Kick-Ass 2

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

The first Kick-Ass was entertaining as an over-the-top response to true-blue superhero movies. The Dark Knight might think he’s angsty and tortured and tough, but he has nothing on the merry band of misfits who form a sort of Justice League on crack, featuring an 11-year-old known as Hit Girl who was raised to be the world’s greatest assassin.

It is less entertaining this time. The lines have already been crossed, the 11-year-old is now 15, and all that’s left is to add a few new characters and a lot more violence. There are some interesting ideas, but mostly it’s just a bloodbath.

The first movie ended with Dave (Aaron Tayl0r-Johnson), who has assumed the identity of a superhero (without any superpowers) named Kick-Ass, killing off the crime boss with a bazooka. Now the crime boss’ son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), wants revenge. He has unlimited resources and unlimited fury. He dresses up in his late mother’s bondage gear, looking like a cross between Spinal Tap and Maleficent. He gives himself an unprintable name, builds an evil lair with strippers and a shark, and hires an international assortment of mercenaries to set himself up as a super-villain.

Meanwhile, and this is the interesting part, it turns out that even knowing dozens of ways to kill a bad guy, with his own finger if necessary, Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) cannot escape a little bit of an adolescent identity crisis. Though she confidently assures Dave that Kick-Ass is his real identity and it is being Dave that is the mask, when her cop guardian (an underused Morris Chestnut) makes her promise to be a normal highschool freshman, she decides to give it a try. A section of the movie is like Buffy crossed with “Mean Girls” as she is taken in by her high school’s Plastics and there is a funny scene where she tries out for Dance Squad by imaging herself in a ninja fight. But, as we all know only too well, the evil in high school is worse than any super-villain, and Mindy, like Dave, will learn what her real identity is.

Over and over, characters tell us that what they are going through is real life, not a comic book. That gets as tiresome as the over-the-top carnage and efforts to shock. Writer-director Jeff Wadlow, taking over for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, fumbles the eternal challenge of a sequel, keeping it enough like the first to deliver what the audience expects while taking it in new directions to make it surprising. His biggest mistake is in overlooking the obvious — this movie belongs to Hit Girl. Every time she is off the screen, it’s like the projector bulb fades.

Parents should know that this is borderline NC-17, an exceptionally violent film with very graphic and disturbing images and sounds, massive destruction, and many injuries and deaths. It also includes exceptionally raw and crude language (a running joke has Mindy filling more than one swear jar), sexual references, and explicit sexual situations and nudity.

Family discussion: Was Dave responsible for what happened to his father? What is the difference between Dave and his friends and vigilantes?

If you like this, try: the original film and the comics by Mark Miller and John Romita, Jr.

In a World….

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 3:19 pm

Writer/director/star Lake Bell has produced a smart, fresh, and funny film that sends up Hollywood, sexism, and the conventions of the romantic comedy and yet somehow has us rooting for the characters to find a happy ending. And she has given juicy roles to a great collection of performers who are too often overlooked — starting with herself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpFNTvA93iY

Bell plays Carol, a voice coach and would-be voiceover announcer, the daughter of Sam (Fred Melamed), a very successful voiceover artist well known for his work narrating movie trailers. The death of Don LaFontaine, the acknowledged leader of this small and very competitive field, has left a perceived opening. According to this film, LaFontaine’s signature opening, “In a world….” is about to be revived for a new “Hunger Games”-like “quadrilogy,” and the job of narrating the trailers is considered the ultimate achievement. Sam has just told Carol she cannot live with him any more because his young girlfriend is moving in. So, Carol has gone to sleep on the couch in the small apartment her sister Dani (Micheala Watkins) shares with her work-at-home husband, Moe (Rob Corddry).

Sam is advising up-and-coming voice artist Gustav (Ken Marino), positioning him to take over the big “In a world…” job. But a temp track recorded by Carol has captured the attention of the studio, and she finds herself in the running for an unprecedented opportunity to be a female voice on a movie trailer. This makes sense as the quadrilogy is about mutant Amazons, but the established tradition is for a deep, rumbling, male “voice of God” narrator.

Bell makes first-timer mistakes in trying to pack too many ideas into the film, but she does a masterful job of keeping it all in balance. She serves the other actors as a director better than she does herself. Carol is sometimes just too much of a clueless, klutz. But when she shows a young professional woman that taking like a teenager with a question inflection at the end of every sentence how important it is to own your voice, it is clear to us that this movie shows how well she owns hers.

Parents should know that this film has very strong language including crude sexual references and some non-explicit sexual situations with some poor choices.

Family discussion: Why don’t trailers use women narrators? What do we learn from Carol’s conversation in the ladies’ room?

If you like this, try: the documentary about voiceover artists, “I Know That Voice”

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Comedy Family Issues

Shakespeare’s Hollow Crown Plays Coming on DVD

Posted on August 14, 2013 at 8:00 am

Executive producer Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “Skyfall”) is presenting four stunning adaptations of some of William Shakespeare’s most revered historical plays. The all-star cast includes Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers), Patrick Stewart (X-Men, Star Trek franchises), Jeremy Irons (Margin Call), Ben Whishaw (Cloud Atlas, Skyfall), and more. The “Hollow Crown” series includes Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two, and Henry V. Filmed with both epic scope and intimate detail, the rise and fall of kings unfolds with Shakespeare’s glorious language magnificently performed. It will be available on iTunes, VOD, and DVD on August 27, 2013.

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Based on a play Classic Epic/Historical

Elysium

Posted on August 8, 2013 at 6:01 pm

The best science fiction acts like a narrative Rorschach test, taking specific elements of our current condition, extrapolating into the future (usually dystopically), and allowing the audience to project our assumptions — and our fears — onto it. “Elysium” is a smart sci-fi thriller that bundles the action and visuals we want from big-budget sci-fi with some provocative ideas about the logical consequences of the decisions we make on some of today’s most contentious issues.

The word “elysium” means a place or condition of perfect happiness. Imagine a place of no worries, no illness, no want. There are endless, perfectly manicured green lawns and soft breezes lightly flutter the sheers on windows that look out on exquisite landscapes. That is home to the wealthy residents of “Elysium,” the space station. It orbits above the now-despoiled planet earth, where the 99 percent live Hobbesian lives that are brutal, nasty, and short. In other words, the set-up is “Wall•E” for grown-ups, without the “Hello Dolly” dance number and cruise ship atmosphere.

Max and Frey meet as children on Earth, and he promises to take her to Elysium some day. They grow up to be Matt Damon and Alice Braga, and meet again when he mouths off to a robocop, who breaks his arm, and she is a nurse in a health care system that provides only the most basic first aid for Earth residents while Elysians have access to a kind of tanning bed technology that cures all injuries and diseases and even reverses the effects of aging.

Max is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation at the plant where he works, making more robots to wait on the residents of Elysium and enforce the brutal restrictions on Earth. A robot informs Max that he will experience catastrophic organ failure and die in five days. The arrogant Elysian CEO in charge of the factory, John Carlyle (William Fitchner), is only concerned about whether Max will get the sheets dirty and how quickly he can be gone.

Max knows that breaking into Elysium and hacking into a med-bed is the only way he can stay alive. And the only way for him to get there is to do a job for his old boss, Spider (Wagner Moura), capturing some data from Carlyle. To keep Max strong, Spider’s henchmen surgically attach a cyber exo-skeletal device to his arms, spine, and skull. He gets help from Diego Luna, a highlight as Max’s old friend from the car-stealing days. It gives him extra power and a sort of USB plug in his brain. And it turns out that Frey also has a desperate reason to get to Elysium. And that the Secretary of Defense (Jodie Foster, dressed in spotless white) is in the midst of orchestrating a regime change, so the data downloaded into Max is of vital importance. She sends a scary operative with a lot of firepower (“District 9’s” Sharlto Copley, scary good) to get Max.

As he did with “District 9,” director Neill Blomkamp adds just enough allegory to this story to give extra weight to the heart-pounding action. Both of the worlds are thoughtfully conceived, especially the burned-out, graffiti-covered remains of Earth. The details are evocative and compelling — a robot asking blandly whether Max is using sarcasm, Spider’s hodgepodge lair with its hobbled-together computers. Foster’s recent performances have been disconcertingly mannered, with head-shaking to indicate the intensity of emotion. But Damon is top-notch as Max, terrific in the action scenes and even better as we see him becoming more human.

Parents should know that this film includes constant sci-fi peril and violence with some very graphic and disturbing images, many characters injured and killed, constant strong language, drugs, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: What elements of this story are based on current issues and controversies? Why did Max say no to Frey? Why was the story about the meerkat and the hippo important? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Upside/Down” and “Mad Max”

Planes

Posted on August 8, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Planes” literally takes off from the retro world of “Cars” and “Cars 2,” with the story of a brave little crop-duster named Dusty (Dane Cook) who wants to compete in an international air race. A couple of problems for Dusty: he was not designed for racing and he is afraid of heights. A couple of problems for the movie: originally intended as a straight-to-DVD release: it does not have the narrative or emotional impact we expect from a feature film and a misguided flashback with a WWII air battle is jarring and likely too much for the intended audience of young gearheads.

The modest ambitions for this movie are refreshing in a summer of over-plotted movies for kids. It is a very simple “little engine that could” story (hmmm, could the next installment be “Trains?”), set, like “Cars,” in a charmingly imagined world of anthropomorphized modes of transportation where even the Statue of Liberty is a machine. It wastes no time giving us the histories of the characters and gets right down to it. Dusty may be built for seed, not speed,” but he wants to race. In his dreams, he has soared near the stars, but in reality he flies “low and slow,” dusting crops. He gets a lot of support from his friends, a practically-minded forklift named Dottie (sweetly voiced by Teri Hatcher) and a loyal fuel truck named Chug (Brad Garrett), who has a copy of “Air Racing for Dummies.”

There is a qualifying race for the Wings Around the World event, and Dusty is determined to participate. He barely makes it into the top five, only after the plane ahead of him is disqualified for the aviation equivalent of doping. He knows he will need more help if he is going to compete in the big event. He asks a WWII Naval plane called Skipper (gravelly voice of Stacy Keach) to be his coach. Skipper himself has not flown since the war, but he knows that “races are won by skill, not speed” and “it’s not how fast you fly; it’s how you fly fast.” He also knows about things like torque, lift, drag, turn ratios, and wind shear.

Dusty enters the race and meets his international competition, including the arrogant champion, Ripslinger (Robert Craig Smith), the lovely Asian champ Ishani (Priyanka Chopra), the British Bulldog (John Cleese), who always has a cup of tea at hand, or, I should say, at wing, the colorful Mexican Chupacabra (Carlos Alazraqui), whose design is inspired by a Mexican wrestler’s mask, and the French Canadian Rochelle (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), with whom Chupacabra is instantly smitten. Dusty is determined to win the race his way — by flying low and holding on to his crop-spraying equipment. But he will have to bend on both to stay in the race.

Each leg of the journey presents different challenges, but all present stunning vistas. There are some slow patches without the detailed characterization of the community and characters we saw in the original “Cars.” And, as noted, a diversion into Skipper’s backstory is poorly conceived and out of sync. It seems a bit off to make fun of merchandising when it comes across as more of an informercial for the very products it pretends to spoof. But the obvious affection for the mechanics of aviation and the dream of doing more than you are built for keeps things aloft.

Parents should know that this film has some potty humor, a brief WWII battle scene flashback with a reference to the loss of some characters, and some peril.

Family discussion: What can you do that goes beyond what you were “built for?” Why did Dusty help Bulldog?

If you like this, try: “Cars” and “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines”

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3D Animation For the Whole Family