A Small Town In Black And White

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Today I begin a new project on FrancisPage.com: The 30/30 Challenge. The goal is 30 original stories in 30 days. Most will be personal, many will be humorous, but all of them will be episodes I have never talked about before online. I kick things off with a story of a story from my cub reporting days.

Huntsville, Missouri, about five miles west of Moberly and 50 miles north of Columbia, is no hotbed of racial tension, or any tension -- even if Confederate guerrilla leader "Bloody Bill" Anderson did spend a few boyhood days there. But on February 8, 1993, the KBIA newsroom at the University of Missouri got a tip about a suspected verbal and physical assault involving a black high school student and a white teacher. The issue was to come up at the Westran School District meeting.

Fellow college cub reporter Jeanette and I travel up there in her car, gabbing about ourselves and our journalism classes while our station plays in the background, interrupted only by a U2 tape. The countryside has nothing to offer in the darkness, save for an occasional radio tower. Fog forms on the ground, and we hope it wouldn't build.

Rolling into Huntsville, I see a typical, classic Missouri small town. The local supermarket is closed and dark at only 6pm. So is nearly every business on the main drag. Jeanette pulls into a Casey's General Store -- that gas-and-grocery chain wedded to rural locations -- and asks directions to the school where the meeting is taking place. It doesn't take us long to find it.

This is a big meeting. The Westran School Board is set up in the library, and people outnumber seats, crowding between shelves and leaning against the wall. Jeanette and I find chairs in the front row next to a newspaper scribe from Kirksville. One of the TV stations in Columbia has deployed a one-man band who sets up his camera right next to the board's roundtable. He places his lone microphone next to the superintendent... who also happens to be the husband of the accused teacher.

The meeting starts and the board jumps right to the public discussion period. Tape recorders click on, including mine, and the clerk reads the rules. A member of the state NAACP sitting beside me pipes up. She's concerned about the 15-minute per topic time limit, with a 3-minute limit per speaker.

"Is this the official policy?" she asks.

The clerk replied, it is.

"Do you have it in writing?"

The supervisor and the clerk exchange glances, and the clerk goes up to fetch it. A few minutes later, he returns with a pink sheet of paper. He hands it to the NAACP lady, and she peruses it silently as I sneak a glance over her shoulder. She insists the clerk read it again and he does.

A lady named Dimple, mother of the girl involved in this suspected racial rhubarb, gets up and lays out the story. She says the whole incident came about because of a cheerleading rivalry between her daughter and the teacher's daughter. Dimple's daughter made the team; the teacher's kid didn't. As the story goes, Dimple's daughter had been rubbing this in the other girl's face through gossip, and the teacher knew it.

Dimple says it all came to a head during a basketball game, where the teacher spotted Dimple's daughter, then shoved and cursed at her: "I'm tired of this bull---- you're spreading about my daughter." Dimple confronted the teacher later on, and the educator told her she was tired of the gossip. Things went downhill. Dimple says the teacher told her, "Well, I know where your daughter gets her fat mouth!"

Dimple tells the board she wants the teacher fired, but not just to cause trouble. She says the incident, "is not a racial thing." Even so, she still notified the NAACP about it. The NAACP representative who inquired about the time limit gets back up and tells the board this is no game. The organization is filing complaints with law enforcement and civil rights groups as well as the U.S. Department of Education. It sounds like overkill, but she says this wasn't the only time a black student has been assaulted. She claims in each instance, the board "swept it under the rug."

The general public gets its turn. "This is not a racist town," says one woman.

Another woman, black and running for school board, says the whole thing is getting out of hand and the board ought to let everybody work things out.

"You'll get elected," snorts the NAACP representative.

An argument breaks out between the basketball coach and the NAACP rep, but what scotches the public comment period is when another woman uses two disparaging words brought back into the limelight by then-presidential-candidate Ross Perot: "you people." The NAACP rep and her entourage walk out along with Dimple, but not before another woman grabs the frustrated mother's hand and begs her to stay.

"We went to school together!" she pleads.

Dimple wasn't having it. As far as I could tell, the public had already made up its mind against her. Why should she expect anything different from the board? I slip out to try to get a soundbite with one of the aggrieved, but they vanish before I can get to them in the maze of the school hallway. I spot the TV guy talking with the local cops, one of whom is going off about how "the blacks" are dragging the media into the whole mess. He spots me with a mic in my hand.

"Don't you tape me!" he half-shouts.

"I'm not recording," I reply in a nervous appeal. He's got a gun on him, after all. The other cop smiles at me like it's an inside joke.

After the meeting, I walk up to the superintendent for his reactions. His wife isn't at the meeting to defend herself, and neither is the other woman's daughter. He has little to say in his defense: "There's two sides to every story."

As I recorded him, my cheap mic from Radio Shack started to come apart at the head. Either the glue wasn't strong enough, or something about the super's words gave it a conniption fit.

Jeanette and I book it back to the station to put our stories together. I write in the dark, but in my youth and inexperience, a story I could crank out in about 10 minutes today is giving me trouble. I want to be fair. I want to be honest. But I'm grabbing at allegations after allegations, and the key players are missing in action. I can barely write the first sentence.

This is where a good editor comes in. He asks for a wrap -- my voice on tape with a soundbite -- and another story with a bite before midnight. I make the deadline, but I end up staying until 2am while he adds some behind-covering verbiage and other words to keep us out of trouble on a hot story.

I would never venture to Huntsville again, for a follow-up story or anything else. I don't remember what happened to the teacher or Dimple's daughter or to anybody else, if something did happen after I left. I just remember the tension of a small town being ripped apart before my eyes over a cheerleading rivalry that devolved into a racial incident. That's a big story for an amateur with a messed-up microphone.

Yes, I Cried My Eyes Out -- Here, You Can Have My Man Card

Reel To Reel: Les Misérables

Going Rate: Worth full price admission... and then some
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Emotional and graphic depiction of poverty and prostitution, Ye olde musket violence, a few curse words

I remember somebody criticizing the Broadway production of Les Misérables for "making the poor look cute." Maybe this film version is what he had in mind: a gritty yet soaring, emotionally draining contemporary opera set in 19th-century France that reaches deep into the soul and does not let go. Bring Kleenex -- a lot of it.

Director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) turns the wildly successful stage production into a musical drama, where dialogue is sung in the manner it would be spoken. Eschewing the traditional movie-musical convention of recording the songs in a studio and lip-synching them in front of the camera, Hooper's cast sings in real time. This technique required each cast member to listen to a piano played off-camera through a hidden earpiece to keep them in key. However, instead of looking at a conductor to guide their pace, the actors set their own time, and the orchestra recorded the backing instrumentation later, matching the actors' rhythms. The product is highly passionate and yet nuanced as the actors are required to act as they sing and play to the camera instead of the back of the house.

You already know Victor Hugo's story: paroled prisoner Jean Valjean (Jackman) is transformed by a priest's act of mercy, driven to break parole and inspired to become a new person. He reinvents himself as a successful businessman and agrees to care for the daughter of Fantine (Hathaway), one of his factory workers forced into a life of prostitution after losing her job. The daughter, Cosette (Seyfried), lives as a neglected errand girl to a corrupt innkeeper (Cohen) and his wife, who provide the musical's sparse lighter moments. Getting the girl away from her deplorable life at the inn is easy compared to getting away from policeman Javert (Crowe) who is engaged in a duel of wills with his former prisoner. The story takes us through a doomed uprising among Paris' poor in which Valjean and Cosette will come to terms with life, love and purpose.

Another benefit of watching the cast sing in real time is that you know their voices are their own, eschewing another Hollywood musical tradition of replacing some singing voices. I saw this film with my Queen Mother and Royal Father, and we all kept a scorecard. Hathaway's Fantine stands out, notably her heartbreaking version of "I Dreamed A Dream." Seyfried also turns in a powerful performance. Crowe's singing works, but he seems a little flatter than the rest -- or maybe that's by design. The big surprise is Jackman's Valjean: he definitely can sing his way through a demanding role. I kept saying to myself, "This is Wolverine?"

Hooper moves the story along at lightning speed. Some songs have been shortened considerably or reworked. One new number appears, written by the show's original composers. I don't think you will have any problem with the changes, and if you do, the stage production is still out there. Making a movie musical is not as simple as filming a theatrical performance, although Hooper conceivably could've gone that route and people would've understood. This version pushes realism while preserving the power and spirituality of a work that has been astounding audiences for more than 25 years.

It is not hard to understand why this story speaks to so many of us. It deals with redemption, love and loss. In Jean Valjean's journey, we remember our GOD is a GOD of second, third, and fourth chances. We remember how GOD uses imperfect people to do HIS work in this world. We remember the servants we are called to be, giving of ourselves and forgiving as GOD forgives us. How can GOD love us so much when we continue to show such lack of love to others? Why does HE trust us with HIS creation when we abuse the gifts we are given?

For the benefit of your fellow moviegoers, please refrain from singing at the end. But don't refrain from the tears. GOD gave them to you for a reason, including films like this.

What A Long Strange Trip This Is Going To Be

Reel To Reel: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Going Rate: Worth full price admission for LOTR fans, matinee for everybody else
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis
Rated: PG-13 (but could pass for a straight PG)
Red Flags: Some scenes of intense fantasy battle violence, some of it gross, but nothing off the charts

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is epic fiction filmed epicly. At times, the prequel to the Lord Of The Rings saga plods, but it doesn't want to leave anything out. Peter Jackson is back at the helm as director, and he's found a way to split one book into three films. This first one clocks in at nearly three hours. I will confess I've never read The Hobbit, but at this pace, Jackson is not just filming every page; he's filming the margins.

Many of you reading this already know the plot: hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) is recruited to join the wizard Gandalf (McKellen), warrior Thorin (Armitage) and a band of dwarves to reclaim the kingdom of Erebor from a gold-hungry dragon that's seized upon the royal stockpile and run everyone out. Bilbo is living a middle-class life in the Shire: roomy hole in the ground with a nice library and lace handkerchiefs. After a wild party and a bit of self-reflection, Baggins decides it's time for an adventure with a group that could use someone small in stature to be their "burglar."

The film plays like a gigantic game of Dungeons and Dragons, full of episodes and battles and atmosphere to convince us the quest is no walk in the woods. We meet all sorts of monsters, creatures and characters, some of whom we know will be important later on, like the goblin Gollum (Serkis -- say it with me: "Dee Pwechiousss!"). The rest we might not have to remember, because they're not going to be around after this gargantuan first act.

I saw The Hobbit in much-debated high-frame-rate 3D, double the speed of standard motion pictures. Home theater geeks sometimes complain about the "soap-opera effect" caused by advanced-technology TV's that add in extra frames to smooth out motion but make Pirates Of The Caribbean look like an episode of The Young And The Restless. I found 48fps avoided that live-video look while still providing amazing clarity of J.R.R. Tolkien's universe perfected by Jackson and his digital wizards. They show much more wizardry than Gandalf, who uses his powers sparingly either because he prefers it that way or because he needs remedial education from Hogwarts -- or because we need to stretch the conflicts over three pictures.

Don't misunderstand: I liked the first Hobbit film. But you need to know it's not for the casual movie fan who may get sucked into it because of the hype. This is a film made for fanboys, and with millions of them around the world, Jackson has to deliver.

So What Did I Learn In The Past Year?

That's the question on my mind as I celebrate 41 years of growth. Here are the answers:

• Don't get hung up in situations where you think you should be patching things up among other people because you think that's what GOD wants you to do. Move on with your life and let GOD work on it.
• It's sad to see so many people look at high unemployment, low wages and crummy jobs and think to themselves, "Well, this is the new normal."  It's only normal if you allow it to be normal.  Otherwise, you need to make sure you're standing up for something better.
• It doesn't matter who you voted for in the last election; Washington's biggest problem is egos.
• You can never have enough kilts.
• Those Coleman gas lamps are hot on top!
• Marriage is still not in my future.
• I don't know what's more annoying: candidate campaign robo-calls or debt collectors calling me looking for somebody else.
• Thrift stores are my new favorites.  I used to think I was robbing from the poor by shopping at these places, but that's just not true.  You're finding a new home for goods people don't want anymore and cutting down on waste.  My favorite patriot, Ben Franklin, believed in frugality.  Why not me?  Why not all of us?

It's On Like Donkey Kong

Reel To Reel: Wreck-It Ralph

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Voices of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk
Rated: PG
Red Flags: Video game violence (but nothing worse than what your kids are already playing) and mild potty-mouth jokes

Wreck-It Ralph is a loving tribute to classic video games, the kind I grew up with in the 1980's. Twice a year, Mom and Dad would take my brother and I and our friends to Showbiz Pizza Place for our birthdays, and we would feed the arcade machines as many quarters as my folks could afford. That was when coin-op gaming only cost a quarter, and the animated violence maxed out at Mario getting hit in the head with a barrel.

The movie's title character (Reilly) is the star villain of a video game modeled after Donkey Kong. Miffed that somebody moved his stump for an apartment building, he proceeds to wreck the place on every quarter. Players control the hero, Fix-It Felix Jr. (McBrayer) who climbs the floors and undoes the damage. Felix gets a medal at the end of each level while Ralph gets tossed to the ground by the grateful tenants and exiled to a nearby dump.

This has been going on for years and years, and the Fix-It Felix Jr. game is still taking quarters at the neighborhood arcade even as other games come and go. Such staying power would inspire pride in a lot of people, but not Ralph. The act's getting stale, and we see it in the beautifully executed opening minutes of the movie as he shares with a 12-step group for anonymous video game villains. Such a gathering happens in the style of Night At The Museum; when the arcade closes, the video game characters are free to leave their consoles and travel along the electrical wires to other games. They mingle inside a surge protector dubbed Game Central Station, a place where you'll see Sonic the Hedgehog reminding the characters that they can't regenerate if they die outside their game and Q*Bert begging for handouts after his machine was unplugged.

When the other characters of Ralph's game celebrate an anniversary without him, he understandably feels undervalued. Felix wouldn't have anything to fix in a game devoid of his presence. Ralph vows to win a medal, but knowing he can't do it in his game, he learns he can earn one down the wires in Hero's Mission, a first-person shooter commanded by Sergeant Calhoun (Lynch). Ralph sneaks in and grabs his medal, but his brief moment of triumph goes haywire when he accidentally launches himself and one of the game's virus-like baddies into a girly-girl racing game called Sugar Rush.

Inside a world that morphs Candy Land with Mario Kart, he meets aspiring Vanellope von Schweetz (Silverman). She sees Ralph's medal as her ticket out of a hopeless, glitchy life in a domain ruled by King Candy (Tudyk, with a voice that reminded me of the forgotten jack-in-the-box from "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer"). Meanwhile, Ralph's game is going haywire, and the entire arcade could go with it if Felix and Calhoun don't stop the creature that's multiplying under the streets of sweets.

Wreck-It Ralph is a family movie you're not shy about taking the kids to see. In fact, you secretly want to see it more than the kids. Or you'll just go yourself (like I did). It masterfully blends different games from different eras with plenty of in-jokes for the retro gamer while keeping the children interested. It also keeps its manic sequences -- those compulsory elements of CGI kid-flicks -- restrained and reasonable.

As I mentioned, different games' characters mingle throughout the film, which I'm sure kept Disney's legal department busy all through the development cycle. Retro-gaming has gotten a nice slice of shelf space over the past few years, and Ralph will surely help it. I'd like to see the original Pac-Man and Donkey Kong back in arcades. I can only fathom so many flavors of Mortal Kombat or Doom.

What's more, I find Wreck-It Ralph has more of a heart than previous Disney CGI animation titles, and it's no surprise why: Pixar alum John Lasseter is executive producer, someone who knows how to make these films work on multiple levels with honest emotions and characters we care about.

Reel To Reel: Skyfall

License to kill renewed.

Going Rate: Worth full price
Starring: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Intense action scenes, explosions, mild language, some brief mild sex

The newest James Bond movie isn't so much another sequel as it is a reboot of the world's most famous spy series, but it doesn't become obvious until the film's closing minutes, when we realize what appeared to be a new chapter is actually a revision. In the process, it makes Bond a lot more human. To my relief, 007 also finds his wit again. He also gets the girls, although Daniel Craig's version is noticeably less obsessed with sex.

Skyfall opens with Bond in a monster of an action sequence to recover a stolen hard drive containing the true identities of several undercover agents. He's battling a baddie atop a moving train when M (Dench) orders Bond's fellow agent (Harris) to "take the bloody shot" from a long-range rifle and end it. She misses.

Bond vanishes, wounded but not dead, reminiscent of You Only Live Twice. While he's out boozing and healing and cavorting with the natives of some ocean paradise, MI6 is in upheaval. M is facing early retirement because of the hard drive theft. What's worse, the movie's proverbial Bond villain hacks into the service's computers and engineers a previously unthinkable act of terrorism.

M needs 007, but he's not quite back in the game. His aim is shaky and he's still carrying around shards of shrapnel in his chest from his last day on the job -- not quite the neatly invincible Bond we all know. With help from the colleague who nearly killed him, he tracks down master cyberterrorist Silva (Bardem), a former agent gone rogue with a face that's supposed to remind us of Julian Assange. Silva is no caricature heavy. Within him is a twisted genius that's more Hannibal Lecter than Dr. Evil, although I always wonder who bankrolls these Bond villains, and how they always manage to get so many toys.

About the toys: Q is back, in the form of a mildly annoying nerd (Ben Whishaw), but don't expect any massively innovative new gadgets. As Q points out, they don't make exploding pens. Bond's Aston Martin from Goldfinger also makes a guest appearance.

We also get a deeper glimpse into Bond's past as he returns to his boyhood home, Skyfall. Not surprisingly, it's a moldy, broken-down estate, much like Bond himself at this point, in need of remodeling. Nothing we can't solve with explosives.

I like how Skyfall embraces Bond's legacy while plugging into the world as we know it. Bond doesn't take on Russians or megalomaniac super-criminals anymore, nor should he, and this film makes it clear that those days are over. I also am relieved this film is not trying to remake 007 as a Jason Bourne clone, as was hinted in Casino Royale. (I skipped Quantum Of Solace, and I gather I won't regret it.)

Admittedly, Sean Connery's Bond remains my favorite. But I can learn to like Daniel Craig's version. Really, I can.

Reel To Reel: Argo

The real "Mission: Impossible."

Going Rate: Worth full price
Starring: Ben Affleck, John Goodman, Alan Arkin
Rated: R (but really could pass for PG-13)
Red Flags: Protest violence, language

At 8 years old, I was too young to fully understand the magnitude of the 1979-1980 Iran hostage crisis. I don't remember the iconic images of the captured Americans paraded around with blindfolds on. I barely remember my elementary school peers talking about it.

"What if the shah comes back?"

"Oh, they'll kill him if he comes back."

But I do remember the Ayatollah Khomeni. And I remember the yellow ribbons on the trees, on billboards, on windows, everywhere. The hostage crisis doomed President Carter's chances of re-election and gave President Reagan political capital to re-arm America. I have no doubt he would've bombed Iran if the standoff continued into his presidency. Tehran would have looked more like the Willcox Playa.

Nearly lost in the upheaval was a miracle: six American diplomats rescued from Tehran through an ingenious plan that required the cooperation of the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and the Canadian government. Argo is the story of how it came together, and although the movie takes copious dramatic liberties with the story, it plays like a caper film crossed with a spy thriller.

Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a CIA "exfiltration" specialist who is brought in to advise on the increasingly hopeless mission of getting the six escapees from the American Embassy to the airport and out of Iran. They're hiding at the Canadian Ambassador's residence, and the clock is running. The revolutionaries are slowly deducing a few embassy employees are unaccounted for, ones they need for leverage, torture, or whatever.

Mendez is a quiet, analytical spook with a sense of responsibility and connections. The State Department kicks around several implausible cover stories for getting the six out -- like posing them as teachers or agricultural workers -- but he doesn't have any better ideas until he catches Planet Of The Apes on TV. Why not have the six pose as a film crew?

Mendez hooks up with an old Hollywood pal, monster makeup artist John Chambers (Goodman, perfectly cast), who's designed CIA disguises before. But this time, the government needs an entire film. Chambers leads him to director Lester Siegel (Arkin), who declares that even if he's making a fake film, he's gonna make a good one. The team settles on "Argo," a script for a Star Wars fantasy knock-off that has a middle-eastern vibe.

Watching Mendez and company set the film up is nearly as interesting as watching them pull off the ruse. We get a taste of Hollywood-insider dealing and press baiting. We also get to watch Mendez drop a cover on six government employees who have never done intelligence work and see if they can avoid blowing their cover, especially when they go out into a crowded bazaar for a location scout. We don't see a lot of shoot-em-up action. The film is content to work on us psychologically.

Argo, which Affleck also directed, doesn't throw a lot of personal sidebars at us. We know Mendez is living apart from his wife and son, and we learn a little about the six escapees, but nothing more. The film isn't interested in their lives as much as their anxiety over possibly losing them. It's simply too much information in the way of the mission, and the movie smartly avoids it.

As I mentioned, the real story of the so-called "Canadian Caper" is less dramatic than Argo portrays it, according to the Wired magazine article that inspired the script. The real story is of governments and agents making numerous secret moves to pave the way for the escape, which happens a lot easier than it should. The film adds a lot more tension and narrow escapes. But hey, if you're gonna make a movie about faking a movie, might as well go all the way.

Reel To Reel: Trouble With The Curve

"What a drag it is getting old." --The Rolling Stones

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Language, references to sex

I don't buy into conspiracy theories, but part of me believes Clint Eastwood's now-famous empty-chair interview at the Republican National Convention was stealth marketing for this film, which just happens to feature Eastwood as a grumpy old man similar to the gritty old pol we saw on stage. I thought Gran Torino might be his last film in front of the camera. I'm glad it wasn't.

Eastwood plays Gus, a baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves who refuses to believe it's time to retire. His vision is going, and he can barely get around without tripping over something. Those dents on the car are not his fault; the garage shrunk on him. His bosses, including longtime buddy Pete (Goodman), aren't sure he can handle a blockbuster assignment: scouting a high-school slugger in the Carolinas who's supposedly the baseball equivalent of LeBron James. It becomes clear this may be Gus' last assignment.

He's mildly estranged from his daughter Mickey (Adams), a workaholic lawyer aiming to make partnership with a presentation on a big case. Gus' stubbornness maddens her, and she carries a grudge for Dad sending her away after the death of her mother. Still, she can't help but feel a responsibility towards him. Prodded on by Pete (Goodman), Gus' longtime boss and friend, Mickey heads off to join her father on the scouting trip to make sure he comes back alive, at least.

Trouble With The Curve would be fine as a father-daughter baseball movie. But no, we get a tacked-on romantic subplot featuring Johnny (Timberlake), one of Gus' scouting buddies who's got his eye on Mickey. The two bond over baseball stats, which I find a little puzzling given Mickey's frazzled relationship with her father. What do I know: Mickey's talents as a lawyer likely give her the power to process reams of information in ways I haven't considered. Timberlake's character seems to be along for the ride, pushed in Mickey's direction because somebody thought this film needed another plot hook.

Eastwood, on the other hand, has still got it. He's grizzled and a bit slower but still a compelling screen figure. I wanted this film to be about rebuilding a relationship, and baseball lends itself nicely to allegory in so many things. But at the end of the day, it comes down to studio heads knitting their fingers about younger audiences, and a call goes out to Timberlake's people. I really hope this isn't Eastwood's last-last picture on screen. I also hope some suit realizes old guys still rule.

Reel To Reel: Lawless

White lightning and dark dealings.

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain
Rated: R (borderline NC-17)
Red Flags: Intense, graphic bursts of violence, nudity and sensuality and strong language. This film is R for a reason, and it tests the limits of that rating.

In the Great Depression of the 1930's, only one business seems to thrive: bootlegging. And in the mountains of my beloved state of Virginia, moonshiners are cranking out product as fast as they can move it. Lawless focuses on Franklin County, Virginia in 1931, where the 'shine business rules. If you aren't making it, you're buying it, or you know somebody who does.

The Bondurant brothers are the biggest name in the trade, propped up by a legend of near-immortality. They've survived Spanish Flu and whatever else tries to take them out. Forrest (Hardy) runs the business side out of a gas station with a laconic, barely-coherent mumble and brass knuckles when necessary, which is often. Older brother Howard (Clarke) provides more muscle, and kid brother Jack (LaBeouf) is the lookout full of ideas who's begging to get in on more of the action.

Although the Bondurants pay off the local sheriff's deputies, they can't stop corrupt Special Agent Charlie Rakes (Pearce), who wants a cut for the Franklin County D.A. Rakes comes all the way from Chicago, and the obvious question is why a Virginia lawman would need to look that far, given the ruthlessness we see among Virginia's moonshining mountain men. Then we see our answer: it's impossible to find sharp-dressed, sadistic thugs in Virginia to do your bidding with hankerchiefs and white gloves. Fellow critic Roger Ebert describes Rakes as "foppish," a form of that word usually reserved for garishly-dressed 18th Century men, and I can't describe him any better than that.

Rakes doesn't seem to understand he's messing with the wrong people. Bullying the brothers just makes them tougher. Forrest survives a throat-slashing at the gas station's restaurant when two men harass Maggie (Chastain), a dancer from Chicago who's now working as a waitress after wanting to get away from big-city life.

Jack, frustrated with Forrest's lack of business development, takes a big risk and sets up a deal with gangsters to bring in more money. Combined with his ideas to improve the operation, the brothers haul in piles of cash. Jack seems to have most of it, and he spends it on fast cars and fancy clothes, looking like some misplaced mobster. He hopes he can woo the heart of Bertha Minnix (Mia Wasikowska), an Amish girl -- although the film never uses the word "Amish" -- under the tight leash of her father. The film gives us a rare look inside an Amish church service, and an even rarer look at what happens when a drunk man, Jack, stumbles into one.

The sacrilege is the tamest of the film's squirmy moments. You'll have to endure bloody fisticuffs, slashing, mutilations, hints of rape and gunfights peppered with salty language along with shock nudity. I won't blame you if you walk out. Really.

Lawless is dark, brutal and profane because of its source material. The film is based on the novel The Wettest County In The World by Matt Bondurant, who based it upon the moonshiner operations of his grandfather and great uncles in Virginia. Even though he's had his own experience with 'shine, he still ran into trouble obtaining the facts to bolster his fiction. Decades after prohibition, people are still reluctant to talk about the business. That has me wondering: is moonshining really just about illegal liquor, or as this movie suggests, all the corruption surrounding it?

Highlands In The Desert

The dance was intended to be informal and casual. Shorts were welcome. So were kilts. We couldn't help but make it something more. Once again, We Make History.

I've been a Stewart and a Cameron, but tonight, I'm a Campbell. My kilt announces it in deep hues of green, half-covered by my long linen 1740's weskit, also properly green. I finish it off with a Jacobite shirt, kilt hose and blue bonnet – with the white cockade, of course. If anybody asks what a Campbell is doing wearing a Jacobite bonnet, I can always say I'm a turncoat. If anybody asks why the kilt falls below my knees, I can say I'm honouring THE LORD with my modesty.

I miss Flagstaff this time of year. The green of the late summer and the cool among the pines leaves me wistful. The clans come together outside the great hall in celebration, everyone in tartans and gowns, smiles wide among faces. But now they're dressed up as if we were in the Highlands once again, in their gowns and kilts and bonnets as they enter the small Tucson ballroom.

“Does this go over the left or right shoulder?” a lady asks me as she ponders how to proper tartan sash over an 1800's hoopskirt.

“Any way you choose, my lady,” I respond. “But I usually wear it over the left shoulder.”

Clan Tucson is back. They are unmistakable in their brown and black tartans, honouring their desert heritage.

“We sewed this last night,” one member tells me, showing off his new, properly-pleated desert kilt. I hear several sewing machine needles snapped in the process, but the fruits of the labour are well tailored.

Our dance master, spirited yet casual, calls us to form sets and we are soon are bowing and curtsying to each other without any casual thoughts. We shall be sticking to the spirited reels this evening, accompanied by a virtual orchestra. It seems at least 30 or 40 people are here, and nearly every one is cavorting in merriment.

“In English dance, we glide,” a dancing master once told me, “but in Scottish we fly.” Indeed, many of the young lads and lasses are flying as they chasse and whirl around. Some – like your humble servant – prefer joyous yet elegant affectations, raising our hands and heads high as we turn. Somebody might well accuse us of being English spies.

Such flying requires refueling. The lads and lasses pause between dances to refresh themselves with cookies, tea, and copious cold water before it's time for a mid-diversion diversion. Dance 'em, Danno. In a growing tradition, we transition from the Highlands to Hawaii in a surf-rock version of the famous We Make History Pineapple Dance, with a medley featuring the theme from Hawaii Five-O.

You pass a pineapple to one person besides you, and then chasse off with the other. The rules are simple, but the variations are unlimited. Several people toss to others in line and charge in threes. Some people scamper away. Some lads dare to pass over the lasses and chasse off with each other. (That might be a cause for a duel, but that is another treatise.) But in the end, the person with the pineapple when the music stops wins the fruit of victory and likely a few juice concoctions down the line.

During a waltz, a highland lass generously shows your humble servant a box step. My feet have a hard time learning new things.

“You're doing it!” she cries, even though they still want to two-step at times, still clung to their Texas ways.

Later, she finds me again, hoping I wasn't embarrassed by the dancing lesson.

“No, not at all,” I tell her. It took a long time for me to learn a Scottish skip-change step, I explain, as I take up true Scottish Country Dancing. I show her, skipping on my right and left feet around the hall. She follows my lead.

“There's also a strathspey,” I explain, “which is a slowed-down skip-change with a hop.” I demonstrate: left step, close, left step, hop and swing the right through. Right step, close, right step, close, right step, swing the left through with a hop. My Scottish dancing masters would give me grief because my feet aren't pointing in a “T.” At times, I dance like the only boy in the ballet class. Not my dear lass, who follows after me.

A lad observes at us and wishes to learn it. I seize upon an idea.

“Take hands, and we'll do it together,” I say. The three of us improvise a sort of strathspey minuet across the room, Scottish meeting English... or French.

As the evening progresses, it's obvious. This is the Highland Ball we love, just a little smaller and sandier. That doesn't change our hearts' desires. Why be casual when we can kilt up and celebrate? Not that we disparage anybody who doesn't, but the freedom to be fancy is there for those who want.

Rife with afterglow, we descend upon a pizza parlour up the street late on the Friday evening. Humongous slices of Italian pie satisfy our cravings. With the establishment nearly to ourselves, we zestily dance in the aisles to the rhythms of the disco age. Clan Tucson dances the Breakdown... and then the Can-Can.

We are family, of good times, staying alive to the night fever because we should be dancing, yeah...

And you should be dancing, too. Check out We Make History for more about their Casual Dance Series -- and many other good historical offerings!

Reel To Reel: 2016 Obama's America

Fahrenheit 2012?

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Dinesh D'Souza
Rated: PG (but could pass for G)
Red Flags: Nothing beyond what you see on TV news, so the PG rating is a mystery

I don't have an equal-time policy for movie reviews. Still, since I reviewed Fahrenheit 911 in 2004, I figured I at least owed it to myself to take on an election-year documentary with a conservative perspective.

First, let me put some transparency on the table. I consider myself an independent, mainly because I dislike both the Republican and Democratic parties. To be sure, I'm not a fan of political parties in general. As I have said before, George Washington didn't like them, didn't think they were good for America. We should've listened to him. If you had to peg me politically, I would call myself a moderate, nearly dead center, but leaning conservative. That's where PoliticalCompass.org puts me.

Despite the title, most of conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza's doc devotes itself to an examination of President Obama's beliefs and what formed them. Less than 10 percent of the film is devoted to predictions. D'Souza narrates the movie not as a raving partisan or GOP mouthpiece but as somebody who wants to understand how Barack Obama thinks. His thesis: Obama's ideology comes from his dislike of colonialism, having grown up in Kenya, which threw off British rule, and Hawaii, where some still resent annexation by the United States.

D'Souza journeys -- literally -- through Obama's upbringing and family, traveling around the world to talk to people who knew him, even borrowing the president's own voice from the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father. It's methodical and heartfelt as D'Souza explores the foundations of the president's leanings. D'Souza doesn't stage Michael Moore-style joke sequences. If anything, the doc plays like a political travelogue, where you're walking with D'Souza as he pursues his gnawing curiosities as a conservative intellectual.

Smartly, it doesn't bite on hot-button issues we've heard too much about. The picture quietly dismisses questions about Obama's birth country. It mentions mentors Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, but comes at them from a different perspective. And D'Souza steers clear of divisive ideological foghorns, choosing to interview comparatively quiet conservative intellectuals.

Making a movie like this is challenging from a illustrative perspective. When not taking us to lands far and away, one can only license or borrow so much news footage, show so many shots of Washington, and splice in so many soundbites. D'Souza and co-director John Sullivan make the interesting choice to stage or re-create a few visuals. That's not something we're allowed to do in the news business, but it's not off-limits in documentaries, and the way it's done is mostly tame.

2016 may change a few minds at the ballot box. It may also change a few minds about conservatives in general. As I write this, the picture is doing much better than expected at the box office for a documentary, especially one with no star power behind it. Perhaps it's because it doesn't preach or pound the table. Given the waves of negative ads we're seeing in this presidential campaign, that's refreshing for a lot of people.

Reel To Reel: The Bourne Legacy

Somebody get this man a compounding pharmacy!

Going Rate: Worth matinee price
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Action violence, language

Universal Pictures thinks there's enough in the tank for a fourth Bourne picture, with or without Matt Damon. It's certainly doable, given the infrastructure created by Robert Ludlum's books. But a Bourne movie without Bourne like a James Bond film without James Bond, or George Lazemby as 007, and we saw how that turned out.

No matter. It turns out the super-secret assassin operation known as Treadstone has churned out several dark operatives, including Aaron Cross (Renner). When we meet him, he's in survival training and on some sort of meds -- this combination of green and blue pills he calls "chems," which do something to enhance his skills. We're never sure what. He's no Jason Bourne, but he's getting there. What he does to a wolf will remind you of what it's like to give a dog heartworm medication.

Halfway around the world, the spook bosses are nervous and cloistered in dimly-lit rooms because they're losing institutional control. People on the outside are talking -- and they can read it in their wiretaps -- about Bourne and Treadstone and all these things that probably aren't legal, much less Constitutional. They decide to shut things down, which in super-spook parlance means killing a lot of people, including Cross.

Out in the snowy abyss, Cross is running low on pills-- excuse me, chems. It turns out they come from this government pharmacological enterprise where one scientist doesn't know what the other is doing. Every so often, Dr. Marta Shearing (Weisz) draws blood work on spooks, presumably to examine the effects of said chems. She's unaware of how deep she's in the swamp until an outburst of violence at the lab ultimately leads Cross her way. His bosses are running him down, and he's still looking for pills.

All through the film, we see ghosts of Bourne. He's mentioned here, he's there, they're talking about him on MSNBC. It's almost as if the film wished it had Matt Damon again.

The Bourne Legacy left me scratching my head at how a group of intelligence chiefs could have so much information and yet be so clueless. I kept wondering when somebody in the room full of monitors, computers and phones would speak up and say, "Hey, shouldn't we maybe just lay off this guy for awhile and catch him off guard?" But movie spooks don't think that way. Neither do action movies.

Reel To Reel: The Dark Knight Rises

If this is the 99 percent, I'd rather be in the minority.

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Matthew Modine
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Action violence

I wonder what would happen if the French Revolution broke out in 2012 New York City, perhaps if Occupy Wall Street acquired some super-criminal who trapped the cops and built a nuke and threw everybody in Manhattan making above five figures into the street. I think it would look at lot like The Dark Knight Rises, the satisfying end to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. If not for the opening-night massacre in Colorado, we'd be talking about how this film is anti-Occupy and right-wing friendly. That's even despite the best efforts of a certain radio talk show host to draw a connection between the arch-villain and one of Mitt Romney's old jobs, somehow inferring the left will use it to their advantage. Enough, already.

Batman is in bat-retirement as the threequel opens, blamed for the death of beloved DA Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne (Bale) is living more like Howard Hughes. He's secluded in his stately manor outside Gotham, which still looks a lot like Chicago. Dent's legacy is anti-racketeering laws which have cleaned up the city and left the police, I presume, with little more to do than chase the routine thugs, murderers and thieves. They don't need a superhero anymore, especially not "The Batman."

However, nobody's been checking the sewers, where a criminal mastermind named Bane (Hardy) is building an army out of various low-paid cretins, who may or may not be construction workers. Bane is what you get when you cross Darth Vader with Hannibal Lecter: a highly-educated, highly-sophisticated maniac with a voice that should be advertising Bose speaker systems. He's got a scientist in his pocket and a plan to use Gotham as a lab for a class war that really is a war. He's also got a girl: Selina (Hathaway), aka Catwoman, who's making a living robbing the rich like Wayne and forgiving herself under the guise, "A girl's gotta eat."

Wayne catches Selina stealing his mother's necklace, but he sees it's a ruse for something much bigger. So does Commissioner Gordon, hospitalized by an injury in the line of duty, who's carrying the weight of the truth about what happened between Batman and Dent but afraid to tell because bigger things are at stake. He knows he needs Batman, but can Gotham's Finest handle the truth? As Wayne mulls whether to put the dark suit back on, he's prodded this way and that by his two stalwarts: genius inventor Lucius Fox (Freeman) and faithful servant Alfred (Caine, in an emotional performance). We also see a prototypical Good Cop, Foley (Modine), someone who isn't afraid of a guy in a bat-suit.

It turns out Batman and Bane are cut from the same cloth as superheroes go. What's fascinating is that they lack any super-powers. Bane needs a mask to breathe. Wayne can barely stand without a cane. Much of the movie involves his physical rehabilitation after Bane leaves him to suffer in a middle eastern prison.

And oh man, what toys they have. The Bat-cycle returns along with an aerial assault vehicle that makes Blue Thunder look like Those Daring Young Men In Their Flying Machines. Bane's got a fusion nuclear device and a whole lot of explosives which allow him to blow up the stock market, put Gotham under siege during a football game, and unleash his version of the 99 percent to wreak havoc upon the upper class. Who needs a guillotine when you can force those unrepentant filthy rich to go walk across thin ice and watch them fall in? They've probably heard that old Mel Brooks joke, "Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die!"

Most of the action in The Dark Knight Rises is cerebral, playing upon nuances and hints to let our brains fill in details while the film charges ahead. But director Christopher Nolan goes all-in for the finish, building mass heroism on top of nightmarish terrorism. My takeaway from this film, however, is a warning about populist movements and class struggles, and how they can be used by corrupt forces looking to amass power. I don't think Occupy Wall Street would line up behind Bane, but sometimes, I'm not so sure.

Reel To Reel: The Amazing Spider Man

Caught in a web of growing up.

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Sally Field
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Action violence

Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. He wasn't talking about Hollywood reboots, but I figured it odd when Columbia Pictures opted to restart the Spider-Man franchise when plans for Spider-Man 4 fell through. Only this time, instead of a straight comic-book actioner, we get a superhero coming-of-age film that seems to borrow from the Twilight and Harry Potter flicks.

The new Spider-Man is rebellious and conflicted, but it's also focused. It reworks or abandons key parts of the story we already know. Peter Parker/Spidey (Garfield) still takes pictures, but he's not gigging for the "Daily Bugle." Mary Jane is out of the picture, replaced with Gwen Stacy (Stone). The Green Goblin has been rejiggered into another green baddie. Fortunately, it leaves one ingredient alone: Parker's status as a nerd shutterbug who can't get a girl.

We get to see more of what happened before Parker became the webbed one. The film starts with a desperate hand-off of the young boy to his Aunt May (Field) and Uncle Ben (Sheen). Fast forward to Parker's teenage years, where he's bullied for standing up to the school bully Flash (Chris Zylka) and mentored by his uncle. The opening 15 minutes reminded me a lot of the original Superman, when a teenage Clark Kent was struggling with an identity crisis and a family he didn't really know.

Parker learns his father was involved in some kind of cross-species genetic testing, which prods him to sneak into Dad's old laboratory. It's located inside Oscorp, a multinational behemoth that makes, well, a lot of stuff and has a really cool building to show for it in Manhattan. While poking around inside Oscorp, Parker gets a little too close to some genetically-diddled spiders, and you probably know the rest.

We see several great sequences of Parker learning to cope with his Spidey superpowers, although he is not pushed towards the red spandex look we're familiar with until his beloved Uncle Ben falls victim to a punk armed robber. At the same time, he's trying to help finish the work his father began, befriending Dad's old lab partner, Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), who is about to embark on a disastrous experiment. And yes, he's going after Gwen in an awkward way.

If Tobey Maguire was a vulnerable, innocent Peter Parker, Garfield is more James Dean than Peter Parker. At times, The Amazing Spider-Man seems like it belongs on the CW's primetime schedule than on the big screen. It's heavy on teen love, angst and romance, so much so that it rushes other plot points, notably Parker's life-changing encounter with the spider. A final showdown contains a plot device that looks like it got there because the writers -- including Spider-Man veteran Alvin Sargent and Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves -- couldn't think up anything better.

When Warner Bros. rebooted the Batman series, it took on new maturity and depth. The new Spider-Man doesn't rise to that level, but it's at least willing to try to evolve beyond a run-of-the-mill comic-book movie.

Reel To Reel: Brave

A brave heart demands freedom!

Going Rate: Worth full price admission
Starring: Voices of Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Kevin McKidd, Robbie Coltrane
Rated: PG (too intense for the wee ones)
Red Flags: A few brief bare unkilted bums, some scary scenes

Some full disclosure: I love wearing kilts. I love Scottish culture, primarily the dancing. So now you know that I am going into Brave with warm predispositions. But lose the plaids and the Highland airs, and Brave is fairy tale mashed up with a teen angst flick. It works because it's colorful and heartfelt, not because it breaks any new ground. Some people demand Pixar be smarter than competing CGI animation studios; I'm not one of them.

Princess Merida (Macdonald) would rather be a tomboy in flaming red locks than a heir to the throne. While her mother Queen Elinor (Thompson) hectors and natters her on how a proper princess should behave, she longs to dart out into the glens and bullseye targets with her bow and arrow. Her father Fergus (Connolly) is an oaf who rests on the laurels of his showdown with the bear that took part of his leg. Even though he gave Merida her first bow, he's not much of a presence in her life. Her three kid brothers are too busy stealing desserts.

Queen Elinor is micromanaging her daughter's betrothal, as is tradition, to the first-born from one of three bickering clans, led by Lord MacGuffin (McKidd), Lord Dingwall (Coltrane), and Lord Macintosh (Ferguson). I'll wager you that last clan was named in honor of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who bought Pixar from founder George Lucas and receives a dedication at the end. None of the three suitors is particularly dashing, but you know kids these days.

Merida, realizing she is also first-born of her clan, decides to upend everything by becoming one of the competitors in an archery competition for her hand. She's a great shot but a lousy diplomat. Queen Mum is incensed, and Merida wants to just get away from it all. Escaping into the woods once more, she comes across a witch (Walters) who offers her a spell to change Mum's disposition, but it comes with a huge side effect.

Brave is that kind of movie that mothers and young daughters will want to watch together. Most families don't do arranged marriages anymore, but you can substitute any number of issues that drive a wedge between mother and child: driving, dating, make-up, clothes, boyfriends, money. Then there's that familiar refrain: "Mom, you never listen to me!" I'm sure a few families will find some uncomfortable moments watching art imitate family life, but as I have seen with Fireproof and Courageous, a great movie will spur us to examine our lives outside the theater.

Another advisory for parents: the PG rating is no joke. Pixar pushes some lines with animated brief bare bottoms, but it also contains some scary scenes involving bears which are definitely not for young children. The maturity level of your kids will vary, so I am not going to give a guideline age.

Pixar overhauled its animation system for Brave, and you see it in the beauty of the Scottish Highlands. It is lovingly faithful to its Celtic roots, including many jigs and reels in the soundtrack. I am hoping Brave reignites interest in all things Scottish just as Braveheart did many years ago. All right, I'll admit it: anything that gets more men wearing kilts can't be all bad.

Reel To Reel: Prometheus

In space, nobody can hear you say, "Don't go there!"

Going Rate: Worth matinee price admission in 3D
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green
Rated: R
Red Flags: Gross aliens, gross alien violence, mild language

Prometheus is a prequel to Alien, the 1979 sci-fi classic that effectively blended horror and science fiction. But as my Queen Mother points out, knowing it's a prequel dilutes its effectiveness. Indeed, Prometheus feels like an Alien remake at times. Both films even come from the same director, Ridley Scott. So why see this movie? It's nice to see the same director remixing his own material.

The film follows a team of explorers led by Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Peter Weyland (Pearce) on a journey to a distant planet to find a lifeform supposedly connected to early civilizations on Earth. There goes that theory of evolution. They wake up from a long hibernation and get down to the grunt work of exploring a desolate rock with an unbreathable atmosphere. Their commanders, more or less, are starchy corporate liason Meredith (Theron) and a souless android David (Fassbender). The Royal Father noted David reminded him of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I kept expecting David to unplug somebody's sleep chamber.

Now on a wasteland of a planet, you can expect whatever these explorers find to be up to no good. This alien race has somehow created its own sustainable atmosphere, but it has run into something that has also killed it off. None of this seems to matter much to Shaw, who's consumed with answering that basic question: "Where did we come from?" She wears a cross around her next, so I gather she knows part of the answer. But she wants to know more.

The team she leads runs into trouble as they walk deeper into an underground shaft. The alien race they find has left them warnings and clues, but are they hostile or friendly? I dunno, what do you think?

Prometheus wants to be broader than just another sci-fi action horror film where aliens eat people. Yes, they do that here. I can also tell you we see an alien come out from somebody's stomach, but at least the way it's handled here is a bit more creative. The film makes a stab at questions of faith and creation, but it doesn't spend much time on them. It also doesn't spend much time on charazterization, either, beyond Shaw, Weyland, and their two supervisors. We know Shaw's faith and tenatiousness drive her forward. Still, when ghouly aliens are killing your crew off, shouldn't your overriding desire be getting the heck off the planet?

The movie is scary and gross in the places I expected it to be, although I still had a few seat-jumping moments. "Definitely not for children," as my Queen Mother observed. It works well in 3D, with copious holographic computer display images. It would work even better if the film seemed fresher, but stale it's not.

Reel To Reel: For Greater Glory

Praise the LORD and pass the ammo.

Going Rate: Worth matinee price.
Starring: Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria, Peter O'Toole
Rated: R
Red Flags: Intense war violence, including multiple hangings and atrocities against children

I wonder what a director like Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez would have done with this story of Mexico's Cristero War, an uprising against institutionalized Catholic persecution that claimed more than 90,000 lives and led to a wave of immigration into the U.S. back when nobody was talking about border fences. The conflict has the elements of a neo-Spaghetti Western: bloody violence and ambiguous morality. This production, which was largely funded by the Knights of Columbus, is more of a tribute film to the Cristeros which pulls emotional strings without giving us enough emotional base.

The movie picks up the story in 1926, when Mexican president and atheist Plutarco Elías Calles (Rubén Blades) institutes several laws to curb the Catholic Church's power. The "Calles Laws," as they're called, forbid priests from wearing religious garments in public, expel foreign clergy, and close Catholic schools. We get no background on why Mexico is taking this drastic step. We're barely told of the anti-Church sentiment stemming from the 1910 Mexican Revolution. The film omits a critical point for understanding it: Church-backed counterrevolutionary Victoriano Huerta overthrew and executed President Francisco Madero after the revolution. As I have told people in my re-enacting pursuits, history is complicated.

While we're trying to figure out why Mexico's government is acting like a secular Taliban, it starts laying emotional pipe. We meet José (Mauricio Kuri), a rascally boy pushed into serving Father Christopher (O'Toole) after playing a practical joke on him. The lovable old padre thinks Joselito will make a good altar boy, if the Federales don't shut his church down and kill him first -- which they do. Non-violent resistance against the Calles Laws fails, and another revolution erupts as Catholics are drawn to war in the face of seeing clergy and parishioners harassed and killed.

Shift to Enrique Gorostieta (Garcia), a secular retired general now running a soap factory. The Cristero forces need his expertise for organization and tactics. Going back to war -- especially for the Catholic cause -- doesn't particularly interest him, but a good paycheck helps. The new jefe insists on fighting with honor. Try selling that one to bands of guerrilla banditos who don't need no stinkin' badges.

The film nearly forgets about José until it needs more dramatic pull. He runs off to join the rebels and ends up under the general's wing. This is when the film starts finding some velocity. Gorostieta gets a few victories and wins respect from a reluctant bandito leader. And somehow, he starts drawing closer to GOD. Behind the scenes, U.S.-Mexican relations get a discussion over breakfast and adult beverages as American ambassador Dwight Morrow (Bruce Greenwood) is more interested in protecting U.S. oil interests than ending a conflict he's clueless about.

For Greater Glory's problem is that it displays too many tendencies of a propaganda film: distilling the conflict down into a straight morality play. The film does devote one brief scene to a Cristero atrocity of burning innocent civilians on a train, but it also leaves out the assassination of Mexican President-elect Álvaro Obregón by a Catholic radical, who was set to become President Calles successor.

The film works when it sticks to the innocence of José and the religious epiphany of Gorostieta. It really works when its characters try to understand where GOD is in any of this. My favorite sequence shows a rebel leader -- who is also a priest -- explaining to the general why bad things happen to good people. Hollywood doesn't do well in explaining that. But this film wasn't made in Hollywood; hecho en Mexico.

Reel To Reel: Men In Black 3

Still hunting the original illegal aliens.

Going Rate: Worth matinee price.
Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Creepy alien violence, mild language, one gross make-out scene

Men In Black debuted in 1997, made a forgettable sequel in 2002, and now comes back with another go in 2012. Columbia Pictures and Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg is executive producer) still see life in a stale franchise. Perhaps it's time to throw the reins to a new generation of space cops.

MIB3 does that, sorta, by prequeling while sequeling. Agents K (Jones) and J (Smith) are still chasing extraterrestrial baddies and erasing memories, but now J is having to do that in two different centuries. It turns out an alien super criminal, Boris "The Animal" (Clement), has just busted out of the supermax lockup on the moon. You could call him the original Spider-Man because he releases these insect-like creatures from the palm of his hand. I'd tell you more if it didn't make me nauseous.

Boris wants to kill K, who not only locked him up but also shot off one of his arms. Worse, Boris wants to do it retroactively -- time-traveling back to 1969, when they first tangled, but offing K before the agent can cuff him. The killer finds a way to do it, and suddenly J finds his partner is reduced to a memorial bust. Worse, the "ArcNet," an Earth-protecting shield, is gone. That was also K's idea.

So now J must get back to 1960's, save his partner, and save Earth from invasion. Remember that the next time you complain about your job. After going way back, he runs into a younger version of his partner, played perfectly by Josh Brolin. I wondered whether CGI, makeup effects, or dubbing enhanced Brolin's younger K. Nope, it's just good old-fashioned casting and performance. He mimics Jones to the letter.

I like how MIB3 moves along before it has a chance to get boring, although Smith's character wore me a bit thin at times. The film also throws another genuinely interesting creature at us, Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), the lone survivor of an alien race who can see multiple future events at the same time. I'm not sure if he's somebody you'd want with you at the Vegas sports books.

MIB3 is better than it could've been, but it still seems dated, like a classic rock group getting back together for a reunion gig. I hear production on Ghostbusters 3 is moving forward with or without Bill Murray. If can be interesting as the Men In Black, it may have a chance.

The Official Patriot

At left, Chapter President James Williamson pins the SAR rosette on your humble servant under the admiration of SAR officer Al Niemeyer.

HUZZAH!  Two years with the Sons of The American Revolution as a prospective member, participating with the color guard, and I'm finally in after getting my act together on the research part.  It took at least two false starts.  I thought I would be able to do it on my own, but I found it's handy to have an experienced genealogist who knows what to do, where to get the documents, how to get the documents, and how to lay everything out so that the application gets through.

Your humble servant's patriot ancestor is Robert Foresman, Sr., who fought in the Pennsylvania Militia during the Revolutionary War, traced back through my father's bloodline.  I am also trying to "prove out" another patriot in the family, this one a member of the Continental Army.  Research has also found a redcoat who surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown... but, psst, we don't discuss him a lot.

Reel To Reel: The Avengers

The gang's all here!

Going Rate: Worth full price admission.
Starring:Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Comic book action violence, mild language

I'll let you in on a little secret: Iron Man steals The Avengers. With that in mind, this all-star comic-book superhero movie is a highly enjoyable ride that takes itself only moderately seriously, and most of that is due to Iron Man (Downey), whose motor-mouth wisecracks put a reality check on an over-the-top fantasy.

A superhero film filled with superheroes requires the evilest threat a screenwriter can think up. This time, it's the Tesseract, a self-generating energy source so powerful it can punch a hole into the universe and bring forth a whole host of ugly superbaddies. Only in movies does such technology always suck from the bottom of the barrel. What if it brought in a race twenty times smarter than us? Would we resist sharing our turf with a superior intellect or defend our dumbness to the death? I dunno.

This energy source, held by a super-dark security group called S.H.I.E.L.D., brings out Loki, a sinister authoritarian bad guy with a scepter that flips people's allegiances. Imagine what it would do to Rush Limbaugh. Loki inverts a scientist and ace archer Hawkeye (Renner) and takes off with the Tesseract. Not good.

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s topper, Nick Fury (Jackson), realizes this problem will require him to do more than stand around and be cool with one eye, so he starts putting together a team: Captain America as Steve Rogers (Evans), Natasha Romanoff as Black Widow (Johansson), Thor as his Shakespearean hammer-throwing self (Hemsworth), Hulk hiding inside Bruce Banner (Ruffalo), and the aforementioned Iron Man doing business as Tony Stark. Put this many egos in a room, and you're bound to have trouble, especially if you get Dr. Banner angry -- something he doesn't want to do anymore, thus leaving doubts about his viability as a team player. Captain is the born leader, even if he's a little too flashy-looking. Widow really doesn't have any superpowers beyond bringing a lot of creative hurt to people. We're really not sure whose side Thor is on, given Loki is a relative. And Stark? Let's just get this done and go eat Chinese.

The film delivers everything expected of a summer blockbuster in its genre: lots of CGI, lots of explosions, lots of impossible stunts. What saves it from being a forgettable thrill-ride is Joss Whedon's touch. He made the film for fanboys without making it a fanboy movie, avoiding the mistake that doomed Watchmen. Seeing Captain America and Thor is not a prerequisite. Prepare to be more than a bit surprised. And stay through the end of the credits. I didn't, but a friend tells me it's worth it.