Film Review: Super/Man - The Christopher Reeve Story

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

This was one of the most moving documentaries I have seen.

Full disclosure: this movie may have hit me emotionally because of two very personal reasons:

The first is that I have emotional connection to Christopher Reeve.  When I was a boy, one of my first memories was watching him fly as Superman.  He embodied to me everything that I would come to idealize in the heroic figure.  He became to template against which all future heroes on screen would be judged and he loomed large in my imagination.

The second reason is that about ten years ago I broke my back and I had to learn to walk again.  Watching Reeve struggle on screen made me have flashbacks to all the tumultuous feelings I had during that time.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a documentary examining the life of the Superman actor who endured a tragic spinal chord injury that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life.  The movie centers around this event, but it jumps back and forth in time to Reeves early life, career, and his time playing the iconic Man of Steel.  It then spent the last half of the movie documenting Reeve's heroic struggle to continue on.

One of the wise things that this documentary did was that it did not fall into the trap of being an hagiographic account of Reeve's life.  While it never portrays him as some kind villain, the movie makes sure to point out the flaws in his character.  We can see the pain in his adult children's faces when they talk about how Reeve moved on quickly from their mother to marry Dana Reeve.  None of this is presented as judgment or condemnation.  Instead, it gives us a very nuanced and human look at this man who appeared larger than life.

The movie jumps across time from before the accident to after.  It creates an odd sense of dread and anticipation as we approach the moment of his injury.

What follows is a touching story of love, hope, and resilience.  Reeve has placed such an emphasize on the physicality of his life, whether it was in acting or sports.  At one point he suggested to his wife that they let him go.  She then said the words Reeve said saved his life: "You're still you and I love you."

There was something so pure and beautiful in that statement.  Most of us, especially men, define our worth by our actions.  I remember when I broke my back, I felt like a failure as a man because my wife had to take care of me.  Of course, like Dana Reeve, my wife reminded me that my value to her was not based on what I could do.  It was based on who I am.

Watching this documentary, you can see the very sad and harsh new realities that Reeves had to endure.  But as the troubles mounted, my respect for him grew.  You could see how he was loved and admired, especially by his friend Robin Williams.  The movie is not a fairy tale.  For every step forward, there were steps back both physically and emotionally.

My biggest critique of the movie is that it sometimes veered into the political.  It is true that Reeves was a political activist, so this is absolutely appropriate to follow.  But whenever it entered this arena, the movie felt a little less like a narrative and more like a political ad.  They also wade a bit into other controversial areas like Reeve and his view of religion.  

In the end, Christopher and Dana Reeve were just two ordinary, flawed people who encountered a horrible tragedy.  What they discovered, and what they showed the world, was that sometimes choosing to live can be the most heroic thing of all.

New Evangelizers Post: A Conversation About the Virgin Birth that Really Was

         

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

Just in time for Christians all over the world to celebrate the birth of Our Savior, the New York Times published an article titled “A Conversation About the Virgin Birth that Maybe Wasn’t”

The purpose of the article was quite clear: an attempt to insult and undermind the faith of billions of Christians around the world.

Part of me is almost flattered by this attack. If Christianity were not a real threat to the powers of the world, then such a coordinated attack in the largest American newspaper of record would not have occured. Christians must be doing something right if the world finds us so noxious that they try to debunk us (albeit very innefectively).

However, this attack also shows a cowardice on the part of those in power. As others have pointed out, what other religion would be so brazenly attacked on the eve of one their holiest days? Knowing that Christians tend not to respond in violence (as always there are sad exceptions to this), it feels very much like the actions of a bully.

The article was not aimed at believers, but at people outside of the faith. We can tell this because the article pretty much dismisses the Biblical accounts outright. As Christians, we accept the Gospels as God’s Word, free from error. To be sure, the Gospels are not written the way we do modern history. But Bible scholars like Fr. Raymond Brown as well as Pope Benedict XVI have pointed out that the historical content of the four Gospels is rich and reliable.

Both Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ Virgin Birth. The New York Times article diminishes their historicity by saying that these two Gospels were written after the Gospel of Mark, which does not mention the Virgin Birth. Even if you accept this chronology, this proves nothing. Mark’s Gospel is incredibly brief and he begins his account with Jesus’ baptism. All four Gospels agree that this moment with John the Baptist begins Christ’s public ministry. Keep in mind people in the ancient world were not as intersted in the childhoods of great men. Modern people, because of the effect of Freudian psychology, draw a strong thread between our childhood experience and our adult personalities. The ancients really didn’t think this way. So it would be perfectly understandable for both Mark and John to skip Jesus’ childhood.

Dismissing the historicity of Matthew and Luke makes little sense. The Gospel of Matthew has often been attributed to the Apostle, who would have been an eyewitness. While this is never explicitly said in the text, the early Church Fathers are very clear about this. But Luke makes explicitly clear that his Gospel is based on eyewitness accounts. When you realize this, then the rest of the attacks on the Virgin Birth in this article seem completely ridiculous.

The source of attacks on the Virgin Birth come from two sources. The first is Celsus. He was a pagan enemy of the Christian faith who was writing in the 2nd Century. The other is from the Talmud, which also written hundreds of years after Jesus’ earthly life. Both Celsus and the Talmud had a vested interest in debunking Christianity (which means they share an affinity with the New York Times, come to think of it). But even if we ignore this, Matthew and Luke have a much stronger claim to historicity. The two Gospels were were written much sooner to the event and on the basis of eyewitness accounts.

Even the alternate fable that was concocted by Christianity’s detractors feels fabricated. Here, it is said that Jesus is the son of a Roman soldier named “Pantera.” Not only was this a fairly common name at this time, but scholars have pointed out that this is clearly play on words meant to mock the faith. The Greek word for “Virgin” is “Parthenos.” So Christianity’s detractors could say that Jesus was not “Son of Parthenos” but “Son of Pantera.” This is like the child visiting Dunder-Mifflin in The Office who makes fun of Dwight Schrutte by calling him “Mr. Poop.”

You can read the whole article here.

Sunday Worst: Bizarro Awards 2024

 My good friend the Doctor said that I should do a parallel list to my Kal-El Awards that reflect to worst in pop culture from the year.  He suggested that I call them the "Lenny Luthors" after the horrible Jon Cryer character from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.  The rational for choosing Lenny was that "he is terrible in every way that Superman is awesome."

I liked the idea, but I thought instead of Lenny Luthor we would name the awards after the true opposite of Superman:

Bizarro.

Bizarro is the anti-Superman, literally.  He even maintains speech patterns that are the opposite of what he means.  "Good-bye, me am not Bizarro.  Me like you!  Live!"  said by Bizarro actually means "Hello, I am Bizarro.  I hate you! Die!"

So since Superman is my mark of excellence.  Bizarro will be my mark of utter awfulness.   Unlike the Kal-El awards, these will be focused mostly on movies.  The reason is that serialized work like television and comics require a longer time commitment in order to understand the material.  You may have to watch a show or read a comic for several months before you discover if it is truly bad or good.  It took me a few episodes to understand the logic behind Vincent D'Onofrio's performance in Daredevil.  The investment of time and/or money also precludes a lot of unnecessary sampling, so my exposure to bad material is a bit less.

With a movie, you can have a complete understanding of the product after 90-180 minutes.  So I only have two TV categories:


-Worst TV Show I Stopped Watching
-Worst TV Show I Still Watch

In both of these cases I will be giving my critical condemnation of shows about which I have some significant experience and thus have a basis for calling them critical failures


So now, here are the Bizarro Awards for movies this past year.  (based on the movies I have seen).


WORST MOVIE

The Bikeriders

From my review:

The main reason for this movie's failure is that it could not convey to me why anyone would want to be a part of the Vandals.  The initial appeal seems to be the appeal of riding.  There is one small scene where Benny leads the police on a chase and revels in the open road.  But this moment is fleeting and it does not translate to the other members.  Instead, it all seems like a waste of time.

...

The constant problem is the Nichols ignores the principle "show, don't tell."  Johnny wants to be just like Benny.  How do we know this?  Because we have a scene where Johnny decides to behave in a way that mirrors something he saw Benny do?  No.  Because Kathy says, "Johnny wanted to be just like Benny."  The movie is filled with these moments where it tells you what the characters are thinking or feeling instead of just showing us.

The story of these bikers is an exploration of their search for masculinity.  That's why it so baffling that the main way we see the story is through Kathy's eyes.  Perhaps the idea is that she is experiencing this macho culture from the outside.  But she always on the outside.  If the story was told from the point of view of someone joining the club, that would be more interesting.  It also doesn't help that Comer narrates the story with the tone of a busybody church lady spreading the latest gossip about the new parishioners.  

One of the central conflicts is Johnny's desire to have Benny take over the club, but Benny resisting any kind of responsibility.  Again, the drama is lost because the stakes do not seem valuable.  During these dialogues, all I could here was Johnny Cash singing, "You can have it all... my empire of dirt."

TOP TEN WORST MOVIES

10. Role Play

9. Wolfs

8. The Instigators

7. The Idea of You

6. Here

5. The Killer's Game

4. The Garfield Movie

3. Conclave

2. Saturday Night

1. The Bikeriders

WORST ACTOR

Paul Bettany - Here

From my review:

"One of the things that struck me was that despite having a stellar cast, the performances were generally very poor.  This is especially the case with Bettany, but everyone seems to be going just a little too over-the-top and giving performances that lack the realism that this movie needs.  I found this very odd considering the fact that most of the actors are skilled veterans.  My guess would be that because the camera never moves, so much of the movie lacks close-ups.  As a result the actors resorted to more theatrical performances, where they played their words and actions bigger as if they were on stage.  Unfortunately, this does not translate onto film."

In Bettany's case particularly, his character arc required a great deal of seething subtlety and nuance, but the style of the movie prevented him from doing a lot of that intimate character work onscreen.  As a result, his performance seems way more artificial than he is capable of giving.

WORST ACTRESS

Ariana Grande - Wicked

From my review:

In my reviews, I try not to be too targeted at individuals.  But Grande is so mind-bogglingly awful in this movie that it gnaws at me.  Her presence is like diced onion in your ice cream sundae.  She is a spray-bottle of water to the face.  She is out-shined, out-classed, and out-acted in every scene.

Her body language, dancing, and singing are fine.  But her acting is some of the worst I have seen in a movie.  She is completely dead-behind-the-eyes.  Perhaps that's what she was going for with playing Galinda as vacuous and vapid.  But all of that artificiality is supposed to cover a real beating heart, which isn't there.  It's like everyone else is making a movie and she is filming a music video: everything is all surface.  Take a look at the moment she finds out she is rooming with Elphaba.  When I saw that, all I could think of was Quint from Jaws: she's "got lifeless eyes, like a doll's eyes..."  Contrast her performance with Margot Robbie's in Barbie.  In that film, Robbie was playing a literal doll, but she still managed to infuse her with way more depth and humanity that any single moment from Grande.

Honestly, Grande almost ruins the movie.  But Erivo so knocks it out of the park that she keeps the movie going.  Grande's broad, empty performance actually fits into the first third of the movie's tone.  Most of the students at Shiz University feel like flat stereotypes.  You can see this in Bowen Yang's equally horrible performance.  Granted that I enjoy stories that go from the light and fun to the deep and tragic, but if it wasn't for Erivo, I think I may have tuned out the entire first third of the movie.

WORST DIRECTOR

Jeff Nichols- The Bikeriders

As I mentioned above, the movie fails primarily in its ability to convey anything desirable about motorcycle culture.  It doesn't let us see the appeal in any way.  And if you don't do that, then nothing else about the movie matters.  There are a lot of problems with the screenplay, but this would have been a place where the director could have transcended the words on the page and given us a visceral experience that would have hooked us.  

Nichols did not do this.

WORST SCREENPLAY

Jeff Nichols, Danny Lion - The Bikeriders

 (See the above on WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR)

MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE

Saturday Night

You would think that the movie Conclave would get this award.  That movie, after all, is a highly politicized, post-modern view of the papal elections where faith and God are almost irrelevant to the story.  The makers of that movie were clearly not fans of the Catholic Church.

But the movie that is the most anti-Christian is Saturday Night.

As I wrote in my review:

In the movie, writer Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) is upset that the network censor, who is a Christian, is cutting the vulgarity from the live broadcast.  When they confront each other, he says, "Hey you want to hear a joke?"  He then proceeds to say the most blasphemous joke I have ever heard in a film (which I will not repeat on this blog).

I want to say a few things about this.  The joke was not targeted at the Christian woman's uptightness or judgmentality.  It was not directed at her being out of date or close-minded.  If it had been either case, I may not have liked the joke, but it wouldn't have felt offended.

The joke was directed directly at God and said of Him things so horrid that it made my stomach turn.  We Christians are just as fallible and full of foibles as anyone else.  We are fair targets for mockery over our shortcomings.  But this joke was not targeted us,  It was targeted at Him.

I also want to be clear that this joke was not told with any kind of jovialness or friendly leg-pulling.  One of the advantages to being a comedian is that you can make fun of sacred cows and people will laugh along.  I find Monty Python's The Life of Brian to be blasphemous, which is why I will not watch it again.  But even here, I felt like they were taking aim at the faith not with a particular axe to grind, but instead treated the religious subject like they treat anything else.  It is the same with the blasphemous humor of South Park.  I think it is wrong, but I don't bear any ill will towards the creators because they treat everyone with their irreverent satire.

You can even say this about more pointed anti-religious humor as with Ricky Gervais.  Granted I haven't listened to all of his stand up, but he clearly goes after Christianity with jokes like, "Unlike Jesus, I actually showed up."  I bristle at how this joke insults the love of God.  But for some reason I don't get angry at Gervais.  The joke comes off not as an attack.  Instead, he is putting out his atheist point-of-view in a tongue-in-cheek way.  You may disagree with me and I respect that.  But while Gervais speaks things I disagree with, I never felt like he wanted to be my enemy.

Saturday Night wants to be my enemy.

That joke was done in the most mean-spirited way imaginable.  And it was done with the tone of the cool kids bullying the one who is not of their group.  The joke was a line in the sand where they said: "Do you believe in Jesus?  Then stay on your side of the line.  We don't want you over here.  We hate you."  It was done specifically to injure, not enlighten.  It was done to cause pain, not laughter (except maybe the haughty laughter of the bully).

And there was no narrative balance, no introspection that a line had been crossed.  This is something done in other parts of the film.  In the first half of the movie, Aykroyd is constantly hitting on the female members of the cast and crew in clearly objectifying ways.  But later in the movie, he rehearses as skit where the tables are turned and he is made to feel uncomfortable.  This gives narrative and thematic balance and resolution to the events of the movie in a way that the blasphemous joke did not.

And that mean-spirited tone is directed at beloved icons like Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who is relentlessly bullied by the cast and crew or Johnny Carson (Jeff Witzke) who is portrayed as a vulgar narcissist.  

Now, I know I did not give the specifics of the joke and you are free to think that I am a super zealous Catholic who is overreacting to a bit of humor.  I will leave that up to you.  All I can do is give you my honest reaction to what I was presented with.

From that point on in the movie, I was sour on everyone.  While I could understand the characters' dreams and frustrations, their horrid morality remained on full display.  

Throughout the movie, Michaels kept talking about wanting to start a cultural revolution on television.  They were revolting from all the traditions that came before.

I don't know if this movie captures a revolution.  But it certainly was revolting.

MOST MORALLY OFFENSIVE

Saturday Night

(see MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE)

WORST TV SHOW I STOPPED WATCHING

Doctor Odyssey

I wanted to like this show.  It seemed a strange confluence between ER and The Love Boat.  And it had a very likable cast in Joshua Jackson, Philippa Soo, and Don Johnson.  

But the show was just... gross!

And I don't mean in the normal, morally vacuous way (although there was plenty of that too).  It was gross in the presentation of the the stories in ways that were so offputing.  The phrase "warts and all" took on a whole new meaning in an episode where there is a single's cruise and VD is running rampant.  

After a few episodes, I couldn't take it anymore.

WORST SHOW I STILL WATCH

The Acolyte

Technically, The Acolyte is cancelled, but I watched it all the way to the end. 

As I wrote in my review SPOILERS BELOW:

  

If the story was meant to show the evil of the Jedi, it mostly failed.  Yes, they act unwisely and impulsively, but based on everything I witnesssed, everything they did was totally understandable.  The Jedi are on the front lines of conflict in the galaxy.  Tragedies like this will happen.  But the solution is to take responsibility the way Sol wanted to.  The greatest moral failing was the collective lie.  That's why it makes no sense for Torbin to drink the poison in episode two.  He bears some responsibility to be sure, but he is not a pure villain.

But this brings us to the final episode.

Sol brings Mae to her homeworld.  She tries to escape and Sol almost kills her but is stopped by Bazil.  Once again, it makes no sense of Sol to try and kill her at this moment.  He wants to bring Mae and Osha together to prove to the council that there is a vergence.  When on the planet he tries to find Mae.  Meanwhile, Osha and the Stranger arrive.  Osha confronts Mae, where Mae tells Osha about Sol killing Aniseya.  The Stranger confronts Sol, where Sol denies that he did anything wrong.  Again, this is completely inconsistent with the previous episode where Sol understood how he failed and wanted to take responsibility before the Council.  You could argue that he changed over time, but that is not what he has been implying since the beginning of the show.  The lightsaber fight was engaging.  The Osha/Mae fight was not.  Stenberg's emotional catharsis just didnt register as true.

Finally, Osha confronts Sol about killing Aniseya.  Sol confesses and about to say he did it because he loves Osha.  But Osha force-chokes him to death.  As she brings him to his knees, he tears up and says to her "It's okay."  He consents to his own murder.

A few things about this moment.  I knew that Sol was going to die in this episode.  Because of his actions, he needed to pay a price for his actions in the previous episode.  While Sol was not a complete villain, justice required him to atone.  I don't really have a problem with that.  The problem is how disgusting a scene it was.  If Osha had, in a fit of rage, stabbed Sol with her saber like Kylo Ren did to Han, that would not only be more understandable, but it would be symmetrical wot Sol killing Aniseya.  But to slowly choke him to death is cruel, intimate, and evil.  

If the episode had ended here are soon after, I may not have been as disgusted.  But following this, Mae, Osha, and the Stranger flee the Jedi.  Osha agrees to become an apprentice to the Stranger, but Mae's memory has to be wiped and the twins have to part.  (By the way, there some revelation about the twins not being twins but two halfs of the same person.  This plot point never develops into anything interesting or significant that I actually forgot about it until now).  We are then treated to a tearful goodbye between the twins.  But here is the problem:

I DON'T CARE ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS!  THEY ARE ALL MURDERERS.

Sol killed Aniseya, but he acted out of ignorance.  He is not a murderer.

Indara killed all the other witches to save Kelnacca from being possesed.  She is not a murderer.

Mae, the Stranger, and Osha all acted in deliberate cold blood.  The show wanted me to feel something for their emotional pain at being separated again.  Boo-frickin'-hoo.

Once Anakin kills Mace Windu (and definitely when he kills the Younglings), he is a murderer.  He is the villain of the story and while I feel his tragedy, I lose sympathy for him.  Or to use a closer analogy, in Captain America: Civil War, Iron Man tries to kill Bucky because he finds out the he murdered his mother.  That primal rage is understandble, as Osha's would be.  But the movie was smart enough to not let Tony kill him.  If he had, Iron Man would have become a villain.  Once Osha murders Sol, she loses all audience good will.  

And she expresses no guilt or anguish.  Even Anakin expressed heartache over his early murders.  In fact, her last scene shows her smirking as she embraces the Stranger's hand.  

Master Vernestra frames Sol for all of the murders to spare the Jedi's reputation.  This avoids any continuity errors with the Jedi not knowing about the Sith in The Phantom Menace.

Like I said, every time I think of the show, I am filled with disgust.  Depite interesting plot points and some cool lightsaber fights, it was wrapped in poor passing and mostly poor performances (except for Jung-Jae and Jacinto).  They miss the mark at most turns.  Affection comes off as creepy obsession.  Righteous anger comes off as murderous evil.  

The themes are as ugly as the execution.  There is a moral relativism at play where Osha self-actualizes by embracing her rage and murdering the closest person she has to a father.  We are left with a too-long story that leads our main character into utter darkness.

And unlike the end of Revenge of the Sith, there is no New Hope.

Thoughts?