A Christmas Story

Posted on December 1, 2008 at 8:00 am

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There’s no better way to start off the Christmas season than this holiday classic, now celebrating its 25th anniversary and so popular that Turner Classic Movies runs it for 24 hours each year. Millions of fans can recite its lines from memory and some are so passionate they visit the Christmas Story house and attend the Christmas Story conference. Some even buy leg lamps or the action figures.

I think there are two reasons for the movie’s enduring appeal. First, it perfectly evokes the experience of childhood. Today’s kids may not drink Ovaltine or wait for their decoder rings, but they still have to deal with bullies and they still wish for gifts their parents think are too dangerous. But more than that, this is the perfect antidote to all those stories of Christmas perfection on one hand and dysfunction on the other. I love the way this family responds when everything goes wrong. They laugh. And you know that in the future, this Christmas is the one they will always remember.

Parents should know that this movie includes some mild sexual references. A character offers money to a girl to do some non-specific things for him and looks at pictures of women in lingerie. There are also humorous references to bad language including a child having his mouth washed out with soap for swearing.

Step Brothers

Posted on December 1, 2008 at 8:00 am

I have an idea for a movie comedy. A writer-director has a couple of huge hits and so all the Hollywood studio hacks descend on him adoringly. “Give us your ideas,” they tell him, “Anything at all! We’ll make a deal.” So, just to get them to stop pestering him and perhaps also to make a payment on his new boat, he tosses out whatever pops into his head or pulls out some ideas he scribbled in a notebook back when he was in college and they write a big check and then they make the movies.
I promise, that would be a lot funnier than the result of one of those ideas, which is what we have in the latest from Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow. This one would have to sit in the oven for a couple more hours to be considered half-baked. Despite the success of “Superbad” and “Knocked Up,” every movie about a childish boy-man who occasionally bawls “I love you man!” to his best friend is not entertaining.
As Will Ferrell gets older, the characters he plays get mentally younger. Here he is a 40-year-old man who lives with his mother and acts like he is 5. When his mother gets married to a man who also has a 40-year-old son living at home (John C. Reilly) the two of them instantly hate each other, then become devoted friends. It’s like “The Brady Bunch” crossed with “My Fair Brady” and a little bit of “Breaking Bonaduce.” Except not as good. Ferrell and director Adam McKay founded the acclaimed “Funny or Die” website. On this movie, I vote “die.”
Buddy movies generally work best when the characters have distinct personalities that create contrast and conflict. They don’t have to be likable but they do have to have some reason to get us on their side. But here the two emotionally and intellectually childish step brothers are so similar and so unappealing that we may not root for the (actual) child bullies who taunt and torture them but we can certainly see their point.

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Comedy

Wanted

Posted on December 1, 2008 at 7:00 am

Nasty, twisted, pulpy, and brutally violent, “Wanted” is like a cross between Kill Bill, The Matrix, and The Terminator. Angelina Jolie, smokey-eyed and a little bit leaner, plays the assassin who grabs cubicle galley slave Wesley (“Atonement’s” James McAvoy) when he is picking up a prescription for anti-anxiety pills just as a lot of gunfire is about to start wrecking havoc on the pharmacy aisles.

It turns out that our Wesley, who has been inwardly stewing and outwardly doing nothing as he is hounded by his supervisor and cuckolded by his best friend, is, in the grand tradition of heroes from King Arthur to Luke Skywalker to Neo to Harry Potter, the chosen one who must discover his hidden powers. The woman’s name is Fox (“Is that a call sign? Like Maverick in “Top Gun?” he asks) and she takes him to a secret citadel where textiles are woven and assassins are trained. Wesley learns to use guns, knives, and fists. He is often critically injured, but fortunately they have some nifty little healing tanks and a soak or two puts him back on his feet and learning how to shoot around objects and race along the top of the El train. He understands that learning how to do something that makes full use of his unique talents is the only way to know who he truly is.

And the director knows enough to get that part out of the way quickly and get to the good stuff, some low-down and nastily twisted action that includes some bullet-cam shots of bodies that are about to be hit very, very hard. Russian director Timur Bekmambetov of the very successful “Night Watch” movies knows how to make violence stylish without becoming overly stylized, nudging the pulpiest elements into myth.

James McAvoy shows himself as able at nerd-into-action-hero as he was at faun (“The Chronicles of Narnia”) and tragic romance (“Atonement”), and Jolie seems delighted to shake off the beatific Madonna role she has played on- and off-screen most recently. She moves like a panther, bringing an ecstatic grace to a ducking move on top of the El train just before it gets to a tunnel. Morgan Freeman is all gravelly exposition and Common has marvelous screen presence as members of The Fraternity. The plot twists are less successful onscreen than on the page and the violence goes over the top but by that time the fanboys will be so satisfied (did I mention that there’s a scene with Jolie getting out of the tub and showing off her tattoos?) that they might not mind, especially with the hint of a sequel.

Spirit-Lifting Short Films from Spirit Clips

Posted on November 29, 2008 at 8:00 am

A new website is assembling beautifully produced short films to touch the heart and inspire the spirit. Spirit Clips was created by Oscar-winning producer Rob Fried (“Rudy”) to create unique high-quality content and an online community dedicated to sharing inspirational stories. It is subscription-based (unlimited for a $24.99 annual membership), or you can view the films without joining for 99 cents and send them as e-cards for $2.99. I like the way they are creating a community around the films, asking people to share their most inspiring stories. Check it out if you need a break or for a reminder that there are still movies, even short ones, that pay tribute to kindness, dignity, courage, integrity, and compassion and that watching them can lift our spirits.

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Shorts Spiritual films

Hancock

Posted on November 25, 2008 at 8:00 am

The problem is, this is not a 4th of July movie. It is not a bad movie. It is not a good movie either. It is a flawed but interesting movie but its biggest problem is that on the 4th of July the kind of Will Smith movie people want to see is a brainless summer blockbuster with some cool explosions, some quippy dialogue, and the kind of bad guy you can cheerfully enjoy seeing fall off a building. This is not that movie, and people who expect that movie are doomed to disappointment. Go see Iron Man again. Or put those expectations aside, start from scratch, and go this this messy but intriguingly ambitious film. Inside the $150 million-budgeted would-be blockbuster there are two or three quirky little indie films trying to get out.

Will Smith’s Hancock may be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to soar like the eagle, his favorite animal, but he is no Superman. He dresses like a homeless guy, drinks like a wino, and talks like a sulky teenager. He will save lives, catch crooks, and hurl beached whales back into the ocean but he won’t be happy, nice, gracious, patriotic or careful about collateral damage. Everyone needs him but no one likes him. He doesn’t like anyone and he doesn’t like himself.

When idealistic PR guy (if that is not an oxymoron) Ray (Jason Bateman) gets stuck on the train tracks, Hancock rescues him and (literally) drops him off at home. Ray invites Hancock in for dinner and offers to give him some help with his image. He advises the petulant superhero to accept responsibility for his actions and remind everyone they cannot get along without him by spending some time in jail and getting some help with anger management. Pretty soon Hancock is shaving, wearing a streamlined leather superhero suit, and handing out compliments to the cops. And he looks pretty good. After all, he’s Will Smith.

But then the story takes a darker turn that makes it at the same time more provocative, more interesting, less safe, and much, much messier. Smith, Bateman, and Charlize Theron as Ray’s wife do their best to ride the bucking bronco of this movie’s seismic shifts set up by director Peter Berg and writers Vy Vincent Ngo & Vince Gilligan but by the end, which bears the unmistakable marks of a panicky recut to make it more upbeat. Too little, too late.

And so a promising idea about a superhero with an existential crisis several times greater than the “great power means great responsibility” growing-up metaphors of Spider-Man and other Marvel and DC denizens wobbles through wildly misjudged moments with way too much emphasis on the metaphoric and literal aspects of the terminating point of the lower intestine and then turns a sharp corner and has something of an existential crisis of its own, leaving the audience itself asking why we are here — meaning in the theater.

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Fantasy Superhero