TRON: I never saw the original, but the Disney follow-up is
1. really neat looking, like “How did they do that?”/”I would live there even though the floor of Jeff Bridges weird future-zen-palace has light up floors like the “Billie Jean” video” way. I have never seen a movie that looks like this, which you really cannot say about another film.
2. Tepid and predictable “prodigal son” plot that very nearly stops short of Jesus-y allusions, but goes ahead with them anyhow
3. The Prodigal Son seems like this is his first role outside of a soap commercial, with all the smiling and rugged goofballing and shrugging he does. According to IMDB he was in Country Strong and Eragon and some bullshit StarzPLay kind of stuff.
4. The movie is basically all a set-up for the sequel. They play it obvious and slow so that you GET IT. The next-next one is supposedly out this year, as in 2011, as in very shortly.
5. How did they make Jeff Bridges look so young? Is it the lighting? If so I will get light up floors when I am old. Very flattering.
6. I fell asleep during the never ending triumph ending. I asked Matt how it ended and he kept jokingly telling me the end of other Disney movies, which was annoying though, two dogs falling in love over a plate of spaghetti would certainly have been an improvement. See also The Most Recent X Men movie which I just remembered I watched 5 or 6 days ago but was so awful all I can remember is the main two dudes are handsome and good actors and it must be embarrassing for them to be in this movie with January Jones who is slightly less wooden than Pinnochio and sadly, they keep doing these shot through the whole movie up at her legs/ass clad in shiny rubber pants, but even with the trick lighting, it cannot be hidden that she has noassatall. Because she is like 98 lbs and is just a walking talking display for the boobs in the movie.
ALSO
I think a lesser Black Eyed Pea is her non speaking villianous side kick? The one with braids.

The only real role of any heft or merit is Kevin Bacon as an eternally-young Nazi scientist who is essentially an energy vampire (describes your ex-boyfriend, non?) with super powers so super there. is. no. stopping. him. Bacon plays it with zeal and relish, a real cackling ham. Poor Kevin Bacon, lost his life savings to Bernie Madoff and now he’s Nic Cage-ing it, taking any movie he can. Though I bet it was pretty fun to be this evil genetic scientist trying to engineer the downfall of humans with a funny helmet on in from a shag carpeted submarine.
But, back to my original point: both these movies are just like, third act is just triumph, false triumph, oh no! the bad guy returns! OR DOES HE?! Romantic tragedy subplot with the typical Leia-like overtones where the guy sees the female sidekick for the hot bod in a bad wig that she is and suddenly a question looms but ALAS WE CANNOT FREAK UNTIL WE DEFEAT THIS EVIL THING blah blah and you keep thinking “and…. the end” …and it just keeps going. Why bother getting all the way to the end when it’s all just a sequel set up and ‘splosions? Also, half the reason I watched it was to see if I could figure out which of these dudes got Jan. Jones preggo on the set? Surely not Kevin Bacon, he seems like a real family man. I know ppl theorize it is one of the handsome leading men–BUT! DUDE! WHAT IF IT IS THE BLACK EYED PEA? A January Jones Apple D. App baby? Anything is possible in Hollywood!

MEANWHILE, and speaking of explosions!
THE ELF DOCUMENTARY IS OUT THIS WEEK ON DVD. It’s worth viewing if you are into activism and trees and the strange ways of contemporary terrorism prosecutions. It’s also about how radical environmental activism got it’s start in Eugene, and works up to the galvanizing moment of Battle of Seattle on into a secret bloc of motivated hippies and punks burning SUV dealerships and logging companies. The main story line follows a guy who fell into it all and was brought down by the big ELF bust a few years ago and was pretty much the only dude amongst the folks caught who chose not to rat anyone else out. Everyone else co-operated with the FBI/etc.. The movie spends a fair amount of time with this guy on his house arrest and it’s hard to see the revolutionary in him, he doesn’t seem radical or even all that motivated. I guess who is all that excitable when yr on house arrest in your sisters condo, dutifully washing out your sandwich ziplocks so you can reuse them while you await a gnarly trial? NO ONE. Matt thought he was boring, but I thought in some ways it made it that much more interesting–this guy who, from what you can tell is a pretty normal concerned-about-the-earth vegan composting enthusiast who is sad about logging. And a decade before he was firebombing things. The footage of the logging and the footage of cops pepperspraying kids faces from an inch away, while these kids are handcuffed to trees and trucks is heartbreaking. I GASPED. I woke Matt up to ask him about the legality of pepperspraying someones balls while they are hanging in a tree, but his law degree focused mostly on tax law and not criminal procedure but he said “probably not. shouldn’t be”–but watching the footage of cops reacting to peaceful environmental protest, you can absolutely see how it radicalized people. Recommended! For sure!

The Windmill Movie is a verite doc. culled from the 200+ hours of footage that documentarian Richard Rogers shot. He began with this project around 1970 and carried it on, in spurts, until his death in 2001, but never edited anything or pulled it together–so the task was passed to one of his former students (he taught at Harvard for a long time) who edited and shaped it into something slightly different. It’s strange and beautiful and Rogers is sad and honest in the snippets of interview and narration, trying to get to the nugget of his envy and lust and resentments that stem from the long summers of his youth in the Hamptons, surrounded by powerful matriarchs and effortless wealth. His mom and her neighbors, filmed in old age, in wigs, so smart and well-bred, cold and (in his mothers case) cruel–in their leisure suits on lawnchairs; total Grey Gardens context. His gorgeous black and white footage from 1970-71, where he just walks the streets of Cambridge and Chelsea, passing girls with lustrous hippie hair and then the mid-80’s footage of a cadre of teenage preppy girls riding to the beach and baking, cocktail parties at an exclusive country club–it all could have been little films of it’s own. And then, there are bits, from when he is thinking of making it a dramatic staging of his life, and gets other people to portray him–basically a moustachioed dude on a bed with a girl ranting about his neurosis–and it makes you glad that is not the movie that he settled for, that he stuck to “reality”. It’s also a gambit that the director who takes over the project uses, getting Rogers longtime friend, Wallace Shawn, to “play” Rogers after his death. You get the sense that the movie that ended up being made, which is more about what Rogers wanted to do with this strange, constant document of his lifetime–how you make autobiography, the dissonance between reality and retelling, “the truth” of film–is somehow a more just document of his life. The Windmill Movie through Rogers needling, self-loathing and nagging self-doubt rather than serving them up.

It’s a fine window into the process of a song, but how much can you care? The real fascination here is Bill Wyman. Poor Bill Wyman. Totally along for the ride. No one cared about him, he had no genius talent, he was just a perfectly fine bassist. But here, we get under close detail and intense lights, his full visage and HIS HEAD TO TOE PINK MATCHY MATCHY OUTFIT. He has such a hangdog face! He looks like a grandma even though he is in his mid-twenties at this point. His face looks like a melty-dog. His hair, as was the standard for that time, is brushed into a shell shape around his grandma-lady-dog face, with heavy bangs, like a tortoise shell. But the lights reveal this frizzed out wave, like he has naturally curls somewhere in there, but it looks like a weave someone ripped a brush through. Like doll hair. Sure, Keith is two feet away HIGH AS FUCCCGGGK with an open romantic blouse hanging off his junkie frame, smoking an entire cigarette without touching it, really typical cool… and there is Mick, the vision of beauty, in a Tunisian nightshirt, so effortless and perfect it kind of makes you sick and jealous of him and whomever loves him, and Brian Jones, who looks like he’s doing cheap drugs and spending his money on poncy velvet outfits (he was) who is mostly obscured from view… And Wyman—With his pink outfit and scuzzhair, looking like a Barbie someone used as a torch. There he is with his maracas and no smile and pink shirt and pink sweater and boogie slacks and cuban heel pink snake boots. Just making a go of it. DOING IT UP WYMAN AND WILD! Probably not caring that he gets laid simply out of proxy to Mick. Just brushing his hair out and laying out his nice clothes on the bed before bed like some 12 year old girl. Bill Wyman was all I wanted to watch of this movie. Sure, Mick and Keith are “compelling”, they are the archetypes of rock n’ roll as we understand it–We know their dumb story! Who cares? Show me the guy with no charisma and bad hair–NOW, THERE’S A STORY.

I stopped the movie about halfway through. Other things might happen in it, but I don’t think so.