The Kite Runner

Posted on December 14, 2007 at 8:00 am

B+
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for strong thematic material including the sexual assault of a child, violence and brief strong language.
Profanity: None
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Disturbing material including child abuse, rape of male children and attempted rape of adult woman, woman stoned to death, abuse by occupying Soviet soldiers and by Taliban
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: December 14, 2007

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This faithful adaptation of the worldwide best-seller puts a struggle for personal redemption and atonement in the context of devastating divides, ethnic, cultural, poltical, and moral, set in Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet invasion of 1979. Loyalty, betrayal, even identity itself are themes that echo and circle back on themselves in this moving story of learning what it means to “be good again.”

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Lions for Lambs

Posted on November 7, 2007 at 3:21 pm

C
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: MPAA Rating: R for some war violence and language
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: None
Violence/ Scariness: Brief graphic battle violence
Diversity Issues: A strength of the movie is strong, loyal relationships between diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: November 9, 2007

It is more op-ed than movie. “Lions for Lambs” is a well-meaning attempt to encapsulate and move forward one segment of our current political debates. But it is mostly speeches, not stories.
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Drama Genre , Themes, and Features Movies -- format Reviews

The Kingdom

Posted on September 24, 2007 at 11:47 am

C
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated R for intense sequences of graphic brutal violence, and for language.
Profanity: Some very strong language, racial epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness: Extreme, graphic, and intense peril and violence, terrorist attacks, torture, many characters injured and killed, including parents and children
Diversity Issues: A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters: 2007

The highlight of this film is over by the time it begins. A brief credit sequence outlines the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia in provocative, trenchant terms covering the Saudi nationality of Osama Bin Laden and most 9/11 hijackers to the entanglements between the US and its top politicians and the oil companies and the Saudis.


Then the movie opens and the last moments of complexity and signficance are over and it becomes a high-budget episode of “The A Team” crossed with “24” and a sort of “CSI: Riyadh” until a few minutes at the end try to tack on some larger meaning. It just shows how thin the material in the rest of the film is by contrast.


It is carefully constructed for maximum impact. Happy American families stationed in Saudi Arabia, mostly by oil companies, are relaxing in that most American of pastimes, a baseball game. And then an all-too-sickeningly familiar scenario unfolds, as a carefully orchestrated multi-stage terrorist attack, killing hundreds of people. Meanwhile, the man who planned it, watches from a balcony far away, filming the explosions.


Who has jurisdiction to investigate and respond? Legally, the Saudis have exclusive authority. As a matter of diplomacy, the United States does not want to interfere. But a movie-genically diverse group of FBI agents fly over to investigate, over the objections of the State Department and his Justice Department superiors.


Jamie Foxx is leader Ronald Fleury, and he is joined by canny cracker (Chris Cooper), a wisecracking newbie (Jason Bateman), and a tough but tender-hearted woman (Jennifer Garner). They are escorted by a sympathetic Saudi (Ashraf Barhom) and pestered by an obnoxious embassay aide (Jeremy Piven).


Director Peter Berg tries to show his mastery of the situation by even-handed assigment of good- and bad-guy roles on all sides and undercutting his shoot-em-up, just-in-time, climax with a final acknowledgement of the inextricability of the forces and tensions behind terrorism and corruption. His capable cast does their best to inject some character into all the bang bang. But it still comes across as arrogant, superficial and part of the problem, not part of the solution. A character is shown reading “The Koran for Dummies” as preparation for the investigation. The movie so mistrusts its audience that it tries to be “The Mideast Conflict for Dummies,” throwing a lot of gunfire and brutality on the screen to get us to learn something about Saudi Arabia and ending up losing not just credibility but interest as well.

Parents should know that this movie has very graphic violence, including a massive terrorist attack by suicide bombers that results in the death of a hundred civilians, including children, torture, and heavy artillery attacks, with explicit shots of gruesome injuries, bloody deaths, and dead bodies. Characters are in intense peril and many, many people are killed. Characters also smoke and use very strong language. A strength of the movie is the portrayal of strong, loyal, capable diverse characters.


Families who see this movie should talk about how we draw the line between diplomacy and law enforcement. How would the US respond to another country’s law enforcement officers coming to investigate a crime in the US? What do you think about the ending? What does it mean to say that tradition and modernity are in violent collision?


Families who appreciate this film will also like The Siege and Arlington Road.

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Chalk

Posted on August 24, 2007 at 12:14 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: Middle School
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some language.
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, characters get tipsy
Violence/ Scariness: None
Diversity Issues: Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters: 2007

A kinder, gentler mockumentary, this black and white film’s greatest strength and weakness is its unwillingness to be too tough on the high school teachers and administrators it portrays. The writers, director, and stars of this movie are all former teachers and have an unabashed fondness for their colleagues. The movie’s opening quote tells us that 50 percent of teachers quit in the first three years. This puts us on their side. No matter how foolish the behavior of these characters, we never lose sight of the honor of their aspirations, the difference they can make in the lives of students, and the greater foolishness of the system’s demands and expectations.

Parents should know that though this film is set in a high school, the story is centered on the teachers and deals with some mature themes. A PE teacher says that other people think she is gay, though she is not. Another teacher complains about how long it has been since she and her husband had sex. Adult characters drink and some get tipsy.


Families who see this movie should talk about the stresses and conflicts faced by teachers, and about the teachers who inspired them the most.


Families who appreciate this film will also appreciate other movies about the absurdities of high school life like Up the Down Staircase and High School High (which parodies as well as perpetuates the genre). And they will appreciate the mockumentaries made by Christopher Guest and his repertory company, which inspired the people behind this film.
The film’s main characters are a nervous but idealistic new teacher (Troy Schremmer as Mr. Lowrey), an enthusiastic but lonely PE teacher (Schremmer’s real-life wife, Janelle Schremmer as Coach Webb), a music teacher-turned administrator (Shannon Haragan as Mrs. Reddell), and an established young teacher whose goal is to be awarded “Teacher of the Year” (co-writer and producer Chris Mass as Mr. Stroope). With a documentary structure, the film counts down the days to vacation and allows its characters to deliver soliloquies about their hopes and disappointments to cameras in their homes.


The people behind the film know teaching better than they know movie-making, and that shows in its shifts of tone from slightly heightened reality to exaggerated farce. Its episodic, improvisational structure gives it a documentary (or even faux documentary) feel, but it also means odd juxtapositions between scenes that work fairly well and some that go nowhere. But the movie succeeds in getting the audience on the side of its characters. They may be and they are certainly self-absorbed, but they are earnest and well-meaning. It is also a rare movie set in a high school that pays almost no attention to the students. There are no big breakthrough moments where a student is suddenly engaged by a subject or transformed because someone believes in him. This doesn’t say much for them as teachers, but as film-makers, it is a refreshing perspective, and the natural sincerity of the performances earns them some extra credit.

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Into the Wild

Posted on August 23, 2007 at 12:19 pm

A-
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Rated R for language and some nudity.
Profanity: Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness: Peril and violence, character beat up, guns used to shoot animals, graphic scenes of gutting and cooking animals, starvation
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: 2007

Every one of us at times hears the call of the wild, to match the wild of the outdoors to the wild that is inside us, to leave behind all of the petty complications of civilization and test ourselves down to the deepest essence, to test our nature, in both senses of the word.

In 1992 Christopher McCandless left behind everything — family, friends, jobs, money, even his name, and went on a journey to find something that felt authentic to him. Actor Sean Penn has written and directed a superb film based on the best-selling book about his journey and its tragic conclusion.


Emile Hirsch plays McCandless, who whimsically renames himself Alexander Supertramp. He walks away from the expectations that felt smothering to him after graduation with honors. He walks away from possessions, donating all of his money to charity and cutting up his credit cards and ID. He walks away from a family that felt disconnected from its outward appearance.

And he walks toward…he is not sure. Something different. Something else. He says he is an “aesthetic voyager whose home is the road” and goes off in search of “ecstatic freedom” to on a “dramatic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual resolution.” His sister says, “It was inevitable he would walk away and do it with characteristic immoderation.” He says, “I don’t need money; it makes people cautious.”


His encounters along the way are in the great tradition of odysseys from Jack London to Jack Kerouac. He meets up with warm-hearted hippies (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker) and a lonely retired military man (Hal Holbrook, in a performance sure to win him an Oscar nomination). For a while, he works for a grain dealer (Vince Vaughn). Every encounter, even a brief conversation with an intake clerk at a homeless shelter, is meticulous and thoughtful. Penn’s sensitive screenplay and Hirsch’s engaging performance show us McCandless’s combination of longing for the biggest emotions and his ability to appreciate the smallest moments, his ability to connect to the subtlest signals from the widest range of people and to the grandest scope of nature.

He is a listener of extraordinary empathy and compassion. After the character played by Keener tells him her story, he says, “We could go eat. Or, I could sit here all night and listen to you.” When a beautiful young girl (Kristen Stewart) offers herself to him, he gently declines. It would not be right for her. Also, like money, love makes people cautious, too, and he is not ready to be cautious yet.


At times, the film comes close to romanticizing McCandless and his quest. But it is anything but romantic in its harrowing final weeks, when he is alone in the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless, whether from hubris, foolishness, immaturity, self-destructiveness, or some combination of the three, makes poor choices that lead to his death from starvation and eating toxic berries. The images of Hirsch, scared and skeletal, are harrowing. Penn, whose previous films as director and screenwriter also focused on lost children and the devastated families, makes us wish up to the last minute for a happier ending.


McCandless liked to quote Thoreau: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” But Thoreau also said that there was a time to go to Walden and a time to leave. It is a tragedy that McCandless was not able to return to tell his own story. But Penn, Hirsch, and cinematographer Eric Gautier (who also filmed another real-life story of a young man’s journey, The Motorcycle Diaries) have brought his story to the screen with honor and grace.

Parents should know that this is a sad movie with graphic depiction of death by starvation and ingestion of poisonous berries. There are bloody scenes of animals being shot, gutted, and cooked. A character is brutally beaten. There is male and female non-sexual nudity and there are sexual references and situations, including references to adultery. When a young girl offers to have sex with Christopher/Alex, he declines for honorable reasons. Characters use strong language and drink, smoke, and use drugs.


Families who see this movie should talk about what Chris/Alex was looking for and whether he found it.

Families who appreciate this movie will also appreciate the book and an article by the same author. They will also appreciate two outstanding documentaries about men who went out into the wild, Touching the Void and Grizzly Man. They should also read the poem Chris quotes to his sister, I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds. And they will enjoy my interview with star Emile Hirsch.

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