Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Quick movie round-up. Before I forget. GH and I watched Beginnings before I left for Singapore. The second feature film of conceptual and graphic artist Mike Mills, Beginnings explores the relationship between a father, who comes out as gay very late in life, and his son, who is still struggling to commit himself to a woman. Cine 1.0 has a good review , by Felicia Feaster, which looks at some of the film's artistic influences. Christopher Plummer turned in a nuanced performance as the gay father Hal Fields, and Ewan McGregor submerged himself in the son Oliver. GH loved the movie for its understated and subtle depiction of human complexity. I liked it too, but found it a little unambitious. On the way to and in Singapore, I watched three comics flicks. On SIA's Kris World entertainment system, The Green Hornet , directed by Michel Gondry, played for laughs. It turned out to be the only way to take the film seriously. Seth Rogen played the hero Britt Reid aka The Green Horne...

For a movie that purports to explain the origins of the X-Men, the explanation of the origins of Wolverine remains murky to me. Why was the child Logan living with a man he thought was his father, but was not? Why was he sick, with a sickness which the child Victor Creed had when he was younger? Why did Creed keep so malignant a vigil beside Logan's sickbed? Did he know that Logan was his brother then? The answers may be obvious to the comic book fan, but for this quarter-fan, the movie, directed by Gavin Hood, was more obfuscating than not. The sequence showing the two men fighting in all the major American wars--from the Civil War to Vietnam--nicely made the point that the brothers were the two faces of American military power. While Victor Creed hired out his bloodlust, Logan was the troublesome conscience. The rest of the movie did not try for too philosophical a message but plumbed for adrenalin-pumping entertainment in the form of aestheticized violence. The movie was obsesse...