We are delighted to have an exclusive clip from the second season of “Dawn of the Croods,” only on Netflix, premiering August 26.
Watch as Eep, Thunk, Grug, Ugga, Sandy and Gran encounter many new modern-day problems for the first time in history as they navigate life in the prehistoric Croodacious Era! Eep joins the first Scream-Leading team, sets up the first underground dance club, and takes up death-guarding at the watering hole; Grug tries to improve his hunting skills through the introduction of math and convinces the family to go on the first vacation; Thunk invents ventriloquism for the first-ever stand-up comedy show and tries the new fad, Slateboarding, with Eep.
Join the family as they meet new friends and encounter new creatures throughout Ahhh! Valley. Eep gets struck with the crush curse when a new cute guy, Kevin, comes to town; Thunk proves he’s responsible by babysitting the new, troublesome baby neighbor, Cliff; Grug finds a new friend, Gurg, to be his doppelganger when he wants to play hooky from his chores; and while on vacation, the whole family is attacked by a never-before-seen Tyrannoconda and meets a new family, The Broods, who live in a solitary utopia that seems too good to be true…
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, inspired by the late Siobhan Dowd, is the story of a boy whose mother is critically ill. He feels utterly isolated. His father has a new family. His grandmother is cold and unsympathetic. The sympathy of his teachers just makes him feel worse. And then one day, a monster calls, a monster with stories to tell. The film stars Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, and Sigourney Weaver.
“What does AEY stand for?” a newly hired employee asks Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). “You mean morally?” No, he just wants to know what the initials represent, though the answer is the same: nothing. And, as it turns out, asking the question and correcting Efraim’s mistake get him fired. AEY “stands for” making money, no questions asked. That will be the basis for great success, until it is also the basis for catastrophe.
We this know right from the beginning, when we see Efraim’s partner David Packouz (Miles Teller) released from the trunk of a car and beaten up at gunpoint by some very evil-looking masked guys. In Albania. And then we go back in time to see how David, a college drop-out now on his seventh job, working as a massage therapist, and smoking a lot of weed, met up with Efraim, an old friend from middle school, and joined him at AEY, a company that sold equipment to the Pentagon.
It was 2008. The United States was fighting two wars and outsourcing pretty much everything. If it costs more than $17,000 to outfit each soldier, that means someone has to sell them all that gear. The Bush administration got into trouble for dealing exclusively with “Dick Cheney’s friends” and was under pressure to give some of that procurement business to small companies. And Efraim, a high school dropout, had mastered the art of constantly scrolling through the website that was essentially the government’s wish list and bidding on contracts so small they were beneath the notice of enormous government contractors who sell tanks and planes. “All the money is made between the lines,” Efraim says. He tells David that while big companies go for the pie, they can make plenty of money from the crumbs. David, bored and worried about money for his pregnant girlfriend, signs on.
At first it works. They make tons of money. But buying and selling guns puts them in contact with some untrustworthy and violent people. And a little bit of success makes them eligible to go beyond the crumbs. An international arms dealer who is barred from selling to the US because he is on a watch list (producer Bradley Cooper) offers them a deal too good to pass up on ammunition they can sell to the Pentagon at a huge mark-up. But Efraim and David are very good at the details when it comes to making the pitch; not very good at the details when it comes to delivering the product. This is a business school case study in failure of operations and execution. And in the failures of government procurement.
Director and co-screenwriter Todd Phillips is clearly trying to make the kind of shift from raunchy, slob comedies (“Old School,” “The Hangover”) to sharp, trenchant satire that Adam McKay did with “The Big Short.” And Jonah Hill, looking disturbingly puffy and pasty, clearly wants to play the Leo role instead of the Jonah Hill role in his own “Wolf of Wall Street.” Both get partway there. Hill clearly enjoys being the trigger-happy hotshot who can brashly invite a girl to skip ahead to the third date for $1000 instead of his usual role as either the dumb shlub or the smart shlub. Phillips does a good job in laying out the parameters of the story, making it clear how the window of opportunity opened for AEY and Efraim and David were in the right place at the right time. There are even chapter headings for each section, foreshadowing telling comments we will hear, from “God bless Dick Cheney’s America” to “That sounds illegal.”
He also lays out a classic Hollywood movie structure: set-up, early triumph, hubris, wipeout. There are some fine moments, like the surreal use of identical actors (or CGI) as the Pentagon officials who sign off on the deal. But Phillips’ control of tone and character is uncertain and he relies too much on songs (“Fortunate Son,” “Time in a Bottle”) to carry the story.
Parents should know that this film includes wartime and crime-related peril and violence including automatic weapons, war profiteering, constant very strong language, crude and explicit sexual references, non-explicit situations, drinking, and drugs.
Family discussion: When and why did David and Efraim make different choices? What was their biggest mistake? Were they appropriately punished?
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and disturbing images
Profanity:
None
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Some social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Intense and sometimes graphic peril and violence including battle scenes, crucifixions, abuse, and accidents, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
August 19, 2016
Copyright 2016 Paramount Lew Wallace’s 1880 book, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, had a revolutionary idea in a spiritual setting. The story of a minor, fictional character at the time of the crucifixion was the first to try to illuminate epic themes through the depiction of a character who was not a participant. Indeed, the title character was hardly aware of the monumental events going on around him. He was too busy dealing with his own personal crises like being enslaved and having his mother and sister contract leprosy. Wallace’s book became the top seller of the century. And then it became a play, two silent films, a Best Picture Oscar winner tied for first place for the most Academy Awards, plus two animated versions and a television miniseries.
Now Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, following the enormous success of their “Bible,” “A.D” and “Son of God” know the genre well and have remade the grand but dated three hour and thirty-seven minute epic. Their version is brisker, not just in the overall running time of just over two hours but in the more contemporary quick cuts and trimmed storyline. It is also more explicitly religious. While earlier versions suggested the presence of Jesus but did not include his face or voice, he is more explicitly involved in the storyline here, portrayed by Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro.
As in all of the earlier versions, it is the story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a Jewish prince who is wrongly accused of a hostile act against the Roman invaders and sold into slavery. In this version the Roman Messala (Toby Kebbell) is more than a close friend; he is Judah’s adopted brother. They are devoted to one another but also deeply competitive.
Messala, in love with Judah’s sister, joins the Roman army in hopes of achieving enough wealth and status to be considered worthy of her. When he returns to Jerusalem, Judah is married to Esther (Nazanin Boniadi). Messala and Judah agree to find a way for the local population to live peacefully under Roman occupation. But a rebel hiding in Judah’s house kills one of the Roman officers and Judah is blamed. Messala refuses to protect him or his family. Judah becomes a galley slave, spending five years chained to an oar on a Roman naval ship.
When the ship is sunk, he escapes. An African named Ilderim (Morgan Freeman) gives him a chance to win back his freedom by competing in a chariot race. And that, after all, is what everyone remembers about “Ben-Hur.” Director Timur Bekmambetov is known for action scenes with tremendous vitality and he more than delivers with the chariot race, which is thrillingly dynamic. The naval battle scenes are also exciting. The screenplay has some clunky dialog and awkward transitions, but Huston is always engaged and engaging and balances the intensity of the action scenes with an inspiring message of forgiveness. The movie is true to the story that has endured in its various versions for more than a century.
Parents should know that this film includes intense and sometimes graphic peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, battle scenes, whipping, abuse, crucifixions, some disturbing images, brief non-explicit sexual situation and mild sexual references.
Family discussion: What changed Ben-Hur’s mind about Messala? Was Ben-Hur right to try to make peace with the Romans? What did Pilate mean when he said, “They’re Romans now?”
If you like this, try; “Risen” and the 1959 version of “Ben-Hur”
The American Bar Association’s Six Types of Movie Lawyers
Posted on August 18, 2016 at 3:19 pm
The American Bar Association’s ABA Journal magazine has an article about movie lawyers that is not the usual top 50 list. Thane Rosenbaum writes about the six types of movie lawyers: crusading, heroic, obtuse, disillusioned, vengeful, and buffoons. Of course, some of the best movies have lawyer characters who fall into more than one of these categories. “To Kill a Mockingbird” has the greatest of all movie lawyers, Atticus Finch, who is heroic and crusading. “Anatomy of a Murder,” based on a novel by a lawyer/judge and starring a real-life judge as the movie’s jurist, had a lawyer who was disillusioned and heroic, and so did “The Verdict” and “Michael Clayton.” “My Cousin Vinny’s” title character was a buffoon and sometimes obtuse, but a hero, too.
I’m a lawyer from a family of lawyers, and I love movies about the law, including the ones listed above (I have to point out that “The Verdict” is completely inaccurate and even “Anatomy of a Murder” has one huge mistake). I especially like movies about real-life lawyers like “Gideon’s Trumpet,” “Amistad,” “Erin Brockovich,” and the upcoming “Loving.”
