The Night Before

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:57 pm

Seth Rogen. Not very surprising guest stars. Many mind-altering substances. Many bodily fluids and functions. Many bad choices. No ability to allow women to be funny, even with some of the best comic actresses of our time in the cast. Haven’t we been here before?

That’s the question the characters in this film are asking, too. Isaac (Rogen), Chris (Anthony Mackie), and Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are friends who get together each year on Christmas Eve for a series of traditions, from visiting the tree at Rockefeller Center to a karaoke bar and a toy store to play on the giant piano keyboard from “Big.” Plus donning ceremonial holiday sweaters and getting wasted. Ethan’s parents were killed just before Christmas by a drunk driver 14 years ago, and Isaac and Chris promised him they would be his family for the holidays. More than a decade later, they’ve agreed this will be the last time. Chris is getting to be a big time athletic star in the NFL, and that means endorsement money and extending his personal brand via social media. He’s a spokesman for Red Bull, which has provided a limo for the evening. And he is hiding the secret of his recent jump in performance.

Isaac is married to Betsy (criminally underused Jillian Bell), and they are about to have a baby. She is refreshingly on board with his going out for a wild night with the boys that she gives him an early Christmas gift — a box of drugs, a sort of Whitman’s Sampler with everything from ‘shrooms to Molly, with some weed and cocaine thrown in for good measure (though, as Isaac points out with a tolerant chuckle, she does not know enough to get the proportions right). Ethan is drifting professionally and personally, never following through on his music and mourning a recent breakup with Diana (criminally underused Lizzy Caplan) because he could not commit to meeting her parents or moving in together.

Many years before, on one of their Christmas eve outings, they heard about a legendary party. I mean a PARTY. I mean THE PARTY, Platonic perfection of party-dom. It has always been their fondest wish to be there. Ethan, working as a coat check elf (his elf face really is very impressive), finds three tickets to the party in a guest’s coat pocket, steals them, and walks out. The party location won’t be announced until 10, so the trio has a few hours for their traditional activities, and plan to limo over to THE PARTY to cap off the evening.

This means encounters with old friends (Diana and her friend, played by the criminally underused Mindy Kaling, plus Michael Shannon as their weed dealer back in high school, Mr. Green), and odd substances (Rogen is actually quite funny as someone going through many different effects from many different drugs). There are cheap jokes about other Christmas movies and changes in technology over the past 14 years. A pay phone. A flashback with people amazed that an iPod can like hold “like 100 songs!” A revisit to Goldeneye on Nintendo 64 at Chris’ mother’s apartment.

There are some new friends, too. “Broad City’s” Ilana Glazer is a Christmas-hating fan who has sex with Chris in a club bathroom and then turns out to be Grinch-y. Various items and people are lost and must be searched for. Isaac’s bad trip is long, strange, and barf-y. And then there is a party with some not-so-surprising guest stars and some even less surprising Christmas-y confessions, apologies, and reconciliations.

“It’s hard to stay friends when you’re older,” Isaac says. It’s also hard to translate “Superbad”-style humor into something for actors in their 30’s. It should not be so hard to find a role for female characters that goes beyond infinite understanding and adoration. There are some enjoyably silly laughs here, and not all of them are in the “oh, no, you didn’t” category. There is a sense of groping toward something more — director Jonathan Levine worked with Rogen and Gordon-Levitt in the excellent fact-based “50/50,” and there are flickers that indicate a wish for something behind drug and barf jokes. One of my Christmas wishes is that the people making this movie learn something from the characters they put on the screen and give us something better next time.

Parents should know that this film is an extremely raunchy comedy with drinking, extensive and varied drug use, constant strong and crude language, some violence, explicit sexual references and situations, and very graphic nudity.

Family discussion: How do you decide which traditions to continue and which to give up? What did Mr. Green teach Ethan, Isaac, and Chris? Is it hard to stay friends as you get older?

If you like this, try: “The Hangover,” “Pineapple Express,” and “Ted”

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Comedy

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:52 pm

MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, and for some thematic material
Profanity:	Some mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant and intense peril and violence, guns, explosions, arrows, mines, zombie-like creatures, many adult and child characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 20, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	March 21, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0189HKE5Q

Can we all just agree that from now on we’ll try to keep it to one book/one movie? This final entry in the Hunger Games series will give the fans what they’ve been waiting for. It’s faithful to the book and it’s perfectly fine. But part 4 is not as good as part 3 and I am not persuaded that it needed to be a separate film.

Jennifer Lawrence is still very much the Girl on Fire and still the heart and soul of the entire series as Katniss Everdeen, whose archery skills, heart, and integrity inspire a rebellion.

Those qualities also make her a double target, wanted by both of the opposing forces. Dictator President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants to get rid of her. But the leader of the rebel group, President Alma Coin, wants to use her for propaganda purposes. As soon as Katniss recovers from the injuries she suffered in part 3, she is back in the field, not so much to fight as to appear to fight, with a camera crew following along.

Also at the end of part 3 we saw that Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who was tortured by Snow’s “Peacekeepers,” is now convinced that it is Katniss who is the enemy. Even the gentle Prim Everdeen (Willow Shields) cannot reach him.

Katniss is deeply conflicted. She has pretended to be in love with Peeta to win the Games and is so disconnected from her feelings she has no idea whether she loves him or not, or, if she is, if he will ever be himself again. Her old friend Gale is in love with her and she does not know how to respond to him, either. While she is passionately committed to bringing down President Snow, she is not willing to go along with the tactics President Coin believes are necessary. She finds it hard to trust anyone, even herself. The abrasive Johanna Mason (Jenna Malone, a refreshing break from the earnest doggedness of just about everyone else) reminds her that some people say what they mean.

All Katniss is certain of is that President Snow must die and she wants to be the one who kills him. So she and a group of rebel soldiers (don’t get too attached — they’re mostly red shirts) set off with one map showing where the mines and traps have been laid out and, for each of them, a capsule of poison to kill themselves in case of capture.

The middle section of the film is more FPS video game than story as the group faces one diabolical threat after another and it becomes numbing, even comedic as we go from guns and traps to a toxic inky flood and then some zombie-esque creatures, as though it is not just President Snow but author Suzanne Collins who wants to make sure no possible destructive force is overlooked.

There is a brief respite at the home of Tigris (a slinky and imposing Eugenie Bonderant, a woman who has been surgically modified to resemble a jungle cat. Like “Ender’s Game,” another story with very young heroes, the climax does not come where you think, in a manner that allows Katniss to evade genuine resolution of the moral quandaries of ends and means.

Director Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) has steered this big, unwieldy ship of a story safely into harbor. If he erred on the side of satisfying the books’ fans over those who might come to the story first on screen, that is understandable. But it means that at least half of the relief at having it resolved will be that no one is planning a part 5.

Parents should know that this film includes intense, extended, and sometimes graphic peril and violence with many adult and child characters injured and killed, as well as references to torture, guns, explosions, murder, chase scenes, themes of dystopia and tyranny.

Family discussion: Could the rebels have won without Coin’s decision? Was it worth it? Why are Snow’s forces called Peacekeepers?

If you like this, try: the other films in the series and the books by Suzanne Collins

Secret in Their Eyes

Posted on November 19, 2015 at 5:28 pm

A girl is murdered. That girl, that crime and the man who did it are seen very differently by different people, all of whom are in law enforcement and all who have sworn to devote their professional lives to justice in this dark thriller based on an Oscar-winning Argentinian film (“The Secret in Their Eyes“). Just as that film used a long-unsolved murder to explore the shifts of politics and culture over the decades, this version, from writer-director Billy Ray, sets the murder in the frantic realigning of priorities following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. For those who loved her, justice for the death of the girl is all that matters. For those working on anti-terrorism, though, the suspect may be of more use out in the world as an informant than in prison as a murderer.

The story takes us back and forth between the present day and the time of the murder, in 2001. Claire (Nicole Kidman) is a District Attorney and Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an investigator newly assigned to the FBI’s anti-terrorism division. There is an immediate charged connection between them, though Claire is more reserved. Ray works with Jess (Julia Roberts), who teases him about his evident interest in Claire.

Then there is the report of a death, a body in a dumpster. Ray and Jess arrive, alert, professional, but detached, snapping on their blue latex gloves and talking about a possible connection to their work because the body was found near the mosque they are investigating.

And then Ray sees the girl and has to tell Jess that everything she cared about in the world has been destroyed. The shot of Roberts’ face as she has to go from thinking she has been called to see a body to understanding that it, that she is the one particular individual who means the most to her, “the thing,” she says, “that made me me,” is shattering to see. For the rest of the film, the radiant presence we know so well is haggard, numb, broken.

In the present day, the murder has not been solved. Because the suspect was an informant from a mosque that could have been harboring terrorists, the case against him was not pursued, and he has disappeared. But Ray has never stopped looking for him. He went through 1906 photos a night, searching every white male in the FBI’s system, for 13 years. He thinks he has found him.

More successful in mood than plot, Ray uses this story to meditate on loss, hopelessness, and the gulf between law and justice. Each of the characters wants something different from this investigation. Jess wants what she thinks of as justice but what looks more like revenge. “Death penalty would be too good for him,” she says. Ray feels somehow responsible, because he could have been with Jess’ daughter the morning she was killed. Claire wants the law to be enforced. And she still feels a connection to Ray. As for the suspect — in his own way, he is as controlled by his obsessions as the others.

Parents should know that this film includes a brutal rape and murder (off-screen) and some violence, with some peril and some injuries and abuse. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Morales’ decision on how to treat Marzin? Should Ray have told Claire how he felt?

If you like this, try: the original film, “The Secret in Their Eyes” and Ray’s earlier films, “Shattered Glass” and “Breach”

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Crime Drama Remake Thriller

Trailer: Friends and Romans

Posted on November 13, 2015 at 8:00 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10FUAIp-zyw

Nick DeMaio, (Michael Rispoli) is an aspiring actor who is perpetually typecast as “Gangster # 3” in films about the Mob. In an attempt to be taken seriously, he and his Staten Island buddies decide to stage a play—and not just any play, but Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”–with Nick as the star. Gathering at odd hours to rehearse, they attract the attention of the Feds, who mistake these good guys for “goodfellas,” and assume the play is a cover for criminal activity. Once again typecast as a gangster– this time in real life–Nick has to prove his mettle, both onstage and off.

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Trailers, Previews, and Clips

The 33

Posted on November 12, 2015 at 5:55 pm

There are other numbers they could have used in the title. 121 — that is how old the Chilean Copiapó mine was when it collapsed in 2010. 2300 — that is how many feet underground the men were when it collapsed. 12,000 — the number of miners who die in accidents around the world, we are told as this movie begins. 69 — that is the number of days before they were rescued. Or just 3 — the number of international drilling teams that came to help, along with more than a dozen corporations. And there is some unknown but surely astronomical number that calculates the cost of the rescue, I am sure. But the movie is called “The 33” because it is less the story of the rescue than it is of the survival, the triumph, of the miners who were trapped, who stayed alive by sharing the woefully inadequate scraps of food left for them, along with the even worse facilities for escape in the case of an accident. In one of the movie’s most searing scenes, they learn that the ladders they had been assured could allow them to exit safely in the event of a collapse were never finished. The intercom for emergencies is not connected.

Director Patricia Riggen brings the skill at visual storytelling and tender-hearted but resilient optimism she showed in “Under the Same Moon” to this story. She insisted on filming underground, and the beams of light from the miners’ helmets, so small against the immense darkness of the caverns, are a powerful symbol of the fragility of the miners’ situation. And she opens up the setting just as it becomes unbearable with a poignant fantasy sequence as the starving miners imagine a glorious feast.

We meet the miners at a party and get a sense of who they are — the one who is about to retire, the one who has moved in with his mistress, to the fury of his wife, the one who likes to sing Elvis Presley songs. And we see them go to work, the long, perilous ride, the ominous response of the manager to the complaints of the safety officer. The shards of mirror they lodge in the walls of the mine are shattering, showing that the ground is shifting. “It’s my job to keep them safe,” the supervisor (Lou Diamond Phillips) tells the manager. “It’s your job to keep them pulling out 250 tons a day,” is the reply. “It’s good for another 20 years.” It would not be good for another 20 hours.

Once it has collapsed, the manager refuses to take any action. Either the miners are dead or they will soon be, and there is no way to get them out. The government takes over the mine and sets up operations, with facilities for the families. Soon an entire village is operating outside the mine, including one miner’s pregnant wife, another’s estranged sister (Juliette Binoche), and the feuding wife and mistress. There is a school for the children, a commissary for supplies, a medical facility. They call it Camp Hope.

The first issue is finding out whether there are any survivors. The moment when the note is retrieved, “We are well in the shelter, the 33 of us,” is jubilant. Then there is the challenge of keeping them alive. Food and sleeping bags (and iPods) are sent down and Skype communications are established. But the greatest engineers in the world cannot figure out how to drill down enough of a hole for a rescue without endangering them further. International press has cameras everywhere.

Meanwhile, the stress on the 33 is severe. Who will be their leader? What if they do not agree?

This is a story that was made for the movies and Riggen tells it well. We join the vigil with the families, and the scene of the real miners at the end shows us why the number that really matters is the one that defines them as a group forever.

Parents should know that this film includes dire extended peril and near-starvation, some strong language, and sexual references, some crude, and alcohol abuse.

Family discussion: Was that the best way for the trapped miners to pick a leader? Who should make sure that corporate facilities are safe and what should the penalties be if they are not? Read about the current trial of the former Massey Energy CEO in the US, following a mining accident that killed 29 mine workers.

If you like this, try: the NOVA documentary shown on PBS about the rescue, focusing on the NASA scientists and engineers, and the documentary “Buried Alive”

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