A Hologram for the King

Posted on April 19, 2016 at 5:36 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drunkenness, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Some disturbing scenes relating to medical issues
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 22, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	August 8, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01GP4HSH2

“Hologram for the King” is an uneven but engaging and always-watchable film based on the book by Dave Eggers. Like Arthur Miller, David Mamet, and many others, Eggers chose a salesman as a central figure and metaphor to illustrate the mixture of optimism, determination, and despair that is the Sisyphean life of someone whose job is to take no after no after no and keep coming back.

Tom Hanks plays Alan Clay, who has all the people skills of a lifelong salesman and all the desperation of a man who has one last chance to make a deal. He is under intense pressure from his ex-wife and his boss. His daughter has had to take time off from college because he cannot pay the tuition, and her kindness and encouragement just make him more desperate to get the money to get her back in school. And there is a troubling lump on his back that he is not prepared to confront until he

But what he has to sell is an elaborate hologram-based conference call system to the king of Saudi Arabia. Even with his advance team in place he discovers that the set-up is not what he expected. The extensive business and university complex he is hoping to service is not yet built beyond one huge office building. The advance team has been relegated to a tent with no food or wi-fi. And the king is not there and no one knows when he will be there or if he will ever be there.

Alan is so jet-lagged he keeps oversleeping and missing the shuttle, and so he gets transported back and forth day after day of pointless frustration by a genial “driver, guide, hero” named Yousef (Alexander Black). He tries everything he can think of to make progress but is always met with polite deferrals. Drunk one night, he tries to dig out the lump on his back himself and ends up in the hospital, where he is treated by a woman doctor named Zahra (Sarita Choudhury).

Metaphors usually work better in books than in films, and the effort to translate Eggers’ commentary on geopolitical and capitalistic forces like outsourcing is not always successful. But Hanks is ideal as the decent guy trying to do the best for everyone, with a long-practiced salesman’s ability to project good cheer and quiet competence. Director Tom Tykwer (“Run Lola Run”) brings a lot of vitality to the story, beginning with a captivating version of Hanks performing the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.” Choudhury is a warm, wise presence as the doctor trying to be true to herself despite the restrictions of the culture. Whether or not Alan makes the sale, he sells us on the value of trying to make things work.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language, some disturbing images and health issues, drinking and drunkenness, sexual references and situations, and nudity.

Family discussion: What should Alan have done at Schwinn? What qualities made him good at his job?

If you like this, try: “Up in the Air”

The Jungle Book

Posted on April 14, 2016 at 5:32 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some sequences of scary action and peril
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence including bees, a tiger, a snake, and fire
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the film
Date Released to Theaters:	April 15, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	August 29, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01CTNDO58

The camera swoops behind the familiar Disney castle logo to take us to that magical place — you know, like the one that is found second star to the right and straight on ’til morning or through the wardrobe in the attic, down a rabbit hole, or via a house swept up in a Kansas tornado. Just a moment past the castle we are deep, 3D IMAX deep, in the midst of of a lush and luscious jungle, where a mop-headed, big-eyed boy in a red loincloth is running for his life.

The wolves are after him. No, the wolves are with him and a sleek black panther is after him. No, he catches him. No, they are friends. It is Mowgli (newcomer Neel Sethi) and the Bagheera (Sir Ben Kingsley), the panther who discovered him as a toddler and delivered him to the best mother he knew, the wolf Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o) who raised him lovingly along with her other cubs. While he matures more slowly and cannot do some of the things they can to stay safe, he can climb and use tools. Although Raksha tells him not to use “tricks” like pulleys, knots, and scoops, he feels very much a part of the wolf pack and solemnly recites along with the others:

Now this is the Law of the Jungle —
as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper,
but the Wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk
the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,
and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

When the rainy season ends, a dry spell shrinks the river so that the “peace rock” is showing. According to the well-established rules of the jungle, as long as they can see that rock, everyone may drink together in peace, meaning the predators cannot attack their usual prey. The one-eyed tiger with burn scars named Shere Khan (Idris Elba) sees Mowgli and warns the others that as soon as the rock is submerged again and the truce has ended, he will come for the boy and will do whatever it takes to kill him. Raksha reluctantly agrees to let Bagheera take him to the town, where Mowgli can be with other people. On the way, they have encounters with Kaa the mesmerizing snake (Scarlett Johansson), Baloo the easy-going bear (Bill Murray), and King Louis (Christopher Walken), an enormous ape (based on the extinct Gigantopithecus) who presides over an orangutan kingdom living in an ancient temple.

Fans of the Disney animated musical version will be happy to find some familiar moments within the superb score from John Debney.

But this is very much its own film, with stunning integration of the digital animals and the real-life boy. (Disneyphiles may think of Walt’s earliest short films featuring a real-life girl interacting with hand-drawn characters.) The world of the jungle is enchanting and vital, a Rousseauian dream of an Edenic natural world (in this PG film, while there is peril and some characters are injured and killed, any carnivore behavior happens off-screen). Sethi has an engagingly natural quality that is as important in bringing the digital characters to life as the brilliant work of the many, many artists and technicians whose names appear in the credits.

So does the storyline’s respect for this world and its inhabitants. Mowgli does not have many of the physical gifts of his wolf family or his friends in the forest. He does have some skills they do not, and it is heartwarming to see him develop simple tools like a stone ax and a pulley because they are not presented as superior or used to establish dominance, but to help his jungle community and to give thanks for all they have given him. This is gorgeous, inspiring filmmaking.

Parents should know that this movie includes extended peril with some violence and some disturbing images. A theme of the film is the tiger’s determination to kill Mowgli, and characters are injured and killed (including parents).

Family discussion: Why did the wolves and Baloo have different ideas about Mowgli’s “tricks?” Should Mowgli stay in the jungle or live with other humans?

If you like this, try: Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories and two earlier films based on this story, one starring Sabu and the Disney animated version.

Midnight Special

Posted on March 31, 2016 at 5:58 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence and action
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including guns, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 1, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	June 20, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01F5ZY4G0

What would happen if someone appeared with strange special powers? What if the person with special powers was an eight year old boy? Would a religious group consider him an angel or maybe a savior? Would the government consider him a threat? How would his parents protect him and teach him what he needed to know when in so many ways he would be teaching them?

In “Take Shelter,” writer/director Jeff Nichols gave us Michael Shannon as a man with apocalyptic visions that might have been a mental breakdown or might have been the real thing. In “Midnight Special,” Shannon again stars, this time as the father of a boy named Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher of “St. Vincent”) who is being hunted both by a religious cult and the US government.

It takes a while to figure this out. We first hear an Amber alert about a missing child who has been taken from his parents and then we see two men in a seedy motel, the window covered with cardboard, and we have to suspect the worst. The child is sitting on the floor wearing goggles and industrial-grade earmuffs and is covered by a sheet.

It looks grim and gruesome, but as soon as Roy (Shannon) picks up the boy, it is clear that they are devoted to one another. Although the Amber alert referred to a couple as the missing boy’s parents, it is Roy who is Alton’s father. Roy and Alton are traveling with a man named Lucas (Joel Edgerton), who seems very committed to protecting them but not very knowledgeable. He often asks Roy questions about Alton, not to pry or to get to know him better but to be better able to protect the boy. At this point, we still don’t know what they are protecting him from, or why anyone would want to hurt him.

A religious group with women in the pastel prairie attire, with intricate braided hair, is led by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepherd), who leads his congregation in a recital of a string of numbers. Their prayer service is interrupted by the FBI, which takes them all away in buses for questioning. They each send search teams to find the boy. Roy and Lucas take desperate measures to keep him from being found. An official from the NSA (Adam Driver, excellent) tries to figure out how an eight year old boy has access to encrypted national security data.

We begin to learn about Alton’s gifts and vulnerabilities and about the stress both have brought to Roy and the boy’s mother, Sarah (Kirsten Dunst). Lieberher is outstanding, with a gravity and dignity that tell us more about Alton than the special effects. In the movie’s most touching moment, he tells his father not to worry about him. “I like worrying about you,” Roy says.

Parents should know that this film has violence including guns, characters injured and killed, supernatural destruction, adult and child characters in peril, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: Why does Roy say he likes worrying about his son? Who is in the best position to protect someone like Alton?

If you like this, try: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and, for a silly and raunchy story with a similar plot, try “Paul”

Hello, My Name is Doris

Posted on March 17, 2016 at 5:14 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad offscreen death, wrenching emotional confrontations
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	March 18, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	June 12, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01F08XCAG

Thank you, Michael Showalter, for giving American treasure Sally Field a role that gives her a chance to show us not just what she is capable of but what it means to fully inhabit a character with enough sensitivity and tenderness to illuminate the world.

In the very first seconds of the film, where we meet the title character at the funeral of the mother she has spent her life caring for, we are asked to look at the kind of person we prefer to ignore. It is the funeral of the mother she has spent her life caring for, and she is bereft, not only of her mother, but of her sense of who she is and what she is in the world. She is odd and needy and repressed. She wears a jumble of mismatched clothes and a frowsy topknot of a hairpiece. She works with a bunch of brisk, hip young people who ignore her. She has a feisty best friend named Roz, played with enormous gusto by Tyne Daly. Roz is so left wing that she comforts herself about here daughter’s imprisonment for for auto theft, because she stole a fuel-efficient hybrid. And she lives in the same house she grew up in, packed full of stuff that she holds onto because of memories or because some day it might be useful. When Roz points out that her refrigerator contains packets of duck sauce that have been there since the 1970’s, Doris responds with incendiary ferocity: “IT KEEPS!”

There’s someone new in Doris’ office. His name is John Fremont (a warm and magnetic Max Greenfield). Doris, whose emotions have been on ice even longer than the duck sauce, somehow explodes with emotion when she sees him.

With her mother gone, Doris begins to have the kind of agonizing crush that most of us get over by the end of middle school. With the help of Roz’s teenage granddaughter, Doris friends John on Facebook under a pseudonym, and then uses what she learns there to make him think they have interests in common, including a band called Nuclear Winter. Doris decides to attend a Nuclear Winter performance, and like Alice through the looking glass, she finds the club an opposite world, where her thrift shop clothes are suddenly vintage and daring. She and John become friends.

Showalter has three great strengths here. First, as we saw in “Hot Wet American Summer” and the underrated “The Baxter,” he is is a master of impeccable casting. Every role, down to the smallest part, is a small gem, deep bench strength that includes Natasha Lyonne as a co-worker, Beth Behrs as the girl John dates, Elisabeth Reaser as an understanding therapist, and Stephen Root as Doris’ impatient but loving brother. Second is his willingness to combine poignancy with humor, grounding and deepening the story. But most important is Field, who is a wonder in a role that has us rooting for her as well as for Doris.

Parents should know that this movie has very strong language and sad and uncomfortable confrontations.

Family discussion: What should Todd and Doris have done when their mother got sick? Why did Doris want to hold on to one ski?

If you like this, try: Some of Fields’ other films like “Norma Rae,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Murphy’s Romance,” and “Soapdish”

Miracles from Heaven

Posted on March 15, 2016 at 10:11 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for thematic material, including accident and medical issues
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Serious illness and peril involving children, sad death (offscreen)
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 16, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	July 11, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01D1U6V58

Copyright Sony Pictures Entertainment 2016

Christy Wilson Beam’s book title says it all: Miracles from Heaven: A Little Girl and Her Amazing Story of Healing. In the book, she tells the story of her daughter Annabel, critically ill with an incurable digestive disorder, who fell thirty feet from a tree branch. Incredibly, she was not injured. And even more incredibly, possibly even miraculously, she was cured.

All of this happens in the trailer, and the movie’s biggest challenge is that the entire story is not much more than that.

A happy, loving family is catapulted into crisis when their sweet-natured daughter becomes ill. It takes a long time to get the right diagnosis, and then it takes a long time to see the only doctor who may be able to help them. And then she gets sicker and sicker and the family is under more and more pressure. And then she climbs the tree and falls. The rest, despite the best efforts of the always-appealing Jennifer Garner, mostly seems like so much padding. So, so much padding.

Just to make sure we didn’t miss the title’s reminder of where miracles come from, we are told right at the beginning what a miracle is: not explainable by natural or scientific laws. And then we meet the Beam family, as adorable as the ray of sunlight of their name, living a life somewhere between a country song and a Hallmark commercial. Everyone is beautiful, loving, patient, and trusting in God. There are sun-dappled vistas and cute animals. They have a kindly preacher, played with warmth and good humor by John Carroll Lynch.

And then Annabel (a very sweet Kylie Rogers), the middle of their three daughters, gets sick. At first, doctors reassure them that it is a minor problem like lactose intolerance, but it turns out to be a major digestive disorder that distends her stomach and makes it impossible for her to eat.

They are told that there is just one doctor in Boston who may be able to help her, but he is so busy they cannot get an appointment. Desperate, Christy (Garner) brings Annabelle to Boston, goes to the doctor’s office, and begs for a chance to see him. While they wait, they meet a kind-hearted waitress (Queen Latifah in a role that verges on uncomfortably confined to quirky comic relief) who gives them a tour of the city (more padding), until they get a call that the doctor is available. Dr. Durko (an engaging Eugenio Derbez) has a great Patch Adams-style bedside manner, but his diagnosis is a heartbreaking one. Annabel is hospitalized, and shares a room with another very sick little girl, who is comforted by Annabel’s reassurance of God’s love and protection.

And then, back at home, Annabel climbs an old dead tree and falls 30 feet inside.

The most touching and inspiring part of the film is not the “miracle” cure of a fall that somehow caused no serious injuries and rebooted the part of Annabel’s brain that was not telling her digestive system how to work. It is when Christy thinks back and realizes how many miracles the family has experienced through kindness and compassion.

Parents should know that this film is about a very sick little girl and includes scenes of illness, with a sad (offscreen) death.

Family discussion: Why did some of the women in the congregation blame Christy? What tested the family’s faith most? Which moments of kindness meant the most to the family?

If you like this, try: “Heaven is for Real”