The Good Dinosaur

Posted on November 24, 2015 at 5:43 pm

“The Good Dinosaur” is the good movie. Not the great movie. Not the especially memorable movie. Just the perfectly nice and pleasant movie, much stronger in visual splendor than in storyline.

Delayed for 18 months as Disney replaced the original director and realigned the story, the seams are palpable. And too much of it is much too familiar: a mismatched pair has to find their way home (see “Finding Nemo,” “Toy Story,” etc. etc.), a young animal is devastated by witnessing the death of his father through a natural disaster (see “The Lion King” — the staging is very similar), a boy with no family is cared for and preyed upon in the wilderness by animals (“The Jungle Book”), and it takes place a long, long time ago (see “Ice Age,” “The Land Before Time,” and “The Croods”).

But it is beautiful to look at, and the story is very sweet, a traditional “boy and his dog,” except here the “boy” is the dinosaur and the human is more like a pet. In the world of this film, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs bypassed earth, and so millions of years after the real dinos died off, they are not only still here, but they are thriving. Humans are just beginning to stand erect and have not yet developed language or tamed fire (but have somehow invented very handy leaf-clothes that are woven together so well they always cover the private bits). The dinosaurs can speak and they have learned how to farm, using their snouts to plow the field and building a silo to store grains for the winter. A loving herbivore dino couple (Jeffrey Wright and Frances McDormand) lovingly watch their three eggs hatch as the story begins. The biggest egg produces the smallest dino baby. They name him Arlo (Raymond Ochoa).

While his brother and sister are confident and capable, Arlo is fearful and anxious. His chore is feeding the chickens and they terrify him. His parents explain that each of the children will have a chance to literally make their mark — to add their paw print to the silo to show that they have made a contribution to the family. “You’ve got to earn your mark by doing something big for something bigger than yourself,” the father dinosaur explains.

Arlo’s siblings make their marks. But Arlo cannot seem to get beyond his fears. His father gives him a chance to set a trap for the animal that has been stealing their grain. But when the creature — a little human boy — is caught, Arlo lets him go. The father dinosaur tries to teach Arlo how to handle fear. But, leading Arlo to chase after the boy, a thunderstorm swells the river and Arlo’s father only has time to save his son before he is swept away.

Arlo gets separated from his family, and the only one who can help him is the young human, who crawls on all fours and pants like a puppy. Arlo names him Spot, and together they meet a variety challenges, many involving friendly characters or predators. Highlights include a very funny Styracosaurus whose antler protuberances are occupied by birds and animals (see “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose.”) But it is very funny to hear him introduce each of them, explaining about one of the birds, “He protects me from having unrealistic goals.” A brief visit to a collection of gophers who get literally blown out of their holes is delightfully choreographed. Sam Elliott provides just the right gravelly bass voice as another dinosaur dad who is less scary than he looks (but even that is too reminiscent of the better shark scene in “Nemo”).

The patched-together quality is most telling in a quasi-dream sequence (see “Footsteps” plaques at your aunt’s house) and an ending that seems to undercut some of what we thought we learned about what makes a family. The visuals are gorgeous, especially the clouds, the landscape, and the play of water and light. But the story is only intermittently as engaging as the background images.

Be sure to get there in time to see the short film before the feature, a heartwarming autobiographical tale about a Hindu father at his morning prayers. As he pays tribute to his deities, his son is on the other side of the room, watching a television show about superheroes. The way they are brought together has more imagination, heart, and inspiration in its brief running time than “The Good Dinosaur” has as a full-length feature.

Parents should know that this film includes extended peril, with some characters injured and killed (and eaten). There is a sad death of parent (who returns in a dream, which may be confusing or disturbing to young children), omnivorous dinosaurs with big teeth, etc., trippy fermented berries, and some potty humor.

Family discussion: How will you make your mark? Who in your family has a scar and what is the story behind it?

If you like this, try: “The Land Before Time,” “Finding Nemo,” and “Inside Out’

Creed

Posted on November 24, 2015 at 5:18 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence, language and some sensuality
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense sports violence (boxing), illness and disability
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 25, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	March 7, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B019EEK7ZA

Rocky had to find the eye of the tiger. When we first met him back in 1976, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) was an amiable, good-hearted lug who loved his pet turtles, Cuff and Link, and if he ever saw himself getting into the ring with champ Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), he could only imagine it would be as a sparring partner. His aspiration was not to get his nose broken and go the distance. Over the course of six films, he took on ever-more daunting opponents, so we could always think of him as the underdog. In the first film, he had the advantage of surprise. Creed assumed he could easily defeat the unknown fighter. Rocky did go the distance (and did get his nose broken), and lost in a split decision. In the second film, Creed knew what to expect and his pride was on the line. This time, it was Rocky who got soft after his fame and success. He had to get hungry and learn to be a fighter again. Rocky faced — and defeated — a champion at the top of his game.

Rocky went on to fight ever-more terrifying foes: Clubber Lang (Mr. T) who was not the decent, honorable guy that Creed was, and then the steroid Soviet man-machine Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). In the last two films, Rocky struggled with the killer knock-out punch that we all face — old age. His trainer Mickey and his wife Adrian have died. He still wants to go the distance, but now it does not seem so distant any more.

And now here is another fighter looking for a title shot. We first meet young Adonis Johnson (called Donny) in juvie, where we learn that he just can’t stop fighting. Eye of the tiger is not his problem. It is taming the tiger he has to work on.

Apollo Creed’s widow Mary Anne (dignified but warm-hearted Phylicia Rashad) is willing to give him a home. Donny’s father was Apollo Creed. His mother is dead. Mary Anne has decided to raise him. And she has no intention of letting him become a fighter.

Donny (charismatic Michael B. Jordan) is doing well in his office job, but there is something in him that just needs to punch people. So he leaves Mary Anne working in an office and he seeks out Rocky as a trainer. Rocky does not want to train anyone (see Tommy Morrison in #5). He just wants to miss Adrian in the restaurant he named for her. But this would not be a Rocky movie if Rocky didn’t go back to the gym, and pretty soon that training montage starts up. Gosh darn if it doesn’t still work, especially when that Rocky theme starts filtering through.

Pretty soon there’s a pretty girl, of course, Bianca, played by Tessa Thompson (“Dear White People” and if you haven’t seen it, please do so now). I loved this character for many reasons, primarily because she never took the “oh, don’t fight, you’ll get hurt” role (that is left to Rashad), and because she plays a character who embraces life so fully that she responds to a progressive hearing loss by devoting herself to her passion for creating music while she can. It is genuinely moving to see a disabled character in a film who is not defined by disability. Bianca is a strong, confident, passionate woman and Thompson plays the role beautifully in every sense of the word. Plus, she and Jordan have some sizzling chemistry.

This next chapter (apparently the beginning of a new series) goes the distance. Jordan, thankfully far from the catastrophically awful “Fantastic Four,” is back with writer/director Ryan Coogler. Their last film together, “Fruitvale Station,” was one of the best movies of 2013. As they did in that film, they have created a character who is complex, layered, trying to understand his past and not sure whether he can move on from it. Jordan can hold the screen with as much star power as any young actor in Hollywood today. He and Coogler are true to the Rocky tradition without being trapped by history. Yes, they go back to the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And yes, you will tear up when they do.

Parents should know that this film includes intense scenes of boxing with graphic injuries, strong language, sexual references and a sexual situation.

Family discussion: Why didn’t Adonis want to use his father’s name? What changed his mind? What would you do if you had Bianca’s health challenges?

If you like this, try: the “Rocky” movies and “Southpaw”

The Night Before

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:57 pm

Seth Rogen. Not very surprising guest stars. Many mind-altering substances. Many bodily fluids and functions. Many bad choices. No ability to allow women to be funny, even with some of the best comic actresses of our time in the cast. Haven’t we been here before?

That’s the question the characters in this film are asking, too. Isaac (Rogen), Chris (Anthony Mackie), and Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are friends who get together each year on Christmas Eve for a series of traditions, from visiting the tree at Rockefeller Center to a karaoke bar and a toy store to play on the giant piano keyboard from “Big.” Plus donning ceremonial holiday sweaters and getting wasted. Ethan’s parents were killed just before Christmas by a drunk driver 14 years ago, and Isaac and Chris promised him they would be his family for the holidays. More than a decade later, they’ve agreed this will be the last time. Chris is getting to be a big time athletic star in the NFL, and that means endorsement money and extending his personal brand via social media. He’s a spokesman for Red Bull, which has provided a limo for the evening. And he is hiding the secret of his recent jump in performance.

Isaac is married to Betsy (criminally underused Jillian Bell), and they are about to have a baby. She is refreshingly on board with his going out for a wild night with the boys that she gives him an early Christmas gift — a box of drugs, a sort of Whitman’s Sampler with everything from ‘shrooms to Molly, with some weed and cocaine thrown in for good measure (though, as Isaac points out with a tolerant chuckle, she does not know enough to get the proportions right). Ethan is drifting professionally and personally, never following through on his music and mourning a recent breakup with Diana (criminally underused Lizzy Caplan) because he could not commit to meeting her parents or moving in together.

Many years before, on one of their Christmas eve outings, they heard about a legendary party. I mean a PARTY. I mean THE PARTY, Platonic perfection of party-dom. It has always been their fondest wish to be there. Ethan, working as a coat check elf (his elf face really is very impressive), finds three tickets to the party in a guest’s coat pocket, steals them, and walks out. The party location won’t be announced until 10, so the trio has a few hours for their traditional activities, and plan to limo over to THE PARTY to cap off the evening.

This means encounters with old friends (Diana and her friend, played by the criminally underused Mindy Kaling, plus Michael Shannon as their weed dealer back in high school, Mr. Green), and odd substances (Rogen is actually quite funny as someone going through many different effects from many different drugs). There are cheap jokes about other Christmas movies and changes in technology over the past 14 years. A pay phone. A flashback with people amazed that an iPod can like hold “like 100 songs!” A revisit to Goldeneye on Nintendo 64 at Chris’ mother’s apartment.

There are some new friends, too. “Broad City’s” Ilana Glazer is a Christmas-hating fan who has sex with Chris in a club bathroom and then turns out to be Grinch-y. Various items and people are lost and must be searched for. Isaac’s bad trip is long, strange, and barf-y. And then there is a party with some not-so-surprising guest stars and some even less surprising Christmas-y confessions, apologies, and reconciliations.

“It’s hard to stay friends when you’re older,” Isaac says. It’s also hard to translate “Superbad”-style humor into something for actors in their 30’s. It should not be so hard to find a role for female characters that goes beyond infinite understanding and adoration. There are some enjoyably silly laughs here, and not all of them are in the “oh, no, you didn’t” category. There is a sense of groping toward something more — director Jonathan Levine worked with Rogen and Gordon-Levitt in the excellent fact-based “50/50,” and there are flickers that indicate a wish for something behind drug and barf jokes. One of my Christmas wishes is that the people making this movie learn something from the characters they put on the screen and give us something better next time.

Parents should know that this film is an extremely raunchy comedy with drinking, extensive and varied drug use, constant strong and crude language, some violence, explicit sexual references and situations, and very graphic nudity.

Family discussion: How do you decide which traditions to continue and which to give up? What did Mr. Green teach Ethan, Isaac, and Chris? Is it hard to stay friends as you get older?

If you like this, try: “The Hangover,” “Pineapple Express,” and “Ted”

Related Tags:

Comedy

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:52 pm

MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and for some thematic material
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant and intense peril and violence, guns, explosions, arrows, mines, zombie-like creatures, many adult and child characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 20, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	March 21, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0189HKE5Q

Can we all just agree that from now on we’ll try to keep it to one book/one movie? This final entry in the Hunger Games series will give the fans what they’ve been waiting for. It’s faithful to the book and it’s perfectly fine. But part 4 is not as good as part 3 and I am not persuaded that it needed to be a separate film.

Jennifer Lawrence is still very much the Girl on Fire and still the heart and soul of the entire series as Katniss Everdeen, whose archery skills, heart, and integrity inspire a rebellion.

Those qualities also make her a double target, wanted by both of the opposing forces. Dictator President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants to get rid of her. But the leader of the rebel group, President Alma Coin, wants to use her for propaganda purposes. As soon as Katniss recovers from the injuries she suffered in part 3, she is back in the field, not so much to fight as to appear to fight, with a camera crew following along.

Also at the end of part 3 we saw that Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who was tortured by Snow’s “Peacekeepers,” is now convinced that it is Katniss who is the enemy. Even the gentle Prim Everdeen (Willow Shields) cannot reach him.

Katniss is deeply conflicted. She has pretended to be in love with Peeta to win the Games and is so disconnected from her feelings she has no idea whether she loves him or not, or, if she is, if he will ever be himself again. Her old friend Gale is in love with her and she does not know how to respond to him, either. While she is passionately committed to bringing down President Snow, she is not willing to go along with the tactics President Coin believes are necessary. She finds it hard to trust anyone, even herself. The abrasive Johanna Mason (Jenna Malone, a refreshing break from the earnest doggedness of just about everyone else) reminds her that some people say what they mean.

All Katniss is certain of is that President Snow must die and she wants to be the one who kills him. So she and a group of rebel soldiers (don’t get too attached — they’re mostly red shirts) set off with one map showing where the mines and traps have been laid out and, for each of them, a capsule of poison to kill themselves in case of capture.

The middle section of the film is more FPS video game than story as the group faces one diabolical threat after another and it becomes numbing, even comedic as we go from guns and traps to a toxic inky flood and then some zombie-esque creatures, as though it is not just President Snow but author Suzanne Collins who wants to make sure no possible destructive force is overlooked.

There is a brief respite at the home of Tigris (a slinky and imposing Eugenie Bonderant, a woman who has been surgically modified to resemble a jungle cat. Like “Ender’s Game,” another story with very young heroes, the climax does not come where you think, in a manner that allows Katniss to evade genuine resolution of the moral quandaries of ends and means.

Director Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) has steered this big, unwieldy ship of a story safely into harbor. If he erred on the side of satisfying the books’ fans over those who might come to the story first on screen, that is understandable. But it means that at least half of the relief at having it resolved will be that no one is planning a part 5.

Parents should know that this film includes intense, extended, and sometimes graphic peril and violence with many adult and child characters injured and killed, as well as references to torture, guns, explosions, murder, chase scenes, themes of dystopia and tyranny.

Family discussion: Could the rebels have won without Coin’s decision? Was it worth it? Why are Snow’s forces called Peacekeepers?

If you like this, try: the other films in the series and the books by Suzanne Collins

Secret in Their Eyes

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:28 pm

A girl is murdered. That girl, that crime and the man who did it are seen very differently by different people, all of whom are in law enforcement and all who have sworn to devote their professional lives to justice in this dark thriller based on an Oscar-winning Argentinian film (“The Secret in Their Eyes“). Just as that film used a long-unsolved murder to explore the shifts of politics and culture over the decades, this version, from writer-director Billy Ray, sets the murder in the frantic realigning of priorities following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. For those who loved her, justice for the death of the girl is all that matters. For those working on anti-terrorism, though, the suspect may be of more use out in the world as an informant than in prison as a murderer.

The story takes us back and forth between the present day and the time of the murder, in 2001. Claire (Nicole Kidman) is a District Attorney and Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an investigator newly assigned to the FBI’s anti-terrorism division. There is an immediate charged connection between them, though Claire is more reserved. Ray works with Jess (Julia Roberts), who teases him about his evident interest in Claire.

Then there is the report of a death, a body in a dumpster. Ray and Jess arrive, alert, professional, but detached, snapping on their blue latex gloves and talking about a possible connection to their work because the body was found near the mosque they are investigating.

And then Ray sees the girl and has to tell Jess that everything she cared about in the world has been destroyed. The shot of Roberts’ face as she has to go from thinking she has been called to see a body to understanding that it, that she is the one particular individual who means the most to her, “the thing,” she says, “that made me me,” is shattering to see. For the rest of the film, the radiant presence we know so well is haggard, numb, broken.

In the present day, the murder has not been solved. Because the suspect was an informant from a mosque that could have been harboring terrorists, the case against him was not pursued, and he has disappeared. But Ray has never stopped looking for him. He went through 1906 photos a night, searching every white male in the FBI’s system, for 13 years. He thinks he has found him.

More successful in mood than plot, Ray uses this story to meditate on loss, hopelessness, and the gulf between law and justice. Each of the characters wants something different from this investigation. Jess wants what she thinks of as justice but what looks more like revenge. “Death penalty would be too good for him,” she says. Ray feels somehow responsible, because he could have been with Jess’ daughter the morning she was killed. Claire wants the law to be enforced. And she still feels a connection to Ray. As for the suspect — in his own way, he is as controlled by his obsessions as the others.

Parents should know that this film includes a brutal rape and murder (off-screen) and some violence, with some peril and some injuries and abuse. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Morales’ decision on how to treat Marzin? Should Ray have told Claire how he felt?

If you like this, try: the original film, “The Secret in Their Eyes” and Ray’s earlier films, “Shattered Glass” and “Breach”

Related Tags:

Crime Drama Remake Thriller