Articles by Carl Kozlowski
Movie review: 'Million Dollar Arm'
May 16, 2014 / 00:00 amOne thing is for certain when it comes to Hollywood’s movie releases most weekends: there’s usually a pretty clear contrast between the new movies. That’s certainly the case this weekend, with the competing debuts of the umpteenth version of a “Godzilla” monster movie, and the inspirational Disney-made sports film “Million Dollar Arm.”You could watch the giant radioactive lizard-beast rampage across cities, causing wanton destruction everywhere – after all, it’s clearly fiction, so what’s the harm, right? Or you can take what’s likely to be the road less traveled and see “Arm,” which actually makes an effort at offering good writing, appealing performances and attempting to uplift the world rather than destroy it.Starring Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” fame in his first leading-man role, “Arm” is based on a the true story of sports agent J.B. Bernstein, who was in danger of losing his business in 2007 after a string of athlete deals fell through until he found a way of thinking way outside of the box. Bernstein decides to find America’s next great baseball pitcher, not by scouting college teams but by heading to India, where he has a very funny string of fish-out-of-water mishaps. Watching a cricket match on TV one night, he sees that a couple of pitchers are able to throw the ball at blazing speeds. The problem is the players have been trained to throw the ball into the dirt and make it bounce at the batter.His solution is to find a way to train them to pitch a baseball American style. But flying his prospects to America and caring for them during an entire year of training is a risky investment of time and money. Teaming with a Japanese investor to produce a reality show competition called “Million Dollar Arm,” as well as a feisty retired baseball scout named Ray (Alan Arkin), he gives the shot of a lifetime to two 18-year-old boys named Dinesh (Madhur Mittal) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma).Along the way, Bernstein has to change a few things about himself as well. He’s a crabby workaholic who is driven by materialism and can’t manage to maintain a relationship. But with an attractive doctor named Brenda (Lake Bell) as the next-door neighbor who takes a nurturing interest in the scared young foreigners, finding the motivation to shift his way of living isn’t that hard after all.“Million Dollar Arm” continues a long tradition of family-friendly Disney sports films like “Miracle” (about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team) and “Invincible” (about a garbage man who became a player for the Philadelphia Eagles) that provide inspiration without resorting to sappiness. Rather, they pull off the all-too-rare feat of being intelligent films for adults that just happen to be clean enough for kids. And with the pitchers who are so central to “Arm” being teenagers themselves, this is a movie that should hold strong appeal for young boys with dreams of playing baseball. Hamm and Bell deliver strong, nuanced performances as Bernstein and Brenda, giving us a believable relationship between two overworked adults seeking to slow down the merry-go-round of their lives. Kudos go to the script by Tom McCarthy for making Brenda a fully-realized person with brains, charm and subtle sex appeal rather than the cardboard cutout women found in most male-dominated sports films. The film steers clear of any noticeable profanity, but there is a party scene where the boys get drunk when left unsupervised. However they are clearly shown regretting it later as they get comically sick. It is implied that JB and Brenda begin an affair, as the film fades out on a late-night kiss at her place and cuts to him sneaking out of her house in the morning, as the boys giggle (although they think he has merely kissed her). The sleepover implication is handled very subtly and should fly over the heads of kids. Otherwise, the movie depicts the boys engaged in unheard Hindu prayer, with the non-spiritual JB moving from eye-rolling annoyance to ultimately sitting respectfully with them.Director Craig Gillespie chose wisely in casting the Indian pitchers, as Mittal scored with worldwide audiences in “Slumdog Millionaire” and Sharma offers his first turn since his unlikely star-making role in “Life of Pi”. Both offer performances that cover all the bases — from fear and wonderment toward their new culture, through the sadness and frustration of early failure, and onto the humor and uplift of their quest. Much like the tough odds faced by these underdog foreigners, “Million Dollar Arm” won’t have an easy time drawing public attention against “Godzilla.” But those willing to give it a chance will find they picked a winner.
Movie reviews: 'Chef' and 'Mom's Night Out'
May 9, 2014 / 00:00 amThis Sunday is Mother’s Day, and one of the many ways to spend some time with yours is by seeing a film. But in a world packed with movies starring Spider-Man and Captain America, catching a flick might not seem so appealing to her.Thankfully, there are a couple of alternatives coming out this weekend that are a refreshing change from the usual summer shoot-‘em-ups, and which instead focus on normal people with relatable lives dealing with their problems in funny fashion. “Chef” is a passion project for Jon Favreau, who exploded onto movie screens in 1996 as the writer and co-star of “Swingers” before fading back into supporting roles and directing movies ranging from “Elf” to the first two “Iron Man” movies.But when he was stung by mediocre reviews and a terribly organized shoot for “Iron Man 2,” Favreau jumped off the blockbuster merry-go-round and decided to write and star in his own material again. He plays Carl, a chef who was once headed for stardom due to his inventive cuisine until the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood forced him to take a high-paying job at a restaurant that has been using the same menu for a decade.Now divorced and struggling to find time for his young son amid his frenzied schedule, Carl suddenly finds his life becoming a lot more interesting when he sends an insulting Tweet back to a restaurant critic who wrote an extremely disparaging review. Unfamiliar with Twitter, Carl thinks that the message will only be seen by the critic – yet he suddenly learns that the whole Twitter universe seems to have read his comment after waking up to find he’s gained over 25,000 Twitter followers in one night.After confronting the critic in person at his table upon a return visit, Carl is fired by his hotheaded boss (Dustin Hoffman). But with a dozen customers’ cameras capturing that argument and posting it online, he finds that he suddenly has more than 20,000 followers and a publicist willing to help him maximize his potential as the next “Hell’s Kitchen”-style cooking-show host. But Carl has a different idea: to take over an abandoned food truck, spiff it up and with his best friends (including a terrific trio of John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale and Scarlett Johannsen) from the old restaurant, create his dream establishment on wheels.“Chef” is the definition of a character-driven comedy, relying on the charm of well-written characters and witty dialogue rather than a complex plot to carry the day. Its’ one weak spot is that Favreau is a bit too slow and indulgent in his pacing at times, and allows the admittedly sensuous cooking sequences to drag on a touch too long. It also should strike home with plenty of people these days who are struggling to find meaning in their work and a deeper purpose in their lives, but while it’s both funny and inspiring, steer clear if your mom can’t handle a rather large amount of F words and some sex-related banter that's funny, yet a bit crude.There’s no such language to be worried about in the other new comedy of the weekend, “Mom’s Night Out.” Starring “Grey’s Anatomy” regular Sarah Drew as a comically overwhelmed suburban mom whose husband (Sean Astin) is always off on a business trip and leaving her with their out of control kids, “Mom’s” quickly finds the funny in daily life while making Allyson a sympathetic lead.When Allyson finally hatches a plan for a mom’s night out with her best friend Izzy (Logan White) and their preacher’s wife (Patricia Heaton), they leave their comically terrified husbands in charge of the kids for the evening. What could go wrong? Everything does, as Allyson has messed up their reservation and winds up getting the trio caught up in a bowling alley with an out of control DJ and their husbands are utterly ill-equipped to handle anything, making each small problem a comic disaster.Things get even crazier when the three amigas run into a single mom from their church who thinks that her boyfriend is watching her baby. In reality, he’s two-timing her with another date after leaving their infant with a friend who runs a tattoo parlor – and suddenly the race is on to find the baby, who keeps going missing just moments ahead of the chasing crowd that now includes everyone from Bible thumpers to thuggish bikers.“Mom’s Night Out” plays like an “Adventures in Babysitting” for adults, recalling the comically anarchic spirit of that late-‘80s teen favorite. But in her feature-film debut, writer Andrea Nasfell has pulled off a rarity in creating a fast-paced, broad comedy that is funny without relying on gross-out humor to get its laughs and which is most relatable to parents while still being accessible and wild enough for kids’ shorter attention spans.The cast is filled with mostly fresh faces and TV stars who are looking to make the big step up into movies, and the lead trio of Drew, Heaton and Wall definitely hit their comic targets. One interesting sidenote to the film is that the characters are church-going Christians who urge each other to pray in a couple of the more quiet and grounded scenes, which could have left audiences feeling like they were trapped watching an evangelical recruitment video.Yet “Mom’s Night Out” is the first mainstream comedy trying to bridge what could become an enormous lucrative gap in society: that of millions of churchgoers who want to see movies but are leery of being offended, and secular moviegoers who are afraid of any movie that appears to be forcing a religion (mainly Christianity) down their throats. The directors, known as the Erwin brothers (who did the touching pro-life drama "October Baby" a couple of years back), manage to handle balance quite easily, and create a night out that will make for an entertaining outing – day or night - with mom this weekend and for broader families in the weeks to come.
Spider Man 2 review
May 2, 2014 / 00:00 amMost superheroes seem larger than life, even in their human alter egos. Superman’s Clark Kent keeps most of his powers even when he’s out of his suit, while Batman’s Bruce Wayne is still a billionaire who knows how to destroy opponents with martial arts and keeps the keys to the Batmobile.But when the “Spider-Man” films were launched in 2002, star Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi gave us a truly human, decent and sympathetic teenage hero in Peter Parker. Learning such life lessons as “With great power comes great responsibility” over the course of three hit films, Parker was one movie hero you’d actually want your kids to emulate.After the third film drew mixed critical response in 2007 and Maguire decided to quit and save his back from further damage along with spending more time with his kids, Sony decided to reboot the series. The resulting “The Amazing Spider-Man” made good money upon its 2012 release, but it was a creative disaster.British actor Andrew Garfield came in to play Parker as a grating, sarcastic boor who insulted criminals and cops alike while engaged in his web-slinging adventures, and director Marc Webb (“(500) Days of Summer”) was inexplicably brought in from the world of romantic comedies. The result was a dispiriting mess that nonetheless raked in enough money to spark a sequel, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” which comes out today.Surprisingly, Webb and Garfield are back at the helm of the movie’s sequel. And even more surprisingly, this time around his film has earned the right to call itself amazing.The new film is a vast improvement in every possible over its predecessor, which also suffered from poor effects and lackluster villain casting. The only people who survived with their dignity intact were Emma Stone as his girlfriend Gwen Stacy and Denis Leary as her police commissioner father.That father-daughter pairing were a key part of the predecessor’s end scenes, as the dying commissioner made Peter swear he would avoid putting Gwen’s life at risk by staying away from her. At the start of the new film, Peter is still dating her but attempting to keep his superhero shenanigans a secret.But Gwen knows deep down that Peter hasn’t stopped at all, and is growing tired of it. She breaks up with him just as a new villain arrives on the scene. A nerdy technician named Max (Jamie Foxx) from Oscorp Industries, the ethically questionable company owned by the father of Peter’s friend Harry (Dane DeHaan), has been zapped by a mega-dose of electricity in a freak accident and is now a power-spewing, electrified monster named Electro. As Oscorp’s founder Norman Osborn lays dying, he tells Harry that the same disease killing him is destined to kill Harry as well. Harry tells Peter he needs Spider-Man’s blood to save himself, but doesn’t realize that Peter is Spider-Man.When Peter says he can’t help, Harry turns to Electro to help him steal some spider-related serum. But when the serum turns Harry into the psychopathic Green Goblin, Spidey and Gwen are left in more danger than ever.The prior Webb-Garfield “Spider-Man” film was a disaster of shifting tones, with far too many scenes marred by stupid wisecracks issued by Peter. Here, Peter attempts a few jokes in his opening moments, but then they abruptly stop as Garfield is allowed to just calm down and act like a normal high school senior rather than looking like he’s trying to audition for the lead in a bad sitcom.In this go-round, Peter is also able to show a new sensitivity as Spider-Man. He is truly haunted by the deathbed promise he gave Gwen’s father, and lives with the sobering terror that the dead cop might be right about how dangerous his life as a superhero can be. Garfield also invests some beautifully played emotional moments at key points in this film, a skill that seemed to be nonexistent just two years ago in the first film. The relationship between Peter and Gwen is also refreshing in showing teens (and us all) an example of a fun, attractive young couple who truly love each other and don’t engage on a sexual level. Add in Parker’s kinder tone spilling over to offering encouraging words to several down-on-their-luck people, and Garfield is suddenly a winner in the role.As Electro, Foxx brings a cool menace to the streets of New York as he tries to seek justice from those who have mocked and wronged his wimpy alter ego, Max. As he wreaks more and more havoc, Foxx has great fun growing into a cocky, dangerous persona, and his attacks on the city are also fun to watch.When the prior “Amazing Spider-Man” film hit theatres two years ago, it seemed to be a pointless cash-grab attempt to keep the character going. But this time around, everything about the movie works and Webb and his team have plenty to be proud of. It’s one reboot that has taken me from a doubter to a believer.
Movie reviews: "The Other Woman" and "Brick Mansions"
Apr 25, 2014 / 00:00 amThese days, women can do just about anything men can in movies – including starring in gross-out comedies. Ever since “Bridesmaids” was a smash in theatres three years ago, there has been a steady stream of other female-driven movies which have tried to out-gross that film both in actual content and box-office earnings.Most of those movies are so poorly made and tasteless that they go straight to DVD or Video On Demand release, but this weekend the new movie “The Other Woman” has an actual shot at theatrical success thanks to its dynamic duo of stars: Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann. While it will make audiences laugh, there are several moments that will make them squirm just as much, although it does have some positive elements to offer about the destructiveness of adultery and the importance to forgive and forget and help others achieve their potential.“Woman” stars Diaz as Carly, a tough-as-nails New York lawyer with a strict set of rules when comes to men and relationships, although it is implied that she has several affairs going at once. When she meets a rich and hopelessly handsome guy named Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), she breaks all her rules and falls for him, but then discovers he’s married when she attempts to surprise him at his Connecticut home and instead finds his wife Kate (Leslie Mann) answering the door.While Carly wants to just leave in shame and get on with her lonely life, making it clear that the one thing she won’t intentionally do is commit adultery, Kate won’t let her off the hook. She shows up at Carly’s law firm and has a very funny panic attack that convinces Carly to leave the office and speak with her in-depth. Bonding over way too many drinks and the fact that they’ve been two-timed by the same guy, they start forming a friendship that at first merely helps them forgive and forget.But then they find out about Amber (Kate Upton), yet another mistress of Mark’s, who doesn’t realize she’s also being cheated on by the Mark. They convince Amber to join them in exacting revenge on Mark, leading to a string of humorous but morally questionable episodes that range from gross-out moments – slipping him laxatives, to name just one – to clever ones that involve taking him down as a dirty businessman by exposing his empire built on fraud.“Woman” is better than its terrible TV ads would indicate, and its lead trio of actresses are spot-on comedically throughout, with Mann particularly impressive with both her physical comedy and wildly elastic facial expressions. Diaz has long been a master physical comic and also has some moments to shine here.Coster-Waldau must be an incredibly good sport, because his character Mark endures an unbelievable string of humiliations from our heroines. Yet the movie does have its weak moments, with a couple too many sappy scenes of the women moping and hugging as soft-pop songs play in the background, and a couple of the physical-comedy scenes going a little too far to work without inducing audience eyerolls.Morally, there’s not much favorable to say about “The Other Woman” in terms of its casual attitudes towards sex. Carly may have the standard of not committing adultery, but is shown in the closing moments as being pregnant in a happily out-of-wedlock relationship. But adults who are aware of properly moral relationships can likely handle that and still have a few laughs on the film.On the other hand, “Brick Mansions” is just depressingly violent garbage from start to finish. A violence-packed thriller about an undercover cop and an acrobatic vigilante who team up to take down a vicious drug lord in a Detroit housing project before discovering that the real problem is entirely different (and utterly ludicrous), it doesn’t have much of a plot between the wall to wall mayhem.What little story there is follows a cop named Damien (Paul Walker) who believes his father – also a policeman – was killed by a vigilante named Lino (David Belle). When 20 kilos of heroin are stolen from a gang led by Tremaine (RZA) and destroyed by Lino, Damien volunteers to enter the Brick Mansions housing project that the drugs were destined for and to make up for the lost shipment.Damien uses this ploy to build trust from the criminals surrounding him, but jumps too quickly to capture their crime lord and botches the arrest. Tremaine kidnaps Damien’s girlfriend and tries to use her as bait for Damien to bring a fresh 20 kilos of drugs to the Brick Mansions, a set up that leads to Damien teaming up with Lino against the gang even though he believes Lino killed his father.But both these reluctant partners eventually learn that the real problem is a neutron bomb that has wound up inside Brick Mansions, and is in danger of exploding within 10 hours. Damien has to figure out how to stop it, leading to ludicrous twists that up-end his entire investigation.“Brick Mansions” has a very sloppy plot that gets ever more ludicrous as it hurtles towards its finale. The characters – and the actors playing them – barely get a chance to stand out as individuals, and the lazy and generic dialogue (which is also filled with mid-level foul language such as S- and B-words) doesn’t help matters.Instead, brutality is the order of the day, with nonstop vehicular and foot chases, plus punching, kicking and shooting. Eventually it becomes tiresome and even depressing, as the filmmakers pointlessly make one woman villain a scantily-clad lesbian who enjoys threatening Damien’s girlfriend with a knife while making sexual comments.While some of the stuntwork is fun, “Brick Mansions” is a tedious enterprise overall. It is a shame that millions were spent to make and market a movie this shallow and pointlessly violent, and that this is the last film Walker managed to complete before being killed in a racing accident during a weekend break from his latest “Fast & Furious” movie. But most distressing of all is the fact that these two films underscore how debased our film-ratings system usually is. “Woman” fought off an R rating despite having no nudity, a bare amount of comic violence, an average level of midlevel profanity and most of its raunchy moments being gross rather than sexual, plus having a positive message of forgiveness. Meanwhile, “Mansions” is nonstop fighting and killing with a weird homosexual undertone in scenes where a villainess sexually taunts the hero cop’s girlfriend, and gets a PG-13. Reforms are needed.
Movie reviews: 'Heaven is for Real' and 'Joe'
Apr 15, 2014 / 00:00 amEaster is a time of rebirth and redemption, and so it is perfect that this Easter weekend is the time that Sony Pictures picked to release the new film “Heaven Is For Real” into theatres. Based on the purportedly true story of a young boy who claimed to visit Heaven and came back to write a mega-bestselling book about it with his pastor father, the film is the latest in a string of Christian-themed movies that have been scoring impressive runs at the nation’s box offices this year.At the same time, theaters this weekend also feature another attempt at resurrection and redemption, as Nicolas Cage watches his comeback attempt “Joe” hit release nationwide. Marking his first truly great performance in the nearly two decades since he won the Best Actor Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas” for portraying a washed-up writer who wanted to drink himself to death, “Joe” follows the story of a struggling but decent man fighting to survive amid a world that’s constantly turning against him. Are either or both of these cinematic efforts divine? Or will you be praying for a way out of the theatre?I’ll start with “Heaven,” which has a better chance to succeed on an artistic level than such low-budget independently produced faith films as the current surprise hit “God’s Not Dead.” While “Dead” and other such low-budget faith films resonate strongly with die-hard evangelical audiences, they are often heavy-handed and don’t reach anyone beyond the proverbial choir because they can’t afford name-brand actors and filmmakers.I’m a practicing Catholic who has visited plenty of Protestant churches in my time, so I’m not trying to denigrate faith-based films across the board. “Heaven” stars Oscar nominees Greg Kinnear and Thomas Haden Church and Emmy winner Margo Martindale, and is co-written and directed by the Oscar-nominated writer of “Braveheart,” Randall Wallace. Add in the fact that its source book has sold over 10 million copies and was number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and it’s easy to believe that this could cross over to non-believers who are curious about the afterlife.The story of “Heaven” follows the family of a small-town Nebraska pastor named Todd Burpo, whose son Colton needed an emergency appendectomy when he was four years old. Colton claims his spirit left his body temporarily during the surgery and that he visited heaven. Despite the fact that Todd is a preacher, he doesn’t know what to think about Colton’s story and tries to discern if his kid is making it up or having psychological issues. But with each further explanation of what he saw in the afterlife, Colton manages to convince his father and other skeptics around them to believe he actually has an incredible experience to share.That’s the entire plot in a nutshell, with no big cliffhangers. “Heaven” has a simple storyline, almost too much so at times, as the first half hour takes forever to get going, and there’s rarely much tension in the rest of it either. But, like the book it is adapted from, its purpose is to assure viewers that there is a beautiful afterlife that awaits those who believe.“Heaven” scores points on an artistic level through the fact that its cast is filled with talented actors who invest themselves fully in its tale, and that it doesn’t use a didactic approach in the manner of “God’s Not Dead.” It takes a quiet approach to its message, and for those inclined to believe or at least be open to the possibility of an afterlife, that slow build could have a quiet and lasting impact. And of course, it’s perfectly fine family fare.“Joe” is also quietly powerful, though it has a lot more complexity in its plot and portrait of desperate small-town lives straight out of the Southern Gothic world of Flannery O’Connor stories. “Joe” follows the story of Joe (Nicolas Cage), a man who heads up a work crew that clears backwoods areas of dead trees. He treats his men – all African-Americans in an area that is still caught up in de facto segregation – with respect and fair pay. He meets a teenage loner named Gary (Tye Sheridan) one day as the boy asks for a job on the tree crew, and hires him.Joe comes to learn that Gary is horribly impoverished and abused by his worthless alcoholic father, and teaches him lessons in self-esteem and self-respect. He also defends Gary against his father and helps the boy move in with him to be in a safe environment.But Joe has enemies from elsewhere in town and his past, and constantly has to control a temper that once got him thrown in prison for 29 months for assaulting a policeman. As Joe faces pressures from saving the boy as well as his own economic strains and the danger of others seeking to hurt him, he gets caught between trying to be a truly good man and the sometimes inevitable fact that good guys sometimes have bad things happen no matter how hard they try.“Joe” marks a huge artistic comeback for its star Nicolas Cage, who has been lazily making poor action movies for well over a decade yet delivers what might be his career-best performance here. Young Tye Sheridan builds on his impressive debut in “Mud” and offers a beautiful portrait of a kid trying to do the right thing when everyone around him does wrong to him.While Joe is the story of a decent man trying to help the lives of those around him and is artistically satisfying for mature discerning viewers, it should be noted that it is filled with an abundance of foul language. Yet rather than seeming like an empty exploitative choice, the language does fit the hardscrabble and emotionally illiterate lives of the characters around Joe and Gary, as well as their frustration with a world that can’t be better. “Joe” also has a few bursts of shocking violence, although it is more implied with clever editing than graphically shown.Director David Gordon Green brings “Joe” to life in a sad and dusty world of poverty and broken dreams, but keeps his real focus on the decent hearts of Joe and Gary. They’re two fellows who might be all too easy to ignore in real life, but they’re heartbreakingly compelling onscreen.
Movie review: Draft Day
Apr 11, 2014 / 00:00 amAny good film manages to immerse its audience in the world of its characters, drawing viewers in to share the lives, and dilemmas of the people on screen. But the mark of a great film comes when it can lure the interest of an audience that initially doesn’t even care about the subject matter.The new movie “Draft Day” flirts with greatness by doing just that. Following a nerve-wracking 13 hours in the life of Sonny Weaver Jr. (Kevin Costner), the general manager of the Cleveland Browns football team, as he has to decide which players to pick on the titular day while also contending with the personal crisis of his secret lover - team budget director revealing that she’s pregnant and not wanting to be a secret anymore.Add in the fact that Weaver’s father just died a week ago and that Browns fans hate Sonny Jr. for having fired his dad from being the team’s head coach a couple years before, and you’ve got one nerve-wracking day ahead of him. After all, he has just traded away three future first-round picks in exchange for getting the top pick in the draft today.It’s a decision that can affect the direction and quality of his team in both immediate and long-term fashions, and adding to his angst is the fact that something seems just a little bit “off” with the player that everyone’s expecting him to pounce upon first. With everyone from his coaches to his lover to his mom, sports radio hosts and thousands of fans coming down on him at once, Sonny has to think faster than he ever has and draw on reserves of cleverness and strength that he barely knows he has.“Draft Day” is packed with tense human drama from start to finish, and has an ace cast bringing its well-drawn characters to vibrant life. Everyone in it has a greater depth than viewers will at first realize, revealing a good or a bad side that will continually surprise while inspiring admiration from fans of smart writing and acting.But where its stellar script really shines is in bringing the world of the NFL draft day to life. As the movie’s smart use of real-life ESPN sportscasters explains in the opening moments, the draft is one of the most dramatic days in all of American sports, during which just 224 college players out of the thousands nationwide will get a chance to be picked by one of the 32 NFL teams in a series of seven rounds.I’m personally not a sports buff, but rather the kind of guy who shows up at a Super Bowl party for the snacks and commercials. When I first heard the title “Draft Day,” I thought this was a war movie. Yet even so, the debut screenplay by Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman immediately explained the draft, set up the stakes and baited the hook perfectly for me to be on the edge of my seat throughout the movie’s riveting and brilliantly constructed final minutes.The other big surprise here is director Ivan Reitman, who made his name with broad-comedy classics like “Stripes,” “Ghostbusters” and “Twins” before releasing a miserable stream of box office losers over the past 15 years. Perhaps he drew inspiration from his son Jason, whose own recent directorial efforts such as “Juno” and “Up in the Air” have set new standards for the modern character-driven dramedy, but Ivan has clearly upped his game here tremendously and reinvented himself as an expert director of drama and even suspense.Buoyed by the classic charms of Costner, “Draft Day” operates with a smooth level of class that carries over to how it handles its moral content. There are no bed scenes in the movie, with Sonny’s affair only discussed by Costner and Gardner, although some of the coaches make some crude sexual jokes in one scene that will be forgotten within seconds. There is one use of the F word and about 20 total uses of either milder foul language or God’s name in vain in various forms, but overall this is a first-round pick when deciding to see a movie this weekend.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review
Apr 4, 2014 / 00:00 amThere’s a theory held by some movie fans that says that when a conspiracy thriller or sci-fi movie has a plot line about the destruction of mass amounts of humanity, the filmmakers are actually trying to warn viewers of real-life doom through clues in the fictional plotline. If that’s the case, then the team behind the new movie “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is working overtime to scare us.A sequel to the hit 2011 movie “Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Winter” finds Captain America’s alter ego Steve Rogers firmly planted in modern Washington, DC society after engaging in wild time travels in the first movie. As he’s catching up on the modern world and what he’s missed in skipping over 70 years of American society, Rogers (Chris Evans) is haunted by his past combat and torn about whether to go back into the military or maintain his status as an Avenger, one of a breed of superheroes who together form a top-secret defense for both America and the world at large. He meets a former soldier and PTSD counselor named Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), with whom he commiserates about their shared similar pasts on the battle lines. But before too much talking time can elapse, Rogers finds himself called into a top-secret mission assigned directly by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the seeming head of the SHIELD forces [think a glorified version of the Department of Homeland Security) that step in when regular human police can’t handle a situation.Rogers is dropped into the Indian Ocean to regain control of a SHIELD ship that’s been hijacked by French mercenaries. But he runs smack into fellow Avenger and mysterious former KGB agent Black Widow (Scarlett Johannsen) on board, discovering that she’s intent on saving the ship’s computer systems onto a flash drive just moments before a massive explosions rocks the control room.While she saves the hard drive and he saves her life, he’s left to wonder why she has a different mission than him. Only Fury will explain it, but the moment he does, a string of hit men are sent to assassinate him. With Fury appearing dead in the hospital, Rogers resolves to overcome his grief and kick a whole lot of butts along the way to saving the world from the nefarious plans that are far worse than he and the Black Widow – and their new superhero partner Falcon, who’s Wilson’s alter ego – could ever imagine: think massive drones that can kill anti-government citizens by the millions.There’s also an insanely buffed-out, highly gadgeted villain in the movie called The Winter Soldier who wears a mysterious mask that looks just like the villain Bane wore in the last “Dark Knight” movie. He may be a ruthless assassin with 24 kills to his credit already, but beneath the mask is a surprising character who may somehow find redemption yet. And yet another surprise lurks in Robert Redford, who says he’s out looking to offer justice but just may be doing the exact opposite.Who’s behind the nefarious plot? How involved is it, and what if anything can Steve Rogers and his superpowered friends do about it? Those are the questions that remain to be answered, providing a good deal of spark for tons of head-spinning, pulse-pounding action while the script is also smart enough to offer up some pretty serious moments of debate about our nation’s police-state tendencies and how far we’ll allow our freedoms to be stripped in the name of so-called security from terrorists and outside forces who might in fact be less dangerous than the forces in our government. The cast is uniformly fun and fine, and the direction by the brother team Anthony and Joe Russo is so spot-on that it handles both the quiet moments of debate between Rogers and the world that’s running too fast around him, as well as stunning car chases and acrobatic kickboxing with aplomb. Parents should be advised to take the PG-13 rating seriously, however, for while the movie keeps in the tradition of Marvel movies being profanity-free and free of sex scenes, “Winter Soldier” has an awful lot of shootouts and bone-crunching, yet non-graphic violence. All in all, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is just the kind of movie we need right now: a rousing entertainment that can help you forget your worries, even while demanding that viewers wake up and battle – or at least – question our leaders.
Movie reviews: 'Cesar Chavez' and 'Noah'
Mar 28, 2014 / 00:00 amIt’s rare that one might find migrant worker leader Cesar Chavez and Noah of the Ark fame compared to each other, but today’s the day to do it if you’re ever going to try. After all, they’re two stubborn leaders, living thousands of years apart, yet both felt they were called by God to lead the way for their people – and now have new biographical films released on the same day.
'Divergent' review
Mar 21, 2014 / 00:00 amI grew up in the 1980s, when teen movies were an enormous moneymaker for Hollywood thanks largely to John Hughes. He created an incredible string of hits that have passed the test of time: “Pretty in Pink,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” were just three of his fun, touching and indelible portraits of what it’s like to be a teenager with all its angst-ridden drama.But they truly don’t make ‘em like they used to. Flash-forward 30 years, and the biggest teen movies are adaptations of young adult novels set in dystopian societies where the government oppressively crushes every citizen’s spirit and teens have to kill others to stay alive, as in “The Hunger Games.” The “Games” movies are exciting and extremely well-made, but they are also a horrifically dark idea that wring their audiences out with massive tension and very little fun. And why do we focus on setting books and movies like those in future, wrecked societies rather than offering our youth fun or at least positive scenarios that are actually enjoyable to experience?The new movie “Divergent” opens today, and it’s another futuristic teen epic set in a dystopia and centered on a teen girl who has to learn to kick butt to survive. And sure enough, they’re based on a series of books, this time by Veronica Roth, whose “Divergent” series just magically happened to be released in 2011, a couple years after the “Hunger Games” books sparked a phenomenon.“Hunger” did it first, and better. They offer a vicious satire of our culture’s sick obsession with reality TV and serve as a bracing warning about where the US could somewhere head if we can’t stop being polarized and agree to get along across party, ethnic and philosophical lines. They also have lightning in a bottle with star Jennifer Lawrence, who in addition to being an action hero with a conscience in their movies, has won an Oscar and been nominated again a year later.“Divergent” has Shailene Woodley as its central heroine Tris, and it’s obvious that the filmmakers are trying to almost literally clone Lawrence. Woodley is a big rising talent in her own right, with a terrific turn in last year’s under-seen and highly recommended “The Spectacular Now” (an example of what Hollywood SHOULD be giving teens), but she looks like Lawrence’s barely-younger sister and has to follow many of the same moves as her “Games” character Katniss.In this movie, Tris starts out as Beatrice, a strangely shy girl growing up in a futuristic Chicago that is the last decent outpost of American society after a war in which Tris says the country was attacked. The movie never specifies who attacked us, and why Chicago survived when LA and New York didn’t, and it never clarifies who the enemy was – just that Chicago mostly survived and now has fortress-like walls around it with massive defense systems.The reason Beatrice is so shy is that she’s a member of a family in the Abnegation division of society. The US population has been divided into five groups: for example, Erudites are the intellectuals, while the Dauntless are the daredevils who enlist to defend society at any cost. As an Abnegator, Beatrice serves the poorest and the faction-less food and basic needs each day while barely getting a glance of herself in the mirror.The country’s teens get to choose which faction they want to spend the rest of their lives in, and then have to pass rigorous mental and physical tests to stay in their division of choice or risk wasting their lives on the street as begging faction-less people. Beatrice goes for her psych test and finds the administrator ending it abruptly and urging her to keep her results a secret.Turns out, Beatrice doesn’t fit easily into one of the categories, and has tendencies and traits of three of the five groups. Thus, she could be tagged as Divergent, which the ruling class seek to brainwash or destroy because they’re free thinkers who are too hard to control. Keeping her results a secret, Beatrice chooses to join the Dauntless, renames herself Tris and starts to train in how to be a daredevil protector of society.But as an evil Erudite leader (Kate Winslet) tries to sweep society for Divergents in order to purge them, Tris has to fight for survival by keeping her secret abilities hidden. For if someone figures her out, there’ hell to pay. The one person who can help her get through it all is a hunky slightly older trainer named Four (Theo James) – and her former Abnegator mom (Ashley Judd), who seems to know way more than one might expect about the evil lurking behind the society.This may sound like an intriguing setup for the movie, and much of it is. But despite also having a big-budget with slick production design and a well-played music score, much of the movie feels like a cheap knockoff of the “Games” films. Not knowing who the enemy of Chicago was doesn’t help, and the movie doesn’t appear to be setting viewers up for a future revelation either.Worst of all, the last 20 minutes devolve into a running shootout that looks too much like kids playing Laser-tag than as a high-stakes harrowing escape. And despite the fact that Tris and Four have nailed down the enemy, she delivers a final voiceover monologue saying she’s still on the run from danger – a danger that makes no logical sense given what we had just seen in the film’s proper ending five minutes before.There are a couple of scenes in “Divergent” that I liked more than those in the “Hunger Games” movies, particularly a dazzling and joyous sequence in which Tris glides over Chicago on what must be the world’s longest, highest and fastest zip line as a final initiation step into being Dauntless. At that moment, and in the story’s initial focus on teens choosing their roles in life and aspiring to do their best for society, the movie has a refreshingly positive feel that made me willing to overlook its day-late, dollar-short other problems.Morally, this is fine for teens and adults to watch. There are a couple of romantic scenes, but Tris makes it clear she wants to “go slow” and thus avoids having sex with her beau when they easily could have. The only bad word in the movie is the “B-word,” used once and maybe twice in arguments between girl recruits, but the one disquieting element is the violence.While the teens aren’t asked to kill each other as in the “Games” movies, the Dauntless have co-ed training sessions which mean the guys and gals all have to engage in brutal fights without regard for being gentle to the female gender. Sure, Tris has the last laugh, but it’s no fun watching a girl like her getting punched, thrown and kicked around by guy fighters.Then again, I suppose those training sequences are like the movie overall: exciting in places, clean enough to avoid driving anyone from the theater, but vaguely disquieting nonetheless. You’ll wind up wondering why no one’s trying to make a John Hughes-style movie anymore.
Movie reviews: 'Need For Speed' and 'Bad Words'
Mar 14, 2014 / 00:00 amThis weekend marks the release of two films I had reasonably high hopes for, due to their lead actors. Unfortunately, the highest of hopes can be dashed by harsh realities, and the ugly truth about the new chase thriller “Need for Speed” and the vile new comedy “Bad Words” is that they are truly awful rather than awesome.In fact, they’re so bad that they almost made me decide to quit reviewing movies and seek a new career path. Even when watching them for free, and getting paid to share my thoughts on them, some movies just aren’t worth seeing. And so I urge you to do anything else this weekend: plant a garden, call your mother, volunteer to do roadside cleanup on the highway.So why am I so outraged?“Need for Speed” marks the first movie-star role for Aaron Paul, who won two Emmys for his portrayal of Jesse Pinkman in the groundbreaking TV series “Breaking Bad.” Here, he plays Tobey Marshall, an ace car mechanic in a small, New York town who lost his girlfriend to Dino Brewster (Dominic Cooper), a smug jerk who has easy money that enables him to own several cars worth over a million dollars.Dino hires Tobey’s crew to rebuild an extremely rare muscle car in order to resell it for more than $2 million, but when Tobey becomes sarcastic with Dino, Dino proposes a race between himself, Tobey and Tobey’s younger brother using Dino’s best three cars. If Tobey wins, he wins the entire $2.7 million the rebuilt car sold for, and if he loses he has to give up his $500,000 rebuilding fee.This reckless race results in Pete crashing, burning and dying. Because Dino didn’t stop to help save Pete from burning to death, Tobey wants revenge for his callousness. But then he finds that Dino has set him up to take the blame – including prison time – for the entire race and Pete’s death. When he gets out of jail two years later, Tobey resolves to clear his name and beat Dino in the world’s most lucrative illegal race. In that race, seven drivers compete and the one who wins gets all the other cars, and the losers all go home without their beloved cars. Tobey wants to win the race for honor but also win Dino’s car by beating him.I can’t believe that I’ve just spent four paragraphs explaining this movie, because the movie’s actual script probably doesn’t include four paragraphs – or even four lines – of coherent writing in it. The characters are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and everyone from the ostensibly heroic Tobey to the evil Dino is an unmitigated and selfish jerk, recklessly driving in chase after chase scene that in the real world would leave hundreds, if not thousands, of other innocent drivers and bystanders dead.Add in the movie’s incredible lack of logic, which is rampant throughout. Tobey is supposed to be broke and desperate for the $500,000 payment when he agrees to refurbish the car for his enemy, Dino, yet his team has the ability to use portable radar systems (not radar speed guns but actual radar screens!) and a helicopter just to watch and warn Tobey of other drivers’ locations in a street race with a mere $5,000 prize.Or take in the fact that in a movie like this, every car except the one driven by the hero is guaranteed to be destroyed by the end of the movie. Therefore, if every opponent’s car is going to be a smoking hulk by the end of the climactic winner-take-all race, then what on earth is the winner even competing for? The right to keep seven other destroyed race cars on blocks in his front yard?There are no funny lines, no likable characters, and very little believable action in “Need for Speed,” and to make it worse, the misery drags on for well over two hours. More like a need for editing, writing, three-dimensional acting, quality direction and entertainment.Meanwhile, “Bad Words” has its own set of problems. While “Need for Speed” finds fun in recklessly endangering the lives of innocent bystanders, “Bad Words” traffics in mean-spirited tricks – often involving crude and sexual humor – that are perpetrated by a grown man against young children.“Bad” follows the antics of Guy Trilby (Jason Bateman), who is about to turn 40 and has been motivated by revenge and hatred his whole life, secretly detesting his father for abandoning him as a young boy. He hatches a plan, twisting loopholes in the rules of the national spelling bee that allow anyone under age 40 who has not finished 8th grade studies to enter the competition.At first, he makes it into local-level bees and wins, but when the bee’s organizers find a way to ban him after all, Guy teams up with a 10 year old Indian boy named Chaitanya (Rohan Chand), helping him gain confidence and fight off bullies by playing a string of nasty pranks on the kids so that they will quit and Chaitanya can rise to the top and win a $50,000 prize they will then split.The real reason that Guy wants to use the spelling bee to gain revenge on his father is that his father invented the spelling bee. If he can humiliate his father on the national news via his crass and rude behavior, Guy believes he will finally be happy. By the end, he has never redeemed himself nor learned anything.“Bad Words” could have been so much better, especially considering that it was a popular sensation in last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The idea of a grown man taking on children in a spelling bee could be fresh and amusing in the right hands, and Bateman has built a long career as one of comedy’s top stars. But even aside from being unbelievably obscene frequently, the fact that actual children were allowed to star in a movie that includes such utterly reprehensible and mean-spirited humor throughout is shocking.In making his debut as director as well as star, Bateman can’t even find an appropriate pace for the film, which drags when it needs to zip and has a terrible score that ruins the background of numerous scenes. From its utter amorality through its sociopathic lead character, on down to its failures of pacing and tone and the sheer wonder of wondering who would allow their kids to act in this movie. “Bad Words” is a bad time at the movies and bad for anyone’s soul.
Movie Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Mar 7, 2014 / 00:00 amOver the course of seven prior films, Wes Anderson has co-written and directed some of the most unique movies of our time. From “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” through “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” “The Darjeeling Limited,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Moonrise Kingdom,” his films create entire worlds of their own with highly eccentric characters, stylish dialogue, unpredictable plotlines and lavishly detailed production design. Starting with the extremely low-budget heist comedy “Bottle Rocket,” the 1996 film that also introduced Anderson’s best friend Owen Wilson to the movie world as his star and co-writer, each of Anderson’s films have taken great leaps of scale in their worlds and subject matter. This weekend, his most epic work yet – “The Grand Budapest Hotel” – hits theatres (in limited release, expanding nationwide over the next month), and he’s hit a homer by giving himself free creative rein with the first screenplay he’s ever penned fully solo. Anderson loves to pretend his movies are adaptations of books that don’t actually exist, and that is the case again here. “Budapest” begins with a Young Writer (Jude Law) interviewing the hotel’s owner, Mr. Moustafa, about how he rose from the ranks of junior lobby boy to become the proprietor of the Grand Budapest – a series of events that came about from his long-ago status as an assistant to its legendary concierge, Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes). The main action is kicked into gear with the sudden and mysterious death of an 84-year-old countess named Madame D (Tilda Swinton), with whom Gustave has been carrying on a secret affair amongst his many sexual exploits. A battle over her vast fortune ensues, as Gustave has been named an heir and the Madame’s son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) leads the charge to stop Gustave from getting a dime. Dmitri and his henchman Jopling (Willem Dafoe) frame Gustave for Madame D’s death and have him shipped to a prison of muscle-bound killers and a moat filled with crocodiles. Gustave has to break free and team up with both Zero – the young version of Mr. Moustafa – and a secret society that includes Bill Murray to clear his name and win what is rightfully his. That’s only the half of it, as the movie then kicks into high absurdist gear, with Anderson engaging in wild action sequences for the first time in his career, bringing cartoonish chases between snowmobiles and sleds racing down ski slopes to life. And yet “Budapest” never loses its whimsical heart, as production designer Adam Stockhausen brings every location and costume to vibrant life with vivid colors and humorously detailed costume designs. It is in the absurd details throughout that Anderson’s movie really shines. He and Hugo Guinness, who conceived the storyline with Anderson before he took over the actual script, ambitiously weave a tale that has countless parallels to the history of 1930s Europe, with spoofs of the Nazis and secret societies. Anderson has noted that he decided to take this boldest of career leaps thus far due to the influence of Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world. Zweig specialized in characters searching for personal freedom against encroaching governmental authority as the Nazis rose to power. Similarly moved by the rampant release of news stories of NSA surveillance and other government abuses in our own time, Anderson has crafted a parable that not only awes the eyes but surprisingly moves the mind. While “Budapest” does feature about 20 F-words, they are delivered in over-the-top comedic fashion, when the normally fastidious and decorous Gustave is driven to frustration, snaps angrily, and quickly gets his emotional bearings back. While not justifying the use of the language to those offended by it, it is also important to note that the tone with the language is absurd rather than truly hateful or prurient. The numerous innuendoes referencing Gustave’s many affairs – including a comically angry rant in which a character uses anti-gay slurs against him while falsely accusing him of sleeping with both men and women – are also delivered with a ludicrous comical tone, although viewers should still be cautious if easily offended. The strongest offensive element lies in a brief flashback implying an old woman performing oral sex on Gustave, and she is seen topless with her breasts exposed as well. He is also falsely accused of bisexual behavior by an enemy, who unleashes a string of anti-homosexual terms against him. Yet despite these elements, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” retains a core of sweetness, as the vast majority of the movie focuses on Gustave’s misadventures rather than the sexual comments and their shenanigans. As you can already see, nearly every role is played by a movie star and often one with an Oscar nomination or statue to boot, with F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tom Wilkinson and Jason Schwartzman rounding out the cast. Pulling that level of talent together and still finding a way to let each of them shine without stepping on each other’s toes is an accomplishment in itself.For adult audiences who are not easily offended by sporadic comedic depictions and discussions of sexual behavior, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” remains a richly inventive and entertaining movie.
'Non-Stop' Movie Review
Feb 28, 2014 / 00:00 amIt’s easy for film critics like me to get caught inside their own self-absorbed bubbles, taking movies way too seriously without remembering that their first job is to let the average Joes and Janes out there know whether a film will deliver on its simple job to entertain. We pick apart performances, lighting, music – but sometimes all that really matters is whether a movie made people laugh, cry or jump out of their seats with excitement.This week, I was reminded of that vital component of my job when I saw the new Liam Neeson thriller “Non-Stop.” In it, he plays Bill Marks, a U.S. federal marshal who is forced to get on a six-hour flight from New York to London that he really doesn’t want to be on.In the opening minutes of the film, Bill has been shown sneaking some whiskey, smoking a string of cigarettes and walking with a boozy, world-weary paranoia through the airport. It is his job to always be alert to any potential threat, but he’s been in the business so long that everyone has become a threat in his eyes.But he’s stuck on the plane, and is trying to make the best of it when he receives a text from an unknown fellow passenger warning him that if $150 million isn’t transferred to a bank account within 20 minutes, someone onboard is going to be murdered. With a crowded plane flying over the open Atlantic Ocean, hours away from the nearest airport, Bill doesn’t have a lot of options to figure out who the threat is coming from.And worse, he quickly realizes that he’s the victim of an elaborately planned setup designed to make him look like a disgruntled agent who has taken the plane hostage himself. This twist is a doozy, as it is so perfectly rendered that if it wasn’t Liam Neeson playing Bill, they might be wondering also if Bill is a lunatic with an axe to grind. And the twist also leads to a whole string of unforeseen consequences that neither Bill nor the audience could ever see coming.But it is a “Liam Neeson thriller,” which over the past five years since the first “Taken” has become a genre unto itself. In these movies, you know that he’s going to be a badass dude with a bunch of special skills - ranging from hand-to-hand combat to expert marksmanship and the ability to drive insanely through the traffic of exotic world capitals - that will leave anyone who crosses him either whimpering with pain or downright dead.But his movies also feature an above-average plot and a ferocious intensity rooted in his desire to save his family or the families of others. Neeson’s characters manage to be interchangeable yet unpredictable all at once, winding up in similar situations but always finding a unique way out of them. And they usually have a fundamental decency as they do here, with no sex scenes or nudity, very little foul language and a ton of action that is intense but never gruesome or bloody.Sure, Neeson is once again perfect in this kind of role. Director Jaume Collet-Serra, who has been teaming up with Neeson on a string of thrillers that could wind up making the duo a modern-day version of Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant, keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace that befits the title, and a solid supporting cast led by Julianne Moore give Neeson plenty to play off of.The non-stop plot twists in “Non-Stop” almost threatened to go too far and derail the movie. But that’s when I learned my lesson about a movie like this: to not analyze it for logic but enjoy it for fun. The way I learned it was through a heavyset, disabled man named Mitchell who rolled into the theatre on an indoor scooter before the film started and hoisted himself with great difficulty into an empty seat.By the time he was safely seated, Mitchell was clearly excited for the movie to start and just eager to have the movie take flight. All throughout, his gasps of surprise and hilarious commentary about the action on screen added to rather than detracted from my own enjoyment of the film.“The marshal is smoking AND drinking on board the flight? I’m never flying again!” was one retort. “This is never going to be used as an in-flight movie!” and “Fly the UN-friendly skies!” were all his creation, as well.Mitchell was right on every one of those points, but he was also right most of all when he summed it up at the end.“What a ride! But I’m glad I wasn’t on it!”
3 Days to Kill
Feb 21, 2014 / 00:00 amIt seems like there's been a million movies in which a spy has to balance his professional killing sprees with the struggles of domestic life as a parent and spouse, to the point that what was a fresh idea 20 years ago in James Cameron's "True Lies" has now become a cliché. But the new Kevin Costner movie "3 Days to Kill" makes a real effort to find fresh angles in this timeworn premise and manages to succeed wildly. A thoroughly entertaining and surprisingly touching story of a CIA agent who learns he has terminal cancer and tries to restore his relationship with his estranged wife and teen daughter while being forced into one last assassination, "3 Days to Kill' works on every level: as a cleverly shot action-film romp, a hilarious comedy and, most of all, as a story of a man facing down death and trying to make real amends with his ex-wife and estranged child. The movie follows international CIA spy Ethan Renner (Costner), who is chasing a dirty-nuke bomb smuggler named The Wolf and his sidekick named The Albino in Paris, where they are about to sell a bomb to rogue Syrians. He is under the direction of a young female agent named Vivi (Heard), who doesn’t know what The Wolf looks like in close-up and thus needs Ethan to do the killing or capture of him.When an opening showdown goes awry, Ethan is rocked with convulsive headaches and flashbacks, awaking in a hospital to learn that he has brain cancer that has spread to his lungs, giving him a persistent cough. His CIA boss tells him he won’t live to see the next Christmas, so he is set free to get his affairs in order – which in Ethan’s case means making peace with his ex-wife (Nielsen) and his daughter Zooey (Steinfeld) after being a terribly distant husband and father.But his ex has one condition: that Ethan must be retired. He promises her he is, just as Vivi reappears to give him an offer he literally can’t refuse. If Ethan will take down The Wolf within the next three days, she’ll arrange a million-dollar life insurance policy for him that will take care of his family when he dies, and she’ll also give him access to a highly experimental drug that can greatly increase his life span.Thus begins an impressively entertaining tightrope act between Ethan’s parental responsibilities (his ex has left him in charge of Zooey for the 3-day weekend) and his need to save the world. It would be easy for director McG - who has built most of his career on flashy but empty movies like "Charlie's Angels" and "This Is War" and writers Besson and Hasak to take the low road and just deliver another clichéd take on the work vs home life of a spy. But they pull off something far greater here. Much like James Cameron revived the spy genre through action and humor in "True Lies," McG and his writers bring new life to a hackneyed premise by taking things in the other direction and being serious about their plot. Costner plays his role at full tilt: an action hero when he needs to be, funny when a little burst of humor is needed, but downright terrific in both confronting Ethan’s mortality and a lifetime of regrets."3 Days to Kill" is that rare action movie that isn’t afraid to slow down and take a breath at unexpected moments. There are surprisingly funny chases and fights in which both Ethan and his nemeses are injured but keep struggling to get the upper hand, but what makes this movie a keeper not only in the theatre but in any fun video collection is its beautifully shot moments where Ethan teaches Zooey to ride a bike or to dance for the first time.In these moments, "3 Days to Kill" also shows that it has a deeper message about family and forgiveness and appreciating the fleeting moments of a truly good life. It’s such a rare and positive portrayal of parent-teen relations that these good points should overrule the very brief moments of implied salaciousness when a random couple is kissing outside a club and an implied topless dancer is onstage for about 10 seconds yet obscured by fog. There is also a touching subplot in which Ethan allows a homeless family of apartment squatters to stay in his apartment until their daughter gives birth rather than throwing them out, with a birth scene that is among the film's many beautifully drawn moments.The movie has two F-words and four uses of JC in vain, and frequent but non-graphic or bloody violence. As such, "3 Days to Kill" is largely inoffensive, extremely entertaining and a positive portrayal of family, making it a winner for teens and adults.
Movie reviews: A Winter's Tale, About Last Night
Feb 14, 2014 / 00:00 amCatching a movie on Valentine’s Day is usually an easy and romantic night out. But unfortunately, the two romances opening today are unlikely to make Catholic couples happy, for two very different reasons.First off, “Winter’s Tale” starring Colin Farrell with an intriguing supporting cast that includes Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly and Eva Marie Saint in addition to newcomer Jessica Brown Findlay, appears to be just the ticket for couples with class. It’s written and directed by Akiva Goldsman, who dealt with a romance in powerful fashion in his Oscar-winning script for “A Beautiful Mind.”But the surprising problem is that the movie’s plot is filled with gaping holes you could drive a truck through, as well as a completely incoherent point of view about the world its characters inhabit. The story follows Peter Lake (Farrell), a young man who has spent much of his adult life as a thief working for a mysterious crime boss named Pearly Somes (Crowe), yet now wants to stop his life of crime.With his evil boss desperate to keep him under his thumb, Peter realizes that he has to escape New York City if he is to find a chance at a law-abiding life. But as he attempts to break one last safe to have the funds for his getaway, he finds that a glowing beauty named Beverly lives there while suffering from a terminal case of tuberculosis.Exhibiting the logical thinking and maturity of a 5 year-old, Peter is instantly and totally smitten, vowing that he loves her truly, completely and eternally despite the fact he’s barely exchanged five sentences with her. But he snatches her up and makes a getaway from Pearly and his men, who are all too eager to capture the new pair.It turns out that Pearly is secretly a major demon who fears that the couple finding love will upset the balance of the universe and put the devil’s side hopelessly behind in the timeless battle between good and evil. And Peter has to be convinced that his love alone is good enough to save Beverly from her impending early death.So far, so good for a swoon-worthy romantic film, right? Well, hold on. First, “Winter’s Tale” is unbelievably slow-paced and features countless repetitive conversations from many different side characters whose entire purpose is to provide jumbled explanations of what’s going on.Peter and Beverly spend the entire movie either on the run or goofily staring each other in the face, and we are told by different characters that their quest for love is the miracle in their lives that is destined to happen. At the same time, there’s mumbo-jumbo about whether people become stars when they die (the sky kind, not the Hollywood kind), and every five minutes there’s a new set of rules regarding what the demons can and can’t do in their quest for stopping humans from committing miracles.Everything is shot beautifully, and the lead couple of Farrell and Findlay really look in love, but the movie’s mess of New Age opinions on the state of love and the universe are maddening. Why can’t Hollywood ever just let a normal couple who are outside Biblical epics believe in God and the Heavenly form of eternal life?Don’t they realize that Caucasian people in 1800s New York – where most of the film takes place before inexplicably jumping into the present day and a resolution dependent upon reincarnation – were either Judeo-Christian or only aware of a Judeo-Christian cosmology? There’s no way WASP society was delving into reincarnation, or the idea that people transform into stars, or anything else for that matter.At least “Winter’s Tale” won’t utterly mortify audiences, even as it might bore them when it’s not annoying them with its spiritual smorgasbord of ideas.The same can’t be said for the new remake of the 1986 raunchy romantic comedy “About Last Night,” which has been remade with an all-black cast headed by new superstar Kevin Hart, whose smash hit “Ride Along” has set him up as the biggest new black comedy star since Eddie Murphy 30 years ago.The movie follows the story of Bernie (Hart) and Danny (Michael Ealy), two single guys in Los Angeles; Bernie is a womanizing playboy, while Danny is a nicer guy recovering from the breakup with a longtime girlfriend. Bernie surprises Danny by staying involved with a wild woman named Joan (Regina Hall), and invites Danny to meet her. When her best friend Debbie (Joy Bryant) comes along that night, Danny and Debbie have a one-night stand of their own.While Bernie and Joan are shown as wild and raunchy, Danny and Debbie are idealized as the perfect, “normal” couple. But over the course of a year, the movie shows the complications that ensue for each of the two couples as the four lead characters learn to overcome their fears of intimacy and commitment and work their way towards cohabitation as a sign of their maturity.On this surface level, “About Last Night” is like countless other romantic or sex comedies, but the cast performs with a great deal of appealing energy that will make the movie fun to watch for secular-minded audiences. Kevin Hart in particular is easily the most dynamic black comic actor since the early heyday of Eddie Murphy’s career, while Ealy and Bryant form a realistic couple with more emotional depth, and veteran character actor Christopher MacDonald has a great supporting role as a bar owner who serves as a mentor for Danny. The movie looks good, too, with glowing depictions of Los Angeles, and director Steve Pink pulls it all together in stylish form.But the huge problem with this movie is that it is overloaded with raunchy, sometimes even gross, sexual humor and scenes. Any believer is sure to be offended at numerous points in the movie, which is so over the top it may offend completely secular audiences as well. It is a shame that the filmmakers and cast feel that such filthy humor is needed to make an impact on today’s audiences, but sadder still is that this movie is likely to be a big hit due to Hart’s popularity, and thus will inspire future movies to follow its dirty path. “About Last Night” also has a completely nonchalant attitude towards premarital sex and cohabitation, and as such is inappropriate for any discerning audience.
'Robocop' Review
Feb 12, 2014 / 00:00 amIt would be easy to assume that this week’s “Robocop” reboot is just mindless trash eager to make a buck off of people’s fading memories of the original 1987 film of the same name. Heading into a theater to watch an early screening, my hopes for the next two hours were minimal at best.To my surprise, the new movie is not only action-packed fun like the original (though considerably less graphic), but is actually smart as well - packed with moral, ethical and philosophical quandaries that will keep audiences talking on the way home after they’ve experienced the initial rush of great fun in the theater. Everything from the issues of using drones and robots for national security, to issues of artificial life support and how far to push it, are addressed.Add in a thoughtful exploration of free will and the conscience, and what truly defines a human life – the body, the mind or the spirit – and you’ve got a film that stands out from the pack and one whose director must have really put some thought into it. And indeed, the new “Robocop” is directed by the acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker Luis Padhila, who has built a decade-long career prior to this American debut on crafting films that explore violence and its consequences, such as the highly acclaimed documentary “Bus 174” about a Brazilian hostage crisis that went seriously awry.The story centers on a by-the-books cop named Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) in 2028 Detroit. While in pursuit of an illegal gun-running gang, he is nearly killed by an explosion outside his house and winds up on life support. At the same time, a major industrialist named Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) has invented robots and drones that he hopes can take over security and national defense from humans. Sellars’ idea is a noble one: humans will never have to risk their lives in combat or police work again. But the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to the idea, fearing that robots won’t know how to assess complex situations or will be susceptible to programming by evildoers. To sell the idea, he needs a sympathetic and controllable robot, and realizes the answer might come by testing Alex Murphy out as a hybrid of man and machine.The problem is, this opens all sorts of questions aside from the aforementioned ones: is it fair to keep a man alive whose only genuinely functioning body parts are his face, brain, heart, lungs and one hand? And what makes a man truly a man?The original film was packed with lurid action and profanity, but had an interesting premise lurking beneath its R-rated surface. The irony is that our present reality – both in terms of what year we’re in, and the technology we have as a society – has practically caught up to the first film. Yet as loaded with questions as this film is, what’s truly remarkable is that it doesn’t force any of its answers down viewers’ throats, and leaves people with the excitement of thinking and arguing its points for themselves.And in a refreshing change from most movie reboots, where the new films are dumber than the originals, the new “Robocop” is actually a better and much smarter film than its predecessor. Padhila’s not exaggerating about the immense depth of his new film, which in a refreshing twist from the first film, has limited foul language and frequent yet non-graphic violence, making it a terrific film for teens and adults. It also has an ace cast with Joel Kinnaman of AMC’s “The Killing” as the Robocop, and Michael Keaton, Gary Oldman and Abbie Cornish in support, in addition to Padhila’s crisp direction and its stunning script by Joshua Zetumer. Combining exciting action with a thrilling level of debatable issues, the new “Robocop” is a winner on all fronts.
'The Monuments Men' film review
Feb 7, 2014 / 00:00 amThere have been countless war movies throughout the history of cinema, most of them falling either into the camp of being jingoistic, pro-battle propaganda like “The Longest Day” or “The Green Berets,” or tragic portraits of war’s effects on mankind such as “Platoon,” which cause audiences to wonder if there is any point to battles at all.Yet in the new movie “The Monuments Men,” star-director-producer-co-writer George Clooney has come up with an all-too-rare fresh angle on war. As an art professor named Frank Stokes who is recruited by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself to organize a team of American art experts to recapture classic European art that was stolen by the Nazis, Clooney brings the spirit of his “Oceans 11” heist-film series to tell the often-overlooked story of how this group risked their lives in order to save humanity’s greatest artistic achievements from destruction.But what truly makes this film shine, especially for Catholic audiences, is the fact that the greatest artworks these men risked their lives to save were Catholic icons. For even as the men also race to save millions of artworks that were stolen from private Jewish collections and Jewish museums, the two works that our heroes are most in awe of and expend the most effort towards are the altarpiece from the Cathedral at Ghent and Michelangelo’s sculpture of the “Madonna and Child.”Clooney’s Stokes makes it clear that these works must be saved because they inspire not only the countries they were stolen from, but all of humanity. And when one of his team is asked if he is Catholic by a group of priests who are racing to hide the “Madonna and Child,” the hero responds “I am tonight,” before he bravely takes a bullet for the cause. The movie opens with informing Roosevelt about how dire the stakes are, with the Nazis having looted potentially millions of works of art from the private collections of Jews as well as national art treasures. The artworks – which so far had been stolen from Paris, Amsterdam and Milan – have been taken to form the key pieces of one of Hitler’s dream projects: The Fuhrer Museum, which he hopes will amass the greatest collection of art in the world, by any means necessary.The Monuments Men ( a name bestowed by the US Army) – now including a Frenchman and a German teenage refugee who becomes an invaluable translator – split up and fan out across Europe in search of clues to the art’s whereabouts. But as they find more and more of the lost treasures, as well as the entire German gold-reserve supply -the Nazis get tougher, creating the Nero Doctrine in which the SS troops are welcome to set fire to any art treasures they feel are in danger of slipping out of Hitler’s hands.If there is any criticism I could wage against the film, it’s that “Monuments Men” often feels episodic rather than having a tightly wound screenplay. While nearly every scene works, they sometimes seem to be disjointed from each other – such as when Goodman and his French colleague (played by Jean Dejardin of “The Artist”) get lost while in a Jeep together and suddenly wind up ambushed by Nazis.The assault comes out of nowhere and is too quickly staged to work up much tension. The same problem occurs in at least a couple of other scenes, when a more full-bore approach to action would have been more satisfying. Yet Clooney and his team still pull it off, with the men’s interactions fun to watch and the nobility of their mission likely to inspire viewers to develop a renewed appreciation of art – and the divine inspiration behind the best the world has to offer – as well.
Director Jason Reitman's 'Labor Day' offers more slices of intriguing American lives
Feb 3, 2014 / 00:00 amIn the course of just five feature films director Jason Reitman has established himself as a timelessly talented filmmaker. From his wicked satire “Thank You for Smoking” and the hip Oscar-winning comedy “Juno” to “Up In the Air” and the low-key yet biting dramedy “Young Adult,” Reitman has presented stories rooted in unique and memorable characters from America’s heartland.Now he’s returned with another lyrical tale of average Americans affecting each other’s lives in profound and unexpected ways. Starring Josh Brolin as an escaped convict and Kate Winslet as a troubled single mother who is forced to hide him from authorities as they fall in love over a three-day Labor Day weekend, it might be his first flawed film. Yet it retains a romantic power that makes it stick in the mind long after leaving the theater.Adele (Winslet) is a single mom of a 13-year-old son named Henry (Gattlin Griffith) who has been traumatized by her divorce a few years before. She’s phobic of everything in her town, so she only goes out monthly to shop for supplies.While shopping, a mysterious man named Frank (Brolin) asks Henry and Adele to get him out of the store they’re in and out of the area. Frank seems menacing at first, and soon they are all at Adele’s house far outside the town. As Frank hides out from police roadblocks searching for him, he starts to repair numerous things in Adele’s house and cooks amazingly well. This includes an incredible pie that’s so sensually made by the duo that it will either provoke uncomfortable laughter or become a classic romantic scene akin to the sculpture-making love scene in “Ghost.”This brief respite provides an odd normalcy for Adele and Frank, two damaged souls who are desperate for attention and love. It also provides Henry with a father figure outside his nice but somewhat distant real dad. As the trio hide from neighbors and the police, it quickly becomes clear that Frank and Adele are so caught up in emotions that they decide to run away together, with the plan leading to unforeseen complications that affect their entire lives.“Labor Day” is a beautifully shot movie with rich characters and terrific actors to portray them. Its story is simple yet powerful, as it reminds us that not every criminal ruthlessly committed their crimes and sometimes genuine mistakes can ruin lives. While Frank and Adele help each other through the movie’s Labor Day weekend, the movie shows itself as a tale of love and forgiveness and worldly redemption.Yet, the film is not without flaws. A series of mysterious flashbacks to a past romance are so vaguely conveyed until their payoff that they could stir annoyance in viewers for much of the film’s running time, even as the revelations they build to ultimately have emotional resonance.And the dynamics of the relationship between Winslet and Brolin are also maddening at points before we fully learn what drives each character, making me want to yell at the screen at a few points as I wondered why Winslet didn’t take advantage of numerous opportunities to break free from Brolin. Yet again, Reitman’s script (based on a novel by acclaimed writer Joyce Maynard) overcomes those doubts by the end.Reitman continues his intriguing string of movies that break the Hollywood mold by portraying regular people in the heartland rather than superheroes and big city glamour queens. Frank and Adele are each deeply sad individuals who just need a loving person to offer them a chance at doing better with their lives, and seeing those chances unfold in the movie is a beautiful thing.Kudos to Reitman as well for telling his story without one discernible use of profanity or obscenity, which is sadly nearly unheard of these days in movies with adult stories. Sex is handled through implication and cutaway scenes, and violence is extremely limited, making this a solid film for adults and teens, although teens are likely to be restless due to its measured pace.Yet for those who appreciate films about people who seem real, and those who love romantic movies with some surprise twists, “Labor Day” will deliver.
Movie review: 'Philomena'
Jan 24, 2014 / 00:00 amImagine being a single and pregnant woman in Ireland in the 1950s. Your family would likely disown you and leave you to raise your child alone. The only place that would open its doors to you were Catholic convents where nuns would help women through their pregnancies for free in exchange for the women giving them four years of manual labor and signing away their rights to their children forever.It certainly would be a tough experience to give away your own baby for life, contractually bound never to track him or her down or interfere with the child's new life and family. But in a horribly tough situation, the nuns were at least there for those women when no one else was.The current movie “Philomena” deals with these issues in a powerfully made fashion, and it is connecting with audiences ($25 million and counting – a solid haul for a small “artsy” film) and with critics and Oscar voters (including Best Actress and Best Picture nominations). “Philomena” stars the legendary actress Judi Dench (nominated for a best Actress Oscar) and British comic Steve Coogan in the story of a woman named Philomena Lee, who enlisted the help of a disgraced British journalist named Martin Sixsmith in her quest to find out what became of the son she lost in the adoption system run by Irish Catholic nuns in the 1960s.The film has been accused by some of being extremely anti-Catholic. Released by Oscar-winning powerhouse, The Weinstein Company, “Philomena” has become a viable and likely long-remembered part of the pop culture pantheon and merits analysis of its message and who’s behind it.At a recent appearance at the prestigious American Cinematheque in Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre, the film’s acclaimed director Stephen Frears (“The Queen,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “High Fidelity”) was glibly defensive of “Philomena.” But with Lee herself there to make a surprise appearance endorsing the film’s take on her life, and an audience member stating they were on their third viewing of the film because they had been raised in the same convent program at the same time as Lee’s son, it became hard to deny the basic story underlying the film.The movie shows Lee as a teenage girl who became pregnant after being naively seduced into losing her virginity, and then entered a convent-run program in order to deliver her child. In addition to being given medical assistance and a home in a society that would have shunned them otherwise, Philomena and her fellow unwed mothers had to perform difficult manual labor for four years and sign documents which stated they would never seek to meet their children after their adoption.Philomena herself is shown as having been devastated when her son Anthony was adopted without any warning or chance for her to say goodbye, and she is still haunted 50 years later, despite the fact she has been married and widowed and raised another child.Nonetheless, she has maintained a rigid and unshakable faith in Catholicism, and defends her beliefs against the wryly condescending comments from the atheist Sixsmith (who to be fair, comes to respect Philomena’s faith by the film’s end).The movie’s revelation of what happened to her son is shown in a desolate light, despite the fact he went on to have a wildly successful legal career that likely would have never occurred if he had been trapped in poverty with Philomena. The nun who controlled the adoption process is portrayed as a stern-faced, bitter scold, while the younger nuns who currently run the convent lie and mislead her throughout the movie, and the film also unleashes an attack on the celibacy of nuns and drove the audience to fits of cheering when Coogan as Sixsmith delivers stinging sarcasm to the nuns, saying he could never forgive them the way Philomena has.The movie is balanced by Philomena’s unshakable faith and willingness to forgive the nuns, but New York Post film critic Kyle Smith (a conservative who nonetheless professes to be atheist) accused “Philomena” of having a relentlessly biased anti-Catholic agenda. He also noted that the movie willfully ignores the fact that unwed mothers in Ireland 50 years ago had no other place offered to them by their society, with the nuns saving a generation of “unwanted” children from being aborted.“The film doesn't mention that in 1952 Ireland, both mother and child’s life would have been utterly ruined by an out-of-wedlock birth and that the nuns are actually giving both a chance at a fresh start that both indeed, in real life, enjoyed. No, this is a diabolical-Catholics film, straight up,” Smith wrote in the New York Post.When asked about the controversy and whether he tried to either attack the church or sought a balanced approach to the film’s portrayal of the nuns and their adoption system, Frears offered only a glib dismissal of the critiques.“Are you saying the story isn’t true, that this never happened?” said Frears. “It is true, and the truth hurts sometimes. As far as I know, the criticism has only come from that one bloke. But anytime there’s a chance for controversy, Harvey Weinstein does like to blow it up.”Frears was referring to one of the film’s executive producers, Harvey Weinstein, who has had a string of other films throughout his career – including “Priest” and “The Magdalene Sisters” – which have negatively portrayed the Catholic Church. Couple that with the fact that Coogan, who co-wrote the film as well, publicly admits he’s an atheist, and it’s easy to wonder.When trying to decipher if the film has a blatant bias or merely offers shameful truths about systemic abuses, prominent conservative Catholic arts blogger Barbara Nicolosi says that it’s important to consider the sources behind the creation. While she hasn’t seen the film, Nicolosi said that the numerous people she has discussed it with make it sound more complex than Smith’s take on it.“The Irish nuns’ adoption system is like any number of things in church history where the intention started very good but it got corrupted for many people for many reasons,” says Nicolosi, who is director of The Story Institute at Azusa Pacific University. “You had a society that only turned its back on unplanned pregnancies, especially back then. They show the church system was harsh, but the world was even harsher. There was literally no place for women with unplanned pregnancies to go back then. And if your family was humiliated by the fact, you were out in the street.“The Church is of the age it’s in, and the sins of the age can infiltrate. But if the movie was set in a secular orphanage, you would have the same problems.” The question is, what would have happened to the child if not for the system?“The idea,” says Nicolosi, “is not to make excuses or say the church shouldn’t behave better or different. Is there anyone in the adoption world shown as gracious, loving? What you don’t want is there to be no mercy shown. The reaction of the audience is telling. If they’re primed to cheer his act of hate, it shows something about what they’re really going for. In a movie of this nature, you just need to suggest the problem is not being Catholic but being a sinner.”
'Her' review
Jan 10, 2014 / 00:00 amIn an age when technology has the ability to bring the world closer than ever at a faster pace than ever witnessed before, mankind seems to still be drifting further and further apart – especially when it comes to romance. That problem is brought to vivid life in the new movie “Her,” in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a lonely man who falls in love with his computerized operating system.I realize that that last sentence is perhaps one of the strangest I’ve ever written, but in this new film by writer-director Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”), Phoenix plays Ted, a guy living in a near-future Los Angeles who is struggling through a painful divorce that he can’t quite bring himself to finalize. Trapped in loneliness as he wanders the cold streets of the giant city around him, Ted spends his days as a writer of emotional special-occasion letters for other people who pay his company to have their most personal notes written for them professionally.Ted stumbles across a kiosk selling operating systems – the small devices that power computers – that are programmed to speak conversationally through artificial intelligence. While the independently smart and talking computer HAL 9000 turned on its human supervisors in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Ted’s new system – named Samantha - opens a new world of intelligent and witty conversation to him, courtesy of the sultry and expressive voice of Scarlett Johannson.As he retreats into a series of deep conversations with Samantha, Ted finds himself realizing that he’s more attracted to and interested in “her” than he is any normal human female. And Samantha’s intelligence and emotional depths grow by leaps and bounds, leading them to fall in love and Ted admitting he’s now in a romantic relationship with what is essentially a smartphone.This may sound like a strange plot, and it is. But it is also highly intelligent, unique, incredibly romantic and very funny, and the fact that Jonze and Phoenix are able to pull it off in a believable and richly emotional and thoughtful way is some sort of miracle.On the surface, “Her” is essentially science fiction, but to label it that way is doing both the movie and millions of moviegoers a disservice. Jonze was inspired to create the film due to his divorce from fellow filmmaker Sofia Coppola, and it marks the first feature film that he wrote himself after prior collaborations with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and adapting Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where The Wild Things Are.”“Her” is his first full-length movie for adults since “Adaptation” in 2002, and it is clear that it is a well-conceived labor of love for Jonze. I’ve seen “Her” twice now and found it mesmerizing on both occasions, with the second time deepening my appreciation after my first viewing already thoroughly impressed me.But the most amazing thing in the movie is how Phoenix and Johannson make it work, with Phoenix offering his most charming and well-rounded performance to date and Johannson working the entire spectrum of emotion solely with her voice.On a moral note, while “Her” is a thoroughly classy production with heartfelt emotions and a whole lot of brains behind it, there are some notes of caution for discerning viewers. There are about 30 F words, but those mostly come from a meanspirited animated character in a video game who yells at Ted when he plays it wrong. A bigger issue is a phone sex scene that is played against a dark empty screen as Ted and Samantha talk their way through some heavy breathing, but at least Jonze left the visuals to the imagination and any honest exploration of a love story between a man and a computerized device should be excused for not having a traditional wedding in it anyway.Beyond that, there is a graphically audible phone sex scene prior to Ted falling for Samantha in which an unknown woman loudly begs Ted to engage in some very bizarre sex acts with her that are of course not actually acted upon , just mentioned. Finally, a strongly sensual scene in which Samantha has invited a woman who has offered to be a human sex surrogate on behalf of Samantha engages in some heated (yet clothed) foreplay with Ted. But he resists the urge to have sex with her, and that decision is a crucial turning point to many of the film’s rich explorations of the nature of true love.Rarely has a modern film offered so much to think about regarding the existence of love and how our connections to other humans are endangered in our ever more computerized society. Beneath its sweeping and sad romantic nature lies a powerful message that if we don’t look up from our smartphones and away from our computers and TV screens, someday we may not be able to find each other at all.“Her” is appropriate and highly recommended viewing for adults who can handle its immoral elements.
My 10 Favorite Films of 2013
Jan 2, 2014 / 00:00 amThis year has proven to be easily the best of the century so far for movies, and picking just ten great films to represent the year’s best has been harder than usual. Since I can’t see literally everything that comes out in a year, I always note that these were my ten favorites, the ones that shook me with the most thrills, laughter or tears.1.) “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”This adaptation of a classic short story by James Thurber was a passion project of star-director Ben Stiller. The movie itself is an ode to the dreamer in us all, depicting a lovable loser who’s lost in constant flights of fancy until a work crisis forces him to take highly adventurous and often funny action in the real world. Jet-setting from Greenland to Iceland to Afghanistan, it’s one of the most epic and ambitious comedies I’ve ever seen, and it packs an emotional punch as well. CONTENT: Best of all, morally it is almost perfectly clean and appropriate for families and viewers of any stripe. (In theatres now)2.) “Her”Writer-director Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) has made some of the most unique movies of the past 15 years, but his divorce from fellow director Sofia Coppola knocked him for a loop that severely limited his output of films. His comeback, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the most likable role of his career, depicts a nice-guy loner in near-future Los Angeles who falls in love with the sweet and sexy voice (delivered by Scarlett Johannsen) on his computerized Operating System when it starts to develop the artificial intelligence to converse emotionally. “Her” is a deeply profound exploration of what really matters in love and whether humans are losing the ability to truly communicate in this era of texting.CONTENT: An average amount of foul language for an R-rated movie, meaning about 40 F words and several uses of other words, albeit much of the foul language comes in outbursts from a satirically angry animated character in a video game. There is an implied phone-sex-style scene between the man and the “female” operating system in which their dirty talk is heard but unseen on a dark screen, and a lengthy foreplay scene between the male lead and a woman which he ultimately walks away from when she’s in her underwear. But the vast majority of the movie has a deep, sweeping romantic feel that far outclasses the offensive moments. (In theatres Jan. 10; reviewed at length next week)3.) “Gravity”Co-writer-director Alfonso Cuaron takes his time making movies (his prior one was “Children of Men” in 2006) but when he does finish them, they’re like no one else’s. Here he takes Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as a two-person cast of astronauts and depicts how things go terribly wrong on a satellite-repair mission in space. Perhaps the best use of 3D effects ever put on screen, “Gravity” also nails its human drama due to its superb performances.CONTENT: Aside from the use of one F word, this movie had mostly clean language, no sexual content and some intense peril in space. Perfectly fine for anyone over the age of 10 or 12 to see. (On DVD now)4.) “Blue Jasmine”Woody Allen’s late-life creative renaissance continues, with the story of a blue-blood woman (Cate Blanchett) whose life slowly unravels in both comic and tragic fashion when her husband is convicted of Bernie Madoff-style fraud. Forced to move in with her total-opposite, working-class sister in San Francisco, she has to mix it up with all manner of loudmouths. While Blanchett is drawing deserved praise as the likely winner of this year’s Best Actress Oscar, the true surprise of the year was former foul-mouthed comic Andrew Dice Clay delivering a hilarious and touching supporting performance.CONTENT: Some foul language and sexual humor, as well as a mild depiction of a sexual near-assault. Perfectly fine for older teens and adults. (On DVD)5.) “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”Based on the story of the longest-serving butler in White House history, who worked under presidents from Eisenhower through Reagan, “The Butler” featured one of the year’s strongest ensemble casts. Best of all, it gave juicy roles to plenty of talented black actors, including Cuba Gooding Jr., who are normally underused these days. Forest Whitaker as the title character and Oprah Winfrey as his wife are likely shoo-ins for Oscar nominations, and the overall movie deserves its own nod too.CONTENT: Violent depictions of authoritarian backlash against 1960s civil rights protesters, an implied adulterous affair is a brief plot point but is shown negatively, a woman struggles with alcoholism, and a contentious father-son relationship that is ultimately repaired plus a mild amount of foul language. Perfectly fine for teens and adults. (On DVD Jan. 14)6.) “Fruitvale Station”The most tear-inducing movie of the year, this docudrama was about the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, a 23-year-old African-American man shot to death by Oakland police in a controversial confrontation. Michael B. Jordan was the acting discovery of the year in the lead role, portraying a young man who wasn’t a saint, and who made some mistakes in life like the rest of us, but who definitely didn’t deserve to die the way he did.CONTENT: Some foul language including F words, but not excessive in the context of its characters/setting and the R rating. A tragic shooting and its resulting death is shown. Brief, clothed sex scene is shown between co-habitating couple. Man wishes to sell marijuana but stops, realizing it’s wrong. Emotionally wrenching film is fine for adults. (on DVD)7.) “We’re the Millers”The funniest movie of the year by miles. Jason Sudeikis played a pot dealer who has to sneak an RV filled with marijuana over the border from Mexico when he’s robbed of a huge stash of pot and cash, and decides that the only way to avoid drawing attention from the authorities is to pretend to be on a family vacation. So he hires a family composed of a stripper playing his wife (Jennifer Aniston), an annoying teenage boy as his son and a tough teen runaway girl as his daughter. Countless things go wrong from there. It’s not Oscar material, but it hits a hilarious home run from there.CONTENT: This is definitely only for adults who are not easily offended. Lots of drug-related humor, a fair amount of R-rated profanity and sexual jokes along with a comically-intended yet sensual striptease by Aniston that stops at her underwear, and a quick shot inside a man’s shorts after a spider bites him. It is nonetheless an undeniably funny movie for those who can handle films in the vein of “There’s Something About Mary,” otherwise steer clear. (On DVD)8.) “Olympus Has Fallen”/”White House Down”The year’s nuttiest, giddiest action movies both featured plots in which the White House was captured by bad guys. “Olympus” took itself slightly more seriously, with Gerard Butler as the hero who fights off a horde of North Koreans in a “Die Hard”-worthy extravaganza of explosions. “Down” took things even farther, with Jamie Foxx as the president who straps on his sneakers and picks up a grenade launcher to fight back alongside his Secret Service agent, played by Channing Tatum.CONTENT: “Olympus” has more-graphic violence and a fair amount of R-rated language, but is nothing any fan of “Die Hard” can’t handle, good for adults and older teens. “White House Down” has little foul language and lots of fun, outrageous action without being as graphic about the carnage. It is fine for teens and adults. (Both on DVD)9.) “The Spectacular Now”This emotionally powerful film about an alcoholic Ferris Bueller-style high school king, the nerdy girl whom he falls in love with, and the transformation they effect in each other was the best teen romance since “Say Anything” nearly 25 years ago. Miles Teller delivered the best acting performance of the year in a movie too few people saw. He is one to watch, the possible heir to Tom Hanks.CONTENT: About 30 F-words, mostly in brief bursts as the male lead tries to “loosen up” the overly rigid teenage girl. He drinks irresponsibly throughout, but this is shown in a very negative context with the movie clearly trying to provide a sensitive depiction of a teen alcoholic who has to overcome denial to get help. The most troubling aspect is a scene showing the girl initiating her first sexual experience, which fades out after a brief clear depiction of implied intercourse, and the movie’s non-judgmental attitude towards teen sex. However, the message of helping others in trouble is a positive one and this film is fine for adults and possibly for older teens with a strong sense of sexual morality. (On DVD)10.) “Prisoners”A recovering alcoholic Catholic man (played by Hugh Jackman in an Oscar-worthy turn) finds his young daughter was kidnapped, and when the cops let the lead suspect go, he kidnaps him himself and tortures him in the hopes of learning where she is. But what if the suspect really is innocent? A harrowing ride through the darkest impulses of humanity, it’s a powerful morality tale that places viewers squarely in the midst of wondering what they would do in a similar situation. The most intense movie of the year by far.CONTENT: Bursts of R-rated foul language, but understandable in the context of unbelievably stressed and angered parents. Strongly implied torture with the audible results of pain. Shocking images of the beaten man, and the revelations of who is actually responsible for the area’s missing children are highly disturbing yet are not excessive to the film’s milieu. Powerful depictions of a prayerful man in genuine crisis, torn between revenge and forgiveness and redemption. Overall, a powerful film for adults who can handle grim fare like “Seven” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” but keep this away from children and teens.