Behind the Scenes: “Noah”
Posted on March 7, 2014 at 10:30 pm
Responding to the Complaints about “Noah”
Posted on February 25, 2014 at 4:09 pm
As I noted earlier, Variety reported the results of a bogus survey as though it represented legitimate concerns from the faith community about the upcoming film, “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe and directed by Darren Aronofsky. It is always disappointing when a small portion of the Christian community perpetuates the worst stereotypes too-often assigned to all believers, coming across as shrill, prejudiced, and thin-skinned, far more interested in finding reasons to be offended than in demonstrating compassion, humility, and grace. We saw that this week in The American Family Association’s calling on its members to protest a “profanity-laced” television commercial with only one bad word: “hell.” And then there is this silliness, yet another bad example of people who devote more energy to telling other people whether they qualify as Christians than paying attention to their own behavior. A good refresher for those who claim to be victims of bigotry is this essay from a United Church of Christ (UCC) minister and fire station chaplin. Basically, if you can worship in the place and manner of your choice and your only objection is that you cannot control the behavior of other people, you are not the subject of discrimination.
This hypersensitivity is just one reason it is so difficult for Hollywood to produce films that honestly portray people of faith or stories based on the Bible. The New York Times’ Michael Cieply, a movie producer-turned reporter, wrote a piece called “Can God Make it in Hollywood?”
Once, studios routinely made movies with overtly religious themes for the mainstream audience. Classics like “The Ten Commandments,” “Quo Vadis” and “A Man for All Seasons” — each of which was nominated for a best picture Oscar — were box-office winners with a wide range of viewers. But after years of neglect or occasional hostility, the question now is whether Hollywood can still find common ground with religious audiences.
That is borne out by stories like the one in Variety, based on a survey with a biased question put to people who had not seen the movie. So it is very reassuring to see this excellent piece by Steven D. Greydanus in the Catholic Register, titled Everybody Chill Out about the “Noah” Movie.
There’s a lot of room in the biblical story for interpretation and imagination, and anyone who’s been thinking about this story as long as Aronofsky has is likely to have some interesting insights into it.
It is well worth reading in full. As noted before, unlike some of the people who are complaining about “Noah,” I will wait to report on the movie after I have seen it.
Winter’s Tale
Posted on February 13, 2014 at 6:00 pm
B-| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for violence and some sensuality |
| Profanity: | Brief strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Supernatural and crime-style violence, some disturbing images |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 14, 2014 |
“Winter’s Tale,” based on the acclaimed novel by Mark Helprin
The exquisite images are not hard to come by with Colin Farrell along with “Downton Abbey’s” Lady Sybil, Jessica Brown Findley with auburn hair that makes her look like a pre-Raphealite dream, and a white horse who looks like he should be pulling Cinderella’s coach. The setting feels like a fairy tale, too, first turn of the 20th century Manhattan and then a fabulous snow-covered mansion out in the New York countryside.
Farrell plays Peter Lake, left behind as a baby in America when his immigrant parents were rejected for health reasons and sent back to Ireland. They put him in a model boat with the nameplate “City of Justice” and set him off toward the shore. When we meet him, he is a thief, formerly allied with a brutal, scar-faced crime boss named Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). Everyone has very literary names in this story except for the horse, who is called Athansor in the book but here is just known as Horse even though, according to one character, he is really a dog.
Now Soames is determined to kill Lake. Rescued once by a mysterious white horse, Lake knows he has to get out of town. He goes on one last expedition to steal enough to pay for his journey. When he is ready to leave just before dawn, the horse refuses to budge. Lake sees the family leaving a luxurious townhouse and decides to see what he can take. He has an intuitive skill with mechanics and easily breaks into the safe.
But one member of the family has stayed behind. Her name is Beverly Penn (Findley) and she is dying of consumption (the 19th century term for tuberculosis). She has to be surrounded by cold all the time, and the family has gone to the country house ahead of her to prepare a tent for her to sleep in. Lake steals nothing but her heart, and loses his own in return. Because she knows she is dying, smaller problems like his being a thief do not really bother her. “What’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen?” she asks him. “I’m beginning to think I haven’t stolen it yet.” Instantly, he knows that his purpose in life is to protect her.
So far, so good, but then the argle bargle about transcending time and everything being connected starts up and it feels like the rules change at random. Or, at least, that a nearly-800 page book lost big chunks in the translation to the screen by writer-director Akiva Goldsman. This relationship between Lake and Penn seems to have some grander purpose, which is why Soames is so determined that he must stop it. He seeks permission from “The Judge,” played by Will Smith. It’s not entirely Smith’s fault that it is at this point things start to completely fall apart. The role is poorly conceived and written and he is catastrophically miscast. Lake ends up getting somehow catapulted into the present day but without his memories. As he tries to piece things together, the pieces of the movie come apart. There are way too many fortune cookie-style pronouncements about eternal battles between good and evil, miracles, destiny, and how we are all connected themselves, even a few from the underused Graham Greene who appears briefly just to throw out some deep thoughts about how God, the devil, angels and demons are just “the newer names” for the forces he describes. Penn says, that “the sicker I become, the more clearly I can see that everything is connected by light.” But by the end, nothing in this movie feels connected to anything.
Parents should know that this film has sexual references and a situation, supernatural and crime violence, some disturbing images and scary surprises, sad death, and brief strong language.
Family discussion: How are the rules for this world established and why are they important? What could only Beverly understand as a result of her illness?
If you like this, try: “Stardust,” “The Adjustment Bureau,” and “The Fountain”
Broken City
Posted on January 17, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Another January weekend, another dumb shoot-out.
Last weekend, it was 1950’s Los Angeles. This week, it’s contemporary New York. It’s still about corruption, betrayal, and bang-bang. Co-producer Mark Wahlberg plays Billy, a cop exonerated after he killed a suspect because there was not enough evidence to refute his claim of self-defense. Mayor Nick Hostetler (Russell Crowe in a very bad Boehner-orange spray tan) congratulates him and then explains with engaging directness and considerable charm why Billy still has to leave the police force. “It is a necessity that we remain un-f’d.”
Seven years later, Billy is almost making a living as a private investigator. He is good at his job but he is too nice a guy to push for payment. His loyal and very beautiful assistant Katy (a likably sharp performance by Alona Tal) reminds him that they are broke because their overdue accounts amount to $42,000, which leads to a pointless scene of phone calls using assorted tactics to get people to pay. There are a bunch more pointless scenes in the film but I cannot say they are any worse than the pointed ones.
Billy hears from Mayor Hostetler, who wants to hire him for the same purpose as all of his other clients but for a lot more money. Hostetler wants to pay Billy $50,000 to find out who is having an affair with his wife, Cathleen (Catherine Zeta Jones). Billy takes the pictures but then, just as the mayor snatches them out of his pocket, it begins to dawn on him (he may be a cop, but he is not much of a detective) that things may not be what they seem and people may not be telling the truth, starting with the mayor.
All of this is happening in the midst of a tough re-election campaign. Hostetler likes to come across as one of the guys, rough, sometimes crude, but effective. He tries to paint his opponent, Jack Valiant (Barry Pepper) — names are not this movie’s strong point — as an out of touch elitist who comes from Connecticut and went to Harvard. But a controversial sweetheart sale of public housing to a private developer (a seedy-looking Griffin Dunne) has tightened the race. Guess what! That surveillance job was not about an affair after all. One clue? Despite a massive shredding operation in the bad guy’s expensive lair/manor, the evidence conveniently shows up in the garbage can in mint condition, not even any coffee grounds or banana peels stuck to it.
It feels like they were making this up as they went along, without regard to what has already happened. A detour about Billy’s actress girlfriend (the very lovely Natalie Martinez) and his fall off the wagon just drags things out in between the chases and shoot-outs. It’s too bad to see top talent slumming in an underwritten, under-thought, under-whelming piece of multiplex fodder.
Parents should know that this film has constant very strong and crude language, sexual references and explicit situations with brief nudity, drinking and drunkenness, shooting, fighting, car crash, corruption, rape (offscreen), and characters who are injured and killed.
Family discussion: What did Billy’s relationship with Natalie tell you about him? Why did he visit her parents? What will happen to him?
If you like this, try: “Inside Man”
The Next Three Days
Posted on March 8, 2011 at 8:00 am
Paul Haggis loses his way in “The Next Three Days,” a labored prison escape drama that never recovers from a serious miscalculation midway through and then goes completely off the rails in the end.
Russell Crowe plays a sometimes deliberate and over-thinking professor named John Brennan who is completely devoted to his sometimes hot-tempered and impetuous wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks). After a public quarrel, Lara’s boss is murdered and Lara is arrested. She protests her innocence, but the circumstantial evidence is too persuasive, and she is found guilty. Three years later, all of her appeals exhausted, she cannot bear the thought of a life in prison, and attempts suicide. John, who teaches “Don Quixote” and knows something about righteous quests, decides he will find a way for her to escape. “I promise you, this will not be your life.” He consults an expert (a brief movie-brightening moment with Liam Neeson), watches a video on YouTube about skeleton keys, and comes up with a plan.
Every movie creates a world for us, and each of them can be plotted along the continuum between real world (a verite documentary) and movie world (flying dragons, superheroes, planets with long blue people). It does not matter at which point a movie locates itself, but once it does, it has to stay there. If you tell us horses can fly in one scene, then don’t tell us they can’t in the next. This movie tells us that justice matters, killing people is wrong, and that John is an English professor. It establishes itself as being on the drama-about-people-like-us point on the continuum. It then veers into a whole other over-the-top heist-style scenario with one of those plans where a lot of things have to go exactly right and then somehow they all do and killing people might not be such a bad thing after all. And then it insults the intelligence and goodwill of the audience with an ending that is jarringly out of place. One of the worst mistakes a movie can make is to assume greater fondness for its characters than we are willing to feel. This movie never lets us like its characters and then tries to make that seem like our fault.