Mortal Kombat

Posted on April 22, 2021 at 7:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some crude references, language throughout, and strong bloody violence
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Pervasive peril and violence, very gory and disturbing images, characters injured and killed including a child
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 23, 2021
Date Released to DVD:	July 5, 2021

“Mortal Kombat” is a movie based on a video game. So, let’s be real here. We’re not looking for or even expecting complex characters or surprising plot twists. We’re here for the martial arts carnage and a few middle-school-level wisecracks, and that we get.

Character development? I’ve seen more complex backstories on Cabbage Patch Dolls. All you need to know is there are good guys and bad guys and the stakes are the very future of the planet, which, it turns out, turns on, you got it, mortal combat, trial by combat — to the death. Oh, and don’t expect it to make a ton of sense, either. Just sit back and watch the fights.

It begins with a pre-credit sequence set in an edenic 17th century Japan, with a devoted farming couple, their gallant young son, and infant daughter. As the father (Hiroyuki Sanada as Hanzou) is out getting water, bad guys arrive, led by B-Han (Joe Taslim), whose awesome fighting skills are enhanced by his ability to manifest ice. He will later be known as Sub-Zero. He says he is there to avenge, but we do not get any details. Only the baby survives, and she is taken away by a glow-eyed guy who travels via lightning named Lord Raiden (Tadanobu Asano).

Skip ahead to present day, where Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is fighting for $200 a bout and not doing very well. He is devoted to his wife and daughter. And he has a mysterious dragon-shaped birthmark, which identifies him to those in the know as a champion. one of those designated to fight for the good guys. Not much time for narrative here. Or anywhere else in the movie. It’s battle, battle, training, battle all the way.

Which is a good thing, because the martial arts are great and, for those who are fans of the game, let me quote Wikipedia:

The basic Fatalities are finishing moves that allow the victorious characters to end a match in a special way by murdering their defeated, defenseless opponents in a gruesome manner.

The finishing moves/fatalities are suitably gruesome. Like guts falling out of ripped-open torsos and being sliced open by a buzzsaw like a side of beef. And gallons of spurting blood. As for the script, well, it has exactly what you’d expect, a lot of “the prophecy is upon us” and “winning Mortal Kombat cannot be left to chance,” portentousness, “if you fail to discover your inner power you will never defeat your opponent” pep talks, plus some middle-school-level “humor.”

So, fans of the game will enjoy the call-outs to their favorite characters and inside information and those who are not familiar to the game but like to see martial arts fights with lots of gore will be suitably entertained and even look forward to the sequel.

Parents should know that this film has extended and very gory and graphic peril and violence, along with strong and crude language and references.

Family discussion: Which power do you think you could manifest? How do you fight people who do not follow the rules?

If you like this, try: The game and the “Mythic Quest” and “The Guild” television series.

Godzilla vs. Kong

Posted on March 29, 2021 at 11:35 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of creature violence/destruction and brief language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended, intense fantasy monster violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 31, 2021
Date Released to DVD:	June 14, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen! In this corner, we have Godzilla, the atomic-era, skyscraper-sized reptile, destroyer of cities. And in the other corner, it’s King Kong, the skyscraper-sized mammoth gorilla. And no one needs to hear about anything else in this movie beyond the one question about Godzilla vs. Kong: Does King Kong throw a roundhouse punch that lands on Godzilla’s jaw like a guided missile? And the answer I am happy to say, is YES.

Also in the movie: a Titan gets sliced in two by a laser beam, another one rips a towering tree out of the ground and throws it like a javelin, a little girl communicates abstract concepts to a monster via telepathy and sign language, and some humans who say things like, “This is our only chance. We have to take it,” and “the gravitational inversion should be quite intense” and “That is the discovery of the millennium!”

As a refresher, “Titan” is the term for all of the gigantic monsters who have been living in massive underground locations that somehow have sunlight, air, and lots of lush vegetation and rivers. They have been “provoked” into coming into human world, as we’ve seen in the earlier Warner Brothers films, leading up to this Avengers/Justice League-style opportunity to see them all together.

In the earlier films, both Godzilla and Kong found humans who understood them. And they had “happy” endings, with Godzilla going back home after helping save the surface world for humans, and Kong at an isolated island-size sanctuary.

But happy endings don’t stay happy when there are audiences waiting for the next chapter. Godzilla returns and is not happy. Kong, it turns out, has been under observation in a “Truman Show”-style setting, except that unlike Truman he knew all about it, and has decided it’s time to do something different. He shatters the fake blue sky above the island. Scientist Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) is afraid to have him leave the island because the Titan world does not have room for two alphas; if he and Godzilla meet, there will be a battle, to which we say, duh, it’s the title of the movie and the reason we are sitting through the thin layer of exposition gives us a chance to catch our breath between special effects fights.

As happens more often than not, the real bad guy here is neither monster but the big, bad, corporation, headed by personification of greed and hubris Walter Simmons (Demián Bichir). What he cares about is power, in both senses of the word. AS has an idea he admits is crazy. “I love crazy ideas,” Simmons says. “They’ve made me rich.” AS says that if they can get Kong to lead them to the hollow tunnels where the Titans live, they can take him home and get access to the power source which I think will somehow restore the balance between humans and the Titans but to be honest, the details did not really matter to me or, I suspect to anyone else, including the people who wrote it.

Simmon’s daughter goes along to brag about the capacities of the flying machines her rich father paid for and to play the imperious spoiled girl/Veruca Salt role. You can all but hear her say, “I want it NOW!”

Meanwhile, Godzilla fan Millie Bobbie Brown and a friend join up with Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) a podcaster who is both paranoid and right in his suspicions about the Big Bad Corporation.

But, as I said, we’re here for the fight scenes, and there are some lulus, including a whole new monster I won’t spoil except to say it gives us the best of both worlds, “Captain America: Civil War” style, allowing for shifting loyalties and therefore different match-ups. Do we care that the “fringe physics” and veterinary science in the film are iffy at best? We do not. The only technology we care about is the CGI that makes that roundhouse punch land with a satisfying pow, and that is just right.

Parents should know that this film has extended fantasy/monster peril and violence with some gory and graphic images. Characters are injured and killed. There is brief strong language and a bathroom joke.

Family discussion: Why was it so difficult for the humans to agree on the best way to treat the Titans? Would you go along with Madison? Why did Simmons believe Lind? Why did Madison believe Bernie? What makes you decide to believe someone?

If you like this, try: “King Kong: Skull Island,” “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” and some of the more than two dozen earlier films, as well as the “Pacific Rim” films

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Posted on February 11, 2021 at 5:38 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence, mostly comic
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	February 13, 2021
Date Released to DVD:	March 30, 2021

I hereby forgive Jamie Dornan for everything “50 Shades”-related, even his terrible rendition of “Maybe I’m Amazed.” He is such a hoot in “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” and so clearly enjoying himself that I was utterly charmed.

I’m not sure what else it is fair for me to tell you about “Barb and Star,” though, because I want you to have the fun of discovering it for yourself. In order to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, it may be a bit cryptic. The best I can do is tell you that if you are looking for something amiably goofy and offbeat, ranging from gentle comedy to outright surreality, you will enjoy it.

I’m guessing that screenwriters and stars Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumalo (who also write “Bridesmaids”) created the irrepressibly cheerful characters of Barb and Star as way of goofing around together. Think a female, very midwestern version of the Gil Faizon (Kroll) and George St. Geegland “Oh, Hello” characters created by Nick Kroll and John Mulaney. Like them, Wiig and Mumalo have the greatest affection for their characters, recognizing how silly (and poignant) it is for them to be clueless and yet very sure of themselves in what may seem to us to be very constricted little worlds. We may laugh at them, but if we condescend because they are outside of our own world, we will learn about our own refusal to acknowledge the constrictions we live in, ourselves.

Star (short for Starbera) and Barb (not short for anything, just Barb), are middle-aged ladies, one divorced, one widowed, who “work” together at the Jennifer’s Convertibles, the poshest store in tiny Soft Rock, Nebraska. They also live together in a house that probably has tiles with cute sayings like “Kiss the cook!”

They never get tired of talking to each other. Indeed, they spend all day at Jennifer’s Convertibles sitting on one of the convertible sofas sipping coffee and talking to each other, a constant pleasant twittering. When a couple wants to talk to them about actually buying the sofa, they refuse. Which may be one reason they find out soon after that the chain is folding they are laid off.

They get some severance money and when a friend (Wendi McLendon-Covey) tells them about her wonderful Florida vacation (“Tommy Bahama top to bottom and a 24-hour CVS!”), they decide to go. It feels like a big risk. They are very comfortable knowing everything and everyone where they are. But the stories they tell each other are old stories, so maybe it’s time to make some new ones. And so they pack, including travelers’ checks left over from Barb’s wedding. And culottes (helpfully defined for us as a skirt with a cloth divider kind of like very wide shorts). And off they go, entertaining themselves on the airplane by imagining a friend they’d like to have named Trish.

And that is where they meet Edgar (Dornan), who is supposed to be carrying out a nefarious assignment, but is distracted by uncertainty, a hallucinatory gigantic drink called Buried Treasure, and of course Barb and Star. The rest of the film includes a wild musical number, another musical number, a mouse orchestra, a threesome, a child who looks like the kid from “Up” and sings along to Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb as he delivers newspapers (and more), a nefarious villain with a familiar face, a book called How to Know the Person You Love Loves You Even if They Don’t Act Like It Most of the Time, love advice from a crab, and, yes, Tommy Bahama.

The movie sails happily from the silly to the surreal, from the goofy to the even goofier. Director Josh Greenbaum holds it all together so that even the wildest moments feel part of the same world as the gentle jokes of two middle-aged women on their first plane trip. One reason is that he never condescends to the characters. He genuinely loves them, and so we do, too. Watching it is like having champagne bubbles tickle your nose.

Parents should know that this is a light comedy with some very mature material including brief strong language, crude sexual references and non-explicit situations, drinking and drugs, and peril and violence (mostly comic). A mega-villain plots a massive attack and commits an off-camera murder. There are also references to divorce and to the death of a spouse.

Family discussion: Why are Barb and Star such good friends? What surprised you about them?

If you like this, try: “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday,” “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion,” “Spy,” and “Lost in Paris”

The Little Things

Posted on January 27, 2021 at 7:00 am

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity.
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Serial killer crime drama
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 29, 2021
Date Released to DVD:	May 4, 2021

Three Oscar winners cannot save “The Little Things,” a crime thriller that starts out promisingly and about halfway through completely loses its way. It’s almost like the screenplay was created by two different people, or undermined by the director. But John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks,” “The Highwaymen”), both wrote and directed, so he is responsible when the story veers into Gothika Rule territory.

It takes place in 1990, and we begin with a pretty young woman driving on the highway and singing along to the Go-Gos as a sinister motorist behind her makes her uncomfortable and then terrified. The first half sets up two mysteries. The first is the realization that the young woman who has been murdered is the victim of a serial killer, expanding and making more urgent the search to find the one responsible. The detective in charge is Jim Baxter (Rami Malek), who takes the job very seriously, even personally. “We work for her,” he says about the dead woman.

A lower-level officer named Deke Deacon (Denzel Washington) has been sent to Baxter’s police station to pick up some evidence. The second mystery is why the people there are (mostly) so hostile to him and why a clearly experienced, capable, and dedicated has not risen in rank. “And they say Black guys never return to the scene of the crime,” another detective says with acid in his voice. But the forensic pathologist seems more sympathetic, agreeing to spend some time with him when a delay in making the evidence available keeps him there overnight.

There’s “something like it up north,” Deke says, and soon he and Baxter are beginning to work together to find the killer. “Things probably changed a lot since you left,” says Baxter. “Still gotta catch ’em? Then nothing has really changed that much,” Deke says.

So far, so good. As long as Deke and Baxter are behaving like intelligent, dedicated professionals, the movie holds our interest as a police procedural with intriguing characters. But then Jared Leto enters the picture as suspect Albert Sparma and it all begins to fall apart. Baxter seems to have an inexplicable change of personality with a decision so monumentally stupid and contrary to day one of any kind of law enforcement training not to mention basic common sense that it takes us out of the story.

Meanwhile, what we learn about Deke’s past is not as meaningful as the movie clearly thinks it is, making the story’s primary mystery secondary to the point of almost inconsequential. Washington’s is the only performance that continues to hold our attention as Leto hits one creepy note and stays there and Malek is unable to overcome his character’s inconsistency. More important, the swerve in tone undermines the film’s aspirations for moral complexity. The title of the film refers to the little things that are important to get right, whether you are a killer trying to evade justice or law enforcement trying to achieve it. In the case of this movie, the little things are all right but the big thing, the screenplay, is a mess.

Parents should know that this movie is about a serial killer and it has some grisly and graphic images and strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Deke send the package to Baxter? How was that decision tied to his own experience? Why did Flo keep the memento on her keychain?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man” and “Silence of the Lambs”

Our Friend

Posted on January 21, 2021 at 5:35 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking, medication
Violence/ Scariness:	Illness and very sad death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 22, 2021
Date Released to DVD:	March 29, 2021

“Friend” is a category that is near-endless in scope. We use it to describe a work colleague we have lunch with sometimes, someone we’ve seen at parties whose middle name we don’t know, someone we met playing tennis who never heard the story of how our two-year-old locked herself in the bathroom with the cat. We use that word for the people we deliver casseroles to when things get tough, and those who deliver them to us, never crossing the doorway into the house. And yet we use the same word to encompass a person who gave up his job, his home, and his relationship to help people he cares about through as excruciatingly painful and physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting experience as there is, the terminal illness of a young mother. That is the real-life story of Our Friend.

Dakota Johnson plays Nicole Teague, wife of journalist Matthew Teague (Casey Affleck), devoted and endlessly patient mother to Molly and Evangeline, and best friend of Dane (Jason Segel), a shy and sometimes awkward guy who has struggled with depression and with direction. But when Nicole’s diagnosis is dire, he leaves New Orleans to move in with the family, saying simply, “I just feel like I’m supposed to be here right now.”

He tells his girlfriend it will probably be just for a few weeks. But he stays as his vacation days get used up and he loses his job and as her patience gets used up and he loses her. He just stays, never asking how he can help, just quietly providing a sense of stability in the home.

“Our Friend” is based on Matthew Teague’s award-winning story in Esquire. In an interview, I asked Teague about Dane, who, as characters in the movie point out, is not successful in conventional terms but whose quiet and extraordinarily sensitive support defines the term “no greater love.” He said simply, “He is my hero. And it’s pretty great to have a best friend who is also your hero.”

Teague also spoke candidly about the two kinds of health care professionals families encounter in critical illness. The first are only about doing anything medically possible to prolong life. The second come in for hospice care, and will do anything they can to keep the patient comfortable and support the family.

We see both in this film, the second portrayed by the great Cherry Jones as the well-named Faith. Pointedly, as really happened, Dane arrives just as both Nicole and the family dog are diagnosed with cancer, and it is Dane who has to take the dog to the vet and be there for what we euphemistically call being put to sleep. Matthew exhaustedly says he wants to make sure the girls do not associate the two cancers.

We see the impact of the illness on Nicole. As the doctor warns at the beginning, the family will see her unlike anything in their past understanding of who she is. There will be confusion, anger, lashing out, and not just from Nicole. But the focus of the film, as the title indicates, is on the friend, who just shows up and says, “Would it help if I stayed with you for a while?”

The script by Brad Ingelsby (“The Way Back,” “Run All Night”) jumps back and forth in time, as though it is all from Matthew’s memory as he writes the story. It opens with Dane sitting on the porch with the girls as Matthew and Nicole rehearse what they will say to let their daughters know that their mother is dying. Though typed titles tell us where we are in time vis a vis the diagnosis, it is sometimes distracting. But director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, who showed great compassion for damaged characters in “Meagan Leavy,” imbues the film with enormous compassion for its characters and the lead actors, especially Segel, bring endless warmth and humanity to their roles, which always feel fully inhabited. We feel their loss. And we feel the sustaining connections that help them through.

Parents should know that this movie is the story of the illness and death of a young mother, and it is very sad. Characters use strong language and there are references to adultery.

Family discussion: What made Dane different from the other friends? Who has been a Dane in your life? Who would you be a Dane for?

If you like this, try: “50/50,” with Seth Rogen playing a character based on himself in the true story of a someone who helps a young friend with cancer, and “My Life” with Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman