A Fan’s Paper Trailer for “Prometheus”
Posted on June 9, 2012 at 3:57 pm
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Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
Posted on June 7, 2012 at 6:00 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | Kindergarten - 3rd Grade |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor |
| Profanity: | Some schoolyard language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Comic, cartoon-style peril and violence with chase scenes and tranquilizer darts |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters and species |
| Date Released to Theaters: | June 8, 2012 |
| Date Released to DVD: | October 15, 2012 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B005LAIHW2 |
“Madagascar 3” is the best of the series, bright, fresh, fun, and funny, with a terrific script from co-director and Eric Darnell, a series regular, and, a bit improbably, “The Squid and the Whale’s” Noah Baumbach.
In the first Madagascar
There’s only one place zoo animals can hide out and be on the move at the same time. With Dubois after them, the zoo animals tell the circus animals that they are from a American circus to persuade them to let them on the train. They are on their way to Rome and then London where a scout will decide whether he wants to bring them to New York. Alex et al have to do more than hide out — they have to make the circus a success.
The storyline avoids the poor choices the first two stumbled over, which includes one character wanting to eat another and a tribal rite that involved sacrifice. This time, the circus setting is colorful and engaging, the action scenes are cleverly choreographed and briskly paced, and there is plenty for both children and their parents to laugh at. The characters seem like old friends for us and for each other, comfortable with each other and sweetly supportive. At first, they appear really old as Alex has a nightmare that they are all creaky and wrinkled. But it turns out it is just his birthday and his friends have honored the occasion by re-creating New York City out of mud. When an animated movie for children finds time to comment on the recently renovated Times Square’s “corporate lack of character,” you can be sure that the movie has some confidence and personality, not be the usual bland bore. They even find time for a meta-joke about jokes, a Marie Antoinette license plate, and a reference to the French economy, a fabulous rendition (under a spotlight) by Dubois of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” and a very touching lesson about home. Bien sur, je ne regrette cette film, and it even has me looking forward to part four.
Parents should know that this film has cartoon-style peril, action, and violence, fire, animal tracker uses tranquilizer darts and other weapons, brief potty humor
Family discussion: What changed the animals’ minds about going home? Who should be the leader? What did Alex and the circus animals teach each other?
If you like this, try: the first two “Madagascar” movies
Snow White and the Huntsman
Posted on May 31, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Director Rupert Sanders is known for making television commercials that look like fairy tales, with angels falling from the sky for a guy who uses Axe body spray and a boy battling samurai warriors with Excalibur to sell X-Box game consoles. With his first feature film he has made a fairy tale that looks like a commercial, with every frame filled with eye-popping images and a lot of dramatic posing. A 30 second version would have made a great commercial for perfume or skin cream. As a movie, it is just so-so, with uneven performances and dodgy pacing. After over 100 movie versions of the classic fairy tale about the girl whose lips are red as blood, skin is white as snow, and hair black as ebony and the evil stepmother who orders her taken into the woods and killed, the Disney animated version is still the fairest of them all.
Like Tarsem’s superior “Mirror Mirror,” released earlier this year, this version makes Snow White into an action heroine, leading the battle against her evil stepmother. Charlize Theron plays Ravenna, who literally bewitches a king grieving for his late wife. She murders him on their wedding night, taking over his kingdom with the help of her creepy brother/henchman Finn (Sam Spruell) and locking the young princess in a grubby tower. Ravenna cares for just one thing — eternal beauty. She swans around looking haughty in fabulous Colleen Atwood costumes that can best be described as haute predator couture, with all kinds of intricate spikes and skulls. Everything is either sharp or poisonous and laced-up tightly, with talon-like finger-armor. She stalks and flounces nicely but when it is time for her to get ferocious she is all eye-rolls and screeches, a bad version of Carol Burnett doing Norma Desmond.
Ravenna has an enormous gold mirror that looks like giant frisbee hanging on the wall, and the robed creature who lives inside assures her that she is the fairest in the land. She also gets some reassurance from skeevy Finn, with whom she shares the creepiest brother watching his sister take a bath scene since “Bunny Lake is Missing
While Ravenna is bathing in thick cream and literally sucking the life out of young women, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) is still locked in the tower. For years. But she stays so pure that when the birds come to perch on her window, she does not grab and eat them. She just allows them to show her a loose nail she can use as a weapon, which comes in very handy as Finn arrives shortly to indicate some predatory tendencies and take her to the queen. The mirror guy has informed Ravenna that Snow White has come of age. Her purity is so powerful that she alone has the power to destroy Ravenna, says the mirror. But her power is so great that if Ravenna can eat her heart, she will no longer need touch-ups and refills. Her beauty will stay as it is forever.
When Snow White escapes into the Dark Forest, where everything is creepy and scary and even Ravenna has no power. The only person who knows the Dark Forest well enough to bring her back is The Huntsman (no name), played by “The Avengers'” Thor, Chris Hemsworth. Ravenna promises to bring his dead wife back to life if he will capture the prisoner and he agrees to go. But Snow White isn’t the only one who gets tripped up in the forest. Sanders gets much too enmeshed in all of the tree-branches-turning to snakes-style special effects and the forest section of the film goes on much too long, with at least three too many set-ups and confrontations, including the return of Finn. And it gets worse when they emerge into a sort of Light Forest fairyland, when the story really starts to go haywire, with a whole “chosen one” theme that had people in the audience groaning. Stewart is out of her league. She is fine playing characters like the vulnerable Bella in “Twilight,” but when called on here to inspire the troops, she sounds like she is ordering pizza.
And then there are the dwarfs. It is hard to imagine that in 2012 anyone could think it is appropriate to cast full-size actors, no matter how talented and no matter how persuasive the special effects, as little people. It is a shame to see Bob Hoskins, Nick Frost, Ian McShane, Toby Jones, and others in roles that should be played by little people. By the time they show up, the plot has fallen apart, with an unnecessary love triangle and a preposterous encounter with a troll. Nearly everyone’s accents waver, some of the dialogue is truly awful, and I am certain no one in a fairy tale should ever use the word “okay.” Recasting Snow White as the hero of her own story is long overdue and production designer Dominic Watkins creates some real magic. But this is not only not the best Snow White; it’s not the best one in the last four months.
Parents should know that this film includes fantasy and battle violence with many characters injured and killed, and some graphic and disturbing images including bloody wounds, bugs, and snakes. There is brief partial nudity and some scenes of a brother watching his sister bathe and then suggestively touching a young woman in a predatory manner.
Family discussion: How did Ravenna’s costumes reflect her character? How did the three drops of blood spilled by both characters’ mothers show their connection?
If you like this, try: Some of the more than 100 other movie versions of this story including the recent “Mirror Mirror” and the Disney animated classic
For Greater Glory
Posted on May 31, 2012 at 6:00 pm
B-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| Profanity: | Mild language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Extended battle violence with many characters and animals killed, children tortured and killed |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie, strong female characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | June 1, 2012 |
In 1926, the atheist President of Mexico Plutarco Elias Calles (Rubén Blades) decided to secularize the country by edict. He deported non-Mexican priests and prohibited the remaining priests from appearing outside of the churches in their cassocks. Rebels fought back, at first with peaceful protests and then with increasing force until it became an armed conflict known as the Cristero War or Christiada. This film, financed in part by the Catholic fraternal society The Knights of Columbus, is a faith-based and often heavy-handed retelling of the story, focusing on characters who have since been recognized by the church as martyrs and canonized.
Andy Garcia and Oscar Isaac bring some depth and dignity to a script that is sincere but clunky. Garcia plays Enrique Gorostieta Velarde, a non-believer married to a devout woman (Eva Longoria) and a former general now painfully under-employed as a manager at a soap factory. When the Cristeros offer him the job of commanding their troops, he accepts because he wants to do the work he was born for, because it will please his wife, and because, he discovers, he would like to believe in something. One of his biggest challenges is winning the respect of the Cristero’s legendary fighter, Victoriano Ramirez (Isaac), known as “El Catorce” because he defeated fourteen of the President’s army by himself. Rodriguez plays one of the women who played key roles in transporting guns and ammunition.
The battle scenes are impressively staged and there are some affecting moments, but it assumes a level of belief and commitment on the part of its audience that may not apply to those who are not familiar with Catholic teachings. Ultimately, it is closer to worship than story-telling, more likely to validate believers than to engage new hearts.
Parents should know that this film has extended battle violence with many characters and animals injured and killed, graphic and disturbing images, and a harrowing scene of a child who is tortured and killed.
Family discussion: How does the quote at the beginning of the movie relate to the story? How did participating in the fight change the general’s mind about God?
If you like this, try: “The Mission” and “Braveheart”
Men in Black 3
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Welcome back, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.
The stars and director of one of the most creative and purely entertaining movies of the last 20 years are back for a third that does not match the original
High-spirited J (Will Smith) and craggy, taciturn K (Tommy Lee Jones) are agents for a super-secret government organization that handles immigration problems and aliens — not the kind from other countries, the kind from other planets. Some are refugees, some are tourists, but some are here to wipe out all of humanity. The Agency manages all of that and with the help of a flashing “nebulizer” the size of a pen to wipe out the memory of any human unlucky enough to experience an alien encounter.
One of the most dangerous aliens of all is Boris the Animal (“Flight of the Conchords'” Jermaine Clement), captured back in 1969 by K and now locked away in a prison on the moon. As the movie opens, an incomparably luscious lady in a tight, tight dress and high, high stilettos (no special effects needed here: it’s Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger) is bringing him a very frosty cake. As everyone but the prison guards guesses, what is in the cake makes possible Boris’ escape back to earth, where he picks up a time machine and goes back to 1969. He plans to replay his encounter with K so that instead of losing an arm and getting captured he kills K and continues with his destruction of the planet. And so J goes back in time, meets up with the K of 1969 (Josh Brolin, nailing it).
The expected fish-out-of water time travel jokes include technology (the pre-chip nebulizer is big and clunky!) and encounters with the people and events of the era. One of the best jokes in the first movie was the display of monitors that revealed that people like Al Roker, Isaac Mizrahi, director Barry Sonnenfeld, Sylvester Stallone, Dionne Warwick, Newt Gingrich, and Anthony Robbins as aliens. In this version, it seems unimaginatively on-the-nose to include Lady Gaga, but back in 1969 there is a witty twist as one of the likeliest alien suspects of the era is revealed to be an undercover Man in Black instead. Michael Stuhlbarg (“Hugo,” “A Serious Man”) is charming as a sweet-natured alien in a ski cap whose gift and curse is his ability to see every possible outcome. I am sure at least a couple of those possibilities would have been better than this movie’s conclusion, which is muddled and unsatisfying.
Parents should know that this film includes extended sci-fi action violence with chases, explosions, and aliens, some disturbing images, some strong language, and brief suggestive alien sexual references.
Family discussion: How did what J learned about his own past change him? How will K be different and why?
If you like this, try: the first “Men in Black” movie (be sure to try the DVD’s director commentary) and “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”