Sicario: Day of The Soldado
directed by Stefano Sollima
The first Sicario movie was a brooding examination of the moral costs of revenge, the war on drugs, and perhaps the standing of the souls of Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt) and Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro). The ending let us know that as majestic and purposeful as one of those characters was, they were definitely going to hell when they died.
Well that was one way to look at it. The other way is the Old Testament way in which we show no pity and pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot until the bitter cup of revenge is drunk in full by everyone. The Old Testament is full of people taking righteous and not so righteous revenge upon people who harmed them or just happened to be in the way of some divinely ordered smackdown.
This "kill em all" way of thinking can often be justified by the "good guys"-just ask any survivor of the WW2 firebombings of Dresden or Tokyo about that-but in most entertainment there's a line beyond which "good guys" don't cross, no matter how righteous the purpose may be. Alejandro crosses those lines in the first Sicario and doesn't appear to be in any need of forgiveness or redemption. He made his choice. You might understand his choice or despair at his choice but there is no denying that the character knew what he was doing. Like Marv in Sin City, Alejandro has decided that there are certain people or concepts worth killing for, worth dying for, and worth going to hell for.
Key Largo
directed by John Huston
In some respects this Bogie-Bacall collaboration, their last one, is a noir film and in another it's a movie masquerading as one. Its cynicism hides an optimism and can-do spirit. The other interesting thing about this film is how the actors of the time, even many of the stars, would be considered normal to average looking people today. Although Humphrey Bogart had massive screen presence would women today consider him handsome? I can't call it. Similarly Lauren Bacall could certainly be considered striking but I don't know that I'd call her beautiful.
And Edward G. Robinson wasn't handsome by the standards of any time. And yet despite that, or even because of that this movie feels real. The stars and the character actors do not stand out from the film; they are the film. Like many films of the time and the genre Key Largo makes judicious use of lighting and setting to set up the internal and external battle between good and evil.
The impending storms and resulting darkness and shadows match perfectly the emotional and psychological challenges being wrestled with by the main characters. Also this film shows that it is possible to make a tense, interesting adult movie without nudity, cleavage or even explicit violence. This movie produced a Best Supporting Actress win for Claire Trevor.
At the time of this writing it is day 21 of the government shutdown. On Friday January 11, thousands of Federal workers missed their first full paycheck. Although it is unwise to live your life paycheck to paycheck, fully 80% of Americans do indeed live paycheck to paycheck.
And that's not just impoverished people. 10% of people with a salary greater than six figures also say they live that way. Of course a six figure income is not what it was twenty years ago. The reasons for that are not really relevant to this post. The larger point is that plenty of federal workers will face some tough decisions over the next few days. The given reason for the shutdown is that President Trump wants $5.7 Billion for the creation and expansion of a hard border Wall.
The Democrats, who won back the House, are offering $1.3 Billion for border security, some possible fencing, but definitely no Wall. In some ways however the fight isn't really over the creation of a wall. Democrats have voted for walls before. Some border areas already have effective walls. The larger fight is over the symbolism of a wall. Trump's rabid base despises illegal immigration and isn't that crazy about legal immigration. They want to see concrete evidence that Trump is making headway in the battle against both. When Trump looked like he was going to cave conservative enforcers Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh called him out in a mocking personal way.
The Sopranos was one of my favorite television dramas. It wasn't the first show to have an antihero protagonist but it was one of the most successful ones to do so. This wasn't just great acting by the series star, the late James Gandolfini, but excellent writing, direction and production by series creator David Chase as well as wonderful support by many other actors and actresses, including Edie Falco. It does seem odd to realize that it has been twenty years since the series debut. Chase and Falco reminisce about the show and of course that ending.
Gods of Thrones
by A. Ron Hubbard and Anthony LeDonne
This is a short (under 200 pages) fascinating book that in part examines the religions of the world created by George R.R. Martin in his series A Song of Ice and Fire and adapted for HBO television by Benioff and Weiss as Game of Thrones. The authors do a deep dive into Westerosi cultures to look at the mores and morals that animate them and how they relate or do not to our own.
This book is emphatically not just about religion. The authors devote text to comparative philosophy, and psychology, time travel, the Hero's Journey, Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, and all of the other things that make human cultures tick and continue to reproduce themselves.
The authors explore or debunk fan theories and make a few snarky pleas to GRRM to finish the series. This book assumes that you are caught up with either the televised adaptations or the books. The first of two planned volumes, this book starts with the religion/worldview of everyone's favorite morose Northerners, the Starks. It talks about how animism and pantheism work in their world and ours, Greek tree spirits, and Tolkien's Ents. Next up is the Religion of R'hllor and its links to real world religions such as Zoroastrianism. The authors use Greek and Roman myths to examine Tywin Lannister's parental morality, wonder if Roose Bolton is really a vampire, and critique Robb Stark's leadership style.
You put poison in my coffee instead of milk or cream
You about the evilest woman that I ever seen
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye
Then you sit down, watch me hoping that I might die
These lyrics from the song Commit a Crime by blues legend Howling Wolf always scared impressed me. Can you imagine living with someone who is evil and cold enough to mix your drink with lye and sit down and watch you hoping that you might die? The sheer malevolence of such a move still chills me. You indeed might need to leave that living arrangement before you killed that person or s/he killed you. I could listen to that song and only wonder at the pure malice from which Howling Wolf is trying to escape. Matthew Burke doesn't have to listen to classic blues songs to get a sense of evil that's loose in the world. His estranged wife, Renee Burke, allegedly mixed Matthew Burke's drinks with antifreeze. Apparently the wife wanted full custody of the couple's children. She decided the world would be a better place without her former special rider.
HOLBROOK, N.Y. - A Long Island woman is charged with attempted murder after she allegedly put antifreeze in her estranged husband’s drinks -- while their two children were present. Renee Burke, 40, of Holbrook, is also charged with burglary, assault, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of criminal contempt, according to NBC News. “It’s not only disturbing that the defendant attempted to murder her estranged husband, but that she did so in the presence of children,” Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy Sini said in a statement Thursday.
Hotel Artemis
directed by Drew Pearce
This was Pearce's director's debut on an American film. However, he's no rookie, having worked in the British market and also having written for large scale American films before. Perhaps that is why he attracted such a big name cast to this B-movie.
It's not that the cast doesn't give good performances or convince you of their character's veracity. It's just that their skills are such that you expect greater emotions or more compelling stories than this movie offers. Who knows why any of the actors chose this film. Salary? Writing? Favors owed? Not too busy? Chance to do something different? Whatever their reasons may have been I didn't think it made for a super interesting film experience. The actors were good. The storyline was unoriginal. That's okay. Some people have argued there are few, if any, truly original storylines
.
Someone is put under duress. Someone either changes or does not as a result of that pressure. If they do change they gain wisdom from the experience and rise to a higher level. If they don't change they die. Or they stay where they were before as a living martyr. The trick is to make the viewer identify with the protagonist(s) and/or sympathize with them. In the John Wick movies the world's best hitmen
(and hit women) occasionally rest, recuperate, and entertain themselves at the Continental Hotel locations. The Continental management doesn't tolerate any violence at its hotels. Hotel Artemis examines what operating such a sanctuary might look like from the inside.
