Trailer for “Thor: The Dark World”
Posted on April 25, 2013 at 8:00 am
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Disconnect
Posted on April 18, 2013 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rate R for sexual content, some graphic nudity, language, violence, and drug use, some involving teens |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drug use |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Tense emotional confrontations, some violence, gun |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 19, 2013 |
Viewers will spend much of this movie mentally imploring the characters on screen not to do what it is all too disturbingly clear that they are ineluctably drawn to do. This is a very scary movie with three stories about the disastrous consequences of revealing too much online. And the scariest part is off-line. Far more devastating than the painful consequences of the bad choices they make is the reason they make them, the yearning for connection.
Grief over the death of a baby drives a couple apart and they separately seek online support to make them feel less helpless and isolated and are ensnared by an identity thief. A devoted but distracted father does not know that his shy, sensitive son is being catfished by a couple of classmates, much less that the boy . An ambitious television reporter wants to write a story about an underage online sex worker, and that means she must get him to trust her. In their own ways, each of them is seducing the other for professional reasons.
These fact-based stories could easily come across as cheesy Lifetime dramas, but documentary director Henry-Alex Rubin (“Murderball”) gives it an intimate, natural tone. Sensitive performances from the entire cast are absorbing, especially Jason Bateman in his first full-on dramatic role as the father of the boy who thinks he has an online girlfriend and that she has asked him to send her a nude photo and Frank Grillo as the single father of one of the boys whose prank turns tragic.
The weakest of the stories involves the grieving couple, who decide to take things into their own hands when identify theft drives them to the brink of financial ruin and the revelations of their online activities drive them to the brink of marital disaster. But even that storyline has some gripping moments as the experience shocks them into talking to each other with more singularity of purpose and honesty than they have shared in a long time. The journalist’s involvement with the underage online sex worker has some superficially sleazy moments, but Andrea Riseborough (Wallis Simpson in Madonna’s “W.E.”) is excellent in showing us the character’s struggle with ambition, compassion, professionalism, and vulnerability. “It’s my job!” various characters cry out at different moments in the movie. It is just a way of declaring how that makes them responsible, and how it defines them.
As we have had to develop a new term, catfishing, to describe online relationships based on fictional character attributes, and even an entire television series on the subject, we are only just beginning to understand the way our brains are constructed to fill in the missing elements of these connections with elements from our own subconscious, a sort of romantic Rorschach test. What draws us in to these stories is the recognition that we bring so much hope and need to these online connections. But what keeps us thinking afterward is its reminder that while the in-person, real-life connections are what scare us most, it is because that is what we long for so deeply.
Parents should know that this cautionary tale includes nudity, explicit sexual references, very strong language, drinking and drugs, and underage sex workers.
Family discussion: Does this movie make you think differently about your online presence? How should the rules be changed? Why was it easier for these people to open up online than in person?
If you like this, try: “Trust”
Trailer: Man of Steel
Posted on April 16, 2013 at 8:51 pm
The Company You Keep
Posted on April 11, 2013 at 6:13 pm
I can’t help thinking that even though this movie is based on a novel by Neil Gordon
There’s nothing wrong in wrestling with the same themes, especially themes as meaty as the conflicts between our larger responsibilities as citizens and our responsibilities as family members and friends and when the ends justify the means — or when the means just make you into the same kind of bad guy as the people you are fighting.
Redford plays a single dad and small town lawyer who, it turns out, has been living under an assumed name for longer than he lived under his own. When a suburban mother of two teenagers (Susan Sarandon) turns out to be a long-missing fugitive sought by the FBI for her role in a bank robbery that led to the felony murder of a guard (himself a father of two children). The robbery was the last act of a splinter group from the anti-war Weather Underground. (Apparently, this fictional theft was inspired by the 1981 Brinks robbery by members of the Weather Underground and Black Panthers.)
Ben, a reporter at a failing newspaper called the Albany Sun-Times, does some research and discovers that the man known as Jim Kent (Redford) is really Nick Sloan, also a fugitive accused of participating in the robbery. Jim/Nick leaves his 11-year-old daughter (singing sensation Jackie Evancho, sweetly natural) with his brother (Chris Cooper), and goes on the run, contacting the old gang (including Nick Nolte, Richard Jenkins, and Julie Christie), none of whom are very happy to see him.
Meanwhile, both the FBI (Terrance Howard and Anna Kendrick) and the reporter are chasing after Jim/Nick with all kinds of high-tech surveillance (FBI) and looking at old microfilms for the kinds of esoteric newspaper archives and property records that are not even online (reporter).
There is some talk about protest here, with a pause for a professor’s lecture to his class about determination to make absolutely sure we do not miss the point. And there is more talk about parents and children and how they change the calculus of responsibility and a great big metaphor of a character who is supposed to represent all of that.
Like “Lions for Lambs,” this is a talky film, but the balance this time is more on the side of story, and the non-stop parade of top-tier actors hold our interest. The title is as much about our relationship as long-term fans of these masterful performers as it is about the characters who have been hiding out as they come to grips with their failures and betrayals.
Parents should know that there are glimpses of wartime and protest violence and characters use strong language. The movie includes drinking and drug dealing.
Family discussion: How did having children make people evaluate their options differently? Do you agree with Ben’s decision at the end? How did the characters show their different ideas of loyalty?
If you like this, try: “Running on Empty” and “Steal This Movie”
Trance
Posted on April 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm
B| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, some grisly images, and language |
| Profanity: | Very strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Violence and peril with guns, fire, chases, car accident, taser, choking, and torture, some very disturbing images, characters injured and killed, graphic wounds, dead bodies |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 12, 2013 |
| Date Released to DVD: | July 22, 2013 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00D3DJI3Q |
Before he was the establishment figure who won Oscars for prestige projects (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and masterminded the fabulous opening ceremonies for the London Olympics that had the Queen and James Bond jumping out of a plane, Danny Boyle was a skillful director of highly styled and deliciously nasty films about not-so-deliciously nasty people doing dreadful things (“Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave”). His latest is “Trance,” a deliciously nasty heist film about the theft of a 27 million dollar masterpiece by Goya, tellingly titled Witches in the Air, and about the mistrust and betrayal that comes next.
Part of the fun comes from having our assumptions turned upside down — and then inside out. So I don’t want to give too much away. The title comes from a hypno-therapist named Elizabeth (the stunningly beautiful Rosario Dawson), brought into the den of thieves because one of them has misplaced the painting and, thanks to a head injury, cannot remember where he stashed it. The problem faced by alpha-thief Franck (ferret-like Vincent Cassel) is how to arrange it so that Elizabeth can get inside the amnesiac’s head to find the missing painting but not let her find that that by doing so she is abetting a rather notorious crime. Dawson, too often underused, gets a chance to show what she is capable of in a performance of intelligence and subtlety. As she explained in an interview, “I wanted to be specific on who she was and make her disappear at the same time.”
The film itself becomes a sort of trance, with deeply saturated colors that shimmer like a dream, and Dawson’s magnetic voice. We, like the characters, must begin to mistrust what we see and what we think we know as the story turns upside down, inside out, and then, as soon as we think we’ve figured it out, Rubik cubes our minds again. This is a movie you’ll be talking about on the way home, and probably shivering about in your own nightmare.
Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and explicit situations, very explicit nudity, violence including guns, taser, car accident, torture, fire, characters injured and killed, disturbing and graphic images, very strong language
Family discussion: What do the title and subject of the stolen painting have to do with the story? What do you think will happen next?
If you like this, try: “Inside Man” and “Side Effects”