Posted on October 7, 2014 at 11:37 am
“The Good Lie” is a moving, inspiring story of Lost Boys (and a girl) from Sudan to immigrate to the US, a must-see for middle and high schoolers and their families. This featurette takes us behind the scenes and focuses on the role that faith plays in the lives of these courageous survivors.
Posted on October 3, 2014 at 3:56 pm
P.T. Anderson is one of the most fascinating filmmakers of all time, writing and producing brilliant movies like “Boogie Nights” to “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “The Master.” His latest film looks like an Elmore Leonard-style story of low-down crime with colorful crooks, but it is based on Inherent Vice by the famously reclusive and opaque Thomas Pynchon. Here’s the trailer, featuring Joaquin Phoenix and his “Walk the Line” co-star Reese Witherspoon, along with Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, and Benecio del Toro.
Posted on October 2, 2014 at 5:55 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Middle School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence, brief strong language and drug use |
| Profanity: | Brief strong language and some mild language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drug use |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Very disturbing violence including mass killings, guns, machetes, many characters injured and killed, some graphic images |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
“The Good Lie” wisely casts Reese Witherspoon and Corey Stoll, who are outstanding as always, as sympathetic employment agency representatives helping refugees from Sudan find work in Kansas. And then it even more wisely keeps those characters in the background to allow the heroes of the story to be the refugees themselves and the real-life survivors of genocide in Africa who play the roles. Thankfully, this is one movie that is not about white people being spiritually enriched by saving people of color. And it is not about white people being spiritually enriched by learning important lessons from people of color. It is about people who have survived unimaginable loss who find a way to live with honor, strong connections, and resilience. Reese Witherspoon may be in it to reassure us that it is not a spinach movie, but even without her undeniably appealing role, the film would succeed because it is true-hearted, warm, wise, inspiring, and funny.
When their village is wiped out by genocidal marauders in the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005. More than two million were slaughtered and more than 20,000 surviving children, mostly boys, walked for hundreds of miles, many more dying along the way. Those who lived made it to refugee camps that were barely able to take care of them, and where they stayed for a decade or more. A small percentage immigrated to the United States. This story focuses on four survivors, the gentle Manerre (Arnold Oceng), the faithful Jeremiah (Ger Duany), and the angry Paul (Emmanuel Jal), who were sent to Kansas, and their efforts to be reunited with Manerre’s sister Abital (Kuoth Wiel), who was separated from the only family she had ever known because no home in Kansas would take her in.
Witherspoon plays the harried employment agency aide assigned to help them find jobs and has no interest in any further involvement with their lives. Cory Stoll plays her boss, who lives on a small farm, with cattle who give the Africans their first familiar sight since arriving in the United States.
Screenwriter Margaret Nagle and director Philippe Falardeau (who showed great sensitivity to cross-cultural issues faced by immigrants in “Monsieur Lazhar”) deftly avoid the too-easy feel-good conventions like romantic happy endings and the too-easy laughs of cultural differences. When a well-meaning but not very well-informed greeter welcomes them with a lime green jello mold, the refugees’ bewilderment is a reflection on America’s warmhearted intentions but cultural myopia. The same with Witherspoon’s character — her failure to learn the most fundamental basics about the skills and knowledge of the people she is trying to place is based on ignorance and lack of empathy in part, but also in a kind of imperishable optimism about the ability of all people to adapt. There is never a suggestion of making fun of the Africans for being provincial, even when one of them asks tentatively if he needs to be looking out for lions. They are never reduced to being cute or cuddly. And while they have strong cultural and familial ties, each is given the respect and dignity of his own temperament and priorities.
In the refugee camp, one of the men wears a donated “Just do it” t-shirt. When he finds out he is going to America, he says, “We can finally find out what this means.” It is always going to be fun to see outsiders respond to elements of American life we take for granted, from escalators to airplane food, from shelves with twelve kinds of Cheerios to dumpsters full of edible goods. The Africans give us a fresh look at our own lives, but what matters here is the way they hold onto what is most precious to them, their heritage, each other, while pursuing the opportunities this great, if imperfect country offers them so imperfectly.
Parents should know that this film includes genocidal violence with guns and knives, entire villages wiped out, many characters killed including parents, some disturbing images, some strong language, drinking, drug use, sexual references and a non-explicit situation.
Family discussion: How did the responses of each of the refugees to living in the US differ and why? What could the Americans have done to be more helpful and understanding? Why was it important for them to name their grandfathers? Why was courtesy so important?
If you like this, try: the documentaries “The Devil Came on Horseback” and “God Grew Tired of Us” and read more about the Lost Boys both in Africa and in the United States.
Posted on February 17, 2012 at 6:01 pm
In the world of this film, American spies work in stylish and luxurious L.A. offices and live in cool apartments that look like the ads in Maxim with people toasting each other with expensive vodka. One of the apartments is underneath a swimming pool, so the occupant can look up at the way the light plays through the clear blue water as luscious lovelies swim by. And that’s the believable part.
Chris Pine plays FDR and Tom Hardy plays Tuck, quip-spouting spies, who are always going to elegant parties for glamorous undercover missions and exchanging purportedly witty barbs as they chase the bad guys. FDR (really?) is the playa and Tuck is the sensitive divorced dad. It’s a big-time bro-mance with such blurred boundaries that they seem to have the same mother, even though Tuck is British. At a family party, Rosemary Harris (“Spider-Man’s” Aunt May) gently chides them both for not producing grandchildren – and then strangely dismisses the fact that Tuck already has a son, who does not count any more, presumably because of the divorce or maybe because no one cared enough to check back to the other pages of the script.
Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) is a consumer products tester who has not dated for a while. She meets Tuck via an online match-up site and – another example of how completely out of date this movie is – she meets FDR in a DVD rental store. All of a sudden, she has gone from not dating anyone to dating two guys at once. And her specialty is product testing, even though she is a good girl who gets the flutters at the idea, egged on by her friend (Chelsea Handler), she decides to date them both. When they find out, they become intensely competitive in a way that is supposed to be charming and funny but in reality is just extremely stalker-ish and strongly suggests that she is just the hapless proxy for their intense attachment to one another, they use all of their training and resources to subvert and spy on each other. One is getting too close to having sex with Lauren? Bring out the tranquilizer darts. Sure, why not spend the billion dollar technology that is supposed to be trained on terrorists to eavesdrop on each other’s dates? We are supposed to find it endearing, but I was horrified.
Parents should know that this film includes action violence and peril with guns, chases, and explosions, sexual humor — some crude — and non-explicit situations, and strong language.
Family discussion: How did Lauren’s professional background affect the way she evaluated FDR and Tuck? Which man was more honest with her?
If you like this, try: “Get Smart”
Posted on April 22, 2011 at 10:02 am
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for moments of intense violence and sexual content |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, smoking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Some peril and violence, sad deaths |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 22, 2011 |
| Date Released to DVD: | 2011 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B0041KKYHE |
According to the ringmaster of the Benzini Brothers Traveling Circus, “a circus survives on blood, sweat, pain and .” In “Water for Elephants” we experience all of these, along with romance, danger, laughter and even a little bit of poetry. This ambitious, colorful story of the travels of a second rate depression era circus is filled with metaphors about life and love—some more successful than others—but it is consistently engaging and a treat for the eyes.
Jacob Jankowski (“Twilight” idol Robert Pattinson) is a young veterinary student on the verge of graduating from Cornell when his world is suddenly turned upside down. Jacob was never wildly enthusiastic about his plans to join his father’s small town veterinary practice but when his parents are killed in a car crash and all of their material possessions are seized by the bank, Jacob ends up with no money, no job, no food, and no place to live, so he sets off on foot down the road.
Tired of walking one night, he abandons his suitcase containing his last few possessions from his old life and jumps a passing freight train. What seems like an anonymous gray train in the dark turns out to be a tumble through the looking glass. As Jacob makes his way through the length of the train, we encounter the different surrealistic worlds of the circus. There is the noisy clown car with its jostling, slap-happy world, the car carrying all the coochie dancers reaches out to him like the sirens reached out to Odysseus (As he makes his way through their car, one of them envelops him in her arms, cooing “I saw you during my act. Want a ride?”). The roustabouts live a grim, desperate life in sparse cars with none of the glamor and glitter of the other cars. Before Jacob joins the roustabouts, one grizzled old timer warns him, “If you have any kind of life to go back to, that’s what you should do.” At the end of the journey is the jewel in the crown, the luxurious train car reserved for ringmaster August Rosenblum (Christoph Waltz of “Inglourious Basterds“) and his beautiful wife (and star attraction) Marlena (Reese Witherspoon).
The Benzini Brothers circus is always on the verge of bankruptcy and as they make their way from town to town they encounter the remains of other small circuses who have died by the side of the road, and whose carcasses are being scavenged for props and talents by the survivors. From one of these failed circuses August purchases a beautiful speckled elephant named Rosie. He acknowledges he won’t be able to pay the men for two weeks but he hopes that Rosie will bring in enough “rubes” so that the circus will be able to survive a while longer.
The care, feeding and training of Rosie becomes a battle of wills between the cruel, pragmatic August and the idealistic, empathetic Jacob. The battle expands to include a struggle for the affections of the beautiful Marlena and the treatment of the roustabouts, climaxing in “The Great Circus Disaster of 1931.”
This film has some visually gorgeous moments, such as the scene with Jacob and August sitting on top of the moving train under the starlit sky talking about life as the beautiful countryside winds by, or the scene with the beautiful and petite Marlena tending to the immense Rosie by lantern light. Like the circus itself, these moments illuminate the poetic grace around us.
