Fist Fight

Posted on February 16, 2017 at 5:40 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language throughout, sexual content/nudity and drug material
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language used by adults, teens, and a child
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs and drug dealing by teenager
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	February 17, 2017

Maybe it’s just here in Washington D.C., but when I saw “Fist Fight,” the biggest laugh from the audience was seeing the name of the executive producer, Steve Mnuchin, who had just been sworn in as the Trump administration’s Secretary of the Treasury. The timing of the movie, with its comic portrayal of an underfunded and wildly dysfunctional public school is uneasily, if inadvertently resonant with the times.

But mostly it is just not very funny. Five writers, including “New Girl” actor Max Greenfield, and a roster of more than a dozen producers, including the two stars, Ice Cube and Charlie Day, could not come up with anything more original than anatomical graffiti, a teacher who takes drugs and want to have sex with students, and a child performing a song with f- and b-words in her school talent show.

The producer/stars play Ron Strickland and Andy Campbell, teachers in a chaotic high school that is even more chaotic than usual because it is the last day before summer vacation. The senior pranks include obscene graffiti in the classroom and on the field, a drugged-up stolen race horse in the halls, the principal’s car covered with paint and left in the school foyer, and (I admit it, this was surreal and funny) a mariachi band trailing the principal for the day.

The students are openly contemptuous of the teachers. So is the administration, which is insisting on re-interviewing each of them to decide whether they will be kept on in their jobs. And poor Campbell, who just want to get along with everyone and impart to his students some of his love for words, has a wife who is about to go into a labor and a daughter who is appearing in the school talent show that afternoon. For some reason, he is performing with her, though she wants to make some last minute changes to the song. Do you think maybe the one she is springing on him has some bad language in it? Yes! Is that something that is inherently hilarious? Not in my opinion.

So, this is about two things: First is Campbell’s constant frustration at trying to do the right thing and the emasculating humiliation heaped on him by everyone when his nice-guy efforts are met with universal contempt. Second is the concept that nice-guy efforts should be met with universal contempt because what matters is the willingness and ability to beat someone up. Even the 911 operator (Kym Whitley) can only laugh when he calls for help.

The movie is filled with funny people. Unfortunately, it is bereft of funny ideas.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong language used by adults, teenagers and a child, drug humor and drug dealing by a teenager, jokes about a sexual predator, graphic sexual graffiti/humor, outrageous pranks, comic violence and peril.

Family discussion: Are Strickland and Campbell good teachers? What do they like about teaching?

If you like this, try: “Three O’Clock High” and “Ride Along”

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Movies -- format

The Great Wall

Posted on February 16, 2017 at 5:39 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy action violence
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extensive, intense, military and fantasy violence with scary monsters, spears, arrows, explosions, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters but some insensitive portrayals
Date Released to Theaters:	February 17, 2017

I get that you need a big Hollywood star to get big Hollywood money. But in “The Great Wall,” that means that Matt Damon has to save the day in ancient China, and having him share the fight with a tough female military leader (Tian Jing) who is Chinese (and very beautiful) does not reduce the quease factor.

Damon plays William, a mercenary who has fought for and against armies of several European nations, now traveling through China in search of the “black powder” they have heard is a new weapon of massive power to destroy. (Gunpowder, the first explosive, was developed by Chinese alchemists in the 9th century.) All of his group are killed except for his closest friend Tovar (Pedro Pascal) in an encounter with a mysterious beast. William kills it and keeps the claw to help find out what it was. When they are captured by an enormous army, it is the claw that keeps them from being killed. The army, a part of the Nameless Order, is stationed by the Great Wall to fight off those creatures, called Tao-Tie. They are dragon-like predators who are learning and evolving, becoming more powerful and working together to develop what can only be called strategy. The Nameless Order has to stop them before they can no longer be contained and take over China, and, after that, the world.

The six people who wrote the film include top-level screenwriters including Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (“thirtysomething,” “Nashville”), Max Brooks (“World War Z”), and Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”) were not able to add any more depth than a videogame, and Matt Damon’s talent and charisma can only take his one-dimensional character so far, but the real star here is director Yimou Zhang, whose gift for visual imagery is always a pleasure to behold. In the grand tradition of Cecil B. DeMille or Busby Berkeley, his eye for epic scale, pageantry, and battle is superb. Blue-armored female soldiers leap off ledges to fight the Tao-Tie via military-grade bungee cords. Two interlopers are suddenly surrounded by a storm of red arrows, shot to keep them at the center of a perfect circle. A soldier accused of having a bow “not to the level of your skill” demonstrates what it — and he — can do with three arrows shot at once, one to adjust the trajectory of a tossed bowl and other two to pin it to a column. The film has no dialog about trust or what it means to risk your life, whether for money or for your community, no bromantic banter, and no discovery of the surprising secret to defeating the animals that comes close to the power of the endless row of faces, resolute, honorable, and determined it to whatever it takes to fight the Tao-Tie.

NOTE: Matt Damon and co-star Andy Lau both played the same character in the American and Chinese versions of the film that in the US was called “The Departed.” The Chinese version was “Infernal Affairs” and both are excellent.

Parents should know that this film includes extended military vs. monsters violence with many characters wounded and killed and disturbing images, arrows, spears, and explosions. While it features strong, brave female soldiers and officers and tries to balance the skill and courage of the Chinese and western characters, it is still disturbing to see in 2017 a movie where the indigenous people cannot solve the problem until the European arrives. You may wish to read the director’s statement on this issue.

Family discussion: Were William and Lin Mae alike? How did they earn each other’s trust?

If you like this, try: “House of the Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower”

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”

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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.