We Bought a Zoo

Posted on December 22, 2011 at 6:07 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for language and some thematic elements
Profanity:	Some mild crude language, s-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad offscreen deaths of parent and animal, some mild peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 23, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	April 2, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004LWZW9W

This is a good, old-fashioned family movie grounded in Matt Damon’s best-ever performance, inspired by the real-life story of a young widower who, without knowing a lot about animals or running a business, impulsively decided to buy a zoo.

Benjamin Mee (Damon) is a reporter still mourning the loss of his wife. His young daughter Rosie (the very gifted and almost impossibly adorable Maggie Elizabeth Jones) is sad. His teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford) is angry and sad. When Mee’s editor tries to reassign him, Mee realizes that the family needs something completely different. And there is not much as different as a zoo. At first Dylan is even angrier. He has already lost his mother and now he has lost everything else that is familiar to him. And the zoo, which has been closed down will be very expensive to get into operating condition. It makes no sense, as Mee’s practical brother (Thomas Hayden Church) keeps reminding him. But after so much loss, Mee needs to feel that he can help something come alive.

The animals are cared for by Scarlett Johansson, looking sensational without make-up, as Kelly the zookeeper. Mee survived a lot of dangerous situations as a journalist, covering dictators and hurricanes, but now he must be a participant, not an observer, and people, animals, and his family are depending on him. Fortunately, he is handy with tools and has a fix-it frame of mind. Unfortunately, that does not work with teenagers. But Dylan is befriended by Kelly’s niece, played by Elle Fanning, who shows herself already a masterful actor by creating a distinctly different character from her equally sensitive performance earlier this year in “Super 8.”

This could easily have been sit-com-ish or corny — there is a persnickety inspector who has to sign off on the zoo before it can open and a group of quirky but lovable staffers, a mostly-humorous search for an escaped animal, and a discreet but sad farewell to one of the big cats. But director Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”), who co-wrote the script with “The Devil Wore Prada’s” Aline Brosh McKenna, makes it work with the help of a superb soundtrack by Jónsi. And Damon’s performance centers the story with such presence and commitment that even viewers who pride themselves in being impervious to the charms of animals and children will find themselves melting.

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My Week with Marilyn

Posted on December 1, 2011 at 6:00 pm

“Her skin does not reject the light.”

That was impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir’s answer when asked why he used one favorite model so many times. And it describes the luminous beauty of Marilyn Monroe, who almost half a century since her death still stands as the ultimate screen goddess. “I have an Aunt Minnie back in Vienna who would show up on time and know her lines, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?” That was what director Billy Wilder said to Monroe’s frustrated co-stars in “Some Like It Hot,” when he told them that they had to be perfect in every take because he was going to use whichever one happened to capture her getting it right. That was Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean Mortenson, the daughter of a mentally unstable woman, raised in foster homes, married for the first time at age 16, later an international superstar, married to the biggest athlete in the country (baseball hero Joe DiMaggio) and then to one of the most distinguished literary figures in the world (playwright Arthur Miller), and dead by an overdose of pills at age 36.

Shortly after she married Miller, Monroe went to England to make a film called “The Prince and the Showgirl” with Sir Laurence Olivier, who also directed. She was not only the movie’s star; in an effort to demonstrate her ability and depth she had formed her own production company and was studying method acting with Lee Strasberg. Colin Clark, who was third assistant director (a gofer) on the film, wrote not one but two memoirs of his experience, including The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me: Six Months on the Set With Marilyn and Olivier, which inspired this film, with Michelle Williams as Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Olivier.

Even the radiant Williams will never be able to match Monroe as a screen presence. But her performance is thoughtful, nuanced, complex, and magnetically compelling, like Monroe herself. While it is the slightest of stories — an inexperienced and insecure young man is dazzled by Monroe who briefly makes him think he can rescue her — it is an improvement over the typical biopic. Williams captures Monroe’s mercurial, even prismatic nature, her strength and her vulnerability, and especially her understanding of her own appeal. “Should I be her?” she asks almost mischievously, with a sense of fun in being able to demonstrate how Norma Jean can turn herself into Marilyn and back again. But her reasons for letting a young gofer “accidentally” see her naked are more complicated. She is under enormous pressure and desperate for the kind of respect no one is willing to give her. Her third marriage is falling apart. She has a pattern of asking men to save her and then testing them beyond their ability. Like Rita Hayworth, who famously said that men went to bed with Gilda (her sultriest role) and woke up with her, Monroe is the victim of a kind of Catch-22. She wants to be loved for herself but has spent too many years being “her” and is not willing to risk being less effective. When she says (while skinny-dipping with Clark) that men in Hollywood are so old, it conveys a great deal about the price she paid for her absent father and need for fame.

Monroe had more than met the eye. This movie has less, but what it does have is highly watchable for Williams’ performance and a juicy turn by Dame Judi Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike and for, I hope, inspiring watchers to return to the original, Monroe herself.

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The Mighty Macs

Posted on October 20, 2011 at 6:44 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some mild marital tension and disagreements in the workplace, a girl is sad after a break-up
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 21, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004OBNMMO

Basketball coach Cathy Rush (Carla Gugino) arrived at tiny Immaculata College in 1972, at just the right moment for her, for the team, and for the game. Restrictive rules that had “protected” female players from a full-court game had just been revised. For the first time, there was going to be a national championship for the women’s teams. And while people were still asking back then, “If she is married, why is she working?” that question would soon be considered inappropriate and ultimately almost unfathomable.

That context and an excellent cast gives this more heft than the typical based-on-a-true-story saga of the underdog team that became national champions. The always-excellent Gugino, in a series of wonderful 1970’s outfits, shows us Rush’s sense of purpose, even when she faces challenges like a Mother Superior (Ellen Burstyn) who is horrified to think that her girls might be “athletes” and a husband who cannot understand why she is there. Her devotion to the girls as people as well as players is nicely shown. And is is good to see the nuns treated respectfully, not made into caricatures or made to seem stuffy, quaint, or cute. They are portrayed as people, too. We are reminded of their sense of purpose when Rush asks the Mother Superior for equipment and uniforms. The Mother Superior says she is welcome to anything she has and then shows the coach her small, spare, room with little more than a cot and a rosary.

Marley Shelton plays Sister Sunday, a young nun struggling with her calling who becomes the assistant coach. Her sweetness and sincerity are a good complement to the coach’s flinty determination. In a scene where they go to a bar in civilian clothes, Shelton shows us how the sister’s faith supports her strength and integrity.

Rush had no coaching experience. The team had just one ball and the gym had burned down. She was the only one who applied for the job and she was paid $450 for the entire season. She might have thought of it at first as “something to keep me busy” while her husband was on the road as an NBA referee, or “a perfect place for someone who was not ready to assume her role in society,” but she learned that her role in society was exactly where she was. Her most important contribution is shown by the updates at the end. She did not just coach a team of champions. She created a new generation of coaches who took what she taught them to the first women athletes to have the opportunities created by Title IX.

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The Big Year

Posted on October 13, 2011 at 6:31 pm

“The Big Year” would be a lot better if it didn’t try so hard to be The Big Movie. This over-Hollywood-ized take on the real-life story of passionate-to-obsessed birders (don’t say “bird-watchers”) makes us wish for a documentary instead. Everything they do to make it “mainstream” and “accessible” and appealing to a mass audience just erodes the specificity that makes this world intriguing. And the trailer misrepresents the movie, making it look like the usual wild comedy we associate with Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson when instead it is mostly a drama with a few awkwardly inserted moments of slapstick. Just about the only comic moment not highlighted in the trailer is when a newlywed couple we see only once arrives on a remote island, his not having told her that what she thinks is going to be a romantic honeymoon is in a place where they will be staying in a barracks with no electricity or running water so he can see some birds.

Each year, extreme birders compete to see who can see the most birds from January 1 to December 31 by doing what they call “a big year.” Winning requires expert knowledge because they have to be able to instantly identify hundreds of species, often based only on a quick glimpse from a long distance or even just from hearing a trill. It requires absolute, unquestionable integrity. No refs, no umps, no certifiers from the Guinness Book of World Records. It is on the honor system. And most of all, like all world-class endeavors, it requires a level of ambition, determination, and focus that can cause serious damage to friendships, marriages and careers.

Martin plays a very successful corporate executive who has postponed retirement twice. His company begs him to stay, but he knows he cannot delay any longer if he wants to give the big year a try. With the warm-hearted support of his wife and grown son, he decides to give it everything he has. Black plays a software engineer at a nuclear power plant who continues to work full-time while he tries to break the all-time record set by Bostick (Wilson), a builder on his third marriage, to a wife who is trying to get pregnant. Bostick promises he will not do another big year, but when it seems that the other two are closing in on his record, he can’t stand it any more. And all three of them are off on a literal wild goose chase.

The scenery is gorgeous. The birds (at least the less obviously CGI birds) are lovely. But the personal lives of the three men are predictable and not very compelling. Screenwriter Howard Franklin zigs where he should have zagged, sticking with the real stories when he should have been shaping a more involving story arc, and failing to convey the real heart of the story, what it is that makes these people so passionate. We get a moment or two when a character explains why one species is his favorite and when all three of the main characters are briefly so transfixed by the sight of eagles mating that for a moment they forget all about competing and record-setting. We never know what makes us want to watch birds. But we do know what makes us want to watch movies and this one does not have enough of it.

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Toast

Posted on October 6, 2011 at 5:59 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad death of parent
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters,
Date Released to Theaters:	October 7, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004UFA0RE

“Being normal is overrated,” a young boy’s friend assures him. “You’ll probably turn out to be very interesting.”

He was right. British chef and food writer Nigel Slater tells his own story in “Toast”. His mother was a terrible cook. When he suggested they try fresh produce, she explained that they were better off with canned food because you don’t know where the fresh vegetables had been. She would boil the food in the can and if it came out especially badly they would have toast for dinner. She loved Nigel with all her heart and he adored her. But he never felt close to his gruff father (Ken Stott). And then his mother died. Nigel correctly discerned that the cleaning woman his father hired (Helena Bonham Carter) was determined to be promoted to lady of the house. She and Nigel were engaged in an all-out war that was tragic but darkly comic because the battlefield was the kitchen.

This film was produced for BBC television and it assumes a familiarity with British dialect and culture that may be confusing for American audiences, even the Masterpiece Theatre-loving Anglophiles. And some family members have disputed the accuracy of Slater’s portrayal. It spends too much time on the early part of Slater’s life (played as a child by Oscar Kennedy) and not enough on his teen years (played by Freddie Highmore). The tone keeps it engaging, though, because Slater’s point of view does not get maudlin. When his stepmother is portrayed as a grasping shrew we understand that it is through his eyes as an unforgiving teenager and, as the last scene makes clear, that he recognizes that living well is the best revenge. Except for maybe being the one to tell the story.

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