The Road

A little over a year ago I picked up a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. After I finished it very quickly, it became the best book I ever read. So I had pretty high hopes for the major motion picture adaptation.

John Hillcoat was chosen to man the directing helms of a story about a man and his son’s struggle for survival in the grayest post-apocalyptic world ever put on film. Their goal is to reach the coast, but they must track cross-country fending off cannibals, starvation, and worst of all, the threat of losing human decency.

The focus of the story is the man’s (Viggo Mortenson) struggle to keep his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) alive amongst so much death and destruction. This is such a powerful film about a father’s love, and the lengths the man will go through to protect his son. Their only weapon is a gun, which has only two bullets with the purpose of helping the two protagonists comment suicide if the “bad guys” catch up with them. The man struggles to teach his son survival, while the son struggles to find humanity in such an inhumane place.

There will be some people who will say this film is a depressor. Look deeper. This film is a rejoicer. It will teach you to rejoice in the human spirit. Because no matter how dark, how bleak things get, there is always the human spirit to rejoice in. We will always feel the need to “carry the fire.”

Check out The Proposal. A hidden Australian-western gem from John Hillcoat.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Flat characters and disjointed story drive a would-be excellent comedy into mediocrity.


The Men Who Stare at Goats has some extremely funny moments. Too bad they are sandwiched in between a plot that is muffled and incohesive. Well, when I say plot, what I really mean is story; this film lacks any real presence of a solid story.



When Bob Wilton’s (Ewan McGregor) wife leaves him for another man, a one-armed man, he decides to show her what’s up by joining the army as a journalist. While in Iraq, Wilton runs into Lyn Cassady(George Clooney) who claims to be a former member of the U.S. Army's “New Earth Army,” a unit that employs paranormal powers in their missions. Cassady claims to be out of retirement and on a new mission for the unit and agrees to let Wilton tag along. The movie cuts between the present with flashbacks of the rise and fall of New Earth Army, which was formed by hippie-soldier Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). The unit does extremely well until recruit Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) brings it down out of jealousy over Wilton’s success as its top psych-soldier. That back story leads to an intersection with the present mission by Wilton and Cassady, and plenty of LSD and gags along the way.

The characters are memorable and they do really funny things, but for what? Is this the story of a man trying to find himself and his destiny after being played for a fool by his wife? Or is it a story of redemption, after a soldier uses his powers for what he sees as dark purposes rather than light? Or even still, it may be a parody of Star Wars, or even a parody of our armed forces’ tactics used for the war on terror. Whatever the story, it lacked focus. Not to say the film was all bad. It contains many moments of flat-out hilarious gags. Every so often those gags seemed forced, and they would have maybe worked better with a darker tone to the picture. But the main complaint is simply with the simple reason why movies are good: story.