Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Posted on June 21, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language including sexual references, some drug use and brief violence
Profanity:	Very strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunkenness, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Disturbing themes of the end of the world, some violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 22, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	October 22, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B007L6VRBM

Dr. Johnson memorably said that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully. Part of what stories do for us is concentrate the mind by providing us with narratives that eliminate distracting quotidian effluvia and allow us to focus on one element of the story. In “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” writer/director Lorene Scafaria (“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) makes that concentration explicit. The world is literally ending in three weeks, and we get to see how that concentrates the minds of Dodge (Steve Carell), Penny (Kiera Knightley), and the people they meet as everyone has to decide what from their “someday” list gets moved up to “now.”

Lorene Scafaria, who wrote the lovely “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” here directs her own screenplay with a top-notch cast and a sure sense of tone and pacing. The classic elements of the journey film with a mis-matched pair on the road in search of something is kept fresh through the setting, the adventures and encounters along the way, and sensitive performances from Carell and Knightley.

As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross might have predicted, a lot of people get stuck in stage one: denial. The movie opens as Dodge and his wife hear the radio announcer promise to keep the audience up to date on the progress of the asteroid known as Matilda and its collision path with Earth, along with a countdown to the end of days and “all your classic rock favorites.” At first, most people run on automatic pilot. Dodge goes to his office and tries to explain to a client that his insurance policy does not really cover what is about to happen. “The Armageddon policy is extra.” His boss tries to fill some abandoned positions by offering promotions. People who always wanted to kill someone offer their services as assassins for hire by those who do not want to be alive when the meteor hits. Musicians put on an end of the world awareness concert. It’s like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff and staying suspended in air until the realization hits — and then he does.

People start to get desperate. Dodge’s wife leaves him. A friend (Patten Oswalt) explains that the end of the world has made it very easy to sleep with women. Dodge’s friends have a party and try to fix him up with a woman (Melanie Lynskey) who arrives wearing all of the jewelry she was saving for the right occasion. But that is not what he wants. The world is increasingly divided between people who choose various ways to numb themselves and those who take this last chance to stop being numb.

Dodge meets his neighbor, Penny, an English girl who has missed the last opportunity to get back to her family. She has a mis-delivered letter from a girl he loved and lost. And she has a car. When rioters take over their building, he offers to get her to a plane if she will help him find the woman who sent the letter. Helping each other gives them purpose. Getting to know Penny gives Dodge more of a sense of being alive than he has ever had before. Dodge had always been too cautious. Penny had always been too irresponsible. Now he must take chances and she must grow up. It’s never too late.

On their journey, they see people and places from their past, including Penny’s survivalist ex-boyfriend (Derek Luke), who thinks that stockpiling weapons and canned goods will help him rebuild society. They stop at a relentlessly chipper restaurant called Friendsy’s (yes, lots and lots of flair) where the staff’s increasingly shrill Ecstasy-fueled cheeriness becomes borderline deranged. And then, even with just days and then hours left, they begin to shift from the past to the future. And, as Rabindrath Tagore wrote, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

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Rock of Ages

Posted on June 14, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The era of big power ballads reaching to the back rows of big stadiums filled with big crowds of fans with big hair is paid big tribute in this irresistibly entertaining anthem-rock love letter to the 80’s. Sung almost entirely by actors rather than rockers, the music is homogenized, somewhere between a “Glee” episode and a real glee club performance. But, let’s face it. Some of these songs were close to parody even at the time.

Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. When it comes to music, history repeats itself, too. First — at least ideally — it is raw and authentic expression of emotion and, as “School of Rock” reminds us, “sticking it to The Man.” When it repeats itself, it is The Man. Yes, “Rock of Ages” is a jukebox musical that turns the barbaric yawps and screeches of rock and roll into something between karaoke, elevator music, and Up with People. Journey’s “Anyway You Want It” is currently being used as an insurance company jingle and background music in an animated kids’ film, Madagascar 3 and Dee Snider sings in an ad about cleaning the rock and roll out of your carpet. So it’s hard to say that it dilutes the authenticity of these songs to be performed by Mary J. Blige, Constantine Maroulis, and Julianne Hough.

Various romantic, business, and existential conflicts provide excuses for songs from Bon Jovi, Guns N Roses, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, Poison, and Pat Benetar. Hough plays Sherrie (how did they not include “Oh, Sherrie?”), a small-town girl, living in a lonely world, who takes not the midnight train to anywhere but the midnight bus from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, in search of the excitement and adventure she has glimpsed through her beloved collection of record albums. They — along with everything else she owns — are stolen as soon as she arrives. But Drew (Diego Boneta), a city boy who works at a club and wants to be a singer, gets her a job as a waitress. The club is owned by Dennis (Alec Baldwin), who is hoping that an upcoming show from a superstar rock group he helped in their early days will solve his financial problems. His devoted techie (that’s sound technology, not computers, back in the 80’s) is Lonny (Russell Brand).

The group is the fictitious Arsenal and this is their last show. Their rock god frontman, Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) is leaving them for a solo career. Also arriving is the Rolling Stone reporter who is, uh covering Jaxx (Malin Ackerman). And also on her way is the wife of the mayor (Catherine Zeta Jones), leading the charge against rock and roll for its outrageous lyrics and sexual rhythms, in support of her husband’s plan to drive out sex, drugs, and rock and roll so he can let his business cronies gentrify the area. The irony is not lost that the storyline in the movie gentrifies not only the music it portrays but the plot of the already-prettied-up musical playing since 2009 near the already-gentrified Times Square. The script has a few choice moments, including a funny joke about another element of 80’s music — boy bands. And it is cute to have the protesting women sing a real rock anthem, “We’re Not Going to Take It” while the rock fans sing the song even the Jefferson Starship (nee Airplane) is embarrassed by, “We Built This City.” (Look carefully in the crowd for some real 80’s stars including Debbie Gibson and Sebastian Bach.)

If the songs are a little soft in the middle, well so are the teenagers of the 80’s who are this film’s target audience. Hough and Boneta are so bland they all but disappear fromt the screen. The only real singer in the cast is Mary J. Blige, but Cruise vamps like a superstar and his performance is choice. As the rock star who is as zonked by ennui as he is by substance abuse and groupies but who comes alive on stage imploring us to pour some sugar on him, he is a hoot. He is clearly having the time of his life and the pure enjoyment he, Baldwin, Brand, and Zeta Jones bring to the film is as buoyant as the still-hummable music. Yes, we were young, heartache to heartache we stood, and like the brick-sized cell phones, buying albums at Tower Records, and cassette tapes, the memories bring a smile. And some devil’s horns.

Parents should know that this film includes gay and straight sexual situations and explicit situations including groupies and strippers, drinking and drunkenness, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What has changed the most in popular music since these songs were hits? Which of today’s songs will still be popular 30 years from now?

If you like this, try: “Across the Universe” and concert films from some of the groups whose songs are featured in this movie like Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages,” Bon Jovi’s “Life at Madison Square Garden,” and Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusions” I and II

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Moonrise Kingdom

Posted on May 31, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Wes Anderson films are not so much directed as curated. Often accused of being more interested in his props than his characters, Anderson’s fussy, even obsessive focus on the objects and sets gives his films a missing the forest for the trees feeling that seems claustrophobic and frustratingly precious to some audiences and astutely ironic to others. Some, I think, see both.

On a fictional island called Penzance off the coast of mid-1960’s New England, two middle school pre-teens run away partly to be together but mostly to be someplace different from where they were. Sam (Jared Gilman) is an owlish-looking orphan who escapes from “Khaki Scout” camp overseen by the very meticulous Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). He wears glasses and a coonskin cap. He lives with foster parents who have rejected him and, as we find, after camp is over he will be sent to live in an orphanage by a woman so odiously officious the only name she goes by is Social Services (Tilda Swinton).

Suzy (Kara Hayward) is a serious and determined girl who lives with a family that does not appreciate or understand her. She wears knee socks, packs a record-player, and is very attached to her binoculars, which give her a chance to look at places far from home. Her mother (Frances McDormand) addresses her children in their home via megaphone. Sam first sees Suzy when she is in costume as a bird, about to appear in a performance of Benjamin Britten’s opera about Noah and the flood. They engage in a secret correspondence and make plans for their getaway.

Sam and Suzy create a world for themselves that is part fantasy, part very real. They are practical, if limited, in their understanding of their situation. Sam uses his camping skills to provide food and shelter, and they rename their site Moonrise Kingdom, establishing themselves as rulers of a place that exists in the opposite of the harsh daylight of their previous reality. They try some kissing but sleep next to each other in complete innocence. Suzy brought a record-player as one of her essentials, and they listen to music.

Meanwhile, Scout Master Ward, Suzy’s parents, and the local sheriff (Bruce Willis), who is having a joyless affair with Suzy’s mother, are searching the island for the missing children. Sam, who was ostracized for being weird by the other scouts, becomes a hero for his daring and romantic adventure and they help him try to escape with the assistance of another Scout leader (Jason Schwartzman) who is less upstanding than Ward. Even Ward ends up complimenting Sam on his “commendable” campsite.

Sam and Suzy may not have a plan for taking care of themselves past a few days and one of the things Anderson does best is conveying that exact moment between the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence (Suzy’s home is called “Summer’s End”) when things are animated by imagination that can feel completely real. Like Peter Pan and Wendy, Sam pretends to smoke a pipe and Suzy presides over a group of Lost Boys to create a family that allows them to be both adult and forever young. Like the young heroes of Dickens’ story about Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jr., the young runaways seem to have an almost incantatory faith in the power of marriage to create a bond that will protect them from the power of the grown-ups.

In many ways Sam and Suzy are more adult than the grown-ups around them, who are petty, foolish, or lonely. And, as usual in Wes Anderson films, they are not as fully realized as the props and settings around them. It is telling that the children assume a paper mache decoy will fool the adults; it almost does. Suzy’s library books in particular are a marvel of period detail, so vivid and evocative audiences of a certain age will swear they had those books on the shelf next to Madeleine L’Engle and Norton Juster. It’s details like the coonskin cap that delight his fans and infuriate everyone else. No one in the mid-60’s and no 12 year old of any era wore a coonskin cap. The omniscient “Our Town”-style narrator (Bob Balaban) can tell us a storm is coming but he cannot make the emotions of the story feel real or meaningful.

Parents should know that this film includes some sexual references and experimentation by middle-schoolers, teen and adult smoking and drinking, some strong language, some violence, and human and animal characters peril and injury.

Family discussion: Why did the scoutmaster change his mind about which was his “real job?” Why did the children run away? How does it change the story to have it set in the 1960’s instead of today?

If you like this, try: “A Little Romance” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox”

Related Tags:

Comedy Drama Romance Stories About Kids

What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Posted on May 17, 2012 at 5:54 pm

No matter how carefully you plan and how diligently you read books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, pregnancy is guaranteed to be different from whatever you think it is going to be. I wish I could say the same for this movie.

These all-star ensemble cast mash-ups are beginning to feel as thin as the old television show, “Love American Style.” It doesn’t help that there isn’t one pregnancy cliche that is overlooked, no matter how many dozens of movies, sit-coms, and cute greeting cards it has already been done and re-done and re-re-done in before.

There is a celebrity fitness coach and reality dance competition show contestant (Cameron Diaz) who becomes unexpectedly pregnant just a few months into a romance with her dance partner (“Glee’s” Matthew Morrison). There is a loving but financially strapped couple hoping to qualify for an Ethiopian adoption (Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro). The husband is nervous about being a father so after his wife offers him a very special sex act to motivate him he starts to spend Saturdays with “the Dudes,” a bunch of stroller-pushing, Snugli-wearing, diaper-bag toting dads whose idea of supporting each other is a Fight Club-style commitment to this decade’s most vapid catchphrase: “no judging.”

Elizabeth Banks plays a woman with ideas about pregnancy so idealized that she has a store devoted to breast-feeding (“The Breast Choice”) and has even written a children’s book about it that is creepier than the infamous Time Magazine cover. She and her dentist husband (Ben Falcone, “Bridesmaids'” Air Marshall Jon) have been trying to get pregnant for years. He is also about to become a big brother. His father is a loudmouth NASCAR champ (Dennis Quaid) married to a decades-younger bride (bright spot Brooklyn Decker) who is pregnant with twins. And there is a pair of rival food truck chefs (Anna Kendrick of “Up in the Air” and Chase Crawford of “Gossip Girl”), whose impulsive encounter apparently did not permit consideration of the importance of birth control.

The movie reads like an extended Caroline Hax “Tell Me About It” column of petty complaints so stunningly self-involved, irresponsible, and selfish that what the movie needs most is a representative of Child Protective Services to take all the babies to better homes. This is one long, loud slog through morning sickness (barfing on live television!), twins, an iPhone app that maps fertility cycles, stretch marks, debates over circumcision, baby names, and combatting the feeling that everyone is doing it better. Serious problems like pregnancy loss and financial concerns are handled as though there is a laugh track and trivial issues like a baby shower are handled as though they actually matter. The big moment comes when Banks’ character confesses to a bunch of future mothers that — insight alert! — “making a human being is really hard.” In yet another tiresome cliche, the clip of her “honest” meltdown goes viral. And then we get to see everyone in labor, making “Exorcist” faces (except for the trophy wife, who sails through labor as she has through the entire pregnancy). “But I typed out my birth plan!” one of them whines cluelessly when it turns out that delivery is not going as she wanted it to. It is another measure of the movie’s disregard of its audience that we go back to the Dudes so they can reverse everything they said the first time. It is not that they have learned anything. The movie is just lazy enough to hope some warm “parenting is wonderful” comments will erase the synthetic waste of celluloid (pixels?) that has gone before. No such luck.

Parents should know that this movie has comic and serious references to reproductive issues including infertility and pregnancy loss and some strong language

Family discussion: Which of these couples will make the best parents? How do you know? Ask your family for some of their pregnancy-related stories.

If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You” and “Knocked Up”

Related Tags:

Based on a book Comedy Romance

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Posted on May 3, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A dream team ensemble cast of British acting superstars gives a predictable story of displaced retirees spark and depth in this cozy tale based on the novel These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moggach.

A group of British retirees come to India for one last adventure. Or, they come because they have nowhere else to go. Some have not let themselves think about which it is, or whether it is both. Easy-going Douglas (Bill Nighy) and the perpetually disappointed Jean (“Downton Abbey’s” Penelope Wilton) come because their limited resources cannot cover the life Jean sees for herself. “Would it help if I apologize again?” he asks. “No, but do it anyway,” she replies.

Muriel (Maggie Smith) is appalled by having to leave “proper” Britain to live among foreigners but it is the only way she can get the operation she needs without long delays from the National Health Service. Evelyn (Judi Dench), a recent widow in reduced circumstances, must learn to take care of herself — and finds that she likes it. Madge (Celia Imrie, the “we’re going to need bigger buns” “Calendar Girl”) hopes to find romance. Norman (Ronald Pickup) wants something a bit more carnal. Graham (a courtly Tom Wilkinson) wants to reconnect with his past. They each find The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel “for the elderly and beautiful” in Jaipur via a website. When they arrive, they learn the description of “a luxury development for residents in their golden years” was more aspirational than accurate. “You Photoshopped it!” one new resident accuses. “I offered a vision of the future,” Sonny explains. He tells them that everything will be all right in the end and “if it is not all right, it is not the end.”

The young proprietor is Sonny (“Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel), whose grand plans and grander hopes for the hotel are so vivid he seems a bit surprised when it is pointed out that the the place is falling down and lacking some of the most basic of amenities, like doors with locks and reliable water. There are the expected culture clashes. The Brits are not used to chaotic riot of noise and color on the streets and the spicy food. But it is worth it to see Maggie Smith’s disdainful expression as she nibbles defiantly on the chocolate biscuits she brought from home, pronouncing, “I won’t eat anything I can’t pronounce!”

Seeing the impeccable performances of this magnificent cast is reason enough to see the film as these actors transform the most conventional of situations by making us care about the characters and their hopes. Wilton’s portrayal of Jean, the bitter wife, shows us how she cannot seem to find her way out of a labyrinth of disappointment. Dench as Evelyn, sitting on the phone listening to an endless recording telling her that her call is very important, knows that she has never really been very important. But there is something more than the kind of bittersweet but cozy story of plucky septuagenarians. Perhaps the reason they stay in the rundown hotel is that they understand how superficial appearances are. Perhaps the idea of restoring its grandeur to what it once was means something to them in a world where old age is “outsourced.” It is encouraging for some of them to learn that “like Darwin’s finches, we are slowly adapting to our environment.”

Parents should know that this film includes some strong language (f-word), sexual references (gay and straight) and partial nudity, sad death, and drinking.

Family discussion: Who gets the biggest surprise? Who changes the most?

If you like this, try: “Enchanted April,” “Monsoon Wedding,” “Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,” and “A Room With a View”