John Wick Chapter 2

Posted on February 9, 2017 at 5:25 pm

A little bit of a spoiler alert here: this time the dog does not die. Other than that, “John Wick Chapter 2” is pretty much what you saw in the first “John Wick.” Once again, this is a movie about a good guy who happens to be an assassin, going after the bad guy assassins, in an assassin demimondaine with cool details but mostly a lot of assassining. Director Chad Stahelski, a martial arts instructor turned stuntman in films like “The Crow” and “The Matrix” makes these films from a stuntman perspective. The intricately choreographed stunts are shot like a Fred Astaire dance number. That means the camera sits relatively still and lets the action tell the story rather than tricking it all up with quick cuts and fancy angles. And the stunt settings are imaginative, including ancient Roman catacombs and an art installation that is like a super-sized funhouse mirror display.

In the first film, retired assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is mourning the death of his wife, the woman for whom he quit being a paid killer so they could live happily ever after together. She had arranged for an adorable puppy to be delivered to him after her death. The spoiled, hot-headed son of a crime boss kills Wick’s dog and takes his car, so Wick gets out a sledgehammer to smash up the cement he laid down metaphorically and literally over his arsenal and stockpile of gold coins, the preferred currency for Assassin World. Some 70 kills later, including the son and his dad, the movie ended.

Chapter 2 has Wick getting his car back, and when we see him laying down that cement again, we know it’s time for the doorbell to ring.

It turns out you don’t get to retire twice. An old colleague shows up with a marker. And, as hotel for assassins proprietor Winston (Ian McShane) helpfully reminds us, there are only two unbreakable rules in Assassin World: no spilling blood in the Assassin Hotel chain known as Continental (we’ll overlook that tussle with Ms. Perkins in the first film), and all markers must be paid. Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio) wants Wick to kill his sister, Gianna (Claudia Gerini), so he can take her place on the Assassin World ruling council. Wick says no. Santino burns his house down.

No time to stop to dig up the arsenal again. Lucky for us, as this means some of the film’s highlights, when Wick meets with his weapons “sommelier” (“Spy’s” Peter Serafinowicz) and his tailors, expert in the art of exquisite fit and bulletproof fabric. Then it’s off to the catacombs for a rather unexpected encounter with Gianna, followed by an Assassin World APB when Santino offers a $7 million reward for killing John Wick.

So, basically another FPS game, as everyone comes after Wick, including Common and Ruby Rose, and he goes after everyone. There has to be a Chapter 3, right?

The details are stylish and a lot of fun, especially Lance Reddick’s imperturbable concierge, a room full of 1940’s-style plugboard and vacuum tube female operators handing out assassination assignments, Rose’s acrobatics and her sign-language threats (she does not speak), and everyone’s exotic tattoos. (Wick’s, usually translated as “Fortune Favors the Bold” is really more like “It is only the strong that the Goddess Fortuna comes to save.”) It is delightful to see Reeves paired again (briefly) with his “Matrix” sensei, Laurence Fishburne, here presiding over an intelligence network of apparently homeless people. It nicely balances the gory images to keep us in a world where we are relieved that the local cop (the always welcome Thomas Sadoski) appreciates that all this killing has nothing to do with the normal rules. Contrary to Winston, in this world there is only one rule: don’t get in the way of entertainment, and this movie obeys.

Parents should know that this film includes constant strong and very gory violence with guns, knives, fights, suicide, many characters injured and killed, many disturbing images, very strong language, and briefs nudity.

Family discussion: Why are the two rules important? Should there be any others?

If you like this, try: the first “John Wick” and “Shoot ‘em Up”

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Series/Sequel

Fifty Shades Darker

Posted on February 9, 2017 at 5:19 pm

Ibsen had it right in “A Doll’s House.” When his heroine walked out and slammed the door at the end of the play, he left it there. She didn’t come back in two sequels. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson, wearing bangs, the universal signifier of adorkability), despite her name, is not that resolute. In “Fifty Shades of Gray” she was a shy college student introduced to the Red Room of Pain and the world of bondage and submission by fabulously handsome and fabulously wealthy and fabulously troubled Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). As he explains to her, it is the submissive who has the power in the relationship. The dominant inflicts pain but the submissive sets the limits. Ana set the ultimate limit by walking out on Christian at the end of the first film. But just days later, he comes to a photography show featuring six huge portraits of Ana, buys them all because he doesn’t want other people gawking at her. The woman who just left him nevertheless consents to let him take her to dinner (“because I’m hungry”), and then invites him to dinner. After first insisting there would be no sex and then that they need to take it slowly, of course they end up having sex, and pretty soon he’s spanking her again, but only after she asks for it.

Maybe if you turned off the sound, it all might seem less dull and silly, like the kind of high-end perfume commercials they only show before Christmas and Valentine’s Day. With the sound on, it alternates between syrupy pop songs and clunky dialogue. Fans of the books may enjoy seeing the characters on screen but those unfamiliar with what I will generously call the storyline will find it more like a random series of what I will generously call events. Putting the book on screen reveals its essential flimsiness, its origins as “Twilight” fan fiction showing through. As with “Twilight,” this is the story of a girl whose purity of heart is so powerful she is able to tame the ultimate predator. Like “Twilight,” he is surrounded by a large, complicated, powerful family, most of whose members should have been jettisoned for the movie version because they do not add anything. Unlike “Twilight,” which was explicitly envisioned as a romance without sex (until it wasn’t), this is a shipper, with lots and lots of sex. While there is much talk about a “vanilla” sex life, there is also a lot of naughty stuff with fancy lingerie (where did it disappear to between the apartment and the party?) and sex toys (“That is NOT going in my butt!” Ana says merrily at the sight of a pretty set of Ben Wa balls).

While both Ana and Christian are supposed to be driven for professional achievement, they do not spend much time actually working. Ana loves her job as an assistant to Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) the head of fiction for a small independent publisher. About half an hour after we realize he is a scummy guy who is trying to have sex with her, she realizes he is a scummy guy who is trying to have sex with her. So of course Christian has him fired and Ana gets his job. Seriously, I have seen six year olds playing with Barbies who came up with more believable workplace storylines.

Meanwhile Ana is bothered by Christian’s past, including an abused drug addict mother who died of an overdose, a suicidal ex-sub who is obsessed with him, and the older woman who seduced him when he was 15 and introduced him to the pleasures of pain (Kim Basinger, herself a pioneer of pretty, soft-focus soft-core S&M in “9 1/2 Weeks”). And Ana is trying to get Christian to tell her about his past, which begins with her drawing a line with red lipstick around his scarred but super-jacked chest to delineate what she should and should not touch. She apparently redraws it on him every day because it is still there days later, no smudges.

Sam Taylor-Johnson brought some humor and a woman’s perspective to the first chapter. She also streamlined it to remove irrelevant and distracting details, left in here for no reason. How does Ana not know Christian’s housekeeper and why is there a scene of their first meeting? Also, there are a lot of lacy little underpants in this movie, mostly being removed. There is also a situation where a lot of misery would have been avoided with a phone call or text message and yet it doesn’t happen, for no reason other than prolonging the agony.

This sequel, reportedly with more involvement by the author, is lackluster fan service. I’d even call it vanilla.

NOTE: Stay through the beginning of the credits for a teaser of part three, coming out in time for Valentine’s Day 2018.

Parents should know that this movie includes very explicit sexual references and situations, sexual harassment, extensive nudity, sex toys and issues of bondage and submission, very strong language, peril including a gun and a helicopter crash, and spouse and child abuse.

Family discussion: Why did Christian tell Ana not to touch his chest? Why did Ana care so much about her job?

If you like this, try; “Fifty Shades of Gray” and “9 1/2 Weeks”

A United Kingdom

Posted on February 9, 2017 at 5:12 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some language including racial epithets and a scene of sensuality
Profanity:	Some strong language including racist epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril, threats, violence including street fight
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 10, 2017

In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Lysander says, “aught that I could ever read/Could ever hear by tale or history/The course of true love never did run smooth.” It may just seem that way because the most enduring loves are those where challenges bring the couples together instead of tearing them apart. To quote Shakespeare again, this is the love that “looks on tempests, and is never shaken.” “A United Kingdom” tells the true story of a love that triumphed over the most intense opposition from both families and at least three countries.

Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo of “Selma” and “Queen of Katwe”) is studying law in post-WWII London when he meets Ruth (Rosamund Pike of “Gone Girl”) and they are instantly drawn to each other. They share a love of jazz music and a passionate commitment to the public good. Before they realize what is happening, they are deeply in love. Seretse explains that he is not just another law student; he is heir to the throne of his country, and his uncle is acting as Regent until he returns. He asks Ruth to take time to think about marrying him but she does not need time to think.

Even though they have already experienced some unpleasant, even threatening responses to their relationship, they believe that their good intentions and mutual devotion can overcome any obstacles. They will see that post-war optimism about a new era of tolerance and mutual commitment to continuing the progress toward freedom tested more intensively than they could have imagined.

Ruth’s sister is sympathetic, but she correctly predicts that their father “will hate him on sight. He is cleverer than him and he is black.” And indeed, he says, “You may deserve a life of insults and shame, but what about us? I can’t see you again.”

And then they go to Botswana, where his uncle and the community see his marrying a foreigner and a commoner as a betrayal, calling into question his loyalty and his ability to understand them. Has his time in London caused him to abandon the ways of his people?

And might his uncle have other reasons for wanting to stay in power?

The British government, in the form of the wonderfully condescending Jack Davenport (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), is even more disturbed. They have important business and political interests in the region, particularly in the adjoining country of South Africa, which is in the middle of adopting the 20th century’s most viciously racist laws, known as Apartheid.

Director Amma Asante (“Belle”), the British-born child of Ghanaian parents, has a sure sense of the worlds she is depicting. The Botswanans and their land are portrayed as respectfully and “normally” as the Londoners, with no sense of quaint or lesser “otherness.” And while the culture is not entirely equal (apparently only men vote), the female characters, including Seretse’s sister, have dignity and agency. This is a true love story, not just between Seretse and Ruth, but between the filmmakers telling this story and the people and the country where it is set.

Parents should know that the theme of the movie concerns an interracial marriage that was objected to by both families and their governments. There are some scenes of peril including racist street thugs, some strong language including racial epithets, and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: How did Ruth prove her sincerity to the Botswanans? Why did the British government intervene?

If you like this, try; “Loving” and the BBC program about Seretse and Ruth Khama.

The Comedian

Posted on February 2, 2017 at 5:32 pm

They say all clowns want to play Hamlet, and often they turn out to be outstanding dramatic actors, from Mickey Rooney to Robin Williams. But it does not always work the other way. Dramatic performers want to be clowns. Robert De Niro is one of the greatest actors in the world and he can be very funny (“Analyze This,” “Midnight Run,” “Silver Linings Playbook”). He does not always choose the best material (“Dirty Grandpa”), but like his fellow Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Sally Field, that doesn’t mean he can play the part of a stand-up comic. It is generally understood that stand-up comedy is the most difficult and terrifying of all in show business professions because they go out on stage with nothing but their ideas and a microphone — no script, no other performers, no sets, no music — just the comic and his or her ideas, and an audience expecting to be amused. Comic and comedy writer Dylan Brody told me that stand-up comics who want to be on television have to be able to deliver four laughs a minute.

In “The Comedian,” De Niro plays Jackie, an “insult comic,” whose humor is based on his ability to fire off quick, punchy, provocative responses to the people around him, to be outrageous by saying what people might think but would never admit to. Jackie was once the star of a popular “Honeymooners”-style television show and is constantly annoyed when fans of the show ask him to repeat his character’s catch phrase.

The problem is that Jackie is never as funny as the movie thinks he is and needs him to be. De Niro makes us see Jackie’s frustration at constantly being confronted with having his most popular work over long ago and not something he was especially proud of even at the time. (See Ricky Gervais in “Extras” for a much better exploration of this theme.) But when it gets to the crucial moments of his performances, he never gets the rhythm of the jokes or shows us the mental imperatives that keep comedians punching. Cloris Leachman (another Oscar winner) does better as a 95-year-old stand-up being “honored” with a Friar’s Club roast. Though she is old and frail, we see in her the fearlessness that made it possible for her to do the one thing tougher than being a make stand-up; being a female stand-up. Her character, a Phyllis Diller/Joan Rivers type, still has the reflexes and gutsiness of someone who has spent decades, going back to the 50’s, relying only on her wit, proving herself in front of audiences. And the cast includes real stand-ups, like Billy Crystal and Hannibal Buress, who remind us what comedians really sound like.

Jackie gets into trouble punching a heckler — not because he insults him but because he appropriates Jackie’s routine for his web series. He is sentenced to 30 days in jail plus community service and it is at the homeless shelter where he is putting in his hours that he meets Harmony (Leslie Mann), also working off an assault charge (her ex and his new girlfriend). Not the greatest of meet-cutes. He brings her to his niece’s wedding where he makes a toast that is profane and insulting but everyone, including Harmony and the bride, thinks it is hilarious (except for his sister-in-law, a terrifically furious Patti LuPone). He then does stand-up at a nursing home where once again, he is profane and insulting but everyone thinks it is hilarious (except for Harmony’s father, a what-is-he-doing-in-this-movie Harvey Keitel). The greatest acting challenge in this movie is pretending Jackie is funny.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language with insulting epithets, bodily function and sexual humor, intentionally offensive and provocative jokes, sexual situation, references to drug overdose, assaults, and discussion of a sad death of a child.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Jackie enjoy hearing from fans of his television show? Was Jackie funny? Why?

If you like this, try: “Sleepwalk With Me,” “Punchline,” “Mr. Saturday Night”

Related Tags:

Comedy Drama

The Space Between Us

Posted on February 2, 2017 at 5:15 pm

An intriguing premise is repeatedly undercut by clunky dialog and corny plot twists in “The Space Between Us,” the story of a teenager born on Mars and his first trip to Earth.

It begins in 2018, just before the launch of the first expedition to colonize Mars. Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman) has been planning it since he was 12 years old and now, a joint project from NASA and the private Genesis corporation is sending a team not just to explore Mars, but to live there for four years, in a settlement called East Texas. With the depletion of resources and abuse of the planet, Mars is the best chance for humanity to continue. “Mother Nature does not negotiate.” The night before launch, Shepherd presents the crew, lead by Sarah, who captivates the crowd with her gallantry and confidence. “Courage,” she tells them, “is fear that has said its prayers.”

All goes well at first, but it turns out, about halfway to Mars, that Sarah has committed a reckless misjudgement. She is pregnant. Nathaniel, worried about losing funding for the project, keeps it secret. Sarah dies giving birth and the baby is raised by the scientists on Mars, without anyone on Earth knowing about him other than Nathaniel and a couple of his colleagues. “East Texas runs on money, science, good faith, and PR,” Nathaniel says. He will not risk the mission. And the child, gestated in zero gravity, might not be able to survive the trip home or life on Earth.

By the time we see him again, Gardner (Asa Butterfield, still soulful, and quite the beanpole since we saw him in “Hugo”) is a teenager. His only friends are an astronaut scientist named Kendra (Carla Gugino), who treats him like a lab assistant, and a robot sidekick.

In some ways, he is just like teenagers on earth, moody, uncommunicative, very interested in meeting a girl, determined to find his father, and determined to test whatever boundaries there are. In some ways he is different. He knows very little about the most basic elements of life on earth. And, because he is the first human to grow up in the 62 percent lower gravity of Mars, his physical development — bone density, heart — has been affected so that even if he did get a chance to come to earth, it could kill him.

But remember what I said about boundaries? And girls? Gardner has been e-chatting with a high school girl named Tulsa (Britt Robertson, seven years older than Butterfield and looks it), who lives in foster care in Colorado. He runs away from the NASA/Genesis medical facility to meet Tulsa and asks her to help find his father, with Nathaniel and Kendra in pursuit. There were so many possibilities here, to see Earth through the eyes of someone whose only knowledge of the planet and human interaction involving more than the same five people came from Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire” and old how-to movies about dating. Instead, we get a syrupy love story and chases with a helicopter, a crop duster, and a series of stolen cars.

Last year’s “The Martian” made the science fascinating. “The Space Between Us” tries to make it superfluous, neglecting some basic principles of physics but even worse, some basic principles of logic.

Parents should know that this film includes some mild language, non-explicit teen sexual situation, alcohol abuse, teen mayhem (stealing, reckless driving), some peril, childbirth scene, sad death, and health risks.

Family discussion: What’s your favorite thing on earth and why? What surprised Gardner most? What advice would you give him about how to act on Earth?

If you like this, try: “The Martian” and the film Gardner watches, “Wings of Desire”