Always late to the party.  How long has this movie been in our collection? Since October?  Anyway, here goes.  Prometheus, the latest offering from director Ridley Scott, available at VPL on DVD and Blu-ray.  Another in the science-fiction/horror genre, this movie stars Charlize Theron, as the expedition leader, Guy Pearce, as a robot named David, who has a great liking for the movie Lawrence of Arabia, and Noomi Rapace, who recently co-starred in Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows, as one of the leading scientists.

A multi-national corporation sends a science expedition to visit a moon orbiting a distant planet in search of a race of beings they believe seeded human life on Earth tens of thousands of years before.  The scientists hope to meet their “engineers”, while the owner of the corporation, of course, has a different agenda.  They find something, but it is, of course, not what they were hoping for or expecting.  Mayhem ensues, everyone on the expedition dies, except one female crew member, and the robot in pieces.  Does this sound familiar?  It should, especially if you recognize the director’s name at the top of the page: Ridley Scott, director of, among other movies, Alien.

I’m going to use one word to describe the content of this movie (spoiler alert) … prequel.  The previews promised something epic.  But the best that can be said of this movie is that it’s mediocre.  OK action, decent technology, although their weapons seemed incongruously primitive, considering it was set in the year 2093.  If you paid to see this movie, too bad.  You wasted your money.  Better to do what I did, and wait until the library has had it for six months.  All it will cost is time.

Truth is stranger than fiction.  Never was that more true than in the events depicted in the Academy Award-winning movie Argo, starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman.

During the storming of the United States Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 by Iranian “students”, six Americans managed to escape the compound and hide out in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor.  They languished there for many weeks while American officials tried to come up with a way of extracting them.  Believe it or not, they were seriously considering having these people ride bicycles 300 miles to the Turkish border.  Finally, CIA extraction specialist Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, comes up with the idea of the six as members of a Canadian movie production crew doing location scouting in Tehran for a couple of days.  He would be the movie’s co-producer.  The cover had to be convincing, so they had to come up with a real script to a movie named Argo.  The cover was fleshed out with producers, offices, posters, storyboards, and even a preliminary cast.  It was Mendez’ job to go in, coach them, and shepherd them out.

Because this is a widely documented and widely known event, I don’t think I am giving anything away by telling you that the six Americans were extracted successfully.  The fact that most of the audience knows the outcome does not diminish the quality of this film.  From the disbelief of the Americans as they watched their embassy being over-run, to the preposterous scenarios run by American officials, to the harrowing, tension-filled hours as the six inched their way to freedom, this story was brilliantly told.

I had initially shied away from this movie because I had heard the role played by Canada in this crisis was downplayed, and even belittled.  The truth of the matter is that Canada’s role was portrayed very fairly and even heroically.  A moment that the audience might have missed is that the six Americans were turned away by two different European embassies before the Canadians took them in, at great risk to the ambassador Ken Taylor, and his wife and staff.

If this film can be criticized at all, it’s that, just like the fake movie used for the cover story, the real movie is quintessentially Hollywood, particularly with the ending: the airline reservations approved just in time, the phone picked up just in time, the Iranian guards chasing the Swiss Air flight down the runway.  All of these are cinematic vehicles used to create tension, and all are unnecessary considering the tension and anxiety of the real events.

If you’re looking for similar films that portray real historical events, I recommend Apollo 13, which is available at VPL on DVD and Blu-ray.

I just finished watching the documentary The Invisible War this morning.  It is about the epidemic of sexual assault that has taken place and continues to take place within all branches of the United States Military.  It is about the systematic cover-up of these crimes resulting in the continued and repeated victimization of sexual assault survivors.  It is about the continuing scandals surrounding sexual harrassment and assault, the promises to overhaul the system, and the resulting inaction.

Internal US government statistics and estimates indicate that approximately 25% of female service members and 1% of male service members have been sexually assaulted during their time in the service.  A male victim was interviewed for this film, but the focus, rightly, was most definitely on the female victims.  It concentrated on a handful of women who were ready to talk about their experiences of assault and the physical, emotional, and psychological toll that came afterwards.  They talked to parents and spouses of these people, many in the military themselves, and brought forward the emotional trauma that they witnessed and suffered.  One particularly heart-wrenching moment was a husband describing how he was calling 911 with one hand while with the other, trying to stop his wife from killing herself.

I don’t have adequate words to describe how this documentary moved me emotionally.  The best I can do is give is a very short piece of advice: you must watch this!