Mission to Mars
Starring Gary Sinese, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielson, Jerry O'Connor, Tim Robbins; Directed by Brian DePalma;Rated PG

Imagine this movie: Tim Robbins and Gary Sinese play really smart, talented actors who take their greatest pleasure in doing either intelligent and politically-charged films or going home to act in the theater one had helped start in a church basement decades before. Further imagine that these two actors are forced to support their real artistic loves by occasionally acting in dopey blockbusters that, while humiliating, pay nicely. In such a movie, you can imagine lots of backstage soul-searching in smart, insightful dialogue between the two actors contrasted to scenes from the current dopey blockbuster in the works and the latter contrasted against the more serious projects which lie closer to the actors' respective hearts.

Well, Mission to Mars is the current dopey blockbuster, unedited — that is, without the benefit of cross-cutting to intelligent backstage soul-searching and the serious works of cinema and theatre. For the first half of the film, I could not stop trying to imagine what was going through the minds of Tim Robbins (who has made some wonderful, smart politically-charged films, like Bob Roberts) and Gary Sinese (who co-founded Chicago's prestigious Steppenwolf Theatre) as they delivered dialogue that seemed swiped from a slow episode of Space 1999. I kept writing the other movie I was imagining in my head: scenes of Tim Robbins racing back to his trailer between set-ups to down a good stiff drink to help him make it through the next take, Gary Sinese in his dressing room, looking at himself in a mirror like Alan Rickman does in Galaxy Quest, though less the pretentious whiner and more bemused at the black humor of a cruel Fate.

This was my experience the first half of Mission to Mars — discomfort, on the behalf of the cast. Then, halfway through, something happened — I think I know what it was, but explaining would spoil the story. Suffice it to say, either the film or I took a sudden turn. Not that there was an improvement in the quality of the dialogue or story or directing. What happened was a) I stopped imagining what the actors really thought of the film, and b) I was struck by how very similar this movie was to so many "B" science fiction films I'd stayed up late to watch on Creature Feature — the ones that featured Whit Bissell in the 50s and Doug McClure in the 70s. It suddenly occured to me what a twelve-year-old might think of Mission to Mars. My conclusion: he — including me at the age of twelve — would have been enraptured by this movie, launched to realms of wonder, a trip forever after held in fond memory.

Suddenly, I was transported back to summer weekend Creature Features on TV, or cheap pre-Multiplex showings of, say, The Neptune Factor with my Junior High movie buddy, Willie Crouch. And unlike most films of this sort in this day and age (and unlike the rest of director Brian DePalma's bloody filmography), Mission to Mars is the kind of film some Junior High boy's parents could feel good about dropping him off with his friend to see: very little bad language, no sexual scenes, decent special effects, and a good guy who is genuinely good. All of which figured into why Gary Sinese took the role, as he explained after the Chicago premiere screening. "This was the first film I've ever done that I could take my kids to. My eleven-year-old daughter told me after she'd seen it, 'Dad, that was a GOOD movie.' That was the best review I could get. It was great to go from Reindeer Games — which I don't know if you've seen, but I'm despicable in that — to Mission to Mars. I'm above the title in this film, too. I don't know if you noticed that. That was helpful, too."

The best question during the post-film Q & A was asked by — and here was the final proof of my theory — a twelve-year-old boy. "Can I shake your hand?" he asked, and Gary, the hometown hero, generously obliged. And so it was brought home to me that there really are reasons for doing the occasional dopey blockbuster than simply as a fundraiser for the Steppenwolf — although I'm sure that was helpful, too.

Galaxy Quest
Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman; Directed by Dean Parisot; Screenplay by David Howard (VI);Rated PG-13

I didn't expect much after viewing the trailers to Galaxy Quest. SF farces are common enough to run the gamut from "Not That Great" to "El-Stinko" pretty consistently. In fact there were several things I saw during commercials that downright annoyed me. So with visions of a Space Balls level humor galloping through my brain I set out with my very pregnant wife, on public transit in sub-zero weather for what I thought would be, at best, an okay movie. Imagine my surprise when I found myself not only enjoying Galaxy Quest, but loving it.

The story is based around a simple premise that directly spoofs Star Trek and the industry that supports its enormous fanbase. Twenty years after the cancellation of their television series, Galaxy Quest, the mostly bored crew of the NSEA Protector find themselves still in costume making regular appearances at conventions, computer store openings and even private parties. Their life is an endless, if profitable, parade of autograph seekers, minutia-obsessed fans and bizarre-costumed groupies. Can life get anymore surreal? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

It seems a group of honest-to-goodness aliens, the Thermians, have intercepted reruns of Galaxy Quest in deep space and mistaken them for "historical documents." Peace-loving by nature, the Thermians are ill-equipped to deal with warfare and when they find themselves the target of a genocide campaign, led by the ruthless lizard-alien Sarris, they're sure that their only hope lies in locating and recruiting the greatest fighting crew in the known galaxy. To that end, the Thermians have built an exact replica of the NSEA Protector that responds to the hand-movements the actors used on the series. Soon the "Commander" and his "crew" find themselves fighting an all-too-real war with no script, no director and no real clue about real interstellar travel.

Sound unbearably silly? It is, in all the right ways. Whether it's possible to construct a spaceship built on the scant information offered in a television show, even one that ran for four years, is beside the point. You might as well insist all that bogus technology be plausible to begin with. As in "How does a Heisenberg Compensator really work?" But, of course, I don't really want to know. Technology is not why I avidly watched Star Trek. It's certainly not the reason to watch Galaxy Quest.

Galaxy Quest is about its characters and what compels them. And what a bunch of characters this group is as thoroughly alien to each other as they initially feel towards the Thermians. This "team" of once-upon-a-time-actors is led by the hammy self-serving blowhard Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) a.k.a. Commander Peter Quincy Taggart. (And clearly, for everybody in the know, pattened after William Shatner, who was just about as well-liked by his own tv "crew".) Actor Nesmith is despised by the other actors who are sick of his preening and manipulative ways. Then there's blonde and beautiful Gwen Demarco (Sigourney Weaver -- looking like Jane Fonda at her 60s silliest), who gave her best years to the show as communications officer Lt. Tawny Madison. Frustrated thespian Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman)is sorry he ever donned the rubber headpiece that transforms him into the alien Science Officer Dr. Lazurus. Former child star and Ships Navigator Tommy Webber(Daryl Mitchell) wails at the slightest pain and whines at the slightest inconvenience while Chief of Engineering Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) strikes a constant air of bemused indifference as a way of sheltering himself against responsibility. The last of the human contingent is convention organizer and hanger-on Guy Fleegman (Sam Rockwell) who jumps at the chance to join the expedition only to realize he may be fulfilling the role of crew-member-with-no-last- name-who-gets-killed-on-the- planets-surface-at-beginning-of-show- by-hostile-alien-life-form. So why watch a movie about such a bunch of losers?

To understand that let's take a look at the actual cast of the original Star Trek. It's interesting to note that as Star Trek's popularity has grown the reputations of its cast have not. None of Trek's original cast members has established a commercial career remotely as successful as the one they've enjoyed via Trek and its movies. In fact, the reason Galaxy Quest can get away with poking fun at its actors is because of the has-been flavor projected by Trek's original cast. The fans of Trek number both those who revere and love to mock Shatner and his crew. And said cast members are often seen mocking themselves on television. In fact, behind me at the theater were two Trekkies gossiping about one Trek cast member's incipient public drunkenness. But even if the real-life cast of Trek has largely failed to 'engage' with the virtues of their screen personas, they nonetheless continue to inspire legions of devoted fans. Star Trek and its spin-off shows obviously represent something important to lots of people.

This, I think, is why Galaxy Quest, the film, works so well. Its writers understand what draws many people to Star Trek and science fiction in general. We all struggle with feeling like losers, we all struggle with our human limitations, and we all struggle with failing to do what we ought to do and doing what we know we shouldn't. But we also know about hope. That star seems, at times, to pursue us instead of the other way around. Just when everything around us seems cheesy and insipid, tainted by the world the flesh and the devil, something happens to remind us what a grand and glorious adventure this life really is. Friendship, courage, love, truth, and faith promise to see us through adversity not because we deserve it but because there is a wonderful providence at work leading us through our trek or quest to the source of all good things. Those things are worth looking for because they are real, ultimately triumphant and we know that we were created to look for them. And in our confidence we don't have to be afraid to laugh at ourselves along the way.

Of course we laugh when Alexander Dane, backstage at yet another convention, looks in the mirror at his cheesy Dr. Lazurus alien makeup and says despairingly, "I played King Lear. I got five standing ovations. I used to be an actor." Most of us laugh because we relate. A paraphrase would be "How on earth did I wind up here? What happened to my hopes and dreams?" Dane, like us, has forgotten what the quest is really about. Conversely, and to the testament of this film's broad emotional range, we definitely don't laugh when Jason Nesmith (Commander Taggart, the Shatner character in the film) steps into a convention hall bathroom stall and accidently overhears a conversation between fans who long ago wrote him off as another self-promoting infomercial. Somehow a bathroom stall seemed an appropriate and even a poignant place for the character of Nesmith to hear those comments. And I couldn't help but wonder if the two gossiping Trekkies behind me recognized themselves.

A meaner-spirited film (like Tim Burton's anti-human Mars Attacks) would simply have used this opportunity to draw a cynical parallel between the cheesy expression of all those high falootin' virtues and the human limitations of it's actors/celebrities. At worst it would have asked the question "Why should humanity Trek at all?" But Galaxy Quest loves its characters, the fans, the audience and, ultimately the trek of the human soul too much to make the mistake of mocking the things that we really care about. Galaxy Quest takes its fictional cast of unhappy, convention-weary, has-beens and gives them the chance to see why what they do is so important to so many —and we get to see the way that revelation changes them.

I won't spoil the marvelous gag that gets Nesmith and crew to sign on with the Thermian's but by the time this crew attempts to steer the replica NSEA Protector out of loading dock, tongue is firmly in cheek. Remember those great space-dock takeoffs in the original Trek films? The music would swell, the crews faces would beam with confident pride and the special effects combined with it all to create a grand and beautiful sense of wonder. Well, in Galaxy Quest, Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazurus takes one look at the replica Protector in its sleek loading bay and — accompanied by swelling orchestration —gasps, "It's real." And we're with him. The adventure is real!! But the joke is on him (it always has been). For, of course, the experience is all very glorious until the crew realizes they're actually expected to fly their ship. As they haltingly take their places at the controls, we see the terrified faces of a group of actors who are great at impersonating a starship crew but lousy at actually flying a starship. Watching the hull of the NSEA Protector scrape slowly across the loading bay and out into deep space, I not only felt that sense of wonder but I laughed at the silliness and cried at the poignancy all at the same time.

And of course, it never occurs to the child-like Thermians that their heroes are merely actors. It's not that the Thermians are stupid, but they have no equivalent in their culture for pretending to be something that they're not. They simply take the situation at face value. And like many of the convention fans willing to pay fifteen dollars a pop for autographs, the Thermians are believers of the highest order in what the Galaxy Quest means to them — that virtue is rewarded, and that we can change for the better if we are willing to face ourselves.

And face themselves this crew does. We watch every single crew member face down their darkest demons and in the end band together to form a solid unit every bit as heroic as their TV counterparts. I won't spoil the ending but there's more than a hint of Divine Grace in the way the plot makes use of the Omega 13 — a mysterious device that even the Thermians themselves don't understand. Even when we falter, the Keeper of the universe leads us both home and to victory.

The special effects in this film evoke just the right combination of cheesy television on-the-cheap sci-fi and big budget sleekness. The computer generated rock-monster you've seen stomping through the commercials looks incredible on screen and is well utilized throughout the film. Stan Winston Studios did a great job of designing the lizard-like villain Sarris. The actor-responsive animatronics of the makeup design allows Robin Sachs a much broader emotional range than is usual for a suit-type monster. This is actually the third film to directly address Trekdom this year. The other two were Trekkies and Free Enterprise which were a documentary and a comedy respectfully. Neither is reported to have the gentle yet edgy heart of Galaxy Quest which already has this critic waiting for a sequel.

Angela's Ashes
Starring Emily Watson, Robert Carlyle, Michael Legge, Ciaran Oens, Joe Breen; Written and Directed by Alan Parker; from the book of the same name by Frank McCourt; rated R.

Here's one of those movies that features the sort of textbook challenge a filmmaker often has to face, which — if he handles it well — the audience might not even be aware of what a good job he has done. Let me show you what I mean. Imagine you're a director making a film about boring people — the task at hand is to keep the film from being boring, too — right? Okay. Now imagine you're making a film about ugliness: wouldn't it be marvelous if you could make it the most beautiful ugliness ever put on the screen? Angela's Ashes features most prominently and continuously, squalor, filth and poverty, and makes those three items as breathtakingly gorgeous as they have ever been in any film.

Given the majestic flavor of this film and the press kit I received for it, it could be that this doesn't seem the most lofty or appropriate way to begin a review. However, the thing I walked out of the theater most impressed with about this film is the Art Direction and the cinematography, and the fact that we were mired in the most filthy and depressing settings imaginable. Somehow, Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning, Evita) went to Ireland and made a film that makes Ireland look hideous: even the rolling hills of green are wretched fields of mucky grey. The same sort of effect was achieved by the author of the original story, Frank McCourt. And I think that assessment pretty much sums up my take on the film. If you think Ireland and the Irish are more than just the sum total of their suffering (self-inflicted and otherwise), you'll leave this film feeling like there was a whole strata of the Irish experience left untouched. But if you like stunning photography and insanely-disciplined art direction, than you'll leave this film thinking nobody has ever done it better.

Let me rave about the Art Direction some more. Angela's Ashes features the most rigorous color pallete I've seen in a film in years (i.e. there can't be more than half a dozen colors used here, all very close to one another on the color wheel, in all the sets, including the exteriors, and the costumes). The last movie that struck me as making so much of so little was Chinatown (1974), which won Best Picture honors in the catagories of Art Direction, Costume, and Cinematography. Look for this film to do the same. Chinatown was all reds and browns; Angela's Ashes is blues and greys. The story depicted follows a young Irish boy whose miserable childhood provides many an opportunity to match the foreground action with the emotional texture provided by that background of all those shades of blues and greys.

I saw the film at a special "Screening for the Religious Community," at which were passed out little comment cards which were supposed to be filled out and turned in afterward. I got the idea that Paramount was a little nervous about what they must have perceived as a certain amount of anti-Catholic material in the film. This is another example of how Hollywood is out-of-touch with the religious community, this time for thinking their film was worse than it was. I doubt very much whether any of the nuns or priests seated down the row from me had much to object about Angela's Ashes, except maybe some nudity. True, the film is very earthy in ways only the Irish seem to be earthy, featuring just about every bodily secretion you can name and a few you probably shouldn't. But the comments about the Church and general treament of Irish Catholicism wasn't really much different than you've heard a thousand times, usually from Irish Catholics, sometimes even from the occasional earthy and out-spoken Irish Monsignor.

As a member of the "religious community," my objection to the film in the catagory of religion had less to do with the presence of any direct attack, than the absence of a sense of the mystery of the Church as a sustainer to the Irish during all those beautifully-photographed sufferings. Yes, pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are ubiquitous, as are Catholic references and ritual — yet there was something superficial in the potrayal of the religious element of Irish life that left me thinking McCourt doesn't himself truly understand —to paraphrase the title of a play he's written —"how the Irish got that way." In other words, a film that plunges to an almost Dostoevskian depth into the description of human tragedy and suffering, fails to plunge very deep at all — certainly not anywhere near "Dostoevskian" — into the mystery of human suffering. However, one has to be thankful for truth where one finds it, even truth of the surface: and Frank McCourt is a master of the surface of the Irish experience. Likewise, director Alan Parker's team buff the surfaces of this film with an Oscar-caliber shine.