Blood Diamond

Posted on December 6, 2006 at 12:47 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence and language.
Profanity:	Very strong language, some racial epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs, including illegal drugs given to children
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic violence with many injuries and deaths, including mutilation of children
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000MZHW40

December brings us the thinking person’s thrillers — all of the explosions and shooting and close calls of a summer movie, but with a more serious purpose and a more distinguished pedigree.

Like Syriana and Traffic, this is the story of deeply entrenched corruption on a global scale, corruption that permeates all levels of society and sustains governments, corporations, and wars. This time it is not oil or drugs. It is diamonds. The diamond industry sells them as magic, the essence of romance. “A diamond is forever.” Three months salary is the right amount to spend for an engagement ring. And the engagement ring is just the beginning — there’s the anniversary band. And there’s the right-hand ring. Every girl can feel a little bit like a movie star or a princess if she looks down at her finger and sees a little bit of what was once a lump of coal and now sparkles when it catches the light.

But on its way to the velvet-draped pedestals at the mall jewelry shops and the red carpet bling, the diamonds are used to support oppression, weapons trade, brutality, and a wide range of illegal activity.

This story is illustrated here through the stories of three fictional characters, a soldier of fortune (Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer), a farmer (Djimon Hounsou as Solomon), and an American journalist (Jennifer Connelly as Maddy Bowen).

Solomon’s peaceful life is ripped apart when his village is attacked by rebel forces. He is kidnapped and forced to labor in the diamond mines. His young son is forced to become a “soldier,” given drugs and abused so thoroughly that he loses any sense that the world can be sane or fair.

Solomon comes upon a rare pink diamond of extraordinary size. He wants to use it to find his family. But everyone around him quickly begins plotting to get it for themselves, by any means necessary. He reluctantly joins forces with Danny. Both have dreams of leaving the brutal world of casual corruption that surrounds them.

But they’re not the only ones who want out. They have to run and hide as they try to track down the diamond, now in rebel-occupied territory, and locate Solomon’s family.

Performances filled with conviction and dignity from all three principal actors, powerful action, and a strong structure that ties together all of the strands of the story and all of the reaches of the diamond industry, from the child soldiers to the glossy magazine ads make this a stirring and powerful story.

Parents should know that this movie has extreme, intense, and graphic peril and violence. Many characters are injured and killed. Rebels and government forces shoot at each other and at civilians, including children. All forms of brutality and violence are described and depicted, including rape, torture, mutilation, and turning children into “soldiers.” Children and adults are kidnapped and forced into labor with rebel forces or the diamond mines. Characters use strong language, including racial epithets. There are sexual references. Characters smoke and drink and children are given drugs. The movie includes depictions of a wide level of corruption and betrayal.

Families who see this movie should talk about what people meant when they said “TIA.” Who is in the best position to change the situation depicted here? Why? Can a moment of love give meaning to a life? How? Families might want to look at the UN’s report on conflict diamonds and the Kimberley Process for ensuring that diamonds are legitimately mined and sold.

Families who enjoy this film will also enjoy The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a classic story of the impact of the prospect of great riches. They will also enjoy Syriana and Traffic.

Apocalypto

Posted on December 5, 2006 at 1:09 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extremely graphic and intense peril and violence, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000NOKFHQ

There are at least three movies here and two of them are great. There is the classic adventure saga of the hero who is trying to get home and save his family. Mel Gibson, as director, has created brilliant action sequences that make the best possible use of the settings and the loyalty he inspires for his characters. Second is a morality tale played out in a culture that is at the same time fascinatingly different and essentially the same as our own. A peaceful tribe is all but wiped out by marauding invaders from a more “developed” and complex culture, as the prospect of an even more “developed” and complex culture is about to arrive and create even more destruction.
And then there is that third film, a further exploration of Gibson’s fetishistic expiation through mortification of the flesh. The violence in this movie is so intense, so graphic, so overwhelming, so pornographic that it is like a whole separate movie, one that initially distracts from and then undermines the legitimacy of the other two.
Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is the son of the chief of a small group of peaceful hunter-gatherers. When their community is destroyed by ruthlessly predatory attackers, he is able to hide his pregnant wife and son before he is taken away as a prisoner. The rest of the story is his escape, pursued by vicious warriors who will not stop until they have secured their revenge and their honor.
Gibson’s audacity pays off brilliantly in using mostly native performers and filming entirely in Mayan dialect (with subtitles), making us feel we are truly and vitally present in a world that has had no exposure to anything outside of a hunter-gathering society unchanged for millenia. Every one of the performances is stunningly open, intimate, brave, and natural.
Heart-stopping action sequences all but explode off the screen. Jaguar Paw’s desperate escape involves a vertiginous plunge down a thundering waterfall, darts poisoned with tree-frog venom, and an improvised grenade made from a beehive. The visuals are mesmerizing, from the smallest leaf of the rain forest to the grand sweep of great natural landscapes and a dizzyingly vast and complex pre-Columbian city with a palace, an arena, a towering altar for human sacrifice, and a marketplace for the sale of slaves.
No one expects a story like this to be bloodless. But the level, frequency, level of graphic detail, and intensity of the violence here is not about telling the story, and it inflicts damage on the narrative that even the movie’s compelling strengths cannot overcome.

Parents should know that this is one of the most explicitly violent movies ever made. It has extreme, intense, and graphic violence with many characters injured and killed. A community is pillaged with all kinds of butchery and assault, including rape and casual murder of children. Other scenes include suicide, human sacrifice, and a gladiator-like exercise in which humans are used for target practice. Characters, including children and a pregnant woman, are in constant peril. There is some strong and crude language. Characters wear revealing native attire and there is a non-explicit childbirth scene.
Families who see this movie should talk about the similarities to our culture (macho posturing, shared jokes, tenderness toward family, struggles with mothers-in-law, tribalism and hostility toward those who are different) and the significance of the final group of invaders. Characters in this movie have to decide what compromises and sacrifices they will undertake to stay alive or protect those they love. How do they make those choices? What is the significance of the name “Almost?”
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

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Turistas

Posted on November 30, 2006 at 4:24 pm

F+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.
Profanity:	Extremely strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Fairly heavy drinking, implied marijuana smoking, contains implication that alcoholic beverages have been â€œdruggedâ€
Violence/ Scariness:	Extremely graphic and grisly violence including torture
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie is the way Americans are seen by those outside the US
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B000N3AW6G

The growing trend in horror is to be as disgusting as possible — the story need not be involved, as long as it includes some form of stainless-steel torture and preferably five to six young backpackers/tourists/campers/other people away from home. While the formula might have proved innovative with some of the earlier films of the genre, the scares are now unbearably canned.

“Turistas” follows a multinational group of twenty-something backpackers who become stranded on an isolated Brazilian beach, populated by only a handful of locals. Of course, as must always be the case in horror, the locals have plans for the young, attractive, scantily-clad travelers; plans that involve the tourists serving as unwilling organ donors to satisfy the demand for black-market transplants.

There’s a lot of buildup to the torture we all know is coming (for us or them?), infusing the first half of the film with a projected sense of dread that’s more dreadful than it is fun. The result is an overriding sense that the film is more sick than scary, more revolting than revealing, more twisted than tantalizing. Horror flicks are meant to be startling and suspenseful, maybe even at times cringe-inducing, but there’s a fine line between horror that’s enjoyable with entertainment value, and horror that’s simply horrible.

Parents should know that besides being nearly unbearably graphic, this film shamelessly copycats many other recent horror films that offer copious scenes of bare skin along with the scares. More than one of the women in the film appears topless, and there is casual kissing and implied prostitution. With a build up that begins with one of the young women begging for her life in the very first scene and continues when the characters find handfuls of prescription drugs and stainless steel surgery equipment later on, the film reaches its climax with a sequence that rivals the Discovery Health Channel in surgery close-ups and soggy internal organs shots. If the thought of navigating multicolored organs in a soup of bright red blood with stainless steel utensils leaves you squeamish when it’s done to help people, it will have you ill when done to harm.

Families who see this film might talk about the differing personalities in the film. Do the young tourists represent stereotypes? Could any of the personalities, such as the levelheaded brother who discourages recklessness and the Australian woman who travels alone and values her independence, be helpful and representative of often-neglected personality types? What are the motivations of the villains, and in what ways do they attempt to justify their actions? Kiko (played by Agles Steib), a young Brazilian entrusted with luring the backpackers to their final destination, finds himself affected by the tourists in a way he did not anticipate. How is this change of heart reflected in the film? What seemed to motivate his evolution from Pied Piper to cohort?

Families who enjoy this film might also enjoy the graphic films by writer/directory Eli Roth, such as Hostel and Hostel: Part II, as well as his semi-comedic 2002 release Cabin Fever.

Deja Vu

Posted on November 20, 2006 at 3:06 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images and some sensuality.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic violence, many characters killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00005JPD0

A heart-pounding thriller with a time-travel twist, “Deja Vu” will not leave you thinking you’ve seen it all before.

Denzel Washington plays Doug Carlin, an ATF agent called in to investigate a bombing. Someone, perhaps a terrorist, has blown up a ferry boat filled with families. Carlin is smart, knowledgeable, dedicated, and persistent. He knows who he is and he knows what he knows and how to find out what he doesn’t know.

And one thing he knows is that someone may have intended the body of a lovely young woman named Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton of Idlewild) to look as though she was one of the ferry passengers, but she was not. As he begins to track down her story, he begins to unravel the events that led to the bombing. He starts to feel he knows her so well, that he is connected to her somehow that he feels her loss sharply. He wants more than to solve the crime. He begins to wish that he could somehow rescue her. With all of his analytic ability, all of his power to make the confusing fit into neat rows of facts and circumstances, there are some odd, even impossible factors that catch at him. Like the message in magnetic letters on her refrigerator: U CAN SAVE HER. And there’s the matter of his fingerprints in her house.

“There are some time constraints,” says another federal investigator (Val Kilmer), inviting Carlin onto a task force. It turns out there is a secret government program (thank you Patriot Act funding) to essentially TIVO the world. And then it turns out that the “tapes” he is watching of Claire Kuchever’s last days are not exactly tapes. Yes, they are the past. But they are a glimpse of a past that is within reach. Carlin may be able to go back in time. He may already have done it; he just needs to remember how and what to do once he gets there.

All of this is the icing — the cake is the good, old-fashioned action, with lots of chases, fights, and explosions, expertly presented by action masters director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. What makes it work, though is Washington, Hollywood’s top go-to guy for the whole package — he brings such conviction to the role that we are ready to believe it, too, and such a jolt of pure movie star power that we are with him every pulse-pounding step of the way. You might have to see this one twice — to put all the pieces together and, knowing where it’s all going, just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Parents should know that this film has a lot of violence for a PG-13, including the bombing of a ship carrying civilians and children. There is some strong language. Characters drink and smoke. A strength of the movie is its portrayal of strong, capable, loyal, and diverse characters.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Time After Time, in which Victorian-era author H.G. Wells chases Victorian-era serial killer Jack the Ripper through modern-day San Francisco and Minority Report where technology enables the government to see and prevent crimes before they happen.

Casino Royale

Posted on November 14, 2006 at 3:47 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content and nudity.
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense peril and violence including torture and assassination
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	2006
Date Released to DVD:	2007
Amazon.com ASIN:	B001DSNF8C

They got a lot right with this new rebooted Bond, but — let me get this straight — when Bond and the Bad Guy have their big confrontation, it’s…a poker game?

First things first. Daniel Craig is a great Bond, with Steve McQueen-style cool and jungle cat grace. He runs like an Olympic athlete and looks great in — and out of — a dinner jacket that is, in the words of Dorothy L. Sayers, “tailored to the swooning point.” It’s a great idea to re-introduce us to the Bond character at the beginning of his career. When he rises from the water in a wry homage to both Bond’s first film, Dr. No, and to images of the Birth of Venus, he is almost impossibly golden.

He is also impetuous and a little messy. He makes mistakes. His first kill (we learn it takes two for that 00 designation) is far from elegant. It’s downright grubby. It is fascinating to get to see Bond learn from his mistakes. As we get to know him, he is getting to know himself. That run of his is not just athletics; it is acting. It is full-on, the only time he lets himself be wholeheartedly committed to anything. We see how he analyzes people and situations, still a little show-offy because he is still a little insecure. He is even, for a brief moment, vulnerable, and we get to see why he won’t be any more. Origin stories often get heavy-handed with portentous foreshadowing as Our Hero meets up for the first time with characters and objects that we know will be important to him. But this film has a light touch when we see Bond meet his Aston-Martin and find that he hasn’t learned the difference yet between shaken and stirred.

Bond feels younger, fresher, brasher, and much of the film does, too, not weighed down with the intrusive product placement that at times made the recent films feel like infomercials (though the director noted in an interview that “Every terrorist and every person in the world has a Sony Erikson phone. If you look in the car park, there are a lot of Fords.” They’ve dispensed with one of the highlights of the Bond franchise, though, the gadget overview with Q, always a delicious way to set the stage for the rest of the movie as each of them gets used. In a world of text messaging and Google, the real-life toys pretty much do everything you need. Okay, that in-car defibrillator comes in handy, but Q could probably pick up one of those at The Sharper Image. And then there are the guns, of course. Lots and lots and lots of guns.

Plot? Who cares? There are only three things we want to know about a Bond film. Who’s the bad guy? And who’s the girl? And how’s the action — especially, how much stuff gets blown up?

Two out of three. The girl is Eva Green. She, too, looks beautiful in evening wear, and she is just about believable as a brainy banker who doesn’t think much of Bond until…she does. She has a lot of warmth and sizzle. The action, aside from the dull patch during the poker game, is very fine, especially an early-on chase and fight scene around and in and on top of a skyscraper construction site. Lots of shooting and lots of explosions. The bad guy is not creepy or menacing enough to be interesting and the object of all the attention — some terrorist money — is not as interesting as a secret weapon or formula or combination to a master safe. And that poker game, with helpful commentary by Giancarlo Giannini as though he’s reporting for ESPN slows things down until they are almost inert.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive action-style violence. Many characters are shot and injured or killed. There is an intense torture scene, other references to torture, and a suggested suicide. Characters drink alcohol and use some strong language. There are sexual references and some non-explicit sexual situations with some brief nudity.

Families who see this movie should talk about the different takes on Bond and the bad guys over the years.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the other Bond films, especially those starring Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. They might like to take a look at the very silly but fun previous version of Casino Royale, with a variety of James Bonds, including David Niven and, believe it or not, Woody Allen. And they will enjoy Daniel Craig’s stylish gangster film, Layer Cake (mature material).