Jane Eyre (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway 

Jane Eyre

     Cary Fukunaga's version of "Jane Eyre" is a metamorphosis. Instead of a conservative classical rendering, the 2011, Eyre is a being self-possessed, witchy and besieged by the supernatural. She is individualistic and dare I say, Objectivist.  The film presents a bestial Bronte world as if on steroids, more real than real. And the audience is now all the better for it. The film has both the daring and the good sense to maintain the classic elements while adding a surreal existential impact.
     As the camera falls on Jane Eyre, she is convulsed in fear and guilt regarding Rochester's moral bankruptcy. We do not know if she is fleeing from a demon of mind or body and her terror and pain is  atmospherically tangible. It is in the very air she breathes. Eyre  is an outsider, an ill weed, cast aside for possessing a thick skin, a clinical intellect and for being labelled a witch. 
     The grey-green terra cotta Earth seems to squelch Eyre under its impartial weight. Still she carries on. Eyre stares spacey and aghast as if she is not from  Gateshead, but a small planet floating in forlorn space. We wonder how much her spare yet seal-like body can take. But this is not a depressing adaptation. The tight pacing along with the hypnotic tensions of the characters will bind your eyes together as if under the spell of two raven-haired succubi.
     Mia Wasikowska,  who portrayed a perfect Alice in Tim Burton's "Wonderland" plays the beset heroine as a fierce empirical rose with bent thorns who blushes hot and cold. Wasikowska retains the same alert passivity that she used so well in "Alice" and it may well be her trademark. Her Eyre is an existential Ophelia as she witnesses the stern  abuse heaped upon her seemingly without reason.  Eyre's  torture in mind and body is embedded in the earth under her grey feet. Her cold yet oddly melting charisma would make any Pre-Raphelite painting leap from the frame and want to become flesh.
     Again and again, Eyre is mentally and physically confined in abuse by moral happenstance, or twined in dilemmas of the heart. Never have humans seemed so ghoulish. This adaptation rivals any bestiary imagined by Guillermo del Toro without the hyperactivity of CGI.
Is Rochester (Michael Fassbinder) a vampire, a fallen angel, or a boorish Byronic facade? Is Eyre beset by spirits?  The genuine psychological pathos never lags behind its gothic trappings. The body of this film thankfully matches its spirit, possessed with plenty of sensual heat as well as haunt. Better still, Jane Eyre emerges as a genuine person, leaping in joy as well as smoldering and enfolding her spurned body upon herself--- a crushed flower.
     For me, "Jane Eyre" the film, is primarily a visual experience and on that level it is a delight from start to finish. 

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Atlas Shrugged (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Atlas Shrugged

     What behemoths of boredom has the singular energy of Ayn Rand wrought? The most recent ball and chain is the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a movie so laughable in its charmlessness it almost turns projected tedium into a genre.
     "Atlas Shrugged" the movie, might do better as a videogame on Xbox, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Indeed, one glance at the overbearing dim cinematography and you might think that it Is a video game. But for now, this movie version stars Taylor Schilling as a Randian "Barbie",  and Grant Bowler as a  Ken-inspired  Hank Rearden. These characters have about as much depth as tissue paper. The dialogue is soporific. Or is it soaperific? 

The plot concerns an under-the-gun railroad tycoon, Dagny Taggart and a block of Ayn Rand machismo, the robotic metal engineer Rearden. But the action is so devoid of pacing that the plot becomes depressingly irrelevant, when I had hoped for irreverent. The narrative was so heavy and thin, I felt  I was watching Vic Sarin's "Left Behind". The entire movie felt pre-formed, too artificial  with only the barest veneer of Rand's Objectivist dream.  Even the score sounds canned from other Armageddon religious melodramas. There is only one message from Dagny and Hank: Get out of my way, cretin, this is my Vision! That's fine, but the film does not relate the Randian struggle in an interesting or compelling way.  This movie would have the rigid Ayn Rand turn to jelly. Grant Bowler is no Gary Cooper in "The "Fountainhead", (which is a much superior film) his facial expressions are no expressions. The Hank Rearden character is in business only to make money. If only singularity and wealth were more interesting on film. And it should have been.
     A more Objective movie would have been Rand herself, alone, as is.
There is one flash in this otherwise colorless movie and that is in the shots of the gleaming, polished, highspeed train. The silver blue  train as it speeds along the Colorado landscape, untethered and free, is the perfect example of Ayn Rand's right-angled philosophy, without the movie's poor players.      
     But then there is a huge fireball and a hand-scrawled sign: I've left the World just as I found it! ---End of Part One. 
     Spare me. There is more poignancy  in The Watchmen graphic novels. Why did these Randians bother with such a bad movie? 
     Who is John Galt?

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Soul Surfer (Rhoades)

“Soul Surfer” Catches a Wave at the Tropic

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Living here in Key West, we have the occasional barracuda attack or collisions with errant manta rays. Even the rare croc bite. But few shark attacks.

“Soul Surfer” tells the true story of a Hawaiian girl who loses her left arm to a shark while surfing.

     Like “127 hours,” the chronicle of how Aron Ralston lost his arm while hiking, “Soul Surfer” shows you the horrific details of a 13-year-old girl getting maimed, but it goes one better – showing you how she dealt with the problem afterwards.

     Based on the book by Bethany Hamilton, we meet her family, Tom and Cheri (Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt) and two brothers. And her best friend Alana (Lorraine Nicholson) and surfing rival Malina (Sonya Balmores). Seems everybody surfs in Hawaii and Bethany (played by AnnaSophia Robb) is no different. In fact, she’s better than most, winning the big competition as well as an advertising contract with the Rip Curl surfwear company.

Later on, when Bethany and Alana go night surfing a big shark chomps off her left arm near the shoulder. She’s rushed to the hospital, where the doctor who’s about to operate on her dad’s knee is called over to ER to save Bethany. Dr. Rovinsky (Craig T. Nelson) pronounces her survival a miracle for she’d lost more than 60% of her blood.

Now I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that she had blown off attending a youth ministry mission trip in order to enter that competition. I think sharks operate on their own. But plucky Bethany volunteers to go to Thailand during the 2004 tsunami disaster as atonement. There, she discovers that her handicap can be an inspiration to others, and she resumes surfing again, only to be narrowly beaten by her nemesis Malina in another competition.

But even Malina is inspired by the one-armed surfer girl.

Ahem. Pardon me while I wipe a tear from my eye.

There – we can now talk about the clever special effects (AnnaSophia had to wear a green sleeve over her arm so it could be digitally removed by the film’s post production magic) and how the title “Soul Surfer” has a double meaning.

But go see this inspiring tale for yourself. Even if you’d a jaded filmgoer like me you’ll enjoy the spectacular surfing scenes. Takes me back to those glorious days of pursuing an “Endless Summer.”

srhoades@aol.com

 [from Solares Hill]

Week of May 6 to May 12 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

    There’s a broad range of movie genres on display this week.

     If you’re a fan of high concept adventure fantasies that revolve around the superpower, supernatural or superscience themes that are a staple of Hollywood, the Tropic tries to show the best of the new releases. HANNA is the latest. The director, Joe Wright, cut his teeth on literary adaptations -- Pride and Prejudice, and Atonement– that have typed him as a darling of the culturati. So when he does an action thriller about a teen-aged girl trained to be an assassin, you can expect something different. You won’t be disappointed.

    Saoirse Ronan (who starred in Atonement, as well as The Lovely Bones) is the 16-year-old girl, a killing machine trained in martial arts, who speaks multiple languages, and has memorized an encyclopedia. But she was raised in the wild and has never met another person her age or seen an electric light. Watch what happens when she comes into contact with the world, and CGI effects. “It's the thinking man's chick-action flick,” says Salon.com.

     If feel-good real human drama is more your preference, then SOUL SURFER is for you. New teen star AnnaSophia Robb (Bridge to Terabithia, Race to Witch Mountain) expands her acting reach in this biopic portrayal of surfer Bethany Hamilton. The daughter of surfers, Bethany seemed destined for hang ten stardom until a shark ripped off one of her arms. If you don’t mind a bit of Lifetime TV style and a faith-based pitch, her recovery and return to surfing, make for “an uplifting, entertaining, and wonderfully-acted account,” (Orlando Sentinel) with remarkable ocean footage. I understand that Bethany performed all the surfing in the film, with visual effects substituting AnnaSophia’s face, so you’ll get to see the real girl in action.

     Or do you prefer unusual documentaries? BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK is certainly that. Cunningham is a legend in the fashion world, an ascetic living in a sparely furnished studio, whose entire life is photographing fashion. Not those flashy, haut style shoots that you associate with the likes of Richard Avedon, but shots of ordinary people on the streets of New York and at New York events. Have you ever noted the “On The Street” feature of the Sunday New York Times? That’s Cunningham. The filmmakers (director Richard Press along with a cameraman and producer) followed him for years as he bicycled around New York on one of his Schwinns (not that he needs more than one; they just keep getting stolen). Supplemented by interviews with Anna Wintour, Brooke Astor, Tom Wolfe and others, it’s a testament to a man and how you can make a life out of a lovely obsession.

     I’m certainly no fashionista, but I must admit that I’ve loved the fashion-driven movies that the Tropic has been showing in recent years -- Coco Before Chanel, Valentino: The Last Emperor; even The Devil Wears Prada, and Sex and the City. Add Bill Cunningham New York!

    Rounding out the film schedule are holdovers of the Civil War courtroom drama THE CONSPIRATORS and the Catherine Deneuve/Gerard Depardieu French farce POTICHE.

     If you’d prefer to ignore the movies and just have fun, well drop by on Saturday afternoon at 4:00pm. They’re having a Kentucky Derby Fund Raiser for Hospice-VNA and the Tropic. Full strength Mint juleps, traditional Derby fare, games of chance and, of course, The Race on the giant screen in the Carper Theater. Tix are $75, all for a good cause.

     Comments, please, to pmann99@gmail.com

[from Key West, The Newspaper - www.kwtn.com]

Bill Cunningham New York (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Bill Cunningham: New York

     Who is that rushing by the Flatiron Building in a single turn? Who is that  blazing by The Natural History Museum in royal blue? No, it's not The Blue Man Group, Spiderman or even Superman himself. It Is Bill Cunningham, fashion photographer and mastermind of The New York Times 
Style page. 
     We get a good look at him in the documentary "Bill Cunningham: New York".
     Like a superhero in Gotham City, Cunningham maintains his privacy. He lives in a small closet apartment in Carnegie Hall. At the time of the film, Cunningham  is one of the last remaining residents. He has no phone booth or Batcave. He works constantly  at his office and falls asleep surrounded by filing cabinets filled with his negatives. And he travels by night via  Schwinn bicycle, a cypher seldom seen.
     Instead of a snappy suit he wears the blue smock of a Paris street sweeper. The kind that can be purchased at any drugstore in the city.
Cunningham's power is his abillity to melt through society's high walls and melt onto any street corner, as deftly as an X-Man. Cunningham  is self deprecating and will do anything to get his photo--he shoots from the hip and "eats with his eyes", engaging his subject in a kind of affectionate combat. A single man with no past history of romantic attachment, Cunningham is by his own admission, in love with Fashion--he will never take an unkind shot.
     Throughout the film, on various days, we see him take his bike and go snapping. He races in between cars with the fluidity of Plasticman. Even under the cloak of night, during rain and hail, Cunningham or simply "Bill" as he is called by friends, races by undaunted. There is a party to go to, there are exciting people to get. 
     But it's all about the clothes. The more striking, the more out of place amongst the current urban sea of khaki and beige, the better.
     When Cunningham  returns to his Carnegie Lair, he invariably checks in with his one remaining neighbor, photographer Editta Sherman, an eccentric known as "The Duchess of Carnegie Hall". Editta was also a muse of Warhol's  in the 70s. Editta in her heavy makeup and topsy turvy black wig is a sight. She is more Minnie Castevet than Roman Polanski could ever dream. She remains a living history book to the triumph of 1960s Pop Art. 
     A sideline to the the film is the location, the legend of Carnegie Hall and the important home it has been to many artists and writers.
During the film, Cunningham and Editta are under immense pressure to move out. The Carnegie studio apartments are about to be turned into offices. Editta for her part,  remains as fixed as plaster, singing in a La-Z-Boy chair.   Cunningham to his credit, nonchalantly accepts the change of the times and prefers not to dwell on it. 
     But indeed, when he is taken to a stark white studio apartment that overlooks Central Park, he blanches and frowns like a blue fish out of water. The new place has no character. Then in a spontaneous wiggle, he unlocks the window to snap a photo.
     Everyone from the Wilde Liza-esque android with the debonair coat and tails, Patrick McDonald, to the sleepy specter of Tom Wolfe, all speculate on the enigma of this man, his avoidance of fame and notoriety and the mystery of his relationships. They all shake their heads. No one, it seems, knows him intimately. It is a touching shock to see this monk-hero of a genius walk away during a high profile party refusing food and  drink, only to be venerated in the next scene as the whole staff dresses like him and wears cardboard cutouts of his impish face during  his birthday party. No one seems to know    Cunningham all that well. But the camera does. As he pedals along the New York streets on his way to a function, you might try to hire him, but he won't accept pay. He is Bill Cunningham, the one and only, as rare to the city as his own smock of  blue.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Hanna (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Hanna

      When "Hanna" begins,  we are  plunged in a Winter Wonderland, halfway between Stieg Larsson and Lars Von Trier. There is a meditative still shot of a deer. Delicate in tranquility. But this is not Disney's Bambi. This is no "Snow White".  A swooping crunch of air. Buckets of blood. We see a innocent looking blonde youngster right out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, collecting the deer's warm insides. Her hands bloody, her fair curls blowing in the snow.
      This feral kid is Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan who also appeared as an enigmatic wanderer in the recent Tropic shown film "The Way Back". Ms. Ronan's Hanna is raised in the Arctic Circle. She is home-schooled in a little wooden cabin right out of "Little Red Riding Hood". Somehow even though she is educated with all kinds of facts about countries and fluent in presumably any language, ( And all this while still a teen!) she is blissfully ignorant about the invention of electricity. What?!?  Hanna is part killing machine, part Alice in Wonderland, with a smidge of something Frankensteinian in her.  The hum of electricity alone makes her go nuts. Or if some boy wants to kiss her. Oh the ridiculousness of puberty.
      She is told by her father (Eric Bana) that she can leave at any time. All she has to do is press a little red button. Really? Is this a fairy tale? Wait don't tell me...! A wicked stepmother, Marissa (Cate Blanchett) comes on the scene complete with a mop of flaming red hair. She has a penchant for stern heels, several pairs. And when angry, Blanchett's face blanches white and she brushes her teeth with a steel wool ferocity until her gums need stitches.
      Somehow The Mysterious Dad vanishes in the snow and Hanna is taken in a raid. Her dad is a rogue agent and Hanna is to be put under lock and key in a high security cell that would give Hannibal Lecter the giggles. 
      The primary fun is watching Hanna escape and escape she does, from tube to tube, ladder to ladder, eviscerating bad guy after bad guy. Scored my the music of The Chemical Brothers, Hanna  blood dances in a homicidal rave. 
      Suffice to say, she ends up in Morocco, somehow getting her hands on the traditional dress. She falls in with a well meaning bohemian family who stays clueless except for a chattering daughter who is rather annoying (Jessica Barden).
      But all is not well in gory Grimmland. 
      Marissa goes to a strip club of all places and gives a peck to a bleach blonde henchman  (Tom Hollander)  with a penchant for hermaphrodites, leisure suits and childhood melodies. The illegitimate offspring of Goldfinger and Truman Capote? Not half as colorful. He is a quasi-facsimile of the Stieg Larsson  villain, Neidermann. He takes the task of presumably taking the young terror alive or scaring her to death. 
      Meanwhile, to her horror, Hanna learns that she was part of a genetic hybrid experiment. Does she have tiger blood? Only Charlie Sheen would know. But we are left in the dark. There is only a string of genetic code and the heading: Abnormal.
      There is more hand to hand combat. Slashings and slittings. No man can get close to her. She finally reaches an odd fairytale dwelling which looks strangely run down and tawdry like Tim Burton faced with budget cuts: broken dinosaurs in the yard, decapitated animals in the foyer, a cluttered kitchen.
      Aha! A disheveled gnome of a man appears--a kind magician  with a soiled flower on his bare chest. This also doesn't make much sense. But no matter. You have to just let go. In an eerie scene that recalls the murder in the "Da Vinci Code", Hanna is on the run again.
      Finally! The expected showdown between the Evil Marissa and Hanna the Horrible! The chemistry between them works, mainly because Blanchett is just as brutal as Ms. Ronan. This is a "Nick at Night" Bourne Identity, Jr. fight to the death. Better late than never.
      I read that the director was influenced by David Lynch in the making of this film. But I found this movie more "Salt" than surreal. Despite this however, Ms. Ronan's visual magnetism manages a poignancy with punch. Her face is as painterly as  young Ophelia, forlorn beneath the snow. 

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Soul Surfer (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Soul Surfer

     "Soul Surfer" is the story of professional surfer Bethany Hamilton and her powerful story of survival, being bitten by a shark at just thirteen years old. AnnaSophia Robb stars as Bethany who is cheerful and goodnatured. She is a wholesome and smiling idealistic girl, who spends three quarters of her time in the paradisical waters of Kauai and the other quarter in a florid missionary  church, situated amongst such verdant greens that its as if The Fall never happened. Indeed it seems as if Bethany is in Eden.
     Ominously, after some "700 Club" mischief on Halloween Night  (a bit of suggestive talk on a surfboard, no skinny-dipping, unfortunately.) Bethany goes out on her board. When talking with her best friend about the natural beauty of the ocean, along comes an abrupt and carnal CHOMP!
     Omg!, A Lucifer of the sea. Evil Incarnate. Perhaps. But a creature of nature nonetheless. Ribbons of blood pour  in the ocean. Bethany is brought to shore by the sheer will of a family friend, Holt Blanchard (Kevin Sorbo) 
     Bethany goes into shock and she loses 60% of her blood volume.  Her bravery is honestly incredible. Her arm was severed. As it was lost or eaten by the shark, it could not be saved. 
Bethany deals with her lost arm in a very matter of fact way which is by no means an easy feat. Her only concern is surfing. The most interesting part of the film, in my opinion, is in showing Bethany's adaptation to her new condition. Opening bottles, preparing food, dressing in the morning or just the simple act of balance is not to be underestimated. It is what most ambulatory people take for granted.
    The only time Bethany loses her cool is when she sees her scar. And, in the most provocative scene in the movie, she takes the arm off of her Barbie. Rather than experiencing a Frankensteinian self disgust, it is a mirrored moment of acceptance. Bethany is a new Christian crusader of water and Will. 
     She takes leave of the ocean and decides to join her missionary group helping Thailand during the aftermath of the  2004 tsunami. She sees with new eyes.  
     After an existential crises that is part Kierkegaard, part Disney cartoon, she decides to surf again. Amen!
    Dennis Quaid as Bethany's father, gives an odd performance. He seems drunk and waterlogged by life even though he never is seen drinking. He looks disheveled, always on the edge of tears. Did he just get out of bed?. Sometimes he is like Gilligan, or he becomes menacing towards the reporters like Mel Gibson. Yikes.
    Helen Hunt is bland and pleasant as the Mom. 
    The cinematography is bright and crisp.
    The surfing action is derivative of the Karate Kid. The snide and scheming arch-rival surfer, Malena, even wears a black swimsuit, but dude, sometimes you gotta just let go. The Apple of Family Values doesn't fall far: the director, Sean McNamara, is known for steering Disney Channel vehicles.
    It is AnnaSophia Robb alone, who gives an earnest portrayal of Bethany,  as a teenaged mariner cresting the blue seas.  This is the Gospel of Girlpower. Whoa! Righteous, babe!

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com