Beginners

Posted on June 9, 2011 at 5:55 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual content
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, characters get tipsy
Violence/ Scariness:	Very sad death from cancer, loss of parents, grief
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	June 10, 2011

Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is engaged in the saddest of tasks, clearing out his late father’s home, choosing what to take, what to give away, what no one will want. He brings his father’s dog home with him, giving him a tour. “This is the bathroom,” he says. “This is the dining room, where people come and eat sometimes.” But it is clear that no one comes to eat there. Oliver, a graphic designer, is a loner and in his grief he is even more isolated from the rest of the world.

Writer-director Mike Mills (“Thumbsucker”), a graphic designer himself, based this film on his own experience. His father came out at age 74 for the first time and lived an enthusiastic and joyous life as a gay man until he died. He tells the story impressionistically, going back and forth between Oliver’s quiet, if sometimes conflicted, support of his father’s new experiences and relationships and then his illness and months after his father’s death, when he meets an actress (Melanie Laurant of “Inglourious Basterds” and “The Concert”), falls for her, and struggles to overcome his sense of loss and learn from his father’s ability to give himself wholeheartedly to a relationship. There are flashbacks, too, showing us Oliver’s spirited if complicated mother (the superb Mary Page Keller), who was married to his father for 44 years. And Oliver mingles in details of history and even cosmology as he tells us what happened. It works beautifully. Mills tells the story with delicacy and tenderness — and with humor. The best lines are given to the dog.

Christopher Plummer is outstanding as Oliver’s father Hal, who has no regrets about his marriage but is determined to make up for the time he could not be fully himself. He calls Oliver in the middle of the night to ask what kind of music he heard in a club. “House music,” he repeats, writing it down, to make sure he knows how to ask for it the next time. He has gay pride meetings in his home. He falls in love with a man and invites him to move in, understanding that his new lover will not be monogamous. Oliver’s reaction is mixed admiration, envy, and a kind of sibling rivalry, and McGregor is an understated marvel in showing us all of that and more, without a word.

After Hal’s death, Oliver goes to a costume party, dressed as Freud. He meets Anna, who has laryngitis, and communicates only through writing. A romance begins, but Oliver will have to allow himself to take the risk of loving her, and sharing himself. At work, even though he knows the client who just wants an album cover will hate it, he has insisted on submitting a series of drawings about the history of sadness. Can he make sense of his own history of sadness?

Tenderly told and exquisitely performed, this is a gentle wonder, with characters we root for and emotions we believe in.

(more…)

The Tree of Life

Posted on June 2, 2011 at 6:19 pm

On those dark nights of the soul, when we consider not just life but Life, and Meaning, and our place in the cosmos, our lives don’t play out in our minds in sequence. Images and snatches of words flicker back and forth in what can seem like random order or they can seem to come together like a pointillist painting, revealed at last only at the end. The famously reclusive, famously painstaking filmmaker Terrence Malick has made a film that projects such a meditation on screen, inviting us to bring to it or own search for meaning.Its non-linear, almost anti-linear style admits or rather welcomes many interpretations. Whole passages are impressionistic, almost abstract. Like the “Rite of Spring” section of “Fantasia” or the famous “Powers of Ten” short film popular with middle school science teachers, it explores the farthest reaches of time and space. The slightly more traditional “movie” sections alternate between the story of a family like Malick’s own in mid-century Waco, Texas and contemporary scenes of the now-adult son of the family (Sean Penn), who wanders almost wordless through settings of steel and glass.

Malick has only made five films in nearly 40 years. Each of them has had a meditative quality, a haunting voiceover, exquisite images, and themes centering on the loss of Eden. “The Tree of Life” begins with a quote from the Book of Job, but even though very sad events befall the O’Brien family this is not the story of good people whose faith is tested by a series of unbearable losses. It is an exploration of how we fit into the grandest possible scheme of things, how the patterns repeat in the division of cells to make complex systems, the development of mechanical formulas so singular that they merit a patent, the awakening of the first adult thoughts in a child, innocence and loss, harsh reality and ethereal imagination.

Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien are so archetypal they do not even have first names. They are just Father (never Dad) (Pitt) and Mother (pre-Raphaelite beauty Jessica Chastain). Pitt sheds his movie-star charisma for his Missouri roots, showing us a mid-century man from Middle America, every line of him as straight as the slide rule that like O’Brien himself is about to be out of date. He loves his three boys fiercely and fights down his own tenderness to teach them the lessons he thinks they must have to survive. He is all that is hard and logical and precise and mechanical. Mrs. O’Brien is gentle, almost silent, so in tune with nature she seems to float through it.

The movie’s near-miracle is the way it evokes the muddy, let’s-break-something boy world. Sending a frog up in a rocket, racing behind a truck spewing clouds of DDT, shoving against each other like puppies, holding in wonder a neighbor’s neglige, the heartless, heedless, long, long thoughts of a boy’s life are beautifully portrayed.

It is easy to understand why this film was both booed at Cannes and given its highest honor. I admired the film’s audacity but winced at its pretentiousness. There are some moments of stunning beauty and power. But other parts seemed overdone and empty.

(If you want to know what I think the ending means, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com — and tell me what you think it means!)

Parents should know that this film includes an offscreen death of a child with devastating parental grief, children’s play results in death of an animal, a father is strict with children and his wife to the point of brutality, some dinosaur violence, some disturbing existential themes.

Family discussion: What is this movie about? How do the creation scenes relate to the story of the family? Why is there so little dialog? What is happening in the end on the beach?

If you like this, try: the short film “Powers of Ten” and the other films by Terrence Malick including “Days of Heaven” and “Badlands”

Related Tags:

Drama Family Issues Spiritual films

Jumping the Broom

Posted on May 4, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sexual content
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family confrontations, slap
Diversity Issues:	Race and class issues
Date Released to Theaters:	May 6, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	August 8, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B003Y5H58S

Sabrina (Paula Patton) is from a wealthy, upper-class family with a mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. Jason (Laz Alonso) is from a blue-collar family in Brooklyn. They fall in love, he proposes, and there’s just one obstacle to their happily ever after ending — bringing those two families together for the wedding. When Shakespeare said that the course of true love never did run smooth, it might very well have been the culture clash that accompanies any joining of two families he was thinking of.

We meet Sabrina as she realizes she is about to take the walk of shame. It is the morning after what she thought of as a promising relationship but he thought of as a one-night stand. She decides to make a major change. If God will send her a true love, she will honor herself and that relationship by not having sex until they are married. And then she literally runs into Jason. They have to make a decision about their future together very quickly when she is transferred to China. He proposes, she accepts, and their perfect little bubble of love is intruded on by just about everyone. It’s hard to say which is worse, the family members who are trying to hide their feelings or the ones who are over-sharing.

Sabrina’s parents (Angela Bassett and Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell) are barely speaking to each other. She thinks he is having an affair and is hurt and angry. Jason’s mother (Loretta Devine) feels neglected and intimidated. As often happens at weddings, the happy couple reflects the strains of their family conflicts and has some of their own, as the “ever after” part of the deal sparks some panic. And, as often happens at weddings, a lot of the attendees are looking for love or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Patton and Alonso are in every way the heart of the film. Patton is as effervescent and refreshing as a chilled glass of champagne and Alonso is endearingly open-hearted and gallant. While the script requires them to behave so inconsistently and immaturely at times that even by wedding craziness standards it is hard to reconcile, they are performers of such immeasurable grace and charm that we keep rooting for them. The script also throws a seasons worth of soapy complications their way, but director Salim Akil is skillful in balancing the drama and melodrama along with some romance and comedy as well. The situations and dialogue may be overdone but the characters always feel real, their poor behavior coming believably from fear and pain and not just the need for another confrontation. He stays well on the safe side of caricature but is not afraid to weigh into tough questions of race, class, faith, money, and identity — and to allow every side some dignity and grace.

(more…)

Prom

Posted on April 28, 2011 at 6:31 pm

Less engrossing than a Clearasil commercial and more synthetic than a Rebecca Black video, “Prom” is Disney’s attempt to launch a new generation of tween idols with a wholesome confection about a high school dance. But the buoyant energy of “High School Musical”-style song and dance numbers is sorely missed and some sweet moments are not enough to make up for a thin storyline featuring too many inexperienced young performers. Anyone over the age of 12 will want to sit out this dance.

It begins three weeks before prom in a suburban high school. The girls are excited about being asked. The boys are terrified about asking them. Apparently, even the ask itself is now a montage-worthy event, with high expectations for drama and creativity from the guys. One romantic invitation features candles in the shed filled with party decorations, igniting a fire that destroys all of the “Starry Night” decorations.This is devastating for Nova (Aimee Teegarden), class president and all-around achiever who is determined that the prom will be “a perfect moment.” Jesse (Thomas McDonell), the school rebel (he has long hair, a motorcycle, and a bad attitude), points out that at the very worst, “the boys and girls of the school have been robbed of the opportunity to stand around and drink punch. Lower the flags to half mast.” The principal orders him to work with Nova to make new decorations, and inevitably, a less combustible set of sparks will fly.

The prom creates stress and drama for other seniors as well. Two popular couples struggle with complications that go beyond the selection of limo and cummerbund. The top candidates for prom queen and king are Jordan (Kylie Bunbury) and her boyfriend Tyler (DeVaughn Nixon), the lacrosse team captain and a playah off the field as well. Mei (Yin Chang) does not know how to tell her devoted boyfriend since middle school that she wants to go to Parsons in New York to study design instead of to the University of Michigan with him. The prom also gives shy, gawky Lloyd (Nicolas Braun) his last chance to ask a girl – any girl — out, with encouragement from his stepsister, Tess (a warm and engaging Raini Rodriguez). And a pretty sophomore (Danielle Campbell) must choose between her awkward, music-mad lab partner and a smoother guy who may not be trustworthy. And they squeeze in two characters from a Disney television series as underclassmen for cross-promotion and the already-announced sequel.

But never fear! The over-packed plot still leaves time for the inevitable trying-on-dresses montage, a parent who has to learn to trust his daughter’s judgment, and a last-minute arrival of a back-lit dream date.

Parents will be relieved that everything stays reassuringly PG. A character who would be a stoner in a PG-13 high school movie merely chomps on the candies that give him his nickname and talks about the girl he is bringing to the prom in a manner that sounds vaguely, well, vague. And parents will appreciate the portrayal of supportive friends and moms and some nice lessons about self-respect, loyalty, and moving beyond shallow fantasies of “the perfect moment.” But with a dozen main characters it feels more like a series of Disney Channel sketches than stories. Its effort to underplay the fantasy of the “perfect moment” prom is lost in its own focus on one magical evening. A complaint from one girl about being required to read Ethan Frome is the only suggestion in the film that school is for any purpose other than college applications and finding prom dates. Like a discount prom corsage, it looks pretty and wilts fast.

(more…)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules

Posted on March 24, 2011 at 9:55 pm

This is the second movie based on the wildly popular series of Diary of a Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney. Last year, in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, we saw Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) begin the agonizing experience of middle school. This movie opens with Greg and his best friend Rowley (Robert Capron) starting their second year in middle school, convinced that everything is going to be different. They have learned from their experiences and torments of their first year, and now begin their second year all grown up and sophisticated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbqqYuG1TCM

It doesn’t take them long to discover that an entirely new catalog of horrors is awaiting them. They’re all here: the embarrassment in front of the pretty new girl in class, the embarrassment in the school cafeteria, the embarrassment at the hands of bullies after school at the skating rink, the embarrassment caused by that suspiciously located stain on your pants, the embarrassment from the over protective mother, the embarrassment from the intercepted note in class, the embarrassment from mistakenly walking into the wrong restroom…it’s hard to think of a single childhood humiliation that has been omitted from this comprehensive inventory. Many of these situations are divided by age group. Greg is hounded by his three-year-old brother who just wants to play with the bigger boys, while Greg in turn hounds his older brother Rodrick (Devon Bostick) because Greg is curious about what goes on at “high school parties.” All of the kids in turn had situations with their parents, and a different set of issues with grandparents living at a home for seniors.

Halfway through this movie, Rodrick hisses to Greg, “You’re my brother, but you’ll never be my friend.” And yet, there is progress. Gradually, Greg forms alliances with family members. He and his brother protect each other. He and his mother reach understandings and enter into pacts. This is not just a repeat of the first year of middle school after all.

Kinney does a good job of remembering and portraying these childhood traumas. School children will laugh and groan in recognition of these misfortunes and will take heart from the fact that Greg somehow
manages to survive them all. Adults may cringe at some long dormant feelings, re-awakened by this movie, and feel more sympathy for the burdens of their school aged children.
(more…)