Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and disturbing images
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Some social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Intense and sometimes graphic peril and violence including battle scenes, crucifixions, abuse, and accidents, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
August 19, 2016
Copyright 2016 Paramount Lew Wallace’s 1880 book, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, had a revolutionary idea in a spiritual setting. The story of a minor, fictional character at the time of the crucifixion was the first to try to illuminate epic themes through the depiction of a character who was not a participant. Indeed, the title character was hardly aware of the monumental events going on around him. He was too busy dealing with his own personal crises like being enslaved and having his mother and sister contract leprosy. Wallace’s book became the top seller of the century. And then it became a play, two silent films, a Best Picture Oscar winner tied for first place for the most Academy Awards, plus two animated versions and a television miniseries.
Now Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, following the enormous success of their “Bible,” “A.D” and “Son of God” know the genre well and have remade the grand but dated three hour and thirty-seven minute epic. Their version is brisker, not just in the overall running time of just over two hours but in the more contemporary quick cuts and trimmed storyline. It is also more explicitly religious. While earlier versions suggested the presence of Jesus but did not include his face or voice, he is more explicitly involved in the storyline here, portrayed by Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro.
As in all of the earlier versions, it is the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a Jewish prince who is wrongly accused of a hostile act against the Roman invaders and sold into slavery. In this version the Roman Messala (Toby Kebbell) is more than a close friend; he is Judah’s adopted brother. They are devoted to one another but also deeply competitive.
Messala, in love with Judah’s sister, joins the Roman army in hopes of achieving enough wealth and status to be considered worthy of her. When he returns to Jerusalem, Judah is married to Esther (Nazanin Boniadi). Messala and Judah agree to find a way for the local population to live peacefully under Roman occupation. But a rebel hiding in Judah’s house kills one of the Roman officers and Judah is blamed. Messala refuses to protect him or his family. Judah becomes a galley slave, spending five years chained to an oar on a Roman naval ship.
When the ship is sunk, he escapes. An African named Ilderim (Morgan Freeman) gives him a chance to win back his freedom by competing in a chariot race. And that, after all, is what everyone remembers about “Ben-Hur.” Director Timur Bekmambetov is known for action scenes with tremendous vitality and he more than delivers with the chariot race, which is thrillingly dynamic. The naval battle scenes are also exciting. The screenplay has some clunky dialog and awkward transitions, but Huston is always engaged and engaging and balances the intensity of the action scenes with an inspiring message of forgiveness. The movie is true to the story that has endured in its various versions for more than a century.
Parents should know that this film includes intense and sometimes graphic peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, battle scenes, whipping, abuse, crucifixions, some disturbing images, brief non-explicit sexual situation and mild sexual references.
Family discussion: What changed Ben-Hur’s mind about Messala? Was Ben-Hur right to try to make peace with the Romans? What did Pilate mean when he said, “They’re Romans now?”
If you like this, try; “Risen” and the 1959 version of “Ben-Hur”
The American Bar Association’s Six Types of Movie Lawyers
Posted on August 18, 2016 at 3:19 pm
The American Bar Association’s ABA Journal magazine has an article about movie lawyers that is not the usual top 50 list. Thane Rosenbaum writes about the six types of movie lawyers: crusading, heroic, obtuse, disillusioned, vengeful, and buffoons. Of course, some of the best movies have lawyer characters who fall into more than one of these categories. “To Kill a Mockingbird” has the greatest of all movie lawyers, Atticus Finch, who is heroic and crusading. “Anatomy of a Murder,” based on a novel by a lawyer/judge and starring a real-life judge as the movie’s jurist, had a lawyer who was disillusioned and heroic, and so did “The Verdict” and “Michael Clayton.” “My Cousin Vinny’s” title character was a buffoon and sometimes obtuse, but a hero, too.
I’m a lawyer from a family of lawyers, and I love movies about the law, including the ones listed above (I have to point out that “The Verdict” is completely inaccurate and even “Anatomy of a Murder” has one huge mistake). I especially like movies about real-life lawyers like “Gideon’s Trumpet,” “Amistad,” “Erin Brockovich,” and the upcoming “Loving.”
It takes a lot of courage to re-make a film that holds the record (tied with “Titanic” and “Lord of the Rings”) for the most Oscars, but producer Roma Downey has more than updated movie-making technology to bring to “Ben-Hur.” After the success of their previous Biblical epics “The Bible” and “A.D.” they wanted to tell a story from the era with another perspective. The 1870 Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is adjacent to the story of Jesus, and that gave them the chance to tell non-Biblical story about a personal journey with exciting adventures and profound inspiration.
In an interview Downey spoke about what led them to the project and what they hope people will learn from it — and about how many cameras were used to create the thrillingly dynamic chariot race scene.
How do you begin to think about topping one of the most famous scenes in movie history, the 1959 “Ben-Hur” chariot race?
It is the most breathtaking scene in the film, there’s no question about that. You will inhale when those chariots come out of the starting gate. Eight chariots, 32 horses come charging down that track and chances are you won’t exhale until one of them crosses the finish line. It is really amazing. Timur Bekmambetov, our director, did an incredible job. He studied at NASCAR, he looked at Formula 1. He figured out all these different and exciting places he can place a small camera, in the wheels of the chariot, between the ears of the horses, on the armor of the riders. He even put a GoPro in an old soccer ball in the middle of the track so the chariots rode over the top of it. And then when he cuts all these things together from all these different angles, it builds the most exciting sequence that you’re going to see on screen this summer.
And how did you select Jack Huston for the role that Charlton Heston made so iconic? Tell me about the cast.
He is just a really hot up-and-coming actor, and this role of Judah Ben-Hur is certain to be a star-making role for him. I’m sure it will make him a household name. He has all the qualities that we were looking for, an actor who could be princely, who could play the young Prince Judah at the start of the movie. And he played so well the physical; he is athletic. The chariot race isn’t just all stunt doubles and body doubles, this guy was really at the reins of these horses, he was really out there courageously coming down that track, riding that chariot. And he also has a beautiful vulnerability. Remember it’s a character who is confined with his heart set on revenge but because of an encounter with Jesus his heart softens and opens even into a desire to be reconciled even into forgiveness. We needed an actor who could display vulnerability for that broken period of life. So I think that you will agree that his performance is just amazing. And of course we also have Toby Kebbell who plays Messala, the adopted brother. Their on-screen chemistry is amazing. And last but not least the great Morgan Freeman playing the role of Ilderrim and the Brazilian superstar Rodrigo Santoro, who plays the role of Jesus for us, a very important role in this film, differing from the 1959 version that really had more of a sense of Jesus, we never really got to meet Jesus the man, we never got to see his face, we never really got to hear his message. In our film we made certain that Jesus was an important character and you get to see him interact with people, you get to see how he engages with the characters and you get to see how he transforms particularly the heart of our leading character Ben-Hur.
I’ve done a lot of research about all the various versions of this story going back to the book published in 1870. Was your first exposure the Charlton Heston movie?
Yes, it was. I have very vivid memories of curling up with my family every Easter in our little home in Northern Ireland watching Ben-Hur. I have the loveliest memories of that movie but you know the truth is it was fifty-five years ago. The world that we live in has changed since then and our expectations of what we hope to see on screen have changed since then, cinema has changed and editing styles are faster. It was a very long idea with an intermission in the middle of it and I don’t know if the audience really would be willing to sit that long for a movie anymore. And also I think the acting style has changed. We now expect a more naturalistic acting style. And of course what we are able to achieve through special effects has transformed amazingly in the last 50 years. We have kids at home, Mark and I, and when we told them that we were going to be on the producing team of Ben-Hur they actually responded, “Ben who?” indicating to us that there is a whole new generation that actually doesn’t know the story, hasn’t seen it, haven’t even heard of it and so we believe it’s a whole new audience who will be excited to see this great story back on the big screen.
What was it like to tell another Biblical era story from the perspective of a fictional character whose story only touches briefly on Jesus?
“The Bible” and “The Son of God” were 100% focused on the Bible or Jesus or the apostles. We loved making this movie which follows Lew Wallace’s story because of the way that he used Jesus as a smaller part of a bigger story. In the same way this movie will appeal to a very widespread large audience because in the end it’s an entertaining fun big action adventure movie. Woven through it however, is this beautiful story of an encounter with Jesus which changes everything and so I think we have been very faithful to the spirit and the intentions of Lew Wallace.
As the producer, you have to worry about everything. What worried you the most?
Copyright 2016 Paramount
We talked about the chariot race and you can only imagine what a logistically complicated project that was. It takes a village to make a movie and thank God on “Ben-Hur” the village was populated with the very best in business, the best horse trainers, the best stunt men, the best camera men, the best special effects team, an amazing director, cinematographer and so on, an incredible group. But I know that the one thing that weighed heavily on our hearts in the shooting of that sequence was safety, first and foremost, that there would be no injury to people and no injury to horses. And so we were very relieved when after two months of principal and second unit photography that sequence finally wrapped.
A scene that was also incredibly moving and extraordinary to recreate was the crucifixion scene. As producers it is our third crucifixion scene in our three years that we’ve got to do that with the Bible series of course which then became “Son of God” and then again with “A.D. The Bible Continues,” so Rodrigo Santoro was the third Jesus that we have cast in a picture and when we hung him from a cross it was the third time that we had re-created the scene. It is a somber set as it always is. Even though it’s a movie you can’t help but being moved by the violent nature of the method of murder and the intensity of just that scene and knowing that Jesus offered himself willingly is incredibly humbling.
It was an extremely cold morning, which presented its own set of challenges for Rodrigo, especially, who had to strip off. The rest of us had the luxury of warm coats and gloves, but he had to be stripped off and be hung from a cross for a long time. We filmed the entire sequence. We know that Jesus said seven things from the cross, so we actually filmed all of that. We weren’t sure what would end up in the movie but the words that Judah needed to hear, the most important things that he needed to hear was on forgiveness: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” It’s in that moment that Judah realizes that he could lay down his hate, that he could set down his anger. His heart is opened and he realizes the only way forward is to forgive and that ultimately is a message of the movie. That vengeance doesn’t work, that it will just leave you empty, it doesn’t to get you anywhere and as Jesus said the only way forward is love and forgiveness.
Rated PG for thematic elements, scary images, action and peril
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Monsters, peril, sad offscreen deaths
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
August 19, 2016
Date Released to DVD:
November 20, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:
B01KMKM4TW
Copyright 2016 Focus
LAIKA Studios’ fourth film, “Kubo and the Two Strings,” is a fable of exquisite beauty and meaning, gorgeously produced in the most painstaking of all forms of filmmaking, stop-motion animation. They are the modern-day equivalent of the monks who labored for years on each page of illuminated manuscripts.
Every detail in every frame and every element of the story, set in a magical version of ancient Japan, reflects the simple profundity of the ancient and contemporary Japanese art that inspired it. LAIKA’s last film, “The Boxtrolls,” was set in a cluttered, sooty, steampunkish imaginary Victorian London, and the studio’s motto was “no square corners, no straight lines.” This time it went in the opposite direction, with the muted palette and spare, carefully balanced settings of Japanese woodblock prints and the sharp lines and perfect corners of origami.
One of the hardest elements to get right in stop-motion is water, because it is impossible to control it frame to frame. In “Boxtrolls,” the studio’s greatest technical triumph was an elaborate set-up for a brief scene in which a character touched standing water and created some ripples. LAIKA loves to challenge itself, and so this film starts with a storm at sea. A woman we will learn is Kubo’s mother is desperately trying to stay upright on a tiny boat. We know she is escaping someone or something, but we are not sure yet what or who it is. And we do not learn until she is washed up on the shore, exhausted and hurt, that she is not alone. In her backpack, there is a baby. It is Kubo.
Like Harry Potter, Kubo had a father who died trying to protect him from a danger so great that Kubo bears a wound. One of his eyes is gone. Kubo’s mother survived, but she used all of her magic to save him and now she is frail, forgetful, and inconsolable.
When we next see them, he is about 11, and has been caring for her all his life. Each day, he makes her food and feeds her. And then he walks from their home in a cave on top of a cliff into the nearest town, where he tells stories in the market. He has the power to bring origami characters to life to act out thrilling tales of the great samurai warrior Hanzo. The townspeople love his stories, which always end with a cliffhanger, and they toss him coins.
The community has an annual Obon festival, where they light lanterns and remember the dead. Kubo wants to go, so he violates his mother’s rule about never being out after dark. And the danger she protected him from years ago comes after him in the form of his mother’s two spooky sisters, both voiced by Rooney Mara and both wearing implacable-expression white masks and terrifying swoopy capes made of black feathers.
Kubo’s mother has just enough magic left to save him one more time. And then she is gone, and Kubo finds himself on a journey, accompanied by the live version of the small monkey charm he always carried in his pocket. He and Monkey (Charlize Theron) set off to find the three pieces of Hanzo’s armor that he will need to fight the sisters and their father, who wants Kubo’s other eye. Along the way they meet a samurai who has been cursed and turned into a giant beetle (Matthew McConaughey). And they meet and fight three different monsters, a giant skeleton, an underwater garden of eyes, and an enormous, floating, reticulated moon serpent, each giving Kubo a chance to discover his courage and power.
This is a gorgeous, epic adventure with grandeur, scope, and spectacular settings, every bit of it wonderfully imaginative. It reflects LAIKA’s own adventurous spirit in taking on narrative and technical challenges as daunting as that faced by any hero. Who else would try to create a stop-motion battle under water? Or take on, in a family movie, a quest that encompasses themes of family, story, courage, loss, destiny, and meaning? LAIKA understands that the most enduring fairy tales are not afraid to deal with darkness because that is the only way to understand its true message, here delivered in a breathtaking conclusion, of tenderness and forgiveness.
Parents should know that this film includes fantasy-style peril and violence with monsters and magic, and sad deaths of parents.
Family discussion: Why did Kubo answer his grandfather’s questions the way he did? Why didn’t Monkey tell Kubo where she came from? Why did the two strings make a difference?
If you like this, try: “Coraline,” “Paranorman,” and “The Boxtrolls”
The 5-disc set Pioneers of African-American Cinema, funded via Kickstarter, is a treasure of rarely-seen films from pioneering filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux. The New York Times wrote, “From the perspective of cinema history — and American history, for that matter — there has never been a more significant video release.”
These were known as “race films,” made in an era where the few mainstream roles for performers of color were sometimes cut entirely out of the films when they were shown in the South, and a small group of black filmmakers made films with all-black casts that were created for black audiences. The Blu-Ray set includes archival treasures.
There is also “The Moses Sisters Interview,” a 33-minute videotape made by the historian Pearl Bowser in the late 1970s that features the performers Ethel, Lucia and Julia Moses reminiscing about their careers. Other documentaries include the 1937 Works Project Administration short “We Work Again,” with footage from Orson Welles’s all-black Federal Theater Project’s production of “Macbeth,” and excerpts from fieldwork footage the novelist Zora Neale Hurston shot in the South as part of her ethnographic research.
