Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 30

IVIES C2 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015 CALGARY HERALD 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i i.i-i"...' A iiiii 1 v. fl, 4k The glory days of National Lampoon revisited ryc-v r- zz: Exposing the tyrant within us Iconic experiment comes to life with strong casting it 3 Matt Damon, left, Jessica Chastain, Sebastian Stan, Kate Mara, and Aksel Hennie, star as crew members on the fateful mission to Mars. The Martian opens Friday, zoth century fox DAMON PROVES MATT MEN REALLY ARE FROM MARS Actor ably holds the screen as heroic astronaut left for dead on the Red Planet DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON Starring: Judd Apatow, Kevin Bacon, John Belushi Director: Douglas Tirola Duration: 98 minutes Now on VOD DAVID BERRY NATIONAL POST Maybe it's just the diminished, fractured media landscape, but there isn't really a proper modern analogue for the National Lampoon of the magazine's 70s heyday. The Onion and its spinoffs arc certainly its satirical equal, but they're far more formalistic than the Lampoon, whose freewheeling pages found space for everything from ribald personal essays to carefully crafted faux-ycarbooks. Cracked andCollegeHumor have taken its pop cultural musings and made them into a Minecraftian mini-world from which there's no escape.

All of which is to say that as much as the Lampoon still looms large over comedy most directly over GenXers, who were the teenagers gleefully soakingup the glory days of holding a gun to a dog's head an demandingyou buy this magazine it was also an institution very particularly of its time. At one point in Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, a writer likens the process of pu tting together the magazine to going into a neglected attic and pulling out all the previously ignored treasures. Director Douglas Tirola limits his view almost exclusively to the institution's golden years the title could just as easily refer solely to Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney, whose wild and well-chronicled life tracks almost perfectly with the Lampoon's peaks and valleys, right down to his untimely death in 1980 which constitutearunthatessentially defined comedy for the next two decades. This will be most recognizable in the parade of famous faces that would get their start on the Lampoon's stage and radio shows: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, almost all of the original Saturday Night Live (a point that is broughtup with somebitternessby publisher Matty Simmons), Harold Rami's and Christopher Guest But the movie also makes a convincing case for the actual writing, tracking its highlights (in particular that faux-yearbook, which was eventually developed into Animal House), alongside the relentlessly ribald antics of everyone involved. Lurking behind this is a whole otherintercstingdoc about the decline of the Lampoon and its main crcatives, really a story as much about bad decisions the brand basically started descending into nothingbutboobs-and-balls jokes in the early '80s as the inevitable path from radical toestablishment to fuddy-duddy It's not one Tirola is interested in, though.

This is just about hanging around talking about the glory days, and as far as reminisces go, you could do worse than the group of people who put out the funniest work of the 70s. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, focuses mainly on the golden years of the Lampoon, whose influence still looms large over comedy. MSGNOLLS PICTURES mm4 1 THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT Vi Starring: Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez Duration: 122 minutes REBECCA TUCKER NATIONAL POST The Stanford Prison Experiment, which took place in 1971, remains one of the most iconic 20th-century studies of human nature. A group of Stanford students were split into two categories half of them guards, half prisoners and positioned in a section of the university outfitted as a prison, where their interactions were monitored using closed-circuit cameras by Stanford researchers led by psychologyprofcssor Philip Zimbardo. The experiment was meant to last two weeks.

It was shut down after just six days as the study's de facto guards began enacting tactics of psychological torture on the prisoners. The study results and findings are still taught in many in troductory psychology courses. Because the experiment itself is such a compelling and well-documented piece of academic history, the task facing director Kyle Patrick Alvarez was not so much rather, capturing the sense that it was (andremains) at once instructive, intelligent and disturbing. He succeeds, and it's mostly on the strength of his cast. In the film, Billy Crudup plays Zimbardo, the still-revered psychologist who actually and unwittingly allowed himself to succumb to his experiment.

The prison guards assume character almost immediately in one case, quite literally: Guard Christopher Archer, played with terrifying venom by actor Michael Angarano, turns himself into a no-punches-pulled, John Wayne-csque drill sergeant as soon as he dons his guard's uniform as the prisoners arc shouted, intimidated and manipulated into submission and fear. Ifs fascinatingto watch, butalso horrifying: Two of the experiment participants quit early due to psy- The skill (of) each of these young men. The Stanford Prison Experiment an engrossing experiment in and of itself. etiological distress. Actor Ezra Miller, as one of these subjects, has an occasionally unwatchablc mental breakdown over about 30 minutes of screen time.

For a film whose central tenet is the intricacies of human nature to truly work, it required expert casting. This, it has. The young men who comprise the film's chorus of gu ards an prisoners aren't exactly a bunch of unknowns you will have seen Miller, for instance, in Trainwreck, while Angarano is part of the cast of The Knick but they're not an ensemble of casy-to-recognizc A-listers. The skill each of these young men enacts in succumbing to his role makes The Stanford Prison Experiment an engrossing experiment in and of itself. Indeed, the film would almost qualify as a psychological thriller if it weren't a faithful, slightly dramatized re-enactment of history, and if we already know how-it ended.

Ulrim ately, the film and the experiment itself comes to one salient conclusion, which Alvarez emphasizes in the film's final scene showing Miller grilling Angaranoon his abuses: The things we donl know about ourselves are often the most ugly. Kristen Wiig portrays a NASA employee who must deal with the ramifications of an astronaut stranded on Mars, zoth century fox CHRIS KNIGHT NATIONAL POST Kids, don't try this at home. Well, you could, but growing potatoes in Earth's gravity and a nitrogenoxygen atmosphere with 100 kPa of pressure is ridiculously easy. For astronaut Mark Watncy, stranded on Mars without even a volleyball to talk to, farming is not rocket science. It's much more difficult.

It's also the only thing that will keep him alive. The Martian is based on Andy Weir's 2011 novel, a page-turner with Da Vinci Code levels of linear narrative and great entertainment value. Left for dead by the other five members of the third crewed mission to Mars, Watney has to figure out how to regain contact with Earth, drive cross-planet to the landing site of the next mission, and keep himself from starving, dehydrating, asphyxiating, freezing or otherwise dying. Hence the potatoes, which he coaxes into growth with the only source of fertilizer on the globe. (Yes, that.) He is also forced to survive on a diet of Happy Days reruns and 70s pop music, thanks to the peculiar tastes of the mission commander, played by Jessica Chastain.

And while David Bowie's Starman is a natural for the soundtrack, you'd be surprised how well Waterloo by ABBA serves as a triumphal anthem. Adapted by Drew Goddard (writerdirector of The Cabin in the Woods and one of the scribes of World War Z), The Martian stars Matt Damon, ably holding the screen as did Tom Hanks in Cast Away, and Robert Rcdford in All Is Lost Like Redford, he remains wordless for a long stretch at the beginning, finally giving in to a syllabic of Germanic origin that's hard to criticize, given his condition. He uses it a few more times, although topping the list is when you only sec him mouthing the word through the windshield of a Mars rover. In space, no one can hear you swear. This is just one of The Martian's moments of levity, carefully doled out to pump up the entertainment value.

Another has Watncy, after a mishap involving rocket fuel, emitting smoke like a chastised Wile E. Coyote. For those who get woozy at the sight of blood, the worst is over pretty quickly as Mark de-harpoons himself; it was a windblown piece of metal that pierced his suit and caused his crew-mates to assume the worst For the existentiallysquea- when they do find out it changes the dynamics of the rescue considerably. Also at mission control: Sean Bean as the flight director; Chiwctel Ejiofor as the Mars mission chief; and Kristen Wiig as the agency's public-rcla-b'ons face. Chastain as Commander Lewis doesn't have too much to do in interplanetary space, but give director Ridley Scott credit for sciencing the out of the design of the good ship Hermes; it looks like it could actually make the Mars-Earth journey.

In fact, 98 per cent of the science in The Martian is dead on. My two biggest beefs: the filmmakers didn't try to simulate the 38 per cent gravity on Mars although to be fair it's easier to fake zero than partial G. (This is why they never even thought of faking the moon landings.) Oh, and the windstorm that kicks everything off? Mars' thin atmosphere means you'd barely feel even a hurricane-speed gale. Nitpicking aside, there is much to enjoy in this day-after-tomorrow talc. And it gets the basics right Space can kill you.

Human ingenuity can keep you alive. Four decades ago, lunar explorers proved that an off-world catastrophe was a survivahlc event, a story captured in Apollo 13 (two Oscars, nine nominations). Two years ago, Gravity (10 noms, seven wins), made a similar point Expect The Martian to capture its share of hardware this year. To be fair, it docsnl quite reach the emotional highs of Apollo 13, the special effects wow factor that was Gravity. But it comes very, very close.

And more than any other film of the past century, it turns Mars into a place where you could imagine living and, unless vou're careful, dying. THE MARTIAN 'A Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels Director Ridley Scott Duration: 141 minutes mish, however, there is much more to come. Mark docs the math and realizes he has more than enough oxygen, water and power to sustain him until he can be rescued, as long as nothing breaks. Bu he lacks enough food, which leads to the film's signature line: "I'm going to have to science the out of this." Anyone who has a problem with that should Or Mars. The visuals are stunning, and it's hard to begrudge shots that merely drink in the scenery.

One in particular, of the rover trundling through a rust-red landscape, recalls a covered wagon in Monument Valley, home to many a John Ford western. It might be one of the best tourism exploration ads yet for our nearest planetary neighbour. Fascinating as it is (and it is!) to watch Watncy's video log entries as he putters his way around botany, power consumption, water production, rover repair, there's a whole subplot and a lot of fine actors back on Earth, not to mention a quintet halfway through a Hohmann transfer window; i.e., on their way home. Running the show at NASA is Teddy Sanders, played by Jeff Daniels as a scientist-politician who takes the second part of his job much more seriously. It's his decision not to inform the crew of the spaceship Hermes that their supposedly dead colleague is in fact alive; though.