Yes, it is basically “Die Hard” and “Under Siege” in the mountains of Finland, if Bruce Willis was a kid on a rite-of-passage solo hunting trip. And instead of executive hostages in a big office building, the kid has to save the President of the United States, who has been ejected from Air Force One in some sort of attack we will learn more about later on.
So, the storyline is far from fresh. But the location is, and it is excitingly filmed and engagingly performed.
Samuel L. Jackson plays President William Allen Moore, en route to a G8-style meeting when his Secret Service officer, Morris (Ray Stevenson) sends him out in a parachute pod to protect him from what appears to be an assassination or kidnap attempt, led by known terrorist-type bad guy and obvious mercenary sociopath Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus). Meanwhile, back in the Situation Room back home, the vice president (Victor Garber), the head of the CIA (Felicity Huffman), and a national security expert (James Broadbent) are trying to locate and rescue the President.
Copyright Big Zero Film Entertainment 2015
But you probably suspect that some of the people we are supposed to be trusting will turn out not to be trustworthy, and you are right.
Meanwhile, Oskari (the nicely underplaying Onni Tommila) in on his Finnish walkabout. He is on his own in the wilderness with a bow and arrow, expected to bring home an impressive kill. He is under a lot of pressure, because his father is a legendary hunter. But the bow is nearly as big as he is and the hint his father gave him about where the best spot is to find his prey. But his father’s idea of help was not what Oskari thought. And the big game he found was a guy in a suit who is pretty big stuff in Washington but not so powerful away from home.
Writer/director (and Tommila’s uncle) Jalmari Helander knows Hollywood movies and matches the pacing and tone of the best of the genre. There is nothing new in the twists of the plot, but the relationship between the canny President and the unruffled boy, each with different skills, and the action sequences that are unrealistic but fun keep things entertaining.
Parents should know that this film incudes extended action-style violence, characters injured and killed, themes of treason and assassination, some strong language, and potty humor.
Family discussion: How did Oskari feel when he saw what his father left for him? What was Oskari’s biggest challenge?
If you like this, try: “Masterminds” with Patrick Stewart
Rated R for language throughout, violence, and some sexual content including brief graphic nudity
Profanity:
Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Extensive action-style violence, some disturbing images, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
June 5, 2015
Date Released to DVD:
September 8, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00YWE6LXK
Copyright 2015 Twentieth Century Fox
It is time to celebrate. Melissa McCarthy finally has the movie role she deserves. Writer/director Paul Feig, who directed her in “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat” has wisely given her center stage and allowed her to be quirky and awkward, which we knew she could do, and improvise crazy lines and scenarios, which we also knew she could do, but also let her play someone who is extremely capable and loyal, smart, brave, and completely captivating, which we always knew she could do, but rarely got to see more than a hint of it.
Feig does not just thoroughly understand the genre he is shredding. He clearly loves it. All of the classic spy movie necessities are there, a sultry song over the opening credits, impeccable tailoring, a beautiful car, fine wine, pretty girls, chases and shootouts, cool gadgets, glamorous world capitals, a formal high society party with tons of security that must be breached, a club scene with EDM, betrayal by a trusted insider, an evil megalomaniacal villain, and — of course — the fate of the entire world depending on our secret agent with a license to kill saving the day. Dippold avoids the usual spoof go-to “jokes” of incompetence, slapstick, and instantly-old cultural references, allowing the characters to take the stakes and the relationships seriously enough so that the comedy is honestly earned and all the funnier for it. It is genuinely refreshing to see women as not just hero and villain but also as hero’s boss and her best friend. The male stars are excellent, especially Jude Law and Jason Statham, who get to riff on their own leading man images as well as larger-scale action hero conventions. But the ladies are in charge here, and they are killing it. Imaging Miss Moneypenny and Pussy Galore plus Dame Judi Dench as M running the show, with Bond as eye candy.
McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, a teacher turned desk agent for the CIA. As super-cool Bradley Fine (Law) tosses off a glass of champagne, pausing to admire the crystal flute glass before smashing it and sneaking out to find the super-powerful, super-compact bomb, Susan is talking through his earpiece, letting him know which way to turn through the labyrinthian tunnels every self-respecting bad guy has to have under the elegant party going on up above, and which direction the henchmen are coming from. He is fond but patronizing. She is capable but a bit fluttery and insecure.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of pollen in the air and Bradley sneezes at the wrong time, accidentally making his gun go off and killing the bad guy. Also unfortunately, the bad guy’s successor, his daughter Rayna (Byrne, with what looks like several dead animals hiding in her hideous hairdo), has access to the names of all of the current field agents. With no alternative, the humorless CIA deputy director (Janney) sends Susan out into the field, just to track and report, not to engage. Susan is nervous but excited, though disappointed when she receives her cover. No sophisticated bespoke attire and fancy hotel rooms. She will be a dowdy, nondescript woman with a very bad perm.
She doesn’t get the cool hoverboard from the Q-equivalent. She gets weaponized versions of the things a woman like her cover identity would have in her purse. And her cover involves hilariously tacky wardrobe and a disastrous perm-looking wig. Of course she soon abandons the “no engagement” part. A rogue agent (Statham) trying to find the bomb on his own mostly gets in the way. But she relies on her excellent observational powers, quick thinking, and some mad skillz in hand-to-hand combat, even if killing a guy grosses her out. And she gets some help from her best friend Nancy (the wildly funny Miranda Hart).
It is exciting, funny, and even heartwarming. And best of all, there’s a hint at the end of a possible sequel. More Susan Cooper, please, and lots and lots more McCarthy.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references, sexual humor, and non-explicit sexual situations, graphic nudity, extensive violence with some graphic and disturbing images, and characters injured and killed.
Family discussion: What do you think it takes to be a great spy? If you were going undercover, what would your name be?
If you like this, try: “Get Smart,” “Bridesmaids,” and “The Heat”
Another summer blockbuster-by-the-numbers, another dad who needs redemption and re-connection with his family, and the only way he can get it is via massive, catastrophic disasters lovingly created via CGI that feels more real than the emotions, characters, or dialog. And that brings us to “San Andreas,” the latest in schlock disaster porn.
This time, it’s an earthquake. Before the tectonic plates start to shift, we get quick intros to our two heroes, the brain (Paul Giamatti as Lawrence, a Caltech seismologist) and brawn (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Ray, a military rescue specialist turned LA Fire Department rescue specialist). This job is easier, because “no one is shooting at us.”
These scenes give the professor a chance to lecture his class and establish the scale of damage a quake inflicts and the impossibility of predicting when one will occur (until….). And it gives Ray a chance to rescue a pretty girl whose car has been knocked off a cliff, accompanied by a TV news reporter (“The Good Wife’s” Archie Panjabi) and cameraman. This is also the only clever twist in the film as the pretty girl is speeding along a narrow mountain road, reaching behind her for her water bottle and checking a text, either of which we assume are going to cause an accident. But this is not a Driver’s Ed cautionary video. Her car is knocked off the mountain by boulders, crushing it and wedging it precariously between rocks on the side of the cliff.
Fortunately, Ray and his wisecracking crew arrive to save the day, explaining what they are doing to the reporter so we can power through some more exposition and see the reporter’s notes on one of the team: “Cute but not smart.” Yep. That prepares us for what is coming all right. Except it’s not that cute. Example: two characters crash land in a baseball field and she says to him: “It’s been a while since I got you to second base!” How hilarious and quippily romantic in the midst of the entire state falling into the ocean!
We quickly establish Ray as a devoted father and estranged husband. Final divorce papers arrive in the mail and his ex, Emma (Carla Gugino — please get a better agent) is moving in with Richie Rich, I mean Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), who has a mansion and a private plane and says that the skyscrapers he builds are his children. To sharpen Ray’s sense of being displaced, Daniel offers to fly Ray’s daughter Blake to her volleyball tournament in San Francisco, instead of driving with her dad.
As if to manifest Ray’s internal upheavals, the earth begins to shake, first in Nevada, where the Hoover Dam collapses, and then on the West Coast, when the fault line of the title, overdue for a major quake after more than a century, seizes, shifts, and heaves.
The special effects are so extensive that it amplifies their unreality. The movie is more concerned with the individual windows exploding out of the buildings than it is about the underlying mechanics of what is actually happening. It is preposterous enough that the professor not only predicts the second quake but hacks into the television networks. Wi-fi, electricity and broadcast channels are still operating, apparently, which is a long shot, but also people are actually watching the television news to find out what is happening, which is even more unlikely. And then, odds fast plummeting below zero, San Francisco is evacuated in a pretty orderly fashion (some folks stopping to loot flat-screens — why it it always flat-screens?), presumably so we can relish all the destruction without worrying too much about the people, the opposite of the neutron bomb. This is PG-13 “action violence,” designed to be exciting, not terrifying.
Goodbye, Golden Gate Bridge, cables swinging vertiginously. Goodbye Coit Tower. All those pretty pixels and algorithms, so cleverly arranged. California is shredded with the same glee the boys who played at our house used to have in wiping out the Sims with every possible kind of catastrophe.
What is terrifying is the Randian twist that has Ray abandoning any duties he has in LA to rescue just two people, both of whom are in his family. And in the middle of Armageddon, he somehow finds time for a heart-to-heart with his ex, after the scales drop from her eyes to understand what a selfish monster Daniel is. For all the literal flag-waving and reference to rebuilding at the end, this is a curiously sour portrayal of disaster as family therapy.
Parents should know that this film concerns a major earthquake affecting Nevada and California, with many collapsing buildings, roads, and bridges, fires, floods, looting, fighting, gun, characters injured and killed, references to death of a child, some disturbing images, and some strong language.
Family discussion: What does this movie teach us about skills and plans we should have for emergencies? What did Emma and Ray learn about one another and why did it take an earthquake for them to reach that understanding?
If you like this, try: “The Towering Inferno” and “The War of the Worlds”
It begins with an argument. Frank (George Clooney) is trying to tell us the story. But he is repeatedly interrupted by someone we will learn is Casey (Britt Robertson). “Try to be a little more upbeat,” she urges him. The only way he can do that is to go back to when he last felt upbeat, as a child in 1964, when he brought his not-quite-working-yet invention to the New York World’s Fair to submit it in competition. The judge (Hugh Laurie) rejected it, but a young girl who was watching them follows Frank, hands him a pin, and tells him to follow her without being noticed. She is Athena, played with saucer-eyed charm by Raffey Cassidy. That leads him to the “It’s a Small World” ride, which had its premiere at the 1964 World’s Fair, but in this version of the ride, there is a portal to a fabulous Oz-like city of the future.
We then meet Casey in the present day, where she is engaging in a little breaking and entering at a NASA facility in Cape Canaveral, trying to stop the machines that are tearing it down. Her father (a warm and wonderfully natural Tim McGraw) is a NASA engineer who has been laid off as his entire program is shutting down. Casey is caught and arrested, and when she is being released, among her things is the same pin. And when she touches it, she is transported to a wheat field with that same city in the distance. The shot is an homage to the iconic image of the Emerald City from the poppy field. She wants to get back there. She feels that she needs to get back there. And so she tries to track down the pin, which takes her to a store filled with sci-fi artifacts run by Kathryn Hahn and Keegan-Michael Key, who manage to be both very funny and surprisingly menacing. The store is called Blast from the Past, a name that turns out to be quite literal when some guys dressed in black with scary grins and big guns show up.
Athena arrives, looking not a day older than in 1964, and takes Casey to see Frank, now a grumpy recluse with a grizzly gray beard stubble and a holographic dog. When the guys in black show up, they are held back by Frank’s elaborate system of booby traps long enough for Frank, Casey, and Athena to escape. Eventually they make it back to Tomorrowland, which looks quite different from the pristine and joyful version Casey first saw.
There are some magical moments, but also some choices so poor they suggest last-minute panic re-cutting. That last scene with Clooney and Cassidy is weird and creepy, even more so because it is intended to be touching. But in much of the film, co-writer/director Brad Bird, working with “Lost’s” Damon Lindelof, combines some of the themes from his earlier films, “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” and even “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” so that the story’s superbly staged action sequences and gorgeously imagined settings underlie ideas about creativity, optimism, and the power of ideas and imagination. It is all in the tradition and the spirit of the man behind the theme park area that inspired the film.
Early on, Casey tells her dispirited father, who describes himself as “a NASA engineer without a launch,” the Cherokee story he used to tell her. Two wolves are fighting. One represents darkness and despair. One represents light and hope. Which one will win? The one that you feed. It is clear that Bird wants us to feed the wolf of light and hope, and this film gives that wolf some real nourishment.
Parents should know that this film includes sci-fi/action/fantasy peril and violence including weapons, characters injured and killed, themes of dystopia and destruction, and some mild language (hell, damn).
Family discussion: What made Casey special? What invention would you like to create to make a better future? Would you like to have a friend like Athena?
If you like this, try: Disney classics from the original Tomorrowland era like “Escape from Witch Mountain” and “Swiss Family Robinson”
Rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout, and for disturbing images
Profanity:
Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
None
Violence/ Scariness:
Constant, intense, and graphic violence, guns, explosions, crashes, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:
May 15, 2015
Copyright Village Roadshow Pictures 2015
Mad Max (Tom Hardy, taking over from Mel Gibson) stamps on a two-headed lizard and then chews its head off. And that’s just in the first minute. That master of apocalyptic junkyard anarchy, George Miller, is back, bigger, wilder, madder than ever with this fourth of the Mad Max movies, all set in a post-apocalyptic desert dystopia of deprivation, chaos, rust, and brutality. In this world, all anyone has ever known is loss and despair. There is no hope, no thought of any possible way to learn or create. At one point, a character points to something completely unfamiliar to him, calling it “that thing.” It is a tree.
The first three films were about the fight for gasoline to fuel the vehicles pieced together from the wreckage. This one is about another, even more precious fluid: water. Other precious fluids come into the story as well, including blood and breast milk.
A brutal dictatorship has taken over, controlling access to all of that. All are the preserve of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, with the right crazy eyes for the role), who lives literally above everyone else in a place known as The Citadel, maintaining control with his army of War Boys, all with shaved heads and powder-white skin and all convinced that their destiny is to die for Immortan Joe and be transported to paradise in Valhalla. Immortan Joe also maintains a harem of impossibly long-legged, lovely young woman. His chief lieutenant is Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a fearless woman with a mechanical arm, so much the central focus of the film that it should have been named for her. When Furiosa escapes with Immortan Joe’s women, including his pregnant “queen,” Joe and his peers come after them, in a convoy of tricked-up vehicles, all made to destroy. Everything is in shades of burnt-out umber except for the bright red suit of a guy shredding an electric guitar to keep everyone angry.
One of the War Boys is Nuz (Nicholas Hoult), who has brought along his “blood bag.” That would be Max, who was captured by Immortan Joe’s troops and kept alive only to serve as a blood donor. Nuz did not want to be left behind but had not yet finished getting his transfusion. So Max is manacled and attached to the front of Nuz’s car. Max ends up with Furiosa and the young women, who are seeing the “green place” where Furiosa was born.
Miller is a master of cinema, and his staging and cinematography on the action scenes are shot through with throbbing, raging, adrenalin that contrasts with the stoicism of Max and Furiosa. Miller has said that the Edge camera car is the most exciting technological innovation in his career. It allowed him (he operated it himself) to put the camera in the middle of the action. He does not like to use CGI, preferring “practical” (real) effects, and the grittiness is so palpable we feel we are inhaling dust.
Hardy is excellent, though, as with Bain, his face is masked for much of the film. Theron is more incendiary than the film’s mountainous fireballs, creating a character with a rich, complicated history in the way she fights, in the determined set of her brows, in the way she looks at the helpless young women, thinking about where she has been and what she has seen. The action makes our hearts beat harder, but Miller’s ability to create characters that transcend the crashes and explosions and themes that resonate all too sharply with contemporary conflicts, are what can make them beat more fiercely.
Parents should know that this film has non-stop apocalyptic action, peril, and violence with many characters injured and killed and several graphic and disturbing images, as well as some strong language, some nudity, and references to domestic abuse.
Family discussion: Why won’t Max tell Furiosa his name? Why did society become so savage? Why was one community different?
