Awakenings

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Malcolm Sayer, a shy neurologist (Robin Williams), is assigned to work with patients for the first time after his research funding is cut off. His patients, all but catatonic, are in a ward called “the garden,” because their only treatment consists of “watering and feeding.” Ever since an epidemic of encephalitis (“sleeping sickness”) decades before, they have not spoken or appeared to understand anything that was going on around them. Everyone else has given up hope, but Sayer, approaching them as a researcher, notices that they are capable of reflex reactions, and believes that new medication used for patients with Parkinson’s disease may help these patients, too. Over the objections of the doctors in charge, he gets permission to try it on one patient, Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro).

At first, there is no reaction, but soon Leonard “awakens.” His transformation is so thrilling that Malcolm is easily able to get permission and funding to treat the other patients. They, too, awaken, some more fully than others. A one-time musician does not speak, but plays the piano. Some of them are horrified at the time they have lost. But most are giddy with the pleasures of being alive. Malcolm takes Leonard outside, and Leonard’s embrace of everything around him contrasts sharply with the inhibitions of Malcolm, who hesitates to try anything but his work, and cannot even bring himself to have a cup of coffee with a friendly nurse (Julie Kavner).

Leonard becomes impatient to experience more. He develops a warm friendship with the daughter of another patient in the hospital (Penelope Ann Miller). He asks for permission to leave the hospital on his own. But he becomes hyperactive, angry, and ridden with tics. The medication’s side effects begin to overwhelm him. Malcolm sees that he is losing Leonard, and the other patients know that it must soon happen to them, too.

Soon, all of them are returned to their previous state of catatonia, the only evidence of their brief awakening the greater respect and affection they receive from the staff, and their impact on Malcolm, who heeds Leonard’s call to life by reaching out to the nurse.

Discussion: This movie is based on the book of the same name by neurologist Oliver Sacks, who was the basis for the character Malcolm Sayer. It is a powerful and moving story, brilliantly acted and directed. Like Malcolm, we can all use a reminder to appreciate the pleasures of being alive, including the pleasures that require us to take risks.

Families who see this movie should talk about what the neurologist means when he says, “because the implications of that would be unthinkable?” Why would he prefer to believe that the patients are not aware of what is going on? Were you surprised by the way any of the patients reacted to being “awakened?” Which reaction was most like the way you think you might feel? Why is it hard for Malcolm to interact with other people? How does Leonard change the way Malcolm behaves? Why does the staff treat the patients differently after the awakening, even when they go back the way they were?

Compare this movie to Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” especially Emily’s speech after her death, about what she misses and what she wants the living to be aware of.

Scriptwriter Steven Zaillian also wrote the screenplay for Schindler’s List and wrote and directed Searching for Bobby Fischer. Teens will enjoy reading the Sacks book, and some of his others, especially The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, with astonishing and compassionate descriptions of some of his neurology patients.

Related Tags:

 

Not specified

Shaft

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

This movie gets four stars just for coolness. Samuel L. Jackson, the Armani leather coat, and the Oscar-winning theme song are a match made in heaven, and it is just plain summer-popcorn-movie fun to see them all work it together.

This Shaft goes back further than the original Shaft movie to the days of the cool, ironic, been-there, seen-that, but still a man of integrity at heart characters that Humphrey Bogart played in movies like “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep,” and before that to the sagas of knights and quests and damsels in distress. They will always be outsiders, cleaning up the messes of the insiders, and they will always be stronger, smarter, and more loyal than the people they help. They are always too honest to be able to get along with anyone. Even the law enforcers have to cut too many corners and they never pick the right corners to cut.

What made the original “Shaft” so galvanizing was the notion of a black man in this role, a man who wasn’t trying to impress Spencer Tracy or Rod Steiger as Sidney Poitier was doing in mainstream Hollywood movies of that era. He was not trying to get what whites had. He was completely satisfied living within the black world, and he would take on even a white man who threatened it. In movie terms, he was Malcolm X to Poitier’s Martin Luther King. This was deeply threatening, but deeply exciting, too.

And it was new in a way it can never be new again. The challenge was creating a new version that would be just as electrifying although it was released in a different environment.

Director John Singleton, whose “Furious” character in “Boyz N the Hood” shared a lot of Shaft’s outlook, has updated the movie and the character. This is a story about the nephew of the original Shaft (played again in this movie by Richard Roundtree), who is so far from his private detective uncle’s commitment to independence that he is a policeman. But when a corrupt system lets a rich racist murderer jump bail, Shaft throws his badge at the judge like a ninja weapon and goes out on the street to see that justice is done.

The script is uneven and filled with holes, showing evidence of reported on-set disagreements between the producer, director, and star. Reportedly, too, Jeffrey Wright’s performance as drug dealer Peoples Hernandez was so exciting that the movie was reworked to give him more screen time. That is easy to believe, because he is electrifying. That contributes, however, to the difficulty in managing all the plot threads. Efforts to bring the two bad guys together, the Dominican drug dealer and the preppy racist (Christian Bale) may provide some interesting moments, especially when the drug dealer starts networking in a holding cell, asking the preppy for his business card, but it slows the story down.

But Singleton knows that when things waver, all he has to do is cut back to Jackson and the theme song to keep the audience happy, and it works remarkably well.

Parents should know that there is incessant use of the f-word and graphic violence, including self-inflicted ice-pick wounds and lots of punching and shooting. A character is blatantly racist and another is a drug dealer. Especially troubling is a conclusion that is surprisingly supportive of vigilante-style solutions, despite indications that even Shaft believes that this time the system will result in justice.

Families who see this movie should talk about how Shaft knows when to follow the rules and when to break them, and what would happen if someone with a less perfectly honed sense of justice were to break as many rules (and noses) as Shaft does.

People who like this movie might enjoy seeing the original to compare the way that different directors, different times, and different budgets change the way the story is told.

Related Tags:

 

Not specified

Battlefield Earth

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

In the future, a race of 9-foot-tall, dreadlocked aliens called Psychlos takes over the earth following a nine-minute battle. A thousand year later, the few remaining humans are hunter-gatherers and the evil Psychlos maintain earth as an outpost for mining. Terl (John Travolta), furious at not being allowed to return to the home planet, decides to use humans to mine gold for him to keep. But one of the humans, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), encourages the others to revolt.

There. Now you know everything you need to know about the movie and I’ve saved you the trouble of trying to sit through it. You might think it can’t be that bad because science fiction movies often have cheeseball dialogue and cardboard performances and as long as the special effects and explosions are good, it does not really matter. You would be wrong. This movie was made due to the ceaseless efforts of its star, John Travolta, and it is the most horrible example of vanity filmmaking since Isaac from “The Love Boat” cast himself as “Othello.”

The movie could be used as an exam for film school students on what not to do.

Acting: John Travolta’s performance as the bad guy in this movie is reminiscent not of his brilliant work in movies like “Get Shorty,” “Face/Off” and “Pulp Fiction” but of his character in “Welcome Back Kotter,” Vinnie Barbarino, trying to act tough. His attempts to sound imperious and sarcastic lack any sense of presence or dignity, and then, to make it worse, he follows them with an attempt at a contemptuous laugh that sounds a cross between Faye Dunaway railing about the wire hangers in “Mommy Dearest” and Dr. Evil in “Austin Powers.” Poor Forrest Whitaker does his best with an idiotic role as Terl’s sidekick and whipping boy. Some other actor struggles underneath the worst make-up job since Dan Ackroyd in “Nothing But Trouble.”

Design and effects: The humans look like a hair band on a bad day. The Psychlos look like a hair band on a really bad day. The sets are dark, dank, and uninspired. The explosions are boring. And it is all much too loud.

Dialogue: At some points, we hear the Psychlos’ dialogue as garbled mush resembling the way the clay people used to talk in the old “Flash Gordon” serials. Unfortunately, at times we hear it in English. “Couldn’t you forget to file the report, as a friend?” “As a friend I could forget to file the report, but fortunately, I’m not your friend.” “While you were still learning to spell your name, I was being trained in how to conquer galaxies!” “Never engage in a criminal activity unless you have a patsy to pin everything on.” And my personal favorite: “Jonnie, I know you don’t believe in fate, but I’ve always known this was your destiny.”

Plot: The plot is not very interesting and completely illogical. Even if we assume that the Psychlos really wanted minerals from the earth, if they were so advanced that they could annihilate the human population in nine minutes, how could it take them more than a thousand years to extract it? Jonnie has to figure out a way to produce gold for Terl while he and his men are really secretly using flight simulators somehow still functioning after a thousand years. This is to enable them to learn to fly fighter jets, also somehow still functioning after a thousand years, kind of like the scene in “Sleeper” when Woody Allen starts up a Volkswagen Bug that had been abandoned for hundreds of years, except not intentionally funny. The audience dissolved in laughter at Jonnie’s solution – just get the gold from Fort Knox, which conveniently had been overlooked during the Psychlo’s thousand-year domination of the planet, and was still intact but ready to be emptied out. Somehow a group of humans who are illiterate and have not even discovered the wheel manage to master thousands of years of literal rocket science in a couple of days, transport over to the Psychlos’ planet and blow it all up with one well-placed bomb. Not since that girl learned how to be a ballerina without leaving the house in “Flowers in the Attic” or Rock Hudson went to medical school really really fast so he could invent an operation to cure Jane Wyman’s blindness in “The Magnificent Obsession” has there been such an example of speed learning.

Halfway through the movie, my son leaned over to whisper, “It’s the movie Ed Wood wanted to make but never had the money for.” He is right – this movie has Wood’s genuine fervor overriding genuine ineptitude.

Parents should know that the movie has a lot of sci-fi violence, with lots of explosions, characters in peril and some gory dismemberment. There are a couple of mild expletives and some mild sexual references. Women are treated as sex objects or taken as hostages.

Families who see the movie should talk about the importance of learning and history (Jonnie is inspired by the Declaration of Independence), and they should contrast the way that the Psychlos use “leverage” (blackmail) to manipulate each other with the teamwork and loyalty shown by the humans. They might also want to compare this movie to some sci-fi classics, like the “Star Wars” movies. Or, they might just want to skip this one and watch those instead.

Related Tags:

 

Not specified

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Fans of the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoon show fondly remember its wisecracking sensibility and its refusal to take anything seriously, especially itself. And they remember its terrible puns, planted like time-release capsules in the brains of young baby-boomers, who would find themselves years later, sitting in some high school or college class, thinking “I get it! The college was named Wossamotta U!”

The best thing about this live-action update is that it is true to those qualities. It is so unpretentious that it is impossible to dislike.

Rocky and Bullwinkle, living in the animated world of Frostbite Falls since cancellation of their television show, are called back into action to defeat their long-time foes, Pottsylvanian spies Boris and Natasha (“Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander and “Thomas Crown Affair’s” Rene Russo). The Pottsylvanian bad guys, including boss Fearless Leader (played by co-producer Robert DeNiro), have been brought into the real world and are plotting that perennial bad-guy favorite, total world domination, through television programs that turn everyone into zombies. Young FBI agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) seeks out her childhood heroes to help her save the world.

I think that in that paragraph I spent more time on the plot than the movie did. It’s really just an excuse for some gentle satire (“Ninety-nine percent of the country is slobbering in front of the television!” “What’s so strange about that?”), lots of jokes and guest appearances, and, of course, some really horrible puns. In fact, there are so many bad puns that some just get thrown away, as when the characters rush by a sign near a stream of water that says “Crimea River.” There are also lots of movie references. Robert DeNiro joshes his most famous line when Fearless Leader asks, “You talkin’ to me?” Jonathan Winters reprises his role from “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”, and there’s a “Hail Pottsylvania” song lifted from the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup.” So many stars show up for brief appearances that Whoopi Goldberg’s character is named “Judge Cameo.” Keenan and Kel, Billy Crystal, Randy Quaid, Janeane Garofolo, John Goodman, and a host of “that guy looks familiar” character actors pop up along the way. There’s even a tribute to Roger Ebert’s favorite movie cliché, the fruit cart in the chase scene.

Kids may miss a lot of the jokes that require a knowledge of old movies or the ability to recognize the guest stars or recognize Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” as Rocky and Bullwinkle drive off. But no one loves puns more than a seven-year-old (that’s why they spend so much time asking you riddles) and they will enjoy the interaction of the live and cartoon actors and the silly humor. Parents will enjoy seeing Rocky and Bullwinkle characters cope with the 21st century, as when Boris has to confront the dreaded “bad command or file name” error message and Bullwinkle discovers a new use for email. The actors all do their best to create an impression in what is really a cartoon environment, but Piper Perabo’s task is particularly thankless. Not only is her character Karen not very interesting, but she has to wear the most hideous clothes seen in a non-1970’s era movie in years, including a denim pantsuit that itself should have been enough to send everyone back to Frostbite Falls.

Parents should know that in order to market this movie to older kids by getting a PG rating, the producers have included brief mild language and cartoon-style violence. Very young children may be scared by the machine that turns people into vegetables (literally).

Families who see this movie should discuss Karen’s “ends justify the means” justification for stealing a truck and other dishonest acts, and Rocky’s reply, “But we’re supposed to be the heroes.” Older kids will enjoy the way that the characters are aware that they are in a movie — what people call “breaking down the fourth wall.” Characters talk back to the narrator. When Karen is asked to explain her behavior, she says, “I didn’t write this movie!”

Kids will also be intrigued by the way that Karen listens to the little girl inside her, and her conclusion that “what you believe in when you are young can still be true when you grow up.” That can lead to a good discussion of how many things change as you grow up, but some essentials remain a part of you forever.

Families who enjoy this movie should watch some of the original Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, including the Fractured Fairy Tales and “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” episodes. They’ll also enjoy Jay Ward’s other creations, Dudley Do-Right and George of the Jungle.

Related Tags:

 

Not specified

Where the Money Is

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Two characters stare blankly at the closed door, as flashing lights from the patrol cars circle the room and a voice booms out, “Come out with your hands up!” Henry (Paul Newman) turns to Carol (Linda Fiorentino) and says, “You haven’t lived until you’ve had someone say that to you.”

Henry is a bank robber, released from prison into a nursing home because he is completely incapacitated by a stroke. Or so it appears. Carol, a nurse, thinks he is faking. Behind those vacant eyes she gets a glimpse of a kind of vitality and adventure that mesmerizes her. Every trick she tries to get him to respond, including climbing onto his lap, fails, until she takes one last chance. She was right.

Eventually, it becomes clear to her what she really wants. She wants to do a bank job with him. She once dreamed of thrills and excitement, and now she spends her time teaching frail and elderly people to do wheelchair calisthenics. She does not want to become like the people she works with in the nursing home, at least not without some adventures to remember. Carol has a husband, Wayne (Dermot Mulroney). Though she promises Henry that “he is clutch,” what will he do when things go wrong?

Though far from the glamour of the robbery of the world’s tallest building in “Entrapment,” this is essentially the same idea – a fabulous old coot and a fabulous young beauty plan a heist and take us along. This movie is better. It has some clever dialogue (one line about a toaster is one of the funniest of the year), and it has the impeccable delivery of Newman and Fiorentino, who could make the time of day recording sound riveting.

The great thing about good heist movies is that they are such marvelous puzzles. Here are the obstacles – how do we overcome them? Then here are the things we never anticipated – how do we respond to them? No one is more fun to watch play wicked than Newman and Fiorentino, but the script lets us down by conveniently skipping a few steps. Worse is the ending, which feels, given the less than 90 minute screening time, as though the movie was chopped up before release. It leaves us disappointed, making the characters less loveable scamp adventure-seekers into soul-less sociopaths.

Parents should know that the movie begins with a flashback scene in which Carol and Wayne make out while driving, leading to an accident, there is an R-ish scene in which we see and hear Carol and Wayne having sex, many characters smoke and drink and one uses drugs, and, even considering the conventions of heist movies, this one has an amoral tone that leaves us unsatisfied.

People who enjoy this movie will also like Paul Newman’s performance as a con man and card sharp in the Oscar-winning “The Sting” and as an old west train robber in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Related Tags:

 

Not specified
THE MOVIE MOM® is a registered trademark of Nell Minow. Use of the mark without express consent from Nell Minow constitutes trademark infringement and unfair competition in violation of federal and state laws. All material © Nell Minow 1995-2024, all rights reserved, and no use or republication is permitted without explicit permission. This site hosts Nell Minow’s Movie Mom® archive, with material that originally appeared on Yahoo! Movies, Beliefnet, and other sources. Much of her new material can be found at Rogerebert.com, Huffington Post, and WheretoWatch. Her books include The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies and 101 Must-See Movie Moments, and she can be heard each week on radio stations across the country.

Website Designed by Max LaZebnik