The Artist

Posted on January 3, 2012 at 6:14 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for a disturbing image and a crude gesture
Profanity:	No bad language, someone gives the finger
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Fire
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 3, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	June 25, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0059XTUMC

“We didn’t need dialogue,” said Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) unforgettably in Billy Wilder’s classic, “Sunset Boulevard.” “We had faces!” Swanson herself had been a silent film star, but she is best remembered for playing the actress driven mad by being made obsolete when the talkies shifted the spotlight from faces to a snappy way with a wisecrack. Of course, “Sunset Boulevard” is a talkie, filled with brilliant dialogue from Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman, Jr. (“You used to be big in pictures.” “I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small.”) But Desmond was right about the faces. Partly because they were silent for the first decades of film-making, the movies invented a new vocabulary of story-telling and new techniques of acting. When D.W. Griffith pioneered the close-up, the declamatory, projecting to the back of the theater style of acting on the stage began to evolve into the subtle, intimate evocation of thought and emotion the way we see it in real life, with a flicker of an eyelid, the trembling of the corner of the mouth, more eloquent than the most lyrical and evocative words.

“The Artist” is a new film from French writer/director Michel Hazanavicius that evokes this classic era of Hollywood in form and content, set in the moment of transition to talkies, black and white and almost completely silent, with references to “Singin’ in the Rain,” “A Star is Born,” and even “Citizen Kane,” but very much of our moment, and so fresh and inventive that color and sound seem superfluous.

Jean Dujardin plays handsome silent film superstar Georges Valentin. He appears at the opening of his latest film with his favorite co-star, his Jack Russell terrier, dancing, bowing, and basking in the adoration of the audience — and hogging the spotlight to annoy his human co-star (Missy Pyle). Outside the theater, when an enthusiastic fan falls into his path, he laughs good-heartedly. The next morning, a photo of Valentin and his fan appears in the paper and his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) does not find it amusing. The charming whimsy and dazzling smile that work so well on screen do not mollify her.

The fan is a would-be actress named Peppy Miller (the very appealing Argentine actress Bérénice Bejo, wife of Hazanavicius). She gets her first break as a dancer on Valentin’s new film. In a captivating scene, they have to do repeated takes of a scene where they dance together because they keep getting distracted by their immediate sense of connection. In the film within a film, he is a star and she is an extra. But in their real story, it is clear she is a lead.

The sound era arrives and Miller becomes a star while Valentin, stubbornly insisting on making a new silent film, loses his wife, his money, and finally, at auction, everything he owns, including his dinner jacket and portrait. Can there be a happy ending? Well, it’s a movie!

There’s a bit of a backlash to this film, following its rapturous reception in Cannes and year-end awards, with some complaints that it plays to the affections of critics and movie insiders and that it is a nice enough film that benefits from being a valentine to cinema rather than on its own stand-alone merits. That is unfair to the intelligence behind the film and the subtle qualities beyond the quaint settings. Hazanavicius shifted the frames-per-second to be closer to the slightly jerky silent movie standard to invite us back into that world. But it is not just a re-creation of an archaic technique. The characters are real, vivid, and affecting. As shown by its final moment, the movie transcends its story to be more than a tribute to a simpler time. It is a lesson on the power of movies to re-invent a visual vocabulary for the universal language that goes beyond the borders of countries and cultures.

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We Bought a Zoo

Posted on December 22, 2011 at 6:07 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for language and some thematic elements
Profanity:	Some mild crude language, s-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad offscreen deaths of parent and animal, some mild peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 23, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	April 2, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004LWZW9W

This is a good, old-fashioned family movie grounded in Matt Damon’s best-ever performance, inspired by the real-life story of a young widower who, without knowing a lot about animals or running a business, impulsively decided to buy a zoo.

Benjamin Mee (Damon) is a reporter still mourning the loss of his wife. His young daughter Rosie (the very gifted and almost impossibly adorable Maggie Elizabeth Jones) is sad. His teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford) is angry and sad. When Mee’s editor tries to reassign him, Mee realizes that the family needs something completely different. And there is not much as different as a zoo. At first Dylan is even angrier. He has already lost his mother and now he has lost everything else that is familiar to him. And the zoo, which has been closed down will be very expensive to get into operating condition. It makes no sense, as Mee’s practical brother (Thomas Hayden Church) keeps reminding him. But after so much loss, Mee needs to feel that he can help something come alive.

The animals are cared for by Scarlett Johansson, looking sensational without make-up, as Kelly the zookeeper. Mee survived a lot of dangerous situations as a journalist, covering dictators and hurricanes, but now he must be a participant, not an observer, and people, animals, and his family are depending on him. Fortunately, he is handy with tools and has a fix-it frame of mind. Unfortunately, that does not work with teenagers. But Dylan is befriended by Kelly’s niece, played by Elle Fanning, who shows herself already a masterful actor by creating a distinctly different character from her equally sensitive performance earlier this year in “Super 8.”

This could easily have been sit-com-ish or corny — there is a persnickety inspector who has to sign off on the zoo before it can open and a group of quirky but lovable staffers, a mostly-humorous search for an escaped animal, and a discreet but sad farewell to one of the big cats. But director Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”), who co-wrote the script with “The Devil Wore Prada’s” Aline Brosh McKenna, makes it work with the help of a superb soundtrack by Jónsi. And Damon’s performance centers the story with such presence and commitment that even viewers who pride themselves in being impervious to the charms of animals and children will find themselves melting.

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Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

Posted on December 15, 2011 at 7:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence
Profanity:	One s-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action-style peril and violence, bombs, guns, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	December 16, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	April 09, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004EPYZUS

The first live-action film from animation director Brad Bird (“The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles”) is pure adrenalin rush. It has the best stunts of the year and crackerjack mastery of pace in this fourth “Mission: Impossible” movie.

More “inspired by” than “based on” the 1960’s television series, the series features Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, an agent who operates outside even the ultra-clandestine world of spies. The most direct tie to the original program is in the presentation of new assignments. They include video as well as audio four decades later, but the recording still intones, “Your mission, should you decide to accept it…” and end by advising him that if anyone on the team is caught or killed, the US government will disavow any knowledge of the operation. And then it self-destructs — this time with a witty twist.

We begin with a classic spy setting, a document drop gone very wrong. There’s a guy with a laptop in a van. There are guards playing a card game in front of a bank of monitors. And there’s a field operative in some sort of hallway. Ethan has to be broken out of a Russian prison, and for some reason it has to happen before the end of the song, “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” by Dean Martin. A meticulously orchestrated plan is amended on the spot and the guy in the van says, “I don’t know what he’s doing and for some reason I’m helping him.” What Ethan is doing is bringing another prisoner along with him. He sticks by his friends, he explains.

After Ethan is in the wrong place at the wrong time and aborts a mission that takes him to the heart of the Kremlin only to be blamed when the whole building blows up, “the Secretary” (Tom Wilkinson) shows up to say that the entire Mission: Impossible force has been shut down and it is time for “ghost protocol,” a mission that is off the books for those who are already operating off the books, kind of a spy version of double secret probation. I just have to ask — the Secretary of what? The head of the CIA has the title “Director.” Cabinet officers are hardly low profile. But he’s not around long anyway, and with the M:I force disbanded and no time, Ethan has to work with the people already there. That’s field agent Gorgeous (Paula Patton as Jane), tech guy Comic Relief (Simon Pegg as Benji), and Mystery Guest Who Says He is an Analyst But Fights Like a Field Agent (“The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner, soon to be Hawkeye in “The Avengers,” as Brandt).

They’re after a dangerous guy code-named Cobalt (Michael Nyqvist of the Swedish “Dragon Tattoo” series). He’s one of those super-villains who is not only off-the-charts brilliant but also in great shape and with outstanding hand-to-hand combat skills. And if they don’t stop him a lot of very bad stuff is going to happen. The details are not important; they’re just a delivery system for action and stunts that includes a wild chase though a sandstorm, a crazy fight scene in a parking lot with vertical conveyer belts and revolving platforms (has Bird been consulting with his old boss re “Cars 2?”), a fall into fan shaft, kept just above the sharp blades by a magnet suit, and Ethan’s heart-stopping ascension along the side of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, 100 stories above ground with nothing but a pair of very sticky mechanical gloves — and then just one glove. What’s fun is what goes right — all the cool gadgets and clever plans. What’s cooler is when things go wrong — mechanical failures and just plain being outsmarted by a very clever bad guy. Our crew visits world capitals and a secret hideout in a train car and has run-ins with an assassin, a weapons dealer, the Russian police force, and a playboy billionaire. And of course, as all glamorous spy movies must, there’s also a pause for a big, fancy party so our crew can get all gussied up. Though I can never figure out why no one at the party ever notices our crew having conversations with the air Patton is spectacularly beautiful.

Renner is terrific in this, playing very well off of Cruise’s intensity and performing the action scenes a Steve McQueen-style economy of motion (I was pleased to see that he is currently working on a biopic of McQueen). He also shows great comic timing in a scene where he has to force himself to do something dangerous. I liked the way the story tied into the third in the series (director J.J. Abrams of III was a producer on this one). But the post-mission coda was under-scripted, with dialog that would have been out of date in the days of the television series. And even by the low don’t-think-too-hard standards of chase and explosion films, the plot has some big holes. But no one is buying a ticket for witty repartee or realism. This is just for fun and it is enormously entertaining.

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The Next Voice You Hear

Posted on November 28, 2011 at 8:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Discussion of wartime weapons of mass desctruction
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1950
Date Released to DVD:	November 28, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B003916I1C

I was pleased to see that Turner Classic Movies will be showing “The Next Voice You Hear” this afternoon at 2:30 Eastern. It’s a sweet little film with a timely message. It was made in 1950, when the primary technology for delivering news and entertainment to American homes was still radio and the primary concern of American families in the post-WWII era was the threat of the Cold War.

One night there is an unusual announcement on the radio. “The next voice you hear” will be the voice of God. Throughout the world each listener (except, oddly, those behind the Iron Curtain) hears the Voice in his and her own language. The story focuses on a typical American family, Joe and Mary Smith, with a young son and another baby coming soon. Joe is played by James Whitmore and Mary is played by future First Lady Nancy Davis, who would soon be Nancy Reagan. We in the audience never hear the Voice. We just see how it affects the Smiths and the other listeners. At first, people are very unsettled and frightened by God’s messages, but it becomes clear that His message is one of hope and peace.

Yes, it’s old-fashioned and corny. Yes, the first names of the Smiths are intentionally selected to make them even more symbolic. But it is a good film for families and Sunday School classes to to watch together and discuss how God’s timeless message might be delivered via today’s technology.

Hugo

Posted on November 22, 2011 at 7:17 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drunken adult character
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad losses of parents and mistreatment of orphans, characters in peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 23, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	February 27, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B003Y5H5H4

Martin Scorsese’s enchanting “Hugo” is a thrillingly immersive adventure. It is about two orphans trying to solve a mystery. It is about the way that stories help us make sense of life. It stretches from the very beginnings of movies and the transformation of images through imagination into pure magic to technological advances that go beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. Scorsese, perhaps the greatest living master of cinematic storytelling and certainly the most passionate movie fan in history, waited until he and the medium reached a point where 3D was ready to be more than a stunt and become an integral element of the story and with his first film for families he stretches the frame in ways it has never been used before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR-kP-olcpM&feature=youtu.be

It is based on the Caldecott award winning book by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a Parisian orphan in the early 20th century who lives in the train station. His inventor father (Jude Law) was killed in a fire, so he came to live with his drunken uncle (Ray Winstone), who wound and maintained the clocks at the station and slept in a little forgotten room inside the clockworks. Now the uncle has disappeared and Hugo is trying to keep the clocks going so no one will suspect that his uncle is gone. He is also trying to hide from the station inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen), a WWI veteran with an injured hand and leg who likes to catch stray children and send them to the orphanage. Most of all, he is trying to repair a mysterious robotic machine that his father found in a museum.

They had been working on it together and with the help of his father’s notebook and the gears from some toys he has stolen from the station’s toy shop he is getting close. But then the proprietor of the toy shop (Ben Kingsley) has confiscated the notebook. The proprietor’s adopted daughter, the book-loving Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz of “Kick-Ass”) who is hoping for an adventure, holds the key to the mystery in more ways than one. From the opening moment, with ticking sounds that surround us as Hugo peeks out from the number 4 on a huge clock dial. The intricate pendulums, gears, and catwalks hidden inside the upper reaches of the station are enthralling, with brilliant production design by Dante Ferretti that seems to surround us.

Occasionally Scorsese will tease us a bit with 3D effects — the inspector’s nose is one example. But more often it is subtly done. Dust motes glisten several feet in front of the screen to create a sustained illusion of depth. The children’s search takes them to the movies and then to a library where they research the brief history of cinema from its invention by the Lumière brothers and the early audiences who jumped when they saw a train coming toward them on the screen. They see Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a giant clock in “Safety Last” and we get glimpses of classics from Buster Keaton’s “The General” to D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance.” And they meet a film scholar who has the last piece of the puzzle. Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan make the children’s adventure and the movie history mesh like the gears that operate the station clocks and the result is a rare story with something for every age. Scorsese lingers too long on Butterfield’s face and some of the other images and some of the scenes could be trimmed, but by the time it all comes together in a joyous celebration of film it is clear that the ultimate tribute to the cinematic giants is standing on their shoulders. (more…)