Bravetown

Posted on May 7, 2015 at 5:41 pm

C-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some language, drug use and brief sexuality
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs, and drug overdose
Violence/ Scariness:	Battle scenes, extended discussion of war dead
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 8, 2015

If only salutory intentions and one good performance could save a film so fundamentally wrongly conceived. “Bravetown” starts out as “Footloose,” veers into “Ordinary People,” and ends up as “Swing Kids,” with jaw-dropping shifts in tone and focus and total misreading of the import of its message.

It really is a shame, because it has a good heart and an important point to make about the devastation of small towns with very little opportunity but a lot of patriotic spirit, and the devastation when so many of the town’s young men go to war. And the always-welcome Josh Duhamel as always gives a performance of enormous heart and intelligence. He plays Alex, the small town’s psychiatric social worker assigned to Josh Harvest(!) (Lucas Till), a sulky teenager who has been sent to live with his father following an accidental drug overdose.

Josh barely knows his monosyllabic father (“That Thing You Do’s” Tom Everett Scott). And the log cabin in the small, depressed North Dakota town is the other side of the world from Josh’s life as a hot — and usually high — young DJ, living with a single mom (Maria Bello) who struggles with substance abuse. Josh’s entire life is music, having sex with his girlfriend, and watching “Platoon” while smoking weed. Until he takes one pill too many and finds himself in court one time too many. Thus, a one-way ticket to a town called Paragon, where the only place that seems to do any business is the recruiting office.

It follows the “Footloose” formula closely at first. The Chris Penn role of only local kid who will talk to him is played by Jae Head (“The Blind Side”). It’s a little weird that he looks about eight years younger than Josh and begins by talking about how pretty his sister is, how she just broke up with her boyfriend, and how she’s in a dance team that is terrible. It is a lot weirder when Josh decides to attend the school dance and the dance team gets up to perform and they are, in fact, terrible, and then, as soon as Josh gets behind the turntables and starts spinning, they magically snap into shape instantly develop a whole new perfectly synchronized routine.

I am not kidding. I mean, even in “Footloose” and “Flashdance” and all of that genre, we at least get to see them practice and slowly get better.

And then it gets really crazy.

Back to the “Footloose” template: The sister (Kherington Payne as Mary) is pretty but troubled and has a dead brother. Her ex-boyfriend likes to hit people and tells Josh to stay away from her. Mary takes Josh to her special place, in this case a tribute to the young men the town has lost to war.

And for the “Ordinary People” part: Alex is an offbeat but insightful therapist who gains the trust of the recalcitrant Josh by letting him spend their court-ordered time watching soccer and eating pizza. These are the only scenes in the film that have any warmth.

Alex, like everyone else in town, is hurting, too. So is Mary’s depressed mother, played by Laura Dern. She seems to be relegated these days to struggling mother roles but is always watchable in them.

Things go completely nuts when we get to the dance team competitions, with a couple of disturbingly clueless examples of cultural appropriation. The Indian (as in Asia, not America) dance number is insensitive, but even worse is the one that has the group dressed up in sweat suits and gold chains like one of those awful fraternity “ghetto” parties.

And then it gets really really crazy as the teenagers start telling the grown-ups what’s wrong and it affects them the way Josh’s magical DJ-ing affected the dance team. Instant cure! Followed by the most insanely mis-imagined — wait for it — dance number on film since the Swing Kids fought Hitler with some swell big band music.

Parents should know that this film has some strong language, an explicit sexual situation, drinking and drug use, some racial and cultural insensitivity, bullies and fighting, wartime battle scenes and discussion of casualties and fatalities.

Family discussion: Why did Alex watch soccer games with Josh? Can you think of a time when you wished you had shared more about yourself?

If you like this, try: the “Step Up” movies, “Footloose” and “Flashdance”

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Movies -- format Stories about Teens

The D Train

Posted on May 7, 2015 at 5:34 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Unrated
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 8, 2015

Comedies, especially dark ones, have a lot of freedom when it comes to narrative logic, but the emotional logic still has to ring true. No matter how crazy the storyline gets, the way the characters respond to it has to make sense, and that is where “The D Train” goes, well, off the rails.

Jack Black plays Dan Landsman, who is helping to organize his high school’s 20th reunion. He keeps insisting he is the chairman of the planning committee, but none of the other members think he holds that title, even though he is the only one who knows the password to the reunion’s Facebook page. Dan organizes their meetings, rearranging the desks in the school library and setting up the phones to call the alumnae and encourage them to attend. He has a laminated sign with suction cups to stick on the door to make sure they are not disturbed. This reunion matters tremendously to him. He is married to a classmate (Kathryn Hahn) and seems stuck in high school, still hoping to find a way to be one of the popular kids and have a cool nickname.

Late one night, he sees a commercial for sunblock starring another classmate, Oliver Lawless (James Marsden). Dan decides that this means Oliver is a celebrity, and that if he can persuade him to attend the reunion, everyone else will want to come, too. So he lies to his tech-phobic boss (Jeffrey Tambor) to wrangle a business trip to LA, but makes it sound so promising that the boss insists on coming along.

In LA, Oliver is at first not even interested enough to be puzzled by Daniel’s attention. But then he begins to warm to Daniel’s enthusiastic approval. They have a couple of very debauched nights, especially the second one. What happens in LA does not stay in LA, and the fragility of Daniel’s most fundamental sense of himself is revealed. When Oliver does show up for the reunion, Daniel begins to unravel.

Marsden, always underestimated as an actor, is superb in this role, fully embracing the character’s darkness, narcissism, self-loathing, and vulnerability. But Black does not have enough to work with to make Daniel sympathetic enough for us to want him to succeed or evil enough for us to want him to fail.

Parents should know that this film has extremely strong and crude language and very explicit sexual references and situations, drinking, smoking, and drug use.

Family discussion: Why was the reunion so important to Daniel? Why was Daniel’s admiration (and his debauching) so important to Oliver?

If you like this, try: “Chuck and Buck”

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Comedy Movies -- format

Welcome to Me

Posted on April 30, 2015 at 5:15 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language and brief drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense confrontations, brief violence
Diversity Issues:	Treatment of people with mental illness
Date Released to Theaters:	May 1, 2015

In “Welcome to Me,” Kristen Wiig plays Alice, a depressed woman diagnosed with borderline personality disorder who wins $86 million in the lottery. She uses much of it to create a one-woman television series that feature monologues about her life and re-enactments of some of her most traumatic moments. This is the most recent in a series of Wiig’s depressed/repressed roles in mostly indie films like “Girl Most Likely,” “The Skeleton Twins,” “Hateship Loveship,” and “Bridesmaids.” Even as the romantic interest in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” she played a character so low-key she came across as diffident. No one is asking her to do a perky rom-com, but it would be nice to see her try something different.

Alice is off her meds. She makes inappropriate comments that make the people around her feel uncomfortable, although she has the support of her parents, her ex-husband and his new boyfriend, and her best friend Gina (Linda Cardellini). And she gets a lot of support from Oprah, via VHS tapes of her talk show, which Alice plays so often she knows them by heart. Oprah’s exhortation to find “something you were born to give,” to “figure out your calling and then begin to honor it” fascinates and inspires her, though probably not in the way Oprah had in mind. When she wins the lottery, she goes to a tiny television station that has been barely surviving on infomercials, run by two brothers, the three-times married on-air talent Gabe (Wes Bentley) and the behind-the scenes guy Rich (James Marsden). “I’m Rich,” he says. “No, I’m rich,” she replies.

Alice gives them $15 million to create a daily two-hour series for her to talk about herself. Oh, and she wants to enter on a swan boat. Soon there is a string of applicants for roles in her re-enactments of difficult and traumatic moments like the time someone took her make-up or the time Gina thought she did not look good in a bikini. Her comments are bizarre snippets of what she has absorbed from television mixed with more bizarre assertions and confessions, all delivered in near-monotone. “I have a prepared statement,” she says as though everything is a press conference, even to her family.

Is this one of those “crazy people are less crazy than normal people” movies? Or a comic but sympathetic portrayal of the challenges of mental illness? Or a satire of our media-saturated age? Despite excellent performances all around, especially Tim Robbins as Alice’s therapist, it does not succeed in any of those categories. The movie opens with a quote from Montaigne: “I study myself more than any other subject. That is my physics. That is my metaphysics.” But Montaigne drew insights about the human condition from that study, which neither Alice nor this film is able to manage.

Parents should know that this movie includes very strong language and explicit and crude sexual references and an explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: If you could re-enact a moment from your life, what would you pick? If you had $86 million, what would you do with the money?

If you like this, try: “The Skeleton Twins” and “Girl Most Likely”

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Drama Independent Movies -- format

The Water Diviner

Posted on April 23, 2015 at 5:58 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for war violence including some disturbing images
Profanity:	Brief language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime violence with battles and terrorist attacks, characters injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images, suicide, mercy killing
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 24, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00WFNPPVY

Before it detours into not one, not two, but at least three preposterous Hollywood twists, “The Water Diviner” is an absorbing drama about Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer (Russell Crowe, making his directing debut as well) who travels to Turkey to find the remains of his three sons, all killed in the battle of Gallipoli, so he can bring them home for burial. We first see Joshua dowsing for water. He selects the spot he is drawn to, then digs with skill, focus, and determination, until he hits water. He has a well.

He returns to the house where his wife tells him to read a bedtime story to their three sons. It is too much for her to accept that they are long gone to war and killed in battle. Finally, she is so overwhelmed by grief that she commits suicide. Joshua insists that she be buried in the church cemetery, and then leaves to bring their sons home and bury them next to her.

Crowe’s greatest asset as a director is himself as leading man, and his performance is powerful, with a muscular masculinity and sense of honor, but shredded by the loss of his family and by his fears that he may be responsible because he “filled their heads with heroic nonsense.” The clash of cultures and the unthinkable tragedies are intriguing. The best part of the film is the depiction of the way the defeated Australian command must work with the Turkish nationals to bury their dead as respectfully as possible, the tensions are inevitable. Was the end of the battle a “retreat” or an “evacuation?” “You killed my sons.” “You sent them. You invaded us.” Both, of course, are right. When one says, “I don’t know if I forgive any of us,” the other side has to agree.

“Four years ago you’d have given me a VC for shooting that bastard,” one of the ANZAC (Australian/New Zealand) officers growls. “That bastard” is Major Hasan (Yılmaz Erdoğan). The former enemies must work together on a task of unimaginable sadness and defeat, creating a sacred burial ground for thousands of dead soldiers, who will remain for eternity in the site of their defeat. “This is the first war anyone has given a damn,” to do even that much, says an ANZAC officer. Previous war dead were piled into pit graves with the horses.

Joshua finds a place to stay — or rather, it finds him, as a boy takes his bag and runs to the home where his mother and uncle have established a small hotel. They do not want an Australian there, but they need the money, so they gingerly make him welcome. The boy’s mother, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko), is still insisting that her husband will return from battle, to keep her son’s hope alive more than her own, and perhaps also to protect her from the pressures put on a single mother to remarry. Joshua is forbidden from going to the burial ground, but Ayshe helps him find a way. Once he gets there, no one wants to help him. But “because he is the only father who came looking,” they grudgingly allow him to look through the piles of bones.

And then it starts to get Hollywood. The water diviner somehow uses that same skill to locate the remains of two of his sons. And then it may be that the third is still alive. The last section of the film takes a turn that even Indiana Jones would find daunting and a romance even Nicholas Sparks would find improbable. It is too bad that the earlier part of the film’s appreciation of conflicts and complexity is followed by a fairy tale ending.

Parents should know that this movie features wartime scenes of battle violence and terrorism with some disturbing and graphic images and a suicide and a mercy killing. Characters are wounded and killed. In addition, it includes some strong language, domestic abuse, sexual references, drinking, and smoking.

Family discussion: What did Joshua and Major Hasan have in common? What do we learn from the flashback to the sandstorm? What should Arthur have done?

If you like this, try: Gallipoli and “A Very Long Engagement”

While We’re Young

Posted on April 2, 2015 at 5:12 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 27, 2015

“While We’re Young” opens with an exchange from Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” about what happens when the young come knocking at the door. But it might just as well begin with the wry Amish aphorism, “We grow too soon old and too late smart.”

Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s work often centers on the perils, agonies, and humiliations, and fears of growing up — including the attempts to avoid it. From the 20-somethings of “Kicking and Screaming” and “Frances Ha” to the immature parents with a teenager struggling through adolescence in his most autobiographical film, “The Squid and the Whale,” he shows us characters who try –unsuccessfully — to hold on to the optimism and narcissism of youth while having access to the powers and privileges of adulthood. Wouldn’t that be nice?

One of the toughest losses of adulthood is the sense of limitless possibilities. That is the moment at which we meet Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts). Their friends all have babies. But after miscarriages and failed fertility treatments, they are giving up on having children and trying to convince themselves that they are happy to have nothing to keep them from spontaneous adventures — even if they never take them. Maybe planning a month ahead of time can still be spontaneous, but they don’t do that, either.

Josh is a documentary filmmaker who has been working on the same amorphous film for eight years. The version he is currently editing is so long it seems like it would take eight years to watch it. One problem is that he is not able to explain what it is about. Or, rather, it is about everything, including the very reality of being able to make a movie about whatever it is about. Also about America. So he is pretty much stalled in his personal and professional life.

And then he meets the adorably artisanal newlyweds Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), who have all the dewiness and boundless optimism Josh would love to feel. And, they have something even more important. They are so young that they think he is cool. They attend a class he is teaching and tell him they admire one of his documentary films, which they found on eBay. Josh and Cornelia are enraptured by the younger couple, who remind them of what they once were, while their old friends remind them of what they cannot have. In one sequence, Cornelia disastrously agrees to accompany her closest friend to a music session for infants, then runs out to join Darby at a hip hop dance class. She is hilariously out of place at both, but loves the feeling of being included with the hip hoppers.

Meanwhile, Josh starts wearing a hat just like Jamie’s and riding bicycles with him through the Brooklyn streets. But Josh’s best friend (played by Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz) tells Josh he’s “an old man with a hat” and Josh gets out of breath on the bike. Jamie calls Josh “Joshie,” affectionate but also infantilizing.

Both young and old will find a lot to laugh at in this film, which has Baumbach’s frothiest dialog and shrewdest characterizations. “Arthritis arthritis?” Josh asks his doctor in dismay when he gets a diagnosis, hoping that perhaps he has some sort of specialized temporary form of arthritis that young people get. “I usually just say ‘arthritis,'” his doctor dryly replies. Josh and Cornelia are mesmerized by the preciously retro decor of Jamie’s and Darby’s apartment, with rows of LPs. “It’s like they have everything we threw out but with them it looks good,” says Cornelia.

Then Jamie’s own documentary starts coming together, and Josh turns from mentor to stepping stone. The documentarian’s obsession with truth-telling takes a twist. And the issue of fathers and sons takes another, as we learn that Cornelia’s father was a one-time mentor of Josh’s and is a possible mentor for Jamie.

The final scene brings us full circle. Baumbach’s past films have been perceptive and wryly funny, sometimes sympathetic, but here we get to see some tenderness for his characters. As former poet laureate Billy Collins says when people use the word some critics are using about this film: “accessible,” this is not “accessible.” It is welcoming.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong language and some drinking and drug use.

Family discussion: Who was right about Jamie’s movie? Ask the older people in your family what they like best about not being young anymore.

If you like this, try: “Metropolitan” and “Kicking and Screaming”

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Drama Movies -- format