In the Heart of the Sea

Posted on December 10, 2015 at 5:36 pm

Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a brilliant novel about humanity, nature, obsession, power, and pretty much everything else, with a lot of technical information about whaling thrown in for good measure and metaphor. Nathaniel Philbrick’s acclaimed book about the tragic real-life whaling expedition that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick is In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. This film is director Ron Howard’s uneven attempt to give that story the mythic force of Melville’s tale (itself never adequately adapted for film).

Like Moby Dick, this is a story of man against nature, not just the powerful animals man tries to trap and kill but of man against the animalistic elements of his own nature. That is represented, as it so often is, by the conflict between two men. The captain of the Essex is George Pollard (Benjamin Walker). He and everyone on the shop know that he is captain only because he comes from a high-born shipping family. The first mate is Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth, with his “Rush” director), resentful of Pollard because he was promised the captain job and knows he is more qualified.

On the first night out, Pollard makes a point of cruelly describing Chase’s father’s time in prison to establish his superiority — and his willingness to use humiliation as a management tactic. In his desperation to establish his superiority, he does not realize that it makes him look thuggish and scared. It certainly does not inspire respect or loyalty. But Chase is determined to make it work. This time, if he meets his quota, he has it in writing that his next voyage will be as captain.

The whalers are under enormous pressure. Whale oil powers the world of the 1820’s (there is a clumsy hint that the world may be shifting to fossil fuels). Whaling ships go to sea for years at a time, traveling across the Atlantic to kill whales, extract the blubber, and melt it down.

Ships — whether on water or in space — are ideal settings for stories because they are isolated from the society at large. Everything is heightened because there is no way to leave and no recourse for support or appeal. But that intensity and drama is dissipated here with a useless framing story as author Melville (Ben Whishaw) tries to get the ship’s only survivor (Brendan Gleeson) to tell him what happened. The connection is awkwardly positioned against Moby Dick‘s narrative voice and unforgettable Job-like status as the sole survivor who can carry the story and the survivor character’s sympathetic wife is a distraction and her scenes suggest after-the-fact re-shoots.

Melville was wise to reshape the story. This version has gorgeous scenery, a moving score by Roque Banos, and superb special effects, but the power of the images is undercut by a story that tries to carry more meaning than it can hold.

Parents should know that this is a whaling saga with constant and intense peril and violence including fire, guns, storms, starvation, murder, cannibalism, and sinking ship, many characters injured and killed, brief strong language, and drinking and alcoholism.

Family discussion: Why did Pollard embarrass Chase on the first night out? What were the biggest differences between Pollard and Chase in the way they treated the men? Do you agree with Chase’s “abominable” decision?

If you like this, try: “The Perfect Storm” and Melville’s Moby Dick

Spectre

Posted on November 5, 2015 at 5:52 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and languag
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Spy-style action violence with chases, shootouts, and explosions, characters injured and killed, torture, suicide
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 6, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	February 8, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B018WXLFSM

I thought “Skyfall” was the best Bond film ever, from the Adele theme song to the storyline that literally brought Bond (Daniel Craig) home. “Spectre” picks up where “Skyfall” left off, M (Dame Judi Dench) dead, the headquarters destroyed, the future of the double-O program in jeopardy. If this chapter, reportedly Craig’s last as Bond, is not up to the “Skyfall” level, it is still a solid entry in this series, more than half a century since the elegantly attired agent with a license to kill first appeared on screen.

The opening scene is brilliantly staged by returning director Sam Mendes. It takes place in Mexico City, in the midst of the Day of the Dead celebration and parade. Skeletons and signifiers of mortality are everywhere. An masked man with a man bun (so he must be a bad guy) passes by. Another masked man seems to be paying attention only to the beautiful woman he is escorting, but we can tell by the elegantly tailored suit that this must be Bond and therefore he is paying attention to everything. Sure enough soon he is spying, shooting, and chasing in one bravura shot that takes him through the crowd and the parade and into a fight inside a swooping helicopter.

Great beginning! And then we go into the credit sequence, which is pretentious and silly, with a sub-par song from Sam Smith. Ah, well.

It continues along those lines, with some set pieces that are exactly what we want from a Bond film, but other elements that show the uneasy bridge the Broccoli family, which controls the franchise, is trying to develop between the late 20th century Bond (Grace Jones! Space! Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist named Christmas! Infomercial level product placement!) and the grittier, more down-to-earth geopolitics of the 21st century, whether on screen (the Bourne series) or in the news (9/11). The film raises the question both in its storyline and in its presentation about whether the era of the shaken-not-stirred martini drinker who never carries a suitcase but always seems to have a dinner jacket on hand is over.

The dinner jacket, the beautiful women who find Bond irresistible, the martini, the cool car, the exotic locations, and the guns and gadgets are all there. A nice twist is that the car was designed for another agent, so Bond has no idea what the various buttons do. And the new gadget actually assigned to him is below the technology level of Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone. The gadgets that matter here are lines of code, and in this movie they serve as the MacGuffin as well. All of that works, though there were some snickers in the crowd during a brief pause in the action where Bond and the new Bond Girl (Lea Seydoux) get all dressed up for dinner on a train. The cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema finds a nice consistency through all of the globe-hopping ports of call, with lots of white space around our increasingly isolated hero. Craig, as he has done in all of his Bond films, gives a performance of depth as well as charm. He faces some choices with moral complexity, especially when he meets with a former adversary, and it is intriguing to see how he thinks them through. The somber tone is Bourne-ish, but the storyline teeters too close to recent stories like the last “Mission Impossible” and even “Captain America: Winter Soldier.” The final resolution exemplifies what is best and worst about the film, taking the “Skyfall” revelations about his past further, but going completely overboard with a brilliant villainous strategist who puts way too much time into an elaborate trap. And an otherwise sensible Bond girl who picks a very bad moment to discuss the relationship.

“Bond will return,” we are reassured once again at the end of the film. And by then we’re already looking forward to the next reboot.

Parents should know that this film has extended and graphic scenes of action-style spy violence with many crashes, explosions, chases and shootouts. There is a suicide and and some torture, with characters injured and killed, as well as some strong language, some sexual references and situations, and alcohol.

Family discussion: Who should decide what information is available to government agencies? How did childhood trauma affect three of the main characters?

If you like this, try: “Skyfall” and some of the Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan Bond films

The Last Witch Hunter

Posted on October 22, 2015 at 5:47 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images
Profanity:	A few bad words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, fantasy drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Extensive fantasy-style violence with many disturbing and grisly images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 23, 2015

A witch would have to cast a spell over me to make me sit through this big, dumb, dull, dud again.

And that’s too bad, because I like Vin Diesel and I can easily be put in the mood for a good-stupid sword and sorcery epic. But not this one, which has a storyline we’ve seen before and dialog that sounds like it was written by people for whom English was not a first language, and probably not a second. It’s like a videogame, and not in a good way.

Diesel plays Kaulder, and we meet him 800 years ago, with long hair and a beard, he is part of a group determined to wipe out the witches who are responsible for the plague that has killed off many of their families, including Kaulder’s wife and daughter. “In her death lies our salvation.” “Let fear perish.” “You must go. You have to fight.” Not very memorable. Oh, let’s be real — it does not even qualify as dialog. It’s just talking.

With torches for light and swords, arrows, and axes for protection, they enter the witch’s cave. Things do not go very well and most of them are killed. Kaulder battles the witch, and as she dies, she curses him to live forever. We catch up with him in the present day, back to being the bald Vin Diesel we all know and love. He’s on an airplane being tossed around the sky by a fierce storm. He realizes that it is not only caused by magic but caused by someone who does not know she is causing it. A young witch with a backpack has carelessly tossed together ancient runes that should never be allowed to touch. (Kids!) “At least you didn’t get them wet,” he says, and we know that (1) the screenwriters have seen “Gremlins,” and (2) they’ll be wet before the end of the movie and the CGI folks will have a heck of a storm to kick up then.

The “Gremlin’s” idea is followed by a few borrowed from “Harry Potter,” “CSI,” and various other vastly superior sources, with some highly predictable twists and a sprinkling of semi-contemporary references. Well, the iPad reference is semi-contemporary. The use of the term “stewardess” and the assumption that they are all super-hot and excellent one-night-stand prospects is rather outmoded.

There are some pretty good special effects and some moderately good stunts, but Michael Caine is wasted as Kaulder’s human aide (about to retire, with Elijah Wood, also wasted, as his replacement). Rose Leslie has some nice moments as a young witch trying to make her way in New York, like she wandered off the set of “Girls.” Ultimately, the remixing of better (and just as bad) films becomes grating and by the time they set it up for a sequel, it is the audience is beginning to cursed for living long enough to sit through this film.

Translation: Sword and sorcery-style fantasy violence with some grisly and disturbing images including dead bodies, a few bad words and brief sexual references.

Family discussion: What would be the best and worst parts about living for 800 years? Why was it so hard for Kaulder to trust anyone?

If you like this, try: “Hansel and Gretel” and “Dragonslayer”

Trailer: The Point Break Remake

Posted on September 18, 2015 at 8:00 am

I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to remake “Point Break,” because it is such a perfect combination of silly and awesome, with my all-time favorite movie stunt. What could a remake be but superfluous? But I have to say, this trailer looks pretty cool.

Everest

Posted on September 17, 2015 at 5:57 pm

This is why we can’t have nice things. As the brief history at the beginning of “Everest” points out, the first successful group to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain was led by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The mountain was the exclusive province of hardy adventurers. But then four decades later, commercial tour groups began to clog the mountain. This made it possible for people who had no business to be there to arrive with certain expectations that people who were being paid to guide them were under a lot of pressure to deliver on. And the crowding itself made it more difficult to keep everyone safe.

Writer Jon Krakauer went on one of those trips for Outside Magazine in 1996, when a huge storm and some bad decisions resulted in the deaths of twelve climbers. His best-selling book, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is the basis for this movie.

The scenery is spectacular, and the 3D IMAX cinematography is literally breathtaking, especially when one climber slips on a precarious ladder across a gorge and we get a vertiginous view straight down. But the people blocking the scenery never come alive to us as characters, partly because most of the time they are wearing near-identical parkas with hoods and speaking through masks or covered with snow, so it is impossible to tell them apart, and partly because so many of them are arrogant idiots. It is difficult to keep the characters straight, much less connect to them, and impossible to feel sympathy for people who make so many bad choices and then go to a place where the altitude, as high as the pressurized cabins of commercial aircraft, literally swells the brain so that thinking is impaired even further.

There are things we do because we dare. And there are things we do because we have big egos and $65,000. Asked repeatedly why they are climbing, no one has a good answer. Some echo Mallory: “Because it’s there!” but the very act of quoting someone else about daring undermines that spirit.

A woman from Japan (Naoko Mori) says that she has already climbed the other six peaks of the world’s seven tallest mountains. A man from Texas (Josh Brolin) wearing a Dole/Kemp t-shirt to make sure we know he’s a proud Republican, says he feels depressed when he’s not on a mountain — and that when his wife (Robin Wright) says she would divorce him if he went on another climb, he went on this one without telling her. A mailman/carpenter (John Hawkes) wants to tell the schoolchildren who helped him raise the money for the trip that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Everyone else kind of mushes together.

Then there are the two rival tour guides, the only distinctive and relatable characters. Rob (Jason Clarke) is a tender-hearted New Zealander with a pretty pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) waiting back home. Scott (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a seemingly laid-back American who beams beatifically when he says “It’s all good,” but points out that all of his group made it to the top when Rob’s group has not.

The film touches on important issues of hubris and the impact of commercialization turing an area that was for thousands of years reserved for the hardiest of adventurers into a playground for people with too much money and too little judgment, but frustratingly abandons them for an increasingly confusing storyline. We know a lot of things are going wrong, but it is difficult to tell what is happening to which climber and where they are in relation to each other. The anguished faces of the people trying to make contact do not come close in impact to that one moment on the bridge.

Parents should know that this film depicts real-life events of extreme peril with many characters injured and killed, very sad deaths, some disturbing images, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What changes would you recommend to prevent these kinds of fatalities in the future? What would you say to Rob in those final conversations if you were Helen? If you were Jan?

If you like this, try: “Touching the Void,” a gripping documentary about another real-life mountain climbing accident and Jon Krakauer’s book about the events of this film