Trailer: Maudie with Sally Hawkins
Posted on April 7, 2017 at 3:32 pm
The wonderful Sally Hawkins stars in “Maudie,” based on the real-life story of Canadian outsider artist Maude Lewis.
Trailer: A Brilliant Young Mind with Asa Butterfield
Posted on August 14, 2015 at 8:00 am
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Godzilla
Posted on May 15, 2014 at 6:01 pm
All the basic ingredients are there for a slam-bang summer monster movie. We have people in helmets and hazmat suits running to try to get away from something scary. We have a scientist pleading with a military officer to trust him and the guy in camo responding that he can’t take that chance. We have a guy everyone thinks is crazy who turns out to be right. We have mumbo-jumbo about radiation and bio-acoustics. We have a tentacle(?) tease 40 minutes in. We have a corporate/government cover-up. People say things like, “There’s been a breach,” and “I can prove to you and the world that this was not a natural disaster.” Oh, and “I’m going to find the truth and end this, whatever it takes.” And “It’s going to send us back to the stone age.”
Buildings will be destroyed and a bridge will collapse. People will be told to stay home and then traffic will be at a standstill as they all ignore directions. We have a lot of globe-hopping so that international forces can be involved and iconic skylines can be trashed. And, most important, we have a very, very big monster to do the trashing. Enormous ships will be tossed around like a rubber duckie in a bathtub.
What we don’t have is a very good story. And for a movie with a lot of destruction, not enough of a sense of real investment in the outcome. The good news about CGI is that you can make anything happen on screen. The bad thing is that everyone knows you can make anything happen, so at a fundamental level, it does not feel real.
“Godzilla” begins promisingly, with a terrific opening credit sequence over “archival” footage and glimpses of redacted government reports. And ash, lots of ash, detritus from atomic fallout, pretty cool in 3D. Then there’s a little backstory. In 1999 we see the discovery of a skeleton in a Philippine mine. The rib cage is the size of an apartment building. And there’s goop! If there’s one thing we’ve learned from monster movies over years, it has to be DON’T TOUCH THE GOOP.
Meanwhile, still in 1999, we get our introduction to the adorable family — there always has to be an adorable family — living near a nuclear energy plant in Japan who will provide the emotional core of the film. There’s loving American father (Bryan Cranston) Joe Brody, distracted by some inexplicable but rhythmic tremors. There’s loving French wife (Juliette Binoche), who also works at the plant. And there’s a son, cute tyke Ford. “Earthquakes are random, jagged,” Joe explains. What he is hearing is “consistent and increasing.” We know he will have a hard time persuading his bosses, but we know he is right. And soon tragedy strikes and the cooling towers collapse. The entire community is contaminated and shut down.
Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is coming back from a military deployment where his job is “stopping bombs.” After he has an adorable reunion with his own adorable wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son, he gets a call. Joe has been arrested in Japan, where he is still obsessed with finding the truth about what happened. He has a crazy room with walls covered in clippings connected by string to show the various conspiracies. Ford thinks his dad is nuts. He’s about to find out that he is right.
I don’t want to give away any monster spoilers here, so I’ll just say that there are some surprises for anyone not thoroughly immersed in “Godzilla” lore. I liked seeing the creature pop nuclear warheads into his mouth like Popeye knocks back spinach. And it steps things up nicely when the monster’s power charge shorts out the grids. The special effects are excellent, though only a high-altitude/low opening parachute jump makes full use of the 3D. But the story is weak and the characters are cardboard. The original 1954 “Godzilla” resonated because it personified (monstronified?) our then-new fears about the atomic age. With so many contemporary scares about environmental damage, they should have been able to find something equally potent.
Parents should know that this is a sci-fi movie in the tradition of all monster movies, with extensive mayhem,scary surprises, some disturbing images, and many characters injured and killed. There is some strong language.
Family discussion: What made the scientist and the military come to different conclusions — information or training? What was the significance of the pocket watch?
If you like this, try: the original Japanese “Godzilla” movies
Blue Jasmine
Posted on August 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm
Two sisters. One imagines herself living a life of ease, comfort, graciousness, and elegance that does not really exist. The other is more accepting of her lower middle class life, her carnality, her limited expectations. The first sister loses everything and comes to live with the second. Woody Allen may have been inspired by Tennessee Williams’ “Streetcar Named Desire” in this modern San Francisco story of two sisters, one desperately trying to hold herself together for one more shot at a wealthy husband and the other more realistic but still holding on to some notion of romance. 
Cate Blanchett plays the self-named Jasmine, who lived in blissful — if willful — ignorance as a one-percenter, married to Hal, a wealthy businessman (Alec Baldwin). She floated from Pilates to shopping to gala to spa as he shifted funds from one shady offshore corporation to another. She would shake her impeccably coiffed head and murmur that she had no head for business and he would chuckle indulgently and pull another diamond bracelet out of his pocket. She and her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) were both adopted and were never close. But family is family, and when Hal goes to jail for Bernie Madoff-style fraud, Jasmine has no money and nowhere else to go. We first see her on the plane from New York to San Francisco, telling the woman sitting next to her what is clearly a story she has told many times before, about her first meeting with Hal, when “Blue Moon” was playing, and about their fairy tale ending of luxury and parties. She ignores the ugly “ever after” the way she glosses over the evident boredom of her listener, turning from annoyance to pity and then discomfort.
Blanchett, who has played Williams’ fragile Blanche on stage, is magnificent as Jasmine, a narcissistic woman who has been coddled and in denial for so long that she does not have the strength of mind or spirit to engage in an honest appraisal of her situation. Ginger is only slightly better. She can ask Jasmine how (and, by implication, why) someone without any money would travel first class and seems to have few illusions about the economic or emotional prospects with her rough-hewn fiancé, Chili (Bobby Cannavale). She does not hold a grudge over the money she lost by investing with Hal or the destructive impact it had on her first marriage to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay in a nicely textured performance). But she, too, has some illusions, and is easily taken in when she meets Al (Louis C.K.) a man who seems to have the stability and finesse that Chili does not.
Longtime Allen collaborator Santo Loquasto evokes the contrasting worlds of the two sisters with impeccably evocative production design and Sonia Grandes costumes are quite literally right on the money, with Jasmine’s gorgeous Chanels and Hermes and Ginger’s shapeless, cheap glamor. Even the expensive bag she selects as a gift from Jasmine is superficially glittery. The cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe is so gorgeous it might even make Alvy Singer leave his heart in San Francisco.
But this movie is easier to admire than to like. It has some points to make about superficiality and corruption, but there is no one to root for or care about. The last act twist is telegraphed a third of the way in and the issues it raises are quickly abandoned. Allen as a director is still getting better, but as a screenwriter he needs to do a few more drafts.
Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and non-explicit situations, adultery, fraud, drinking, drug use, smoking, and strong language.
Family discussion: Why is it important that the sisters were adopted? Which one made poorer choices about men? What will happen to them next?
If you like this, try: “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” another Woody Allen film about contrasting siblings confronting life choices