Chance's Corner: Ghostbusters Review

Boy, oh boy. Girl, oh girl. The new, gender-bending Ghostbusters really started off rough. A mansion tour guide spouts off several lame lines, and I'm as stone-faced as his tour group. One EVP fart and a gallon of ghost vomit later, and I'm still struggling to smile. All that hate circling the internet before the movie even came out seemed to have some merit.

Leslie Jones

However, somewhere along the way, Ghostbusters started to have a few moments - moments where I cracked a smile and some charm oozed. These moments were all mostly in the second act when the crew was assembled. Leslie Jones was probably my favorite of the crew, despite the tokenism of her character. Director Paul Feig wants to make a movie that promotes representation, but he stumbles into the very same pitfall he's trying to cover up. Why couldn't Leslie Jones be a scientist and Melissa McCarthy be a subway worker?

Also, Chris Hemsworth is a handsome, solidly-built devil (the movie beats you over the head with this fact), but his dumb blonde shtick was... dumb. Sure, Feig was using Hemsworth to lash out at a dumb blonde female stereotype, but he's lashing out in the wrong movie. Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver represented strong, independent women in the original Ghostbusters, not women reduced to lame my cat/Mike Hat jokes.

Good grief, I started off complimenting the movie and ended up ranting. I might as well keep going. The villain is lame and underdeveloped, the obvious ad-libbing is truly dreadful, the Fall Out Boy version of the Ghostbusters theme is an abomination, and the climatic battle during the third act feels like it was just thrown together.

Whew, it sounds like I'm completely trashing it. Look, it's an okay movie, alright? Like I said, it has moments. That's all I can give it. 

Ghostbusters is now available at the Franklin County Library!

Poet's Perch : New Friends and Old Friends by Joseph Parry

New Friends and Old Friends

Make new friends, but keep the old;

Those are silver, these are gold.

New-made friendships, like new wine,

Age will mellow and refine.

Friendships that have stood the test - 

Time and change - are surely best;

Brow may wrinkle, hair grow gray,

Friendship never knows decay.

For 'mid old friends, tried and true,

Once more we our youth renew.

But old friends, alas! may die,

New friends must their place supply.

Cherish friendship in your breast - 

New is good, but old is best;

Make new friends, but keep the old;

Those are silver, these are gold

Joseph Parry

Tom's Two Cents : Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett's new novel, "Commonwealth," is the story of two modern families in crisis--the result of a divorce in each family that affects six children.  Franny, the younger in one family, has just been christened when the novel begins, and Albee, the youngest of four in the other family, is yet to be born.  A stolen kiss and immediate electric shock (a bit dorky, it seems to me) between Franny's beautiful mother, Beverly, and Bert Cousins, an uninvited guest at the christening party, starts the whole ball rolling, but the story is much less about them or their respective spouses than it is about Cal, Holly, Jeanette, and Albee; Caroline and Franny.  In the best modern tradition, the story of the developing lives of these six children hops, skips, and jumps all over the place, as this old reader, anyway, tries desperately to keep them straight.

Actually Franny Keating carries the greater part of the story.  An engaging, yet perplexing law school dropout, she is a cocktail waitress in Chicago at the famous Palmer House, when she accidentally meets Leonard Posen, a famous author, and later begins an affair with him that more or less dominates the middle part of the book.  I say "more or less," because it seems to me that Patchett is quite determined not to linger too long over any one story line.  Just when one thinks she is finally focusing on one of her many possible protagonists, she is off to another, and usually somewhere in the confusing middle of their story.  Things get really complicated when some of the children marry and have children of their own, while others simply go off the beam, or, in one case, mysteriously die.

Patchett is too facile a writer to induce such a wandering plot accidentally, so I will conclude that it's her deliberate intention to do so, to express her dismay over how six children's lives are so affected by what appears to be a random, romantic moment in the lives of the father of one set and the mother of the other set.  At times both sets of children "hate" their parents, but not each other.  They are too caught up in the dynamics of trying to become one of those increasingly modern things: a "blended" family. 

This book is nothing like Patchett's "Bel Canto" or the more recent "State of Wonder."  We are forever in the less than exotic settings of the modern states of Virginia and California, where one can literally pick the oranges off the trees.  Oranges are, in fact, a predominant motif in the book, and a very prominent part of the dust jacket.  A symbol, you ask?  Certainly!  But I will leave it to you to figure that one out.

Chance's Corner: Hunt for the Wilderpeople Review

Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is a bad egg. We're talking disobedience, stealing, spitting, running away, throwing rocks, kicking stuff, loitering and graffiti. No one seems to want to deal with him anymore, until Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her rugged husband, Hec (Sam Neill), take him in.

At first, Ricky is put off by Bella's eagerness and Hec's "reserved" nature, but with a little care and understanding it all seems to work out. However, as fate would have it, tragedy strikes, and Ricky's future with his new family is put in jeopardy. So Ricky does what he does best. He runs away. Okay, maybe he's not so good at it, especially in the New Zealand bush, but he just might make it back home with a little help from Uncle Hec.

Unfortunately, Paula (Rachel House) of child services is on their tail under the assumption that Hec has kidnapped Ricky. In her mind, she is the Terminator, and Ricky is Sarah Connor... from the first movie... before she could do chin-ups. Interesting outlook, but Paula fails to stop and ask herself if she is the Terminator sent to kill or save Sarah Connor.

Okay, that may sound a little kooky, but there is a genuine sense of style, substance and soul in Hunt for the Wilderpeople that I haven't seen in awhile. Director Taika Waititi pulls off perfect direction, characters, humor, quirkiness and emotional resonance. Although Sam Neill and Julian Dennison seem like an unlikely duo, they are truly phenomenal together. The generation gap between them collides and congeals in the New Zealand bush and creates a real gangsta's paradise.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is now available at the Franklin County Library!