Soul Surfer

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm

Bethany Hamilton (AnnaSophia Robb) tells us that as a child she spent more time wet than dry. She is the daughter of competitive surfers, home-schooled so that nothing would interfere with her training or her opportunity to go out into the water when the waves were good. And then one morning, when she was 13, a shark bit off her arm up to the shoulder. Determined that nothing could stop her from doing what she loved, she was back on her board a month later.

Two powerful forces kept her going, Bethany’s passion for surfing and her faith in God. This movie does a better job with the first than the second. The surfing scenes both before and after her injury are gorgeously portrayed, taking us inside the waves so that you will almost feel the spray on your face as the surfers rip around the swells. Writer-director Sean McNamara and the talented surfers on screen convey not just the experience of harnessing the power of the ocean but the thrilling rush of it as well. But he does not bring the same energy to the faith-based part of the film, which feels flat and more dutiful than heartfelt, like a youth group curriculum pulled off the Internet.

One problem is Carrie Underwood, a lovely performer who just does not have the acting skill she needs for Sarah Hill, the youth counselor who guides Bethany both before and after the attack. Perhaps because the film-makers are trying to please both faith and secular audiences, the faith-based elements of the story are thin and vague, reduced to a parable about not being able to see the big picture when you are too close and a trip to a very tidy settlement area in Thailand after the tsunami. The mention of Jeremiah 29:11 is not as significant as her doctor’s reassurance that “the things you are going to have to learn to do differently is extensive but the things you won’t be able to do is small.”

The real turning point is the scene where Bethany receives a prosthetic arm that does not give her the functionality she expected. That is a far greater blow than the original injury because it is only then that she must acknowledge that her loss is permanent. It is only then that she is able to have an honest re-evaluation of her faith, her priorities, and her options. In another sober moment, Bethany’s father (Dennis Quaid) silently matches the bite mark on Bethany’s surfboard with the enormous jaws of a captured shark, confirming that this was the beast that attacked his daughter.

Robb conveys Bethany’s resilience and athleticism. McNamara has a good sense for the rhythms of teen girl friendships (I still think that Bratz is underrated) and the scenes with Bethany and her friends capture the warmth and excitement of young girls on the brink of mastery of skills and the beginning of independence. But like its main character, it really comes alive when it catches the waves.

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Arthur

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Russell Brand takes over the title role in this unnecessary remake of the better-remembered-than-re-watched 1981 film starring Dudley Moore and the Oscar-winning Sir John Gielgud. It’s harder to find a perpetually substance-abusing hedonist funny these days than it was back in the Reagan Administration era. There have just been too many boy-men comedies and too many episodes of “Celebrity Intervention” since then to give this idea the freshness it had 30 years ago. Compare the advertising taglines for the films. Circa 1981: Not everyone who drinks is a poet, some of us drink because we’re not. Circa 2011: No Work. All Play. Crisper, perhaps, but dumbed down and not too ambitious or intriguing.

Brand, who can do quite well when he essentially plays himself, his offhand delivery contrasting nicely with the outrageousness of the comments, is a comedian, not an actor, and he seems lost just when his character most needs to demonstrate the depth to persuade us that two fine women see something worth loving in him. When Brand shows up in the opening credits as not just star but co-producer, it becomes drearily obvious that this movie was the result of nothing more than a “let’s find a vehicle for Russell” meeting. There is no sense at any point that anyone connected with the film had any special inspiration about either remaking or updating the original. We hear a few notes from the original film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning song (“When you get caught between the moon and New York Ciiiity….”), but just a few flickers of what made the Moore version so appealing.

As in the first film, Arthur is a fabulously wealthy man who tries to amuse himself by over-spending or over-indulging in alcohol and women or preferably both at once. His loyal nanny (Dame Helen Mirren replacing Gielgud as the butler) is the only one who is close to him and the only one who cares about him. His mother is a tycoon who would hold him in disdain if she thought he was worth the effort. The girl he slept with the night before tucked his watch into her purse. The cops get a bit annoyed when he floors it in his Batmobile. And somehow showering money and gifts on random strangers does not win him friends, either.

Arthur’s mother gives him an ultimatum. Either he marries the rapaciously ambitious Susan (Jennifer Garner, having a lot of fun but not quite managing to squelch her innate niceness) or he is cut off from the fortune and must find some other way to support himself. Even though he has just met a girl named Naomi who might make him happy (indie darling Greta Gerwig in her first big-budget leading role), he agrees. The dilemma gets amped up as Arthur becomes more attached to Naomi and when he meets Susan’s father, played by Nick Nolte in a tasteless role as a nouveau riche bully who casually plucks out the nails Arthur accidentally shot into him and forces Arthur to put his tongue in a buzz saw. And then Arthur, who has always been taken care of, has to care for someone else when his nanny becomes, as she would say, ill.

“I like earning something,” Naomi tells Arthur, “And I know you don’t know what that feels like. It is great.” I like movies that earn the respect and affection of their audience with diligence, sincerity, and imagination. The people behind this movie do not know what that feels like, and that doesn’t feel great.

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Comedy Remake Romance

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Posted on April 5, 2011 at 8:11 am

A gallant warrior mouse and a dragon with a secret join the two youngest Pevensie children for a voyage and a quest in the third and best so far in the Narnia series. War has come to England and Edmund (Skandar Keynes) tries to enlist, protesting “I’ve fought wars and led armies,” when he is rejected for not being old enough to join. Peter (William Moseley) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) are on the brink of the adult world. But the younger children, Lucy (Georgie Henley) and Edmund are packed off to live with relatives, including their arrogant meanie of a cousin, Eustace (“Son of Rambow’s” Will Poulter), a young man who believes that he (with the help of science and logic) has all the answers. Time for a trip to Narnia, this time via a magic painting of a ship at sea, which suddenly floods the bedroom and washes them away.

They are picked up by a ship called the Dawn Treader, led by their old friend King Caspian (Ben Barnes). And soon they are on a quest to find seven banished lords and their seven swords.

They will face daunting challenges, some of the most terrifying coming from themselves, sometimes amplified by malevolent magic and sometimes just a reflection of their own youth, inexperience, and insecurities. They accuse each other of not being up to the tasks as they wonder themselves whether they are. They are drawn to worldly prizes. Lucy is so eager to be as pretty and grown up as her big sister that she steals a spell from a book of incantations. Eustace keeps stoutly insisting that he wants them to get the British consulate to sort things out and tries to stuff treasure into his pockets. Edmund sees a vision of the White Queen, still tempting him to betray the others. In one moment reminiscent of “Ghostbusters,” “Harry Potter,” and “1984,” an evil force brings into life whatever is most feared by the people it is attacking.

The movie succeeds most as a visual treat. The title vessel is genuinely enchanting, exactly what you would want a fairy tale ship to look like. The series moves smoothly into 3D, designed more to draw you into the world of Narnia than to make you swat away distracting objects seemingly suspended in front of your nose. It also achieves a nice balance, accessible to those who are not familiar with the books and the first two movies or interested in the Christian allegory but satisfying for those who are.

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Tracy and Hepburn: The Definitive Collection

Posted on April 3, 2011 at 6:20 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some social drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movies
Date Released to Theaters:	1940's
Date Released to DVD:	April 12, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004K4FUT8

Now this is a pure movie magic. There has never been an on- and off-screen romance like the nine-movie pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. When writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz introduced them, Hepburn, who was wearing special heels that added several inches to her slender frame, said, “I’m afraid I’m too tall for you, Mr. Tracy.” Mankiewicz said, “Don’t worry, he’ll soon cut you down to size.” And thus began a movie legend. She was never as natural and playful on screen with anyone else. And his love for her just shone from him, always.

Their first movie together was “Woman of the Year.” They work for the same newspaper. He’s a sportswriter and she’s an expert in international affairs who writes an influential political column. They meet when he she says something dismissive about sports on the radio and he writes a column telling her off. He’s called into the publisher’s office and as he walks in, the first thing he sees is her lovely leg as she leans over to adjust her stocking. He offers to take her to a baseball game and she goes, in a preposterous outfit, and completely charms everyone there. I’m not wild about the movie’s last half hour, but it is one of the great pleasures of movie history to watch these brilliant performers fall in love. Their best movie is probably “Adam’s Rib,” the story of married lawyers on opposite sides in a murder case. And their most heart-felt performances are probably in their last film, completed just before Tracy’s death, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” The speech Tracy makes about his love for his wife is clearly straight from his heart. Their weakest film is the all-but-forgotten “Sea of Grass,” understandably omitted from this new collection, which also leaves out “Keeper of the Flame,” a flawed but intriguing film about a reporter who visits the widow of a respected statesman to write about her late husband that raises some powerful issues about how and when certain information should be made public.

I am delighted that seven of their films are now available in the splendid Tracy & Hepburn: the Definitive Collection. It includes their best-loved and best-remembered films and some that may be new to fans. “State of the Union” is their only Frank Capra film, a surprisingly timely (if talky) story about an industrialist turned Presidential candidate and his estranged wife. Real-life actor-turned Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan borrowed one of his best lines on the campaign trail from this film. I especially love “Pat and Mike,” the story of a sheltered athlete (you can see Hepburn, a superb athlete herself, playing golf and tennis) who meets a street-smart promoter (look for a young Charles Bronson in a small role) and “Desk Set” (she runs the information resources division of a broadcast network and he comes in to install the first computer — it’s about the size of a dozen refrigerators). And I am very fond of “Without Love,” set in my home town of Washington DC during the World War II housing shortage. He’s a scientist and she is a young widow. They impulsively decide to get married “without love” so that they can work together and you can guess the rest. Lucille Ball in her pre-Lucy days appears as Hepburn’s sophisticated friend who has a way with a wisecrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=besQOvmq9nw

I have one copy of this treasure to give to a lucky reader. Send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Tracy-Hepburn” in the subject line and tell me which is your favorite of their films and why. Don’t forget to include your address. A week from today I will pick one entry at random. Good luck!

Source Code

Posted on March 31, 2011 at 6:08 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence including disturbing images, and for language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense peril and violence, bombs, huge explosions, characters injured and killed, brief graphic images of wounded character
Diversity Issues:	Brief reference to racial profiling
Date Released to Theaters:	April 1, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	July 26, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0053F042G

Director Duncan Jones (“Moon”) has produced a first-rate thriller with Jake Gyllenhaal as Captain Colter Stevens, sent back in time and into the body of a man on a commuter train eight minutes before it will explode, to see if he can find the bomber.

At first, we are as confused as Stevens, as he comes to on a Chicago-bound commuter train, apparently mid-conversation with a beautiful woman (Michelle Monaghan), with no idea of who or where he is. He goes into the bathroom and sees someone else’s face in the mirror, as in the old television series “Quantum Leap.” And then everything explodes and he is in some sort of capsule, talking to an officer in some sort of operations center on the other side of a window, (Vera Farmiga as Colleen Goodwin), trying to understand his mission though she answers most of his questions with “not relevant.” Her sense of urgency is clear, though. He must find the bomber on the train before he makes it into downtown Chicago to set off an even deadlier bomb.

Like an action-adventure version of “Groundhog Day,” Stevens is sent back over and over to re-live the same eight minutes to try to notice as much as he can about the people around him. He is in the past, Goodwin tells him. Those events have happened. There is nothing he can do to stop the bomber from killing everyone on the train, including the man whose body he is temporarily occupying. Those people are already dead. His mission is limited to identifying the bomber so that he can prevent the even greater tragedy that is yet to happen. As Stevens goes back and back again over the final eight minutes before the explosion, he is able to learn from his mistakes and start over. But it also means that whatever he has to do must be accomplished in eight minutes. And he re-experiences those minutes over and over again, learning more about what is happening on the train, and in his reports to Goodwin more about what the program he is working for it all about, his ideas about what his mission entails begin to enlarge.

Jones makes each replay different and enthralling as we work with Stevens to find the bomber and then to solve the bigger issues he uncovers as well. It is fast, fun, and exciting and bolstered with a top-notch cast to make some of the wilder elements of the science fiction work (though no one ever really figures out how to manage temporal anomalies). Gyllenhaal is believably dashing, dedicated, and dreamy, and Monaghan is believably someone it would take far less than eight minutes to fall for. Jeffrey Wright clearly relishes his role as the single-minded creator of the system that sends Stevens back in time and Farmiga is ineffably moving as the officer whose conflicts about what she is asking Stevens to do deepen as she keeps hitting the rewind button. Jones shows a sure hand in delivering on the concept and the action but he has already mastered pacing, story-telling, and heart. He makes each of the replays vital and engaging and knows just when to lighten things up. And he even sneaks in an affectionate “Quantum Leap” reference, with Scott Bakula providing the voice of Stevens’ father and even throwing in a signature “Oh boy.” It is the wit and attention to detail (pay close attention to that last shot) that makes this story worth going back to a few extra times.

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