review of MAX PAYNE
by Elliot Strong
starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis
directed by John Moore
Rated PG-13 for violence, language, disturbing images


First off, let me get one item of business out of the way: I have never played the titular Max Payne video game. While the advertisements made it look cool (albeit highly derivative) in a Matrix- meets - Hard Boiled sort of way, my gaming time was
budgeted for blasting the Covenant forces of the Halo universe. Therefore, the newly released Max Payne movie has to stand on its own merits, of which any redeeming ones I have yet to think of.

The film’s trailer was well produced and displayed some tantalizing action sequences, but as is all too common these days, if you’ve seen the trailer you’ve seen all the best parts of the movie. Turn your computer speakers up quite high, watch the trailer while setting a $10 bill on fire and you get pretty much the full experience of watching Max Payne in a theater.

Second item of business: I consider myself a fairly well versed fan of the action genre. However, one of the problems with watching a lot of action movies over the years is that while watching a new release, I can’t help but think that I could have made a better movie myself (case in point, 2004’s The Punisher), or that the genre is becoming so incredibly clichéd and formulaic that it’s time for a complete re-imagining of the genre. On the other hand, my wife (who is far from an action movie aficionado) was gracious enough to see Max Payne with me and enjoyed it in spite of its derivative nature.

Max Payne is one of the worst offenders when it comes to lifeless and unimaginative action movies. It ticks every single action movie cliché and rips off stylistic elements from seemingly as many other films as it possibly can. Corny flashbacks in bright sunny colors: check. Payback/Sin City color scheme and snow: check. Loner antihero protagonist with a grim expression who never eats, sleeps, drinks, or smiles, fending off hordes of heavily-armed enemies with a measly pistol: check. This wouldn’t all be so atrocious except for the fact that the movie takes itself so seriously, and not in a Hot Fuzz sort of way either. It’s another tired revenge story that got wrapped up in layers of lame mythological references and corporate conspiracy plots. A loving father (who happens to be a cop/federal agent/soldier/etc.) loses wife and child, turns rogue and exacts revenge on the evildoers. How many times has this movie been made?

Mark Wahlberg has the ability to put out decent work, whether as an actor in films like The Departed or as the producer of Entourage. He reportedly took enough interest in this script, without previously playing the video game, to get on board.
But after seeing the end result, I have to wonder if he’s having second thoughts. Why successful actors allow their brand or image to be diluted by movies such as Max Payne is beyond the scope of this article.

Mila Kunis shows up as a stock Russian assassin with a penchant for black leather, spiky heels and German submachine guns (again, all clichés). She does as well as can be expected with the material she was handed, and if she can use this role to put That ‘70s Show behind her, so much the better for her career. On a side note, her addict sister Natasha is played by future Bond-girl Olga Kurylenko, who’s previous film was the equally by-the-numbers video game turned movie Hitman.

After a tepid opening action sequence, the film takes an hour to really get boiling. When it does it is so laden with CGI that any visual subtlety is lost and the story becomes bogged down by its own focus on the “Valkyr” drug conspiracy plot.
Logical loopholes permeate the plot, and it tries far too hard to incorporate pseudo-supernatural elements and references to Norse mythology. The more the script focuses on the fictional drug’s side effects and the resulting preposterous mass hallucinations of exactly the same type of CGI demon-Valkyrie, the more ridiculous the movie becomes.

Movies exist in part to distract the viewers from reality and keep their attention for long enough to become immersed in an alternate world, and hopefully make the audience ponder some larger narrative theme. The unfortunate thing about a film like Max Payne is that it is so vacuous, so devoid of any greater purpose or theme except for nihilistic revenge, that it is completely worthless for entertainment value. Stylized violence only engages a viewer for so long; there must be something more substantive to make a movie worth spending one’s time or money to see it.

About reviewer Elliot Strong: I am a man of eclectic tastes. Born and raised in Seattle, my interests range from opera and Walla Walla wine to vehicles with loud engines and movies with explosions in them. My taste in movies is just as questionable and far-ranging as you may suspect. Currently living and working in Ballard with my wife, Daytona, and a big weird cat named Max, I am sort of boring and have been at Mars Hill since 2001.

RELIGULOUS
directed by Larry Charles
written by Bill Maher 

review by James Harleman

There’s a sucker born every minute. It’s not scripture, but fairly accurate. Unfortunately, when any wiseacre wants to make a modern day mockumentary to prove a point, this reality comes in very handy. This is what makes Religulous funny, but ultimately hollow.

Combining “religion” with “ridiculous” to get his title is fairly inventive (says the guy who combined cinema and synagogue). The film follows comedian-turned-commentator Bill Maher as he purports to examine the current state of world religion. From a trucker’s church to the Vatican, from mosque to Mormon Utah, Maher discovers truly laughable and ignorant characters around the world (or manages to creatively edit and subtitle them into hilarity). He even street-preaches Scientology in London, which had the theater rolling. I saw the film with a Christian friend, an agnostic, two atheists and an anti-theist in a packed theater, and we all laughed pretty hard. However, this is from the director of Borat, so to think any deep truths about America or global religion are revealed would be stretching things considerably.

This isn’t a documentary, and maybe we shouldn’t judge it in that vein; Bill is trying to get a laugh, or a rise, out of his subjects, and even takes different sides of arguments about Jesus and the Bible to get chuckles from the audience. All the questions are loaded, which plays to a reality-television crowd, but does little to examine the impact of religious belief. Give me any religious group, any political party, or any particular group of hobbyists and you can traverse the globe and find rubes to make any of these look insipid. To be fair, he does this well, and could be unleashed to comedically eviscerate other demographics in the future with great success. The formula works, so long as we don’t pretend it’s telling us truth.

Does the Holy Land theme park Bill visits irritate me personally? Absolutely; Christians clapping and cheering a performance of the crucifixion as the soldiers beat Jesus to a pulp seems disturbing. Moreover, the fact that no one even tries to engage Maher in philosophical debate or leverages traditional or presuppositional apologetics bums me out. The fact that he exposes idiocracy and hypocrites in just about every religious camp at least levels the playing field, but he doesn’t talk to the average agnostic or atheist which, if you stop folks in a grocery store, reveal the same general level of education and understanding of the world around us.

Bill Maher grew up Irish Catholic with parents that made him go to church, but didn’t regularly attend themselves. While he feels like he “outgrew” his faith, the evident reality is that he never really bought into it. His mother admits church wasn’t about giving him Jesus, but rather a moral compass. He confesses that he “doesn’t know” what to believe, but vacillates in disposition between “agnostic but curious” and “irritated atheist” upset that anyone has ANY assurance about God OR the afterlife. His incredulity is his own undoing, and as he tries to land the plane at the end of the film with the tired old argument that religion is to blame for war and conflict in the world, his own religious zeal misses the mark.

Religion is not usually the cause of conflict, but convenient fuel. My good friend’s two year old son bullies the younger son because he wants control of the toys. Cruelty and force are the easiest way to satisfy his innate hedonism. He’s not old enough to justify it with an appeal to God; when he’s older, and the toys are money or oil, he may use a higher power to rally other bullies to his cause, but without a god to appeal to he’s just going to pick another persuasive rally-cry. Most crusaders weren’t killing for the god of the Bible, they were killing for the booty promised by the religious leaders. Blaming the flammable liquid for the arson is “religulous”, and even atheism fuels its own Mao’s and Dahmers. Even in the decade of my life when I was agnostic and borderline atheist, I knew this argument was shallow and trite.

“How do you REALLY know?” is one of Bill’s questions. It’s a fascinating exploration worth following up with a “mixed worldview” group of acquaintances following the film. While I think there are fascinating philosophical arguments for God’s existence, agnostics and atheists often like to call Christians ignorant for believing there is a God without much more explanation than “I just know.” Is this answer really that absurd? Bill’s mother (who the credits sadly mention passed away) sent him to the church to get “moral grounding”. This begs what morality means to those who don’t need religion and find truth subjective… which ultimately leads to right and wrong being subjective, and ultimately leaves men like Bill Maher with no basis to contend that war itself is wrong. This usually results in some kind of appeal to “common sense”… that certain things are right and wrong because “we just know”. Sound familiar?

Morality can be self-evident, but God apparently cannot (even deist founding fathers knew that inalienable rights don’t hold up to logical scrutiny apart from a creator). The agnostic or humanist is ultimately left with the same argumentation as the Christian, (we just KNOW) only they’re contending that we goose-step to a “common sense” without any clear articulation of its origin or trustworthiness. That’s not enlightenment, it’s actually an even tighter and more “ignorant” reasoning. 

”Grow up or die,” Maher challenges, evincing the arrogance in our contemporary culture that somehow recent scientific advancement and evolution have made us more intelligent and atheism is a new step in our maturity. Sad to say, thousands of years ago atheism was alive and well. It’s what prompted King David to write in Psalm 14 “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

Is that arrogant? Not for Christians, because next to God Christians know we are ALL foolish, and that all have sinned, (including Bill, and the admittedly undereducated truckers who earnestly pray for him). In fact, Christians are even documented by the Bible as being some of the worst offenders when it comes to foolishness. In talking about His people, 1 Corinthians illuminates that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong… so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” 

Honestly, Maher’s characterization of Christians corroborates the Bible (thanks Bill).

Apart from the god Bill Maher thinks is no more real than the unicorn, how does he stand on a foundation that asserts peace is the best ascent for the human species? We could point to overpopulation and climate change and reasonably assert that another global war might help cull the human herd. How does he argue against conflict as an acceptable modus operandi for the human animal? Loving thy neighbor is truly a religious concept, and if Bill is right perhaps we should deem it “religulous” as well.

High School Musical 2
Reviewed by Caitlyn Stark
Directed by Kenny Ortega
Rated G

Here continues the phenomenon of High School Musical and review number two of my High School Musical trilogy.

If the first movie was popular, High School Musical 2 was, to use the words of HSM2 character Sharpay Evans, “Fabulous!” The day HSM2 came out, approximately 17.2 million people tuned in, making it the most-watched basic cable program ever, according to Nielsen Media Research, more than doubling the number of people who watched the first movie. People had spent the year in-between the HSM movies obsessing about Troy and Gabriella and East High, anxiously waiting to see what would happen over the summer for their favorite Wildcats.

The movie begins in the last class on the last day before summer. The students are anxiously watching the clock (which seems to get bigger and bigger) behind their teacher Ms. Darbus and as the final seconds tick down they whisper “summer, summer, summer, summer.” When the bell finally rings, the classroom explodes, and everyone in school joins in the song, dancing in the halls, celebrating the beginning of summer. They sing about how much fun they’re going to have over the summer, how it’s the time of their lives.

However, reality quickly comes crashing down for some of the Wildcats, as they realize they need summer jobs. They’re all juniors, and college is fast approaching, and some of their parents are encouraging them to earn some money. They talk about the different places they could work, and about what they’re going to do to hang out over the summer.

There are a couple Wildcats who won’t have to work over the summer: Ryan and Sharpay Evans. Their parents own the Lava Springs Country Club, and all Sharpay has to worry about is that her chaise is in a good place for a tan, winning the Star Dazzle Award at the Midsummer Night’s Talent Show, and breaking Troy and Gabriella up so that she and Troy can rule the school senior year. She puts her plan into action by having the manager of the Country Club offer Troy a job, no questions asked. As the summer begins, Sharpay wants the “whole world according to moi” and for everything to be “fabulous.” Troy arrives and she sings “I like what I see, I like it a lot. This is absolutely fabulous!” But then, the rest of the Wildcats arrive right behind Troy and suddenly it’s “not!” because this group also includes Gabriella and she has to re-think her plan. First, she tells Fulton, the manager, to fire them, but he informs her that her mother said that she wasn’t allowed to make that decision, so she tells him to make them want to quit.

Right away, he follows her orders and is much harder on the new employees then he would normally be, which inspires some of the Wildcats ask “how did we get from the top of the world to the bottom of the heap?” as they realize that a summer job is going to be much harder then they thought. Troy and Gabriella encourage them to “work this out” and slowly people join in agreeing that they can save the summer and have fun.

Faster then Sharpay can blink, two of her goals for the summer are dancing out of her reach. Troy and Gabriella are a stronger couple then ever, and Kelsey has written them a song to sing at the talent show: “You Are the Music in Me.” Even as their relationship is as strong as it’s ever been, Troy starts to get really worried about his college tuition. Sharpay notices and finds this would be a perfect way to get him away from Gabriella and the Wildcats.

After getting Troy promoted, and extending “club privileges” to him, which separates him from the Wildcats during work, Sharpay uses her father’s connections to a school Troy wants to attend to get them interested in him. This drives a wedge between him and his friends from the basketball team, including his best friend Chad, as he chooses to do things to try to get a scholarship instead of things he promised to do with them. While Troy plays basketball with the college team, the rest of the Wildcat boys play baseball with other staff members from Lava Springs. Gabriella invites Ryan, who has been excluded from his sister’s plan and performance in the talent show, and he joins in and even though Chad argues that “I Don’t Dance,” Ryan shows him that dancing and baseball both take game. By the time the game is over, Ryan is fitting in with the rest of the Wildcats, which is obvious the next morning when he’s seen wearing the school’s colors for the first time.

While Troy’s relationship with the Wildcats is on stormy seas, Sharpay continues to weasel her way in next to him, forcing him to practice with her for the talent show, using a faster version of the song Kelsey wrote for Troy and Gabriella. But shortly after that, she finds out that Ryan is helping the rest of the Wildcats with their performance for the show, and steps in to keep them from performing by telling Fulton to ban all junior staff members from the show.

This is the breaking point for Gabriella, who confronts Sharpay and tells her to stop messing with her friends. That night Gabriella quits to show Sharpay that she’s not going to take it anymore. Troy overhears the conversation and stops Gabriella to ask her if she was really leaving. She tells him “I Gotta Go My Own Way,” and that he hurt her and his friends by allowing himself to be a jerk in his effort to pursue his future. She leaves him alone with his thoughts.

The next morning, Troy finds out how Sharpay banned the junior staffers and storms out of the kitchen, telling himself that he needs to “listen to [his] own heart talking” and “count on [himself] instead.” He goes back to Chad to make things right and confronts Sharpay, telling her that he took back his old job as a junior staffer and that he wouldn’t be singing with her. She tries to go back to the number she was originally going to do with her brother, but he’d sold his costume and was done taking orders from her.

As the show approaches, Troy goes back to Sharpay and tells her that he will sing with her, as long as the Wildcats are allowed to perform too. However, just before Troy goes out, Ryan tells him that Sharpay wanted him to learn a new song, so he learns it quickly and as they’re about to go on, he asks Sharpay why she switched songs. Sharpay realizes that Ryan tricked her, and realizes that it was for the best.

Troy goes on and starts singing “Everyday” alone, and Gabriella appears to sing with him. They sing, wanting the moment to “last forever and never give it back. It’s our turn, and I’m lovin’ where we’re at, because this moment’s really all we have.” The entire staff comes on stage, including Ryan and Sharpay, to join in the song. After the show, they all go out to watch the fireworks, and Troy and Gabriella have their first kiss.

The next day, during a staff-only pool party, everyone celebrates that they finally got the summer they wanted, and that now everybody’s “All for One!”

Similar to the first movie, the idea that we are all different, and yet all need each other comes up, particularly in the final song. But HSM2 has another major theme: that “there’s more to life when we listen to our hearts.”

In his Footloose-worthy song that would leave Kevin Bacon quaking in his dancing shoes, Troy wrestles with the fact that he has been allowing other people to decide how he’s going to live his life, and he comes to the conclusion that he needs to listen to his heart, and count on himself instead: “The answers are all inside of me. All I gotta do is believe.” This belief is prominent in many people’s worldviews, that if they “listen to their heart” and “follow their heart” they’ll do what’s best. However, Jeremiah 17:9 says that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” In our sinful nature, listening to our heart means drawing out of a diseased and rotting core. Jesus said in Matthew 15 that “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”

On the other hand, when we have a relationship with Jesus a change occurs: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you…and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 36:26-27). A Christian goes through heart changes, the kind that allows Paul to talk about “love that issues from a pure heart” in 1 Timothy 1:5. And because of that heart change, we know that we can’t trust in ourselves, we can’t “count on [ourselves],” but rather that we can trust in someone far greater then ourselves and count on Him who has “all authority in heaven and on earth” and who has everything figured out: Jesus Christ.

About Caitlyn Stark: “I am a musical-lovin’-Disney-watchin’-romance-dreamin’ girl, who loves reading, singing, acting, watching movies and plays. God has blessed me so immensely in my life, with his unstoppable faithfulness! I love my family, who gave me a passion for serving, words and music, and taught me about not being worried about being a little weird. I’m a student, looking to be an English teacher, and a dealer of legal addictive stimulants for the Siren who calls Seattle home.”

I thought my friends and I were crazy when we had a Lord of the Rings day and watched all three EXTENDED editions, totaling some eleven and a half hours not counting disc changeovers, bathroom breaks, and some food. I’ve even known a few Star Wars fans who have done a six-movie marathon, which must be akin to a three-film dentist appointment followed by a three-scoop cinema-cone from Baskin Robbins to soothe and cool the prequel pain. My wife’s been trying to lovingly coerce me into having another day-long movie party and I’ve been holding back. There is something oddly religious about devoting so much time stooping before the screen in a posture of quiet, flickering worship that I’ve staved off having a flick-fest. However, if I were to measure things subjectively, it pales in comparison to the World Record-setting event chronicled in the Seattle P.I. last week:

Duo Claim record by watching 57 films in 123 hours

As worship is ultimately indicated by where we pour our time, treasure, and talent, this seemed worthy of an entry in the halls of Cinemagogue. Now my wife is picking out dates for LOTR as we speak…