Christopher Schroeder

Author: Christopher Schroeder

  • Where Do You Go From Here?

    I discovered this week that my seven-day Chicago Sun-Times delivery subscription rate had increased by more than thirty-three percent in one month.

    The Sun-Times rep couldn’t explain such a substantial increase, which she insisted had been shared in an email that I couldn’t locate even in my spam folder. She also couldn’t explain how this cost connected to the monthly WBEZ donations that I had been making for many more years than I had been a Sun-Times subscriber.

    Moreover, this increase was discovered in the same week that WBEZ announced its first on-air WBEZ fundraiser of the year, and the first without federal funding. Both are owned by Chicago Public Media, a nonprofit media company that acquired the newspaper in 2022, which made it “the largest nonprofit local news organization in the nation.”

    At that point, I had switched my newspaper subscription from the Chicago Tribune to the Sun-Times in support of public media. I’d generally prefer to have public media funded by the government as it is for example in Canada and elsewhere, which although problematic seems more reliable, but I recognize the political realities in the United States.

    One problem is that this new Sun-Times seven-day delivery rate is three times higher than the same Tribune rate at least for new subscribers. Another is that anyone can obtain the entire Sun-Times print version in electronic form through its website without spending any money.

    In other words, those of us who support Chicago Public Media, and prefer print newspapers, are spending a minimum of three times more than at least some Tribune subscribers. In exchange, we receive what everyone else can consume without any cost.

    A bigger problem is that the Sun-Times and WBEZ content seems to have decreased. Reports I initially hear on the radio for example or read in the newspaper will now reappear in the other form in what seems like a relatively recent overlap.

    Even worse is the way that new CPM leaders seemed unprepared for the present reality. They both seemed surprised by the federal funding loss, which is irresponsible given how often it had been threatened over the years, and have offered no coherent vision or detailed mission for its future, including one that explains the part that donors play.

    I don’t envy anyone in American public media whose existence depends upon the largesse of public. At the same time, I believe that the present state of public media in the United States could offer an opportunity to reimagine a more independent model, one that is both visionary and inspiring.

    If Chicago Public Media did that, they would also suggest that they will be good stewards of our support, which could reassure current donors and motivate new ones.

  • Perhaps It Pays

    CRIME 101, which has received generally positive reviews, is a search for meaning story confined within a crime caper.

    Serial jewelry thief Mike / James Davis (Chris Hemsworth) has rules for his robberies, which he hopes will enable him to amass a predetermined amount of money to compensate for his childhood poverty. He is pursued by Lou Lebesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a seasoned detective who cannot convince his colleagues of the connections among the robberies he is investigating.

    These rules explain why Mike cancels his next planned heist, which his fence Money (Nick Nolte) then shares with Ormon (Barry Keoghan). For his next job, Mike needs the assistance of a high-end insurance broker named Sharon (Halle Berry), who feels unappreciated by her boss, especially as she ages.

    Mike proposes a dinner date about to Maya (Monica Barbaro) after she crashes her boss’s car at a stoplight into his. Meanwhile, Lou, who has separated from his wife Angie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is suspended after he refuses to support the false account of another officer’s shooting of an unarmed suspect.

    Sharon agrees give Mike insider information but after being assaulted by Ormon turns to Lou, whom she has encountered as a part of his investigation. Lou disrupts Mike’s latest robbery but is surprised by the unexpected arrival of Ormon, who shoots one victim and threatens to shoot Lou, and is then shot and killed by Mike.

    Lou offers Mike a cover story, and convinces him to run and the victims to cooperate, and he swaps fake diamonds from one of Mike’s previous robberies for the real ones, which he gives to Sharon for a new life. Lou later discovers the vintage car he has been left by Mike before audiences then learn Maya receives one of Mike’s childhood photos, which seems to be his way of asking for a second chance.

    Adapter and director Bart Layton more or less manages the crime thriller conventions and conveys a complicated plot although he needs a lengthy run time to do so. His efforts are supported by mostly convincing performances from the lead actors.

    The more impressive accomplishment would have been succeeding at the search for meaning story at the center of this movie. This story, in a more compelling script, could have clarified the connection between Mike and Lou and even them to Sharon and perhaps even Lou’s wife Angie.

    The biggest obstacle seems to be the character development. Lou seems underdeveloped, but Sharon is probably too two-dimensional. More development of both could have tipped the balance, and shifted the focus from remunerative illegal activity to the challenges of finding meaning in life.

    Lou and Sharon attempted to work within established norms but ultimately reject these, and Mike, who had rejected these norm and manages to escape, only does so at Lou’s mercy. Lou’s moral maturation also benefits Sharon directly, and indirectly even himself.

    Such an interpretation suggests that Lou is the center of the underlying story. As it is, the focus is somewhat unclear, and makes this movie at most a semi-satisfying crime caper.

    The challenges are an already long running time, which has previously been mentioned, and the limits of Hemsworth’s capacity. Would audiences have engaged even longer? Could he contribute to a more emotionally complex story?

    These unanswered questions mean that audiences cannot answer the one suggested by the title — does crime in fact pay? An affirmative answer, which this movie seems to suggest, could require a crime introduction course, or least make it an appealing elective.

  • More Than That Please

    I saw Send Help, which is more aptly titled than I realized.

    Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), who is a useful and reliable if also awkward employee, has been promised a VP promotion by the CEO who has recently deceased. This promise, which was known to other senior employees, is broken by the CEO’s son Bradly Preston (Dylan O’Brien), who assumes his father’s position.

    The company needs help however with a merger, so Linda is asked to accompany these senior employees and the new CEO on a trip to Bangkok. She can according to Bradley teach his former frat bro Donovan (Xavier Samuel) what she knows and then be reassigned from their corporate headquarters to a satellite location.

    Linda is drafting a merger memo on the flight while Donovan plays her survivalist reality show video application for the rest of the group. She eventually realizes why they’re laughing and then deletes her draft just before the plane in an unexpectedly graphic scene begins to disintegrate after an explosion and crashes, and sinks, into the ocean.

    The only other survivor besides Linda is an injured Bradley, whom Linda rescues and helps recover. Her survivalist hobby obviously becomes relevant, and affords her an advantage, as does later her former marriage to an abusive husband whose death she stopped preventing.

    Linda, who cannot save Bradley from a two-dimensional caricature, ostensibly develops her heretofore type character with this account of her part in her late husband’s demise, which could influence the last third of the movie but remains underdeveloped at best. As a result, it seems like an add-on, or an empty gesture in this survivalist horror thriller, which is how it is described.

    Linda’s motivation remains a mess even at its end. Why would she sabotage their rescue even if she was relying on the resort home she had discovered? And could the conclusion reinforce an impression that she has parlayed her time stranded on this island into the self-serving career that she despised, and we presumably are to despise, in Bradley and his bros?

    Critical consensus nonetheless is quite positive. More than 260 offer sufficiently positive reviews for example to earn it a Rotten Tomatoes certified fresh film status. Those who recommend it consistently cite the director Sam Raimi, the entertainment value of this movie, and its professional validation for those with bad bosses in their generally positive reviews.

    Surely these reviewers, and the industry, think more of audiences. Or maybe that explains why the movie menu is so often filled with so little appealing.

    We need more than that.