Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted on July 31, 2014 at 5:59 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language
Profanity:	Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended comic book/action-style peril and violence with weapons and fights, many characters injured and killed, brief disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 1, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	December 8, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00N1JQ452

This is the most purely entertaining film of the year, a joyous space romp that all but explodes off the screen with lots of action and even more charm.

Our recent superheros have been complex, often anguished, even downright tortured. It has been a while since we’ve had a charming rogue with a bad attitude but a hero’s heart. Enter Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who keeps trying to get people to call him Star Lord and who carries with him on his interplanetary space travels the “awesome mixtape” he was listening to as a young boy on Earth back in the 1980’s, when his mother died and a spaceship came to suck him up from the ground and take him far, far away. One of the purest pleasures of the film is the soundtrack of 70’s gems like “Ooh Child,” “Come and Get Your Love,” and “Hooked on a Feeling” (the ooga-chacka Blue Swede version) and some others too delicious to give away, wittily juxtaposed with spaceships and aliens.

In a scene that pays homage to the classic opening of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and with a personality that owes a lot to Harrison Ford’s irresistible space rogue Han Solo, Quill enters a chamber and steals a precious orb from a pedestal, only to be stopped by Korath (Djimon Hounsou) and some other scary-looking guys with sci-fi gun-looking things. A lot of people want the orb and are willing to take extreme measures. Evil wants-to-control-the-galaxy guy Ronan (Lee Pace) sends the beautiful but deadly green assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who seems to specialize in colorful space characters) to get it. Also interested are superthief Rocket Racoon, a genetically modified procyonid (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and his sidekick Groot, an enormous, self re-generating talking tree (voice of Vin Diesel). Groot can only say one existential sentence, but it is remarkably expressive. Then there’s Drax (Dave Bautista), who just wants to destroy pretty much everyone, but especially Ronan, who killed his family. He is completely literal, with no capacity to process metaphor (except when the script calls for him not to be, but no need to get overly focused on consistency here).

This motley crew ends up in prison together, where they form a bond through an elaborate escape plan and a lot of quippy dialogue. The low-key, unpretentious “Bad News Bears”/”Dirty Dozen” vibe is refreshing after so much sincerity and angst in the superhero genre. It hits the sweet spot, irreverent without being snarky. And because it is set away from earth we are spared the usual scenes of destroying iconic skylines and monuments. Instead we get a range of richly imagined exotic settings and wild characters, though Lee Pace is under too much make-up and is stuck with a one-note character as Ronan. It is a shame that the bad guy is not as delightfully off-kilter as the good guys, but with five of them, there is plenty to keep us entertained. I don’t want to get too picky (see consistency note above), but the orb’s purpose and powers don’t seem to be thought through too well, either. I don’t ask for much from a McGuffin, just that it (1) propel the storyline and (2) not interfere with the storyline. This one doesn’t quite meet #2.

But deliciously entertaining it still is, with a long-overdue star-making role for Pratt, who has been the best thing in too many second-tier movies and outstanding but under-noticed in top-level films like “Moneyball” and “Zero Dark Thirty.” Director James Gunn, who also co-scripted with first-timer Nicole Perlman, has made the summer popcorn movie of 2014, tremendous fun, and with more heart that we have any reason to expect. Can’t wait for the just-announced part 2.

Parents should know that this film has extended (and quite cool) science fiction/comic book/action-style peril, violence, and action with fighting and various weapons, some characters injured and killed, some disturbing images, some sexual references, and some strong language (two f-words).

Family discussion: What makes this group especially suitable for taking on Ronan? How does this movie differ from other superhero/comic book films?

If you like this, try: “Men in Black” and “The Avengers”

Trailer: Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted on February 19, 2014 at 9:10 am

One of the most anticipated releases of the year is Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” starring Chris Pratt (“The LEGO Movie”), Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and Lee Pace. The trailer looks amazing. I love the use of the Blue Suede version of the Jonathan King “ooga chaka” version of the B.J. Thomas song, “Hooked on a Feeling.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTZ2Tp9yXyM

And for hard-core fanboys and fangirls, here are the detailed analyses from Entertainment Weekly and director James Gunn himself.

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Trailers, Previews, and Clips

American Hustle

Posted on December 19, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“Some of this actually happened,” the movie’s opening shot deadpans. It is true that the United States government both threatened and paid a con man to help them con some bigger fish and then accidentally ended up conning some of the biggest fish ever caught — six US Congressmen and a Senator. David O. Russell directed and co-wrote “American Hustle,” the story of 1970’s fraud, insanity, and betrayal, plus a lot of “what were we thinking” hair and clothes and a rockin’ soundtrack, from “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road” to “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?” and the inevitable “Horse With No Name.”

The storyline has so many layers of double-cross, lies, betrayal, grandiosity, and sheer insanity that the audience may feel they are getting lost, but in a way, that is the point, and of course, that is the decade for it. I mean, look at the home perm on Bradley Cooper, who plays the hotdog FBI agent Ricky DiMaso as something of a cross between Starsky, Hutch, and Huggie Bear.

And then there is the hair on Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld. It can perhaps best be described as an edifice. As the movie begins, we are treated to the painstaking assembly of his pompadoured comb-over, remarkable to witness and a dead-on detail that lets us know who we will be following for the rest of the film. He is a phony, he is all about making the surface look better than it should, and he will do whatever it takes to put forward the image that will sell whatever he is trying to sell. Ascot, check. Pinky rink, check. Briefcase full of cash, check.

Flashback. Rosenfeld is the master of at least half a dozen medium-sized scams when, at a party, across the room, he spies a beautiful woman. It is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). They share a love of Duke Ellington and a talent for re-invention. “My dream” she tells us, “more than anything, was to become anything else than what I was.”

They cook up an almost-legal scam, taking up-front fees on the promise of using their connections to obtain loans from some vaguely defined “London connections.” All is fine until they get busted. And DiMaso, intrigued by their world of deception, persuades them to work for him to bring down some big-time criminals.

But things get complicated and messy. DiMaso’s boss (a terrific Louis C.K.) is reluctant to have federal officers engage in criminal activities, even to catch other criminals. One of the great joys of this film is when the boss keeps trying to tell DiMaso an ice-fishing story that never gets to the point because the hotheaded DiMaso keeps interrupting him. Rosenfeld is married to an unhappy, volatile wife named Rosalyn (a dazzling performance of astonishing depth and mesmerizing assurance by Jennifer Lawrence) and stepfather to her son. He has to find a way to resolve things with the FBI, the mob, and the politicians.

The unfinished ice-fishing story is the point. This is not a nice, linear explanation for what happened. This is a bunch of stories that intersect in a maze of all seven of the deadly sins plus a few that should also be on the list. Brilliant performances by everyone in the cast (including Alessandro Nivola as an FBI official and an unbilled guest star as a guy from the mob) and a witty, insightful script are what hold it together. Lawrence makes us furious at and sorry for her character at the same time, and she is sizzlingly funny.

The purpose of this film is not to illuminate the particular events of Abscam. It is to meditate on the irrepressible American enthusiasm for self-invention and the thicket of betrayal and damage that can be the result. It is about the stories we tell, even the ones like the ice fishing story that never get to make a point. Russell himself can’t resist tweaking the details, making the characters more interesting and sympathetic than they really were. But that wouldn’t be a good story.

Parents should know that this film has very strong adult material including constant bad language, explicit sexual references and situations, nudity, drinking and drug use, extensive criminal behavior and betrayal.

Family discussion: Who are the biggest con artists in this story? How do the characters determine who deserves their loyalty? Was justice done?

If you like this, try: “Flirting with Disaster,” “The Fighter,” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” from the same director

One-Line Movies With the Year’s Best Actors

Posted on December 2, 2013 at 3:59 pm

The actors who created some of this year’s most intriguing performances each appear in a eleven original (very) short films directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. The one-line scripts are from the year’s best screenwriters, from Lake Bell of “In a World” to Sarah Polley of “Stories We Tell” and Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg of “This is the End.” Watch Oprah Winfrey, Michael B. Jordan, Bradley Cooper, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Robert Redford, Forest Whitaker, and more create a world in a moment.

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Actors Shorts

The Hangover Part III

Posted on May 23, 2013 at 11:02 am

Let’s hope that this movie is the much-needed stake in the heart to the triligization of popular movies (okay, with an exception for Richard Linklater’s “Before” series and “Toy Story”). I began to think of the three films as a shell game, with the pea of novelty and humor under just one shell, and shrinking retrospectively as I was dragged through this far distant last in the series, so entirely disappointing that it diminishes any fond memories of the original.

And that is the key word. The first chapter was original. We got to enjoy the speculation and schadenfreude as we lived a night of mostly unintentional debauchery and mayhem backwards. Feral man-child Alan (Zach Galifianakis), cynical Phil (Bradley Cooper), and mild-mannered Stu (Ed Helms), a hapless trio, in Las Vegas for a bachelor party, wake up in the mother of all mornings after and spend most of the movie piecing together the events of the evening before. They have to discover how they ended up with a tiger, a baby, a missing tooth, and a hospital bracelet. And the prospective groom is missing.

In #2, there’s another wedding to make in time, and another morning after. Some people found the second one a garish and cynical retread. I thought it was pretty funny and even managed to find some meta-commentary in the way it rang changes on the first one. And I liked Paul Giamatti.

In #3, director Todd Phillips and Craig Mazin (the execrable “Identity Thief”) take over script duties from the original’s writers, who were off plagiarizing themselves with a college-age version of the very same movie. This one jettisons the backwards-style structure, which is fine, but it plays as though they pulled it out of a slush pile and did a global search and replace to insert the first movie’s characters, who, in one of many increasingly less funny repetitions of almost-jokes we’ve increasingly tired of, are referred to by one character as The Wolf Pack.

Once again, they are separated from Doug (Justin Bartha), who is held hostage by a thug (John Goodman) while they are sent to track down their old frenemy, Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong). We also meet up with the first episode’s characters drug dealer Black Doug and former stripper Jade (the criminally misused Mike Epps and Heather Graham). And here is what we learn:

1. These are really unpleasant people. They are selfish, childish, and uninteresting.

2. A little of Leslie Chow is better than a lot.

3. It is impossible to make the same joke funny three times in a row. The second time may provide a pleasant sensation of remembered humor. The third time is just irritating.

4. It is possible to criminally underuse even John Goodman, completely wasted here.

5. Melissa McCarthy, on the other hand, while also underused, manages to make her five minutes the highlight of the film.

6. It is possible to miss Mike Tyson.

This movie is the bad hangover from the now-tarnished original.

Parents should know that this film includes comic and more serious violence including murder, guns, chases, characters and animals in peril, injured, and killed, extensive drug content, constant very strong language, sexual references (some crude) and situations (male and female nudity), pervasive very bad behavior

Family discussion: Which of the friends makes the best choices? Do you think that the different structure of the story-telling works as well as the original?

If you like this, try: the first “Hangover” movie and “Cedar Rapids”

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Comedy Series/Sequel