The haunting and mysterious end of Season 3 - Battlestar Gallactica

Finished Season 3 of the always entertaining "Battlestar Gallactica" and it actually ends with the resurrected (?) Starbuck flying in a Viper and pledging to lead the colonies to Earth - she says she's been there, and we close on an image of our familiar little planet. But it will take a whole season (4 is the final) to get the colonists there. Season 3 explores the guilt or innocence of a collaborator with the enemy (Baltar), who was compelled by force to work with the Cylons and, though we know he will do anything to save his skin, may have helped the humans by refusing the resist the occupation. Most interesting, the series continues to explore the idea of the difference between humans and machines that are programmed to be like humans, i.e., the Cylons - if they are in fact programmed to destroy the human race, can they also fall in love with humans, act against the interest of their own programming - in other words, do they have free will? And for that matter to humans have free will? Aren't we also programmed - socially, and genetically? The gripping conclusion of season 3 [ spoilers here ] has 4 of the key resistors among the colonists realize or seem to realize that they are Cylons and have always been. Is this possible? More likely, I think, is that the Cylons have found a way to infiltrate and affect their brains - perhaps through music (strikingly absent among the colonists) and perhaps art (scene in some visions). The scene in which the four come together in a remote corner of the ship and they seems suddenly to realize what drew them there - their terror and confusion ("Like a switch turning on," as one says) - is among the most haunting and affecting in the whole series.

Poetry in (slow) motion: Another excellent Korean film

The Korean movie “Poetry” is a bit slow-moving and maybe a bit too
long but still worth watching and thinking about – a really
intelligent and thoughtful examination of a very kind person faced
with difficult moral decisions and with tremendous social obstacles.
I’m almost sure this movie must be by the director of the great Oasis,
and maybe the same director also did the even better Korean film
Mother? The three films do share a sensibility; Poetry probably the
weakest of the trilogy because of some improbabilities in the plot
development and the very slow pace – doesn’t have the dramatic tension
and suspense of Mother or the pathos of Oasis. In Poetry, a 60ish
woman, facing first signs of Alzheimer’s, is caring for her teenage
grandson, a sullen and difficult brat, and she learns that the
grandson may have been part of a group of boys who bullied a young
girl in school, driving her to suicide. Strangely, the reaction of
school officials is entirely to cover this up by getting the families
to pay off the family of the dead girl. That seems to me not only
morally repugnant but unlikely – though the film does set up Korean
society as a place where people smile at one another and brush trouble
and difficulties under the rug, so to speak. One problem with the
movie is that it is inconceivable as this very kind family of the girl
who died would not have seen many signs of her distress and tried to
get her help of some kind. It’s convenient for the structure of the
movie to make the family unaware but if the director wanted that to be
so he should have made the girl’s family highly dysfunctional. That
aside, the movie follows the 60ish woman through her many painful
decisions as she tries desperately to preserve the reputation of her
grandson. It’s a burden she cannot, and should not even try, to
carry.

Unique among French films? A movie with no sex: Leon Morin, Priest

"Leon Morin, Priest" - a movie just about as interest as it sounds. Not. I expected so much more from this vintage (1961) Jean-Pierre Melville movie - which is briefly described as a story of a priest in Nazi occupied France during WWII. Melville did the truly great movie about the Occupation and French Resistance, Army of Shadows. But Leon Morin has none of that greatness - it's just slow and ponderous, something like an Eric Rohmer movie, lots of talk, but with even less action. The only truly interesting element is that Belmondo plays the very chaste and upright Morin: kind of like casting James Dean as a Mormon minister back in the day. Belmondo actually plays the part quite well, for what that's worth. It starts off promising: some women in occupied France send their children off to the countryside so that they won't be singled out as half-Jewish. One of the women, Barny (what a name!) goes to Morin for confession, and then begins a relationship of many years that she sees as perhaps flirtatious but Morin sees as purely spiritual - when at last she comes on to him, just a little, he storms off in outrage. They pass blithely through the Occupation - it's all happening offstage, there are no daring Resistance activities and no big conflict with the Nazi troops, and then it ends. By the end, Barny, a very sensual and probably bisexual young woman, realizes she can have a relationship with a man, Morin, that isn't based on sex and that doesn't become sexual (that in itself unusual if not unique in French cinema!), that Morin is interested in her as a person and as a soul to save. OK, possibly - but there's no drama as this works out - partly because Morin himself is such a stiff straight-arrow, never tempted even for a moment as far as we see. If he is tempted, it would be good of Melville to show us that - his own confession, his own torment - but within the borders of this film, Morin is saintly. Saints are boring.

Top 10 recent suspense movies for intelligent viewers

Friend WS is off to the Cape for a week and asked me for suggestions for recent movies - suspense or action - that they might enjoy watching with their (adult) kids. Here's my list of the top ten recent suspense movies (for intelligent viewers):

5 in English:

The Hurt Locker - definitely great suspense, keeps your attention start to finish
District 9 - a little weird and unconventional, comic at times, provocative, makes you think about racism and oppression in new, unexpected ways
Red Road - dark, serious, tense for every second, strains credibility if examined closely, but, still, well acted - does include highly graphic sex scene
Fish Tank - by same (Scottish) writer-director, very raw presentation of working-class British life, very well plotted, moving, surprising
Winter's Bone - meth dealers in the Ozarks, another great American indie movie with a strong, young protagonist struggling to keep her dysfunctional family intact

5 subtitled:

The Secret in their Eyes - Definitely one of the best movies I have seen in years. Complex, thoughtful, shocking (Argentine, I think)
Pan's Labyrinth - The most unusual, eccentric movie on this list, not sure suspense is the right word to describe it but it's full of drama, some exciting moments, totally its own world (Mexican, but set in Spain?)
Revanche - great little-noticed Austrian movie about an outsider, ex-con trying to get his life on the right track and making terrible decisions
Mother - Korean movie, a son accused of murder and a mother tries to find out the truth
Lantana - A little-known Australian movie that may remind you of Crash but it's far more true to life

Battlestar Gallactica Season 3: A series that's far better than you'd think

A little more than half-way through Season 3 of "Battlestar Gallactica," and worth checking in on this very enticing series - far better than you'd (or I'd) expect it to be: the season began with the humans held in captivity on Cylon-occupied Caprica, and we follow the resistance forces as they contact the Battlestar, stir up rebellion, and get rescued - obvious echoes here of native resistance forces in Iraq and the mideast, but here the terrorists are the humans, the heroes - one of the many clever ways in which BSG plays with our minds and our conceptions. Now that all (almost all) are reunited on Gallactica, the series heads again toward the planet they are seeking, Earth, with the Cylon forces in pursuit. Season 3 takes a sharp turn toward the mystical as we learn more about the Cylon mysteries - how they are reincarnated, their prophecies, their own power struggles - with an increasing focus on the 5 cylon faces we have never seen: who are they? Balthar, the traitorous human president, aligns himself with the Cylons, of course, while they are in power, but later captured by the humans and imprisoned on BSG (along with # 6 cylon, Caprica) - and of course he tries again to make a deal: he will obviously survive through the whole series. Aside from strong character development and genuinely captivating plot, the strength of this series involves the way it raises questions about race, xenophobia, genocide, and even about the nature of free will, without ever being didactic, preachy, or (for the most part) heavy-handed. Has a great balance of personal drama (the love affairs get rather complex in season 3), excitement, and occasional real comedy - especially the goofy scenes in which Baltar envisions Caprica speaking to him, as she leans over him in some slinky red dress - the cast must have had a great time filming those scenes!

Days of Heaven: A potentially beautiful film gone to waste

Let's start with the positive: Terrence Mallick's 1978 film "Days of Heaven" is absolutely beautiful to watch, and the Criterion blu-ray version on a big screen is just great - one astonishing landcape shot on the Texas prairie after another, and each shot composed with a delicacy and sense of balance, line, and color - you couldbe watching "The Gleaners" come alive in cinematography - and then there are the close-ups, the faces like Evans photos, stolid and full of character, even the locusts consuming the wheat, and the fires at night on the plains like Whistler, dark and mysterious - so I'd say get the DVD and then - turn the sound off and just watch it, because the story is preposterous, poorly constructed, dragged down by a stolid script, clumsy acting, poor casting, and a melodramatic score. Anything else? Well, the narrative voice, meant to be a teenage girl?, never clear from what vantage she is telling the story, sometimes seems like a kid, but her vocabulary and sentence construction sounds like: a screenwriter. Richard Gere and whoever plays his wife/lover/sister - who knows what she is? - are OK, but the young Sam Shepard as a lonely, wealthy rancher is absurd - way to handsome and cool for this part, meant to be lonely and bit of a loser. Most of all, we never have any idea why Gere and (unnamed) girlfriend/wife pretend to be brother-sister, it's never clear whether they are scam artists trying to capture Shepard's fortune or if they're unfortunate lovers. As a result, we don't understand them or their motives, don't care at all about them when they're in flight after Gere kills Shepard (his 2nd killing - is he a sociopath, or a victim of a bad screenplay?). And lest we forget this is the swinging 70s, for no reason at all two airplanes suddenly land on the prairie, replete with an Italian flying circus (what hath Fellini wrought?). Mallick (sp?) apparently does not develop traditional narratives and works on the level of symbol or allegory - but whatever he's after her totally eludes me. Clarity of narrative would help. A potentially beautiful film gone to waste.

Questions left unanswered at the end of Season 3 of Damages

Season 3 of "Damages" does keep you watching and totally intent right up to the last moment but then, ultimately, is it a great series? For entertainment, certainly; for acting, Glenn Close is a force of nature, powerful and dominating, and Rose Byrne is maturing as an actor season by season; and many of the secondary characters - notably Lillie Tomlin, Ted Danson, and Martin Short - each primarily known as comic actors, give some of the best dramatic performances of their lives. And yet - by the end I still feel that not all the questions of the extremely complex plot were answered, not all the answers were really credible, and there are far too many loose ends, false leads, and red herrings - it definitely has the sense of something that the writing crew was building as it ran along the tracks. The 3rd season takes on a family obviously modeled on the Madoffs, but in this case the son, instead of being a hapless suicide, takes over the family enterprise and tries to access the money that dad had sheltered. In opposition, Patti Hewes (Close) tires to access the money as well to make whole those who'd lost their fortunes in the Ponzi scheme. Where this season becomes a little weaker than the first two is in that Patti plays a less central role, we don't see her wiles, smarts, and ruthlessness at work in service of her clients - most of the dirty work is done by Ellen (Byrne) and Tom (Tate Donovan). Patti's animus isn't so much against the malefactors as against the older woman who's ensnared her son, and these scenes are not too well developed and they end kind of abruptly. Lots of scenes in which Patti tries to recollect a memory of her youth regarding her first pregnancy - mysterious in a way, but a bit distracting from the main line of the plot. Lots of business about a stolen purse and a car crash in which the driver takes off - all answered, more or less, at the end. But who was this architect stalking Patti? And who was the British assistant that she fired - and why did she do so? And why is Ted Danson even in this season? And, and ... Well, overall, it's a totally fun series, especially if you can forgive a few ragged threads at the end - this is a patchwork quilt of a series, not a Swiss watch.