Bumblebee

Posted on December 20, 2018 at 5:34 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended sci-fi/action-style violence, weapons, explosions, mayhem, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 21, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	April 2, 2019

You know how Transformers turn from cars into robots and robots into cars? Well, with this movie, an origin story for fan favorite Transformer Bumblebee, who “speaks” via audio clips from the radio. The ridiculously bombastic Transformer series just kept getting bigger, louder, and dumber. Roger Ebert famously called one of them a “horrible experience of unbearable length” and they got worse after that. This Bumblebee has transformed itself, kind of, into a more warm-hearted “ET” plus Herbie the Love Bug-style story with a retro soundtrack, directed by LAIKA’s Travis Knight. And it’s…better. Not great, but it won’t make your ears ring or your brain cells melt.

Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) is an unhappy teenager living in San Francisco in 1987. She is still mourning for her dad, who died suddenly the year before, and counting the days until she can leave home. Everything seems an affront to her — the terrible uniform she has to wear working at the amusement park food stand, selling lemonade and hot dogs on a stick, her mother’s odious boyfriend who has moved into their home and thinks he can tell her what to do, and the monstrous unfairness of not having a car. So she spends much of her free time sulking and wearing an endless assortment of t-shirts from various edgy 80’s bands to show how righteously disaffected she is.

Meanwhile, after losing a battle to the evil Decepticons on their home planet, the good-guy Autobots led by Optimus Prime (still voiced by Peter Cullen, thank goodness) put their top soldier, Bumblebee (voiced by Dylan O’Brien) into an escape pod and tell him to set up a safe place on a remote planet called Earth. He arrives in the middle of a military wargame that leads to a chase, and is soon tracked down by two Decepticons (voiced by Angela Bassett and Justin Theroux), who permanently damage his voicebox and his memory cells. Later on, when Charlie wheedles a beat-up old yellow VW bug from a junk dealer, it turns out to be Bumblebee, and he and Charlie begin to form a friendship.

This takes us back to the first “Transformers” movie, oh, so many explosions and robot fights ago, when it was about the relationship between Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBoeuf) and his special space friend. Bumblebee’s inability to communicate, until Charlie figures out how to give him access to a radio and he figures out to use sound clips from it to “talk,” give a special poignancy to those first encounters. But that is undermined in part by subsequent scenes, which spend too much time on weak sub-plots about mean girls and the nerdy but lovable boy next door. It is nice that Charlie is very clear about setting boundaries with the boy, and he respects that. The movie could have skipped the scenes of Bumblebee inadvertently trashing Charlie’s house TP-ing the bully’s house and overturning her car, diversions that go nowhere and are not nearly as merry or endearing as they are intended to be as Knight seems more interested in the mechanics of the scene than what they add to the storyline.

All of this is of course just building up to lots more action as both the military and the Decepticons (best line in the movie is when Cena points out that the very name Decepticon should make us worry) come after Bumblebee. The Decepticons first appear to befriend the humans (and incidentally invent the Internet). So, lots of bombast and shooting and chases and explosions.

No matter what, I always enjoy seeing cars turn into robots and robots turn into cars, and I appreciated the lower-key, retro setting. If the series is not completely transformed, it does remind us why we liked the Transformers to begin with, and that’s a good start.

Parents should know that this film has a few bad words and extended sci-fi/action-style violence with characters injured and killed, weapons, explosions, and mayhem. Humans are vaporized. A positive element of the movie is Charlie’s clear boundaries with the boy who likes her.

Family discussion: Why does Charlie trust Bumblebee? Why does Agent Burns change his mind?

If you like this, try: “The Iron Giant”

Mary Poppins Returns

Posted on December 18, 2018 at 10:25 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some mild thematic elements and brief action
Profanity:	Mild language in a song
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril, references to sad death of parent
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 19, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	March 18, 2019

If I may borrow from the original “Mary Poppins movie” for a moment, the new sequel, “Mary Poppins Returns” is a very jolly holiday with Mary indeed. Inspired, like the first, by the book series by P.L. Travers, this movie has Emily Blunt taking over from Oscar-winner Julie Andrews as the magical nanny who arrives once again just as the Banks family needs her most.

In the first film, she was nanny to Jane and Michael Banks. She took them on magical adventures that included a tea party on the ceiling and diving into a chalk picture for an animated musical number with dancing penguins. But the real magic she brought to the Banks family was a reminder of what was important. The fond but distracted parents learned that it was more important to fly a kite with the family than to keep the job that supports the family and its domestic employees or fight for the rights of women. (Well, the 60’s was a complicated time. But the message of family connections is still valid.)

This sequel very sweetly brings Mary Poppins back, once again arriving from the sky via a parrot-head handled umbrella, again to care for the Banks children, meaning the now-grown Jane and Michael Banks (Emily Mortimer and voice of Paddington Ben Wishaw). Oh, and Michael’s three children, too, who have taken on too many adult responsibilities as the family still mourns the loss of their mother. Jane works for the rights of workers and does her best to help her brother and his children, who still live in the old house on Cherry Tree Lane.

They may lose the house, though, as Michael cannot pay the bank, yes, the same one his father worked at, what he owes. It’s now run by Mr. Wilkins (Colin Firth), who promises he will do everything he can to help Michael, but who shows up as a wolf in an animated adventure when Mary Poppins takes the children into the design on their late mother’s porcelain bowl, so perhaps he should not be trusted.

Jane and Michael remember Mary Poppins, but now believe that they only imagined the magical adventures. They have lost their ability to see magic in the world. Mary Poppins, with her brisk, no-explanations manner, has come back to show them how to find it. And that means a visit to another of her eccentric relatives (Meryl Streep, enjoying herself enormously), and journeys undersea via the bathtub and into the sky with balloons. And it means singing and dancing, too, with a wild music-hall-style number in an animated theater and a tender ballad about The Place Where Lost Things Go. Plus, Dick van Dyke is back. And he dances.

We take it for granted that this movie would have visual Disney magic. No one assembles a more gifted collection of production designers, costume designers, and visual effects designers than Disney, and no studio has a better, more organic sense of its own history and culture. So when Disney decided to revisit the 54-year-old classic based on P.L. Travers’s novels, after having already mined its own history with a movie about the making of that movie, it was fair to expect that it would look and feel as though we had never left. The magic touch is there, with gentle references to the earlier film, including the animated adventure with a retro, hand-drawn, cel-based look along the lines of Disney’s specialty, and an enchanting appearance from Dick Van Dyke, who played two characters in the original. Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins and “Hamilton’s’ Lin-Manuel Miranda as her lamp-lighting friend are practically perfect in every way. And, as “Saving Mr. Banks” reminded us, the real magic, is that at its heart it is not just about fantasy adventures but about healing the family. The songs, the special effects, the imagination are a lot of fun but what makes this movie top ten-worthy is the heart.

Parents should know that there are references to a sad death of a parent, worries about money, and some situations with mild peril. A song has some mildly spicy lyrics with references to nudity.

Family discussion: Which was your favorite adventure? Why didn’t Mary Poppins stay?

If you like this, try: the books by P.L. Travers and the classic original film

Creed II

Posted on November 20, 2018 at 10:37 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sports action violence, language, and a scene of sensuality
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic fight scenes, serious injury, fighter killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 20, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	March 4, 2019

Like a Timex watch and like Rocky himself, the Rocky franchise takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Here we are, four decades later, and Rocky Balboa is still going. “Creed,” written and directed by Ryan Coogler in between “Fruitvale Station” and “Black Panther,” was an unexpected upgrade, as Adonis Creed, the son of Rocky’s opponent in the original Oscar-winning film took over, angry, with a chip on his shoulder, and itching for a fight. Michael B. Jordan is a brilliant actor with sizzling screen charisma, and it was, well, a knockout. He was on his way to becoming a champ and to making a life with a beautiful hearing-impaired singer (Tessa Thompson).

Coogler produced this next chapter, Creed 2, written by the original Rocky, Sylvester Stallone, who returns as Creed’s coach and mentor, the guy you always want in your corner. And one thing Stallone knows how to do is step up the stakes. Entertainment Weekly once wrote that “It’s hard to find anything more 80’s than Rocky IV.” Just before the Cold War would draw to a close, “Rocky IV” had Stallone battling a Soviet fighting machine named Drago (Dolph Lundgren) with an ice queen of a wife (Brigitte Nielsen, who would be Mrs. Stallone briefly). After Drago kills Apollo Creed in the ring, Rocky fights him on behalf of Apollo and of course on behalf of America and freedom, and Rocky-ism.

And now, in the eighth film in the series, Drago’s son, trained by his bitter, brutal father (Lundgren again), challenges Adonis, newly crowned heavyweight champion, to a fight on behalf of Apollo, America, freedom, and Rocky-ism. One fighter is bigger and tougher, but he has been trained with hate. The other has been trained with heart . Time for the classic Bill Conti score again.

Michael B. Jordan is mesmerizing on screen and so completely authentic that he makes even the soapiest moments real and engrossing. Is Rocky going to refuse to train Adonis to fight Drago’s son (Florian Munteanu) just to create an opportunity for extra drama? Will there be ten-counts? Will there be a proposal, a baby, a reconciliation? Maybe two? Cornerman pep talks about “this is your house” and commentary on the business side of boxing (“The belt ain’t enough — you need a narrative, something that sticks to the ribs”)? Decadent Russian oligarchs in a dining room that looks like it belongs to Count Dracula? A camera shot that makes us feel like one of Drago, Jr.’s fists is coming right at us? Callbacks to “Rocky IV?” (In that film, Lundgren said only 46 words. In this one, he says a few more but some of them are the same words. Nielsen, on the other hand, is in the film but her ex-husband did not give her more than a few words to say.) Dramatic moments in the audience, as women watch the fights — or don’t? All of that, plus, in case we miss anything, a lot of expository narration from the sports announcers.

Oh sure, it’s cheese. But it’s Rocky, and it still works.

Parents should know that this film includes extended and graphic scenes of boxing with severe injuries, references to a boxer who died following a fight, brief strong language, and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: How did the different goals Adonis and Viktor had for the fight affect them? What made Ivan Drago change his mind? What do we learn from Adonis’ night with the baby?

If you like this, try: the “Rocky” movies and “Warrior”

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Posted on November 20, 2018 at 5:51 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some action and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Fantasy/action/cartoon-style peril and chase scenes, no one hurt
Diversity Issues:	A metaphoric theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 21, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	February 25, 2019

I’ve got to warn you — you’re going to need to see “Ralph Breaks the Internet” at least twice. And I’ve got good news for you — it is well worth it. The sequel to “Wreck-It Ralph” is “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and just like the Internet itself it is bursting with endless enticing distractions. But in the midst of all that is also a wise and warmhearted story with endearing characters. And it is a rare comedy that understands it is not enough to refer to a specific cultural touchstone; it has to have something to say about it. What it does have to say is so shrewd and funny it may merit a third viewing.

“Wreck-it Ralph” was about characters in old-fashioned video arcade games, the kind they used to have before we had laptops and phones that we could play games on. Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is not exactly the bad guy but the menace in his very old-school game. All he does is break things that are repaired (if the game player is successful) by Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer). He ends up visiting some newer games, including a military first-person shooter game and a racing game called Sugar Rush, with the cars made of candy. There he meets a brash little girl with a pixel-shaking “glitch” named Vanellope. The happy ending resolves various issues and Ralph and Vanellope end up friends.

As this movie begins, everything seems to be going fine. Ralph is very happy meeting up with Vanellope every night after the arcade closes to talk about, well, everything. But the arcade owner (Ed O’Neill) is upgrading. “What is wiffy?” Ralph wants to know. That would be Wifi. And the next thing they know, Ralph and Vanellope are whisked into the big, wild world of the Internet and like Dorothy in Oz and Alice in Wonderland and the Pevensies in Narnia, they will have many thrilling adventures and meet many astonishing characters before they find their way home. The characters’ idea of what home and friendship mean will be changed, shifted, or enlarged by their experience, one of the film’s most thoughtful elements.

But on the way there we have so much fun seeing the most familiar — and some of the most frustrating — elements of the digital world reflected and personified, and writer/directors Phil Johnston and Rich Moore take advantage of Disney’s unsurpassed line-up of characters to fill the movie with surprising and hilarious cameos. The highlight is the funniest scene you will see at the movies this year, when Vanellope ends up in a room with the Disney princesses (almost all with the original voice talent). What’s great about this is that Johnston and Moore are the rare filmmakers who know that referring to a cultural icon is not enough; you have to say something about it. And what they have to say about the princesses strikes the perfect balance between affection and irony. No more waiting for a prince to come. These sisters are doing it for themselves. Also stopping to sing by water at some point, though.

The film is not just smart about culture, digital and IRL. It is smart about people, and especially about our fears and insecurities. It’s a rare film for children that goes beyond “friends are great!” and explores the delicate negotiations of relationships between people who may have different ideas about what they want. A wise man taught me a long time ago that everyone has different tolerance levels for ambiguity and that each of us has different tolerances for ambiguity across a wide range of categories. Someone can be comfortable taking big risks in one area, but not another. “Ralph Breaks the Internet” has a deep understanding that even adults will find illuminating. Plus, it is a ton of fun and if you stay ALL the way to the end there is one more sly joke.

Parents should know that this film includes fantasy/video game-style peril and violence, chases, crashes, no one seriously hurt, and brief potty humor.

Family discussion: How are Ralph and Vanellope alike and how are they different? Which is your favorite Disney princess and why? What is your favorite thing about the Internet?

If you like this, try: “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Zootopia”

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Posted on November 15, 2018 at 5:08 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sequences of fantasy action
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended fantasy peril and violence, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 16, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	March 11, 2019

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” is a little less fantastic than the first film in this new series set in the Harry Potter universe. It serves as something of a bridge between the first Potterverse film set in the past and outside of England and whatever chapter comes next. The first film introduced us to a new set of characters and settings, taking place mostly in New York in the 1920’s.

J.K. Rowling is still more of a novelist than a screenwriter, and the screenplay is unwieldy and cumbersome, with too little investment in the characters, too much focus on the secondary details, and too little attention to the stakes of the story.

As we glimpsed at the end of the last movie, our evil villain is Grindelwald, played by Johnny Depp with bleached out hair and one light blue contact lens. And he’s something of a wizarding world white nationalist. While magics and non-magics (muggles in the UK, no-majs in the US) have existed peacefully side by side for centuries, Grindelwald wants the “pure-blood” magic people to reign over the mixed-race magics and the humans.

Our hero is still Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who is much more comfortable with magical creatures, even the destructive and dangerous ones, than he is with people, magic or not. With people he looks away and mumbles. With creatures, he instinctively knows how to make them feel safe, maybe because he feels safe with them.

Really, that’s plenty for a movie. But Rowling piles on lots of characters and lots of storylines and lots of world capitals — so many we might forget we’re not in a Bond movie, except that they all have the same chilly, sepulchral, beige color scheme. The movie is cluttered with layers of references to the Potterverse, including a visit to Hogwarts (young Dumbledore!), boggarts, polyjuice potion, and an encounter with Nicolas Flamel. And it is cluttered with mini-plots that don’t go anywhere (as Chekov should have said, if you’re going to introduce a character who turns into a snake in the first act, that snake better save the day in the third) or mini-plots you wish didn’t go anywhere (a search for a lost brother, a romantic misunderstanding that would have seemed tired in a “Brady Bunch” episode). Plus, don’t put the wildly talented Ezra Miller in a movie and give him nothing to do but look glum.

Instead of a missing puzzle piece in a complex, thoroughly imagined world, it is more like fan service. There is much to look at and much to enjoy but I can’t say that it’s Fantastic.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive fantasy peril and violence, characters injured and killed, and some disturbing images.

Family discussion: What would your boggart be and how would you make it ridiculous? Why do Grindelwald’s followers believe he is right?

If you like this, try: the “Harry Potter” series and the first “Fantastic Beasts” film