Movie Review: “Of Dice and Men”

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Of Dice and Men

Full Disclosure Notice: I have known Cameron McNary since high school, where he was one year behind me. We lost touch when I went off to college and reconnected on Facebook a few years ago. Cam talked on Facebook about the play he wrote, “Of Dice and Men”, and I have made small contributions to his staging of the play at PAX Prime and to the making of this film. However, my friendship with Cam and my contributions have no effect on how or what I write. I’m only saying all this in the interest of transparency. I actually probably judge the work more harshly than if I didn’t know Cam at all – and had I not known him, it’s unlikely I would’ve planned to do a review, since I can’t make it to any of the official screenings. There. The DISCLOSURE is now over. On with the rest of the show.

“Of Dice and Men” is a cheeky and sweet look at what happens when a group of friends who game together are impacted by choices made by two of the trio at the center of the group. Based on a play of the same name which debuted in a staging at the PAX Prime convention in 2010, “Of Dice and Men” focuses primarily on two characters: the sweet, sensitive John Francis (Evan Casey), and his foul-mouthed, oafish BFF, John Alex (Cameron McNary). The rest of the gang is comprised of: Jason (Ricardo Frederick Evans), John Francis and John Alex’s close childhood friend; Tara (Gwen Grastorf), the lovely and sweet would-be object of John Francis’ affection; and the married couple of Linda (Rebecca Herron) and Brandon (“One Tree Hill”‘s Greg Thompson) – a hysterically funny, hyper-sexed couple that plays together and stays together.

 

John Francis

John Francis (Casey) monologues about being a Game Master

 

The movie opens with John Alex discovering John Francis packing for a move to Berkeley, and your first taste of their friendship is riddled with John Alex’s f-bombs and gesticulations. Clearly he is the “Jay” to John Francis’ (nearly) “Silent Bob”. The next few scenes fill in the backstory, including introductions to the group’s game characters – a halfling, a half-elf wizard, a dwarf, a barbarian, and a cleric. To a certain extent, those who’ve never gamed before, particularly with Dungeons and Dragons, will find themselves lost in the minutiae of the gaming characters’ presentation. The concepts of “hit points” and “rolling for damage” haven’t yet made it to a broad pop culture lexicon, but the unrequited love between John Francis and Tara is easy to understand. In many ways, a brief scene showing all the missed connections between the two is instantly relatable.

 

Tara demonstrates her geek cred

Tara (Grastorf) gives the “Are you for real, dude?” look as she is forced to demonstrate geek cred to a game store employee

 

The majority of interaction takes place at Linda and Brandon’s dining room table – where miniature figures, graph paper, pencils, and scads of dice cover the tabletop. It is here that you see the game characters reflecting parts of each person’s real personality, such as Linda’s randy Scottish dwarf (who will regale you with tales of genital girth and length for days) or Tara’s wispy wizard who dies at the drop of a hat. Brandon, who games only because of his love for his wife, makes a choppy, hesitant barbarian – yet he is, in real life, clearly a thoughtful and strong person.

One night’s gaming results in a fracture when Jason announces that he enlisted in the Marines and is headed for Iraq. John Alex is visibly hurt and lashes out at Jason, and this confrontation makes for a jarring end mid-way through the gaming session. John Francis withholds his own announcement until the following day, dealing with the personal aftermath individually – as friends one-by-one come to his rented room to find him partially packed for a move he’d planned for weeks but never said was coming. The play was inspired by McNary’s best friend shipping off to Iraq around the same time that he was getting married and establishing himself as a real grown-up, so it’s clear that the angst of John Francis and the anger of John Alex represent very real feelings McNary surely experienced.

 

John Alex as Spango and Jason as Kester

John Alex (McNary) as halfling Spango Granetkiller, with Jason (Evans) as Kester, pondering certain doom at Jason’s last night of gaming with the group

 

The movie ponders the question of whether gaming has any purpose or meaning, and though it largely leaves that open to interpretation by the individual, it makes a strong case for it – or any hobby or interest – as having value to those who participate in it. The relationships built between those led through the worlds created by Game Master John Francis all love him, and love each other, and the bonds between them are renewed each time they come together around the table with their dice and miniature pewter selves. The movie is a study of characters with characters, and so it operates on several levels. It screens like a play (which makes sense, given its source material), so there are times where scenes fade to black almost abruptly. On the other hand, several nice touches – such as the graph paper background for the credits and the fantasy world backgrounds for character intros – are clever nods to the geek culture that continues to thrive and sustain gaming.

I would recommend making it to a viewing, if attending one of the several conventions screening the movie (see below). It’s unclear whether the movie will make it out of the con circuit, and it’s also equally unclear to me that it would resonate with a broader audience where gaming might not be as widespread. Still, it’s a sweet indie film and it was clearly made with love of friendship and of gameplay. What more would anyone need to prove whether gaming matters?

“Of Dice and Men” will next be screened at Gen Con 2014 on August 15, 2014, Intervention Con on August 23, 2014, Dragon*Con 2014 (screening date/time TBD, sometime between August 29 – September 1, 2014), and PAX Prime on August 31, 2014. More information about screenings can be found at the official “Of Dice and Men” website.

2-1/2 stars out of 4

“Of Dice and Men” is currently rated PG-13; it contains frequent use of profanity and one scene with mild violence. 

Movie Review: “The Hundred-Foot Journey”

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Hundred Foot Journey

The opening of “The Hundred-Foot Journey” immediately transports viewers to a location evoking all five senses: a bustling, chaotic Indian marketplace where shoppers compete for the best ingredients for their kitchens. A crowd envelops a vendor offering urchins, arguing their case to justify their right to purchase – when the seller stops them all and agrees to sell to the mother of the young Hassan Kadam, who has opened an urchin and is savoring each taste with nearly sensual relish. Hassan is a cooking prodigy, urged on by his mother – the matriarch of the family and the head chef at the family’s restaurant in Mumbai.

Following a post-election riot, tragedy strikes and both the restaurant and Hassan’s beloved mother are lost in a fire. The family flees India and heads to Europe, taking refuge first in Holland, followed immediately by England. Deeply unsatisfying attempts to grow roots in their new environs lead the family back to the mainland, this time to France. A chance brake failure strands the Kadams just outside Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in the south of France, and the young Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon of “Mood Indigo”, an amazing ringer for a young Winona Ryder) tows them to town.

 

Marguerite feeding the Kadams

Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon) offers the stranded Kadams a homemade feast

 

Hassan’s brother and sisters are eager to leave, but their eccentric father, played by Om Puri (“Charlie Wilson’s War” and “Gandhi”), insists on establishing a restaurant in an abandoned building on the edge of town. This gorgeous farmhouse has the unpleasant disadvantage of being directly across the street, exactly one hundred feet away, from Le Saule Pleurer (translation: “The Weeping Willow”), a high-class establishment that garnered a star from le Guide Michelin. As Marguerite explains, “one star [from Michelin] is good, two is amazing, and three is only for the gods.”

 

Kadam family arguing

The Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri, far left) and anchored by Hassan (Manish Dayal, far right standing), argues over whether to settle in the south of France

 

Le Saule Pleurer’s owner is the taciturn Madame Mallory, a widow with a heart of ice and a burning desire to garner another Michelin star. Madame Mallory is played by the sublime Dame Helen Mirren (“Red”, “Red 2” and – the first place I saw her – “White Nights”), whose failed French accent is the sole flaw in her otherwise fantastic performance. The fully grown and strikingly handsome Hassan (Manish Dayal of “White Frog” and the “90210” reboot) continues to thrive in the kitchen, turning the family’s Maison Mumbai into a destination worthy of attention. With Marguerite a sous chef for Le Saule Pleurer, Hassan and Marguerite find themselves on opposite sides of a quickly simmering war between the two restaurant owners, Papa on one side and Madame Mallory on the other.

 

Hassan studies French cooking

Hassan (Manish Dayal) studies les livres de cuisine lent to him by Marguerite

 

Hassan eagerly devours the French cookbooks Marguerite snuck over to him, learning the key sauces, ingredients and techniques needed to prepare fine French cuisine. (I’m nearly positive one of them is Le Cordon Bleu Cuisine Foundations, and if Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking isn’t one of them – it should be.) The two young chefs have more and more surreptitious rendezvous, including one where Marguerite confides what is required to prove cooking chops to Madame Mallory. Meanwhile, moves and countermoves by the two restaurants’ generals escalate until a breaking point is reached – xenophobes deface the wall outside Maison Mumbai and set a fire that temporarily injures Hassan. During his convalescence, Hassan manages to break down the divide between himself and Madame Mallory, proving to her that he has the talent to make it in her storied kitchen and finally getting her to admit that he is “more chef than anyone [she] has met.” This begins his personal journey of discovery, not just for Hassan but also for Marguerite, Papa and Madame Mallory.

 

Madame Mallory in her kitchen

Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren) is not amused by limp asparagus

 

“The Hundred-Foot Journey” is a lovely film, neither too lighthearted nor too depressing. The charm of the south of France is seasoned with beautiful scenes in marketplaces and lush forests, and the time spent in the kitchen seems like a missed opportunity to bring back “Smell-o-Vision”, though lovers of French and Indian cuisines (like myself) can easily imagine the rich scents wafting up from the pots and pans scattered on stovetops in both restaurants. The actors are all superb, although it helps that excellent talent is paired with a humorous, sweet script. My only beefs with the movie, and they’re sized more like an amuse-bouche, are Mirren’s dodgy accent and the fairly maudlin ending. Still, these are insufficient reasons to spurn this film; it was surely one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. As far as whether or not to bring kiddos, there are a couple of scary scenes – particularly the two attacks on the Kadam family restaurants – but otherwise it’s a family-friendly movie. Consider “The Hundred-Foot Journey” a very solid investment of two hours and something worth ordering again and again.

3-1/2 stars out of 4

“The Hundred-Foot Journey” opens nationwide starting August 8, 2014. This movie is rated PG for thematic elements, some violence, language and brief sensuality.

Time stands still: my six-month mammogram

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Time stands still in the radiology waiting room. You sit, half-dressed, torso lightly covered in a wrap that still leaves you shivering in the artificial cold of the medical building. Fake lighting, bland colors, and non-description artwork illustrate the scene, as though somehow the artificiality will make it better. When you emerge into bright daylight, blinking and groping for sunglasses, the myriad of nature’s colors overwhelm and remind you that the visit was something not real.

The exam itself is like something from a bad science fiction film. Machines that gently hum move with ornate precision at the touch of foot pedals. They take pictures in seconds that used to take minutes or longer to develop, but just because the picture emerges so soon doesn’t mean that its meaning is so rapidly evident. You sit. And you wait. And then you wait some more.

If you’re lucky, the tech comes back quickly to inform you that you can get dressed and go on with your day. If you’re less lucky, they want more pictures. Maybe it will mean more time with the mean machine that treats breasts like they’re made of silly putty, squishing them into awkward shapes in some vain attempt to remove one dimension from your form. Maybe it will mean that you need an ultrasound instead – a rendezvous with a microphone-shaped paddle and goo that feels like otherworldly slime. You never understand the pictures presented on the screen. We aren’t meant to see inside ourselves so literally unless something is wrong, and even then what is opaque seems clear – yet remains opaque on many levels.

Today, I had an epic wait after my first set of pictures. Someone was less lucky than I; they had a biopsy and the radiologist looked over those images at length. I’m sad and tired and annoyed, but I’m not the person who was biopsied, so I count my blessings and hold my tongue. The tech doing my second set of pictures manhandles me more but the machine hurts less. I can’t explain it. I’m just sadness and anxiety. She tries to reassure me that the pictures are just additional details, but I still just want to run away.

When family members have had breast cancer, it makes you want to know whether you will get it, but – at the same time – you don’t want to know.

Today, I’m lucky. I escape without an ultrasound. I escape with the order to come back in six months, hopefully to be back on an annual cycle again. I’m sent away with the words “You are stable”. That’s not the same as “You’re clean”. That’s “no additional growth at this time” or “we will keep an eye on things”.

I walk to my car, almost 2-1/2 hours after I arrived. I know I’ll be back in six months. I hope my results are no worse. For a child of a survivor, for the niece of a two-time survivor (who ultimately succumbed to lung cancer), “no worse” is a victory.

But I will try to spend tonight by myself, secluding myself from family and friends, because even with “no worse” results, I’m emotionally spent. I’m wrung out like a washcloth. And I have to preserve my strength for six months from now.