Articles by Carl Kozlowski
Costner inspires in 'McFarland, USA'
Feb 26, 2015 / 00:00 amThere are few present-day actors who are as beloved and as worthy of all-time icon status as Kevin Costner. And there are even fewer great sports movies these days that can inspire greatness and teach life lessons along the lines of “Rocky” and “Breaking Away.”But thanks to the new movie “MacFarland USA ,” which opened strongly last weekend and stars Costner in the true story of a white coach who overcame culture clashes to inspire a champion team of poor Latino cross-country runners, audiences have the opportunity to have both. Better yet for Catholics, the movie is filled with imagery of the devoutly faithful teens and their families’ homes filled with images of Mary and crucifixes as well as making note of the athletes’ prayerfulness.“MacFarland” takes place in 1987, when high school coach Jim White was fired from a job as football coach in Boise , Idaho , after the latest in a string of anger-control issues occurred against a student. With his wife and two daughters in tow, he is forced to take a job as assistant coach and a teacher in McFarland , California – smack in the middle of farm country, surrounded by Hispanic migrant workers and their kids, who make up the entire student body.When White butts heads with the head coach after just one game, his life is hanging by a thread. He gets reassigned to supervise the PE period, and lazily tells his students to run around the school’s weatherbeaten and decrepit track. While most of the kids do so half-heartedly, he notices a few of the boys are able to race like the wind without even trying.The reason for that, he discovers, is that the boys are used to running a lot of miles every day at rapid speed in order to make it to and from school so they can work in the fields with their families outside of class hours. When White notices that one boy in particular is running 5 minute miles without any training , and running at that pace for several miles to boot, he goes to the principal and demands the chance to start a cross-country team.And so the powerful and surprisingly unpredictable story begins. It’s easy to assume that viewers will be subjected to a threadbare series of clichés, but the ace script by Christopher Cleveland and Bettina Gilois weaves a powerful tale filled with twists and a surprising amount of wit. Director Nikki Caro of “Whale Rider” and “North Country” fame (her direction inspired Oscar-nominated performances in both films) makes both cultures come to life and helps guide the team’s young actors (some of whom are students and migrant workers themselves in real life) to beautifully realized performances. It’s also Costner’s best big-screen role in about a decade.White comes to realize that the only way he can convince the boys’ parents to let them run for him and limit their work in the fields is if he shows that he cares about the families and their culture first. He joins them in the fields for a day, starts eating Mexican food regularly for the first time since he starts getting invited over for dinner. These moments ring true in both their initial humorous awkwardness and their eventual touching sense of understanding and connection.But the movie, despite being a PG-rated release from Disney, also manages to address gritty subject matter like domestic violence, a near-suicide attempt, unexpected pregnancy and gang violence in a way that respects adult viewers’ intelligence while handling the issues subtly enough to not scare or confuse children. It’s a delicate balancing act that is quite impressive, and gives the film extra punch when it needs it – as well.Parents need not worry that any of this is handled in a way that children can’t handle. No one is physically hurt onscreen, and there’s no sex, nudity or foul language to speak of. The most intense moment, which might scare younger children, is when Costner and his family race to a scene where one of his team members was shot by a gang member.But “McFarland USA ” isn’t defined by these gritty moments, but rather transcends them in a way that makes the movie highly truthful and that much more inspiring. I was traveling last weekend and missed getting the review in for opening day, but I highly encourage families and frankly anyone who appreciate a great and inspiring film to continue supporting it this weekend with a trip to see it.
Movie Review: "Kingsman: The Secret Service"
Feb 13, 2015 / 00:00 amDue to the extreme hype, moviegoers might think that “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the only new film coming out this weekend. But there is an alternative to that twisted, overrated sex-driven flick, which any Catholic with common sense should know to avoid in the first place. “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” a teenage James Bond-style escapade on steroids, is a British production that puts American action movies to shame. Packed with great gadgets, hilarious (but at times gruesome) action, brilliant inside-jokes about movies and clever dialogue overall, “Kingsman” could line up some surprising returns at the box office this week. Unfortunately, while there are some truly great fun moments for adults, the filmmakers took what could have easily been a teen-friendly PG13 film and allowed frequent foul language, a couple of intense (yet humorously played) violent scenes and a brief but strong implied sex scene at the end into the movie. The most graphic fight scene occurs among a congregation in a church that is clearly modeled after the Westboro Baptist Church, the notorious pseudo-Christian cult that has for years cheered on US soldiers’ deaths at their funerals, claiming that their deaths were God’s punishment for modern society’s open attitudes toward homosexuality. Adults who are used to intense action movies will have few if any problems with the content, but those who are easily offended by language and gouging, stabbing, kicking and fistfighting (though the worst of it is shown in ridiculously fast motion) might do well to steer clear. The movie stars Colin Firth (“Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “Love Actually”) as you’ve never seen him before, playing a British secret agent named Harry Hart, who is also known as Galahad. In an absolutely crazy opening sequence, he takes part in a rescue attempt of a kidnapped professor, only to botch it and in turn be saved by a fellow agent code-named Lancelot. But when Lancelot literally (yet bloodlessly) gets split in half by a sword-wielding female villain, Hart must recruit a new agent to take his place. Among the candidates is Eggsie, Lancelot’s 17-year-old son, who has grown up in the decade since his father’s death to become a thug in the making. Eggsie enters Kingsman training when he calls upon a secret number Hart gave him as a child and is bailed out after recklessly racing a stolen car backwards through the streets of London.After a hugely entertaining series of training exercises, including perhaps the most harrowing skydive scene ever committed to film, Eggsie teams up with Hart to take on the villain du jour: Valentine, a billionaire cell-phone mogul who is clearly modeled as a black Bill Gates with the lispy voice of Mike Tyson. The fact that Valentine is played by Samuel L. Jackson, cutting loose with one of his best roles of the past 15 years, takes the movie to an almost perfect comic plane.Valentine makes global warming his pet cause and tries to lobby the world’s leaders peacefully to do something about it. But when they don’t take the environmental crisis seriously enough, he devises an evil plan to depopulate the world by giving away free subscriber identity module (SIM) cards all over the world to everyone with a cell phone, then rigging them to control their minds.Once these are installed in everyone’s phones, Valentine intends to wait for the perfect moment to send a signal that will drive the phone users to brutally kill everyone around them. The test run is made in a backwoods Kentucky church modeled on the Westboro Baptist Church, with the redneck congregation driven to slaughter each other in a fashion that makes the Jonestown Massacre look like a Christmas party.I’ll leave the rest of the plot’s insanity a secret, but that church scene is going to be the red line that will potentially drive away a giant part of its potential audience in Middle America. The depiction of the mad preacher screaming about hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage is out of kilter to the rest of this otherwise comically violent and frequently foulmouthed yet undeniably charming movie. Yet even so, it’s about two minutes out of a nearly two-hour film, and much that remains after that scene goes back to being a fun romp.In a way, that’s either the blessing or the curse of the entire film. Co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn previously made the two “Kick-Ass” movies, which also featured brilliantly inventive plots and groundbreaking action sequences, yet were kind of creepy due to the fact their heroes and villains were mostly children cussing and killing their way through life. If he would just tone them down a few notches, the movies would still be crowd pleasers while drawing far more eyes.With Eggsie a bit older and more mature than the kids in “Kick-Ass,” and the absence of an eerily young girl heroine whose presence feels vaguely pedophilic, “Kingsman” is an easier film to enjoy.
Double Review: 'Jupiter Ascending' and 'Project Almanac'
Feb 6, 2015 / 00:00 amJupiter AscendingEver since unleashing the groundbreaking first “Matrix” movie on the world in 1999, Lana and Andy Wachowski have been two of the luckiest filmmakers alive. After all, since that smash hit, they have managed to crank out some of the biggest misfires of the past decade — two bad “Matrix” sequels, a live-action version of “Speed Racer” and the confusing 2012 anomaly “Cloud Atlas” — while still managing to draw an enormous budget for their latest travesty, “Jupiter Ascending.”Perhaps Warner Bros. needed a big tax write-off this year, because that is the only way to explain its reported $175 million budget. There is simply no way that this movie will earn decent money past opening night, if that, as it drove even this reviewer out of the room and into a screening of the far more competent and much less expensive “Project Almanac” after 45 minutes of mind-numbing confusion.In “Jupiter Ascending,” Mila Kunis stars as a woman named Jupiter whose father was inexplicably killed by Russian gangsters while she was still in the womb. Her mom abandons her after childbirth to other Russians, who raise her in Chicago to be a cleaning lady.For reasons that take forever to be explained and then remain painfully obtuse, Jupiter gets caught in the middle of a fast and furious attempt by ugly aliens and their human-looking leaders on Jupiter to kill her. The only one who can save her is a bounty hunter named Caine (Channing Tatum), a half-wolf and half human-looking being who also comes from our solar system’s largest planet.Why they want her is a mystery to Jupiter, and will likely be so for anyone watching this film. Nearly every line in the opening hour is a jumbled mess of exposition in which an endless series of weird names are introduced and weirder words from the planet’s vocabulary are explained to the confused earthling.Even more annoying were the endless and confusing action scenes, in which constant jump cuts and an over-reliance on lasers rendered everything an explosion of colors. The result is a mess of flying bodies and spaceships that are hard to distinguish from one another and even harder to care about.While a science-fiction movie should induce awe and wonder in a crowd, the only thing that “Jupiter” seemed to make people wonder about is how such big stars agreed to make such a terrible film. Beyond Tatum and Kunis’ embarrassing performances, in which Tatum just mumbles a lot and Kunis constantly looks like she is trying not to laugh at her lines — it’s shocking to see British actor Eddie Redmayne caught up in this trash.Redmayne is currently up for a Best Actor Oscar for his remarkable performance as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything,” but this movie could prove to be his “Norbit.” That 2006 debacle starred Eddie Murphy and was released right in the middle of Oscar voting — just as “Jupiter” is now — and is widely believed to be so bad that it led voters to deny Murphy a richly deserved Oscar for “Dreamgirls.” Those audience members who didn’t join this reviewer in fleeing the theater guffawed loudly at Redmayne’s bizarre line readings throughout. And if you don’t believe it could be this bad, consider that audience members walked out in droves at the free screening at the Sundance film festival last week, while those who remained refused to applaud, even as Tatum and Kunis were known to be in the theater.I realize that I can’t account for everything immoral that takes place in “Jupiter,” due to the fact I left early. But its rated PG-13, and from what I saw, it was mostly rated R for violence, and that was mostly ofth laser-fighting, spaceship-chasing variety, with plenty of wonton destruction of both Jupiter the planet and Chicago. There are few bad words in it, mostly because everyone’s constantly speaking in space slang from Jupiter, or in Russian, both of which have to be explained but barely are. Finally, the one scene of sexual content I noticed consisted of an evil Jupter roay getting groped by a bunch of female creatures while his shirt’s off, insinuating an orgy but again, the scene is so confusingly written and poorly shot like the rest of the movie and therefor its just more creepy than salacious.Basically, my advice to you, regardless of how immoral this movie is or not, just do not see it. It’s bad on every imaginable level. You’ll thank me for sparing you the money.Project AlmanacFeeling the need to restore my faith in filmmaking, and curious to compare how a sci-fi film with a much lower budgeted would compare, this reviewer actually paid to see the week-old release “Project Almanac” rather than suffer one second more for free with “Jupiter.” “Almanac” has no recognizable stars, and at $12 million cost far less than one-tenth of the budget for the Wachowski tragedy.The lack of recognizable faces plays in the favor of “Almanac,” which is the latest in the found-footage school of movies started by “The Blair Witch Project.” It’s about a group of science-whiz teens led by David, who gets accepted to MIT but needs to come up with an amazing science project to win a scholarship to the notoriously expensive school.He and his best friends find plans for a time-travel machine that his dad — a long-dead scientist — created secretly many years ago. With his sister Christina filming their efforts on a video camera to document everything for MIT’s scholarship committee, the gang goes through a series of fun near-misses on the device before finding they have succeeded.Using their newfound ability, they first do fun things like get revenge on a bully, attend a Lollapalooza concert they had missed, and find winning lottery numbers they then use to get rich beyond their imagination. However, as David keeps pushing it, trouble starts to brew and they find they have to undo the dramatic changes they have unwittingly caused by altering events.“Almanac” is a fairly innocent movie, with one possible yet unclear “F” word, occasional “S” words and some fairly mild sexual innuendos spoken throughout but not constantly. The filmmakers wisely keep the focus on the science and the aforementioned escapades the kids get into while traveling time. There is also a scene that implies a teen boy and girl just had sex, but it’s not discussed or actually shown.Sure, these kids are sneaking around and therefore duplicitous, and they break into the school science lab at one point to steal hydrogen for their machine’s engine, but that shouldn’t matter to parents or anyone, frankly. If a movie about making a time-travel machine isn’t a fantasy that kids can’t replicate bad behavior from, what is? Basically, it’s the intensity of the scares as they risk death to travel that makes the movie too much for younger children and earns it a PG13. This is perfectly acceptable fare for teens and adults.That said, “Almanac” isn’t perfect filmmaking either, and is often more interesting than exciting to watch. But the young cast and filmmakers put the Wachowskis and their big stars to shame. All in all, even “Almanac” isn’t worth $15, so this is a great weekend to catch up on an Oscar-nominated movie you’ve missed, or read a book, or do your laundry.
Movie Review: "Black Or White"
Jan 30, 2015 / 00:00 amAmid an era in which racial tensions are boiling over more than they have in decades, America is looking for positive solutions to calm the storms. The movie “Selma” has come into sharp cultural focus as a result, due to its stirring depiction of Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Yet while that film does manage to bring those past dramatic incidents to vibrant life, there is still a need for filmmakers to address what’s happening in the here and now. The new movie “Black Or White” boldly steps into the breach with the tale of a white grandfather (Kevin Costner) and a black grandmother (Octavia Spencer) fighting for custody of their biracial granddaughter – and the result is a movie, that while occasionally uneven in tone, manages to be touching, smart and wickedly funny throughout. Costner plays Elliott Anderson, a lawyer who in the film’s opening scene, has learned that his wife has died in a car crash. They had been raising their granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) ever since her mother – Elliott’s daughter – died in childbirth, because the daughter was just 17 years old and Eloise’s father was a drug-using, 23-year-old street thug named Reggie (Andre Holland), who quickly fled his responsibilities. But seven years later, with Elliott left to raise Eloise alone after the crash and Reggie re-entering the picture claiming to be newly sober, his mother Rowena (Spencer) enlists her shark-lawyer brother Jeremiah (Anthony Mackie) to seek sole custody of Eloise. While they use the two mens’ changed lifestyles as their official excuse, a deeper argument emerges: Rowena and her family believe that Eloise would be better served by being raised in a black environment. Elliott fights back through his best friend and law partner Rick (Bill Burr), with the case that he has given Eloise a life of privilege and private schools that can’t be matched in Rowena’s South Central Los Angeles neighborhood. On the other hand, while Elliott resents Reggie and doesn’t trust his sobriety, he himself has a drinking problem that’s spinning out of control. These complex issues come to a head in a series of courtroom scenes with dialogue that is powerfully written and unpredictable. Ever since his immortal performance as Crash Davis in 1988’s “Bull Durham,” Costner has been known for delivering fiery speeches that combine acid wit with deeper meaning, and he pulls off a rant here that had the heavily mixed black and white crowd at the advance screening gasping, laughing and applauding. Most of the rest of the cast matches Costner note for note, with Spencer able to draw laughs with the best eye-rolls in show business. Mackie practically vibrates with fierce and prideful energy, Holland is outstanding at making his reprobate character sympathetic against the odds, and Burr – who is currently America’s hottest white standup comic – does a surprisingly good job with his meaty dramatic role. Yet, the film isn’t without problems. Although she’s at the center of the often-electric battles, Estell is a flat presence onscreen and her character is frankly annoying at times. The musical score is downright atrocious as well, repeating itself throughout the film and adding a distracting emphasis to several slowly paced weak scenes outside the courtroom. Writer-director Mike Binder, who has built a career of underappreciated yet terrific character-driven movies including “The Upside of Anger” and “Reign O’er Me,” still manages to make this movie land both its emotional and comedic punches. It’s a rare movie that speaks with often politically incorrect daring and honesty about how black and white people truly see each other, and it will likely stick in audience’s minds and grow on them even days after seeing it. For that alone, it’s a movie that deserves to be noticed. On a content level, “Black Or White” has its PG-13 rating earned primarily through one use of the “F” word, a surprising string of uses of the notorious “N” word in a couple of scenes, and some milder profanities scattered a few times throughout. There’s also no sex or nudity, but the affair that resulted in Eloise’s creation is discussed in angry terms a couple of times. The movie is clear in its depiction of Elliott’s drinking and there is a brief image of Reggie’s crack use. There is also a pretty intense fistfight between two men that results in a rather perilous situation, but to say more would be giving things away. Overall, “Black Or White” is perfectly acceptable viewing for adults and teens, though this is a movie that’s definitely aimed at a middle-age and older crowd.
Movie Review: 'Mortdecai'
Jan 24, 2015 / 00:00 amJohnny Depp has had a rough time in the last couple of years, with a string of bombs including “The Lone Ranger” and “Transcendence.” Now, he’s returned as yet another in his endless string of oddball characters in “Mortdecai,” an art-heist farce that I’ll admit most critics have derided but which I - and the audience of regular folks that I saw it with - laughed heartily at.It stars Depp as Charlie Mortdecai, a wealthy yet financially imperiled and shady art dealer who travels the globe selling famous paintings at nonetheless overpriced levels. His tendency to sell paintings that aren’t supposed to be sold - classics that are supposed to be in museums - for outrageous amounts frequently gets him in trouble and requires him to have an assistant named Jock (Paul Bettany), who is always ready to help Mortdecai fight or shoot his way out of a tense situation with angry customers.Mortdecai’s other main associate is his wife Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow), who jumps in to save the day when necessary. As the movie opens, the couple are eight million pounds in debt to the British government in back taxes, making them obligated to help out when an old friend of theirs, a secret-police inspector named Martland (Ewan McGregor), shows up and asks them to help track down a painting by the famed artist Goya that’s been stolen and is believed to be also pursued by a Syrian terrorist.They come to realize that the painting in question has long been rumored to have been in Nazi hands at one point, and that the back of the frame has codes to a bank account worth millions. With numerous private collectors dying to get their hands on the painting - including the terrorist, the MI5 intelligence agency, and assorted other angry past clients who want to make up for Mortdecai’s scheming and rip him off in return - globetrotting comic escapades ensue.“Mortdecai” has been savaged by most critics as being heavy-handed, but I and the audience I saw it with laughed and chuckled throughout. Depp’s character is an utterly self-absorbed twit who, in a running gag, values his new mustache more than his wife (who hates it and threatens to leave him if he won’t shave it off).It resembles “Austin Powers” movies, if they were made in the lush visual style of Wes Anderson (of “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The Royal Tenenbaums”) fame. There are sexual innuendos at a rapid clip throughout the movie, but most of them are still much less crass than those uttered by Mike Myers’ Austin Powers in those films.In fact, some of the lines are quite brilliant and really quite tame in the scheme of things. However, there is one truly crass line in the movie and the only actual sex shown is a three-second glimpse of a young Johanna on top of Mortdecai in a college dorm room in their pre-marriage days, with it implied that she’s nude but no breasts or other sexual organs are shown.Mortdecai and Martland were romantic rivals for Johanna in college, until Martland stumbled across Mortdecai and Johanna engaged in their illicit activity. Thus, there is also some teasing between the men, as Martland keeps joking that he’ll step in and replace Mortdecai if she chooses to leave him over the mustache or their poor finances.Language-wise, there is just one F-word, but an assortment of British bad-slang terms including “bugger,” “bloody,” “bastard,” “balls,” “hell,” and “sod,” plus “bitch” are heard several times throughout. God’s name is heard in vain about 10 times total, in the form of “Jesus,” ”God” and “Christ.” But in an age when R-rated movies are packed wall to wall with F-words, hearing just one here and having British slang replace cruder American terms is much easier on the ears than many other films.There is plenty of comic action violence throughout, with shootings, bodies found stabbed, a couple of accidental fires and a very funny car chase, but all of it is played at a level that’s cartoonish and which children could easily enjoy if it weren’t for the rating being slapped on for the innuendos. For the record, this movie was rated OK for 6 year olds in Canada and 12 or 13 year olds pretty much everywhere else on the planet. I’m usually fine with accepting American film ratings and never normally say an R-rated film is okay for kids (though “American Sniper” should be seen by most older teens, 15 or 16 and up), but “Mortdecai” really is one that will not harm most kids age 10 or 12 and up and might likely make for a funny family trip to the movies for those with older children and teens.
Movie Review: "American Sniper"
Jan 16, 2015 / 00:00 amIn the more than 20 years since Clint Eastwood won Best Picture and Best Director for “Unforgiven,” he has been making numerous films that have shared that Western’s theme of the tragic consequences of violence. He has openly acknowledged that movies like “Gran Torino” and “Million Dollar Baby” were responses to the cinematic havoc he reaped a fortune from in spaghetti Westerns and Dirty Harry-style movies from the ‘60s through the ‘80s.That seismic shift in his cinematic philosophy has been a fascinating one to watch, but unfortunately Eastwood has had a few duds in the last few years as well – including last summer’s blasé attempt to bring the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” to the screen. But with his powerful latest film, “American Sniper,” Eastwood at age 83 has created a masterpiece - with six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture - that combines his skill directing bang-up action with harrowing quiet moments that show the devastating psychological results.Both ends of the spectrum – the macho and the mentally shaken - are expertly portrayed by Oscar-nominated Bradley Cooper, who brings the real-life Navy SEAL Chris Kyle to life in a performance that is nothing less than a reshaping of his entire career and persona. Kyle became the greatest sniper in US military history. Killing 160 enemy combatants and sympathizers during four tours of duty in Iraq, with another 95 that he shot without official confirmation, Kyle was constantly praised by his peers but tormented by demons from his first kill – a young boy who was sent by his mother to hurl an explosive at an American tank.The movie expertly moves between flashbacks of Kyle’s childhood, where his father taught him how to hunt masterfully with guns, and his adulthood, where prior to 9/11, he was just a well-meaning yokel without much of a direction in life. But when the World Trade Centers and Pentagon were hit, Kyle was one of the many patriots nationwide who immediately enlisted to fight back for his country.At the same time, he was beginning a romance with Taya (Sienna Miller, in a performance that should have been Oscar-nominated) that quickly led to marriage and kids. The heart of the movie comes from the interplay between his action-packed, tension-riddled battle scenes overseas and the more subtle battles he suffers with his guilty conscience – and the impact it has on him as a husband and father – when he’s stateside. In fact, the movie’s strongest scene is a jaw-dropping stunner, alternating in rapid-fire fashion between Kyle racing through Iraqi streets to escape an enemy ambush and Taya listening in on the other end of the line from back home, utterly horrified and wondering if she is about to hear her husband die before her ears.Throughout, it is impossible for viewers to take their eyes off of Cooper, whose career exploded in 2009 with “The Hangover,” a raunchy R-rated comedy that could have typecast him as a dirty-minded yuppie. But Cooper is clearly a far deeper and more ambitious actor than the “Hangover” trilogy, and he seems to literally leave his own body behind and fully immerse himself as Kyle, packing on pounds of muscle and effecting his no-nonsense, America-do-or-die attitude as the hero he portrays.“American Sniper” is undeniably on the side of America’s soldiers and in favor of the war it depicts in Iraq. It does feature a lot of profanity, especially the F word, but adults who have seen modern-made war movies likely know to expect that by now. There are also some jokes involving discussion of sex, but Eastwood and his team keeps such moments fairly limited, and “American Sniper’ has such a positive message about heroism, the military, America and the value of family that it would be a shame if the language dissuades people from seeing it.The violence is frequent and the suspense involved in the many chases and battle scenes is intense, but Eastwood mostly uses tasteful restraint to limit the amount of blood found within. There is no nudity, and the only questionable scene of sexuality comes in a quick foreplay scene in which Taya strips down to lingerie and is led by Kyle into the bedroom in a scene depicting their life before marriage. Yet the movie’s strong emphasis on the value of family and married life helping Kyle keep his mind together is a much stronger focus in the film than anything illicit.Overall, “American Sniper” is perfectly fine viewing for any adult who can handle the tension of war horrors, and is possibly even great viewing for older teens who could likely use a dose of reality about sacrifices our heroic troops go through in the name of keeping us all safe. Hollywood should certainly get all the encouragement possible, through financial success, to keep making positive films about our nation and military.
Movie Review: "Selma"
Jan 10, 2015 / 00:00 amIt may be hard to believe, but there has never a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He’s been the subject of several TV movies and miniseries over the years, but it’s pretty amazing to consider that the greatest civil rights leader in American history went without a grand cinematic portrayal a full 22 years after the far more controversial activist Malcolm X was graced with a movie by Spike Lee.That all changes this weekend with the release of “Selma,” a rousingly powerful depiction of King’s quest to lead a peaceful march for civil rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the powerful authoritarian forces that attempted to stop him. Stunningly directed by Ava DuVernay, “Selma” is far from a staid and dated portrayal of a historic figure, but rather a vibrant and fully alive work that speaks directly to our still-troubled race relations and the often-contentious relationship between police and the African-American community.Starring British actor David Oyelowo as King, the movie opens with a stirring example of the contradictions the icon dealt with on a constant basis. He’s shown accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, while back home in the states four young African-American girls were killed when a bomb devastated their church in Selma.It is immediately clear that King has to make Selma ground zero in the battle for immediate voting rights. But as he moves into town, King is under pressure from constant mysterious surveillance by the FBI – including their attempts to destroy his marriage by playing audio tapes of his marital infidelities to his wife, Coretta – as well as vicious hatred from much of the local white community and even backlash from some young black activists who are resentful that he will overshadow their own efforts.King is also in frequent contact with President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who wants to help King achieve his goals but is trying to take a few years, rather than immediate action, in order to face less resistance from the nation’s bigots. Ultimately, King settles upon the idea of the 10-mile march to Montgomery as a dramatic way to show thousands of black citizens observing nonviolent protests for the right to vote.It is in the attempt to march that DuVernay and her incredible cast succeed in creating a horrifying and indelible record of the absolute evil the protesters were subjected to. King isn’t along on the first attempt, when everything from bullets to horseback policemen wielding whips were unleashed on the crowd, but when he leads them back a second time with a much bigger and racially mixed crowd from around the nation, the world is watching and the movie becomes a vital example to current protesters of racial injustice.Some former Johnson associates, as well as scholars, have criticized “Selma” for its portrayal of President Johnson, claiming that it portrays him as more of a villain than he actually was. They believe the film portrays him as being the driving force behind the FBI’s attempts to discredit King and that the movie doesn’t give him credit for the idea of the marches.Yet others say that such credit is questionable, and the overall tone of the movie seems to respect Johnson and show him as a man caught between a rock and a hard place as the nation was facing horrible divisions. The final impression is one of a leader who went with the forces of change when they could no longer be denied, rather than violently obstructing them.Led by Oyewolo’s commanding and emotionally eclectic performance and infused with a riveting sense of time and place that will make now-distant history seem fully alive and of the moment, “Selma” is one of the most important movies of the past year and could serve as a vital reminder amid our current protests that the best way to demand change from authorities is not to kill them or fight back with violence. It lies in the strength that faith provides, and the knowledge that if enough evil is met with a noble response, the hearts of society will demand change.
It's a Hard-Knock Life: 'Annie' Movie Review
Dec 29, 2014 / 00:00 amIt’s been a hard-knock life for the new version of the movie musical “Annie,” if you believe the mostly scathing reviews that it has received from critics across the country. Only 18 percent of critics gave it a good rating on the review site Rotten Tomatoes, and the choice quotes thrown at the movie included the Los Angeles Times’ assessment that the movie is “grim.”But I’m happy to report that when I actually sat down to watch the movie myself on Sunday night with a female friend, amid an absolutely packed theatre in that same city of Los Angeles, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the new “Annie” is in fact a tremendous amount of fun. And if we as adults without children liked it so much, then I have to give the film a full-hearted recommendation for families with kids.Along with the previously reviewed “Big Eyes,” which provides a highly unpredictable and entertaining plot while being almost completely inoffensive for teens and adults, these provide two good movie options for the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break. And the inspirational true-life story “Unbroken” about an American who survived a harsh WWII Japanese POW camp - which I haven’t seen yet, also is drawing praise from Christian circles, giving teen and adult filmgoers a third stellar option at theatres.Updating the classic Broadway musical from 1977 and the 1982 hit movie that originally brought its magic to the screen, the new “Annie” cleverly resets the story in present-day Manhattan rather than the Great Depression-era 1930s. More importantly, it also recasts the movie to make both Annie and her caretaker (now known as Will Stacks rather than Daddy Warbucks) African-American, Quvanzhane Wallis (who was Oscar-nominated for her 2013 debut role in “Beasts of the Southern Wild”) and Jamie Foxx as Stacks.In the new movie, Annie isn’t actually an orphan, but rather was abandoned as a baby by her parents outside an Italian restaurant. She’s still under the care of a Miss Hannigan (Cameron Diaz), who now harbors a slew of young girls in her apartment as a scheming foster parent.Annie is always sneaking away from Miss Hannigan’s apartment to try and track down her parents, and on one eventful day, she literally runs smack into Stacks, a billionaire cellphone magnate who is running for mayor of New York City. He pulls her out of the way of a speeding truck, saving her life, and his heroic deed goes viral after being caught on a cellphone camera.Stacks is a loner who has no kids or even a wife or girlfriend to speak of, but when his campaign advisor Guy (Bobby Cannavale, in a hilariously smarmy performance) tells him being around Annie would win over voters, he reluctantly allows her to move into his stunning penthouse apartment. As Annie adjusts to her new life of privilege and Stacks adjusts to having responsibility for another person, Miss Hannigan jealously schemes to ruin It all for them.Sure, the plot is simple, and it stays that way since the focus is on the music and a child’s sense of wonder at getting to experience life in New York on both ends of the economic spectrum. For kids, it’s sure to be pure magic on that level, but there’s fun to be had beyond the musical numbers for adults.The movie has slyly funny updates on the omnipotence of cellphone cameras, social media and viral videos, along with a dose of satire lobbed at today’s political campaigns and how much style has replaced any sense of substance in them. From the lead duo of Foxx and Wallis on down through the supporting players (including Rose Byrne as Stacks’ right-hand woman who is tired of being overlooked as a romantic interest) such as Diaz and Cannavale on down through the other girls and the smaller characters who color the edges of Annie’s life, the casting is terrific.That isn’t to say the movie is absolutlely perfect. Diaz has been taking some brutal critiques for her off-pitch singing, but the movie slyly acknowledges the actress’ lack of pipes by inventing a backstory for Hannigan in which she was fired as a background singer for ‘90s dance-music act C&C Music Factory. Strangely, it’s the cast’ most accomplished singer – the Grammy-winning, million-selling Foxx - - who sounds the strangest, with his voice buried in the mix of his lead-singing numbers.Director Will Gluck co-wrote the sharp update with Aline Brosh McKenna, and the two have delivered a movie that, regardless of what other critics have to say. One attacked the movie by saying that its message seems to be “rich people are nice too.” In an era in which class warfare is played by the mainstream media and the wealthy are demonized at all turns, perhaps that explains why the critics are ganging up on this fine family film. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s a fine family film.Either way, surveyed audiences have rated it an A-. I’d say that’s about right, and have no doubt anyone in our audience who sees this will feel the same way.
The Question of Art and Commerce: 'Big Eyes' Movie Review
Dec 25, 2014 / 00:00 amAs the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But when artist Margaret Keane caused a sensation with her seemingly unending stream of paintings depicting sad-looking children with enormous eyes in the 1960s, another question arose: is art just a commodity that any name can be placed upon, or is it an inherent part of an artist’s expression from the soul? Based on the true story of Keane’s battle with her husband Walter over whether to tell the world she created her paintings, or whether to let him take all the credit, and the hilariously riveting court battle that ensued, “Big Eyes” offers unique perspectives on modern art and its value or lack thereof, on American marriage at the cusp of the women's rights movement giving a wife the chance to speak up against unfairness in the home. Thanks to the unique vision of director Tim Burton, who has created unique cinematic worlds in everything from “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure” and “Batman” to “Edward Scissorhands” and “Sleepy Hollow,” the movie is blessed with its own unique visual style as well. The movie opens with Margaret (Amy Adams) on the run from a husband prior to Walter, taking all her prized possessions out of her house along with her young daughter, and fleeing for early-1960s San Francisco. As a single mom, she has few options to survive, and in addition to taking a dreary day job painting prefabricated designs on baby cribs, she paints portraits of passersby on weekends in city parks for practically pennies. She depicts all her subjects, no matter their age, race or gender, with giant eyes, and this unique and haunting style quickly earns her the attention of Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), a fellow painter in the park. When her ex-husband tracks her down and threatens to take her child away because she’s a single mom, Keane proposes to her after only their second date. Desperate yet charmed, she dives into her second marriage and soon, Walter notices that her paintings outsell his when he gets an indoor showing of his work at a restaurant. . Seeing that she signs her paintings only as “Keane,” leaving out her own first name, Walter convinces Margaret that in their male-dominated times men can outsell women in painting and that she should do the work, but let him take the credit in the hopes that they can sell more. To the horror of the New York Times’ art critic and the surprise of their friends and even themselves, the paintings become a sensation, making the Keanes millionaires. But money doesn’t buy happiness for long. Walter only gets more greedy with every breath, and forces Margaret to paint constantly in tiny rooms, making her feel imprisoned. When Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries impress her with their message against lying and stealing, she becomes a member and decides to wage war in court for her good name, reputation and fortune. That final courtroom battle is incredibly entertaining and includes some of the funniest moments in a movie all year – and as a major bonus for people with taste and believers, it achieves its enormous laughs without one smutty joke. The movie is rated PG-13 for basically one F word, as Margaret’s best friend leaves the Keanes’ house screaming at Walter, and less than 10 utterances of any other lesser swear words or uses of God’s or Jesus’ name in vain. There is a briefly intense scene of a drunk Walter throwing lit matches at the carpet surrounding Margaret and her daughter in an attempt to chase them out of a locked room, but no other violence and no sex or nudity. One hopes that many other comedy screenwriters will take heed of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s brilliant script and learn from it that crassness does not equal comedy. Christoph Waltz takes on his most “normal” American role to date, following his two Best Supporting Actor Oscar wins playing an evil Nazi in “Inglorious Basterds” and the oddball friend of a former slave in “Django Unchained.”. As Walter Keane, he is an outright marvel to behold – a charming liar and manipulator who can alternately be the funniest or the angriest guy in a room. But Amy Adams is the real star as Margaret, and has to achieve a lot of acting ground while being relatively sedate. After all, she’s trapped in an era when women had few chances to speak up for themselves, and she felt the need to wall up her intense emotions. Yet Adams is compelling to watch with her steely-eyed gaze, and when she finally starts to crack her perfect façade, her comedic bite is also entertaining to watch. Overall, “Big Eyes” brings to life an odd piece of American pop culture history that has largely been forgotten, and the entire team behind it manages to do so with the utmost of class, restraint and good taste. It is perfectly fine viewing for teens and adults, and should make for some interesting discussions on the perennial questions of “what is art?” and the balance between art and commerce.
Movie Review: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"
Dec 12, 2014 / 00:00 amThis has been quite a year for God at the movies. There were several smash hits Christians embraced in the spring, such as “God’s Not Dead” (cost $2 million, made $60 million), “Heaven is For Real” (cost $12 million, made $90 million), and “Son of God” (another $60 million winner off a $22 million budget) all were embraced by Christians and shocked Hollywood by scoring well at the box office. Then there was “Noah,” a huge-budgeted epic from Paramount that made just barely more than $100 million here in the US but did better around the world. But because it took some liberties with the story of Noah (including having a bunch of bizarre rock people come to life and help him build the Ark), many Christians attacked it and it’s generally believed it could have made double its gross if it hadn’t scared off so many believers. Now comes “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” and it’s another big-budget epic from a major studio – this time Fox – and it’s been stirring up controversy on a couple fronts. First, star Christian Bale said he believes Noah was schizophrenic. Second, director Ridley Scott admitted he’s strongly agnostic. And third, God in this movie isn’t depicted as a booming voice, but as an 11 year old boy who’s petulant in what he wants. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I’m happy to report that that’s far from the case. In the actual film, Bale’s Moses starts with fears about whether he’s really being inspired by God to lead his Jewish people out of Egyptian slavery and into the Promised Land of Israel, but he is undeniably dependent on sincere prayer conversations with God to figure out each major decision on their 40-year journey to freedom. Secondly, the God-as-a-kid concept actually works on its own terms. .Everyone loves the idea of God booming His voice across the skies, but yet we are told so often to withdraw into silence to hear the voice of God most directly, and Jesus famously spoke about how the ideal state of mind is to be like a child. Since none of us has directly heard God speak, who is to say that He couldn’t come to us in the form of a boy? One other point I should mention is that director Ridley Scott handles the parting of the Red Sea differently than we’ve come to expect. There’s no giant, fast parting of the waters, but rather, the miraculous crossing of the Sea has a different yet still impressive visual approach that still pays off with spectacular end results that should leave no viewer’s jaw undropped. Having addressed the controversies of this movie,I should state the obvious: the plot. Rather than following Moses from the moment he’s placed in a basket and floated down the river to Egypt, we meet him as a grown man in 1300 BC who is unaware of his status as the earthly leader of God’s Chosen people, the Hebrews. The Hebrews have been Egypt’s slaves for 400 years, but right off the bat, the movie opens with a scrolling text that says that they never forgot their God and that “God has not forgotten them.” We quickly are thrust into the court of the Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro), and see Moses and the Pharaoh’s son Ramses (Joel Edgerton) A priestess predicts that “a leader will be saved and a savior will one day lead,” but no one realizes she’s talking about Moses and Ramses. Moses only comes to realize his true background as a Hebrew and his destiny to lead them after he visits a slave-labor city and meets a scholar (Ben Kingsley) who tells him he’s a Hebrew and God has big plans for him. This causes a major stir back home, and Moses is exiled to the desert, where he meets his wife and starts encountering God in the form of an 11 year old boy (Isaac Andrew). As he finally accepts his destiny to confront the pharaoh and demand the Hebrews’ freedom, he warns the Egyptian ruler that God will unleash a stream of plagues upon the empire. And from there, Ridley Scott leaves behind the questionable elements of his take on Moses (other than using crocodiles to help explain how the waters turn to blood) and piles on one thrilling moment after another. The ten plagues come in one furious, wildly impressive montage that expertly improves on the effects of Hollywood’s prior great Moses epic “The Ten Commandments,” and even that amazing sequence leads to the utterly jaw-dropping adventures of the Egyptians on chariots chasing the Hebrews on foot across vast expanses of deserts, mountain ranges and ultimately the sea. It is in these sequences, and the seemingly unending dangers that the Hebrews are put through, that “Exodus:God and Kings” truly shines. Moses turns to God time and again (equally often without the manifestation of the child) and prays his way through to the right decisions, and so ultimately the movie is not just spectacular entertainment but spiritually stirring as well. We are at an interesting crossroads in which Hollywood is trying to listen to the call for Bible-based, faith-centered entertainment for the first time in decades. We also are at a point where world-class directs like Scott are eager to take on the challenge of mounting the epic tales of the world’s greatest book, the Bible.It is important to vote with our dollars as believers, and support the good and even great efforts. “Exodus: Gods and Kings” may have a couple of strange aspects to it, such as the child form of God, but it still is world-class film making that could really bring all ages and types of people around the world into the theater for an exciting message of meaning. And for that reason, I feel that “Exodus: Gods and Kings” is the most inspirational movie of the year.
'Wild' - a redepmtive but dark journey
Dec 5, 2014 / 00:00 amIn the new movie “Wild,” a newly divorced woman named Cheryl Strayed - whose best-selling memoir the film is based upon - is trying to kick intense addictions to sex and heroin by walking over 1000 miles from the Mojave Desert to the Canadian border along the Pacific Coast Trail (known in the film and by hikers as the PCT). Played by Reese Witherspoon in a staggering performance that covers every part of the emotional spectrum and then some, Cheryl is a wounded soul who runs away from the others who have mired her life but is bravely forcing herself to face her internal anger and corruption head-on. Cheryl grew up largely without a father after her mother (Laura Dern) fled her abusive alcoholic husband while Cheryl was a young child. That combination of no father and domestic chaos rubbed off on her in a way that leads to a string of empty sexual encounters and an addiction to heroin after her mother’s untimely early death from cancer, until her husband of seven years confronts her and they decide to divorce. Once she has her divorce papers, Cheryl buys a ton of hiking and camping gear and sets off on the PCT. She takes three months to do it and learns many life lessons and skills along the way as she is shown bouncing between her solo walk and occasional encounters with strangers, and her vivid and sad flashbacks to a lifetime of havoc with her abusive dad, sweet but unstable mom, and illicit sex and drug use. Director Jean-Marc Vallee does an impressive job of jumping between the present and the past, with the disturbingly shot and edited flashbacks giving viewers a fascinating look into a highly troubled woman’s mind. As the director of “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” he employed the same techniques to give glimpses into the haunted memories of Ron Woodruff, a straight man who contracted AIDS through using needles and having sex with prostitutes before redeeming himself by helping lead the fight for more effective drugs against HIV. Both movies are uncompromising in these flashbacks, marking Vallee as a unique stylist who can make the darkest moments of the human soul riveting to watch. But he is matched here by Witherspoon in a performance that literally carries the movie as strongly as Cheryl carries her life in a 50 pound backpack. Cheryl is a tough woman to sympathize with for much of the movie, as she is revealed throughout in the quick but graphic flashbacks to have been a dishonest, adulterous, argumentative drug abuser. And Witherspoon walks a tightrope, as she could have easily tipped so far into depicting wild behavior that the entire performance could have come off as showboating for an Oscar to match her Academy Award for “Walk the Line,” yet always stays just on the right edge of her travails in leading viewers on her quest. . Viewers accustomed to regarding Witherspoon as an “America’s Sweetheart” type should be aware that despite its overall positive message of change and redemption - Strayed remarried and has children now - , this is a very hard-R movie. Between several nude scenes, flashes of graphic sex, an implied abortion or willful attempt to induce miscarriage, shooting up drugs and swearing profusely through the first two-thirds of the movie, it’s absolutely not for kids and might be too harsh for a good percentage of adults as well. Yet Nick Hornby – the British novelist and screenwriter famous for guy-centered projects like “About A Boy” and “High Fidelity” – does an impressive job of mining Cheryl's mind, and the interior struggles of a deeply flawed person trying to set herself aright (albeit without traditional religion involved). And the cinematography by Yves Belanger, who also lensed “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” not only captures the darkness of Strayed’s past, but the glorious light into which she is emerging.
'Horrible Bosses 2' disappoints with too much smut
Nov 29, 2014 / 00:00 amI’ve had some terrible bosses over the years: one was shipped off to two weeks of anger management training after throwing an enormously packed folder at my head in front of 50 coworkers, another was featured on a very special “Oprah” episode as one of the four meanest bosses in America, and a third disappeared on a payday without paying us, and still has the IRS tracking him for the misuse of a $60,000 federal business loan. So when the movie “Horrible Bosses” came out in 2011, I made sure to grab a ticket and wash my negative memories away with laughter. Starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day as three working-man losers whose bosses drove them so crazy that they hatched a plan to kill their supervisors – attempting to avoid suspicion by having each one kill the boss of another man in the trio.Everything went comically wrong, because the three leads were completely unskilled at being hitmen and wound up having to hire a shady man with an unprintable nickname, played by Jamie Foxx, to help them finish the killings and still botched most of the plan. One boss died, while another (Kevin Spacey) wound up in prison, and a third (a sexually harassing dentist played by Jennifer Aniston) got off scot free. The movie was a smash hit, due to its ace comic acting and inventive twists – but while it was funny in a lot of places, it also suffered on a moral level from having way too many swear words and sex jokes. Now, three years later, the trio of Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) are trying to launch their own dream company: making and selling a new kind of showerhead that not only shoots out water, but also spews out liquid soap and shampoo to make showering a one-step process. After a ridiculously botched appearance on a Los Angeles morning-TV talk show, the guys receive an improbable order for 100,000 showerheads from a business tycoon named Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz) and his son Rex (Chris Pine). But Hanson cancels the order after our heroes take out a $500,000 loan to set up a factory, setting them up to be forced into bankruptcy, at which point Bert plans to buy their company for pennies on the dollar at an auction. And so a new revenge plan begins: since they’re incompetent at killing people, they decide to simply kidnap Rex and hold him hostage for the money he owes them. Once again, they rope in Foxx’s criminal, and once again, it all goes haywire. On the one hand, the team making “HB2” must have felt the adage “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” because they maintain the original’s popular mix of bumbling criminals, outrageous twists and – sadly – way too much smutty humor. It’s a shame that the four writers behind this sequel feel the need to stoop so low into all manner of sexual innuendos, a few sight gags and a lot of swearing when the plot and performances alone would be hilarious enough to be a smash again. There is a place for dark humor, and for movies aimed at adults, but if the “HB2” makers would simply trust their own skills fully and genuinely respect their audience, they would likely find even greater success with a PG-13 version (a la 1987’s classic “Throw Momma From the Train”) that kept the kidnaping, doublecrosses and its fantastic car chase finale and ditched the smut. As it is, though, we’re left with a movie that’s too silly to inspire any viewer into actually committing any sins – even of thought – but is almost definite to offend seriously discerning members of the faithful.
Does it really need two parts? 'Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One'
Nov 21, 2014 / 00:00 amIt’s fitting that the opening and closing scenes of “Hunger Games: Mockingjay” feature miserable people being held on lockdown in a mental ward, because that’s how anyone suckered into spending $12 to $15 on a ticket to the film is going to feel the entire time. A grim, depressing and thoroughly unexciting slog through two hours of time you will never get back, the third entry in the heretofore sterling series has lost all sense of what made the prior films so exciting.A large part of the problem is that this edition of the series is actually just part one of the film adaptation of the “Mockingjay” novel by Suzanne Collins. That means that, in keeping with a tradition set by the final two films in the “Twilight” and “Harry Potter” series, the final novel in the series is split into two parts on the big screen. While in the “Potter” series, the idea made sense since the book being adapted was over 700 pages long, in “Twilight” and now “Mockingjay” the movies are just normal-length books stretched thin to make double the money.The “Hunger Games” series centers around a feisty older teen named Katniss Everdeen who appears to be living in the colonial past, but in fact is about 75 years in the future and living in the aftermath of a second Civil War. In the prior two films and books in the series, she volunteered to take part in a series of nationally televised games in which teenagers are chosen by the national government to fight each other to the death until only one is left standing.Katniss won over the hearts of the movie’s populace as well as filmgoers worldwide with a gutsy yet endlessly inventive and ethically high-minded standard of play that enable d her to survive the games twice. But in the stunning final moment of the last film, Katniss shot one of her arrows through the force field the government had constructed to keep the Hunger Games participants confined to the treacherous playing fields and was snatched away the forces of a rebellion.In “Mockingjay,” she opens the film huddled and hiding in a hospital corridor, reciting her name and where she came from. It’s clear that she’s going crazy from all she’s been through and so she’s quickly put into action making anti-government propaganda videos that will be snuck into broadcast television programs nationwide.Meanwhile, Katniss’ fellow rebel/game-player – and possible love – Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) has been left behind in the government’s hands since the rebels could only help one person at a time escape from the Games. Now captured by the government, he is trapped making propaganda videos for the authorities, telling people to stop their rebellion and begging Katniss to give up too.Thus, the film’s central showdown is set up, with Katniss and Peeta as the pawns of the opposing sides, making this edition a battle of propaganda videos rather than actual life and death. As such, Katniss is reduced to spending a lot of time standing in front of green-screens or watching a bank of secret video monitors rather than actually being in the real world doing battle.Why anyone thought that this was a good idea – effectively neutralizing the most dynamic character and actress working in American film today- is beyond me and will be beyond anyone who is tricked into seeing this utterly boring mess. If the filmmakers had just made one movie out of the book, we could actually get to the action of the final revolution and have some excitement and catharsis.Instead, we are stuck with endless scenes of Katniss moping, crying and shrieking – and in one truly, staggeringly awful scene, we even see her sing a boring song. That tune instantly and inexplicably becomes an anthem for the rebellion, making it appear for a few brief horrifying moments that we’re watching “Les Miserables 2” rather than “Hunger Games 3.”I should add that I’ve been conflicted about “Hunger Games” movies and the others that they have spawned, such as “Divergent” and “The Maze Runner.” All of these movies, and many more “young adult” (i.e., teen) novels on bookstore shelves, take place in “dystopian” societies, after apocalyptic battles or events have ruined everyday life as we know it.These movies are usually well made, with the first two “Hunger Games” films outstanding in my opinion. The “Hunger Games” movies have an extra level of intelligence to them, and a sense of allegory and foresight about where American society could fall if we don’t maintain our highest ideals – so in that way, the books and movies are strongly akin to George Orwell’s “1984.”What made me queasy with the concept is the idea of teens being asked to kill other teens on national television as entertainment. But there thankfully haven’t been copycat incidents, nor are we likely to go that far in society. And Katniss always has shown as much mercy, kindness and class as possible while fighting to survive, setting as good an example as possible in tough circumstances – including in her thoroughly chaste relationships with the two boys she’s torn between.That said, millions of people will be lured into boredom this weekend in the hopes of seeing something worthwhile. But after this week and possibly next, this movie will be a bigger bomb than the ones dropped by the government on Katniss and the rebels. Here’s hoping the finale next year provides the resounding entertainment that we’re missing this time.
'Dumb and Dumber To' and 'Foxcatcher' make for a dull weekend at the movies
Nov 14, 2014 / 00:00 amThere’s something to be said about the innate human desire to be a champion that can make a story truly compelling. It can go across any arena, whether it’s trying to be a top movie star or an Olympic wrestling champion, and this weekend two new movies illustrate that fact in vastly different ways.“Dumb and Dumber To” is the bigger release, hitting theaters everywhere with the return of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels to the roles of Harry and Lloyd, two outright idiots whose misadventures were first thrust upon the world 20 years ago in “Dumb and Dumber.” That movie helped cement Carrey’s comedic superstardom, coming at the end of a whirlwind year in which he had also scored blockbuster box office with “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “The Mask,” while showing audiences another side of Daniels, who had largely been a dignified dramatic actor in classy films like “Terms of Endearment.”The first “Dumb” followed the guys on a cross-country quest, and the sequel follows the same formula. In this movie, Lloyd (Carrey) reveals he has been playing an elaborate prank on Harry (Daniels) by pretending to be in a near-catatonic state for 20 years at a mental hospital where Harry attends to all his needs, including in the bathroom, during weekly visits.With Lloyd awake and admitting his prank, Harry reveals that he needs a new kidney or will die. Lloyd refuses to help him as a donor, and Harry feels all is lost to find a matching blood type until he receives word that he has an adult daughter he’s never known about. Lloyd sees her photo and is instantly smitten, so he agrees to join Harry on a cross-country quest to find her.Now, that’s just the bare-bones plot of this movie, and let’s face it, there’s not much more to be added in the form of story structure or any intelligent motivation for the characters. What the movie is packed with is gross, raunchy, and scatological jokes that are occasionally funny in spite of themselves but which can barely be described in a setting with families and other religious readers like this one. Suffice to say, if you’re reading this site regularly, “Dumb and Dumber To” is certain to offend you deeply.While this movie is a shameless attempt to grab cash from a new generation of dumb-comedy fans and the nostalgia of viewers approaching middle age, this time around it’s more pathetic than funny to see the levels to which Carrey and Daniels will lower themselves to for a laugh. What might have seemed funny in spite of itself 20 years ago when they were up and coming actors in their early 30s now can often feel unsettling when these actors are in their 50s. Truly, one can’t help but wonder is there anything they won’t’ do to make a buck and be popular again?On the other hand, “Foxcatcher” is hardly a winner either, despite its own themes of winning and losing. Set in the boom years of the Reagan presidency in the mid-1980s, it follows the bizarre true story of wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), a decidedly lower-class guy who dreams of making the US Olympic wrestling team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Mark is trained by his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo), a somewhat older family man who transfers his own quashed desires to make it in wrestling onto Mark. He pushes him hard and has an odd habit of slapping Mark in the face repeatedly when he’s trying to fire him up, which underscores a strange tension between them. Then one day Mark gets a mysterious phone call from a minion of multimillionaire John DuPont, who is one of the idle rich heirs to the biggest family fortune in America. DuPont, played by Steve Carell wearing a big prosthetic nose that’s distracting throughout the movie, is an obsessed yet oddly serene wrestling fan who flies the malleable Dave out for a secret visit to his rural estate. There, he makes Mark an offer he can’t refuse. Showing him the insanely elaborate gym he has constructed to train wrestlers, DuPont he tells Mark that he wants to be his sponsor and asks him what kind of financial arrangements he needs to train full time for a year. Mark’s utter cluelessness about anything other than wrestling shines through when he excitedly tells Dave he “thought of the highest number I could think of — $25,000.” Soon, Mark is immersed in the bizarre bubble of existence that surrounds DuPont due to his life of privilege, and eventually he drags Dave into it too as DuPont hires Dave to coach him at the family compound. But in a classic case of be careful what you wish for, the clash between Dave and DuPont over Mark’s mind, body and spirit leads the trio down some very twisted turns. Now, this may sound intriguing, and the real-life story behind it all is indeed riveting to read. But somehow, it doesn’t work as a movie. “Foxcatcher” has an oddly disconnected tone throughout its very lengthy running time, as director Bennett Miller (“Capote,” and the much better “Moneyball”) keeps his characters inscrutable and emotionally frozen to the point which much of the movie feels like a pretentious slog that takes forever to get to its depressing conclusion. The three leads all try their best, but Tatum, Ruffalo and Carell are playing characters so unsympathetic that it’s hard to care what happens to them. Wearing his ridiculous prosthetic nose and speaking in an annoyingly low-key clip, Carell appears to be shouting out “I’m a Serious Actor!” from start to finish, while Tatum’s Mark is clueless to the point of annoyance and Ruffalo’s Dave is an amped-up jerk. There’s not much if any foul language in “Foxcatcher,” which is surprising for an R-rated film, and there’s no sex or prurient nudity in it. The movie is rated R for a scene in which DuPont starts to get Mark hooked on illegal drugs, and for a surprising act of violence.“Foxcatcher” is drawing raves from most critics, but my gut tells me that the general public will find it too cold to care about. It’s a classic example of a film that tries so hard to enlighten us that it forgets to entertain us as well.
"Nightcrawler" – a wake up call for news networks?
Oct 31, 2014 / 00:00 amWe can’t say that we haven’t been warned. It’s been nearly 40 years since “Network” burned up movie screens on its way to winning Best Picture, over 32 years since Don Henley unleashed his dark-as-coal masterpiece“Dirty Laundry” onto the world’s radio stations, and 12 years since Michael Moore showed us all how dangerous local TV news was becoming to our psyches in“Bowling for Columbine.”Now comes the new movie “Nightcrawler,” an almost indescribably great movie that mixes sinister satire, harrowing suspense, crackerjack car chases, and utterly unique performances to create a modern classic that exists purely on its own terms. Barreling into theaters this weekend amid an inspired run of films that have been uncommonly good in the last few weeks, it is an absolute must-see on an artistic level, though it has some problematic elements faithful viewers should be aware of.Starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a desperate Los Angeles fringe dweller named Lou Bloom who stumbles into becoming the hottest freelance cameraman (aka“nightcrawler”) in tabloid-style local news, “Nightcrawler” pokes fun at the ridiculous lows that our newscasters and their handlers have sunk to and serves as a telephoto lens pinpointing the madness that we all embrace too easilyevery time we watch a live car chase down the freeway.The movie opens with Bloom being caught by a guard for cutting a chain-link fence and stealing it in order to sell the metal. He gets the upper hand on the guard and steals his watch, before heading to a shady scrap yard and trying not only to fast-talk his way into better payments but also into a job with the boss. The answer: “I’m not gonna hire a thief.”And thus we see all we need to know about Lou, and all we’re really going to get about this mysterious sociopath who knows how to talk a mile a minute and flash a toothy smile, but is disconcertingly creepy beneath the surface like a modern-day Eddie Haskell from “Leave It to Beaver.” After seeing that other nightcrawlers are making $300 and up for literal minutes of footage from bloody car wrecks, he steals a fancy bike on Venice Beach and trades it in for a video camera and a police radar scanner before chasing car crashes and shootings across Los Angeles.At first, he’s competing against a veteran nightcrawler (Bill Paxton) who runs his own service called Mayhem News, but Lou quickly learns the ropes and talks a clueless and overly enthusiastic younger man into being his assistant for $30 a night, even as he starts making thousands of dollars for his footage. The person paying him is a desperate and aging news producer named Nina (Rene Russo) at KWLA-Channel 6, which is so blatantly a spoof of Los Angeles station KTLA-Channel 5’s embarrassingly airheaded local coverage that Channel 6’s headquarters is even the same building as the real-life KTLA.Soon, Lou has Nina so desperate for his stunningly graphic footage that he manages to negotiate far beyond outrageous fees, and manages to practically take over the station and her very being. But when he not only crosses the line at a triple murder scene but storms through it like he’s driving a Sherman tank, no one involved in this roller coaster ride is ever going to be the same again.There can’t be enough praise lavished upon Gyllenhaal here, for he has spent the past decade building a career in which no two movies or roles are remotely alike. From “Donnie Darko” and “Zodiac” through “Prisoners,” with many more innovative flicks in between (I’m not singling out “Brokeback Mountain”, of course), he has become the most challenging actor of his generation: utterly unafraid to take chances and even be unlikable, in the service of work that not only entertains viewers but makes them think and even ask big questions.Writer-director Dan Gilroy cast his real-life wife Rene Russo as the ruthless TV news producer Nina, but she delivers a performance that also hits all types of angles with precision. Watching her coach news anchors to say reprehensible things as they lurch their way through harrowing crime and accident footage, Russo is a stone-cold perfect match for Lou and even finds his unflinching focus a turn-on.“Nightcrawler” has some frequent profanity, primarily about 50 F-words and about 10 or so uses of God’s name in the form of G-D and Jesus’ name.It also has some graphic shots of car crash and shooting victims, and while there is a shootout and an amazing car chase, it’s not exploiting its violence, and there’s no onscreen sex or nudity. However, Lou is an amoral sociopath who is constantly scamming and blackmailing his way to success. Overall, it’s fairly in the middle for an R-rated movie in terms of immoral content.Watching this movie, one gets the feeling that far too much of it is far too close to being true. Watch the hysteria-inducing constant state of “Breaking News” alerts on Fox News, or the shamelessly shallow approach of the newest anchor on ABC’s “World News Tonight”, and you’ll be even more certain that in general, journalism is dead, its zombified last kicks powered by any means necessary.Here’s hoping that “Nightcrawler” can kick some life and guts back into the reporters who still know how to shake the system with their work. But sad to say, we can’t count on anything truly changing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a fascinating ride.
'Fury' and 'St. Vincent' offer surprisingly Christian themes
Oct 24, 2014 / 00:00 amWhat makes a man truly good – as in noble, brave and heroic? Is it the ability to fight evil in a war, or the willingness to help others even when there’s great emotional or monetary sacrifice involved? And can a man attain greatness even when he is deeply flawed in some significant ways?Those questions are explored in two new and very different movies, “Fury” and “St. Vincent,” that offer audiences the riches of unpredictable and fresh writing, bold performances and superb direction. The fact that “Fury” is a harrowing and hell-raising WWII film led by Brad Pitt and “St. Vincent” is a quirky dramedy starring Bill Murray reflects the fact that this fall has been offering an impressive slate of films to make up for a summer of shallowness.Surprisingly, they are also films with very strong Christian themes and characters who are front and center to the story. “Fury” is filled with profanity, like most modern-era war movies, but at least three of the five main characters are Christian and both prayers and heartfelt descriptions of Scripture and God’s call are front and center to its most heroic moments. Any grown adult has heard “bad words” before, and these are grunted and yelled in the context of battling Nazis, so tune those out and you’ll be astonished to find a truly powerful Christian witness.“St. Vincent” has less profanity, being a PG-13 film, but it does feature a central character who smokes, drinks and gambles way too much. He also hires a hooker weekly and the movie opens with a brief and tawdry (yet clothed in underwear) sex scene between that tries to play for laughs, but get past that minute or so and you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful and touching story of redemption that calls us all to strive to be saints no matter how many faults we are fighting.“Fury” follows the story of Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Pitt) and his four-man tank team (including a solid Shia LeBeouf and an Oscar-worthy Logan Lerman) as they attempt to mow down Nazis in the heart of Germany. Tough but scrupulously fair, Collier has a sterling record of always bringing his team back alive.But when his main gunner is killed, his replacement is a clerk typist named Norman (Lerman) who has never been trained in combat and is petrified by the idea of killing someone, even a Nazi. In his one morally questionable move, Collier forces Norman to shoot dead a Nazi soldier who is trying to surrender, and that life lesson in knowing how to kill or be killed leads to all manner of life lessons through the rest of the film, including a final showdown between these fantastic five and a regimen of 300 SS officers.“Fury” is written and directed by David Ayer, who has written the grittiest cop movies of this century in “Training Day” and the absolutely superb “End of Watch.” Here, he turns his eye away from the hellish streets of some corners of Los Angeles and towards the battlefield, offering an even more ambitious look at what defines manhood.The choice to use the term “manhood” is intentional here, as these are both movies centering squarely on men – some in life and death situations from decades past, some in more low-key daily crises in the present day. But both these movies offer a refreshing alternative to the often-neutered modern males portrayed on screen these days, while finding a safe median on the spectrum between Rambo and Ross from “Friends.”“Fury” is packed with action, and while tis final half-hour is thoroughly rousing, it takes the time to show the devastating impact combat – especially the close, hand-to-hand kind still prevalent during the 1940s – could have on the mind, soul and spirit of our troops. It also has a centerpiece section away from the battlefield that is a masterstroke – offering a respite of humanity to both our heroes and the audience itself while showing the men as they each deal with a dinner with innocent German women in vastly varying ways.Meanwhile, “St. Vincent” offers Bill Murray a tailor-made, career-capping, thoroughly Oscar-worthy role as a cantankerous and highly conflicted man named Vincent, who reveals his nicer side slowly and surprisingly as he takes the young boy who’s his new next-door neighbor under his wing. As a gambling addict, alcoholic and chronic smoker who sleeps with a pregnant hooker (Naomi Watts) on the regular, Vincent should be nobody’s idea of a role model for an impressionable boy.But when a struggling single mom named Maggie (Melissa McCarthy, toning down her obnoxious shtick to deliver a well-rounded performance) moves in next door with her young son Oliver (newcomer Jaeden Lieberher in a sterling debut), he winds up being the kid’s babysitter. Being hopelessly in debt and generally averse to children, he charges $11 an hour to do the job, but just as Brad Pitt’s sergeant teaches his newbie a string of life lessons in “Fury,” Vincent winds up teaching Oliver an entirely different set of life skills while showing that even the biggest sinners can also be saints in some ways. As an all-too-rare bonus, the movie also positively portrays Catholic priests in extremely favorable fashion throughout.“St. Vincent” has the improbable distinction of being the debut feature film of writer-director Theodore Melfi, a total unknown who not only accomplished the magic feat of landing Murray but drawing a classic performance out of him as well. The whole movie has a glow of goodness from start to finish even as it also provides a fun portrait of a man who is a nearly unchangeable reprobate.As the movie reveals ever more about what Vincent does with his life and the circumstances that have driven him there, it draws a mix of both laughter and tears that is an al-too-rare combination in movies. And both these movies form a rare combination that, viewed separately or together, have something for everyone.
Film review: 'Men, Women and Children'
Oct 17, 2014 / 00:00 amWe live in a world with more communication tools than ever before, yet we seem to be losing the ability to talk straight with each other. Between texting, TV, Tivo, Roku, and role-playing games alone, we rarely enjoy each other’s simple company and the lost art of conversation. We can embrace more of the world, yet we hear about loneliness more than ever.Jason Reitman’s new movie “Men Women & Children” tackles these issues head-on, with the incisive and powerful dramedy serving as a wake-up call to take back our relationships and our families from the dangerous ledges we place them upon in the Internet age. It depicts a roundelay of relationships in Austin, Texas, a red state town that Hollywood normally dismisses as flyover country rather than paying genuine attention to the lives found within.The plot will sound extreme at first, and many people will find at least some of its content pretty offensive in the first half. However, Reitman (who directed the superb movies “Juno” and “Up in the Air”) and his team are forcing us to take a long, hard look at where society is going and whether we have enough decency left to stop it – and making audiences feel (most of the sex and nudity and pornography involved is implied or discussed, not shown or barely shown) how bad we have become in this case is a powerful part of the point. And without giving away exactly who, what or how, note that the characters wind up making the right decisions in the end.The movie follows several families in quiet crisis, focusing foremost on the bland marriage of Don (Adam Sandler) and Helen Truby (Rosemarie Dewitt), who have a teenage son who spends a lot of his time secretly watching porn and masturbating in his room. It’s soon revealed that Don does the same thing, and even sneaks into his son’s room to use his porn, because it is even more perverse than his own. The men are described by the narrator (Emma Thompson) as being so perverted by their pornography habits that they cannot become aroused without such images in their minds, and have thus been warped by the pornography (which again, is largely unseen, but discussed or implied, in the movie).Don and Helen are so unhappy, in fact, that he pursues a call girl for sex and Helen goes to a website that sets up adulterous encounters. Meanwhile, the story also follows a mother who is a failed actress who has returned to her Texas roots to raise the daughter she became pregnant with by a producer who took advantage of her years before in Los Angeles. She transfers her desire for stardom onto her daughter, and sexualizes her image and thinking as a result – creating a poisonous parent-child relationship results in other consequences throughout the movie.At the heart of it all is a young teen couple who do not pursue pornography or sex or even any high-tech means of communicating. They are shown as a naïve, pure, innocent ideal and the movie follows their story largely through the lens of the girl’s mother (Jennifer Garner), who is excessively intrusive into her daughter’s life, spying on her in every way possible.All these various extremes slowly spin out of control, causing the characters’ lives to ping pong against each other in ways that are mostly unpredictable, and divided between both funny and sad moments. These powerful messages are expertly acted by an impressive cast, and powerfully written by director Reitman and Erin Cressida Wilson.The one annoying aspect of the movie that clashes with the strong moral lessons the characters arrive at comes from embracing the words of the late famous astronomer Carl Sagan and his humanist/atheist agenda. He is quoted at four points – two by the narrator and two by the teen boy with pure intentions – about his belief that earth is a pale blue dot in the universe and that our lives are all meaningless in the span of eternity. However, it could be that the movie refers to it as an example of the fact our modern self-absorption comes from an inflated self-worth and that we could all stand to remember that we are not the center of the universe.Some other reviewers have found "Men Women & Children" heavy-handed in its moralizing, but this isn’t a poorly made piece of fire-and-brimstone hysteria along the lines of this spring’s surprise Christian-film hit “God’s Not Dead” but an unmistakably adult film that has a passionate point of view about daily life issues that need to be addressed. As I left the packed early screening I attended, the audience I saw it with was immediately engaged in intense conversations afterwards about the funny and serious extremes with which they, their family members and others have found themselves mired in digital obsession. And that sound of conversation is the sound of hope that we can keep ourselves from going too far off the rails if we only try.
Disney focuses on family fun in new live-action film
Oct 10, 2014 / 00:00 amRemember when Disney used to put out a new live-action kids’ movie every month, like “The Cat From Outer Space” and “Escape from Witch Mountain”? But ever since “The Little Mermaid” and “Toy Story,” it seems that all the effort put into making great family films comes from animated flicks.Thankfully, the new movie “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” is here to save the day, bringing back the sense of gleefully anarchic joy and adventure that’s been mostly missing from live-action family films since “Home Alone.” Starring Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner as Ben and Kelly Cooper, the very happily married parents of four kids, and the very talented young actor Ed Oxenbould as their grade-school son Alexander, the movie follows what happens when Alexander makes a wish about his family that goes really, really wrong.Alexander’s always prone to bad luck and mishaps, and wakes up with gum stuck in his hair, and has a day filled with disasters the day before his birthday, including the news that the coolest kid in school is going to throw his own birthday party the same night and steal all their friends’ attention. But Alexander’s birthday is also momentous for the rest of his family: his older brother Anthony is having both his drivers’ test and his prom and his sister Emily is about to make her debut as Peter Pan in the school play, while Ben has a big job interview for his best opportunity in seven months of unemployment and Kelly has to decide whether to accept a promotion that would make her spend too much time away from her family.But when the family won’t listen to him share his frustrations at the dinner table, Alexander makes himself a birthday cupcake at midnight and wishes that everyone in the family could for just once have a bad day too. What results is a wildly funny series of mishaps that include Emily getting buzzed on cough syrup, Anthony having a disastrous driving test, Ben making an extravagant fool of himself in a busy restaurant mid-interview and Kelly racing across town on a bicycle to keep Dick Van Dyke from reading an embarrassing mistake in a children’s book she edited in front of a packed room of kids.Oh, and it gets even worse from there.While it’s impressive that all this action takes place at a whiplash pace within just 81 minutes, making the movie almost breathlessly entertaining, what’s truly impressive is that it’s so positive and refreshing on so many levels. The parents actually love each other, the kids love their parents rather than being know-it-alls or brats, and no matter what happens and how bad things get, their troubles always manage to bring the family closer together.The only thing that’s remotely objectionable in the movie is a brief moment in which mom Kelly says “Ok I’ve seen your penis, I’ve seen the penis of everyone in this car” after her oldest son Andrew is mortified that she walks in on him as he’s toweling off after a shower. Of course, viewers never see anything other than the bathroom door opening and the mom and son screaming at each other.But while this dialogue is questionable, it is so brief exchange will be quickly forgotten and should absolutely not be of enough concern to keep parents from enjoying this with their children. The entire cast is hilarious, energetic and loving, and director Miguel Arteta doesn’t hit a false note amid all the craziness.I highly recommend supporting a movie like this, because if it’s a deserved success, there will finally be more movies like it – great family movies with recognizable human beings having fun but treating each other with proper love and respect. See this movie, and you’ll have a terrific, hilarious, all good and very great time.
Movie Review: 'Gone Girl'
Oct 3, 2014 / 00:00 amAs Catholics and Christians, the ideal is to have marriage last for a lifetime. But as we also know, there sometimes are circumstances so difficult that they result in annulments and civil divorces. And in our tragic, sin-absorbed world, sometimes marriages even go so far awry that they result in murder.The new movie “Gone Girl” portrays one of those toxic marriages, and shows how things deteriorated from a fairy-tale beginning. Yet while that is a dark theme, and while the movie takes numerous twisted turns along the way to its riveting conclusion, it is also an amazingly well-made thriller that would likely have been made by Alfred Hitchcock if he were alive today. While it is definitely for adults, most adults will find it one heck of a rollercoaster ride.The movie stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy, a couple of professional magazine writers in New York City who meet in 2005, marry a couple of years later and have a happy and highly sexual relationship until the economy goes cold in 2009.We see how their marriage goes cold through layoffs and relocations, and the film alternates the slow buildup of disappointments with the fast-paced present-day pileup of stomach-churning clues that Nick find when it appears that his wife has been either kidnapped or killed by a home invader.As Nick races to discover what happened to his wife, he finds himself under investigation by the police and the victim of unceasing tabloid-style cable TV coverage that slowly wears on him as well. These factors would be the heart of most other thrillers, but the highly ambitious team behind “Gone Girl” have seemingly dozens of plot twists up their sleeves from there.“Gone Girl” is written by Gillian Flynn, who adapted her own smash-hit novel for the screen. The book sold two million copies in hardcover alone during its first year in print, underscoring the storytelling power of its author, a power that is only enhanced by the frequent casting surprises to be found in the rest of its 2 ½-hour running time. But to reveal more about this movie’s intricate plot would be a crime in itself. Surprises unfold all the way through to the last shot of the movie, making this a film that will both make jaws drop repeatedly and then also wag obsessively afterwards in discussion of who did what to whom and why, and whether Flynn and the team behind this movie are poking a hole into all marriages or merely analyzing this one. That is a major question for discerning viewers to consider, as the opening and closing narration by Nick makes marriage sound like an unpleasant emotional and psychological prison or war zone. While they are indeed just one couple, the movie shows no balance of happy marriages or families, leaving one to assume that Flynn and director David Fincher are attacking the institution itself.There is also frequent profanity, three brief yet fairly graphic sex scenes, as well as a brutal murder scene that occurs amid a forceful seduction, so “Gone Girl” has definitely earned its R rating and should absolutely not be seen by children or teens. It should also be noted that deception, lying and double-crossing are the order of the day among all the major characters. However, most of the sex is cut away from fairly quickly and the one violent murder is portrayed as unequivocally evil. It might be easy to react to a paragraph like the one above and assume there is no place whatsoever for such material to be seen by faithful filmgoers. But the material is handled mostly with taste and discretion, and is not presented in a positive prurient fashion that would be likely to lead to occasions of sin. Sin complicates lives, and it is fair game for a movie to deal with grown-up issues in a grown-up fashion as long as they don’t cross the line into exploiting the behavior through titillation or the outright endorsement of said sin.Through it all, “Gone Girl” is a movie that attains perfection and zips quickly through its lengthy running time, barely giving viewers a chance to catch their breath and wrap their minds around the latest twisted moment. That Flynn and director Fincher (“Seven,” “The Social Network”) manage to do this even while leaving viewers to wonder throughout which characters are meant to be rooted for and which are meant to be despised is a cinematic sleight of hand that absolutely stands up in comparison to the best of Hitchcock’s darkest explorations of the human soul in films like “Vertigo.”While Affleck should finally be able to destroy the stigma of his years chasing cash-grab movies and Jennifer Lopez with his rich and multilayered performance here, it’s the rest of the cast that delivers the biggest surprises. Pike is wondrous as Amy, whose story is brought to life through beautifully etched and sharply edited flashbacks, and this movie is so strong that even Tyler Perry steals several scenes as the ace defense lawyer Nick hires to clear his name and Neil Patrick Harris is believable as the dramatically dark flip side of his womanizing Barney on the just-ended CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.”Fincher turns the screws with precision, leaving viewers with a haunting portrait of a marriage gone wrong and the disturbing awareness that there are others like them across our land. He, Flynn and the cast also take satirical stabs at cable news and our tabloid obsessions, where the latest flash of lurid temptation takes precedence over facts every time.Packed with tension, shot with masterful skill and riveting from start to finish, “Gone Girl” is a frontrunner for this years’ Oscars and is unlikely to be gone from theaters anytime soon.
'The Equalizer' review
Sep 26, 2014 / 00:00 amDenzel Washington has long established himself as one of the classiest actors in Hollywood, rarely if ever engaging in sex scenes and nearly always playing men of deeply heroic character. His new movie "The Equalizer" - a reinvention of a beloved 1980s TV thriller that ran on CBS, about a retired British secret agent who stepped in vigilante-style to solve New Yorkers' crime-related problems when the police could not - maintains those moral traditions, but there are a few elements of concern for discerning viewers to consider.The movie follows Washington as retired American secret agent Robert McCall, who left his secret life years ago and is now happily living a quiet life working in a Home Depot-type store. The movie leaves much of his life mysterious - we don't quite know why he left his job, and only vaguely hear that his wife died under sad circumstances years ago - but two things are clear: he is a highly trained killer and he has a strong sense of justice that, frankly, may be too strong for his own good and for any other moral person to support.When a young streetwalker he has befriended and tried to guide out of her dangerous lifestyle is beaten by her Russian pimps, McCall first offers nearly $10,000 to buy her freedom. When his offer is rebuffed, he winds up laying waste to all the mobsters in the room in highly inventive and brutal fashion. As a result, he triggers a dangerously escalating war against a vicious and ruthless Russian assassin out to stop McCall's meddling, and McCall winds up fighting back with both psychological and violent means that will leave viewers on the edge of their seats.Directed by Antoine Fuqua, who guided Washington in his Oscar-winning role in "Training Day," "The Equalizer" raises the game in the action genre and mixes in plenty of heartfelt emotion and psychological depth. The performances are outstanding across the board, and the score is superb, while Richard Wenk's script is so good that this will likely stand with the likes of "Die Hard" as a violent action classic.But viewers should be aware that Washington uses plenty of tools from the shelves of his home-supplies store as murder weapons, and the results are squeam-inducing at times. But more than that, the movie is likely to stir questions in viewers of how much retribution is too much and whether the deadly punishments McCall metes out are proportionate to what even such evil villains deserve. There is also quite a bit of swearing from bad guys - about 70 words in 2 hours and 11 minutes - but McCall chastises even his friends swearing, so the movie does paint a good vs. bad line on even that behavior.For adults who can handle movies in the vein of "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon," however, "The Equalizer" will be a richly rewarding ride. One just wishes that Hollywood could show a little more restraint in the violence, rather than pushing the envelope here.