The Finest Hours

Posted on January 28, 2016 at 5:53 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of peril
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense scenes of peril, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 29, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	May 23, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B019PQ0NZG

“In the Coast Guard they say you gotta go out. They don’t say you gotta come back in.” It was a big nor’easter storm off the coast of Massachusetts. It was February 1952, so communications technology was limited. And not one but two tankers split in half. The most experienced Coast Guard crew went off to rescue the first one. When word came in that a second one was sinking, four young men, all under 25 and two who had never been on a rescue operation, took a small boat out into the storm.

That second ship was the Pendleton. Knowing that they had no more than two to three hours before their half of the tanker would sink into the icy storm-tossed waves, they had to decide who would be in charge. “No officers, no rules, every man for himself,” a crew member says. But they realize they must choose between the man who wanted to take the lifeboats or the engineer they did not know as well who said he had a plan (Casey Affleck, understated and compelling). “They may not like you, but they know to listen to you,” one member of the crew admits.

Based on the true story as told in the book by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman, screenwriters Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson efficiently introduce us to the characters and the challenges they are facing. Chris Pine plays Bernie Webber, a departure from his usual cocky, confident roles. Bernie is a little shy, but very sincere, and he believes in the rules, not in a rigid way but in a careful way. When we first see him, he is about to see the girl he has been talking to on the phone for the first time and he does not want to get out of the car because he is afraid she will not like him.

And of course she does like him. Her name is Miriam (British actress Holliday Grainger, last seen as an evil stepsister in “Cinderella”). Director Craig Gillespie (of the wonderful “Lars and the Real Girl”) gives them just enough time to get invested in their relationship — and to get us invested in it — before the storm comes in.

Gillespie really gets going when the storm does, though, and those scenes are powerful and exciting. We are in the small boat with Webber as the window shatters and the compass is wiped out. The boat is tossed around like a cork, at one point completely on its side, with monster waves crashing down. And we are in the Pendleton’s engine room as seams burst and beams come down. And then we are back on land, as Miriam tries to find out what is going on, tries to get the commanding officer to bring the rescue team back, and then learns what it is to love a man who risks his life as a part of his job.

In a film like this, the most important job of the director is to make sure we understand how daunting, even impossible, the task is, and then to make sure we get to see what goes into surmounting the obstacles. Some of that is missing here, as when we are told that there are too many men on the Pendleton for the small boat to carry, and then somehow it carries them. The compass is out, there’s no communication, and yet somehow Webber’s crew finds the Pendleton. It may be that no one knows how it worked, but it undercuts the drama to skip over some of those details.

The quiet heroism of these characters is movingly portrayed, and these days, when heroes are hard to come by, this is a touching story of selflessness, courage, and dedication, and exactly the kind of story that Disney tells best.

Parents should know that this story concerns a real-life catastrophic storm with many lives lost. There are scenes of very intense peril, some mild language, and social drinking.

Family discussion: How did the men on the tanker decide who should be in charge? How did Bernie decide when to follow the rules and when not to? What did Miriam learn from her visit to the widow’s house?

If you like this, try: “The Perfect Storm” and “The Hunt for Red October”

Trailer: The Finest Hours

Posted on September 11, 2015 at 8:00 am

A heroic action-thriller, “The Finest Hours” is the remarkable true story of the greatest small boat rescue in Coast Guard history. Presented in Digital 3D™ and IMAX® 3D, the film will transport audiences to the heart of the action, creating a fully-immersive cinematic experience on an epic scale. On February 18, 1952, a massive nor’easter struck New England, pummeling towns along the Eastern seaboard and wreaking havoc on the ships caught in its deadly path, including the SS Pendleton, a T-2 oil tanker bound for Boston, which was literally ripped in half, trapping more than 30 sailors inside its rapidly-sinking stern. As the senior officer on board, first assistant engineer Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck) soon realizes it is up to him to take charge of the frightened crew and inspire the men to set aside their differences and work together to ride out one of the worst storms to ever hit the East Coast. Meanwhile, as word of the disaster reaches the U.S. Coast Guard station in Chatham, Massachusetts, Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff (Eric Bana) orders a daring operation to rescue the stranded men. Despite overwhelming odds, four men, led by Coast Guard Captain Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), set out in a wooden lifeboat with an ill-equipped engine and little, if any, means of navigation, facing frigid temperatures, 60-foot high waves and hurricane-force winds.

Z for Zachariah

Posted on August 27, 2015 at 5:31 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for a scene of sexuality, partial nudity, and brief strong language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Apocalyptic themes, murder
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters (race, gender, faith)
Date Released to Theaters:	August 28, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	October 19, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B014DEGTEO

In 1959, a movie called The World, The Flesh And The Devil imagined a post-apocalyptic world with three surviving humans. In the words of the 1960’s television series, “The Mod Squad,” they could be described as “one black, one white, one blond.” Harry Belafonte, Mel Ferrer, and Inger Stevens played characters who might be the last people on earth but who still carried with them the fears, angers, and prejudices of the civilization now destroyed.

Fifty-five years later, “Z for Zachariah” is another post-apocalyptic story about a black man, a white man, and a beautiful younger woman who may be the only survivors following a catastrophic, toxic event that has poisoned the whole world, except, perhaps, for a tiny, edenic farm that appears to be free from deadly radiation. And once again, human frailty creates conflict at the most fundamental level. The themes of the 1959 film reflected post-WWII concerns like the atomic bomb and racial bigotry.

“Z for Zachariah” is based on the posthumously and pseudonymously published book, though there are significant changes.

Ann (Margo Robbie) lives on her family’s farm. She believes her family will return from their scouting expedition. And she believes that she and her dog and her farm were preserved by God. Periodically, she puts on protective gear to go into the deserted town and scavenge from the shelves of the stores. She grows food on the farm and visits the tiny church her father built to play the organ and worship.

Then John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) arrives. He is also wearing protective gear (it turns out he was one of the engineers who designed it), but foolishly removes it to bathe in a pond that has been contaminated. Ann rescues him and nurses him through radiation poisoning.

They are very different. John is a man of science and rationality. He sees that he can create hydropower through the waterfall, but only if he can use the wood from the walls of the church. Ann believes the church is what has kept her alive; John believes repurposing the planks will enable them to establish a sustainable source of food for…well, with a man and a woman, perhaps there will be more people to feed at some point. In the old world, they would never have met, and if they had, they would have had little to say to one another. But they understanding, respect, and affection are beginning to grow, and the need for connection and comfort is near desperate in both of them. And then Caleb (Chris Pine) — a character not in the book — arrives. He has something John cannot have, a community and cultural connection to Ann. He is young and handsome.

Like director Craig Zobel’s last film, “Compliance,” this is also a tense story of three people in an enclosed, isolated space finding their most profound values tested. Even in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, humans still struggle with morality, trust, honesty, power, forgiveness, and love. It is deceptively understated and quietly compelling.

Parents should know that this film features a disturbing apocalyptic setting, discussion of cataclysmic events, sexual references and situations with partial nudity, brief strong language, homicide.

Family discussion: What do Ann and John have in common? What do Ann and Caleb have in common? What happened when John and Caleb were together? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil” and “On the Beach”

Horrible Bosses 2

Posted on November 25, 2014 at 5:58 pm

Maybe it’s just the proximity to the horrible “Dumb and Dumber To,” but the cheerily offensive “Horrible Bosses 2” made me laugh. Full warning — it begins with an elaborate sight gag as our hapless heroes demonstrate their new product on a relentlessly cheery morning show. When the product, a “Shower Buddy” that combines the soap and shampoo with the shower head, demonstrated by Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) does not work at first, Dale (Charlie Day) kneels down behind it to make some quick repairs. His back-and-forth motions in the vicinity of Kurt’s lower torso make it appear to be a sexual act. This is followed by an expression of interest in the Shower Buddy by the TV host (the wonderful Keegan Michael Key), until he hears the name of the company. The trio has combined their three names: Nick, Kurt, and Dale, to sound like a racist epithet. If you’re still with me, then this is your movie.

Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt, and Dale are very happy to be free of their horrible bosses and running their own company, especially when a wealthy entrepreneur named Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz) places a large order. The guys rent a manufacturing facility, hire staff (mostly girls Kurt wants to have sex with, plus a black felon they are scared of and a Latina woman they can’t understand), and go into production. They are proud to report to Hanson ahead of schedule. But it turns out that Hanson planned from the beginning to bankrupt them and take over their company. They are back in the world of horrible bosses again.

They get some advice from one of their old horrible bosses, Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey), now serving his jail term, and from M****F**** Jones (Jamie Foxx), the criminal they sought guidance from in the last movie, not realizing that his crime was only pirating “Snow Falling On Cedars.” They decide the best option is to kidnap Hanson’s spoiled, arrogant son (Chris Pine) and hold him for ransom. Their plot requires some laughing gas as a sedative, so they visit the dental office of Dale’s former horrible boss, the sexually predatory Julia (Jennifer Aniston), not knowing her sex addiction support group is going to be meeting there.

The kidnapping plot does not go well. They are not even sure how to spell kidnapping when they write it with permanent marker on their dry-erase board. But there’s a surprising twist that gives the story a second wind. Waltz and Pine, not known for comedy, are both excellent, especially Pine, clearly enjoying himself enormously. A lot of the humor is sheer outrageousness, much of it racist or sexist or both, but some of it is pleasantly loopy, like a doorbell that plays Badfinger. The three guys have great chemistry. And nobody is better at playing a horrible boss than Spacey. But the highlight of the film is the outtakes over the end credits, showing us that this movie was more fun to make than to watch.

Parents should know that this movie includes extremely crude, offensive, and graphic sexual references and situations, nudity, constant very strong language, and violence including murder.

Family discussion: Who was the worst boss you ever had? Who was the best?

If you like this, try: The first “Horrible Bosses” movie and “Ruthless People”

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Comedy Series/Sequel

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Posted on January 16, 2014 at 6:01 pm

There are three conclusions to draw from this reboot of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. First, it plays like an infomercial for NSA access to, well, pretty much everything. Second, no matter how attractive the actors and how thrilling the score, there is no way to make it exciting to watch someone banging on a keyboard and staring intently at a computer screen as the “loading” indicator creeps along. Third, when spy movies run out of other ideas, they conclude that the fate of the United States and the rest of the world is not enough to hold our attention, so it must be time to kidnap the hero’s girlfriend.

Chris Pine (“Star Trek’s” Captain Kirk) takes over the role of Jack Ryan from Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck to play Tom Clancy’s egghead action hero, Jack Ryan, PhD. Bringing him up to date, we see him as a student at the London School of Economics, helplessly watching the terrorist attack of 9/11 on television, then enlisting in the Marines, being shot down, saving two of his men despite the gravest of injuries, and then, in rehab to learn to walk again, meeting two people who will change his life. One is Cathy, a pretty med student (Keira Knightly, with an American accent). The other is a guy in a suit named Harper who recruits Ryan to work for the CIA, deep undercover…on Wall Street. I really liked the idea that the government would recognize the threat to national security from the too big to fail financial institutions, but it turns out that isn’t it. Ryan was sent to Wall Street to spy on the same old bad guys we always spy on, Russians, this time trying to manipulate our financial markets.

Director Kenneth Branagh’s biggest mistake was in the casting of the villain: Kenneth Branagh. We know he’s evil because he has a sleek, spare, shiny black office and he sits there grimly, listening to an ethereal aria and beating up a guy who was clumsy in giving him a shot. Branagh seems to enjoy playing bad guys — most recently in “The Wild Wild West,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” and “Pirate Radio.” He’s better at playing the uptight bureaucratic type (or the self-important type as he did in “My Week with Marilyn”) than the larger-than-life bad guy needed for a Bond-style film. In fairness, the screenplay, originally written as a stand-alone and then adapted for the Jack Ryan character, lacks the Tom Clancy magic that makes his stories so absorbing, the authenticity of the technological details and the depth of character. Compare this pallid Russian bad guy and his generic compatriots to the superbly crafted, complex Soviet characters in “The Hunt for Red October,” from Sean Connery’s captain to Joss Ackland’s diplomat. The other big problem is the increasing ridiculousness of the storyline. The United States has such a crackerjack team in Moscow that we can send in the espionage equivalent of magic elves to secretly remake a luxury hotel room that has been shattered in a shoot-out/fight/drowning so that in less than a couple of hours it is like new, with just a little wet grout (and of course the removal of the dead body) to show that anything had been changed. And yet, when they need to do the one thing any spy team should learn on day one, breaking into a secure location, the only one who can do it is our boy Jack, the PhD from Wall Street? Once the break-in takes place, it just gets silly, with a lot of intent people banging on keyboards and getting instant access to thousands of data sources and a series of increasingly implausible bang bang with even less plausible banter. Ryan is the increasingly implausible Swiss Army knife of superspies, equally adept at hand-to-hand combat, stunt driving, and hacking.

You’ve got to grade January releases on a curve, and by that standard, it barely passes muster. In any other month, it would be strictly wait for DVD.

Parents should know that this film includes extensive scenes of spy-style peril and violence including chases, crashes, and explosions, guns, knives, drowning, fights, and terrorism, references to painkiller dependency and abuse and alcohol abuse, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: Does this make you feel differently about how much access the government should have to private data? What qualities make a good spy?

If you like this, try: the other Jack Ryan movies, especially “The Hunt for Red October,” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Torn Curtain”