Cake

Posted on January 22, 2015 at 5:58 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, substance abuse and brief sexuality
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Substance abuse including pills and alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violence, themes of loss and damage
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	January 24, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	April 20, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00TY6CM7U

Two shrewdly-chosen elements separate this film from the typical Lifetime saga of a middle class white woman struggling to overcome a dire challenge. First is the way writer Patrick Tobin and director Daniel Barnz (the underrated “Beastly”) trust the audience, dispensing with the usual ten-minute “before” scene allowing us to fall in love with the main character before the bad thing happens. Claire (Jennifer Aniston) is already in a bad way when we meet her. The film is willing to take the risk of our not loving her, not even liking her, in part because it allows us to be drawn into the story because if America’s sweetheart Aniston is in the role, we know that this unhappy, uncooperative, woman must be worthy of our interest.

And that is the second element that elevates what could have been a soapy, formulaic story. Aniston, who also produced, gives a brave, vulnerable, nuanced, grimly humorous and deeply felt performance as Claire, a woman whose past we piece together only gradually as we also are discovering who she is now, how much she has lost, and, before she knows it herself, how much she has kept.

Claire lives in a lovely house with a pool and she has a housekeeper (Adriana Barraza, excellent as Silvana). We can see there was once more in her life but now it consists of therapy — group therapy (with Felicity Huffman as a leader not quite as sunny as she would like to seem), physical therapy (Mamie Gummer as the hydrotherapist who is losing patience), and the crucially important people who control access to the drugs (Lucy Punch as the cheerful if easily-misled keeper of the prescription pad). When finessing no longer works, Claire gets Silvana to drive her across the border to Mexico, where pharmacists are more persuadable and can also provide statues of the Virgin Mother with handy hiding places.

Claire has an ex-husband, Jason (the always-welcome Chris Messina, conveying worlds about what he and Claire once had in just a brief appearance). She has a handsome pool cleaner (just another form of drug). She has Silvana, who stays out of loyalty, pity, and limited other options. She also has Nina (a performance of great delicacy by Anna Kendrick), a fellow member of the Chronic Pain Workshop, whose sympathetic visits are problematic because she is not really there.

Nina committed suicide just before the movie starts, leaving a husband (Sam Worthington) and young son. Claire’s conversations with her are manifestations of her own dance with death, the numbness of drugged-out senses and overwhelming grief, or the ultimate choice to end it all.

We get small glimpses of who Claire once was and of how much of that she still has. When Silvana’s old friends behave like middle school Mean Girls, Claire knows exactly how to respond. With Jason and with a visitor played by William H. Macy, we see how much she has lost. Her humor can be grim, but it shows resilience. Her determination to get drugs may be focused on the wrong goal, but it shows her resolve. Aniston, who played the role with no make-up other than the scars applied to her face, shows with every grimace of pain, every attempt to contain a grimace, with movement that shows a world of understanding of physical pain, how fully she inhabits the character as Claire is learning how to return to her life.

Parents should know that this film has very strong language, some peril and violence, issues of loss and disability, substance abuse, sexual references and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: Why was Nina so important to Claire? Why did she go to see Roy?

If you like this, try: “The Good Girl,” “28 Days,” and “Inside Moves”

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Drama DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week

A Most Violent Year

Posted on January 15, 2015 at 5:58 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some violence
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Crime and violence including guns, suicide
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	January 16, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	April 6, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00RNELG5E

After three very different movies, we know two things about writer/director J.C. Chandor. First, he is already one of today’s most original, thought-provoking directors, with a remarkably mature and insightful eye, and second, he is vitally interested in the survival instincts of characters who are under the direst of pressures. His “Margin Call” is the best take we have seen yet from Hollywood on the Wall Street meltdown, taking place in one day as a huge financial firm finds out it is on the wrong side of a bet that will bring down the entire company. It is filled with sharp, smart, character-defining dialogue that all but sizzles. His second film was “All is Lost,” an almost-wordless, one-character story with Robert Redford trying to stay alive a boat that is damaged in a collision, and an ending that viewers are still debating. And now, his third film is his first period piece, set in 1981 New York, one of the most violent years in the city’s history.

Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain star as Abel and Anna Morales, husband and wife and ambitious owners of a home heating oil company. The company is doing well and they have the chance to take it to the next level with the purchase of some property on the water that will reduce their delivery costs. But they are under tremendous pressure, moving into an expensive new home, on the hook to come up with the money for the land in 30 days, under investigation by a prosecutor who is equally ambitious (“Selma’s” David Oyelowo), and being pushed hard by cut-throat competition from his competitors, who harass his drivers, hijack his trucks, and steal his oil.

Like Michael Corleone, Abel wants to be strictly legitimate, but he is not there yet.

Both husband and wife are trying to move past their origins into the upper middle class. Abel is an immigrant who began as a driver for the company when it was owned by Anna’s father, a gangster. They love each other deeply, but each is by nature mistrustful and secretive. “You won’t like what happens if I get involved,” Anna tells Abel, and they both know he is right. Anna and Abel may have some trust issues but Isaac and Chastain, who have been friends since they studied together at Juilliard, as actors have a fearlessness with each other that requires complete trust as actors. Every scene they are in together crackles.

We first see Abel running through the streets. This was when running first became popular as exercise. But Abel is running all the time. Isaac is always calm and reassuring in his manner, but he has a white-hot inner fury. That is probably what drew Anna to him. He wants it all — money, respectability, family. And he knows that in order to get it he will have to deal with some very bad people and some very weak people and that means he might have to do some very bad things and some people might get hurt.

In his first period film, Chandor creates an atmosphere so authentic we can almost taste the smog. He has been compared to Sidney Lumet for the gritty, layered texture of the settings and the storyline. He is extraordinarily gifted with actors, starting with the casting. Alessandro Nivola is superb as a highly civilized gangster who lives in a home so fortified it tells us how thin that veneer of civilization really is. He creates a complex and fully-realized world that brings home Faulkner’s famous line: “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, and some peril and violence including guns, suicide, and criminal activity, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: How would this story be different if it took place today? Why does the film begin with Abel running?

If you like this, try: “Margin Call” and “All is Lost” from the same director

Spare Parts

Posted on January 15, 2015 at 5:58 pm

It really happened. Four undocumented high school kids from the poorest of communities took on the most brilliant engineering students from the country’s top colleges in a robotics competition and won. The contest results were one in a million, but once it happened, the movie version was inevitable. George Lopez produced the film and stars as the students’ reluctant coach and teacher, Fredi Cameron (based on the two real-life teacher/coaches, Allan Cameron and Fredi Lajvardi).

Unlike its robotic superstar, there is not much ingenuity in the storyline. Everything added on, especially the fictionalized backstory for Cameron, is predictable and superfluous and distracting. Lopez is an amiable presence, but these detours reveal his limits as an actor. We want to focus on the students and their robot, to see them solve problems in engineering and teamwork (which is a form of engineering, too). But too much of the running time is devoted to Cameron’s past and his possible romance with a fellow teacher, played by the always-wonderful Marisa Tomei. If she played the coach, this would have been a much better movie. Still, with a storyline like this one, it cannot help being fun to watch.

Cameron is an engineer with a PhD who tells the school’s principal (Jamie Lee Curtis, in a performance of great warmth and wit) he wants a temporary job as a substitute teacher. She notes that he has moved around a lot, but she does not have any alternatives. He agrees to coach the school’s engineering club because he is assured no one will want to join.

Oscar (Carlos PenaVega) shows up with a flier. He is an outstanding JROTC cadet and was crushed to learn that he cannot join the US Military without proof of citizenship. He thinks participating in a NASA-sponsored robotics competition will make it harder to be turned down. Cameron reluctantly agrees to help.

They assemble a team that includes the brain (David Del Rio), the kid who always gets into trouble but is a whiz at mechanics (José Julián), and the muscle (Oscar Javier Gutierrez II) — one problem they cannot engineer around is that someone has to be strong enough to lift their robot. Each has his own challenges. The brain is bullied at school. The troublemaker is under a lot of pressure to take care of his brother. The muscle has to be able to pass a tough oral exam at the competition to show that every member of the team understands the details of the robot. Oscar falls in love with a pretty classmate named Karla (sweetly played by PenaVega’s real-life wife, Alexa), but worries that his illegal status puts her at risk. All of the students are hiding from the ICE, which has already sent one of their mothers back to Mexico.

And then there is the challenge of the competition itself. Not only does this robot have to operate underwater, it has to execute an immensely complicated series of tasks in a limited time period. When the team shows up, they are so certain they will lose anyway that they decide they might as well compete with the college teams instead of the other high school teams. The night before they have to compete the robot has a disastrous leak. Their very creative and inexpensive (and hilarious) solution is one of the film’s high points.

The film’s name refers to more than the repurposed junk used to assemble the robot. Their triumph is bittersweet because their undocumented status prevents them from taking the opportunities available to those who are citizens. This film makes it clear that it is our loss, as it prevents our country from benefiting from the perseverance and skill that made an $800 robot created by kids kick the robotic butt of the $18,000 robot from MIT.

Parents should know that this film includes some teen crime including armed robbery, violence including bullying, some strong language and tense family confrontations and teen kissing.

Family discussion: What was the team’s most difficult challenge? Who was the teacher who inspired you the most and why?

If you like this, try: the book by Joshua Davis, Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream, and films like “October Sky” and “Stand and Deliver”

Inherent Vice

Posted on January 8, 2015 at 5:58 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violence
Profanity:	Very strong, explicit, and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Extensive substance abuse including drinking, smoking, and drugs, drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	January 9, 2015

We love mystery stories because they reassure us that questions have answers and justice is possible. But some mystery stories are there to remind us that life is complicated and messy, and sometimes answers are just more questions. This is one of those stories.

Inherent Vice is a novel by the famously private author Thomas Pynchon, whose books are dense, complex, and thus rich fodder for grad students and intelligentsia. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood,” “The Master”) is also known for dense, complex stories, and he likes to focus on decay, corruption, and bruised innocence. They are well matched in this weed noir story, sort of Dashiell Hammett crossed with Hunter Thompson.

The original set-up is right out of a classic detective story. A beautiful woman named Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston) visits her ex-boyfriend, Doc (Joaquin Phoenix), some kind of hippie detective, to ask for his help. The narrator (singer Joanna Newsom), in a hypnotic, vocal fry deadpan, lets us know right away that Doc would be better off telling her to leave. But he cannot say no to Shasta or to a mystery, so he is on the case.

Shasta’s new boyfriend is a wealthy (and married) developer named Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts). Shasta believes that Wolfman’s wife and her boyfriend are trying to have him committed so they can get his money. As Doc begins to look into this, he encounters many odd characters, most with their own unsolved mysteries, some of which begin to intersect with the Wolfman story or with each other or both. And it all comes together, or doesn’t, in a haze of, yes, decay, corruption, and bruised innocence that is about the failure of the American Dream or existential chaos or the fragility of our concept of reality, or maybe just that the journey and those who accompany us along the way are more important than the destination. Also, something about the optimism and passion for changing society of the 60’s giving way to the me-decade and passion for individual self-exploration of the 70’s.

Doc encounters a number of extremely colorful characters as he explores a series of mysteries that appear to be linked, or perhaps all part of one big mystery involving a secret and very powerful malevolent force. The only one who seems to know what’s going on is the almost-never-seen narrator, and it’s not clear whether we’re supposed to root for the characters or laugh at them. But as always, Anderson’s impeccable casting and music choices are captivating, and there is an amusing contrast between his attention to every detail of camera placement, editing, production design, and dialog and the convoluted storyline and druggy fog surrounding the characters. I’m not sure what it was that I watched, but I have to admit I enjoyed watching it.

Parents should know that this film has just about everything we consider “adult content,” including constant very strong, explicit, and crude language, nudity and very explicit sexual references and situations including prostitution and adultery, drinking, drugs of all kinds and drug dealing, and violence including guns.

Family discussion: Why did Doc help Shasta? Why did he help Coy? Why is Doc a detective?

If you like this, try: “Boogie Nights” and “There Will Be Blood” by the same director and the book by Thomas Pynchon

Selma

Posted on December 24, 2014 at 5:55 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material including violence, a suggestive moment, and brief strong language
Profanity:	Some strong and racist language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Very brutal violence including abuse and beatings by law enforcement and individuals, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	December 25, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	May 4, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00S1MYWBW

“Selma,” director Ava DuVernay’s film about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the march from Selma, Alabama to the state capital at Montgomery, to make the case for the right to vote, is superb as biography, as history, and as drama. It is one of the best movies of this year and this decade.

And somehow it has arrived just as we need it most, as Americans continue to struggle to reconcile our notions of equality. This film is a powerful reminder of the Civil Rights Movement cry that “we’re not where we want to be, we’re not where we’re going to be, but, thank God, we’re not where we were.” It is a reminder of the difference one person can make, and the inescapability of an idea whose time has come. And it should also be a powerful reminder that the voting rights people fought — and died — must be exercised to carry that dream forward.

This is a story of politics and race and history, but it is also very much the story of a man who just wanted to be “a pastor in a small college town” but found himself called to lead a movement, even though he put himself, his followers, and his family at risk. King has to try to keep his supporters together, increasingly difficult as the very progress he has made has made them impatient and independent.

British actor David Oyelowo makes Dr. King into a real person, polite and respectful but also canny and insistent in his meetings with President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) in the Oval Office, devoted and compassionate with the members of the movement, stirring and inspirational at the pulpit and podium, and at his most vulnerable when he is alone with his wife, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo, who played the same role in the superb “Boycott”). Even over the course of the few weeks covered by this film, we see Dr. King constantly assessing, re-evaluating, learning, and growing.

We also see that wiliest of politicians, LBJ, outmaneuvered by King, partly because he refused to give up but also because for the first time there was television coverage of what was going on and the rest of the country, 70 million viewers, were no longer able to pretend that this country was living up to its ideals of justice and equality. Even with the passage of the monumental Civil Rights Act, which required equal treatment without regard to race or gender in public accommodations and the workplace, the inability to vote imposed an insurmountable barrier to meaningful change. At the beginning of the film, we see Annie Lee Cooper carefully, deliberately filling in her application to register to vote. When the contemptuous official quizzes her on the number of county judges in the state, she is prepared with the answer. Clearly, she has tried this before and done her homework. She gives the correct number: 67. He responds, “Name them.”

“This voting thing is just going to have to wait,” Johnson explains. “You have one problem. I have a hundred and one.” He tries to persuade King that his War on Poverty is of central importance to black citizens. King understood that without the right to vote, blacks would continue to be excluded.

Everyone tries to stop him. The FBI sends tapes to Mrs. King that purport to reveal King’s affairs. There are constant threats and supporters are murdered. A church is bombed, killing Four Little Girls. The first time they try to walk to Montgomery, the 600 marchers are attacked by the police with tear gas and billy clubs wrapped in barbed wire.

But television cameras send pictures of the police brutality to 70 million viewers across the country. The images put even more pressure on Johnson, who finally brings Governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) to the Oval Office, to force some progress on the man whose inaugural address included the words, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Today we live in a world that is saturated in images and opinions, often angry ones. This film, like King’s patient but insistent voice, is a clarion call, the story of a man, a movement, and a journey that can and must continue.

Parents should know that the movie’s themes include historic depiction of virulent racism including verbal and physical attacks and murder, strong language including racist epithets, brief sexual sounds and discussion of affairs.

Family Discussion: How did Dr. King make President Johnson change his mind? How did President Johnson make George Wallace change his mind?

If you like this, try: Other films about the Civil Rights movement including “Boycott” (also featuring Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King), “Separate But Equal,” and “Eyes on the Prize”