Tag: Dennis Quaid

REAGAN: THE DEFEAT OF SCREWTAPE

 

SHORT TAKE: Historically accurate bio-drama about the life of President Ronald Reagan, his enduring love affair with his wife, Nancy, and his heroic decades long fight to root out Communism in our country and around the world.

LONG TAKE: Loving but honest, Reagan, based on Paul Kengor’s novel: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, is a tribute to Ronald Reagan, the man Rush Limbaugh referred to as Ronaldus Magnus, the man tied with Donald Trump for the best president we’ve have since our founding fathers. And it is a gem. It begins March 30, 1981, the infamous day outside of the Washington Hilton, when he and some of his retinue were shot by an attempted assassin, much like Donald Trump was so targeted July 13, 2024. That is only the beginning of the parallels between Trump and the story told in Reagan.

Dennis Quaid does a delightful turn as the eponymous Leader of the Free World, gently and respectfully portraying Reagan, the man as well as the statesman. Quaid naturally conveys Reagan’s personality, from his sense of humor under pressure to his contagious and confident air of authority in negotiation, as well as his Christian strength in recognizing and accepting the Hand of God in both his own victories and defeats. (One minor piccadillo – I thought the too-heavy makeup, prosthetics and CGI was a little distracting at first. But Quaid’s performance is excellent and effortlessly created the magic of suspension of disbelief with his acting alone.)

Reagan’s courage and wit are on clear display after his attempted assassination, as he tries to comfort his wife, Nancy (played with gentle and loving enthusiasm by Penelope Ann Miller) and crack jokes with his surgical team. It is also demonstrated how more civilized our country was at the time, as the worldwide sentiment was towards Reagan and his recovery, instead of today’s vicious media which made no effort to hide their childish animosity towards Trump despite his injury and the death of one of Trump’s supporters.

Assuming it is true, I was surprised to learn that even one of Reagan’s staunchest political enemies “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., Democrat Speaker of the House, prayed the rosary at Reagan’s bedside.

Reagan spent the majority of his adult life going head to head against the corruption of Communism infiltrating Washington and Hollywood, which then as now, sought to destroy the foundations of America. Similarly, today, Donald Trump has faced, during his political tenure, a resurgence of this corruption. (Though Trump’s job is harder given that the cancer of Marxism has been allowed to eat far more deeply and into many more establishment institutions.)

Then the movie cleverly takes a peculiar turn, landing us in the present at the apartment of Viktor Petrovich, (Jon Voight) an elderly, weary, and worn KGB agent, who spends the rest of the movie explaining to a bemused Russian agent, Andrei Novikov (Alex Sparrow) how Reagan single-handedly managed to bring down the Soviet Union.

The rest of this solid pic follows the many highlights of Reagan’s political and personal life, as seen through the eyes of this KGB agent, previously assigned to watch and outmaneuver Reagan, a task which constantly was always just out of Petrovich’s grasp.

And in the midst of his battles Reagan meets and marries the love of his life, his devoted consort battleship (as Henry Higgins might have put it), Nancy Davis Reagan. They become inseparable as Reagan becomes the governor of California then President of the United States.

Petrovich regales to Novikov how the Soviets harried and spied on Reagan. How, despite constant attempts to aid his Soviet superiors in stopping Reagan from stopping them, nothing worked – not threats, not unrest fomented on Reagan’s political doorsteps, not the assail of Democrats and the convenient idiots for the Communists who surrounded Reagan. Not well meaning but lesser committed allies who unintentionally gave Reagan bad advice. Not sabotage nor betrayal by the Communist sympathetic media who caricatured him, deliberately misrepresented his economic proposals, and warped the image of his negotiations. Not the Berlin Wall nor assassination attempts. Reagan out plans, out negotiates, out spends, outmaneuvers, out charms and in the end…simply wears the Soviets out until they have no choice but to capitulate to this “American Cowboy,” who forced them to “tear down that wall”. (Referring to the Berlin Wall which separated with mortal violence the prosperous West Berlin, the latter of which was oft called the “Island of Freedom,” from the Soviet oppressed East Berlin for 28 years. Many unarmed men and women, merely seeking to be free in their own country, were shot trying to cross over the massive concrete barbed barrier. The tearing down of this bloodied Wall signaled the beginning of the end to Soviet supremacy in Russia.)

You almost feel sorry for Petrovich – this beaten and bemused failed information gatherer. Although he accurately lays out all the information to this junior leaguer, he never quite seems to comprehend just what it was that enabled Ronald Reagan, against odds, threats to his life, the might of the Soviet Union, and opposition from his own countrymen (then and now the Democrats and RINOs), to defeat one of the most powerful Marxist countries in the world.

So we become privy, at the most pivotal times of Reagan’s life, to the Angel at his side, as well as the Devil at his back.

The Screwtape Letters, by the brilliant CS Lewis, is a creepily whimsical tale of an elder statesman demon, Screwtape, tutoring his nephew and apprentice demon, Wormwood, on the fine art of corrupting a soul. Wormwood has a “patient” who eventually, to Screwtape’s frustration and Wormwood’s destruction, converts to Christianity, is supported in his faith by the love of a good woman, and defeats both Screwtape and Wormwood by never succumbing to the multitude of temptations and terrors laid before him. And it occurred to me that Reagan, in concept, is a modern day successor to The Screwtape Letters, if it were set after Screwtape’s defeat, as we listen to the old demon Petrovich commiserate with the younger replacement apprentice demon, Novikov, as they vainly try to comprehend how they lost to Reagan. Wormwood was absorbed by Screwtape as the penalty for failing to corrupt their “patient”. Correspondingly, who knows HOW many Wormwoods were “disappeared” by the Soviet apparatchiks for failing to stop Reagan.

Ironically, Petrovich misses the obvious. While Petrovich amasses voluminous amounts of information and knowledge about Reagan, he seems to have acquired very little wisdom. Reagan won and protected America’s greatness because he was a man of faith, fortitude and commitment, who loved his wife, his fellow man, and his country more than himself and would…not…quit.

But as you can read in Eccleiastes 1:9 – “There is no new thing under the sun.” It is easy to see the parallels to today’s headlines as President Trump faces similar demonic opposition in the Woke, pro-Communist, pro-death, anti-Western culture so prevalent in our media, entertainment and elite entrenched political swamp. Trump, as did Reagan, is combating similar forces of evil who seek to destroy our country and erase our Judeo-Christian heritage.

And just as it is beyond the comprehension of Petrovich, the modern day Screwtape, to understand how one man’s faith and love can overcome impossible odds, the Swamp we face today will not likely understand why this movie will resonant with the vast majority of Americans who, like the East Berliners, seek only to be free in their own country, or how and why Reagan’s successor in valor, Trump, will not stop until our beloved country’s citizens are free to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

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MIDWAY GOES ALL THE WAY

SHORT TAKE:

Inspiring reenactment of the days before and of the watershed Battle of Midway during World War II, highlighting the selfless heroism and courageous dedication of men who committed EVERYTHING they had to fighting what  seemed to be a losing struggle with the Japanese Empire.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Mid teens and up as the violence is necessarily graphic and brutal. No sexuality but the language is occasionally rough and appropriate to the men and circumstances.

LONG TAKE:

SPOILERS!

Romans 5:7: “Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just man, though perhaps for a good man one might even find courage to die.”

We all love action heroes who put their lives on the line in extreme moments to save family or friends in desperate situations: Bruce Willis’ John McLane in the Die Hard series, Tony Stark in Endgame. Even the disaster “B” movies like Skyscraper and The Poseidon Adventure can be guilty pleasures, admiring (pretend) courage in the face of the (manufactured) crisis.

Now imagine HUNDREDS of these types of everymen, volunteers or drafted, trained certainly but no superheroes. But this was real. These men had real families and lives. The pain, the terror, the disfiguring injuries and sudden young deaths, the gut wrenching grief left behind, HAPPENED to people your grandparents knew – or TO your grandparents. Your own family histories, photos, private letters, and stories told at family gatherings are probably rife with tales of loss and sacrifice of young men who left everything behind, including their youth and many their lives, to protect their country and families.

The story of Midway begins on a warm December in Hawaii, where people planning outdoor church services and picnics with their families, are suddenly faced with split-second life changing and life losing decisions when, without  warning, planes tore out of the sky shooting at  friends and crewmates, ripping them to pieces. Few would have blamed any who froze or ran, but hundreds of these men seized the nearest weapon to shoot back, some hopelessly trying to simply buy time for others to reach safety, while the vessel they were on broke, sank or burned in brutish apocalyptic Hellscapes of screaming and smoke and explosions, with no possibility of escape.

That was Pearl Harbor and the movie Midway examines the fallout from this cataclysmic event and the eponymous Battle for our lives that followed in Pearl’s wake. The Battle of Midway was the determiner whether the war would continue to be fought out in the ocean and around Japan and Europe or whether it would make its way to the shores of continental USA and be prolonged, possibly for decades.

Midway tells the story of the men who, at Pearl and during the Midway Battle, followed Christ’s example, willingly offering up their lives for their fellow countrymen regardless of who they were, knowing only that they were in desperate danger.

All of the acting choices were inspired, the indigenous accents of the people being portrayed understated and realistic.

Woody Harrelson (2012, Zombieland, The Glass Castle) is the perfect Charles W. Nimitz, bringing his familiar wary self confidence to this real life seasoned soldier, agonizingly cognizant he is in the fight of his country’s life.

Dennis Quaid (Frequency, A Dog’s Purpose, The Alamo) is the growly fire hydrant shaped tough guy William “Bull” Halsey who leads from the front.

Patrick Wilson, (The Alamo, Phantom of the Opera) whose talents have been grotesquely underused in the fright flick Conjuring franchise, comes into his own as the intelligence officer Edwin Layton, whose warnings leading up to Pearl had been ignored and who now was determined to put everything on the line to be sure his country was never under-prepared again.

Ed Skrein (Alita: Battle Angel, Deadpool) is the fighter pilot Dick Best, who put his country’s freedom and his fellow patriots before any consideration for his own personal safety.

Aaron Eckhart (Batman: Dark Knight, White House Down) is Jimmy Doolittle who led the potential suicide mission into the never-before attacked Tokyo to strike a morale blow for America.

Nick Jonas (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) is Bruno Gaido, whose calmly philosophical personality and selfless heroism are brought to light on the screen.

Luke Evans (Hobbit trilogy, steam punk Three Musketeers, live action Beauty and the Beast) portrays Wade McClusky, decorated air group commander whose reasoned instincts and willingness to think outside the box became critical elements in the outcome of the Midway Battle.

All these actors brought to life real heroes, instilling their performances with the respect and dignity those historic military fighters deserve.

There are no last-minute saves or inevitable wins, no cliched characters though some cast members portray composites of real people, no politically correct soft pedaling, no feminist agenda. This is historically based on the raw courage of the men who went toe to toe with a ruthless aggressor Empire, with only a handful of planes and the few patched up aircraft carriers which survived the Pearl Harbor sneak attack. These are the men who truly were the Thin Line between the west coast of America and conflagration by the Japanese Empire. The soldiers at Midway were the only thing standing between us and a brutal autocracy for whom the Geneva Convention meant nothing, and which slaughtered a quarter of a million Chinese as retribution for the aid given by a few dozen Chinese to a single American Squadron.

These men, many young and barely out of their teens, stood like the Spartans at Thermopalaye, with their homes almost in sight against an overwhelming Imperial military which would have shown no quarter, no mercy, no diplomacy and no compromise for anything west of the Rocky Mountains. Had the Japanese won at Midway there was a distinct possibility that everything from Seattle to San Diego would have burned, the citizens butchered or enslaved by the merciless occupying Japanese force, as they had done in China. As such, these desperate and disparate courageous men threw themselves against this juggernaut, with photos of their families tucked into the control panel, in planes technologically years behind the Japanese, flying missions which were often tantamount to suicide, with little regard for their own personal safety.

Writer Wes Tooke and director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Patriot) show the stark savagery with which America was confronted, bringing to unvarnished relief the raw dauntless valor required of these American heroes. Robbie Baumgartner’s (Argo, Hunger Games) cinematography puts you in the flying seats with the pilots as they dive bomb in and out of the sky, challenging the limits of human endurance against incredible G-forces to survive the onslaught of anti-aircraft coming from the Japanese ships. The soundtrack by Harold Kloser and Thomas Wander (Independence Day, 2012)  is inspirationally stirring and evocative not only of the selfless patriotism of the country behind this effort but evocative of the very plane propellers and stuttering guns which flew like under-weaponed knights against this massive Japanese dragon.

So go see this tribute to great American soldiers who stood between us and a sadistic pitiless foe, who risked and gave their lives, not only for the just, or the good, but following Christ’s example, for every man, woman and child in America. Go see it, if for no other reason, than we owe it to their memory.

 

FIRST MAN – THE WRONG STUFF

AUDIO PODCAST OPTION OF FIRST MAN REVIEW

SHORT TAKE:

Incredible acting can not save this tedious and pseudo-“reality TV show” style rewriting of history aimed at devaluing American exceptionalism, American accomplishments and American heroes.

WHO SHOULD GO:

No sexuality, a handful of mild profanities (and one quite vulgar but understandable cuss word muttered off screen by someone feeling very ill) and a lot of visually disturbing images including prolonged scenes of extremely violent shaking and people trapped in a fire in an enclosed space. Were this an accurate inspiring portrayal of the space race I’d say it was worth it, but as it is there’s really NO POINT.

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LONG TAKE:

I was 10 years old when the first man – an AMERICAN – walked on the moon. I remember it being late in the day – 9:56 pm CST to be precise – where we were, so I had my P.J.s on. And when Neil Armstrong uttered those now amazing words for the first time: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” I SAW it on TV. Then everyone in the house – Mom, Dad, my brother and sister and her fiancé all ran outside. I was barefoot, so my future brother-in-law swept me up and carried me outside with our group and we all just stood near Metairie Road, because nearer to our house the view of the sky was obstructed by trees – and we just looked and waved to Neil Armstrong. And we were not alone. People all over the WORLD cheered and cried and laughed and were simply amazed at the INCREDIBLE event that AMERICA had accomplished, putting the FIRST MAN – an AMERICAN man – on the moon.

America was the FIRST country, and to date the ONLY COUNTRY, to make an extraterrestrial manned landing, was AND IS the FIRST AND ONLY country to have a man step out ONTO  extraterrestrial property, and frankly is the FIRST and ONLY country in the world or in HISTORY to legitimately lay CLAIM to an extraterrestrial piece of land. In a fit of historic re-engineering to downplay the obvious American exceptionalism in such a feat, First Man pointedly neglected to show the planting of the American flag – a symbol as synonymous with our achievement as the image of the booted human footprint or Lieutenant Armstrong’s step off the module.

Their excuse is that they think Armstrong didn’t see himself as an American hero but that it was an accomplishment of the world…..NO! The world didn’t pay for it. The world didn’t chip in men or time or money or blood or industry or lives in plenty for our AMERICAN space program. No one but AMERICAN men died in our test planes and shots and explosions. The UN had nothing to do with it. And I don’t really care what the filmmakers think Armstrong’s opinion was. This was ENTIRELY an American adventure against which we were in competition with other countries. And even if I bought into the vacuous “world accomplishment” POV – which I do not – the fact is the flag was planted. Our AMERICAN flag was visible in places and photos where the director – Damien Chazelle – deliberately chose, in an act of sheer arrogance, to inauthentically, blatantly and unilaterally eliminate our AMERICAN flag from the picture. And yet they CLAIM to be historically accurate emphasizing its FALSE historicity with the documentary style footage. This is an affront to every man who died, to every widow who had to raise their children without one of the men who perished in a test plane or capsule, to every man, woman and child who devoted their prayers, tax money, sweat, enthusiasm and attention to this DISTINCTLY AMERICAN program.

Before I went to see First Man I had heard about this flagrant insult to the memories and sacrifices of our country. I had been concerned I would have to chide what I had been sure would be an otherwise excellent movie about the space program.

I needn’t have been concerned.

SPOILERS

There are PLENTY of other egregious flaws with First Man. Insulting the planting of the American flag by ignoring it was just one of many.

To start, however, the acting was excellent. In Claire Foy I think we’re seeing the making of a British Meryl Streep – a woman who can so artfully immerse herself in character that you don’t recognize her from one performance to the next. She is a true actor – as defined by Alan Swann in My Favorite Year when he explains in comic desperation that he is “…not an actor, I’m a MOVIE STAR!” (For more examination of this point please see the first paragraph of my blog Operation Finale). Whether the Swedish Girl in the Spider’s Web, the crazed American in Unsane, Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown or as Janet Armstrong, Foy nails it. There is a scene at the end, brilliantly performed, of almost complete silence, visually emphasizing Armstrong’s inability to connect with anyone, where Gosling and Foy say more in subtle looks and gestures than most movies do in pages of script.

Unfortunately, while Ryan Gosling is excellent too – he expends his talent creating an extremely unpleasant person.

Were I Neil Armstrong’s descendants I would be thoroughly perturbed at the portrayal of the famous astronaut in First Man. It is also just poor script writing. We all know the outcome of the story: It took years, there were a number of Gemini shots which made sure we could safely get a man into space, dock with another vehicle and return him home alive. Then Apollo 1 blew up, Apollo 11 made it to the moon and there were a number of successful Apollos in between. In order for such a pervasively well known story to work you have to care about the characters. And the Neil Armstrong in First Man is not only unlikeable, he is unapproachable. Cold, distant, unfeeling, harsh, abrasive even to his best friends, his wife and his sons, the writer chalks his personality issues down to his inability to overcome the death of his toddler daughter by brain tumor. He flees the funeral of a fellow astronaut, to run away home, without a word to his wife, ignoring the fact she is in pain as well, and leaving her, humiliated, having to beg a ride from a friend. He shuns his friend’s offers of counsel, as he stands staring into space in his backyard with: “Do you think I came out here because I wanted to talk? Do you think I left the funeral because I wanted to talk?” He not only refuses to answer his worried wife’s inquiries when he returns home bloodied and burned after an almost fatal crash, but immediately runs away claiming to have “forgotten something at the office”. Janet has to bully, berate and throw things to get him to say goodbye to his own children, for possibly the last time, before he goes to the Moon. He seems immune to the agony of his dead friend’s widow. And the flashbacks of his dead daughter, which cripple him into apathy, become redundant in their predictability at crisis moments. I’ve seen serial killers, devoid of empathy, portrayed as more emotionally engaged than poor Ryan Gosling’s Neil Armstrong. It is difficult to believe NASA would put someone so emotionally and psychologically damaged in charge of THE one and only first ever in all of human history –  moon landing.

The retro historians were out to trash an established American hero. Basically they portray Neil Armstrong as a body part reserved for proctologists. And even if this were true, the story of the First Man, who was landed on the moon by AMERICA, was NOT the place to put it. If you want a tell-all, soap opera bio pic of Neil Armstrong, then by all means, go ahead. But don’t pretend this tortured portrait of an American hero is a reflection of the American Spirit or play fast and loose with history while claiming to be accurate. Don’t make a psychologically crippled version of Neil Armstrong the center of a movie about the space race.

Either show Armstrong’s whole life warts and all or put the uplifting endeavor that was and is the AMERICAN space program in the correct light. The only reason to have it “both” ways and put it ALL in a negative light is because you wish to undermine and treat with dismissiveness the AMERICAN moon walk in particular and AMERICA in general.

Nowhere in the entire movie is the joie de vivre, the enthusiasm, the sheer joy of exploration and discovery that was and is the American space program, not even in the more realistically portrayed Gus Grissom (Jason Clark) or  Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll).
Where is the camaraderie from The Right Stuff? Where is Ed Harris’ John Glenn who exemplified that genial excitement or Dennis Quaid’s  cocky and arrogant but infectiously confident Gordon Cooper in the movie about the lead up to the moon shot? Harris and Quaid’s Glenn and Cooper, respectively, personified why charting the unknown was worth the trials and terrors and tears that it cost us.

By contrast First Man makes it look like the space program was the unwanted chore of a beleaguered group of government bureaucrats with which we foolishly burdened the American taxpayer. Chazell even rudely shoehorned in “Whitey on the Moon,” an anthem against the space program. Playing it along with scenes of racially inspired protest marches, the film makers tried to make it appear as though this bitter song was a reflection of the “popular” sentiment during the years leading up to the moon shot. This song, with all its resentment and anger, was neither a representation of the mood of the country concerning the space program NOR even published until AFTER the first landing on the moon took place. Its anachronistic insertion was amateurishly spliced in, as though from an entirely different movie and had no bearing on the outcome of the story.

The obvious intent of First Man was to make it appear as though the American public was against the program, when, in fact, the approval for the space program was enthusiastically positive along all the —isms you can imagine because it was a uniquely AMERICAN program of which every AMERICAN could be proud! In the end the entire WORLD was rooting for AMERICA and these three AMERICANS to get to the moon, land and return alive – which AMERICA accomplished FIRST.

Instead of the exciting, energizing program that created jobs, inspired innovations and injected new levels of patriotism across our country, First Man tried to portray the space program as a draining, painful, horror movie. The audience has to sit through interminably long, difficult to endure, near real-time length scenes in the capsule, including the  deafening roar from inside of the relatively primitive Gemini 1 and the monster-like screaming of the exploding rocket fuel and distressed metal as it strains to not come apart in Apollo 11. The director’s choice of near home movie found-footage semi documentary-style makes the movie feel even more harsh and barren, especially as we walk often through dated, sparsely adorned versions of the military housing where these men and their families lived.

And slow! Oh my goodness! It was as though Stanley Kubrick became enamored of The Blair Witch Project, and insisted on the acting techniques of HAL from 2001 to make a sequel to The Right Stuff.

First Man is yet another obvious attempt by the intelligentsia to target and try to downplay, trivialize and sully the achievements that highlight America’s genuine and unique exceptionalism. They emphasize the space program’s problems and failures without celebrating their successes and astonishing one-of-a-kind accomplishments.

And – guess what – when last we looked “…our flag was STILL there!”

Poland should be rightly proud of Madame Curie’s discoveries. The world should be grateful to France for producing Louis Pasteur. The world admires and loves Mother Teresa, a native of Skopje (now Macedonia). Humanity is better for the beautiful music of Russia’s Tchaikovsky. Japan’s Kurosawa’s movies are considered classics. All these countries love their native sons and daughters and take every opportunity to extol them to the world.

What is WRONG with some Americans?! The country of their birth, which has given them and the world so many blessings through the grace of God is unappreciated by many whose thriving is owed to the freedoms for ingenuity and success that America affords. Other countries seem to appreciate and respect our flag more than do some of her native peoples, and it is infuriating. If you do not appreciate the many many blessings of living in America and being an American then, as another blessing of living in America, you are free to go to some other country for which you have more respect. If you wish to make movies about American history then  I don’t expect perfection or for it to be shown without mistakes, for no human endeavor can be done without them, but I do expect that it would be created with respect.

In short First Man is the LAST place you want to go for a good uplifting (pun intended) movie about the space race. Instead, just go watch The Right Stuff again!!