Closed Circuit

Posted on August 27, 2013 at 8:00 am

Terrorism has killed thousands of people, destroyed buildings and property, and caused seismic rifts in our notions of who constitutes “us” and “them.” What is even more terrifying is the damage it has inflicted on our most fundamental notions of privacy and justice. “Closed Circuit” is an up-to-the-minute thriller in which the chases and explosions are less scary than what it reveals about how ineffective our legal system is for responding to terrorism. The damage to democracy may be more devastating than the damage to life and property.

The story begins with a shocking terrorist attack at a London market. Two suspects died in the bombing and one died “resisting arrest.” Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto), described as “the last man standing,” is quickly captured and accused. The traditional judicial system cannot provide him with the rights that are accorded all defendants under UK law, including the right to examine and respond to all evidence against him and to be given any evidence the government has that might cast doubt on his guilt. So he is given two different trial attorneys (called barristers in Great Britain), one for an open hearing, one for a separate closed hearing. The judge soberly advises them that “you must not meet or communicate or share information in any way.”

Martin (Eric Bana) will represent Erdogan in the open hearing to the best of his ability without any access to information deemed sensitive by the government. Claudia (Rebecca Hall) is appointed to have access to those files the government has selected as confidential. In a complicated set of procedures, if she discovers something in those files that is relevant to the case, she can show it to the judge but not to Martin or the defendant. This procedure is intended to provide some some fairness in an inherently unfair process we continue to refer to as the justice system. “There is no right way out of this,” a character will say.

Claudia initially tries to withdraw. She does not explain much but we learn that she and Martin have a history. Even though the process prohibits them from having any contact, that past relationship makes things more complicated.

Separately, Martin and Claudia begin to believe that they are being manipulated, even threatened. But by which side? Is it possible to sustain a democracy, or any kind of accountability, when an official explains, “You want the freedom to attack me, but without me you wouldn’t have much freedom at all?” It is eerily reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s famous speech in “A Few Good Men” and Jose Ferrar’s in “The Caine Mutiny.” Both accuse us of feeling superior to the decisions we delegate to those who guard our freedom, and our willingness to overlook the infringements of freedom that result.

As an audience, we can distance ourselves from the chases and explosions. Our most terrifying realization is the same one Pogo made famous: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Parents should know that this film has very strong language, references to adultery a terrorist attack, chases and fights, suicide, some disturbing images of murder victims, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: Read up on the US FISA court and the controversy about NSA access to personal information. How do we balance the need for national security with the fundamental guarantees of individual justice like the presumption of innocence, the right to examine evidence, and the protection against self-incrimination?

If you like this, try: “Four Lions” and “The Ghostwriter”

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Short Term 12

Posted on August 23, 2013 at 9:37 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and brief sexuality
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense confrontations, references to abuse, suicide attempt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 23, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	January 17, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00EOAHDT8

There is a look in the eyes of those who have seen the very worst that can happen. Those who no longer have the blessing of living in denial. Those who know, not just in their heads but in their souls, that the innocent can be hurt by those they trust, that their bodies, their hearts, and even their minds can be damaged in ways that leave them shattered, convinced that they will always be alone and outside the magic circle everyone else seems to know how to stay inside. Then there are those rare souls who have traveled all the way to the end of the road of no expectations but hold on to their sense of humanity by using what they have experienced to help others. The look in their eyes is tired, but not entirely closed off from the world. As T.S. Eliot said in “Ash Wednesday,” the goal must be “to care and not to care.”

The gifted actor Brie Larson captures that look in “Short Term 12,” a wise and heartfelt new film about the staff at a facility for abused, neglected, and damaged teenagers. It has the intimacy of a documentary so that the solid, assured narrative structure sneaks up on you. This assured feature from writer/director Destin Cretton shows that kind of understanding behind the camera as well.

Larson plays the aptly named Grace. She is not a therapist or a doctor. She has a more important credential, as we will learn. Her job is to help create a space that makes the kids who have no reason to trust anyone can feel safe, despite the drab institutional setting, the almost non-existent budget, the overworked professionals, and the rules that restrict them. How can you make someone feel safe when the state will throw them out with no support after 12 months or when they turn 18? How do you not give up when you see this kind of damage every day? Can you find yourself in helping others? Can you hide from yourself there?

Grace lives with her co-worker, Mason (“Newsroom’s” John Gallagher Jr., authentically disheveled), who loves her deeply but is troubled that she cannot truly open up to him. Remi Malek has the thankless role of the newbie who gives the other characters the chance to provide some exposition and show us that good intentions are not enough. But Cretton handles even this character with sympathy and humanity. Then there are the residents, including Marcus (Keith Stanfield), who is about to turn 18 and leave the only home he knows, and a new arrival, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), who is furious and hostile.

Beautifully observed scenes open these characters up to us, with moments of small-g grace that are more heart-wrenching than the traumatic revelations. They seem to bloom on screen thanks to sensitive writing and gorgeously heartfelt performances. Birthday cards. An anniversary tribute. A look of resignation, recognition, and exhilaration as an emergency, but a relatively and reassuringly solvable one, comes up. A broken teenager begins to heal. And a broken adult begins to acknowledge that helping others cannot be enough unless she does what she asks from them, and what Cretton does before our eyes: to tell the truth.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, sexual references and situations, discussion of very severe parental abuse including sexual molestation, and frank discussion of family dysfunction and abuse

Family discussion: What do you learn about Mason from his family party? Why is the character named Grace?

If you like this, try: “Manic” and “The United States of Leland”

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence and disturbing images, language, sexual material, thematic elements and smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language, n-word and other racist epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and alcohol abuse, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including police brutality, lynching, murder, rape (off-camera), sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 16, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	January 13, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00EV4EUT8

Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood was covering the 2008 Obama campaign when some young black women told him that they were going to vote for America’s first major party Presidential candidate who was African-American, even though their fathers told them not to. The generational chasm that separated the fathers who were not ready to see one of their heritage in the White House and the daughters who were inspired him to check to see whether there might be someone in the White House itself who was of that older generation. He found one, Eugene Allen, who had been a butler in the White House from the Truman administration to the Reagan administration, and who was planning to vote for Barack Obama, and Haygood wrote an article telling his story.

That story inspired this film, with Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, born on a plantation in the Jim Crow south and serving eight Presidents while raising two sons. Like the young women Haygood met, the next generation had very different ideas and aspirations. The conflict between a man whose job was to serve by being “invisible in the room” had sons who wanted to be anything but invisible. As Sidney Poitier said to Roy Glenn in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in 1967, “Dad, you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”

There are some awkward moments in trying to get through so much material so quickly, with just brief glimpses of some of the Presidents and some of the events. By the time we figure out that it is Robin Williams playing President Eisenhower, painting a landscape as Cecil serves him from a silver tray, his appearance is over. John Cusack has two juicy scenes as Richard Nixon. As the eager, if socially clumsy Vice President, he visits the kitchen to hand out buttons and ask the staff what issues are important to them. “As members of the Negro race,” he intones, as though they do not know who they are, “what are your biggest concerns?”

Later, Cecil sees the President unraveling under the impeachment proceedings. James Marsden has some of President Kennedy’s charisma, and Minka Kelly is lovely and utterly heartbreaking as Jackie, sobbing in the pink suit covered with blood that she could not bring herself to remove. Liev Schreiber shows us President Johnson’s swagger, leaving the bathroom door open so he can talk to his aides while he is on the toilet. Presidents Carter and Ford are seen only in brief archival footage, but Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda are both excellent as the Reagans, shown with more warmth and humanity than the caricatures we might expect.

This cavalcade of star power is just the frame. Director Lee Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong (Danny Siegel on “Mad Men”) put the human story at the center of the tumultuous historic changes from the late 1950’s to the first decade of the 21st century. That gets a little didactic and clumsy. Cecil Gaines is given two sons, Louis (David Oyelowo of “Red Tails”) and Charlie (Elijah Kelley of “Hairspray”), so that Louis can become involved in the Civil Rights movement, from sit-ins to freedom rides, and then the Black Panthers and anti-apartheid, while Charlie goes to fight in Vietnam. But sensitive and heartfelt performances and the ultimate recognition by the characters that despite their estrangement, the connection between Cecil and Louis is powerful and unbreakable makes their reconciliation hit home. There is a distracting and unnecessary detour into the relationship between Cecil’s wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and a neighbor (Terrence Howard). And the cameos by big stars as the Presidents are distracting — and a grim reminder that even powerhouses like Winfrey, Whitaker, and Daniels and a relatively modest budget were not enough to get a Hollywood greenlight without some white stars. Some of the best scenes are when we see the African-American characters away from the “other face” they have to show whites, relaxed and joking in the White House locker room (Cuba Gooding, Jr. Lenny Kravitz) and or at neighborhood parties.

Ultimately, this is Cecil’s story. When he was a child, service was a chance to get out of the cotton field. In his first job away from the plantation, he learns to present a pleasant, respectful, and helpful face to the customers, to “make them feel not threatened,” to look at them only to “see what they need.” And he learns to stop using the n-word about himself or anyone else. When he comes to the White House, he is told, “You hear nothing. You see nothing. You only serve.” As for the issues, when it comes to the staff, “We have no tolerance for politics at the White House.”

While Louis and his friends are staging a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter, his father is serving dignitaries, wearing white gloves and a tuxedo. But all the courage and determination Louis shows in his passionate commitment to equality don’t reach the power of the moments when Cecil challenges the long-standing tradition of paying the African-American staff of the White House 40 percent less than the white staff, and not allowing them the opportunity for promotion.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness,” the movie’s opening epigraph from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King tells us. “Only light can do that.”

Parents should know that this film includes strong language, drinking, drunkenness, and alcohol abuse, sad deaths, peril and violence including police brutality, rape, murder, lynching, racial epithets, sexual references and non-explicit situations.

Family discussion: Talk to members of your family about their own experiences before and during the Civil Rights era and read about some of the people and incidents mentioned in this movie, including Emmett Till, Pablo Casals, and James Lawson.

If you like this, try: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, “Eyes on the Prize,” and “The Remains of the Day” and the books The Butler: A Witness to History and White House Butlers: A History of White House Chief Ushers and Butlers

Jobs

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some drug content and brief strong language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drug use including hallucinogens
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense and angry confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 16, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	November 26, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00BEIYLAW

Even the most fascinating character, a true visionary with a transformative impact on the world and a story with one of the most wallopingly vindicating comebacks in business history, cannot always translate into a great movie. A straight-on biopic cannot help but feel formulaic and clichéd, with the inevitable cinematic ports of call: our hero meets his then-unknown, now-legendary posse, there is a start-up montage of hard work with no resources, and when things get going our hero is accused by the people around him of neglecting them and/or abandoning the principles he once stood for. Everyone will tell him he is wrong. He will be proven to be right. Everyone will tell him he is arrogant. He is, but he is also right. There are setbacks. There is triumph. There are “Stars: They’re Just Like Us”-style peeks into his messy private life. There is hero worship. As we learned from “The Social Network,” these stories work better when they do not try to show us why someone was great or how he or she became great but instead tell us a story about a limited set of incidents that illuminate not only the life of this real person but tell us something about our own.

The good news is that just that movie about Steve Jobs is in the works, from “The Social Network’s” Aaron Sorkin. It will show us just three different moments in Jobs’ life, as three products are about to be launched. And it will have lots of very smart dialog. I can’t wait to see it. In the meantime, we have this version, with Ashton Kutcher giving a very respectable performance as Steve Jobs, from his days as a college dropout still attending courses at Reed, in between sleeping around and dropping acid, to his triumphant return to Apple, eleven years after he was thrown out by the board of directors and the CEO he hired. Is it ironic or at least inconsistent that a movie about a man who insisted on “insanely great” innovation and joyfully disruptive, even seismic product development would be the subject of such an old-fashioned, traditionally structured storytelling? Sure. It’s like the problem of the computers and other equipment in the movie. Though it is crucial to the storyline that we see how innovative they are; a couple of decades later they all look as old-fashioned as the rotary phones. It is not a great or even a very good movie. It is reporting rather than illuminating. But it is watchable and modestly entertaining.

We learn very quickly, if clumsily, that (1) Jobs is so brilliant that a benign professor played by James Woods says he is welcome to keep going to class even though he has dropped out, (2) he is something of a user (he picks up a girl, sleeps with her, and then, when she offers him a tab of acid, tells her he is taking a second one for his girlfriend), (3) he is sad and rootless (as he and his friend and girlfriend are tripping as they lie on a blanket in the Oregon countryside, a tear slips out of his eye when he talks about being abandoned by his birth parents). And while we’re on the subject of tears, there are a lot of damp eyes in this movie. There may be no crying in baseball, but apparently there are a lot of tears in computers. And (4) he does not play well with others. He goes to work as a programmer for Atari, where he alienates everyone by being arrogant and smelling bad.

And then one day his pal Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad, in full nerd mode but with heart) shows him something cool. He has hooked up his processor to a TV screen so that he can see the code. Big time light bulb moment for the other Steve. After an awkward and unimpressive demo for the Home Brew computer club, which led to his first business opportunity. Jobs realized that there was a market for personal computers beyond the hobbyists and gearheads. The fact that this seems stunningly obvious now is a tribute in part to his vision. The clunkiness of the landline phones throughout the movie is another one. Soon he created Apple with Wozniak and some friends. Jobs set up a production facility in his parents’ garage and everyone got out their soldering irons and whatever the 1980’s equivalent of Red Bull was and went to work.

We see him rise and fall and rise again, with boardroom battles as vicious and bloodlessly violent as any scene to hit theaters this year. Jobs is portrayed as a callous but visionary leader who tells his staff that “when you can touch the human heart, it’s limitless,” but parks in the handicapped space and tells his pregnant girlfriend, “I’m sorry you have a problem, but it’s not happening to me.” He ferociously insists on loyalty from those around him but shows them none in return.

All of the performances are solid, despite the considerable handicap of 70’s hair. As one of the early Apple employees he cuts out of the IPO gains, Lukas Haas is still making good use of those puppy dog eyes that go way back to “Witness.” Matthew Modine and J.K. Simmons are nicely slick as corporate bad guys. But so much of both the personal and business story is left out that it feels empty. The Jobs we see seems more focused on the details of the financing than the details of the product. The man who felt abandoned by his birth parents (and later refused to see his birth father, even as Jobs was dying) disputed paternity and refused to see his daughter Lisa, but nevertheless named his biggest project after her? He ran up huge development costs but refused to raise the price of the products to cover them and this made the shareholders the bad guy? Why was he so ruthless in refusing stock options for the guys who were there at the beginning? And why doesn’t the movie show that Wozniak gave them a piece of his own share? Most important, why doesn’t the movie give us more than platitudes in showing us how Jobs got to “insanely great?”

Parents should know that this film includes smoking, drinking, marijuana and hallucinogens, strong language, a paternity dispute, and many tense confrontations.

Family discussion: What were Steve Jobs’ greatest strengths and faults? How can you work toward something that is “insanely great?” What does it mean to say that “the system can only produce the system” and how can we transcend that?

If you like this, try: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and Steve Wozniak’s iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It

Elysium

Posted on August 8, 2013 at 6:01 pm

The best science fiction acts like a narrative Rorschach test, taking specific elements of our current condition, extrapolating into the future (usually dystopically), and allowing the audience to project our assumptions — and our fears — onto it. “Elysium” is a smart sci-fi thriller that bundles the action and visuals we want from big-budget sci-fi with some provocative ideas about the logical consequences of the decisions we make on some of today’s most contentious issues.

The word “elysium” means a place or condition of perfect happiness. Imagine a place of no worries, no illness, no want. There are endless, perfectly manicured green lawns and soft breezes lightly flutter the sheers on windows that look out on exquisite landscapes. That is home to the wealthy residents of “Elysium,” the space station. It orbits above the now-despoiled planet earth, where the 99 percent live Hobbesian lives that are brutal, nasty, and short. In other words, the set-up is “Wall•E” for grown-ups, without the “Hello Dolly” dance number and cruise ship atmosphere.

Max and Frey meet as children on Earth, and he promises to take her to Elysium some day. They grow up to be Matt Damon and Alice Braga, and meet again when he mouths off to a robocop, who breaks his arm, and she is a nurse in a health care system that provides only the most basic first aid for Earth residents while Elysians have access to a kind of tanning bed technology that cures all injuries and diseases and even reverses the effects of aging.

Max is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation at the plant where he works, making more robots to wait on the residents of Elysium and enforce the brutal restrictions on Earth. A robot informs Max that he will experience catastrophic organ failure and die in five days. The arrogant Elysian CEO in charge of the factory, John Carlyle (William Fitchner), is only concerned about whether Max will get the sheets dirty and how quickly he can be gone.

Max knows that breaking into Elysium and hacking into a med-bed is the only way he can stay alive. And the only way for him to get there is to do a job for his old boss, Spider (Wagner Moura), capturing some data from Carlyle. To keep Max strong, Spider’s henchmen surgically attach a cyber exo-skeletal device to his arms, spine, and skull. He gets help from Diego Luna, a highlight as Max’s old friend from the car-stealing days. It gives him extra power and a sort of USB plug in his brain. And it turns out that Frey also has a desperate reason to get to Elysium. And that the Secretary of Defense (Jodie Foster, dressed in spotless white) is in the midst of orchestrating a regime change, so the data downloaded into Max is of vital importance. She sends a scary operative with a lot of firepower (“District 9’s” Sharlto Copley, scary good) to get Max.

As he did with “District 9,” director Neill Blomkamp adds just enough allegory to this story to give extra weight to the heart-pounding action. Both of the worlds are thoughtfully conceived, especially the burned-out, graffiti-covered remains of Earth. The details are evocative and compelling — a robot asking blandly whether Max is using sarcasm, Spider’s hodgepodge lair with its hobbled-together computers. Foster’s recent performances have been disconcertingly mannered, with head-shaking to indicate the intensity of emotion. But Damon is top-notch as Max, terrific in the action scenes and even better as we see him becoming more human.

Parents should know that this film includes constant sci-fi peril and violence with some very graphic and disturbing images, many characters injured and killed, constant strong language, drugs, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: What elements of this story are based on current issues and controversies? Why did Max say no to Frey? Why was the story about the meerkat and the hippo important? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Upside/Down” and “Mad Max”