Home For the Holidays

Home For the Holidays
By Peter John Gardner

There comes a point in most people's lives where they experience a shift in attitude toward the holiday season. It's usually around the same time they reach adulthood and realize that you can't spend much longer than 8 hours with your family for the sake of your own sanity. The older you get, the more settled you become in your own life, so when you go home for the holidays, it's like walking into a time capsule where you set your mind back to your childhood and remember how you dealt with everyone's idiosyncrasies. I don't consider it a negative attitude. It's more like having to prepare yourself for having your mom wipe the 'schmutz' off your face and doing battle with your siblings over the remote control.

Home For the Holidays addresses this issue. Holly Hunter plays Claudia, an art restorer recently fired from her job and flies home to her parents' house for Thanksgiving. Also attending the festivities are Claudia's conservative sister Joanne, played by Cynthia Stevenson, and her gay brother Tommy, played by Mr. Downey Jr. Tommy brought a 'friend' of his home with him named Leo (Dylan McDermott) even though Claudia was under the impression that he's in a serious relationship with a guy named Jack.

The film captures a lot of awkward holiday moments. There is a scene at the airport which shows a group of grown adults talking on the phone to, presumably, their parents and saying things like, "Yes, I'm bringing my vitamins. Yes, I brushed my teeth this morning." No matter how old one gets, parents will always be parents. To this day, my mother still calls and/or e-mails me to make sure I'm taking my vitamins, and reminds me to say, "Thank you" whenever I receive something. Because, you know, I never learned manners in my 29 years.

Directed by Jodie Foster, Home For the Holidays spends the majority of its time documenting these little scenarios that we all face during the holidays. Especially touching is the relationship with Claudia and Tommy, who even though they've lived separate lives since moving out of their parents' home, they still immediately click and fall back into the beats of their relationship and clearly have always depended on each other to help them through their family's craziness.

By the end of the film, we learn that Tommy brought along Leo not as a new lover, but as a potential match for his sister. Of course they fall in love, and Leo hops on Claudia's plane to be with her. It must be nice to have a gay sibling to hook you up with a potential mate.

These days I don't spend much time at home when it's the holidays. Not only is it difficult to stand your ground as an adult when you're under your parents' roof, but the more family members that show up, the more old wounds get opened up. Either that, or everyone facetiously pretends that everything is awesome and no one has a bone to pick with anyone. That just makes things worse. Not wanting to solve problems with family members just deepens wounds and causes the family gatherings to feel more like an awkward lunch with your upper management than a warm, loving environment.

It should be noted to any readers that knew me in high school that Robert Downey Jr. sports the EXACT same haircut I used to have, as well as the same wardrobe of oversized sweaters and jeans. I like to think that Downey caught a glimpse of me one day and thought to himself, "Now there's a guy with style. I should ape that for my next film."

Richard III

Richard III
By Peter John Gardner

Every time a Shakespeare play was assigned reading in one of my high school classes, a common complaint heard from the peanut gallery of future brilliant minds was, "Why do we have to read this shit?" To a student that's uninterested in the material, the plays are boring, hard to understand, and contain plots that have become cliche hundreds of years later. I call it "The Nirvana Effect". It's all about context. If one is just now digesting something by Shakespeare/Nirvana, they're most likely going to compare it to a more contemporary work that used the same template but enhanced. But at the time of release, Shakespeare/Nirvana was groundbreaking stuff.

What's remarkable about Shakespeare is that if you take his plays, many of them still work if you just change the setting to a different time and place. Richard III takes the classic Shakespeare work and sets it in 1930's era England. Well, less like the real England and more like a bizarro world version where England is a fascist regime during World War II. The story follows Richard, the younger brother of King Edward IV, and his murderous quest to overthrow his brother from the king's throne. Richard manipulates and murders his way to the top, at one point even having his own brother Clarence executed just so that he could shift the blame onto Edward and accelerate the death of the ailing King.

Playing Richard is the always excellent Ian McKellen whose overacting brings out a slightly comical side to the character. McKellen doesn't play Richard like he would in a stuffy old theater in Great Britain. Instead he plays him the same way he would later play Magneto in the X-Men films. Robert Downey Jr. plays Lord Rivers, brother of Queen Elizabeth, and makes the odd choice of using an American accent in the film. Throughout the first half of the film, Rivers is the primary thorn in Richard's side, and halfway through the film, Downey has one of the more entertaining death scenes in this type of film which I wouldn't dare spoiling.

Back to why we still read Shakespeare. It's apparent while watching this film adaptation that one could take the themes of misuse of power and trust and apply them to any modern government. An easy analogy would be the Bush administrations use of the politics of fear throughout their term. Sure, being the big bad tough guy on the block may work in the short term, but how much good will toward us from countries around the world did we destroy because of it all? A more rudimentary example would be a co-worker that steps on other co-workers and makes false accusations about them to the boss in order to further their own career. Sure, stepping on people is one way to the top, but once you get there, people will resent you for it.

Could somebody take this play and set it during modern America? Perhaps, as there will always be a place for a cautionary tale about the abuse of power and the morality of what it takes to acquire power. Whether or not you want to place Democrats or Republicans as the totalitarian rules is up to your own politics. Personally, I would tweak things so that the Richard III turns into the story of how Jay Leno took over the Tonight Show...twice. Jay III, starring Richard Gere as Jay Leno, coming soon to a theater near you.

Only You

Only You
By Peter John Gardner

My stance on romantic comedies is the same as my stance on mayonnaise. It serves a purpose in the world, many people are fans, nothing against it, but it's just not my cup of tea. That being said, I went into this movie pretending that Robert Downey Jr's character was really Tony Stark and the events in this movie are what happens before Iron Man. It made the whole experience a little easier to bare.

Only You is your basic, sugary sweet romantic comedy that defies logic in order to get the two leads together. The story goes like this. When she was a little girl, Faith (Marisa Tomei) learned from a Ouija board that the man she would marry would be named Damon Bradley. Flash forward to her adulthood, Faith is about to marry another man. While she is getting fitted for her dress, Faith receives a phone call from one of her fiancee's friends informing her that he will be unable to attend the wedding because he's in Europe. His name? Damon Bradley.

So like any woman with good sense, Faith pretty much drops her wedding plans and trots off to Europe to track down Damon Bradley. It doesn't matter how much in love she is with ohwhatshisname that she's about to marry. The Ouija board guy is for real, and they're soul mates!

While chasing some stranger like a madwoman, Faith accidentally bumps into Peter played by Robert Downey Jr. Peter finds out who Faith is looking for, and introduces himself as Damon Bradley. Immediately, Faith's attitude toward Peter changes and they have a romantic night together. Well it's romantic until Peter drops the ball by telling her that he's not really Damon Bradley.

Right here, I was thinking that the message of the movie is that all guys with the name Peter must pretend to be somebody else in order to get laid.

Faith continues her search for Damon because no matter how perfect her night with Peter was, he's not her soul mate. Peter starts tagging along in her quest for Damon in a really creepy way that most women would think that it's time for a restraining order, but the movie needs him there, so he's there. The movie shows that Peter might really be her soul mate because of all the little things they have in common and what a great guy Peter really is. Eventually Faith meets Damon at a posh hotel in Italy thanks to a tip from Peter. When Damon pushes things forward a little too fast, Peter intervenes and proceeds to fight Damon. Of course we find out Damon is a fake, and Peter set up the whole thing to win Faith over. She was not amused.

Later in the movie, we find out that the name Damon Bradley was faked by one of Faith's friends on the Ouija board through an excruciating subplot involving Faith's sister-in-law. At the end, we're at an airport when Peter and Faith hear the name "Damon Bradley" being called for on one of the PAs. The two rush to see him. In the middle of the awkward conversation between Faith and Damon, Peter excuses himself to his flight. Damon realizes that Peter really loves Faith and vice versa, so he convinces Faith that Peter is really the one for her. Cue Faith running to catch up to Peter's plane where she's swept off her feet and they live happily ever after. Romantic comedy concluded.

I thought about writing something exploring whether the notion of soulmates is real or we just tell ourselves that when we meet someone that we're compatible with, but I can't overlook this atrocity to guys with the name Peter. Faith and Peter had a great night together, and she dumps him as soon as she finds out that his name is not the same as one she got from a Ouija board 20 some odd years ago. Yeah, he lied at first saying he was Damon, but that's of little importance. He just needed an "in", or else a beautiful woman like Faith would never give him the time of day.

Even after she warms up to Peter, she still doesn't want to pursue anything romantic with him. This is the story of the life of most Peters. He's a great guy, generous, funny, but a little quirky (this is Robert Downey Jr), yet Faith continues to pursue someone that may or may not exist. It's not until she meets the real Damon, who turns out to be rather average looking, that she decides she wants something with Peter. If I were Peter, my first question would be, "What changed your mind?" Does it matter? It shouldn't, but it does. This movie is really about how it's bad luck in the field of romance to have the name Peter.

Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers
By Peter John Gardner

"It's just murder. All God's creatures do it. You look in the forests and you see species killing other species, our species killing all species including the forests, and we just call it industry, not murder." - Mickey Knox

In 1991, a young writer was having trouble finding funding for the production of one of his scripts entitled Natural Born Killers. Producing the film would be too expensive for the up-and-comer, so he sold the script for $10,000 and used that money to fund his directorial debut. That debut became "Reservoir Dogs" and that writer was a young Quentin Tarantino.

Long story short, the producers that bought the script partnered with Oliver Stone and reworked the film from Tarantino's original vision. The film shifted its focus from the celebrity gossip reporter Wayne Gale to the killers themselves, Mickey and Mallory. Instead of the film's narrative being about the exploitation of violence in the media, the film also became a loose character study of the killers themselves.

Natural Born Killers was criticized upon its release for "glorifying violence", but the film doesn't do that. While it tries to figure out what make Mickey and Mallory tick, it never goes out of its way to portray them as sympathetic characters nor does it ever imply that what they're doing is "cool". Even by 90s standards, the film isn't really that violent to begin with. Sure, lots of people get shot, but it's not a movie padded with gore.

The film can be divided in half. The first half is the Mickey and Mallory Show. We follow Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in their roles as Mickey and Mallory Knox as they gush over each other and kill anyone that rubs them the wrong way. Inevitably, they get caught and the second half of the film chronicles their time in prison and subsequent escape. Also onboard is Tom Sizemore as a sleazy detective tracking the killers, Tommy Lee Jones as a batshit insane prison warden, and Robert Downey Jr. as a celebrity gossip reporter hoping that his post-Superbowl interview with Mickey Knox will be the defining moment in his journalistic career.

Basically, the film is an exploration of the media's obsession with violence, fresh off the very public trials of OJ Simpson and the Menendez Brothers. Are we making anti-heroes out of these people just by giving them coverage 24/7 in the news? It was a hot topic at the time, but 15 years later, it seems somewhat irrelevant. Since then, many people have stopped watching the news just because they are tired of hearing "bad news" or the most common excuse, "It depresses me". With the exception of the Beltway Sniper a few years back, killers don't really get top bill in the news anymore. But that's just cable tv. In 2009, news has other ways of getting around.

Think about it. Even though the press was locked out of Iran after their fraudulent election earlier this year, Iranians took to social networking sites to let the world know what was going on in their country. People were finding out about Iranians being beaten in the streets through Twitter while CNN was covering a "Jon & Kate Plus 8" story. Even if the media didn't give coverage to attention craving madmen, they'd still find a way to make their voices heard. Imagine a serial killer that leaves a trail of murdered bodies and then posts a confession on Youtube about it. Or after every murder, the killer lets his followers on Twitter know about it before the police.

One other thing that made me think while watching this movie. Rodney Dangerfield plays Mallory's physically and sexually abusive father in this movie. Now imagine having Rodney Dangerfield as your dad. Forget his character in the movie. It's basically Rodney with a few incest jokes thrown in. Imagine being raised by a guy that makes his living on the fact that his insecurities prevent him from feeling any respect from his peers, so he constantly complains about it. Imagine being a toddler and seeing Rodney's bug eyes staring at you in your crib. That's the stuff nightmares and killers are made of.

Hail Caesar

Hail Caesar
By Peter John Gardner

One of the main reasons I decided to take on the work of Robert Downey Jr. after the completion of Project Stallone was because I thought that films featuring Downey would typically be better than the majority of Stallone films I had to endure, thus making this project a little more painless. I thought I was right until I got to Hail Caesar.

In one sentence, this movie is basically Anthony Michael Hall's masturbatory fantasy about being a rock star. Directed by Hall, the film follows Julius Caesar (yes, that's his character's actual name) on his quest for fame and the approval of his girlfriend. Caesar as a character isn't likeable at all, and he comes across less like an early 90s alternative rocker and more like some douchebag fraternity boy that happens to know how to play a little bit of guitar. Oddly enough, Hall bears more than a passing resemblence to FOX News's misinformant Glenn Beck so the movie is a lot more fun if you pretend that it's Glenn Beck and not Julius Caesar.

The plot finds Caesar with his struggling rock band that makes Bill & Ted's Wyld Stallions look like The Beatles trying to catch a break. At the same time, Caesar is dating the daughter of a wealthy eraser factory owner that is obsessed with guns and Ronald Reagan. His daughter is a complete, hoighty toighty snob that seems to have nothing but contempt for Caesar, leaving the viewer to wonder why they're even dating. Dad's not too fond of his daughter dating a "lower class" rock musician, so he hatches a plan to get Julius out of the picture. In order for Caesar to continue dating this uppity wench, he has to come up with $100,000 within six months. For some reason that is never explained, the dad gets Caesar a job at the pencil eraser factory to help get him started. Soon enough, Caesar is promoted to manager and uncovers some sketchy activities going on at the factory that he can use as blackmail. Hijinks ensue as well as cocaine fueled cameos from Judd Nelson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert Downey Jr. Downey's role is as a record label exec whose first appearance is preceded by a bizarre dance sequence in his office than can only be explained by the use of cocaine from everyone involved.

This film is an unfunny mess with vague themes of true love and not "selling out". Since Anthony Michael Hall didn't really sell me on his role as a struggling musician, and Downey's appearance is the cinematic equivalent of an all night cocaine bender, I'm going to focus instead on Samuel L. Jackson's role as the mailman. It's a small role, and most of the time Jackson is getting attacked by the dogs at Caesar's house. He eventually quits the mailman job and takes on other thankless jobs, like digging a hole in front of the Caesar house.

"Four years of college for this?" mutters Jackson. Jackson's character obviously was an English major in college. English majors typically go through four years of school to arrive at two destinations: a) Become an English teacher, or b) Do something that has nothing to do with English where you frequently get shit on, take on mundane jobs, and wonder why you spent all that money on tuition. Life frequently puts me in positions where I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, and instead of an obstacle or challenge, it's a fucking dog chasing after me that I have to deal with (metaphorically speaking, of course). You can't fight the dog, that would be animal cruelty. You have to run away and hope that you don't get a piece of flesh ripped off of your leg.

Short Cuts

Short Cuts
By Peter John Gardner

Fate and choice are two opposing forces that have been explored to death in the arts, yet we always return to these themes because they're something mankind will most likely never figure out. How much of our life is dictated by fate, and how much is through our own choice? Was it fate to make certain choices in life? Is it a choice to believe in fate? What happens when fate and choice collide? Is your head ready to explode yet?

Short Cuts is a very long film based on short stories that explore these themes. Some of the stories run parallel to each, some characters meet characters from other stories, but everything and everyone is not intertwined and connected into one larger story like Magnolia. There are 22 principal characters in the film, yet director Robert Altman paces the film properly so that the viewer never loses track of what's happening to whom. There's a story involving Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Fred Ward, Anne Archer, and Huey Lewis (of all people!) that explores failing marriages and a dead body. Concurrently, we've got Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits playing a dysfunctional couple who accidentally hit the child of Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell. Bruce and Andie are already knee deep in problems of their own including an irate Lyle Lovett as a baker and Jack Lemmon giving advice on infidelity. Meanwhile, Lily Tomlin's daughter is married to Robert Downey Jr. who plays an odd man that is aroused by sadism. Downey also has the distinction of being the first time I've seen a character in a movie awakened by his own fart. Finally, there's a story of Tim Robbins as a bad cop whose oblivious wife is friends with Moore's character. It sounds like a lot to keep up with, but the movie gives everyone enough breathing space, and ties the stories together

Was it luck or fate that these characters cross each others' paths? Short Cuts leaves it up to the viewer to decide. With this in mind, and as a man that doesn't believe in fate, I tried looking back on my own life to figure out if fate did indeed play a role or if everything is just the result of luck, choice, and coincidence. If I had never left Texas when my parents divorced, I would have never met the beautiful people that I consider my friends now. Was that fate or just trying to adapt and survive?

With romantic relationships, the phrase "meant to be" pops up in the more serious ones. Was it really meant to be or are the two people involved just really good at compromise and decency? When the relationship ends, was it because it "wasn't meant to be" or is it because one or the other made some bad decisions? Who decides what exactly is "meant to be"?

A phrase that I loathe is "every thing happens for a reason". As a staunch atheist that doesn't believe in fate, the phrase itself makes me sigh, yet there is truth to it. I don't think that some outside force whether it be fate or a deity makes things happen to a person, but I do believe that the reason things happen is to teach something. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I've tried to walk away from each one of life's fuckups and disasters having learned something through the experience. That something may not become apparent until long after the fact. Am I a wise man? Fuck no. Am I wiser than I was ten years ago? Certainly.

Am I wiser after writing this article? Doubtful.

Heart and Souls

Heart and Souls
By Peter John Gardner

Allow me to start this one off by saying that I loved this movie. I normally don't care for warm hearted, romantic comedies for the whole family, but this movie kept me smiling throughout and is just plain cute. That being said, the following entry will be overthinking a movie that does not require any thinking at all for the sake of a good read.

The film starts off somewhere in the 1950s where we follow four individuals making one last mistake in their lives before they all take a bus ride home. The bus crashes into a car where a woman is giving birth, and instead of being pulled up to Heaven, the recently deceased get stuck with the newborn child. They aren't allowed to leave the child because they are bound by some kind of invisible wall around the child.

So these four people hang around young Thomas 24/7 and entertain themselves by entertaining him. As the child grows up, family and school faculty grow concerned with Thomas's "imaginary friends". One night, the four dead babysitters overhear a fight between Thomas's mother and father about what to do with their child that they think could be schizophrenic. The spirits decide to become invisible and let Thomas grow up to lead a normal life.

Flash forward to the future where we find Thomas has grown up into yuppie banker that doesn't seem to have the time for anyone. The dead spirits are still hanging around Thomas all day, but he can't hear or see them anymore. They just follow him around and comment on his life. When the bus to Heaven finally arives, the spirits find out that they were left on Earth so that they could use Thomas to fix their mistakes (think Quantum Leap), so they strike a deal with the bus driver to come back a little later after they tie up their loose ends. Hilarity ensues and Downey is a tour-de-force of physical comedy whenever he is possessed by one of the spirits.

The circumstances of the spirits' lives and Thomas's in the film had me asking myself all sorts of questions concerning the logistics of the situation. So these four people are bound to Thomas until they Quantum Leap their problems and are not allowed any privacy. Do the spirits go to the bathroom? What do they talk about with each other for eternity? Did any of the two males have sex with either of the two females?

And what about poor Thomas? These four people have watched him every time he's taken a shit, picked his nose, had sex, masturbated, or stuck a finger up his own ass. Think about that. What if this is actually what happens when you die? You get stuck with three other people as the guardian angels of a newborn baby. Or think about your own life right now. That time you didn't wash your hands after taking a hefty number two at the office? The time you rubbed one out in bed while your wife was sleeping? Or how about when you stuck your finger up your own ass just to see what would happen? Four strangers could have been watching you, and one of them could be played by Tom Sizemore.