Universal Classic Monsters
Posted on October 31, 2012 at 3:48 pm
What could be better for Halloween than the new Blu-Ray release of Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection 
Check out this delectable gallery of ghouls!
The Original Movie Vampire: Nosferatu
Posted on October 29, 2012 at 8:00 am
As we think about scary movies for Halloween, I wonder what the vampires in “Twilight” or “True Blood” would think of one of the earliest screen depictions of a vampire, “Nosferatu.” If the story seems familiar, it is because they wanted to film “Dracula” without paying for the rights to the original story. A great mystery grew up around the actor who played the title role, Max Schreck, inspiring the Willem Dafoe film, Shadow of the Vampire
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
Alex Cross
Posted on October 18, 2012 at 6:00 pm
In “Alex Cross,” Tyler Perry is called upon to: show devastating grief, show incendiary fury, make threats, throw punches, and take over a part played twice on screen by Morgan Freeman. He is not up to any of those things. Perry is a powerhouse as a writer/director/impressario and I am a fan of his unique blend of high melodrama, low humor, and true-hearted faith in God and family. But here, in a prequel to the gritty detective films “Along Came a Spider” and “Kiss the Girls,” based on the best-selling thriller series by James Patterson, Tyler is not a good fit. It opens with Tyler as Cross in run-with-a-gun mode, chasing after a bad guy, and then we see him bantering with his long-time best friend and partner (Edward Burns) and with his gorgeous wife (Carmen Ejogo). There isn’t a persuasively authentic moment in any of that. Indeed, the 6’5″ Perry’s most believable performance is when his character has to reach something from a high shelf. That feels real.
Cross is supposed to be a Sherlock Holmes-style hyper-observant detective with a degree in psychology who is also a devoted family man with a cute-cranky mother (Cecily Tyson) who is also gangbusters in chasing, shooting, and beating up bad guys, not to mention some vigilante-style rough justice. He is always right. How do we know? His best friend/partner says, “Just once I would like it if you got something wrong because this is really getting annoying.”
And the bad guy here (an unrecognizably strung-out Matthew Fox) is also something of a super-villain who has mastered every kind of weapon and technology and has an evil genius command center with marked-up maps and mechanicals pinned to the wall (how retro) and a champion mixed martial arts combatant and specialist in torture and charcoal drawings, who leaves meticulously detailed clues that are only revealed by an Al Jaffee-style Mad fold-in.
The story begins with the murder of a gorgeous and very wealthy woman with a kinky side. She explains a statue of the god of war in her bedroom: “War is a passionate undertaking of strategy and skill just like sex. So it belongs beside the bed.” She is butchered and her three bodyguards are shot and burned. That leads to a botched attempt on one of her colleagues, an arrogant German guy who does something with money that is so important he has the kind of super-security they usually reserve for places where there is actual money and not just computers people use to move it around, except in movies where we have to show how smart the villain is by having him surmount all of the obstacles. And then it all gets very personal and very, very ugly. The body count rises, including a lot of collateral damage as well as some that hit close to home. The exposition-heavy dialog is clunky (“But this building is impenetrable!” someone says as the building is being penetrated). The banter is clunkier: “I’d rather take advice from a ham sandwich.” “Love you too, it goes without saying.” And yet, he says it.
I was not a fan of the last Alex Cross film, Along Came a Spider, because of its plot holes and factual clangers. (No, the Secret Service does not protect the children of Senators and the Russian President does not live in America.) Once again, the plot becomes increasingly more preposterous when super-detective figures out that super-villain is targeting someone who is about to make a presentation to the city council. Now, in that situation I might suggest moving the meeting to a different time or place, but no, these braniacs decide to send every cop in the city to the location to lock it down. For a presentation. That must be some power-point. It goes without saying that someone claims it’s the equivalent of impenetrable and it goes without saying that our Energizer bunny of a bad guy is way ahead of them. But they say it anyway.
Parents should know that this is an R-level movie. It has very intense and graphic violence for a PG-13 with torture including severed fingers as well as brutal fighting, guns, and bombs, very sad deaths of characters including a pregnant woman, explicit sexual situations for a PG-13 including bondage and partial nudity, some language, and references to drug use and drug dealing.
Family discussion: Who was right, Dr. Cross or his mother? What makes him so aware of the revealing details all around him?
If you like this, try: Morgan Freeman’s performances as Alex Cross in “Kiss the Girls” and “Along Came a Spider”
Disney’s Cinderella — New Diamond Edition
Posted on October 3, 2012 at 3:57 pm
This week, Disney’s animated classic Cinderella
The classic fairy tale by Charles Perrault is lovingly and imaginatively brought to life in this animated Disney version, also a classic. Cinderella, a sweet, docile, and beautiful girl forced to act as a servant for her mean stepmother and stepsisters, goes to the ball with the help of her fairy godmother. But her godmother warns that the beautiful coach and gown will only last until midnight. Cinderella meets the Prince at the ball, and they share a romantic dance. But when the clock begins to strike midnight, she runs away, leaving behind one of her glass slippers. The Prince declares he will marry the girl whose foot fits that slipper. He finds her, and they live happily ever after.
Disney expanded the simple story with vivid and endearing characters and memorable songs. The animation is gorgeously detailed and inventive. In one musical number, as the stepsisters squawk their way through their singing lesson in another room, Cinderella sings sweetly as she scrubs the floor, reflected in dozens of soap bubbles.
When Cinderella asks if she can go to the ball, her stepmother tells her she can, if she can make an appropriate dress. She then keeps Cinderella much too busy to have time to make the dress. But Cinderella’s friends, the mice and birds, make one for her in another delightful musical number. As the fairy godmother sings “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo,” she transforms a pumpkin into a coach, the mice into horses, the horse into a coachman, and finally, Cinderella’s rags into a magnificent ball gown. The scene when the Duke comes looking for the girl whose foot will fit the glass slipper is very suspenseful and highly satisfying.
While the story has enduring appeal, many people are troubled by the passive heroine, who meekly accepts her abusive situation and waits to be rescued, first by her godmother and then by the Prince. It is worth discussing, with both boys and girls, what some of her alternatives could have been (“If you were Cinderella, would you do what that mean lady told you?”), and making sure that they have some exposure to stories with heroines who save themselves. A Ella Enchanted
In today’s world of blended families, it might also be worth discussing that not all step-parents and siblings are mean. Even children who are living with intact families of origin may need to hear this so that they will not worry about their friends.
Families who see this movie should talk about these questions: Why does Cinderella do what her stepmother says? What could she have done instead? Why is the King so worried about whether the Prince will get married? If you had a fairy godmother, what would you like her to do for you? Or would you like to be a fairy godmother? Whose wish would you grant?
This story has been told many times, and families might enjoy seeing some of the other versions, including Cinderfella
Children might be amused to hear the rumor that Cinderella’s most famous accessory is the result of a mistake. It is often reported that in the original French story, her slipper was made of fur. But a mistranslation in the first English version described it as glass, and it has stayed that way ever since. But in reality, while there have been many versions of the story over the years, the best-known early written version, by Charles Perrault, did describe her slippers as glass. Other versions have her wearing gold slippers or a ring that fits only the true Cinderella.