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”

Eye in the Sky

Posted on March 10, 2016 at 5:43 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violent images and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Military violence including terrorism, bombs, explosions, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 11, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	June 27, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01CUMHBJS

“Eye in the Sky” is a rare thriller that grips the mind and heart equally. Drones take our military closer than we have ever been before to the people and the activities of the enemy as they remove us further than we have ever been before from the visceral reality of the actions we take based on what we have learned. This film takes us inside the tactical, political, legal, and moral choices faced by the international governments and military in combating terrorism. Director Gavin Hood and screenwriter Guy Hibbert show us the stakes rising and the options shrinking with each passing second, so we in the audience must constantly ask ourselves not just what the characters should do but what we would do.

Colonel Katherine Powell of the British Army (Helen Mirren) is awakened by her phone. Intelligence received via drone indicates that three from the top ten international most wanted list of terrorists may possibly be together at a home in Kenya. The British and the US are especially interested in one couple they have been trying to find for six years. The wife is British and the husband is American. Both countries want them captured and tried at home.

If her team can positively identify the couple and the man they are meeting with, the mission will turn from reconnaissance to capture. But then the drone camera reveals that the danger is far more dire and imminent than they thought. The house is not just a meeting place. They are arming suicide bombers, taping their last statements, and presumably getting ready to send them into densely populated areas for maximum carnage. The people working on this are all over the world, with a military unit in Hawaii that analyzes images from a drone in Kenya, flown by a pilot in Las Vegas, commanded by military personnel in England, under the direction of elected officials who are both away from their countries on business.

The military has the capacity to prevent the suicide bombers from inflicting damage on civilians by blowing them up before they leave. But they are in the middle of a residential area. Is this warfare or an execution? Does it matter that two of the targets are British and US citizens? Does it matter that a little girl is selling bread just outside the house?

The international scope of the mission and the bureaucratic/political decision-making is fascinating. Information inside the house comes from a tiny mini-drone that looks like an insect, flown into the house by an operative nearby who is pretending to be both selling buckets in the open market and playing a video game on a phone. The operative is played by “Captain Phillips” star Barkhad Abdi, a very different and equally impressive performance of great intelligence and thoughtfulness. Information from the outside, including the biometric identification of the suspected terrorists, comes from drones monitored by Americans half a world away. Sitting at screens are Aaron Paul and Phoebe Fox as US military who are diligent and dedicated but not really prepared to blow up the people they’ve been spying on, especially that little girl.

There is a literal ticking time bomb in that house. We can see it. What should we do about it? Should we risk that child’s life to keep the suicide bombers from taking more lives? For the military, including Colonel Powell and her boss, Lieutenant General Frank Benson (the late Alan Rickman, making us miss him even more sharply), it is a mathematical calculus; not simple, but clear. They know they must consult the lawyers, who remind them of the criteria, almost a formula, they are required to apply. But the bureaucrats get nervous, and bump it up to the politicians. Calls must be made all over the world as the officials are participating in various diplomatic events; at one point it is even suggested that the question be put to the President of the United States.

But the film shows us that these questions have already been asked and answered. There is a calculus that is reassuringly quantitative and comprehensive but disturbingly clinical. As we see the people all over the world watching the people inside the house, trying to figure out how to apply those algorithms expressed in acronyms and percentages, the film forces us along with the characters to try to apply formulas to a world that will always confound them.

Parents should know that this movie features military violence including drones, guns, explosions, terrorism, suicide bombers, with some grisly and disturbing images, and very strong language. An extended part of the film focuses on potential “collateral damage” to civilians, including a child, from military action.

Family discussion: How would you improve the decision that was ultimately made? How would you improve the process for making it? Who should decide?

If you like this, try: the documentary “Drone”

Zootopia

Posted on March 2, 2016 at 10:00 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some thematic elements, rude humor and action
Profanity:	A few schoolyard words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Animals are drugged, making them violent
Violence/ Scariness:	Action-style law enforcement peril and violence, chases, bullies, some injuries
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movi
Date Released to Theaters:	March 4, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	June 7, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01B2CX0LU

Simmer down, out there. In this, the craziest of all political moments in US history, some people are going to tell you that Disney’s adorable “Zootopia” is full of subtext about issues like immigration, sexism, terrorism and the role of law enforcement. There are references to current ways of talking about issues of trust and finding a balance between autonomy and community, but if there’s subtext in this bright, wonderfully imagined Oscar-winning story about animals of all sizes and appetites living together, it is Isaiah 11:6: the lion shall lay down with the lamb.

Of course that depends on which lion and which lamb, and, in this movie, it also depends on a farm-town bunny named Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) who wants more than anything to be a cop in the big city of Zootopia. There’s some skepticism; rabbits have never been in the police force, which is made up of bigger, more physically powerful animals. But Judy has studied more and worked harder, acing her police academy studies and even mastering the obstacle course. She arrives ready to arrest lots of bad guys, only to be assigned…parking duty. Undaunted, she is determined to be the very best meter maid ever, so resolutely honorable she even gives herself a ticket.

And Judy is so observant that even on parking duty she notices details that could lead to clues about the city’s biggest crime wave, the disappearance of 14 of the city’s citizens, including, most recently, an otter whose devoted wife (Octavia Spencer) is frantic with worry.

A con artist fox (Jason Bateman, perfectly sly as Nick Wilde) may be able to provide important clues. Judy forces him to help her by threatening to turn him in, and our team is on the case. They may appear to be misfits — predator and prey, law-breaker and law-enforcer, cynic and optimist. But it turns out they are a very good match.

Bateman gives Nick’s voice a sardonic, superficially laid-back but really checking out all the angles tone, and Goodwin brings intelligence and integrity to Judy’s enthusiasm. They complement each other perfectly and their growing appreciation, understanding, and friendship is believable and heartwarming. Other outstanding voice talent includes Jenny Slate as a sheep who is the over-worked and under-appreciated deputy mayor and Idris Elba as a cape buffalo police chief.

The world of Zootopia is wonderfully imagined and the animators have a lot of fun with the drastic scale and biome differences in the Zootopia population. Investigations and chase scenes take us through a variety of ecosystems, from Tundra Town and Sahara Square to the Rainforest District. Like Gulliver or Alice in Wonderland, Judy’s proportionate relationship to the immediate surroundings and characters varies wildly. Her pursuit of a weasel thief (Alan Tudyk) goes through a rodent-occupied area where she is as tall as the buildings and has to step around the cars. And she has to find a way to tuck parking tickets behind the windshield wipers of vehicles that are sized for tiny mice and towering giraffes.

Alert audience members will enjoy marvelously understated and witty details, from references to “The Godfather” and “Breaking Bad” to a Department of Motor vehicles staffed entirely by sloths — one, named Flash, gives new meaning to the corny mug on his desk that says “You want it when?” There are some sly pokes at cultural touchstones, with an app featuring a beloved pop star (voiced by Shakira), a “Lemming Brothers” bank, and even a call-out to Disney’s own unstoppable “Let it Go” powerhouse, “Frozen.”

Judy’s irrepressible optimism and equally irrepressible determination make her an endearing heroine, and Nick’s thinly disguised longing for a reason to believe in her keeps him skeptical but not cynical. The themes of predators and prey finding ways to live together peacefully — and the fear and selfishness that threaten that peace — is a graceful context for their learning to trust one another. Disney has created a film I’ve already seen twice and a place I will happily return to again any time.

Parents should know that this film includes law enforcement-style peril and some violence. Characters are drugged and become aggressive and violent. A character is a con artist who cheats, lies, and steals.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Judy’s father want her to join the police force? How did being bullied affect Nick’s choices? How can we make it possible for everyone to be able to follow whatever dreams they have?

If you like this, try: “Over the Hedge” and Disney’s animal-populated version of “Robin Hood”