Zero Dark Thirty

Posted on January 10, 2013 at 6:00 pm

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Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and disturbing wartime images including torture and terrorism
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	January 11, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	March 18, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00B1E6FF8

It begins with heart-breaking audio of 911 calls from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. A frantic woman who asks if she is going to die is soothed by the operator until she is suddenly gone and we hear the operator’s dawning understanding of the magnitude of the disaster.

And then it is two years later and we are watching the torture-aided interrogation of a detainee in Pakistan. Dan (Jason Clarke) is forthright and almost clinical as he tells Ammar (Reda Kateb) that he will hurt him for every lie. The interrogation is witnessed by a new arrival who we will know only as Maya (Jessica Chastain). She turns down the chance to stay outside the room. “There’s no shame if you want to watch from the monitor.” Maybe she is proving something to Dan, maybe she is proving something to herself, maybe she is so intent on finding Osama Bin Laden that she wants to make sure she does not miss a detail. Probably all three.

Director Kathryn Bigelow brings that same intensity of focus to telling the story that Maya brings to the search. After “The Hurt Locker,” Bigelow, the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, re-teamed with screenwriter Mark Boal to make a movie about what they thought would be the unsuccessful search for Bin Laden. Their project was overtaken by events as Bigelow and Boal were all but embedded with the military and CIA to do their research in real time, giving the movie an intimate, gritty, documentary feel.

Maya goes to work. “You don’t think she’s a little young for the hard stuff?” one of her new colleagues asks. “Washington says she’s a killer.” This is not a movie where we go home with the heroes and see them hug their children. It is not a movie where we see them struggle with their demons or sit down over drinks to give us endearing details about their lives or explain why they do what they do. At one point, Maya is asked about her background and she says she has done nothing since she got out of school but look for Bin Laden. She acknowledges that there is a reason she was particularly suited for this task, but she never reveals it. This is the story of hard-working, even driven professionals who have to make life or death decisions all the time, about what it takes and about the price they pay.

People come and go in the story. A new President is elected and the policy on torture changes.* The policy on the level of certainty required as a basis for action changes, too. Dan goes back home. “I need to do something normal for a while. I’ve seen too many guys naked.” And, he says, “You don’t want to be the last one holding a dog collar when the oversight committee comes.” Some of the CIA and military investigators are killed and she is attacked. But then there is a breakthrough and she has another challenge — persuading the military and the politicians that she is right about where Bin Laden is hiding. James Gandolfini, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehele, and Kyle Chandler are all outstanding as Maya’s colleagues.

And then it is time to bring in Seal Team 6. The attack is brilliantly staged, much of it through night goggles that let us see the compound and the shoot-out through their eyes.

It is also a gripping, masterfully assembled story. Even though we know how it ends, it will leave you breathless.

Parents should know that this film includes terrorism, war, and torture scenes with some very graphic images, characters injured and killed, some sexual references, very strong language, and drinking and smoking.

Family discussion: What does this movie stay about torture? Was Mya right to be so confident? What made her good at her job?

If you like this, try: the documentaries “Restrepo,” “Gunner Palace,” and “Standard Operating Procedure”

*Those who claim that this movie is pro-torture are not paying attention. While some people in the movie may be pro-torture, that is not the same thing as having the movie promote torture. The movie makes clear that establishing a high probability of Bin Laden’s location depended on years of intensive research and was based on correlating many, many sources of information. Mya gets critical data other ways. And the movie’s unblinking portrayal of torture is there to remind of what happened, and, perhaps, of Golda Meier’s famous comment about the true tragedy of war: “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”

Promised Land

Posted on January 3, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Promised Land,” written by stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski is smart, sincere, and timely, well directed by Gus Van Sant and with thoughtful, intelligent performances by everyone, especially Frances McDormand (“Fargo”) and Titus Welliver (“The Good Wife”). It’s a very good movie until it goes completely off the rails at the end.

Steve Butler (Damon) is about to get promoted for his outstanding record selling fracking to farmers. He says what makes him successful is that he grew up in communities like the ones he is selling to (“football Fridays and cow tipping”), and he knows enough to stop at the local bar (Welliver is the bartender) when he gets to town to get acquainted and buy clothes from the local store to help him fit in. He’s a modern day Professor Harold Hill, telling the people in the town that they’ve got trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B — for bankruptcy. The answer is a capital G for gas, and that may not rhyme with M for millionaire, but it still sounds pretty good.

But what really makes him successful is that he truly believes that he is helping them. No, more than helping them; he believes he is saving them. Steve saw his own farm community collapse when a factory closed down. So when he sits across the kitchen table from a farm family and says he understands exactly what their financial struggles feel like, he is telling the truth. “I’m not selling them natural gas,” he says, “I’m selling them a way to get back.” When he tells the farmers — or lets them believe — that this is a great way for them to make money selling something they never even knew they had and will never miss, he almost believes that, too.

Steve’s partner is Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), who cherishes very few illusions about what she is doing, and is very clear about why she is doing it — to support the son she Skypes with from too many hotel rooms. She knows how to talk to the women, mom to mom, about what the fracking money can mean to the community. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a state-0f-the-art high school,” she tells them. More money means better opportunities for the next generation. And Steve and Sue have a couple of additional and very powerful means of persuasion. When the local mayor says he might put up a fight, they pay him off (but not too much). And when farmers hesitate, they bring up that special quality of the gas they want to “harvest.” If the farmer says no, they can go to his neighbor and get it that way. So, it isn’t will you or won’t you say yes. It’s will you before they do? And Steve reminds them that “if you’re against this, you are for oil and coal, period.”

All seems to be going smoothly until two people who are not going to be bought off start to object. One is a local science teacher with a PhD (Hal Holbrook) who says that “the potential for error is just too high” and “money can lead very often to bad decisions.” The other is an cheerful environmentalist named — wait for it — Dustin Noble (Krasinski) who says that he, too, is from a farm community, and he has pictures of dead cows that he says were killed by fracking. He visits local schoolrooms and shows the children what it looks like when fields go up in flames. And because this is a movie, it isn’t enough that Steve and Dustin are on opposite sides in the struggle for the gas drilling rights and the soul of the town. There’s also a pretty teacher (Rosemary DeWitt) in town and both of them like her, too.

The battle escalates as Steve and Sue spread some money around and Dustin’s pictures shake up some of the local people. There is a Frank Capra-esque gathering in the school gym as everyone gets together for a big vote and Steve has to examine his own soul. As soon as Steve says, “None of this can be true, right? We would have heard about it,” we know that his essential goodness and passion for doing the right thing is creating an intolerable conflict. Up to that point, the movie has some respect for its audience and the complexity of its subject. But then it takes a big, dumb, veer into Hollywood nonsense that cheapens its message and leaves us feeling sullied.

Parents should know that this film has constant very strong language, some sexual references, drinking, a drinking game, and drunkenness. A character throws a punch.

Family discussion: How did Steve, Sue, and Dustin differ most in their priorities? What made them effective in persuading people in the town? Did you change your mind about who was right?

If you like this, try: “Gasland,” the documentary about fracking, and do some research into the extent of natural gas extraction and the scientific data about its impact. The movie “Local Hero” is a lighthearted story about a similar situation.

Related Tags:

Drama Environment/Green

Django Unchained

Posted on December 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm

How do you solve a problem like Tarantino?

The prodigiously talented writer/director is a master of style, sensation, and a uniquely muscular kind of cinematic storytelling that builds on a stunning ability to mash up high and low art in a singular and wildly entertaining combination shot through with pure cinematic testosterone and filled with saucy variations on dozens of other films.

But then there is the content of the films, which it seems that Tarantino looks at as just another tool for jacking up a movie’s adrenalin. In “Pulp Fiction,” there was the shock of a literal shot of adrenalin to the heart of an overdosing character and the frisson of hired killers whose biggest concern about blowing someone’s head off is the challenge of getting the blood off the car upholstery. The purest expression of Tarantino’s art is in the “Kill Bill” movies, where he wastes no time on plot, just the minimum nod to the simplest and most relatable of motives — revenge.

In “Django Unchained,” as in his last film, Tarantino uses an actual historic atrocity almost as an afterthought or a placeholder. Like The Bride’s revenge motive, the Holocaust and slavery — and endless uses of the n-word by both black and white characters — are used to justify massive carnage, and, apparently, for no other reason. With “Kill Bill,” the less we knew about the specifics of the reason for the revenge, the better. With “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” we are already aware of the horrors that give the characters license to wreak destruction (artfully). But it is, ultimately, empty. Put another way: sound and fury, check. Signifying: nothing.

Foxx plays the title character. As the movie begins, slave dealers are marching a group of slaves in leg irons and with the scars of whip marks along their backs, through the wilderness. A cheerful man with an elegant, cultured manner pulls up in a cart with a big tooth mounted on a spring. He is passing as a dentist. He cordially offers to buy a slave but when the brutish, dull-witted men refuse, and the first massive slaughter of the story is underway, and all the other slaves set free. The man is Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, who won an Oscar as a Nazi for Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”). He is a bounty hunter who hunts down “wanted dead or alive” men and kills them to collect the reward. In those pre-Google image search days, he needs Django to identify three brothers. The information on the wanted posters is not enough for a positive identification. He is opposed to slavery, so he makes a deal. He will keep Django a slave only long enough to complete the job.

Django proves so adept at the bounty hunter business that Schultz offers to bring him on as a partner. “Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?” Django replies. Django wants to rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). When they tried to escape from their owner, they were separated and sold. Schultz says that Django will not be able to do it alone, and promises to help him get her back. Their travels take them through several different adventures and many nods and winks to other films (Franco Nero, the original Django, shows up in a brothel bar), including a completely hilarious scene with a bunch of proto-Klan types who can’t get the eyeholes right in their masks and some completely horrifying scenes with a slave torn apart by dogs and a seemingly endless “mandingo fight” to the death. Broomhilda is now owned by a man named Candy (his plantation is called Candyland). He is utterly corrupt and despicable, but even worse is his house slave (Samuel L. Jackson), because he betrays other slaves.

Tarantino gets top marks for style, as always. The violence and historical reversals are possibly intended to be empowering (oddly, Broomhilda is surprisingly less powerful than the usual Tarantino female characters). On the contrary, it is dispiritingly disrespectful to the people who suffered unspeakable atrocities. And Tarantino’s increasing distance between style and substance grows less palatable with each film.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely brutal, graphic, bloody, and disturbing violence with many characters injured and killed, an extended fight to the death, whipping and torture, prostitutes, slaves, some nudity, and constant very strong language including many uses of the n-word.

Family discussion: Why did Stephen tell Calvin his suspicions about Django? How does this movie show the influences of spaghetti westerns, American westerns, and “Blazing Saddles?” Any other inspirations?

If you like this, try: “Inglourious Basterds” and “Kill Bill”

Les Misérables

Posted on December 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Fair warning: I seem to be impervious to the appeal of “Les Misérables.” I was not a fan of the stage show or the songs, but I understand that it is the most popular musical of all time, and I approached this movie version with an open mind. My take is that it will make the fans happy, but I am still unpersuaded.

The musical is based on Victor Hugo’s vast novel about Jean Valjean (a magnificent Hugh Jackman), who served 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family and spends the rest of his life trying to do good and to avoid the relentless pursuit of Police Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who is trying to put him back in prison for violating his parole.

When Valjean is first set free, he is bitter and angry. He repays the kindness of a priest who tries to help him by stealing valuable silver treasures from the church. Immediately captured, he is returned to the priest (played by Colm Wilkinson, the foremost Valjean in the stage version). But the priest insists that the items were gifts, and with the police watching, he encourages Valjean to take more. Valjean is transformed by this compassion and generosity, and he vows to be as good, loving, and devoted to helping others as the man who cared for him.

Years later, Valjean, under another name, is prosperous and public-spirited. He owns a factory and he is mayor of his town. Fantine (a heart-breaking Anne Hathaway) works in his factory to support a daughter she boards with an innkeeper and his wife. She loses her job because she refuses to sleep with a foreman and is forced into prostitution. Valjean is horrified and feels responsible. As she lies dying, he promises to care for her daughter, Cosette.

Valjean rescues Cosette from the corrupt innkeeper (Sasha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter). But he has attracted the attention of Javert, and so he and Cosette must hide. Ten years later, with Paris in the upheaval of a revolution, an idealistic young man named Marius (“My Week with Marilyn’s” Eddie Redmayne) sees Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and instantly falls in love with her. In the midst of uprisings and violent reprisals, Valjean tries to keep his promise to Fantine and keep Cosette safe and happy.

Production designer Eve Stewart has done a masterful job, making the setting as vibrant and as essential to the story-telling as any of the characters. Director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”) made a critical contribution by having the actors sing their parts while they were filming, instead of pre-recording them to be played back when the movie was being shot. Since the movie is “sung-through” (all dialogue is sung rather than alternating speaking and singing), this gives the music a welcome organic quality and immediacy. Hathaway’s character is on screen for only a brief time, but her big number, the “I Dreamed a Dream” song memorably sung by Susan Boyle, is wrenching. Hooper keeps the camera on her beautiful face, like the “Nothing Compares 2 U” Sinead O’Connor video, the better to feel her anguish, and it is a stunning moment. Elsewhere, he over-does the artsy angles and sometimes assumes too much familiarity with the storyline. Crowe’s voice is not up to the task and Seyfried’s is stretched beyond its capacity. Newcomer to film Samantha Barks (from the London cast) as Eponine, the daughter of the innkeepers who also loves Marius, sings like an angel and lights up the screen.

It’s a long slog at nearly three hours, for a non-Miz-head. But I came away with more understanding of those who are.

Parents should know that this is an epic story of struggle against oppression with disturbing and graphic abuse of prisoners and others, many characters injured and killed, sad deaths (including death of a child), and a woman accused of sexual misconduct and forced into prostitution.

Family discussion: How does the priest change Jean Valjean’s notion of what he should do? Why was Javert so conflicted? Why were the rebels willing to risk their lives?

If you like this, try: the PBS concert specials saluting the 10th and 25th anniversaries of the musical and the non-musical film versions

This is 40

Posted on December 20, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Writer-director Judd Apatow has made the mistake of believing that the audience will find his wife and children and mid-life crisis as relatable and endearing as he does. And there is nothing more fatal to a movie than a gross miscalculation about the appeal of its characters. It’s fine to make a movie about unpleasant people as long as the movie knows they are unpleasant. But this movie asks us to care about the concerns of people who care very little for anything but the most superficial and selfish problems, with no sense at all of how shallow and unappealing they are.

Apatow’s mega-successful “Knocked Up” was the story of a successful professional woman who became pregnant after a one-night stand with a man who was neither successful nor professional. The pregnant woman’s sister Debbie (Apatow’s real-life spouse Leslie Mann) and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd) provided a comedic counterpoint, coping with marital stress, including two children, played by Apatow and Mann’s real-life children. In one scene, Debbie and her sister are not permitted into a club because Debbie is too old and her sister is pregnant. Debbie is devastated by the loss of this important validation. Debbie is shrill and demanding, constantly blaming her husband. In one big plot twist, it turns out that the secret he had been hiding from her was not an affair but a fantasy sports group he liked to escape to.

“This is 40” continues the story of Pete and Debbie. She is still shrill and demanding, still constantly blaming her husband, and still pretty much on board with the idea that her self-worth depends on being attractive to strangers in hot clubs. In the opening scene, the week of both Pete’s and Debbie’s 40th birthdays, they are having very enthusiastic sex in the shower when he reveals that his performance has been enhanced with medication. Instead of expressing concern or sympathy or support, she interprets this as evidence that she is no longer as attractive as she was when she was younger. She whines to her personal trainer (Apatow regular Jason Segal) that she is failing to arouse men and he consoles her by saying that she arouses him.

Debbie insists that she and Pete embark on a course of self-improvement that involves graphic depictions of a mammogram and a colonoscopy, and a lot of resolutions about eating better and unplugging the kids from the internet. It does not, however, involve any expressions of generosity, humility, compassion, responsibility, or maturity. Pete and Debbie are aggrieved by the remoteness (her) and dependence (his) of their fathers, but they are not doing much better as parents. I have a sinking feeling that there will a a future sequel for the girls to work out their issues with their parents.

The movie is overlong and saggy, swooping almost randomly from set-piece scene to set-piece scene, and yet it is all supposed to take place in about one week. This continually undercuts any sense of forward momentum and Apatow stuffs his films with so many of his friends that we keep having to be reminded of who all the characters are. And then when we are reminded, we are disappointed all over again. Segal, Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”), Lena Dunham (“Girls”), Charlene Yi and Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”) are all trotted out for short bits and some are quite funny (be sure to stay for McCarthy’s outtakes during the credits). And Megan Fox is a standout as an impossibly hot and possibly larcenous employee in Debbie’s boutique. This is Fox’s second top-notch performance this year, following “Friends With Kids” — take that, Michael Bay. There is even an occasional flash of understanding of the challenges of marriage and getting older, as when Pete and Debbie try (but not very hard) to use obviously therapy-inspired tactics for expressing their complaints and disappointments.

But that is not enough to make up for the inert plotline and unappealing characters. For a guy who seems to think about nothing more than the travails of self-absorbed people suffering from arrested development, Apatow has failed to learn that the issue is not growing old — it is growing up.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely graphic and explicit sexual references and situations including fertility issues and an “escort,” constant very strong language, drinking, marijuana, some mild violence (no one badly hurt), family stress, and stealing.

Family discussion: What do we learn about Pete and Debbie from their relationships with their fathers? Why was staying young so important to Debbie?

If you like this, try: “Knocked Up” (featuring the same characters) and “The 40 Year Old Virgin”