Race and Deadpool

                         Heroes, Rising (in various ways) To Their Occasions

                                                       Reviews by Ken Burke

Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ insightful reviews.  Therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when you’re ready to be transported to … wherever we end up.  Please protect your eyes from the dazzling brilliance.

                      

                                                      Race (Stephen Hopkins)

                

Based on the life of superstar athlete Jessie Owens, we focus on just a few of his years: the astounding debut as an Ohio State U. track and field star setting new world records, followed by his appearance at the 1936 Olympics where he upset host Adolph Hitler’s plan of showcasing Aryan dominance by taking 4 gold medals—1 for each event that he competed in.

                 

What Happens: James Cleveland Owens (Stephan James)—called J.C. as a boy but mistakenly understood by an elementary school teacher as “Jesse,” so he continued to use that name so as not to embarrass her—came from a poor African-American family but his running and jumping talents led to the opportunity to attend Ohio State University in 1933 as part of the track team where his coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis)—himself a star runner at the school about a decade before—insists that Jesse hone his natural abilities into the determination to win, given that OSU’s had a string of poor-performance-years that the coach wants to transcend (the implication is that the football team could do better as well if they'd accept Black athletes but that group’s racist coach and players have no interest in such integration, reminding us that these White-supremacy-attitudes weren’t just confined to the U.S. South until Supreme Court and Congressional action finally started bringing about enforced changes to such discrimination by the mid-20^th-century days of the Civil Rights movement).  Jesse responds to Coach’s requirement by putting in plenty of hours on the track but he also has classes to attend and a part-time-job at a gas station needed to earn a little extra cash to send home to his family and girlfriend, Ruth Solomon (Shanice Banton), who’s raising their out-of-wedlock-daughter, so Snyder becomes concerned that Jesse’s missing too many practices, leading to getting him a job as a page at the state legislature there in Columbus where he gets paid for doing nothing (probably a benefit for a good many college athletes of that time) so he can work harder on his speed and timing.  The work pays off at the May 25, 1935 Big Ten meet at Ann Arbor, MI when Jesse sets 3 new world’s records and ties a 4^th (by Snyder’s stopwatch he beat that one as well but the officials didn’t accept it), leading to a big push to get him to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but there are problems with that coming from many directions.

 When Jesse comes back home for a visit he meets an official from the NAACP who strongly urges him to boycott the upcoming Olympics in defiance of the racial hatred already being shown by Hitler’s Nazis as they’ve moved to full power in Germany.  Such a boycott by the entire American team is also being encouraged by our  Amateur Athletic Union, headed by Jeremiah Mahoney (William Hurt); former AAU head and later-to-be-member of the International Olympic Committee Avery Brundage (Jeremy Irons), working with the IOC in 1935, wants our team to compete in order to bring about much-needed-emotional-uplift during the dark days of the Great Depression (Coach Snyder’s of that opinion also, but it’s mostly to replay/erase his own tragedy of not being on the U.S. team in 1924 in Paris after being injured in a light-plane he was piloting which crashed upon landing).  Brundage travels to Berlin to work out a deal with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Barney Metschurat) that will allow Jews and Blacks to compete for the U.S., along with no actions taken against such people during the Games—although Brundage sees Jews being taken away in a truck when he comes to negotiate; in return, the Germans will work with his construction firm to build their planned new embassy in D.C., but Jesse’s still conflicted, not from fear (he’d learned Snyder’s tactic of blocking out hostile screams from the crowds at his track meets—although that wouldn’t be necessary in Berlin because he was already a popular celebrity there) but in respect for those who felt he shouldn’t be participating in an event intended to glorify the “Aryan myth” of racial superiority, intended to be documented by famed filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (Carice van Houten).*

 *If you’ve got about 3½ hours to spare you can watch her acclaimed1938 documentary (with stunning images of athletes in motion in some of her montages), with English subtitles where needed (not too often).  Our current film presents her as standing up to Goebbels to insure her cinematic vision, which may or may not be that accurate, although the final footage does celebrate the German winners, with their required Nazi salutes, as much as possible (also not often).  In Part 1 of Olympia (1:55:00) we see Jesse winning the 100 meters at roughly 41:00-42:00, the long jump at 59:00-1:00:15 (in Part 2 [1:28:27] there are no subtitles so I hope your German is better than mine; my apologies if I missed Jesse in this one but I didn’t see any footage of his 2 other events).

 Finally, Owens decides to go (along with Snyder, who manages to get coaching credentials but must pay his own way otherwise), where he triumphs in the 3 events he qualified for—the 100-meter-sprint, the 200-meter-sprint , the long jump (where he got motivational help from his German competitor, Carl “Luz” Long [David Kross], whose private repudiation of Nazism and loss of the gold medal led to his combat assignment and death in WW II)—as well as being a last-minute-addition to the 400-meter-sprint-relay when his Jewish teammates were pushed off by orders from Goebbels, under fire from Hitler (Adrian Zwicker) because of the “embarrassment” of seeing this “Negro” on the winner’s stand so often (to great enthusiasm from the crowd) so he refused to congratulate any winner of any event.  (Accounts now question whether Hitler privately shook Owen’s hand; however, sadly, there’s no dispute that our own President FDR didn’t honor him in D.C. after returning from Berlin.)  Before some final historical-note-graphics we conclude this film with a scene of Owens, Snyder, and their wives (Ruth with Jesse, although earlier, when he emerged as a college track star, he abandoned her for awhile for a flashier woman) about to enter the Waldorf-Astoria for a dinner in his honor but Jesse and Ruth had to use the service entrance, even in NYC in the mid-1930s, another example of the shameful racism they were forced to endure and eventually overcome in a country that praises its entertainers, including victors on the sports field, but still all too frequently has little need for them after their winning seasons/careers if they don’t somehow reflect the prevailing notion of the “dominant paradigm” (which may well include people of color, as long as they fit comfortably with their White counterparts or are rich enough to maintain public adulation even if they do seem to be tolerantly-oppositional to “the norm”); despite its other laudable accomplishments, though, this film’s final remarks don’t even briefly note how Owens struggled financially for most of his life after 1936 until his death in 1980.

So What? While Owens’ victories in track and field are a matter of public record not at all distorted by the events of this film, it’s hard to know without a lot of research (that I didn’t do) as to how accurate the evolved friendship between student-athlete Jesse and desperate-to-mentor-a-winner Coach Snyder was or whether Brundage really was at the implied-blackmail-mercy of Goebbels in agreeing to bump the Jewish runners from the U.S. relay team because his construction deal with the Nazis (which never happened because of WW II) would have been the scandal it’s portrayed as in this film or whether the head coach of the American runners in the 1936 Games was as racist as he’s depicted here (but it provides a useful plot point in getting Snyder in as a personal coach for Owens), yet even if all of those aspects are fictionalized-additions to what is indisputably true they don’t undermine the critical value of this account of Owens’ focus to excel on the world stage for his own driven sense of personal accomplishment.  (That he finally chose to join the Olympic team may also be sincerely an aspect of his patriotic desire to diminish the Nazi hopes of seeming-racial-superiority, but it’s clear that we’re encouraged to believe that way because, as shown in Race, Jesse’s part of a sports-focused-crowd listening to the radio in 1936 when former heavyweight boxing champ “Max” Schmeling [a German] beats up-and-coming American contender “Brown Bomber” Joe Louis, giving you every reason in that scene to believe that Schmeling just won the title again although it was Louis who went on to be champ in 1937 [later knocking out Schmeling in round 1 of their 1938 rematch, as Joe continued on to retire undefeated in 1949] so even though Louis’ career far eclipsed Schmellng’s we’ve encouraged to think that Jesse headed off to Berlin partly to avenge the loss of his Black countryman to a Nazi stooge).  You may be shouting “USA” when seeing this film but in 1936 Germany they were instead shouting “Owens” in recognition of his individual triumphs in setting world records, even as such victories brought honor to his (our) home country in the face of planned propaganda about racial inequities.

Bottom Line Final Comments: While most of what I’ve seen at the movies so far in 2016 has been catch-up-screenings of 2015 releases as they make their way into general circulation following their mandatory 1-week-minimum-run in Los Angeles County in order to qualify for Oscar consideration I've also seen a few offerings of the (rapidly aging) new year; of those, Race is clearly the best so far, with my anticipation that I’ll still look favorably on it when I’m considering my 2016 triumphs (Mick LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle notes that had this been released in December 2015 it would likely have scored some nominations that could have provided a little less reason for the #OscarsSoWhite protests that I know are still giving host Chris Rock ample ammunition for what promises to be a not-so-benign-broadcast on ABC next Sunday, February 28, 2016).  However, that’s not the general consensus of the collective-film-criticism-establishment as Race has garnered only 61% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 57% at Metacritic (more details in the links far below), so I don’t really know what my critical (in all senses of the word) brethren are thinking in their reactions, although some remarks I’ve read indicate that there’s a belief that this approach to Jesse Owen’s life and sports career is too worshipful of its protagonist who always seems to do the right thing (so to speak; I’m curious to know what Spike Lee thinks of Race), except when he has that passionate fling with the vivacious woman he encounters at an LA nightclub while there for a track meet at USC but otherwise is a diligent soldier for his demanding coach, an honor-bound-provider (despite very limited means) for the folks back home in Cleveland, and a credit to his race (as well as the whole human race) for his passion to win at the Olympics as he shows his best side despite the glaring spotlight of the world’s rapt attention (which does finally produce some lack of focus as he almost fouls out of the broad jump event before redeeming himself with a new world’s record).  

 Given the horrors of racial antagonism in the U.S. felt by Owens and most other Black Americans, along with the emerging-genocide-program of mid-1930s Nazis, this film could have shown more callous examples of bone-deep-racism than mere arrogant football players or a few Jews forced into a truck, but how much detail do we really need to verify how close to the brink of total human failure that we were all headed toward during the years of the Great Depression and its aftermath?

 Race (a simple title with extensive connotations about sport, social relations, and policies of extermination—although that level of Hitler’s “final solution” wasn’t known yet to the world at large, otherwise I can’t believe that anyone except German contenders along with Spaniards and Italians herded into service in support of the Fascist Franco and Mussolini regimes would have even considered legitimizing these Games with their supposed intentions of non-political, international good will) is clear that evil is alive and well in 1933-’36, both at home and abroad, but the focus is more on rising up against that kind of wicked intolerance, confounding the demented supremacists with concrete evidence that the so-called “inferiors” are not that at all but instead can display culture-changing-courage as well as achieve triumphs denied them in the petty minds of their bigoted detractors.  I think Race succeeds well in those intentions, although—as I noted above—to not even acknowledge in those final graphics of the film the financial difficulties that Owens faced after his brief glory years (because, in need of income, he accepted some commercial endorsements, thereby nullifying his amateur status which left him with little way to provide for his family [including 2 more daughters], as there were few career opportunities for professional swift runners in the 1940s [an NFL career might have helped but still was extremely hard to come by then, just as football hadn’t been available at all for Jesse back at Ohio State]) undercuts the larger picture of how individual victories in those long-ago-decades didn’t lead to anything big enough, fast enough to lower the high tide of U.S. institutional racism (a legal fact, not just my usual leftist-opinion) so I just hope that the strong positive feelings that this well-constructed, well-delivered film provides don’t confuse historically-naïve-contemporary-viewers into thinking that any one act or life of courage (as depicted about Jackie Robinson in 42 [Brian Helgeland, 2013; review in our April 18, 2013 posting], Martin Luther King in Selma [Ava DuVernay, 2014; review in our January 15, 2015 posting], Cesar Chavez in Cesar Chavez [Diego Luna, 2014; review in our April 30, 2014 posting], for example) is enough in itself to cure centuries of engrained-social-dysfunctions-and-hatreds, but the personal victories of someone like Jesse Owens still need to celebrated—as they are appropriately in Race—for their contributions toward a better, more inclusive society for us all as we go forward.

 If you’re aware of my review style at this Two Guys in the Dark blogsite you already know how I’ll conclude my remarks on Race; if not, you’ll now find that it’ll be with a Musical Metaphor that addresses in some manner what the film’s about, what I may have encountered with its intentions, or maybe (not here, but occasionally) something silly (see the next review below) just to match the mood of a funky presentation.  In this intentionally serious case of Race, I’m going with The Beatles “Blackbird” (from the 1968 album The Beatles [unofficially known as the “White Album” because of its almost-blank-cover]) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiL5JpUtjqY, an intimate performance at London's Abbey Road recording studio by Paul McCartney (date unknown) in which this video gives you virtually the same experience as the recording except on the CD track you can hear a percussive beat (McCartney’s foot) as well as the added sounds of a blackbird singing.  Not only does this song have a direct explanation of being about what this songwriter saw as emerging-improvements in U.S. race relations in the late 1960s (as Paul himself has said about it), with these cinematic-Race-related-encouragements to “Take these broken wings and learn to fly” (not that Owens’ winged-legs were ever broken but his spirit was certainly assaulted by the prejudice of those who hated him for his very existence) as his on-field-accomplishments were clearly his “moment to be free” (until he tried to go through a swanky hotel’s front door on the way to his own victory dinner), but it also connects a bit with the controversy over whether Hitler ever personally congratulated Jesse on his victories (Owens says he did, but those who claim seeing a photo of this private moment don’t have any evidence to verify it) and varying explanations of McCartney’s song that some (including him at times) said is really a love poem to a generic (or specific?) Black girl (given that Brits often refer to younger women as “birds”), so I’ll leave any interpretations of all these possibilities with you while you sing (or whistle like a bird if you wish) along with the Metaphor, in preparation for something not nearly so uplifting in my next review.

                

                                                    Deadpool (Tim Miller)

           

An admittedly-unheroic-character is put through a painful mutation experiment that cures his terminal cancer but leaves him hideously scarred yet incapable of physical harm because of his newly-emerged-quick-healing-abilities.  He has no interest in being a superhero, instead using his anger and physical skills in search of the “surgeon” who altered his life.

What Happens: Much of the 1^st hour of Deadpool’s 108-minute-running-time is presented as jumps between the present day of the ongoing action and lengthy flashbacks of this self-conscious-origin-story (the main character often acknowledges us watching this movie, so he’s helpful in giving us the necessary details of how he came to be who he is); thus, I’ll streamline it all here by staying with a straight chronological rendering.  A few years ago, a former Special Forces operative (with 41 kills in Middle East engagements, very athletic as we see in the present-set-scenes), Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), had fallen into being an underworld enforcer, justifying himself as taking actions against even worse scum than himself; one night he met Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin), an equally-raunchy-outsider, who shared his hot sexual attraction (they spend a year in various manifestations of orgasm in a montage set to Neil Sedaka’s 1961 hit, “Calendar Girl” 
[on the Neil Sedaka Sings Little Devil and Other Hits album of that year]; it’s too early for a Musical Metaphor but this is too catchy a tune to ignore so here it is for your enjoyment—or possibly disgust when you see these seemingly-mindless-female-attractions parading around for Neil’s pleasure in this pre-Feminist-era, even as the period tried to herald JFK’s vision of a New Frontier; however, as the notes with this early version of a music video clarify, he did “march” one of them [Miss March, in fact] “down the aisle,” Leba Strassberg in 1962, with their marriage still intact), then became engaged only to suddenly find that Wade has multiple terminal cancers.  Seeking a miracle cure, he finds himself strapped to a table by vicious Ajax (Ed Skrein) and his muscular assistant, Angel Dust (Gina Cararo), only to learn that he’s to be subjected to various tortures until either his mutant genes manifest a power that can be sold out to a devious owner or he’ll die in the process.  

 What finally emerges is Wade's fantastic cellular-reconstructive-ability preventing bodily injury but leaving him hideously-scarred so after mistakenly being left for dead by Ajax he stays away from Vanessa because he can’t “face” her with such a hideous appearance, then works with his oddball-bartender-friend, Weasel (T.J. Miller), to develop his red uniform (covers his body, hiding the scars; distracts from the blood stains left by bullets or knives as his rapid-healing-powers are at work).

 However, instead of even caring about using his new-found-mutation for the greater good (as encouraged by X-Man Colossus [a huge metallic bruiser voiced by Stefan Kapičić] and his sullen accomplice-in-training, Negasonic Teenage Warhead [Brianna Hildebrand]), all Wade wants to do is find Ajax to take revenge on him, with Wilson now going by the name of Deadpool (as Weasel’s bar has an ongoing “deadpool” gambling contest as to who might die next, so the name became ironic when Wade became near-immortal).  As the hunt for Ajax goes on, with Wade focused on using the anger brought on by his loss of identity, a life with Vanessa, and any future purpose in being alive to destroy his nemesis, the mayhem mounts as Ajax’s assistants are killed in well-choreographed-scenes of chaotic slaughter, Ajax responds by capturing Vanessa, then all this culminates in a massive battle among the major players finally resulting in the death of Ajax (shot by Deadpool, as we find that his adversary’s powers of not feeling pain—or emotion—don’t keep him from being physically terminated [even though he somehow survives an earlier bullet to the head and sword-thrust from Deadpool]), with muscular Angel Dust finally stymied by the firestorm that Ms. Warhead can muster, so that all can end well with the revived-romance between Wade and Vanessa, warmly accompanied by the odd-choice of Wham!’s “Careless Whispers,” although we get a bit more story after the end-credits as Deadpool first tells us to go home but then reveals that we’ll someday get a sequel featuring the Deadpool comics' character, Cable, to be played by a yet-unchosen-actor.

So What? To truly appreciate Deadpool (even if you know nothing yet about this X-Men-related Marvel Comics guy, therefore just flowing with what’s on screen here for its own merits) you have to be willing to accept R-rated language (that would likely make the rest of the screen-superheroes you’ve previously watched blush a lot, except for Batman and Ironman who’ve nobly-restrained themselves quite a bit in their studios’ quest for the more-financially-lucrative-PG-rating-designation), constant body mutilation that looks awful but doesn’t slow down our combatants (Deadpool has to cut off his own hand at one point to escape being handcuffed to a moving vehicle but he just grows another one later; Ajax [real name Francis Freeman, but he gets very upset when being reminded of that] has mutated so that he doesn’t feel pain but why that seems to keep him from physical harm—at least until Deadpool puts a bullet through his brain at close range—isn’t that clear to me), a meta-awareness-structure that has Deadpool frequently talking directly to us as well as making caustic comments about his own narrative as well as the whole superhero-movie-concept, along with a protagonist who’s not out to do anything (in this initial tale of his exploits, at least) for the good of anyone else but just kill whoever gets in his way in the extended-quest to once again locate Ajax so as to make him suffer for the ruination that Wade feels has come to his life (although when he finally makes a move to apologize to Vanessa for just disappearing on her for so long she comes to realize that she can accept his scarred appearance, despite hardly anyone else being able to look at him without the mask and costume that covers his body completely).  

 There are lots of references here to an enormous range of pop-culture-connections (including the snide generic "characters" of the opening credits and notations about the failure of Reynolds' previous superhero movie, Green Lantern [Martin Campbell, 2011; I'm one of the few who liked it, but I’ve always had a fondness for that character and his complex-circumstances]), there’s a sense of liberation in seeing a superbeing with no desire to work for society but yet isn’t a villain who disrupts our lives (just those preventing him from finding Ajax), and there’s plenty of quickly-edited, impactful action especially in the early freeway and final battle scenes, but you’ve got to have a certain sensibility about all of this to fully embrace it which I admit that I don’t.  It was more amusing than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Burr Steers; review in our February 11, 2016 posting), but not by much, especially when it gets deadly-serious during the torture-transformation scenes.

Bottom Line Final Comments: Initially, I wasn’t too interested at all in seeing Deadpool because: (a) I don’t know a bit about him in his previous Marvel Comics incarnation (I was more of a DC fanboy in my long-lost-younger-days but have stopped trying to be current with how both of these entities try to keep their characters freshly-relevant with all of their various plot twists and complicated-recreations of the universe [or the Multiverse in DC’s case {you can explore it until you’re totally exhausted here}]; I couldn’t begin to tell you how all of these revisions relate to what I knew growing up about Earth-Two [where the DC characters of the 1940s-‘50s lived], Earth-One [where the DC superheroes in print since roughly the 1960s resided—that is until everything changed more times than I’m clear on], and Earth-Prime [the planet we’re on where stories of these superbeings are simply available for our entertainment], with how it’s all evolved from there beyond my comprehension, so you can imagine my total lack of comicland-understanding about the Marvel Universe, especially where those endless X-Men are concerned), and (2) my local critical guru, Mick LaSalle (although other members of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle [which recently verified me for the 4^th time as not being admitted to their ranks; yes, I’ll get over it at some point] might disagree), published a scathing review of Deadpool that gave me reason to avoid it completely.  (“But at the heart of the film and overarching everything is a creepy assumption, all the more creepy in that it might be true: Audiences will root for the most repellent of characters, so long as that character is identified as the protagonist. […] This is bad, borderline garbage, but disturbing, too, in that it’s just the kind of fake-clever awfulness that might be cinema’s future.”)  Still, when something makes a monetary-impact like Deadpool has ($235.4 million domestically [some use the synonym "North America" but this box-office-term properly includes only U.S. and Canada income, not Mexico through Panama], $256.5 million elsewhere throughout the world in a mere 2-weeks-release; biggest R-rated opening of all time; biggest February opening of all time; plus many other "biggest" designations [at this link scroll all the way down to the "Reception, Box office" area]), I feel some obligation to see what’s going on so that's what I did.

 What I found was funny enough, a nice parody of the whole concept of the constantly-overwhelming-summer-spectacular that the superhero genre has been offering us for quite some time now, but just extreme enough in its meta-ness, cynicism, and obscure-“insider-trading”
references (see the 5^th link to this movie in the extensive Related Links … section just below) to keep reminding me that I’m not even vaguely intended as the target audience for all of this hipster-snarkiness so any of you reading this might feel that Mr. LaSalle and I are hopelessly lost in the fog of yesteryear (although he’s about 12 years younger than me, putting him only in his almost-late-50s) if Deadpool resonates more with you than with us.  (At Rotten Tomatoes 224 reviews resulted in an 83% positive response whereas at Metacrtiic the average score is only 65% based on 49 critics—not at all unusual for the latter group in terms of using a smaller sample nor coming in with a lower score—but I have to wonder if age within these groups has any impact on the results; I certainly think it does when I find myself totally off in another direction from stories that have no interest for me but they often score and/or perform well with younger segments of the population who’re more aware of crossover connections to comic book storylines, popular TV actors now in movies, shoutouts to cultural elements I rarely care much about—zombie stories, “nostalgia” for 1980s-‘90s music and media references, binge-watching streamed episodes of something, etc.—all of which are likely aspects that make any form of arts criticism much more subjective and audience-segment-relevant than most critics ever care to admit.)  When I put all of the considerations above into perspective, I’m pleased enough with Deadpool for a diversionary exploration of something that I’m neither that familiar nor engaged with, but as with the earlier Marvel-based Guardians of the Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014)—another anti-hero-parody-intentionally-masquerading-as-legitimate-fantasy/reality, also hugely popular beyond my interest level (review in our August 7, 2014 posting)—I doubt I’ll need to bother with the inevitable Deadpool sequels (one already guaranteed, probably will lead to more beyond that, giving Reynolds a much better retirement plan than he’d ever hope to get with any further attempts at Green Lantern).

 To wrap this up, my offering for an actual Musical Metaphor to accompany the concept and themes of Deadpool is an easy choice as I just take the same “what-the-f***”-attitude of snide protagonist Wade Wilson and direct you to listen to George Michael singing “Careless Whisper” (from the 1984 Wham! Make It Big album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwD srQ1eQ, not because I think that this overly-melodramatic-confession of the cheater-singer of the song about how his dalliance will never allow a reconnection with his one true love really has anything to do with the content or attitudes of this movie but if Deadpool and Vanessa are going to get so much (phony?) emotion from it as an indication of the depth of their passion (all of which may just be another snarky comment in a narrative built upon and celebrated for such snark), then it’s got to be deemed as vitally-relevant, so I invite you to sing along with Gorgeous George as he suffers the lovesick blues (besides, the song reminds me of how Oakland Athletics right-fielder Josh Reddick also used it as walkup-music last season as a joke on how such at-bat-sound-bites are usually more macho in tone).  I also invite you to stay tuned for the rare event of 2 of my postings in a single week as I’ll be back with my annual Oscar predictions and preferences in a couple of days as preparation for the big ceremony on the night of Feb. 28 (coincidentally marking 29 years since I met my award-winning-wife, Nina Kindblad—well, she gets my award as best lifetime companion ever, even if I don’t have a gold statue for her) so I’ll see you again real soon.

             

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

                 

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AND … at least until the Oscars for 2015’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, February 28, 2016 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2015 films made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists and which ones have been nominated for and/or received various awards.  You may find the diversity among the various critics and the various awards competitions hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competition-award-winners (which usually pales in comparison to the even-more-noticeable-gap between box-office-success that you might want to monitor here, and the actual award-winners)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices are as valid as any of these others, especially if you can offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe winners for films and TV from 2015 and the Oscar nominees for 2015 film releases.  And, in last-minute-consideration for your Oscar-pool-picks I’ll remind you that I’ve previously noted in this section of my postings the award winners from the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America, as their choices might have impact on the Oscar winners given the overlap of memberships among these various cinema-industry-organizations.

Here’s more information about Race:

http://www.focusfeatures.com/race

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E31LnSw47xo

clips from Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDKEjMn6bGM (Jesse meets his new coach), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3nQpOsqY-0 (Jesse impresses his coaches with his speed), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61Gcb4GnWw (Jesse learns to block out insults from the crowd in order to concentrate on his running), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUF2HfpV uC8 (Jeremy Irons and William Hurt in their roles from this film argue over whether the U.S. should boycott the 1936 Olympic Games), and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPG5o5pRY38 (intercut footage from the film and newsreel images of the actual Jesse Owens)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/race_2016/

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/race

Here’s more information about Deadpool:

http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/deadpool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCvLUxICxEI (this is one of those Red Band trailers that retains the R-rated language and bloody imagery of the movie; if you’d prefer something a bit more sanitized here’s one at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuH3zDs2y3s [or if it’s having loading problems like it did for awhile for me, go back to the beginning link of this section at http://www. foxmovies.com/movies/deadpool and click the WATCH THE TRAILER link at top of the page])

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_T8-kb5s-M (5:20 explanation about the post-credits scene in the movie, how it relates to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off [John Hughes, 1986], along with information about a major character in the soon-to-come Deadpool sequel, which also flows into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntpikESr34Y&ebc=ANyPxKrWggiX0kU1oiJRoomjTPy3HBfmVHlNdNwSr3XUueKiGU4pYRqeDAI3lwM5SLb47f3N38QFuACj350Exl7rur_2yMc0Nw, a 19:53 exploration of the many, many references sprinkled throughout this movie, several from Deadpool comics)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/deadpool/

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/deadpool

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com.  Thanks.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile.    Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.

               

WE DO OUR VERY BEST TO PRESENT THESE TWO GUYS POSTINGS IN A VISUALLY-CONSIDERED GRAPHIC LAYOUT, BUT EXTENSIVE TRIAL-AND-ERROR HAS SHOWN US THAT UNLESS YOU’RE READING OUR REVIEWS ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER USING MAC OS X 10.10.5 AND SAFARI 9.0.3 YOU’LL LIKELY SEE A SLOPPIER PRESENTATION THAN WHAT WE INTENDED (but Google Chrome 48.0.2564.116 usually comes fairly close to our intentions).  OUR APOLOGIES FOR ANY INADVERTENT MESS THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FOUND A SUCCESSFUL WAY TO CONTROL.

Where to Invade Next and Zoolander 2

                         No Vaccinations Needed for These Travels           
                     
                                  Reviews by Ken Burke
                  

 I’m abandoning my usual What Happens, So What?, Bottom Line Final Comments review structure this time around because it doesn’t really work so well for documentaries such as Where to Invade Next nor do I really want to attempt a plot summary of something as intentionally-ludicrous as Zoolander 2 so these reviews will be more free-form than usual in hopes that will serve these films more appropriately (if not, I highly doubt the involved directors will even take notice).

Take care, curious readers, for plot spoilers gallop rampantly throughout the Two Guys’ insightful reviews.  Therefore, be warned, beware, and read on when you’re ready to be transported to … wherever we end up.  Please protect your eyes from the dazzling brilliance.

                   

                       Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore)

                

In this documentary Moore goes to several other countries to examine social practices that could benefit the U.S., ranging from longer paid vacations to better middle-class working conditions to truly rehabilitative approaches to prison to more active, accepted roles for women in all sectors of a nation; many of these ideas, though, originated in the U.S. anyway.

                    

 Michael Moore is well known for taking aggressive, confrontational stances in his documentaries toward situations, policies, and people that he’s not in agreement with, from an admittedly-left-wing-viewpoint (a reason why I admire and support his work), leading to the kinds of challenges in his films from a liberal viewpoint that Donald Trump’s been bringing to the current Presidential campaign from his version of a conservative stance (even though his less-successful-GOP-rivals keep claiming he’s not truly conservative, but I’ll let them battle that out on their own because if Trump’s hogwash about Mexicans, Muslims, and anyone else he can demonize to stir up the redneck Red State electorate isn’t what the far-right-wing-commentators have been pushing for the last 8 years [or all the way back to the Nixon administration for some of them] then I’d hate to see how much more extreme you’d have to get to appease these folks—oh, wait, I already have:  Ted Cruz).  However, unlike past diatribes from Moore (I’m sure he’d accept that word to characterize his work because he’s just as unabashed as Trump in taking a stance—unpopular as it may be among his critics—and sticking to it despite oppositional denunciations, although Moore does cite considerably more facts to justify his assertions than Trump seems to think are necessary to defend his policy proclamations), Where to Invade Next is much softer in tone, encouraging in its intentions to present solutions to current social problems in the U.S. that could ideally appeal to most anyone regardless of political persuasion, and ultimately very supportive of American values (including ones actually written into our Constitution, given the current furor over what this document calls on us to collectively do), although the Moore-bashers will likely find nothing but positions to criticize while the lefties like me find a lot to admire in his widely-traveled-ambitions to gather information for this wide-ranging-presentation (however, his publicists didn’t provide many photos to work with so I’ve had to reach a bit for even vaguely-plausible-images to help break up my never-ending-cascade of words; I hope you'll enjoy them).

 In previous docs such as Roger & Me (1989, critique of GM CEO for how his downsizing hurt Flint, MI autoworkers—you can bet that an exposé on the current water crisis there is in Moore’s “pipeline”), Bowling for Columbine (2002, NRA-member Moore “assaults” excesses of U.S. gun culture; winner of the Feature Documentary Oscar), Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004, critique of President G.W. Bush’s war agenda following the 2001 attacks on NYC and DC), Sicko (2007, comparison of our for-profit-health-industry vs. government-based-care in other nations), and Capitalism: A Love Story (2009, the social costs of profit-hungry-corporate-interests) Moore aggressively went after targeted people that he felt owed explanations for their actions, illustrating his arguments with graphics, news footage, and clips from narrative movies and cartoons that spoke to his points.  While there’s still quickly-cut-footage of contrasting situations in the U.S. (and more of those hilarious caustic commentaries) to what he’s showing from Europe and Tunisia in his new film, the overall tone is much less antagonistic, as if he’s followed the advice of some of his less-dismissive-critics in offering a quieter tone to his subject matter in hopes that it’ll be seen and appreciated by a wider audience than the liberal (I know the new semantic strategy on the left is to say “progressive” to avoid the harsh connotations that Tea-Party-wingnuts [Did I just use a pejorative connotation myself?  How ungracious of me.  Tell you what: I’ll clean up my provocations when Sarah Palin does the same, OK?] have attached to “liberal” but what worked in the 1960s for me—certainly not for Nixon and his Silent Majority—still has value for some of us today) mainstays in Hollywood and beyond who eagerly anticipate Moore’s next attack on actions and attitudes that degrade rather than enhance us as a nation, even though his antagonists have difficulty believing that he (and we) truly loves America because if he (we) does, how could he (we) keep knocking this country’s supposed-exceptionalism?  (Although those same sorts of “USA, USA”-chanting-critics of Moore’s viewpoint seem to easily agree with Trump that American needs to be made great “again,” so once more I have problems with processing conservative logic—including the sort that claims our Constitution is a “dead document” intended to be interpreted only as written in the late 18^th century unless specifically amended; so long, Justice Scalia, it’s … never quite … been good to know ya.)

 Although the title of this documentary may falsely convey a critique of 21^st-century-U.S.-foreign-policy in being so militarily-involved in the various political affairs and quagmires in the Middle East, in fact the “invader” is Moore rather than our Armed Forces as he’s on a quest to symbolically plant the American flag as he claims useful ideas for our national well-being, then brings them home so that we, as the “exceptional” society we claim to be, can adopt them.  He manages to pack quite a travelogue into just under 2 hrs., so I’ll summarize what he focuses on in each country that he visits—with the caveat that some naysayers about this film seemed to have missed his opening directive, that he’s after the “roses” not the “weeds,” so he’s not denying that each of these other countries also has problems of its own but he’s only satirically trying to show (through a lot of faked shock at what he finds) that how the U.S. approaches some situations by and large isn’t working for us so maybe we could reconsider, learning from the experience of others who have solid immigration (another loaded word these days) and historical connections to our country's national development so it’s not like these are truly “foreign” people or ideas.  With all of that in mind, let’s commence our tour.

 He starts in Italy where workers (or at least the ones he interviewed) get 8 weeks of paid vacation annually, along with 12 paid holidays, 15 paid days off when getting married, 5 months of paid maternity leave, and an extra month’s pay at the end of December (work for 12, get paid for 13; such a deal!—also, all of this is government-mandated as opposed to no required vacation at all [including our official holidays, depending on your occupation] in the U.S. where time off from work is all at the will of our employers), producing a very content labor force quite willing to be consistently productive when on the job, along with a managerial class (again, at least the ones interviewed) who find that their profits are quite adequate with their businesses contributing to a national economy accepting of such benefits for the work force.  In France Moore focuses on elementary school meals where in a provincial city he found chefs in public schools working with the local mayor’s office to plan menus a month in advance so that the kids could expect daily, healthy 4-course-meals delivered with enough lunch time to casually eat and digest their nutritious food; when he showed them images of the slop that American kids often have for school lunches they were appalled, nor did one little girl at his table care for a taste of the Coke he had to bring in himself to maintain his own acquired tastes.  In an additional French segment he also showed how junior-and-senior highschoolers are given straightforward sex-ed-classes intended to honestly talk about the realities of our human urges, STD’s, birth control, etc.  (Admittedly, in corresponding school years for me it was way back in 1960-1966 but all I got were admonitions from a priest on an almost-daily-basis in Catholic 7^th grade about what little perverts we were, then when I shifted to public school in 9^th grade there was nothing about sex ed at all except what I learned later from an oh-so-willing-girlfriend [who shall remain nameless to protect me from a defamation lawsuit].)

 As a further look at public education, Moore’s next off to Finland which has the shortest school days (20 hours per week) and year in the Western world, along with no homework, no use of standardized testing, no multiple-choice-exams (my salvation in college biology, with its obscure—for me—biochemistry focus which constantly confounded my lack of knowledge on the subject, because my semi-photographic-memory allowed me to recognize strange words, phrases, images of protein chains, etc. that I had no real understanding of—and still don’t, so I never gave these kinds of tests to my own students, hypocritically refusing to simply dangle the correct answer in front of them rather than really understanding the assigned material); instead, the Finns’ focus is on true collaborative learning—including the arts and life skills such as cooking—efficient lessons, equality of funding for all schools (no tuition, private schools aren’t allowed), respect for self and others, as well as allowance for play time in order to grow the entire child—cognitively, emotionally, physically, psychologically—with no loss in academic skills compared to other countries.  (These above, compared to most of the ones to be explored below, are places I’ve visited and can somewhat verify Moore’s findings, although I didn’t interview factory and school officials like he did, nor are the emerging problems of increasingly-less-homogeneous-populations in these nations—an aspect of the “weeds” he intentionally avoided—brought into consideration, but, again, Moore’s explorations were intended as fact-finding for ideas that could be put to better use in our society, not rigorous overviews of all the pluses and minuses that can be found in the nations that he toured.)  Slovenia (not Slovakia, once connected to the Czech Republic, with which this Balkan country is often confused) is the one that most directly surprised me because there even college education is free, not only for their citizens but for foreigners so Moore interviewed some American students who’ve found it more economically-viable to travel a great distance for their higher education (where they’ve found many classes in English so they don’t have to first undergo intensive language study) than to stay home, running up tens of thousands of dollars in debt, even at our public universities.  (In contrast to my undergrad costs at the University of Texas at Austin—a location that may seem as “foreign” to some as Slovenia—which were well under $100 per semester in 1966-1970, a huge help given my massive studio art supplies expenses; yet, in those days UT benefitted from a huge endowment from state-owned-oil-money whereas contemporary Slovenia just makes this part of their annual budget—as explained to Moore by students and the country’s President, Borut Pahor, when an attempt was made a few years ago to charge tuition so the students led massive protests that led to the fall of the previous government.)

 When Moore got to Germany his focus was once again on workers but this time not how much vacation they get but instead how they’re required to work, which (again, for those interviewed in this doc) is 36 hours a week even though they’re paid for 40 in a country where even a long tradition of great technological advances hasn’t undercut a stable middle class or traditional industries so that there are still many employees at the Faber-Castell pencil factory where workers can’t understand the need nor the motivation for Americans to work longer hours or take on extra jobs in order to make adequate wages for comfortable living; in fact, comfort is a strong consideration here in that stressed workers are given 3 weeks free stay at a spa (along with their children, if necessary) if they need to decompress from work-related-pressures.  As an attempt to avoid such trauma to begin with, workers comprise half the membership of Boards of Directors nor are bosses allowed to call or electronically contact their employees after work hours.  (Also, in a non-related-to-work but important extra note about Germany, Moore shows how awareness of the country’s Nazi past is kept alive in school lessons, plaques on public walls and sidewalks, etc. in an effort to prevent recurrence of such Holocaust horrors, unlike here where we do our best to avoid discussing our heritage of Native American genocide, slavery, or ethnic-discrimination, attempting to leave the allusion of a post-racial-society.)  In possibly the most shocking contrast to the U.S., though, we next “invade” Portugal where drugs have been decriminalized for 15 years which surprisingly has led to a decline in usage of these formally-illicit-substances; the legal official Moore interviews is very matter-of-fact about how modern societies are awash in addictive options, which for him includes alcohol and the Internet, yet prohibition of these things simply leads to a more fervent desire to have them with the resulting criminalization of large portions of the population.  This interviewee stressed his country’s emphasis on human dignity, with the goals of medical rehabilitation rather than a death penalty looming over someone for past actions (whereas our penal system uses forced labor and denies voting rights, even after incarceration time has been served).

 This topic leads us directly to Norway where prisoners are trained to become (or return to being) good neighbors, with a strong sense of trust being part of this emphasis on rehab rather than revenge.  In what we’d likely consider a minimum-security prison (with no walls) each inmate has a private room (that only he has the key to), there are 115 stable prisoners overseen by only 4 guards, and as one of Moore's interviews shows, a convicted murderer works in the kitchen where sharp knives are easily available, yet no one—including the inmates—seems to even consider violence occurring on the “inside.”  Even at what Norwegians acknowledge as a maximum-security-facility the guards don’t carry guns, there are a good number of amenities, prisoner-on-prisoner-crime isn’t a problem, prisoners can vote so that candidates even campaign within these jails, no one can serve longer than a 21-year-sentence (even the horrific 2011 mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, who’s still included in the concept of rehabilitation—although extreme cases such as his can have successive 5-year-sentence-extensions applied if he’s still considered a threat to society).  In what seems like one of TV’s Saturday Night Live parodies but is a sincere attempt by authorities to find common ground with convicts, when inmates arrive at the more-stringent-prisons they’re greeted by a video of guards singing “We Are the World” to them to engender a sense of social connection; it was hard not to laugh at this from my American perspective of reading about how gangs still operate within U.S. prison walls, death is a constant reality either from guards or other inmates, and few who are finally released can find a proper place in our society again, but in Norway they’re serious about bringing those who can be rescued from the motivations of their crimes back into the mainstream, with a low 20% recidivism rate to show for it (compared ours at 52%, a rate that increases the longer we keep someone locked away).

 Moore’s final focus is on women’s rights in other countries, with a visit first to Tunisia on the North African side of the Mediterranean where ancient Islamic restrictions on women have been in some stage of relaxation since 1973 but freedoms greatly accelerated in the only Muslim country that’s found its way to an awakening of democracy since the heralded 2011 Arab Spring revolutions so that the new Tunisian constitution explicitly guarantees equal rights for females, a sometimes-abstract-concept given concrete manifestation when Moore visits a women’s health clinic where free abortions are allowed (once again I’m thinking of Texas but not in a positive way unless our now-8-member-Supreme Court is willing to strike down that state's cruel restrictions there that have made it very difficult, if not near-impossible, for such options to be chosen, just one more example of the kind of legal thinking in my former home that gave me good reason to leave, hoping those who choose to stay may someday sway politics there to a more humane level—starting with sending U.S. Senator Cruz back to Canada or Cuba or whatever heritage he’s willing to claim).  Finally, Michael’s off to Iceland where women’s rights have also been consistently on the rise since at least 1975 when protests about age-old-sexism led to the first democratically-elected-female-President of any country in 1980 (Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, served until 1996; in 1971 she also became the 1^st single woman—divorced as well—to be allowed to adopt a child); since then, Iceland’s adopted rules that require Boards of Directors to be no less than 40% of each gender, no more than 60%; a bank run by women was the only one not to collapse in the 2008 Great Recession with its corresponding financial crisis in Iceland; and 70 bankers and hedge-fund-managers—all men—have been indicted there for abuses during that period (while hardly anyone from U.S.A.’s Wall Street has been held accountable for all of the money, jobs, homes, and dignities lost during that unnecessary-debacle) because, as an interviewee tells Moore, Iceland’s economy has recovered with the emphasis on “we” not “me,” as women leaders advocate “words, not war.”

 Where to Invade Next ends with footage from 1989 of the Berlin wall being chopped down, then more current shots of Moore and a friend walking along a remaining piece of that former barrier noting how such seemingly impossible events as the fall of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, the legalization of gay and lesbian marriage in the U.S. have come about in our recent (or immediate) past, giving hope that the U.S. might soon be willing to adopt some (or all) of the ideas being advocated in this film, especially in that, as various interviewees note, many of them began with us (especially the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” in our Constitution) even if they’ve largely slipped away from our current usage.  Where to Invade Next concludes with a clip from The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) as Glenda the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she always had the power (in her magical ruby slippers) to achieve what she wanted (even if it was merely a return to black-and-white Kansas [sorry, Sunflower Staters]), with a final film clip coming after the end credits showing the much-hated-Confederate-flag being taken down in South Carolina.  In the interviews in the links far below Moore says that he’s feeling optimistic because of all of the progressive (some might say “justified”) actions occurring now in our country, although what he’d hoped to celebrate with the release of this film has been notably sidelined by his recent bout of pneumonia which forced him to cancel talk-show-appearances, a 50-date-promotional-tour intended to stir viewership, as well as travel to Europe for likely-well-received-accolades; consequently, despite solid-if-not-fabulous-reviews (76% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, 63% average at Metacritic; more details far below in the Related Links) the debut weekend take of about $897,000 from 308 domestic screens has yielded Moore's 

lowest per-screen-average yet ($2,912) although that may notably increase with the rollout soon to considerably more venues (such better audience response would seriously dampen the mood of my very-conservative Pittsburg, PA colleague, Fiore Mastracci, who’s rejoicing in Moore's so-far-tepid-box-office-impact—see the Links to Other Review Sites You Might Like on the [ironically-appropriate] right of this posting if you want a dose of Fiore’s “Right Critic” opinions, which might go down better with a side dose of bourbon if your views resemble the Left Coast ideology that Moore’s film has encouraged me to spout off at a rate not usual in mainstream-publications).

 To bring closure to my comments on Where to Invade Next—which I think offers a wealth of ideas and practices that I’d like to see rapidly incorporated into American society even though doing so would certainly require a major overall of the ideological/structural/economically-confining assumptions currently in place that produce the vast differences between what we largely do vs. what Michael Moore observed in other nations that have varying degrees of resemblance to our own—I’ll offer you my standard Musical Metaphor to comment upon the film in question, with the content of this documentary (opinionated as hell as it may be, although I think that’s the essential character of all docs despite any assumption about any “objectivity” attempted to be forced onto this form of artistic communication) easily reminding me of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (from his great 1973 There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album) presented at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmgKSUXH18 in a live performance from the fabulous 1981 Concert in Central Park where he’s joined by his famous ex-partner, Art Garfunkel (if you’ve got a couple of hours free [can tolerate interruptions by ads] and would like to revisit the entire event of 19 songs [although a few of them have no video accompaniment] you can start here with “Mrs. Robinson” [from the 1968 Bookends album], then just let it flow—with #3 of this cluster, “America” [also from Bookends], fitting nicely as the earlier bookended concept to “American Tune”).  A final note on this film is that Where to Invade Next will be shown free for a week in Moore's hometown of water-besieged-Flint, MI, but I encourage the rest of you to pay to see it wherever you can.

              

Short Takes (well, for me this is short)

                         

                      Zoolander 2 (Ben Stiller)

One-time über-male-fashion-models Zoolander and Hansel have been in seclusion for years but the strange killing of celebrities encourages an Interpol agent to get them back in action to help solve the crimes, with the villain still locked away in a fashion prison since the 1^st movie back in 2001; the gags are incessantly-stupid but that’s not always a bad thing.

                  

 The plot summary I wanted to avoid with this flat-out-silly-movie starts with Justin Bieber being chased through the nighttime streets of Rome before being viciously killed (seemingly shot about 1,000 times, although there aren’t nearly that many bullet-holes in his clothes); he manages to send an Instagram selfie to the world before dying, which alerts Agent Valentina Valencia (Penélope Cruz) of the Interpol Fashion Division of yet another celebrity death (I caught Madonna and Bruce Springsteen but there were a couple more on screen) with the final image of the same scowl so she seeks out the reclusive originator of this look—Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller)—for help in solving this crime wave.  From there it just continues to get even more intentionally-ridiculous with each wacky set-up more absurd than the last.  (The various antics include former modeling stars Zoolander and his estranged ally, Hansel McDonald [Owen Wilson], in hiding [one in Extreme Northern New Jersey, which looks more like the mountainous Alps, the other in Uncharted Malibu Territory, a dead ringer for the Sahara Desert] because the former assumes he's responsible for wife Matilda Jeffries’ [Christine Taylor] death—and, ultimately, Social Services taking his son, Derek Jr. [Cyrus Arnold], because Dad didn’t know how to make spaghetti sauce—as the result of the collapse of a special school he sponsored, made with materials such as rubber glue, while the latter’s been in hiding [with his 11-member-commune—which began as an orgy—but now all of them, female and male, are pregnant by Hansel] because of a 2-inch-facial-scar from the school disaster; to have to go into the details of how Derek, Hansel, and Valentina attempt to foil the evil plan of Jacobim Mugatu [Will Ferrell] to kill all of the other great fashion designers of the world or the legend of how consuming the heart of the Chosen One-descendant [supposedly Derek Jr.] of Steve [also played by Stiller], the first perfect male fashion model [created along with Adam and Eve], will bring about eternal youth would just be too mind-boggling for me to write or you to read, so let’s not belabor the usual What Happens aspect of Zoolander 2 any further, shall we?  Fine.)

 Given the far-from-spectacular-critical responses to this planned cacophony of idiocy (Rotten Tomatoes, a whopping [not!] 22%, Metacritic with an average score of 35%; more details in the links below if you really need them), you might be asking yourself why I even bothered with this silly mess given that I’d chosen to pass on other availables, including ones with hefty critical support and box-office success (Deadpool [Tim Miller]: Tomatoes 83%, Meta 65%, opening domestic gross $152.2 million; Kung Fu Panda 3 [Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh Nelson]: Tomatoes 81%, Meta 65%, domestic gross so far $100.2 million—however, given all the buzz about Deadpool I guess I’ll overcome my initial disinterest and check it out after all, so look for some comments soon [but not for … Panda 3, I’ve seen enough of that stuff already]).  The awful-damaged-ego-driven-truth is that my Valentine’s Day present from the San Francisco Film Critics Circle was the news that I’ve been turned down for the 4^th time in a row from membership in this esteemed group so I was simply looking for something stupidly-mindless as a distraction from the bum-out that’s regularly come my way from the SFFCC this time of year (a tactic that worked better with Young Frankenstein [Mel Brooks, 1974] diverting my feelings about my 1^st wife leaving me on the Ides of March [no joke] in 1975, but in retrospect I now know that Young Frankenstein is a hell of a better [even deeper] movie than Zoo … 2 ever hoped to be and that I’ve got a much better spouse [the lovely and charming Nina Kindblad, nuptials in 1990] the fabled 2^nd time around).*

*Ironically, another encouragement for me to see Stiller’s current silliness is that it got a very positive review from Mick LaSalle, celebrated movie critic of my local San Francisco Chronicle (syndicated far and wide as well) and a major presence within the SFFCC, whereas Tony Hicks, one of the critics for the Bay Area News Group, including the Oakland Tribune that I subscribe to, was quite negative about Zoo … 2; Hicks has been reviewing movies for about a year now, yet he just got voted into the SFFCC (congrats, Tony!), so I guess I should be listening to him more, especially in cases like this where, after viewing Stiller's wackiness, I think Mr. Hicks has a better handle on what happens on screen than does Mr. LaSalle, although my personal response to this movie falls between their extremes.  (In truth, I probably should be writing more like Hicks if I ever want to break the SFFCC barrier because at present my approach seems to be like no one else in the world … but I’m standing pat [with Pat, Craig that is, wherever his first Two Guys review may be], although not putting any money aside yet for that membership-celebration-champagne).

 However, unlike in some reviews I’ve read of Zoo … 2 that claim it’s not even funny, I have to disagree because there’s a consistently-amusing-flow here (sort of like with the old TV series, Laugh-In [NBC, 1968-1973], where the jokes just kept coming in rapid-fire-order so that you could still be chuckling to yourself about something that happened 5 bits ago, helping hold you over until something else works better than the intervening flat attempts [such as in Stiller’s folly, with Derek getting his Netflix discs, one a Jack Ryan movie the other a Jack Reacher, leading him to mutter that it’ll be a “jack-off night”] in between the better parts).  It’s just that the whole damn thing feels like a desperate attempt to pound together about 100 min. of whimsy even though there’s hardly any motivation to resurrect something that simply achieved minor cult status years ago (Zoolander [Stiller, 2001]).  Just like with that now-dusty-original, it’s a bit of a pleasure in this new one to see all of the various cameos by well-known-actors (including Billy Zane, Kiefer Sutherland [part of sensual Hansel’s orgy-family], Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Sting [Hansel’s father], Katy Perry, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Benedict Cumberbatch [as All, the new paradigm of a model, just married to him/herself], Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Susan Boyle) as well as several famous fashion designers (although Levi’s-wearing-me only recognized Tommy Hilfiger by name, along with Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour from what I learned about her from the background of The Devil Wears Prada [David Frankel, 2006]), but after awhile it just gets a bit tiresome in its “look who’s there” inclusions and rambling-script-craziness.  It did make for a pleasant diversion on President’s Day (certainly more so than President Obama's had recently, dealing with all of the asinine Republican resistance to an appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice in the waning months of his tenure), was certainly worth the mere $6.50 I had to pay for the standard Monday Seniors Day at my local Hayward, CA Century Theater, but ultimately it's just a zany, quickly-forgettable-romp.

 In final annihilation of the whole Short Takes concept, I’ll keep this not-so-mini-after-all-review going just a little bit longer with its own Musical Metaphor, which in keeping with the mood of Zoolander 2 simply needs to be the silliest thing I can find; that criterion led me to “Do the Freddie” (from the 1965 album of the same name) by the British Invasion band, Freddie and the Dreamers, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE66VvER6rM (a performance on a very popular rock-and-roll-based TV program of that time, Hullabaloo [NBC, 1965-1966], with the show’s dancers and the other guests, Trini Lopez and additional-Brit-hit-makers Herman’s Hermits, joining in; the audio’s not too good on this archival-video-memory, though, so, if some reason, you’d like a better aural rendition of this goofy song-and-dance-number, here you go at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgJ-P_uOkC0 [better sound, still marginal images]).  With that, I’ll dance away until next time.

             

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

              

We encourage you to visit the summary of Two Guys reviews for our past posts.  Other overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!

AND … at least until the Oscars for 2015’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, February 28, 2016 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2015 films made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists and which ones have been nominated for and/or received various awards.  You may find the diversity among the various critics and the various awards competitions hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competition-award-winners (which usually pales in comparison to the even-more-noticeable-gap between box-office-success that you might want to monitor here, and the actual award-winners)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices are as valid as any of these others, especially if you can offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the Golden Globe winners for films and TV from 2015 and the Oscar nominees for 2015 film releases.   In previous postings I added at this point links for recent awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America in case you’d be interested to see how that might impact Oscar voting in those categories; to those I’ll add the winners’ list from the Writers Guild of America.  Finally, for those of you who’re Netflix subscribers they have a new feature where you can make 1 click to add a cluster of films to your queue, including all the Oscar nominees from 2015 releases for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress in case you want to do some binge-watching before the Academy’s awards-fest on February 28, 2016.

Here’s more information about Where to Invade Next:

http://wheretoinvadenext.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFgewMnZdQc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxKooNIPo4 (1:08:14 interview with director Michael Moore, includes Q & A with the audience that goes off into other topics than this film; if you’d prefer a shorter talk in the same vein by Moore, sometimes on topic but beyond most of the time, here’s one at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiDW1SaUi2g [34:11])

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/where_to_invade_next/?search=where

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/where-to-invade-next 

Here’s more information about Zoolander 2:

http://www.zoolander.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CL4LNWHegk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4q0K561WXs (8:10 73 questions for Derek Zoolander)

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zoolander_2/?search=zoolander

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/zoolander-2 

Please note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my new email at kenburke409@gmail.com.  Thanks.

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile.    Ken

P.S.  Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker.

                   

WE DO OUR VERY BEST TO PRESENT THESE TWO GUYS POSTINGS IN A VISUALLY-CONSIDERED GRAPHIC LAYOUT, BUT EXTENSIVE TRIAL-AND-ERROR HAS SHOWN US THAT UNLESS YOU’RE READING OUR REVIEWS ON A MACINTOSH COMPUTER USING MAC OS X 10.10.5 AND SAFARI 9.0.3 YOU’LL LIKELY SEE A SLOPPIER PRESENTATION THAN WHAT WE INTENDED (but Google Chrome 48.0.2564.109 usually comes fairly close to our intentions).  OUR APOLOGIES FOR ANY INADVERTENT MESS THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FOUND A SUCCESSFUL WAY TO CONTROL.