Drama

“What thousands must die, so that Caesar may become great.”

When Hong Kong released Infernal Affairs in 2002, it pretty much revived the Asian gangster genre and proved the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s Best Director Academy Award winner, The Departed. I saw The Departed before I watched Infernal Affairs and, now seeing it, must say I prefer Scorsese’s Boston noir re-envisioning of the film more than the original. I realize this goes against the hardcore fans and critics of the film, but it doesn’t take anything away from the hardboiled crime sensation directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak created.

"The 1920's in America: jazz music, girls who smoke, and the wing walkers. Like a giant party, only without the booze. Change was in the air. Skyscrapers displaced family farms, and revolutionary ideas challenged time-honored traditions."

Of course, one of those "revolutionary ideas" was the theories of Charles Darwin with the publication of his book On The Origin Of Species. The book had been out since 1859 and Darwin was long dead, but some of the ideas presented in his theories were about to cause a maelstrom across the United States when John Scopes was arrested for violating a new Tennessee law that prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools. The resultant Scopes, or Monkey Trial, would be the first court procedure carried live by radio and would put the ideas of religion and science on a collision course.

Here is a forgotten 80s, romantic dromedy that may have been forgotten for a reason. Various love triangles arise around the setting of a Demolition Derby. Jamie Lee Curtis and Patrick Swayze star in a tale packed with the usual 80s comedy tent poles such as weird dreams, screwball scenarios, and youths having to stand up for the little guy.

Cody (Curtis) might lose her Derby site until a recent high school graduate stumble into her life to help, and perhaps steal her heart. Meanwhile a derby rider (Swayze) is pulling his life together after his long time girlfriend starts having an affair. The story runs through the sort of formula we've all seen before, with those aforementioned signifiers of its place in the American 1980s along with familiar 80s actors appearing. Heck, they even have cameos by John and Joan Cusack and Michael Winslow (yes, the guy who does the sound effects from Police Academy) sneak in. The performances are acceptable, the gags are not the freshest, and the romance is jammed with heartache and conflict.

"You lose. You die."

In 2005 Russian-born writer director Gela Babluani had a bit of an Eastern Europe success with his film 13 Tzameti. The film took the Grand Prize Jury at Sundance and a few other film festivals, winning also in places like Venice and Transylvania. The film made quite a splash, and it wasn't long before it attracted the attention of American distributors. An English-language version was inevitable at this point. Thankfully Babluani was able to work out a deal where he got to direct his own remake. Babluani has received more than a little heat for essentially remaking the exact same film with only a few changes to cater to the American audience. I never saw the original film, but now I have seen his remake. It would become his first American film and what a film it has turned out to be.

Everybody needs a little help in their life but many are afraid to ask for it. Perhaps they need to know how to ask for a raise, or perhaps help with their geometry homework. One does not exactly gain knowledge of how to ask out a beautiful redhead supermodel unless they get a little help from somewhere. But I digress. Today, we explore the life of Laura who apparently needs a little help when her cheating husband dies right in front of her. Things are not as easy as they seem.

Laura (played by Jenna Fischer) is a dental assistant. Behind is a very noisy macaw outside the window who constantly repeats “Rinse Please”. He is supposed to be soothing. She talks to the patient and tells him about her husband and how he flosses with the extra waxy floss and how that is not good for him. Laura obsesses a bit about the fact that her husband ignores her and the patient soon wonders where the exit sign is at.

I can't help it. Whenever I see David Boreanaz I can't stop seeing the brooding vampire Angel. It's not really his fault. This character couldn't be farther from the Angel character, but that's what I see. It's also true that Bones, now entering its sixth season, has been around longer than Angel. It's also very likely that he now has fans that aren't even aware of that previous character. It has been quite a few years. I'm usually better at letting go of a character once the show has ended and the actor has moved on. But there it is. Agent Booth ends up doing something silly, and it throws me for a bit of a loop. It's probably a testament to how good an actor Boreanaz actually is, that he's ingrained himself so fully in my brain. And, I haven't watched near as many episodes of Bones, to transfer that identification. But it's Bones that's here now, and based on its current popularity, it's likely to be here for a while longer yet.

Dr. Temperance Brennan, or Bones (Deschanel) is the world's leading bone specialist. She works in Washington, D.C. for the famous Jeffersonian (I assume it's intended to be the Smithsonian). Her talents have proven themselves very helpful in solving crimes where skeletal remains are all that there is to go on from the victim. Her FBI agent/liaison is Seeley Booth (Boreanaz). Together they have an uneasy relationship that grows into a kind of friendship. The problem is that Bones doesn't have a ton of social skills. She relies on Booth to guide their social interactions. More on that later. The lab is run by Dr. Camille Saroyan (Taylor) who has become a bit of a guiding mother to the team. Dr. Hodges (Thyne) is the trace-elements expert and tries very hard to be cool and hip. He's generally the opposite of Bones. He says pretty much what comes into his head and is a bit of a science-fiction geek. Angela (Conlin) is an artist who uses her skills to reconstruct facial details from the skulls. She also works on enhancing images and restructuring evidence. She's a bit of a romantic and has probably slept with every male in the lab. Dr. Sweets (Daley) is a young FBI agent and psychologist. He profiles victims and suspects as well as serves as a counselor to the team. He's a bit over-eager at times, looking up to Booth as a mentor, of sorts. The lab also has a few interns that show up from week to week, likely depending on actor availability.

“I'm not a doctor. I haven't been to medical school; I haven't even been to high school.”

A beautiful and moving film based on John Irving’s best-selling American classic The Cider House Rules deals with sensitive and controversial subject matters wrapped inside a captivating coming-of-age story. John Irving had second thoughts about trimming his huge novel into a two-hour film and only agreed to adapt the screenplay after the studio agreed to allow his son, Colin Irving, to be in the movie (He plays Major Winslow in a small role as a notifying officer delivering bad news).

There are some things in life I will never be able to relate to. Famous sports athlete, sorry missed out on that boat when I walked off the baseball team in high school. President of the United States, I need more than the votes of my wife and parents. But there are other things on a smaller scale I can’t relate to either. Like children. I will never how it is to have my own children. While I have certainly accepted this fact and I am okay with it, sometimes movies come along with themes that are foreign to me. Enter Beautiful Boy.

We open up to some home videos at the beach. A family can be seen in what would be their last vacation together before the son would eventually go off to college. We slowly pan in to Sam (played by Kyle Gallner) who is reading his essay to a very disinterested class. Dejected, Sam finishes and sits back down. Life is difficult at the new college and Sam is finding it hard to adapt.

"This is not the opening of a TV show. This is real life."

If you had to describe the fourth season of Chuck in one word it would be Mother. This season Chuck learns that his mother was also a spy and that she didn't really just abandon her family. She went deep undercover and now may or may not be one of the bad guys. It helps that Momma is played by genera favorite Linda Hamilton who makes some sweet references to her earlier works on Terminator and Beauty And The Beast. The man she went undercover to get was Alexei Volkoff, played by one of my favorite and incredibly underrated James Bonds, Timothy Dalton. This is the story that really dominates the season, but there are some other events of note to be found:

"In May 1980, Fidel Castro opened the harbor at Mariel, Cuba with the apparent intention of letting some of his people join their relatives in the United States. Within seventy-two hours, 3,000 U.S. boats were headed for Cuba. It soon became evident that Castro was forcing the boat owners to carry back with them not only their relatives, but the dregs of his jails. Of the 125,000 refugees that landed in Florida an estimated 25,000 had criminal records."

One of those refugees was Tony Montana.