Last Chance Harvey

Most of this was written at the time of the film's release. I saw this in a theater because the cast was so good, how could I not?

 

Last Chance Harvey (Joel Hopkins, 2008) Consigned to forgotten corners of the internet amid the dark alleys of the streaming services, this amiable and genial little semi-romantic semi-comedy boasts a fine casting of plucky players trying to make more of it than it is. Maybe it's only on the lists of those completists who want to see every single movie that Dustin Hoffman or Emma Thompson starred in (and certainly those are good goals), but I would be surprised if anybody had ever heard of this movie, which seems a shame. You read the reviews and practically everyone says is that Hoffman and Thompson are magical together, and if it was just them...the movie would be amazing.

The titular Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) is a musician working for ad agencies writing commercial jingles, but he's always wanted to be a jazz pianist. He's been hired to write yet another innocuous ear-worm, but he's on his way to London for his estranged daughter's wedding (he at least feels the absolute need to be there). He's told, rather cruelly by his boss (Richard Schiff) to take his time, enjoy himself...because he won't have a job when he gets back.

Hey...Mazel tov!

Add to that, his estrangement from his family (his ex-wife, played by Kathy Baker, is now married to James Brolin's character) his awkwardness with social situations in general, and that dear daughter wants her step-dad to give her away, Shine is having a very bad time of it. He spends the wedding at the back of the church (at least he's there), but he's determined to skip the reception and just slink home, until he finds his flight delayed with a long layover. Only thing to do is hit the bar, and once there, he has a strained conversation with Kate Walker (Emma Thompson, always exactly right), an airline worker he previously had blown off while she was just doing her job.

She wouldn't be there if a connection didn't happen...not merely back to the U.S., but between the two characters...and as I said it's amiable and genial and you probably already know where it is heading. Hoffman is such an adept spur-of-the-moment actor and Thompson is such a quick wit and sharp writer that it's like seeing your two best friends spark off each other and say what you will about the rest of it, but that is a joy.

There is a complication or two of the An Affair to Remember variety—don't worry, no one gets hit by a bus—and we get to witness what may be the longest wedding reception in history. The slight story-line is fleshed out with Kate's eccentric mother (the wonderful Eileen Atkins) who thinks that there's a Rear Window-style murderer living next door. Hilarity ensues.

Still, you could do worse than this one to kill a little time, especially with such a good cast.

Lightyear

To Xfinity and Beyond

or

Just Goes to Show a Movie Can Have Too Much "Buzz"

Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans), Space Ranger, is on a mission for Star Command, when he's awakened by a signal telling him that they're nearing a planet with life on it. He goes out to explore the planet alone, leaving a team of scientists in hyper-sleep aboard his ship. Alone is what Lightyear does—he's a lone wolf and it's easier to do things himself. The thing is he's not alone: his commander on the mission, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) has tagged along, surprising the bejeezus out of him and noting the fact that he's "narrating again," which Buzz confesses is him doing his Mission Log (which no ever listens to). It helps him focus. What doesn't help him focus is the other member of "The Away Team," a rookie—with a not-very-reassuring reddish color on his uniform (for those of us who know "sci-fi tropes")—named Featheringhamstan (Bill Hader), whose defense stance seems to be "approaching panic." That would be the way to go, actually, as the planet has a slightly spongey surface, all the better for the tentacled underground dwellers to travel through and for the above-ground spider-crabs to scramble over.

 

But, it doesn't bode too well for any sort of colonization, so after tussling with those species (that's it?), Buzz and Alisha and Feathinghair...Farthinghamster..."the rookie" get back to the ship to try and lift off the thing—noting that their ship (let's call it "The Turnip" because they do) is sinking into the ground. Buzz mans the controls, while Alisha primes the hyper-space crystal for launch. Buzz is determined to get them off the ground, but the ship crashes, leaving them stranded on the planet...and worse for Buzz, leaving the mission uncompleted.

Okay, a diversion. But not as big as the one this crew takes to become deserted, so no big deal. Let us explain (as the movie does) that what we are watching is the movie that inspired the "Buzz Lightyear" toy from the always reliable "Toy Story" series that launched Pixar Studios into feature films in 1995 (Andy, the real-live boy from the series, loved the movie and his mom bought him one). So, this is not the toy we're watching, with it's round googly-eyes and the Tim Allen voice and the purpose of comic relief, this is a science fiction adventure film (with humor), rather than a comic film about toys having existential crises. It's a different animal, only tangentially related to the Toy Story franchise. 

 

Affirmative?

 

Let's move on.

The marooned colonists call the planet T'Kani Prime and their goal is to survive, use the planet's resources and build a launch platform to get them back to Star Command, and within a year, they have built an impressive "Gerry Anderson" inspired complex, complete with a bug-zapping fence and a launch vehicle to get them into space. But, first, they must test the newly-developed hyperspace fuel that could get them home. And that's tricky. They rig up a test-vehicle and select Lightyear—the fellow who crashed the original craft stranding them in the first place—to pilot the ship.

The test flight goes well...until it doesn't. That hyperspace fuel becomes unstable and Lightyear is unable to achieve the speed necessary to go full-hyperspace (it's amazing how similar the sequence looks to the early test flight in Top Gun: Maverick), but, he's able to get the ship back to planet, even though the mission is, technically, a failure.

But, he's greeted with surprise, even shock. "Buzz! It's good to see you!" For Buzz, the trip took hours. For the colonists it took "4 years, 2 months, and 3 days." The speed that Buzz achieved on-board his ship created "time dilation" so that a moment for him, would be days or weeks for everybody else—please see Interstellar for reference. Relatively speaking, Buzz has missed the 4 years plus, the colonists have experienced and there have been changes—in technology and people. To deal with the psychological consequences, Buzz is given a robotic therapy cat, Sox (Peter Sohn), but what he's itching to do is test the new hyperfuel again to see if it has made enough improvement to get everybody home.

So, he goes up again, with the same results. The hyper-fuel becomes unstable, and when he lands another 4 years have gone by: Alisha is in a relationship, his friends are older, the colonists have made more improvements and they have a new fuel prototype.

So...it's time to test again. Buzz goes up, the hyper-fuel becomes unstable, he lands, and another 4 years have gone by. Alisha is married, pregnant, and there's a new hyper-fuel. You get the pattern.

Buzz goes up again and again, each trip adding another 4 years to everybody else's life while Buzz stays in place in a sci-fi metaphor for life passing him by. Until the day that he goes up and the hyper-fuel—now designed by Sox the robo-cat in a long gestating project—is able to maintain integrity to make the jump to hyper-space. He's done it. The mission is achievable. He's able to get everybody home.

But, no one wants to leave. The jump to hyper-space has increased the time dilation so that 22 years (14 weeks, 3 days) has elapsed. Alisha is dead, her children grown, with grandchildren and the colony has made a stable life for everyone concerned. Buzz's mission is no longer relevant. But, a new threat has emerged: Zyclops robots, led by the evil overlord Zurg (James Brolin), have occupied the planet, the colony protected by a laser shield that is constantly under attack. And, there's a "rag-tag" group of defense forces—Darby Steel (Dale Soules), Mo Morrison (the ubiquitous Taika Waititi), and Izzy Hawthorne (Keke Palmer), Alisha's granddaughter, who join up with Buzz to try and defeat the Zyclops army.

Lightyear is absolutely gorgeous, as the Pixar team of artists have (again) pushed the limits of detail and design to bring the world—and new worlds—to life. But, the film disappoints. It's not because of Evans as the voice of Lightyear (he's great, paying homage to Tim Allen's legendary work as toy-Buzz, while giving this Buzz his own tamped-down personality), and it's certainly not due to any issues having to due with a same-sex relationship which flits by in the background while Buzz Lightyear obsesses over his one true purpose. These are prickly little "dog-whistle" issues that don't even deserve an internet comment (although there are many, all deserving to be dismissed).

No. The problem is the character of Buzz Lightyear, who is—necessarily—not the same goofy, though good-hearted, character of the "Toy Story" films, but is—in all senses of the term—his own man. Almost buffoonishly so. While the rest of the world changes, he stands, alone in his own stubbornness. He's a misanthrope, a Rip Van Winkle, out of time and space. In a way he's a bit like Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (but without the virulent racism) or The Outlaw Josey Wales (without the tragedy)—he even inherits an ersatz family which he initially scorns, ala Josey. But, unlike those he doesn't have a distinctive emotional epiphany—oh, he has one when he's confronting himself (and to explain that, you'd have to see the film), but it's so weighted down with an action sequence that one might be forgiven if it escapes one's notice. 

 

And it takes so long for him to come to his conclusions that he seems a little dense to what is going on all around him. Maybe it's all that narrating....spending too much time in his own bubble helmet.

Maybe I'll revisit Lightyear in 4 years, 2 months and 3 days, and perhaps find some aspect that might make him a hero...or even someone you'd want an action hero figure of.

Because for someone whose catch-phrase is "To Infinity...and Beyond(!)" he should perhaps choose "Affinity," instead. Until then, Lightyear will just be another lackluster choice in endless rotation on Xfinity.

 
 

Capricorn One

Capricorn One (Peter Hyams, 1978) And then came the backlash.

The Moon landings happened between 1969 and 1972, with six landings—more were planned but were scrapped due to budget cuts and general disinterest in "Man's Greatest Adventure"—and one mission (Apollo 13) that had to be scrapped due to equipment malfunctions. In 1976, a book was self-published by a former technical writer for Rocketdyne (who'd manufactured the Saturn 5 rocket engines) that the Moon landings were faked, based on his theories and his Bachelor of Arts in English.

Peter Hyams was working on the CBS broadcasts of the moon landings, which included—in lieu of real pictures from space—video simulations, animations, and staged views of a life-size Lunar Module on a Moon-simulated stage. He wrote a treatment of a Moon landing hoax in 1972 and after the Watergate scandal, began shopping it around where it was eventually sold to Sir Lew Grade in 1975.

The premise for Capricorn One is that NASA discovers—at the last minute—that the environmental system on-board just plain doesn't work, that despite astronauts supposedly testing the suits and spacecraft before launch, or even having test flights, and despite that keeping the astronauts alive during the mission might be "job 1." So, Head of NASA Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) has the three man crew (James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, Sam Waterston) taken out of their capsule before launch and flown to a Nevada base where a planned faux-Mars walk will take place five months hence.*

The studio is a humble affair where all the action—all the action—would take place in a 90° arc around the landing craft—forget that a mission to Mars would be a long time affair requiring months of transit time and and a long staying time, a few months at least, to make the trip worth it, and, you know, "distance". Not to mention that the equipment to be used is the 1969 moon landing vintage—the real lunar lander couldn't support its own weight in anything more than the 1/6th lunar gravity (for some unknown reason—but I'll speculate money—NASA cooperated with this project). 

Anyway, the astronauts, for the good of the country, decide to go along with the subterfuge—and there's also the little matter that if they don't, their wives will be blown up on the trip back to Houston after the launch. Given that threat, you would think these pilot-engineers would be able to connect 1 to 1 and realize that if they're threatening to kill the wives (who wouldn't know about the conspiracy), then it's a small step (rather than a giant leap) to kill three of the  people in the know.

The spend the length of the mission in that desert location—not too different from that Rocketydyne writer's premise that the Moon crews spent their missions in Vegas with hookers and showgirls (they weren't recognized and the women didn't talk or brag about it?). But the crew have no such amenities (and being on Earth, neither can they simulate zero-g conditions—a staple of televised crew activities in space—during their broadcasts**), and once their scheduled broadcasts have concluded, they start to realize their vulnerability (they're not needed anymore) and so they plan to make an escape to try to get back to civilization before the execution can take place.

Once the hoax is accomplished, the crew make their escape, hijacking a jet used to carry the would-be assassins to the desert facility and ditching it when it runs out of fuel—there wasn't enough for a return trip (just how well funded is this conspiracy?)—the astronauts split up to make it more difficult to find ALL of them. They are pursued by your standard conspiracy theory "black helicopters" that are not so smart to separate but pair up in their search. In fact, the black helicopters are rather comically imagined and shot. Looking like bugs, at one point they face each other as if talking in a forced perspective shot*** that belies the fact they'd be chopping each others' blades off if they were really facing each other.

Meanwhile, NASA announces that the astronauts were killed during re-entry. While the nation mourns, one of the cap-techs (named Elliott and played by Robert Walden) tips off an intrepid reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) that the television signal for the broadcasts beats the telemetry signals from the space-craft. 

Of course, it would. But what did they do with the spacecraft? Did they shoot it into a course for Mars—in which case it would take 21 minutes to reach Earth and that's a lot of difference—or is it in Earth orbits—in which case tracking stations around the globe would be receiving it at a rate once every 90 minutes (the time it takes to orbit) rather than the regular speed of the Earth turning into the signal (See how this gets less and less likely?).

Anyway, Caulfield starts to follow leads and signals and enlists the aid of an eccentric crop-dusting pilot names Albain (Telly Savalas—okay, mock if you want, but Gould and Savalas are the most entertaining thing about this picture) to help find the desert studio and find the astronauts who might've survived—spoiler alert: they have better luck than two "black helicopters").

The unlikely team of Gould and Savalas really are the best thing about the movie. The worst performance is a real surprise—Sam Waterston gives a horribly overly-emotive performance in times of crisis, and I'll put that down to his playing the Command Module pilot because they never get the attention that the other two in the crew get.

The movie is absolute hokum, but it's visuals were tantalizing enough to inspire all sorts of conspiracy theories, to give pictures to the specious theories that were circling like vultures—and shots from the film were used in some garage videos as a basis for likelihood. In this case, those images were more powerful than any logic, as nothing is mentioned in the film about where the actual rocket has gone and no one in the film questions the limited field of view of the faked Mars signals (something you couldn't say about the vistas of the moon missions—even Apollo 11 did a 360° sweep of the landing area with the television camera) or even why the camera couldn't be moved to show the back of the spacecraft (thus showing the stage). Details. For the movie-goer, that's not brought up. Out of sight, out of mind. Plus, if a reporter can figure out a deception is going on—while it's going on—it's not much of a deception. In a post-Watergate world, it was easier to believe a case of malfeasance from the government than it would be to believe that it's easier to actually make the trip than to fake it.

Capricorn One is a mediocre film, but its imagery is compelling enough to charge the imagination...and fool the gullible. In fact, it's just like a conspiracy theory—all surface and no depth and enough holes to fly a Saturn 5 through.

Still, in a 1999 Gallup poll, 6% of Americans believe the Moon landing was faked (Post 9/11, a Pew research poll said that the number had "skyrocketed"...to 7%). 25% of British citizens believe it was a hoax (8 of the 1009 interviewed think Louis Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon).

https://news.gallup.com/poll/3712/Landing-Man-Moon-Publics-View.aspx
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-landing-faked-why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories/

The posters for Capricorn One played up the conspiracy angle.

* At one point Kelloway grouses that Apollo 17 started getting complaints that the coverage was pre-empting re-runs of "I Love Lucy." As I remember it, it started with Apollo 12. If we had the same adventurous spirit at the time of Columbus, we'd be speaking Spanish!

** And this is is rich—during the televised Mars-walk, when they have to simulate Mars' lesser gravity, a director snaps his fingers and says "Slo-Mo" and the picture slows down—and if such a thing WERE possible, they'd still have to find some way to make up the time differential the longer "slo-mo" images would take when things go back to normal speed.

***