Here’s a coincidence. Two very different movies this week offer musings on the scourge of war. Wonder Woman’s come from comic books; Land of Mine’s are real history. Both are worth watching.
Also notice a special event at the Cinematheque. Creative Visions marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China as a special administrative region by screening eight films from there over the next three weeks. They show the breadth of its movie output. Kung Fu Hustle is probably the best-known. Echoes of a Rainbow opened the series yesterday and gets a second screening Saturday night with a special extra. The director, Alex Law, and his frequent collaborator Mabel Cheung will there to answer questions after the film.
You can find more about the whole series at http://www.thecinematheque.ca/
And these are the new ones in town:
Wonder Woman: 3 ½
Land of Mine: 4
I Called Him Morgan: 4
Captain Underpants: 2 ½
WONDER WOMAN: The people at DC Comics take a major and winning step towards matching their rivals at Marvel with this bright and entertaining adventure. Wonder Woman is one of their earliest characters. She’s been around since 1941 in the comics but it’s taken years to get her back on screen. Her return is a triumph. As played by Gal Gadot, the Israeli actor, she’s strong, never cynical or brooding and unapologetically pushing for goodness. She’s international now; her costume is no longer a stylized US flag and she even has a slight accent. And she can fight like the best of them. Gadot, who has a brief military background is entirely believable in the role.
After scenes of her growing up and being trained hard in a secluded colony of Amazons, Diana (her given name) has to face the rest of the world. A plane crashes; she rescues the pilot (Chris Pine) and learns there’s a terrible war going on, World War I. She’s convinced that Ares, the God of war is behind it and insists on going along to find him.
The quest takes her and Chris to London, to high-level war cabinet meetings, to the trenches at the front and to a lab where a zealous German officer (Danny Huston) is having a new mustard gas developed rather than support an armistice to end the war. He could be Ares, although there are a couple of other candidates too. Or Ares could just be the idea of war itself. That gets fuzzy as the film progresses. But the action, the individual battles and the settings are excellent. The film often feels like the first Indiana Jones movie because of its look and old-style adventure feel. And with only a small bit of semi-racy dialogue, it’s clean. The director, Patty Jenkins insisted it not be a restricted film. She thinks young girls will want to see it. Not just them. (Playing everywhere including The Dunbar, 5th Avenue, Scotiabank, Marine Gateway and suburban theatres) 3 ½ out of 5
LAND OF MINE: A fresh take on war. It has a previously untold story and became highly controversial in Denmark where the film was made and the events took place. That’s because it reveals a violation of the Geneva accords. At the end of the Second World War, after five years of occupation by Germany, the Danes forced German POWs to clear landmines off the beaches. Some 45,000 had been buried there because that, not Normandy, is where the Allies had been expected to land. Many of the captured soldiers were just teenagers. They had to get down and carefully poke at the sand to find the mines. We get incredibly tense scenes and dread the potential explosions. Many times they happen and the film gradually evolves into a meditation on the ethics of war, and especially on how people behave after.
Roland Møller, as the sergeant leading the project, bears the moral quandary. “This is my land” he yells at the young men. To him, making them clear land mines is small retaliation for the occupation. Gradually though, after conversations them and several deaths, he softens. He sees that they’re young and scared and maybe victims too, in that they were also pressed into war against their will. They only want to go back home. He eases up on them but how long can that last? The film won awards in Europe and was an Oscar contender because of the strong acting and the grip it has on us as it explores the ethical issues. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
I CALLED HIM MORGAN: This is much more than the usual story of a jazz player who becomes a junkie. It is that, sure, almost typically so in part. Lee Morgan was a brilliant trumpet player, discovered when he was still a teenager by Dizzy Gillespie, played with Miles Davis and others and was a prolific recording artist himself. His hit The Sidewinder is said to have saved the Blue Note record company from bankruptcy. But he got onto heroin, almost destroyed his career and was saved by a good woman. Later, early in 1972, she shot him dead.
How it came to that has long been a mystery. Colleagues like Wayne Shorter and various players in his bands have great recall for details as they talk about him in the film. Not about his relationship with Helen More though. They assumed they were in love and devoted to each other because they were always together. The film tells the real story, through parallel bios of the couple and most notably her own words. She gave a long interview not long before she died and it’s apparently heard here for the first time. She called him Morgan and “this little boy.” She took him in when she found him walking without shoes. He had pawned them to buy drugs. She tells exactly what happened with their common law marriage. It may not be complete and is surely one-sided but it is high drama. Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin gets it across with vibrant editing, generous doses of music and terrific intimate memories from people who were there. (VanCity Theatre. Rev Gary Paterson, the jazz vespers host at St Andrew's Wesley Church, will introduce the final screening on Thursday.) 4 out of 5
CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE: The books are big sellers and this film captures the anarchic silliness in them. That’s great for the fans, whether they’re 10 years old now or looking back nostalgically. But I’d say be careful. How much potty humor and how many fart jokes do you want, even when they’re delivered with great imagination as they are here? How early do you think kids need to learn to fight authority?
George and Harold (voiced by Kevin Hart and Nelson, B.C. native Thomas Middleditch) are good buddies. They both laughed at the word “uranus” in class, have been inveterate pranksters ever since and write their own comic books about a superhero in underpants (because that’s what they all seem to wear). They get their school principal (Ed Helms) to turn into that character by hypnotizing him and then watch the fun grow into hyperactive chaos which they can turn off and on. Meanwhile, a new science teacher (Nick Kroll, talking like Einstein) works to drive all humour out of the school because students always laugh at his name. Poopypants. See what you’re getting? It’s a kids’ perspective. This film, based on the first four of the 12 books, mostly panders to young boys. They dislike school. Teachers are all boring drones and the principal is mean. The brightest pupil is a whiney snitch and brownnoser. Enough with that anti-education attitude. It seems that in the later books you get more fantasy with the absurdity. (International Village, Marine Gateway and many suburban theatres) 2 ½ out of 5