St. Patrick’s Day Special: “Jig”
Posted on March 17, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with this thrilling documentary about the world Irish step dancing competition.
Related Tags:
3D “Swan Lake” in Theaters on March 20
Posted on March 16, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Audiences across the country will have a chance to watch Matthew Bourne’s critically acclaimed re-interpretation of one of ballet’s classic stories, Swan Lake in 3D, shown exclusively in RealD™ 3D, in select theaters on Tuesday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m. local time. Perhaps best-known for replacing the traditional female corps de ballet with a menacing male ensemble, Swan Lake in 3D was pre-recorded at Sadler’s Wells, London in 2011 with a stellar cast including the magnificent Richard Winsor as the lead Swan/Stranger, Dominic North as The Prince and Nina Goldman as The Queen. Edgy and dramatic, Bourne’s Swan Lake tells the eternal story of tragic and forbidden love with dynamic, modern day flair, making this production a one-of-a-kind experience for ballet and performing arts fans alike.
Tickets are available at participating theater box offices and online at www.FathomEvents.com. For a complete list of theater locations and prices, visit the NCM Fathom Events website (theaters and participants are subject to change). This presentation will be broadcast to select movie theaters through NCM’s exclusive Digital Broadcast Network.
21 Jump Street
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:30 pm
The record on movie versions of decades-old television shows is not a pretty one. I call them lunchbox movies because I can envision the pitch meeting with the young studio executive smiling, “Oh, I had the lunchbox for that show! It was my favorite! Yes, I’d love to do a movie version of ‘SWAT!'” For every “Charlie’s Angels,” there are a half-dozen, well, “Charlie’s Angels 2,” not to mention — please, don’t mention — “Land of the Lost,” “Bewitched,” “The Wild, Wild West,” “”The Dukes of Hazard,” “The Avengers,” “Inspector Gadget,” “I Spy,” “My Favorite Martian,” and “Starsky and Hutch.” Whether you play it straight or skewed, it’s very difficult to catch lightning in a bottle, and even harder the second time. So it’s a relief and a pleasure to report that “21 Jump Street” is a lot of fun. It is a wild comedy version of the 1987-91 police drama starring Johnny Depp, about young-looking cops who go undercover in high schools.
Channing Tatum (Jenko) and the newly slimmed-down Jonah Hill (Schmidt) star as the undercover cops. In high school, Tatum’s character was cool and Hill’s character was a nerd. But they become friends at the police academy and are made partners after graduation. “I thought there’d be more car chases and explosions,” Jenko says as they ride their constabulary but not at all exciting bicycles on beach patrol. When they mess up their first arrest by forgetting to read the perp his Miranda rights, they are sent to 21 Jump Street, an abandoned church that is the headquarters for the high school infiltration operation headed by Captain Dickson (Ice Cube), a pepperpot who endearingly owns up to embracing his stereotype and hilariously explains that their program is nothing but recycling a cancelled idea. Jenko and Schmidt are assigned to play brothers to track down the source of a very powerful and dangerous new hallucinogen that has already killed one boy. Jenko will be the cool jock to find the purchasers of the drug and Schmidt will be the science nerd to find the manufacturer — and they will have to move in with Schmidt’s doting but smothering parents.
And of course everything goes wrong.
They are no better at remembering their fake identities than they are at remembering the Miranda warnings. Jenko ends up having to play the brainiac and Schmidt has to be the jock who takes drama class. And in one of the script’s shrewdest and funniest observations, the seven years since they were in high school, a lot has changed. It isn’t just that calling a girl on a cell instead of texting is so old school she thinks it must be coming from one of her parents’ friends. The fundamental rules they both thought they understood about what makes someone cool like the iconography of one-strapping vs. two-strapping the backpack and the bedrock divisions of high school phylum, genus, status, and species seem to have moved or disappeared. For Jenko and Schmidt, figuring out high school is an even more daunting mystery than tracking down the drug dealers.
Tatum, best known for syrupy romances and action movies, turns out to have crackerjack comic timing and Brie Larson and Dave Franco are standouts as students who exemplify the boundary-crossing of the current generation of high school students. She’s cool and does drama — and Larson has a warmth, wit, sweetness, and sparkle that is utterly winning. He’s all about protecting the environment and has an entrepreneurial side that isn’t always legal. And it is fun to see Franco showing off the off-beat vibe he is so good at in the Funny or Die videos with his brother James. The strong supporting cast includes cameos from some “21 Jump Street” original stars and the inevitable Rob Riggle doing his inevitable obnoxious shtick. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the witty “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”) maintain a strong balance between action and comedy and keep things energetic with big scenes that include an out-of-control teen party and the prom. They also balance appreciation for the original series with a very contemporary sensibility. At the end they make it clear that everyone is up for a sequel and I found I was, too.
Casa de Mi Padre
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:11 pm
You think having sunny-spirited Californian Will Ferrell play the son of a Mexican rancher is not goofy enough? How about if the entire movie is in Spanish (with subtitles)? You want goofier? I got your goofy right here. The entire premise of the movie is that it is a humorous take on a genre that is largely unknown to its intended audience. The result plays like an extended “Funny or Die” short, engagingly loopy and unpretentious but overlong and uneven.
Ferrell’s great appeal as a comic performer is the way he commits so completely to whatever his character’s dim but utterly earnest world view is supposed to be. Whether he is an elf or “Hank the Tank” or a high school cheerleader or banging on a cowbell, he is completely on board. Here he joins with Mexican stars Gabriel Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna (who co-starred in “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Rudo Y Cursi”), and Latino actors Genesis Rodriguez (“Man on a Ledge”) and Efren Ramirez (“Napoleon Dynamite”) in the story of a rancher with two sons, Armando (Ferrell) and Raul (Luna) and the drug kingpin (Bernal) who wants their ranch and the woman both brothers love.
Armando is a rancher at heart, but his father does not respect him, reserving his love for the son who left home and became successful in business, Raul. When Raul returns with his beautiful fiancee, Sonia (Rodriguez), they hope the ranch’s financial problems will be over. But it turns out Raul’s money comes from drugs, and the rival drug lord Onza (Bernal), who has his own relationship with Sonia, wants to eliminate the competition and punish those who dared to challenge him.
The film embraces the cheesiness of its melodramatic plot, clunky (at least in translation) dialog, and limited budget, and the best jokes are the cheery and sometimes absurd asides that go on at the edges of the frame. Thankfully, its humor is based in a genuine affection for its source material, the soapy, low-budget telenovelas (and the traditional Hollywood Westerns that influenced them), respecting the heart of those stories and their audiences. The cast is terrific, especially Bernal, who can make smoking two cigars at once look menacing and the beautiful Rodriguez, and everyone in the cast is clearly having a blast. There are some moments of loony hilarity, but it would have worked better as a short, as the concept gets played out quickly. Si casa no es tu casa.
Jeff, Who Lives At Home
Posted on March 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for language including some sexual references and some drug use |
| Profanity: | Constant very strong, explicit, and crude language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drunk driving, and drug use |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Some peril and violence, no one badly hurt |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | March 16, 2012 |
Of course Jeff (Jason Segal) lives at home. Just about everyone lives at home; that’s what “home” means. The thing about 30-year-old Jeff, though, is that he still lives at the home he never-quite grew up in. He lives in the basement of his mother’s home, and while he tells her he is busy when she calls from the office, he really does not do much but smoke pot and watch movies, certainly nothing by way of education or employment. We first see him dictating his thoughts on yet another re-watching of M. Knight Shyamalan’s deterministic alien invasion movie, Signs. In tight close-up, there is almost a rapturous expression on his face as he recounts the way that seemingly random events and choices turn out to be essential. That enlightened insight about interconnectedness seems to have no relationship to Jeff’s being on the toilet as he discusses it.
Jeff’s mother asks him to go to the store and get some wood glue so that he can repair a broken slat in the shutters. And it is her birthday. So like heros in epics from the earliest days of storytelling, Jeff undertakes a journey and a quest. He makes a rare excursion away from home.
Jeff may be going out for wood glue, but in his heart the quest is for meaning and connection. The wrong number asking for “Kevin” he received that morning could be a sign of some kind. And so, when Jeff sees a guy on the bus with “Kevin” on the back of his basketball shirt (Evan Ross, son of Diana Ross), he follows him off the bus instead of staying on to get to Home Depot for the glue. After some misadventure — and a pick-up game — he runs into his older brother, Pat (Ed Helms of “The Office” and “The Hangover”), who has been drowning his troubles at a Hooters after surprising his wife, Linda (Judy Greer of “The Descendents”) with a Porsche they cannot afford. Pat and Jeff get into the Porsche so they can buy the wood glue but once again a number of detours lead them astray, after they see Linda out with a man they don’t recognize. Meanwhile, their mother (an enchanting Susan Sarandon) is receiving flirtatious overtures from an anonymous admirer somewhere in her office’s nest of cubicles and finding herself flattered and intrigued and nervous.
Writer/director brother team Jay and Mark Duplass (“The Puffy Chair”) are often credited or criticized for creating the genre of “mumblecore,” a category of 21st century independent characterized by inarticulate and often aimless characters ineffectually grappling with the transition to adulthood. But it is a mistake to underestimate the strong structural foundation that underlies this film. Both Jeff and Pat are immature and inclined to numb their feelings (with pot or a Porsche). But the essential debate they (sometimes inarticulately) have about meaning and connection is nicely echoed in the seeming coincidences and randomness of their journey and the way they rediscover their own connection.
Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references including adultery, drinking and drug use, and some peril and scuffles.
Family discussion: Whose life changes the most by the end of the movie? Why did Pat and Jeff respond so differently to the loss of their father?
If you like this, try: “Daytrippers” and “The Puffy Chair”