Everest

Posted on September 17, 2015 at 5:57 pm

This is why we can’t have nice things. As the brief history at the beginning of “Everest” points out, the first successful group to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain was led by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The mountain was the exclusive province of hardy adventurers. But then four decades later, commercial tour groups began to clog the mountain. This made it possible for people who had no business to be there to arrive with certain expectations that people who were being paid to guide them were under a lot of pressure to deliver on. And the crowding itself made it more difficult to keep everyone safe.

Writer Jon Krakauer went on one of those trips for Outside Magazine in 1996, when a huge storm and some bad decisions resulted in the deaths of twelve climbers. His best-selling book, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster is the basis for this movie.

The scenery is spectacular, and the 3D IMAX cinematography is literally breathtaking, especially when one climber slips on a precarious ladder across a gorge and we get a vertiginous view straight down. But the people blocking the scenery never come alive to us as characters, partly because most of the time they are wearing near-identical parkas with hoods and speaking through masks or covered with snow, so it is impossible to tell them apart, and partly because so many of them are arrogant idiots. It is difficult to keep the characters straight, much less connect to them, and impossible to feel sympathy for people who make so many bad choices and then go to a place where the altitude, as high as the pressurized cabins of commercial aircraft, literally swells the brain so that thinking is impaired even further.

There are things we do because we dare. And there are things we do because we have big egos and $65,000. Asked repeatedly why they are climbing, no one has a good answer. Some echo Mallory: “Because it’s there!” but the very act of quoting someone else about daring undermines that spirit.

A woman from Japan (Naoko Mori) says that she has already climbed the other six peaks of the world’s seven tallest mountains. A man from Texas (Josh Brolin) wearing a Dole/Kemp t-shirt to make sure we know he’s a proud Republican, says he feels depressed when he’s not on a mountain — and that when his wife (Robin Wright) says she would divorce him if he went on another climb, he went on this one without telling her. A mailman/carpenter (John Hawkes) wants to tell the schoolchildren who helped him raise the money for the trip that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Everyone else kind of mushes together.

Then there are the two rival tour guides, the only distinctive and relatable characters. Rob (Jason Clarke) is a tender-hearted New Zealander with a pretty pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) waiting back home. Scott (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a seemingly laid-back American who beams beatifically when he says “It’s all good,” but points out that all of his group made it to the top when Rob’s group has not.

The film touches on important issues of hubris and the impact of commercialization turing an area that was for thousands of years reserved for the hardiest of adventurers into a playground for people with too much money and too little judgment, but frustratingly abandons them for an increasingly confusing storyline. We know a lot of things are going wrong, but it is difficult to tell what is happening to which climber and where they are in relation to each other. The anguished faces of the people trying to make contact do not come close in impact to that one moment on the bridge.

Parents should know that this film depicts real-life events of extreme peril with many characters injured and killed, very sad deaths, some disturbing images, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What changes would you recommend to prevent these kinds of fatalities in the future? What would you say to Rob in those final conversations if you were Helen? If you were Jan?

If you like this, try: “Touching the Void,” a gripping documentary about another real-life mountain climbing accident and Jon Krakauer’s book about the events of this film

Edge of Tomorrow

Posted on June 5, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Are there moments you would like to relive, so you could make a different choice?

It’s a universal fantasy that has played out many times in books and films. It can be a gift (About Time). It can be a curse, though a curse with some benefits that could involve saving the world, personal growth, and falling in love (“Groundhog Day,” “Source Code”). In “Edge of Tomorrow,” Tom Cruise plays Major Bill Cage, a slick military officer who stays far away from the fighting by handling press relations for the global effort to defeat mechanical spider-y aliens called Mimics. A general (Brendan Gleeson) wants to send him to the front to get footage of the battle. Cage’s usual smooth patter fails to dissuade him, so he tries blackmail, which so infuriates the general he is demoted and sent to the front, not to shoot movies but to shoot Mimics. He gets hollered at by a Kentucky non-com named Major Sergeant Farell (Bill Paxton), thrown into a exo-skeletal fighting suit, and dropped from a plane, where he gets killed. End of story.

Except that it isn’t. Cage somehow has been caught up in a time loop that keeps bringing him back to that rude awakening in Farell’s division. Like a video game character, when he gets killed, the system is reset and no one but he remembers that it has all happened before. Over and over, he repeats the same actions. No matter what he does, nothing changes until in the midst of battle he meets up with the war’s most decorated soldier, Rita (Emily Blunt), who looks him in the eye and says, “Come find me when you wake up.”

It feels like a nightmare, but it is not. To explain more about what is going on would be to spoil some of this highly entertaining film’s best surprises. Director Doug Liman and editor James Herbert are terrific at using the re-sets to add energy to the storyline rather than bogging it down. They use different angles and pacing to help us keep it all straight, even though sometimes we follow Cage back to his original starting point and sometimes we join him well into another foray, not realizing until just the right moment how many tries it took him to get to that point. Liman deftly plays the rinse-and-repeat familiarity for both us and Cage as comedy and as thriller as needed. Big props to the creature designers, too. The Mimics are like lethal tumbleweeds made of razorblades, moving at hyperspeed.

Cruise describes himself on Twitter as “running in movies since 1981,” but growing up in movies is something he has done just as often. He is just right as the slick and callow advertising man turned press relations officer who has to find a way to stay alive and then find a way to save the world. Blunt is excellent as the battle-worn veteran. As Cage has to find his inner soldier, Rita has to ask herself whether she can let go of hers, lending just enough emotional heft to the storyline to keep the story moving forward even when the events are repeating.

Note: the DVD release is renamed “Live Die Repeat”

Parents should know that this film includes constant sci-fi/action-style peril and violence with scary aliens and many characters injured and killed. There is some strong language including one f-word.

Family discussion: What did Cage learn about himself by repeating the same day? Why didn’t he tell Rita about the helicopter at first?

If you like this, try: “Source Code” and the graphic novel that inspired this film, All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Godzilla

Posted on May 15, 2014 at 6:01 pm

All the basic ingredients are there for a slam-bang summer monster movie. We have people in helmets and hazmat suits running to try to get away from something scary. We have a scientist pleading with a military officer to trust him and the guy in camo responding that he can’t take that chance. We have a guy everyone thinks is crazy who turns out to be right. We have mumbo-jumbo about radiation and bio-acoustics. We have a tentacle(?) tease 40 minutes in. We have a corporate/government cover-up. People say things like, “There’s been a breach,” and “I can prove to you and the world that this was not a natural disaster.” Oh, and “I’m going to find the truth and end this, whatever it takes.” And “It’s going to send us back to the stone age.”

Buildings will be destroyed and a bridge will collapse. People will be told to stay home and then traffic will be at a standstill as they all ignore directions. We have a lot of globe-hopping so that international forces can be involved and iconic skylines can be trashed. And, most important, we have a very, very big monster to do the trashing. Enormous ships will be tossed around like a rubber duckie in a bathtub.

What we don’t have is a very good story. And for a movie with a lot of destruction, not enough of a sense of real investment in the outcome. The good news about CGI is that you can make anything happen on screen. The bad thing is that everyone knows you can make anything happen, so at a fundamental level, it does not feel real.

“Godzilla” begins promisingly, with a terrific opening credit sequence over “archival” footage and glimpses of redacted government reports. And ash, lots of ash, detritus from atomic fallout, pretty cool in 3D. Then there’s a little backstory. In 1999 we see the discovery of a skeleton in a Philippine mine. The rib cage is the size of an apartment building. And there’s goop! If there’s one thing we’ve learned from monster movies over years, it has to be DON’T TOUCH THE GOOP.

Meanwhile, still in 1999, we get our introduction to the adorable family — there always has to be an adorable family — living near a nuclear energy plant in Japan who will provide the emotional core of the film. There’s loving American father (Bryan Cranston) Joe Brody, distracted by some inexplicable but rhythmic tremors. There’s loving French wife (Juliette Binoche), who also works at the plant. And there’s a son, cute tyke Ford. “Earthquakes are random, jagged,” Joe explains. What he is hearing is “consistent and increasing.” We know he will have a hard time persuading his bosses, but we know he is right. And soon tragedy strikes and the cooling towers collapse. The entire community is contaminated and shut down.

Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is coming back from a military deployment where his job is “stopping bombs.” After he has an adorable reunion with his own adorable wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son, he gets a call. Joe has been arrested in Japan, where he is still obsessed with finding the truth about what happened. He has a crazy room with walls covered in clippings connected by string to show the various conspiracies. Ford thinks his dad is nuts. He’s about to find out that he is right.

I don’t want to give away any monster spoilers here, so I’ll just say that there are some surprises for anyone not thoroughly immersed in “Godzilla” lore. I liked seeing the creature pop nuclear warheads into his mouth like Popeye knocks back spinach. And it steps things up nicely when the monster’s power charge shorts out the grids. The special effects are excellent, though only a high-altitude/low opening parachute jump makes full use of the 3D. But the story is weak and the characters are cardboard. The original 1954 “Godzilla” resonated because it personified (monstronified?) our then-new fears about the atomic age. With so many contemporary scares about environmental damage, they should have been able to find something equally potent.

Parents should know that this is a sci-fi movie in the tradition of all monster movies, with extensive mayhem,scary surprises, some disturbing images, and many characters injured and killed. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: What made the scientist and the military come to different conclusions — information or training? What was the significance of the pocket watch?

If you like this, try: the original Japanese “Godzilla” movies

Island of Lemurs: Madagascar 3D

Posted on April 3, 2014 at 6:02 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Discussion of possible extinction
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 4, 2014

The people behind the marvelous 3D IMAx Born to be Wild have made another awwww-inspiring story of some of the world’s least-known and most adorable and intriguing creatures, the more than a hundred species of lemurs, found only on the island of Madagascar, off the coast of Africa. Around the time of the dinosaurs, lemurs arrived on Madagascar as castaways. For millions of years it was a paradise for them with no predators. Fascinatingly, due to the isolation, evolution and natural selection resulted in unique species found nowhere else on earth.

http://www.si.edu/Imax/Movie/130/2014-04-04/#showtimes

This fascinating 40-minute film takes us inside the world of these glorious creatures, their brilliant eyes and leaping dances, and the efforts led by American professor Patricia Wright to create spaces that will keep them safe. Lemurs die in captivity. They can only be kept alive in their own environment. We see scientists search to find mates for the last two known of one species of lemur living in a preserve, playing matchmaker by hunting down two more from the wild and introducing them to each other. The Lemurs and Wright are exceptionally engaging protagonists, and by the time we get to the schoolchildren dressing up as indigenous animals at the end, you will understand how they feel.

Parents should know that there are references to the risk of extinction and environmental despoliation.

Family discussion: Which lemur was your favorite? How are lemurs like other primates: chimps, apes, and humans? How are they different? What can you do to help lemurs?

If you like this, try: “Born to Be Wild”

Behind the Scenes: Island of Lemurs

Posted on March 24, 2014 at 8:00 am

Morgan Freeman narrates the IMAX 3D® documentary “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,” the incredible true story of nature’s greatest explorers—lemurs. Here’s an early peek at the film, coming soon to IMAX theaters across the country.