MovieMonday: E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial

This movie, Steven Spielberg's third, was released in 1982 after Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Its first-year sales were greater than those for the first Star Wars film, a result that gobsmacked Hollywood and established Spielberg as the  pre-eminent filmmaker of his generation.

Most of us have seen it before, but let's recap the story.  A being from another planet is left behind on earth when his spaceship leaves in the middle of the night to avoid humans investigating their presence in a forest.  

The being, eventually named E.T., wanders into the garden shed behind a suburban family house.  Elliott, a 10-year-old boy who lives in the house with his mother, younger sister and older brother discovers E.T. and offers acceptance, friendship and Reese's Pieces candies to the puzzled alien.

There is tension in the house because the dad is gone.  The mom learns that he is off in Mexico with a girlfriend.  One of the boys calls the other "penis breath," which, given how square moviegoers were at the time, caused critics to warn parents not to take children under the age of eight to see the film. 

Effectively, E.T. becomes Elliott's imaginary friend -- such are not uncommon comforts for children -- and then, as the two other siblings inevitably encounter E.T.,  he becomes a family member to be protected from the still-menacing adult men searching the neighborhood and tracking the strange footprints they have found.

E.T.'s physical form also was designed with children in mind.  He does not look at all like a human, but he is about Elliott's height, has two arms, two legs and great big eyes that reflect emotion. 

In addition, E.T. is a quick study.  He learns English by watching television and applies what he learns to voice the film's memorable line, "E.T. phone home", that expresses his dearest wish.  E.T. also applies what he already knows (unexplainable, but it works) to contact fellow extra-terrestrials on his home planet.  In the process, he identifies so completely with Elliott that, when E.T.'s health declines in an unfamiliar environment, Elliott gets sick too.  

The goal becomes to help E.T. return to his home.  This effort knits his adoptive family and neighborhood children into a magical effort that leads to the expected conclusion.

The film retains its interest because the children and their world don't seem so different from that of today -- except for those bikes with small wheels and banana seats -- and because it gratifies the sincerity of all children and their wishes to do good.    Adults who have happy memories of the story might want to share this movie with younger persons of their acquaintance. 

Note

A caveat:  In the movie, 10-year-old Elliott's class (presumably fifth grade), is assigned a science activity that may not be familiar to students of this generation: the dissection of live frogs that students have narcotized but that still have beating hearts.  This apparently was a middle school project in some locations, but in my city, it was only a high school biology exercise.  My impression is that it since has been eliminated and replaced, occasionally by "dissection" of frog-shaped silicone material.  E.T. casts the project as painful for big-hearted Elliott and gives him a chance to display his honorable and humane nature; but even the set-up may be more stressful for today's young viewers than the occasional "shit" bombs sprinkled through the script.  

MovieMonday: Ready Player One

Steven Spielberg has made fantasy films before, but this one is much more concerned with technology and, specifically, the tension between virtual reality and real life.  

The human aspect may be the way Spielberg could try out a special effects-laden superhero fight between good and evil.  Hard to tell.  

It's another unusual turn from a director who has made many kinds of films, most of them successful.

As is the case with many movies now, it takes its story from a young-adult novel. The plot involves a virtual reality universe called OASIS, which is a popular escape from the earthly dystopia of 2045, when life "is a number everybody is just trying to escape."

Early on, we meet Wade Watts, an orphan who lives with his aunt and her unpleasant boyfriend in a trailer on a shelf in the Stacks neighborhood of Columbus. 

When Wade straps on his VR headset and lands in OASIS, he becomes Parzifal, a streaked-blond avatar who hops into a DeLorean car, closes its wing door and then joins a drag race/battle involving other vehicles -- one a motorcycle driven by a cute female avatar named Art3mis -- and obstacles including a virtual King Kong.  The reason for the race is not clear, but its practical purpose is to get the action going. And of course the movie ends with an epic battle, another stock element in action movies of all genres.

In between, Parzifal and his friends join a competition to find/win three keys left by the sorta-dead OASIS inventor, who promised the winner a really cool Easter egg that will confer hidden powers and control of the VR paradise.  

Naturally an opposing team of greedy bad guys wants to take control of OASIS and use it to make money.  Naturally the bad guys are led by a CEO-type guy in a business suit; naturally his avatar also wears a business suit.

It's not a complex story, but it can be hard to follow the plot twists, which involve conflicts on earth and in the OASIS universe.  The main characters step back and forth between the two spheres, real and virtual, and their earthly connections make the movie's theme more humanly resonant and, well, Spielbergian.  

The computer-generated imagery, done by George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic shop, is excellent throughout.  The movie is worth watching for this alone, and particularly in 3-D.  

The film is well-stocked with references to 1980s pop culture, a plus for people who care about Hall and Oates, Buckaroo Banzai and historical Atari games.   

The plot is more credible than a superhero plot when it comes to  characters' motivations, but not much more. 


Notes

This is mostly a guy movie.  When I saw it, the theater was filled with mostly with single men and bro-friends in pairs; there were also a father and his tween-aged son, and one woman with her boyfriend.  

-----

There are lot of movies now that assume a dismal future.  Off the top of my head, I came up with these: two Mad Max films, "The Matrix," the Hunger Games trilogy, "The Road," "Logan," "Robocop," "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 49."  

Maybe it's easier to fight imagined battles than to take up current issues.

Oscar Talk: Bridge of Spies

Mark Rylance in the "Bridge of Spies" first scene

I have been a little surprised by the apparently muted reception that "Bridge of Spies" has received in the run-up to the Academy Awards ceremony.

At first I thought maybe this was because the movie was released much earlier in the year than other best picture nominees, most of which came out in November and December.  But then I checked; "Bridge of Spies" had an October release.

(Studios seem to favor this late-release strategy, hoping that movies that win top awards will sell many more tickets after the Oscars.  It did not play out for last year's best picture, the quirky "Birdman," which sold $37 million in U.S. tickets the year it was released and only $5 million more after the Oscars; 60 percent of its $103 million gross came from foreign sales.)

So why is "Spotlight" favored for the best picture award while the also-nominated "Bridge of Spies" is seen as a non-starter?

Consider the differences:

"Spotlight," is a straightforward good-guys-going-after-bad-guys morality play whose ending is never in doubt.  Its environment in Boston is mostly a newsroom -- a white-collar workplace of computers and fluorescent lights -- public records offices, coffeehouses, parks and parking lots, plus several social events.

"Bridge of Spies" is more subtle.  Its setting is earlier, during the Cold War, when people worried about the existential threat of American and Soviet nuclear arsenals. The unease is personalized in the lead characters, played by Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance (the favored supporting actor candidate), who recognize each other as serving different governments, but also as human beings.
     The atmospheres in "Bridge of Spies" are nuanced and support the movie's themes -- New Yorkers' anger at due process protections being given to a Russian spy, and then cold, gray Berlin, where citizens in the eastern sector are being effectively imprisoned by a wall and a thuggish Russian-sponsored regime. The good guy-bad guy element is there, but it is established by what is seen in the movie.

Interestingly, a common complaint about "Bridge of Spies" is that it lacks tension.  I think this is more true of "Spotlight," but I may be the only one.

Maybe we're just so used to Steven Spielberg turning out great movies that we take him for granted.
He's won Oscars for best movie ("Schindler's List) and best director ("Saving Private Ryan") plus seven and five other nominations, respectively, in those categories.

"Bridge of Spies" has been nominated for four other Oscars -- its Coen bothers/Matt Charman screenplay, music, sound mixing and production design.

Meanwhile, "The Revenant" has 12 nominations.  It is a novel story, of course, and Leonardo DeCaprio is getting both support and resistance in his siege/campaign for best actor.  Certainly the movie is ambitious in its locations and story, but even with all that, people complain that it's just too darn long.

Perhaps what distinguishes "The Revenant" and "Spotlight" is the level of promotion that has been generated for each of them.  This happens in all kinds of election procedures, as any American voter can attest.