Israel’s biggest box-office hit of 2016, “The Women’s Balcony,” is a warm-hearted film about a close-knit Orthodox community living in blissful harmony until their synagogue literally collapses in the middle of a bar mitzvah. The rabbi’s wife is critically injured and the rabbi becomes depressed and foggy-minded. The men of the congregation are grateful when a charismatic rabbinical student known as Rabbi David (Avraham Aviv Alush), offers to help, bringing along his friends to conduct services and raise money to rebuild the temple. But he proves to be a very divisive figure when he urges the congregation to become more strictly observant, suggesting the men give their wives headscarves to cover their hair. The showdown comes when he tells the women that rebuilding the balcony, where the women sit separate from the men during services, will have to come after the creation of a new torah scroll. The women do not agree.
The details of the setting are fascinating, and while unfamiliar to many in American audiences, the elements of an Orthodox Jewish life are presented in a comfortable, respectful, natural manner. The film is immensely charming in its depiction of the quiet, gentle humanity of the community and the way their commitment to Judaism is reflected in every aspect of their lives. Evelin Hagoel is a stand-out as Etie, a grandmother who leads the rebellion and Yafit Asulin is radiant as a shy young woman who finds love. This is an endearing comedy with some thoughtful insights about the way we find and keep finding the sustaining force of grace in our lives.
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief sensuality
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Medication
Violence/ Scariness:
Theme of potentially deadly illness, reference to sad death, domestic abuse
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
May 19, 2017
Copyright Warner Brothers 2017
“Everything, Everything,” based on the novel by Nicola Yoon, is an updated fairy tale about a princess trapped in a castle and the prince who does not exactly rescue her but gives her a reason to rescue herself.
It’s not an enchantment or a curse that keeps her inside. It’s an illness that means any exposure to bacteria or a virus could be fatal. Maddy (Amandla Stenberg, Rue in “The Hunger Games”) cannot remember a time when she was allowed to be outdoors.
Diagnosed at 2 with the immune deficiency SCID, Maddy lives in an irradiated and sterile environment. She has never left her home and has never met anyone other than her doctor mother (Anika Noni Rose), her nurse Carla (Ana de la Reguera), and Carla’s daughter Rosa (Danube R. Hermosillo). She has books, she has an exercise machine, she has 100 identical white t-shirts, and she has an online SCID support group. She and her mother watch movies and play phonetic scrabble. Maddy studies architecture and builds model rooms, placing the figure of an astronaut in each one. This avatar is her opposite. Her world is measured in square feet; the astronaut’s is unlimited.
Maddy stands at the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the backyard and imagines what it would feel like to stand on grass or feel a breeze of unfiltered air. And she has a seat in the corner of her bedroom overlooking the house next door, which is how she peers down at a new family moving in, a new family with a boy who has a beautiful smile. He is Olly (Nick Robinson of “Kings of Summer”). He draws his phone number on his window opposite her bedroom, and soon they are texting each other, sweetly portrayed as a face-to-face conversation at a table in Maddy’s model diner, with the astronaut looking on. She wears white; he wears black. She says, “When I talk to him, I feel like I’m outside.” But when she talks to him, she wants to go outside. And both of them find their worlds getting less black and white.
The elements of a young teen romantic fantasy are all here, primarily the disapproving parent, the utterly devoted and hunky but not too aggressive young male, adoring and supportive, and the big reason that they cannot get too physical, except maybe one perfect time. In “Twilight,” he was a vampire who could lose control and kill her. Here it’s just his normal human germs. Anyone over the age of 15 may be distracted by impracticalities and plot developments that go from improbable to preposterous, but even people who know that you have to have ID to get on an airplane and money to pay a credit card bill might just enjoy the pleasures of watching Maddy wake up to the world and Olly, through her, wake up to a few of his own.
Parents should know that this film includes risky teen behavior, some strong language, serious illness, and a non-explicit sexual situation.
Family discussion: Did Carla make the right decision? Why does Maddy put an astronaut in her model rooms?
If you like this, try: “My Sister’s Keeper,” “Before I Fall” and “The Fault in Our Stars”
Ah, the family car trip. Often excruciating, frequently tedious, always unforgettable. For this third in the “Wimpy Kid” movie series, based on the wildly popular books by Jeff Kinney, the story moves from the schoolyard to the highway as Greg and the Heffley family leave home for his great-grandmother’s birthday party. The kid actors from the first movie have grown up. Remember, one of the characters was played by Chloe Grace Moretz, recently in “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” And if that doesn’t make you feel old, consider this: the entire cast has been replaced, with “Clueless” star Alicia Silverstone now playing the mom. Tom Everett Scott takes over the dad role from his “That Thing You Do” co-star Steve Zahn.
The Wimpy Kid stories are funny and reassuring for kids and tweens because they can laugh at and with Greg Heffley (now played by Jason Drucker) as he careens from one excruciatingly disgusting encounter to another, many involving human and animal bodily functions and the products thereof. “I like my family and all,” Greg explains, “I’m just not sure we were meant to live together.”
Greg has a dim older brother named Roderick (Charlie Wright), who mistakes the motel safe for a microwave, subjects Greg to an endless stream of demeaning comments, and explains his secret: “I spent years lowering Mom’s and Dad’s expectations.” He has a toddler younger brother who becomes a rage monster without the pacifier Dad has left behind because what better time to wean him than the road trip? Eventually, they will be joined by another passenger, a baby pig, won by the toddler at a county fair.
Along the way, the family encounters filthy motels, a rude bully Greg terms “Beardo,” and the worst horror of all — a Mom-demanded relinquishment of all devices. “This is an unplugged road trip,” she smiles at the boys. “The only connecting we’re going to do is with each other.” She even forces them to listen to dreadful music like — wait for it — the Spice Girls. And Greg has a secret goal. Trying to overcome public humiliation that has gone viral (“Now I’m a meme!”), he is determined to meet and create a video with his gaming idol at a Comic-Con-style gathering just “two inches on the map” from the party.
The kids in the audience, mostly fans of the book series, enjoyed it very much, but adults are likely to find it a very long haul indeed.
Parents should know that this film includes slapstick comic peril and violence (no one hurt), bodily function humor, and some schoolyard language.
Family discussion: Why do the worst parts of the trip make the family feel closer together? What was your favorite road trip with the family and why?
If you like this, try: the other “Wimpy Kid” movies and the books and “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”
Rated R for crude sexual content, brief nudity, and language throughout
Profanity:
Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking and drunkenness, drug references
Violence/ Scariness:
Extended action-style comic peril and violence with some disturbing and grisly images, characters injured and killed, graphic medical procedure
Diversity Issues:
Stereotyped portrayal of South Americans
Date Released to Theaters:
May 12, 2017
Copyright 2017 20th Century FoxEmily Middleton (Amy Schumer), pulls an old scrapbook out of the closet in her childhood home and leafs through old photos of her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn). Like Emily, those images bring back memories of happier times and remind her how much she misses her once-adventuresome mom. Unfortunately, they also bring back our memories of better movies and how much we have missed Hawn’s irresistible effervescence in the 15 years since her last film. Schumer has been everywhere talking about how much she adores Hawn and how thrilled she was to get a chance to co-star with her in “Snatched,” directed by Jonathan Levine (“50-50,” “The Wackness,” “The Night Before”), and written by Katie Dippold (“The Heat,” “Ghostbusters”). It is too bad she relegated her to the dreary role of the risk-averse mother. And it is too bad that Schumer continues to relegate herself to the almost-as-dreary role of the immature, millennial.
Emily gets both fired and dumped (both for good reason) just as she is about to take a vacation in Ecuador, so she retreats to her childhood home, where her agoraphobic brother (Ike Barinholtz) still lives with her divorcee mother, whose character traits come straight out of the cliche drawer: she sips white wine, loves her cats, has four locks on her front door, does not know the difference between a private message and posting on a Facebook wall and needs help unlocking the CAPS key. And Schumer’s Linda is the same self-centered and childish but raunchy character we’ve seen Schumer play too many times already. Emily is too careless. Linda is too careful. Got it? The opening crawl warns us that the movie will feature “violence, mayhem, and a reckless disregard for human life…the kidnappers did bad stuff, too.” So, another “Hangover” variation in the jungles of South America (but filmed in Hawaii).
How does Emily persuade the hyper-cautious Linda to go to Ecuador with her? Wheedling and guilt don’t work, but the magic word is “nonrefundable ticket.” (“Put the ‘fun’ in ‘nonrefundable!'”) So the next thing they know, they are at an elegant resort, where, just to make sure we did not miss the point, Emily lounges by the pool in a bikini and Linda comes out dressed, as Emily points out, like the sun-sensitive character in “Powder” — or a beekeeper. And she slathers sun block on Emily like she’s a toddler.
Emily and Linda get kidnapped for ransom, bicker, escape, get captured again, bicker, escape, etc. Pretty much every South American is a servant or a criminal. The State Department is useless. There are pratfalls and shoot-outs and one very disgusting medical procedure. Various encounters along the way are funny in the usual raunchy comedy mode, especially Christopher Meloni as a khaki-wearing guide who is up for adventure but maybe not up to it, and the invaluable Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack as American tourists with some special ops skills. The movie would have been better if it was about them.
Parents should know that this film includes very explicit sexual references and crude humor, very strong language, brief nudity, graphic medical treatment, extended peril and violence, some humor about mental illness and disability, characters injured and killed (played for comedy), and some graphic and disturbing images.
Family discussion: Who changes more on the trip, Linda or Emily? Why is it hard for Emily to be nice to her mother?
If you like this, try: “Trainwreck” and “Inside Amy Schumer”
Director Guy Ritchie pretty much makes the same movie every time. Even when it is set in Victorian England (“Sherlock Holmes” with Robert Downey, Jr.) or Cold War-era Europe (“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.“), or based on a classic book (“Sherlock” again) or a remake of an Italian comedy (“Swept Away”), it’s really pretty much about corkscrew story-telling with tricked-up juxtapositions of quick cuts and slow motion, and flashbacks and side-cuts for emphasis and illumination. The characters are a motley crew of cheeky lower-class rapscallions taking on the rich and powerful. They range from wildly proficient to borderline incompetent, often damaged but usually pretty good with a quip, assuming you can understand the argot, and with their own kind of honor.
So, why not take that formula and set it in the Middle Ages, featuring some of the most enduring characters in the Western canon? What’s that, you say? Because it’s already been done by Monty Python? But they were using coconuts for horse clop clop, and we have all this lovely lolly for computers and explosions and fight scenes, that’s why! This begins with a riderless horse running from an exploding building and goes on to include a sort of three-headed mermaid octopus, a gigantic snake, and a therapeutic iowaska-style trip. Plus, of course, that sword gets pulled from the stone.
And that is how we come to have the ponderously, if generically, titled “King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword,” pretty far from the essential elements of the Arthurian legend, literally two pie slices short of a round table and no Guinevere or Galahad in sight, but per the title we do get a lot of Excalibur the sword and a bit of Arthur’s dad Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), plus, as noted, a lot of magic and fights and explosions, plus a very cool monster, all of which are a good bit of fun.
As the story begins, the longtime pact between men and mage (magicians) is coming to an end. Uther is King, but his brother Vortigern (Jude Law, lounging menacingly in what looks like disappated British rock star garb) is so jealous that he will destroy what he loves most to get the throne, unleashing the power of the mage, which in this case includes rampaging giant elephants.
Soon Uther and the queen are dead and young Arthur is sent off in a boat, ending up in a brothel, where we see him grow up in a kaleidoscopic flurry of images that show us that he is (1) very buff (ultimately ending up as Charlie Hunnam), (2) very canny at collecting coins, (3) learning how to fight, and (4) very loyal to his friends, including the prostitutes who raised him.
Arthur’s uncle has become king. He rules with fear, which he considers not a necessary evil but the primary benefit of his position. He says it is intoxicating, that it “takes you completely.” In video game fashion, he can only assume total power if he is able to prevent Uther’s true heir from touching Excalibur to some sort of altar and completes the building of a tower. To find and kill Uther’s son, he requires every man of the right age to try to pull the sword. Thus, Arthur is revealed, though he says and possibly means that he never wanted power.
With the help of his rag tag friends from his days on the street and a mysterious mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), Arthur takes on the king and his army of Blackleg soldiers. But this is exactly the problem; the one thing the audience must have in a fight is a good sense of the stakes and challenges. With magic on Arthur’s side, we never know what is really possible. And psychobabble about his not being able to access the full power of the sword until he is willing to confront his painful memories just sounds silly, in part because Hunnam, a true Ritchie not-so-anti-hero, never seems vulnerable enough to need any additional soul-searching.
It is kinetic, fast, and fun to watch, though the rumored prospect of five more in a projected series has me wishing for a mage to make it stop.
Parents should know that this film includes extended fantasy/action peril and violence, with explosions, swords, fights, arrows, torture, and monsters. Characters are injured and killed, including beloved parents, children, and spouses. There are scenes in a brothel, sexual references, and characters use some strong language, alcohol, and drugs.
Family discussion: Why does Arthur say he never had any desire for power? How do we know when is it time to face painful memories?
If you like this, try: “Excalibur” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”
