The Wrecking Crew

Posted on March 26, 2015 at 9:48 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for language, thematic elements and smoking images
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some sad stories
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	March 27. 2015

Copyright Lunch Box Entertainment 2015 — Copyright Magnolia 2015

Maybe you like Frank Sinatra and your friend likes the Mamas and Papas. Maybe you’ve argued about who is better, the Beach Boys or Simon and Garfunkel, or maybe you prefer Elvis. Each of those monumentally talented performers had a highly distinctive sound but each of them was backed by the same group of astonishingly talented and remarkably versatile studio musicians known as “The Wrecking Crew.” Like other behind the music documentaries 20 Feet from Stardom, Only the Strong Survive – A Celebration of Soul, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and Muscle Shoals, this is a riveting look at the people just outside spotlight. They may be every bit as good as the performers they stand behind, but for some reason — less charismatic, less determined, less in need of attention, less lucky, they do not get to be stars.

The Wrecking Crew backed up Bing Crosby, Glen Campbell (who was a Wrecking Crew member before he moved to the front of the stage), Herb Alpert, Cher, Nancy Sinatra, and the Monkees. The list of iconic albums that they didn’t play on is shorter than the one they did. Just as unforgettable as the timbre of the voices of superstars are the deedle-deedles or doot-doots (and the dum-dum-dum dum of the “Mission Impossible” theme song) and other musical cues and curlicues that make a song a hit. This movie has the pure joy of creating unforgettable music, and a satisfying chance to appreciate literally unsung heroes, but it also has loss and betrayal and secrets.

This is a love letter from filmmaker Danny Tedesco to his late father, one of the Wrecking Crew musicians, and those like him, who gave their best and were loved all over the world by fans who had no idea who they were. When Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys” tells us that Carol Kaye is the best bass player ever, it is impressive. When she shows us how she played the licks at the heart of “Good Vibrations,” it is soul-stirring. This is also a story that speaks powerfully to all of us who feel that our contributions are not as valued as they should be. And of course, it has some of the greatest music ever made, now to be listened to more thoughtfully and appreciated more than ever.

Parents should know that this movie has some sad stories, some strong language, and smoking.

Family discussion: Would you rather be a star or a studio player and why?

If you like this, try: 20 Feet from Stardom, Only the Strong Survive – A Celebration of Soul, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and Muscle Shoals

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Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Secret Ocean 3D

Posted on March 20, 2015 at 7:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Reference to predators
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 20, 2015

Jean-Michel Cousteau begins this dazzling underwater documentary with archival footage of his father’s pioneering work in showing us life in the other two-thirds of the planet. And then he uses the latest technology to bring those flickering monotone images up to date with spectacular visions of exquisite sea animals shaped like plants, a 30-pound snail that eats food to make it taste bad to predators, a creature that looks like a pile of twigs and has no head and no blood but can regenerate its appendages, a candy-cane striped shrimp, all in a world exotic, strange, and wondrously interdependent with our own. Plankton, we learn from narrator Dr. Sylvia Earle, is not just the source of food for many of the creatures who live in the sea (and who themselves are food for other animals), but the source of much of the oxygen we breathe. The environmental message is subtle, but powerful. These creatures cannot survive without us and we cannot survive without them.

The images are stunning beyond words, but it would have been nice to get more information about the locations and habits of the animals we are observing. Still, this is as spectacular a series of images and as provocative a series of characters as you will see on any screen this year.

Scheduled venues for Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Secret Ocean 3D:

01 – DIGITAL3D – February 20, 2015 – Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland (OR)
02 – IMAX3D – February 27, 2015 – The Henry Ford Museum IMAX Theatre, Dearborn (MI)
03 – DIGITAL3D – March 6, 2015 – Moody Gardens 3D Theater, Galveston (TX)
04 – IMAX3D – March 20, 2015 – Indiana State Museum IMAX 3D Theatre, Indianapolis (IN)
05 – IMAX3D – March 20, 2015 – Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Samuel C. Johnson IMAX, Washington (DC)
06 – IMAX3D – April 3, 2015 – Montreal Science Center Telus IMAX 3D Theater, Montreal (QC)
07 – IMAX3D – April 16, 2015 – New England Aquarium Simons IMAX Theatre, Boston (MA)
08 – IMAX2D (DOME) – No later than April 20, 2015 – Planetario Puebla Omnimax Theater, Puebla (Mexico)
09 – DIGITAL3D – May 22, 2015 – Houston Museum of Natural Science 3D Theater, Houston (TX)
10 – DIGITAL3D – May 23, 2015 – New Mexico Museum of Natural History Lockheed-Martin DYNA Theatre, Albuquerque (NM)
11 – DIGITAL3D – June 12, 2015 – Milwaukee Public Museum 3D Theater, Milwaukee (WI)
12 – DIGITAL3D – July 10, 2015 – American Museum of Natural History 3D Theatre, New York City (NY)
13 – IMAX3D (DIGITAL) – No later than August 30, 2015 – Challenger Learning Center IMAX, Tallahassee (FL)

Insurgent

Posted on March 19, 2015 at 5:52 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action throughout, some sensuality, thematic elements and brief language
Profanity:	Several strong words, one f-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs used for suppression and torture
Violence/ Scariness:	Extensive peril and violence, disturbing images, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	March 20, 2015

This second in the “Divergent” series suffers from sequel-itis. The exuberance of the premise buoyed the first episode, as we and the central character, Tris (Shailene Woodley) explored the post-apocalyptic world that divided all citizens into strictly segregated factions. But now that the foundation has been laid, the next steps are not nearly as exciting.

There is Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). The tasks of the society are assigned according to the qualities of each. Amity are the farmers. Dauntless are a combination of law enforcement and military. Candor are the judges. Erudite make the laws. Abnegation care for everyone, even the factionless, and due to their tradition, culture, and ethos of putting the good of others before themselves, they are the governing body.

But over time, the system has eroded. When Tris is evaluated for assignment to a faction, she is found to be “divergent,” with more than one of the qualities, and that is considered profoundly threatening to the system.

At the end of the last episode, she had joined the Dauntless and survived their brutal series of tests and escaped with Four (Theo James), following a battle that killed her mother, as Jeanine (Kate Winslet), an Erudite, is consolidating her power and turning the community into a dictatorship. As this chapter begins, Tris and Four are hiding out in Amity with Tris’ Erudite brother, Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and a member of Dauntless named Peter (Miles Teller).

Tris chops off her hair so that she spends the rest of the film looking like a cross between Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Her Dauntless side is impatient in the tranquil community of Amity, where people murmur, “Go with happiness,” as they hand out food in the cafeteria line. She is determined to go back into the city and kill Jeanine.

Meanwhile, Jeanine has found a box that was hidden by Tris’ mother (Ashley Judd), and can only be opened by someone who is fully Divergent, possessing in equal amounts the qualities of all five factions. She is certain the box is the key to controlling everyone, and she must get Tris — alive — to get it open.

Four and Tris end up in Candor, where they are given a powerful truth serum. “May the truth set you free,” is not just rhetoric as the serum is administered. It will determine whether Four and Tris are turned over to Jeanine. They are proven to have been telling the truth but it is a painful experience and they end up captured anyway. Tris is forced to endure a series of excruciating “sims” to qualify to open the box (not clear why she couldn’t just try it to see), and the results are not what Jeanine was expecting.

Some of the plot developments, from a book written by an author in her early 20’s, simply cannot hold up to being portrayed onscreen. At times it’s just a weaponized vision of the highly cliquish tables at the high school cafeteria. Even pros like Winslet and Naomi Watts (as a rebel leader) cannot quite put their thinly conceived characters over. But Woodley never lets us forget that the biggest struggle Tris has is not with the repressive regime but with her own fears and regrets. Her sincerity and resolve outshine all the fight scenes and give some depth to the superficiality of the storyline.

Parents should know that this film includes constant peril and intense violence with guns, knives, suicide, and threatened suicide, many characters injured and killed, some disturbing images, a sexual situation, a storyline about repressive government and personal and political betrayal, and several swear words.

Family discussion: Why does Jeanine think she is acting on behalf of the greater good? Why does Caleb? How does our society try to categorize people?

If you like this, try: the “Hunger Games” films and “The Giver” and the books they are based on

The Gunman

Posted on March 19, 2015 at 5:43 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, language and some sexuality

Stars too often produce the kind of movie they want to star in, instead of the kind of movie anyone wants to watch. Co-writer/producer/star Sean Penn is clearly trying to make The Gunman a thinking person’s thriller. You can hear the pitch: a serious look at the exploitation and corruption of emerging economies with lots of slammin’ action! And a chase scene/shootout set at a bullfight!

Unfortunately, it fails as both political drama and action movie. The romance isn’t much, either. Its primary interest is in the many opportunities to see how buff Penn has become. If he had applied as much attention to beefing up the script as he did to beefing up his arms and abs (and showing them off in a surfing scene and a shower scene), the movie would have been much more than this week’s AARP action thriller. Instead, he hired Liam Neeson’s “Taken” director to stage a lot of shootouts in various locations. Been there, seen that, it was better.

Penn plays Jimmy, part of a team providing security in 2006 for humanitarian relief workers in the Republic of Congo, where we are informed that corruption and unrest are rampant in “the world’s deadliest conflict since WWII.”

Jimmy is very much in love with a gorgeous doctor with a beatific smile and gloriously tousled curls named Annie (Jasmine Trinca). She is so beautiful and adores him so completely that we know the moment she says, “See you later,” something will intervene. In case we missed that portent, Jimmy says, “I got a feeling we’re going operational.” He and his team have what we will learn is a “parallel contract with the mining interests.” Machete-wielding marauders create terror everywhere. But corporations with huge revenues at stake are sometimes the beneficiaries of unrest, and sometimes the cause of it. Jimmy is soon “into the wind” following assassination of a political leader who was cancelling all existing agreements with corporations extracting valuable minerals.

Eight years later, Jimmy is back helping to dig wells when three killers come after him, and he realizes that the powerful people who hired him to murder to protect their interests may now have decided to hire someone else to protect their interests further by making sure he never tells anyone what he did for them.

There is some potential in the premise, but it is quickly jettisoned for mind-numbing run-with-a-gun shoot-em-up scenes as battalions of Kevlar-vested guys with automatic weapons come after him. Somehow, he always manages to not only run between the bullets but overpower and outsmart the bad guys, even though he is suffering from brain damage and headaches, except when he isn’t.

He visits his former colleagues so that they can either help him out or try to kill him. Meanwhile, Annie serves the retro girlfriend role: unquestioning adoration, taking her clothes off, hiding behind him, and being taken hostage. And Idris Elba is wasted in a small role that primarily consists of a speech about building a treehouse, but at least he gets to talk about something, which is more than you can say about the Africans in the film. For a movie that is supposed to be politically significant, it’s awfully retro-colonialist.

In the closing credits we are helpfully informed that despite the climactic bullfighting scene, Barcelona no longer allows bullfighting within its jurisdiction. No such disclaimers are made about the various atrocities — political, corporate, or cinematic.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong violence with many characters injured and killed, assorted different weapons, torture, execution and assassination, references to rape, a sexual situation, drinking, smoking, pharmaceuticals, and constant strong language.

Family discussion: How did Jim, Cox, Felix, and Stanley respond differently to the choices they made? What efforts are underway to provide more transparency in the impact that multinational corporations have in emerging economies?

If you like this, try: “Blood Diamond” and “The Constant Gardener”

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Drama Movies -- format Thriller

Merchants of Doubt

Posted on March 5, 2015 at 5:30 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for brief strong language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Discussion of tobacco
Violence/ Scariness:	References to injury and environmental degredation
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 6, 2015

Do you remember the tobacco executives standing up before a Congressional Committee, their right hands raised, each of them swearing that they did not believe that tobacco caused cancer? That was in 1994, three decades after the US Surgeon General’s report showing the adverse health effects of cigarettes. Any other consumer product with that much proof of its destructive impact would have been restricted or banned long ago. But the tobacco industry was able to delay or prevent meaningful government action through a series of public relations maneuvers and strategic lobbying and campaign contributions. Ultimately, tobacco consumption was reduced in the United States. Television ads were banned. Warning labels were required. Very big fines were assessed following lawsuits that revealed a history of intentional deception as toxic as cigarettes themselves.

But the legacy of using corporate money to undermine science and thus to undermine public policy as well may be the most devastating effect of all. As documented in “Merchants of Doubt,” based on Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, corporations have used distraction, delay, and downright deceit to create pretend opposition to scientific findings. Their tactics have included those as sophisticated and complex as the creation of fake “public interest groups” with secret funding by corporations and their trade associations, to those as simple and old-fashioned as releasing the private contact information of the scientists and encouraging a barrage of bullying threats and personal attacks.

One of the film’s most devastating segments deals with a two-year, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by two Chicago Tribune reporters about how the tobacco companies thwarted potential regulation by fraudulently shifting the blame for home fires from cigarettes to the failure of furniture to be coated with toxic flame retardant chemicals. Fake experts and fake studies work because no one, neither the journalists who are hard-wired to present “both sides” nor the law-makers and regulators who are often looking for a way to justify the decisions their corporate funders are supporting, ever make an effort to find out the experience, expertise, reputation, or conflicts of interests of these industry-supported “experts.”

The focus now is climate change, with more than 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists agreed that it is a severe, even critical problem and millions of dollars spent by the fossil fuel industries to distort, delay, and deceive. In the film, former Congressman Robert Inglis, who identified himself as having been elected from “the reddest county in the reddest state in the country” (South Carolina), and who considers himself a hard-core conservative, lost his bid for reelection because, after a visit to Antarctica where he witnessed the evidence of climate change, he was considered a traitor, perhaps less by his constituents than by the industry funding anyone who would oppose government action on climate change.

No matter what you think about tobacco, climate change, or fire retardants, this is an essential film because it addresses the key issue of trust. Whatever policies you support, everyone should agree that they must be grounded in the clearest and best-documented facts. Who can we believe? What questions should we ask? As Senator Whitehouse said last week, “You can believe every single major American scientific society, or you can believe the Senator with the snowball.”

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Documentary Movies -- format Politics