Battleship

Posted on May 17, 2012 at 9:29 pm

As if it wasn’t enough of a challenge to try to create a movie based on a board game — and a board game based on a game that is perfectly adequately played with pencil and paper — this movie has to find its way around the fact that the large armored warships that give the game and the movie its title have been out of commission as everything but museum pieces for decades, replaced by much more powerful ships called destroyers. And yet, director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights”) and screenwriters Eric and Jon Hoeber (“Red“) have somehow managed to add some aliens and a lot of explosions to create a good, old-fashioned summer popcorn movie that is good, old-fashioned fun.

They give us half an hour to meet the main characters. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch, thankfully making it possible to overlook “John Carter“) is an impetuous but gallant young man. His brother Stone (“True Blood’s” Alexander Skarsgård), a naval officer frustrated with Alex’s lack of direction, insists that Alex get some discipline and join the navy. A couple of years later, Stone is a commander and Alex is a promising but still-impetuous lieutenant in love with Samantha (Brooklyn Decker), the daughter of the admiral (Liam Neeson). In the midst of an event called RIMPAC that is like an Olympics of international naval operations, just after Alex gets in trouble for a scuffle with a Japanese naval officer (Tadanobu Asano), something happens that is not part of the program. For four years, a program called the Beacon Project has been sending signals to a planet that is similar to earth and capable of supporting life in the hope of making contact. The signals have been seen as an invitation and the inhabitants of the other planet have arrived, like Columbus. And, as a character points out, if they are Columbus, we — all of humanity — are the the Indians. Except it is more like Columbus arriving with an armored brigade and bombs that slice through destroyers like bullets through tissue paper. And they operate a enormous rockets that operate like Decepticons the size of the Chrysler Building in a world with no Optimus Primes.

The Battleship board game involves trying to guess where the other player’s warships are hidden by calling out squares on a grid, and the Hoebers find a witty way to make that a part of the story, and to bring in a real battleship, too. There’s more than just bang-bang. Alex comes up with some clever, way-out-of-the box tactics and Rihanna is a hoot as a determined petty officer weapons specialist. And in a cute variation on the whole “ET phone home” thing, the aliens need to get to the Beacon Project communication center. The only people who can stop them are none other than the beautiful daughter of the admiral and a wounded warrior she happens to have been trying to inspire by taking him for a bit of a mountain climb. He is played by real-life West Point graduate Gregory D. Gadson, a double leg amputee, in a performance adding some nicely quiet dignity to the story. There is not much quiet or dignity in the rest of the movie, but Berg stages the action scenes with kinetic energy and a sure sense of fun. (And be sure to stay all the way through the credits for an extra scene.)

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop action-style violence with aliens, many explosions and military battles, characters injured and killed, and some strong language (s-words, muffled f-words).

Family discussion: How did the qualities that got Alex into trouble also help him? Would you say the same about anyone else in the story who became an unexpected hero?

If you like this, try: “Independence Day” and “Transformers” – and the board game!

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What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Posted on May 17, 2012 at 5:54 pm

No matter how carefully you plan and how diligently you read books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, pregnancy is guaranteed to be different from whatever you think it is going to be. I wish I could say the same for this movie.

These all-star ensemble cast mash-ups are beginning to feel as thin as the old television show, “Love American Style.” It doesn’t help that there isn’t one pregnancy cliche that is overlooked, no matter how many dozens of movies, sit-coms, and cute greeting cards it has already been done and re-done and re-re-done in before.

There is a celebrity fitness coach and reality dance competition show contestant (Cameron Diaz) who becomes unexpectedly pregnant just a few months into a romance with her dance partner (“Glee’s” Matthew Morrison). There is a loving but financially strapped couple hoping to qualify for an Ethiopian adoption (Jennifer Lopez and Rodrigo Santoro). The husband is nervous about being a father so after his wife offers him a very special sex act to motivate him he starts to spend Saturdays with “the Dudes,” a bunch of stroller-pushing, Snugli-wearing, diaper-bag toting dads whose idea of supporting each other is a Fight Club-style commitment to this decade’s most vapid catchphrase: “no judging.”

Elizabeth Banks plays a woman with ideas about pregnancy so idealized that she has a store devoted to breast-feeding (“The Breast Choice”) and has even written a children’s book about it that is creepier than the infamous Time Magazine cover. She and her dentist husband (Ben Falcone, “Bridesmaids'” Air Marshall Jon) have been trying to get pregnant for years. He is also about to become a big brother. His father is a loudmouth NASCAR champ (Dennis Quaid) married to a decades-younger bride (bright spot Brooklyn Decker) who is pregnant with twins. And there is a pair of rival food truck chefs (Anna Kendrick of “Up in the Air” and Chase Crawford of “Gossip Girl”), whose impulsive encounter apparently did not permit consideration of the importance of birth control.

The movie reads like an extended Caroline Hax “Tell Me About It” column of petty complaints so stunningly self-involved, irresponsible, and selfish that what the movie needs most is a representative of Child Protective Services to take all the babies to better homes. This is one long, loud slog through morning sickness (barfing on live television!), twins, an iPhone app that maps fertility cycles, stretch marks, debates over circumcision, baby names, and combatting the feeling that everyone is doing it better. Serious problems like pregnancy loss and financial concerns are handled as though there is a laugh track and trivial issues like a baby shower are handled as though they actually matter. The big moment comes when Banks’ character confesses to a bunch of future mothers that — insight alert! — “making a human being is really hard.” In yet another tiresome cliche, the clip of her “honest” meltdown goes viral. And then we get to see everyone in labor, making “Exorcist” faces (except for the trophy wife, who sails through labor as she has through the entire pregnancy). “But I typed out my birth plan!” one of them whines cluelessly when it turns out that delivery is not going as she wanted it to. It is another measure of the movie’s disregard of its audience that we go back to the Dudes so they can reverse everything they said the first time. It is not that they have learned anything. The movie is just lazy enough to hope some warm “parenting is wonderful” comments will erase the synthetic waste of celluloid (pixels?) that has gone before. No such luck.

Parents should know that this movie has comic and serious references to reproductive issues including infertility and pregnancy loss and some strong language

Family discussion: Which of these couples will make the best parents? How do you know? Ask your family for some of their pregnancy-related stories.

If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You” and “Knocked Up”

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The Dictator

Posted on May 15, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Chutzpah has never been a problem for Sasha Baron Cohen, whose previous films, based on characters he created for television, were semi-documentaries of encounters with ordinary people who did their best to accommodate his outrageously offensive behavior. Whether he was getting a group of people at a rodeo to sing along with an anti-Semitic anthem as an Eastern European journalist in Borat, or get parents of babies to eagerly agree to put their infants in danger in order to be in a movie as the gay fashionista Brüno, Cohen exposed hypocrisy, bigotry, and general cluelessness, as well as the occasional sweetness and tolerance of Americans willing to respect cultural differences. After appearances in mainstream Hollywood films “Sweeney Todd” and “Hugo,” Cohen has returned to his favorite themes with a scripted film, working again with director Larry Charles, in a sharp political satire in the grand tradition of Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” and Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America.” Except much dirtier. Chaplin never thought of shooting a scene from inside a woman in the middle of delivering a baby.

Cohen plays Aladeen the totalitarian dictator of North African country called Wadiya, which has caused concern in the rest of the world by developing a nuclear weapon. The development of the weapon as well as just about everything else in the country is obstructed by Aladeen’s egomania and peremptory Queen of Hearts-style ordering of executions for anyone who disagrees with him, bumps into him, or offends him in any way. He has an entire wall of famous Americans he paid to have sex with him, including Megan Fox, Oprah, Lindsay Lohan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Aladeen’s closest aide is Tahir (Sir Ben Kingsley), who is plotting to assassinate Aladeen so that he can take over and sell the country’s lucrative oil rights to Exxon, wealthy Chinese businessman Mr. Lao (Bobby Lee), a heterosexual who enjoys demonstrating his power by making male celebrities have sex with him (leading to a perfectly performed and hilarious cameo by a movie star not known for his sense of humor). Aladeen uses doubles (also played by Cohen) as decoys. After one is killed, he finds another who is something of a simpleton.

Aladeen and his new double go to New York so that he can address the UN about the nuclear weapon. Tahir arranges for the dictator to be captured and killed so that the double can sign the papers establishing Wadiya as a democracy that he needs to sell Mr. Lao and other corporations the oil rights — and become monumentally wealthy. Aladeen is captured and there is a funny scene when he talks his captor (John C. Reilly) out of torturing him with a friendly and knowledgeable discussion of torture implements and techniques. He does not get tortured but he does get shaved and thus unrecognizable as the dictator. So Aladeen ends up working in a Brooklyn collective food market run by Zoe (the ever-effervescent and always-game Anna Faris). Despite his contempt for her politics — and her unshaven underarms — he can’t help being captivated by her. Cohen tempers his fascination with the offensive and making the audience uncomfortable with a little bit of sweetness this time, and the story and the film benefit from it.

Parents should know that this movie has extensive crude and intentionally offensive material including racist and sexist and sexual humor, potty jokes, male nudity, and political humor.

Family discussion: How is Sasha Baron Cohen able to make points through satire that are not possible in serious political commentary and debate? Do you think he goes too far and how do you draw that line?

If you like this try: Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” “Coming to America,” and Cohen’s other movies

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Comedy Satire

Dark Shadows

Posted on May 10, 2012 at 6:00 pm

“Dark Shadows” tries to sink its teeth into the legendary 1960’s supernatural soap opera with both ironic distance and visceral thrills. It can be done — see the original “Men in Black” — but wonderfully weird visuals from director Tim Burton and a highly watchable performance by his muse, Johnny Depp cannot keep the tone from faltering and the results are unsatisfying. One big problem is a criminally underused cast. Eva Green matches Depp as Angelique, the woman scorned whose witchcraft turns the young heir Barnabas Collins into a vampire and curses all of the Collins family forevermore. But Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller, Jackie Earle Haley, and Chloe Grace Moretz (“Hugo,” “Kick-Ass”) have little to do but pose in Colleen Atwood’s fabulous 70’s costumes. Co-scripter Seth Grahame-Smith, whose genre mash-ups include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) has produced a script that does not work as tribute or update.

Barnabas Collins was the young son of a wealthy family who came to America in the 1770’s and settled in a 200-room mansion on a cliff near a Maine fishing town. Angelique (Green), the daughter of a servant, loved Barnabas or, more likely, she loved his wealth, position, and power. When he told her he could not love her, she unleashed her witchy revenge. She enchanted Josette (Bella Heathcote), the girl Barnabas loved, so that she committed suicide by jumping off the cliff. When Barnabas tried to follow her, Angelique turned him into a vampire who could not die.

Barnabas is captured and shut into a coffin for nearly 200 years. When a construction project digs him up, he enters the world of 1972, which is almost as confusing and dysfunctional as his descendants. They are: Elizabeth (Pfeiffer), her louche brother Roger (Miller), her sullen teenage daughter Carolyn (Moretz), and Roger’s “I see dead people” son David (Gulliver McGrath). They live in a partitioned-off wing of Collinwood Mansion with drunken caretaker Willie Loomis (Haley), a dotty housekeeper, and a substance-abusing psychiatrist named Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), who came for a brief time to help David after his mother’s death but stayed for years.

No one believes Barnabas at first, despite a convincing resemblance to the family portrait. But he tells Elizabeth he is there to restore the family to wealth and power and proves his good intentions by leading her to treasure hidden in a secret room and he begins to seem no less believable than the other members of the family. With some vampire version of the Vulcan mind meld, he persuades the local captains to switch from their association with the dynamic woman who controls most of the fishing business in the area. She is none other than Angelique, still going strong and still in the midst of a big love-hate thing with Barnabas. And there is Victoria, a new governess for David, who looks just like Josette (Heathcote again).

Depp is clearly having a blast with his character’s gothic formality of movement and linguistic curlicues and Green has a great triumphant/demonic smile. Whenever they are on screen the movie picks up and their intimate encounter is hilariously room-shaking. Barnabas experiences the wonders of the modern age, including some that we take for granted (paved roads, television) and some that feel as mystifying to us as they do to him. Shag rugs? Lava lamps? But the plot is as creaky as the hinges on Barnabas’ coffin.

Parents should know that the ghoulish plot concerns vampires, ghosts, and witches. While some elements are comic, the film has stylized but graphic horror-style violence, characters injured and killed, sexual references and an explicit comic sex scene, some strong language, smoking, drinking, and drug use.

Family discussion: What were the biggest differences Barnabas found when he returned after 200 years? How was he most like and unlike his relatives?

If you like this, try: Episodes of the original black and white television series and the fantasy film “Stardust”

Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story

Posted on May 3, 2012 at 5:34 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Mild
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the film
Date Released to Theaters:	May 5, 2012

One of the most daring rescue missions of the post WWII era was the Raid on Entebbe in 1976. Terrorist groups called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the German Revolutionary Cells hijacked an Air France plane with 248 passengers aboard. The flight was redirected to Uganda. The non-Jewish passengers were released and left and the crew was released but insisted on staying. They Jewish passengers were held hostage while the hijackers demanded the release of 53 convicted terrorists from Israeli prisons. The Israelis were given 48 hours to respond. They chose to rescue the hostages instead of negotiating.

The commando mission was led by 30-year-old Lt. Col. Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, older brother of the man who would become Israel’s Prime Minister. All but two hostages were rescued and all eight terrorists killed in an expertly conducted mission that took just 58 minutes. All of the Israeli soldiers survived except for Yoni whose heroism and dedication were celebrated throughout the world. This thoughtful and stirring documentary tells his story.

The film draws on Yoni’s own words, which described the conflicts he felt about being a soldier and his passionate devotion to Israel, and on interviews with his family, his wife of four years, and the woman he was living with at the time of his death, and archival footage that shows us his gallantry and spirit.

This is a touching and inspiring story, powerfully told. Those who die young, especially those who sacrifice themselves to save others, are often reduced in memory to a name on a memorial or elevated to superhuman proportions to protect us from thinking about how we might measure up. This movie is filled with warm memories and specific details about a real person and what makes it so compelling is the reminder that by the time it ends we feel not just the admiration for his heroism but the sharp pain of his loss.

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Documentary Movies -- format