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”

Argo

Posted on October 11, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some violent images
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Scenes of mob violence, hostages, references to terrorism
Diversity Issues:	Ethnic, political, and cultural differences a theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	October 12, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	February 18, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00AHTYGRW

The movie within the movie, an outlandish space fantasy possibly named “Argo” for Jason’s vessel in the ancient Greek myth, may be more believable than the true and recently declassified story that surrounds it. In 1979, when American State Department employees were taken hostage in Iran, six escaped and were hidden by the Canadian ambassador. A CIA “exfiltration” expert who specializes in getting people out of difficult situations, rescued them by disguising them as members of a Canadian film crew, scouting locations for a fictitious Hollywood movie called “Argo.”

It is like an episode of the television series “Mission: Impossible” except that (1) it really happened and (2) it was much, much harder. Unlike “Mission: Impossible,” the people creating an elaborate false reality in order to fool the other side had to work with civilians. And they had to navigate a lot of bureaucratic, diplomatic, and national-security-related internal conflicts in a volatile environment with limited sharing of information. James Bond has something more valuable than a license to kill. He has a license to pretty much do whatever he wants with M ready to stand behind him. But Tony Mendez (played by director Ben Affleck) has to make a lot of literally life-or-death decisions very quickly and yet is still subject to oversight by layers of people with different priorities and points of view.

Affleck, following “The Town” and “Gone Baby Gone” (and a screenwriting Oscar for “Good Will Hunting”) is no longer one of Hollywood’s most promising new directors — he has arrived. This film works on every level. Even though we know the Americans were rescued (Canada’s embassy was given a prominent location near the White House in gratitude for their efforts), the tension is ferocious. The scenes in Hollywood, with John Goodman and a sure-to-be-nominated for a third Oscar Alan Arkin are as sharp and witty, recalling “The Producers” and “Get Shorty.” But rather than an easy way to provide contrast or comic relief, Affleck and first-time screenwriter Chris Terrio (based on an article in Wired Magazine) use those scenes to provide context, along with some tang and bite. One masterful section of the film intercuts the two stories as the Hollywood group set up shop, secure the rights to the screenplay, and put together a staged reading to get publicity to demonstrate their bona fides while the six Americans are trapped and the exfiltration mission gets underway. There are a lot of similarities — both sides deal in illusion, and not just the illusion of the sci-fi fantasy film they are pretending to make. The constant lying about the project comes naturally to Arkin’s character, an old-time Hollywood guy who has seen it all and who himself has no illusions about the integrity and loyalty of those around him. He says, “You’re worried about the Ayatollah. Try the WGA.”

Affleck locates the film in its era with hair and clothes that evoke the time period without exaggeration or ridicule, not easy to do with 70’s styles. He even used 70’s era film stock and borrowed some of the staging from movies of the era like “All the President’s Men,” and the opening titles are in a 70’s font. But the film also has some important insights about what happened and about our own time, reflected in the conflicts of three decades ago. It begins with a brief description of the events leading to the hostage crisis, emphasizing America’s support (to benefit the oil companies) of the Shah’s brutal regime, told somewhat differently than it would have been in 1979.

“You don’t have a better bad idea than this?” a State Department official asks the CIA. “This is the best bad idea we have,” is the reply from Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston). They can’t fake any of the usual identities for the Americans because they are too easy to disprove. The normal reasons for foreigners to be abroad — teaching, studying, aid — are not plausible. Only something completely outrageous could be true. And it turns out that Iranians are as in love with Hollywood movies as everyone else. This one is a good reminder of why we all feel that way.

Parents should know that this film includes scenes of mob violence, hostages, references to terrorism, characters in peril, tense confrontations, alcohol, a lot of smoking, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Why did the Canadians take in the Americans? Why did Mendez defy his orders? What would you do if someone approached you the way Mendez approached the Hollywood insiders?

If you like this, try: “Charlie Wilson’s War”

Won’t Back Down

Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

What should have been a rousing, feel-good, “inspired by a true story” film about a mother and a teacher who take on the teacher’s union and the school board to turn around a failing elementary school benefits from strong performances but suffers from a palpably skewed point of view. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, the devoted single mother of a daughter with dyslexia who attends the John Adams elementary school in a poor Pennsylvania community. Viola Davis plays Nona, a frustrated teacher whose own son has developmental disabilities that add to the strain in her marriage.

When Jamie tries to see the school superintendent to complain about the principal’s unwillingness to help her, she can’t get in. But a sympathetic receptionist explains that there is a parental trigger law that at least in theory can help. If a school has consistently failed, parents and teachers can petition to take it over. In reality, Jamie is told, those petitions never succeed. The school board uses delays and technicalities to wear down the petitioners. But, as Jamie explains, those mothers who lift trucks to save their babies have nothing on her.

The other teachers are angry and scared when Nona joins Jamie. If the petition is successful, the teachers will no longer be part of the union. They will lose their tenure and possibly their jobs. The petition cannot be successful without the signatures of at least half of the teachers. Lifting the truck begins to seem easy by comparison.

Gyllenhaal conveys passion well but her character is too good to be true, never wavering or even slowing down despite having to hold down two jobs to support her daughter and always having to exemplify all that is committed and pure of heart while also being all kinds of spontaneous and free-spirited, knowing everything about Penguins hockey, being infinitely patient with her daughter, and rocking the skinny jeans. Davis brings great depth and warmth to Nona, but she is stuck with the “black Stepford wife” role and even Davis, one of the finest actors in film history, cannot make Nona’s big powerhouse revelation scene work.

Every parent and anyone who has ever been to school cannot help but be drawn into this underdog story about people who want to make things better for their children and are willing to take on the bad guys. But oh, this movie really overdoes it with the bad guys. There are some mentions of the important contributions made by unions, especially by Michael (the always-outstanding Oscar Isaac) as a Teach for America veteran who is one of the school’s best teachers. But those references are all to the distant past and the praise sounds as insincere Antony’s praise for Brutus. Meanwhile, the union officials are portrayed as venal and corrupt, more concerned with their own power than with the welfare of the children and willing to restort to bribes, threats, manipulation, and character assassination. The bias is evident when of them all but twirls a villain-esque mustache as he quotes a statement the late Albert Shanker, former president of the teacher’s union, never actually made about how children do not pay union dues, so his allegiance is to the teachers who do. They make “It’s a Wonderful Life’s” Mr. Potter seem like Santa Claus. There are bad teachers in schools but it is way over the top when the opening scene shows Jamie’s daughter struggling to sound out the word “story” as her teacher checks her email and shops online and some of the other kids play computer games and make fun of her.

The film has been widely criticized because it is funded by those who have an economic interest in taking over schools, for-profit companies that want to get the school contracts, and those points are valid. Those points are valid. But so is the point that seven out of ten kids at this school cannot read by the time they leave. It is fun to see Gyllenhaal and Davis dance together in the bar where Jamie works as a bartender but it would have been a lot more meaningful to have a forthright conversation about how to protect and retain good teachers and help students who do not have enough support at home. All we ever hear about from the phone book-sized petition Jamie and Nona present to the board is a number with digits mistakenly reversed that may be grounds for rejection. We never hear about the ideas for change that would be the reasons for its approval. We can all agree that schools can do better and that abuses occur when there is too little protection for teachers and administrators and when there is too much. The tough part is coming up with a way to do something about it. Nona and Jamie talk about the importance of high expectations. I had higher expectations for this film than it was willing to meet.

Parents should know that this film includes drinking, scenes in bar, mild language (“screw”), references to drunk driving and irresponsible behavior, tense confrontations, and some kissing.

Family discussion: Read about the controversy over the “parent trigger” laws advocated in the film – what are the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing school administration? What are parents in your community doing to help teachers and students?

If you like this, try: the documentaries “Waiting for Superman” and “Small Wonders”

Related Tags:

Based on a true story Drama School

Looper

Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity, and drug content
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use and addiction
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic violence with adults and children injured and killed, suicide
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 28, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	December 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAII8A

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same man in a twisty time-travel thriller about “loopers,” assassins who use short-range guns called blunderbusses to kill targets sent back in time from the future. The first thing we see is an ornate antique pocket watch as young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) waits next to a cornfield, a cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. The seconds tick by and then the target appears on the cloth, hands cuffed behind him with a bag over his head. Joe shoots, turns over the victim to retrieve the silver bars under his jacket, and disposes of the body. The criminals in the future have found a neat (in both senses of the word) method of dispatching their enemies.

It is 2044. The dead man was sent back from 2074.

Young Joe goes out clubbing with other loopers, the hapless Seth (Paul Dano) and another looper who has been retired. In what is called “closing the loop,” his last target is his future self. These final assignments bring payment in gold along with the knowledge of what will happen to the young assassin when he faces himself in three decades. Seth lets his future self escape and gets in trouble with Abe (a superb Jeff Daniels) the man in charge of the loopers. There are some special challenges that come with the problem of two different versions of the same person running around at the same time; apparently, you can’t just shoot him/them without disturbing the time-space continuum or something like that. Old Joe and Young Joe know themselves/each other too well to trust each other and too well to hide from or outsmart each other. And just like Marty McFly, they have to reckon with the fact that any big changes they make in the now will result in even bigger changes in the future. Which is Old Joe’s past.

Still with me?

As with his brilliant and ground-breaking “Brick,” also starring Gordon-Levitt, writer/director Rian Johnson has an engaging and compelling way of mixing genres. There are some overlays of the Western, the noir crime story, and a “Terminator”-style time travel mind-bender. The efforts to make Gordon-Levitt and Willis look even a little bit like they might be the same guy are ineffective and distracting, but other than that, this is a smart, exciting, mind-bender and a lot of fun.

Parents should know that this film has intense and graphic violence and peril. Adult and child characters injured and killed. The film includes a suicide, disturbing images, drinking, drug use and drug addiction, nudity, sexual references and situations, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Joe’s decision at the end? How did his experience with Seth affect his choices later on? What elements of today’s society inspired this idea about the future?

If you like this, try: “Brick,” from the same writer/director and star and time travel stories like “12 Monkeys” (also with Bruce Willis) and “Frequency”

Trouble With the Curve

Posted on September 20, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for language, sexual references, some thematic material, and smoking
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and scenes in bars
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 21, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B009AMAK0E

“Trouble with the Curve” pitches softballs to power hitters. It has major league players and a bush league script.

Clint Eastwood plays — surprise! — a grumpy old guy, a role he is too comfortable in, on and off screen. Here he is Gus Lobel, the John Henry of the Moneyball era. He is a baseball scout who relies on his instincts and experience while the youngsters look at metrics and formulas. His approach may be out of fashion, but the old-timers believe in him. The problem is that he is losing his eyesight. As he prepares to go on one last scouting trip, to watch a talented but arrogant power hitter, his friend (John Goodman) asks Gus’s estranged lawyer daughter (Amy Adams) to accompany her father on the road. Her name is Mickey, as in Mickey Mantle and the senior lawyers at her firm are about to decide between her and an ambitious fellow associate for a big promotion. She decides to go, bringing her laptop and a bunch of resentments and abandonment issues as well. And on the road they meet up with Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a former player turned scout, hoping to become the team’s radio commentator.

This is a “guy cry” movie. Guys can feel manly going to see it because it stars Clint Eastwood and it is about baseball and the individual literally against the machine, raging at the dying of the light and all that good stuff, so they don’t mind tearing up a little, or sitting through the romantic portion. While Matthew Lillard as Gus’s young rival explains that “these programs are an essential tool in evaluating today’s talent,” Gus knows that even if he can’t see talent, he can hear it. He’s been watching so long that he can tell from the crack of the bat whether a batter is hitting a fastball or a curve. And just as we know that the preening young prospect will need to be taken down a notch, we know that the guy in the suit who tells Mickey he wants to move their relationship forward because “we’re perfect on paper” will be gone by the second act. As will Mickey’s vegan cuisine, no match for a minor-league hot dog. And Timberlake’s shirt.

There’s nothing new or surprising here, except perhaps when things get completely over-the-top at the end. Oh, and Eastwood singing on screen for the first time since “Paint Your Wagon,” when he visits his late wife’s grave to attempt “You Are My Sunshine” with a gravelly warble.” “As you know, to hit the magical 300, you fail seven out of ten times,” Timberlake explains. This film is entertaining, but not especially memorable. Maybe it bats around .240.

Parents should know that this film has some strong and crude language (including the r-word), sexual references, a reference to child molestation, drinking and drunkenness, and a lot of smoking.

Family discussion: Why was it hard for Gus and Mickey to tell each other how they felt? Compare this movie to “Moneyball” – which approach to finding new players is the right one?

If you like this, try: “Field of Dreams” and “Gran Torino”