Clint Eastwood has quickly become the tour de force of Hollywood, a director that any studio would love to have in the stable.  After Million Dollar Baby netted Best Picture and Best Director at the 2004 Academy Awards, Eastwood movies have become a staple at annual award shows. With how the Academy warms to biopic movies, this year’s Invictus will surely continue down the same path.

I remember reading Time for Kids in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa. It wasn’t until after seeing Invictus that I can begin to understand what Mandela has meant to South Africa and the rest of the world. By showing compassion and love to both enemies and friends, Mandela united a nation and region destroyed by decades of war, racial segregation, and apartheid.  Although only a brief portrayal of Mandela’s career, Invictus will allow American audiences to attach the deeds of Mandela with his name, which is already world renown

Invictus follows Mandela and South Africa’s preparation for the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Morgan Freeman (Mandela) is supported by Matt Damon in the role of Francois Pienaar, rugby captain for the South African Springboks. The film picks up the day Mandela assumes power, balancing a narrow fold by never becoming too political or too sports oriented. The plot focuses on how rugby contributed to Mandela’s diplomatic policy and how it contributed to stabilizing the divided nation.

Invictus, while not great, delivers a powerful message.  Eastwood certainly has amateur moments, such as shoving inspirational music down the throats of the audience. This was coupled with the fact that I found Morgan Freeman too identifiable. I was too often reminded of rough characters (like Scrap from Million Dollar Baby) that Freeman had portrayed in the past. This is a problem that biopic movies always face. Previous efforts like Ray, Walk the Line, Capote, and The Last King of Scotland were able to excel because they stared relatively unknown leads. Joaquin Phoenix (Johnny Cash in Walk the Line) and Forest Whitaker (Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland) believably portrayed their roles because they hadn’t starred in blockbusters or epics like Wanted and The Shawshank Redemption. Even with this, Freeman portrayed Mandela well and deserves the early Oscar buzz.  Damon was relatively strong, often carrying the rest of the unknown, South African actors who portrayed the Springbok rugby team. Eastwood continues his use of local actors: aside from Damon and Mandela, the cast is primarily comprised of South African nationals.

Invictus brings to light the horrible racial prejudice that still exists in the 21st century. I couldn’t help but think of Bobby Kennedy in the final moments, a man who might have been as important as Mandela had his life not been taken by a nameless, selfish individual. Kennedy mentions in his speech, On The Mindless Menace of Violence, “but we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.”

As I was taking a bathroom break after the movie I was approached by a middle-aged black man who asked me, “How is my white brother doing tonight?” If but only for a moment in time, we both recognized what we shared. Later in the parking lot I was asked by another black man if I could spare change for his car that had run out of gas. He said, “My friend told me that I would never get money from a white man.” I gave him my last dollar. I wasn’t trying to be charitable.  I was trying to help a friend in need.

Nearly two months before his death, Robert Kennedy would ask one thing. He closed his speech saying, “surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.” Mandela has taught but a fragment of the globe to view enemies with kindness, compassion, and clemency. I can only hope that Invictus will inspire a new generation of leaders poised to eradicate the disease of prejudice.  The art of cinema has a global outreach and ability to inspire that humanitarian or awareness groups do not.  Eastwood is obviously drawing on this ability to share with the world a story of conquering racial prejudice entrenched in apartheid and uprooted by Mandela.

Leave it to Wes Anderson to turn classic Roald Dahl characters into quirky claymation renditions of his normative actors like Bill Murray or Jason Schwartzman.  In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson proves that he’s got a much firmer grip on American nostalgia than, oh say, Spike Jonze, whose Where the Wild Things Are provoked a hip response to a genuinely bad rendition of a children’s book.  There’s nothing new about Fantastic Mr. Fox.  The stop-motion is tendentious, the voice-overs are unremarkable, and it’s clear that Anderson is trying not to break new ground except in medium.  But you know what?  It works.

I’ll be the first to say it: I like Wes Anderson movies.  For some reason there’s a stigma against liking his movies which lends a totally unwarranted superiority complex to those who don’t.  I don’t care how pretentious they are or how a representation of the mediocrity of life can’t be done more than once, they’re entertaining, they’re funny. Fantastic Mr. Fox is really no different, except that the transference from human banality to that of foxes (or the animal world in general) also necessitates a transfer from real life to imaginary, from three-dimensional to the perception of three-dimensions.  The stop-motion of Fantastic Mr. Fox is exceptionally well-suited to the warmth of the film.  The quiet, gentle voices of George Clooney (Mr. Fox) and Meryl Streep (Mrs. Fox) bring the film-screen closer to the audience.  We empathize because we can relate to these……foxes…

Like I said, other than the claymation Fantastic Mr. Fox offers little more than any other Wes Anderson movie, which is saying something, although perhaps this one’s not quite as good because of its basis on Roald Dahl’s children’s novella of the same title.  That’s where Anderson throws in foxes riding motorcycles, a rival collegiate rat with an aggrandizing alcohol problem, and a bureaucratic animal world reminiscent of something like The Secret of Nihm.  None of that’s in the book, but we can expect a director as talented as Anderson to create a world within a world of our expectations of the film, something which (not to harp on a bad movie) Where the Wild Things Are couldn’t do.

I know this hasn’t been much of a critique of Fantastic Mr. Fox, more so a critique of Wes Anderson and his superiority to other very disappointing children’s book-movies (Where the Wild Things Are, just in case you’ve been skimming).  This is the first movie this year that I’ve gone to with brimming expectation and it’s the only one I’ve left feeling truly satisfied.

Our generation has been slapped with a label of apathy.  From this apathy, the definition of “cool” has become radically different from what it once was.  You couldn’t be cool in the 60s if you were apathetic, just like it’s difficult to be cool and proactive now.  But sometimes, very rarely, something remains cool over the decades.

It’s been 40 years, to the month, since The Beatles recorded Abbey Road, their last effort as a cohesive unit (although Let it Be was released later).  40 years later, this album can get just as personal as it ever could, more so than any other rock and roll album from that era.  Come on, do you have the same magical experience when you listen to Cosmo’s Factory by Creedence Clearwater Revival?  To us, everything that has filtered through the four interim decades is great music, but let’s be honest, nothing is better than Abbey Road.

One of the most fantastic things about this album is that everybody knows it’s great.  Going back to what I said earlier, a very significant minority of people have a) never heard Abbey Road or, even rarer, b) don’t like it.  It’s just cool, and it’s been cool for 40 years.

I highly doubt that any of The Beatles could have foreseen how consequential their careers together would be.  John Lennon is no god, yet we obeyed his command to come together, a song of lyrical augury which opens this timeless album.  The relationship between the songs on the album mirrors the adhesion that the album itself created on its listeners.  We must come together, we must take example.  Abbey Road is not a mere rock and roll album, it is rather a philosophical doctrine of love, loss, pain, and observation.  On The Beatles (The White Album), the lyrics continually stress that the band is not trying to change the world.  They failed miserably.

One of my favorite aspects of Abbey Road is the fact that it is an album, much like a novel is a representation of like events which culminate in a climactic fashion.  This may sound redundant, but think of most albums you listen to.  Are they cohesive bodies of work, or are they merely collections of songs that are similar because they’re played by the same five musicians?  Rarely is an album an actual album, and this is the best of them.  I urge modern listeners, such as myself, to find an old vinyl copy of Abbey Road (maybe your parents have one).  The album we love so much today is actually two albums, connected only by nomenclature and separated derisively between “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Here Comes the Sun”.  For the sake of continuity, we don’t get that on the CD version.  We also forfeit the tone of Abbey Road partially: side one begins and ends with dark, mellow songs, interspersed by brightly painted singles such as “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Octopus’ Garden”.  Side two is totally different.  It begins and ends with messages of hope, this time interspersed with tracks that stress The Beatles’ ability to entrench philosophical subjects into mundanity (“Carry That Weight”, specifically).

Amongst dissemination that characterized the last half of their career, The Beatles recorded Abbey Road to end on a good note.  In fact, most of the second half of the album is accidental, contrived by McCartney and George Martin in late night sessions without the presence of the full band.  It is not a magnum opus; it’s The Beatles doing what they did best.  They aren’t deified, Apollonian muses; they’re just four guys with exceptional songwriting ability who were in the right place at the right time.  Abbey Road represents the culmination of their career together.

The greatest testament to The Beatles is the career of each individual musician post-1970.  Apart from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, can you think of one song from George, Paul, Ringo, or John himself that is more memorable than any Beatles track?  If you can, than you’ve had a maligned musical upbringing (Wings?).  The Beatles will exist long after its compositional materials are dead, and Abbey Road will remain its crown jewel and a the crown jewel of the rock and roll world itself.