Did Someone Say "Wonder?"

I am so sorry! I begin this review with that statement because I am on a terrible losing streak. At a really unfortunate time in American history, HBO is showing a terrible collection of movies. People are suffering out there. Folks are out of work, investments are in the crapper, airlines are charging for a glass of water, and I can’t find a good movie on cable. I have finished watching movies shaking my head so many times I think my equilibrium is out of whack. Unfortunately, when you get on a streak like this I am told you just have to ride it out. Hopefully the loyal readers of this blog can ride it out with me.

Drum roll please…I recently watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.

I know it is my own fault. I take full responsibility for this one. It was Christmas Eve, I had returned to my castle early from work and it seemed like a good idea. When I saw the credits I thought to myself: “Natalie Portman is hot, Dustin Hoffman was in Tootsie and Jason Bateman was Teen Wolf (Two). How bad can it be?” To keep my answer to that question short, this movie was bad enough to be a CBS sitcom.

The basic premise of this film is that a 250 year-old toy shop owner (Hoffman) has decided he is going to die Elvis-style (substitute a chair for the can) within a couple of days and hires an accountant (Bateman) to value his business so he can give it to his apprentice (Portman) so one of his customers who collects hats and has no friends (Zach Mills) can continue to play with the toys.

As the accountant goes through Mr. Magorium’s books he discovers that the store has been open for one hundred years without a business license, there have never been any taxes collected or paid, there is an undocumented biographer with a handlebar mustache living in the basement, and Mr. Magorium has an IOU from Thomas Edison that was never collected. Of course, in the world of “Wonder” none of this matters.

Editorial Note: I have to admit that the best part of this movie was the thirty or so minutes I was asleep. So, some of the aforementioned local and federal regulatory issues could have been addressed during my slumber. Additionally, crucial plot information could have been missed and it is possible the secrets of the magic toys and Molly Mahoney’s (Portman) Dutch-boy haircut could have been explained. However, I think this is highly unlikely.

I am still not clear on why Mr. Magorium decided to value a business he was giving away to his apprentice. And it seems odd that Mr. Magorium decided to give his business away to an apprentice that is only mildly interested in it and has aspirations for bigger and better things (Molly is also a pianist). Molly is a pianist. Mr. Magorium’s apprentice is a pianist. The pianist tickled the ivories. Pianist, pianist, pianist.

By the way, Mr. Magorium has a curious look and sound to him. He looks like Doc Brown and Einstein somehow co-fathered an offspring and his voice sounds like Daniel Stern’s after he took the forth brick to the head in Home Alone 2.

So, Mr. Magorium correctly called his shot and died on cue and once he did all of the toys in the store turned to black and lost their “wonder.” Somehow, Henry Weston (Bateman) turned into a real estate agent and handled the sale of the toy store but left the “wonder”-less toys in the store. Once a buyer was found hat collector Eric Applebaum (played by Zach Mills of Hollywoodland fame) swooped in to try to save the store and this led to the climatic final sequence when Henry realized that the store was full of “wonder,” Eric realized that his first friend was a middle aged accountant and Molly realized that if she performed some of the worst dance moves ever set to music and put on film she could bring the “wonder” back to the toys in the emporium.

So, I guess the moral of this story is only chase your dreams until such time as you are extremely close to achieving them and then make a last second decision to serve as day shift manager at a children’s toy store. "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys "R" Us Kid. There's a million toys at Toys "R" Us that I can play with."

Warren

P.S. I Didn't Cry

Yeah, I watched P.S. I Love You. So what? It was late at night and I wanted to watch a movie. At my house, the only movies that I can watch comfortably (with the Wife) at an advance hour (i.e. after 9:00 pm) are new release chick-flicks. I have tried to watch Predator, The Jerk, Commando, Waterworld or Ed (oops, how did that one get in there) at this late hour, but my beautiful bride is never interested and expects my viewing to be in another room. That being said, I was flipping around the channels recently and not only did I stop on P.S. I Love You (heretofore known as PS) but I read the information screen, stopped flipping and told my Wife it was on. I realize that this may seem questionable but I am a professional blogger now and it’s not like I was wearing sequined pants and a plaid shirt!

When I initially flipped past the movie I just assumed that it was an old Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film. Turns out, this movie actually stars Gerard Butler (of 300) and Hilary Swank (of The Next Karate Kid) as a mis-matched Irish-American couple. At the beginning of the movie they are shown fighting quite a bit with neither of them seeming thrilled with their position in the NYC rat race. The movie takes a very quick left turn though as Butler’s character of Gerry (I guess another mother in the Village had already named her kids Thom and Fill) either suddenly died of a brain tumor or slowly died of a brain tumor in an unexplained time lapse. Either way, when I found out the character died of a brain tumor I kept thinking, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line “It’s not a tumor” from Kindergarten Cop is in my opinion the most memorable line in a career filled with transcendental quotes.

Note: I suspect you are trying to sound out the word transcendental right now with the plan to look it up once you can successfully say it out loud. I realize that transcendental refers to a non algebraic complex number, however I also think it should refer to a series of great movie quotes. I would formulate it something like: e = Cool/Austrian

If you have read this blog before I have previously harped on the type casting of actors. In this case, I have personally type cast Gerard Butler and it is not as a romantic lead. I don’t know if this makes me a hypocrite or not (I have already taken a lot of grief for watching PS, so being considered a hypocrite doesn’t really hurt) but I just can’t see him being anything other than the Phantom of Leonidas (a handy combination of the Phantom of the Opera and King Leonidas). When Gerry and Holly (Swank) are fighting at the beginning of the movie I was really cheering for Gerry to just yell “This is Sparta” and then kick Holly into a bottomless pit of doom while simultaneously dropping the kitchen chandelier onto some innocent passer-bys. Of course, much to my dismay I mostly just got this long, drawn out scavenger hunt for love with a sprinkle of Jo Jo Dancer.

I am not always the best judge on these things, but I think that this movie was written by a gal who loved Gerard Butler in 300 and Chad Lowe in Life Goes On (Emmy Award winning Chad Lowe). If my premonition is correct, she sat at her typewriter in much the same way that I do and just thought of the coolest way to combine her love for those two actors. Or course, who knows what the heck has happened to Chad Lowe, so the next best thing would be to punish Hilary Swank (Collateral Damage – punish all of us too). So, she slowly typed out her story goals: “Gerard Butler stands around without his shirt” and then “Hilary Swank cries for two hours and fifteen minutes.”

When PS was over it was obvious that the aforementioned writer had delivered (and Hilary Swank had pulled it off) a character with the Ruth-ian task of constant crying for an entire film. I kid you not, Hilary Swank cried from 9:00 pm until 11:15 pm. I really wonder how she motivated herself to cry that much. I mean, when you think about the number of scenes in this movie, added to the number of takes a typical scene has, she must have thought of every single sad and tragic event in the history of earth. I should have looked at the credits closely to see if there was a historian on the payroll.

Meanwhile, Gerard Butler was topless in almost all of his scenes. Interestingly enough he was topless both as a live character and as a ghost. Of course, you may be asking “Warren, does this film hypothesize that humans haunt their former lovers in a form representative of their peak of physical beauty?” The answer to that question is yes, but apparently it can only last for one calendar year. So, we all have that to look forward to!

P.S. I did squeeze out a tear when James Bond was being whipped in the grapes in Casino Royale.

Warren

The War in Afghanistan continues

So I finally watched a movie that I can write about. HBO finally showed "Charlie Wilson's War." I enjoyed this movie when I saw it in the theaters and I committed myself to seeing it either on DVD or cable when it was made available. Well, HBO had been showing teaser previews of it since late September and I looked forward to finally catching it again.

Full disclosure. I like the movie because I like almost anything that Aaron Sorkin is involved in. He came on the scene as the writer of "A Few Good Men," a movie that has become one of the more quotable military movies of late, if only for the dynamite performance of Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise. He went on to write "Sport Night," a tv show which introduced us to witty, intelligent, meaningful, funny dialogue in his what would become characteristic staccato style. Somewhere in there he wrote, "An American President," a movie starring Annette Benning dating the widowed President, Michael Douglas. Then he had a seven year run of "West Wing," on TV. Admittedly, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," left a little of his usual magic behind. Still I enjoyed that TV show while it was on the air.

I am a sucker for good writing and "Charlie Wilson's War," delivered in spades. The basic plot is that it is the mid-eighties. The Soviet Union has invaded Afghanistan. The U.S is providing minimal backing to the Afghans, the enemies of our enemies. Tom Hanks as the title character, Charlie Wilson, is a lecherous, reprobate of a congressman. I suppose that that is redundant. But Wilson wears his lasciviousness a little more exposed on his sleeve than do most congressman. He has been elected from a district which wants nothing and has elected him five times. He gets to say yes to many other congressman and not piss off his constituents. He has built up many favors owed to him. He has also gotten himself on the crossroads of the Congressional committees of Defense and Budget. And the sub-committee on covert ops. He is able to assist in the approval of covert defense spending.

He feels a pang of guilt that the U.S. is not funding the Afghans better. Prodded by a wealthy matron, portrayed by Julia Roberts, in his district he begins assessing how he can funnel money to a covert war in Afghanistan. In this pursuit he meets Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character, Gust Avrakatos. Gust is a lecherous, reprobate of a CIA operative working Washington, D.C. He is slovenly and doesn't give a crap about the politics of the place. He has pissed off his boss and now is looking for something to do. He seizes on the opportunity to pursue helping the Afghans. These two characters, Wilson and Avrakatos, couldn't be more perfect for one another.

Tom Hanks gives one of the better performances of his career. Now that he has thrown off the mantle of always having to play likable characters, he can stretch a little more in his performances and explore more nuanced characters. But Phillip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant. I have always admired him as an actor. He rarely gives a bad performance. He just is usually in such offbeat films that I don't see much of him. Well he not only pays the bills by being in a large studio film, he delivers a memorable performance.

The pivotal scene in the movie, the one which I will watch repeatedly in the coming years and memorize lines of, is when the two men first meet. Charlie Wilson has called for a CIA Deputy Director or above to his office so that he can discuss his plans to get funding into the hands of the Afghans. Instead he gets Gust Avrakatos, a low level, pudgy, malcontent. Wilson is not happy. Avrakatos assuages his anger by presenting him with a gift of really good scotch. Wilson, a frequent imbiber among his many vices, is placated. Just then a crisis develops in Wilson's office. Rudy Guiliani, yes that Rudy Guiliani, is a Federal Prosecutor looking into Congressional misconduct and Charlie Wilson has been implicated. Gust is asked to leave while Wilson's comely assistants talk to Charlie about how their office should respond to the charges. This happens a couple times. The cute assistants barge in and Gust is asked to leave. Finally Avrakatos is invited back in. As he is sitting down he mentions that Wilson should make sure that the limo driver from one of Charlie's escapades is told to keep quiet or at least Charlie should find out what the limo driver knows. Wilson is livid. Was Avrakatos listening at the door as he discussed his private business with his assistants. No, Gust bugged the scotch bottle. Well all right now lets get back to business. And Wilson offers Avrakatos a drink of the very scotch that had been bugged. I haven't written any of the dialogue here, but suffice to say it is brilliant. As is the pace of the scene and how it is shot.

What I like most about that entire scene is the ethos involved. While Wilson was probably rightfully indignant, possibly incensed, he didn't let the indiscretion of the scotch bottle bugging get in the way of taking care of what he called the meeting for. He and Gust completed their discussion of how to begin funding the Afghans. Charlie Wilson also saw to immediately enjoying the scotch. It is the understanding that we are all flawed, pursuing our own agendas. We occasionally dupe each other, but when we have shared agendas it is best to just let the anger die and get on with accomplishing our objective. And if we do all that with a sense of humor, so much the better. This movie, in the final analysis, didn't hold up either Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character or Tom Hanks' character as heroes. They are both disreputable. And they far from acted with pure intent. But they accomplished a good thing. Eventually the Soviets got sick of being blown up by U.S supplied weapons and they left Afghanistan. They also eventually failed completely and both the Soviet Union and in fact the entire Eastern Bloc bloc was broken. The Berlin Wall tumbled and former totalitarian Communist countries converted to capitalistic democracies. That movement continues today.

The movie ends on a prescient note, foreshadowing the implications we feel in today's world. And here it may be too preachy. It is well and good to say, "I knew that would happen," twenty years after the fact, but contextually that message seems contrived. Anyway the parting shot of the movie is; the U.S. should have continued to fund the Afghans, rebuilding schools and infrastructure instead of solely concentrating on rebuilding Eastern Europe. For without the needed U.S. funding, the Islamic fundamentalist came in, filled the void by building madrases, and started this whole Taliban/Al Quaida thing. And here we sit with 170,000 soldiers in Afghanistan today. I don't know. In a sense, we should have seen some of this coming, but really we wanted to get our hooks into Eastern Europe to make sure those countries fully broke from the Soviet grip. And really there is only so much foreign aid money.

Anyway. Good movie. Incredible performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Tom Hanks continues on his journey to be a serious actor.

Matthew