The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Posted on August 17, 2017 at 5:02 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence and language throughout
Profanity:	Extended very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence, guns, explosions, assault weapons, chases, car crashes, knives, many characters injured and killed, many disturbing bloody images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 18, 2017
Date Released to DVD:	November 21, 2017

If they’re not going to waste time coming up with a story, I’m not going to waste time trying to explain it. The title says it all. There’s a hitman named Darius (Samuel L. Jackson). There’s a bodyguard named Michael (Ryan Reynolds). They have a history. And they quip, shoot, and punch their merry way through a buddy-cop action comedy so generic it may have been created by algorithm. More thought went into the various set-pieces, the chases, explosions, shoot-outs, and hand-to-hand combats than into the story, something about transporting Darius to the Hague so he can testify against a dictator charged with genocide.

This may not be the moment for violent and lethal mayhem as lighthearted summer fun, including the execution of a man’s wife and child as he watches in horror. A lot of heads explode when they are hit by bullets and the fact that we don’t know most of them because they are all faceless guys in riot gear does not make a difference. So, stipulating that the premise is dumb, the plot makes no sense, the genre has been played out endlessly over the years, sometimes worse but sometimes much better, including with these two actors, and that it is especially dispiriting to see Salma Hayek wasted in a silly spitfire role, I will share a couple of thoughts about the two stars.

Ryan Reynolds: I don’t know why you would want to give this movie any more of your time, but if for some reason you sit through the very long credits (lots of locations, lots of stunts), you will see a brief extra scene that will give you an idea of what a talented professional Ryan Reynolds is. He had just one job in that shot, to have a particular facial expression that matched the expression in another scene. He was ready to go when the shooting had to be held up because loud church bells began playing nearby. We hear someone from the crew yell out that they are holding for the church bells, and we see Reynolds hold that expression and that mood as the bells keep ringing and then keep ringing some more. He keeps it together for an impressive length of time, then finally gives up, wipes his eyes, and makes a quip. But it gives you a sense that even in a silly shoot-em-up like this piece of forgettable fluff, he holds himself to the highest standard. Also, the character here is designed around his strengths. He is at his best when he is playing a decent guy who is frustrated and snarky. The script doesn’t give him much to work with — the yadda yadda about his triple A rating is especially tiresome and the romantic complications are inane. But he makes the best of it with great timing and essential decency.

Samuel L. Jackson: Lord knows, he could phone it in by now. He’s done this exact role more times than even he can count. But he brings it, snapping out every one of those MFs like he’s been waiting to do it all his life and creating a character with no help from the script. He even has to sing. One smart move made by the screenwriter is giving Darius two impediments, one emotional, one physical to make it believable that Michael could be a match for him. Kind of like in “Batman vs. Superman,” when they had to kryptonite-ize Superman but not too much to make it an even fight.

Someday, when this movie comes on cable, just check it out long enough to see not why we pay these guys the big bucks but why they’re worth it.

Parents should know that this film includes constant peril and violence with chases, explosions, shoot-outs, assault weapons, knives, various other weapons, many characters injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images including bloody wounds and heads exploding, very strong language, drinking, drugs, brief nudity, and a brief glimpse of a prostitute.

Family discussion: Who was right about what makes a bad guy? Why was it hard for Michael to believe Amelia?

If you like this, try: “Midnight Run,” “Mr. Right,” “Die Hard with a Vengeance”

California Typewriter

Posted on August 14, 2017 at 6:29 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated, no adult content
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 18, 2017

Copyright 2017 American Buffalo Pictures

A couple of years ago, I stayed at a hotel that had a vintage manual typewriter in the lobby, with a pristine stack of paper placed neatly beside it. I could not resist. I rolled in a piece of paper and began to hit the keys, enjoying what pianists call the action of the machine and the memories it brought back.

Then I got to the end of the line and waited. Although I learned to type the summer before my freshman year in high school and typed my school papers through high school, college, and law school and then used increasingly sophisticated typewriters in offices for the next five years, I had completely forgotten that it was up to me to hit the carriage return. I reached up and swung the lever, and very much enjoyed reviving the memory of that feeling of satisfaction, accompanied by the little bell. A computer will wait, sometimes impatiently, for you to continue. A typewriter will congratulate you for what you have accomplished.

This captivating documentary pays tributes to typewriters and the small but passionate group who still love and repair them. It is filled with delightful characters, and if they sometimes edge into Christopher Guest territory with their rhapsodies about the percussion and the ink flying onto the paper (the late Sam Shepard, adding an extra sense of loss to the film), or how typewritten words are “almost what thoughts look like” (John Mayer), they are still endearing and insightful. And, as ever the voice of decency and civilization, Tom Hanks shows up because he is a serious collector of vintage typewriters and he likes to give them to friends and urge them to use them.

Indeed, I am now guessing that the Greg Kinnear character in “You’ve Got Mail” who loves his analog typewriters so much may in fact be based on the real-life passions of the man who gets the girl in the film, played by Tom Hanks.

California Typewriter is the name of the Berkeley, California typewriter repair shop that may have to close as its owner is turning 70 and business is pretty much eclipsed by computers, except for the collectors and John Henry-types. The film alternates between the people at the store and typewriter aficionados, from a collector who literally dreams of owning one of the very first typewriters made by the man credited with inventing them to a sculptor whose medium is typewriter parts. Ever wondered about the odd QWERTY arrangement of letters on your computer keyboard? Did you know that typewriters created a whole new category of jobs for women, bringing them for the first time into workplaces other than schoolrooms and hospitals? The women themselves were called “typewriters.” There’s a music group that uses typewriters as their instruments. And historian David McCullough, who writes his book on his old Royal typewriter, mourns the loss of typed letters, speeches, and diaries, with cross-outs and inserts. “There is value in mistakes…You see the process.”

There is a bittersweet quality to the film, which has brief glimpses of people standing in long lines in the rain to get the new iPad, and tech conference presenters chirping about algorithms. We see the last typewriter manufacturer in the world close down, and its final 100 machines turned into a sculpture. But the very scarcity creates bonds. “I collect typewriters,” a man with a veritable museum in his home says. “But better than that, I collect typewriter friends.” And it is not a spoiler to note that the failing store of the title gets new access to customers from the very technology that disrupted its industry: a website.

Parents should know that this movie has some brief art images of bodies.

Family discussion: Have you ever typed on a typewriter?

If you like this, try: “The Shocking Miss Pilgrim,” with Betty Grable as a “typewriter” (secretary), and the delightful French film “Populaire,” a romantic comedy about a champion typist and her boss/coach

Kidnap

Posted on August 3, 2017 at 5:02 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violence and peril
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence including children in peril, guns, chases, crashes, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 4, 2017

Maybe Halle Berry, who produced and stars in “Kidnap,” thought this would be her “Taken,” a big prestige star in an all-out action movie. Not so much. Instead, this is one of those movies where if anyone made a single rational decision it would be over in eight minutes, instead of the 80-some minutes that feel like 800.

Berry plays Karla, a single mom waitress in a diner who adores her six-year-old son, Frankie (Sage Correa), and has promised to take him to an amusement park. On the way there, we establish that (1) his favorite toy is a little voice recorder, and (2) Karla’s ex is now married to a doctor and Karla is doing her best to reassure Frankie that “everybody loves you” and that the grown-ups are all getting along. So, when she gets a call from her lawyer about the ex’s attempt to get custody, she tells Frankie to stay where he is and moves so that he cannot hear the discussion. When she gets back, he is gone.

At first, she thinks he is just hiding. But he has left the recorder on the bench, and then she sees him being hustled into a distinctive teal car. And so she races into her minivan, dropping her phone in the parking lot because (see above regarding the film’s duration), and chases after them.

And chases after them. And chases after them. Causing endless mayhem and at least two deaths along the way, but who cares about other people’s family members? This is HER SON and they picked a fight with the WRONG MOTHER.

Berry is so much better than this. She makes competent terrified/determined faces at the right moments, but even she cannot sell the increasing preposterousness of the storyline or make sympathetic a woman who would abandon the critically injured people who got in her way or tried to help her. She’s the one who really needs to be rescued in this saga.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive peril and violence including kidnapping, knives, shotgun, car chases and crashes, and some strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Karla leave the police station? Would the law and the news media really respond the way they did in this movie?

If you like this, try: “Without a Trace” and “Nick of Time”

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Posted on August 1, 2017 at 4:55 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action, suggestive material and brief language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended sci-fi/action violence, guns, chases, characters injured and killed including genocide
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	July 21, 2017
Date Released to DVD:	November 21, 2017

Yes, the visuals and special effects in Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of the Thousand Planets” are next-level, dazzling, stunning, and themselves worth the price of a ticket (3D please). But let’s be honest. The best special effect in the movie is the lovely real face of Rihanna as Bubble, a shape-shifting alien our hero meets in an inter-galactic strip club.

That hero would be Valerian (Dane DeHaan), who has gone to the strip club in search of the disguise he needs to infiltrate an alien compound and rescue the woman he loves, his space partner Laureline (Cara Delevingne). She was captured as the two of them were on a mission to…oh, who cares what the mission was? It’s your basic save the universe stuff. You know and I know and they know you are not there for the subtleties of the space city that incorporates, “Zootopia”-style, every possible creature and culture, a veritable Pepperland of comity and the exchange of learning. In the opening scenes, we see the history of the place, as human astronauts welcome aboard an increasing variety of visitors with a warm handshake, first from other countries, and then from other planets and galaxies, still with something as close to a handshake as possible.

This is the movie Luc Besson has wanted to make since he was a teenager, base on a French comic book series from the 1960’s with a visionary aesthetic that inspired Besson’s own “5th Element” and George Lucas’ “Star Wars.” He had to wait decades until the technology made it possible to do the ravishing visuals justice. That is the good news and the bad news. The good news is that the visuals are indeed ravishing, worth a couple of viewings on the biggest screen you can find and then a couple more when you can watch it at home and hit “pause” to see every detail. The bad news is that the storyline has not held up as well over the years as the settings, in part because much of it has also been appropriated, too, over the years, partly because times have changed, and partly because it wasn’t that great to begin with. Valerian and Laureline banter back and forth about whether he can make a commitment to her as they try to save the world. It is supposed to be part of the fun of the story that they are cool and casual. Valerian even wears a Hawaiian shirt at one point instead of his spiffy spacesuit (they are undercover as tourists). But their characters are so bland, especially by contrast with the wildly imaginative world they are racing through, that it drags on the storyline. That’s disappointing because it distracts from some promising flickers of substance.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive sci-fi peril, action, and violence with many guns and blasters, characters injured and killed, sad deaths, references to genocide, corruption, brief strong language, provocative dance and references to prostitution.

Family discussion: Why do Valerian and Laureline disagree about the converter? How do you know when to break the rules?

If you like this, try: “Avatar” and “The Fifth Element”

Atomic Blonde

Posted on July 27, 2017 at 5:54 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sequences of strong violence, language throughout, and some sexuality/nudity
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, pills, and cigarettes
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence with stabbing, strangling, guns, explosions, murder, torture, and very disturbing images, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 28, 2017

Unlike its title character, “Atomic Blonde” keeps missing the mark. It tries for both the style of “John Wick” and the substance of the Bourne series, but each takes away from the other, with a story that is too familiar and too empty, punctuated by achingly obvious “Hey, remember the 80’s?” songs. Like “I Ran” for a chase scene, get it? Oh, and someone plays Tetris!

The film is based on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine, a British spy sent to Berlin in 1989, just as the Wall is about to come down. We see Ronald Reagan’s iconic “Tear down that wall!” moment and are told via title cards about the flowering of democracy in the Soviet bloc, then warned, “This is not that story.”

Most of the film is a flashback, as a badly bruised Theron cooly debriefs her MI6 boss (James Faulkner) and a representative from the CIA (John Goodman). A spy named James Gasciogne (Sam Hargrave) has been movie-killed during the opening credit sequence, meaning that he is handsome and has a chance to say some dashing spy stuff between being hit by a car and shot in the head.
Then we see Lorraine getting out of an ice bath, giving us a chance to see her bruises and her tush before going in for the debriefing, where she asks the CIA guy to leave, and he responds, “If it would make you more comfortable, I could stand behind the mirror but it’s a little crowded back there.”

She is sent to Berlin, her cover to pick up Gascoigne’s body (she cleverly inserts an error in the paperwork, knowing that will delay her return). Her contact there is a libertine named David Percival (James McAvoy). We know he’s a libertine because he looks scuzzy, plies people with expensive liquor from the west, and wakes up bleary with two naked women in his bed. And we know he can’t be trusted because Lorraine has been sent off with the stunningly original, “Don’t trust anyone.” And yet, on arrival she gets into a car with a guy who tells her that David sent him, but guess what? He turns out to be a bad guy, which gives Lorraine a chance to show us how the term stiletto heel can be literal. And everyone is after the movies’ most overused McGuffin, the crucial master list of spy names. Zzzzzzzzz. Why don’t they just stop compiling them?

The action scenes are well staged, as you might expect from a director who used to be a stunt man. But they are undermined by the lack of control of the movie’s tone and the relentless plodding through every spy movie convention, from the “You don’t know who you’re dealing with” speech and the “Who are you to judge me?” speech, to the stop everything to get all dressed up to go clubbing and sex with someone who is either there to betray you or to be killed because you were getting too close. Bill Skarsgård is a bright spot (can every movie please have a Skarsgård?). But the ultimate revelations about who is and is not to be trusted are unsurprising and unilluminating. Mostly, this film is a lot of smoking, strangling, shooting, and stabbing, with Charlize looking great and fighting like a badass. Because it tries to be more, instead of a stylish thriller it becomes a soggy mess.

Parents should know that this film has constant extremely graphic violence, stabbing, choking, shooting, punching, many characters injured and killed, many disturbing images and sounds, very strong and crude language, sexual references and explicit situation, nudity, and themes of betrayal.

Family discussion: Who is the most honest character in the movie? Do you agree with Lorraine’s decision about David?

If you like this, try: The “Bourne” movies, “John Wick,” and “Hanna”