Superman Returns (2006)

Director: Bryan Singer

Another movie from a transatlantic flight – Delta again – this time they gave me a headphones that didn’t work in one ear. I pressed the stewardess button and it stayed on for an hour. Rubbish airline.

Superman Returns is exactly what it says it is. He’s back. Lex is back. Lois is back. I personally thought that the film was damn good (but I may have been comparing it with Delta’s roast chicken . . . or the Jack and ginger could have been kicking in). Kevin Spacey bring Lex Luther back to life quite brilliantly, and about half way through I realized that Brandon Routh wasn’t Christopher Reeve.

And its full of legal tidbits:

1. Act 1, Scene 1: Lex is bedside with an old woman who is signing her will which gives her estate to Lex – just before she dies. I think that there could be an argument for duress here, but more importantly there is no witness. There is no way Lex gets the estate so quickly. Can we say “lots of court.”

2. Superman’s first big deed is to save an airplane that has a space shuttle connected to it. The whole idea is that the shuttle will be launched from the back of the plane to save fuel (guess no one told them NASA was phasing that shuttle out). More importantly though, this causes questions about the delineation between airspace and outer space. This particular contraption would cause all sorts of difficulties for those that endorse the functionality view of the question. Also as to any claims made by those in the airplane, would they fall under the Liability Convention or do they fall under the Federal Tort Claims Act?

3. There are questions as to vigilante “justice.” The scoop at the Daily Planet one day is “Superman: Does he still stand for justice?”

4. More great police work. The police have barricaded a building that has villains with big guns in it, but the security guards are still wandering around inside with small guns.

5. Lex is out of jail because he won his 5th appeal. Apparently the appeals court called Superman as a witness, and he didn’t show up. This is just shoddy writing, the appeals court wouldn’t call a witness; they would rule for a new trial.

6. Lex tells Superman that he is “not so good at the little things like Miranda Rights, due process, making a court date.”

7. Lex is making a new continent. Right in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. So lets first talk a little bit about the law of the sea. Usually when land is suddenly created where there was once water, whoever had the rights to that area before gets the land, but of course no one owns the high seas. The question is can Lex actually claim the land as his? Someone actually asks Luthor if he thinks the rest of the world will let him keep the new continent . Also though, new land might very well require new property law, especially with such a vast amount.

8. Superman takes the land Lex created and puts it into orbit. Is it now a celestial body under the auspices of the Outer Space Treaty or the Moon Treaty? Or since it has an earthly origin is it a space object?

9. Oh yeah, Lex means law.

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Single White Female (1992)

Director: Barbet Schroeder

Another bad On Demand pick. This movie is a completely predictable thriller about a woman (named Allie … played by Bridget Fonda) who allows a possesive psycho (named Hedra … played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) to move in with her. The psycho of course goes on a killing spree. The one redeeming moment of the whole experience of watching this travesty on film is the scene where the Allie’s boyfirend (Steven Weber) is killed by a high heel…death by stilleto.

Very tenuous law in this baby:

1. The apartment is rent controlled so the psycho can’t go on the lease.

2. At the end when the psycho has Allie cornered Allie says . . . and I love this . . . “We’ll call a lawyer.” That always works with people who are on killing sprees.

3. Let’s hear it for shoddy cops. The boyfriend is axed with a size nine, Allie is framed by Hedra who has become an Allie look alike, and Allie manages to find out from the TV, get abducted, and go on a wild chase through the apartment building. Shouldn’t a police officer have showed up for questioning by now?

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American Beauty (1999)

Directed by Sam Mendes

American Beauty follows the final year in the life of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a suburbanite man in a shoddy marriage with a crappy job. One day he decides that he is going to change, so he quits his job and starts buying pot from the neighbor boy. That’s sort of the jam and biscuits summary of the film, but if you really want to get down to it this movie is all about Plato’s theory of ideas and how that theory works when interplayed with the excesses of America. I think that if you are cued into this reading of the film it morphs from a good movie to a really good movie.

But what about the law. There are just a few snippets:

1. There is mention of a property dispute in which Carolyn Burnham (Annette Bening) cuts down the neighbor’s tree. She justifies this by saying that a “substantial portion of the root structure” was on her property.

2. When Carolyn threatens to divorce Lester, he tells her that since he supported her while she got her real estate license that he would be entitled to half of everything. Rawk on Lester.

3. When Lester is on the verge of getting fired he demands a nice severance package. He supports his right to this by A) threatening to turn in information about his boss buying prostitutes with a company credit card to the IRS (since the way it was reported it would constitute fraud) and B) threatening a fake sexual harassment lawsuit against the man who is firing him. He does this on purely evidentiary grounds: “Can you prove that you didn’t?”

4. Finally, the order obsessed ex-marine father of the dope dealer says, “There are rules in life . . . you need structure, you need discipline.” Of course he just beat the crap out of his son.

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