Movie Reviews: Brightburn

Brightburn
directed by David Yarovesky

Richard Donner directed Superman and The Omen. Brightburn is a low budget earnest mashup of those movies. It is produced by the people who created Guardians of the Galaxy. Brightburn imagines the origin story of an evil Superman. Evil is a loaded word. There is no such thing as evil in nature.  

The cuckoo who tricks other birds into raising its hatchling, who immediately destroys the host birds' eggs, the wolf who hunts bison to eviscerate and eat them, or (in the film's example) the wasp who lays eggs in or around other insects who either raise wasp young or become food for wasp young are all acting according to their instinct. They can't be reasoned with or trained to do otherwise. Their behavior is preprogrammed. It's who they are and what they do.

Arguably humans can deliberately ignore, short-circuit or  rewrite much of our instinctual programming. Some argue that humans don't even have instinctual programming. I don't know that I would go that far but humans certainly possess a level of free will that is apparently unparalleled for other beings. 

Brightburn depicts events when someone who looks human but isn't reaches a point where his pre-existing programming activates. The results for humans are similar to the caterpillar who discovers that its supposed stomach ache is actually a young wasp eating its way out of the caterpillar. Not good.

Movie Reviews: Greta, Creed2

Greta
directed by Neil Jordan

Greta has the very serious and greatly acclaimed French actress Isabelle Huppert playing the title role in a movie which is almost certainly far beneath her talents but at the same time fits some stereotypical assumptions about older women. 

The camera is not really a friend to Huppert here but no one stays beautiful or on top forever, which perhaps is one of the points this uneven movie was making. All the same I really could do without the constant well lit facial closeups that reveal an unfortunate serious facial hair issue. Yikes! 

Twenty or thirty years ago this sort of movie would have starred Jennifer Jason Leigh and Farrah Fawcett. The story is very familiar. What matters is not the story's lack of originality but whether the writers and actresses involved pull the viewer into the unreality bubble and keep them there. With a few huge glaring exceptions they accomplished this task for most of the film. The exceptions are what made me think the story was uneven.

Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a NYC waitress who is struggling to process grief over her mother's recent death from cancer and what she sees as her father's (Colm Feore) insufficient period of mourning and rapid remarriage and immersion in work. Frances lives with a wealthy stylish roommate Erica (Maika Monroe) who is constantly after Frances to enjoy life and stop moping about. 

Michigan White Woman Calls Police On Black Man For Reckless Eyeballing

American Black men who are present where white people think they shouldn't be are in danger of either being assaulted (if the white person in question happens to be male and/or larger than you) or of being arrested by the police (if the white person in question happens to be female and/or smaller than you).

This was often called "reckless eyeballing" after the southern habit of arresting black men accused of looking at a white woman. Looking a white woman in the eyes, or with with what she thought was sexual interest, or just making her uncomfortable could and did lead to arrest, assaults, beatings, lynchings, murders and pogroms.  

Matt Ingram was among the last convicted under this framework, in a 1951 case made notorious by civil rights activists in North Carolina. A seventeen-year-old white woman named Willa Jean Boswell testified that she was scared when her neighbor Ingram looked at her from a distance of about 65 feet. Prosecutors demanded a conviction of assault with intent to rape that was reduced to assault on a female by the judge, leading to a two-year sentence.

At the appeal in Superior Court, the judge instructed the jury that Ingram was guilty if he used “intentional threats or menace of violence such as looking at a person in a leering manner, that is, in some sort of sly or threatening or suggestive manner…he causes another to reasonably apprehend imminent danger” The all-white jury again returned a conviction, leading to a six-month sentence of labor on the roads, suspended for five years.

Cases like this were why many older Black men I know avoided even transparently consensual and utterly platonic interactions with white women. They considered it imprudent or even dangerous. But times have changed have they not? Well they have and have not. Recently not far from me, this happened:

Royal Oak police have launched an internal investigation after officers stopped and questioned a black man reportedly because a white woman said he looked at her suspiciously. 

Movie Reviews: The Great Race

The Great Race
directed by Blake Edwards

I first saw this film as a child many many years ago. I watched it again recently. It's a slapstick comedy with a side order of The Battle of the Sexes. This film works the same side of the street as films like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or later works like Smokey and the Bandit. 

The scene that stuck in my head was when an angry feminist challenges the hero to a dueling match, snidely announcing that she was the Women's International Fencing Champion. Nonplussed the hero accepts the challenge, swiftly defeats her and coolly reminds her that he was the Men's International Fencing Champion.

You would never see a scene like that in any major film today. And if you did, it wouldn't be good natured, as this film is. Men and women can complain and snark all they want but neither is possible without each other. Although the film is humorous it's not quite the anarchic over the top style of The Three Stooges, at least not until the end. So although I enjoyed watching the film for old times' sake it was rarely laugh out loud funny. I had some smiles and a few chuckles though.

By modern standards this film is pretty tame on sex and violence. There is slapstick violence and Natalie Wood in a few (well more than a few) revealing outfits but that's it. At the beginning of the 20th century Leslie Gallant III (Tony Curtis) is a daredevil. He's always dressed in white, supremely confident, polite and protective of women, children and the downtrodden. 

Yellowstone Park: When Bison Attack

I would like to think that as an adult I would be smart enough to stay far away from a one ton bison. I also like to think that if a child of mine were in danger I would run to try to save that child instead of running to save myself. But one never knows, does one. I'm glad the girl in the below video is okay. I can't blame her for being so close to a large wild animal. She's only nine years old. I don't expect her to be full of wisdom and smarts. She just got here. I do blame her parents for being stupid enough to allow this event to occur. News flash. Wild animals are well, WILD.

Stuyvesant and The Limits of Affirmative Action

I support public and private sector workplace affirmative action programs. Due to this country's history many people have a strong preference for their own and a disdain for black intelligence and competence. We live in a very segregated society. 

People who live separate residential and personal lives are as a group often unable or unwilling to judge co-workers, business partners, or new hires solely by potential and results. Humans usually don't work that way. 

Whether it is law firm partners who find more errors in associates' work if they think the associate is Black, hiring agents who sight unseen reject candidates with "Black" names, people that just tell someone straight out that they don't hire their kind, immigrants who won't hire Black people, managers more willing to hire white felons than Blacks without criminal records, workplace bigotry and stereotyping remains a huge problem. It's partly why the black unemployment rate has stubbornly remained twice that of whites for about as long as the metric has been recorded. If you're Black and haven't experienced any workplace funny business, congratulations but I think your number just hasn't come up yet.  It will soon. 

We do need standards. Properly done, affirmative action's should make people define and enforce objective standards. If a company hires an incompetent Black person, I won't cry when that person is fired, demoted or transferred. But evaluating job performance can be opaque and biased. A person who excels in one role or with one set of people can fail in a different role or with different co-workers. Measuring educational performance is different. This brings us to Stuyvesant High School. 

Movie Reviews: Ode to Joy

Ode to Joy
directed by Jason Winer

This is an intermittently humorous though predictable romantic comedy that deftly weaves through some dark passageways before returning to the crowd pleasing formula that typifies the genre. 

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy must reexamine his life choices and triumph over internal challenges and fears. Hopefully transformed, newly confident boy goes after girl again hoping for second chance.

This film's hero is Charlie (Martin Freeman), a forty something unmarried schlub librarian who works in the Brooklyn Public Library. His sad sack co-workers like Charlie. They wonder if Charlie's gay or asexual because Charlie is never seen in the company of women, nor does he come in on Mondays talking about weekend dates with beautiful ladies.  Charlie is neither gay nor asexual.  Charlie's problem, which is (not quite hilariously) depicted at the wedding of his little sister Liza (Shannon Woodward) is that he suffers from cataplexy. Any strong emotions, in Charlie's case joy is usually the culprit, trigger blackouts, loss of muscle control, and fainting. It's incurable and embarrassing. At Liza's wedding Charlie fainted and took out at least four people.