Coming to Theaters: February 2015

Posted on February 1, 2015 at 3:39 pm

Happy February! Here’s some of what we’ll be seeing in theaters this month:

February 6

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Everyone’s favorite residents of Bikini Bottom are back on the big screen with a 3D adventure, co-starring Antonio Banderas as a pirate.

Jupiter Ascending Anything from the Wachowski’s (“The Matrix,” “Cloud Atlas”) is guaranteed to have dazzling visuals. Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, and Eddie Redmayne star in a sci-fi/fantasy story about the battle for Earth.

Seventh Son Jeff Bridges stars in a sword and sorcery epic about the sole remaining warrior of a mystical order and a young hero born with incredible powers, the last Seventh Son (Ben Barnes).

Ballet 422 A 25-year-old member of the corps de ballet gets a chance to choreograph a major piece for the New York City ballet in this behind-the-scenes documentary.

February 13

Fifty Shades of Gray The steamy international blockbuster about the couple who experiment with the Red Room of Pain comes to screen in time for Valentine’s Day.

Rewrite Hugh Grant plays an Oscar-winning screenwriter whose subsequent series of failures have left him with no job, no family, and no money. He accepts a teaching position, intending to do as little as possible, but finds that the students, including single mom Marisa Tomei, have something to teach him about what matters.

The Last Five Years This sung-through (almost no dialogue) musical tells the story of a five year romance from his perspective (Jeremy Jordan) and hers (Anna Kendrick).

Kingsman: The Secret Service Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson star in this stylish spy story.

Old-Fashioned A serious-minded antique dealer meets a free-spirited young woman who is drawn to his views on faith.

February 20

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 The sequel to the raunchy comedy with returning stars Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, and Chevy Chase. This time, they go into the future!

McFarland USA Kevin Costner plays a track coach in his film inspired by the 1987 true story of novice runners from a predominantly Latino high school in McFarland, an economically challenged town in California’s Central Valley.

February 27

Focus Will Smith and “The Wolf of Wall Street’s” Margot Robie star in a story of two con artists. Can they work together without conning each other?

Maps to the Stars Julianne Moore plays a fading movie star in this David Cronenberg-directed Hollywood satire, co-starring John Cusack, and Robert Pattinson.

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Opening This Month

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 is deeply romantic but also pretty daffy. There are exquisite images and some grand themes but also some clangers, some murky mishmash in the set-up, poorly designed special effects, and one badly botched miscasting that throws everything out of whack.

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”

After Earth

Posted on May 30, 2013 at 6:00 pm

“After Earth” goes off the rails in the first minute as Jaden Smith (the “Karate Kid” remake, “The Pursuit of Happyness”) opens the story with a near unintelligible voice-over narration with some mishmash about how a thousand years before all humans were evacuated from Earth because the environment had become uninhabitable (critic on board so far) and then some predatory monsters evolved (still with you) who are blind but track by smelling fear (starting to lose me) and can only be defeated by “ghost fighters” who somehow are not afraid to fight them but still haven’t figured out that with all the cool technology they have invented, it might be good to have some sort of phaser-style assault weapon rather than continuing to fight them with what are basically cavemen-style spears, or technology of 20,000 years ago (critic has left the building). Will Smith has done to Jaden with this movie what Rebecca Black’s parents did to her with “Friday.” At about 50,000 times the cost.

You can see where this comes from. Will Smith is credited with the idea, and it is structured as an allegory for the wrenching moment of parenting he is at with his son, that precarious balance between wanting to protect them and needing them to have the courage, integrity, and skill to take care of themselves. Smith senior plays General Cypher Raige (these names are really over the top), a taciturn, demanding man who has spent more of his son’s life away from home than with him. Jaden Smith plays Cypher’s son Kitai, who, just as his father is returning home is notified that he has not qualified as a cadet. He is desperate to prove himself to his father, but due to a past trauma that will be revealed in great detail, is not sure of himself. Cypher decides the thing to do is to bring Kitai along on movie cliché number three, the “one last mission.” And, in movie cliché number two, something unexpectedly goes very, very wrong. And in movie cliché number one, two people who don’t know each other very well learn to respect and appreciate one another.

The spaceship crashes, everyone else is killed, Cypher is injured badly, and the only way for them to survive is for Kitai to make a very dangerous trip, by himself, to a remote location, so ET can phone home and they can get rescued. This is the part of the movie where the characters lay out the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), so we can see how they play out over the rest of the story. Are the little ampules for coating the lungs so Kitai can breath absolutely necessary? (Props to the foley team here; the sound these little disks make as he sucks them in are excellent.) Well, somehow Kitai will have to face a shortage. Is the holographic communications system attached to Kitai’s sleeve the only way his father can direct him to the communications disk that is their only hope of calling for help? Somehow it will have to break. And then there are the creatures “all evolved to kill humans” Kitai will run into along the way, plus various other difficulties, one requiring a “Pulp Fiction”-esque injection into the heart.

I have cherished the notion, as M. Night Shyamalan has gone from skillful, absorbing films like “The Sixth Sense” to gimmicky and increasingly self-aggrandizing claptrap (“Lady in the Water,” “The Last Airbender”) that some day we would again see his gift for cinematic storytelling. At times, he has shown an almost Spielbergian understanding of the language of film. But here, even his camera placement is pedestrian. And it is almost as though he sets out to make the worst possible use of his actors. Will Smith’s endless appeal comes from his energy and charm. All of that is tamped down here as he plays a rigid officer who cannot seem to decide if he is talking to his son or issuing orders. Jaden Smith showed himself to be a gifted performer with a nice easiness on camera, but here he is poorly directed. A far better director and a more experienced actor would have a hard time making so much time alone on screen work. Even Tom Hanks had Wilson to talk to. By the time we get to the monster, it is just a relief to know it is almost over.

Parents should know that this film includes pervasive peril and violence, human and animal characters in peril, injured, and killed, some graphic injuries and dead bodies, family member gored by scary monster, snake, spider, falls, and some disturbing images.

Family discussion: How does Moby Dick relate to this story? What do we learn from the way the characters evaluate their resources and options? Do you agree with the General’s distinction between danger and fear?

If you like this, try: “Enemy Mine”

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Action/Adventure Science-Fiction

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 but makes up for the mangled sequel. It has some references and tributes to the first two, though it is not overly bothered about consistency with the prior stories either in the details or in the tone. This one seems balanced more toward the sci-fi action and less toward the wonderfully understated comic sensibility that made the first one so refreshing. Nothing in this film reaches the matchless “Now I’m going to have to buy the White Album again” and testing scene moments of the first one. But those black suits still fit and it is still a lot of fun.

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”

Trailer: Men in Black 3

Posted on December 12, 2011 at 10:53 am

The first “Men in Black” is one of my favorite films of the 1990’s. The second was a terrible disappointment and clearly hacked up before release as shown by its slim running time and unsatisfying and conclusion. I keep hoping there is some director’s cut coming some day. I’ve been worried about the third in the series because of reports of chaotic filming and rumors that there was no script and they were making it up as they went. This new trailer looks encouraging, so here’s hoping.

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Trailers, Previews, and Clips