Almost Christmas

Posted on November 10, 2016 at 5:24 pm

In “Almost Christmas,” Danny Glover plays Walter, a recent widower who spends a lot of time in the kitchen, trying over and over again to replicate his late wife’s legendary sweet potato pie. What he wants to replicate, of course, is the time when his family was all together, as shown in a heart-tugging, gracefully edited opening credit sequence, with the years melting into each other from 1971 to 2015. A young couple embraces on a mattress on the floor and, as it happens in life, an eye blink later they have three children, and then, as a bit of a late surprise, a fourth. The children are all adults now, coming home for the first Christmas since their mother died, and Walter wants it to be a time of reconnection. For that, he needs the sweet potato pie and it has to be just like hers.

Writer/director David Talbert (“Baggage Claim”) is trying for his own version of a sweet potato pie with this film, mixing in the standard ingredients for a Christmas family gathering comedy/drama movie. So, there are adult siblings with ongoing conflicts, a dad who is spending too much time on work, precocious kids (in this case, happily uploading every element of family dysfunction on social media), church, a guest star (though why you would put Gladys Knight in a film and not let her sing is beyond me), family traditions, a kitchen disaster, secrets to be revealed, a rekindled romance, a busted marriage, high maintenance in-laws, and, of course Christmas meaning and reconciliation magic and a lot of food. In other words, other than running into Gladys Knight, it is pretty much what goes on around the world at Christmas.

Talbert’s sweet potato pie of a movie has the right ingredients, and if they are not always combined just right, it still makes for a treat, with an exceptional cast and enough laughs to keep us going until the exact right moment for some tears.

Walter’s older son is Christian (Romany Malco), a husband and father of two who is running for Congress (none of this storyline makes any sense as Christmas is at least 11 months before the next election and the issue he gets caught up in is municipal, not federal, but okay). Malco is terrific in an unusually understated role. The look on his face as Walter asks him to speak at the homeless shelter his mother was devoted to shows endless tenderness and loss. His wife (an underused Nicole Ari Parker) is mostly there to remind him that he should not take time away from the family for his campaign. The youngest of Walter’s children is Evan (Jessie T. Usher), a college football player being scouted for the NFL draft, hiding an addiction to painkillers.

Their two sisters are Rachel (co-producer Gabrielle Union), a fiercely independent single mom and law student, and Cheryl (Kimberly Elise), a dentist married to a know-it-all former basketball player (J.B. Smoove), who is still a player, if you know what I mean.

Walter’s outspoken sister-in-law, a backup singer named May (Mo’Nique) arrives to wear a wild assortment of wigs and prepare an even wilder assortment of exotic foods that no one will touch. Rachel’s high school friend (Omar Epps) would like to renew their acquaintance. And Jasmine (Keri Hilson), Christian’s campaign manager (John Michael Higgins) and Evan’s friend (D.C. Young Fly) show up for various complications.

Like Walter’s pie, it’s not quite as good as the real thing. It would fit it well with Hallmark’s line-up of non-stop Christmas movies from Halloween through New Year’s Day. But there’s a reason those movies are so popular. They remind us of our own chaotic but still memorable holidays and our own difficult but still wonderful families.

Parents should know that this film includes some sexual references and a non-explicit situation, prescription drug abuse, sad offscreen death of a parent, offscreen car crash with injuries, gun, and some strong and explicit language.

Family discussion: What is your family’s favorite recipe? Why was it hard for the sisters to get along?

If you like this, try: “This Christmas”

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Hacksaw Ridge

Posted on November 3, 2016 at 5:39 pm

Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) called himself a “conscientious supporter.” He wanted to support the troops fighting in WWII; he just would not touch a gun. And so, after brutal bullying and assaults and a court-martial, he was permitted to “go into battle without a gun.” And so, as a part of the “Liberty Battalion” of Army’s 77th Infantry Division, he went into one of the most dangerous battles of the war, with no weapons, just a Bible and some syringes with morphine.

Mel Gibson‘s first film as a director in a decade combines themes he returns to again and again: personal courage in the face of overwhelming odds, sacrifice for others, inspiration, faith, and very graphic, agonizing mortification of the flesh. The first half of the film introduces us to Doss, growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia with an abusive, alcoholic father (Hugo Weaving), falling for a pretty nurse (Teresa Palmer), and wanting to help the war effort without killing anyone.

Then there is an extended section covering basic training, with a tough but not humorless sergeant played by one of the few Americans in the cast, Vince Vaughn. It sweetly and sometimes amusingly harks back to the classic WWII films, with assorted characters from very different parts of the country are thrown together and a tough sergeant who whips them into shape with insults and threats, but everyone knows it is really for their own good, to teach them what they need to know to survive. There is no category for a regular army guy who says he cannot even touch a gun. They do everything they can to get him to change his mind or leave the military, but he will not give up. He’s a guy who will walk an extra two miles because he likes the woods. He knows who he is and what he believes.

And then, he is in battle. And again, he will not give up. “Just let me get one more, Lord,” is his prayer as over and over, 75 times, he heads back into enemy fire to pick up wounded men — including two Japanese soldiers — and carefully lower each one over a sheer cliff with an improvised pulley.

The scenes in battle are as harrowing as any ever put on screen. We are in the midst of utter carnage and chaos. Gibson knows how to create a visceral experience to make us understand just how extraordinary the rescue mission was. In an interview, he once said that he hates war, but loves warriors. Both are evident in this stirring tribute to a true hero.

Parents should know that this film includes extremely graphic and disturbing wartime violence with grisly images of wounded and dead soldiers, bullying and a brutal beating, domestic violence, and a car accident. Characters use some mild language.

Family discussion: How does the sergeant prepare the soldiers for war? How does he promote teamwork? What should the military do with “conscientious supporters?”

If you like this, try: “We Were Soldiers” and “Sergeant York”

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Trolls

Posted on November 3, 2016 at 5:26 pm

“Trolls” is pure delight, lots of jokes, great music, and a surprisingly wise take on the elusive quest for happiness. Plus, it has that Justin Timberlake song that’s like pure sunshine.

It is tricky to make self-consciously adorable characters happy without being sugary, but it works because they understand the difference between happiness based on generosity, honesty, and courage and pleasure, based on sensation.

The characters are inspired by the so-ugly-they’re-cute troll dolls with the colorful poufs of hair invented by Danish sculptor Thomas Dam (DreamWorks has now bought the company, making the film something of an infomercial for the toys). The trolls all about sunshine, parties, singing, dancing, cupcakes, glitter, scrapbooks, and scrapbooks frosted with glitter. They have fitbit-style wrist bands reminding them every half hour that it is hugging time. The trolls are led by benevolent King Peppy (Jeffrey Tambor), who saved the trolls from the monstrous Bergens twenty years before, and his irrepressibly cheery daughter Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick).

The Bergens are as naturally unhappy as the trolls are happy. The only way the Bergens have ever found to feel happy is to eat the trolls. Once a year, they would raid the troll tree and gobble down as many as they could. King Peppy led them to a secret place where the Bergens could not find them, courageously risking his own life to make sure there was “no troll left behind.”

Poppy decides to have a party to celebrate 20 happy and peaceful years since the trolls escaped from the Bergens. Branch (Justin Timberlake), the one pessimistic troll, warns her that a loud celebration might attract the attention of the Bergens, but Poppy insists. Branch is right — the Bergen chef (Christine Baranski) has been searching for the trolls for 20 years, and the party fireworks lead her to their new home. She captures some of the trolls and Poppy, mindful of her father’s example, goes off to rescue them. Branch, who had predicted the Bergen threat and spent all his time creating a shelter while the other trolls were hugging and singing, had planned to wait out the invasion alone. But Poppy invites the other trolls to hide out there, and Branch agrees to go with her.

And so there is a journey and (literally) colorful characters along the way and once in Bergen-land, where the rescue effort is complicated but ultimately aided by the trolls friendship with a Bergen scullery-maid with a crush on the young king. Her name is Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) and she agrees to help the trolls if they will help her get the attention of the king. There’s a makeover that is half mice in “Cinderella” and half Cyrano de Bergerac. I worried that the film was buying into old-school notions that a girl has to be made over to attract and please a man, but the film is clear that Bridget that she may get a confidence boost from the makeover but she needs to be honest with her crush about who and what she is. And it was very good to see the movie’s honest engagement with the idea of happiness. Even with daunting and scary challenges, a positive attitude can inspire you and those around you. Even the saddest loss does not mean that you lose happiness forever. And the greatest happiness comes from being close to those we love. Hugs and music and dancing always help, too.

Parents should know that this film includes fantasy/action peril. Some trolls are eaten by the Bergens, with one especially sad loss of a character’s grandmother.

Family discussion: What do the trolls know about happiness that the Bergens don’t? What is the difference between pleasure and happiness? What is the hardest part of trying to be happy?

If you like this, try: “Megamind” and “Despicable Me”

Inferno

Posted on October 27, 2016 at 5:10 pm

Dashing, globe-trotting symbology professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) doesn’t work any harder at trying to prevent a global pandemic than Hanks and director Ron Howard work at trying to make the Dan Brown book into a movie. You can guess how Langdon’s effort works out. I’m here to tell you that the movie does not. Not even close.

Langdon wakes up, disoriented and with a gash on his head. As far as he remembers, he is still at Harvard but somehow he sees Florence out the window. He has no recollection of the past few days and the doctor (Felicity Jones) explains that he has temporary retrograde amnesia. Her name is Sienna. Conveniently, she speaks English — she is English — and several other languages, and even more conveniently she is a fan of his work because she “likes puzzles.” She attended one of his lectures when she was nine years old and has read all of his books with such devotion that she even mentions there is one she didn’t like much.

When an assassin dressed as a police officer starts shooting at them, Sienna grabs Robert and brings him, still in his hospital gown, to her apartment. Pretty soon, they are both on the trail of a puzzle that leads to an impending release of a virus that while wipe out 80 percent of humanity, put in place by a crazed zillionaire who had some very strong feelings about the problems of over-population, and who fell to his death in the prologue, but not before warning darkly that “Humanity is the disease; Inferno is the cure.”

Robert, still groggy, has to figure out how to stop release of the virus. But the clues are simply that that puzzling or interesting. Unlike The Da Vinci Code, where Brown put together a clever and intricate series of clues based on authentic history and art, this one is little more than chase scenes in iconic locations, alternating with yawn-inducing scenes people barking kill orders into headsets and staring intently into monitors.

We also get drearily Delphic pronouncements like “the truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death” and somber almost-adages like “the greatest sins in human history have been committed in the name of love,” squinting at Renaissance frescos, a mysterious group with the PAC-like name The Command Risk Consortium (“We are not the government; we get things done”), a stolen death mask of “Inferno” poet Dante Alighieri, and an absurd pause for a chat about missed chances and regret. Irrfan Khan provides an all-too-brief bright spot, and I would happily see an entire movie about his crisp and unflappable character. As for the rest, one action scene is underwater, but the rest of it drags so much it feels like it might be, too.

Parents should know that this film includes fantasy/action style violence with grotesque and disturbing images, theme of global pandemic, chases and extended peril with characters injured and killed, suicide, betrayal, some strong and crude language, and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: Who is doing the most to address the problems of over-population? Why is Dante especially appropriate for this story?

If you like this, try: “The Da Vinci Code”

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

Posted on October 20, 2016 at 5:12 pm

Tom Cruise is back in a second “Jack Reacher” movie, based on the hard-boiled series by Lee Child. Jack Reacher is a quintessential and perfectly named fantasy action hero — former military but resistant to authority, capable of instant assessment of threats and options, crackerjack fighting skills, and no strings of any kind. He has no home, no family, no ID other than an expired military card, no car, no bank account, no possessions, just a passion for justice and a knack for getting into and out of trouble. And the equally perfectly named Cruise, capable of challenging himself as an actor but apparently not at the moment very interested in it, except maybe physically, is just right for Reacher, a bit world-weary but ever-righteous. He still runs very fast and looks good with his shirt off.

We first see Reacher in a diner with his hands cuffed behind his back, a bit scuffed up but characteristically steely. A sheriff informs him he is about to be arrested and charged with felony assault of the men lying injured on the ground. He coolly informs the officers that the pay phone is about to ring and that it is the sheriff who will soon be wearing the cuffs. The officer’s derisive snort is barely over before the phone rings, and sure enough, Reacher is right again.

He has solved a problem for the military (we won’t worry about the various laws — and bones — he broke on the way), and thanking him is his successor as overseer of an investigative unit, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Avengers”). They do a little phone flirting, and he decides to go see her in DC, only to find she has just been arrested for espionage. So, now Reacher has what he loves best, an injustice that only he can make right, of such an order of magnitude that it is certain to provide many opportunities for mayhem. But there is one problem that is, for a change, entirely outside of his ability to shoot, punch, or evade. Turner’s military attorney conveniently agrees to meet with Reacher (in an officer’s club, surrounded by pretty much everyone who might be interested), and he conveniently happens to have Reacher’s file with him as well, and helpfully shows Reacher the paperwork showing that a woman had filed a child support request with the military because she said the father of her teenage daughter was Jack Reacher. The same bad guys who are after Maj. Turner are after the girl, so Reacher ends up on the run with both Turner and his possible daughter Sam (Danika Yarosh).

Pairing up again with Edward Zwick (“The Last Samurai”) and with a script by Zwick and his “thirtysomething” partner Marshall Herskovitz (with Richard Wenk), Cruise stays right in his “Mission Impossible” action hero sweet spot. The interplay with Sam gives a little balance and emotional weight to the various fight scenes and shoot-outs, without diminishing the appeal of the ever-able hero with no strings.

Parents should know that the violence in this film is borderline R with very intense action and fight scenes, chases, fights, shoot-outs and explosions, torture, hired killers, corruption, many characters injured and killed, threat of rape, some strong language.

Family discussion: How was military training and experience reflected in the choices made by both the good and bad guys in this movie? What did Jack want the answer to be about Sam?

If you like this, try: the earlier “Jack Reacher” film and the “Bourne” series