Movie review by Greg Carlson

Tim Jenison, an inventor whose work in video editing solutions and computer graphics has made him a wealthy man, embarks on an odyssey to “paint a Vermeer” using an optical device Jenison believes might have been similar to something theoretically available to the Dutch master. The result of Jenison’s obsessive quest is less interesting than the lengths to which he goes in the process. “Tim’s Vermeer,” the story of Jenison’s grand experiment, is captured by magic/comedy tricksters and skeptics Penn and Teller. Penn Jillette provides on-camera commentary while silent partner Teller makes his feature debut as director. Appreciators of great painting might take issue with the suggestion that Vermeer “cheated,” but the film does raise some thought-provoking ideas concerning the intersection between art and technology.

One of the movie’s most vocal critics is Jonathan Jones, who wrote about “Tim’s Vermeer” in “The Guardian.” Jones took the position that Teller had made “an art film for philistines,” and suggested that, ironically, the “failure of Jenison’s device to create any of the power of a real painting by Vermeer puts all these theories about painting and the camera obscura and ‘secret knowledge’ in their place.” Reading the commentary of Jones causes one to speculate that the documentary might have been richer had some respectable voices of dissent been allowed a measure of screen time. Instead, Teller trains his camera firmly on the progress of Jenison as a lavish recreation of the objects and elements depicted in Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” (or “Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman”) is assembled.

The strongest point made by Jones reminds us that the movie never presents images of the Vermeer original, but instead relies on inherently inferior and misleading reproductions of “The Music Lesson.” A short section of the movie is devoted to the unsuccessful efforts of the filmmakers to photograph the painting, which is held privately in London by the British royal family. Jenison is ultimately granted a short personal audience with the piece, but viewers are asked, somewhat anticlimactically, to accept his breathless descriptions.

Many viewers will find it entirely possible that critics like Jones overstate the case against Jenison. “Tim’s Vermeer” is devoted to technological possibility at the expense of deeper conversation and contemplation of the “mystery of history” presented by Vermeer’s uncanny and unfathomable talent. Undoubtedly, even if Teller had devoted equal time to explorations of Vermeer by the artist’s greatest scholars, the central premise of Jenison’s experiment would have most likely remained the same.

Teller includes the testimony of British artist David Hockney, whose 2001 book “Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Techniques of the Old Masters” suggested that the use of camera obscura and optical assist techniques advanced photorealism in painting. Philip Steadman, another supporter of the optical assist theories, also appears in “Tim’s Vermeer.” Steadman’s “Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces” was published the same year as Hockney’s “Secret Knowledge.” The principal argument opposing Jenison, Hockney, and Steadman raises the “so what?” question and makes the emphatic claim that Vermeer’s genius resides not in the possibility that some kind of mirror allowed him to “copy” reality but rather in the authenticity and singularity of his transcendent vision.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) receives the startling news in confession that he is to be murdered in one week – not for anything Lavelle has or has not done, but because the damaged soul on the other side of the sliding lattice insists that “There’s no point in killing a bad priest, but killing a good one… That’d be a shock.” The unseen man who condemns Lavelle is known to the clergyman but not to the viewer, a tactic that allows writer-director John Michael McDonagh to trot out a gallery of weirdoes, malcontents, non-believers, adulterers, and abusers functioning as potential suspects while Lavelle “puts his house in order” and the hours tick by.

“Calvary” is the second screen collaboration between McDonagh and Gleeson, and the veteran actor provides a measure of stability and calm in a movie that regularly shifts from black comedy to serious contemplation. McDonagh’s ambitions are abundant, but the filmmaker is happy to apply the hammer when a scalpel might have been more effective. Lavelle, who opts not to take any real precautions against his imminent demise, is burdened by the weight of the widespread sexual abuse and rape of vulnerable minors, but as David Edelstein notes, the scope of charges could be expanded to include the “corruption, impotence, and general irrelevance of the Catholic Church.”

Lavelle is by most accounts a good and decent man. We learn that he joined the priesthood after the death of his wife, leaving their young daughter (played as a grown-up by Kelly Reilly) with the devastating feeling that she’d lost both her parents. Reilly’s Fiona, visiting her dad’s village following a suicide attempt, brings a much-needed female perspective to “Calvary.” The only other women to interact with Lavelle are a grieving widow and a local cheating on her spouse. McDonagh’s decision to give Lavelle a daughter – and the marriage and sexual knowledge of his former life – humanizes the friar by distancing him from the “celibates” who preyed on children and by suggesting to the community members that Lavelle is “one of them.”

There is something off-balance, however, about the way in which McDonagh imagines Lavelle going about his business after someone he knows makes a threat against his life. Surely, audience members are being invited to size up the possible killer-to-be, and many will wonder why Lavelle doesn’t bother to confront him earlier. McDonagh, in an interview with Helen O’Hara, acknowledges that he set out to “kind of rip off the Hitchcock ‘I Confess’ structure” as well as utilize a “Who’s going to do it?” variation on Agatha Christie-style formula.

In his somewhat anachronistic soutane, Lavelle defies the stereotype of the contemporary Catholic priest, and McDonagh has claimed that the stark costume calls to mind both the iconographic look of figures in Sergio Leone films and the “Samurai warrior putting their armour on every day to go out to battle the forces of darkness.” In the end, and especially in the movie’s grim climax, “Calvary” fails to attain the level of insight and transcendence that might have been present in a story with richer characterizations among the supporting cast and fewer manipulations by the filmmaker. McDonagh’s fascination with sinners, however, never lacks for color.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In 2005, “Sin City” exploited the possibilities of green screen in a manner that felt fresh and exciting, marrying computer generated imagery to the performances of Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s game cast. Faithfully replicating the stylized, monochromatic panels of Miller’s cult comic book series, the film’s design was exciting and novel. At the time, I wrote “Seldom has a movie recreated the particular experience of reading comic books,” and compared to most of the films based on graphic fiction, only Edgar Wright’s “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” has since surpassed the cinematic representation of the comic medium’s unique properties explored in the original “Sin City.”

What a huge disappointment, then, to discover that the anticipated sequel is such a deflating and dispiriting letdown. Titled “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” and using Miller’s yarn of the same name as one of its principal storylines, the follow-up, as Nathan Rabin argues in his “Dissolve” commentary, “makes its predecessor seem much worse by association” and “calls into question whether ‘Sin City’ was any good at all, or whether the novelty of its visuals and storytelling merely masked a howling nothingness at its core.” Rabin’s critical annihilation of “A Dame to Kill For” lands squarely on what he sees as the movie’s hatefulness and stupidity, but plenty of fuel could also be added to the pyre regarding the leaden pacing and numbing repetitiveness.

Miller’s hard-boiled neo-noir voiceover, meant to pay homage to the slang-infused tough talk of classic pulp detective and crime fiction, is delivered without a single hint of humor or self-awareness, and the result is a tone deaf litany of misogynist cliches presumably reflective of Miller’s own regressive attitudes about gender. Abandon all hope that the filmmakers could be sophisticated enough to use the pulp format to deconstruct chauvinistic attitudes that fail to account for women as real human beings. The use of classic “narrating I” belongs exclusively to the men until late in the game, when Jessica Alba’s haunted stripper Nancy — following some painful self-mutilation — goes on a revenge-fueled murder spree.

That Nancy’s inner thoughts are expressed to the audience at all is something of a surprise. That those thoughts are only shared once Nancy begins behaving like Mickey Rourke’s violence-prone behemoth Marv is less suprising. From returning veterans like Alba, Rosario Dawson, and Jaime King to new recruits such as Lady Gaga, Jamie Chung (replacing Devon Aoki as Miho), and Juno Temple, Rodriguez and Miller include a significant number of women in the cast. The women of Basin City, however, exist only in positions subordinate to or dependent upon the men who aim to protect them — unless, of course, they are emasculating punishers.

The most important woman in “A Dame to Kill For” is Eva Green’s femme fatale Ava Lord, a one-time lover of the Marv-esque Dwight (Josh Brolin). Ava’s reappearance in Dwight’s life calls up old demons he had hoped to keep at bay, and the outcome of their entanglement can be guessed even if one has no previous experience with Miller’s source material. Green somehow manages to rise above the phony dialogue, a feat unrealized by Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Booth, and a barely present Bruce Willis. She almost looks like she is capable of having fun in a universe where that concept seems forbidden by every law of (un)civil society and human nature.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Probably best known in America as the screenwriter of Ji-woon Kim’s terrifying “I Saw the Devil,” Hoon-jung Park closely examines classic and contemporary gangster genre hallmarks in the smart and entertaining “New World.” The Korean filmmaker’s second feature as director, “New World” stylishly blends together key elements of Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s “Internal Affairs” (and Martin Scorsese’s sinewy, Best Picture-winning American remake “The Departed”) with Johnnie To’s “Drug War.” Most noticeably, the grand gestures and the tragic hero’s journey of “The Godfather,” which Park claims to have studied “dozens of times,” are paid direct and loving tribute.

One of the most common devices in the contemporary thriller is the mole, and Park places undercover cop Ja-sung (Jung-jae Lee) in the eye of the hurricane. Ja-sung’s loyalties and nerve are tested as he rises through the ranks of the octopus-armed Goldmoon front, balancing his commitment to police boss and handler Kang (the shaggy, durable Min-sik Choi) with the constant pressure to impress the board of crime lords monitoring Ja-sung’s devotion to their operation. All the while, Ja-sung’s very life depends on hiding his true identity in a world where skepticism and paranoia are standard procedure. Just as he did in the “I Saw the Devil” script, Park sinks his teeth into the question of whether it takes a monster to catch a monster.

Park studies the minutiae surrounding the procedures for succession when a death leaves a power vacuum in the crime syndicate, and the tight-lipped Ja-sung’s quiet stoicism contrasts with the flamboyance and unpredictability of extrovert Jung Chung (Jung-min Hwang), a deeply dangerous man with whom Ja-sung has spent countless hours and forged an unlikely friendship. The director chooses not to depict Ja-sung’s moral struggle through any of his virtually non-existent after-work relationships. Instead, Park expects the viewer to question Ja-sung’s allegiances along with Kang and Jung Chung, and the tactic builds the necessary level of ambiguity surrounding the question of what “side,” if any, Ja-sung has chosen or will choose.

Another parallel to “I Saw the Devil” materializes in the grisly violence, and although the amount of onscreen mayhem accounts for a smaller total of the running time than the horrors depicted in Kim’s 2010 film, Park stages the shooting, stabbing, and bludgeoning with matter-of-fact calculation that more sensitive viewers will find difficult to stomach (hand-to-hand combat junkies, however, will thrill to a Crazy 88-style parking garage melee that concludes with a nasty, bird’s eye view, elevator knife fight). With its emphasis on sudden death and the posturing of characters defined by competitive machismo, the gangster genre has typically lacked for strong female figures. Park skips the moll entirely, but the movie’s only two significant women are confined to secondary roles, and both are placed in harm’s way.

Several critics have observed that “New World” fails to innovate – or worse, simply recycles the gangster film’s most familiar beats – but an equally compelling argument could be made in favor of the confident way in which Park honors the traditions and conventions of the genre. Additionally, “New World” looks great, from the vivid photography of frequent Chan-wook Park collaborator Chung-hoon Chung to the elegant costume design of Sang-kyung Cho. The smartly tailored suits worn by the gangsters will leave the fashion-conscious out of breath, especially when those handsome outfits get spattered with blood.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

“Boyhood,” Richard Linkater’s twelve-years-in-the-making adventure that follows the lives of a familial quartet, carries in its DNA one of the Texas auteur’s most durable paradoxes: the easygoing, everyday, and quotidian markers of cyclical middle class life onscreen contrast sharply with the vision, commitment, and work ethic that Linklater applies to his profession. From the fascinating and entertaining connect-the-dots vignettes that propel “Slacker” to the unfolding poignancy and brilliance of the “Before” series, Linklater’s continued interest and investment in chronicling the deliberately uneventful routines, intimate conversations, observational silences, and tiny epiphanies experienced by his characters make “Boyhood” one of the year’s most vital movies.

The lengthy production period undertaken by the intrepid cast and crew is nearly without precedent in mainstream fictional narrative cinema, although comparisons have been made to Francois Truffaut’s two-decade spanning Antoine Doinel series of five films (featuring the character played by Jean-Pierre Leaud). Rumors of Stanley Kubrick hiring a young actor and shooting material for a month at a time every few years turned out to be false. In the non-fiction realm, Michael Apted’s remarkable “Up” series continues to check in every seven years with a core group of participants who were children when the first installment, directed by Paul Almond, debuted in 1964.

While outliers like Kenneth Turan have employed apophasis to “rain on the parade” of the movie’s almost universal acclaim, the recent film world discussion of “Boyhood” was assessed by Indiewire’s Sam Adams in a piece called “Why the Unanimous Praise for Boyhood Is Bad for Film Criticism – and for Boyhood” that called attention to issues that may not have occurred to Linklater as he designed, altered, shaped, and nurtured the project for more than a decade. Adams collects the varying thoughts of Armond White, Rebecca Cusey, Mark Judge, and Rebecca Mead to summarize the complexities of the movie’s polarizing affect. Where some see cliché, banality, and a kind of “liberal conditioning” that allow audience members to validate their privilege, others will point to a Bressonian transcendence in the movie’s quiet concerns.

For many, the sight of Ellar Coltrane aging from six to eighteen in the course of the movie’s 164 minute running time will be more than enough to put a lump in the throat. Alongside Lorelei Linklater, who plays sister Samantha and whose transformation is just as emotionally concussive, Coltrane reacts and responds to the scenarios from the perspective allowed by his chronological age at any given point in time (not unlike the evolving concerns acted by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint as they grew up throughout the “Harry Potter” movies). Lorelei Linklater has received a fraction of the attention enjoyed by Coltrane, but she is every bit as valuable to the film. One imagines that a companion piece titled “Girlhood” could be equally compelling.

The movie’s most deeply felt thematic exploration, however, emerges not from the remarkable changes that often occur when a single cut reveals the startling growth and maturation of the children, but rather through Linklater’s portrait of parenthood. While Ethan Hawke’s Mason, Sr. comes and goes, seemingly at his own pace and convenience, into the lives of his children, Patricia Arquette’s Olivia represents the glorious, frustrating peaks and valleys of trying to raise a daughter and a son the best that you can without the full support and presence of a committed partner. Others, including Kyle Buchanan, have suggested that the movie could just as easily be titled “Motherhood,” and Wesley Morris argues that the film contains “the most poignant depiction of a single mother I can think of.” Whether one identifies primarily with the kids or the adults, growing up is hard to do, but watching your children grow up might be harder.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The whopping financial success of “Guardians of the Galaxy” portends many eventualities, but chief among them is the seemingly bottomless desire of the moviegoing public for summery, blockbuster-budgeted superhero tentpoles. If Indiewire’s Kevin Jagernauth is correct, the “tipping point” may be in sight, with “30 comic book movies from major studios hitting theaters in the next six years.” In his August 7 post, Jagernauth argues that it is simply not possible for all nine of the planned 2017 superhero films to meet with box office success, and the author goes on to suggest that the genre will need to “change it up” to avoid exhausting viewers with tired and formulaic stories.

Director James Gunn’s new movie, a swashbuckling sci-fi adventure that liberally borrows from “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and Marvel’s own “The Avengers,” surprised many by turning out to be a critical and commercial hit. Marvel Studios president and architect Kevin Feige’s streak toward world domination remains intact, and we can expect the company to make a lot more hay while the sun shines. Gunn’s vision, based mainly on the 2008 “Guardians” iteration created by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, follows the reversals of fortune experienced by Peter “Star-Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt) and the unlikely gang of interstellar misfits who follow him through gorgeous starscapes that look like the paintings of John Berkey and Chris Foss come to life.

Chasing a powerful and dangerous MacGuffin orb related to the Tesseract, Quill meets green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana), genetically modified organism Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Rocket’s leaf-bearing sidekick Groot (Vin Diesel). Later, vengeance-seeking, muscle-bound literalist Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista) rounds out the collective. Stuffed with non-stop wisecracks and what feels like a contest to fit in as many variations on calling one another idiots as (in)humanly possible, “Guardians” bathes and basks in its self-aware irreverence. References to Jackson Pollock, “Footloose,” Alyssa Milano, Ranger Rick, “The Giving Tree,” and John Stamos fly by as quickly as the vintage pop radio staples on Quill’s “Awesome Mix Vol. 1.”

Despite the emotional enthusiasm of fanboys and fangirls, the movie is far from perfect. Next to Joss Whedon’s superior translation of “The Avengers,” Gunn and Nicole Perlman’s script fails to deliver a compelling and complex antagonist to keep our heroes on their toes. Thanos (an uncredited, motion-captured Josh Brolin) barely appears. Benicio del Toro’s Taneleer “The Collector” Tivan is fright-wigged comic relief. And Lee Pace’s Kree baddie Ronan the Accuser –the movie’s primary villain – is far removed from the elegance, wit, and charm of Tom Hiddleston’s memorable take on Loki. The best of the bunch is Michael Rooker’s blue pirate Yondu Udonta, whose whistle-controlled arrow competes with Rocket’s heavy blaster for coolest “Guardians” weapon.

Additionally, “Guardians of the Galaxy” insists on maintaining the bummer belief that even in other solar systems it’s a man’s world. Fulfilling the Smurfette Principle as the team’s lone female, Gamora gets the Black Widow slot, minus any scene as strong as the tables-turning interrogation of Loki. Even though she is missing from much of the merchandising, Gamora proves a formidable fighter. She may also be the smartest of the Guardians, although given the crew’s lack of brainpower, that’s not saying much. Recently, Amanda Marcotte staked out a pro-Gamora position. Manohla Dargis asserts that Gamora escapes Trinity Syndrome, but the point is debatable. Certainly Saldana brings much to the character, and Gunn and Perlman handle her more comprehensively than any of the other female characters, including Karen Gillan’s Nebula, Glenn Close’s Nova Prime, Ophelia Lovibond’s Carina, Melia Kreiling’s Bereet, and Laura Haddock’s Meredith Quill.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Cockamamie, idiotic, and often fun, Luc Besson’s “Lucy” purees visuals from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Kill Bill,” “The Tree of Life,” “Only God Forgives,” and many other movies fancied by the filmmaker, including “Nikita,” “Leon,” and “The Fifth Element” from his own filmography. Many of Besson’s references appear courtesy of the director’s vigorous insertion of deliberately obvious, comically on-the-nose stock footage, a device far more entertaining than the cards announcing the ever-increasing cerebral capacity of the title character played by Scarlett Johansson, an involuntary drug mule who runs afoul of gangster Min-sik Choi and police officer Amr Waked after a bag of a crystalline synthetic called CPH4 leaks inside her abdomen and gives her godlike powers.

“Lucy” initiates a basic premise virtually identical to Neil Burger’s “Limitless,” the 2011 techno-thriller based on Alan Glynn’s “The Dark Fields,” in which Bradley Cooper attains superhuman abilities and enhanced brain function after gobbling a dangerous nootropic. In the two films, the pharmaceuticals operate as both MacGuffin and the fire of Prometheus, placing the protagonists in serious danger because of the gifts they unwrap. Another presumably coincidental similarity between the two stories is the side effect in which the irises of Cooper’s Eddie and Johansson’s Lucy transform into an even more electrifying shade of cerulean than naturally possessed by either actor.

Besson names his character after the 3.2 million year-old hominid, setting the table for all kinds of icebox talk on the text’s insight – or lack thereof – into race and gender. As sad as it is predictable, the protagonist is the only female with a significant speaking role. With “Lucy,” Johansson completes a strange trifecta of otherworldly characters coming into possession of knowledge that changes the way they relate to the world. In many aspects, Lucy’s intellectual progression mirrors the journey of discovery taken by self-aware operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her,” but Lucy’s extermination of so many men also echoes the deadly alien in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” one of the year’s best films.

Given Besson’s reliance on the tired Hollywood reflexes that demand so much gunplay and a “Strong Female Character” in a world weirdly devoid of women, it would be more than a stretch to call “Lucy” a transhumanist statement. At least the presence of Morgan Freeman, playing his umpteenth variation on the sage scientist, is less distracting and ineffectual here than in the turkey “Transcendence,” another 2014 title trading on themes of futurism, intelligence beyond measure, the mind/body problem, and the fantasy of accelerated powers associated with higher consciousness.

What Besson misses most sorely is a genuine emotional interest in Lucy, along with a meaningful treatment of any turmoil she might be experiencing as a result of her rapidly expanding awareness. Besson vaguely alludes to the cost of CPH4, but mostly by way of an overly simplified application of the race against time plot used with much greater effect in “D.O.A.” and “Blade Runner.” Like Tyrell says of replicant Roy Batty, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” but Lucy isn’t allowed to share much if any of Roy’s capacity to appreciate life as we know it. Imagine how much more interesting “Lucy” might have been had Besson spent less time on the repetitive cycle of violent showdowns and carved out some room for Lucy to experience a more profound conflict akin to the experiences of HAL 9000 or Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Warm, funny, engaging, and foul-mouthed, “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” recounts the almost too-good-to-be-true rise and fall of the Portland Mavericks, a colorful minor league club that operated from 1973 to 1977 in the Class A Northwest League. Owned and operated by the irrepressible Bing Russell – one-time ballplayer, veteran cowboy actor, entrepreneur, raconteur, father to Kurt and grandfather to “Bastards” co-directors Chapman and Maclain Way – the Mavs were the embodiment of nearly every underdog and anti-establishment baseball cliché imaginable. Functioning as the only team in the league independent of the majors, the Mavs would, in their half-decade of existence, write one of the most endearing chapters in American baseball history.

The Way brothers capitalize on Bing Russell’s prodigious collection of memorabilia, combing through an impressive archive of photographs, motion picture film, and newspaper clippings to visually enhance the film’s set of interviews with many of the people closely affiliated with the Mavericks. Russell died in 2003, but his personality dominates the film. A devoted student of baseball, Russell fell hard for the game as a kid, eventually becoming “peanut smuggler” and unofficial rabbit’s foot to a classic New York Yankees roster that included Lefty Gomez, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig – who gave Russell the bat used to hit the Iron Horse’s final home run.

After an injury cut his playing career short, Russell ended up in California, where he appeared in “The Magnificent Seven” and, in his own words “never solved a case” as Deputy Clem Foster on “Bonanza.” Russell’s first love and second wind, however, arrived in an opportunity to revitalize minor league baseball in Portland, Oregon, when the Triple-A Beavers franchise relocated to Spokane. “Bastards” paints a vivid picture of the Maverick tryouts, a real life variation on the ragtag assemblage of rejects, has-beens and never-weres of “Major League.” Russell’s emphasis on fun attracted characters that would have been right at home in “The Bad News Bears.” Pitcher Rob Nelson notes, “Most of the Mavericks had a little bit of a paunch. They led the league in stubble.”

Apart from the internal Mavs film footage, the Ways tap into a pair of key visual artifacts. The first is NBC’s “The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola.” During a visit to Portland, the sportscaster collected enough material for two episodes in a single day of shooting. The broadcasts gave the Mavericks national exposure. The second is Johnny Carson’s interview on “The Tonight Show” with Mavs pitcher Jim Bouton, whose controversial tell-all “Ball Four” earned the former Yankee a reputation as persona non grata. Bouton is worthy of his own feature documentary, and the interviewees in “Bastards” speak of him with great affection. Unfortunately, Bouton does not provide any new on-camera interview material for the film that bears a title he coined.

Kurt Russell, who actually played for the Mavericks, is the most famous subject interviewed for the movie, but Nelson, Jon Yoshiwara, Carren Woods, Frank Peters, Jim Swanson, and batboy Todd Field – yes, the same Oscar-nominee who directed “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” – speak with eloquence and salt to the “Maverick Miracle.” That miracle encompasses everything from the invention of Big League Chew bubble gum to the flaming broomsticks signaling “It’s a Jogarza!” when the Mavericks completed a sweep. “The Battered Bastards of Baseball” flies by with as much zip as one of Bouton’s best fastballs. You need not be a hardcore baseball fan to enjoy the ride.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Joon-ho Bong’s English-language debut “Snowpiercer” is a berserk conglomeration as likely to win a host of new fans as it is to put off some of the director’s longtime admirers. Turning on the talented Korean filmmaker’s deep understanding of screen space and the timeless cinematic allure of the locomotive, the movie is freely adapted from Jacques Lob’s post-apocalyptic graphic novel “Le Transperceneige,” published in 1982 with artwork by Jean-Marc Rochette. “Snowpiercer” is the name of the train that bears the only survivors of devastating climate change on an ice-encrusted Earth. Confined to the relative safety of the machine’s long line of cars, the remaining humans are divided into the same kind of instantly identifiable haves and have-nots symbolized by steerage-bound Jack and first class Rose in James Cameron’s “Titanic.”

Like Cameron’s film, “Snowpiercer” works partially as a disaster movie about people trapped in a massive machine, trading the hubris of the unsinkable, real-world engineering marvel for the outright fantasy of a chugging, perpetual motion choo choo. The demented idea that the shark-like Snowpiercer must forever barrel forward or die is presented with enough imagination to abet the necessary suspension of disbelief. “Snowpiercer” also makes use of the “city in a bottle” trope seen in “Logan’s Run” – especially in two key aspects: the deeply instilled fear/belief that life outside the shelter is uninhabitable, and the grim politics that population equilibrium must be maintained to protect the resources required to sustain a limited number of passengers.

Bong re-teams with Kang-ho Song and Ah-Sung Ko, assembling an ensemble that also includes Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Ewen Bremner, and Alison Pill. Swinton makes the deepest impression as Orwellian bureaucrat Mason, whose thick glasses, severe coiffure, and ghastly dentures evoke a mutant Margaret Thatcher. Her character belongs to a universe altogether different from the one inhabited by Evans’s dour revolutionary. And even though Evans is the film’s front and center lead, the father-daughter team played by Song and Ko emerges as parallel heroes. In contrast to Swinton’s outré facade, the great Song underplays his apparently drug-addicted picklock, holding back the manic energy he brought to Jee-woon Kim’s wild Sergio Leone homage “The Good, the Bad, the Weird.”

By far the most enchanting element of “Snowpiercer” arrives courtesy of the eye-popping design of each railcar the rebels breach on their way to the engine. As the hardscrabble caboose-dwellers claw their way from the tail-end ghetto to the opulent cabins reserved for the wealthy elite, Bong escalates the tension in a series of set-pieces. Unsurprisingly, the filmmaker is not stingy with the violence and mayhem, and the movie’s most memorable scenes include brute force and bloodletting. In one, we learn how the Snowpiercer’s enforcers punish some infractions by ghoulishly freezing off limbs. In another, unglued teacher Pill’s primary-school classroom erupts in what turns out to be a lesson in small arms. Despite Bong’s firmly established sci-fi tone, the sight of so much gunfire around children disturbingly calls to mind the proliferation of American school shootings.

Working with screenwriter Kelly Masterson, Bong jettisons many of Lob’s foundational plot elements, dispensing with the novel’s central relationship between a desperate prisoner and an aid worker/activist. The filmmaker runs out of steam even before the movie’s clunky final movement, a tiresome disquisition of unnecessary explanation that cannot be salvaged by the presence of the usually dependable Ed Harris. As Harris yammers on and on, justifying the ugly “necessity” of his crazy train’s fascist state while he lounges in a silk bathrobe and fries a steak, “Snowpiercer” is drained of its vitality – something that never happened during “Mother,” Bong’s superior previous feature.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Making her feature debut with an expanded adaptation of her 2009 short, Gillian Robespierre shows plenty of talent and even more promise in “Obvious Child,” a low-budget comedy attracting as much attention for its subject matter as it is for star Jenny Slate’s breakout performance. Slate plays Donna Stern, a smart, underemployed stand-up comic whose candid onstage disclosures drive away an already unfaithful boyfriend. Reeling from the lost relationship, Donna takes refuge in alcohol and an impulsive one-night stand that leads to unexpected fertilization. The plan to terminate the pregnancy is presented as Donna’s straightforward choice – rare in a genre where the full-term outcomes of “Juno” and “Knocked Up” are the standard.

Robespierre has expressed frustration at the way the movie has been labeled online and in print, stating in a “Variety” interview with Brent Lang that “journalists have used the shorthand ‘abortion comedy,’ but that makes it feel small.” Even so, Donna’s decision becomes the motivating issue in the organization of the film’s narrative chronology, climax, and denouement. Abortion has not been entirely foreign to comedies, satires, and comedy-dramas. “The Last American Virgin” (and “Eskimo Limon,” the hugely popular Israeli movie upon which it was based), “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Citizen Ruth,” “Dogma,” and “Palindromes” all dealt to varying degrees with a topic that industry self-censorship organizations had for years discouraged even mentioning.

As explored by Eve Kushner, Lauren Rosewarne, and many others, the most common abortion trope in popular film is not the depiction of a sympathetic protagonist who chooses the procedure. It is instead the firmly established narrative precedent that “Good Girls Avoid Abortion,” the very name bestowed on the convention in the TV Tropes wiki article on the topic. In two separate “Slate” pieces, Roxanne Khamsi and Amanda Hess note the disproportionate number of TV and movie characters who die as a result of choosing abortion. Historically, the overwhelming majority of screen characters who discover an unplanned pregnancy opt against abortion.

Anti-choice viewers will find little to like about Slate’s Donna, whose sense of humor also reveals monumental irreverence about the “human vagina” and its impact on undergarments. The character’s scatological obsession sustains multiple fart and poop jokes. Some gags, like the accidental flatulence that earns one character the nickname “pee farter,” are funnier than others. The screenplay depends on a few contrivances that stretch credulity and would feel more at home in a duller, less imaginative universe. My vote for the worst scene is the revelation that one-night stand Max is a student of Donna’s mother. Max returns a book to her home when Donna happens to be visiting.

Robespierre squeezes every pretty penny out of the licensing fee paid for the Paul Simon song that also gives the movie its title. Featured prominently in the trailer and more than once in the feature itself, “The Obvious Child” underscores one of the best sloppy/goofy underwear dance scenes since Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst cavorted in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” While some have speculated on the title song’s meaning in relation to Donna’s pregnancy, the track certainly works as an allusion to the main character’s arrested development and slacker status. No matter what the interpretation, the propulsive, infectious batucada pounded out by Simon’s Bahian collaborators Olodum on the opening tune from “The Rhythm of the Saints” is an inspired selection.