Month: March 2020

Looper – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Looper is a 2012 time-travel film noir starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis both as a character named Joe.  The premise of the movie is that in the year 2074, time travel has been invented but it is illegal.  It is used by criminals to dispose of people by sending them thirty years into the past where killers called loopers execute them in exchange for bars of silver.  The kicker is that thirty years later the loopers are sent back into the past to be executed by their younger selves.  This is called closing the loop and once the looper kills his older-self he is retired with a golden payday and heads off to enjoy his money in peace for thirty years.  I know, this is a seriously goofy plot device.

Young Joe is a lost soul with a drug habit and little else.  At one point he attempts to help his friend Seth, a fellow looper, whose older-self escapes killing.  He hides Seth in his apartment.  But when their boss Abe, played by Jeff Daniels, tells Joe that the choice is betraying Seth or losing half of his silver stash, Joe gives up Seth who is killed in a fiendishly painful way.

And of course, a similar thing happens to Joe.  His older-self shows up to be killed but eludes Joe and thus it becomes a three-way search with Young Joe looking for his older-self and the gang looking for both of them.  Into the middle of this is thrown a young woman named Sara, played by Emily Blunt, and her young son Cid.  Young Joe shows up at her farmhouse because he has information that Old Joe is planning to kill the boy.  Old Joe has information that leads him to believe that the boy will grow up to be a ruthless killer that will lead to the death of Old Joe’s wife.  I won’t give away the ending because it’s well done and if you decide to see the movie it would spoil it.

From the point of view of science fiction, the plot has got more holes in it than swiss cheese.  Using time travel to get rid of bodies?  That’s the best use they could come up with?  This story is really a character driven noir.  Joe, in both of his manifestations, is a damaged human being who late in the game discovers his humanity.  The improbable plot allows his characters to exhibit the best and worst traits in their personalities and his interaction with Sara and Cid allows him to finally look beyond his harried, meaningless existence and do something right.

By the illogic of the scenario, this movie may not appeal to somescience fiction fans with higher expectations for time travel story consistency.  But as a story it has merits.  Gordon-Levitt is his usual sympathetic persona.  Interestingly they used makeup  to try to make him look a little bit more like Bruce Willis.  It is a little distracting, but not much.  Bruce Willis is, of course, Bruce Willis and is most himself when he is pouring automatic weapons fire into his surroundings which he does with great abandon.  But he does okay.  The supporting cast is good and the few special effects are good enough.  I’ll recommend this movie.  It’s not great but it’s good.

The Same Old Script

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Camera Girl is a fan of the NCIS shows.  Like all women she has her weaknesses.  From the few times I’ve sat through these procedurals I have been enlightened as to just how many blonde, beautifully coiffed policewomen there are who can chase down a two-hundred-pound perp, subdue and cuff him while wearing high heels and without breaking a fingernail.  Well sure, I can see that.

By sad happenstance tonight she was watching NCI-NO (New Orleans) while I was in the living room.  The action was around an NOPD officer who while in pursuit of a robbery suspect becomes surrounded by a crowd of the suspect’s friends and thinking he sees a gun in the hand of a man shoots and kills him.  So, of course, the cop is white and the suspect and the shooting victim are black.  Eventually we find out that the victim was holding a phone that the policeman mistook for a gun.  Speeches and anger by the black cast members over the unjust treatment of black men by law enforcement, shame and appeasement by white cast members over how racist the world is.  The policeman resigns in shame.  The victim’s mother gives a dignified and loving speech about her son.  Everyone looks wistful.

That’s all very nice.  But isn’t that exactly what they said was the case with Michael Brown in Ferguson?  He was just a gentle giant who was executed by a racist cop.  He was a good kid who just accidentally assaulted a policeman, tried to take his gun and even after being shot once, charged the officer rather than surrender.  Why that could happen to anyone.

Anyway, what I’m wondering is when the next police show on tv is going to devote an episode to the knock out game.  You know, where a black teenager cold cocks some old Hassidic man or woman just to see if he can knock him unconscious with one punch while his friends capture it on their phones.  As a special bonus if he hits his head hard enough on the pavement he might even die.  Now that would be must see tv.  Maybe they could explain how it’s really racism by the old man that caused the incident.

Or maybe they can highlight one of those scenes that get captured on camera fairly frequently of a white or Hispanic or even black teenager being mobbed by black teenagers, knocked down and pummeled relentlessly with fists and feet until unconscious and then robbed of shoes and other belongings.  Certainly, this can be shown to be, once again, the result of anti-black discrimination.

So, the point of this post is to say that the bad relations between the police and the inner-city black population is hardly one of inexplicable racism.  The police are stuck with trying to keep order within an environment where many of the inhabitants, of these neighborhoods, even the teenagers, are depraved thugs and the rest of the community blames the police for enforcing laws that everywhere else are just normal behavior.

And now since the police have been prosecuted for doing their jobs, they have sensibly stepped back from enforcing the laws in these neighborhoods.  And the result of that is criminality and the law of the jungle.  Just last week, the Mayor of Baltimore begged his citizens to stop shooting each other so that there would be more beds available for COVID-19 patients.  That’s what Ferguson has brought us to in 2020.

Now I know that Hollywood would never have the courage to provide equal time to the politically incorrect truth about life in modern American cities but it certainly would get high ratings and everyone has always told me that Hollywood is a business and what makes money decides what is shown.  I don’t think there’s much of a market for the racist cop trope any more.

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Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 25 – The Devil in the Dark

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The Enterprise is summoned to a mining planet that is experiencing a series of killings.  Some sort of underground monster is killing the men by means of a highly corrosive chemical that eats away the body leaving just some ashes.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy lead the investigation.  Administrator Vanderberg explains that a few months ago the miners opened up a new level and shortly afterwards the attacks began.  While listening to his story Spock noticed a spherical silver mineral specimen on Vanderberg’s desk and asks him about it.  Vanderberg tells him that thousands of these nodules were discovered on the new level.

Spock theorizes that the monster may be a silicon-based lifeform and advises that a more powerful phaser weapon be used to attack the creature.  When Spock discovers that the creature is the only one of its kind in the area, he states that destroying it would be a crime against science.  Kirk states that killing the creature is the only choice available.

After several more deaths the creature steals the circulation pump for the colony nuclear reactor.  Emergency repairs by Scotty allow a temporary reprieve but very shortly the colony will need to evacuate or suffer a meltdown.  Finally, Kirk and Spock find the creature and wound it with their phasers.  Eventually they corner it and seeing that the creature seems intelligent Kirk changes his mind about killing it and lets Spock mind meld with it to find out where it has hidden the pump and why it is attacking the colonists.

Meanwhile Kirk summons McCoy to heal the badly wounded creature.  When Kirk orders him to help the creature, McCoy makes one of his trademark statements, “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”  Spock performs his mind meld and discovers that the Horta is a peaceful creature.  It is the only one around because every fifty thousand years all the Hortas but one die off and the remaining one guards the eggs and serves as mother to a whole generation of Hortas.  When the miners opened the new level, they unconcernedly destroyed thousands of the silicon nodules which, of course, are the Horta’s eggs.  The angry colonists calm down once they realize that they were the original aggressors and can find a way to live and let live with the Hortas.  But Spock reminds them that all this may be moot because the Horta is badly wounded.  Suddenly McCoy speaks up and says that the Horta will survive.  He had the Enterprise beam down a hundred pounds of thermo-concrete and he troweled it on the wound and it will form a bandage until the Horta heals.  He becomes so excited he yells out, “Why I can cure rainy day!”

As the Enterprise is preparing to depart the planet, we hear from Vanderberg that the baby Hortas are hatching out and they are providing the miners with tunnels to help them find minerals more quickly.  So, everybody’s happy.

This episode has a lot of things going on.  There is some interesting interaction between Kirk and Spock.  Spock exhibits human emotion when he thinks Kirk is in danger.  In fact, in a radio exchange during a cave in Spock calls him Jim, which doesn’t sound very Vulcan.  The story is definitely interesting although the secret of the silicon nodules is fairly transparent.  Bones, of course has the best lines in the episode.  But there is a dark side.  During his mind meld with the Horta Spock takes on the voice and facial expressions of an hysterical woman.  The weeping and agonizing are awful to have to watch.

My rating.  As a show the grade is 8!  Shatner mocking isn’t a thing here but for this episode I’ll substitute mockery of Spock.  The mind meld is awful and deserves a 9.  Total score 8 // 9.

 

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