Halloween Pick: “Poltergeist”
Posted on October 30, 2012 at 3:28 pm
One of my favorite Halloween movies for older kids is the original Poltergeist
Cloud Atlas
Posted on October 25, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Six nested stories set in the past, present, and future entwine grand themes of the conflicts between those who would oppress and those who demand freedom, those who must create and those who want to repeat what is already there, those who love and those who are afraid to love or be loved. Some in the audience will be enchanted by the grand scope of the story-telling and the intricate details of the mosaic that make up each of the story’s parts. Others will be impatient with the gimmicks and distracted by the prosthetics, wigs, and make-up. Many will grapple with the frustration of experiencing both reactions.
When they made the “Matrix” films, they were known as the Wachowski brothers, Andy and Larry. But since then, Larry has become Lana while resisting terms like “transition” as “complicity in a binary gender narrative.” That clearly fueled the commitment to age, race, and gender fluidity throughout the film. Even the most sharp-eyed cataloger of prosthetic noses and teeth will be surprised as the credits reveal the multiple roles taken by Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving (Mr. Smith in the “Matrix” films), Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess, James Broadbent, Ben Wishaw, Keith David, Doona Bae, and others.
The oldest story, set in the early 19th century and told in the traditional style of ahistorical drama, has Sturgess as a man disturbed by the abuse of slaves in the Pacific who is being poisoned by a doctor (Hanks) he thinks is curing him. His journals become a book on a shelf in the next story, set in the 1930’s, with a musician (Wishaw) writing to the man he loves about assisting a venerated composer and working on his own composition, called “Cloud Atlas.” In the 1970’s, styled to remind us of that era’s “paranoid cinema” films like “The Parallax View” and “The China Syndrome,” an investigative reporter (Berry) gets stuck in an elevator with an elderly scientist who gives her some important information about a nuclear facility. She discovers his 40-years-old correspondence with the musician in his papers. In the present day, we see something of a shaggy dog story as a British publisher (Broadbent) goes on the run from hooligans and ends up having to escape from a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”-style facility.
Two stories are set in the future. The first, in what is now Korea, has a “Blade Runner-“ish society made up of consumers and “fabricants.” One of them sees a movie based on the story of the publisher’s escape (starring Hanks), which helps her understand that she must rebel against the abuses of her society. Her story becomes part of the origin myths of a post-apocalyptic society hundreds of years even farther into the future, where much of humanity has returned to an almost bronze-age level of technology and everyone speaks in a Jar-Jar Binks form of pidgin English that may have worked better on the printed page but on screen is intrusive and overdone.
As the the “Matrix” films, the more specific and concrete it gets, the less resonance it has. Its greatest message about human aspiration and inspiration and connection is in the message as medium. The scope and audacity of this undertaking, the biggest budget independent film in history, with the Wachowskis putting up their own homes to make the final budget numbers, outshines the details that never quite reach the clouds.
Parents should know that this film includes some graphic violence including murders, rape, shoot-outs, knives, arrows, suicide, brutal whipping, poison, car crashes, and a character being thrown off a balcony. Characters are in peril, injured and killed. There are dead bodies with disturbing images, some strong words including f-word and n-word, gay and heterosexual sexual references and explicit situations as well as nudity, crude sexual humor, portrayal of slavery and totalitarianism, smoking, and drug use.
Family discussion: Which of the stories was the most compelling and why? Who was the bravest character? Who learned the most?
If you like this, try: the book by David Mitchell and the “Matrix” movies
Looper
Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity, and drug content |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drug use and addiction |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Intense and graphic violence with adults and children injured and killed, suicide |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | September 28, 2012 |
| Date Released to DVD: | December 24, 2012 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B005LAII8A |
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same man in a twisty time-travel thriller about “loopers,” assassins who use short-range guns called blunderbusses to kill targets sent back in time from the future. The first thing we see is an ornate antique pocket watch as young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) waits next to a cornfield, a cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. The seconds tick by and then the target appears on the cloth, hands cuffed behind him with a bag over his head. Joe shoots, turns over the victim to retrieve the silver bars under his jacket, and disposes of the body. The criminals in the future have found a neat (in both senses of the word) method of dispatching their enemies.
It is 2044. The dead man was sent back from 2074.
Young Joe goes out clubbing with other loopers, the hapless Seth (Paul Dano) and another looper who has been retired. In what is called “closing the loop,” his last target is his future self. These final assignments bring payment in gold along with the knowledge of what will happen to the young assassin when he faces himself in three decades. Seth lets his future self escape and gets in trouble with Abe (a superb Jeff Daniels) the man in charge of the loopers. There are some special challenges that come with the problem of two different versions of the same person running around at the same time; apparently, you can’t just shoot him/them without disturbing the time-space continuum or something like that. Old Joe and Young Joe know themselves/each other too well to trust each other and too well to hide from or outsmart each other. And just like Marty McFly, they have to reckon with the fact that any big changes they make in the now will result in even bigger changes in the future. Which is Old Joe’s past.
Still with me?
As with his brilliant and ground-breaking “Brick,” also starring Gordon-Levitt, writer/director Rian Johnson has an engaging and compelling way of mixing genres. There are some overlays of the Western, the noir crime story, and a “Terminator”-style time travel mind-bender. The efforts to make Gordon-Levitt and Willis look even a little bit like they might be the same guy are ineffective and distracting, but other than that, this is a smart, exciting, mind-bender and a lot of fun.
Parents should know that this film has intense and graphic violence and peril. Adult and child characters injured and killed. The film includes a suicide, disturbing images, drinking, drug use and drug addiction, nudity, sexual references and situations, and very strong language.
Family discussion: Do you agree with Joe’s decision at the end? How did his experience with Seth affect his choices later on? What elements of today’s society inspired this idea about the future?
If you like this, try: “Brick,” from the same writer/director and star and time travel stories like “12 Monkeys” (also with Bruce Willis) and “Frequency”
Premium Rush
Posted on August 23, 2012 at 6:00 pm
He’s a Manhattan bicycle messenger and his name is Wilee, like the coyote. But Wilee (the always-brilliant Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is more like the road runner in this story. He has an envelope to deliver, and Bobby (Michael Shannon) wants to stop him. This nifty little thriller does not need much more than that to hold our attention. And yes, it delivers.
Director and co-writer David Koepp (writer of “Spider-Man,” “Panic Room,” and “Jurassic Park”), like his hero, pares everything down to the essentials, and that means removing the brakes. Wilee explains that his bike has no gears and no brakes. It cannot coast, so the pedals never stop turning. “People risk their lives for 80 bucks on a good day,” he tells us. But he loves the freedom, the adrenalin, the constant recalibrating as he swerves in and out of traffic and tries to stay safe in a city were “door” is a verb and getting “doored” (slamming into an opening car door) can cause major injuries.
Just as Wilee is constantly juggling and recalibrating his options as he determines his strategy for getting to his destination as quickly and as safely as possible, with the priority on speed. Koepp takes us inside Wilee’s head as he looks down different paths and calculates what the outcome will be for each one. He applies the same sort of calculus to the rest of his life. He graduated from law school but never took the bar because he cannot see himself wearing a suit to an office, at least not now. He cares about his girlfriend, Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), but he cannot plan far enough into the future to manage to get to her graduation. He likes being in the moment. He does not like anything that reminds him of the other life beyond the urgency of making the deadline. He loves being a part of the few, the proud, the bike messengers — in a world of email and FedEx, there are still some things that have to be carried in person — but he is feeling increasingly competitive with Manny (Wole Parks), who seems to be chasing Wilee on the streets and Vanessa after hours.
Nobody gets mad better than Michael Shannon. I do not want to give away too much about what he is trying to do and why, so I will just say that he is great as a volatile man cracking under extreme pressure. Like Wilee, he looks from side to side to evaluate his options and is still just about able to continue to appear normal when he needs to. Koepp keeps the gears moving like a Swiss watch, hitting rewind to show us how the characters got to where they are but keeping the pacing tight, with just the right touches of comedy, romance, and plot for a nicely satisfying little late-summer treat.
Note: Be sure to stay for the credits to see a clip showing Gordon-Levitt’s real-life on-set accident, which required 31 stitches on his arm.
Parents should know that this film includes extended peril and some violence including bicycle accident and a gun, characters injured and killed, and some strong language (one f-word).
Family discussion: Why did Wilee prefer being a messenger to being a lawyer? What does his name tell us about him? What did the movie gain from being told out of order?
If you like this, try: “Quicksilver” with Kevin Bacon, “Cellular,” and “The Transporter”
The Expendables 2
Posted on August 23, 2012 at 4:37 pm
The Botox budget must be bigger than the catering costs but less than the ordnance in this sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s first round-up of the 80’s and 90’s A-Team for an action extravaganza. That’s A as in AARP.
This time, our heroes: Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture, along with their summer intern and obvious redshirt Liam Hemsworth are on a rescue mission. I’m not going to bother with their character names because the point of this movie is the actors, not the characters.
The guy tied to a chair and about to be tortured is hooded, so you know we are in for a big wink-wink surprise, and yes, it is former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, “This is embarrassing.” The group rescues him and the Chinese billionaire he was guarding and then literally drops the client off by tossing him out of a plane with Li to guide him down. Li wisely exits the movie at this point, so my hopes for a rematch with Lundgren were tossed out of the plane with him.
Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) calls in a favor that has Stallone and the gang out for a job he insists is simple. All they have to do is retrieve the contents of a safe in a plane that crashed. They will need to take Maggie (the “combat proficient” Nan Yu) along, despite Stallone’s grousing that he does not want to be anyone’s babysitter. Hemsworth comes along for what he says will be his last job because he wants to quit to be with his wonderful girlfriend. He might as well be wearing a sign that says DBTA.
Or, he could be wearing a sign that says, “I am here to let the bad guy show everyone how really, really bad he is. Here I am, cute as a kitten and calling everyone ‘Sir’ and sacrificing myself for the others, so he must be really, really bad.” We also know he is really, really bad because (a) he is played by Jean Claude Van Damme wearing very mean-looking sunglasses and (b) his character’s name is, I am not kidding, Vilian.
The over-the-hill gang engages in various shoot-outs punctuated by lame wisecracks that refer to their iconic roles. Do you want to guess whether someone says, “I’ll be back?” At its best, it’s like watching a theme park stunt spectacular, one set-up after another, with brief distractions as the guys bond by discussing what they would pick for their last meal or just by the usual macho put-downs. Not that any of these guys were great actors to begin with, but they are less so, now. Between the Botox and the scar tissue, their faces don’t really move anymore. As the movie goes on, Li’s decision to literally bail out seems like the wisest move.
Parents should know that this film includes constant mayhem, peril, and violence, chases, explosions, fights, assault weapons, many characters injured and killed, drinking, smoking, and mild sexual references.
Family discussion: What did Barney mean when he said “we keep it light until it is time to get dark.” Why did he agree to fight the bad guy without weapons?
If you like this, try: the earlier action films starring these actors and the first “Expendables” movie