By SQ Reviews Into the Woods is a story that spreads enough blame around to indict half the cast as villains, but the movie ends with a restorative justice message. It takes a whole community to destroy a community; conversely, all members of society working together can make communities whole.
Director and producer Rob Marshall brought to the screen Stephen Sondheim’s acclaimed musical medley of familiar fairytales and surprised the members of SQ Reviews (who as a rule do not watch musicals). Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), and Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) get lost in the proverbial woods, each in her own way. The Baker (James Corden) and the Wife (Emily Blunt) swindle little boy Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) out of his mother’s cow with magic beans to fulfi ll a deal the couple made with the wicked Witch to remove the Witch’s fertility curse.
Reviewers meet to discuss the musical in the lot between the Education Department and the San Quentin News. We spend the fi rst fi ve minutes staring silently at Juan Meza who smiles, unfazed by our disapproval. He’s the one who insisted we “do something different” and review a musical. “I’m just going to get this out of the way,” Emile DeWeaver begins. “I liked it.”
“It was a musical,” says Rahsaan Thomas. “I couldn’t in good conscience watch more than 30 percent of it. If I ever get married, I might raise that standard to 50 percent.”
Meza turns to talk to DeWeaver, pointedly ignoring Thomas. “It was interesting, right?” says Meza. “All those stories interconnected. I liked most of it; I wanted to shake Jack, though. That kid was dumb.”
Everyone is laughing, but Thomas says, “That’s wrong; you can’t call a kid dumb.”
“The boy was an idiot,” Meza says. “His own mother told him every day: You’re stupid.”
“Okay, I get your irritation,” DeWeaver says. “But I wonder if being told he was stupid everyday made Jack stupid?’
“You’re such a liar, you’re not wondering at all,” Meza says, and everyone laughs again. DeWeaver has been sitting in too many Patten College classes where instructors ask leading questions to which they think they know the answers.
Meza continues, “I see your point. In real life, that’s true, but in this movie, Jack was just dumb. I mean, his mom would say it, and she’d look sad. She was just stating the plain facts: My kid is an idiot.”
“Jack’s mom reminded me of my family,” DeWeaver says. “They used to say I had the Devil in me. They did exorcisms; my father had the house anointed with holy oil. They didn’t do it out of maliciousness, but I began to believe I was on the Devil’s side of things and internalized it. Often in prison, people are treated like animals. Some resist, but many internalize the treatment and act out as animals. Careless judgments can create monsters.”
Thomas agrees and switches topics. “Did anyone fi nd the song between Red Riding Hood and the Baker creepy: I know I shouldn’t have strayed from the path, but I was excited by the wolf. He wanted to teach me things.”
“That part was just wrong,” says Meza, “and I was bothered that they tried to make it right. That creepiness aside, I liked the restorative justice message. Everybody had a right to be mad at everybody, but they had to stop blaming and get to solutions. Everybody had a voice, everyone told their stories, and everyone faced their demons. Nobody commits an offense alone; it’s a societal problem.”

Director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar poses a question: what is more important, survival of an individual or survival of the species?
The earth is becoming uninhabitable. Continued existence hinges on finding a new planet and figuring out how to propel a colony-sized space station past escape velocity.
In preparation for humankind’s exodus, Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) lead a team of scientists on a mission to three galaxies to find humanity’s next home.
Accepting the task means Cooper must leave behind his children. A promise to his daughter (Ellen Burstyn) elevates Nolan’s film from an adventure about human survival to a story about the survival of a daughter’s love for her absent father.
When the members of S.Q. Reviews meet in the lot outside the Education Building in front of the San Quentin News room, we relate to this theme of a love that transcends time and space.
“Interstellar makes a great argument for the power of love,” Emile DeWeaver says. “I generally think of love as a chemical response that perpetuates evolution, but I loved Dr. Brand’s response to that idea. She said, ‘Then why do we love dead people? What evolutionary purpose does that serve?’ Love is an observable phenomenon that transcends time and space. We get a lot of infantilizing movies in prison, so it felt great to watch something complex for adults.”
Juan Meza didn’t like the choices the protagonist made concerning fatherhood. DeWeaver poses a question: what would Meza tell his daughter after a 20-year absence? Our circle is silent while Meza thinks. We all ache with the decades we’ve been absent from our children.
“If I had a chance to be out and talk to my daughter, I’d say…” Meza shakes his head, searching for words. “I’d tell her it’s not her fault that I left. Had I known that she existed, I would have changed my ways because she is that important to me.”
“I missed my sons’ lives,” Thomas says. “There’s no excuse or way to make up for that. There is nothing I can say, so I wouldn’t say anything. All I can do is do what I can to show how much I love them.”
Meza leans forward in his seat, shaking his head. “No. There are certain things that your child wants to hear no matter how old they are. You have to say it.”
“There’s power in words,” DeWeaver says “I grew up in an unstable environment that made me feel insecure all the time. I need to hear the unspoken, or I can never be sure it’s actually there.”
Jonathan Chiu is our quiet member. Thomas turns to him, determined to get Chiu on the record.
Cooper left Earth because the planet wouldn’t survive for another two generations. For Chiu, one generation with his daughter is enough of a legacy.
“Knowing that she would live to an old age, I would have stayed on the planet with my daughter,” Chiu says.
We rated Interstellar 4 dinner cookies out of 5.
­Rahsaan Thomas, Emile DeWeaver, Juan Meza and Jonathan Chiu contributed to this story.

“I want a real love, a real house, a real thing to do every day,” Mark Wahlberg says, playing the lead in director Rupert Wyatt’s The Gambler.
He’s explaining to his love interest, Amy Phillips (Brie Larson), the reasons why he took the $200,000 his mother gave him to pay his debt to dangerous men and bet it on a roulette wheel. “And if I can’t have it … I’d just rather die.”
Jim Bennett (Wahlberg) is a literature professor who falls for a co-ed who stirs a desire strong enough to challenge his addiction. Wahlberg and John Goodman (a philosophical loan shark named Frank) give magnetic performances. Wyatt delivers an exciting movie, but after the initial rush fades, the story’s messages leave the members of S.Q. Reviews cold.
We meet beside the Education Building to discuss the film. Initially we liked the movie, though Rahsaan Thomas takes exception to how Bennett treats his mother. Special guest Richard Richardson thinks the screenwriter should’ve better conveyed the reason Bennett was angry with his mother.
“The movie is called The Gambler,” John Chiu says. “Not the guy and his mother.”
Chiu is from Hong Kong. We lovingly refer to him as our British talent.
“Fair enough.” Richardson pats his French braids. “So tell me why this dude’s gambling like he’s crazy. His family is rich; he’s smart as hell … what else does he want?”
“He lost his grandfather, his father and, in some ways, his mother,” says Emile DeWeaver. “He has this life filled with loss, and he fills it with more loss in the hopes that one day he’ll achieve that victory that’ll make everything worth it. He wants his real life so bad that he’s killing himself to get it, until he finds someone to live for.”
“That’s another problem with the movie,” Thomas says. “All the stupid stuff he did, he should’ve died. Stuff doesn’t just work out because you meet a hot blonde. It sends the wrong message that vacancy is filled by finding someone.”
Reviewers shake their heads in agreement, and what began as general acclaim transforms into growing censorship of the cultural values expressed through the movie. The conversation turns to how The Gambler uses stereotypes that reinforce a narrative of inequality.
“I have to ask this because I just shook my head when I saw it,” Chiu says. “How do you guys feel about the fact that Bennett owes $200,000 to an Asian gang that basically lets him slide throughout the movie? John Goodman loans him a bunch more money, but the Black guy is this hot head that wants to kill him over 10 grand.”
“Actually, he wanted to kill him for insulting his hat,” DeWeaver says. “That’s even worse. But is the poor portrayal intentional or just a lack of imagination on the screenwriter’s part?”
“Intentional,” Chiu says. “John Goodman could’ve played the petty gangster, who’d kill you over a hat, and the Black guy could’ve been the wise godfather-criminal with great lines, but casting assigned those roles to specific people for specific reasons. Is it coincidence that every intelligent, sophisticated role went to White actors while the minorities played cardboard cut-outs?”
We all enjoyed the movie when we watched it, but after we talked about it, the messages and narratives disturbed us. We give it a two out of five dinner cookies.

S.Q. Reviews continues the theme we explored in May: What is the so-called monster’s side of the story?
In Dracula Untold, Dracula (Luke Evans) grows up in the Turkish court as a slave-soldier. Stripped from his father’s court, he is trained to be a fanatic killer for the sultan. After the Sultan’s death releases Dracula from service to inherit Transylvania’s rule, he finds himself faced with his bloody reputation as Vlad the Impaler and a decision.
Will he send his son (Art Parkinson), along with a thousand other children, to endure the same life that turned Dracula into a killer? Dracula Untold is the story of how a father becomes a vampire to protect his son and nation from the Turkish empire.
S.Q. Reviewers sits down to discuss the movie.
Rahsaan Thomas says, “One thing I like is Dracula understood that once he became a monster, he couldn’t turn back. So he set up an ending that would protect everyone from him.”
“But wasn’t he a monster before he became a vampire?” John Chiu asks. “Vlad the Impaler killed thousands.”
“Vlad was raised to be a monster,” Thomas says. “Situational forces made him act like a monster. Once he was free to do his own thing, he was a good man: loving husband, father, ruler.”
“Let’s back up a little,” says Emile DeWeaver. “You said Once he became a monster, he couldn’t turn back. What would you say if someone said to you, Rahsaan, you killed people. You’re a monster, and you can never come back from that?”
Thomas looks around the seated circle. “I think there’s a difference between acting like a monster and being a monster. I grew up in an environment where I felt like I had to act like a monster to survive.”
DeWeaver says, “But when a person sees you act like a monster, they think you’re a monster because how can they tell the difference? Isn’t that what you just did with Dracula? You saw his actions, and you called him a monster who can never turn back.”
Thomas shakes his head. “When Dracula became a vampire, he couldn’t survive without killing other people. The need to kill came from within him; when he was the sultan’s slave, it came from outside, and that’s how you tell the difference.”
“My childhood environment twisted my values,” says DeWeaver, “but my rage came from me. Under your premise, I’m a monster that can’t change.”
“No, we talked about this in IMPACT,” Thomas says.
(IMPACT is an acronym for the self-help group Incarcerated Men Putting Away Childish Things. In this group, men work to dispel the misguided male role belief systems that led them to incarceration.)
Thomas continues, “You’re confusing responsibility with blame. Your choices were limited by things you didn’t get to choose. Like being Black and the social rules of your neighborhood.”
“OK, but what’s the difference between me taking responsibility and me blaming myself?” asks DeWeaver.
Thomas steeples his hands. “Bad role models and limited choices are the problems that face us,” he says. “Responsibility is the solution.”
We rate Dracula Untold two and a half of five dinner cookies.
Contributors: Emile DeWeaver, Rahsaan Thomas, Juan Meza, John Chiu

With the U.S. incarcerating more people than any other industrialized nation, it is not surprising that “the villain’s side of the story” has become a popular theme in entertainment media.
George Lucas’ last Star Wars trilogy tells the story of how love and loss transformed the Messiah-figure Anakin Skywalker from a galaxy’s hope into one of sci-fi’s most iconic villains, Darth Vader.
Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) impaled his way through Turkish troops in Dracula Untold, a film that delves beneath a macabre myth to produce a human story about a father protecting his son. On the CW’s new show i-Zombie, even zombies are airing their brain-eating side of the story.
Director Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent continues the trend of exploring monstrosity by telling the witch’s side of Sleeping Beauty.
Maleficent introduces the title character (played by Angelina Jolie) when she is a curious fairy child who falls in love with a human boy. The boy grows into the ambitious King Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who gains his kingship by trapping Maleficent and cutting off her wings. Driven by vengeance, Maleficent curses Stefan’s first-born child, Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning).
S.Q. Reviews gathers in the lot next to San Quentin’s Education Department. Rahsaan Thomas and Juan Meza are eager to talk about the monster’s side of Sleeping Beauty. They have spent their semester in Patten University’s prison program exploring monstrosity with volunteers Dr. Beatrice Kitzinger and Vera Shapirshteyn.
Thomas says, “We all read Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. We were regular kids, but something changed; we became criminals.”
DeWeaver nods. “It goes back to the theme that runs from Dracula Untold to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Monsters aren’t born; they’re made.”
“Exactly,” Thomas says. “I’m not saying villainy is justified; it’s not, but it is understandable. And when we understand a thing, we can fix it.”
Meza objects to Maleficent’s characterization as a villain.
“For me, she’s nature,” says Meza. “The human king cut off her wings to possess her power like men try to possess and dominate nature. So I don’t think it was villainy. It’s more justifiable indignation against a perpetrator.”
“She cursed an innocent baby,” Thomas says. “Can’t call that justifiable.”
Meza waves his hands in negation. “The curse came from her father’s crimes, just as we inherit pollution’s curse from our fathers’ government policies.”
“Maleficent took the father’s crimes out on someone who’d done nothing to her,” Thomas says. “That’s villainy. When my brother was shot, I ran and left him. I felt hella’ shame for running. “And I hated the dude who shot my brother. I couldn’t cope. And for a lot of years, a lot of people who didn’t know me or my brother paid for what happened to me. That’s wrong.”
“There’s a lesson in Maleficent that I had to learn,” DeWeaver says. “Growing up, I felt life had screwed me, so I screwed it back. I told myself these stories to justify crime. I felt justified, feeling I was in the right, but right doesn’t mean anything if I’m perpetuating destructive cycles. Beginning any cycle might not have been my fault, but I could’ve chosen to end it, to step out of it.”
DeWeaver adds, “Maleficent is a fairy tale, so it ended happily. In real life, we have to be more diligent in breaking destructive cycles because true love’s kiss won’t wake us from the nightmares bad choices make.”
We rated Maleficent four dinner cookies for telling our stories.
Contributors: Emile DeWeaver, Rahsaan Thomas, Juan Meza and John Chiu.

Jose Saramago’s Seeing (2006) and Kafka’s The Trial (1923) have something in common: they both reveal the inherent disconnect between those who govern and those who are governed.
For me, the stories demonstrate the politics behind government policy and its failure to consider the everyday “man on the streets.”
In The Trial, Kafka refers to government officials with his line: They’re constantly constricted by the law both night and day. They have no proper understanding of human relationships and in such cases they feel that keenly.
In The Trial, Josef K is arbitrarily put on trial. He is told by a prison priest — in the midst of his trial and before his guilt or innocence has been determined — that he’s assumed guilty.
But, I’m not guilty, said K. It’s a mistake. How could any person, in general, be guilty? We’re all human, after all, each and every one of us.
That’s right, said the priest. But, that’s how guilty people always talk.
Are you prejudiced against me too, asked K.?
These criticisms of concentrated power emphasize obscure or incomprehensible situations, which find human rights are only for a select few.
I was drawn to both stories by their similar interpretation of government officials: the idea that once a select few are given the powers to govern, they lose the capacity to understand the implications of their decisions — they don’t comprehend the pain they inflict on the very people they’ve sworn to protect.
Saramago makes that point here:
The rash person who appeared to be ignorant of the basic tenet of social behavior, which teaches that in the house of the hanged man, one should never mention the word rope.
To understand Saramago, one has to be dedicated and have a willingness to concentrate on his peculiar writing style.
Seeing is a story told after there has been a city-wide election and the voters have cast blank ballots. The government’s reaction is paranoia and martial law.
All top government officials, military and police evacuate the city and create a false narrative to re-establish normalcy, defined in their terms.
Saramago believes that: Rights are not abstractions…people either deserve rights or they don’t…they continue to exist even when they’re not respected.
Saramago shows his readers that making amends in spite of circumstance is a noble cause. However, he drives home the point that ingrained in the status quo is a constant element that sees anything contrary to the stability of government as severe and deadly.
Kafka’s Door Keeper character also shows the futility of resisting the status quo.
The Door Keeper explains how the Law works, while producing anguish in suspects told the reality regarding their societal status. Oddly, Kafka has the Door Keeper give this information to suspects when it’s no longer relevant.
That being said, Josef K is told, You don’t have to consider everything true; you just have to consider it necessary.
K’s response shows the inherent gloom in “necessary” information:
A depressing opinion, said K. Lies are made in a universal system; K said that with a finality.
In the end I questioned the appearance of a dog in both stories.
Dogs represent various emotional states, from being a man’s comforter to being used as a derogatory moral statement about someone’s character.
I came away with a vague sense of missing something when reading about the significance of a howling dog at night or to die like a dog.
Still, for both Kafka and Saramago, death is merely a passing moment in their storytelling.
Juan’s Book Review

Director Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes continues the franchise tradition of exploring prejudice and power. Reeves’ contribution to the Apes mythos is a sense of inevitable catastrophe that pushes Dawn across a spectrum of genres: from allegory to action movie to tragedy.
Humanity’s struggle to find its place in a new world where apes talk and hunt with spears drives events, but the movie centers on Caesar (Andy Serkis), a chimpanzee who embodies all that is noble and good in ape culture. He contends with prejudices and grudges in an attempt to preserve a utopia and avoid war with humanity.
SQ Reviewers gather in the lot behind San Quentin’s education department to discuss the tragic elements in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
As men in prison, each of us has an element of tragedy in our stories: anger that blinded us, fears that drove us, and circumstances that swallowed us. We know firsthand how tragedy often stems from some weakness or moral failing in character that make an otherwise avoidable catastrophe inevitable. Emile DeWeaver poses the question: why was war inevitable and why was the utopia created by the apes doomed?
“I think intelligence ruined everything for the apes,” says Juan Meza. “Before intelligence, there were no evil apes. It reminds me of Adam and Eve in the garden. When they got knowledge, that’s when the bad came.”
“I see your point,” said DeWeaver. “But it breaks down for me because in the movie the apes built a utopia, and they needed intelligence to do that.”
Rahsaan Thomas locates the tragic elements in a vengeful ape named Koba and a bigoted humans like Carver. “I think the tragedy came from the inability to forgive,” he says. “Koba couldn’t understand why Caesar worked with humans, but Caesar knew the humans weren’t going to give up on that dam.”
In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the central conflict revolves around a hydraulic dam in ape territory that humans will stop at nothing to restore.
“Caesar used intelligence to avoid war, so intelligence isn’t evil per se,” Thomas continues. “It all fell apart because Koba couldn’t forgive humans, and the humans like Carver blamed apes for the flu epidemic that killed off most of the humans.”
Meza holds up one finger, seeking to clarify his point. “What I’m trying to say about intelligence is that it brings ambition with it. For me, Koba wanted to be the leader. Caesar was trying to stop war, but Koba wanted to be in charge so he could go to war.”
“Caesar was just stalling war out,” Thomas says. “Eventually it was going to happen anyway. Humans were going to grow and need more space. And the history of America is that when they need more space, they take it.”
“OK,” DeWeaver says. “Humanity definitely has a history of taking the space we think we need. But what’s the quality that describes this taking-mentality, since we’re trying to pinpoint tragic elements?”
Thomas covers his mouth while he thinks. “In the movie, it was the us/them mentality – us humans against those apes.”
DeWeaver closes the meeting with a last thought. “I think the tragic element was fear. When I look at why some apes hated humans or why humans mistrusted talking apes, I see anger and mistrust as defenses against something feared in the future. Koba said he didn’t want humans to have power because they would enslave apes with it. People who are loath to forgive a slight often fear they’ll be slighted again, but what I took from the movie is that letting fear rule us leads right back to the catastrophe we’re trying to avoid.”
We rated Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 3.5 dinner cookies out of 5.
Contributors: Emile DeWeaver, Rahsaan Thomas, Juan Meza, John Chiu

The Last of the Mohicans is a musket and hatchet, arrow-packed love story set in British-controlled America.
Nathaniel (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a frontiersman whose main loyalty is to his adopted Mohawk tribe. But when he falls in love with an aristocratic woman named Cora (Madeleine Stowe), he’s drawn into a war between the French and the English.
Nathaniel, his Mohawk brother and his father Chingachgook (Russell Means) are only interested in protecting fellow settlers and living as free from government control as they can. In contrast, Magua (Wes Studi) from the Huron tribe seeks to avenge his dead family by killing British Colonel Monro and his daughters Cora and Alice (Jodhi May). The plot is driven forward by Magua’s blood lust, Nathaniel and Cora’s love, and war between two governments.
When the SQ Reviews members sat down to discuss the film, it became clear that none of us liked the choice of the actor as the central character of the movie. Though the movie never portrays Nathaniel as a native-born Mohican, the fact that he is the protagonist in a movie about the last members of a Native American tribe proved problematic for many.
Juan Meza, who is of Apache descent, compared The Last of the Mohicans to Dances with Wolves, and said the problem with The Last of the Mohicans is that the movie reverses the classic roles of the hero and the victim.
“Its the Dances with Wolves effect,” Aaron Taylor says, and a new term is born. Everyone chuckles, then Taylor continues. “I loved the movie with the exception of choosing Day-Lewis as the hero. I loved it for the action scenes, historical context. I loved Magua. He had some of the best lines in the movie about destroying a race of people — he reminded me of General Zod in Man of Steel.”
“Sounds like someone needs some Restorative Justice,” Emile DeWeaver says, referring to the need for forgiveness and reconciliation between conflicting cultural groups.
“What about Magua?” Rahsaan Thomas asks. “Was he an example of becoming what you hate? He went on the war path killing women and children because his kids were killed and wife taken.”
“He did nothing wrong,” Meza insists, rocking forward in his seat. “He was a hero. He was out to destroy everything that didn’t belong there.”
“Why was it okay for Magua to decide what belonged there, but we condemn the British government for deciding what did and didn’t belong in America?” DeWeaver asks. He likes to play Devil’s advocate.
What if somebody broke into your house?” Meza asks. “What would you do to protect your family?”
“Magua’s family was dead,” DeWeaver says. “Revenge was no nobler than the English deciding that they would make the world England for its own good. Don’t get me wrong, Native Americans had the moral high ground. But framing the issue around who is right or wrong is the problem. It’s this dichotomy of us versus them.”
Overall, we rated the movie an average of 2 out of 5 dinner cookies.
Contributors: Rahsaan Thomas, Emile DeWeaver, Aaron Taylor, Juan Meza