Safe Haven

Posted on February 13, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Now that best-selling author Nicholas Sparks has rung every possible variation out of his core formula: damaged hearts, pretty people, syrupy pop-song montages, buttery, sunlit cinematography, the healing powers of a body of water (and rain), the healing powers of a small town community, a sad death, and a letter of great import, he has officially run out of new ideas and even thoughts about how to keep re-arranging the old ideas. An unnecessary twist at the end feels desperate and it feels like a cheat.

Damaged heart number one: Julianne Hough plays Katie, who is on the run from the Boston police for what looks like a violent assault. She has cut and dyed her hair (so efficiently that it never grows out or needs to be retouched), stops in small town on the North Carolina Coast (body of water is the Atlantic Ocean), takes a job as a waitress in a local cafe and somehow has the money to move into a dilapidated but picturesque little cabin out in a remote area of the woods.

Damaged heart number two: Josh Duhamel, as usual far better than his script, plays Alex, the extremely handsome widower with two children (one adorable and affectionate, one mini-me damaged heart who misses his mom) who owns the local store. At first, Katie just wants to keep to herself and resists making friends with Alex and with Jo (“How I Met Your Mother’s” Cobie Smulders), another single woman living alone in the woods. But soon Katie and Alex are out on the healing water and then, when it rains, getting drenched by the powerful healing effects of even more water. A not-very-surprising mystery about Katie’s past is revealed and pretty soon there will be a very significant letter.

Hough is not an actress of great range, but she looks very pretty and wears a bikini well. Duhamel has a natural ease on screen that makes it easy to overlook what a committed and subtle performer he is. Even when he is called upon to make Alex to have some improbable reactions, he manages to find a smidgen of honesty that elevates the material. Director Lasse Hallstrom (“Chocolat,” “The Cider House Rules,” “My Life as a Dog”) puts so much gloss on the images that it feels like a perfume commercial but never elevates the story above the Lifetime movie level.

Parents should know that this movie includes themes of domestic abuse with some graphic and disturbing images, fire with child and adults in peril, references to sad death of parent, sexual situation, some strong language, and alcohol abuse

Family discussion: What does Katie learn from Jo that she cannot learn any other way? What changed Alex’s mind?

If you like this, try: the book by Nicholas Sparks and some of his other movies like “The Notebook,” “The Lucky One,” and “Dear John”

Identity Thief

Posted on February 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm

How did so many great performers get stuck in this awful movie? And why, why?

There’s one scene in this ugly and poorly paced road trip comedy that has the straight-laced Sandy (co-producer and star Jason Bateman) hiding in the bathroom because he is so agonized by what is going on in his hotel room. The scammer who stole his identity (Melissa McCarthy) is drunkenly seducing an even tipsier guy named “Big Chuck” (“Modern Family’s” Eric Stonestreet) and two heavy people wanting to have sex must be funny, right? Sandy runs the water in the bathroom and wraps his head in a towel to block out the sounds and thoughts. As we went back and forth between the not-funny gyrations in the bedroom and the not-funny disgust in the bathroom, I was wishing I had a towel to wrap around my ears. And my eyes.

Sandy Bigelow Patterson is a loving husband and father with a pregnant wife (Amanda Peet) holding onto a $50,000-a-year job at a financial institution where the big bosses are getting million-dollar bonuses, not for performance but for “retention.” Director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) has a small role as the obnoxious partner who explains why he is worth all that money and a monkey could do Sandy’s job. “I’m going to get you a copy of The Fountainhead,” he says, an overused signifier of soul-less arrogance.

Then, out of the blue, a group from Sandy’s office splits off and hires him at five times his old salary. But his happily ever after is ruined when an identify thief takes advantage of his gender-neutral name (many not-funny jokes are made about Sandy’s overall unmanliness and how girly the name “Sandy” is). She has not just blown out his credit card accounts; she has outstanding arrest warrants. Sandy’s new boss gives him one week to straighten it out and the mild-mannered Sandy decides that what makes sense is for him to leave his family in Colorado and go to Winter Park, Florida to find the other Sandy and somehow bring her back to Colorado and get her to confess her crimes.

But she does not want to go, so she puts up a fight. Worse, she loudly sings along to the car radio. Even worse, through all kinds of trauma and misery she still manages to sport pale blue eye shadow left over from the 1960’s. To further complicate things, she is being chased by a skip tracer because she owes a lot of money (Robert Patrick) and by a couple of elegant-looking hoods under orders from an imprisoned crime kingpin who wants her killed.

A sloppy script from Craig Mazin (some of the mid-“Scary Movie” franchise and the lackluster “Hangover II”) shows no sense of character, and dragged-out direction from Seth Gordon (the wonderful “King of Kong” and the hideously awful “Four Christmases”) shows no understanding of comic momentum. And the film criminally mis-uses not just the exceptional talents of its two leads but also Stonestreet (we are subjected not just to disconcerting, almost random personality shifts and casual racism but also his bare butt), rapper/actor T.I., Genesis Rodriguez (she needs a new agent after this and Schwarzenegger’s “Last Stand”), and Robert Patrick (ditto after this and “Gangster Squad”). McCarthy is as good as it gets in full-on, fearless, “yes, and” commitment to the moment that should be ideal for a character whose skill is constant re-invention and on-the-fly assessment — is this a time for aggression? a play for sympathy? But it is all surface, and an unpleasant surface at that. Sandy #2 is both selfish and needy, the relentless morphing leaving us with nothing — no one — to connect to. And when the classic-turned cliché mismatched road trip formula requires the pair to develop growing sympathy and respect from each other and from us, including, ugh, a makeover, it just collapses.

Parents should know that this movie includes extended sexual humor with very explicit and crude references and explicit situations, brief nudity, drinking and drunkenness, some drug references, very strong language, violence including shooting, punching, collisions, theft and fraud.

Family discussion: What made the characters change their minds about each other? How did Sandy and Diana see the rights and feelings of other people differently? What do you learn about Diana from her encounter with Big Chuck?

If you like this, try: “Midnight Run”

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Comedy Crime

Side Effects

Posted on February 7, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Those “ask your doctor about” commercials for medication always have a lawyer-imposed “side effects may include” section briskly recited by the narrator in the second half of the ad in the same bright but soothing tones used for the near-miraculous results described in the first half. It is a difficult choice to balance the risks and benefits of some of today’s pharmaceuticals, made more difficult by the conflicts of interest that doctors and drug companies face in balancing what is best for the patients with what is best for them.

Steven Soderbergh’s nicely nasty and genre-bendingly twisty thriller takes place at the heart of this conflict. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) takes mood-lifting medication to deal with the crushing stress she faces with her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) in prison for insider trading and the loss of all their money and their luxurious life in Connecticut. Martin gets out after four years and promises her that he will get it all back for her. But the stress is too much. After a suicide attempt, her new psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), who earns a little extra money with a cushy “consulting” fee from a drug company pushing a new anti-depressant, prescribes medication, and then more medication to deal with the side effects of the pills she is already taking. We know from the very first scene that this is not going to turn out well.

The drug that “helps stop the brain from telling you you’re sad” and lets you “take back tomorrow” is something “everyone takes.” “It doesn’t make you anything you’re not,” the doctor explains. “It just makes it easier to be who you are.” But is his recommendation compromised by the $50,000 he gets just to “go to a few meetings, recruit some patients, track some data?” Law is excellent as the doctor who wants to do the right thing but may want to do right by too many people. And his judgment may be further compromised by a problem from his past.

Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion”) build some meta-surprises into the story. And just about anything more I can tell you after that would require a spoiler alert, so I’ll just say that the less you know about the movie before seeing it, the better you will be able to appreciate it. In fact, don’t watch the television commercials. They give too much away. But if you need to know more now, I’ll just say that the movie’s biggest surprise may be how conventional it turns out to be.

(more…)

Related Tags:

Drama Thriller

Warm Bodies

Posted on February 3, 2013 at 9:48 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for zombie violence and some language
Profanity:	Brief strong language (b-word, s-word, f-word)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Beer
Violence/ Scariness:	Zombie violence with some graphic and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 1, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	June 3, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B008220BLG

You don’t often hear the word “adorable” used to describe a zombie movie, but that is probably because you don’t often have a story about a zombie in love.

Oh, it’s still a zombie movie. Brains get eaten. In fact, that’s how our undead anti-hero, known only as R (Nicholas Hoult) falls in love. We meet him as a zombie who has a semblance of an inner life, already an arresting notion. The whole deal about zombies is that they are undead, soulless creatures who have just one remaining motive or compulsion — they need to eat, preferably brains. This gives them an important advantage over the rest of us, with our ambivalences, consciences, and that pesky ability to reason that requires us to consider a range of competing considerations. They also have an even more important advantage — being undead, they cannot really be killed.

R introduces himself via an internal narration that provides a comic contrast with his very limited mode of oral expression and compromised memory. R is all he can recall of his name. As he explains when he introduces his “best friend,” M (Rob Corddry), “by best friend I mean we occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly at each other.” He spends his days trudging stiffly through the airport, now the home base for the zombies, until he gets the urge to feed. A part of him longs to be human and a bigger part of him fears turning into one of the “bonies,” a further devolution from zombie, skeletal figures who are much more aggressive, eating their own skin. “They’ll eat anything with a heartbeat. I will, too, but at least I’m conflicted about it.”

There is one thing he likes about eating brains, “the part that makes me feel human again, a little less dead.” R eats the brains of a young man named Perry (Dave Franco of “21 Jump Street”), which give him access to Perry’s memories and to his feelings, especially his feelings of love for his girlfriend, Julie (the warmly appealing Teresa Palmer of “Take Me Home Tonight”). R and Julie — yes, there is a balcony scene, too. Julie lives in a walled, post-apocalyptic city ruled by her father (John Malkovich). The surviving humans are at war with the zombies. But R rescues Julie and as they are hiding out, his love for her begins to make him more human.

Hoult easily makes us understand why Julie is drawn to R, and his small, gradual awakening to the pleasures and pains of being human are beautifully chosen. Based on the book by Isaac Marion and with able script and direction from Jonathan Levine, this works as a zombie movie and as a romance. The massive losses have caused the humans to jettison some of their humanity for survival. Julie’s friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton of “Crazy, Stupid, Love”) to abandon her dream of being a nurse to be an armed forager. She has held on to a small store of make-up in hopes of a return to a more civilized life and tells Julie ruefully, “I wish the internet was working so I could look up what is wrong with you.” The movie’s nicest moments are when Julie must pretend to be a zombie and R must pretend to be a human. We see how superficial the differences have become and M and some of the other zombies find their hearts re-animated through the power of longing for love and Julie’s father has to open his heart despite his grief at losing his wife. R’s concerns about how he appears to Julie (“Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”) are only a slightly amplified version of what we all go through when we meet someone who inspires us to enlarge our spirits and be on our best behavior. And a simple “hi” turns out to be a poignant reminder of what being human really means.

Parents should know that this movie has fantasy/sci-fi violence, some graphic, with disturbing images, guns, brain-eating, knife, and weed-wacker attacks, some strong language (b-word, one f-word), a beer, and some lingerie.

Family discussion: What is the significance of the names R and Julie? What makes R more human?

If you like this, try: “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland”

Stand Up Guys

Posted on January 31, 2013 at 6:23 pm

A little bit “Goodfellas” and a little bit “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” this is a life-in-a-day story about aging criminals. Unlike Ferris, these guys have had too many days off and are very happy to return to their old haunts and activities.

Val (Al Pacino) gets out of prison after 28 years. He has been a “stand up guy.” He never told on his friends. One of those friends is there to pick him up, still in the same car he had back when Val went away. They greet each other warmly. “You look like s***.” “You look worse.” A brief hug feels “weird.” But that’s just their way of saying how glad they are to see each other.

Val is eager to get back in the game, meaning food, alcohol, girls, and stirring up trouble. But he is not the only one whose life has been on hold. Doc has been waiting for Val to get out of prison because he he missed his friend but also because he has a job to do. A thuggish and brutal crime boss named Claphands (Mark Margolis) has a hit out on Val and he insists that Doc be the one to do it. Val wants to live it up because he just got out of prison. Doc wants to help him live it up because he will have just one more night before he is killed. Val gets the picture pretty quickly.

So, they round up their old friend Hirsch (Alan Arkin), who is in a nursing home breathing from an oxygen tank and steal a car that happens to belong to two other thugs known for their brutality (“These are the kind of guys who take your kidney and don’t even sell it”). They go out for an outrageous joyride that includes a couple of visits to a sympathetic madam (Lucy Punch), some big meals, a bit of breaking and entering and light robbery, a visit to the emergency room for a very intimate procedure assisted by a nurse they knew when she was a child (Julianna Margulies of “A Good Wife”), a game of pool, a poignant but courtly slow dance that seems directly lifted from Pacino’s own “Scent of a Woman,” an impromptu burial, some revenge beat-downs, some thoughts about life and aging and a friendly young waitress with beautiful eyes. “It’s like the old days,” says Hirsch. “No, it’s better. This time, we can appreciate it.”

The story is preposterous, but the coincidences and improbabilities (like the almost-complete absence of any other people) just add to the fairy tale or dreamlike quality. The story could almost exist as a fantasy created by the imprisoned Val. It is not just Val and Doc who want a chance to show their vitality and know-how in the face of their mortality. Pacino, Walken, and Arkin show all of that and the pure joy of performing in the knowledge that they are better than ever. “That’s got no flavor, no style,” one of them says dismissively. These guys have all the flavor and style in the world and it is always fun to see them show it. And this time, we can appreciate it.

Parents should know that this film has constant very strong and crude language, explicit sexual references and situations including nudity, Viagra use and prostitutes, criminal behavior, references to rape, drinking, smoking, drug use, and extensive violence with some disturbing images with characters injured and killed.

Family discussion: What is the difference between Val, Doc, Claphands, the Jargoniews and Wendy in the way they set and enforce rules? What makes someone a “stand up guy?”

If you like this, try: “Midnight Run,” “Gran Torino,” and “Going in Style”

Related Tags:

Comedy Crime Drama