South Dakota Politics: Mutants, Monsters, & Meth Labs

I am not exactly your go to guy for summer movies. I am your go to guy for horror movies. I have posted a lot on superhero movies. I can recommend X Men: First Class. The blend of Marvel Comics history with real history is delicious. The plot is solid enough for this sort of thing and the action is superb.

The film excels at two things: casting and scene crafting. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr [Magneto] are both very good. The former is nerdy first and a bit sexy. The second is sexy first and a bit nerdy. Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, well, it's Kevin Bacon.

As for scene crafting, Magneto steals the show. Note to self: don't kill Magneto's mother in front of him, even if "Nazi methods are effective", and don't try to threaten Magneto with a metal knife.

Marvel was very clever in drawing a connection between the mutant/non-mutant antagonism and the civil rights story (along with the Holocaust and other examples of majority/minority oppression). Unfortunately, Marvel barely exploits the most interest aspect of their creation. Unlike actual victims of oppression, the mutants really are different from "the rest of us." They clearly do represent a serious threat to non-mutants. The story would be more interesting if the ambiguity of this situation were better developed and more sympathy were shown for those folks who can't fly or read minds and fear those who can.

In the X Men movies, this matter is represented in the friendship and antagonism between Professor X and Magneto. Magneto sees it as an irreconcilable conflict between us mutants and them. Professor X, quite unintentionally I think, comes off as wishful liberal.

One final note: Fassbender looks silly in Magneto's helmet. Sorry.

Super8 was a lot of fun in spite of itself. File under "deadly alien loose and only the kids know what to do about it." It is a decent nerd fantasy, only slightly marred by a pathetically stupid climax. What goes right here is competent pacing and an unbelievably good job on the part of the young actors: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Riley Griffiths. Five minutes in I knew exactly what the plot was going to be, and I was still mesmerized. It was the faces. As for the ending let's just say that if the power fails in the theater just as the hero (Courtney) confronts the alien, it would make for a better cinematic experience.

I enjoyed both of the above while I watched them, and thought a little less of X Men and lot less of Super 8 when I thought about them later. Meanwhile I watched a much more powerful and beautiful movie on DVD. Winter's Bone didn't make it to the local theaters, so far as I can remember. It was toe curling fine. File it under Hillbilly Noire. If you watched Justified, which is good for TV, imagine the same thing without the good guys.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a sixteen year old Ozark girl trying to pass for seventeen. She has care of three younger siblings and a mother who is heavily medicated. Her dope cooking father has gone missing and if she can't find him or prove he's dead, the bondsman will take their house and land with its hundred year growth trees. The trees are thrown in to get you tree huggers interested. What Ree cares about is her family.

Ree's world is a tangled web of family connections interwoven with meth labs, pot plants, and crooked cops, all of it spread out over a hard landscape of hills, crags, caves, and twisted pine. As soon as she starts looking for dad she is threatened and manhandled. Eventually she is bloodied. But she keeps at it, for what choice does she have? The story tracks to the line between family obligation and murderous business.

Winter's Bone is nearly perfect noire. Ree, like most noire heroes, is an inexplicably good person. She don't take no dope. She won't stop trying to save the few souls who are dependent on her, even when it nearly costs her everything. Actor John Hawks, who is very dear to me as he played Sol Star in Deadwood, plays Ree's uncle, Teardrop. He takes some warming to, but comes around to be as much of a hero as this story can otherwise afford.

Go see X Men and Super 8, for the buttered popcorn. Put Winter's Bone at the top of your Netflix que queue for a more genuine experience.