Lions for Lambs

The title of this 2007 movie refers to the frustration of incompetent military leaders sending brave, heroic soldiers on ill thought out and or conceived missions.

The movie starring Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep certainly has enough star power to be a success. The reviews however were not good, the movie made very little money, and has generally been classified as a disappointment.

Last weekend I happened upon this movie and seeing the cast started watching it and despite the reviews that have been widespread I have to say that I most definitely do not concur. I thought the movie was very strong.

In fairness to the reviewers there was a sense that the movie was going somewhere, as you watch the opening scenes you do not realize that these scenes are going to be the biggest part of the movie. That said, for me it still worked.

We meet Tom Cruise as California Senator Jasper Irving. A young, handsome, war hero he is considered a future Presidential candidate and is as ambitious as he is well thought of. A huge advocate of our military adventures in the Middle East he invites a semi hostile reporter in for an interview.

Meryl Streep plays Janine Roth, a veteran reporter shocked to be given an audience with Irving. Little does she know he has determined that she is just the kind of reporter he needs to sell his plan for what is called establishing forward points in Afghanistan to increase the chances for success. When she advises him that to her forward points might be otherwise called bait he realizes she is in for a battle in making her convinced. Playing on her patriotism he pulls her in until she knows not what to do. She feels a responsibility for the Iraq war and the lack of questions put forth by the news media including herself.

As this is going on, at a California university a typical liberal minded college Professor named Stephen Malley, played by Redford, has called a meeting with one of his students. Todd Hayes has all the potential in the world, easily recognized by Malley, but he now is missing too many classes and while he is doing the work he is not engaged and Malley is convinced that he could be a bright light, one of few that enters his classroom that can make a difference.

The third scene connects the two first. The mission that Senator Irving is trying to sell to Reporter Roth is starting as they speak. In it are two soldiers named Rodriguez and Finch who are to be among a group landing at a forward point. As they land however they are fired upon and the mission is soon in trouble.

These two soldiers also hold the distinction of being the other shining lights for Professor Malley. While he is trying to engage his new student he tells them the story of these two young men who came through his classroom and then instead of going to graduate school at Harvard or Yale joined the army. They felt to stand outside the system and mock it was hypocritical.

For me this movie worked. Perhaps it struck my idealism bone. I am not sure. Redford had a great deal of skin in the game, he produced, directed and starred in the movie. It must have been a sadness to him to have it do so poorly. I am not afraid of being in the minority, that much is well established, in this movie I am.

I give it a strong positive rating.

The War of the Worlds by H G Wells

This book from 1898 has been one of the more influential books of the last 100 years. There have been several movie adaptions including the Tom Cruise vehicle a few years ago that was quite successful. Most of us have heard the story of the panic caused by a reading of the story on a New Jersey radio station in the nineteen thirties. As people tuned into the channel they could not differentiate if this was a story or an actual news reporting.


In the story we have an unnamed author telling of a Martin invasion of England. Cylinders fall on England and it soon becomes apparent that inside these cylinders are aliens. These aliens quickly subdue the humans who are in their vicinity. Humans who are innocently curious to those with more aggressive motives are all laid waste with the heat rays and disabling black clouds that the aliens possess.


Our author in his escape leaves his wife in a village called Leatherhead wiht plans to return to get her but in the story he never does get back. We see him in his travails, coming into close contact with the aliens, being fortunate enough to survive some chance encounters, and also meeting up with various survivors and other refugees.

A story like this will always have an audience. We, as humans, are prone to wondering about other beings. Just last year the physicist Stephen Hawking advised that our attempts to send messages to outer space might well be a fools errand. His reasoning, that aliens that do travel to our solar system would most likely not be coming on a friendly mission and we might not want to attract their attention.

One of the more interesting aspects of the story is Wells writing for the main character that features him wondering if the human race now will suffer what the lower creatures on Earth have felt since mans rise. That is are we now just rabbits and ants to the martians and if so is that a just retribution for our treatment of lesser creatures.

Another is that the method of the defeat of the aliens. Certainly not one you would obviously think about, and certainly not the traditional victory method, but one cognizant of scientific realities or at that time theories it actually makes significant amounts of sense in the way it is presented.

This is another fine book. I will now have to, at some point, have to read The Invisible Man to complete my H G Wells lessons but he certainly deserves his place in the pantheons of great writers.

Rock of Ages

First of all it should be noted that I am not a blind go to the movies kind of guy. What this means is that I usually check out a few reviews for a movie before I decide to go. With that in mind what occurred Tuesday night should never have happened.

We went to see Rock of Ages. It was in a word, awful. Actually that is not even a strong enough wording, it was incredibly awful. The blame however, has to go to me. I had briefly read a review in Rolling Stone of the movie. What I saw was that Tom Cruise nailed his part as the aging rock God Stacee Jaxxs. What I missed was that this was a musical, what I also missed was Peter Travers saying that the movie was bland, the cast was bad BUT that Tom Cruise nailed his part as the aging rock God Stacee Jaxx.

Actually in retrospect it is kind of funny. My wife on Tuesday night as we found ourselves childless said let's go to a movie. Victims of the East Coast heatwave it seemed a good place to go, I said Rolling Stone says Tom Cruise is pretty good in Rock of Ages. I further thought that RS loves to poop all over Tom Cruise so if they said he was good he must be. So we go to the movie, get our popcorn, take our seat, answer the trivia questions, sit through the previews and BAM in the first scene Julianna Hough breaks into song as Sherrie the Midwestern girl on her own heading in a greyhound bus to the West Coast. Thinking to myself that's ok she is just singing a little to set the tone and then everyone on the bus with her starts singing.

Houston we have a problem. Before long it became evident that this was a true blue musical. I wanted to crawl in my seat, while my wife, she who loves musicals said " I am so glad you picked out this movie for us."

The problem is that it was not even a good musical. The music was not bad but the plot was just too cheesy. Julianna Hough, she of Dancing With the Stars fame, is cute but not a great actress. Diego Bonata who plays the male lead, her romantic counterpart and an aspiring rock star is awful. It could well be the role he plays but, to me, this was one of the worst performances I have seen in a movie. Just awful.

The supporting cast, which was actually made of larger stars such as Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand and of course Tom Cruise were all quite good. Cruise sings his own songs, perfects the groupie abusing, single monolithic stare gazing in a fixated way at an object or interviewer to a science. In short it might be one of his best performances but it comes in an awful movie. Baldwin and Brand play their roles for laughs and for the most part succeed. When their characters realize that they are in love and break into song and sing to each other the audience in the theatre teetered on laughter and then broke out into full throat-ed howls. It had to be what the scene was intended to be.

About halfway through the movie I was looking at baseball scores. Our star crossed lovers had broken up, he was in a cheesy boy band, and she was " dancing" at a mens club. By the time we get around to the happy ending the film seems to have some redeeming value. My wife loves musicals, she said she wanted to poke her eyes out about halfway through, but she too acknowledged that it ended well.

I cannot decide if it was an attempt to be played as funny, campy, serious or somewhere in between. For me it did not work. Next time I guess I will take the time to read the whole review.