Tag: Inferno

May 20th, 2019 (Victoria Day)

This past long weekend I didn’t really watch anything too interesting but for re-watching Dan Brown’s Inferno.   I have already talked about it before as another installment of the Robert Langdon series.   It’s okay.

I also watched before the weekend the Julia Roberts’ film Ben is Back.  It also star the young and up and coming male star Lucas Hedges.   He has done some memorable roles already including Boy Erased with Russell Crowe and the family trying to use conversion therapy on their son to remove his inclination towards other boys (see Nov 26 2018 review).   This film is a lot closer to the other TIFF released from last year Beautiful Boy with Timothee Chalamet (also a very popular and in demand young actor) where Steve Carrell as father tries to understand and help his addicted son.   This was reviewed by me on October 29th in the Halloween edition.    There is a similar arc to both stories with Roberts and Carrell playing the loving (maybe too enabling parent) who wants to help a son who has lost his way.   Or at least he has found a path that the parents disagree with and they view it as self-destructive.   As addicts the boys are both convincing.   They have done terrible things and disappear for stretches of time.   Hedges’ character Ben is coming back early from a stint in Rehab it seems.   Only he seems to think that his returning to his home (with Mom, Step-Dad, younger sister and step-siblings) is a good idea.    He sponsor does not.    The plot is simple with his surprise visit and then as he wanders this small town which may be Vermont (but the mall seems a great deal like Woodbine Centre in Toronto) he gets noticed and recognized by others in the town.   There are some interesting moments, like Mom Julia in the mall which is unexpected.   There are others where Ben seems to have a dark cloud around him and bad things just seem to happen.   His step-father is not impressed.   His Mom tries to smooth things over and make them right.   I thought I knew where this was going and then it changed direction, mildly anyway.   Is it more satisfying than Beautiful Boy?   Not sure.   It’s different but keeps a theme going.   Is the Hedges performance better than Chalamet?   I can’t say that.   He has a couple moments where he needs to show some depth and he addresses them admirably.    What I can say about seeing both of these is that I am glad, so far, that my children haven’t been caught up in this world.   It’s a scary prospect that one who you have cared so closely for takes a U-turn and heads in a direction you can’t understand or relate to in any way.   I guess life is a lottery in many ways and children have to make their own choices.    Julia Roberts has some palpable moments of frustration and I think she attacks the problem for her directly with a moving seen with her son, just the two of them.  You’ll know it when you see it, and it was a moment where I sat and watched and just said “wow”.

April 18, 2017

This past week I rented a couple films.

First was Inferno with Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon.  This also stars the very busy Felicity Jones (of Rogue One fame, as well as Theory of Everything).  The story here is Langdon, minus the bad mullet from Davinci Code, awaking battered and bruised in a hospital bed.  He knows very little and is groggy.  He eventually notes he is not in Boston near Harvard but rather Florence.  Then he tries to help solve and prevent a viral epidemic from another radical who sees people as a virus on the planet.  There are some expected twists and turns.   It is decently done.  Still I can see why this didn’t get a tremendous following during the summer.   I like the scenery, with Florence and Venice it makes for a nice travel log.  I like seeing these places.
The second film is so memorable that I can’t even recall it.  I racked my brain over this.   So I will need to re-visit the video store to jog my memory.
On Netflix I did watch the WWII documentary Five Came Back about acclaimed directors (Ford, Huston, Capra etc) who enlisted and were part of the propaganda effort.  Some of their films are there, like the Battle at Midway with live colour footage.  The even more powerful film was the Nazi Concentration Camp film which was another documentary used at the Nuremburg Trials.  Anyone who claims that the holocaust was not real should watch this film.  It is heartbreaking what humans are capable of doing to one another.  The War changed all of these directors and they came back and made some of their most memorable films.  I also caught another BBC documentary about Hiroshima and it was interesting; interesting in the US being blamed and accused of using the weapon, but then it is revealed that the Japanese military and government kept their people away from real information.  There was no surrender after the first bomb, and even when the second bomber was seen going to Nagasaki, no warnings were even issued to their own people (5 hours notice could have been given).   The premise of the coverage is the US wanted to drop the bombs anyway and have guinea pigs on its effects.  The reality is many thousands of US lives were saved avoiding a land invasion of a people who fought to the bitter end.  Again, another good film to catch.
Painfully little in the theatres to catch these days.

[Time passes]  Oh!!  I remembered.

Legend of Tarzan.
I even watched the extras in this film as well.   Now I know why it didn’t make that great an impression on me.   In the Extras they talk about how they were taking a different tack on this classic story of the ripped man in the loin cloth.  Here, they work in reverse, starting with a civilized Tarzan (Lord Greystoke) after he has been back from Africa for 8 years and already with Jane as a civilian.  There is then a request for him to see about “progress” being made in the Congo, which requires his expertise.  So he and Jane reluctantly go.  What they find is Christoph Walz acting as a bad man, and looking for diamonds for his Belgian leader while facilitating revenge for Tarzan’s enemy in the jungle.  You see, Tarzan killed this tribe leader’s brother long ago.  And there you have it.
In the Extras they further explain how they didn’t fly the cast into Africa and no filming was done there.  It was all done in soundstages in Britain.  There are also no animals in the film that are real.  They are CGI.  And here is where the picture falls down.  Some of the animals are very realistic (think Life of Pi’s Tiger – only as a lion) but then others, like the gorillas, are challenged.  Some look somewhat real.  Others less.  CGI is coming a long way, but there is still more for complete realism.
Alexander Skarsgard (looking more like his father in each film, although more ripped here) plays Tarzan and the ripped muscles.  No loin cloth but rather various stages of undress – fully clothes to Hulk like chinos.  Then Samuel l Jackson taking on evidence of using slaves, Margot Robbie trying to be tough and independent and yet you wonder about her boldness with bad guy Walz at times (where he would be unlikely to stand for the impudence).  Never mind.  It was okay.  CGI less so.  And a movie that really didn’t need to be re-made, much like last week’s Ben Hur.