Christmas Eve

Posted on December 4, 2015 at 12:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some peril, thematic elements and language
Profanity:	Some strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad terminal diagnosis, gun, some tense confrontations
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	December 4, 2015

It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but the Christmas season is also the most hectic and the most fraught. Our to-do lists are overwhelming. Our expectations are even more so. And then there are the expectations of others. Everyone who celebrates Christmas expects at least a little magic around December 25th. Everyone, even the most cynical among us, wants to believe. Like Scrooge, we want to wake up as merry as a schoolboy and like the Grinch, we want our heart to grow.

In the gentle dramedy “Christmas Eve,” six very different groups of people get that chance. They deal in the most literal terms with life and death. There is love and loss and reconciliation. And it all happens because a guy runs his repair truck (labeled “Deus ex Machina”) into a power station and knocked out the electricity, so that six elevators get stuck and the people in them are trapped.

Patrick Stewart plays a wealthy man used to barking orders at cowering underlings. He is trapped by himself in a precarious construction elevator. The others are in groups. One is in a hospital elevator with orderlies, a nurse (played by Shawn King, the wife of producer Larry King — yes, that Larry King), a doctor (Gary Cole),a and an unconscious post-surgery patient.

In an apartment building, an outgoing photographer and a shy young woman are stuck together. A classical music ensemble is trapped together on the way to a performance. There is a lot of artistic temperament in a crowded space and one of them (Cheryl Hines) has a gun.

In another elevator, an IT guy who has just been laid off (Jon Heder) is trapped in an elevator with the boss who just gave him the bad news — on Christmas Eve. And in a shopping mall, two silly girls are trapped between brains and brawn. Their elevator includes a guy with a lot of muscles and tattoos who does not say much, a guy with some OCD issues and a lot of hand sanitizer, and a guy who could do very well on Jeopardy.

Before the power station can go back on line, the repair truck guy has to be rescued in a very complicated maneuver. So that gives us time to go back and forth as the temporary (but not as temporary as they intended to be) inhabitants of the elevators worry about everything from bodily functions to existential issues (I suppose bodily functions are a kind of existential issue).

As one might expect from the unwieldy construct, the movie is very uneven, careening back and forth between “Love Boat” level corny situations to a few moments of surprising insight. We are not surprised when the photographer gives the shy young woman a makeover and takes her picture. But we are at what happens next. The doctor was hoping he would be far from the hospital by the time his patient woke up and had to hear some bad news. But they are in the elevator so long that he ends up having to tell her himself, and the moment is sensitively handled. The weakest elements are the slapstick-ish rescue of the man who hit the power station and the interaction between the laid-off employee and his now-former boss, which requires a suspension of disbelief even Christmas cannot excuse. At its worst, it feels like a late-season “Love Boat” episode crossed with a late-night Hallmark Christmas movie, but at its best it reminds us that even in this busy season, we need to stop to smell the pine needles.

Parents should know that this film includes crude bathroom humor, some strong language, peril, gunshots, a sad terminal diagnosis, and tense confrontations.

Family discussion: Which of these people would you most like to be stuck with? What was the most important lesson learned by the characters? Which one surprised you the most?

If you like this, try: “New Year’s Eve” and “Valentine’s Day”

A Royal Night Out

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 5:57 pm

The fantasy of royalty mingling among the commoners goes back as far as royalty itself, turning up in classic stories from the Arabian nights to Mark Twain’s Prince and The Pauper to Audrey Hepburn’s Oscar-winning Roman Holiday, and in civilian form, the many runaway heiress films like It Happened One Night. An urban myth that Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, Princess Margaret celebrated VE Day, the end of the WWII battles in Europe and the surrender of the Nazi forces, by mingling with the crowd, has been turned into a fantasy that the then-teenage princesses had a wild night out on the town. It’s sort of Cinderella in reverse.

King George (played by Rupert Everett and yes, the one from The King’s Speech) and his wife, also called Elizabeth (Emily Watson) are preparing for various ceremonies to recognize the end of the war, including a speech the King is to give on the radio just before the official end of hostilities at midnight. His daughters are the future queen Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon, with an endearing freshness and just a hint of steel), called Lilibet by her family, and the fun-loving Margaret (Bel Powley of “Diary of a Teenage Girl”). Although their father relies on them to be with him when he speaks on the radio, still a very difficult challenge for the man whose stutter was the theme of “The King’s Speech,” they persuade their parents to let them out just once, so they can mingle among the “ordinary people.” Elizabeth has never made a pot of tea, visited a public ladies’ room, or had a drink in a pub, all of which she will get to experience. She has never been spoken to in a familiar manner, and had to be reminded to remove her tiara by a footman who suggests it might rather give her away.

The king and queen think they have outsmarted their daughters by assigning them a military escort and arranging that their outing will be confined to a closed room with carefully selected guests. But the girls escape and are quickly separated. Margaret spends the rest of the night going from one wildly improbable situation to another (including a brothel) while Lilibet searches for her with the help of an RAF airman named Jack (the very appealing Jack Reynor from “Sing Street”), who does not think much of the military or posh people.

Even the most Masterpiece-loving American Anglophiles will find this story lightweight and inside, with some of the accents hard to parse and some of the references obscure. But Gadon, especially in the last half of the movie, is lovely as the girl who grows to enjoy being called Lizzie, and it is satisfying to see her interest in learning about the people who will be her subjects and growing into her power as a woman and a monarch.

Parents should know that this film has drinking, some drug use, some scuffles and fights, sexual references and situations (including prostitutes and a threesome), references to wartime casualties, and some strong language.

Family discussion: If you were a prince or princess, what would you most want to see and experience? Why didn’t Jack want the help of the royal family?

If you like this, try: “Roman Holiday”

The Letters

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 5:46 pm

Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who devoted her life to “the poorest of the poor” in India, is one of the foremost figures of the 20th century, and on the way to being recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Some people are disturbed by discovering through her published letters that at times she felt doubts about herself, her work, and even about God. But it was that same resolute honesty that compelled her to follow her calling and it would be more disturbing if she never doubted or if she doubted and did not feel she could express it. Her accomplishments are even more impressive once we learn how fiercely she wrestled with God.

In “The Letters,” Juliet Stevenson plays Mother Teresa, from her early days as a nun to establishing her own order. At first, in the convent in India, she is teaching young girls in starched uniforms who sit quietly and are eager to learn. But she receives “a calling within a calling” and believes she has been called on by God to work with “the poorest of the poor.” Reconciling this determination with her vow of obedience and her dedication to humility is not easy. Persuading the people that she hopes to help that all she wants is to help them, not convert them, is not easy.

The tall actress Juliet Stevenson does a fine job as the tiny nun. Some people may object that the movie caters to those who are already believers. It does not question Mother Teresa’s greatness or her tactics and it elides over some of the controversies concerning the expansion of her operations and whether her faith-based approach was always best for the people she was helping. Some viewers will find the film slow, though for me that was one of its strengths. Writer/director Bill Riead makes sure that its quiet power is more like a prayer than a biographical portrait, a calling inside a calling inside a calling and one that its subject would find most suitable.

Parents should know that this movie’s themes concern work with the “poorest of the poor,” with extreme deprivation and illness.

Family discussion: What is the best way to help the “poorest of the poor?” Why did Mother Teresa want to help people who were not Catholic?

If you like this, try: “The Life Journey of Mother Teresa,” a documentary

Chi-Raq

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 3:37 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong sexual content including dialogue, nudity, language, some violence and drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	A theme of the film is gang-related violence, guns, shooting, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Race and gender issues are the theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	December 4, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	January 25, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B017W1P79I

“WAKE UP!” Laurence Fishburne pleads at the end of Spike Lee’s incendiary movie, “School Daze,” not just one of Lee’s best films but one of the most important films of the 1980’s. He was not talking to his fellow students. He was not talking to the camera. He was talking to us in the audience. He was telling all of us to rise above fear and petty differences — and fear of petty differences and stop hurting each other.

That message is even more urgent now, and so “Chi-Raq” is an even more powerful call for all of us to wake up, and it is Lee’s best non-documentary film in many years. It is more than a film; it is an anguished wail of grief and fury and the most important film of 2015.

We call the great Illinois city on the shores of Lake Michigan Chicago, but as the opening lines of the movie explain, for the residents of a South Side community with more violent deaths than the US military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is Chi-Raq. In the film a little girl is killed by a stray bullet in a gang-related shooting. She is collateral damage. The week I saw the film, there was a funeral in the very community where it is set for a nine-year-old boy who was a deliberate murder target as an act of reprisal against his father. Even the ultimate symbol of Chicago gangster violence, Al Capone, never went that far. This is not a documentary and the mode of storytelling here is heightened, but there can be no credible claims that what it portrays is unfair or exaggerated.

They feel completely isolated from any kind of help from the outside. Businesses are afraid to come into their community, so there are not jobs or services. The government does not help. The newspapers do not tell their story. Their news is reported by rappers, and in a sensationally dynamic scene in a club a rapper known as Chi-Raq (a fierce Nick Cannon) tells the truth about what they see all around them.

Lee, working with co-screenwriter Kevin Willmott, brilliantly positions this vitally contemporary story as an updated version of a play written in 411 BC, “Lysistrata,” by Aristophanes. Just as the savvy strategist of almost 25 centuries ago plotted with the other women of her community to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War by withholding sexual favors from all of the men, “Chi-Raq’s” Lysistrata (a sizzling performance by “Mad Men’s” Teyonah Parris) sits down with the women from the opposing gang (to continue the classical themes, the gangs are the Trojans and the Spartans) to get them to pledge that there will be no loving until there is no more shooting. The heightened classical overtones include a narrator/chorus who has a Greek-sounding name Dolmedes — inspired by the Blaxploitation hero Dolemite and played by Samuel L. Jackson in a series of natty, brightly colored suits. And then there is the dialog, all in verse, somewhere between rap and iambic pentameter, which actually have a pretty broad overlap.

Lee makes it clear that this is a widespread, even universal problem as women around the world join forces with Lysistrata. And no one escapes responsibility for the carnage, with a searing climax of tragedy and redemption. We see a mother (Jennifer Hudson) scrubbing her little girl’s blood off the street. We see people tweeting the details of a shooting as it happens. Lysistrata is inspired not just by her namesake but by the real-life Nobel Prize winner Leymah Gbowee, who brought the Christian and Moslem women of Liberia together to stop the fighting in their country. Lee is very clear about who is to blame and who is responsible for making it better: all of us.

And when we see mothers holding pictures of their children killed by guns, we are seeing real mothers, holding pictures of their real children. All of the flash, music, sex, and spectacle are balanced with moments of intimacy, connection, and poignancy, and all are anchored in Lee’s passion for his community. That reality makes this a rare movie that can change the conversation.

Parents should know that this film features gang-related and other violence with tragic outcomes including characters injured and killed, explicit sexual references and situations with nudity, smoking, drinking, and drug use.

Family discussion: What is the best way for the community, the government, and business to stop gang-related violence? How can a movie like this make a difference?

If you like this, try: “School Days,” “Do the Right Thing,” and “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” and read “Lysistrata”

Brooklyn

Posted on November 25, 2015 at 5:22 pm

“Brooklyn,” based on the book by Colm Tóibín, is exquisitely lyrical, the story of a young woman who immigrates from Ireland to New York in 1952. She is sad, homesick, and lonely at first, then just as she begins to feel at home she is called back to Ireland.

Movies can show us monsters and aliens and explosions but none of that will ever have the quiet power of Saoirse Ronan in close-up. The breathtaking intimacy of being so close to her face, her sky-blue eyes, the lift of her chin, is a story in itself. For once, the Irish-raised actress is using her own accent, and the lilt of it is pure and poetic.

She plays Eilis (pronounced EYE-lish), who lives with her mother and sister Rose in a small town. Rose has helped her make arrangements with a priest in New York (Jim Broadbent) for an apartment and a job. Eilis loves her family. But she is stuck in a part-time job working for a shrew in a grocery store. Ireland in the post-WWII years has little to offer her by way of love or work. And so she takes a voyage. The reason she is the only one at dinner the first night out is revealed when she gets very, very sick. But a sympathetic roommate helps her through and advises her about how to pass muster at Ellis Island — to act like an American, which means looking confident.

Eilis moves into an all-Irish boarding house, owned by the formidable Mrs. Keough (Julie Walters), a sharp-eyed but not unkind woman who can tell the difference between the simpering giggles of the other girls and the shy but steady Eilis. Soon Eilis is working at a department store, where the complexities of the transactions (payment sent to a central location via vacuum tube) and inventory are not as challenging as learning to chat pleasantly with the customers. It is an amusing change from the store in Ireland, where the owner barked at someone for wanting shoe polish on a Sunday, and “Mad Men’s” Jessica Paré is excellent as the manager.

Eilis slowly begins to feel at home. Ronan’s performance is precise and sensitive. She shows, not tells us how Eilis begins to bloom through taking some bookkeeping classes and meeting a nice guy, an Italian boy named Tony (the piercingly sweet Emory Cohen). There is believable magic in their sweetly developing relationship.

And then, there is a tragedy at home and Eilis has to go back to Ireland. But is that her home anymore? Can she fit into her old place? Does she want to?

Director John Crowley is a careful observer, and every moment rewards careful observation from us. A yawn in church. The faces of the people at the dock saying goodbye to their emigrating family members. The look on Eilis’ face as she struggles to tell Tony how she feels — it is a wonder, and one of the year’s best films.

Parents should know that this film includes a non-explicit sexual situation, sexual references, some strong language, and a sad death.

Family discussion: Did Eilis make the right choice? Why or why not? Who was most helpful to her?

If you like this, try: “In America,” another story of Irish immigrants in New York