Christine, No Country for Old Men, Dante's Peak, and Lust, Caution

There is something comforting in the morally balanced (in terms of debits and credits) universe of Stephen King -- like in a film adaptation of his work such as Christine. Sure, it's an adolescent sense of righting wrongs, but it's all about karma and comeuppance. It's also not unique. Take another example, chosen almost at random: Dante's Peak. When the boss-geologist, who didn't think there was a reason to worry, dies in the volcanic maelstrom, one is left with a kind of "he deserved to die more than most of the victims".

So it is with great interest that we see the return of films where the glass is always less than half full. Whether it's the "bad guy" getting away, in Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men -- or whether it's the betrayal of a tight circle of friends, to save a man who would turn around and kill his savior, in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution -- there is something creeping back into motion pictures that last left it's mark during the heyday of American cinema of the early 1970s.

Tre

Should probably be called "Kakela" as I heard someone say leaving the screening. This almost too real foursome features strong performances all around, but the center of it really is Kakela, not Tre.

That being said, Tre is engaging for yet another reason -- its director, Eric Byler, who also brought us the true in spirit, if less mature in content and execution, "Charlotte Sometimes". Screening after screening brings cast and crew to parade in front of festival and club audiences -- and too often we're left on the verge of wondering whether getting started home earlier in the day might have been a better use of our time. There are almost always nuggets, but often not quite enough. Byler is different -- so while the film itself is quite worthwhile, if you can here from him (dvd extra, perhaps?) in addition to seeing the film, by all means pursue that!

Meet the Robinsons = The Terminator

Strangely enough, the story behind Meet the Robinsons is the same as
the story behind The Terminator: An invention gone wrong creates a
dystopian future in which machines enslave humans... and time travel
provides the solution.

Of course, the Disney movie emphasizes the brighter future, with the
dystopian future offered as a brief alternate scenario -- which is
the opposite of the emphasis in the Terminator films/tv series.

Ideocracy

Although not as funny as I would have liked, it is actually the most
accurate description of "survival of the fittest" one can find in
popular culture: Darwin's theory doesn't describe the fittest taking
over but, rather, the most re-productive taking over.

Understanding the World Through Extrapolation

Perhaps much of what I know about place sin the world where I have
not been is based on what I have seen in movies and related media.

So I take a sense of how places I HAVE been are portrayed in movies
-- the mis-representations, the exaggerations, the fabrications, and
the accuracies -- and use that to judge how well movies about places
I have NOT been likely portray those places. Using that calibration,
I then extrapolate what the places I have not visited, but have seen
in movies and other media, must be like.

Death of President; Westworld

Death of a President is oddly patriotic for a film critical of Bush's
America. The patriotism lends the fictional documentary an aura of
authenticity, but would be the first place to start when trimming the
running time to a digestible length (perhaps 70 minutes).

Westworld: Now I recall why it took me so many years to watch this
movie: Even now the only version of this campy sci-fi classic from
the early 70s is a pan-and-scam travesty of what was probably a very
cool Cinemascope motion picture. The film oozes "limited budget and
not sure how to stretch it" from every frame, and manages to hit
every cliche. What impresses one most, now, if the soundtrack -- not
the twangy western bits, but the incidental music, especially during
the third, chase, act.