Movie Review: The Prestige

Title: The Prestige
Author: Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Michael Cane
Release Date: 2006
Genre: drama, mystery, sci-fi
My Rating: ****
Official Rating: PG-13 for violence and disturbing images
Age Group: 14+

Summary
Every magic act has three parts: the pledge (where something apparently ordinary is shown), the turn (when something extraordinary happens), and the prestige (when the ordinary thing is brought back). Or so Cutter claims.
Two young magicians, Robert Angier (the showman) and Alfred Borden (the gifted illusionist) are friends and partners on stage, working under the main magician. One night, something goes horribly wrong, and the two men are forever set against each other.
One rises to success and fame, then the other. They are constantly fighting to find out each other's secrets. Sometimes, it seems as though they will go to any ends to find out the methods of those three parts.
But what happens when you find out that they've both been living their acts? That the story itself has a pledge, a turn, and a prestige?

Word of Warning

Allow me to begin by explaining that while many of these things are present in the movie and the story, they are not present. It's incredibly hard to explain, but some of the more difficult things are not what they appear (this is a movie about magic shows, after all). This does not detract from the bad things that do happen, but it does make some things that seemed horrible much less serious. Little more can be said without risking majorly spoiling the movie, and that's something I absolutely do not want to do with this one.

•  People drink. There are a few scenes where characters are drunk, all portrayed in a negative light.
• Multiple people drown during magic tricks, apparently gone wrong.
• A young girl's future is threatened.
• A husband kisses his wife's calf during a trick, discretely but noticeably.
• Husband and wife kiss passionately, fall onto bed, scene cuts.
• A bird is killed during a magic trick, its crushed body is shown.
• A man tries to drown himself, does not carry through. A woman hangs herself, we see her limp body hanging by a rope around her neck.
• Someone mutters "Oh my God" but it sounds more like a prayer and less like a disrespectful use of His name.
• Man is shot in the hand, screams in pain, fingers are missing in a later view. Another man is shot in the arm, while quite a few are shot in the abdomen later on (and die).
• Women in magic shows wear provocative clothing complete with short skirts, tight waists, and very low necklines (think circus performer).
• A man falls, breaking his leg (we hear the crunch)
• Implication that a man is cheating on his wife. This is later confirmed, sort of. We get a scene of a couple in bed together fully clothed, nothing happens and the scene is quick, only meant to share information and nothing more.
• Man is captured, nailed into a coffin, and buried alive but given the opportunity of escape via blackmailing his partner.
• Various things (objects, animals, people) are "electrocuted".
• A man is sentenced to death and hung. We see the floor fall out, his body drops, no movement, his neck apparently broken.
• Man chops off fingers with a chisel.

My Thoughts
At the end of the movie, I stared at the screen for a good ten minutes, shocked. Calculating what I had just seen. Processing, going over the story again, seeing the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. Heartbroken. Impressed. In awe.
It's a movie that is incredible the first time, and I suspect absolutely brilliant the second time. It's the kind of movie that can, and should be watched at least twice.
It was well done. How could it not be, with such a director working with that cast?
But it was more than well done. This is one of the few movies out there today, created in the last ten years, that is genuinely a work of art.

Book Review: Hatchet

Title: Hatchet
Author: Gary Paulsen
Release Date: 1987
Genre: young adult/children's fiction, survival
My Rating: ***
Official Rating: Young Adult Fiction
Age Group: 12+
Awards: Newbery Medal, Dorthy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award

Summary
Brian is on the way to visit his dad via plane. He's working up in Canada in some remote location, and a small charter plane is going to take Brian there for the summer. Because Brian's parents aren't together anymore. Because of the Secret. Because of what Brian knows.
Brian knows about his mother cheating with that man. He saw them kissing in the car across the street from where Brian and his friend were playing. Brian didn't tell his father, and neither did his mother. But that didn't stop the divorce from happening.
At age thirteen, that's a tough thing to handle. Honestly, at any age that's a tough thing to handle.
But when the pilot has a heart attack over an unidentifiable wilderness, and Brian does what he can to fly the plane himself, things get a whole lot worse.
Especially when Brian crashes the plane.

Word of Warning

• Brian's parents are divorced. His mother cheated on his father (all the detail we have is that they were kissing) while they were still married.
• A very well-known survival story, filled with the elements of survival: struggles for shelter, food, and against the elements.
• Brian has to kill animals for food.
• Vomiting, diarrhea, sickness in general.
• Injuries, an attack by a moose (nothing too deadly or graphic)
• At a very low point, Brain tries to slit his wrists. His attempt fails, and in the morning he wakes up more determined than ever to live.
• Fighting against the elements, including a dramatic experience with a tornado.

My Thoughts
It was decent. I think my all time favorite survival book will always be Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain, but this is also a pretty good book. It gets a bit long, and the writing style isn't something I'm a big fan of (particularly the sentence structure), but there's nothing necessarily wrong with it.
My biggest objection is that it just gets too long. I realize Brian was stuck in the wilderness for a long time, but I just started to lose interest after a while, especially since, knowing the genre, I had no doubt that Brian would somehow survive.
It's a rough adventure for Brian. He goes through a lot. But he makes it, and he's smart. In our ever-changing society which is becoming more and more paved, it's nice to still have a good wilderness adventure book standing strong and still being eagerly read by a variety of readers.

Novella Review: Nightjohn

Title: Nightjohn
Author: Gary Paulsen
Release Date: 1993
Genre: slavery, education, historical fiction, novella
My Rating: *
Official Rating: young adult fiction
Age Group: 16+ (depending on maturity of the reader)

Summary
Sarny is a young girl on a plantation. One day, a new slave is brought to the plantation. His name is John, and his back bears evidence of many horrible beatings. As Sarny struggles with what goes on around her, she eventually comes to discover a dangerous secret about John: he has come to teach slaves to read.

Word of Warning

• People are referred to as "breeders" if they are going to be used in just that way.
• Horrible bloody beatings. Descriptions of dogs attacking humans.
• References to "the troubles" which is a girl's period.
• One young woman doesn't take well to breeding, and is tied up and forced to comply (basically raped). She was a little crazy in the head before, but this pushes her over the edge.
• A woman is beaten to protect someone else. Later, a man suffers the same fate.
• Someone's toes are cut off.
• A young man determined not to be old enough for the breeders shed sneaks away to a neighboring farm to meet with a girl, is caught, and then castrated (Sarny describes it as being treated like the cattle so there will be no more sneaking away to girls, but you get the idea of what's actually going on).

My Thoughts
This is a brutal, horrible book. Paulsen did his research well, and unfortunately this is the truth, the novella even based on a true story. While the story might be accurate, and might contain hope through education, I'd warn to be very careful about handing this on to youth readers. It's a short read, and I'd recommend reading it yourself before handing it to a student or one of your own children. Just make sure that what's in the book is something they are ready for. If not, it will come as a horrible shock and hurt them deeply.

Book Review: Flame of Resistance

Title: Flame of Resistance
Author: Tracy Groot
Release Date: 2012
Genre: historical fiction, romance, Christian, drama
My Rating: ***
Official Rating: adult fiction
Age Group: 18+
Awards: Christy Award

Summary
When Tom Jaeger's plane is shot down over France, he is rescued by members of the resistance group called the Flame and nursed back to health by a sweet old grandmother named Clemmie.
Greenland, the leader of the Flame, eventually forms a plan. Tom looks like the perfect German, so why not send him undercover? A few changes are made, and Tom finds himself going undercover to a Germans-only brothel to gain intel from Brigette, the woman who runs the house. Tom's not the least bit comfortable with this situation, but as long as all they have to do is sit and talk, he eventually gets over it.
But when the mission is compromised, will everyone managed to escape alive?

Word of Warning

•  As mentioned above, there is a brothel. The author is very careful to carefully dance around anything descriptive, almost making sex itself a dirty thing (which was wrong).
• Girls are catty.
• People get hurt, get captured, and die.
• Torture.
• One young woman is captured and tortured, raped, and left for dead.
• This is a war. Germans are horrible (though not all, as we soon learn). People die, people are starved, people are driven to horrible things just to survive. They ignore others and let them take beatings, they sell themselves into prostitution, etc. There is no sugarcoating here.

My Thoughts
The book was good. Well done, even. I enjoyed it, and I was hooked. The pilot is a compelling character, as is Clemmie, and even Brigette. It's a sad story, but a good one, and I think it sheds light on the truth of a horrible time in history that is far too often sugarcoated by our historical fiction. Well done, Groot. Well done.

Movie Review: Brooklyn

Title: Brooklyn
Author: BBC Films, Parallel Film Production
Release Date: 2015
Genre: Historical fiction, romance, drama
My Rating: ***
Official Rating: PG-13 (for a scene of sexuality and brief strong language)
Age Group: 18+

Summary
Eilis (A-lish) is stuck in Ireland with no prospects. Her mother stays at home, her sister works, and Eilis works too--at the general store down the street run by a crabby middle-aged lady. Rose, Eilis' sister, writes to Fr. Flood in America and soon enough Eilis finds herself on a boat to Brooklyn with no indication of coming back.
Brooklyn's nice enough, and full of Irish people, but Eilis misses home. And life in America isn't as easy as everyone says.
We hope Eilis can make it America, but making it isn't everything. Hopefully she can thrive.

Word of Warning

• Eilis is very non-combative. This is fine, except it leads to many misunderstandings because instead of explaining or defending herself, she just remains silent and deals with the issues herself.
• We see a sea sick young woman sit on a bucket since the bathroom has been locked. Later, she pukes in the same bucket.
• Language: f*ck. There were others that were less problematic, but unfortunately I don't have a list of them.
• A dead cold body is shown, found by the mother of the dead character. It can be very hard to see because it's so heartbreaking.
• Eilis struggles with being homesick and lonely.
• Eilis neglects to tell her mother about a significant development in her life. This causes all sorts of complications later on.
• A young woman accidentally leads a young man on, then eventually this becomes less of an accident but something she just doesn't bother to clear up.
• Two characters make love the day before they're to be married in a civil ceremony. While we don't see much as far as skin, the scene is very awkward and there is no question about what is going on. It isn't a long scene and easily skipped.

My Thoughts
It was a simple movie that you need to be in the right mood for, and honestly I don't think any of my brothers will ever sit through more than five minutes of it. But my sister and I enjoyed it. The movie moves slowly, simply, and feels honest and quiet. It feels like Eilis.
Somehow, they capture in film how she's feeling even though it involves no voice overs or camera tricks. This is just the story of an Irish immigrant in the 1950s. There is little to say about it, to be completely honest. It's just good and well done. It's not one of those films that exposes some tragedy or terrible thing that happened.
It just looks at the truth in an honest and simple way, and ends honestly and simply, and worth watching.

Book Review: Legion

Title: Legion
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Release Date: 2012
Genre: Adventure, drama, sci-fi
My Rating: ****
Official Rating: adult fiction
Age Group: 12+

Summary
"My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite mad."
Thus begins a mind-bending adventure in which we meet Stephen Leeds' hallucinations, or aspects, as he calls them. He's a brilliant man and essentially what happens is he has different characters in his head. One's a SEAL, one a therapist, another a history expert, then there's the one who speaks Hebrew...and so on until he has nearly all 47 rooms in his mansion filled.
Of course, no one can see or hear these aspects except Leeds, but he still gives them actual space, and thankfully so does his faithful butler Wilson.
Leeds is a recluse, hiding away from the scientists who want to figure out his "condition" but when a woman presents to him an interesting mystery, he agrees to go to Israel to try to solve it.
Afterall, why not try to find a camera that can take pictures of the past?
Well, one reason could be the terrorist group that wants to use it to destroy all major world religions. Or that could be a motivator. Either way, Leeds is off to Israel!

Word of Warning
Very few problems with this book. I think it's not put in children's or YA fiction just because it's not structured or targeted as one, but I think it really hits the three major areas (children, YA, adult) rather well.

• Language: damn, "oh my God", and bastard. Each time these are used (as rarely as it is), one of the aspects kindly warns "Language!"
• Terrorists. They attack, blow a car up, capture major characters, and torture/beat a man almost to death before shooting him. They also cut off his hand (but that's done before we meet him).
• Speaking of shooting, there is an aspect, J.C. (the SEAL) who is practicing his aim by shooting at a picture of bin Laden. He tends to request "Can I shoot him?" quite often, but I'm not entirely sure he's serious. He does come in handy when the terrorists are in the heat of a battle.
• Essentially, Leeds murders about five people in self-defense, but it's complicated by by the fact that he attributes this to J.C.
• The goal of the terrorist group is to prove all major world religions wrong. This is nicely contrasted by another character who is trying to use the camera to prove Christianity (more specifically Catholicism) true. And it's not that this character doubts it, it's that he wants to prove it to doubters.
• One of the aspects is very impressed by the man's persistence in remaining a serious scientist and a faithful Christian (probably Catholic). While this is really great, the aspect spends a few moments making it sound like these two things actually don't go together and should in a normal world compete. Eventually the aspect tries to conclude that they can work together, but the conclusion is a little weak when put up against his speech before it.

My Thoughts
It's a fast read, really only about 84 pages, mostly dialogue since Leeds spends a good amount of time talking to his aspects. It's fun, watching a character talk to compartmentalized information in his head that is manifested as characters. Plus the adventure is a fun, fast-paced story that isn't too complicated to follow but just enough to make you think, and just when you thought you had it, turns out you didn't.
And Leeds knows his aspects aren't real. He also thinks he can't live without them. But there's a mysterious woman who was teaching him how to control them, and himself, to get his life back into order. And he's torn between how much he loves life with his aspects, and knowing that he really needs something more from life, and something needs to change.
With something this easy and enjoyable to read, I can say two things: I'm off to find the rest of the series, and I'm interested to see where Leeds goes next.

Movie Review: Earth to Echo

Title: Earth to Echo
Author: Disney
Release Date: 2014
Genre: adventure, sci-fi, family, friendship
My Rating ****
Official Rating: PG for action, peril, and mild language
Age Group: 8+ (my only concern for this age group is the bar scene, mentioned below)

Summary
Tuck, Alex, and Munch. They're best friends, and suddenly, per a government ruling that a freeway will be built right through their neighborhood, they're forced to part. The boys are devastated and are pretty sure this is going to be the end of their friendship. But when their phones "barf" the day before they're all scheduled to move, the boys decide to have one last adventure together. They're going to figure out what is going on with the phones, no matter what it takes.
Tuck will, of course, film the whole thing. Always gotta have a good home video!

Word of Warning

• The boys all lie to their parents about where they'll be so they can run off to the desert, alone. Later, they're joined by a girl, who also lies. Another issue with this is how easily the boys get away with this, and for how long. It's clear that while their parents probably do love them, they're not paid nearly enough close attention.
• The group soon learns that in order to complete their mission, they need to break into various places where havoc results--not by their direct doing, but they do enable it.
• One of the places the group ends up at is a bar. People are partying and drinking, and an older woman at the bar buys some of the boys drinks (they bravely resist, and are luckily able to escape before they're forced to drink).
• One character goes on and on about how her father is a drunk (or an addict...it was hard to hear) and how she just wants to get away from him and her poor mother....All as a lie to distract someone whom she doesn't want asking questions. The whole story is completely made up and mumbled through fake tears.
• Someone gets left behind and caught by a security guard. He's rescued, and nothing bad happens aside from a mildly-harsh scolding from the guard, but this experience is traumatizing for the kid who is an orphan and living with foster parents. He has a fear of being left behind, and this experience does NOT help matters.
• The kids are eventually "captured" by government agents. They're questioned and while the most fearful of them breaks down and sobs out every answer asked for, the others don't seem nearly as scared. The agents themselves behave as children would imagine them to, not telling their parents and forcing them to do things against their wills.
• One of the boys tells a story about how he and a girl at school kissed in the bathroom. He rates the kiss as ok, saying that "he's kissed girls in better places" but this comment seems much more related to the bathroom setting than it does to other possibilities.
• One of the boys remarks that he'll be sleeping over, "In your mother's bed. Not playing video games", a comment meant to be inappropriate but honestly just really funny to an older audience because of how innocent and ridiculous it sounds.
• The kids end up at a teen party where there is clearly under-age drinking, passionate kissing, and one guy is passed out in the bathtub (fully clothed, alone, no implications made).
• Under-age driving.
• The boys, having met an alien, decide to do whatever they can to rescue it. Sometimes this means just following a map, but eventually it means breaking into places, trespassing, and breaking various other laws. At the climax, they decide to trust the alien, at the risk of hundreds of human families, and give it what it wants. It's not clear whether they expect the alien to harm the hundreds, but they do know it's a very real possibility. While this might seem honorable in terms of friendship, it's childishly short-sighted.

My Thoughts
There are a few texts that I am honestly impressed with their make up or structure. Finding Neverland captures J. M. Barrie so well and has such a beautiful supportive structure that, as a whole, it's a wonderful work of art. Sea of Tranquility uses alternating narration to navigate difficult issues in a way that is very human but also honest and open. Chasing Shadows blends narration with comic strips to give a sense of urgency and intense emotions. Salt to the Sea uses multiple narrators, finally circling each other in a fascinating way, to tell a story so horrible and yet so full of goodness you cry at the end, even if you're not a crier for anything else. And The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society uses letters to tell a great story, adding an edge that the story could never have in classic narration form. While there are others, they are sadly few and far between.

But this movie joins those ranks. Tuck is proposed as the "author" of the story, narrating, filming, and apparently later compiling the videos to create the final product. We're given his camera, the other boys' cameras, and the alien's camera. We're convinced that these are just boys adventuring, and honestly, it's so genuine I don't even know how someone wrote this. It makes me wonder if they handed the boys cameras and said, "You find an alien and it needs help" and let them go from there.
I know that's not what happened, but that's how well-done this movie is. It fits well as a whole. The dialogue, the characters, the structure, the camera, the music, everything--it comes together as an incredible whole that is worth seeing.

Movie Review: Pan

Title: Pan
Author: Warner Brothers
Release Date: 2015
Genre: fantasy, family, adventure, Peter Pan, British literature, children
My Rating: ***
Official Rating PG for fantasy action violence, language, and some thematic material
Age Group: 10+

Summary
Poor Peter and his friends. They're orphans in a very miserable orphanage, as apparently all orphanages always are. He wants his mother, and he's positive that she'll come back for him. But with WWII raging on outdoors, doesn't he have bigger things to think about?
Unlike all literary orphanages, this one has a crabby old nun (wait for it, I promise this is different)...who sells the boys to pirates who fly ships across the sky.
Wait, what?
Peter and some of the boys are kidnapped by Blackbeard where they are forced to mine fairy dust and fight for their survival. But Peter still wants his mother, and his new buddy James Hook wants to go home, so why not work together?
Just when they're ready to take off though, Tiger Lily shows up spewing nonsense about a chosen one, a savior, someone called the Pan. And she's pretty sure Peter is it.
So is Blackbeard, and he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Word of Warning

• As mentioned above, Peter and the other boys live in a sad orphanage with a cruel nun character who is fat and ugly and basically a tyrant. She also sells the boys to pirates. She's just an all-around nasty character.
• As with any orphanage, there are abandoned children.
• The characters are not all together good, even though we're to believe they're on the good side. They break into places, steal, and do general mischief.
• The PG rating comes from fantasy action violence and thematic material. We see scenes where characters fall to their deaths, bombs are dropped (on England and on pirate ships), characters are nearly crushed by a falling metal car, there is an animated war scene (shown as historical of Neverland), an animated battle scene shows a woman made of bubbles being stabbed and dying, a man looks possessed when attacked by fairies (and quite honestly, attacking fairies are rather fierce), and so on.
• The mermaids apparently do not even wear shells. Their hair covers what is absolutely necessary. Tiger Lily wears a bandeau style shirt for significantly long parts of the movie. 
• There is a light, somewhat playful, romance that never amounts to anything physical (not even a hug).
• Blackbeard is using fairy dust to stay young forever. This can be (and should be) disturbing.
• An old man is shot and killed. Other characters die as well, though some of these deaths are meant to be comical.
• Brief mention of suicide, not as an action to take, but rather as a caution.
• The animals of Neverland are creepy and dangerous.

My Thoughts
If you're looking for something accurate to the original Peter Pan stories by J. M. Barrie, this isn't it. It's much closer to the original feel than, say, Hook starring Robin Williams and a grown up Peter Pan (wait, isn't that a contradiction?). However, there is much focus on family, knowing where one comes from, and heroism for the sake of doing the right thing. This is very much not the vibe of the original book.

But if you're looking for a well done movie with little known actors who are incredibly skilled, a fun fantasy adventure romp, this is a great option. I enjoyed it in theaters, and I enjoyed it again while watching it for research. It proposes some interesting questions, and I'd like to see how it is connected, eventually, to the original Peter Pan. By the end of the movie, you get the feeling this is the first half of a prequel to Peter Pan. I'd like to see where it goes from here.
And even if it goes nowhere, it's still a good, well done movie worth watching and enjoying.