MVP of the Week: Stephen Merchant

Posted on March 3, 2017 at 3:29 pm

The 6 foot 7 inch talk Stephen Merchant, who appears in two very different movies opening this week, is also the creative talent who co-created the original British version of “The Office,” as well as “Extras,” “Lip Sync Battle,” and his own series “Hello, Ladies.” This week he appears as Caliban the mutant tracker in the Wolverine movie “Logan” and Walter, the ex-con in the romantic comedy “Table 19.”

His lip sync battle with Joseph Gordon-Levitt is unforgettable. And I also recommend his interview on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron.

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Actors

Logan

Posted on March 2, 2017 at 6:00 pm

C
Lowest Recommended Age: Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong brutal violence and language throughout, and for brief nudity
Profanity: Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and drunkenness
Violence/ Scariness: Very intense and graphic peril and violence with many disturbing and bloody images, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: March 3, 2017

Copyright Fox 2017
Copyright 20th Century Fox 2017
A lot of Wolverine fans love the elegaic final chapter, “Logan,” but I do not. Perhaps if you are deep in the weeds of the MCU, you will see meaning and closure in “Logan,” but for me, even as a Comic-Con-attending fangirl, it was slow and depressing, and not in a good way.

Wolverine fans know that he is a loner, only intermittently joining forces with the X-Men, and his stories often show the influence of classic western sagas. “Logan” is set in the west, and its dry, dusty terrain fits the somber tone of the story. Logan/Wolverine is old and tired. His legendary powers of healing are slowing, and so is he. He and Caliban (Stephen Merchant, looking like Uncle Fester in “The Addams Family”) are caring for Professor Xavier, who is also losing his powers and near the end of his life. The time of the X-Men seems to be ending, too. No new mutants have appeared.

Or, so everyone thought. Logan is threatened by Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), who says he is looking for a woman who is looking for Logan. And she finds him, and offers to pay Logan a lot of money to transport a little girl to the Canadian border. He does not want to do it, but he needs the money to take care of Professor X, and when the woman is murdered, he feels that he has no choice.

Professor X, who struggles with dementia, keeps insisting that the girl has some special qualities, but Logan refuses to believe him…until the tough guys show up and she dispatches them with some very familiar-looking adamantine claws that pop out from her knuckles. Time for a road trip, including an encounter with a sweet farm family and with many perils and threats along the way.

The action is well-staged, though brutal even by comic book movie standards. Jackman and Stewart are always watchable, but the story drags (the movie is well over two hours), and we know where it’s going at every step. One big plot point has to do with Logan’s belief that the story in the comic books cannot be true. He may be persuaded otherwise, but we never are.

Parents should know that this film includes constant and very graphic comic-book/sci-fi peril and violence with many disturbing images and many characters injured and killed, and brief non-sexual nudity.

Family discussion: How does this movie show the influence of classic westerns? Why does Caliban stay loyal?

If you like this, try: the previous Wolverine and X-Men films

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Comic book/Comic Strip/Graphic Novel Movies -- format Science-Fiction Series/Sequel

Table 19

Posted on March 2, 2017 at 5:59 pm

B +
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, drug use, language and some brief nudity
Profanity: Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking and marijuana
Violence/ Scariness: Comic peril, no one hurt, medical issues
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: March 3, 2017
Date Released to DVD: June 13, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN: B06XYSX6KQ
Copyright Fox Searchlight 2017
Copyright Fox Searchlight 2017

I know. They hate the term. But it is impossible to talk about Mark and Jay Duplass (as writers, anyway, aside from their work as actors, directors, and producers) without the dreaded term “mumblecore,” which was applied to their early microbudget work because of the improvisational, shaggy-dog, millennial-ness of their work. Traces of that remain in “Table 19,” cross-bred with a more conventional romantic comedy, and it turns out to be a welcome blend of sweet and sour. This is not the usual Jennifer/Jessica with a quippy best friend, a meet cute, and a makeover.

We’ve all seen that placecard and most of us have been seated by it: the table for leftover wedding guests who aren’t the family or close friends of either bride or groom but somehow had to be included. Eloise (Anna Kendrick) provides the fellow denizens of the dreaded Table 19 with the inside scoop. Back just a few months earlier, when she and the bride, her oldest friend, were planning everything together, Table 19 was for the people who did not fit in anywhere else, the people who had to be invited but who the hosts were hoping would not make it, still sending a gift from the registry.

The characters may be third-tier in the minds of their hosts, but they are played by top tier comic talent. Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson play a married couple who have fallen into a marital death spiral of bickering that makes them miserable and humiliated, but they cannot seem to find their way out of it. Stephen Merchant is a cousin of the groom who seems unfamiliar with social interactions of any kind. “The Grand Budapest Hotel’s” Tony Revolori is a teenager with raging hormones but no idea of how to talk to girls. June Squibb plays the bride’s first nanny.

And then there is Eloise, once a maid of honor and dating the bride’s brother/best man (Wyatt Russell), but, since they broke up two months earlier, stuck at Table 19, on the other side of the ballroom, near the restrooms.  We know she almost didn’t come; she even started to burn the invitation. But for some reason, she was determined to be there, and there she is, on the wedding table island of misfit toys. A mysterious and handsome man appears and he has an English accent and a way with an aphorism. Could he be her Prince Charming?

Very able performers make up for some story shortcomings, including a too-neat resolution that I’m guessing was recut after test screenings. Kendrick is as always a marvel of precision, heart, and comic timing, so every time things start to go off kilter, we know she will get us safely home.

Parents should know that this film includes some strong language and comic mayhem, brief comic nudity, drinking and tipsiness, marijuana, and sexual references including adultery and pregnancy.

Family discussion: Why did Eloise go to the wedding? How did sitting at Table 19 make it possible for her to acknowledge her feelings? What’s your funniest family gathering experience?

If you like this, try: “Rocket Science” with the same director and star

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Comedy DVD/Blu-Ray Romance

The Shack

Posted on March 2, 2017 at 5:57 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for thematic material including some violence
Profanity: Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Alcoholic parent
Violence/ Scariness: Tragic murder of a child, domestic and child abuse, gun, possible attempted suicide
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: March 3, 2017
Copyright Summit 2017
Copyright Summit 2017

“The Shack,” based on the best-seller by William P.Young seeks to provide comfort and healing for those struggling with a terrible loss and with something even worse — the fear that tragedy has no purpose and the doubt that pain engenders about whether life makes sense. Can there be meaning in a world of senseless tragedy, where the innocent suffer? The book‘s subtitle is Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity, and it is somewhere between a parable, a fantasy, and a story about a man devastated by grief who spends a week in a shack in the woods, talking to God.

While some people, including some Christians, will find the theology of this story questionable, it presents an accessible and comforting notion of God’s love and the healing power of forgiveness.

Sam Worthington plays Mackenzie, a loving husband and father of three children who still struggles with his memories of his abusive father, a man of “calloused hand, rigid rules” and alcoholism. “Pain has a way of twisting us up inside and making us do the unthinkable,” and “the secrets we keep have a way of clawing themselves up to the surface.” (It is not clear exactly what the most painful secrets are but it seems possible he murdered his abusive dad?)

Mack takes his children on a camping trip, where his youngest daughter Missy is kidnapped and brutally murdered while he is rescuing his son, trapped under an overturned canoe. Mac, who had always been surprised and touched by Missy’s simple faith in a God she felt close enough to that she referred to Him as Papa, is shattered by guilt and grief. Even though he sees the pressure it puts on his family, he cannot break out of his isolation.

When his family is away, Mack finds a note in his mailbox, though there are no footprints in the snow. The note is signed “Papa” and it invites him to come to the woods, to the very shack where Missy’s bloody dress was found.  Although he dreads returning to the place of his crushing pain, he goes, and it is there he meets the Trinity. God, known as Elousia, I Am, or Papa, is in the form of an African-American woman who was a kind neighbor in his childhood and who wears Ma Griffe, the perfume he mother loved (Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer). She says he will be most open to her in the form of a mother, and apparently one who loves Neil Young.

God’s Son is in the form of a young carpenter who can walk on water and run on it, too (Avraham Aviv Alush), and the Spirit is known as Sarayu (Sumire Matsubara).  

They live in a Kinkade-like Eden, filled with warmth, light, nature, good food, and laughter.  Very gently, they guide him to an understanding that God’s love does not mean freedom from pain, but a sharing of that pain that can help him forgive and help make his spirit whole.

Some believers will dismiss this as “comfort food Christianity.” The Son actually says that religion is too much work. “I don’t want slaves; I want friends,” and he himself is “not exactly a Christian.” Papa tells him, “I can work incredible goodness out of unspeakable tragedy, but that does not mean I orchestrate the tragedies.”

But its idea that God loves us enough to reach out to every one of us in our the way we are best able to understand is genuinely touching. The insights Sam reaches about forgiveness and healing could be arrived at via psychotherapy or a number of other ways, but for this man — and this audience, the message is meaningful and touching, and a good reminder that patience and forgiveness are always worth making time for, and that every act of kindness changes the universe.

Parents should know that this movie concerns the brutal kidnapping and murder of a child, with images of her bloodied dress and dead body, a gun and possible attempted suicide, as well as depictions of wife and child abuse and alcoholism.

Family discussion: Why is it important to learn to forgive, even when the transgression is evil?  How did each member of the Trinity teach Mack a different lesson?

If you like this, try: “What Dreams May Come” and “Henry Poole is Here”

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Based on a book Drama Movies -- format Spiritual films

Before I Fall

Posted on March 2, 2017 at 5:53 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving drinking, sexuality, bullying, some violent images, and language - all involving teens
Profanity: Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Teen drinking
Violence/ Scariness: Fatal accident, suicide
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: March 3, 2017

Copyright 2017 Open Road
Copyright 2017 Open Road
Who would not like to go back in time to correct a mistake? Can you correct a mistake without making it worse?

Lauren Oliver’s debut novel Before I Fall is a bittersweet “Groundhog Day” story about a pretty, popular high school senior named Sam (“Everybody Wants Some!!’s” Zoey Deutch) who lives her last day over and over until she figures out why.

Sam wakes up on “Cupid Day” (her school’s version of Valentine’s Day), happy, confident, and looking forward to the day ahead. Her best friend Lindsay (“Paper Towns'” Halston Sage) is picking her up and at school she is expecting her boyfriend Rob to have red roses delivered to her in class. And that evening, she and Rob have planned to have sex for the first time. Everything seems to be coming together just as she wants it.

She barely acknowledges her parents (yes, that is “Flashdance’s” Jennifer Beals as her mother) as she flies out the door. When her little sister runs after Sam with her gloves, instead of thanking her, Sam barks, “Don’t touch my things!” Lindsay picks up their other two friends, and the movie really captures the wild swings between professing total love and devotion and mildly trashing and topping each other that is teengirlspeak.

At school, the lesson is about the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned to keep pushing a huge rock up a hill, never getting it over the top before it rolls back down. But no one is really paying attention and the class is interrupted by the delivery of the Cupid’s Day roses. She receives the red roses Rob sent her — after she reminded him — with a note that is more jaunty than romantic. And then there is a special rose from an old friend, who tells her he is having a party that night. She barely acknowledges him. And she does not even notice a sad and angry girl named Juliet (Elena Kampouris) intently working on a charcoal drawing until they are all in the cafeteria, when Lindsay taunts her. “Remind me why we hate Juliet?” Sam asks, but does not really pay attention to the answer. She is more bored by it than ashamed of it.

She does end up at the party, where Rob gets sloppy drunk and Juliet confronts the girls who have been mean to her, including Sam. Later that night, they learn that Juliet has committed suicide. And then Sam wakes up and it is Cupid Day all over again.

At first, she is frustrated and angry at reliving the same day over and over and over. She exploits the freedom from consequences but it is not fun; it is empty. Finally, she begins to pay attention to the people around her and begins to understand what she has to do.

Deutch ably handles her most challenging role so far, showing us Sam’s thoughtfulness, even in her most self-absorbed moments. The small details of her different approaches to each day keep us aware of exactly where she is on her path to greater understanding. Each day may seem the same to Sam, but for us Deutch makes them different as she passes through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She makes us share her sense of loss, but also her understanding as a reminder of a time she was a hero makes her willing to locate that in herself once more.

Parents should know that this movie includes teen drinking, bullying, strong language including crude sexual references, suicide, and a fatal accident.

Family discussion: If you could live today over again, what would you change? Why didn’t Sam pay attention to Kent and Juliet before? Who is your hero? Whose hero are you?

If you like this, try: “If I Stay,” “About Time,” and “Restless”

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Based on a book Drama Movies -- format Stories about Teens
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