Winter’s Tale

Posted on February 13, 2014 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence and some sensuality
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Supernatural and crime-style violence, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 14, 2014

“Winter’s Tale,” based on the acclaimed novel by Mark Helprin is deeply romantic but also pretty daffy. There are exquisite images and some grand themes but also some clangers, some murky mishmash in the set-up, poorly designed special effects, and one badly botched miscasting that throws everything out of whack.

The exquisite images are not hard to come by with Colin Farrell along with “Downton Abbey’s” Lady Sybil, Jessica Brown Findley with auburn hair that makes her look like a pre-Raphealite dream, and a white horse who looks like he should be pulling Cinderella’s coach. The setting feels like a fairy tale, too, first turn of the 20th century Manhattan and then a fabulous snow-covered mansion out in the New York countryside.

Farrell plays Peter Lake, left behind as a baby in America when his immigrant parents were rejected for health reasons and sent back to Ireland. They put him in a model boat with the nameplate “City of Justice” and set him off toward the shore. When we meet him, he is a thief, formerly allied with a brutal, scar-faced crime boss named Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). Everyone has very literary names in this story except for the horse, who is called Athansor in the book but here is just known as Horse even though, according to one character, he is really a dog.

Now Soames is determined to kill Lake. Rescued once by a mysterious white horse, Lake knows he has to get out of town. He goes on one last expedition to steal enough to pay for his journey. When he is ready to leave just before dawn, the horse refuses to budge. Lake sees the family leaving a luxurious townhouse and decides to see what he can take. He has an intuitive skill with mechanics and easily breaks into the safe.

But one member of the family has stayed behind. Her name is Beverly Penn (Findley) and she is dying of consumption (the 19th century term for tuberculosis). She has to be surrounded by cold all the time, and the family has gone to the country house ahead of her to prepare a tent for her to sleep in. Lake steals nothing but her heart, and loses his own in return. Because she knows she is dying, smaller problems like his being a thief do not really bother her. “What’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen?” she asks him. “I’m beginning to think I haven’t stolen it yet.” Instantly, he knows that his purpose in life is to protect her.

So far, so good, but then the argle bargle about transcending time and everything being connected starts up and it feels like the rules change at random. Or, at least, that a nearly-800 page book lost big chunks in the translation to the screen by writer-director Akiva Goldsman. This relationship between Lake and Penn seems to have some grander purpose, which is why Soames is so determined that he must stop it. He seeks permission from “The Judge,” played by Will Smith. It’s not entirely Smith’s fault that it is at this point things start to completely fall apart. The role is poorly conceived and written and he is catastrophically miscast. Lake ends up getting somehow catapulted into the present day but without his memories. As he tries to piece things together, the pieces of the movie come apart. There are way too many fortune cookie-style pronouncements about eternal battles between good and evil, miracles, destiny, and how we are all connected themselves, even a few from the underused Graham Greene who appears briefly just to throw out some deep thoughts about how God, the devil, angels and demons are just “the newer names” for the forces he describes. Penn says, that “the sicker I become, the more clearly I can see that everything is connected by light.” But by the end, nothing in this movie feels connected to anything.

Parents should know that this film has sexual references and a situation, supernatural and crime violence, some disturbing images and scary surprises, sad death, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: How are the rules for this world established and why are they important? What could only Beverly understand as a result of her illness?

If you like this, try: “Stardust,” “The Adjustment Bureau,” and “The Fountain”

About Last Night

Posted on February 13, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for for sexual content, language and brief drug use
Profanity:	Very strong, crude, and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunkenness, scenes bars, marijuana
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 14, 2014

Kevin Hart, who starred in the surprisingly successful “Ride Along” just last month, is back with a much sharper, funnier comedy that is ideal for making the best use of his brash, motormouth persona. Even more important, for the first time Hart appears opposite someone who is every bit his match, the fabulously talented and knock-out gorgeous Regina Hall. It’s one of the best on-screen romantic pairings since Mae West and W.C. Fields. As a funny post-credit scene shows, she not only kept up with him every step of the way, she challenged him to do better. It is clear he is not only upping his game but having a blast.

David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” was softened a bit for its 1986 movie version, also called “About Last Night,” a romantic comedy starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jim Belushi, and Elizabeth Perkins. But it was still, for its time, provocatively frank in its portrayal of two couples who were navigating a world that was post Mr. Goodbar but pre-AIDS, pre-Tinder, and pre use of the term “booty call.”

Like the original, there is a serious couple and a comic couple. As the movie begins, Bernie (Hart) and Joan (Hall) are each giving their best friends all the details (and I mean all) of the wild, drunken sex within moments of meeting at a bar the night before. Their friends are Danny (Michael Ealy, with a lot of leading man sizzle) and Debbie (Joy Bryant, with one of the best smiles in Hollywood), both serious, stable, and gunshy about relationships following some bad experiences. Bernie and Joan bring their friends along to their second meeting, otherwise known as the “this isn’t a date date.” Bernie and Joan introduce them to each other as “boring,” and that, more than any other reason, prompts them to try to interact and prove that it isn’t true. “I’m not really boring,” Debbie explains. “I just pretend to be so she can be the crazy one.” Debbie and Danny have sex within hours after meeting, uncharacteristic impulsivity for both of them, and then they worry about what it all means.

Danny and Debbie end up moving in together but poor communication, struggles with intimacy, and Danny’s insecurity over losing his job while Debbie is professionally accomplished. No one seems to know what it means to have sex, to live with someone, to say “I love you” first, to decide to get a puppy. And no one is clear about what it should mean — Danny and Debbie want to have a relationship (most of the time) but sometimes it scares them. And when one of them gets scared, the other’s feelings get hurt.

What keeps this part of the story from bogging things down is the energy and oh-no-you-didn’t outrageousness of the bicker/banter, which starts out down and dirty and then gets even down and dirtier. From the opening blast of “Sex Machine” through a series of hilariously explicit conversations swinging back and forth between confident assertions about the most intimate specifics and panicked cluelessness about the basics of any form of interaction out of bed. So, there’s a lot of theories about how to behave and a lot of failure to carry it off. Danny’s problems at work and with an ex are under-written distractions that don’t work as well as the silly fun of a costume party that has Danny and Debbie dressed as Ike and Tina Turner. The energy and chemistry of the four leads keeps things moving so briskly that it diminishes the familiarity of the material. And, more important, it keeps us hoping for a happy ending.

Parents should know that this is a very raunchy comedy. It features extremely explicit sexual references and situations, sexual humor including many jokes about casual sex and various sexual acts and body parts, drinking and drunkenness, drinking games, and marijuana.

Family discussion: Why did Danny keep asking Debbie if they were fighting? Why did Bertie and Joan enjoy making each other angry?

If you like this, try: the original version, starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore (briefly glimpsed in this remake), “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and “Think Like a Man”

Walking with Dinosaurs 3D

Posted on December 19, 2013 at 6:42 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for creature action and peril, and mild rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Dinosaur predator violence and peril, sad death of parents
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 20, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	March 24, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00HDKJESO

Dinosaur movies pretty much all have the same plot. Unless it is a fantasy like “Jurassic Park,” the story is pretty simple: the dinos have to migrate and there are a lot of encounters and adventures along the way. What separates Walking With Dinosaurs 3D from earlier entries like “The Land Before Time” and Disney’s then-state-of-the-art “Dinosaur” is the beauty and majesty of the great creatures, marred a bit by a jokey script with too much focus on poop and barf jokes, silly winks at the audience about the animals’ “future as an oil field,” and distracting anthropomorphism.

A brief prologue set in modern day has a brother and sister visiting their paleontologist uncle (“Star Wars’” Karl Urban) in Alaska. The girl is excited by the broken tooth found by her uncle and happy to accompany him to the dig to see if they can find more bones. But her older brother is bored. “I’m not really into digging for dead things.” He’d rather text his friends about how lame everything is.

But then a bird (voice of John Leguizamo) appears to explain that “Every fossil tells a story.” He transforms into his prehistoric ancestor, garishly colored with trailing trail feathers and toothy-looking protuberances from his beak, to narrate the story of his friend Patchi (voice of Justin Long), from just after hatching as the runt of the nest to adulthood and becoming a father with his own eggs to guard.

Our hero is Patchi, a Pachyrhinosaurus (thick-nosed lizard), whose early run-in with a predator leaves a hole in his frill that helps us identify him as he goes from hatchling to adolescent to adult. He is a cheerful, curious, friendly vegetarian, a bit in the shadow of his alpha male older brother, Scowler (voice of Skylar Stone). Their father is the pack leader who shows the rest of the tribe the way when it is time to migrate. But along the way there is danger, especially from predatory meat-eaters who find the plant-eaters delicious. Patchi’s parents are killed (off-screen) protecting their young. Scowler takes over via head-butt battle, and it looks like he may take over the pretty female Patchi likes as well (Tiya Sircar as Juniper). Will brains triumph over brawn?

Kids in the audience seemed to enjoy the slapstick and potty humor and it is possible that it tempered the scarier themes. It will certainly make fans of the television series happy, and, I hope, inspire curiosity about the real stories that fossils tell. Viewers with more serious interest in dinosaurs will want to take advantage of the Blu-Ray’s “Cretaceous” option and skip the human voices.

Parents should know that this film has dinosaur-era violence, characters in peril, injured and killed, sad deaths of parents, and potty humor.

Family discussion: Why did Patchi and Scowler make different choices? Which was your favorite kind of pre-historic creature and why?

If you like this, try: the television series and visit your local natural history museum to learn more about dinosaurs

Black Nativity

Posted on November 26, 2013 at 5:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for thematic material, language, and a menacing situation
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	References to substance abuse
Violence/ Scariness:	Teenager threatens someone with a gun, references to violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 27, 2013

The poet Langston Hughes wrote a play called “Black Nativity,” a joyous African-American retelling of the story of the birth of Jesus with gospel music, and it has become a holiday perennial. Now it has been adapted by writer/director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) with a framing present-day story of a prodigal daughter, estranged from her parents for 16 years, brought back home at Christmas as “Black Nativity” is being performed in her father’s church.

Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson plays Naima, a single mother in Baltimore who has lost her job and is trying everything she can think of to keep her home. But even with two jobs, she and her 15-year-old son Langston (17-year-old Jacob Latimore), named for the poet, are about to be evicted. Niama has no other options left. She puts Langston on a bus to New York to see the grandparents he has never met, knowing nothing about them or the cause of their estrangement.

Langston is hurt, lost, and angry. He is frustrated that he cannot do more to help his mother and determined to find a way to get her the money she needs to keep their home. Things go badly when his bag is taken by a kid as soon as he gets off the bus and he is arrested trying to return a man’s wallet because the police think he is trying to steal it. In jail, he meets Loot (Tyrese Gibson), who jeeringly calls him “Lunch Money” and makes Langston feel powerless and disrespected.

His grandfather, Reverend Cornell Cobbs (Forest Whitaker), is formal and reserved. His grandmother, Aretha (Angela Bassett) is affectionate but clearly in pain over the past and afraid of being hurt again. Langston will do anything to feel that he is taking control of what is happening to him so he can return home.

Impressionistically told, with songs that serve as monologues, the movie becomes more powerful when Cornell’s church stages a gorgeous production of “Black Nativity” and Langston nods off to have a gospel-inspired dream that features Nas and, as an angel with white hair sticking up like a dandelion ready to make a wish, Mary J. Blige. When Langston sneaks out of the service in a desperate attempt to get the money, it leads to a confrontation revealing in ways he could not anticipate. The concluding scenes of redemption and reunion are tender and transcendent.

Parents should know that the storyline concerns foreclosure and eviction, family estrangement, law-breaking, teen pregnancy, and abandonment. A teenager uses a gun.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Langston’s family want to tell him the truth? What did the watch symbolize to Cornell? What did we learn from Langston’s dream?

If you like this, try: the poetry of Langston Hughes

Frozen

Posted on November 26, 2013 at 5:00 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some action and mild rude humor
Profanity:	Brief schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Scary wolves, snow monster, peril, sad death of parents
Diversity Issues:	Strong female characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 27, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	March 17, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00G5G7K7O

Smart, exciting, funny, sweet, tuneful, and gorgeously animated, the Oscar-winning “Frozen” adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale into a story of two sisters kept apart by a scary secret. Scary wolves, an enormous snow monster, a perilous journey, a warm (yes)-hearted snowman, a loyal reindeer, a sleigh ride, a sensational ice castle, and a little romance keep things moving briskly, but it is the relationship of the sisters that makes this movie something special. There’s a surprisingly strong emotional connection.

The king and queen of Arendelle love their two daughters, Elsa and Anna, and the girls are best friends. Anna loves to ask her big sister to “do the magic,” because Ilsa was born with the special power to create snow and ice. But an accident almost becomes a tragedy, and the trolls who heal Anna remove her memory of her sister’s gift.

Their parents lock the gates around the castle and keep the girls apart. They tell Elsa to “conceal it, don’t feel it.” They want to protect her from those who might be afraid of her ability and protect those she might hurt as she grows up and her gift becomes more powerful. She wears gloves all the time and stays in her room. Anna wanders the castle alone, singing to the paintings, with no one to talk to. Although she no longer remembers the details of their former closeness and the time they spent together, she is devastated that her sister will not see her.

Their parents are lost at sea, and three years later Elsa (Broadway star Idina Menzel) is about to be crowned queen. Anna (Kristen Bell of “Veronica Mars”) is overjoyed to be seeing her sister and excited about meeting the people who will come through the gates that are opened at last. She is charmingly awkward, having had no opportunity to learn any social skills, but that does not seem to matter to the very handsome Prince Hans (Santino Fontana), who proposes just a few hours after they meet. Anna is overjoyed.

But Elsa forbids the marriage and when Anna objects, her frustration and fury explodes, turning the balmy summer into a frozen winter. Elsa runs away, locking herself into a dazzling palace made of ice in the mountains. Anna follows, sure that she can make things right if she can just talk to Elsa about what is going on. And that is where the adventure begins. She meets a rough-hewn ice harvester named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff of “Glee”) and his reindeer Sven and a sunny-spirited, warm-hearted, and familiar-looking snowman named Olaf (Josh Gad of “Thank You for Sharing”). And when they get to the ice palace, things do not turn out the way she expects.

Human animated characters tend to be bland-looking, but the voice talents have enormous spirit that gives them a lot of life. Broadway stars Menzel, Groff (“Spring Awakening”), Bell (“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”), and Gad (“The Book of Mormon”) make the most of a tuneful score featuring the Oscar-winning “Let It Go.” The songs are beautifully acted as well as sung. Highlights include an adorable ode to summer from Olaf, who is not quite clear on the physical properties of snow as temperatures rise, Kristoff’s “duetted” ode to reindeer with Sven (he sings both parts), and Menzel’s powerful “Let it Go.” Bell’s sweet voice is lovely as she sings to the paintings in the castle about her longing for people and then exalts in her love for Prince Hans. There is also a charming ensemble with trolls singing about how we’re all in our own way “fixer-uppers.”

The animation is everything we hope for from Disney, one “how did they do that?” after another, with ice and snow so real and so touchable you may find yourself zipping up your parka in the theater. But the effects and action are all in service of the story, with a contemporary twist that is as welcome as summer’s return.

NOTE: Be sure to get to the theater in time as one of the highlights is the pre-feature short, starring a vintage Mickey Mouse voiced by Walt Disney himself. It is a masterpiece of wit and technology that must be seen a couple of times to fully appreciate. And be sure to stay through the end of the credits for an extra scene re-visiting one of the film’s most powerful characters.

Parents should know that this film include characters in peril, some injuries and action-style scares, monster, the sad deaths of a mother and father, some potty humor, and kissing.

Family discussion: What’s a fixer-upper? Why did Elsa’s parents tell her not to feel? Why was she afraid of her power? Why didn’t her parents want anyone to know the truth, and how did that make Elsa and Anna feel? Who do you think is a love expert?

If you like this, try: “Tangled,” “Brave,” and “The Princess and the Frog”