A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

Celebrities aren’t always what they seem.  An actor could portray nasty people to be a nice person in real life.  They could present a family-friendly image only to be caught saying vile things.  This is why Lloyd Vogel is taken aback by an assignment to profile Fred Rogers.  It’s just a few hundred words, but is anyone really that nice?  I mean, yes, he was a Presbyterian minister.  No, he wasn’t really a sniper.  But his persona is so nice.  So pleasant and easygoing.  Lloyd has to wonder if Mr. Rogers is for real.

His wife, Andrea, doesn’t want the image of her childhood hero ruined, which is understandable.  Lloyd takes the assignment anyway and gets to know Mr. Rogers a little better.  He’s persistent and digs deep.  Lloyd gets into a fight with his father before taking the assignment.  He even starts to push buttons with Mr. Rogers a little.

By the end of it, Lloyd has a great story.  He comes to respect Mr. Rogers a little more and comes to understand himself a little better, too.  In a lot of ways, it’s exactly what you might expect from a movie about Fred Rogers.  In some ways, it wasn’t at all what I expected.

I was going into this having seen the 2018 biopic, thinking the two movies would be similar.  They weren’t.  This movie was set up like an episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, with overviews done in the style of the show’s signature miniatures.  Plus, the story of the article was balanced with Lloyd’s home life, trying to raise a new child and dealing with his own father.

The movie isn’t quite fact, but it’s not exactly fiction, either.  There was an article for Esquire about Mr. Rogers, but the character of Lloyd Vogel is based on Tom Junod.  I would imagine that the portrayal of Fred Rogers is fairly accurate, but again, it’s not always possible to differentiate the public image from the private person.  This is something I imagine a lot of people wonder about.  (No, he wasn’t a sniper in real life.)

I was surprised to learn years ago that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, which is fascinating to me.  He was able to do God’s work without ever bringing God into it.  I’m happy to see that at least one other movie about Mr. Rogers have made their way to theaters everywhere.  Heroes don’t always wear capes.

IMDb page

 

The Current War: Director's Cut (2017)

I like to make the distinction that Thomas Edison was a businessman Whereas Nikola Tesla was an inventor.  Like Henry Ford, Edison didn’t really invent anything.  He just found a new way to make a light bulb.  He basically made it so that people could buy and use them.

This isn’t to say that Edison didn’t make contributions, but Tesla was the one that had more of a scientific mind and could create new things, like the coil named for him.  He was even trying to make it so that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly.  So, it’s only natural that Edison gets all the schools named for him.  Right?

When I saw the coming attractions for The Current War, I thought that Tesla might get his due.  He was featured in said trailers.  Nope.  The movie was mostly about how Westinghouse and Edison brought lights to the people.  Part of this was the power supply, which Tesla had a part in.  However, Tesla’s part in the movie was not what I had hoped.  He was shown in a few scenes, mostly being pushed out of something he was working on.

It worries me sometimes if I can’t get at least six paragraphs into a review.  I’d go into a detailed recap, but there’s not much for me to share.  The movie focuses on Edison.  He’s shown as being very petty and driven.  He’ll resort to demeaning the competition if it means getting what he wanted.

Overall, it was very bland and plain.  Having an even pace isn’t always a good thing.  Here, it makes it monotonous.  It’s like the movie got rejected by PBS, so they toned it down a little and got a theatrical release.  (I kind of feel like I forgot most of the movie once I walked out of the theater, so if I got a few details wrong, please forgive me.)

IMDb page

 

The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 2 Episode 9 (The Trouble with Templeton)

One of the common themes with The Twilight Zone is going back to relive past glories.  Youth seemed great when compared to adulthood.  In the case of Booth Templeton, he longs for his first wife, Laura, who was taken from him after too short a marriage.  Sure, he has a great career.  He even has a second wife, who is younger and more beautiful than he deserves.  It’s not the same, though.

True to Twilight Zone fashion, Booth gets the opportunity to step back to 1927 and have a second chance with Laura.  It dawns on him that maybe his first marriage wasn’t exactly the way he remembered it.  He’s taken back to 1960 to continue with his life in his present.

One of the problems in reviewing episodes of The Twilight Zone is that they’re often basic.  There’s not much to them.  This is the case here.  (It’s what Rod Serling might call a detour into The Twilight Zone.)  It’s just enough time for the main character to get the message.

It is an understandable message.  At some point, you realize that most of your life is behind you.  You would be forgiven for thinking like Booth does.  It would be nice to go back and relive the fun parts.  Unfortunately, it’s not always that fun.

I think this is what made the show so accessible.  It didn’t try for anything fancy.  It told its story plainly and was never insulting or condescending about it.  This may be a byproduct of the half-hour format, but it works.  Don’t live in the past; live in the present.

IMDb page

Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 11 (Friday's Child)

I always wonder if things really were simpler back in the 1960s.  If television is to be believed, men worked outside the house and women took care of the house and children.  Children were usually happy and obeyed their parents.  (I suppose that by this same reasoning, people might look back on today’s media and assume the opposite is true.)

Star Trek, on occasion, also tended to present things simply.  The United Federation of Planets represented the good guys.  The Klingon Empire represented the bad guys.  And by good guys and bad guys, I mean Americans and Soviets.  Thus, when Captain Kirk shows up on Capella IV, it’s troubling to find Kras, a representative of the Klingons also vying for the planet’s resources.

The Capellans are a warrior race.  This would seem to give the Klingons an advantage, as they would seem to have similar values.  When Kirk offers medicine, it’s of little value.  (Those that lose in battle are usually left to die.)  What’s a Starfleet Captain to do?  I will say that it does require a rather interesting solution wherein McCoy has to gain the trust of the mother of the future leader of the Capellans.

It’s been pointed out that races on Star Trek tend to be a little monolithic.  It’s something I’ve noticed myself.  It’s not like there’s one sect of Capellans that value aggression.  It would seem that they all do.  There’s not a scientific class of Klingons.  All Klingons are conquerors.  It would seem that only the Federation has diversity.  I’m not sure if this is a product of the era or if the episodes usually tried to focus on the message.

My only real complaint about the episode is the side plot of the Enterprise being called away by a ship in distress.  It seemed like it was a way to fill time.  The landing party didn’t seem to be in any real danger, not that a main character would have been killed off anyway.  The distress call was a decoy, but it wasn’t clear to what end.  I’m sure there’s an explanation for it.

I can see why this was one of the episodes I didn’t recall.  You have a basic culture of the week with a stereotypical enemy and the good guys win.  In the end, the Capellans grant the mining rights to the Federation.  It would appear that the only one unhappy would be Kras.  Of course, that’s to be expected.  I don’t recall the good guys losing too many times in The Original Series.

IMDb page 

Black and Blue (2019)

Sometimes, a simple story is good.  Stick to one thing and do it well.  Other times, not so much.  A simple story might not be able to support a grand idea.  Take Black and Blue.  The movie centers on Alicia West.  She’s new to the New Orleans police force and is still maybe a little naïve.  (She has no problem wearing a body camera.)

The story starts when her partner, Kevin, is called to pull a double shift.  He needs the night off to be with his family, so Alicia agrees to cover.  She’s sent out with Deacon Brown, an officer who does have a problem with body cameras.  During their shift together, Deacon and Alicia stop by an abandoned warehouse.

Alicia is told to stay in the police car.  Even if you hadn’t seen the coming attractions, you know what happens next.  She has to get out of the car and wanders into the warehouse, only to witness a murder.  The rest of the movie is Alicia trying to get back to the precinct to upload the video on her body camera.  It turns out that the shooter was another police officer.  Alicia is framed for the shooting and has to find support among a community that isn’t very accepting of police officers.

Black and Blue was directed by Deon Taylor, who also directed The Intruder.  I find I had the same problem with both movies:  They were a little too simple.  I found that I was watching a movie that was taking too long.  The script, such as it is, can’t support the 1:48 running time.

This isn’t to say it should have been shorter.  It’s just that the movie came off as a little repetitive at points.  We constantly see that the people won’t help her, but we’re not shown why beyond one line of dialogue.  The police don’t go out to that area because it’s so far gone.  That’s not really explored in the movie.

Instead, it’s all about Alicia being hunted down by the police and not being accepted by the community.  (In a cliché move, she can’t even trust her partner.)  She’s on the run and has no reasonable expectation of finding a place to hide.  She’s not fully a police officer and she’s not really a member of the community.

There aren’t a lot of surprises.  It’s almost like a paint-by-numbers movie in its predictability.  If you’ve seen the trailers, you can probably predict how the movie will unfold.

IMDb page

 

Inside Man: Most Wanted (2019)

It’s somewhat rare to find a sequel that captures the magic of the original.  Often, then tend to be seen as cash grabs.  You get the original cast back together and have a somewhat similar story.  By the time anyone realizes what’s happened, you already have their money.  In many cases, the sequels are released straight to video.  Inside Man: Most Wanted is one such case.

I had seen the original Inside Man and liked it.  When our house was being tented, we came across this movie, which I had never heard of, and with good reason.  It had been released directly to video, which is never a good sign.  Add to that the fact that the cast and crew is all new.  There are some tenuous connections, like familial relationships, but there’s almost no connection to the original film.  Even the music is different.

It does have a similar setup, though.  Some people rob the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City.  (Instead of Nazi diamonds, though, they’re after Nazi gold.)  An expert hostage negotiator is brought in.  After a few plot twists, hostages are released and the negotiator doesn’t know who was really a hostage.

I’d go into more detail, but why bother?  The movie is like that Can I Copy Your Homework meme.  A promise was made to change a few of the details, but we all know what really happened.  They took a copycat movie and turned it into a sequel for a movie that didn’t really need a sequel.  I think that anyone involved in the original was smart enough to pass on this one.  You should do the same.

IMDb page

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

It would seem that movies based on comic books are popular right now.  DC and Marvel have all sorts of movies lined up.  There’s a new Wonder Woman movie coming out   I saw a coming attraction for a movie featuring Harley Quinn.  Joker is out now.  Yes, we have another Joker origin story.

But have you ever considered the other origin story?  Have you ever wondered how the character of Wonder Woman came to be?  There was a man named William Marston who was in love with two women.  Those women served as the basis for Princess Diana.  This movie tells the story of how that relationship turned into one of DC’s most iconic characters.

It starts with a burning pile of Wonder Woman comic books and flashes back to when William and Elizabeth Marston met Olive Byrne.  She was a student enrolled in his class who would become their life partner.  The movie shows the relationship as being difficult, especially at first.  Elizabeth wasn’t as accepting as William.  However, the three of them went on to have several children together.

It’s hard to tell how accurate the movie is.  Most of the intimate encounters depicted are speculative.  It’s also a major motion picture, which means that liberties are taken, anyway.  I’m sure many parts were glossed over or altered for the sake of the production. (For instance, the movie hypes up the Marstons’ contributions to the lie detector.)

I’d like to say that the movie was informative, but it seemed to be more about the sex than anything else.  Very little of it is about the comic book.  We get to see William talk to  Max Gaines, who would get Wonder Woman accepted for publication at National Periodical Publications.  We also get to see that the comic book wasn’t popular among conservative groups.  But this is very basic.

In fact, I had to look up Wonder Woman to find that Marston’s Wonder Woman isn’t anything like today’s Wonder Woman.  His comics did have more for conservatives to be concerned about.  This is where the movie didn’t really do the story justice.  I would have liked to see more of that.  No, I’m not saying I’m totally disinterested in the polyandrous aspect of it.  It’s just that’s not what I was expecting.

IMDb page