The Next Three Days

Posted on March 8, 2011 at 8:00 am

Paul Haggis loses his way in “The Next Three Days,” a labored prison escape drama that never recovers from a serious miscalculation midway through and then goes completely off the rails in the end.

Russell Crowe plays a sometimes deliberate and over-thinking professor named John Brennan who is completely devoted to his sometimes hot-tempered and impetuous wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks). After a public quarrel, Lara’s boss is murdered and Lara is arrested. She protests her innocence, but the circumstantial evidence is too persuasive, and she is found guilty. Three years later, all of her appeals exhausted, she cannot bear the thought of a life in prison, and attempts suicide. John, who teaches “Don Quixote” and knows something about righteous quests, decides he will find a way for her to escape. “I promise you, this will not be your life.” He consults an expert (a brief movie-brightening moment with Liam Neeson), watches a video on YouTube about skeleton keys, and comes up with a plan.

Every movie creates a world for us, and each of them can be plotted along the continuum between real world (a verite documentary) and movie world (flying dragons, superheroes, planets with long blue people). It does not matter at which point a movie locates itself, but once it does, it has to stay there. If you tell us horses can fly in one scene, then don’t tell us they can’t in the next. This movie tells us that justice matters, killing people is wrong, and that John is an English professor. It establishes itself as being on the drama-about-people-like-us point on the continuum. It then veers into a whole other over-the-top heist-style scenario with one of those plans where a lot of things have to go exactly right and then somehow they all do and killing people might not be such a bad thing after all. And then it insults the intelligence and goodwill of the audience with an ending that is jarringly out of place. One of the worst mistakes a movie can make is to assume greater fondness for its characters than we are willing to feel. This movie never lets us like its characters and then tries to make that seem like our fault.

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List: Movies for Women’s History Month

Posted on March 7, 2011 at 3:59 pm

For Women’s History Month, try some of these feature films about women of extraordinary courage, intelligence, determination, and achievement.

1. Erin Brockovich Julia Roberts won an Oscar for this story about a clerk in a law firm who helped win the largest toxic tort settlement in U.S. history for the people who had been damaged by inappropriately and illegally disposed chemicals.

2. Norma Rae Sally Field won an Oscar for this story based on union organizer Chrystal Lee Jordan.

3. The Miracle Worker Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke both won Oscars for this story of two extraordinary women, teacher Annie Sullivan and her deaf and blind student Helen Keller.

4. A League of Their Own While the men were at war for a brief time in the 1940’s there was a women’s professional baseball league and this is their story.

5. Funny Girl Barbra Streisand won an Oscar for playing Fanny Brice, one of the most popular performing artists of the early 20th century.

6. The Rosa Parks Story Angela Bassett stars as the woman whose refusal to give up her seat on the bus began the Civil Rights movement.

And try these documentaries, too:

1. Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Stanton & Anthony The lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and their fight for women’s right to vote is much more accurately depicted in this documentary than in the fictionalized “Iron-Jawed Angels.”

2. Life of Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? Has there ever been a better name for someone who fought for justice? Sojourner Truth was a slave who became an activist for the rights of African-Americans and women.

3. The Spirit of Sacajawea Native American Sacajawea and her infant son guided Lewis and Clark in their expedition through the western United States.

4. American Experience – Eleanor Roosevelt The niece and wife of Presidents, Eleanor Roosevelt was a shy, bookish girl who became a world-traveling advocate for peace and for human rights.

5. Following Amelia Earhart: Heroines of the Sky Pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded by Congress.

Inside Job

Posted on March 7, 2011 at 8:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some drug and sex-related material
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Reference to drug use with some images
Violence/ Scariness:	True story of betrayal and corruption
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 22, 2010
Date Released to DVD:	March 8, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0041KKYBA

Americans are generous in need and forgiving of mistakes. But we are outraged by injustice. This indispensable film shows us the who, what, when, where, and how of the financial crisis, finally placing it in the context it requires — a failure of decency, fairness, accountability, and honor. Even for those who want to put a pillow over their head when they hear terms like “credit default swap” and those whose eyes glaze over at the thought of watching a hearing on C SPAN will find this movie, the 2011 Oscar-winner for best documentary, a mesmerizing saga of corruption and greed, the biggest heist story of all time, and sadly, all too true.

Charles Ferguson (“No End in Sight”) is now at the front rank not just of documentarians but of film-makers, investigative journalists, and participants in the public policy debates. He begins with the story of what happened in Iceland, which went from one of the world’s most stable economies to bankruptcy almost overnight following deregulation. Its GDP was $13 billion; its debt was $100 billion. Still, at first this seems like an odd choice, but it quickly becomes clear that Iceland illustrates the same mistakes, oversights, bungles, and corruption that led to our own financial catastrophe. And by the final chapter of the film, it comes up again in a stunning interview. A flustered academic has to explain why a paper he once wrote about the financial stability of Iceland (without disclosing his financial arrangement with the people behind the deregulation) is now listed on his c.v. as being about Iceland’s instability. His explanation? It must be a typo.

This chilling absence of any sense of honor or shame or responsibility pervades the film. This is the story of “massive private gains and public loss.” Ferguson points out that this is just the most recent in a series of financial crises, each one causing more damage while the industry made more money. He describes the “great big global Ponzi scheme.” And he names names and shows us the faces of the people involved. He makes leverage, securitization, and yes, credit default swaps as fascinating as the Empire’s plans for the Death Star. And he points out that in the 21st century, it is financial instruments that are the real weapons of mass destruction.

The Adjustment Bureau

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 5:54 pm

The first great movie of 2011 is thought-provoking, exciting, and swooningly romantic. Writer/director George Nolfi takes on the biggest questions of all — faith and doubt, fate and free will, God, love, the meaning of existence — with an absorbing story about who we are and why we do what we do.

Matt Damon plays David Norris, a popular politician with a bad habit of losing control that has just cost him an election. As he gets ready to deliver a safe and appropriate concession speech, he has a brief meeting with a young woman and feels an immediate connection. And then he gives the concession speech and it is frank and outspoken and of course, appealing to the voters who find his candor refreshing. His political prospects are bright again, but he can’t stop thinking about the girl.

We’re used to seeing people, especially people in power, surrounded by fixers, arrangers, smoothers, tweakers — publicists, managers, agents, advisers, lawyers. David has those, including his best friend/campaign manager. But there is something different going on. There are men in hats giving each other odd directions with a strangely compelling sense of urgency, as though they are organizing a rocket launch. But why would someone be deployed to spill coffee on David’s shirt?

To keep him off a bus, for one reason (though the deeper reason will not be revealed for a while). But the coffee isn’t spilled in time. He gets on the bus. And the girl from election night is there. Her name is Elise (Emily Blunt). She is a dancer. And David is besotted with her.

The men in hats are from an Adjustment Bureau. They have enormous power and a secret system of doorways that allow them to bypass miles in a few steps. The hat men step out of the doorways like a less cheery version of the minions who keep things running smoothly at Disney World.

The Adjustment Bureau doesn’t want David and Elise to be together, and they are acting on the highest authority. But even that authority cannot stop the most powerful force in the universe.

A knockout cast and imaginative visuals provide a sumptuous setting for the romance. Anthony Mackie, moving with the graceful economy of a cheetah, is the Adjuster who has come to care for his charge. Other Adjusters include “Mad Men’s” John Slattery as a harried bureaucrat and Terence Stamp as the ruthless enforcer brought in when all else has failed. Damon makes David intelligent, brave, sensitive, vulnerable, curious, and great-hearted, and Blunt makes Elise everything a man like that would be willing to risk it all for. There are a few surprising rough edges for such a well-crafted story. Elise’s reason for being in the men’s room where she meets David for the first time is oddly off-putting, a loose end that is never explained. And a story David tells about his political inspiration would have to have occurred about 15 years before he was born, unless he is the youngest-looking baby boomer in history. But what does work in this movie works exceptionally well, a bracing engagement with the reason for everything that gives us a good reason to remember this movie for a long time.

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Beastly

Posted on March 3, 2011 at 5:49 pm

It’s the great challenge for all the versions of “Beauty and the Beast” that no one seems able to overcome: the beast is always a far more interesting, appealing, and yes, attractive character than the good-looking but bland prince he wants so desperately to return to. When handsome, wealthy, arrogant prep school senior Kyle (“I Am Number Four’s Alex Pettyfer) is cursed by a witch his “beast” face, covered with exotic scars and tattoos, is more expressive and somehow more real than the pretty boy he was before.

In this latest re-telling of the French fairy tale that dates back to the 18th century, Kyle gets into trouble when he runs for the presidency of the school’s Green Club even though he admits in his campaign speech that he is only doing it because it will look good on his college applications. “Don’t vote for me for my commitment to the environment,” he tells his fellow students. “I don’t have one.” Despite an opposing speech from a gothy-looking girl named Kendra (Mary Kate Olsen), he is elected. But beating her isn’t enough. He plays a cruel prank on Kendra, humiliating her in front of her classmates. And so she curses him. He will look like a beast, as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, unless within one year he can persuade someone to say, “I love you.”

His father (Peter Krause of “Parenthood” and “Sports Night”) is a television personality who believes that “people like people who look good.” He finds an apartment for Kyle with a housekeeper (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a blind tutor (the always-terrific Neil Patrick Harris) to care for him and leaves him alone. Kyle sulks and refuses to talk to anyone for five months. (In one of the movie’s cleverest conceits, everyone at school accepts his absence without question because they think he is at rehab.) But Lindy, the quiet scholarship student (“High School Musical’s” Vanessa Hudgens) gives him a reason to want to go out. And more important, she gives him a reason to think about someone else — taking care of her and being close to her. She gives him a reason to want to be liked. And that means being seen.

I liked the way the story plays with the framework of the fairy tale, giving Lindy a reason to have to move into Kyle’s place, isolating them both.

Pettyfer, a very limited performer in his earlier films, has a looser, more confident, more genuine feel here. He even handles Kyle’s funny lines well; he admits how he found the poem he wants to share with Lindy: “I Googled ‘modern poetry’ and ‘impress girls.'” In an era of bullies and mean girls, “Gossip Girls” and “Pretty Little Liars,” it’s nice to have such a tenderhearted fairy tale.

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