ParaNorman

Posted on August 16, 2012 at 6:00 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for scary action and images, thematic elements, some rude humor, and language
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language ("boobs"), reference to "the f-word"
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Brief joke about steroid use
Violence/ Scariness:	Cheerfully gruesome storyline about zombies and ghosts with some comic but disturbing images, characters in peril, character dies of natural causes, discussion of the historic abuse and killing of people thought to be witches, bullies
Diversity Issues:	Tolerance a theme of the movie, diverse characters include a gay character, some making fun of people who are not intelligent
Date Released to Theaters:	August 20, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	November 26, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAII62

While digital animators create algorithms that replicate real life textures and weights and movements so perfectly they can seem real-er than reality, the small but preposterously dedicated stop-motion animators create their own three-dimensional world and invite us inside. Like its predecessor at LAIKA, “Coraline,” “ParaNorman” is a spookily gothic-tinged tale, and, like “Coraline,” everything you see on screen was really built and really moved, a fraction of a fraction of a millimeter at a time. The touch, and touchability of everything we see adds to the magic, and each setting, prop, and character is so lovingly detailed that it rewards repeated viewings.

Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) loves to watch old zombie movies with his grandmother as she knits on the living room sofa. Until his parents remind him that his grandmother is dead.

Yes. Norman sees dead people. Perhaps that is why his hair is constantly standing on end. He is fine with it, but it bothers everyone around him. His parents (Jeff Garlin and Leslie Mann) worry about him, his teenage sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) is annoyed by him, and at school everyone either ignores or bullies him.

When a creepy ghost (John Goodman) appears in the boys’ bathroom at school to warn him that the town will be attacked by zombies, he explains that only Norman can stop them. Before sunset, he must read aloud from an ancient tome at the grave of the witch whose curse turned seven local citizens into zombies centuries before. The lore of the witch’s curse is so central to the town’s identity that there is a statue of a witch in the town square, several local businesses have witchy names, and Norman’s school pageant is a re-telling of the story. Three hundred years ago, when the local citizens condemned a witch to death, she used her powers to condemn them to spending eternity as zombies. But the secret of the book helps Norman discover that the zombies and the witch are not what he thought.

With references to “Scooby-Doo” and “The Goonies,” “ParaNorman” expertly balances scary and funny elements of the story, with a surprisingly heartwarming conclusion. “It’s all right to be scared,” Norman’s grandmother explains, “as long as it doesn’t change who you are.” Norman, Courtney, his friend Neil, Neil’s dim brother Mitch (Casey Affleck), and school bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) have to work together to try to save the town.

The voice performances are excellent and the visuals are dazzling. Every item from the houses to the cars to the lockers in the schools is just a little off-kilter and every detail from Norman’s alarm clock to the zombie’s sagging skin is designed with endless wit and skill. The score by Jon Brion keeps things nicely spooky and the resolution is satisfying. It is too bad that the thoughtful points it makes about bullying are undercut by making fun of not one but two characters who are not bright. The message of reconciliation, kindness, and appreciating differences is a good one, and it should extend to all of the movie’s characters.

Parents should know that this movie’s themes concern zombies and ghosts, and each child will react differently. Some will be enjoyably scared and some will find it funny but even with a reassuring conclusion to the story, some may find the images or storyline upsetting. The film has comic but gruesome images, characters in peril, reference to historic abuse and execution of those claimed to be witches — reassuringly and often humorously presented but some elements of the story and images may be disturbing to children. There is also brief potty humor, a joke about steroids, and a refreshingly positive portrayal of a gay character (a teenage boy briefly mentions his boyfriend).

Family discussion: Who was right about Norman, his mother or his father, and why? Why did Neil want to be friends with Norman? How did Norman help the witch?

If you like this, try: “Monster House,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “The Corpse Bride,” and “Coraline”

The Bourne Legacy

Posted on August 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence and action sequences
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs, drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended spy-type violence with hand-to-hand combat, guns, chases, explosions, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 10, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	December 10, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAIIPS

Different spy. Different program. Same evil conspiracy still trying to justify the nastiest of means with the most unprovable ends. This is “The Bourne Legacy,” the fourth in the Bourne series and the first not to star Matt Damon. Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first three films, wrote and directed this latest installment, with “Hurt Locker’s” Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, like Jason Bourne an inconvenient reminder of an ambitious spy program that at least some people believe needs to be shut down with extreme prejudice. Those of us who felt there was not enough Renner in the crowded Avengers movie (he was the guy with the bow and arrow) are glad to see him take the lead here. He handles it gracefully.

The way he walks, runs, and punches is as important to defining the character as what he says, and Renner moves with an athlete’s economy, precision, and confidence. We first see Cross in an isolated, frozen location (the settings, even more than usual, really tell the story) and we immediately learn that he is brave, resourceful, and very capable. And that he takes some sort of pills. Soon he meets up with another guy (the always-outstanding Oscar Isaac) and even though they have never met, they communicate with the kind of shorthand that lets us know they recognize they share the same training and perhaps more and yet do not entirely trust one another. Soon we find that the same people who wanted to shut down any record of Jason Bourne’s Treadstone project are trying to erase any evidence of Cross’s project, Outcome and they will do anything to make that happen.

Jason Bourne could not remember who he was or how he came to be injured and floating in the water, and we shared his discovery of his own history and growing realization of the corruption and betrayal around him. So it seems logical that Gilroy would go in the opposite direction with Aaron Cross. His problem is not a loss of memory. In a way, he has too much memory. Slight spoiler alert here, though it is revealed in the trailer — the operatives in the Outcome project have been physically and intellectually enhanced with medication monitored by scientists, including Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz, who can carry off the brainy beauty role). Cross does not need to find out who he is. He needs to stay who he has become. When he runs out of the medication, he has to have her help to get him more.

One of the highlights of the film takes place in Marta’s home, a huge house in the country with beautiful lines and a great deal of potential but a shabbiness that tells us she is a person of taste and vision who never created the home she hoped to have. The confrontation that takes place there binds her to Carter and sets the rest of the story in motion. They end up in the Philippines, and Gilroy makes great use of the city for neatly-staged chase scenes.

Renner is a superb choice for an action hero, with easy charisma, intelligence, and mad fighting skills. He holds the screen effortlessly and is quickly becoming one of the most appealing leading men in Hollywood. The problem with the film is the decision to give him chemically enhanced capacities. It’s the Batman/Superman divide. The first three Bourne movies gave us a damaged hero we could identify with because he was so human. But with Cross, it is hard to identify with him or gauge his level of danger because we don’t really know what he can do or whether another hit of the meds could ramp him up further. We’re rooting for Renner all the way. Cross, not quite as much.

Parents should know that this film has extensive spy-style action violence with chases, explosions, fights, shoot outs, some strong language, drugs, drinking, and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: How is Aaron Cross different from Jason Bourne? What do we learn from the scene with the other Outcome agent? Who is in the best position to stop Byer?

If you like this, try: the other “Bourne” movies and the novels by Robert Ludlum and “Hanna”

Dark Shadows

Posted on May 10, 2012 at 6:00 pm

“Dark Shadows” tries to sink its teeth into the legendary 1960’s supernatural soap opera with both ironic distance and visceral thrills. It can be done — see the original “Men in Black” — but wonderfully weird visuals from director Tim Burton and a highly watchable performance by his muse, Johnny Depp cannot keep the tone from faltering and the results are unsatisfying. One big problem is a criminally underused cast. Eva Green matches Depp as Angelique, the woman scorned whose witchcraft turns the young heir Barnabas Collins into a vampire and curses all of the Collins family forevermore. But Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, and Chloe Grace Moretz (“Hugo,” “Kick-Ass”) have little to do but pose in Colleen Atwood’s fabulous 70’s costumes. Co-scripter Seth Grahame-Smith, whose genre mash-ups include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) has produced a script that does not work as tribute or update.

Barnabas Collins was the young son of a wealthy family who came to America in the 1770’s and settled in a 200-room mansion on a cliff near a Maine fishing town. Angelique (Green), the daughter of a servant, loved Barnabas or, more likely, she loved his wealth, position, and power. When he told her he could not love her, she unleashed her witchy revenge. She enchanted Josette (Bella Heathcote), the girl Barnabas loved, so that she committed suicide by jumping off the cliff. When Barnabas tried to follow her, Angelique turned him into a vampire who could not die.

Barnabas is captured and shut into a coffin for nearly 200 years. When a construction project digs him up, he enters the world of 1972, which is almost as confusing and dysfunctional as his descendants. They are: Elizabeth (Pfeiffer), her louche brother Roger (Miller), her sullen teenage daughter Carolyn (Moretz), and Roger’s “I see dead people” son David (Gulliver McGrath). They live in a partitioned-off wing of Collinwood Mansion with drunken caretaker Willie Loomis (Haley), a dotty housekeeper, and a substance-abusing psychiatrist named Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who came for a brief time to help David after his mother’s death but stayed for years.

No one believes Barnabas at first, despite a convincing resemblance to the family portrait. But he tells Elizabeth he is there to restore the family to wealth and power and proves his good intentions by leading her to treasure hidden in a secret room and he begins to seem no less believable than the other members of the family. With some vampire version of the Vulcan mind meld, he persuades the local captains to switch from their association with the dynamic woman who controls most of the fishing business in the area. She is none other than Angelique, still going strong and still in the midst of a big love-hate thing with Barnabas. And there is Victoria, a new governess for David, who looks just like Josette (Heathcote again).

Depp is clearly having a blast with his character’s gothic formality of movement and linguistic curlicues and Green has a great triumphant/demonic smile. Whenever they are on screen the movie picks up and their intimate encounter is hilariously room-shaking. Barnabas experiences the wonders of the modern age, including some that we take for granted (paved roads, television) and some that feel as mystifying to us as they do to him. Shag rugs? Lava lamps? But the plot is as creaky as the hinges on Barnabas’ coffin.

Parents should know that the ghoulish plot concerns vampires, ghosts, and witches. While some elements are comic, the film has stylized but graphic horror-style violence, characters injured and killed, sexual references and an explicit comic sex scene, some strong language, smoking, drinking, and drug use.

Family discussion: What were the biggest differences Barnabas found when he returned after 200 years? How was he most like and unlike his relatives?

If you like this, try: Episodes of the original black and white television series and the fantasy film “Stardust”

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Posted on December 20, 2011 at 11:21 am

The late Swedish author Steig Larsson created a series of books originally titled “Men Who Hate Women” with a character who was an idealized version of himself — an investigative journalist of impeccable integrity and political correctness who effortlessly appeals to women. But it was the other lead character in the books who inspired the final titles of the trilogy and who became an international sensation, the dragon-tattooed bisexual computer wizard Lisbeth Salanger, a ward of the state for her violent behavior and anti-social demeanor, with no respect for conventional rules but with a passionate commitment to justice. “She’s different,” says her employer. “In what way?” “In every way.”

The three books inspired three excellent Swedish films with Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth, and now David Fincher (“Se7en,” “Zodiac,” “The Social Network”) has taken the helm of a big-budget American remake, with Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara (briefly glimpsed in “The Social Network” as the girl who breaks up with Mark Zuckerberg in the first scene) as Lisbeth.

Fincher’s version is very true to the book, sharing its strengths and its weaknesses. Mara’s version is slightly softer than Rapace’s, she still delivers the character’s most intriguing qualities, the combination of blatant punk style with a resolutely inaccessible core, her combination of vulnerability and resilience, her determination, and, above all, her ability to triumph over the most horrifying violations. As the original title suggests, the weakness of the story is Larsson’s clunky insistence on including every possible form of atrocity, and those who are familiar with the plot may find that there are not enough surprises left. A superb soundtrack by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (who also did “The Social Network”) is interrupted by a jarring version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”

It begins with a scene that could have come from Raymond Chandler. Mikael, discredited following a libel suit by a powerful businessman, is invited to meet with an even more powerful figure, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the head of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families. In his huge home in a island that serves as a family compound, Henrik explains that he is haunted by the disappearance of his young granddaughter Harriet forty years before. Each year, on his birthday, Vanger received a pressed flower, a symbol of his relationship with Harriet that he believes comes from her killer and is intended to taunt him. The police and private detectives have tried to find out what happened to Harriet but the mystery is still unsolved. No body has been found and there seems to have been no way for her to leave the island. Mikael agrees to see if he can find out what happened. “You will be investigating thieves, misers, and bullies,” Henrik tells him, “the most detestable collection of people you will ever meet — my family.”

What Mikael does not know is that he has already been investigated by Henrik, whose aide hired a firm to do a background check. The research was done by Lisbeth Salanger, who hacked into Mikael’s email and has done a very thorough, if not strictly legal, analysis. The only person Lisbeth trusts, her state-appointed guardian, has a stroke and his replacement is an abusive monster who insists on sexual favors before allowing her to have access to her money. After some horrifying encounters, Lisbeth extracts some revenge. Meanwhile, Mikael makes some progress but realizes he needs help. The aide suggests Lisbeth, and so our two protagonists meet.

Steven Zallian (“Schindler’s List,” co-screenwriter of “Moneyball”) adapted the book well, discarding some distracting subplots. The soundtrack and production designer Donald Graham Burt superbly convey the frozen remoteness of the setting. Mikael is not easy to portray because he spends a lot of time watching and listening but Craig makes Mikael thoughtful and lets us see that he recognizes his failures. Mara’s voice is a little too sweet for Lisbeth but her efficient, straightforward physicality and her watchful but implacable expression are just right for the character who is about to kick the hornet’s nest.

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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 7:10 pm

All Sherlockians know that the only villain who could match the most famous and celebrated of all fictional detectives is the fiendish Professor Moriarty. As we were promised in the postscript to the first Sherlock Holmes movie from Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey, Jr., and Jude Law, this sequel pits the two masterminds against each other in a match to the death.

Watson is about to get married and this produces two responses in Holmes. He feels abandoned and is jealous of Watson’s fiancée. This emotion is mostly childish and narcissistic but, as in the first film, there is a frisson of homoeroticism as well. But he does have moments of generosity and concern for others. He fears that their association will put Watson and his new wife at risk. In one of the high-octane film’s best and quietest moments, he visits Moriarty (played by Jared Harris, son of Richard Harris of “Camelot” and the original Dumbledore in the first Harry Potter movies) to ask whether they can agree to let Watson be free of any entanglement in the unpleasantness ahead. But Moriarty does not play by any rules, which is what makes him so dangerous.

There are silly disguises and wild stunts. We meet Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry) — in the books a brilliant recluse, even more eccentric than his violin-playing detective sibling but here a rather foppish quasi-diplomat who calls his younger brother “Sherley” and walks around his home in the nude despite the presence of a young lady. There is a brief appearance by Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler (“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman,” says Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia”). Noomi Rapace from the Swedish “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo” series is criminally underused as a gypsy woman trying to find her brother. Director Guy Ritchie makes the most of the steampunk sensibility by matching analog gears with camera tricks that hyper-rewind and tricked-up slo-mo to show us Holmes’ observations and analysis. He also draws some parallels to our time. Anarchists were the terrorists of that era, technology was making possible more devastating destruction, national borders were dissolving, and, as always, money is the great motivator. “Though politics may divide us, business will unite us,” says a character.

“Come at once if convenient,” Holmes says in a note to Watson. “If inconvenient, come all the same.” As we see in the meeting with Moriarty, this is an era on the cusp, the first World War just over 20 years in the future, and Holmes knows that Moriarty is not the only one who will not be willing to abide by a playing fields of Eton-style veneer of gentility. Like the first film, what holds our interest is Downey, whose vision of Holmes, if not what Conan Doyle had in mind, is arresting. Today he might be diagnosed as having sensory integration or autism spectrum issues. “What do you see?” the gypsy woman asks Holmes. “Everything. That is my curse.”

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