A Walk in the Woods

Posted on September 1, 2015 at 5:50 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual references
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and discussions of substance abuse
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 2, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	December 28, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B015YYC4C8

It isn’t getting to that point where you most often see your friends at funerals. It isn’t feeling stale because instead of promoting a new book, he’s going on some chirpy morning show to promote a reissue of his old ones.

Though both of those things are true. But Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) has a different reason for wanting to try one of the longest hikes in the world, the Appalachian Trail. He quotes the pioneering conservationist John Muir, the man who inspired the National Parks system and urged the preservation of the Grand Canyon. Muir said sometimes you just have to “throw some tea and bread into an old sack and jump over the back fence.” And it is just past Bryson’s own back fence that the AT beckoned.

If mortality was bearing down a bit hard, that just meant more “now or never” urgency. The fact that the lead actors are three decades older than Bryson was when he took the walk that led to his book, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, vastly overshadows the clutter from the superficial other issues raised by the script, often half-heartedly. Will Bryson write again? Will he re-adjust to living in the US after years abroad? Will he recover his mojo? Where is he from? Will he make it to the end of the trail alive and without inflicting some serious and possibly lethal damage on his traveling companion?

Bryson is, as the movie begins, back in the US and feeling unmoored. He decides to hike the private, non-profit, volunteer-managed Appalachian Trail, stretching more than 2000 miles from Maine to Georgia. His wife (Emma Thompson, bringing her luminous intelligence to an underwritten wife-y role) insists that he cannot go alone. Everyone he knows turns him down. And then he gets a call from his old high school friend in Des Moines, Katz (Nick Nolte, a marvel of shambling decay with a voice more growl than verbal), volunteering to come along. These guys are not exactly up to jumping over the back fence. But the longest journey begins with a single step, and so off they go.

No big surprises ahead — encounters with quirky people along the way (Kristen Schaal is a stand-out as a loony solo hiker and Mary Steenburgen is a welcome presence as always as the owner of a hotel along the trail), spectacular scenery, some historical and conservationist information, some highs and lows in the terrain, the temperature, and the reconnecting of the old friends. But it is a pleasure to see these two old pros swing for the fences one more time.

Parents should know that this movie has some very strong and vulgar language with very crude sexual references. Characters drink and discuss substance abuse.

Family discussion: How would you describe the friendship between Katz and Bryson? What adventure do you want to take and who would you take with you?

If you like this, try: the book by Bill Bryson and other walking movies like “Wild” and “Tracks” and more great books about treks like A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Grandma

Posted on August 27, 2015 at 5:50 pm

Lily Tomlin is cranky, feisty, tough, and utterly irresistible in this story of a grandmother who has to visit past decisions about her own life in order to help her teenage granddaughter. Tomlin plays the aptly named Elle (French for “she”), a feminist poet. Her work is respected and influential but that has not translated into financial stability. She has recently cut up her credit cards and made a wind chime out of them.

As we first see her, she is dumping her much younger girlfriend, Olivia (Judy Greer). No “it’s not you; it’s me.” No, “I’ll always remember the good times.” No lyrical meditations on love and loss. Not even any arguments or accusations. Just “It’s over. Leave.”

And then Elle’s granddaughter arrives. Her name is Sage (Julia Garner), and she has a head of fuzzy, soft curls that make her look like a dandelion. She is young and vulnerable but determined. She needs help, and it is clear that she would not be there if she had any other option. She is scheduled to have an abortion that afternoon, but she needs $630. And so Grandma and Sage set off in Elle’s clunker of a car, making desperate visits to people who might be able to help them. So we see a series of encounters, sad, angry, poignant, romantic, score-settling, each impeccably performed by an outstanding cast of actors in small scenes with deepening impact. We learn more about Elle’s life, the wrenching loss she is still mourning, the kindness and unkindness she has shown, and the way she has and has not dealt with the consequences. Standouts include Nat Wolff (“Paper Towns”) as the father, Laverne Cox as a sympathetic tattoo artist, Marcia Gay Harden as Elle’s brisk businesswoman daughter, and Sam Elliott as Elle’s ex.

Writer/director Paul Weitz (“About a Boy”) has taken a story that could be a parody of the worst nightmares of Fox News fans and made it into a very human story of love, loss, and overcoming the fear of intimacy. It is about the families we create and the perfect love we must feel for imperfect people.

Parents should know that this film has very strong and crude language, drinking, drugs, teen pregnancy, and extended discussion of abortion.

Family discussion: Why does Elle break up with Olivia? Why don’t Elle and her daughter get along? Why is the film called “Grandma” and not “Elle” or “Elle and Sage?”

If you like this, try: “The Daytrippers”

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Drama Family Issues

We Are Your Friends

Posted on August 27, 2015 at 5:35 pm

Director Max Joseph brings some of the “Catfish” sensibility to “We Are Your Friends,” with an intimate, documentary feel and a storyline about people in their 20’s who have big dreams but not much understanding about how to achieve them or even about the nature of their relationships. Joseph is the quieter co-host of “Catfish,” the MTV series sequel to the film that added its name to the lexicon, meaning an online relationship with someone who is not as described or presented. In “We Are Your Friends” (named for the Justice vs. Simian song) four bros hang out together, trashing each other and everyone else, promoting parties, enjoying easy access to drugs and girls, and reassuring each other that fame and fortune lies ahead. They feel like besties, but it’s just inertia and a shared fear of moving forward. In reality, they are very different.

Cole (Zac Efron) is a talented DJ who knows how to combine “the rhythm of a caveman” with a kickin’ bass line to “get the crowd out of their heads and into their bodies.” His pals are hot-tempered Mason (Jonny Weston), low-key drug dealer and aspiring actor Ollie (Shiloh Fernandez) and quiet but thoughtful Squirrel (Alex Shaffer of “Win Win”). They get jobs facilitating real estate deals (calling people in foreclosure) for a wealthy businessman (Jon Bernthal, all rough charm and menace in an excellent performance). And Cole meets James (Wes Bentley with Wolverine-style facial hair), a big shot DJ who has performed all over the world and who has a girlfriend/assistant named Sophie who looks like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, because she is played by Emily Ratajkowski, who is one. Ratajkowski was better in “Gone Girl.” Here she does more posing than acting.

There’s nothing wrong with a coming of age story about a young person with a strong creative drive who needs to learn to develop a singular voice, and Efron is, as always, an appealing actor. But too much of it seems borrowed from other films and the situations and settings (San Fernando Valley, aimless young men who party too much and wear their pants too low, the empty and foreclosed houses and predators who flip them) are washed out and played out. The big lesson for Cole is learning to develop a distinctive sound. But the scene where the scales fall from his eyes — or ears — so that he begins incorporating the sounds around him like that wacky carriage ride scene in “The Great Waltz” is just silly. It never persuades us that EDM is anything but derivative, mostly because the movie is, too.

Parents should know that this film has a lot of adult material including very strong language, crude sexual references and situations, nudity, drinking, smoking, extended drug use and drug dealing including marijuana, PCP, ecstasy, and cocaine, a fatal overdose, and a painful scene of foreclosure.

Family discussion: Why did Squirrel say the best part was before the evening began? What did James mean about the meaning of the word “irreparable?”

If you like this, try: “Magic Mike” and “Echo Park”

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Drama Scene After the Credits

Trailer: A Politician’s Downfall in “Zipper”

Posted on August 7, 2015 at 8:00 am

Ricki and the Flash

Posted on August 6, 2015 at 5:48 pm

“Aren’t you allowed to have two dreams?”

The person asking the question is Ricki (as she is now known), played by Meryl Streep. She has just accused her ex-husband, Pete (Kevin Kline), of not supporting her dream of playing rock music. And he has responded, “I thought we were your dream.” Years ago, Ricki was a suburban housewife named Linda, with a husband and three young children. She left them to be a rocker, and now fronts a cover band called Ricki and the Flash, performing at night for a small group of loyal fans at a bar in Tarzana, California. During the day, she is a cashier for a warehouse store. Neither job pays well; she is about to declare bankruptcy.

But first she has to go home. Her daughter Julie (Streep’s real-life daughter Mamie Gummer) is having a breakdown because her husband is in love with someone else. Pete’s wife is away, caring for her ailing father. So Pete calls Ricki and asks her to come home and help him take care of Julie. She arrives, with her guitar and dressed in 70’s rocker drag, at his gracious gated community and enters Pete’s grand and elegant home, where everything seems effortlessly comfortable. And where Ricki, with her stringy braids and kohl-rimmed eyes and tattoo is very out of place.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody (“Juno”) gives Ricki some unexpected characteristics and of course Streep brings her to life. Linda/Ricki loves to perform and loves the look and shock-the-bourgeois attitude of a rock musician, even at her other job. But she is not the stereotype anarchist/liberal. The tattoo on her back is a proudly waving American flag and she calls out “Support the troops!” from the stage. We learn a little bit more about where that comes from in one of the movie’s highlights, when Pete’s second wife, played with depth, heart, and resolve by Broadway star Audra McDonald, returns home and the two women have a conversation about what is best for Julie. It is couched in the kind of “we don’t have to like each other but we need to get along” terms of two very different women who share the experience of having been married to the same man and, in their own ways, mothering his children.

Streep clearly loves being back with her “Sophie’s Choice” co-star, and she and Kline create a palpable sense of history with each other in some touching moments, especially when they join forces to confront Julie’s ex. And it is a joy to see Steep and Gummer together. Their trust and connection is so solid that it gives them both the freedom to make their relationship complicated and painful, wanting so much from one another, and still wanting to give to one another, too.
Rick Springfield (yes, that Rick Springfield) is excellent as lead guitar of The Flash and sometime boyfriend for Ricki.

The film is awkwardly constructed, and the ending, while sweet, is abrupt and unrealistic. It makes sense for the storyline that Ricki is not a great singer or musician, with a dozen cover songs on the soundtrack, director Jonathan Demme’s commitment to using the live performances without any studio sweetening is questionable. But the musical performances are joyous, tender-hearted and true. And it explores essential questions: How do we love the people who cannot love us back the way we want them to? What do you do when your dreams do not fit together? What will you give up for someone you love?

Parents should know that this movie includes tense and unhappy family confrontations, discussion of a suicide attempt, strong language, drinking, marijuana, and sexual references and situations.

Family discussion: Can you have two dreams? How does Pete feel about Ricki? How can you tell? Why does Ricki hurt Greg?

If you like this, try: “The Rocker” and “Juno” and see Streep and Kline together in “Sophie’s Choice”

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Drama Family Issues