He has a rather laisse faire attitude at first, but he gets involved in a terrible unfolding situation through an emergency call and becomes deeply invested in helping. Most of the film is just a tight closeup of his face as he listens to the different people on the emergency line. It was quite an extraordinary experience and something only a movie could do, but yet it didn't involve any of the trickery that I have come to find so boring in these intensely popular super hero movies -- explosions, car chases, long repetitive fights. It just delved deeply into this one rather ordinary guy's psyche. It takes us from the guy we see at the start, who is putting in time, waiting for his chance to get back to his "real job" to a guy who has been transformed by his experience. I recommend it highly.
I confess I am interested in seeing the new Lion King movie. I really like Donald Glover; he's one of these real modern Renaissance people and the shots of the "live" action seem pretty inspiring, especially when you think of the terrible assaults we are perpetrating on the natural world. BUT, I'm not sure I want to sit in a movie theatre with a lot of little kids. That might be a prejudice of mine, but I just remember movies when I was a little kid and how the popcorn boxes were flying and stuff like that.
Of course, I also remember seeing "E.T." in a movie theatre (yes, I'm that old) -- I was an adult, but a friend of mine had a young son and we took him to see it (it seems shocking to think that that little boy would be in his forties now - I haven't seen him since he was about 11). He was enraptured from the moment the movie started and in the scene where the kids are frantically riding their bikes, little David was miming it along with them, he was so involved in the story.
And I also remember when I was a little girl in Weyburn and on Boxing Day, the Soo Theatre always had kids' movies and you could go and stay all day and so I went (I would have been about 10) -- all by myself, because that's what we did then -- no one ever thought that you needed a parent to come along to the all day movies for kids. I paid my dime and went in with my popcorn. The movie people were having trouble with the film or something and couldn't get it to work and the kids were getting restless, so they darkened the theatre and showed, of all things, "Pal Joey" which was a very grown up movie, with Frank Sinatra in the lead role of a womanizing ne'er do well who wants his own night club and Rita Hayworth playing a society woman who used to be a stripper! But as soon as the movie started, all of the kids (me included) settled down and watched it, just as if it was "Mary Poppins" or whatever we thought we were going to see. Nobody left and, as far as I know, nobody complained. And why would we? Who wouldn't want to see Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth?
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