Articles by Carl Kozlowski
'Terminator: Genisys' showcases an underwhelming, convoluted plot
Jul 1, 2015 / 00:00 amThere are some actors who just can’t break out of typecasting. The Three Stooges never got to do Shakespeare, Michael Richards never stopped being Cosmo Kramer, and Arnold Schwarzenegger will always be The Terminator. Yet while those first two examples were metaphorical, Schwarzenegger really is trapped in the role of the humanoid killing machine who eventually developed a heart of gold. He starred in three “Terminator” films before he switched over to being The Governator, and now that he’s left government behind and suffered a string of embarrassing box-office flops, he is back in his signature role in the series’ fifth film, “Terminator: Genisys.” “Genisys” is a confusing mess, because it spends half the time rehashing the plot points of the original “Terminator” from 1984 in an obvious attempt to explain the original films to a new generation of sci-fi fans who haven’t bothered to see them. The key idea is that a worldwide missile-defense system called Skynet developed enough artificial intelligence to form its own opinions about mankind, opting to destroy humanity with nuclear missiles around the world on what became known as Judgment Day in 1997. The only person who can eventually lead humanity in a massive revolt against Skynet and its evil robot enforcers is a man named John Connor. Therefore, the Terminator robot played by Schwarzenegger was sent back to 1984 to kill John’s mother, an average Los Angeles waitress named Sarah Connor, before she could conceive John – and another human hero also traveled back in time to save her from the Terminator and impregnate her with John. That convoluted plotline worked wonders in the hands of the series’ creator, writer-director James Cameron. But after the film’s initial sequel “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” in 1991, he moved on to create other classics like “Titanic” and “Avatar.” Two other half-hearted sequels were released by other filmmakers since then, with the latest – 2009’s “Terminator: Salvation” - not even starring Schwarzenegger at all. “Genisys” spends the other half of its running time trying to reinvent the wheel by creating a plot in which our heroes don’t know whether to time-travel to 1997 or 2017 in order to save the world. A hole in time was cracked open during a key fight sequence that can’t be revealed without being a major spoiler, leading to greater – yet more confusing – consequences than anyone ever imagined. This latest attempt at adventure is directed by a guy named Alan Taylor, a veteran TV director of everything from “Sex and the City” to “Game of Thrones,” whose only major feature film before this was “Thor: The Dark World.” In other words, this journeyman is no James Cameron. The movie really stars hot young “Game of Thrones” actress Emilia Clarke, who follows in the footsteps of all-time female badass Linda Hamilton in taking on the role of Sarah Connor. Hamilton played her with a toughness and grit that called to mind a female Rocky Balboa. Clarke, on the other hand, may be a 29-year-old actress, but she seems so young and high-strung that she comes off like she’s starring in a sequel to “Juno” rather than saving the planet from rampaging killer robots. As the adult John Connor, supervising events from 2029 Los Angeles, Jason Clarke’s odd looks and nasty facial scar undermine the badass nature that his character needs to have because he looks like Randy Quaid. And Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese – Connor’s right-hand man, who goes back in time to save Sarah Connor and impregnate her with John – is just a plain, generic, good-looking action hero. As Bruce Willis’ son in the last awful “Die Hard” movie, he nearly drove a nail into the coffin of that franchise, and he may just do the same with the “Terminator” films. This latest entry in the series is the second, after “Salvation,” to be rated PG-13. While normally I’m happier to spotlight a G, PG or PG-13 film rather than an R since I’m a Catholic critic partially concerned with the moral content of films, the first three “Terminator” films were dependent on pushing their action violence to inventive and gritty limits. Toned down enough to be deemed OK for teens by the ratings board, the result makes all of the action sequences feel like the filmmakers pulled their punches and limited their weaponry damage throughout. This not only detracts from the escapist fun of a world-class action series, but just feels bland throughout. At least there is almost no profanity, and we never see Connor and Reese have sex, as their inevitable “mating” (Arnold’s word for it in the movie) is thankfully switched into a budding romance that never goes beyond a sweet kiss. Be forewarned, however, that the time-travel machine that's key to the movie requires that anyone who uses it remove their clothes, so there is briefly seen rear male nudity, mostly in shadow, and implied nudity from Sarah Connor - though none of this is in a prurient, sexual context. Of course, one can never underestimate the stupidity of the masses, and “Terminator: Genisys” is likely to clean up overseas, where blowing things up real good is more important than having well-motivated characters and a sensible plotline. But here, audiences are as likely to be underwhelmed as the one I saw it with opening night.
'Ted 2' an improvement on the original, but still stoops low for jokes
Jun 26, 2015 / 00:00 amThe movie “Ted” took the movie business by surprise back in 2012, when the silly comedy about a grown man named Johnny played by Mark Wahlberg, who still lives with the teddy bear, Ted, he had as a child. The reason why he kept the childhood memento is because Ted magically came to life one Christmas and became Johnny’s best friend (aka “Thunder Buddy”) for life. That movie, co-written and directed by Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy” fame in his live-action filmmaking debut (and co-starring MacFarlane as the voice of Ted), made $218 million in the US alone and a total of $550 million worldwide. That success was almost inexplicable, as the movie largely consisted of Johnny and Ted getting into one debauched situation after another, involving drugs, sex, hookers, car chases and more, all shown through the prism of a completely stupid movie that had some laughs in it but very little plot to string them together. But with so much money made by the original, it was inevitable there would be a sequel. The TV commercials and trailers for “Ted 2” seemed to go in a completely strange and wrong direction: the story is about Ted having to prove his personhood in order to have the right to stay married to his human wife and to adopt children. If he can’t prove he’s the same as a human mentally and emotionally, he will be regarded merely as property and will even lose his job as a grocery store cashier. Thus, the ads for “Ted 2” have featured Ted in a buttoned-up suit, sitting in a courtroom rather than having anarchic fun with Johnny all across Boston. The ads gave the movie a self-serious tone, and seemed to also be a ham-fisted allegory for the battle over gay marriage rights. But thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. The new movie is packed with gags and one-liners from nearly the beginning to end, with many of the best lines taking amazing swipes at the likes of Kanye West and the Kardashians, and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler. In keeping with the style of “Family Guy,” MacFarlane has written a movie that throws outrageous zingers at the audience on an often non-stop basis, and takes shots at numerous celebrities and politically correct social tropes. MacFarlane and his co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild weave together a constant stream of marijuana-smoking jokes and scenarios with hilarious homages to movies like “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” and “Field of Dreams” and the aforementioned shock humor beating up a string of celebrities with insults. Thus, we have the crux of the problem for Catholic and other Christian moviegoers. On the one hand, “Ted 2” maintains the tradition of MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” in using as much crude yet clever humor as possible, and since he has more freedom in an R-rated movie than in FCC-regulated television,this means the movie contains many, many swear words, including at least 100 uses of F or S words and about 20 uses of God’s name in the form of JC and GD. In the context of a simple-minded Boston guy who’s goofing around with his talking-teddy-bear friend, I would wager these swears are less offensive than they would be coming in the context of a violent criminal or a couple having a screaming fight in a serious movie. But yes, many of our readers will absolutely be offended. Add in the frequent pot jokes and total advocacy of marijuana smoking, and this is definitely not a movie for most of the CNA audience. There are also numerous sexual and scatological jokes, though no sex or nudity is shown. The one visual gag that is truly offensive involves Johnny and Ted accidentally causing a huge spill in an in-vitro fertilization clinic, which I will spare readers from reading about directly. Finally, there is an absurd fight set at a comic-book convention, in which numerous costumed comic-book fans duke it out in silly fashion. And Johnny is friends with a gay couple who have a few jokes based on their punching and tripping the nerds at the comic-book convention; these moments are more mean than funny. However, the strange thing about “Ted 2” is that it also makes a few good points along the way. Ted’s battle to regain his marriage places high value upon marriage, and is not the same-sex marriage allegory it appears to be. Johnny and their lawyer fall in love with each other, and never have sex, implied offscreen or on. Their relationship is sweet and chaste and involves a surprisingly beautiful love song that MacFarlane actually wrote himself. The movie also comically attacks the use of pornography, as Ted confronts Johnny about how much he’s watching and how perverse it is, telling him he can’t just watch porn but needs to get out and find a new relationship again after his divorce (Johnny is not Catholic, so arguing the merits of divorce and remarriage doesn’t enter the picture here). The way Johnny and Ted completely destroy Johnny’s laptop is hilarious, and the movie shows his true-love, pure relationship is vastly preferable to porn addiction. Most impressively, MacFarlane and his co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild weave in an intelligent and occasionally moving discussion of what the definition of personhood is. Is a person formed by having a soul, their mind or their heartfelt emotions? The fact that they can wage these big questions (and arrive at a pretty moral and sound conclusion), mixing the raunchy humor with smart jokes about such landmark Supreme Court cases as the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education is absolutely remarkable (and incredibly prescient timing considering the cultural battles being freshly waged in South Carolina right now). . The one artistic weak spot in the movie parallels the weakest moments of the first “Ted”: an annoying performance by Giovanni Ribisi as a Ted-obsessed weirdo who wants to kidnap the bear and have it all to himself. Ribisi’s character is utterly gross and unpleasant and brings few if any fresh laughs to the proceedings; in fact, his subplot drags both movies out 20 minutes longer than they need to be. On the other hand, Wahlberg is hilarious fun as the perpetually stoned and utterly stupid Johnny, and Amanda Seyfried brings luminous romantic magic and smarts to her role as the dope-smoking lawyer who takes on Ted’s case pro bono. And there are also a stream of big-surprise cameos that are so well-cast and sharply performed that the packed audience at the advance screening exploded with laughter and applause several times over. With all these artistic factors in its favor, it’s a shame that MacFarlane felt a need to stoop so low and often into the gutter. Here’s hoping that his work will move to be cleaner the next time, consistently raising its moral quality to match its artistic inventiveness.
Double movie review: 'Inside Out' and 'Love & Mercy'
Jun 18, 2015 / 00:00 amThe life of the mind - that inner voice that guides us all, that either perks our days up or drags us down into doubt and despair – is an intriguing one that movies have rarely managed to fully explore. “A Beautiful Mind” won a Best Picture Oscar for providing a tragic depiction of genius gone awry, and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” also took home top honors for its surreal portrait of life in an insane asylum. But neither of those put their entire focus on what goes on in the highly sensitive tissues and nerves that steer every aspect of our existence. But two new movies – “Inside Out”, which opens Friday, and “Love and Mercy,” which is slowly expanding nationwide – take distinctly different looks at what goes on between our ears, and each has its own rewards. “Inside Out” is the more inventive of the pair, the latest creation to come out of the magic Disney Pixar movie factory. The problem is that, despite its frequently funny moments and a heart-tugging finale, most of this animated wonder feels like it was factory-assembled rather than sprung from creative passion. The story follows the life of Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias), an 11 year old girl whose parents (Diane Lane and Kyle McLachlan) relocate from middle America to San Francisco. What originally was an exciting trip for the young girl quickly turns sour, when she finds that her new house is tiny and has no yard to play in, that the furniture has been mis-routed by the moving trucks and won’t arrive for several days, and that she cries while introducing herself to new classmates, seemingly dooming her to a life of social failure. But inside her mind, a storm of feelings is constantly brewing with the glowing Joy (Amy Poehler) trying to keep her as happy as possible for as long as she can. Competing with Joy for emotional control of Riley are Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Fear (Bill Hader): in other words, perfect casting on all fronts. At first, the struggle for control is relatively normal, as Joy prevails enough to keep Riley generally smiling, and the other emotions are kept in check enough to emerge only sporadically. But when glowing orbs representing Riley’s core memories – the biggest moments of her life so far, which influence her entire future actions – go missing, Joy has to break free and search through the treacherous outer landscape inside Riley’s mind but beyond her usually used terrain in order to get the memories back and put her life back in balance. This may sound complex and cool, offering an entirely fresh and mostly funny take on how the human mind works. But the long middle portion of the film in which Joy has to endure and overcome one bad break after another is so extended that it often feels exhausting and might prove too smart for young children. Thus, “Inside Out” doesn’t have the universal, undeniable magic that cast a spell on audiences worldwide in the “Toy Story” films and some of their other creations, but it’s still worth a viewing for those intrigued by its premise and lured by Pixar’s always inventive visuals. Being a Disney Pixar movie, it’s obviously fine for kids, with no moral improprieties to be found, but it is a bit scary in places for young ones. A decidedly different, and more adult, take on mental issues comes from “Love & Mercy”, which uses the unique tactic of having two different acclaimed actors portray legendary pop songwriter Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame at two distinct stages of his life. Paul Dano of “There Will Be Blood” fame plays Wilson as a young man descending into drug addiction and madness even as he’s creating some of the most gorgeous music the rock era has ever had to offer, while John Cusack plays him as the older, borderline insane man he became in his 40s before the love of a good woman (Elizabeth Banks in a career-best role) helped set him free from manipulative psychotherapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). Writers Oren Moverman and Michael A. Lerner use the dual time-frame approach to brilliant effect, showing us both the highs and lows of Wilson’s rollercoaster life and career in stirring fashion. Director Bill Pohlad masterfully finds a way to guide the performances of each of his leads, Dano and Cusack, into one indelible portrait of a man for whom both his genius and his madness stemmed from the sound and voices in his head. “Love & Mercy” is a mostly gentle film, with nothing that any older teen or adult can’t handle morally. The film does feature the fact that Wilson experimented with illegal drugs in an attempt to heighten his creativity, but also shows the fact that he had profound negative consequences as a result. Wilson's psychotherapist also screams at and threatens him in in several scenes, and the film cuts away from an implied shot of Wilson and his girlfriend/eventual wife starting to kiss in a shower (strictly showing their heads) and then lying in bed together under sheets. As a near-documentary look at the creative process behind “Pet Sounds,” one of the most magical albums of the past 50 years, combined with a frightening yet ultimately exhilarating look at a deeply wronged man getting his life back together, “Love & Mercy” is two movies in one. And both work in perfect harmony to give viewers an experience they won’t easily forget – just like Brian Wilson’s music.
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" is a selfless tale of true friendship
Jun 12, 2015 / 00:00 amAnyone lucky enough to have been around in the 1980s regarded it as the greatest era of teen movies ever, as John Hughes served up classics like “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and Cameron Crowe bookended the decade with “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Say Anything.” These were movies that treated teens with respect, showing both the humorous highs and the angst-filled lows of high school life in a way that resonated universally with viewers. Things have changed a lot in the decades since, with dreary dystopian fantasies like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” series being the most successful teen movies being released nowadays. Just when it seemed like it’s time to give up hope of ever seeing a teen movie that doesn’t center on kids having to kill each other to win a competition, along comes the funny, touching and profound new movie “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.” The winner of both the critic and audience awards for best film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Me and Earl” follows a Pittsburgh-area boy named Greg (Thomas Mann), who has little self-esteem and tries to just sneak through life at his high school by being just friendly enough with every social group. He has only one friend, an African-American boy named Earl (RJ Cyler), and the two spend most of their free time filming ridiculous spoofs of famous movies. One day Greg’s mom tells him that a girl named Rachel (Olivia Cooke) that he barely knows has been diagnosed with leukemia. She orders Greg to go befriend Rachel and help bring joy into her life, since he’s so easygoing. Greg feels he’ll be rejected and doesn’t want to do it at first, but he gives it a try and he and Rachel find that they hit it off immediately. This is the point where a thousand other teenage movies would make Earl and Rachel fall in love, but this is one movie that refuses to follow the easy path in any direction. Writer Jesse Andrews (adapting his own hit young adult novel) and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon use unconventional elements like stop-motion animation to bring Greg’s internal thoughts to life, while the interspersed clips from Greg and Earl’s spoofs also offer an inventive and humorous counterpoint to the overall sadness of the story. But what’s truly unique about the film is the fact that Greg and Rachel never fall in love, as neither one of them is attracted to each other romantically, even as they become the best of friends. To see a teen story play out where the cliché’s of prom night dates or first sexual encounters aren’t front and center is a refreshing change of pace. These are kids dealing with low self-esteem and death, but help each other through these issues with humor and grace. “Me and Earl” is also refreshing in its depiction of the relationships between the kids and their parents, with veteran actors Connie Britton, Nick Offerman and Molly Shannon all given meaty roles that transcend the usual teen movie clichés of portraying parents as being clueless adversaries. It’s a film filled with characters whom audiences will relate to and fall in love with, and these veteran actors are clearly thrilled to be sinking their teeth into meaningful material. But it’s the film’s trio of young stars who are truly magic, in the kind of breakout performances that launch major careers. Mann is a terrific Everyman, giving Greg a combination of humor and heart that could easily make him this generation’s John Cusack, while Cyler plays Earl with a mix of world-weariness and droll with that makes him seem decades wiser than his years. Yet it’s Cooke who has to win us over the most as we follow her long day’s journey into night with as much light as her spirit can find. She gives a performance for the ages, in a film that stands an excellent chance of being a major Oscar contender. The movie is rated PG-13 for one F word, and about 30 or so S words scattered throughout, plus about 10 uses of God's name in vain, including about 5 GD's and one or two JC's. Greg also jokes crudely about masturbation in two scenes, but of course nothing is shown. However, anyone who has ever known a teenager knows that they hear this kind of language all the time and it would be a shame to keep any teen away from a movie that emphasizes friendship between boys and girls rather than sex, and which portrays an utterly selfless and beautiful tale of true friendship and caring for a fellow human being. The movie never directly deals with religion or Christianity, but that display of selflessness is one of the finest displays of Christian love for others I’ve ever seen on screen in a mainstream Hollywood movie. "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" opens today, Friday June 12 in New York and Los Angeles, and will be open nationwide by July 3.
'Spy' - utterly silly fun
Jun 5, 2015 / 00:00 amThere’s no other way to describe actress Melissa McCarthy than as a force of nature, a comic hurricane who crashes onto movie and TV screens and destroys everything in her path in hilarious fashion. The only possible comparison to her in the history of women comics might be Lucille Ball, whose constant and fearless physical-comedy antics on the classic “I Love Lucy” set the path that McCarthy now boldly follows.Sure, there is one major difference between McCarthy and Ball: McCarthy also has a talent for the profane, spinning webs of foul-mouthed anger and insults at anyone who gets in her characters’ way, while Ball was the put-upon housewife whose harebrained schemes always fell apart in the end. McCarthy’s comic bullhorn of a mouth is the main reason her films have been rated R, so let’s just get it out of the way that if you really hate hearing foul language so much it ruins your movie-watching experience, steer clear of her.But if you can just let her words slide past your ears, with the understanding that as a discerning and disciplined adult you’re not going to wind up bursting into comic tirades at everyone in your life just from watching a movie, then you’re missing out on a woman who just might be the funniest person on the planet today. And she’s got her funniest movie yet with the new film “Spy,” written and directed by her collaborator on her breakthrough film “Bridesmaids,” Paul Feig. I’m not going to tell you that you have to let your personal standards down if you really hate swearing. But I’ve personally discussed the issue of foul language with at least two orthodox priests whose mission is working with people in Hollywood, and they both said as long as foul language isn’t intended to seriously blaspheme God, used to describe sexual acts or outright anger/hatred towards someone, the F word shouldn’t concern anyone as being sinful. McCarthy’s films are sex-free and her anger is so ridiculously over the top that one could never take it seriously, so I’ll just say that I think most grown adults will have an absolute blast at this movie.Actually, there are two other caveats about the film: the action is surprisingly intense, and several shootings spew blood, and there’s a moment where a poisoned drink burns through a man’s throat. It’s graphic but quick and followed by an absurd moment almost immediately. And in the one truly offensive moment of the film, a man’s cell phone photos reveal a couple of very fast images of his penis. They are almost literally blink and you’ll miss it, however, though it would have of course been preferable to avoid them altogether.“Spy” follows a woman named Susan Cooper (McCarthy), who is the harried secretary of CIA superspy Bradley Fine (Jude Law). She serves as the eyes and ears for Fine on his missions, observing his surroundings via surveillance cameras and warning him where the bad guys are in a room so he can kill them before they get him.But only James Bond can be perfect, and he’s shot dead by a ruthless international arms dealer named Reyna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) while tracking her to prevent Boyanov from selling a nuclear bomb to another international rogue figure. Boyanov reveals to Susan that she has the information on the next four most important CIA assassins, including Rick Ford (Jason Statham), and that she can kill any and all of them as a result.And so it is that the head of the superspies (Alison Janney) needs to send someone unknown and unrecognized In to tail Boyanov before she can sell off her nuke. And Susan volunteers for the job, since she’s flown so far under the radar her entire career that no one could possibly recognize her. Ford thinks the idea of sending Susan is dangerous and absurd, but the spy boss observes that Susan was a surprisingly adept hand to hand combat master and expert shooter in her CIA training videos and decides to send her in anyway.Thus begins an utterly ridiculous series of misadventures, as Susan is sent to one European locale after another, each time with a different insanely funny costume and fake personality: a cat lady with 10 cats in one location, an old lady from Iowa in another. Against orders, Ford has followed her to Europe in the hopes of killing Boyanov the second they find her, and he and Susan wind up engaged in an ever-growing rivalry throughout the film.The movie’s plot gets ridiculously complicated while remaining utterly silly fun throughout, as it is nearly impossible not to laugh at McCarthy’s ample physical-comedy talents – including hand to hand combat, knife fighting and an amazing chase scene where she rides a scooter in amazing fashion - and vituperative mouth. Again, if you really can’t handle swearing, steer clear, but anyone else will find themselves doubled over with laughter so much their sides will literally ache by the end.
'Aloha' is filled with heart and humor
May 29, 2015 / 00:00 amThere was a time when it was enough for a filmmaker to make a great movie, and nothing else mattered. There were writers and directors whose name on a poster signified that viewers were in for a treat, whether they were seeing a movie by Preston Sturges or John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock or Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese.For just over a decade, Cameron Crowe was among those greats, with classics like “Say Anything,” “Jerry Maguire” and his tour de force, “Almost Famous,” all coming between 1989 and 2000. But then he fell from grace, and fell hard, with a disastrous 2005 movie called “Elizabethtown,” a highly personal tribute to his then-recently deceased father that was such a bomb it derailed both his own career and the careers of its stars, Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom.Fast forward to this weekend, when Crowe’s new movie “Aloha” hits theatres with a cast that’s almost too good to be true. Bradley Cooper, fresh off the $500 million worldwide smash “American Sniper,” is the head of an ensemble that includes Rachel McAdams, Emma Stone, Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin, Danny McBride and John Krasinski of “The Office” – and yet, the movie has garnered near-poisonous advance word of mouth, largely because industry insiders are criticizing its marketing campaign.The good news for viewers is, this is a great movie, filled with all the hallmarks that make Crowe one of our most vital filmmakers: vibrant performances, memorable dialogue and situations that truly wrap viewers into moral dilemmas that are comic and heartbreaking all at once. The bad news for Sony, which has to market it, is that this is a movie that can’t be defined and dumbed-down in a sentence, like “Hot Pursuit” and “Mad Max,” “Pitch Perfect 2” and the upcoming “Spy,” and the resulting billboards and posters are more confusing than enlightening about its plot. “Aloha” follows Cooper as Brian Gilcrest, a former military contractor who was gravely injured in Afghanistan while conducting a business mission for an eccentric billionaire named Carson Welch (Bill Murray). Forced to abandon his lifelong dreams of being an astronaut by a combination of his injuries and the government cutbacks that de-funded NASA, he’s flying back to his boyhood home of Hawaii with an unusual assignment from both the military and Welch: to convince the leader of a native Hawaiian resistance group to give his literal and figurative blessing to a new bridge between two US bases.While he’s there for the five days of his mission, Gilcrest finds himself torn between two women – a very serious ex-girlfriend named Tracy from 13 years ago (McAdams) and a pilot named Alison Ng (Stone), who has volunteered to be his military escort throughout his stay. At first, Alison seems overbearing and annoying, while the now-married Tracy has the forbidden allure of an exotic past lover. And as he navigates his way between the two women, Gilcrest is also having to wrestle with his conscience as he learns what his prayer-seeking mission is really about.Since this is a Cameron Crowe movie, all of this is more unique and involving than a basic plot description could ever convey. This is the writer who coined all-time catch phrases like “Show me the money!” and “You complete me” in “Jerry Maguire,” brought us the iconic image of John Cusack holding a boombox over his head to express undying love in “Say Anything,” and refashioned Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” into an anthem of youthful rock n’roll freedom in “Almost Famous.”On top of it all, “Aloha” is one of the most moral movies to come out of the Hollywood mainstream in a long time. It’s rated PG13 but I honestly couldn’t see why, by the usual standards of the rating. There are no F words, literally a couple of milder swear words, no violence, no onscreen sex (two unmarried characters are shown lying in bed together talking after implied sex, however), and everyone winds up doing the right thing. It won’t appeal to young kids, and likely not teenagers, but for adults, it’s a rare film that respects both your intelligence and your conscience.“Aloha” may be hard to describe in a sentence or two, or those sentences may not grab a prospective filmgoer’s attention as an easily defined genre piece. But it is filled with heart and humor, breathtaking moments of romance and heartbreaking moments of choices between right and wrong that are universally relatable and eminently lovable.In other words, it’s not prefabricated garbage from the Hollywood assembly line, but rather a film that is memorable enough to stand the test of time. It’s the kind of movie that people will look back on someday and wish they’d given a chance to the first time around in theaters. Here’s your chance, don’t blow it.
'Tomorrowland' carefully crafted and highly entertaining
May 22, 2015 / 00:00 amThere has never been a movie studio that has utterly dominated the family marketplace more strongly than Disney right now. Bearing control over not only its own illustrious lineage of famous characters and films, but also of other mega-popular entertainment brands including Pixar, Marvel, “Star Wars” and the Muppets, it seems there is no way the famed conglomerate can do wrong.That theory is put to the test this weekend with the new movie “Tomorrowland,” produced by Disney and based on the idea of the Tomorrowland section of the Disney theme parks. When this project was announced a couple years back, it seemed like the height of product-placement cynicism – but unlike the morons responsible for utter dreck like 2012’s film “Battleship,” the execs at Disney were smart enough to know the stakes were high and that maintaining their credibility mattered.As a result, some of the most creative minds in the business were assigned the task of creating an actual story that was entertaining and had something to say, rather than 90 minutes of rides coming to life. Brad Bird, the visionary director behind “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles” and the last “Mission: Impossible” movie, was put in the director’s chair, while Damon Lindelof of the beloved TV series “Lost” was hired to write the screenplay with him.Add in George Clooney in a rare turn starring in a blockbuster and a family film (as opposed to prestige pictures for adults), and you’ve got one impressive pedigree. And the results are impressive as well, with the creative team’s efforts resulting in a movie that plays nearly at the same level as the first “Back to the Future.”Much like the plot of that timeless classic from 1985, “Tomorrowland” is rooted in the adventurous and often funny friendship between a teenager and an eccentric inventor, with the 21st century twist being that the main hero is a girl named Casey (winningly played by Britt Robertson) this time. But the action starts back at the 1964 World’s Fair, where a young boy inventor named Frank (Thomas Robinson) presents his jet-pack invention to the head of a young inventor’s contest (Hugh Laurie), only to be rejected when he admits its flying capabilities aren’t fully functional.Dejected, Frank is ready to abandon his dreams when a mysterious girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) – who was lurking near the contest head – discreetly hands him a pin with the letter T on it and tells him to follow her ride-car into the Fair’s version of the “It’s a Small World” ride. Busting through the crowded line, Frank leaps into a car and sees a laser hit his new pin – causing the “Small World” ride to stop and drop him down a mysterious chute into the futuristic world of Tomorrowland.Frank is elated to spend years there inventing things while developing unrequited feelings for Athena, and it is from that point that the story leaps into the present day and follows the adventures of the aforementioned girl Casey. She’s the daughter of a NASA engineer (Tim McGraw) who’s about to lose his job when three rocket launch platforms at Cape Canaveral are permanently taken down, and she gets arrested when she tries to disable the equipment involved in the dismantling.As she’s bailed out from jail, Casey is handed a pin with the letter “T” on it, and finds that when she touches it, she can see quick glimpses of a brighter, flashier, seemingly futuristic world. Her dad thinks she’s crazy or on drugs, but she soon sneaks away in the dead of night to track down a Houston kitsch store whose Internet ad features the only image of the pin to be found anywhere on the Web.Casey’s quest for the truth behind the pin surprisingly leads her into contact with Athena as well, despite the fact that Athena is still a girl who hasn’t seemed to age a bit in the past 50 years. And while those two find themselves chased by and battling all manner of androids and robots, the key to their understanding everything comes from finding the now-reclusive adult Frank (Clooney) and roping him into their quest against his will.What’s at stake is the entire fate of Earth and mankind as we know it, and that fact is not just a fun way of raising the stakes to the ultimate level. It’s also a smart means for Lindelof and Bird to gently educate kids about the myriad problems faced by the world today from nuclear proliferation to climate change, and encourage them through the heroic and unflappably optimistic Casey to believe that it’s never too late to set the world back on the right course.Yes, this plot sounds convoluted, but the zippy pace and zesty performances keep it lively and memorable throughout. Besides, it’ refreshing to find a summer blockbuster whose plot keeps viewers constantly surprised and on their toes, and which finds a way to respect the intelligence of audience members of all ages.There is no foul language other than a few “Hells” and one “Oh my God!”, and no sex or nudity of course. While the movie is rated PG, it is packed with a surprising amount of action that Bird manages to tone and pace just right to avoid being too gruesome for little ones – but parents of younger kids age 8 and under should be aware there are a few scary moments and that realistic-looking androids have their fake heads shot off or torn off at a few points in the movie.While some might argue that any mention of environmental problems and climate change is politically correct messaging, I am a conservative and felt that it steered clear of heavy-handed politicizing. Casey is held up as an example of a girl who cares about the world around her and has the optimism to try, and Pope Francis himself has recently said not caring about the world in the form of our carbon footprint is a sin.Carefully crafted yet wildly entertaining, “Tomorrowland” is one movie that will make viewers of all ages happy to be watching it right now.
'Pitch Perfect 2' delivers astounding fun this weekend
May 15, 2015 / 00:00 amWhen’s the last time you thoroughly enjoyed a movie from beginning to end, that put a big grin on your face from start to finish and made you want to feel like you could get up and dance and belt out songs with the best of the actors on screen? Improbable as it sounds, “Pitch Perfect 2” is exactly that kind of movie – and as over-the-top entertaining as a movie can get.Now before anyone accuses me of being a shill for the movie, or the kind of critic that says outrageously happy things about crappy movies in order to get their names and review quotes in newspaper and TV ads, let me make it clear that until Tuesday, I had never seen even the first “Pitch” movie. That 2012 film, featuring no big-name actors, nonetheless managed to win audiences over worldwide with its ridiculously spirited depiction of the world of college a capella singing competitions.That’s admittedly a strange thing for a movie to focus on, but the movie – starring Anna Kendrick as a shy freshman at the fictional Barden College who finds popularity and empowerment when she joins an all-girl singing team called the Barden Bellas and leads them to win the national championship – was a refreshing antidote to the sex-drenched messages that are targeted at modern society, and especially teens, on a constant basis.That’s especially true coming from female pop singers like Beyonce who make it seem like even at the top of their game, it’s necessary to roll around on stage floors and video sets wearing next to nothing in order to get attention, rather than relying on actual singing talent or songwriting chops to succeed. One big reason the first “Pitch” was a hit was the fact that it almost seemed like the perfect pushback against the insidious messages spewed forth by the music industry.It didn’t have a complex story to tell, just an infectious spirit of joy and explosive musical talent that made it a worthy successor to the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland, “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” musicals of the 1930s and 1940s. After conquering the box office and the pop charts with the soundtrack, “Pitch Perfect 2” opens Friday in an attempt to build on the success of the first one.The Bella's are back, and this time they’re reaping the rewards of their championship by giving a command performance at the Lincoln Center to a packed audience of dignitaries including the president and Michelle Obama (seen in hilariously obvious stock footage). But when Bella member Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) rips her pants widely and reveals – offscreen and implied – that she’s not wearing any underwear while spinning on a swing high above the stage, the Bellas are disgraced and stripped of their right to defend their American championship and the right to recruit new members.But soon they find a loophole to get their honor back, by taking on a German championship team called Das Music Machine at the world a cappella championships in Copenhagen, Denmark. The road to that showdown, filled with musical numbers, funny montages and a non-stop sense of fun, is a silly ride to take, but one that’s seemingly impossible not to enjoy.The filmmakers behind “Pitch Perfect 2” deserve some real credit and praise for showing us young women who (aside from the offscreen disaster with Fat Amy that opens the film) are creative, ambitious, smart, team workers and essentially sisters working together for positive goals. Aside from using the “B” word a couple times regarding the German team, there is almost no foul language, as well as no violence, no onscreen sex and no onscreen nudity.In fact, this is a rare Hollywood movie focused upon young attractive women who are either in relationships or heavily pursued for dates, yet who do not engage in premarital sex or even imply it onscreen. The first “Pitch” has a few more sexual references than this one, which means that Banks and her team actually cleaned up the script compared to the first movie (whose one big morally questionable moment was a singing contest set to songs about sex, albeit not graphic songs. Overall, the first “Pitch” is perfectly fine for teens and adults, while the new sequel could likely be fine for younger kids too since the sporadic innuendoes would likely fly over young ones’ heads completely.)The plus-size performer who proudly calls herself Fat Amy who does have an implied casual sex relationship with a guy from another a capella team, which is alluded to with winks and moments where they sneak off. But surprisingly even here, the man in the pairing (hot rising comedian Adam Devine, as Bumper) wants to make it a fully-rounded love relationship that can have permanence. While he is shot down by Fat Amy at first, she changes her mind later and embraces true love in a devastatingly funny sequence set to a classic 1980s love song.The Bellas, from Kendrick and Wilson on down, are a wonder to behold, and actress Elizabeth Banks – who plays a hilariously shameless TV analyst of the competition - does a startlingly good job in her directing debut. This movie moves like a freight train from start to finish, slick and powerful and sure of its path.I didn’t have much hope for a movie with as generic a title as “Pitch Perfect 2,” since it sounded at best like an assembly-line, soulless creation. Thankfully, it’s instead an example of what can happen when Hollywood professionalism delivers a film that’s astounding fun.
'Hot Pursuit' isn't high art, but fine for a summer weekend
May 8, 2015 / 00:00 amIt’s rare to find a mainstream Hollywood movie where the heroine is a Christian who’s open and proud about her faith, and is never shown to be a hypocrite. Unfortunately, that’s one of the few pleasant surprises of the new comedy “Hot Pursuit,” in which Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara of TV’s “Modern Family” improbably team up in the kind of storyline that makes you cringe even as you’re realizing you’ve seen something like it a thousand times before.It’s a broad comedy about two women – a policeman and a drug lord’s wife – who have to go on the run from killers who are determined to stop the wife from testifying against the drug cartel in court. The female cop is Cooper (Reese Witherspoon), whose father was the best cop in her city, even though she’s turned out to be a bumbling klutz relegated to the evidence room.Cooper finally gets a chance at a big case when her chief assigns her to be the protector of Daniella Riva (Sofia Vergara), the wife of a drug kingpin who is headed with her husband to testify against the head of their cartel. But when Cooper goes to pick up Daniella, two teams of men enter the Rivas’ house and kill her husband and the US Marshal assigned to oversee Cooper.Thus, Cooper and Daniella go on the run in a desperate attempt to stay alive and make it to the testimony. Along the way, numerous car chases, foot chases and other comic mayhem abound, with the two women bonding along the way. Yes, this is the kind of plot you’ve seen a thousand times before in buddy-cop movies, but the twist that the filmmakers are hoping will make it seem fresh is that this time the buddies are women.It’s far from enough, despite the fact that Witherspoon and Vergara put a lot of manic energy into their parts under the frantic direction of Anne Fletcher (“The Proposition”). They’re trying too hard the whole time, and often the humor arises from such gross discussion topics as menstruation, or a cheap and easy reliance on lesbian humor, from when Daniela starts to grab and kiss Cooper to make a dumb redneck lust after them as a lesbian couple.It’s a shame that such prime talent is put to waste in the service of such a formula movie, because there are other moments that are a great deal of fun, including a big chase scene in which two different cars filled with bad guys are shooting at a bus filled with vacationing seniors in the seats and Witherspoon and Vergara fighting for control of the wheel.Audiences will likely find it enjoyable enough, even though several scenes cross into stupidity and this is hardly the material that earned Witherspoon her Oscar. But even the most serious of actors need to have fun once in a while, and she likely saw this as giddy fun. The strongest surprise from a Christian perspective is that Cooper and Daniella are both shown as believers and speak of prayer, God, and the angels in matter of fact and positive ways.Altogether, "Hot Pursuit" isn’t high art, but it’s enough basic fun for most adults and older teens to enjoy on a summer weekend.
'Avengers: Age of Ultron' and 'Ex Machina' movie reviews
May 2, 2015 / 00:00 amThe summer movie season is officially upon us this weekend, with the release of the new “Avengers: Age of Ultron” leading the annual flood of superheroes, action movies and broad comedies into theatres. But while the new movie costs $250 million and features an array of star actors including Robert Downey, Jr., Scarlett Johannsen and Jeremy Renner in its cast, there is a more intriguing science fiction film that’s also in theatres now, called “Ex Machina.”The two movies couldn’t be more different in terms of style, tone, scope and the audience they’re trying to reach, but both are dealing with the same moral and ethical question: can mankind create robots with artificial intelligence (AI), and if it can, will the robots prove to be a danger to our very existence? “Avengers” handles the topic as a backdrop to fast-flying wisecracks and high-flying action that’s fine for most kids (certainly over age 10) to handle, while “Ex Machina” is a thoughtful yet occasionally disturbing mind-bender for adults.I’ll get my thoughts on “Avengers” out of the way first, because most of the planet is going to see this movie without giving a thought to how critics feel about it. Packed to the gills with about a dozen superheroes and their human allies like Nick Fury (played by the reliably cool Samuel L. Jackson) facing off against a giant force-field called Ultron that Tony Stark/Iron Man hoped would help save mankind from alien attack but which becomes evil itself, the movie is filled with frenzied action and a steady stream of hilarious one-liners that fans will appreciate in direct proportion to how much they’re obsessed with the characters and the Marvel universe they operate in.There’s no sex or nudity, although an ongoing flirtation between Hulk’s human alter ego, David Banner, and Black Widow has a couple of mildly racy comments. The fact that Captain America is trying to navigate present-day society with a 1940s mindset provides comical reasons to remind other characters like Tony Stark not to swear, so foul language consists of a couple of s-words.And while the movie is packed with fights and chases that I occasionally felt were a little intense for kids – and Ultron takes a robot form that’s a bit scary as its earthling persona – overall “The Avengers” continue the Marvel tradition of good clean fun that emphasizes a strong love of the U.S. and the positive message that even the oddballs among us can team up and save the world.“Ex Machina,” meanwhile, is largely a three-person tale taking place over a week in the middle of the Norwegian nowhere. Meaning, it follows the strange adventure that a brilliant young techie named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) experiences when he wins a company-wide contest to be the new assistant to the brilliant inventor named Nathan (Oscar Isaacs) who owns the company at his massive Scandinavian estate on his latest project: creating an AI robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander) whom Nathan hopes will revolutionize human/robot relations.Caleb is to test Ava and see if he can tell that she is a robot, or if she has developed so strongly that she has a genuine free will of her own. Ava has a beautiful face and a body that mixes visible wiring with alluring curves, leaving Caleb off-balance from the beginning, while Nathan is an alcoholic, anti-social recluse who treats his female Asian assistant with an utter lack of empathy.At first, the interaction between Caleb and Ava seems innocent, and viewers are absorbed into the hypnotic rhythms of life in the middle of nowhere. But when the scientific home base starts getting hit by a string of blackouts, things get really strange: Ava secretly tells Caleb that Oscar can’t be trusted, before slipping back into fully-friendly mode the moment power is restored and the omnipresent surveillance cameras are turned back on.Thus, “Ex Machina” becomes an edge-of-your-seat mind game that one could easily imagine Alfred Hitchcock making in the 21st century, though its cold visual sense and intensely creepy atmosphere are torn straight out of the Stanley Kubrick playbook of “2001” and “The Shining.” It raises some truly interesting and frightening alarms about the ethics on the frontiers of science, at a time when in reality we are being told that scientists in real life can likely create artificial intelligence by 2050.The movie, written and directed brilliantly by British cult-favorite writer Alex Garland (who previously wrote the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach” and the zombie-movie classic “28 Days Later”) , leaves the biggest moral lessons up to the viewer, which means the movie refrains from heavy-handedness in either direction and will inspire intense discussions among viewers afterwards. There are about 20 to 30 varying levels of swear words throughout the movie (a few F words, a few milder, a few uses of God’s name in vain, but none on an excessive level), a minimum of violence (although it’s a tad bloody when it finally happens) and some graphic female robotic nudity from other robots on the estate, so “Ex Machina” is definitely for adults even as it is as shot as tastefully as possible.All told, both movies are worth seeing, but “Avengers” is good family fun while “Ex Machina” is something that only adults should encounter.
'Little Boy' strong in faith, but not wavering in quality
Apr 24, 2015 / 00:00 amThe idea of a little faith being able to change lives, and even the world, goes back as far as the parable of the mustard seed: that even faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain. The new movie “Little Boy,” out in theatres today, hinges on that parable but also is a prime example itself of that tale’s principles in action.Starring the remarkable child actor Jakob Salvati as an 8 year old kid nicknamed “Little Boy” by everyone around him because he’s tiny for his age, the movie depicts his life during WWII in the small town of O’Hare, California, as he struggles with the fact his father got drafted into the war against the Japanese. His father, played by veteran actor Michael Rapaport in a relatively brief but superb performance, had to leave his family and mechanic business behind when his older son, London (David Henrie), was rejected from service due to having flat feet.With his father away, Little Boy feels alone in the world, as he is bullied by the rest of the kids in town and treated with condescension by adults. Under the sway of his bitter older brother, who harbors hatred for Japanese people that’s fueled by US propaganda films and news that his father been captured by Japanese soldiers, he throws rocks at the house of an old Japanese townsman named Hashimoto (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), breaking a window.London does even worse, lobbing a Molotov cocktail at Hashimoto’s house but thankfully missing the mark. He winds up in jail, while Little Boy winds up getting a lecture from his priest (Tom Wilkinson), who tells him to get rid of his anger and frustration about his father and channel his energy into positive action.Little Boy believes in the powers of a famous movie magician and wants to believe that he has the power to save his father, so the sympathetic priest gives him a list of good works based on the beatitudes – such as visiting the sick and clothing the naked – and tells him he has to complete the list to truly have his faith give him power. But the priest also adds one extra duty to the list – to befriend Hashimoto.The heart of “Little Boy” develops from the friendship between the young kid and the older Japanese man, who turns out to be as well-drawn and powerful a character as the immortal Mr. Miyagi of the “Karate Kid” films. As Little Boy learns life lessons from his accomplishing his list of duties and from the sage older man, the movie delves into a number of surprising directions, which all have a remarkable payoff.While this is a family film and counts Mark Burnett – the most powerful Christian in Hollywood due to his work on everything from creating “Survivor” to producing the epic miniseries “The Bible” – among its producers, “Little Boy” manages to tackle issues of racism and war in a mature, realistic fashion. Viewers see the world largely through Little Boy’s eyes, but at no point does the film – co-written by Alejandro Montaverde and Pepe Portillo, and directed by Montaverde – ever feel dumbed down, and it will definitely move adult audiences as well. Montaverde was also the writer and director of the pro-life drama “Bella,” which was an art-house hit in 2006. That movie drew a lot of support from Catholics and other Christians, but to be honest, its storytelling was not a strong suit beyond its message. “Little Boy” represents an enormous growth on every level, and it shows in the fact that it has drawn acclaimed, recognizable actors like Rapaport, Wilkinson and Emily Watson (as Little Boy’s mom) to the film.Special praise must be reserved for Eduardo Verastegui, who plays a small part in the film as another Catholic priest but who was a major producer on the film. Having already succeeded with “Bella,” he has dedicated his life to making films that advance Catholic beliefs when possible, but to absolutely never make a movie that violates his faith principles.Here’s hoping that a bigger mainstream audience finds this movie and supports it, as “Little Boy” is exactly the kind of Christian – and more specifically Catholic – filmmaking we need. Strong in faith but not wavering in quality, respecting every viewer’s intelligence without having to be inappropriate for children, it is quite an achievement and well worth every penny spent on tickets.Please make sure you support it with your family and friends this weekend. With the crush of summer movies coming up, it needs a strong start and if you don’t support a faith-based, family-friendly movie of this caliber, you have no right to complain that Hollywood doesn’t make more like it.
Movie review: 'While We're Young'
Apr 17, 2015 / 00:00 amMidlife crises are always rife with complications, and those complications often make great fodder for fiction. The new movie “While We’re Young,” written and directed by the outstanding young filmmaker Noah Baumbach, shows that the topic can be funny, a bit touching and even a tad mysterious all at the same time.“Young” features the powerhouse foursome of established stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, and red-hot rising stars Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, as two couples who become unlikely friends despite a generational divide. In casting such appealing actors, Baumbach manages to pull off the difficult trick of finding likable human characters amid the often annoying world of New York City hipsters.Stiller plays Josh, an established yet struggling filmmaker who has been stuck for the past decade on a documentary that’s so pretentious and boring, even he can’t describe it easily himself. Watts is his wife Cornelia, who has never really found a strong career and who also harbors regrets that she wasn’t able to have children despite numerous scientific attempts to conceive back in her thirties.While teaching a continuing-education class on documentaries, Josh is approached one night by a young couple named Jamie (Driver) and Darby (Seyfried). Jamie claims to be a passionate fan of Josh’s work, and asks him to meet up in-depth outside of class despite the fact that Jamie is only auditing the course for free.Yet, eager for any sense of praise and validation as he’s mired in his early forties, Josh takes him up on the offer, and the two couples become fast friends. Josh and Cornelia had long felt the rest of their friends slipping away from them as everyone else became parents, so teaming up with vibrant hipsters eager to include them in activities outside of “mommy music” classes and parenting discussion groups is instantly appealing.Cornelia joins Darby in a hip-hop dance class, while Josh starts wearing odd hats chosen by Jamie, and the two couples bike through Brooklyn and sneak through subway tunnels together. But something about Jamie always seems just a little too perfect.When Jamie starts catching breaks on his own documentary project that Josh could only dream of – and even gains the approval of Cornelia’s dad (Charles Grodin), a legendary documentarian who has never embraced Josh’s work – Josh is determined to find out if there’s a larger game being played against him. And it’s in this mystery, which remains mostly comic in tone but is ultimately nearly as complex and surprising a revelation as the ending of “The Sixth Sense,” that Baumbach raises the movie to an entirely different level.Baumbach has long specialized in lacerating yet comic portraits of self-absorbed New Yorkers, and has even pulled off a screenplay Oscar nomination for “The Squid and the Whale” along the way. Yet, whether depicting the effect a toxic marriage has on children in “Squid” or the life of a young woman learning to break out of her shell in “Frances Ha!”, he has only slowly but surely learned how to create characters that audiences actually want to be around.His prior collaboration with Stiller, the 2010 film “Greenberg,” was so odd and neurotic that the movie gained nationwide notoriety for the fact that thousands of its attendees demanded refunds. That won’t be the case with “Young,” an infinitely more appealing movie that hits on themes of aging, parenthood and finding one’s place in the world in ways that are universal.As the older couple, Stiller and Watts are an ace team who truly feel like they have shared decades of ups and downs together, and who remain inspiring for having done so. Seyfried and especially Driver have the more complicated job of appearing sweet and happy on the outside while harboring far greater complexity within.A major presence in the acclaimed HBO series “Girls,” Driver uses his offbeat facial features and off-kilter speech rhythms to mesmerizing effect, and is poised to become a superstar with his upcoming lead role in December’s new “Star Wars” movie. The fact that he nearly steals a movie in which he nearly steals another man’s life is just one of the many pleasures that this thoughtful, intriguing and richly entertaining movie has to offer.“While We’re Young” is rated R for its language, and nothing else, and while there are a couple rants by Stiller in which he uses the F word a few times within a minute – including a big argument with Watts – the movie overall is a positive portrait of two married couples in a New York City rife with unmarried cohabitation.Beyond the movie’s pleasantly funny surface and eventual sense of mystery, “Young” also offers some depth regarding the pressures to have children and the toll it can take on those who are unable to do so. It balances touching moments in which Josh and Cornelia express their sadness and frustration at not being able to bring a child to term (they’ve had a couple of miscarriages), against hipster couples who seem to have babies just because “it’s time”, as if the children are merely lifestyle accessories.While I can’t give away the ending of the movie, which comes after a huge plot twist, the story does ultimately come to a very life-affirming ending that is perfect for Josh and Cornelia and will make viewers value their own station in life, no matter their age, as well.
Paul Walker's legacy lives on in his charities, latest film
Apr 10, 2015 / 00:00 amLast weekend, while most of us Catholics were focused on Easter weekend and the three most holy days of the year, the movie “Furious 7” – the seventh movie in the “Fast and the Furious” series of action movies - was breaking records at the box office. While seemingly just an action film filled with two hours of mayhem involving fast cars, explosions and the race to control a microchip that could create the most powerful surveillance system on the planet, the movie resonates with viewers on a deeper level for several reasons.The most obvious reason is that the series’ costar, Paul Walker, died in 2013 during the making of the film as he and a friend took a wild joyride in a car that burst into flames, killing them almost instantly. It was initially easy to label this as merely reckless behavior and scoff at the 40-year-old Walker for having engaged in such reckless behavior, but then a deeper picture of the man emerged – with an Entertainment Weekly reporter writing that Walker was the most genuinely decent star they had met in the 15 years of their writing career.It turned out that Walker was a devout Christian who was deeply involved in charitable activities that went far beyond writing donation checks and showing up for attention on red carpets. He founded the charity Reach Out Worldwide (ROWW), a disaster relief organization that was designed to cut through the usual red tape and help rush urgent care to the people suffering from the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.In the three years between ROWW’s founding and Walker’s death in 2013 (the charity still goes strong today), it sent medical teams to Indonesia after the 2010 tsunami, and sent an entire crew of workers to lead the clean-up in Alabama after it was devastated by tornadoes. In fact, Walker bought $15,000 in power tools himself and then had his friends drive his own pickup truck from California to Alabama filled with even more tools.Another hotspot for ROWW help was the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan, the largest storm ever recorded. And Walker was also training to become a paramedic, with thoughts of giving up acting in the next few years to save lives for a living.These are surprisingly deep involvements for a Hollywood actor in his prime, and Walker further showed strong character as a deeply involved father to an unexpected daughter he fathered at age 25. But these concerns and actions fit in with the surprisingly deep ethos that underpins the “Fast and Furious” film series- especially those from the fourth film on.It was in that 4th film, 2009’s “Fast & Furious”, that the series’ other main star, Vin Diesel, demanded a greater say in the writing and direction of the movies in the series. And with that insistence came a stronger emotional subtext to the movies, as the gang emphasized just how much the other members were like family to them.There was also a strong element of faith and prayer that got heightened in the last four films, as Diesel’s character Dominic Toretto, frequently wears a crucifix (in fact, a crucifix in the newest film is a key plot point) and leads his family and friends in sincere prayers before meals. It’s refreshing to see a team of bone-crunching, speed demon all-American heroes can also be shown as people of faith who draw more strength from that than from their perceived coolness.There’s not much else out worth seeing this month of April, all the way until the release of the new “Avengers” movie on May 1. Action movie fans will have a blast with the latest “Furious” movie, but the rest of us who want to see people of prayer portrayed positively in Hollywood will find plenty to be happy here.
Over a decade after its debut, 'The Passion' stands alone
Apr 3, 2015 / 00:00 amThere was a time in the 1930s through the ‘50s when Bible-based films were regularly released by Hollywood, as grand spectacles filled with moviedom’s biggest stars. Many of these became timeless classics, watched each year during the Easter and Christmas seasons.Who doesn’t love watching “The Ten Commandments” every Easter, with an all-star cast of legends led by Charlton Heston bringing some of the most exciting stories ever recorded to life? It still plays today on ABC after 40 years of annual showings, and still draws viewers nationwide, and this year it is just one faith-filled option for viewers, as NBC starts airing the epic miniseries “A.D.” about the earliest days of the Christian church after Christ’s return to Heaven.Yet none of those movies ever depicted the true horrors of Christ’s suffering for our sins like Mel Gibson’s film, “The Passion of the Christ.” Even more than a decade after the release of that 2004 release, I am rendered speechless each time I see it.Under the careful guidance of writer-director Mel Gibson, the film takes an uncompromising look at the mockery and scourging of Christ, and the long walk He endured lifting the cross on the way to Calvary, and His precious Sacrifice for our sins.I can recall the reactions of not only myself, but the packed theatre around me in a Los Angeles suburb, as we all began the movie with a celebratory mindset tied to the fact we finally had a movie that truly respected our Savior. But by the end, that mood had turned to a grim sadness as Gibson and star Jim Caviezel took us through the bloody pain of each of the lashes.By the time the movie ended with Christ dying on the cross before emerging triumphantly from His tomb, much of the audience was in tears, and a phenomenon took form. While the movie was on its way to making more than $370 million in the US and $600 million worldwide, much of the mainstream media and Hollywood itself (Mel Gibson financed the movie himself, and chose an independent distributor outside the Hollywood mainstream) didn’t understand why the movie was resonating with so many.“The Passion” has continued to have a hold on the minds and hearts of many believers, especially Catholics. Even if Gibson has some unusual angles to his take on Catholicism, he clearly understands and embraces the unimaginable horrors that Jesus endured for us, and the unflinching look he provided has inspired many to re-watch the movie annually on Holy Week and especially Good Friday.Such repeated viewings reflect a desire to connect with Christ in a way that is hard to do via a mere reading of the Bible or our own personal imaginations. To see Caviezel as Jesus streaked with blood, and His skin shredded by whips, His head subjected to the crushing cuts of the crown of thorns and then to be nailed to the cross and left to die – all of these bring the story to life in a fully present fashion that makes viewers almost feel as if they were there with the Lord.But the message of hope brought by Christ’s resurrection and re-emergence from the tomb is in the film’s last scene, of course, even more important. And the success of “The Passion” financially led the way to the current wave of Christian and Biblically-themed films – from “Heaven is For Real” and “God’s Not Dead” to “Do You Believe?” and the latest “Exodus” – that are again helping bring Heaven to earth.Let us pray that God will continue to inspire future artists to keep making such great films, and that the world will remain open to seeing them.
'Get Hard' movie review
Mar 27, 2015 / 00:00 amThere are some comedies that walk the line so precariously between being raunchily funny and patently offensive that one has to wonder throughout, which types of people are going to love it and which people are going to be thoroughly disgusted? The new movie “Get Hard,” starring Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart in a storyline that utterly destroys any sense of political correctness or decency while often being raucously funny, is a prime example.“Get Hard” stars Will Ferrell as James King, a blueblood investments kingpin who gets charged with fraud, and Kevin Hart as Darrell, the deluxe car wash owner who KIng hires to teach him how to survive prison despite the fact he’s never been there. Along the way, the movie sets new records for scenarios involving humorous racial paranoia and homosexual panic – but just as I wondered how offensive this movie would be, I ran into and sat with a gay male friend and two extremely conservative Catholic women friends.Like the rest of the crowd, my friends exploded in laughter throughout the movie, although they also spent good chunks of the movie with their jaws dropped and looking at each other with stares that said, “I can’t believe I just saw that!” But the fact that those highly disparate friends all guffawed from start to finish – aside from one particularly offensive scene, mentioned below - is a good indication that a good number of adult moviegoers will handle and enjoy the movie.The film’s opening credits offer a savvy, fast-paced contrast between the daily lives and experiences of King and Darrell, and by extension the wealthiest in LA and those who have to hustle to survive. Darrell needs $30,000 for the down payment on a new house in a better neighborhood so he can send his young daughter to a safer, better school, while King makes $28 million in a day for his investment firm.King is also engaged to the money-chasing daughter of his boss, Marty (Craig T. Nelson), and has the world on a string until federal agents crash his engagement party and charge him with over 40 counts of fraud and embezzlement. When he refuses to cop a plea, maintaining his innocence, King is sentenced to 10 years in maximum security prison and given 30 days to get his affairs in order.Knowing nothing about prison other than he’s guaranteed to get raped by fellow inmates, King turns to Darrell to teach him how prepare to be tough – or “get hard” – for prison. His reason for selecting Darrell is simply that he’s the one black guy he knows, and he’s so casually racist that he assumes Darrell has been to prison simply because of his race.With King agreeing to Darrell’s request for the $30,000 he needs for his down payment, the lessons begin. These at first focus on getting King ready to take any kind of sexual assault thrown at him, but when Darrell can’t manage to bring himself to try performing bathroom-stall oral sex on a gay man Darrell introduces him to at a brunch hotspot, Darrell decides to toughen up, or “get hard,” once and for all.And thus begins a series of outrageous training sequences, from ridiculous exercises to locking King into a fake prison cell in his own lavish mansion, to teaching him how to trash talk. He also tries to get various street gangs to agree to protect him, with disastrous results. Along the way, he also has to figure out who framed him and try to clear his name.The stereotypes and outrageous behavior are constant, and the bathroom-stall scene goes completely over the line of bad taste, including a quick shot of male genitalia. This movie is certain to offend for those couple of minutes, and offend varying groups at other points. And there is a lot of foul language, though it kind of blends in on a movie that’s satirizing prison and the gang world.But aside from that scene, “Get Hard” is undeniably funny in spite of itself, especially when the story broadens out to mock racial conventions and stereotypes, as well as ideas of what makes a real man, macho culture and the prison system. While it has its definite moments of offending moral conservatives, it’s already receiving a huge liberal backlash from the left for daring to mock the gay lifestyle and hip-hop/gangster rap culture.How many movies dare to take on those liberal sacred cows of homosexuality and rap? Perhaps the true point of the movie is that all the crasser aspects of our American culture deserve to be poked fun at and taken down a peg.Ferrell and Hart make an ace comic team that calls to mind the best team-ups of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, in “Silver Streak “ and especially “Stir Crazy.” It’s clear that Ferrell has been re-energized by working with Hart, the hottest standup comic on the planet right now and a fast-rising movie star to boot.So if you can handle being shocked from time to time yet laughing in spite of yourself, “Get Hard” will make you laugh – even if you feel kind of ashamed when it’s over.
New Christian movie asks filmgoers 'Do You Believe?'
Mar 23, 2015 / 00:00 amThere’s been an interesting movement going on in Hollywood over the past couple of years, one which could almost be called a revolution. Movies with strong Christian or Biblical messages are coming out at a pretty fast pace, ranging from movies like “Son of God” and “Noah” to “Heaven Is For Real” and “Unbroken.”But one movie in particular seemed to capture the zeitgeist of that wave of films more than most: a little $2 million movie called “God’s Not Dead,” which rode a smart social-media plan all the way to $60 million at the box office. Its only recognizable actor was Kevin Sorbo, who was a worldwide TV star in the “Hercules” TV series before turning largely to making Christian movies, but “GND” still resonated because its mostly fundamentalist-Christian fan base was inspired to support a movie that strongly supported their faith.As a result, the writer-producers of “GND” are back with a new movie called “Do You Believe?”, which opened this past weekend nationwide. It’s a far more ambitious and compelling movie than their prior one, weaving together the stories of 12 people in Chicago who are all facing crises of faith while being far less heavy-handed about its message.But more impressively, it has a cast that is filled with veteran actors who bring the stories greater depth and power than anything “GND” attempted to achieve. Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino plays a struggling mother with a sick daughter, while Sean Astin of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Rudy” fame plays a doctor who thinks science holds all the answers to life’s questions. Lee Majors (“The Six Million Dollar Man,” “The Fall Guy”) and Delroy Lindo (a leading African-American actor from literally dozens of prime movies) also play key parts.But at the core of it all are two veteran actors, Cybill Shepherd and Ted McGinley, who lead the way as a woman struggling with the loss of her child years before, and the pastor whose sermon asking people if they believe in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is the key to bringing all the stories together. The movie does approach Christianity from a fundamentalist, born-again point of view, but it’s a big step in the right direction for faith-based films and the success of these kinds of movies bodes well for ambitious Catholic filmmakers to get their feet in the door with something besides exorcism thrillers as well.“You don’t get a chance to do that kind of movie very often,” says Shepherd, speaking at a press event recently at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. “I was very moved by the script. I had started talking to Jesus again the past couple of years, asking help me be more healthy and live in a way that makes me feel better about myself, and then two weeks later I got this role.“I wish people would take away the idea that we should help each other and go the extra mile,” continues Shepherd, who has re-embraced the Episcopalian faith of her childhood. “Do unto each other as you would have done to you, the Golden Rule.”Asked about whether she would pursue more roles in Christian-themed films, Shepherd said she would be certain to if the scripts were as good as “Do You Believe?” She feels that the swarm of name actors who jumped on the new movie was a sincere attempt to do meaningful work in a compelling story.“I just want to say what appealed to me about the story wasn’t just being Christian, but it being a great dramatic part for me,” says Shepherd. “I didn’t think about the other one being a hit. After crying at the script, I did the happy dance over getting to do it. Even with six straight weeks of Michigan nights in winter. I’d tell any actor, if you get a great part to play what are you going to do, turn it down? Do it!”For McGinley, the opportunity to star in “Do You Believe?” was the perfect culmination to his life and career, as he has mostly gained fame in secular roles on sitcoms like “Married with Children” and “Happy Days,” in addition to movies like “Revenge of the Nerds,” but has always harbored a strong Christian faith personally.“I might have played a pastor once or twice in the past – right before I killed someone in the role,” says McGinley. “But this is a great guy, a good husband, he loves his wife, but being unable to have kids is their bump in the road. I related to this guy who was trying to do a good thing and helps a pregnant teenager.“At the start, he has this encounter with a street preacher carrying a 12 foot cross in an intersection, who could be seen as crazy,” McGinley continues. “He thinks he’s doing all he can as a pastor, but the preacher says 'Do you believe?' and then has an encounter with a group of thugs . My character realizes that this is life and death, does he have that courage? He writes the sermon the next morning that brings all these people’s stories together, asking everyone, 'Do you believe?'”McGinley says he has watched pastors and priests his entire life, and has admired their ability to command an audience with a meaningful message during sermons and homilies. He himself contemplated being a pastor before turning to acting, but he believes his new role shows the impact that a great sermon can have on a life.“I’m hoping that people on the edge, that it will allow them to see what a real message of giving is like,” says McGinley. “This is about man, humanity, struggling with the perils of their life. Overcoming what is there, they can be faithful.”“Do You Believe?” Is playing in theatres nationwide.
'Run All Night' proves to be a tale of regret and redemption
Mar 13, 2015 / 00:00 amIn a strange way, Liam Neeson might just be the most Catholic action hero we’ve ever seen in movies. He’s actually Catholic (despite bizarre rumors after “Taken 2” that he was going to embrace Islam, he never has) and spoken highly about it plenty of times including in a hilarious appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s talk show.But what I’m referring to is the moral gravitas he brings to his action films. In the “Taken” trilogy, he was a secret agent who would stop at literally nothing to save his family when they were endangered. In the underrated classic “The Grey,” he has an amazing transformation from atheist to believer as he faces death in the Alaskan wilderness against nature and voracious wolves.But in the past six months, he has really dived into issues of forgiveness, redemption and whether revenge can ever be righteous, first with last fall’s “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” and this weekend with the absolutely brilliant “Run All Night.”Liam plays Jimmy Conlon, whose best friend since childhood is Sean Maguire (Ed Harris, in his best role in a decade), who grew up to be a crime kingpin in New York City. Jimmy was Sean’s best assassin, who would kill anyone Sean asked and do so with inventive brutality or ace shooting skills.The problem is, Jimmy’s guilty conscience caught up with him eventually. He left his family to protect them from ever being harmed in a revenge move by criminals, but his son Michael never understood and grew up to utterly disown him and ban Jimmy from meeting his own children. Jimmy is barely surviving now, having quit his violent ways but frequently drinking and admitting to Sean that he can’t sleep at night due to seeing the faces of all he killed.One other thorn in Jimmy’s side is a police detective named John Harding (Vincent D’Onofrio), who confronts Jimmy in a diner and taunts his guilt in the hopes of finally knowing all the names of Jimmy’s victims and being able to bring closure to their families. Jimmy drives him away, but soon comes to realize how badly he need this cop, whom he respects for being an honest one.What really brings Jimmy problems is that a high-rolling Albanian drug dealer has arrived in New York, hoping to convince Sean to help him flood New York with high-grade heroin. Sean refuses, having gone relatively legit 20 years before when he saw that the cocaine he helped distribute in the ‘70s and ‘80s had destroyed countless lives. The Albanian is not happy, especially with Sean’s sleazy son Danny, who he had paid to guarantee Sean’s interest. With Sean refusing to play ball, the Albanian wants his fat payoff back – but he doesn’t know the kid has blown it all, and Sean refuses to bail his son out of trouble on this one.The Albanian coincidentally hires Jimmy’s now-grown son Michael (Joel Kinnaman) through a limo service to go to his money meeting with Danny. But when Danny tricks the Albanian and his men, and instead ruthlessly shoots them, Michael races away from the scene. Danny goes to Michael’s house to kill Michael off to prevent him being a witness, but at the same time Jimmy has been made aware of what’s going down and has shown up at Michael’s house too – just in time to kill Danny as he’s about to shoot Michael.Jimmy calls Sean and admits he killed his son Danny, and tries to explain it was a matter of saving his own son. But there are rules in mob life, and the prime one in place now is that Sean’s thugs get to kill Michael and even the playing the field, no matter what. Jimmy refuses to follow that code and warns Sean that if he tries to kill them, he’ll rat out everybody they’ve ever killed to police detective Harding.And so the game is on, intricate pieces set into place exquisitely. A father and son on the run to clear their names, a dad determined to atone for his past and reconcile with his son, a son who slowly learns to trust, then love his dad after a lifetime of resenting him, plus corrupt cops, countless mob thugs and an ace hired killer (played by rapper/actor Common) out to stop them, and one honest cop as their only way out.Yes, that is a long setup to explain, but that’s just the first half hour of the movie. How many action movies put even a sliver of such thought into their plotting? Thriller fans should be elated that here is a rarity: a modern action movie that makes you think and respects your intelligence as well as your spirit.Now, I need to make it clear that this movie is packed with foul language and violence. The fistfights and a couple of stabbings are intense but not gory, and there’s a lot of shooting and car chases, not to mention a brilliant string of showdowns in a public housing complex that I wouldn’t dream of giving away. There is also a lot of foul language, including unfortunate uses of Jesus’ and God’s names in vain on many occasions and the usual array of R-rated bad words.But anyone who has seen R-level action movies won’t be shocked. This is the gritty world of low-level mob men, who are clearly not paragons of decency. Yet “Run All Night” is a much deeper exploration of right and wrong, of the desire to change and whether it can actually occur, of guilty consciences haunting men for decades after their worst behavior, and of families torn apart by evil actions and whether they can piece themselves back together.Those moments in “Run All Night “ – and they’re plentiful – are moments of thought and beauty, giving us Catholics much to chew on and contemplate amid this Lenten season. Writer Brad Ingelsby did a similarly smart thriller called “Out of the Furnace” that went too far to recommend morally, but he nails it here, along with director Jaume Collet-Serra as they bring us a New York filled with regret and redemption.
'Unfinished Business' stoops low for shock comedy
Mar 6, 2015 / 00:00 amFrom the moment I first saw it as a 16 year old back in 1987, “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” was one of my all-time favorite movies. I've probably seen it at least 50 times since then, with at least half of those occurring during the annual Thanksgiving week screenings that pop up on TV in order to remind us all of the funny yet bittersweet story of two traveling salesmen desperately trying to make it home for the holiday.Not many movies have been able to pull that magic off since, but the new movie “Unfinished Business” - starring Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson and Dave Franco – has that kind of feel for much of its briskly paced running time. The story of three struggling businessmen who are so desperate to land a huge deal that they'll make a madcap dash across Germany to beat their competition, the movie is extremely original and highly unpredictable with top-notch comic performances.But just like “PT&A” could have been an even greater family classic if it wasn't for the one scene where an enraged Steve Martin cusses out an auto-rental clerk by saying the F word literally 26 times in 60 seconds (I've counted), “Unfinished Business” blows its opportunity for a wider audience. Its storyline – which also includes Vaughn's lead character dealing with problems from his loving wife and kids back home – had plenty of clean laughs without having to go dirty. But it unfortunately does, and in far worse and more frequent fashion than “Planes” ever imagined.The movie follows Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn), a hardworking and loving family man with a wife and two troubled children. He quits his sales job in the opening scene, saying he's had enough of his female boss Chuck (Sienna Miller) and that he can start a company selling metals that still respects his employees and their quality of life.Only two men join him: a 67 year old named Timothy (Tom Wilkinson), who has just been laid off due to his age but wants to work, and a young guy named Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), who followed Dan out the door after failing a job interview due to his stupid answers. It is unclear throughout the movie if Mike has a mental disability or is just weird and naïve, but either way his goofiness is extremely lovable and entertaining.After a year of largely failing, the trio get a chance to close a major deal but have to travel to do so. They head to Portland, Maine, only to learn that the real deal is to be made in Berlin. So off they go, nearly penniless, to Germany with only blind hope that they will succeed – only to find that Chuck meets them there as competition for the deal they thought they had sealed.What ensues is a mad dash of bizarre meetings and misadventures. Unfortunately, writer Steve Conrad and director Ken Scott stoop to real lows for shock comedy at some moments of the movie, including the naïve Mike's attempts to have sex for the first time and the men's search for a gay businessman in the middle of a homosexual street festival. Where they end up involves highly visible male frontal nudity and jokes about extremely aberrant behavior.There is also a major scene in which the men have to enter a unisex spa with lots of non-genital nudity from both sexes, in which Trunkman is forced to drop his own pants in order to convince a major businesswoman to negotiate with him since she's already sitting nude in a sauna.The movie also features lots of foul language throughout, although this is delivered in inventive, motor-mouthed bursts from Vaughn and is a sort of trademark for the actor. If you're a fan of his prior work, you won't be offended, but if you hate hearing much profanity no matter how humorously it's delivered, then definitely count the language as another element in the “reasons to avoid” list.Overall, the movie plays as if it is schizophrenic, even though I'll admit that I found almost all of it extremely funny myself. If you can handle the movies of the Farrelly Brothers, such as “There's Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber,” you'll like this. But I'm afraid that for most of our audience, this is a must-avoid and I do wish the filmmakers had had the common sense to just keep it clean, or at least toned down, all the way through.It's also a shame because the movie has very positive portrayals of family life and the American can-do spirit in the face of adversity, and this is a film that could actually inspire some people who are facing hard times at work. Here's hoping that someone out there in Hollywood – or better yet, many of them – will have the guts to tell a refreshing, funny, adventurous story without having to wallow in moral muck along the way.
Don't miss the story behind the baby 'drop box'
Mar 4, 2015 / 00:00 amFor most film school students, a successful project means creating a compelling movie that is skillful enough to draw a good grade and maybe even an agent. But for Brian Ivie, making the student short that evolved into the full-length documentary “The Drop Box” changed his life on a far deeper level.Ivie’s immersion into the world of his subject, South Korean pastor Lee Jong-rak, inspired him to become a Christian himself. Seeing Jong-rak’s selfless devotion to his nation’s abandoned children through providing a home for abandoned and often disabled children lit a fire in Ivie that could only be quenched when he gave his life to Christ a year after beginning his project.“I read about Pastor Lee in a Los Angeles Times article on June 20, 2011, all about a man in South Korea who had put a mailbox for abandoned babies in his church and cares for them. I thought it looks like the bunker of a man who had drawn a line in the sand and said, ‘No one dies here.’ I wanted to make the movie so no one would forget his work when the article faded.”The initial short film evolved into a full-length documentary that is in the midst of special showings at theatres nationwide this week, including tonight and tomorrow. From there, the film already has a life scheduled for iTunes and other digital platforms.At the time he started working on the short version of “The Drop Box,” Ivie was just a regular college student, “a nice guy with a lot of hidden things in my life.” He watched pornography at the same level as many other young men away at school, and had what he describes as “anger issues and abusive relationships.”“I was a pretty good guy by most people’s terms still, but you still don’t get saved without repenting and asking forgiveness,” says Ivie. “A little boy recently asked me my biggest mistake, and I said that I had thought I was too good to need God’s forgiveness, and thought that sin was just a normal part of being a human being.”Ivie first reached out to Jong-rak by sending an email to him, and a month later he received a reply inviting the young filmmaker to live with him and see his work in action. Three months later, he arrived in Seoul with a team of friends as his film crew, embarking on his first trip outside the US aside from a Mexican cruise.He was astonished by what he saw at Jong-rak’s church and mission, surrounded by children whose parents had abandoned them because of cultural stigmas that consider disabled children to be signs of a curse upon their parents.Seeing Jong-rak and his team of helpers care for such children in their most vulnerable state soon led to deeper thoughts about his own life and its purpose.“It was a link in a chain, the pastor being proof of a loving God,” says Ivie, who is now 24 and engaged in film as his career. “It helped me realize I didn't have to hate myself for my sins but that God wanted me to be debt free. My brother got saved as well, and he was the closest to an atheist I’ve ever seen, so that was pretty miraculous. Other friends on the trip maybe didn’t get saved, but the experience changed their lives upside down.”Ivie notes that his conversion came about eight months into the making of his student short film, and after his transformation, he decided to return to Seoul and redo the film through his new Christian perspective. While he originally envisioned a film that would be 10 minutes maximum, he feels that God inspired him to make the film an 80 minute feature with many added points to its message.He has been pleasantly surprised to find that his USC professors were supportive of his efforts, and was even more surprised by the fact that the national Christian organization Focus on the Family chose to support him as he expanded the film’s scale. Focus financed his final trip to South Korea and has become his distribution partner on the project, helping him release it to DVD, Netflix, Amazon and iTunes.“Focus on the Family and I call it a documentary on life,” says Ivie. “I think the most powerful part of his work is him helping people not to abandon or abort their babies. He says he will embrace your suffering with you and bring the children in, that you are valuable and so is your childhood. This is a picture that asks: what if one family or man embraced others who are suffering and said we will embrace you and it grew from there. I think that could change the world.”“The Drop Box” is showing tonight and Thursday night at select theatres nationwide. For theatres and showtimes, and to learn how to order the film via DVD or online platforms, visit www.thedropboxfilm.com.
'Focus' gets it right
Feb 27, 2015 / 00:00 amThere are few greater pleasures in cinema than enjoying a well-crafted con-man thriller that respects your intelligence, features stars with sizzling charisma and chemistry, and dialogue that's witty at every turn. Very few have pulled it off since the heyday of Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant's team-ups in films like “To Catch A Thief” and “North By Northwest,” but the new Will Smith movie “Focus” - out today – is one of the rare ones to get it right.Since this is a Catholic site and it's my primary duty to alert people to the moral and ethical problems in a film, I want to make a couple of points right away. “Focus” is a movie that features massive amounts of pickpocketing, thievery, fencing of those goods that have been pickpocketed and stolen, and then on top of that there are epic feats of gambling, duplicity, backstabbing and deception.But in the context of a con-man movie, in which the audience is called upon to root for the antihero to find a way to win against ever-escalating odds, all of these illicit activities are presented in tremendously fun way, and are so complex that there is no way anyone seeing the movie could possibly walk out the door and emulate it – so they can't even really be an occasion of sin, unlike truly violent movies that can set off one's mindset to anger, or a highly sexual film inspiring illicit desires.There is only one surprise shooting, a couple of sex scenes cut away at foreplay or are implied via discreet morning-after shots, and for an R-rated movie involving criminals, the foul language is pretty limited, with perhaps 50 or so offensive words – from five or six improper uses of Jesus' name to about 20 uses of the F word, and the rest composed of minor profanities - in the full two hours. And most foul the language comes in bursts in contained, heated moments. I'm not justifying these things, but proportional to the majority of modern thrillers, these amounts of sex and foul language are minimal and will barely register with anyone who's inclined to enjoy this genre of film.Now for those adults who can just sit back and enjoy themselves with an always fun and sometimes brilliant script, “Focus” is the story of a lifelong con man named Nicky Spurgeon, played by Smith with the unique mix of charisma, humor, romance and emotional depth that marks his best work – and which here makes for one of his best roles. At the movie's outset, Nicky is enjoying a drink at a ritzy hotel bar by himself, when he notices an attractive young blonde woman named Jess (Margot Robbie, building on her “Wolf of Wall Street” breakthrough to once again show major talent) tricking a variety of men out of both their drinks and their watches and wallets.When she tries to trick him into taking her upstairs to her room and appears to seduce him, another man bursts in with a gun, claims to be her boyfriend, and threatens to kill them. It turns out to be a scam, but Nicky figures it out immediately and reveals that he knew he was being scammed all along.The next day, Nicky follows Jess out of the hotel and taunts her about her poor crime skills. She begs him to teach her how to up her game on that front, and the two start to hang out as he shows her in an incredible series of moves how he can take items off of people from virtually their heads to their toes (it's a clean scene, I swear). As she slowly impresses him with her ability to learn his illicit trade, he brings her into his organization: a group of about 30 people who can conduct scams, robberies and mass non-violent criminal actions on a basis ranging from a couple members to the entire group robbing dozens of passersby at once on a busy pedestrian street.They next move to taking on the Super Bowl in New Orleans, scamming and robbing countless men who are away for the weekend from their wives (mostly robbing while flirting over drinks, with only one quick and clothed fake seduction shown). But once Nick takes Jess to a primo box seating area to watch the game, an Asian businessman overhears them betting each other over which people in the crowd would exhibit which behavior, and a string of utterly insane bets between Nick and the businessman ensues.This sequence between Nick and the businessman is one of the best-written, most unexpected and edge of your seat mind games I have ever seen in watching thousands of films. The sequence on its own would be worth the price of admission even at today's high ticket prices, and is a masterwork on every level by writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa – whose vastly different last film, “Crazy Stupid Love” was one of the absolute best films of 2011 and is highly recommended for older teens and adult viewing.From there, the movie leaps three years forward to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with Nicky hired by a world-class race-car owner to figure out how to trick his main competitor into buying a bogus device that gives fake readings of fuel efficiency to the cars that use it, in the hopes that such a deal will give him the advantage to dominate the racing world. Nicky is all set with a fresh con to set the deal up – but then sees Jess arrive at a party, only to discover that she's now the girlfriend of the man who's hired him for this gig.Since they had parted ways under abrupt circumstances, her re-entry into his life throws him for a loop at what appears to be just the wrong time.It may sound like I've given away all the plot, but rest assured, even this is only about half of it. The rest remains so unpredictable, fast-paced and fun that this is easily a movie that any adult should enjoy – as I reiterate that the above-mentioned immoral content is handled with as much discretion as an R-rated comic thriller will allow. As such, I highly recommend this as the movie to focus on this weekend.