The Hollywood Theater is showing a new print of Mon Oncle, a film by the sublime French actor/director Jacques Tati. When I heard that it was the English-language version I worried, until I recalled that there is virtually no dialog in the film anyway.
What there is, is Tati. You should always see one of his films.
TRON: Legacy
Director: Joseph Kosinski
With: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Bruce Boxleitner, Michael Sheen
TRON (1982) was notable because it was ahead of its time. The sequel is not. It is less interesting than the average video game, and is derivative, boring and stupid. The dialog is dumb, the big set pieces are all borrowed from better movies, and Jeff Bridges phones in one of his standard acts: the hippie burnout who can be moved to act like a human being one more time. Gawd, this is bad.
They have created a game, which is among the most boring parts of the movie, which is a kind of cyberspace Frisbee. I need to go see Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome again just to erase the images.
I won’t even bother to run down the plot, because you have seen it all before. Save your money.
D-
Smile ‘Til it Hurts: The Up With People Story (Doc 2009)
Director: Lee Storey
Up With People, a squeaky-clean cult of singers and dancers, is still going strong. Back in the 60s and 70s, hipsters like myself found amusing in a sick kind of way. They were supposed to be an answer to the drugged-out and unpatriotic swine laying about the crash-pads of America. Nixon and Reagan had them perform at the White House, slathering effusive praise on them.
This film informs us that they were born from Moral Re-Armament and from the ashes of WW II, by an evangelist named Frank Buchman. A Jim Jones-type tyrant, he controlled everything, including who could get married and how much sex couples should have. Culties that could sing and play instruments were recruited to do just that, and were billed as Sing Out!, ironic in that a left-wing folk music magazine begun in 1950 carried the same title, and would be culturally and politically the opposite of these Stepford Kids.
They acquired the Up With People name from a song written by members, many of whom appear in this movie. Some are unrepentant, but there is much “what the hell was I thinking” from the principals.
A glimpse into a uniquely American phenomenon, and an early weapon in the culture wars.
B+