Trance

Posted on April 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Violence and peril with guns, fire, chases, car accident, taser, choking, and torture, some very disturbing images, characters injured and killed, graphic wounds, dead bodies
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 12, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	July 22, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00D3DJI3Q

Before he was the establishment figure who won Oscars for prestige projects (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and masterminded the fabulous opening ceremonies for the London Olympics that had the Queen and James Bond jumping out of a plane, Danny Boyle was a skillful director of highly styled and deliciously nasty films about not-so-deliciously nasty people doing dreadful things (“Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave”). His latest is “Trance,” a deliciously nasty heist film about the theft of a 27 million dollar masterpiece by Goya, tellingly titled Witches in the Air, and about the mistrust and betrayal that comes next.

Part of the fun comes from having our assumptions turned upside down — and then inside out. So I don’t want to give too much away. The title comes from a hypno-therapist named Elizabeth (the stunningly beautiful Rosario Dawson), brought into the den of thieves because one of them has misplaced the painting and, thanks to a head injury, cannot remember where he stashed it. The problem faced by alpha-thief Franck (ferret-like Vincent Cassel) is how to arrange it so that Elizabeth can get inside the amnesiac’s head to find the missing painting but not let her find that that by doing so she is abetting a rather notorious crime. Dawson, too often underused, gets a chance to show what she is capable of in a performance of intelligence and subtlety. As she explained in an interview, “I wanted to be specific on who she was and make her disappear at the same time.”

The film itself becomes a sort of trance, with deeply saturated colors that shimmer like a dream, and Dawson’s magnetic voice. We, like the characters, must begin to mistrust what we see and what we think we know as the story turns upside down, inside out, and then, as soon as we think we’ve figured it out, Rubik cubes our minds again. This is a movie you’ll be talking about on the way home, and probably shivering about in your own nightmare.

Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and explicit situations, very explicit nudity, violence including guns, taser, car accident, torture, fire, characters injured and killed, disturbing and graphic images, very strong language

Family discussion: What do the title and subject of the stolen painting have to do with the story? What do you think will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man” and “Side Effects”

New on Blu-Ray: Laura

Posted on March 2, 2013 at 8:00 am

The classic noir mystery/romance Laura is just out on Blu-Ray, and it is magnificent. It has one of the all-time great movie twists, so I won’t give much away except to say that it stars the exquisitely beautiful Gene Tierney, along with Dana Andrews as a cop investigating a murder and Clifton Webb as the acerbic writer who was a friend of the victim. It also has one of the most famous scores of all time. Highly recommended!

Related Tags:

Classic Crime Drama Mystery Romance

Snitch

Posted on February 21, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Snitch” tries to be three things at once, but it doesn’t do any of them very well.

First, it wants to be a drama about fathers and sons. John Matthews (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is a good man who who risks everything, even his own life and the lives of his family, to save his teenaged son from a ten-year prison sentence. John owns a construction company that is solid but struggling a bit because of the economy. His son is Jason (Rafi Gavron), who lives with his mother, John’s first wife (Melina Kanakaredes), and uses her last name because he is angry at his father for leaving them. Jason makes a foolish mistake and agrees to accept a shipment of some pills from a friend. It is a trap.

Three of the key characters in the story make big sacrifices to help their sons, but the theme is heavy-handed and the dialog so clunky it feels like an after-school special.

Second, it wants to be an action film, because John finds that the only way to get Jason out of prison in less than ten years is to deliver an important arrest to the federal prosecutor. Jason refuses to entrap any of his friends (as he was entrapped by the friend who sent him the drugs), even to reduce his sentence. So, John decides to go undercover in a very high risk sting operation involving criminals at the top of an international drug cartel. He gets badly beat up the first time he tries to make a connection to a drug dealer. But with the help of an employee who is now determined to go straight after two prison terms for narcotics distribution, he is introduced to Malik (Michael Williamson), a typical movie drug dealer — black, gangsta, and living in a house with almost no furniture and loud rap music. John has no street cred whatsoever. But he does have big semis and a legitimate business to give him good cover for transporting big, heavy bags in them. And even the suspicious Malik understands that the economy is lousy, and is persuaded that a law-abiding citizen like John could be desperate enough to fill some of those cement bags with cocaine.

So there are some shoot-outs and chases, but they are poorly staged and uninvolving. So as much as the movie tries to make us believe he is just a good guy from the suburbs who does not know anything about guns and criminals, this is The Rock. We never feel the sense of peril that would create some tension, and we miss the expected sense of satisfaction when no cans of whup-ass are opened.

Third, the movie tries to be an issue film, taking on the unintended consequences of the mandatory minimum sentences legislation that was supposed to reduce the unfairness in assigning penalties for drug-related offenses and get tough on drugs but instead created a whole new level of unfairness and got tough only on low-level users. When judges no longer have discretion to assign prison terms based on individual circumstances, the only mitigating factors are the defendants’ ability and willingness to turn over bigger fish. Susan Sarandon, once again stuck in a role far beneath her, plays the ambitious US Attorney and political candidate who is so over-the-top that it undermines the institutional pervasiveness of the problem the filmmakers are trying to convey. They do more to make their point with a credit-sequence note about the impact of mandatory minimums than they accomplish through the film. And the recent documentary “The House I Live In” addresses the issue far more compellingly.

It’s a triple disappointment. But most of all, it is just dull.

Parents should know that this film includes characters are drug dealers, drinking, smoking, drug use, violence including knives, fights, shoot-outs, and chases with characters injured and killed, and some strong language.

Family discussion: How did being a father of a son change the decisions made by three characters in the movie? Why did John say his son taught him about character and integrity? Do mandatory minimum sentencing laws do what they were intended to do?

If you like this, try: “The House I Live in” and “Narc”

A Good Day to Die Hard

Posted on February 13, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Chases. Explosions. Guns. Crashes. Wisecracks. Punches. Repeat. Repeat again. Yes, it’s the fifth “Die Hard” movie.

Bruce Willis returns as cop John McClane and this time the setting is Moscow. Though he repeatedly says throughout the film’s zippy 90 minutes that he is on vacation, McClane is in Russia to help his estranged son Jack (Australian actor Jai Courtney of “Spartacus”), who has been arrested for attempted murder. It turns out that Jack, who uses his mother’s last name and has not spoken to John in years, is actually under cover for the CIA. Both the Russians and the Americans want a “file” that has been hidden away by a man named Komorov (Sebastian Koch), who is about to go on trial. It contains incriminating information about a high-ranking Russian official. He wants it destroyed. The Americans want to use it to discredit him. The stakes are very high. The chases are very fast. The explosions are very big. The repartee is….not great, but thankfully minimal.

Unlike his “Expendables” colleagues Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, whose 2013 action film releases managed to be both lackluster and overheated, with so much work done on their faces they looked like bad copies of Madame Tussaud’s replicas of themselves, Willis is every bit as good and better than he was in the first “Die Hard” film a quarter century ago. Regrettably, we get only a glimpse of the fabulous Mary Elizabeth Winstead, briefly returning as John’s daughter, Lucy, to drop him at the airport and admonish him to behave (as if!). But Courtney is well-matched to Willis, with their bullet heads, truculent glares, and cocky pleasure in their own outrageous badassery. John may pause for a brief “Cat’s in the Cradle” reverie with Komorov in between dodging bullets, as they ruefully reflect on their failures as fathers, but shortly afterward, as John and Jack awkwardly observe a tender parent-child reunion, they agree that nothing like that would work for them. “We’re not a hugging family,” Jack says. “Damn straight,” agrees his father.

The locations are exotic, and the chase scene through the streets of Moscow is wilder than any since the last “Die Hard.” The titles may be getting increasingly labored but Willis and the stunts make it work.

Parents should know that this film has constant peril and violence. Many characters are injured and killed, and there is a lot of shooting, punching, chases and explosions, some graphic and disturbing images, and strong language.

Family discussion: How are John and Jack alike? Why was Jack so angry with John? What changed his mind?

If you like this, try: the other “Die Hard” movies, especially the first and third

Identity Thief

Posted on February 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm

How did so many great performers get stuck in this awful movie? And why, why?

There’s one scene in this ugly and poorly paced road trip comedy that has the straight-laced Sandy (co-producer and star Jason Bateman) hiding in the bathroom because he is so agonized by what is going on in his hotel room. The scammer who stole his identity (Melissa McCarthy) is drunkenly seducing an even tipsier guy named “Big Chuck” (“Modern Family’s” Eric Stonestreet) and two heavy people wanting to have sex must be funny, right? Sandy runs the water in the bathroom and wraps his head in a towel to block out the sounds and thoughts. As we went back and forth between the not-funny gyrations in the bedroom and the not-funny disgust in the bathroom, I was wishing I had a towel to wrap around my ears. And my eyes.

Sandy Bigelow Patterson is a loving husband and father with a pregnant wife (Amanda Peet) holding onto a $50,000-a-year job at a financial institution where the big bosses are getting million-dollar bonuses, not for performance but for “retention.” Director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) has a small role as the obnoxious partner who explains why he is worth all that money and a monkey could do Sandy’s job. “I’m going to get you a copy of The Fountainhead,” he says, an overused signifier of soul-less arrogance.

Then, out of the blue, a group from Sandy’s office splits off and hires him at five times his old salary. But his happily ever after is ruined when an identify thief takes advantage of his gender-neutral name (many not-funny jokes are made about Sandy’s overall unmanliness and how girly the name “Sandy” is). She has not just blown out his credit card accounts; she has outstanding arrest warrants. Sandy’s new boss gives him one week to straighten it out and the mild-mannered Sandy decides that what makes sense is for him to leave his family in Colorado and go to Winter Park, Florida to find the other Sandy and somehow bring her back to Colorado and get her to confess her crimes.

But she does not want to go, so she puts up a fight. Worse, she loudly sings along to the car radio. Even worse, through all kinds of trauma and misery she still manages to sport pale blue eye shadow left over from the 1960’s. To further complicate things, she is being chased by a skip tracer because she owes a lot of money (Robert Patrick) and by a couple of elegant-looking hoods under orders from an imprisoned crime kingpin who wants her killed.

A sloppy script from Craig Mazin (some of the mid-“Scary Movie” franchise and the lackluster “Hangover II”) shows no sense of character, and dragged-out direction from Seth Gordon (the wonderful “King of Kong” and the hideously awful “Four Christmases”) shows no understanding of comic momentum. And the film criminally mis-uses not just the exceptional talents of its two leads but also Stonestreet (we are subjected not just to disconcerting, almost random personality shifts and casual racism but also his bare butt), rapper/actor T.I., Genesis Rodriguez (she needs a new agent after this and Schwarzenegger’s “Last Stand”), and Robert Patrick (ditto after this and “Gangster Squad”). McCarthy is as good as it gets in full-on, fearless, “yes, and” commitment to the moment that should be ideal for a character whose skill is constant re-invention and on-the-fly assessment — is this a time for aggression? a play for sympathy? But it is all surface, and an unpleasant surface at that. Sandy #2 is both selfish and needy, the relentless morphing leaving us with nothing — no one — to connect to. And when the classic-turned cliché mismatched road trip formula requires the pair to develop growing sympathy and respect from each other and from us, including, ugh, a makeover, it just collapses.

Parents should know that this movie includes extended sexual humor with very explicit and crude references and explicit situations, brief nudity, drinking and drunkenness, some drug references, very strong language, violence including shooting, punching, collisions, theft and fraud.

Family discussion: What made the characters change their minds about each other? How did Sandy and Diana see the rights and feelings of other people differently? What do you learn about Diana from her encounter with Big Chuck?

If you like this, try: “Midnight Run”

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Comedy Crime