The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Posted on August 14, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic elements and brief language
Profanity:	Brief mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some sad losses and references to loss of parents
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 20, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	December 3, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIIKS

I have one copy to give away to the first person who sends me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Timothy” in the subject line! Don’t forget your address!

One of the biggest surprises — and greatest pleasures — of being a parent is learning how different your child is from the one you dreamed of, and finding out that the reality is so much better than you could have imagined. That is the theme of the endearing fable, “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.” Jim (Joel Edgerton) and Cindy (Jennifer Garner) meet with an official from an adoption agency to explain why they are fit parents, and it turns out to be the story of Timothy, who came to be their son after they had given up.

“You couldn’t have tried harder or done more,” they are told as the movie begins. All of their time, money, and energy has been focused on trying to become pregnant, but nothing has worked and they are devastated. They decide to mourn their loss by writing down a list of qualities and talents they would have wanted in a child. Honesty, of course. Musical and artistic talent would be good and he should have a good sense of humor. He does not have to be a star athlete, but it would be nice if just once he made the winning goal. They bury the list in the garden and prepare to move on.

But then, he is there, a 10 year old boy covered with dirt. He says his name is Timothy (CJ Adams). He calls them by the words they had hungered for: “Mom” and “Dad.” And he has leaves growing out of his legs, leaves that can’t be snipped off, even with gardening shears. They decide not to question it, just to enroll him in school and be a family. They agree that it puts him under too much pressure to say, “Have a great day!” before school, so Jim just says encouragingly, “Have the day that you have.”

Jim works in the town’s struggling pencil factory. Cindy works for the pencil company’s imperious owner (Dianne Weist) at the local museum devoted to the company’s founder. As they cope with problems at work and with their extended families (an ailing relative, a competitive sibling, a distant and judgmental father), Timothy inspires many people because he seems to understand and appreciate the world around him. He forms a friendship with an artistic older girl. And he manages to fit every item on the buried list, but in his own way.

As someone once said, “I used to have four theories about children. Now I have four children and no theories.” And as someone else once said, “Adults don’t make children. Children make adults.” The great gift of parenthood is the way it makes you jettison so many assumptions — about who you are and who your children are. When you meet your children, you begin to meet yourself as well. This whimsical, bittersweet tale is one of the summer’s nicest surprises.

Parents should know that this film deals with infertility issues, sad losses and references to death of parents, bullies, and includes some brief schoolyard language.

Family discussion: Where do you think Timothy came from? What would have been different if he turned out the way Jim and Cindy expected? How did they learn to be better parents?

If you like this, try: “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao”

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Posted on July 5, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A prize-winner at Cannes and Sundance, this near post-apocalyptic story of a father and daughter in a condemned part of Southern Louisiana is a stunningly assured debut by first-time feature director and co-writer Benh Zeitlen and extraordinary performances by a cast of non-professionals.

Six-year-old Hushpuppy (the mesmerizing Quvenzhané Wallis) and her father Wink (Dwight Henry, who owns a bakery in New Orleans) live in homes made from trash in a fictional community called The Bathtub. They do not have electricity, running water, or telephones, but Hushpuppy is happy and feels lucky to be there.

Zeitlen, the 29-year-old son of folklorists, makes this story exquisitely lyrical. It is poetic in tone and epic in scope. Seeing through Hushpuppy’s eyes makes it feel like a fairy tale because of the freshness of her conception of what is real and what is fantasy, what is strange and what is ordinary, what is scary and what is comfortable. Like Margaret O’Brien in the beginning of “Meet Me in St. Louis,” she introduces us to the community she loves. Like Alice, she brings us into a strange and enchanted world.

‘The Bathtub has more holidays than the whole rest of the world,” she tells us; while ordinary people in other places only have one or two holidays, they celebrate all the time. She is a part of a fiercely devoted community. We hear her repeat what she has been told and we see the contrast between what she is telling us and what we are able to understand. Her father’s hospital gown and the precariousness of their shelter signify nothing special to her, but we can tell it means that her father is very sick and the next big storm will flood The Bathtub. What we see as peril and deprivation, she sees as a place of myth and plenty. And she sees it as her home. For her, it is “the prettiest place on earth.” That is what she has been told and that is how it seems.

Later, when they are taken to a shelter, we see that through her eyes, too. For Hushpuppy, it is not a place of rescue and protection but a place of strangeness and sterility. Buses parked outside, ready to take displaced people from the exotic but familiar world of The Bathtub to strange-sounding far-away places like Des Moines seem institutional and predatory. Later, another possible rescue takes her to a part of the “civilized” world that again, we understand when Hushpuppy does not see how very dangerous it is.

Hushpuppy’s teacher points to the tattoo on her thigh to illustrate her stories about the aurochs, boar-like prehistoric beasts. The fable-like timelessness of the setting makes the era of the aurochs feel very close. When they appear, in a scene of breathtaking synthesis of myth and metaphor, Hushpuppy’s spirit seems to expand to fill all of the courage, resolve, and vision of the human spirit.

Zeitlen achieves a naturalness and state of wonder that is breathtaking to experience and one of the most impressive films of the year.

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Savages

Posted on July 5, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Oliver Stone’s new movie about drug dealers and drug users seems to assume that its audiences may be watching in an altered state of consciousness as well. Stone has never been known for subtlety, but just to make absolutely sure that everyone watching the film knows what is what, he makes a very clear distinction between our heroes and our villains. The good drug dealers are two guys and a girl who live together in an almost Edenic state of polyamorous bliss on Laguna Beach and donate money to African villages. The villains are the bad drug dealers, who chain-saw off the heads of seven people before the opening credits are over and are led by viciously evil Selma Hayek with a hairstyle that makes her look like a demented Veronica from the Archie Comics.

Our narrator cautions us that just because she is telling the story does not mean she is alive at the end of it. O (for Ophelia) is a California girl from a wealthy but dysfunctional family whose primary occupations are shopping and having sex with her two boyfriends. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is the muscle, a cynical former military guy. Ben (Aaron Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is the idealistic botany/business guy. Together, O tells us, they make the perfect boyfriend, and they love each other, too, so it’s just one happy cuddle puddle.

But the very thing that makes them so successful — the exceptional quality of their weed — has made them a threat to the big, bad drug dealers from Mexico. When they make an offer Ben and Chon can’t refuse, Ben and Chon refuse anyway. They are willing to turn over the business but they are not willing to work for Elena (Hayek) and her group. So O gets taken hostage, and if Ben and Chon do not start cooperating, they will chop off her fingers.

When O and Elena have an elegant dinner and O starts prattling on about her failed effort at community college as though she is talking to her parents’ friends at the country club, we get a sense of the grand guignol possibilities of this story, based on novel by Don Winslow, who co-scripted. Hayek’s relish in the role is entertaining and John Travolta has a good turn as a paunchy FBI agent with no illusions. But Benicio de Toro’s portrayal of Elena’s sociopathic henchman is just icky. Stone’s re-re-re-treading of the same issues that have pre-occupied him since he was fighting in Vietnam — drugs, corruption, military, power — is tired. The butchery and dissolution of the bad guys is over the top and the heroes give us no reason to root for them. A final fake-out is an insult to any remaining goodwill left from the audience and the overall preposterousness finally feels like an insult.

Parents should know that this film has extremely graphic and disturbing violence including torture and rape, explicit sexual situations, nudity, drinking, smoking, extended drug use (marijuana and cocaine) and drug dealing, very strong language

Family discussion: Why do the different characters refer to each other as savages? Do you agree with the definition used at the end? What kept O, John, and Ben together?

If you like this, try: “American Gangster” and “Blow”

Related Tags:

Based on a book Crime Drama

Yankee Doodle Dandy

Posted on July 4, 2012 at 3:38 pm

James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R1jiVcIGcg

Magic Mike

Posted on June 28, 2012 at 6:00 pm

You might expect a movie about strippers to be either a glossy Hollywood fantasy or a gritty, sour, documentary. The surprise of “Magic Mike” is that it avoids both extremes with an appealing naturalness and intimacy that softens but does not glamorize its setting.

It is inspired by the experiences of co-producer and star Channing Tatum as an exotic dancer before he broke through as an unexpectedly versatile actor (“Step Up,” “G.I. Joe,” “Dear John,” “21 Jump Street”). Equally versatile director Stephen Soderburgh (“Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Oceans 11”) gently bumps the story a couple of degrees away from the sordid to keep things fun and even romantic. The big musical numbers are grander and more elaborate than anything you might actually see in a small Tampa club catering to sorority girls and bachelorette parties. But even when it gets debauched and dangerous, it is still kind of sweet. It has a bit of the sense of discovery of Robert Altman’s “The Company.” Plus, those guys have some moves. The dance numbers are a blast, witty, sexy, and very wooo-worthy.

Tatum plays Mike, a would-be entrepreneur who does a little of this and that (and wears very little of this and even less of that) as he tries to straighten out his financial situation so that he can pursue his dream of designing furniture. He meets a young college drop-out named Adam (Alex Pettyfer), and introduces him to the world of exotic dancing, from trolling bars to entice girls to come to the show to turning himself into the fantasy lover they love to be scandalized by. The owner is Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), who has promised Mike he will open up a big club in Miami and make Mike his partner. (Drinking game: take a shot every time McConaughey says “all right.”)

Adam lives with his sister Brooke, played by the very appealing Cody Horn, who has a wonderful easy chemistry with Tatum. So there is a classic structure, with Mike in the center between the hardened and cynical Dallas and the naive kid in a candy store Adam, drawn to the dream of a different life with Brooke. What takes this out of the category of fluff is the way the story is unaffectedly located in the reality of the economic struggles of the area and our time. Mike tries to persuade a bank loan officer to give him some money, shoving stacks of bills across her desk and not quite understanding that even though he is still selling, this transaction differs from the easy and sleazy environments he frequents. But she sees who he is. So does Brooke, and that helps him to see himself beyond the breakaway pants.

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