The Messenger

So, how does one follow up the feel-good family fare of Back to the Future? How bout with a movie about the military men whose job is to visit the families of soldiers killed in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars?

Occasionally, it takes awhile for American movies to matriculate down here to Peru. Usually it is some forgettable romantic comedy or action film that barely registered a blip on the domestic scene and is being shopped around to foreign countries to recoup a few dollars of a budget certainly in the red. The Messenger, which was released in 2009, followed this path but it's unusual we're seeing it so late, given its critical acclaim and the Best Supporting Actor nomination for Woody Harrelson (more on that later).

As I've already mentioned, the movie revolves around the story of two Army servicemen who have been removed from active duty and now visit the families to deliver the dreadful news of a son or daughter being killed in action. During the first half of the movie, we witness several of these visits as heart-wrenching as they are. Emotions spring forward from the families while the Army representatives remain stoic, a task easier for the veteran (Harrelson) than for the newcomer to the job (Ben Foster).

The movie shifts in the second half of the movie and focuses on the relationship between Harrelson and Foster's characters and a relationship between Foster and a widow whose husband was killed in action. The emotional scars that each of the characters bear become apparent to the viewer as they try to maintain their day to day lives.

This was a grim movie covering a grim topic, but it was done so well. The actors-Foster, Harrelson, and Samantha Morton (as the widow)-were superb and really breathed life into the characters, keeping the movie from devolving into a depressing two hour affair. Mind you, it was tough to watch at times but the job done by these fine actors (one scene between Foster and Morton as they make tentative steps towards intimacy was particularly well done) elevated The Messenger.

Before exiting, a word on Woody Harrelson-as mentioned, he was well-deserving of the best supporting actor nomination here, further affirming his strong acting chops. I lost track of the him when he was thrust into feature roles in films such as Natural Born Killers and The People vs. Larry Flynt-those movies just didn't appeal to me. However, in this movie and No Country for Old Men he has played supporting roles that just ratchet up the respective movies. I hope he continues picking up these choice parts in quality flicks, but in the end, I will always think about Harrelson as how we first knew him:

Recent Reads

Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer:
Many have heard the basic story of Pat Tillman, the former NFL player who walked away from a multi-million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01. Tillman became an Army Ranger and was killed in action while serving over in Afghanistan.

That was the narrative I knew-I remember listening to the Jim Rome show the day after his death was announced and the three hours that was devoted to his passing and mourning his loss. I recall seeing snippets in newspapers and websites after his death, mentioning how his mother was fighting to discover the circumstances behind his death on the battlefield. But I did not delve further into the story until I cracked open this book.

Krakauer is the acclaimed author of books such as Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Under the Banner of Heaven. He aggressively writes about the topics he chooses and will unflinchingly criticize which has brought him controversy (particularly so for Under the Banner of Heaven). This book devotes itself to two main narratives-the life of Pat Tillman and the cover-up of his death due to "friendly fire" in Afghanistan.

The portrayal of Tillman reveals an incredible man and I feel describing him as such is even a disservice. Krakauer doesn't portray a flawless man-he recounts an incident in high school that landed Tillman in juvenile detention and nearly derailed his football career before it got started. As I read I discovered a flawed human who defied convention-he was an introspective jock, a NFL star who was devoted to his high school sweetheart, a soldier who doggedly avoided the limelight that the Army tried to shine upon him.

In contrast, the Army brass and White House officials involved in the cover-up of the cause of Tillman's death come off as manipulative, calculating, and shallow. As the author lays out, the cover-up began almost immediately as the attempt was made to cloak Tillman's death as a hero fighting off enemy forces when in reality he was inexplicably killed by members of his own platoon. Tillman's death was used as a rallying point for citizens back home, to support increasingly unpopular wars in the Middle East. That his death didn't fit the hero's narrative meant little to those scripting the story they wanted to present.

I finished this book awed and angry; awed by the man that Pat Tillman was and angry with the twist of politics that his death became.

The Help by Kathyrn Stockett
I didn't really expect to like this book. It was a book club selection for a group where I'm one of two male participants (and a plethora of middle-aged women). This book screamed femininity-the story centers upon two black housekeepers in Mississippi just before the civil rights movement. I went in with guarded expectations.

When I finished this compulsively readable novel, I was a bit stunned. It had been a long time since I had dove so deeply into a book, compelling me to pick it up whenever I had a free moment. The setting is rich territory and actually pretty predictable-on one side you have the overworked, underpaid housekeepers who work for the bigoted white women who themselves are constrained by the limitations of being a housewife in the 1950's. I've read some reader commentaries after I finished the book that call it an instant classic, but I don't think I'd go that far. Comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird just don't feel like they will hold up over the years.

But that doesn't diminish the enjoyable read that this book provided. Looking into the window of life in Mississippi just prior to the civil rights era provides perspective that I will never experience and this book does a wonderful job of doing so, in a very accessible manner.

Back to the Future

For my 14th birthday, my parents took my cousin Dan and I to Winona for dinner and a PG-rated movie to celebrate the big day. I chose Back to the Future on that night and nearly twenty-five years later I was again in a theatre viewing the big screen showing of Michael J. Fox's step into movie stardom after having already conquered the small screen with his character Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties.

I couldn't help feeling a bit nostalgic on Saturday night while Marianella and I watched Marty McFly valiantly attempt to return to 1985. The nostalgia existed for a time when I relied on my parents to take me to movies (which in retrospect was a time of pretty limited celluloid options-my Dad, who could exercise a pretty colorful vocabulary working around the farm, was conversely a critic who judged a movie's worth upon the amount of profanities that were included in the film; even Back to the Future couldn't escape his scorn with the profane utterances in the movie that you can count on one hand).

Nostalgia was also present as I viewed a film whose premise was built on the vast disconnect for Marty returning to the time of his parent's youth of 1955. Twenty-five years after this movie debuted, there was a similar disconnect from the mid-'80s for us. We were struck by the stonewashed jeans favored by Marty, his "hip" lingo (evidently 'heavy' was an adjective popular among teens in '85), and a time when JC Penney's was still considered an anchor store for large shopping malls.

Analyzing BTTF a bit closer than when I was fourteen, I was also struck by the choice of Fox as the lead character of Marty McFly. The character was written as a bit of a smart ass, anti-authority figure who caught the scorn of the high school dean and local townspeople as he maneuvered around town by stealing rides from the rear bumpers of various vehicles on his skateboard. But really, has there ever been a more wholesome teen idol than Fox? Nothing about him was anti-authority; I mean, he was just finishing his run as Alex P. Keaton, the ultimate square (to steal from Marty's mother in 1955). You also can't look at the era and say that all of the teen characters were still wholesome as Wonder Bread; in the same year, Judd Nelson was starring as the ultimate anti-authority teen in The Breakfast Club. Viewing Fox as a electric guitar playing rebel was. . .quaint. When you consider the director of BTTF (Robert Zemeckis) would also direct Forrest Gump in the next decade, you can definitely see Zemeckis was most comfortable in family-friendly, non-threatening fare.

All this being said, Back to the Future is one of those classic popcorn movie experiences-a movie enjoyable at age fourteen and again at thirty-eight. We left the theatre smiling and recounting the cleverness of the movie's dialogue. We laughed over our favorite scene, when Marty is being chased by Biff and his gang around the main square, eluding them before they smash into a manure truck. And while Fox was the star of the film, the considerable talents of Christopher Lloyd as Marty's mentor, Doc Brown stole the show. His elastic expressions and frantic nature provided the perfect foil to Marty. Lloyd certainly has made a career of stealing laughs however, as this clip below will attest (if you don't have five minutes, I strongly suggest tuning in at the 4 minute mark):

The Initial Post

Greetings everyone (or no one-who knows who will bother?)~
I've decided to double my blogging empire with the advent of this new blog. What will it be and why bother? Well, for one, I enjoy writing and I just am not getting enough practice in with my other blog. So, to keep my skills sharpened, I've decided to begin this blog, which will concentrate on musings of recent movies, books, articles, TV shows, news items, youtube videos, CD's, etc, etc. that have crossed my path and I feel like spilling my thoughts about.

By no means is this going to be an up to date review of the latest in entertainment-for many of the items I write about, they have been in circulation for quite some time. So, don't cancel your subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly, but I do hope you find these entries interesting.