Some movies I just don’t get.
I see the trailers, browse the ads, check out the internet scuttlebutt, and by the time I finally get around to seeing some of these movies, I’m left speechless, wondering what in the world the big deal was.
A Prairie Home Companion is one of these.
I lived in Minnesota for five years (ten if you count the first five years of my life too, which I do, but not when considering pop culture awareness) and grew to develop a fondness for Minnesota culture: their love for the outdoors, their friendliness, their practicality, and their sense of Norwegian history. However, for whatever reason, I never listened to a full episode of Garrison Keillor’s weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Through the snippets I have heard over the years, it seems to be a variety show centered on Minnesota culture, with frequent references to a fictional Lake Woebegon and heaping with nostalgia for a time when people actually sat in their living rooms and listened to radio shows like this one.
What Robert Altman’s film does, to varying degrees of success, is fully capture the essence of Keillor’s bittersweet radio show while also exploring what it means to have an ending to various things: youth, friendships, relationships, radio shows, even life itself. And to that end, I get it. I understand that through Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin’s characters tearfully singing what will be their final song on air, we are reminded ourselves of times when we have been forced to say goodbye. I get that John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson sing dirty songs about life on the cowboy trail we are meant to think back on better days and things long gone. And I also get that Keillor’s pragmatism throughout the movie (which takes place virtually in real time during the course of an episode of the radio show) is a lesson for all of us: things change, and we might as well move on and not dwell on the past. We should remember the past, but not, as Keillor says, “be told to remember it.”
And all these lessons are well and good. But as a movie, as a piece of celluloid entertainment, it just doesn’t work. Watching people sing songs for an hour and a half, with very little actual plot holding it all together (Kevin Kline’s bumbling inspector, Guy Noir, supposedly sent to investigate the corporate deal that is bringing an end to the show, provides the barest of narrative threads for us to follow) is a tough thing to do. Several times I turned to my wife with a puzzled look on my face and said “This is one weird movie.”
And so it is. While the messages are nice, the presentation needs work. But then, perhaps Altman, a celebrated director in what turned out to be the final movie of his career, was simply looking back on life through his camera lens and letting the very talented actors in this movie show us what it means to have endings brought upon us. Perhaps the best part of the whole movie was the very end, when Lola Johnson, played surprisingly well by Lindsay Lohan, joins the cast of the radio show at Mickey’s Diner several years after their show has ended, and offers some forthright and rather unsolicited financial advice to her mother. We see in her mother’s confusion that life has moved on, and some things were meant to end. Perhaps Altman knew this too.
John McTiernan is a veteran of action movie directing, and he puts his chops to good use here, even though much of the action takes place in confined spaces aboard submarines. Having cut his teeth on the excellent Predator (one of MJV’s favorite movies of all time) and defined an entire hero archetype with Jon McLane in the original Die Hard, he once again shows his talent for creating scenes that ratchet up suspense and tension, though this time he does it through characters and dialog alone: a key scene in which Captain Ramius, played to the hilt by the outstanding Sir Sean Connery, orders his men to continue down a deep ocean trench even though all their sea charts point to imminent doom if they don’t turn aside is just as powerful as any 
Jack Ryan, the longstanding Tom Clancy hero played here by Aled Baldwin, is the only one who knows what Ramius is really up to. Here again Red October avoids cliché, and instead of having the entire movie come down to a matter of one powerful commander refusing to believe Ryan (as is the case in so many movies like this), his concerns are mostly heeded throughout the movie, and moments of tension are scattered throughout instead of having everything lead up to one moment at the end, which the audience would surely know the outcome of anyway.
Not that facts aren’t presented here–plenty of them, to be sure, make up vital portions of the movie. There are interviews throughout the movie with several individuals who worked at Enron as well as Bethany McLean, the reporter who broke the story of Enron’s scandals in 2001 (as well as co-author of the book on which this movie is based), corporate whistleblower Sherron Watkins, and even Gray Davis, the former governor of California. Snippets of congressional hearings, particularly those involving Jeff Skilling, the president of Enron, are revealing and sometimes tough to sit through, as we watch him dance around the truth and even outright lie to his inquisitors about what happened at Enron and the key role he played in the downfall of the company.
Documentaries can be as subjective as their creators want them to be, and footage, interviews, points of view, and even shooting locations can be manipulated to support any political agenda or other motive that the director has. Extreme examples of this can be found in any of Michael Moore’s sensationalist films, which can only be called documentaries by the loosest possible definition of the word, and even in other works such as Morgan Spurlock’s faux-indictment of the fast food industry in Super Size Me, and Ben Stein’s biased look at intelligent design in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (which I thought was a good film, but I was fully aware of its political bent and, thus, the biased nature of the material which was being presented). Waco: Rules of Engagement is surely guilty of these same transgressions to some degree, but without an opinionated narrator advancing the examinations being presented onscreen, and with so much of the footage taken directly from congressional hearings in the years following the tragedy, it lends a greater deal of credibility that many documentaries tend to lack.
Interviews shown in the film of fellow Branch Davidians also show a group of people who were simply looking for answers, and for whatever reason, found them in Koresh and the end-times theology of the Branch Davidians. Where the film truly shines, though, is in showing how mishandled and bungled the attacks on the compound, begun by the ATF and carried to a bloody end by the FVI, really were. Through extensive footage taken from the aforementioned congressional hearings, this film documents incredible lapses in the chain of command, confusion on the part of the agents on the ground, and shows how the situation grew beyond control and ended up in the tragic killing of not only Koresh but dozens and dozens of his followers, many of whom were women and children.
Despite the movie’s predictability and total lack of originality, it is an enjoyable story that is perhaps even more noteworthy for what it is not: Â a crass, sophomoric, attempt to push the boundaries of family comedy like so many of its contemporaries. Â I’m so tired of seeing PG-13 rated schlock, that is just barely not edgy enough to deserve an R-rating, being passed off as family or teenage entertainment. Â But Paul Plart is far more the exception to this trend than the rule, and the movie not only has blatant messages about the importance of family relationships, not judging others by their looks, never giving up under pressure, and even a hint of 
Enter Yes Man, the film from directory Peyton Reed, about a man named Carl Allen who is so down on himself and life in general that he turns down every chance for surprise, fun, or even enjoyment. Â But soon Carl, played by Jim Carrey, decided to say “yes” instead of “no” to virtually any opportunity that comes his way. Â Whether it’s a homeless man asking for money, a friend asking him to foot the bill for the bar tab, a stranger asking if he wants a ride on her motorbike, or the chance to take a spontaneous trip to exotic Lincoln, Nebraska, Carl soon realizes that saying “yes” often leads to more excitement and, ultimately, a life well lived.
When this movie came out I was surprised at how little attention it got from the general public. Â Having watched it this week, though, I think I can understand why: Â Lions for Lambs is not exactly entertaining per se, and it’s also a tricky premise to sell to an audience (especially an audience that has catapulted drivel like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen into the box office stratosphere) because of the multi-faceted approach to telling its story. Â The action unfolds in real time as senator Jasper Irving, played by Tom Cruise who looks and acts like the all-growed-up version of his Daniel Kaffe character in A Few Good Men, is being interviewed by journalist Janine Roth, played by Meryl Streep. Â She gets him to spill the beans about a new strategy for finally winning the War –a plan that is being put into action in Afghanistan as they speak, and involves two young soldiers who get separated from the rest of their platoon. Â The two soldiers just happen to be former students of professor Stephen Malley–Robert Redford in a role that feels as natural as any he has ever played, if a bit more passionate at times. Â Malley is, at the same time this is all going on, trying to knock some real-world sense into one of his students (young actor Andrew Garfield, channeling a healthy dose of Judd Nelson’s character from The Breakfast Club), using his former students as examples of true courage and conviction, even though he personally disagrees with their decision to join the military.
The Expanse is one of those episodes. Â I can’t say that it’s entirely successful at what it sets out to do, but it’s certainly an interesting and entertaining ride along the way. Â The show starts out with an attack on earth by an alien probe, reminiscent of Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home. Â Except instead of churning the oceans, this probe cuts a swath right out of the planet roughly 300 yards across and 4,000 miles long. Â It starts in Florida and goes clear to Venezuela, after which the probe self-destructs and bits of it crash-land on Earth. Â Blackout. Â Cue opening credits (and, of course, the mute button. Â *shudder* Â that opening ballad is still terrible.) Â This, my friends, is how to open a season finale.
