Category Archives: Movies

Dark Water: Real Monsters

Environment, Law, Movies, Pollution

 

 

Dark Water is a really good film. It is a monster/horror film, but not but not the kind you might expect. This is a real life horror show with real life monsters,.

The opening scene is dramatic, spooky and menacing. The scene is idyllic at the outset, like so many scenes in so many horror films. In 1975 a group of cavorting teenagers trespass onto property for a classic midnight swim. It’s obviously loads of fun. I have done exactly that type of thing. But just as in any self-respecting horror film you know from the menacing music that something is wrong. Danger lurks and teenagers dressed only in skimpy swimsuits are defenceless before the danger. There must be a monster lurking in that dark water. And there is. But it is not the typical horror film. It is much worse than that.

The water is oily—slimy. This can’t be good. Suddenly the strong deep male voice of authority rousts them up. The kids are forced to leave. And they do. After they leave a small boat softly glides across the pond spraying something over the slick and shiny surface of the water. The boat is marked “containment.”

In time we learn the monster is not supernatural. It is real. It is indeed profoundly menacing and dangerous. It is a chemical monster the result of corporate malfeasance of a high order.

The film was based on an article in the New York Times Magazine by Nathaniel Rich in 2016 titled, “The Lawyer who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” That lawyer was Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo). He was a lawyer that typically acted for chemical corporations. He was an environmental lawyer—for the wrong side!

Bilott was persuaded to go to the other side by a friend of the family, a West Virginia dairy farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who was profoundly angered by what happened to his cows. His cows were strangely dying in horrible ways on land he farmed. He was suspicious. Something was wrong. It was a mystery and Bilott was intrigued. Like a relentless detective  on the trail of truth. And the truth is ugly and leads to an astonishingly long drawn out legal battle against a corporate giant and weak government regulators.

Tennant was unable to get help from anyone before Bilott. No veterinary or lawyer would talk to him. DuPont owned the town and the town was grateful for the ownership. People did not want to rock the boat. It got good paying jobs and security. But did it get something else too? Something less benign?

The corporate giant at the heart of the case, DuPont, never admitted liability or wrongdoing, but it did pay hundreds of millions of dollars for harm caused to animals, property, and people as a result of their chemicals ending up in a local stream and drinking water. The chemical central to the case is called PFOA short for perfluorooctanoic acid. It is a chemical that was entirely unregulated.

In the lawsuit Bilott asked for and got an order requiring DuPont to provide all relevant documents to Bilott. But he got more than he bargained for—110,00 pages of documents! He was literally swamped with paper. It took him months to just sift through the papers. Information in those papers did not come out easily.

It took 16 years for the case to wind through the courts, but of course all the resulting lawsuits have not been completed. Far from it in fact. Many of the parties involved died before judgment of the court was delivered, including Wilbur Tennant.

Yet with enormous—no heroic—work Bilott found a story. Sometimes, I am proud to say, lawyers are heroes. This was one of those times. According to Rich’s articles this was the story:

‘‘I started seeing a story,’’ Bilott said. ‘‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.’’

DuPont used TFOA in its wonder product Teflon. According to Rich, it was the source of about $1 billion in annual profits for DuPont. Worth defending with vigour. And that is what DuPont with the aid of their team of expensive lawyers did. They defended in the American style—with overwhelming force as the Powell doctrine demands.

PFOA, although unregulated at the time had some very interesting properties. According to Rich,

“PFOA’s peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body.”

 For decades DuPont had been dumping it into their own landfill near Tennant’s property and that in turn drained into a local creek. As Rich explained:

 “By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA.”

The court ordered an independent scientific analysis of Tennant’s claims that the harm was caused by DuPont’s chemicals and that report blamed poor animal husbandry on the part of Tennant instead of the chemicals. But DuPont had not been entirely forthcoming in disclosing information for the scientific panel to make its determination. The fight should have been over here. But Bilott was as relentless as a bulldog with its teeth in a human leg.

Bilott kept digging and as he kept digging he kept finding interesting stuff. Watch the movie or read the article to find the details and they are fascinating. Well worth the read or view. And he discovered a lot of people that were harmed. Horrendous birth defects and worse. An interesting little scene showed an adult person with horrible birth defects who had been shown in a photograph as a young baby in the film. The actual adult man, played himself as a happy-go-lucky gas jockey.

Here is Bilott’s side of the story according to Rich:

‘‘I was irritated,’’ he says.

DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. ‘‘This was a completely different scenario. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? What did the insides of their heads look like? Were their internal organs green?

Tennant’s suit was eventually finalized after 16 years, but this film actually raises a much bigger question. Or even two. I will talk about that in my next blog.

London has Fallen: the logic of terrorism

Movies, terrorism

 

This film starts with news that there has been a horrific terrorist attack by Pakistani terrorists. The Americans promptly retaliate in the inexorable logic of terrorists and states—it launches a drone attack a wedding of the daughter of the presumed arms supplier of terrorists. He sternly asserts to his son, “vengeance must always be profound and absolute.” No one questions that logic. The young Americans in Nevada controlling the drone act exactly like young boys with video games and congratulate themselves when the attack is over. The guests of the wedding have been slaughtered.

It matters not that the victims of the American attack are ordinary people, young old, men, women, and children. In fact, this is never questioned through the balance of the film, except of course by the Pakistani’s who vow revenge, extending again the dubious logic of reprisal. Of course it is also presumed that the Pakistanis are evil for attacking the leaders of the free world, including most importantly the bravely heroic young American President. Why is that evil and America revenge “natural”? This is the unanswered question behind this movie.

The Pakistani arms dealer is evil because he supplies arms to terrorists. The leaders of the free world, who supply many times more arms to terrorists around the world, are somehow good and innocent. That’s because they are on “our” side.  We are always the good guys. One side has heroes; the other has villains. What distinguishes them?

The entire film displays one group of killers killing another such group. No one questions this. The film is technically good, and morally bankrupt. A perfect film for a post-ethical world. Watch it if you like.

 

Knives Out

Movies

 

Knives Out was a gorgeous film. I enjoyed it immensely even if for me it failed to deliver the truth. So what? What films do that? But detective stories are supposed to do that. Aren’t they?

The film is a fine replica of an Agatha Christies’ whodunit. The setting is in and around a modern gothic New England manor home where the family of a wealthy author, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), have gathered for his 85th birthday. And, of course, the patriarch dies. At first it seems to be a suicide, but we all know better without knowing anything.

Around a reading of the will, the family is unsurprisingly a bunch of predatory rats. They are called “self-made over-achievers.” None is as appealing as last week’s laundry. As was said, “a will reading is like community theatre production of a tax return.” But in this case that is an underestimate as we get to watch the family teeth come out.

There is one sympathetic character Marta (Ana de Armas) the nurse of the writer. She has a surprising characteristic. She has a “regurgitative reaction to mistruths.” In other words she vomits whenever she hears a lie. Blanc says, “Cruel or comforting this machine unerringly arrives at the truth. That’s what it does.” What Detective would not pay a handsome fee for that? What philosopher would not like such a machine? Or theologian. Or maybe  they might not want it.

The detective is Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), smirking, smoking cigars flipping coins and bumbling towards the truth. He has an unlikely southern accent. One of the sons, Ransom (Chris Evans) calls him the “CSI-KFC.” Blanc assures the family “my being here is purely ornamental, I am a quiet passive observer of the truth.” Just like us in the audience. Isn’t that what we all want to be?

There is a second peculiar mystery. Why is he there? There are police in charge of the investigation but they lean on Blanc even though he does not seem to be the sharpest pencil in the case. Who hired him and why?

The detective story is of course a classic genre if there ever was one. A search for the holy grail of truth. The detective has the task of leading us to it. That’s his job. As Benoit says, “this is a twisted world and we’re not finished untangling it yet.” He also said something like: ‘we must be patient until the truth slides off Gravity’s rainbow to subdue the sodden earth.’ I hope I got that line right. That line puzzled me. The rainbow of the book, I have been told, was the shape of the Nazi V2 rockets of World War II that everyone feared but  ultimately failed to deliver their cargo of deaths because the allies captured the facilities before they were ever used. Most think the shape of the rockets is the basis for the name of the book–Gravity’s Rainbow.

As Thomas Pynchon said in that book,

“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice—guessed and refused to believe—that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chances, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the Rainbow, and they its children. . . ”

The rainbow then was the shape of death. Or perhaps, near death, something not as a fierce. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Spenser Confidential

Movies

 

 

It’s difficult for me to decide what to think about the  new Netflix  film, Spenser Confidential, starring Mark Wahlberg. The reason is that I have been fan—not a rabid fan—but a modest fan of the Spenser series of Detective novels written by Robert Parker. The problem is that this film is loosely—very loosely—based on the characters in that series namely Spenser and his buddy Hawk. In truth the only resemblance to that series of novels is the fact that Spenser is a detective, or at least is investigating a murder, and he likes boxing. The only resemblance between Hawk in the novel series and the film is that they are both black and big and tough. I don’t know why the film makers bothered using the same names. They must have paid for the rights to do that, but there is very little connection. There is also very little connection between this film and a TV series starring Robert Ulrich as Spenser either. That series did have a strong resemblance to the novel series. This weird fact mystified me.

Now getting down to the film. I liked it. I like it a lot. It had great humour particularly involving Spenser and his rough foul-mouthed wife. I also liked the humour between Spenser and his new pal Hawk. The mystery Spenser tried to solve was hardly worth our attention.

All in all, the film was amusing and funny. Not a bad combination actually. I recommend you see it. Just don’t expect anything like the previous Spenser series.

2 Popes

Moral Humility, Movies, religion

 

 

This is a movie about something that could never happen in American politics–2 leaders with deep disagreements finding something elusive–common ground.

In 2005 Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and was summoned to Vatican City in Rome after the death of Pope John Paul II so that the new Pope could be selected. The process of picking a new Pope is arcane.  The people have no say. The decision is made by a group of old men, Cardinals of the Catholic Church. No women vote nor ordinary people. One would think such a system could never work. What could be more undemocratic than that? Yet the Roman Catholic Church has survived for 2 thousand years. Any institution that can last that long deserves some respect. In any event, the Cardinals selected German Cardinal Josephy Ratzinger, and he become Pope Benedict. Cardinal Bergoglio, who later became Pope Francis  came second in the vote. The two priests could hardly be more dissimilar.

7 years later Bergoglio has submitted his resignation, but the Vatican has not responded. The resignation cannot be completed unless Pope Benedict approve its. And he hesitates?The Pope and perhaps his biggest critic from inside the Church meet at the Popes grand Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of Popes.

Like American politicians the two churchmen quickly find things to disagree about. But unlike the politicians they debate severely without corrosive rancor. When they are unable to find a way out, they gently agree to disagree.

Bergoglio comments that the churches of Europe are beautiful but empty. Pope Benedict, a traditionalist, opines that “change is compromise.”  It is attitudes like that which make the Church so rigid. How can you improve on perfection? At the end of their first discussion, Pope Benedict says, “I disagree with everything you say.”

Yet, again, unlike so many politicians, they have more respectful discussions. For example, Bergoglio also complains, when seeing refugees on television that we are seeing the “globalization of indifference.” He also says, “Mercy is the dynamite that breaks down walls.”  If only more of our political leaders had such wisdom.

How can you make a good movie out of respectful discussions? It seems impossible, but I would suggest that is what people actually crave and get so rarely. I must admit I found it a great pleasure. I must admit I also enjoyed watching 2 Popes watch a soccer game on television while Pope Benedict drank Fanta.

They even argue about truth. If these were politicians neither would admit any truth in the other’s position.  Pope Francis takes a different approach. He says, “Truth may be vital, but without love it is unbearable.”

Eventually despite a deep chasm between these 2 men, common ground is found. Pope Benedict says to  Bergoglio, that although he was waiting for the voice of God, he heard that voice through him. These 2 men may have been selected by a process that makes about as much sense as the election of American Presidents through the Electoral College , but yet they managed to see more than a devil in the other. I wish more of our leaders could do that. I also wish more of us could learn from these 2 elders.

1917

Movies, War

 

This film tells the story of 2 fictionalBritish lance corporals in World War I on the western front, assigned to stop a battalion of 1,600 men from walking into a German ambush.  One of the men has extra incentive. His brother is part of the forces about to walk into that trap. The general warns the young corporal, “If you fail, it will be a massacre.” Apparently the film is based on true events told by the director’s father.

 

The film astonishes with its brilliant cinematography and unusual points of view. This is a war movie like I have never seen before. I am not sure this is what I wanted, but I really got the feeling that this is what war is like. And it doesn’t feel good. It an outstanding film. While not for the squeamish, I recommend it highly.

 

The scenes of war are unparalleled in their grizzly realism. The landscape is strewn with mud, dead horses, dead humans stuck inside mud, often with only parts revealed. Rats and birds consume the corpses. There are cows in the country-side doing their best to ignore the carnage. Buildings are horribly ravished. Violence is sudden, shocking, and explosive. All of this makes for a great film created by artists at the height of their powers. If this film does not win the Best Picture award, the film that does will have to be outstanding.

 

When the message to stand down is delivered, the officers who receive it safely ensconced in their bunkers, don’t want to believe. They are ready for war. The last thing they want to do is stand down. That idea is entirely contrary to their aggressive training. You’ll have to see the film to see what happens.

But I want to comment on a side bar. The film does not glorify the “heroes.” It does not glorify war. And that is good.

But why do so many war movies focus on the soldiers? For example, I would love to see a war movie that concentrates on a real life hero–like Bertrand Russell for example. I read his autobiography about 50 years ago after my first year of university. Russell was one of my intellectual heroes, but he was more than that.

I will never forget his description of going to Trafalgar Square in London when England declared war on the Germans in 1914. What surprised Russell, and me, was the immense joy experienced by the people. They were excited to go to war. The young men and women, aided and abetted by the old warmongers, were absolutely joyous at the prospects of the war. Of course it helped that most of them thought the war would be over soon. They fully expected to be, as they said, “home or homo by Christmas.”

Bertrand Russell could not believe it. It was his first experience of people braying for war. They screamed for war. They demanded war. And only a few voices dissented from this madness. People like Russell who were conscientious objectors to the war urged caution. They were the only ones who were sceptical about the objects of the war. They were the only ones who thought the war might not end soon. They were the only ones who exercised any humility or modesty. They were not consumed by the lust for war.

Of course, the people in England scorned Russell and his kind as cowards, traitors, Communists, and Huns. Many of them, like Russell were imprisoned for refusing to serve in the war. That took real courage.

Yet that war served absolutely no good purpose. It was fought mainly by young men and women from the working classes, to defend the dubious colonial businesses of the ruling classes. Why would they do that? Those hapless young people were pushed into a meat grinder for the sake of the higher classes. Millions lost their lives for no good reason at all. The war, like so many,  was a monstrous disaster. Old men called; young men and women died fro it.

When will we see a movie that glorifies the dissidents who told the truth about war, urging caution and humility while renouncing aggressive violence? That is a movie that I would like to see.

Parasite: Start the Revolution Without Me

Movies

 

 

We watched an electrifying film–Parasite. The grand finale is exactly that.  Grand and final. The film is unabashedly Korean. Be prepared for English subtitles. Together with Roma, from last year, Hollywood is going international all out.

The film involved a family of con artists that gradually take over a modern mansion when the owners take a camping trip. The family is extremely poor. 4 people living in a tiny basement apartment sharing minimal food. All are unemployed.  When the city fumigator comes by blowing awful chemical we assume they will be choking. No they want the assistance to kill stink bugs in their apartment   Clearly, these are the wretched of the earth. Regularly a drunken passer-by urinates on the sidewalk just outside their apartment window. The con artists gleefully get drunk and make a horrible mess of the lavish home. Soon the occupiers find another man who has been secretly camping in the basement and from there, all hell breaks lose. I mean that literally.

The film is sort of an allegory of revolution. The tinder is provided by 2 groups of common people who end up attacking each other and the elites who own the house. When resentments explode they do not do so in an orderly way. You don’t want to be there when it happens.  When the revolution comes, no matter what side of the Great Economic divide you occupy, you will deeply wish the revolution had started without you.

Spectacular explosions are triggered by innocuous micro-insults–like smell. But the results are hardly predictable. Forces are unleashed with astonishing power and speed.  Modern technology, no matter how sophisticated, won’t help you. It will just pour fuel on the conflagration and the combustion will decimate all of the virtues. You will be done.

The massive walls around the house are insufficient to contain the bedlam. As almost everyone, except the current President of the United States, Donald Trump knows, even the most beautiful walls are inadequate.  It does not matter how solid they appear. They won’t do the trick when the pot boils over. Even the most obsequious minors can be the instruments of uncontrollable rage when it is driven by an “idiot wind.” When the revolution comes it may not make any sense, but it will be real and dangerous nonetheless. It will be time to get out of there; if you can.

Marriage Story

Movies

 

 

This is a film about a marriage, or perhaps, the dissolution of a marriage, aided and abetted by lawyers for both parties.  The couple, Charlie and Nicole, start the film living together but estranged. Nicole tells Charlie, “I want an entirely different kind of life.” When Nicole hands Charlie the official petition for divorce Charlie dumbly says, “Thanks.”

Early on in the story and Charlie and Nicole are reading a story to their son Henry caught in the middle. Tears quietly roll down Charlie’s cheeks. Bewildered Henry does not understand what is going on.

The marriage mediator, trying to help them through this process, asks both of them to make a list of things each likes about the other.  Nicole is too embarrassed to read the list Charlie made about her. So we don’t get to see the list yet. The couple agrees that their divorce will be easy, non-confrontational, and uncontested.

Nicole has sought the services of an aggressive female attorney Nora.  One of the lawyers had a pillow on the office couch with the words, “Eat, drink, and Remarry.”

Then, of course, the lawyers get involved. And that soon changes everything. Charlie visits a young, aggressive and expensive lawyer, Jay Marotta, who urges Charlie to fight dirty. Charlie balks at this and hires a more congenial lawyer  Bert Spitz. Spitz says “divorce is like a death without a body.” Later when Charlie grumbles about the process, Spitz says, “you do this because you love your kids, but because you’re doing this the money comes from the kids’ education.” Spitz also advises Charlie to spend as much time as he can with his son. “Many people fight for this right and then don’t use it,” he says. In reply, Charlie says “you’re the first person in this process who spoke to me like a human being.”

Yet when the “amicable” process fails, Charlie goes back to his aggressive lawyer. “I need my own asshole,” Charlie says.  He also adds, “It’s going to be a fight now; we’re going to ask for things we never wanted.”  Someone remarks, “the system rewards bad behaviour.” Too often that is true. What a great system? That’s how things go when lawyers get involved. The lawyers, all of them, are unhelpful, cynical, mean, shallow, and greedy. And these are their good characteristics.  The young boy is caught between 2 trigger-happy parents. And he is selfish and unreasonable, like kids often are.

So the couple tries to settle the matter themselves directly without lawyers and it does not go well. Soon they are yelling at each other. Reason has vanished. Charlie in particular gets transformed by selfishness, but Nicole is not a model of kindness either. Soon Charlie breaks down in embarrassment at his own actions, weeping and begging for forgiveness.  The couple is able to relax their demands and Nora brags that she got her client more custody than she wanted, but urges her to take it. “Take it you won.”  Is this what winning looks like? Aside from the lawyers who wins in a divorce?

Near the end the list Charlie and Nicole made about the good points of the other are revealed. At least, Charlie sees what Nicole liked about him and he breaks down crying.

As happens too often in real life, the lawyers don’t make a strong positive contribution to the process. They are excellent street fighters, but is that what the couple needed? It seemed to bring out the worst in both parents.

A great system? I think not.  But this was a very good movie.

The Irishman.

Movies

 

 

I am not a big Martin Scorsese fan. I know that makes me a Cretin, but there it is. I liked some of Scorsese’s early films, but most of the later films leave me cold.

The Irishman tells the story of Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran a Philadelphia mob hit man reputedly involved in the mysterious disappearance of the Teamsters’ union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. It’s a movie about ‘ordinary’ mobsters growing old and loosing their claws. It stars some of our favorite actors also growing old. It took nearly an hour of watching the film before I started to warm to it.

I think I started to like it about when Jimmy Hoffa remarked, “The government and big business are coming after us when we need unity. We need solidarity.” Mobsters and corrupt union bosses may be of dubious character, but they need to get along with others. Their lives depend on it. At least so they think.

Technically, like any Scorsese film, it is brilliant. It is a period piece that really feels like it belongs to its era while speaking for all times. it employs some great technology to make some of the actors look a lot younger or older than they are. That was pretty neat. Before the film is over, all the old men are dead or in jail. Frank’s daughter who witnessed him explode at a grocer who had in his view been disrespectful to Sheeran’s young daughter was obviously scared of her own father. After that she felt she could not come to him for help. It was too likely to turn violent.

The mobsters are family men. Is that enough for us to have fellow feeling for them? It helps, but is it sufficient? The mobsters are kind to each other’s children and spouses. Does that make them good people? I don’t think so. These are family men who can kill ruthlessly.

In one scene, old Frank, went in a wheel chair to pick out a casket. He bought a green casket. Does that signify renewal? I admit I did not find much regenerative in this film. Scorsese showed the mobsters as ordinary people, with wives, children, girlfriends and friends, but was not able to put a lot of life into this film.

After Hoffa disappears the cops question Frank as to his involvement and he refuses to speak. Frank says, “I can’t.” He can’t rat out anyone. It is not in his DNA. The Code of the Mobster is too strong, even when there is no reason to be bound by it anymore.

When he is old and in personal care home, he asks the nurse, “I’m still alive?”  The nurse responds positively and Frank replies, “It’s good to know.”  Sometimes it is difficult to know if he is alive or not. Sometimes he sees to be part of the living dead now that he no longer has claws at least.

At the end of it all, his daughter asks him, ‘What’s the point?’  That’s the point.

I was intrigued by the conversation between the hit man and the mobster. They talked in Code. Like Trump and his people. They always talk in code so they have deniability. Like a judge or jury we are expected to make reasonable inferences about what is going on. Like when Trump asks the leader of the Ukraine to do him a favor when they are discussing the military aid he held back. He always wants to maintain deniability. That way the mobster can always claim, “The conversation was perfect.” But we all know what happened.

In the end, the old men have learned nothing. Frank refuses to rat out anyone, even though all his friends are dead. Even though it would make no difference he can’t rat them out.

The movie was worth seeing, but I would not say it was great.

Little Women

Movies

The movie Little Women was written and directed by the very brilliant film maker,  Greta Gerwig.  A while back I blogged about undergoing a sex change operation. I suggested my name had been changed to Johanna. Now I will add fuel to that fire.  Here it is:  I enjoyed the movie Little Women more than any action movie I have seen in the last 5 years! There it is. I am out of the closet!

This film had some important things to say and it did so in an entertaining way. It reminded us that women often recognize that love is important, even very important, but so is the life of the mind and there is no reason why women should not participate in that life as much as any man.  I also liked what one of the sisters, Meg, said to her sister Jo: “Just because my dreams are different from yours doesn’t mean they’re not important.” Women  have the right to resist being put into boxes they are pressured to stay inside. This is an important lesson for men and women of all ages. It is easy to succumb to such pressures. It is brave to resist.

We also had an interesting experience in the theatre.  There were only 6 people watching the film.  And 2 of them sat right beside us. These were 2 women. Not only that, but they chatted or commented annoyingly throughout the film. Why did they do that? Then, near the end of the film 2 more women walked in  and one of them stopped right in front of Chris and asked her if she was in the right seat, implying that Chris was in her seat. Chris responded by waving her away and saying yes she had been sitting in her assigned seat for the entire film. The woman was obviously coming in too early for the next show. The lesson I learned: Yes women can be brave, but they can also be a pain in the ass.