Trailer: Big Stone Gap with Ashley Judd, Whoopi Goldberg, Jenna Elfman, and Patrick Wilson
Posted on September 8, 2015 at 8:00 am
Set in 1978, “Big Stone Gap” tells the story of the ever-ordinary Ave Maria Mulligan (Ashley Judd) who lives a simple life with her mother, runs the pharmacy, directs The Trail of the Lonesome Pine outdoor Drama, and hopes that Theodore Tipton, her best friend and the high school band director, will take their platonic friendship in a romantic direction. Ave Maria waits, and before she knows it, she turns 40. Now the old maid of Big Stone Gap, Ave Maria decides that happiness is for other people—that is, until a long-buried family secret throws her quiet life spectacularly off-course. It is written and directed by Adriana Trigiani and features Whoopi Goldberg and Jenna Elfman.
James McAvoy plays the doctor who tried to play God, Victor Frankenstein, in this latest film based on the classic novel by Mary Shelley. Daniel Radcliffe plays his assistant, Igor, and the cast includes “Downton Abbey’s” Jessica Brown Findlay and “Sherlock’s” Andrew Scott. It will be in theaters this Thanksgiving.
Copyright 2015 Route One Films It isn’t getting to that point where you most often see your friends at funerals. It isn’t feeling stale because instead of promoting a new book, he’s going on some chirpy morning show to promote a reissue of his old ones.
Though both of those things are true. But Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) has a different reason for wanting to try one of the longest hikes in the world, the Appalachian Trail. He quotes the pioneering conservationist John Muir, the man who inspired the National Parks system and urged the preservation of the Grand Canyon. Muir said sometimes you just have to “throw some tea and bread into an old sack and jump over the back fence.” And it is just past Bryson’s own back fence that the AT beckoned.
If mortality was bearing down a bit hard, that just meant more “now or never” urgency. The fact that the lead actors are three decades older than Bryson was when he took the walk that led to his book, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, vastly overshadows the clutter from the superficial other issues raised by the script, often half-heartedly. Will Bryson write again? Will he re-adjust to living in the US after years abroad? Will he recover his mojo? Where is he from? Will he make it to the end of the trail alive and without inflicting some serious and possibly lethal damage on his traveling companion?
Bryson is, as the movie begins, back in the US and feeling unmoored. He decides to hike the private, non-profit, volunteer-managed Appalachian Trail, stretching more than 2000 miles from Maine to Georgia. His wife (Emma Thompson, bringing her luminous intelligence to an underwritten wife-y role) insists that he cannot go alone. Everyone he knows turns him down. And then he gets a call from his old high school friend in Des Moines, Katz (Nick Nolte, a marvel of shambling decay with a voice more growl than verbal), volunteering to come along. These guys are not exactly up to jumping over the back fence. But the longest journey begins with a single step, and so off they go.
No big surprises ahead — encounters with quirky people along the way (Kristen Schaal is a stand-out as a loony solo hiker and Mary Steenburgen is a welcome presence as always as the owner of a hotel along the trail), spectacular scenery, some historical and conservationist information, some highs and lows in the terrain, the temperature, and the reconnecting of the old friends. But it is a pleasure to see these two old pros swing for the fences one more time.
Parents should know that this movie has some very strong and vulgar language with very crude sexual references. Characters drink and discuss substance abuse.
Family discussion: How would you describe the friendship between Katz and Bryson? What adventure do you want to take and who would you take with you?
If you like this, try: the book by Bill Bryson and other walking movies like “Wild” and “Tracks” and more great books about treks like A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Opening this Week: A Walk in the Woods and Learning to Drive
Posted on August 31, 2015 at 3:15 pm
Copyright 2015 Broad Green Pictures
This week, two movies are based on first-person accounts by writers telling their own real-life stories. In The New Yorker, Katha Pollitt wrote about getting her first driver’s license in her 50’s, after her partner of seven years left her for another woman. When her driving instructor tried to teach her to pay attention to what was going on around her, it felt like a metaphor for the warning signs she had missed about her relationship. The film is “Learning to Drive,” starring Patricia Clarkson and Sir Ben Kingsley. Some of the details were changed, including the ethnicity of the instructor and the duration of the relationship.
Copyright 2015 Route One Films
One detail that was changed in “A Walk in the Woods” was the age of the protagonists. When Bill Bryson and his irascible childhood friend Katz hiked the Appalachian Trail in the 1990’s, they were 44 years old. In the movie, Bryson is played by Robert Redford, who will be 80 next year, and Katz is played by Nick Nolte, who is 74. Bryson’s wife is played by 56-year-old Emma Thompson, who is supposed to be his contemporary. While some of the characters and incidents are lifted straight from the book, especially the very funny character played by Kristen Schaal, there are also some important changes. But the biggest is the “this is our last chance at a grand adventure” theme, just because the characters are played by septuagenarians.
Rated PG-13 for a scene of sexuality, partial nudity, and brief strong language
Profanity:
Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:
Apocalyptic themes, murder
Diversity Issues:
Diverse characters (race, gender, faith)
Date Released to Theaters:
August 28, 2015
Date Released to DVD:
October 19, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:
B014DEGTEO
In 1959, a movie called The World, The Flesh And The Devil imagined a post-apocalyptic world with three surviving humans. In the words of the 1960’s television series, “The Mod Squad,” they could be described as “one black, one white, one blond.” Harry Belafonte, Mel Ferrer, and Inger Stevens played characters who might be the last people on earth but who still carried with them the fears, angers, and prejudices of the civilization now destroyed.
Fifty-five years later, “Z for Zachariah” is another post-apocalyptic story about a black man, a white man, and a beautiful younger woman who may be the only survivors following a catastrophic, toxic event that has poisoned the whole world, except, perhaps, for a tiny, edenic farm that appears to be free from deadly radiation. And once again, human frailty creates conflict at the most fundamental level. The themes of the 1959 film reflected post-WWII concerns like the atomic bomb and racial bigotry.
Ann (Margo Robbie) lives on her family’s farm. She believes her family will return from their scouting expedition. And she believes that she and her dog and her farm were preserved by God. Periodically, she puts on protective gear to go into the deserted town and scavenge from the shelves of the stores. She grows food on the farm and visits the tiny church her father built to play the organ and worship.
Then John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) arrives. He is also wearing protective gear (it turns out he was one of the engineers who designed it), but foolishly removes it to bathe in a pond that has been contaminated. Ann rescues him and nurses him through radiation poisoning.
They are very different. John is a man of science and rationality. He sees that he can create hydropower through the waterfall, but only if he can use the wood from the walls of the church. Ann believes the church is what has kept her alive; John believes repurposing the planks will enable them to establish a sustainable source of food for…well, with a man and a woman, perhaps there will be more people to feed at some point. In the old world, they would never have met, and if they had, they would have had little to say to one another. But they understanding, respect, and affection are beginning to grow, and the need for connection and comfort is near desperate in both of them. And then Caleb (Chris Pine) — a character not in the book — arrives. He has something John cannot have, a community and cultural connection to Ann. He is young and handsome.
Like director Craig Zobel’s last film, “Compliance,” this is also a tense story of three people in an enclosed, isolated space finding their most profound values tested. Even in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, humans still struggle with morality, trust, honesty, power, forgiveness, and love. It is deceptively understated and quietly compelling.
Parents should know that this film features a disturbing apocalyptic setting, discussion of cataclysmic events, sexual references and situations with partial nudity, brief strong language, homicide.
Family discussion: What do Ann and John have in common? What do Ann and Caleb have in common? What happened when John and Caleb were together? What will happen next?
If you like this, try: “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil” and “On the Beach”
, vastly overshadows the clutter from the superficial other issues raised by the script, often half-heartedly. Will Bryson write again? Will he re-adjust to living in the US after years abroad? Will he recover his mojo? Where is he from? Will he make it to the end of the trail alive and without inflicting some serious and possibly lethal damage on his traveling companion? 
imagined a post-apocalyptic world with three surviving humans. In the words of the 1960’s television series, “The Mod Squad,” they could be described as “one black, one white, one blond.” Harry Belafonte, Mel Ferrer, and Inger Stevens played characters who might be the last people on earth but who still carried with them the fears, angers, and prejudices of the civilization now destroyed.
, though there are significant changes.