Unbroken

Posted on December 24, 2014 at 5:49 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for war violence including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language
Profanity:	Some strong and offensive/abusive language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense wartime peril and violence, characters injured, abused, and killed, some disturbing images, parent strikes a child with a belt
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	December 25, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	March 23, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00HLTDC9O

Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie breaks into the top ranks of American directors with “Unbroken,” showing an exceptional understanding not just of actors, but of tone, scale, and letting the camera tell the story. Working with the magnificent cinematography of Roger Deakins (“True Grit,” “Skyfall”), she adopts a classical style well-suited to the WWII setting, but every choice is careful, thoughtful, and powerful.

Based on the best-seller by Laura Hillenbrand, this is the story of Louis Zamperini, the son of Italian immigrants. He was a rebellious kid who became an Olympic athlete. His bomber plane crashed over the Pacific, and he survived for 47 days at sea, before being captured with one surviving crewmate, by the Japanese. In the prison camp, he was singled out for horrific abuse and repeatedly beaten.

The screenplay by the famously off-beat Joel and Ethan Coen is straightforward, direct, and sincere, keeping the focus on the war years, with the incidents from Zamperini’s past brought it primarily to show us how he relies on his memories to keep going. “Nobody’s chasing me,” he tells his brother who is urging him to run faster as he trains for a race. “I’m chasing you,” his brother tells him.

That internalized sense of mission helps him hold onto the idea of his own power as the brutal Japanese captors try to take everything away from him.

The opening scene puts us in the sky, and Jolie superbly evokes the thrill and the terror of flying on a bombing mission in aircraft that seem barely past the era of the Wright brothers. The crash scene is vertiginously disorienting. Jack O’Connell plays Zamperini with an effortless masculinity, understanding that it has nothing to do with macho posturing, just an imperishable sense of integrity, courage, and honor. O’Connell, Finn Witrock (“Noah”), and Domhnall Gleeson (“About Time”) perfectly capture the rhythms of an experienced crew, some amiable wisecracks and bravado to recognize the perilousness of their situation, but always focused, on task, and always, always, putting the team first.

We become so attached that it is sharply painful to see the characters experience such deprivation and abusive treatment. Japanese pop star Miyavi (real name Takamasa Ishihara) plays the sadistic Mutsushiro Watanabe, known as Bird. He knows of Zamperini’s celebrity as an athlete and sees that he is a symbol to the other prisoners.

If the Bird can break Zamperini, it will crush the morale of the whole camp. So, he singles Zamperini out for beatings and mind games. But Zamperini knows that “we beat them by making it to the end of the war alive.” He simply will not give up, and defining his own sense of what it means to win allows him to maintain a sense of control that is his most powerful weapon.

It is gorgeously filmed, superbly acted, and directed with great sensitivity and compassion, but the real impact of the film comes at the end, when we learn through a few simple titles, what happened to Zamperini after the war. Even Jolie recognizes that there is nothing she can put on screen to match the real-life footage of Zamperini, back in Japan at four days before his 81st birthday, running with the Olympic torch.

Parents should know that this movie includes very intense and disturbing wartime peril and violence, with a plane crash, an extended period lost at sea, and grueling prison camp abuse, and some strong language including racist epithets. School-age bullies harass and punch a character and a parent beats a child with a belt.

Family Discussion: What was the toughest challenge for Louis? Why didn’t he give up? Why did he forgive his captors?

If you like this, try: the book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, and Zamperini’s own book, Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life, along with the films Stalag 17 and The Great Escape, also based on real-life WWII stories of American prisoners of war.

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

Posted on December 18, 2014 at 5:23 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild action, some rude humor and brief language
Profanity:	Brief schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 19, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	March 9, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00SSI2PKO

Fans of the first two “Night at the Museum” films will like this one because it is pretty much the same film. They go to another museum, this time the British Museum in London, and the exhibits come to life and create chaos. The good news: it’s a zippy 90 minutes. The bad news: way too many of those minutes involve a peeing monkey.

The most popular characters from the earlier films are back, including the late Robin Williams in an especially poignant role as Teddy Roosevelt and the late Mickey Rooney as a retired museum guard. Dick Van Dyke almost steals the movie in a brief appearance showing that he can still get down and boogie.

But once again the focus of the story is on Larry (Ben Stiller), museum security guard turned wrangler of the exhibit figures when they come to life at night. The museum director, Dr. McPhee (Ricky Gervais), thinks that Larry has created some sort of special effects, but when a fundraising gala is held at the museum after dark so the guests can marvel at what they think is some kind of animatronic display things go very wrong. The ancient Egyptian tablet that creates the magic is becoming corroded and the result is like a corrupted computer code. The exhibits go wild, and the director is fired.

Young Egyptian King Ahkmenrah (the terrific Rami Malek) says that the only way to figure out what is wrong with the tablet is to take it to his parents, who are exhibits at the British Museum. With Dr. McPhee’s help, Larry brings Ahkmenrah to the British Museum for “conservation.” Once he arrives, he finds that there are some stowaways — Teddy Roosevelt and Sacajawea (the lovely, elegant Mizuo Peck), a prehistoric man who looks very familiar (Stiller again as Laa), Dexter the monkey, and our fierce little toy soldier-sized friends Octavius the Roman centaurian (Steve Coogan) and Jedediah the cowboy (Owen Wilson).

Ahkmenrah is reunited with his parents (Sir Ben Kingsley and Anjali Jay) who explain the problem — like an iPhone, the tablet need to be recharged. All it needs is moonlight, but getting it there in time is a problem, especially when it is stolen by a very confused Sir Lancelot (“Downton Abbey’s” Dan Stevens). Lots of hijinks and slapstick stunts ensue, with a highlight being entry into a vertiginous M.C. Escher drawing.

There are Muppet Movie’s worth of guest appearances, including Rebel Wilson riffing as a security guard. It zips along briskly, not wasting any time in this episode on any kind of love interest for Larry, though there is a dreary detour about Larry’s high school senior son (Skyler Gisondo taking over for Nick Daley) not wanting to go to college. We’re there for the stunts and special effects, and mostly for the dream that maybe some night at some museum, it does all come to life.

Parents should know that this movie includes comic/fantasy peril. Some characters appear to be hurt but are fine. There is also potty humor and brief schoolyard language.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Nick’s decision about the tablet? Which museum would you like to see come to life and why?

If you like this, try: the first two movies — and read about the real legends and histories of Theodore Roosevelt, Camelot, Sacajawea, ancient Egypt, and M.C. Escher. And visit your local museum to imagine your own adventures.

The Imitation Game

Posted on December 4, 2014 at 5:03 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, homophobia, suicide
Date Released to Theaters:	November 21, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	March 30, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00RY85CQI

Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician with an enormous intellect, an almost equally enormous ego, and an almost equally enormous secret. He was one of the founding thinkers behind modern computing and it is his name that we use for the test that determines whether a computer has achieved true artificial intelligence status. The Turing test standard is human conversation. If a human cannot tell whether he or she is communicating with a person or a computer, than the program has passed the Turing test and is true artificial intelligence.

I’m not sure that Alan Turing could have passed the Turing test. Cumberbatch, who also plays a super-smart, arrogant, and obnoxious guy in “Sherlock,” creates a very different character here. Turing himself is an Enigma. In the opening scene, a sort of job interview nightmare in which Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) is trying to interview Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) for a spot on the team working at the famous Bletchley Park estate to break the code the Germans were using to send orders to their troops. If passing as human means meeting even the most minimal standards of civility and responsiveness, Turing failed that interview. He seemed to think that it was he who was interviewing Denniston to determine whether the task was of sufficient interest and import to merit his attention.

Denniston begins to dismiss him. But when Denniston says that everyone thinks the code, known as Enigma, is unbreakable, Turing says briskly, “Let me try, and then we’ll know for sure.” Denniston does not have a better idea or a better option.

The German code is unbreakable because it is constantly changing, so by the time any one message has been decrypted, whatever was learned could not be applied to whatever comes next. The Allies are perpetually behind. [The process, complicated as it is, has been simplified for the purposes of the movie, glossing over the important work done by Polish mathematicians, the contributions of the French, and the challenges faced as the Germans continued to make the Enigma more complicated and impenetrable as the war continued.) While a bunch of brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and puzzle-solvers (including Joan Clarke, played by Keira Knightley) worked away, Turning realized not only that what made the code unbreakable was the inability of any then-existing computational mechanism to perform enough calculations fast enough to decrypt the messages before the code was reconfigured the next morning, but that he could create a machine to do it.

We know how it turned out. But director Morten Tyldum keeps the story gripping on several levels. First, there is the conflict between Turing and just about everyone, and the pressure for immediate results as he is spending a lot of time (years) and money on something no one has ever seen before. Second, there are the interpersonal struggles, and Turning’s internal difficulties. He did want intimacy, and we see in his memories of his first love, a boy at his school. He likes Joan, and is briefly engaged to her. But he was gay at a time when being gay was punishable by prison. Then there are other kinds of secrets. One of the people working on breaking the code may be a spy. And once the code is broken, the Allies have the wrenchingly painful decision about what to do with the information. It’s not just a puzzle. It is statecraft, and terrible compromises and terrible losses are part of the job.

The film adds some unnecessary drama and oversimplifies parts of the story. But it is a powerful, complex drama and a long-overdue tribute to a true hero and visionary.

Parents should know that this film includes wartime themes and images, some disturbing, wrenching moral choices, betrayal, the pressures of being a closeted homosexual when it was a crime, drinking, smoking, and some sexual references.

Family discussion: Do you agree with the decision to withhold the news that the code had been broken? To allow the mole to keep spying?

If you like this, try: Read up on the history of the codebreakers at Bletchley (The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park, Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-boat Codes, 1939-1943) as well as those in Poland and the spies who helped them get the information they needed and try some online version of the Turing Test.

Penguins of Madagascar

Posted on November 25, 2014 at 5:17 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for mild action and some rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 26, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	March 16, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00SK573RU

The most adorable characters from the first three animated “Madagascar” movies were the penguins, the seldom right but never in doubt leader Skipper (Tom McGrath), the often right but never listened to Kowalski (Chris Miller), the literally explosive Rico (Conrad Vernon), and the ever-loyal Private (Christopher Knights). They spun off into their own television series and now they star in their first feature film, a sublimely silly spy farce that has them globe-hopping through exotic locations with a cosmopolitan spy (Benedict Cumberbatch) in pursuit of a dastardly villain known as Dr. Octavious Brine, aka Dave (John Malkovich). It is one of the best family films of the year.

First, we get the origin story, hilariously narrated in the inimitable voice of director/documentarian Werner Herzog. It is Antarctica, and a film crew led by a cartoon Herzog (who did make a movie in Antarctica, “Encounters at the End of the World”) is there to shoot the march of the penguins. But Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico step out of line to rescue an egg that is rolling away, and the decision to think for themselves and to opt for adventure and loyalty to the team over tradition and instinct — plus a more-than-healthy dose of boundless confidence and optimism soon has them floating away from the frozen South Pole and on their way to uncharted lands, or lands uncharted by any penguins anyway. The egg they have saved finally hatches, and while they are a bit distressed to find that the miracle of birth is messier than they thought, they are charmed by the tiny hatchling and especially by the way they imprint on him as the only family he has ever known.

We next see the penguins years later, following the events of Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. They are on a mission to break into that most impenetrable of fortresses, Fort Knox, repository of the US Government’s store of gold. But their goal is not what we might think. And the outcome is not what they expect. They are kidnapped by an enormous purple octopus, brilliantly animated, with every tentacle and crooked tooth creating comic menace. His human identity is Dr. Octavius Brine, well-known geneticist, aficionado of fine cheeses, and regular contributor to NPR pledge drives. But inside that lab coat is his real persona, the evil purple octopus named…Dave.

Yeah, I know, not too scary, right? And that is just one of the immense frustrations Dave has to confront, which is why he has created the green, ominously glowing Medusa serum. No one knows what it does, but it looks pretty evil.

It turns out someone has been tracking Dr. Brine. An international organization of crack spies called the North Wind, led by a wolf so deep undercover his name is classified (so the Penguins call him Classified) is trying to find him. The North Wind and the penguins stop in Venice, Rio, Shanghai (which the penguins think is Ireland) and other world capitals, sometimes working together, sometimes trying to beat each other to Dave and the Medusa serum. It turns out that Dave’s motive is one that will ring very true to kids, especially those with adorable younger siblings.

But of course, all of this is just an excuse for a never-ending stream of jokes. My favorite is Dave’s disastrously non-threatening Skype call as he tries to figure out how to transmit sound and picture at the same time. “It’s like trying to call my parents,” Classified says impatiently. The break-in at Fort Knox is very funny as the penguins roll over to camouflage themselves on a black and white striped floor. And a running joke featuring puns on celebrity names is delivered with such understated dry humor that it never loses its charm. If, as they say in the theater, dying is easy but comedy is hard, silly comedy may be the hardest of all, but here it is done to perfection, one more item to add to the thanks list on this holiday weekend.

Parents should know that this film has brief potty humor, and some comic peril and action (no one hurt).

Family discussion: Why was Dave so jealous of the penguins? Why didn’t Classified want the penguins to help him?

If you like this, try: “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” and the television series “The Penguins of Madagascar”

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay

Posted on November 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense peril and violence with hundreds of deaths, grisly scenes, torture
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	November 21, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	March 6, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00PYLT0OW

It seems no different at first. While the second in the “Hunger Games” series ended with the surprise last-minute rescue of heroine Katniss Everden (Jennifer Lawrence), and the even bigger surprise that insider Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) was secretly helping to organize a rebellion against the fascist dictator President Snow (Donald Sutherland), we begin this first half of the final installment with Katniss gripped by anxiety and terror, listening to the voice of someone we cannot see, calling her “Miss Everdeen,” which sounds respectful, even deferential, but still delivering orders. Is this more of the same? Just another version of the world of Panem where the thinnest gloss of rhetoric about ideals and values is used to disguise the vilest abuse, corruption and even genocide.

No, this is District 13, thought to have been exterminated, but in reality literally driven underground, as much as 40 stories down, as they work to find a way to overthrow President Snow’s totalitarian regime. They are led by Alma Coin (a somber Julianne Moore), President of the rebel forces. Coin can be abrupt, but it is a manifestation of urgency and decisiveness, not dictatorship. Snow dresses in spotless white, surrounded by lush white roses, and the capital city of Panem is a riot of garish, decadent colors. District 13 is all in gray, looking a bit like Janet Jackson’s “Revolution” video, evoking its uniformity in dedication to its goal and seriousness of purpose. Coin is not cynical, but she is realistic, constantly establishing priorities, understanding the consequences but willing to pay the price.

Coin and Heavensbee believe Katniss is what they have been waiting for, a symbol who will communicate to the other districts that the time has come for rebellion. She is the Mockingjay, named for the distinctive birds creation through genetic manipulation mating with natural species. Katniss is a figure whose sacrifice and resilience lend her enormous national credibility. She was made into a celebrity by Snow through the original Hunger Games.

Now Coin wants to use that as a weapon against Snow’s regime. They try to make a “propo” (propaganda) video with CGI effects, but realize that Katniss is too honest to be effective unless she is telling the truth. So, they take her to see what has happened to her home community in District 12. It has been reduced to rubble, with an enormous pile of skeletons of those who died there. And so Katniss is able to produce the outrage and resolve Coin’s forces are looking for in the video.

Katniss agrees to serve as symbol, on condition that the rebel forces rescue the Hunger Games competitors who were left behind, and pardon them for whatever they have done. She believes Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is dead, but then he appears on a televised broadcast hosted by Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), the game show emcee with the sepulchral smile. Her joy turns to horror as she hears him plead for her to stop any opposition to Snow. Has he been tortured? Does he know something she does not?

That seems more likely as the initial attempts at rebellion result in enormous losses, including the firebombing of a hospital. With support from Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), now reluctantly sober, and Effie (Elizabeth Banks), whose adjustment to live without wigs, make-up, and fashions that would make Lady Gaga say “too much” provides much of the film’s comic relief, Katniss struggles with PTSD and with the painful moral dilemmas of asking others to risk their lives for a cause that may be doomed.

The series is a respectful adaptation of the books, but its real strength is not the writing of Suzanne Collins but the performance of Jennifer Lawrence, who is to the film all that Katniss is to the rebellion and more. Once again, Katniss is the heart of the story and Jennifer Lawrence is the heart of the film. In a plot that has her devastated and horrified much of the time, she manages to give a performance that is moving but never an atom out of control. Her conviction and presence is what anchors the film and makes the wildest absurdities of the storyline work. While I am not in favor of splitting the book in two just to double the box office, this version skillfully finds a story arc that comes to a satisfying conclusion while making us eager to see what happens next.

Translation: Brutal dictatorship relying on military force, bombing (including bombing unarmed civilians), shooting, executions, hundreds injured and killed, disturbing images including wounded civilians and piles of skeletons, torture (off screen), some teen kisses

Family discussion: What made Katniss the best choice to symbolize the rebellion? Why was it necessary to have a symbol? Why did President Snow refuse to use the word “rebel?”

If you like this, try: the first two “Hunger Games” films and “The Maze Runner”