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Interview with Ginger Gentile

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TAKING ON IVY LEAGUE: INTERVIEW WITH ‘EXCLUSION U’ DIRECTOR GINGER GENTILE

Activist director sets sights on elite universities

 

Ginger Gentile/Core Media

 

Spin the wheel and land on a current hot-button topic that incites anger on either side of the political spectrum and puts grass-roots activists on a collusion course with powerful, moneyed institutions: gun control, abortion, transgender intolerance, immigration, agenda-based news organizations, and of course evergreen racial dynamics.

Roiling in the margins awaits another issue destined for the center stage: the shocking and permissive financial shenanigans of institutions of higher education. Tangential issues—student loan forgiveness, the influence of “woke” progressive professors, the protests of ultraconservative guest speakers—already are popping up in headlines across the nation.

Ginger Gentile’s new documentary, Exclusion U, launches headlong into the controversies, hidden and no-so, of how universities, particularly the Ivy League, sit on billions of dollars while refusing to expand enrollments. It’s a topic ready-made for Gentile, who describes herself as an activist documentary filmmaker who prefers to take on “issues that people don’t want to talk about.”

Her previous documentary, Erasing Family (2022), explores trauma children of divorce suffer when a parent is erased from their lives. That film was financed through a crowdfunding campaign. Gentile also produced several independent films during her post-college stint in Argentina. Her experiences as a Jewish person living in Buenos Aires may very well inspire a future documentary about Jews in Latin America, she says.

When it comes to scandals within the corridors of higher education, Gentile, an Ivy Leaguer herself, knows of what she speaks. As a student at Columbia University, she had a love-hate relationship with her alma mater.

“The education was amazing,” Gentile recalls, but she didn’t cotton to some of the same institutional issues she takes on in her film. “I was always protesting. My time at Columbia informed my outlook on how Ivy League functions.”

Gentile’s film takes on myriad issues: economics, race, politics, legacy benefactors, beleaguered financial aid efforts, intentional exclusivity and even gentrification. But the centerpiece is certainly the issue of endowments. Exclusion U carefully lays out how Ivy League institutions hoard billions of dollars through financial set-asides. The endowments grow exponentially into a largess that rarely find its way back to those who need it most, low-income students and the communities that surround and support the universities.

“I always knew that schools had endowments,” Gentile says. But the extent to which donations and assets are funneled away was staggering to discover. “Everything is public, but not widely known. All these things they do are legal,” she adds.

In addition to students, Gentile’s documentary has many former educators, administrators and admission officials as talking heads. Was there a concern of upsetting the Ivy League culture?

“I only interviewed people who wanted to talk,” she said. “There was fear from students from Harvard compared to other universities. Harvard is such a powerful institution.”

She adds, “Everything is fact-checked. They may not like it but it’s all true.”

Looking to the future, Gentile has her eyes on the subject of math.

“I’d love to do a film about people’s fear and hatred of mathematics,” she says. “Also, I have an interest in the Manifest Movement,” as well as the previously mentioned exploration of Jewish people living in Latin America.

What does she hope viewers will take away from the film?

“That there are schools with a lot of money and power because we allowed them to have those things,” she says. “It’s time for us to do something about it.”

Exclusion U is produced by Veronica Nickel (Moonlight) and includes interviews with Davarian Baldwin (In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower), Tressie McMillan Cottom (Lower Ed), Anthony Jack (The Privileged Poor), Jeff Selingo (Who Gets In and Why) Dan Golden (The Price of Admission) Richard V. Reeves (Brookings Institution), Lauren Rivera (Northwestern University), and Deja Foxx (influencer/staffer for Vice President Kamala Harris).

The film will be released on June 23, and will be available on various on-demand platforms including iTunes, Amazon, and GooglePlay.

Official site here

 

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Interview with Director Sam Pollard

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BUILDING ON LEGACIES: INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SAM POLLARD

Editor-turned-director’s latest work features late Mayor Maynard Jackson

Sam Pollard on set

There’s something synchronistic about a trailblazing African-American mayor, who paved the way for a trailblazing African-American president, having his story told by a talented editor-director, who himself came up through the influence of a legendary African-America director.

Pollard, left, and Spike Lee with their Emmys

Sam Pollard’s timely documentary Maynard, then, is an exemplar of black legacy all around—in front of and behind the camera. We read frequent reports of the current presidential administration on a quest to erase the legacy of the country’s first black president. Pollard’s film asserts that Barack Obama’s legacy, in part, is a continuation of strides began from folks like Maynard Jackson.

“Listen,” Pollard says, “looking at Maynard in hindsight is a breath of fresh air.”

CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF MAYNARD

Maynard Jackson Jr.’s story is long overdue for the screen. In 1973, the charismatic, unflappable politician was elected mayor of the city of Atlanta, becoming first African-American to lead a major southern city. Jackson held the post for three terms and by the time of his death had changed the course of politics.

Maynard Jackson

Pollard’s film illuminates a political terrain fraught with racial discord, political in-fighting, complex alliances, both black and white. Sound familiar to today’s politics? And yet, Maynard inspires hope. Our nation’s been through this before, it says, and we have come through the other side.

Even before becoming a longtime editor of the films of director Spike Lee, Pollard had a winding career in editing. Before Lee, Pollard spent 20 years doing low-budget work with vanguards like the late Bill Gunn. But working with Lee for more than 20 years has provided Pollard with “a sense of how to tell a story,” he says. “Being an editor has had a very positive impact on my directorial career.”

The Emmy winner (his “Slavery By Another Name”), four-time Peabody Award winner and Academy Award nominee has produced films on playwright August Wilson, singer Marvin Gaye and author Zora Neale Hurston.

In Maynard, Pollard’s command of his material—with assistance from his editor Jeff Cooper and cameraman Henry Adebonojo—is on display. The documentary vibrates with a sense of the era—its roiling racial politics, its music, the clothes. Maynard Jackson, tall and broad, uses carefully chosen words, commands audiences with his articulate speeches and forthright assertions. Sound familiar? We see Jackson, successful in high school and college, grandson of famed civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs, primed for greatness.

There would be stumbles along the way. Facing defeat after a run for the Georgia senate, a young Jackson dusted himself off, and turned the experience into a successful campaign for mayor.

Pollard uses archival footage to great effect. I was gobsmacked by footage of a portly Jackson in the ring with Muhammad Ali for a promotional boxing match. News footage and interviews of the Atlanta child murders that rocked Jackson’s second term remain potent. And Jackson’s legacy-burnishing renovation of the Atlanta airport into an international hub truly speaks to his lasting accomplishments.

Pollard with Shirley Franklin, former mayor of Atlanta

But it’s the talking heads that give weight to Pollard’s film and Jackson’s story. Famed mayors Andrew Young and Shirley Franklin. Civil rights heavy-hitters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Former President Bill Clinton. Attorney Vernon Jordan. Pollard gets them to speak personally about Jackson. The voices of Jackson’s family wring true intimacy from the proceedings. Jackson’s son, daughters, ex-wife and widow bring the Jackson legacy into focus. Their contributions went beyond speaking in front of the camera, though. It was the Jackson clan that brought Maynard to life. Pollard says he was sought out by the family to bring the story of the late mayor to the screen.

“The family reached out to me,” he says. “They were looking for someone to help produce a film about their father.”

The family understood its patriarch’s place in history. A quote by Jackson’s daughter Bunnie Jackson Ransom—“He was the Obama before Obama”—has been used in some promotional materials.

Maynard was not a perfect mayor. He belatedly contended with a corrupt cabinet member, and seemed to lose his zest for politics during his apprehensive third term. Pollard intended to create a full portrait of the man.

“The easy part would be to not have complexity,” he says. “I wanted a very rounded perspective.”

Bill Clinton on Maynard Jackson

To that end we see former mayors still touched Maynard’s influence, Bill Clinton’s eyes brighten as he relates a Jackson anecdote as only he can. And the scene in which the news of Maynard’s untimely death reaches each of his family members is masterfully filmed and edited.

The documentary gained from what Pollard calls the “benefit of living witnesses.” The film boasts participation from other trailblazers of the era.

“They are still alive. All these former mayors touched by him,” he says. “You can hear directly from people who pass on his legacy.”

Up next for Pollard is a feature film on the life of Bert Williams, a black entertainer from the Vaudeville era. The Bahamas-born Williams rose to become one of the most popular comedians of his day. Pollard’s film, sure to be as provocative as Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, is in the fundraising phase.

Maynard debuts Nov. 16 at DOC in NYC.

Official site here

Sam Pollard’s filmography here

 

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Quik Flix Hit

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The Age of Consequences (2016)

Unrated

 

PF Films

We’ve seen climate change documentaries that present us with the unnerving prospects of global environmental dangers, real and theorized, pushing our ecosystem past a bleak point of no return. Have we seen one arguing that a cluster of catastrophes—international conflicts, migration, scarcity of resources, even terrorism—emanate out from the epicenter of a man-made ground zero: global warming?

I might be slightly exaggerating when I say The Age of Consequences edges into the realm of a horror film.

The new documentary, professional and smartly directed by Jared P. Scott from PF Films, arrives Jan. 27 in an intense political season that either amplifies the stakes of its dire message, or will work against the film just as its call for cultural and legislative action is needed most. You know where you stand on the issue of climate change.

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SOPHIE ROBINSON

Age works to tilt viewers away from partisan perspectives, hoping that fact-of-the-matter, up-to-moment catastrophes will speak louder than political talking points. The doc gets a big lift by featuring military experts speaking convincingly of their beliefs and, more importantly, experiences in the real cause-and-effect of environmental destruction. We’ve heard environmentalists and left-leaning politicians’ pleas for action, but Scott’s film mostly looks to admirals, generals, veterans to bolster an overarching theme that environmental abuses/neglect can cascade into civil conflict, migration catastrophes, food shortages, terrorism recruitment, and overwhelm humanitarian efforts.

What was once laughed off as “tree-hugger” hyperbole has been termed in some corners of the military as a “threat multiplier.” The film follows the dominoes as they fall: Climate change exacerbated one of the worst droughts in Syrian history. The three-year drought begun at the end of 2006 ultimately triggered 1.5 million Syrian men to leave their farmlands and move to city locations, seeking jobs and food. Additionally, Iraqi refugees were at the time migrating into Syria. These two factors alone spurred a 30 percent population growth in urban areas, which in turn drove up food and apartment prices, as well as drained the health-care system. Such strife is cited by officials in the film as a factor giving rise to civil war. Broken social structures leave openings for terrorist recruitment. The film suggests climate-change hazards will increase such migrations and their consequences.

And look at the threat multiplier from a financial perspective: A 2010 Russia-China drought, the film states, lead to wheat shortages in those countries. The countries responded by purchasing wheat on the global food market, which drove up prices across the planet, spurring economic chaos.

And from a humanitarian perspective: When global warming wreaks havoc on populated regions, getting aid to displaced millions increasingly is becoming a logistical nightmare, and soon, the film suggests, an unsustainable effort. The U.S. military alone spends increasing amounts of time exclusively on humanitarian and recovery efforts. It would take but a small cluster of these catastrophes occurring simultaneously to break the back a nation or create a devastating domino effect across the globe.

Scott and his cameraman Michael McSweeney keep the film moving by using sharp visuals. A reoccurring radar chart graphic works well as a visual interpretation of the tangled arms of environmental and social threats across the globe. The film makes good use of archival footage from current conflicts and catastrophes. Hurricane Katrina footage still chills to the bone. A technique of placing a subject center frame and at a distance (to highlight beautiful corridors and staterooms of power) subvert the common method of using standard shots of talking heads.

The Age of Consequences left me wrung out and the solutions belatedly offered—better stewardship of the planet, alternative resources, a more aggressive timeline to confront environmental hazards—are of the stripe we’ve heard before and don’t completely mitigate all the dread it previously piled on. Perhaps they can’t. Maybe the film hopes to shock the viewer out of complacency. What remains to be seen is how it lands in an era in which those in seats of power and their supporters don’t exactly seem like cheerleaders for climate-change activism.

 

 

 

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Quick Flix Hit

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Apparition Hill (2016)

Rated PG-13

apparition-hill

Stella Mar Films

Apparition Hill, the site where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared before six local youths in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, is without doubt a place of inspiration. Is it also a place of healing, enlightenment and miracles? Well, every year, thousands seeking those rewards trek up a jagged hillside in the village of Medjugorje to the spot marked with a statue of the Blessed Mary.

Director Sean Bloomfield joined seven strangers on a two-week trip to Medjugorje and up so-called Apparition Hill to document experiences filled with urgency and desperation, curiosity and skepticism, hope and joy—ultimately providing the cast, and possibly viewers, with multiple levels of insight.

READ MY INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR SEAN BLOOMFIELD

Bloomfield selects his cast from a potpourri of video submissions: two atheists, Pete, who prefers finding life’s meaning in science and logic, and Mark, who craves knowledge beyond understanding but can’t get there through spirituality; Rich, a widowed father of nine; Jill, a Catholic latecomer needing to strengthen her weakening belief; Holly, a terminally ill wife and mother whose husband Matt decides to join her on the trip; and Ryan, a sad on-off drug abuser who’s been in and out of prison. There’s an eighth participant, Darryl, who suffers from ALS. His condition confines him to a wheelchair, necessitating a separate, earlier journey to Medjugorje for him that serves as a side story in the documentary. He has a video chat with the rest of the gang to express his views on the journey he’s taken as it prepares to trace his steps.

Along the way we meet Ben, a former addict who now resides in the community, and Miki Musa, a local guide who was featured in a previous Bloomfield documentary.

We take several pilgrimages with the cast—to the weeping Statue of the Risen Christ that resides behind the town’s St. James Church, to the Blue Cross at the base of Apparition Hill, to the sacred spot itself and still further up to the hilltop where we find a holy site honoring Christ Himself—and we learn more about each along the way. The members seem to approach the experience with open minds, I must note. Certainly, our attention is drawn to the two atheists and Holly, who has Stage 4 cancer.

We regard Pete and Mark closely because we sense if they change, if they believe, there is something powerful going on here. They’re both presented as skeptical but fair-minded enough to give the pilgrimage a chance. We regard Molly, who comes dangerously close to missing the trip due to her health, as the ultimate test case for these proceedings because of her bright smile, because of her relentless optimism, because she seems to be a wonderful wife and a loving mother. With her, as she smile through tears, we truly hope for miracles (even as Holly claims she’s seeking only peace and enlightenment). Her struggle gives the film an undercurrent of suspense and sadness that might not have been the director’s intentions.

The documentary attempts to take a nonjudgmental look at the cast and the community, but it’s a hard sell. Peeking into these lives is personal, and you just can’t move through Medjugorje without being swept along on its spiritual current. Catholicism runs deeply in this village. The cast attends Mass repeatedly, prayers are spoken, rosaries are counted, novenas are undertaken.

Of the six Herzegovinian children who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in 1981, the documentary focuses most on Mirjana Soldo. Sixteen at the time of her visitation, Soldo has basically devoted her life to her pilgrimages where she communes with Mary. We watch this visionary immerse herself in prayer and are simultaneously perplexed and moved. She is in a place beyond us as tears stream down her cheeks, her eyes look through this world and a knowing smile overtakes her. And yet, she later expresses what she sees, hears and feels is not beyond us.

The film’s ending, powerful and raw, brings a journey to its inevitable conclusion, then Bloomfield tags on a sweet coda as a salve.

Lives have been challenged and changed, and clearly, the film hopes, not just for the cast we’ve observed.

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Quik Flix Hit

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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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Quik Flix Hit

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Danny Collins (2015)

Rated R

danny-collins

Big Indie Pictures

Danny Collins isn’t as famous as Al Pacino, who plays the fictional aging rock singer in this film, but Danny’s type of fame will do well enough. He’s recognized nearly everywhere he goes, not just by long-time fans but also youths familiar with his celebrity.

In the BloghouseBefore he was a celebrity living off his name and long-ago hit songs, he was a talented singer/songwriter. So talented, in fact, a circa ’70s interview he did for a Rolling Stone-like periodical caught the attention of John Lennon.

It transpires that Lennon was moved by the interview and wrote an admiring and encouraging letter that included Lennon’s phone number. The skittish Danny, who was eager for success but apprehensive of stardom, could have benefitted from such a letter. Alas, through couldn’t-believe-it-if-it-weren’t-based-on-true-events circumstances, Danny wouldn’t receive the letter for more than 40 years. By the time it’s gifted to him by his steadfast manager (the great Christopher Plummer) he’s going through the motions of fame. Trophy girlfriend, fair-weather friends, casual drugs, expensive gated home and sports cars. He slogs through his performances as best he can, singing songs he’s long since tired of, resigned that he is more celebrity than singer.

The letter blasts him free of absorbing thoughts that he’s in the final throes of his life, sending him on a new trajectory. He packs up, dumps the girlfriend and sets off on a quest to find the life he should have had, and tie up some loose ends.

Up to this point the film has moved briskly and Pacino keeps Danny engaging, no doubt. When Danny checks into a rinky-dink New Jersey hotel to get back to writing the songs that Lennon-endorsed Danny Collins was supposed to have written years back, Danny’s likeable personality really comes into focus. In quick order he charms the hotel valet (Josh Peck), the young concierge, and more intentionally the hotel manager (a wonderfully low-key Annette Bening).

The loose ends involve wriggling himself into the life of his adult estranged son. The son (Bobby Cannavale) has a wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter and no intention of having a relationship with his long-absent father. Danny’s well-written introduction to the family (Garner shines) effectively sets the stage for the first father-son encounter.

The film’s not so much about the plot, but there are key twists I will not spoil. And it’s not even about whether Danny will succeed in writing and singing this comeback song, though Pacino makes us root for him.

Cannavale, Garner, Bening and Plummer are all wonderfully realized character and each has at least one well-written scene that allows them to shine. This is one of those movies where you don’t mind spending time with any of the characters because they’re all interesting and say interesting things. But it’s all held together by grandmaster Pacino who knows this character inside and out. I like that Danny’s smart (he’s often taking notes) and is remarkable at reading people and assessing situations. The flashy-but-outdated clothes, hair style and cheesy songs don’t keep us from seeing what a good heart the man has, or what a warm-hearted, humorous film this is.

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Quik Flix Hit – Summer Movie Roundup

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In the Bloghouse

 

Time for a look back at the summer’s best and worst in the 2014 Summer Movie Roundup.

 

 

 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Edge of Tomorrow

Godzilla (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy

Lucy

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

RELATED: See all of Marvin Brown’s reviews from his film archive.

Quik Flix Hit

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Summer Movie Series

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Rated PG-13

edge-of-tomorrow

Warner Bros./Village Roadshow

I have a thing for time-travel movies. When protagonists scramble backward or forward in time attempting to correct wrongs or save the day or recapture love, for me, it hits a sweet spot. Based upon the trailers, I went into Edge of Tomorrow eager to see how the time-jumping theme would be put to use. It didn’t disappoint.

In the BloghouseGiven that the film takes place in the near future and that the time-traveling mechanism is actually created by aliens and not built by humans provides a fresh approach. Based on a Japanese light novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Edge is Groundhog Day (1993) crossed with Source Code (2011).

We follow Major William Cage (Tom Cruise), a brash public relations officer in the military, who’s also cowardly on the actually soldiering side of things. Through a bit of plot contrivance, Cage is forced into frontline combat against a seemingly unbeatable alien force.

Cruise imbues his character with enough forced confidence, which crumbles in the face of real danger, that I connected with his terror as he is literally shoved into a heavy, weaponized bodysuit and airdropped onto a field of battle no less horrific than Normandy on D-Day.

The aliens, Mimics, are fiercely conceived as octopus-like monsters that burrow through the earth like caffeinated groundhogs, then emerge to tear through adversaries with multiple buzz-saw appendages.

Cage’s mission goes horribly wrong for every soldier involved, but not before he takes sight of legendary soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt).

Instead of waking up in the afterlife, Cage is reborn into the same day and at the same spot where his mission began. Yes, the same commanding officer (Bill Paxton) will berate him, the same elite squad will mock his recruitment into its ranks, the same doomed mission plans will be laid out. After things go badly again, and he’s reborn again, he and we get the drift of things. After a few rounds of being horrified by his circumstances, Cage begins to use the knowledge at hand not only to mold himself into a better soldier, but to get to know his enemy and to construct something of a survivable battle plan.

Director Doug Liman (The Borne Identity, Go) has fun with Cage’s learning curve, finding creative ways to repeatedly kill our hero. I won’t spoil how or why Cage faces this dilemma, but it holds the key to possibly winning the war.

Cage eventually connects with Rita, who knows more than expected about his plight. She’s a hardened soldier—not completely convincingly played by Blunt; Michelle Rodriguez would have been typecasting but also perfect—who’s all about the mission.

The plot isn’t as complex as it could have been, which will ease confusion for those who struggle with gimmicky scenarios like time travel. I think Edge starts strong, builds up quite a bit of steam with its “live, die, repeat” format, but ultimately runs its course before its endgame arrives. But I’m still a softie for time-travel movies.

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Summer Movie Series

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Rated PG-13

amazing-spider-man-2

Marvel Enterprises

Let’s see. When last we left off, Uncle Ben was murdered, as was Gwen Stacy’s police captain dad. The Lizard was behind bars. Gwen and Peter Parker’s relationship was broken but there was a spark of hope. And poor Peter was no closer to understanding why his parents abandoned him.

In the BloghouseThis sequel to the 2012 reboot answers the questions about Peter’s parents and adds several other wrinkles to his life, not including the on-again-off-again thing he has going with Gwen.

Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone return and bring their chemistry with them, and the visuals are up to snuff, but I feel like the good will and characters built in Part One are wasted in this follow-up. This isn’t a bad movie, mind you, but I don’t know why they keep overstuffing these things with bad guys and plot—that misfortune befell 2007’s Spider-Man 3.

Peter and Gwen’s relationship, his mom and dad’s disappearance and the birth of supervillian Electro (Jamie Foxx) would have been enough story. But we also get the Harry Osborn/Green Goblin subplot (which really should be main-plot material),  inconsequential villain Rhino and Sally Field’s Aunt May jockeying for position.

Nerdy, introverted scientist Max Dillon becomes Electro after getting zapped by genetically enhanced electric eels. For some reason he blames Spider-Man, despite the fact that Spidey is basically the only person who has shown him kindness. With his ability to harness electricity he fearsomely commands the city’s attention, even though his costume and uneven makeup leave something to be desired.

Meanwhile, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan, Chronicles) returns to the city to find his billionaire father Norman (Chris Cooper) dying from a hereditary illness, an affliction Harry discovers he shares. He reconnects with old friend Peter in a well-written and -acted scene that underscores this plotline deserved more time.

Meanwhile, Gwen tires of Peter’s inability to commit, which is largely due to the danger he represents to her as a superhero and the promise he made to her dying father to stay away from her—again to keep her way from danger. Two good reasons in my book.

The plot lines converge in a final showdown I won’t spoil, but comics fans have seen coming since the first movie.

The first film, with its charismatic leads and reworked origin story, convinced me that I could do with another Spider-Man series; this one caused me to wonder if it might be time to give Spidey a break.

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Summer Movie Series

Godzilla (2014)

Rated PG-13

godzilla

Warner Bros.

Godzilla takes his time showing up in his new movie. At first I’m thinking great, less is more. After awhile, I’m really getting eager to see the big guy. Finally, I’m wondering if Godzilla’s going to make a cameo in his own movie. He does eventual make his entrance. It’s a good one, the mighty creature rising up out of the ocean, water cascading off his mountainous frame like waterfalls, towering over birds and helicopters, blotting out the sun, opening his mouth to stop the show with his roar. Humans and giant monsters alike pause to take notice.

In the BloghouseThe whole movie is like that: setup, delayed gratification, big scene. Repeat.

There’s a prologue 15 years ago that mainly functions to give the protagonists a tragic backstory. In present day, a scientist played by Bryan Cranston has basically gone insane after his years of dire global warnings go unheeded. His estranged son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Avengers: Age of Ultron) reluctantly arrives to talk some sense to his dad. Before long the son discovers, lo and behold, the old man’s not bonkers. Thus Ford is pulled into his dad’s mission while trying to get home to wife Elle (Elizabeth Olsen, Oldboy, Very Good Girls) and his own son. Olsen’s wasted in this, while Cranston brings gravitas this movie doesn’t need. Japanese legend Ken Watanabe is also wasted as a scientist whose function I still haven’t figured out.

When technology goes awry—Cranston told us so!—it produces a giant insect parasite that tears across the globe, eagerly off on some unknown mission. Once military intervention fails, it’s up to our scaly hero to save the day. With his awesome tail and fire breath, Godzilla’s formidable in battle, even when being double-teamed by giant monsters.

There’s lots of destruction of large-scale architecture, but nothing we haven’t already seen in big-budget action flicks. Honestly, I had more fun watching Pacific Rim (2013), itself a tribute to classic Japanese Kaiju films like Godzilla.

Make no mistake, this Godzilla is leaps and bounds ahead of the 1998 American reboot. My issues with the film resides in the screenplay, not in its execution. Director Gareth Edwards has a knack for amazing images and the execution of a scene. When this film’s on, it’s on. A scene of an elite military team parachuting into the monster warzone borders on iconic. The men jump from a plane then seem to fall endlessly with red flares streaming from their boots, through cloud holes, into dark sky, into glowing thunderclouds, back into dark sky, and downward. It’s a beautiful sight, visual poetry. Another scene of beautiful destruction involves a burning train roaring through the night and off a destroyed bridge. There’s a memorable visual of soldiers moving through lush jungle, and of a suspension bridge swaying and crumbling as it holds busloads of people.

Can I also note that actor Sally Hawkins, who plays a scientist, has absolutely nothing to do in this movie? Why even include this character?

If you’re a Godzilla fan, or into big-budget summer action—albeit doled out at deliberate junctures—check this out, otherwise: Skip it.

 

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