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Reviews
Shin Ultraman (2022)
Magnificent movie worthy of Tsuburaya's creation
A giant in red and silver.
A warrior of light from beyond the stars.
In our time of greatest need, he comes swiftly to our aid.
He--is Ultraman.
I had high hopes for this movie, and it did not disappoint. I was a fan of the original Ultraman in 1966, and this is a reimaging of that series, compressed into about two hours. The SSSP (Science Patrol in the American dub of the series) doesn't have the fancy weapons and vehicles of the original, but they seem to get along without them. I liked the actors in the movie, especially Masami Nagasawa, who plays Hiroko Asami new to the SSSP from Japan's intelligence service. (I find her quite fetching, and I shall have to learn more about her.)
One of the first sites I found on the internet when I joined online with my little WebTV set was Wayne Koizumi's Absolute Ultraman. It had just about everything you could know about every Ultraman series and movie made, and then some. I was so disappointed when he took the site down--it was like a longtime friend had moved away. I hope he's well, and liked this movie as much as I did.
This movie has a two-night showing in American theaters--last night was a subtitled version, and tonight's (1-12) will be dubbed in English. If there is any movie that is best appreciated by seeing it in the theater, it is this one.
Experimenter (2015)
I enjoyed this movie a great deal
If you saw this movie in the theaters, I envy you.
The drama is quite low-key in this movie. Peter Saarsgard as Milgram narrates the movie, talking directly to the viewer, always very serious, very methodical. It begins with the origin of the obedience experiments in the very early Sixties. Milgram watches the subjects carefully, taking detailed, concise notes as they progress through the experiment, pulling one switch after the other until they reach the end. We are informed that over sixty-five percent of the subjects went all the way to the last switch, against all the predictions made by the psychologists he consulted.
The movie follows him through his life, as the obedience experiments gain public knowledge. He tells us of his relationship with his old professor Solomon E. Asch, whose conformity experiments originally inspired the obedience experiments. We also follow his relationship with his wife Alexandra, aka Sasha, with Winona Ryder doing an excellent job in the role. They meet in an elevator while on their way to the same party, and the friendship blossoms into a lifetime romance. (The real Alexandra Milgram was a consultant for this movie--she appears in a cameo at the end.) We see him defending the experiments to his colleagues, his students, and then to the public at large once his book Obedience To Authority is published. And while people may argue about the methodology and the deception involved--which Milgram refers to as "illusion"--very few argue with the results.
The movie also covers a number of Milgram's other experiments, such as the Lost Letters and Familiar Stranger experiments. We follow his career as he is denied tenure at Harvard, then takes a professorship at City University of New York. There he is approached by a producer who wants to make a high-end drama about the experiments--this becomes the TV movie The Tenth Level. Milgram is not impressed--as he says in the movie:
"There are times when your life resembles a bad movie, but nothing prepares you if your life actually becomes a bad movie."
The movie contains a good deal of symbolism--in two scenes where Milgram talks about the obedience experiments, he is followed by an elephant--The Elephant In The Room. (That's how she's billed in the closing credits. Her name is Minnie, by the way.) And at various points in the movie we hear the song "Some Enchanted Evening"--I'm afraid I'm not sure what it represents; someone shall have to explain it to me, please. It opens with a quote from the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard--
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
and includes Milgram's own paraphrased words--
"You could say we're puppets, but I believe that we are puppets with perception, with awareness. Sometimes we can see the strings and, perhaps, our awareness is the first step in our liberation."