Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I fell in love with Narnia during the Third Grade. Our teacher had assigned “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” as required reading for that year, followed by a series of writing assignments that explored mythology in other cultures. They were fairly basic assignments, but I was instilled with a love for fantasy that continues to this day. After devouring the first book in the series, I dove head first into the entire series and have often returned several times over the many years to reread the stories of C.S. Lewis. I know there’s a chronological disturbance with “The Magicians Nephew” and “The Final Battle” is not exactly one of my favorite books, but when it comes down to the nitty and the gritty… “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” is probably the most intimate and introduces my favorite character in the series. It begins to tell the tale of a doubting, petulant, and arrogant young boy named Eustace as he joins cousins Lucy and Edmund on one of their adventures to Narnia.
That’s right, faceless reader. My favorite character in the series is also the character that has received the largest number of complaints, including a claim from our local paper that child abuse advocates would probably like to smack him across the face. But it’s not about who he IS, it’s about who he is becoming and the choices that are laid out before him. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is about choice, temptation, and redemption. Oh yes, the strong Christian themes are here and I am just fine with that little oddity in modern cinema. Maybe this is where “Voyage” becomes a little harder to swallow for the public? It is no secret that Fantasy and Theology aren’t precisely great partners, with large Christian fundamentalist groups taking their numerous stands against D&D, Heavy Metal Music, Horror Movies, and the Harry Potter franchise. Additionally, large numbers of Fantasy film fans are tired of feeling pilloried by that same fundamentalist community and aren’t eager to feel the pangs of Christian Spirituality mixed with their Minotaur’s. No character is as great a symbol of intolerance AND salvation as that of Eustace, creating an extremely polarizing character for any potential viewer. Oh, the places we could go with a character study on him… but let’s just focus a bit more on the movie, shall we?
Lucy and Edmund return to Narnia and aid Prince Caspian in his quest to find Seven Lords that were once loyal to his father. His uncle had them banished to some Islands off the coast of the mainland. A growing evil has taken root near the border to Aslans’ Country, threatening the islands as villainous slavers force people there to make ritual sacrifices. Unlike the previous entries, Voyage is much less epic of an adventure and focuses more on the personal struggles of the ships crew as they travel from one island to the next in a desperate bid to seek out the Lords, their swords, and stop this growing menace. The special effects team really outdoes their previous entries by showing a certain degree of restraint and saving the most stunning visuals for when they will count the most. Indeed, the sea serpent is probably one of the most frightening and horrific things I’ve EVER seen on the big screen and it promises to give me nightmares for years to come.
5 out of 5. Definitely one of the most worthwhile films of the year for me.
House
I have found the Holy Grail! In my quest for the weird and the bizarre, I have delved into visions of the nightmarish and the perverse. I have seen the brutal, the strange, and the beautiful and the politically charged to the nonsensical whimsy of madness. I have seen just about everything there is to see in the world of cinematic art, forgetting some and endlessly haunted by others. But nothing holds a candle to the simple bizarreness of this unique “horror” import from Japan. In what may seem like a simple enough story, nothing could ever prepare you for the oddball lunacy that is unleashed with a viewing of “House”.
Gorgeous is a young teen girl whose family vacation is ruined by the appearance of her fathers’ fiancée. Rather than allowing the woman to join them, she sets out to visit her Aunt in the country and brings along a group of friends with a bizarre list of nicknames. Kung-Fu, Fantasy, Mac, Melody, Sweetness, and Prof are excited to be spending time together with their beautiful friend and have absolutely no idea that the girls’ Aunt harbors a deadly secret. With that said… THE FREAKIN’ HOUSE STARTS EATING THEM!!!! No, no no no no no… not eating them, really, but kind of yeah. Okay, it starts to devour them a few pieces at a time but they’re still alive… so we have randomly floating limbs, screaming teenage girls, geysers of blood, a mewling cat, furniture that hops around and attacks people, and people getting turned into bananas after drinking soup with bears. I’m not sure what the heck is going on at any point in this movie, except that this is by far the weirdest film I’ve ever seen. Things happen for no apparent reason, people spout out lines of dialogue that make NO sense… and then more things start to happen. And I’m staring at the screen with the distinct impression that someone else HAS to be watching my response, because this movie is MESSED up.
This is it…. This is the strangest movie I’ve ever seen. I decided to watch some of the extra’s on the DVD, but once I saw the name Ti West my brain sort of folded in on itself and wrapped into a tight little knot. This guy starts talking about the movie as if he’s EVER made a decent film in his life and I’m trying to figure out why this even matters… when I remembered that there are journalists and reviewers out there who will swear by House of the Devil as being the greatest horror movie of the past five years. I looked at this movie and tried to figure out why Ti West, the man who films a girl refilling her glass of water multiple times, has any sort of say in regards to this film. And I listened to him speak… at the end of the day, his comments could be regarded as this: “This is the strangest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s like a childs nightmare.” Congratulations, doofus! You state the obvious…
This movie deserves 4 out of 5. The Ti West commentary after the film in the special features seems perfectly nonsensical with regard to the rest of the film. It’s like asking Eli Roth to do an interview on the special features portion of “On Golden Pond” because Cabin Fever took place in a cabin near a lake. I don’t get it.
Operation: Endgame
Two government assassination squads are forced to kill one another in this extremely dark comedy. The basic premise introduces “Joker” to his new assignment, a covert operations assassination team devoted to furthering the interests of the U.S. government. Their opposing squad, set up decades earlier, is also devoted to furthering the interests… so it’s never really clear where their major differences lay, save that they both work as top secret cover operation squads on the fringe of legality. The events of the film coincide with the change of administrations, the aftermath of an operation gone wrong, and orders to shut down all operations and destroy all data related to their activities. Joker is a seemingly innocent bystander caught up in events, desperate to find a way out of the facility before the entire place is flooded with hot napalm and fiery death.
As much as this film REEKS of political propaganda, the story is actually really good and could have worked with just about any change of political power. As it is, we are often brought into current events with snips of public speeches from “then” newly elected President, Barack Obama. Steve Cordell, “Daily Show” regular, is heavily featured as a middle-aged and extremely burned out senior agent struggling with alcoholism, regret, and the impending psychological breakdown of a man in his line of work. All of the characters are homicidally insane, except for two lackeys left to monitor events on video feeds. Zack Gaffigan, Ellen Barkin, and other cast mates round out an interesting ensemble in the tradition of “Heathers” and ‘Very Bad Things” with characters holding secret plans, grudges, and orders for one betrayal after another.
3.5 out of 5.
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