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Released recently (March 2011), Battle: Los Angeles is a fairly decent war movie, or war actioner (whatever it is), wherein a platoon of brave Marines take on murderous extraterrestrial beings that are unexpectedly invading various countries.  Aaron Eckhart never makes a false move in his role as a military man, viz. Sgt. Nantz, and the movie’s special effects are, I think, just what they should be.  Battle has been criticized for its shaky-cam, but shaky-cam or not the action footage seldom disappoints.  One potent scene, for example, has Nantz rush out to put several children on an ascending helicopter, only to witness the helicopter get horrifically blasted by the space aliens before it can re-land for the children. 

One might object that the characters are made of cardboard, but there is no real place for individual human complexity in battlefield sequences. 

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Battle: Los Angeles is not a great entertainment, but there is fun to be had.  It is hardly free of banality, but it means business.  Too, it sincerely honors the Marine Corps.

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I don’t find Noel Coward’s comic play, Hay Fever–performed in Tulsa in 2011–very funny, but I do enjoy and respect it.  It’s rollicky, inventive and properly, indeed brilliantly, structured.  It would be nice if there were at least one really honorable character in it, but the barbed satire can be appreciated.  Among these well-to-do English people of the 1920s, there is false emotion, narcissism, and caddishness.

Good show.  Kudos to costume designer Claremarie Verheyen.

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The Davis Guggenheim film, Waiting for “Superman” (2010-now on DVD), is a good if imperfect documentary about public schools in the U.S.  Guggenheim is a liberal who is rightly critical of teachers’ unions.

The Village Voice‘s Melissa Anderson, who didn’t like the film, mentions in her review that the doc-maker asks the question, “What is our responsibility to other people’s children?”  She answers the question thus:  “Maybe, for starters, demanding a stronger, securer social safety net”–and she knocks Guggenheim for failing to bring this up.  But how, exactly, do we obtain this stronger safety net, Ms. Anderson?  By increasing spending for unemployment benefits, Medicaid, CHIP, the food-stamp program, and Social Security?  Sorry, that just adds to the 14 trillion-dollar federal debt.  Do we hike the minimum wage?  I actually believe in the existence of a minimum wage, but hiking it now (or even later) is very inadvisable.  No, it’s fine that Waiting for “Superman” avoids demanding Anderson’s safety net.

She also writes that “few would disagree that the unions’ bloat and bureaucracy have often had a deleterious effect on public education . . .”    Why, then, haven’t people from the liberal elites voiced their opposition to the teachers’ unions?

 The parents of five lovable children in the film try to get their kids into charter schools–public schools independent of the public system.  Anderson says these schools “do not have high success rates,” and if that’s true, it is to her credit that she points it out.  Frankly, it means things are even worse than Guggenheim realizes.  Do see his documentary, though.  It’s worthwhile.  It does our society more good than do the impracticalities of armchair Progressive idealism.

Philip Saville’s The Gospel of John (2003) believes in what Jesus is doing, in His mission.  Heretical it ain’t.  It’s reverent–and, for the most part, sensibly done.

Why, it even obeys all but one of critic Dwight MacDonald’s rules of success for biblical films, propounded in 1965.  One of these rules is Use the original script.  Another is The story of Jesus should be told with reverence for the text in the New Testament . . . but with irreverence for the sensibilities of contemporary religious groups–Buddhist, Moslem, Taoist, Catholic or Jewish.”  Hear, hear!  That’s The Gospel of John all over!

Henry Ian Cusick enacts Jesus Christ with necessary charisma and aplomb.  He’s very good, just as he was on the TV series “Lost.”  There is much in Saville’s directing that is very good too, as witness the Cana wedding scene.  There, much to a servant’s quiet amazement, water becomes wine and a happy feast remains happy.  Jesus stands apart from the celebrants, whereas before he was sitting with them, and wears a serious look on his face, as though thinking of future events, such as the Atonement, more important than this one.  Also worthy is the shot-series where Mary, the sister of Martha, washes the Lord’s feet in ointment and dries them with her hair–a scene of intimacy not even interrupted by Jesus’ mild rebuke of Judas Iscariot.  I love the ending of the film, too, with Christ walking ahead of His disciples on the seashore, reminding the perplexed Peter to “Follow Me,” before the final shot of John occurs in a freeze frame.  Lovely.

Gospel moves with a proper rhythm, but, as in John’s account, there is a great deal of sermonizing by Jesus.  The movie is for those who understand or at least suspect there is genuine value in the evangel, or for those with an interest in the life of Jesus, or for those disciples of His who seek to be edified.  Many of them have been, I’m sure.