Schoolhouse Rock Salutes the American Revolution
Posted on July 3, 2014 at 8:00 am
Snowpiercer
Posted on July 1, 2014 at 6:00 pm
A French graphic novel by Jacques Lob
In an effort to mitigate the damage from climate change, people all over the world shot a chemical into the air that precipitated an overcorrection so extreme that the entire world is covered with snow and ice and is not longer habitable for humans. Seventeen years earlier, the few remaining people were allowed to board a train designed by Mr. Wilford, who still lives in the train’s first car and keeps its engine running. He is considered something like a king or even a god by the train’s passengers, some of whom are 17 or younger and have never known any life off the train.
The train circles the globe once a year, and measures the passage of time by the landmarks it passes. After a brief prologue with snippets of news reports informing us of the environmental catastrophe, we meet the poor, filthy, brutally abused inhabitants of the train’s last car, including Curtis (Chris Evans, almost unrecognizable in a black knit cap and with a haunted expression) and his best friend Edgar (Jamie Bell). They are kept barely alive through doling out of icky looking “protein bars.” And they are kept in control by masked, brutal guards armed with assault weapons. There have been brief attempts at rebellion or escape but all have failed.
Occasionally they are visited by someone from one of the forward cars. Mason (Tilda Swinton, brilliant as a demented apparatchik) has the most terrifying smile of chipper malice since Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. And there is another woman who appears from time to time to measure the children in the last car and take some of them away with no explanation. They are never seen again. Curtis reveres Gilliam (John Hurt), a disabled old man who encourages Curtis and Edgar to start a real revolution. But one lesson they have learned from the failed attempts is that it cannot work unless they get all the way to the front car and gain control of the engine. That means they will need to break out of the train’s prison the only man who can unlock the doors between the train cars.
The rebels move forward, at devastating cost, surging through a series of train cars, each with stunning revelations about what has become of human society. But nothing can prepare them for the shocks of the final confrontation in the engine car.
If Jonathan Swift was a filmmaker, this would be the movie he’d make — sharp, compelling, challenging. As Curtis crosses doorway after doorway, each opens into another remarkable tableau, a beauty salon, a fish farm, a classroom, a disco. This is a story that is richly imagined and powerfully presented.
Parents should know that this film has apocalyptic themes and images, constant peril and violence with a variety of weapons, disturbing images, many characters injured and killed, constant very strong language, smoking, and drugs and drug addiction.
Family discussion: What elements of the society on the train are similar to cultures in the world today? Does Wilford make good points about what it takes to sustain a community? How does this story explore the way that myths and traditions are developed? What do you think will happen next?
If you like this, try: “Brazil” and “In Time”
Begin Again
Posted on July 1, 2014 at 5:59 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Some tense confrontations, slap |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | July 2, 2014 |
| Date Released to DVD: | October 27, 2014 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00M7D81FO |
“It’s delicate,” a songwriter tells a performer who has (literally) amped up her gentle ballad into a power anthem. 
The songwriter is Greta (Keira Knightly) and the performer (Maroon 5’s Adam Levine) is her ex. They were together for five years when he was struggling, but he has become successful and it went to his head.
The more important question for us is whether success has gone to the head of writer/director John Carney. Has he overly tricked out the sweet story he told so well in the bittersweet “Once,” now that he has a bigger budget and top-tier actors? Not quite. Has he repeated too much of the original? Almost. But it is still a lovely little dream of a film, an endearing date-night treat.
No one rumples better than Mark Ruffalo, and here he plays the very rumpled Dan, a once-successful record producer and co-founder of a label with the very pressed and present Saul (Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def). We know he has had some setbacks because he wakes up in a dingy apartment (and then goes right back to bed), but he drives an elegant Jaguar. He’s unreliable. He’s a slob. He has let down everyone in his life, including his ex-wife, Miriam (Catherine Keener), his daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld), and his company. Worst of all, he just does not care about any of it any more, partly because he likes to feel that he is a victim and partly because he just does not want to feel anything at all.
Saul fires him (obligatory “Jerry Maguire” joke). Dan has hit bottom. And that is when he sees Greta, who has been reluctantly dragged on stage at an open mic night, and is quietly singing before an indifferent audience. In a moment of piercing beauty, Dan looks over at her and does not just hear but actually sees an arrangement come together around her, as ghostly instruments begin to, yes, delicately, fill in to support her song. She reminds him of what made him excited about music, and he tells her he wants to record her.
Like “Once,” there are scenes of people sharing music, of extemporaneous singing and composing, that light up the characters with so much shimmer it gives us goosebumps. There’s a fairy tale quality to the story. Of course they decide to forego a recording studio and made the album with hit and run session outdoors all over New York City where they run into adorable urchins who provide back-up vocals (and apparently don’t require contracts or royalties or any other pesky little legal details) and finish the tracks before they have to grab the gear and run from the cops.
I wish they had kept the original title for the film, “Can a Song Save Your Life?” It is more apt, more vivid, less safe. Carney is wonderful at evoking the joy of music, its healing powers, and the way it connects us to each other and the universe. This is a love story, not between Dan and Greta or between them and their exes but between humans and music.
Parents should know that this film has constant very strong language, drinking, smoking, and sexual references.
Family discussion: Share your “guilty pleasure” songs with your family. Why did Greta decide to release her music herself?
If you like this, try: “Once,” from the same writer/director
Tammy
Posted on July 1, 2014 at 5:59 pm
Top talent is wasted in this un-funny and disappointing vanity production from Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone.
They wrote it, or, more accurately, assembled it from pieces of other films, some better (“Thelma and Louise”), some even worse (McCarthy’s own “Identity Thief”). Falcone directed the film and appears as a fast food restaurant manager who fires the title character, played by McCarthy. Tammy is late to work because she ran into a deer and has been trying to resuscitate the stunned animal by blowing on it and making encouraging comments like, “Walk it off.” After she gets fired (contaminating the food in the kitchen by shaking her hair and rubbing saliva on it on the way out), she goes home to find her husband (Nat Faxon) entertaining a lady friend (Toni Collette). For the second time in ten minutes, she tries to make rejection and bad attitude funny. For the second time, but not the last, she is unsuccessful.
She goes a few doors down the street to her parents’ house and tells her mother (Allison Janney) she is taking her grandmother’s car and getting out of town. Her grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), insists on coming along and provides a powerful inducement: more than $6000 in cash. And so, they’re off on the road in Pearl’s Caddy for a road trip comedy so derivative of every road trip comedy you’ve ever seen that it could be another in the apparently-assembled-by-robots “Scary Movie” franchise. Will they visit a roadhouse and make bad decisions? Yep. Will there be arguments, revelations, and bonding? Yep. Encounters with old acquaintances and new friends? And don’t forget the hilarity of being hospitalized and arrested and put in jail!
Like the odious “Identity Thief,” the movie wants to have it both ways. We are supposed to laugh at McCarthy’s character for being loud, obnoxious, willfully dumb (she does not know who Mark Twain is, but pretends she does — funny, right?). We are supposed to find it funny and endearing that she is at the same time both arrogant (she brags about her ability to seduce men) and painfully insecure and sensitive (she pleads with the girl she is robbing to be her friend). Of course there has to be a makeover. And then there’s the ever-popular old people having sex humor. Yay!
The wisest decision McCarthy and Falcone made was in casting. Sarandon is a joy, and of course efforts to make her seem old and infirm fail completely. She is and will always be imperishably glorious. Mark Duplass makes the most out of an underwritten role as a generic NICE GUY/LOVE INTEREST. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh are pure pleasure as a kind-hearted and generous couple, and Dan Aykroyd has a nice moment as Tammy’s understanding and supportive dad. But the script’s sloppiness keeps getting in the way as characters’ major personality changes bear no relationship to anything beyond the needs of each individual scene. Falcone clearly loves his wife and it is touching to see her and make her look beautiful without makeup (before the makeover, even with two-tone hair). I can’t help thinking that the over-the-top antics were the trade-off to get financing for the film, and the quieter, more dramatic moments, some truly touching, were what interested them. It is in those moments we get a glimpse of what McCarthy can do and it would be great to see her in a movie where she gets to take that journey instead of this one.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references and situations, alcohol and drug abuse, comic peril and mayhem.
Family discussion: Is there a place you’ve always wanted to go? How did Bobby and Lenore make Tammy feel differently about herself? Why did she forgive her grandmother?
If you like this, try: “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat”
Earth to Echo
Posted on July 1, 2014 at 5:55 pm
B +| Lowest Recommended Age: | 4th - 6th Grade |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for some action and peril, and mild language |
| Profanity: | Some schoolyard language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Sci-fi-style action and peril |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | July 3, 2014 |
| Date Released to DVD: | October 20, 2014 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00MHIKRVA |
Three kids go on a wild adventure and make an extra-terrestrial friend in this updated take on films like “E.T.” and “The Goonies.” It being 2014, that means that the found footage genre, pioneered in “The Blair Witch Project” and featured in adult thrillers like “Paranormal Activity” and “Cloverfield,” has permeated family film as well. What makes this intriguing is that its intended audience of digital natives, kids who played with iPads before they could talk, may just be better able to process the fragmented, jerky cinematography designed to appear as though it was shot by the kids in the story themselves, than any adult in the audience can imagine.
As it begins, an entire community is being shut down for a highway construction project and all of the families who live there have to leave. Three close friends, confident, talkative Tuck (rapper Brian “Astro” Bradley), shy techie Munch (Reese Hartwig), and sensitive Alex (Teo Halm)have received mysterious messages on their phones and they want to find out where it is coming from and what it means. Some guys from the construction project have some to the door offering to exchange new phone vouchers in exchange for the phones they say they have damaged with their drilling. But the boys realize that their phones are not broken. They are being contacted by someone or something who wants them to find him/her/it.
The trio is able to get away for one last night because their parents are too distracted by the move to notice what they are doing. They get on their bikes and bring along a movie camera and some “spy glasses” that surreptitiously take movies as well. The signal leads them to a tiny, owl-like robotic alien they call Echo, who needs their help to repair his ship so he can return home. But the “construction guys” are looking for Echo, too. Tuck, Munch, and Alex have to race against time and the men who want to capture Echo in a treasure hunt for the parts Echo needs.
There are no surprises in the storyline, but the likeable kids, cute alien, and novelty of the found footage approach makes this heartwarming story of four friends on a thrilling adventure a good choice for a family outing. Echo does not speak; he/she/it just beeps, which means the kids have to do the talking, and that keeps the focus on what they are learning as they try to understand and take on the responsibility of helping someone in a meaningful way for the first time.
Those not accustomed to the mosaic style of “found footage” films may find it disorienting, but the sense of adventure and the strength of the friendships is palpable throughout, and kids and their families will enjoy being along for the ride.
Parents should know that this film has sci-fi action and peril, some schoolyard language, 0underage drinking and drunkenness and references to tween kissing.
Family discussion: Why did the kids feel “invisible?” What questions would you ask Echo? What did Tuck learn about Alex? Why did Tuck lie about Emma?
If you like this, try: “E.T,” “The Goonies,” “Super 8,” and “The Last Mimzy”