Divergent

Republican propaganda, but still mildly entertaining. In the (post-apocalyptic) Midwest, a plucky young woman challenges the powerful forces that deny human nature and want to control everybody "for their own good"....and she finds a hot guy in the bargain!

Kate Winslet is wonderful as the Hillary/Obama bad guy character.

Ashley Judd is wonderful as the Christ-like mom.

Shailene Woodley is...okay, I guess. Her hair is wonderful.

The star of this movie is actually Shailene Woodley's hair.

Taken

How do I loathe this movie? I can't even count the ways: it's racist and sexist, and has gigantic plot holes. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect much from an action movie. But it can't be so fucking stupid that it detracts from the action itself!  (Which in this case, was adequate.)

But the worst thing is that it's not really an action movie. At heart it's basically a throwback to a type of revenge porn that I thought had died. In this case, the hero (no, the protagonist) is totally justified in perpetrating any outrage, because he's got to rescue his virginal daughter from white slavery. The movie makes sure you understand that she's a virgin. It makes the bad guys that much worse, and that much more deserving of the violence they receive. Look, I understand violence in self-defense, I really do. But what we have here is a character who is not above gratuitous torture and murder, even when it doesn't help him get his daughter back. In one particularly gruesome scene, he tortures a bad guy to death. In another, he shoots an innocent woman to force her husband to give up some information.

This kind of thing is not really about self-defense, or justice. It's not really even about revenge. It's about blood lust. Blood lust comes first for the people who like this sort of thing, but they can't admit it to themselves, so they cover their nakedness with the fig leaf of revenge.

There are lots of bad guys in Taken, and of course the worst ones of all are Arabs. Of course they are. It's like every single trope was calculated to pass muster with Sarah Palin.

Oh, I almost forgot, the one girl who actually likes sex? She gets killed, just like in some stupid horror movie from the 1970s.

Who are the poor unfortunate females who got enmeshed in this crapfest?  Famke Janssen for one, who I must admit I used to have a huge crush on.

"Used to"?   Sorry, Famke, it's not you, it's me.

And a bunch of other people. I don't have the gumption to write one more word about this dumb movie.   But don't listen to me. If you want to buy this movie, here's a helpful handy link: BUY.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

I think Steve Coogan is very very funny. His Alan Partridge character makes me laugh out loud. And I have a tender spot in my heart for Alan's longsuffering personal assistant Lynn, played wonderfully by Felicity Montagu.

But but but. I always have a big "but," don't I?

The characters are great, but the story is not. In fact, it's kind of a hard movie to watch. Alan is easy to laugh at when there's not much at stake, but I felt very uncomfortable watching someone with a shotgun pointed right at his head through half the movie.

But hey, I have to feed my kids, so buy this movie right now by clicking on this link.

Paddington

Went today with wife and three kids. I was expecting to hate it, and I loved it! Very visually inventive, nice story, excellent cast. And it's set in London. A sort of hyper-realistic steampunk London, but still.

The story? It's basically The Blind Side meets The Golden Compass, with a sprinkling of Nanny McPhee.

The female cast are uniformly wonderful. There's Julie Walters as the elderly aunt, and Madeleine Harris as the teenage daughter.

But the standouts are Nicole Kidman as the villain, and Sally Hawkins as the mom. I love them both, for different reasons.

Village of the Damned and Children of the Damned

No time for a proper review, here are some notes:

• Only a few years between these two movies, but what a difference! Two different worlds:
• Village of the Damned: 
• genteel (George Sanders, for God's sake)
• bucolic (set in a picture perfect English village)
• male supremacist (face slapping)
• heteronormative (despite Sanderss's gay-osity)
• traditional gothic plot (the good guys triumph)
• a fabulous dress, with a bustle and a huge bow
• Children of the Damned:
• oppressive (strangely deserted London)
• sex is confused and dangerous
• the two main characters appear to be gay
• the first mother is a shrieking harridan, all the other mothers are weak or otherwise problematic
• loss of agency: the primary female character is most often an automaton
• inability to communicate: the primary child character speaks only twice, both times briefly
• random events are more important than character (the accident that resolves the conflict)
• the plot is gothic stood on its head (the monsters turn out to be the good guys and we turn out to be the monsters)
• weird plot hole: why did the children return to their embassies, only to kill and then go back to the church?