Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Posted on February 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some mild adventure action and brief mild language
Profanity:	Some brief schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Action-style peril, minor injuries, some large insects, scary animals with big teeth, and some gross and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, mild sexist humor
Date Released to Theaters:	February 10, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	June 4, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B007R6D74G

Like its predecessor, Journey to the Center of the Earth, this is a well-paced and highly entertaining family film made with good humor, panache, and imagination. Josh Hutcherson returns as Sean Anderson, a teenager whose last expedition was in search of his father. Refreshingly, it does not take itself seriously. Even more refreshingly, it takes the idea of adventure seriously, with a welcome reminder that the actual thrill of exploring beats even the most entertaining movie or game.

Sean receives an encrypted radio signal and suspects it may be from his grandfather, Alexander, an explorer. Sean’s stepfather Hank (Duane “The Rock” Johnson) is a Navy veteran who once one a prize for code-breaking. Sean does not want to have anything to do with Hank, but cannot resist letting him help solve the code. When it appears to be coming from Sean’s grandfather, with a clue that leads them to more clues in classic stories of island adventure by Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jonathan Swift, Sean is determined to find it. Hank persuades Sean’s mother (Kristen Davis), to let them try because it is the first real opportunity he has had to get close to his stepson.

They fly to Palau, where the only person crazy and desperate enough to try to take them to an uncharted and possibly imaginary island in the middle of the most dangerous storms on the ocean is Gabato (Luis Guzman, providing awkward comic relief). Sean and Hank get into Gabato’s rattletrap of a plane with Gabato’s beautiful daughter Kailani (“High School Musical’s” Vanessa Hudgens) as a navigator. Like the Millennium Falcon being sucked into the Death Star by the tractor beam, Gabato’s plane is pulled onto the island by the swirl of the storm for a crash landing that shatters it to shards.

Sean is thrilled to find his grandfather (a game and very dapper Michael Caine) and the group is enchanted by the lush beauty of the tropical island and by its big/small reversals. Animals that are big in the rest of the world are small, and animals that are small are big. So the elephants are the size of border collies and the lizards are the size of dinosaurs. Alexander has created a “Swiss Family Robinson”-style treehouse and has discovered the ruins of an ancient city. But when Hank discovers that the island is sinking and will be submerged in a few days, they have to find a way to get back home. They set off for the coast. Alexander at first is hostile to Hank but, like Sean, learns to appreciate him after he shows how skillful and dependable he is — and after he pulls out a uke and sings a very respectable and funny version of “Wonderful World.”

Director Brad Peyton keeps the characters and the plot moving briskly and manages to bring in some nice moments as Alexander, Hank, and Gabato demonstrate different styles of fatherhood. Kailani reminds Sean that it may be bad when parents embarrass you but it is worse when they don’t even try to provide support and guidance. The humor is silly, but reassuring, not condescending to the young audience. It balances the scenes of peril as the group tries to find an escape. However, Gabato is so over-the-top he is likely to grate on anyone over age 10. It palpably conveys the fun of exploration and discovery and the pleasures of being part of a team. The production design by Bill Boes is spectacular, especially Alexander’s wittily imagined house, the ancient city, and the 140-year-old submarine that starts up like Woody Allen’s VW Bug in “Sleeper” after a unique jump start. It perfectly matches the fantasy-adventure-comedy tone of the story, where you can hold a a baby elephant in your arms and fly on the back of a giant bee. “Are you ready for an adventure?” characters ask more than once. This movie will have you ready to say, “Yes.”

As an added treat, there’s an “What’s Opera, Doc”-ish 3D Daffy Duck cartoon before the film, with audio from the original Daffy and Elmer voice talent, Mel Blanc.

Parents should know that this film has characters in peril, minor injuries, some icky and scary-looking animals with big teeth, some jump-out-at-you surprises, some potty and briefly crude humor, and brief schoolyard language.

Family discussion: How many different styles of parenting were portrayed in this movie? Which do you think is best? What adventure would you like to go on?

If you like this, try: “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and books by Jules Verne

Red Tails

Posted on January 19, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The official military documents of the 1940’s said that African-Americans were “mentally inferior” “subservient and cowards” and not fit to fly planes. The Tuskegee Airmen of WWII proved that African-Americans were outstanding pilots. They had to fight to be trained and they had to fight to be allowed to do combat missions, but once they were in the air they demonstrated skill, courage, and dedication that made their divisions one of the most highly decorated of the war. For George Lucas, a long-time scholar of aerial combat, a film about the Tuskegee Airmen was a passion project. When the studios told him that they would not finance an expensive movie with no white leading characters, he put up almost $100 million of his own money for a feature film and a documentary about one of the most inspiring stories of the 20th century.

It has the best of intentions, an excellent cast, and thrilling battle footage. But the scenes on the ground are clunky. It is in part because the filmmakers, with some justice, do not trust the audience to know very much about history, both of the second World War and of institutionalized racism, so they feel they have to explain everything. But screenwriters John Ridley and Aaron McGregor (the “Boondocks” comic strip) make the dialog so expository-heavy it is a surprise the aircraft are not too weighed down by them to get off the ground.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Terrence Howard (both, by coincidence, playing Tuskegee Airmen for the second time) play officers inspired by real-life General Benjamin O. Davis. Gooding plays Major Emanuelle Stance, the commanding officer of the Italian air base where the Tuskegee Airmen are waiting to be allowed to fly missions and Howard plays Colonel A. J. Bullard, who is in Washington advocating for his fliers to be given a chance. The dignity and resolve Howard shows in meetings with a racist superior officer (“Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston) shine despite the awkward dialog.

So does the terrific cast of young actors including Nate Parker, Elijah Kelly, Method Man, Ne-Yo, and, as the daredevil every war movie has to have (think of him as a WWII Maverick from “Top Gun”), British actor David Oyelowo. His nickname is “Lightning” and he’s the kind of guy who has to have one more swing around to hit one more target on the way home. There is the usual conflict between the by-the-rules guy and the rules-are-made-t0-be-broken guy and a sweet romance with a local girl who speaks no English. The script falters but the power of the real story, the sincerity and screen presence of the actors and the dedication and gallantry of the Tuskegee Airmen and the men who portray them make this a stirring tribute.

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Contraband

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Oh, not another one last job movie! This remake of an Icelandic thriller, directed by the actor who played the lead role in the original, is a by-the-numbers heist, chase, and shoot-em-up. It’s too gritty to be escapist fun and too predictable to work as a thriller.

Mark Wahlberg plays Chris, a one-time smuggler turned legitimate family man with a loving wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and two sons. He is committed to staying on the right side of the law. But Kate’s young brother gets into trouble with the local drug dealer (Giovanni Ribisi as an oily predator named Briggs) the same way Han Solo got into trouble with Jabba the Hutt, dumping the payload to avoid capture, and Briggs says he will come after the whole family if he doesn’t get paid. So, Chris has to get the band back together for one more run. He gets approved by the Department of Homeland Security to work on a ship going to Panama and arranges for trusted associates to be assigned to the crew. He leaves his closest friend Sebastian (Ben Foster), a recovering alcoholic, to watch over Kate and the boys and takes off for many locations where bad cell reception will add to the tension and frustration.

We’re supposed to be on his side because he keeps saying he won’t smuggle drugs and he loves his highly photogenic family and because the bad guys are so thoroughly loathsome. And because he such a good smuggler. But that can’t make up for the increasingly sour taste of the story as Chris and his gang get caught up in some ugly situations, including a detour to meet up with yet another strung-out drug dealer who wants everyone to call him El Jefe, keeps deadly animals in cages, and yes, needs Chris to ride along for just one more last job. There is one good exchange when the drug dealer says he fed a colleague who disappointed him to the wolves and Wahlberg responds, “Literally?” And there are scenes that are either commentary on the conundrum of abstract expressionism in a realist world or an ironic statement on valuation models, or perhaps a pearls/swine reference, but most likely just a cheap joke about real guys who know how to fight being smarter than people who pay millions of dollars for paintings no one can understand. Chris may love and defend his family and even try to protect Briggs’ little girl but his callousness to the carnage and other damage around him and inflicted by him makes it hard to stay on his side.

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Action/Adventure Crime Remake

The War Horse

Posted on December 23, 2011 at 12:30 pm

The second Steven Spielberg movie of the week opens on Christmas Day, a grand epic, is big, long, ambitious, and showy. It is a work by a master, but it is not a masterpiece. Every detail is carefully considered. Every leaf on every tree is perfectly aligned so that every sunbeam and shadow fall perfectly across them. Every equine muscle, every country cottage, every blade of grass, every puff of smoke from a discharged weapon is exquisitely framed and lit, but the visuals outweigh the story. The result is serviceable but stodgy, stuffy, and static. The poetry and symbolism of the stage play (with a multi-operator puppet as Joey) is replaced by postcard-picturesque images that are visually rapturous but feel thin in comparison to the movie’s aspirations.

It’s “Black Beauty Goes to War,” the story of a magnificent horse named Joey and Albert (a dull Jeremy Irvine), the boy who loves him. When World War I begins, Albert’s father sells Joey to a gallant young officer (Tom Hiddleston), who promises Albert he will do everything he can to keep Joey safe and get him back home after the war. But war has a way of changing everyone’s plans and soon Joey is on his own journey that will take him back and forth between the British and the German forces and, for a short idyllic time, a respite with a frail but brave little French girl and her affectionate Grandfather. The horse can switch sides in a way that a human cannot, and the movie makes clear the difference between the soldiers who are taken prisoner and shot and the animals who are inherently neutral and thus commoditized. The brutality of war affects the human characters differently as we see in their responses to the animal.

The sweep and grandeur and tragedy of the film pay homage to majestic WWII-era filmmakers like John Ford, with gorgeous cinematography by Janusz Kaminski. One quiet scene of breathtaking power recalling the real-life Christmas truce reminds us of our better angels. But it also reminds us of Spielberg’s better films.

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The Adventures of Tintin

Posted on December 21, 2011 at 8:00 am

Two box office champion directors and a cult favorite joined forces for a film that was a first for all of them, a 3D motion capture animated story. It is clear that director Steven Spielberg, producer Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”) and co-screenwriter Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) were thrilled at the total freedom of animation, bringing storyboards to life without any pesky problems posed by weather, local ordinances, camera placement, safety, or the laws of gravity. And so they have created a film that is non-stop, brilliantly staged action, with every mode of transport and obstacle, half Indiana Jones, half M. Hulot, with a touch of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, turning the entire material world into a giant Rube Goldberg contraption. Wonderfully cinematic shots and transitions show us how the masters have fun with pure, unleashed movie story-telling.

The comic book stories of the boy reporter Tintin created by an artist/writer known as Hergé (Georges Remi) are wildly popular in Europe but not well known in the US. Tintin is brave, capable, inquisitive boy of indeterminate age, probably somewhere around 14. His excuse for getting involved in all kinds of adventures is that he is a reporter though neither the books nor the movie waste any time on the details of actually writing or filing stories, or, indeed, on any facts about Tintin’s origins or family. He has a dog, Snowy, who is as intrepid as he is, and their journeys give them many chances to rescue one another in many exotic locations.

Spielberg and Jackson (whose WETA firm did the animation) did not try to copy the iconic linge claire style pioneered by Hergé, though there is a sly nod to it in the delightful opening credits and in a street artist’s sketch of Tintin at the beginning. Instead it is an intensely detailed motion and performance capture with hyper-real textures and 3D effects that make the vertiginous chase scenes feel very visceral. Tintin (voice of Jamie Bell) buys a model ship that turns out to be of great interest to a mysterious man named Ivanovich Sakharine (voice of Daniel Craig). That leads Tintin to an adventure that involves cities, a desert, an opera singer, a potentate, pirates, dim policemen (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson), as he is drawn into a multi-generational saga involving lost treasure. Along the way he meets up with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), a drunken sailor who is part sidekick, part clue.

It has a lot of alcohol for a PG movie and some parents may be uncomfortable with the repeated references, some intended to be humorous, to drinking and drunkenness. And some will find the non-stop action overwhelming and just too much to process, even in these frenzied movie-as-video-game days. Even the exacting eye of Spielberg and the prodigious talent of WETA have not quite mastered the physics of movement with motion capture technology. The textures are wonderfully vivid and tactile and the angles and velocity are superb and the seas and ships toss convincingly. But the weight of the bodies when characters leap or fall or objects crash feels strange and somehow off and the faces never find the right spot between the realism of the textures and a more stylized or cartoony look. This is one element where they should have been more true to the original.

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