Real Steel

Posted on October 6, 2011 at 6:57 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence, intense action, and brief language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Human and robot violence, character badly beaten
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 7, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	January 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004A8ZWW4

The robot has the heart and the human has to learn to feel again in this unabashedly cheesy but irresistible fairy tale about a father, a son, and robots who bash the heck out of each other in a boxing ring.

Charlie (Hugh Jackman) was a boxer until human boxing was abandoned some time in the near future. Now enormous rock ’em sock ’em robots get in a ring and fight to total mechanical destruction. It is like something between trial by combat, a computer game, a cockfight, and a demolition derby. Now Charlie drives around from one skeezy venue to another, promoting whatever bucket of bolts he can get to stand up and throw a punch. When his robot loses a match because Charlie was distracted by a pretty blond, he loses everything. He actually loses more than everything because he bet more than he had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5l3r1dV4I

He gets an opportunity to try again when a former girlfriend dies and he is left with their son Max (Dakota Goyo), with whom he has had no relationship. The boy’s wealthy aunt on his mother’s side (Hope Davis) wants to adopt him. Charlie agrees to sign over the boy in exchange for enough money to buy a new robot. It means keeping Max for the summer, so the aunt’s husband can take the child-free vacation trip he has been planning. Charlie planned to dump Max on another old girlfriend, Bailey (Evangeline Lilly of “Lost”), the daughter of the man who trained him as a boxer. But Max insists on going along and when the robot Charlie bought with the money he got is destroyed, Max finds an old sparring robot in the junkyard. He was never intended to be a boxer. He was not designed to throw punches, just to take them. But he has a “shadow” function that enables him to learn moves by imitating a human. And Charlie is the human who knows how to hook, jab, and uppercut.

Two things work surprisingly well in this movie. The first is the robots, magnificently designed and brilliantly executed. Real-life boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard provided the boxing moves and gave each one of them a distinct style and personality in their approach to fighting. They are outrageously fun to watch. The second is the storyline. Part “The Champ” (made twice, both among the greatest sports weepies of all time) and part (of course) “Rocky,” the script is co-written by Dan Gilroy (the stunning fantasy “The Fall” and the uneven but intriguing and provocative “Freejack”). It may be cheesy but it embraces the cheese with enthusiasm and awareness. Jackman and Goyo bring a lot to their roles as well. We might lose interest in Charlie but Jackman makes us see that he is wounded, not selfish. And Goyo has just the right mix of determination and faith to show us that he has the best of Charlie in him and to show that to Charlie as well.

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Moneyball

Posted on September 22, 2011 at 6:02 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some strong language
Profanity:	Some strong language (much less than the book)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Chewing tobacco, alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family situations, sad references to injuries and letting players go
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 23, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	January 9, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0060ZJ7BC

Brad Pitt is underrated as an actor. But he is the best there is when it comes to calibrating the deployment of his onscreen star power, which he uses as expertly as Meryl Streep does accents. Pitt can dial it down to one when he wants to play character actor and make it work. But here he dials it back up to eleven, giving the role of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane a shot of pure movie magic in this real-life story about the man who turned baseball upside down by using computer formulas to select “undervalued” players.

The Oakland A’s feel like “a farm team for the New York Yankees.” They make players great and then lose them to the teams with budgets more than three times as large. All that money makes the playing field anything but level. “We’re a small market team and you’re a small market GM. I’m asking you to be okay spending the money we have,” the owner tells Beane. “There are rich teams and there are poor teams and then 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us,” is Beane’s frank appraisal.

The A’s cultivate and train players who leave for the teams that can pay the most. A game that is supposed to be about skill and drive seems to be just about money. And then Beane, in the midst of a negotiation with another team that is not going well, notices a nerdy-looking guy in the corner who seems to have some influence. After the meeting, that nerdy guy becomes Beane’s first draft pick.

He is Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a shy wonk who comes to work for Beane and together they pursue a different direction. Instead of the century-old system of watching players hit, catch, throw, and run and try to figure out if that means they will be able to perform in the big leagues — a system that failed badly when Beane himself was recruited right out of high school — they will look at computer algorithms about what produces wins. Brand and Beane develop a roster like Warren Buffett puts together a stock portfolio. They look at fundamentals to figure out unrecognized value. Sort of a grown-up Bad News Bears. Or, as Brand puts it, an Island of Misfit Toys.

The script from two of the best screenwriters in history, Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) and Steven Zallain (“Schindler’s List”) is well-structured and filled with smart talk. The scenes of Beane’s own pro career are too long and too distracting. But scenes with Beane visiting his ex-wife (Robin Wright) and her new husband and especially those with Beane and his daughter add warmth and urgency to the story. But it is Pitt who is in every way the heart of the movie, his natural confidence and grace a lovely balance to the formulas with Greek letters and the endless statistics. It is nice to see baseball, that most number-centric game, get upended by numbers. And yet it succeeds because it is that most cherished of traditions, the come-from-behind underdog story.

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Warrior

Posted on September 8, 2011 at 6:09 pm

Imagine if Rocky, instead of fighting Apollo Creed, got into the ring with another Rocky. And they were brothers.

I know, I know, but somehow it works in a surprisingly affecting story of the sons of an abusive alcoholic who have not seen each other since they were teenagers and end up fighting each other for a mixed martial arts championship title.

That’s the magic of movies. Somehow, they can take a story of a welder who does post-modern dance numbers in a Pittsburgh bar and dreams of being a ballerina or cartoon characters are live in old-time Hollywood and feel real-er than real life. As cheesy as this movie gets, it keeps raising the emotional stakes over and over again until we just tap out and go with it, largely because of full-hearted, powerhouse performances from Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton.

Tommy (Hardy) comes home. He’s been away a long time. His father, Paddy (Nick Nolte) is glad to see him, but Tommy says he wants to deal with his father only as a trainer. He has no interest in catching up or mending their estrangement. He just has one goal, to win a $5 million mixed martial arts championship.

Brendan (Edgerton) has a good life as a high school science teacher with a family. His wife says, “I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to raise our children in a house were their father gets beat up for a living.” But paying for his daughter’s health care has put the family at risk of losing the house. He needs a lot of money fast and the only way he knows to get it is to win the mixed martial arts championship. He goes into training with an old friend. Cue the montages.

The script by writer/director Gavin O’Connor (“Miracle”) is as corny as an “up close and personal” Olympics athlete profiles, but as effective, too. Every time you think you’ve made up your mind who to root for, it switches around on you, and then switches around again. The fight scenes are powerful, but in large part due to the emotional weight given to Tommy and Brendan by Hardy and Edgerton. The final bout, well, its a knock-out.

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Drama Family Issues Sports

Family Movie Night: ‘Game Time — Tackling the Past’

Posted on September 2, 2011 at 8:00 am

The latest Family Movie Night, sponsored by Wal-Mart and P&G, is “Game Time: Tackling the Past,” about a pro football player named Jake (“Chuck’s” Ryan McPartlin) who has been estranged from his family. He reluctantly returns home for the first time in 15 years when his father (Beau Bridges) becomes ill, and then decides to stay home when his contract is not renewed. Jake fills in at his father’s job as a high school football coach and reconnects with his high school girlfriend. Watch for it Saturday, September 3, at 8 (7 Central).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaWDaY262zI

Seven Days in Utopia

Posted on September 1, 2011 at 6:38 pm

Sports psychologist David L. Cook wrote a book called Seven Days in Utopia: Golf’s Sacred Journey about a young golfer who runs away after a meltdown at a big tournament, gets stuck in a small town, and meets a mentor who was once a champion and teaches him important lessons that he takes with him back to the next competition.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like Cars?

It’s still a good story. And I give Cook and co-writer/director Matthew Dean Russell credit for avoiding some of the usual sports-as-metaphor details. They refrained from making their main character spoiled or hot-headed. Even more unusually, they refrained from making his father a monster. Both are well-intentioned but misguided. This eliminates the easiest routes to dramatic intensity but demonstrates a confidence in the characters that is most welcome. It would be too much to say that adds subtlety to the story. This story is not subtle in any way; its biggest failing is that it does not trust its audience enough. It hammers its points home and then does it a few more times, and then a few more, just to make sure. If only the filmmakers had trusted their audience as much as the movie’s teacher trusts his student.

Lucas Black (“Cold Mountain,” “Friday Night Lights“), who co-produced, plays Luke Chislom, a young golfer who has been driven all his life by his father. When they get into an argument on a crucial shot in an important competition, Luke’s father walks off the course and Luke snaps his club in half and runs away.

Swerving to avoid a cow in the road, Luke crashes his car into a fence in the small town of Utopia, Texas. While the car is being repaired, a local rancher named Johnny Crawford (Robert Duvall) offers to give him some golf lessons to help him “find his game.” In true Mr. Miyagi “wax on, wax off” fashion, many of these lessons do not involve hitting a golf ball with a golf club. They are lessons about focus, faith, patience, confidence, and grace. They have Luke pitching washers, taking the controls of a plane, painting a picture, and literally burying the lies that hold him back. And there’s a pretty girl in town who is training to be horse whisperer and seems to know something about whispering golfers as well.

Black is an engaging performer and he and Duvall have an easy, natural quality together and many scenes have a refreshingly quiet quality, not so much of volume but from a spirit of humility and sincerity. Luke is a good kid, open to learning but not naive, and the film will reward those who are willing to give it a chance.

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