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TV series review 

The Killing Season (2016)

TV-MA

killingseasongrab

The most powerful moment in A&E’s eight-part docu-series, The Killing Season, arrives midpoint when documentarians Josh Zeman and Rachel Mills make the startling revelation that their dogged search for a serial killer of at least four prostitutes turns out to be the preverbal tip of the iceberg.

Up to this point we’ve joined them on whirlwind tours of crime scenes and talking-head recollections, punctuated by images of regional maps marked red at the spots where victims were discoveretoonMarvinBlogd. After journeying through at least seven states, countless police departments, harrowing locales, the intrepid duo connects with a Florida journalist whose work dovetails with the documentarians’ in the worst of ways. We cut to a map of the whole United States as it explodes with red markers denoting unsolved murders of hundreds of prostitutes/drug-addled women from what looks to be the work of hundreds of serial killers. Finally, a series that was careening from one serial-killer theory and conspiracy to another snaps into chilling focus.

Executive produced by Alex Gibney and produced by Jigsaw Productions and Gigantic Pictures, the series arrives Nov. 12 at 9 p.m. ET on the A&E network. It’s like a student project that starts simply but increases victims, killers and theories exponentially, becoming instead a master’s thesis on the subject.

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH JOSH ZEMAN AND RACHEL MILLS

Things start off in typically disturbing yet familiar documentary fashion: Zeman and Mills’ workaday detailing of the history of the Long Island, New York, serial killer (LISK). Soon, the team is in a neighboring community, studying its victims, who have similar and conflicting links to LISK, suggesting two killers may be at work—and even at odds with each other. Next, we follow the team to Atlantic City, drawn there by similar victims and a killer with a similar MO. Then, prostitute killings in Daytona Beach, Florida, seem to be yet another link and/or distraction in this ever-sprawling case. Here the killer may be hidden amongst throngs of spring breakers. All of this sleuthing eventually leads to unnerving revelations of whole-sale slaughter of women spanning the country.

Zeman, like one of those bold reporters willing to go wherever the story takes him before asking whether it’s safe, seems to subsist on caffeine rather than sleep. He’s traversed the serial-killer terrain before in his co-helmed Cropsey, 2009. Mills, equally bold, is harder to read; she’d be a good poker player. She’s quick to follow a lead, to take a ride with a possible suspect, to share space in a trucker’s cab as he tells her she’s dressed to temp rapists; and yet here she is shedding tears speaking with a victim’s relative. The team, which includes at least a cameraman who follows them into every uncertainty, is persistent, whether whacking its way through overgrown fields, exploring decrepit junkyards, traversing lands occupied by disturbing campers, or flirting with an outlaw biker club.

The Killing Season is most effective, though, when meeting friends and family of victims. One such woman keeps ashes of the victim, her best friend, in a box at her feet. Gratuitous, yes, but who else mourns for this all-but-forgotten victim? Another victim’s daughter—seeking understanding and closure—is eager to join the team on an ominous journey to the occupied backwoods where her mom’s body was discovered.

The doc also intrigues with its look into and use of cyber-sleuthing, websites and blogs dedicated with varying degrees to sussing out facts, creating serial-killer profiles and propagating theories. Websleuths.com stands out as a one of the more-credible resources.

We learn that long-haul trucking is a job “perfectly suited for picking up a woman in one state and dumping her body in another.” We are told truck-stop prostitution is the “lowest rung” of prostitution, and we believe it. These women seem to be whispers and faded photographs in a cyclone of terror and bureaucracy, whose sad lives are teased out by the few who knew and loved them. Different theories, different obstacles, different cities—New York, New Jersey, Florida, Oklahoma, Cleveland—but the same creeping terror abounds.

Where we start, on Long Island with the discovery of four female bodies wrapped in burlap, allegedly the victims of a coast-surfing serial killer, to where we end up, Cleveland, following the destruction of hundreds of woman at the hands of two hundred serial killers is a wakeup call—to both our lack of interest in the sadly invisible mothers, sisters and daughters on the fringes of society, and the demons among us left uncheck to fester in the crevices of this nation.

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| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Out of Time

InsomniaObession4.2My essay on “time travel” is among contributions to the latest edition of Insomnia & Obsession magazine, edited by Robert Pope. Fellow author and friend Jim Koloniar (Cannibal Reign) is also featured. Check it out here!

Quik Flix Hit

Video review

Indigo Children (2012)

Unrated

indigochildren

In an unremarkable small town that could be any unremarkable small town, a quiet boy is spied upon by a quiet girl. She’s drawn to him because, like her, he’s an Indigo child. This means, according to her, that they are special, different, better, though to the viewer they seem as ordinary and stoic as their town.

toonMarvinBlogWriter-director Eric Chaney’s debut film bows this month in digital format. Deliberately paced, Indigo Children strives to echo the rhythms of small-town pathos. Shots are held, given time to be seen and absorbed.

I say the town’s unremarkable, but the cinematography’s not. Fantastic aerial shots of lush-green fields, mighty trees and ancient railroad tracks are contrasted with a model-train diorama. Homes decayed and moss-covered are contrasted with upscale homes, and a big city on the horizon.

Story proper—young lovers Mark and Christina (Robert Olsen and Isabelle McNally) attempting to connect with themselves and each other—flows through laconic voiceovers, videotape confessions and clipped dialogue. The dialogue, at times, seems intentionally vague.

After the death of his absent father, Mark’s family is reduced to himself and his shattered mother; they move around each other like ghosts. Christina, with her wide eyes, cutoff shorts and forced confidence, launches a relationship with Mark. It’s as if inert Mark’s a potted plant and she’s cultivating a relationship around him.  Fond of binoculars, Christina’s new to town, supposedly staying with an uncle who’s never seen.

A second story involves lustful teen boy (Arturo Castro) trying to find a connection with his mother, who never speaks, and is seen each day methodically readying herself for a night out … somewhere, with someone.  This disconnection is a reoccurring theme in Chaney’s film. There are always circumstances separating kids from adults—disappearance, death, disillusionment, depression.

Several shots of big-city skyscrapers looming in the distance put a bigger (better?) life in sight, but out of reach.

Chaney, talented at finding emotion in mundane scenes, has an eye for detail and conveys confidence in pacing. The film evokes a strong sense of place; the director hints at personal connections. It’s hard, though, to imagine those beyond the art-house crowd investing in this short, enigmatic tone poem. Its structure is everything our attention-deficit movie-going society sidesteps. Artsy or not, Chaney’s a filmmaker to keep an eye on.

We are all Indigo children, I guess, yearning to be special and to get beyond our stations in life, but struggling to find a way to board a train that will take us there.

 

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On a New Quest

I met Phife Dawg in the ancient fandom of my twenties as he helped lay down the Scenario in ’92; I met him in person at Sundance 2011, where the legendary rapper from legendary A Tribe Called Quest promoted a documentary film about the group.

toonMarvinBlogMalik Isaac Taylor, what his momma named him, seemed to enjoy the crowd and was hopeful the documentary, Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, would lend clarity to his plight and legacy. I enjoyed the doc (see my review here) but the ensuing years didn’t really bring the Tribe back together.

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Malik Isaac Taylor, aka Phife Dawg

Nevertheless, it’s a film worth seeing, made all-the-more relatable by Phife’s participation. His presence (in the film and at Sundance) underscored the human element in the often ethereal, mythologized landscape populated by our idols. Candid about ongoing health issues, Phife couldn’t defuse obvious regrets about and hope for the Tribe, and seemed moved by the outpouring of love from the crowd.

Phife died March 23 at age 45.

I shared a walk with The Five Foot Assassin and the doc’s director Michael Rapaport after the screening and found Phife easy to talk with and pretty humble for a fellow who helped reshape late ’80s/early ’90s hip hop.

His passing on Wednesday burnished that memory, and is another after-the-fact reminder of how greatness is somehow fleeting and everlasting.

He kicks it still.

New book from Marvin Brown

THTLB-coverPhotoMy first nonfiction work, The House the Lord Built is now available! The book details the 40-year history of The House of the Lord, one of Akron, Ohio’s largest churches under the leadership of Bishop F. Josephus Johnson II. In prose, photographs and members’ own words, the past, present and future of the House is revealed and celebrated!
Purchase the book at Amazon.com. Learn more at my website: www.marvincbrown.com.

Canine is here!

My short story “Canine” appears in the latest issue of Insomnia & Obsession magazine. Learn more about the chilling story here, or purchase a print or digital version here.

Canine-coverThe artwork is by Chris Bently.

 

Quik Flix Hit

Summer Movie Series

Terminator Genisys (2015)

Rated PG-13

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Paramount Pictures

You know me, I’m a sucker for time-travel flicks. That fact, coupled with director James Cameron’s persuasive knack for depicting action—whether on a shoestring budget (like his original 1984 Terminator film) or a big-bucks bonanza (his standard-elevating 1991 sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day)—bowled me over twice. Cameron’s certainly the key because despite his films remaining among my favorite sci-fi actioners, I didn’t cotton to the subsequent sequels (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2003, and Terminator Salvation, 2009) directed by others.

toonMarvinBlogThis latest effort, which basically ignores parts 3 and 4, attempts to follow-up the Cameron films. At first we’re wondering if we’re seeing the same films again, more a reboot than a direct sequel.

A future world-ravaging battle between humans and machines is in its last throes as the human resistance has finally beaten the sentient machines that launched the battle back in the ‘90s that left billions of humans dead. Leading this resistance is legendary warrior John Connor.

It’s discovered that in its final hours, the defeated machines have launched a Hail Mary operation using a “time-displacement” contraption to send one of its deadly “Terminator” cyborgs (Arnold Schwarzenegger) backward in time to kill John’s mother Sarah before she births him, thus taking out its enemy before he’s ever born. John counters this operation by sending his faithful human soldier Kyle Reese backward to protect Sarah and defeat the Terminator. This is basically the same plot as the original film. In the early-going, some scenes are shot-by-shot. In the original, Kyle not only helps save the day by sacrificing himself to destroy the robot, but in his spare time impregnates Sarah to create the franchise paradox of being the father of the leader who sent him to protect his mother. Now, stay with me. It transpires in the sequel (Terminator 2: Judgement Day) that this was all for naught because the machines send another, more advanced time-jumping Terminator (an incredible Robert Patrick) to strike at John himself, while John’s still a boy; the resistance, not to be outdone, sends a reprogrammed Terminator (Schwarzenegger again) as protector of young John.

This latest film twists itself in knots to entertain both these scenarios, trying to serve up the best of both films. To that end we get two different versions of Schwarzenegger’s T-101 Terminator; a variation on the advanced T-1000, the liquid-metal morphing Terminator from film 2; plus a hybrid of each of these machines, its identity and mission I’ll leave for you to discover. This time around Sarah is portrayed by Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”). Her introduction heralds a plot deviation that final puts this film on its own course. She’s capable and tough, but Linda Hamilton’s waitress-cum-muscled machine killer remains the definitive Sarah Connor.

We’re dealing with multiple time jumps, the old standby alternate timelines and surprisingly effective pathos (if you’ve kept up with the franchise) wrung from Sarah plight of foretold doom, Reese’s plight of longing for his best friend’s mother and the T-101’s plight of protecting, learning from and loving humans. At points the film becomes more convoluted than necessary, trying too hard to lend gravity to its sci-fi confection, forgetting to have fun. But it’s closer in spirit to the franchise’s best efforts than its worst ones. Director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World) present some decent action sequences. Taylor’s movie does effectively use stock footage and cutting-edge CGI to recreate Schwarzenegger’s ‘80s terminator, while incorporating an age-appropriate Schwarzenegger into the mix. The older, broken-down version of the Terminator saves the film from the preposterous idea of a 67-year-old Schwarzenegger as an action star.

To James Cameron’s credit, it must be said that nothing in this film outdoes the stunt work and then-groundbreaking f/x of his original films, which are decades removed from this film.

If you’ve long followed this series you’ll probably enjoy this as an improvement over films 3 and 4 with its attempt to again give story and characters equal weight to the action. If you’re fed up with this whole time-travel, Schwarzenegger action shoot-em-up, there’s not much here that’ll light your fire. The film’s good enough to leave me suspecting that had Cameron directed it he might well have pulled off a cinematic hat trick.

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More Summer Movie Reviews:

Inside Out

Jurassic World

Tomorrowland

Mad Max: Fury Road

Avengers: Age of Ultron

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Quik Flix Hit

Summer Movie Series

Inside Out (2015)

Rated PG

insideout

Disney/Pixar

Known for taking children’s emotions seriously, Pixar’s latest film nevertheless surprised me with its complexity and daring. It’s not that Inside Out doesn’t have the Pixar touch: it’s funny and loaded with action and superb visuals. It’s also one of the studio’s most inventive, plot-wise, rivaling Monster Inc., Ratatouille and Up in that respect. But it carries the ambitions of Pixar’s more adult-leaning efforts, The Incredibles and Wall-E. It takes an adult to see what Pixar’s attempting here, but a child to feel it.

In the BloghouseBy now you’ve seen the previews, right? You’ve been introduced to Riley, the 11-year-old girl whose emotions are personified by cutely rendered and directly named creations: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Bill Hader). These beings stand around a console in the middle of Riley’s mind and take turns guiding her through her days. In an inventive system, the team captures Riley’s emotions in glowing spheres, which are organized according to importance and shipped off, via vacuum tubes and trains, to be stored until they are reused, forgotten or discarded.

The pixie Joy has big blue eyes and a sun-like aura. Anger, in his tweed pants and loosened necktie is forever moments away from literally blowing his top. Sadness, who in many ways becomes the heart of the film, mopes about with her asymmetrical haircut and turtleneck sweater. Disgust, who the film does the least with, has fabulous lashes, perfect hair and a high-maintenance disposition. The insect-like Fear is mostly over-the-top manic, but he does get some big laughs.

Like old pros Riley’s color-coded emotions know when each is up at bat. She needs some toughness to excel on the hockey ice, here comes Anger to juice her up. She needs her spirits lifted after a bad situation, there’s Joy. About Joy: she’s clearly the leader of the pack, whose abundance of, well, joy keeps Riley buoyed along rippling currents of adolescence. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? A child leading a joyous existence? But what happens when joy isn’t suitable as a coping mechanism? Realistically, can we be happy all the time, in every situation?

Riley’s life faces a seismic shift when her family relocates to the West Coast. New home, new school, new friends. Now the animated kids’ film begins to deepen as life’s realities reshape emotions and self-value.

I can think of a half-dozen ways this movie could have taken easier routes through this material, like the tried-and-true Pixar formula of one part kid mixed with one part adult mixed with one part critic-impressing subtext. Instead it relies on honest emotions and not half measures to pull us to its conclusion.

The psychological and neurological underpinnings of the film seem seriously considered. We’re dealing with short-time memories, long-term ones stored as keepsakes, and essential core memories that are critical to Riley’s fundamental outlook on life. There are long-standing islands harboring the girl’s personality: one formed from love of family, one formed for zany diversions, still another based around her love of hockey. (It’s brutal to see those islands crumble under trauma faced by Riley.) There’s long-forgotten wastelands of defunct memories (and discarded imaginary friends) and emotions that are haunting. Not to mention visits to towns that house Riley’s abstract thinking, dreams, imagination and fears. The team manufacturing her nightly dreams as if they were film productions is particularly inspired.

The plot involves the upheaval of those core memories as Joy and Sadness are accidently launched away from headquarters and must journey home before Riley’s life implodes from the lack of Joy and the internal conflict from the remaining emotions—at the very time in her life when she needs them at their best. The film gains power as we cut back and forth between the exciting mission inside Riley’s head and the blunt emotional consequences in her real world. It’s one thing to see the emotions muck up their roles and tumble through various caverns in their child’s mind; it’s another to see young Riley slip into depression and emotional confusion and anger she can’t articulate to her parents. With Joy away from headquarters, even Riley’s love of hockey and the self-esteem it built slips away in one heartbreaking scene.

At one point during the film, my daughter began to cry and I wondered if the material was too much for her. As I watched her, I realized she was right there fraught with Riley, and ultimately, like Riley, my daughter worked her way through her emotions. Somehow the film makes visually manifest abstract ideas of how we can laugh and cry through the same experience—and how each of those emotions are essential.

It’s not the greatest animated film ever made, but Pixar could have rested on its laurels and delivered a good, fun movie with this material. Instead, in pushing to make one of its most ambitious films yet, Pixar sinks the slap shot.

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More Summer Movie Reviews:

Terminator Genisys

Jurassic World

Tomorrowland

Mad Max: Fury Road

Avengers: Age of Ultron

 

| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Quik Flix Hit

Summer Movie Series

Jurassic World (2015)

Rated PG-13

jurassic-world

Universal Pictures

The head honcho of Jurassic World is told to beef up attractions for the cloned-dinosaur theme park. The same request must have been made of the creators of Jurassic World, the sequel to the Steven Spielberg-Michael Crichton 1993 box office juggernaut. So the fantastic and improbable dino-Disneyland creates exotic dinosaur hybrids to wow its been-there, done-that, got-the-T-shirt visitors and sate its money-hungry corporate investors. Likewise, we get a film, directed by a competent Colin Trevorrow, trying to make everything bigger, bolder, faster, louder. As a big summer movie thriller it does the job.

In the BloghouseThe visceral response to massive prehistoric beasts chasing and chomping on humans while tossing vehicles around like Matchbox cars is likely a rapid heart beat. And this time, the dinos attack not just by land, but air and sea.

The setup, introducing the half-dozen main players, is swift and employs snappy dialogue.

As a deluxe cruise ship delivers teen Zach (Nick Robinson) and his younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins) to their aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), Jurassic World’s top administrator, we take in the grandeur of this island resort/park/museum/zoo/research facility in sweeping aerial shots. Improbable though it may be, the filmmakers try to ground the festivities in American pastime familiarity: cotton candy and gift shop inflatable dinosaurs; a petting zoo, where little tykes ride cute baby dinos; self-guided tours in clever, transparent spherical vehicles spinning across grassy plains; an elevated monorail circling the park; interactive hologram exhibits. Then there’s the Sea World-like aquatic show, replete with a massive dino-whale blasting out of the pool to snag a hanging snack (a Great White shark!) for the roaring audience in the splash zone.

As this is set 20 years after the original story, we miss grandfatherly and original park creator, the late John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough), but we remember dino-DNA expert Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong) who takes on a darker persona this time out.

Owen (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Barry (Omar Sy, X-Men: Days of Future Past) are introduced as diligent, big-muscled dino wranglers. Owen, in fact, has made himself the alpha male of a pack of velociraptors. We watch him engage the viscous creatures like a lion tamer: firm and confident, but respecting the animals’ predatory natures and keeping his distance with safeguards.

Two other main characters bound into the mix: park bankroller Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan, The Life of Pi), visiting his latest big-dinosaur investment, and Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio), head of the military wing of the corporation who has his own agenda for these hybrid dinosaurs. The new attraction, dubbed Indominus Rex, is teased as the mother of all dinosaurs. We get hints of him through shaking trees, deep-nose snorting and thunderous footfalls—you know the drill.

With the characters in play and the park abuzz with thousands of guests, things slide off the rails before we can get settled. In quick succession, Claire’s nephews break away from their put-upon handler (Katie McGrath) to roam the park sans adult supervision; Hoskins mounts what amounts to a corporate coup; and Indominus pulls a sweet fake-out that hastens his escape from captivity.

The rest is run-or-get-trampled, eat-or-get-eaten thrills, which the movie succeeds at wonderfully. Pterodactyls dive-bombing visitors, raptors tag-teaming against their adversaries and a Jurassic faceoff I won’t spoil. A quick visit to the crumbling site of Hammond’s original Jurassic Park (as John William’s theme leitmotif twinkles on the soundtrack) hits the right note of nostalgia.

I see no type of indemnity clause that could hedge this venture’s bet against a catastrophe of Jurassic proportions, and yet I sense that if we could build this World, people would pay thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles to sign those waivers and dive right in.

Summer’s here!

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| Marvin Brown’s Movie Review Archive

Quik Flix Hit

Summer Movie Series

Tomorrowland (2015)

Rated PG

tomorrowland

Disney Pictures

Tomorrowland is the kind of movie that would have inspired me as a kid. Nearly every moment of this film’s runtime is devoted to underscoring the power and necessity of imagination and invention. That our fertile human minds can lead us not only to weapons of destruction and instruments of healing but to a more essential purpose, as thinking beings, of our capacity to shape our destiny in the best of ways. I’m proud to write that as an adult I found this movie inspiring. In this era of bloated politics, cultural indifference, incuriousness and xenophobia, I tapped into the filmmakers’ schema that a through-line of invention is always among the clutter, a path waiting to be exposed and taken. It’s as if the movie is a test of our belief in our better angels, the power of imagination. Those who cotton to that may be moved by the film’s attempts to inspire; those who don’t may dismiss this as corny.

In the BloghouseWhen we think of the imagination it took to allow man to travel beyond the planet and walk on the surface of the moon, or even imagining a day when it would be commonplace for men, women and children to board a pressurized tube of aluminum and plastic to be hurled hundreds of miles and hour, tens of thousands of feet about the ground as a form of commercialized travel, how did we get to a time and place where that kind of ingenuity is buried under the latest political wrangling or financial scandals or reality-TV obsession? We don’t invent things anymore, we stand on the shoulders of inventions we now mock, while repackage them in the latest colors, slim shapes and hipster slogans.

Imagination and those who celebrate it are often punchlines these days. And yet from our earliest imaginings we’ve created motion pictures and automobiles and computers and microwave ovens and antibiotics and x-ray machines.

Tomorrowland presupposes that most of us have grown up and away from ideas of awe and visions that stir us to move in wonderfully radical directions. We’re resigned to our fate of future days that will erase, decade upon decade, our joy of possibilities and possible better times. Who today looks ahead and envisions days of abundant resources and peaceful cultures and cooperative nations? But what of this mythical place where the imagination could be allowed to run free? The story jumps off at New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, where we meet the best, brightest, boldest thinkers and imaginers.

One such thinker, 10-year-old Frank Walker with his self-made jetpack (of course!) in tow, will attend the fair with the intention of changing the world with its possibilities. While a fair official (Hugh Laurie) sees promise in Frank but dismisses the boy as not yet ready for prime time, a curious little girl, Athena (Raffey Cassidy), thinks otherwise, seeing something urgent in Frank’s imagination. The boy is surreptitiously invited to a world beyond the world he thinks he knows. This prologue gives us a marvelous glimpse of Tomorrowland—a gleaming, Disney Kingdom-like wonderland of rockets and flying trains and inventions as small as a button pin and as large as the sky—before we’re catapulted to the present day where we meet Casey (Britt Robertson), a wise-beyond-her-20 years daughter of a NASA scientist (Tim McGraw). Casey, already a dreamer, makes a spectacular and brief visit to Tomorrowland and doesn’t hesitate to chase its possibilities. This puts her in the sights of powerful forces who’d rather not have the place discovered and will use deadly means to keep things secret.

She eventually connects with a much older, disillusioned Frank (George Clooney) who has long put his residency of Tomorrowland behind him, as well as, perhaps, the promise he once held as a boy. Clooney does wonderful work as the craggy, jilted Frank who nevertheless maintains a little-boy longing in his eyes. It’s great to see Casey’s imagination reignite his.

Casey’s plight aligns her with Frank and a still-young Athena as Casey uncovers not just the wonders of the future, but, as grownups know, its frightening uncertainties as well. The stakes—at first the exposure of Tomorrowland, then the possible end of the real world itself—felt like serious business to me. But don’t let my crowing about the film’s underpinnings make you think there’s no fun to be had. There are great action set pieces, including giant robots fighting, a time-freezing weapon, a journey into space and through a wormhole, an attack on a country house decked out with a most impressive defense system, and a fight that takes place in two time streams.

What does it say about a film that gambles its success on the hopes that the audience buys into a dream? It saddens me to see this film turn out low box office numbers and negative reviews, basically making the film’s point of humanity’s time-worn nature to run headlong into cynicism and doubt, instead of it daring to dream, to believe that better, yet-to-be-imagined days lie ahead.

No matter. I was inspired and I hope younger viewers, who are our tomorrows, will be as well. I found the last shot of the film powerful. Does that make me a sap, or hopelessly optimistic?

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