Kung Fu Panda 2

Posted on May 26, 2011 at 6:39 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for sequences of martial arts action and mild violence
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Martial arts action and violence, children separated from parents, characters in peril
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	May 27, 2011

Po, the kung-fu master panda (Jack Black), has everything he hoped for in the first movie. He has the martial arts skills to protect and impress the community and he is accepted as a teammate by the greatest champions in China. But he has not yet found inner peace, and that will require an even greater struggle.

Po has not wanted to think about the fact that his father is not a panda, until a glimpse of an all-but-forgotten insignia on an enemy unlocks some memories so painful Po does not want to think about. But a new villain (Gary Oldman as the peacock Lord Shen) is the most vicious Po has faced, and he cannot be defeated unless Po understands the tragedy that links them together. He cannot fight his memories and his adversaries at the same time. Po must make peace with his past to move on to the future.

As with the first one, this film combines exquisite, Asian-influenced design and a story that includes the classic heroic themes and gentle humor. The action sequences are exciting, especially a sensational scene with our heroes hiding out in a dragon costume. Before the peril gets too tense, there is always a laugh to remind us that we are safe with Po. “Ah,” he says, walking into battle, “my old enemy — stairs!”

It has some nice parallels — Po and Lord Shen were both given up by their parents, for different reasons. And both make use of fight techniques that can be used for good or evil. The same gunpowder that creates inspiring firework displays can be weaponized into something that could mean the end of kung fu. Po fights for freedom and for the discipline and skill of martial arts itself.

It opens with some background, beautifully told with traditional shadow puppets. Po’s existential crisis is handled deftly, with the reassuring message that even when the beginning of our story is not happy, that does not have to control who we are.

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Bridesmaids

Posted on May 12, 2011 at 8:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some strong sexuality and language throughout
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Characters drink and one combines a tranquilizer and alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Some comic peril, extreme gastro-intestinal distress played for humor
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 13, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	September 20, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005CHTXY0

There is something intriguingly subversive in “Bridesmaids” that goes beyond the anarchy inherent in all humor and its reliable sub-category, the switch-up. But we’ll talk about those first to get the basics out of the way.

Comedy is almost always about boundaries — pushing through, transgressing, upending — and especially about the boundaries that define our assumptions and expectations. One classic way is substitution or switch: Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon dress as women. So does Dustin Hoffman. It undermines some of our fundamental notions of gender and identity. Then there is good, old-fashioned anarchy, when some uncontrollable force like the Marx Brothers or a leopard or the Cat in the Hat or just a madcap love interest turns the life of the hero upside down. “Bridesmaids” has both. Judd Apatow, one of the most successful writer-director-producers of recent movie comedies, has been justifiably criticized for the guy-centric and bromantic themes of his movies, which over and over again feature boy-men terrified by incomprehensible civilization and maturity as represented by angry and humorless females. His movies have (usually) provided such sturdy and reliable box office performers that they have created an established genre — which means it is ripe for some deconstruction. Enter the ladies. When “Saturday Night Live” MVP Kristen Wiig appeared in a small role in one of Apatow’s films, he invited her to write a script. She and her friend Annie Mumolo (who appears in the film as a terrified airplane passenger) came up with “Bridesmaids,” a female-led comedy that gives the starring roles, the punchlines, the outrageously explicit gross-out comedy, and the character arc to the women. That simple shift alone gives the movie a freshness that is immediately intriguing if sometimes unsettling (see reference to the gross-out comedy). It takes on more than the standards of the typical Apatow-style comedy, which are dear to the heart of its fans. It takes on something even more dear to the hearts of the “Sex in the City”/”Say Yes to the Dress” segment of the audience — the onslaught of wedding drama, with all of its attendant opportunities for humiliation and over-spending, often at the same time. Some in the audience will find the over-the-top scenes like Wiig’s imitation of a part of the male anatomy or the intense gastro-intestinal distress of four women trying on gowns at an exquisitely appointed boutique the most tellingly hilarious moment. But others will find it in a simple scene that merely involves opening an invitation to a wedding shower.

Annie (Wiig) has just about hit rock bottom as the movie begins. Just about every possible element of her life is maximally directed at destroying any remaining shreds of self-esteem. Her bakery has folded. Her boyfriend left her. She is sex-buddies — without the buddy part — with a handsome but completely self-absorbed man (a hilariously sleazy John Hamm). She has a job she hates at a jewelry store and awful brother-and-sister roommates. Her only bright moments are her time with her lifelong friend Lilian (Maya Rudolph), who always makes her feel understood and supported. When Lilian gets engaged, Annie is genuinely thrilled for her and happy to be her maid of honor. But she is sad and bereft and a little jealous, too. Lilian’s life is coming together for a big happily ever after wedding and she feels left behind and scared.

Those feelings are exponentially magnified when Annie attends Lillian’s engagement party and meets her new friend, Helen (Rose Byrne of “Get Him to the Greek”). Helen is wealthy and beautiful and very competitive. Annie starts to get overwhelmed and frantic as she tries to keep up with her obligations — the bachelorette party, the bridal shower, the ultra-expensive bridesmaid gown. Infuriatingly, every time Annie fails, Helen serenely sails through with a gentle, pitying look, and takes over. Along the way, Annie meets a kind-hearted cop (the unassumingly charming Chris O’Dowd of “Pirate Radio”), but she is so scared and sick of herself that his genuine kindness and affection just make her feel worse. And then, when Lilian’s big day comes, Annie gets one more chance to be a true maid of honor.

Wiig and Mumulo are first-time screenwriters and they have not quite figured out the structure of a screenplay. It feels like a string of sketches and goes on about 20 minutes too long (they should lose the “funny drunk” scene for starters). But an bit of an amateurish touch in the writing and the improvisational riffs of dialog work nicely, giving it a fresh, heartfelt quality. It is clear that the actresses had a blast unleashed from the usual film comedy roles of dream date or harpy. Many of the funny lines in the trailers and commercials do not even appear in the film; this is one where the DVD extras will be as much fun as the movie. And there are some sturdy underpinnings that demonstrate real care. Watch Annie’s morning-after scenes with the two men. With one, she leaps out of bed to primp so she can pretend she always looks freshly made up and she lies about what she wants from the relationship and expects him to know the truth. The other invites her to be her truest self, truer than she is really ready for.

Like a chocolate with a crunchy outside shell, this movie has a gooey center. Its biggest surprise is the way it deftly captures the chemistry and rhythms, the deep sense of connection, and — sometimes — the passive-aggressive, deadlier-than-the-male viciousness in female friendships. Its greatest strength, though, is its cast, who act as though they have been waiting all their lives to get up to bat and knock it out of the park. Byrne is just right as the silky mean girl. But in one of the best performances of the year, Melissa McCarthy (“Gilmore Girls,” “Mike and Molly”) steals the film as Lilian’s future sister-in-law and Annie’s fellow bridesmaid. She is fierce, she is fearless, she is wildly hilarious, and she raises the bar for the guys over at atelier Apatow. Gentlemen, over to you.

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Water For Elephants

Posted on April 22, 2011 at 10:02 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for moments of intense violence and sexual content
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some peril and violence, sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 22, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0041KKYHE

According to the ringmaster of the Benzini Brothers Traveling Circus, “a circus survives on blood, sweat, pain and .” In “Water for Elephants” we experience all of these, along with romance, danger, laughter and even a little bit of poetry. This ambitious, colorful story of the travels of a second rate depression era circus is filled with metaphors about life and love—some more successful than others—but it is consistently engaging and a treat for the eyes.

Jacob Jankowski (“Twilight” idol Robert Pattinson) is a young veterinary student on the verge of graduating from Cornell when his world is suddenly turned upside down. Jacob was never wildly enthusiastic about his plans to join his father’s small town veterinary practice but when his parents are killed in a car crash and all of their material possessions are seized by the bank, Jacob ends up with no money, no job, no food, and no place to live, so he sets off on foot down the road.

Tired of walking one night, he abandons his suitcase containing his last few possessions from his old life and jumps a passing freight train. What seems like an anonymous gray train in the dark turns out to be a tumble through the looking glass. As Jacob makes his way through the length of the train, we encounter the different surrealistic worlds of the circus. There is the noisy clown car with its jostling, slap-happy world, the car carrying all the coochie dancers reaches out to him like the sirens reached out to Odysseus (As he makes his way through their car, one of them envelops him in her arms, cooing “I saw you during my act. Want a ride?”). The roustabouts live a grim, desperate life in sparse cars with none of the glamor and glitter of the other cars. Before Jacob joins the roustabouts, one grizzled old timer warns him, “If you have any kind of life to go back to, that’s what you should do.” At the end of the journey is the jewel in the crown, the luxurious train car reserved for ringmaster August Rosenblum (Christoph Waltz of “Inglourious Basterds“) and his beautiful wife (and star attraction) Marlena (Reese Witherspoon).

The Benzini Brothers circus is always on the verge of bankruptcy and as they make their way from town to town they encounter the remains of other small circuses who have died by the side of the road, and whose carcasses are being scavenged for props and talents by the survivors. From one of these failed circuses August purchases a beautiful speckled elephant named Rosie. He acknowledges he won’t be able to pay the men for two weeks but he hopes that Rosie will bring in enough “rubes” so that the circus will be able to survive a while longer.

The care, feeding and training of Rosie becomes a battle of wills between the cruel, pragmatic August and the idealistic, empathetic Jacob. The battle expands to include a struggle for the affections of the beautiful Marlena and the treatment of the roustabouts, climaxing in “The Great Circus Disaster of 1931.”

This film has some visually gorgeous moments, such as the scene with Jacob and August sitting on top of the moving train under the starlit sky talking about life as the beautiful countryside winds by, or the scene with the beautiful and petite Marlena tending to the immense Rosie by lantern light. Like the circus itself, these moments illuminate the poetic grace around us.

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Dumbstruck

Posted on April 21, 2011 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for brief suggestive humor
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	References to substance abuse

Once a year, there is a gathering in Kentucky for people who “talk to themselves and play with dolls for a living” — ventriloquists. “Dumbstruck” is a documentary from Lindsay and Mark Goffman that follows five of them for the year between two of these Vent Haven ConVENTions in what turned out to be the biggest year in history for the tiny little community. One of its members unexpectedly hit the biggest of the big time when Terry Fator went from performing at county fairs to a $100 million headliner contract in Las Vegas after he won “America’s Got Talent.”

For an enduringly popular style of performance, there’s a lot of hating on ventriloquists. Many people think of them as corny or annoying, just above mimes or strange, like the murderous ventriloquist characters played by Anthony Hopkins in “Magic” or Michael Redgrave in “Dead of Night.” When Fator walked on stage for the first time in “America’s Got Talent,” judge David Hasselhoff said, “Oh, no, a ventriloquist.”

But it is impossible not to fall in love with the characters in this film — the human ones, anyway — because it is more than an act from someone who might have just as easily chosen juggling. It is clear that these people become ventriloquists because they have things to say that they just do not feel comfortable saying any other way. I used to think that the reason ventriloquists argued with their characters was to enhance the audience’s perception that the puppet was a real character. But this movie makes it clear that the relationship — and that is truly the word that applies — between the person and the puppet is far deeper and more complex and intriguing, and the passion it requires is profoundly moving. All of us adopt personas for different situations; they just make it more explicit. The art is less about whether the lips move or the voice sounds different than it is about the ability to take a portion of what is inside them and create a complete character from it. After all, the most successful American ventriloquist of the 20th century, Edgar Bergen, performed on the radio.

This film has a former beauty queen, Kim Yeager, whose mother wistfully dreams that her daughter will give up ventriloquism and live a normal life. But Yeager is wholeheartedly committed, performing more than 400 shows in a year, many of them safety demonstrations for schoolchildren. In one of the movie’s most intriguing scenes, she gets some advice from a consultant on her act and ends up completely re-thinking her main character. Then there’s Dan Horn, who was at what used to be considered the height of success for a ventriloquist. He spends most of his time on the lucrative cruise ship bookings. But the long separations are very hard on him and his family. We learn about Wilma Swartz from her nephew, who tells us that the rest of the family has abandoned her but that he is loyal to her because of her kindness to him when he had no one else. She is 6 feet 5 inches tall and one of her puppets is a life-size ostrich. And when she needs help, she finds that the ventriloquist community stands by her. Dylan Burdette is a white middle-schooler from rural Kentucky whose mystified parents are trying to understand why he wants to be a ventriloquist and why he insists on a dummy who is a black “pimp.” And there is Terry Fator, who as this movie was being filmed, became a superstar. He returns to Vent Haven as a homecoming hero, and the Goffmans show great sensitivity and understanding in portraying the mingled emotions of his fellow puppeteers as they share his triumph and wish some of it would rub off on them.

The Goffmans have a lot of affection for their characters, and by the end of the film, you will, too.

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Lord of the Dance 3D

Posted on March 16, 2011 at 6:20 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 17, 2011

The best seat in the house for one of the most popular shows on the planet is “Lord of the Dance 3D,” a concert film that puts the viewers on stage with the thunderously percussive Irish dancers starring and under the direction of Chicago-born Michael Flatley, the show’s “creator, producer, director, and star.” And of course, Lord of the Dance.

There’s no dramatic tension here, either on or off-stage. They try — Flatley explains at the beginning that this show attempted the impossible and everyone said it couldn’t be done, now the pressure is really on because they are coming home to Dublin. But the graphics that open the movie remind us that it has already sold out the biggest venues in the biggest cities in the world and it is fair to expect that an Irish dance show will do pretty well in Ireland.

And there is a folklore-ish sort of storyline in the dances, with a glittery jester-clad sprite waking the dancers with a flute, followed by some sort of good and evil battle that climaxes as the sprite’s flute is snapped in pieces and Flatley’s sparkling Lord of the Dance belt is ripped from his waist. Do you think he can dance it all back to victory?

At its cheesiest, which is very, very cheesy, the battle of the dancers is reminiscent of a (more) twinkle-toed version of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” video with a bit of the Sharks and Jets from “West Side Story,” if the Sharks costumes were inspired by “Star Wars.” It is almost relentlessly entertaining, with wild stage effects that include shooting streams of sparks and images in lights timed to each tap, and many very lovely legs in very, very short skirts dancing up a storm.

It would have added more interest to give us a sense of what goes on backstage and meet some of the almost interchangeable dancers. I would love to have seen the rehearsals to find out how they create the impeccable precision of the dozen and more taps per second as they all but fly across the stage. But the movie keeps us at a distance, seeing only what the live audience sees.

It’s unlikely to thrill those who are not already fans. But the throngs who love to see Irish step-dancing will find that up-close and 3D is an excellent way to enjoy the show.