Shaun the Sheep

Posted on August 6, 2015 at 5:07 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for rude humor
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Mild comic peril and mayhem, animal control officer, memory loss
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 7, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	November 23, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B013H99VXC

“Shaun the Sheep is another adorably quirky animated film from Aardman, the folks behind “Wallace and Gromit” and “Chicken Run.” it is a wordless pleasure about a flock of sheep who have an adventure when they get bored with their idyllic but monotonous life on the farm and visit the big city. But they miss their farmer. And when they are ready to go home, the farmer is not there. They had accidentally transported him to the big city, where he got amnesia and now cannot remember who he is or where he lives. Only the sheep can save the day.

Aardman films are made with sculpted figures shifted just one tiny movement at the time, and so lovingly hand-crafted that the audience can glimpse fingerprints on the characters. In a week, an animator may produce two or three seconds of film. And yet their movements are as fluid and intricately choreographed as a Jackie Chan stunt. And their faces are as expressive as any Oscar-winning actor.

That is especially important in this film because it is wordless. It is not silent — there are sound effects and a musical score and several well-chosen songs play on the soundtrack. Occasionally we hear a murmured mumble, a low-key British version of the adults’ muted horn sounds in the Charlie Brown shows. The kids in the audience with me loved it, laughing wildly, especially at a few potty jokes and some slapstick pratfalls. Don’t tell them, but children — and their families — will benefit from having to up their observational skills to stay on top of what is happening.

As Shaun and the flock dress up as humans to search for the increasingly bewildered farmer and evade the increasingly frenzied animal control officer and his electrified pinching grasper, their adventures are funny, exciting, and even poignant. The settings are witty and captivating, with some sly satire popping up to keep things brisk. It’s (forgive me) shear delight.

Parents should know that this film includes some bodily function humor (guy on toilet, sheep manure) and cartoon-style peril, head injury and memory loss.

Family discussion: Why did the sheep miss the farmer? Why was the haircut so popular?

If you like this, try: “The Wallace & Gromit” films, the “Shaun” television series, and “Chicken Run.”

Fantastic Four

Posted on August 6, 2015 at 4:53 pm

Three things a superhero movie should not be: dreary, dull, and tedious. Three things this movie is: see if you can guess. I am a huge fan of the comic book series Fantastic Four, which I first read as a teenager, ready for something with a little more edge and attitude than my beloved Superman. I have suffered through previous efforts to make their stories work on film, and dared to hope that this one would be better. It is awful in every category. The script is terrible, wasting much too much time on a revamped origin story that goes back to 5th grade(!) and the high school science fair(!) and still does not tell us anything interesting about the characters or how they got their powers. The characters are dull and all seem to be acting in separate bell jars, with no indication that there is another human being in the scene. Even when they are supposed to be friends, siblings, parent and child, or possible romantic partners, they act as though the other person was a tennis ball hanging in front of a green screen.

People who are supposed to be super-smart do things that are super-stupid. Like constantly. One thing scientists understand very well is that empirical data matters. So when things go terribly wrong when you try something, what’s the deal with doing the same thing again without taking any new steps to prevent further disasters? And Reed Richards’ only complaint is that the new pod is not as pretty as the old one and needs ten minutes of corrections to the code?

The dialog is filled with appalling clunkers like, “Do you ever think about what would have happened if you never came to the science fair?” “We cannot change the past. But we can change the future.” It even has locker-room style pep talks like, “He’s too much for each of us, but if we all work together we can beat him!” And many of the comments are just pointless and there are developments that have no logic of character or plot, indicating that the movie was even worse at some point and was cut like someone was slicing the bruises off a banana. The special effects look like they were created on Fiverr. The action scenes are muddy and static. At just over 90 minutes, it still feels endless.

And another boneheaded decision: while the comic book characters are adults, somebody decided to age them down into teenagers for this version so we could add in some adolescent angst, a love triangle that is about at the level of who will ask Sue to the prom, and, I am not making this up (I wish I were), the whole superpower thing happens because those darn kids get drunk one night and take the dimensional traveling machine thing out for a tipsy joyride. Think “Fantastic Four 90210.” We’ll have fun, fun, fun ’til Daddy takes the dimensional traveling pod away!

And what is the number one requirement for a superhero movie? A great villain. No such luck here. The bad guy is just a moody misfit who likes the same girl as the other guy and just might blow up the planet over it. And somehow when he’s abandoned for a period of time in another dimension on what looks like another planet with no life forms of any kind, somehow he manages to eat enough to stay alive AND come away with a really cool new cape and hood, sewn for him I guess by little elves? And unless Sue Storm’s new powers include hairstyle changes, the continuity people on this film have some ‘splaining to do.

There is a legendary Fantastic Four movie, available only on bootleg, made in 1994 as an “ashcan” film, not intended for release, just to preserve the studio’s rights to the characters. My bet is that it is better than this version. There is no bad guy in the history of the characters who has inflicted as much damage on the F4 as this sorry, soggy mess. (Thankfully, the plans for the sequel have been scrapped.)

Parents should know this film features extended sci-fi/comic-book peril and violence, some disturbing images of characters getting fried and exploding, parental death, domestic violence, some strong language, and drinking and drunkenness.

Family discussion: Why did Reed run away? How are Reed and Victor alike?

If you like this, try: “The Avengers” and “Iron Man” and the Fantastic Four comics, especially those featuring Galactus

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

Posted on July 30, 2015 at 5:54 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action-style violence, guns, chases, explosions, knives
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 31, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	December 14, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B012XYP82U

You think you’ve seen it before? Well, it is a familiar situation. Hitchcock had an assassin waiting in a concert hall for the right moment to shoot and our hero trying to stop it — twice, in the original “Man Who Knew Too Much” and the endlessly repeating “Que Sera Sera” remake. There was something along those lines in “Foul Play,” too, with Dudley Moore conducting. And you’ve seen four earlier “Mission Impossible” movies with Tom Cruise already. So you think you know where this is going? You are wrong. You’ve never seen this.

“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” is the action movie of the year, with stunts and chases that are dazzling in conception and execution. You know that amazing shot from the trailer with Tom Cruise hanging on to the outside of a plane as it takes off, the G-force coming at him like a locomotive and his legs dangling off the side as the ground disappears below? I’ll bet you thought that was the movie’s climax — in any other movie it would be. In any other year it would stand out as the best we saw. But in this film, they’re just getting started. It’s over by the time the credits come on, so we can get down to the real stuff.

Testifying before Congress we have angry bureaucrat Henley (Alec Baldwin) and imperturbable IMF chief Brandt (Jeremy Renner) responding to questions about some of the activities of the Impossible Mission Force, following that Russian blow-out in the last movie. Soon IMF is shut down, just as Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is (1) finally learning about this movie’s bad guys, known as The Syndicate, and (2) captured.

Good thing he’s been doing his ab exercises, because his hands are cuffed behind a pole, so some very impressive legwork is going to be needed to get him up and over. Hunt manages to escape with the help of a beautiful and mysterious women named Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) who is either on his side or not.

They next meet up at the Vienna Opera House where a brilliantly-staged instant classic sequence has Hunt and a would-be assassin fighting while a production of “Turandot” is going on below — and a head of state is enjoying it with his wife from their box seats. Coming up: a wild motorcycle chase scene and an underwater adventure with no oxygen tanks allowed.

So who cares if they keep referring to a thumb drive as a disk, the concept of “The Syndicate” is as weak and unimaginative as its name, and the final confrontation is logistically impossible? It is enormous fun, and Cruise is a master at the top of his game. There are exotic locations, the stunts and actions scenes are intricate and clever, and, of course, the fate of the world is at stake just as our heroes are entirely on their own. We know that the IMF team will be disavowed if they are caught; that’s the end of the assignment messages, just before they self-destruct. This is the fifth film; we think we know how this goes.

But we start getting surprises right from the beginning as writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (“The Usual Suspects”) knows where the twists go (this is not your usual monologuing hero and villain) and Cruise knows just how to deploy his endless movie star sizzle. My favorite moment in the movie is the look on his face in the middle of a flight scene when his adversary pulls out yet another weapon and Cruise gives him (and us) a look that says, “Dude. Really?”

McQuarrie wisely gives Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner some screen time, and the sizzling Ferguson is Hunt’s equal in fight skills, spycraft, and keeping everyone else guessing. The real Mission Impossible is topping the earlier films in the series plus upstarts like “Fast/Furious.” Challenge accepted.

Parents should know that this film includes constant spy-style action, peril, and violence, guns, knives, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed, and brief nudity.

Family discussion: How did Ethan decide who was trustworthy? Should Ethan have notified the British authorities of the threat? Should real spies behave like this?

If you like this, try: The four earlier “Mission Impossible” movies and the “Bourne” series

Best of Enemies

Posted on July 30, 2015 at 5:23 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Archival footage of 1968 protests
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	July 31, 2015

Once upon a time, network television news was dignified, objective, and delivered in stentorian, voice-of-God tones by white, vaguely Protestant men, in half-hour increments at the dinner hour. And then, in 1968, third-ranked network ABC, unable to compete with CBS and NBC in gavel-to-gavel coverage of the political conventions delivered by universally respected news teams, decided to try something new. For $10,000 each, they hired extreme right-wing author/journalist William F. Buckley and extreme left-wing novelist/journalist Gore Vidal to discuss and debate each day’s events at the conventions which would end up nominating Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.

Buckley and Vidal had a great deal in common. They were both combative, rapier-witted, hyper-verbal men from upper-class families, probably the last generation to be able to refer to themselves as “one” unironically. Both ran for office, perhaps more as theater than as real-life politics. When asked what his first act would be if he was elected mayor of New York City, Buckley famously quipped, “Demand a recount.”

And both men had in common a deep, visceral, loathing for one another that even exceeded their disdain of each other’s politics. Buckley was Catholic and a social as well as political conservative. Vidal was a proud libertine, whose most recent book at the time, Myra Breckinridge, was about a transgender woman, played by Raquel Welch in the movie version.

Their debates were unprecedented in the staid world of television news. So were their ratings. “Best of Enemies” is a new documentary about the Buckley-Vidal convention commentary. It is fascinating as theater to see two classically educated, combative, passionately partisan, men who so seldom met their matches square off against one another. Mere mortals who suffer from l’esprit d’escalier (the spirit of the staircase — the witty riposte not thought of until leaving the party on the stairs) can only envy these rapier-witted combatants try to use the upheavals of one of the most tumultuous and politically charged years in American history to score personal and political points. By the end, they were more interested in hurting each other than helping their causes. Buckley famously lost his temper and used a homophobic slur that was shocking in those days when everything on television was bland and family-friendly.

It is more than entertaining. It illuminates a significant moment in a time of enormous change. And the filmmakers are persuasive that it was a turning point that led directly to contemporary “news” that, as anchorman Howard K. Smith said to Buckley and Vidal at the end of their final segment, shed more heat than light.

Related Tags:

Documentary Movies -- format Politics

Vacation

Posted on July 28, 2015 at 6:44 pm

I didn’t like the first one. I didn’t like the sequels. Keep that in mind when I tell you that I really did not like this latest in the gross-out, mean-spirited “Vacation” series, this time with the next generation going on another car trip to Wally World. You know how kids survive long car trips with earphones and DVD players? That’s what I wished I had to help me survive this movie. I even took extra time making my notes to have an excuse to look down at my notebook instead of looking at the screen. This is a movie that finds — or tries to find — humor in mistaking a sewage facility for a natural hot springs (with extended scenes of the cast spreading the “mud” all over themselves), sibling abuse, attempted suicide, a person and an animal in separate instances getting slammed by vehicles, excruciating humiliation, suspected pedophilia, and a misunderstanding of the term “rim job.”

Ed Helms plays Rusty Griswold. He bears no resemblance to the Anthony Michael Hall, who played him in the first film, or the young actors who played the character in the sequels. But Russ bears no resemblance to the character of the earlier movies, either. This Rusty is a genial bumbler who loves his family and works as a pilot for an airline. He and his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) have two sons. The little one, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), bullies the big one (Skyler Gisondo as James) with constant insults, attacking his manhood, personality, and overall right to exist on the planet.

Russ decides that what the family needs is some bonding time, like on that car trip to the Walley World theme park he somehow remembers very fondly from his childhood. He rents a bright blue car called a Tartan Prancer, which he describes as “The Honda of Albania.” He has no idea what most of the buttons on the car do, but that means we all get to find out together.

The family swings by to visit Rusty’s sister Audrey (Leslie Mann), who is married to a guy who looks like a Norse god, because he is played by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth. He is a TV weatherman named Stone and he is rancher who intimidates Rusty by being handsome, muscular, wealthy, and good at everything, including being a loving husband, if you don’t count his preventing his wife from having a job outside the home. Oh, and as we and Rusty and Debbie get to see in detail (graphic detail at the end of the movie), he is exceptionally generously endowed and feels very, very good about it. And this is — really — the highlight of the movie.

Hemsworth and Applegate both rise above the material, but the material is below sea level, so that is not saying much.

Parents should know that this movie includes very strong and crude language, very explicit sexual references and some situations, graphic nudity, disturbing scenes, comic mayhem involving people and animals, attempted suicide, apparent vehicular homicide (portrayed as funny), and a lot of bad behavior (portrayed as funny).

Family discussion: What was your family’s best road trip? What road trip would you like to take?

If you like this, try: the original “National Lampoon’s Vacation” and its sequels

Related Tags:

Comedy Family Issues Series/Sequel