Monster Trucks

Posted on January 12, 2017 at 5:21 pm

When my son was eight, he and his friends would have loved this movie. That is just one of the reasons I enjoyed “Monster Trucks,” a charming fantasy in the always-appealing genre of a young person befriending and being befriended by a creature even more powerful than whatever adults are around. Plus, big trucks. So, think “Pokemon” with wheels, “Fast and Furious” for kids, “Speed Racer” with a plot you can follow, and “Free Willy” for gearheads with a touch of “Scooby-Doo.”

Tripp (Lucas Till, game but about eight years too old to play a teenager) lives in North Dakota with his mom (a barely seen Amy Ryan) and still misses the dad who abandoned them (Frank Whalley, suitably seedy). He does not like his mother’s boyfriend Rick (Barry Pepper), a cop who is fussy and by the book. And he does not like school, which he barely acknowledges. He spends much of his time working at the junkyard run by Mr. Weathers (Danny Glover) and spending his spare time using the parts he finds there to build a truck he can drive.

Nearby, a big oil drilling company run by ruthless Reece Tenneson (Rob Lowe) is under pressure to produce. Their scientists locate a water table above the oil reserve. Under environmental and endangered species laws, they should not drill without further investigation. But Reece insists they go ahead, and the drilling releases three squid-like creatures who live on oil. They capture two, but the third escapes and ends up in Mr. Weathers’ junkyard, where Tripp is at first terrified, then fascinated, then, after they bond over throwing stones at one of Reese’s trucks together, captivated by a creature he names, without much imagination, Creech.

Somehow, the best way to hide and transport Creech turns out to be using him as the engine of a tricked-up truck with big wheels. Soon Tripp and his classmate (Jane Levy as Meredith) are on the run to keep Creech from being captured by Reece’s enforcer, Burke (Holt McCallany) so they can poison the creatures and keep drilling for oil.

There’s nothing new here, but it is good-natured fun, with special effects that seamlessly integrate Creech into the action. It would have been nice to see Meredith as something more than the brainy girl with a crush and a credit card, and the film is half-hearted at best when it comes to Tripp’s careless treatment of a kid who wants to be his friend, expecting us to laugh at his presumption. As a January Saturday matinee or an outing for a third grade birthday party, it hits the spot.

Parents should know that this film has extended mild peril, with chase scenes and threats. No one is badly hurt. There is some schoolyard language and brief bodily function humor.

Family discussion: What qualities of the creatures made Jim decide they were worth saving?

If you like this, try: “Transformers” and “Free Willy” — and a Monster Truck rally!

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A Monster Calls

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 5:50 pm

It turns out that there is something even more painful than the most devastating loss imaginable. That is the lesson of “A Monster Calls,” based on the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal award winning book by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, from an idea by the late human rights activist Siobhan Dowd.

It takes place in the Irish countryside. “We begin,” the movie tells us, “like so many stories, with a boy too old to be a kid and too young to be a man and a nightmare.” The boy is Conor (Lewis MacDougall), whose adored single mother (Felicity Jones) is struggling with cancer and the ravages of its treatment. While other boys are gently awakened by their parents and sent off to school with a good breakfast and a lovingly packed lunch, it is Conor who makes breakfast for his mother (there are rows of medicine bottles in the kitchen cupboard). He also does the laundry before he goes to school, where a bully threatens him. He has a frosty grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) and an affectionate but useless father (Toby Kebbell). So, he is alone with his grief, his fear, his anger, and his paints, which he must learn to use to express them all.

Let’s think for a moment about the title: “A Monster Calls.” Is that “calls” as in “pays a call,” or comes to visit? Is it “calls” as in “calls out to?” Is it “calls” as in “calls out from?”

A teacher says sympathetically, “If you ever want to talk…” Conor’s dad arrives from America, where he lives with his new wife and new baby, and he takes Conor to an amusement park. But Conor does not want to talk and he is not amused. A glimpse of the old “King Kong,” Fear and Fury bookends, and a shiver-inducing creaking noise give us a hint that a terrifying, destructive monster may be coming.

And then, yes, Conor is visited by a monster, an enormous walking yew tree with the rumbling voice of Liam Neeson. Conor may think the monster is there to protect him, but that is not exactly true. He says he is there to tell Conor three stories, and then, he says, Conor must tell him one and it must be true. The monster’s stories have a yew tree connection, as does a possible new treatment for Conor’s mother. They begin like traditional fairy tales but do not pretend that the resolutions are fair or straightforward. The fury within the stories seems to take over Conor and he finds himself becoming violent before telling his story forces him to admit what terrifies him even more than the prospect of losing his mother.

This is a complex, richly imagined film with a deep understanding, clear-eyed but compassionate. The stories it contains help us to be honest about our own.

Parents should know that this film is about a boy whose mother is dying of cancer. There are some other disturbing images and situations, including a bully and a monster.

Family discussion: Which story surprised you the most and why? Why was it important for Conor to tell his story? What monsters live inside us?

If you like this, try: the book by Patrick Ness and “Secondhand Lions”

Silence

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 5:27 pm

Like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam-era adaptation, Apocalypse Now, Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” is the story of men who take a journey to find a former leader who has disappeared into the untamed natural world.

It is the mid-17th century. Two Portuguese priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) go to Japan in search of their teacher and mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). After receiving disturbing reports that he has publicly abandoned his faith, they say, “We have no choice but to save his soul.” They leave with “no luggage except our hearts.”

Ferreira had gone to Japan as a missionary and he and his colleagues had some success in converting Buddhist peasants. But Japan has now outlawed Christianity in any form, and as we see immediately, the officials have decided that the best way to eradicate it is to torture believers, forcing the priests to watch. Early efforts to fight Christianity failed because killing the priests made them martyrs, showing the strength and power of their faith when they refused to renounce it, even under torture. So the officials responsible for eradicating Christianity have had to develop a more subtle approach. Instead of torturing the priests, they torture and murder their followers, telling the priests that all they have to do to stop it is recant. It can be as simple as putting a foot on an icon of Jesus. “It’s a formality,” the Japanese official says in a soothing voice. “You don’t have to believe it.”

The priests have a choice: deny their faith in Jesus and Christianity or allow the suffering and death of innocent people. What should they do? Who has the answer?

For Martin Scorsese, who co-wrote and directed, this movie has been a passion project for three decades, since he read the award-winning novel by Shusaku Endo, inspired by the true stories of 17th century priests in Japan. Scorsese, who once thought of becoming a priest grapples here with the big questions about the letter and the spirit in the context of a time and a faith that traditionally has put a lot of emphasis on the letter as a frame and a discipline for the spirit. It is also a faith tradition that understands suffering as a part of faith practice, whether a way to appreciate the suffering of Jesus or to test one’s faith or to better understand others’ experiences, or to earn the rewards of heaven. The gorgeous visual scope and striking images are as powerful in telling the story of the clash of culture and religion as the narrative.

When it comes to performances, the film is off-balance, probably unintentionally, as the Japanese characters are more complex and completely realized than the one-dimensional priests. Garfield seems at sea as an actor, not just as a character, except in a few scenes where he has a chance to debate the “Inquisitor” (a wry, clever Issey Ogata). This movie about silence is at its best in the verbal jousting on faith, culture, truth, and power.

Translation: Extremely tense scenes of torture and brutality with some very disturbing graphic images, characters injured and killed

Recommendation: Mature teens-Adults

Family discussion: Were you surprised by the final shot? In the debate with the Inquisitor about culture and faith, who was right?

If you like this, try: “Unbroken” and “The Last Temptation of Christ”

Passengers

Posted on December 21, 2016 at 8:47 pm

“Passengers” is beautiful to look at, a pretty story about pretty people in a pretty (outer space) setting, but it cannot overcome the ick factor of its premise.

Everyone’s favorite boy we wish lived next door, Chris Pratt, plays a likeable ordinary guy who works with his hands named Jim Preston, one of 5000 passengers and 250 crew in a spaceship on a hundred-year journey to a hospitable colonized planet. Like the spaceship in “Wall-E,” it is set up with every luxury, from sushi restaurant to a genial robot bartender (Michael Sheen). The people on board are in suspended animation for a hundred years, to be awakened four months before arrival, to enjoy the ship’s amenities and prepare for their new home. The ship is gorgeous, though I am not sure how practical it is.

But somehow Jim awakens 90 years early and there is no way to return to his hibernation. He is alone on the spaceship and his plan to emigrate to the new planet is not going to happen. Instead of being a pioneer in a fresh, optimistic new world, he is doomed to spend the rest of his days stranded, sure to die before anyone else on the ship is awake. The ship’s help kiosks briskly inform him that malfunction of the hibernation units is impossible, a reminder of the Titanic’s “unsinkable” hubris. He tries to send a message to the home base on earth, only to learn that it will be more than 30 years before he can get an answer.

So, he basically turns the spaceship into a man cave, living in dirty sweats, growing a beard, drinking, and playing one on no one basketball and one on avatar dance video game. Finally, almost mad with loneliness, he starts looking at the files of the 4999 people still sleeping on the ship, and finds himself captivated with one of them, a journalist from New York with the fantasy name Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence). After many discussions with the robot bartender, he can no longer help himself. He knows it is wrong, but he wakes her up, and he lets her think it was due to the same malfunction that woke him.

Decades ago, movies used to have scenes where the guy grabbed the girl and she beat her fists helplessly against his chest, crying, “I hate you!” until he forced her into a passionate kiss, after which she melted into his arms. These were mostly romantic comedies, but we saw some of this and worse in drama, too. Remember Rhett carrying Scarlett up the stairs in “Gone With the Wind,” and 30 years later, Laura falling for her rapist, Luke, on “General Hospital.” (Also see: Zeus and Europa, the Sabine women, the silent classics “The Sheik” and “Son of the Sheik”) But that just doesn’t work any more.

Aurora is entirely a fantasy figure. Even her nudity is highly sexualized, where his is not. By taking away any shred of agency or consent the script sets up an insurmountable obstacle to any kind of relationship for Jim and Aurora, which it makes the fatal mistake of treating as surmountable. There’s the getting-to-know-you part, and then she she-learns-the-truth part and then the not-talking-to-him part, and then the work-together-or-everyone-dies part, but nothing can really support the idea of the romance it tries to persuade us is happening.

Parents should know that this film includes extended sci-fi action and peril, sad death with characters injured and a sad death, some disturbing images, issues of predatory behavior and consent, brief strong language, alcohol, sexual references and situations, and nudity.

Family discussion: Why did Aurora make that choice at the end of the film? What would you do if you were left alone?

If you like this, try: “Gravity” and “The Martian”

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Romance Science-Fiction

Why Him?

Posted on December 20, 2016 at 10:20 pm

If you go to see “Why Him?” you will ask yourself, “Why Me?”

Some of the people behind “Meet the Parents” had the idea of basically making the same movie all over again. Of course they made it all over again twice with the sequels, but hey, this time let’s try a twist! How about if the dad is the normal one and it is the prospective son-in-law who is outrageous! And maybe if we have extended scenes of Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally sitting on toilets, and enjoying it, and the cast getting drenched in moose urine, no one will notice that it is not actually funny. Believe me, I noticed. Over and over and over again.

Cranston plays Ned Fleming, a nice guy who loves his family. We first see him celebrating his birthday with his wife Barb (Mullally), teenage son Scotty (Griffin Gluck), and the employees of his printing business, who are like family, too. Ned’s daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch of “Everybody Wants Some!!”) Skypes in from her dorm room at Stanford. Her boyfriend, not realizing anyone can see her, comes into her room and takes his clothes off, thus letting Ned know, in front of all his friends, that she has a boyfriend with whom she has sex. So we’re in that skeezy category of films going back to “Take Her She’s Mine” and “The Impossible Years,” in which daddies are obsessed with their daughters’ sex lives.

It turns out that Stephanie’s beau is a daddy’s nightmare. Not only are they having sex, but Laird (James Franco)’s youth, sexuality, and wealth (he is a tech zillionaire) makes Ned feel emasculated and he hates not being Stephanie’s number one guy anymore. This come just as Ned has not told anyone that his business is doing poorly

The family goes to California to spend Christmas with Stephanie, and everything they learn about Laird just makes Ned feel more anguished. But have no feel — at some point following the moose urine and Japanese toilet jokes, there will be hugs all around.

Franco commits fully to the man-child Laird, and his charm and movie star smile makes up for some of the most appalling elements of the storyline and even gives us a hint of what Stephanie might see in him. Keegan-Michael Key adds some spark as Laird’s concierge/best friend, and there are a couple of clever lines. But disgusting and outrageous does not equal funny, no matter how much moose urine you pour onto it.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely crude and explicit humor including sexual references and situations and bathroom jokes, very strong and crude language, drinking, drugs, comic peril and violence.

Family discussion: How does your family treat the people who date its members? How were Laird and Ned alike?

If you like this, try: “Meet the Parents”

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Comedy