The Purge, Election Year - 2016 - Movie

The Purge - Election Year

2016 

R - 127 min

Thrill ride for socialist adrenaline freaks, definitely not serious filmmaking.

From the previews so carefully edited to grab you and not let go, and buildup via the other 2 films of this trilogy, I was expecting something a bit more….overwhelming as far as scope.  Something along the lines of different locations across the states, interconnected webs of intrigue from those in power with ties to other countries, or quite possibly more of the inner social circles of those of the NFFA, the New Founding Fathers of America.  Instead, this was once again battle lines drawn between tightly controlled areas, characters, and personal focused drama on a limited scale that I would estimate demonstrated a smaller budget, studio execs not wanting to pour money into the incendiary series for fear of controversy or backlash, or quite possibly a look at the demographics of the previous 2 films and deciding it would not be worth it.  Only adrenaline junkies go see this stuff after all, in large part.

Contrary to that, however, we know that focusing on a particular group of people and subject in a story that has a large scope is one of the ways to effectively demonstrate the crux of the matter without making an epic that could end up being another Water World.  The hard part then is believability and impact. Convincing performances by all, and great editing tension and continual moving action kept this alive and made it the “thrill thing” that people go see most killer and chiller film, splatter films, or other pump-action flicks for.  This is really no different when it comes to that, as expected.

As far as bad guys, and girls, that was also limited, but well-played and came down to inept mercenaries working for the big guys with money, and some bad girls in the street who just wanted their candy bars.  Rather colorful group.

So getting past the cinema aspects and looking at the agenda, there is the socialist/moralist/idealist triangle of big private government interest taking advantage of their situation and providing a platform for extinguishing poor people that do nothing but suck resources from the economy, and also getting their kicks in a near-satanic kind of way by personally purging themselves in a private ceremony.  Conspiracy isn’t quite the word any longer at this stage, it’s more like outright legalized plans by white supremacists to rid themselves of social “vermin”.  Of course, to not make it seem like a white/black issue, the first person they sacrifice is a white drug addict.

The troubling aspect of this is the filmmaker’s almost overeager willingness to make this a vendetta against Christ.  No, I don’t mean Christianity, as in the church, but Christ himself (and consequently the images and hierarchy of church authority as well).  The name of Jesus was put front and center as the “excuse” that these twisted conspirators and control freaks used to justify their genocidal/sociopathic plan.  The church and state duo that is so often decried as an incorrect alliance by left swinging idealist and ACLU fans is seen firmly rooted here as the core of the NFFA’s justification, just as Christ and the Church have been used countless times as axe-swinging material over issues like slavery.  There was of course the underground group, mostly African American that included the token white guy who is our hero of the film, starring Frank Grillo, who come to the rescue in the end, and save the senator.  I’m not afraid of a spoiler here, because those of you who would actually bother to go see this will guess this is going to happen anyway.

Predictable, plot driven, and juvenile, the entire series is based on the old fashioned horror convention of “who’s gonna get whacked, and how bad, and do we get to watch?”.  

I repeat: Thrill ride for socialist adrenaline freaks, definitely not serious filmmaking.  HOWEVER, having said that, I’m betting that privately Mr. Obama and cabinet members got a screening, and enjoyed every gun-hating minute.

- Agitatus

Maggie's Plan - my Part II

Maggie's Plan  - Part 2

2015

R - 1Hr 38Min - Comedy, Drama, Romance

Greta Gerwig - Maggie 

Julianne Moore - Georgette

Ethan Hawke - John

Make sure you read the FIRST review of this, which was yesterday, the day before today, ya dig?
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As with all things that seem pristine and pressed together neatly, after sleeping on it, the next day you’re sure to find wrinkles.  You plant grass seed and you find a patch you missed when it all grows up or the birds ate while you were away.  You turn the perfect tomato over on the vine to find a hornworm firmly embedded in the fruit’s shady underside.

After sleeping over the Maggie’s Plan initial review, I’ll have to say something troubled me while I slept that I woke up thinking about.  It was something clear to me during the viewing, but not as consciously clear as the flicker of the celluloid (or dancing digits) on screen.  This is not to negate ANY of my previous comments actually, because it’s a different subject, offbeat from the filmic language of actor, writing, directing, lighting.  This is a touchy subject nowadays for most of the urban and intelligent, as well as a mundane or mute subject across much of the rest of the culture.  So while stepping carefully to not offend, this topic must be explored, after all, it is central to the central character, therefore it’s central to the entire piece and affects the whole zeitgeist of the thing, if you get me.

Maggie’s Quaker life. 

Late in the film, Julianne Moore’s Georgette character sums her up while seated across the table from her as “simple, a little stupid, loving, kind, open hearted, warm” (not an exact quote, I’ve only seen this once) and then went on to say “I really like you”.  She summed up our filmic understanding of the Maggie character to the core.  We absolutely love her, you can’t help it.  The natural charm, the very honest approach, the wide eyes, her love for children.  But ultimately we’re also led to what could conceivably be a darker part of her, her double-minded hypocrisy, she’s called a hypocrite outright by her friend, and manipulator, or intruder into the lives of others, which she did so very unproductively throughout, admitting in the end her plan was a fiasco and ill-taken, ill-conceived.  Yet we also believe it was naturally inevitable, just like the ending (no spoiler here right?).  

But her faith plays a key role, a master manipulative role that hangs on her like a necklace.  The key shot in the film surrounding her faith, we find, is empty.  (Ok this is a spoiler, so if you haven’t seen this yet PLEASE DO NOT read further).  She attends a Quaker service.  We see a simple sign that is like a parking sign, so we can assume that it has been there for some time, or at least people don’t make signs out of metal and bolt them to an iron fence unless they intend to do something long-term.  The very next shot is so telling of the state of her faith, and the state of the Quaker religion.  It’s the alter of her inner sanctuary.  She sits alone at the meeting, not one other soul in attendance. She has stated to John about her meetings, “I still attend”.  However we only find out late in the game of the story that her faith has an empty, silent component.  Because her faith is directly tied to her behavior, and her behavior is that of idealistic dreaming that leads her down blind alleys, then her faith and the admission of mistaken values become one in the same, or part of the failure.  Her faith becomes nullified in the face of another kind of idealism, being urban, modernist, and ultimately religionless.  She resolves to break away with that life of manipulation, hence her assumed dreamy idealism, therefore we assume that the religious adherence must pass away with it, or that it did.

Her skittishness of things involving her body, her purity, is essentially viewed as tied with this as well.  She refuses the offer of physical love from her sperm donor, attempting to have a child by herself.  In the person of Guy, played by Travis Fimmel, is a perfectly fine specimen of a man offering love and affection that she seems to so obviously need and want, but she wants the fruit of his labor in a plastic jar, one that she emphasizes is “sterile”.  She had to say that of course.  His offer is truly sweet, given the circumstances, and understandable.   She claims, “That’s too complicated”.  This also strengthens the character’s puritanical prudishness and distance from romance and the evident opportunities right before her, reinforcing what appears to be a wayward idealism once again.  Sexual fear is yet another symptom of a wayward religion.

It’s typical of the modern idealist in the new age of abstracting reality from circumstances, of situational ethics and tolerance, buzz words for universalistic correctness, speech sounding like sound blurbs from a newscast carefully censored prior to air time, to dismiss religion along with “old fashioned” words like purity and faithfulness by dragging a wonderfully innocent character like Maggie (an old fashioned name as well), through the sullies and mud pits of the sophisticated and existential modern conventions of parenthood.  In the end, what we have is essentially a soiled virgin whose misguided beliefs are found to be subjugated to the supposedly more elevated personal triumph of “the real world”.  It’s all done comically, and with great cinematic penache, but also there is this sense of tragedy, at least for me there was that sense, a sense of loss of something larger and more beatific than the immediate and pragmatic, an overreaching sense of guidance, of God.  I believe that this is a universal desire, a reality.  Beneath our sometimes stoic standup against darkness there is a prayerful wish for Eden to be true, that we could return to the garden, but alas we are awash in those muddy sullies.

For that reason I’m sure that Rebecca Miller did not attempt to dream up a way to undermine belief, but one cannot separate the wayward or misguided idealism from belief in Maggie’s character, they are one in the same.  In the end, we are left to believe that the character has undergone a great change, or shift, and has come to realize that like her Quaker meetings, her belief in a world that is pure and unadulterated is also empty, and cannot exist.  That I suppose, is the sense of loss that I have, while also triumphing in the belief that she does eventually find the direction that she truly was looking for in the first place.

In place of that vacuum, Rebecca gives us a hope that if we look directly and squarely at ourselves, as we are, not as we would “like” to be, we can find the substantial and fulfilling life, despite it’s flaws.  This does not negate God, but simply puts our condition in a real perspective, an honest one, one that can accept a giant jar of pickles.

- Agitatus

Maggie's Plan - 2015 - Movie

Maggie's Plan 

2015

R - 1Hr 38Min - Comedy, Drama, Romance

Refreshing, invigorating, other positive words come to mind.  This is a SitCom. I hate that word, because it conjures up soap operas, at least in my mind, and wasted hours that people spend on a couch in front of half-hour relational entanglements and personal romantic and suspenseful tensions.  Well, there really should be a new word, a Relational Comedy.  A RelCom.  That’s what this is.

I’ll get to Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, and Ethan Hawke in just a moment, and a shining moment too, but first I want to touch on Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph’s roles.  I’ll call them both unexpectedly and pleasantly surprising.  Children of SNL, after the previews I’d seen, I was set for characters that were colored with that sensitivity of the SNL world, the quick and quirky changelings that you can never really believe in, delighted in yes, but of course were very put on.  As I said, I was surprised.  The directing and acting combination here throws us absolute winners of convincing characters that are also enjoyable.  In the middle of the first few sentences of Maya’s first appearance on the screen she does indeed become the friend character, and SNL is nowhere to be found.  Bill Hader, likewise, shed his Saturday personas, many of them, and spot on delivered a real and serious performance as a friend and dad, not to mention a perfect half-drunk scene were his “slip” was extremely well done and not “faked” at all.  Kudos to them both.  Well done.  They’ve managed to avoid the Jim Carrey syndrome of never being completely believable as anything other than an “over-actor” (quote from Liar Liar outtake).

The complete surprise to me here was Greta Gerwig as Maggie.  I say complete surprise here because ( I am now ashamed to say this because I feel like “where have I been?”) I have not seen her before in her other appearances in Frances Ha, Mistress America, or otherwise.  She has SOooooo many credits already.  Again, where have I been?  I need to see those films when I have time. She absolutely envelopes the screen with her natural and effervescent presence.  It just drips off the camera into the theater.  Her home-spun look and calm resolve play so well.  The scenes with the youngest child are classic beautiful and endearing beyond measure.  I think I could just watch those by themselves over a few more times.  This role seems written for her.  It may have been, I don’t know.   But she is the perfect antithesis to Julianne Moore’s exotic and overwrought character Georgette, with the French accent and ballistic scholarly credentials.  Moore of course pulls this off with ease it seems.  It can also be that Greta’s costumer for this role was spot-on perfect, down to the shoes we see in the opening, the done up hair, or like the one restaurant scene where I laughed at the outfit of the yellow checkered blouse conventionally 50s with the Middletown America turquoise (was it?) sweater.  Perfect, and schoolish, like her apartment piled with books.

In fact I need to pause here and just sum up the whole acting thing from every perspective: Incredible.  Every player in this film gives a stellar performance, and so therefore I must also believe that Rebecca Miler, director, has triumphed.  Talk about understanding the language of film and how to get a performance out of people.  Wow, she’s going to have a great career as a director.  That only goes back to ’95, even though she’s been acting since ’88.  Kudos to her as well for this breakthrough film. That’s what I keep wanting to call it.  Why?  Because I believe we’re in for more of here.  Like Clint Eastwood was at one time turning from acting to directing, Rebecca is just getting warmed up I believe.

Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore.  Now here is a couple of seasoned actors who’s chemistry in this case could not be more perfectly matched with the roles.  The scenes in the snow, the bedroom farces, the antithetical proton/neutron attraction/attack synthesis makes the story and the plot work. The scene of Ethan’s character John coming out of his “closet” in the confessional kind of way to Maggie is absolutely perfect, stunning in fact.  So well written.  So here is where the writer gets the honors.  Great characters written well, and great casting all around.

So far, I believe that this film we should see up next year for an Oscar.  For which nomination I would not be sure, but writing might be my choice.

If you’re in to RelComs, this is a must see.

And one point that I’m proud of, I called the last shot.  I knew exactly where the film would cut at the end.  In fact, there in the theater, I actually held up my fingers and pressed them together at almost the exact same moment the closing shot went to black.  I still have that editing magic I guess.

- Agitatus

4 Films/1 Day

4 Films/1 Day

On Wednesday, July 13th, I plan on seeing all 4 of the following films, a banner day.  Then I'll post my usually pointed and biased opinions for each one the next day.  Should be quite an adventure.  I've never viewed 4 films in one day. Taking them in this order:


Maggie's Plan - The Music of Strangers - The Purge - The Infiltrator