The Cold Light Of Day

How do you like your thrillers? Are you like me and prefer your thrillers to be fast paced and have the sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seats kind of tension (aka – a white knuckler – a term derived from so tightly gripping the arms rests of the theater seats – that your knuckles turn white). How about gunplay and auto chases? And finally, don’t you hope thrillers have a bit of logic to them, a really bad villain, and a heroic lead that you can admire – are these all on your wish list?

Which brings us to The Cold Light of Day which opened on Friday, September 7th. Historically, this weekend aka the weekend following the Labor Day holiday, has been the lowest film revenue producing weekend of the year. So if your film is opening on that weekend – there’s a good chance that A) your film isn’t that good, B) you chose to find a spot away from strong competition, and/or C) this was the only weekend offered to you.

The film stars Henry Cavill, Sigourney Weaver, and Bruce Willis. This is a film that begins with a family on a holiday aboard a sail boat off the coast of one of Spain’s sun-drenched beach towns. Willis (called Martin in the film) is a shadowy US government employee based in Madrid. Weaver (Carrack) is someone Willis works with, and the lead Henry Cavill as Will, is Martin’s son who has just flown in from San Francisco to meet up with his parents, his brother, and the brother’s girl friend, Dara.

When Will has had enough of his Dad’s heavy-handed parenting, he announces he has to go into town to get some stuff, so he dives off the sail boat to swim in and do his shopping. A few hours later, when he returns to the beach to swim back to boat – he doesn’t see the boat. He climbs up to the top of a hill,  and from there he can see that the boat has gone around the point and is now anchored in a gentle out-of-sight cove.

Will: Help me find my family!! The Local Cops: Take us to the boat …

He swims out to the boat and finds – his whole family is gone, and there are definite signs of a fierce struggle having taken place on board. The local police aren’t much help but they say take us to the boat. As usual in this type of film, the local police can’t be trusted. They’re about to turn Will over to the bad guys.

Moonrise Kingdom

So I stepped into one of those little mini-mazes the movie theaters set up to guide, control, and gently feed the ticket buyers, in orderly fashion, to the ticket windows. A few people were already at the windows buying tickets, but no one else was next in line.

However, two women, likely in their late 50′s or early 60′s were standing in mid-maze.

‘Excuse me, are you ladies going to buy tickets?‘ ‘Not yet, we are still deciding what to see. You may pass us – any recommendations?‘

I said that I was going to see Moonrise Kingdom. And they asked what is it about?

I said that I couldn’t say more than it would take you back to the time when you were both 12!

They said that sounds interesting and they followed me towards the ticket window. I never saw them after that as I lost about 7 minutes waiting in line to buy snacks.

But yes, Moonrise Kingdom, directed by Wes Anderson and written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, is about two 12 year-olds. While it is not quite a coming-of-age film, it is truly about an adventure that the two kids take, and what is even more interesting is that this film is not a film that seems to have been designed for today’s kids. Instead it seems that Anderson created this film for people in their late 50′s and early 60′s, because they are the ones who can mostly likely identify with people who would have been 12-13-14 years old in the 1960′s.

Of course, being 12-13-14 might be the same at any point in history (up to a point) with only the influential toys, clothing, and other things like cultural idols, icons, and artifacts changing over the years.

On New Penzance Island, a mythical island – actually the film was shot in Rhode Island – Sam Shakusky, a 12 year old Khaki Scount has gone missing. Scout Master Ward, played by Edward Norton, discovers this only after making his morning inspection and then sitting down at the Mess where the place settings and the headcount of seated scouts differ by a count of one. Who’s missing?, asks the Scout Master.

Where’s Shakusky……?

It takes them a few moments to figure out that it is Shakusky. His tent is zipped from the inside, but this isn’t much of barrier. After Ward unzips the tent entrance, they peer inside the tent and see no one …

… and the mystery immediately intensifies. In a remarkable feat of stating the obvious, Ward says, Shakusky has flown the coop. Peeling back a poster taped on the inside tent wall. they discover a hole big enough to crawl through.

The Good Guys

I’m done with school, I’m out in the world with a good many of those items that we chase after and desire, now either in my possession, or they’ve become forgotten dreams, or, they are current items on my credit card statement. There’s a lot of truth to the expression, ‘been there, done that’ — and while it is not my mantra, it does fit comfortably.

But it wasn’t that long ago that hanging out in a tree fort, hikes in the forest with the dog, and Saturday afternoon at the movies were very important to me. And in those days, when it was summer, and there was no school, we’d play cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or G I Joe. It was fun to be a good guy. You could be heroic, brave, never run of make-believe ammo, and it was exciting to emulate heroes.

Growing up on Long Island, in a North Shore commuter town about forty miles east of Manhattan, we watched TV, played baseball, and absorbed as many movies as possible. And we loved those movie heroes. And today is no different … I still love my movie heroes.

Sorry, we won’t be talking about iconic cinema heroes like Indiana Jones, James Bond, Rocky Balboa, and Han Solo. We’ll leave them on the shelf for now. For me, so many of the cinematic good guys are cops. I’m not talking about the guys in uniforms that walk a beat, or handle crowd control or traffic. While exemplary, it is not the uniformed police that we will discuss here.

It’s the cool guys with gold shields — the detectives.

So Who Do You Like Today?

“So, who do you like today?”

This was the tag-line for some new promotional TV and radio spots that were being aired in the New York City Metropolitan area a few years ago. They were trying to lure you to go to Belmont Park, which is the primo place for Thoroughbred Horse Racing in America. I’m not going to be writing about horse racing at Belmont Park or anyplace else today. But I do like that line, and I’m asking that question but about a different subject.

Specifically, which movies for men do you like? You know, women have chick flicks, rom-coms, and love stories, then there’s comedies, tear-jerkers, and wholesome family movies. What I have in mind are movies that guys like you and me will watch again and again; and we’ll watch them every time they’re broadcast. So if I say, “Do you like this one?” you’ll say, “Hell yes! When is it on?” These are the kinds of movies that if I show you just a single image, you would probably recognize the movie. How about this one?

I don’t have to wipe out everyone, Tom – just my enemies.