The Judge and the Predestination of Science Fiction

Hello all,
In case you have not known Natchitoches Parish has been out of school for three days due to weather and as a smart little trooper I raided Red Box of some real cinema gold!


The Judge

I can honestly say I was excited about this one and very pleased with the outcome. The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr., Robert, Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton, is a film about a lawyer coming home to his estranged family to bury his mother only to be entangled in a murder trail that involves his Judge father. This is the first non superhero role that Robert Downey Jr. has tackled in a while and I was very interested to see if his drama chops were still up to speed and I can honestly say WOW! The one two punch of raw emotion is centered around the relationship between Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall and comes to a head as Robert Duvall finds himself on trail for murder for hitting a man he doesn't remember hitting. Huge questions of fatherhood, ethical responsibility, and moral justice are tackled through the progression of the film and by the end you are not only dedicated to the main character, RDJ, but also to the Judge himself who finally finds common ground with his middle child. GO TO RED BOX RIGHT NOW and get the Judge, I promise you will not be disappointed.



Predestination

Now as a sci-fi nut I have to admit when I saw the preview for Predestination, starring Ethan Hawke and Sara Snook, I was pretty excited. The film trailer portrayed the film to be something of a time travel murder mystery that centered around Hawke as a temporal agent trying to hunt down a murderer through the wake of time. Sounds exciting right? Well like any time travel film it always comes down to the details and sadly that's where Predestination lost me.

Now let's clarify, Predestination is not a bad movie, it's just not everyone's cut of tea and I'll explain why. The film starts out with an agent, Hawke, getting hurt by an explosion set off by the killer and his road to recovery. Then we time travel to a crappy bar in New York where Hawke talks to a sex changed woman/man and she/he delivers a very sad and gut wrenching tale of her/his life. Long story short this person, played by Sarah Snook, has her entire life ruined by a mystery man who gets her pregnant which leads to the changing of her sex and the kidnapping of her daughter. Hawke promises her to take her back in time to allow her to kill this mystery man and become a new agent. Well not to give anything away but if you're already confused, it only gets worse from here. By the end of the film you're either scratching your head or wondering why you spent time sitting through the film to reach that end.

Now what makes a good time travel movie? Well not everything can be Back to the Future and even Back to the Future had it's own hiccups that we ignored because well it was Back to the Future. A time travel film has to be easy to interpret while being complex in the plot. The sequence of events have to be linear while not being too linear and there always has to be that time travel twist at the end. Take Denzel Washington in Deja Vu. Here you have a cop who has to solve a crime using time travel. The plot isn't too hard to understand, the flow of events has a viewer on the edge of their seats while the plot twist at the end gets them up and cheering for the emotional ending. Predestination didn't really have that. The plot twist was just kind of twisted and when the big ending come up it wasn't all that big.  The good thing about Predestination? It wasn't CGI pumped and it had a real retro vibe to it. In Predestination time travel was inventing in 1981 and everything revovled around this underground science movement that started with the space program and flowed into time travel. The time machine wasn't some overly complex machine or some flash car, it was a violin case. The hero's weapon wasn't some over the time laser beam, it was a simple revolver. The simplicity of the props and the retro sensation of the setting lends alot to the complex issues that are surrounded by the plot and the details of the plot. In the end it's like what the hell did I just watch and why?



Tune in next time for Big Hero 6!!

J.