Posted on February 11, 2016 at 8:52 am
Keanu Reeves, Renee Zellweger, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw star in the courtroom drama “The Whole Truth,” directed by “Frozen River’s” Courtney Hunt.
Posted on December 24, 2015 at 7:54 pm
C| Lowest Recommended Age: | Middle School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for thematic material including some disturbing images, and language |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Alcohol and drug abuse |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Themes of severe brain trauma, dementia, substance abuse, domestic abuse, suicide |
| Diversity Issues: | Some bigotry and xenophobia |
| Date Released to Theaters: | December 25, 2015 |
Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) is a pathologist, an immigrant from Nigeria, with an assortment of degrees and certifications. He lives very quietly and is devoted to his work. When he is asked to perform an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers four-ring center Mike Webster (David Morse), something does not seem right to him. His office will not authorize additional tests, so he pays for them himself: $20,000 to prepare very thin slices of Webster’s brain so that Omalu can figure out why a man who was just 50 had amnesia, depression, and dementia, with indications of brain damage normally not found until extreme old age or severe injury. The tests revealed a syndrome Omalu called CTE: chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Omalu wanted to find out how pervasive this problem was among former professional football players. But there was a lot of money and a lot of power with no interest in finding out whether a game — no an industry — that “owns a day of the week” and employs tens of thousands of people might be so unsafe for its players that it put the future of professional football at risk.
He gets an ally in former NFL doctor Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin). And while some of his colleagues consider him a troublemaker or even a traitor, his boss (Albert Brooks) is on his side.
Art didn’t imitate life, but it was most likely shaped by it. The 2014 Sony hack revealed memos that raised concerns from studio executives about the sensitivity of the subject matter and the response of the NFL. That may be why a film about integrity and courage pulls its punches. It ramps up the implications of pressure, unpersuasively attempting to tie unrelated professional and personal setbacks to the NFL. A climactic job offer does not have the meaning that the film attempts to assign to it. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is sadly underused as the loyal spouse. And Smith himself is underused with a one-note performance that makes Omalu a cardboard figure. A movie about courage shows very little of its own.
NOTE: Slate’s Daniel Engbar contradicts some of the allegations in the film. The week of the film’s release, the NFL pulled its funding from an independent research project about the link between professional football and brain injuries.
Parents should know that this story concerns severe traumatic brain injury from professional sports with catastrophic consequences including dementia, substance abuse, domestic abuse, and suicide, as well as the obstructionist efforts by the authorities to deny the injuries, some strong language.
Family discussion: Why did Bennet Omalu pay for the additional tests? Why didn’t the NFL do more to protect its players? Who is most like Dr. Omalu in your life?
If you like this, try: “The Pursuit of Happyness”
Posted on November 13, 2014 at 5:55 pm
“Beyond the Lights” is a welcome return to the grand traditions of movie romance, with sizzling chemistry between gorgeous, fabulously charismatic stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker. And it also has some very astute insights about family, ambition, and the pressure put on young women, especially those in the performing arts, to present themselves as sexually provocative and available.
Minnie Driver plays Macy Jean, a ruthlessly ambitious stage mother who sees her talented young daughter, Noni, as her ticket out of poverty and powerlessness. We first see them at a singing competition when Noni is a little girl (India Jean-Jacques). Her performance of Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” gets her a trophy that her mother smashes to the ground because she did not come in first. Then Noni is grown up (Mbatha-Raw), singing and dancing in a steamy music video, featuring a successful rapper named Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly). Macy Jean is pushing Noni hard to do whatever it takes to become a star, and she is on the brink of a breakthrough, with an upcoming television appearance that should launch her into superstardom.
But in the midst of all of this sound and fury, Noni feels lost. The image her mother has created for her is so overpowering that she does not know who she is anymore. She is a singer with a million-dollar voice, but she is also a person who feels that it belongs to someone else, that she is lost somewhere beneath the glitter and fakery. Alone in her hotel room, she goes out the window and sits on the ledge, contemplating allowing herself to just fall off.
She is rescued by a cop assigned to her security detail. His name is Kaz (Parker) and he grabs her hand and looks into her eyes. He says “I see you.” And she believes he does.
Of course, the incident is spun for the press. “We’re selling fantasy here, and suicide ain’t sexy.” Noni jokes about the risks of combining champagne and stilettos and poses with her handsome savior. But Kaz did see Noni. He saw her the way she wanted to be seen. And she saw him, too.
Kaz has a demanding parent, too, a father (Danny Glover) who wants him to run for office, and knows that Noni is not first lady material.
Writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love and Basketball”) keeps the love story glamorous but never soapy, through the subtle, moving performances by Mbatha Raw and Parker, and a script that respects the characters, with thoughtful details and easy humor. In the very beginning, Macy Jean is frantic because she does not know how to handle her biracial child’s hair. Later, Noni is wearing a purple-streaked weave for her music video. And when she begins to be happy again, she frees her hair as she finds her true voice. Prince-Bythewood’s confidence in her own voice as much a pleasure of this film as the love story and the star power, which add up to the best date movie of the year.
Parents should know that this film includes very provocative sexual imagery and musical performances with very skimpy clothing, sexual references and situations, strong and crude language, attempted suicide, and tense family confrontations.
Family discussion: What does it mean to “do small things in a great way?” How did Noni and Kaz help each other? Why did being on the brink of great success was Noni in despair? What can we do to protect girls from the overwhelming focus on appearance?
If you like this, try: “The Rose,” “The Bodyguard,” “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Dreamgirls,” “Love Me or Leave Me,” “Gypsy,” and “Mahogany”
Posted on November 1, 2014 at 8:00 am
It’s going to be a great month at the movies! November is traditionally the time when we start to see the big awards hopefuls. Next Friday, two of the most anticipated films of the year open: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” with Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway as explorers seeking a new planet for humans who can no longer live on a desolate, broken Earth, and Disney’s “Big Hero 6,” based on the Marvel comic about a lovable robot and the equally lovable nerds who work with him to save the day.
And then:
November 14:
“Beyond the Lights” — a romantic drama about a fragile pop star (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), her ambitious mother (Minnie Driver), and the handsome, true-hearted cop who rescues her (Nate Parker).
“The Theory of Everything” — the most brilliant scientist of our time, Stephen Hawking, is confined to a wheelchair and speaks through a computer, because he has ALS. This is the story of his days in school, falling in love, early work, and learning of his illness. It stars Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones.
“Rosewater” — John Stewart wrote and directed this story of a journalist named Maziar Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) who was jailed for his reporting.
November 21:
“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1” Jennifer Lawrence is back in the next-to-last of the series.
“Foxcatcher” In this fact-based story from the writer and director of “Capote,” Steve Carell is almost unrecognizable as the unstable heir to the Dupont fortune who sponsored Olympic wrestling team hopefuls — and murdered one of them. Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum co-star as the real life Schultz brothers, both gold medal winners.
November 26:
“Penguins of Madagascar” puts the most popular characters from the “Madagascar” series in the middle of the action for a spy story co-starring John Malkovich and Benedict Cumberbatch.
“Horrible Bosses 2” Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day are back (and so are Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston) for another wild comedy, this time co-starring Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine.
Posted on May 8, 2014 at 8:00 am
“Belle,” expanding to theaters across the country tomorrow, is based on the real-life 18th century story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate daughter of a titled British Naval officer (played in the film by Matthew Goode of “A Good Wife”) and a slave from the West Indies. Her father brings her to live with his uncle, the British equivalent of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In the film, directed by a British woman of African heritage, Amma Asante, the themes of gender, money, class, and race are explored with sensitivity and insight reflecting some of what we have learned in the nearly 400 years since Belle appeared in a famous portrait with her cousin.
There was a real Belle, and as in the film she was known to her family as Dido, born around 1761. She lived with her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield. He and his wife and unmarried sister raised her with her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. The girls were around the same age, as shown in the portrait, and raised as sisters. Dido was, as shown in the movie, loved by her family but was subjected to restrictions based not just on her race but on her illegitimacy. A contemporary report from a visitor to the home suggested that she was more of a companion to her cousin than an equal. She had some responsibilities over housekeeping, but so did her unmarried aunt. A fascinating historical account noted that she served as a kind of secretary to her great-uncle, which suggests that she had a level of respect for her intellectual ability that was unusual for people of her race and gender at the time.
The move toward abolition of slavery in Great Britain is as gripping and complex a story as the movement in the United States. There were two big differences. First, since slavery was offshore and unseen by most citizens, it was more difficult to make its fundamental immorality clear to the population. Once it was made clear, it led to the first ever populist political movement. This story is very well told in the film “Amazing Grace.” Second, the abolition of slavery was accomplished in 1833, decades earlier than in the United States, and without armed conflict.
One reason for that was a crucial decision made by the courts in England in 1772, a decision by none other than Belle’s great-uncle, Lord Mansfield. While the facts of that case are very different from those described in the film, the decision was the first acknowledgement by the court of the inherent offensiveness of slavery and was an important precedent for framing the arguments over slavery that followed. We will never know whether Belle influenced her great-uncle explicitly or by the example of her intelligence and character, as the movie has it. But it is fair to wonder whether he would have ruled differently had he not had the unquestioned affection for Belle that has been documented.
For more about Belle, read this scholarly article by Henry Louis Gates and Belle: The Slave Daughter and the Lord Chief Justice
