Reviews by Tom Price

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

2006-11-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

“Comedy is tragedy plus time” wrote Woody Allen in one of his best films, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The funniest humor often has an edge to it, traipsing perilously close to the bounds of propriety. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan clearly and intentionally crosses those bounds.

Whether crossing those bounds makes this shock film satirical genius or offensive bigotry depends on your perspective.

After Borat opened Nov. 3, it became the No. 1 film at the U.S. box office, surpassing a record previously held by Fahrenheit 9/11 for the biggest opening weekend for a film released in fewer than 1,000 theaters. Pre-release buzz and 94 percent favorable reviews on RottenTomatoes.com, a web site that summarizes film reviews, show that many regard Borat as the funniest movie of the year. And there was plenty of laughter at the screening I attended, including from a woman whose very laugh was infectious and caused the laughter to spread. While there were scenes of sizzling satire, I found my conscience more often troubled by the nature of the humor.

The 84-minute “mockumentary” is based on a character created by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen from the “Da Ali G Show” on HBO. The plot is simple. Borat Sagdiyev is journalist from Kazakhstan who comes to America to make a documentary, encountering real Americans in real situations and using their unguarded responses in the film. After seeing an old Baywatch episode, he goes on a cross-country quest in an ice-cream truck to marry Pamela Anderson.

Borat is portrayed as the stereotypical foreign rube as well as an anti-Semitic, misogynistic, bigoted, ill-mannered and crude – but deceptively innocent -- guy. The R-rated film includes raw language, male frontal nudity, naked men wrestling, scatological gags and comments offensive to pretty much every group on the planet. The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, about which there is virtually no shred of truth in the film, has hired Western public-relations firms to deal with what their Washington embassy called “a one-man diplomatic wrecking ball.” (Indeed, Cohen has conducted counter-press conferences saying that the Kazakh diplomats are really double-agents from Uzbekistan. And if they don’t desist, Kazakhstan will “commence bombardment of their cities with catapults.”)

You’re probably getting the sense that Cohen relies on interviews with people who don’t realize the nature of his intentions in this film. Where the satire works, Americans are unmasked as they spew their own hatred and bigotry of their own free will, such as a gun-seller who recommends a particular gun for use in defense against Jews. Or consider the actual audience response to Borat’s remarks at a rodeo in Roanoke, Va. -- “We support your war of terror. (Big applause) May we show our support to our boys in Iraq? (Applause) May the US and A kill every single terrorist. (Loud applause) May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq. (Applause) May you destroy their country so for the next 1,000 years not even a single lizard will survive in their desert. (Loud applause)”

But Borat is nothing more than a foreign Archie Bunker from that ’70s TV show, “All in the Family.” Studies proved that not all viewers saw Archie’s comments as ignorant bigotry; many simply laughed in agreement. And Cohen simply pulls together all the worst American stereotypes of foreigners for cheap laughs.

Early in the film, Borat gets advice from a humor coach about the kind of humor that works in America. As Borat misfires on an offensive joke about someone with mental retardation, the coach says, “Here in America we try not to make fun of or be funny with things people do not choose.”

Borat ignores that advice in numerous instances as it perpetuates foul stereotypes or shames innocent bystanders for things as simple as physical appearance. At a dinner party in Alabama where six couples were hosting someone they thought was a foreign journalist, Borat points to two women beside him: “In my country, they would go crazy for these two.” Then he points to a minister’s wife: “(Her) not so much.”

As the government of Kazakhstan is finding out, Western media have unrivaled power to shape global opinion. A film like Borat simply manufactures an ugly caricature of foreigners and trumpets an even uglier American and Western mindset of cultural superiority over all.

No wonder a large portion of the world hates us.

The Departed

2006-10-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

“Honesty is not synonymous with truth.”

When that phrase is uttered midway into The Departed, director Martin Scorsese’s best film in years, we are beginning to see the impact that lies have on two men of similar backgrounds, who have departed from the truth in service to different callings.

The two South Boston men become police officers with different motives. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks redemption from his family’s history of crime connections through taking a special assignment to infiltrate the Irish mob of Frank Costello. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), an orphaned altar boy, grows up admiring Costello and, at his bidding, joins the state police as Costello’s inside mole.

And it doesn’t take more than two minutes into The Departed to establish that Costello is what actor Jack Nicholson described his character to be: “the ultimate incarnation of evil.”

“When I was your age, they would say you could become cops or criminals. What I’m saying to you is this: When you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?” Costello tells Sullivan, who is assigned to a special unit working to catch his mentor.

For the rest of the 2-hour-and-21-minute film, viewers become engaged with these and other rich and fascinating characters. The principal question becomes which man will find the other first. Questions of morality fly by like hurdles in a steeplechase.

Adapted from the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs by screenwriter William Monahan (Kingdom of Heaven), The Departed deals with lies, betrayal and deception – none greater than the ways in which characters deceive themselves.

Living in a world of lies begins to impact each man in different ways. Sullivan’s glamorous apartment, which should have been a clue to his police colleagues that something was amiss, overlooks the state capitol and Beacon Hill. He dreams of gold and becoming a lawyer. Although cool and unfazed by police attempts to root him out, Sullivan is the more self-deceived of the pair, vainly hoping that his path will lead to respectability. Meanwhile, Costigan’s path first goes through prison in order to build confidence with underworld elements. Later, he suffers physically and emotionally for the crimes he commits with Costello’s gang in the hope of not blowing his cover. Ultimately, he searches in vain for the identity of the man he once was.

Despite the excitement, the film does have some flaws. It is a bit of a stretch that both “moles” sleep with Madolyn (Vera Farmiga), a psychiatrist who works with police officers and others who experience violence. (Although each man’s relationship with Madolyn does reveal insights into his inner character.) We can see that lying is difficult work for the moles, each carrying around two sets of cell phones and needing to keep track of which client is calling. (But it’s funny that the police never thought about listening in on the cell phone traffic to catch the mob’s undercover operative within their ranks.)

The film’s R rating comes for its pervasive foul language and brutal violence, although it’s not as graphic as Scorsesee’s Gangs of New York. And the language is very appropriate to the rich and vibrant characters in this film’s all-star cast, including Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg.

Although this graphic portrayal may be too much for some viewers, these honest depictions do communicate deeper truths about the nature of lies. Those who deceive may ultimately become easily deluded themselves about whether they’ve really heard the truth from others.

The Illusionist

2006-09-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.” -- Matthew 6:22-23

When Jesus preached those words in the Sermon on the Mount, he essentially was saying that life could be an illusion. Or, as put by the tagline to one of the best films so far this year, “nothing is what it seems.”

The Illusionist takes viewers on a captivating journey to 19th-century Vienna, where Eisenheim, a mysterious magician played by Edward Norton (Kingdom of Heaven, Fight Club), returns after years of absence to amaze and stun the people with his performances. His popularity captures the attention of Viennese officials, who seek to unmask the performer as a fraud, in part to cover their own deceptions.

Made by the producers of Crash, last year’s Oscar-winning best picture, The Illusionist combines political machinations, romance, turn-of-the-century beauty and the supernatural into a powerful story that illustrates how our lives can be shaped by the way we choose to perceive the world around us. If we see things clearly, we are not deceived. But if the hand is quicker than our eyes, our judgments could be shrouded in darkness.

If the question of perception isn’t enough, what makes The Illusionist the best film I’ve seen so far this year is the way this deftly crafted story is filled with rich and fascinating characters. Written and directed by Neil Burger (based on the short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” by Steven Millhauser), this film is destined for best screenplay nominations at award time.

The 110-minute film is a character-driven movie, and perhaps nowhere is that better illustrated than in the portrayal of Chief Inspector Uhl by Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Lady in the Water, Cinderella Man). Giamatti’s performance is stunning as a man torn between his search for the truth and his desire for professional advancement through his service to the Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell). The Chief Inspector becomes our point of view for the film as we wonder whether Eisenheim’s performances are well-contrived illusions or the supernatural deeds many in his audience believe them to be.

Immediately suspicious of the magician, the Crown Prince becomes involved in a more direct rivalry with Eisenheim when it is discovered that the magician was a forbidden childhood sweetheart of the prince’s fiancée, the duchess Sophie von Teschen, played by Jessica Biel (Elizabethtown). As a peasant boy, Eisenheim watched as his love was taken from him; as a powerful magician, will he stand aside a second time? Especially when, beneath all her finery, Sophie still wears a wooden locket Eisenheim made for her years ago – a locket that contains his picture and can only be opened in a special way.

Enhanced by a beautiful score by contemporary composer Philip Glass, The Illusionist raises the question of whether truth can exist in an illusion. Eisenheim openly proclaims, “Everything you have seen here is an illusion.” While the Crown Prince, scheming to overthrow his father, insists that nothing is up his sleeve. These two perspectives cannot co-exist – especially when Eisenheim directly challenges the Crown Prince’s right to rule with one of his tricks.

The Illusionist helps us to realize the thin boundary that exists between illusion and reality, love and obsession, public service and self-interest, life and death. And its surprising plot twists will certainly test your level of perceptivity. In the end, although perceptions affect one’s view of the world, it is the choices we make that determine our fate.

World Trade Center

2006-08-10T05:31:00.000-07:00

Only 20 people were pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center. The new film World Trade Center tells an intimate story of the 18th and 19th men rescued, New York Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and Officer William Jimenez (Michael Peña).

The much-anticipated second Hollywood Sept. 11 film in some ways is like United 93, which this spring retold the story of the passengers aboard the plane that crashed into Pennsylvania farmland after a struggle with the hijackers. World Trade Center returns the viewer to the immediate emotional feelings of the day – the shock and chaos, confusion and disbelief. Like United 93, World Trade Center is almost apolitical – a marvel for some who anticipate a conspiracy from each film directed by Oliver Stone (JFK, Born on the Fourth of July). Still, the 2-hour and 6-minute film returns viewers in 2006 to another political reality – one in which the world wept along with us and Americans were united, if only for a brief time.

The trailer promoting the film features a satellite image of lower Manhattan on Sept. 11. Yet while the PG-13 film is set in the context of the earth-shattering event, it focuses on the intimate and personal relationships of these two men.

Responding to a crisis for which there is no crisis plan, a small team of officers volunteer to follow Sgt. McLoughlin into the towers on a rescue operation. After assembling their gear, they are just beginning to make their way through a concourse between the towers when the first tower collapses. World Trade Center vividly depicts the sense of being inside the hell of a collapsing building.

“What good did we do?” asks Jimenez, who is well-portrayed by Peña (who starred as the locksmith in Crash, the Oscar-winning best picture of 2005). Yet Jimenez, one of only a few of the Port Authority officers to volunteer to go into the tower, realizes that heroism and courage begin with being willing to act. Later, he reassures McLoughlin, who is feeling guilt-ridden for having led his men into the tower, “They couldn’t live with themselves if they hadn’t gone in.”

Much of the film’s center alternates between the claustrophobic space inhabited by McLoughlin and Jimenez, their families’ anxious vigils and the memories of life’s shared interactions.

Indeed the strongest message of the film is that humans are intrinsically connected – through memories the men share with their loved ones, through their pained conversation as they try to motivate each other to fight for life and through the selfless responses of others involved in their rescue.

The most vivid of those human responses is a true story that involved retired Marine Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon). Karnes describes feeling a call from God to put on his uniform and go to the tragedy’s epicenter to try to rescue people from the rubble. Dissuaded by his pastor and averting the restricted access, Karnes turned out to be one of the men who found the place where the two officers were trapped.

The script by newcomer Andrea Berloff focuses on the tiniest details about choices and actions, which make the difference between regret and happiness, between death and life. McLoughlin left for work that morning without kissing goodbye his wife, Donna (Maria Bello). Jimenez and his pregnant wife, Allison (Maggie Gyllenhaal), each regret their failure to compromise on a name for their unborn daughter. In another instance, Jimenez recalls that an officer’s offer to switch places with him spared his life but cost the other man his. Donna McLoughlin, wondering whether she’ll ever get a chance to see her own husband, comforts a woman who is stricken by angry words last spoken to her missing loved one.

As the officers struggle to survive, they alternate between waking consciousness, memories and hallucinations. While pinned and choking on dust and rocks, Jimenez has a vision of the Sacred Heart of Jesus offering him a liter bottle of cool water. That iconic Catholic devotional image, often depicted in sacred art, merges into the response of the rescuers, offering the men cool water and risking their own lives in service to them.

While World Trade Center movingly depicts the personal stakes and heroism of Sept. 11, this film and director Paul Greengrass’s United 93 have played it safe as the first major 9/11 films. Few would criticize stories of American heroism: passengers fighting back against the terrorists or two policemen struggling to survive. Yet one wonders when will we see cinematic portrayals of families whose lives were utterly destroyed by the events, a depiction of what motivated the attacks or an illustration of how 9/11 has changed our society?

Although highly moving, World Trade Center at some points comes close to feeling like one of those child-trapped-in-a-well films. Its proximity and faithfulness to the actual events makes it powerful. Time will tell which is its true legacy.

Scoop

2006-08-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

What makes a good story? And how much can you believe about what anyone tells you?

American journalism student Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson) is just beginning to get an idea. That is, when she’s not trying to interview a famous director, sleeping with him and forgetting to actually get the story. Sondra also has problems understanding what makes a story credible. And a lack of a credible and compelling story is the same weakness of Scoop, the newest film from writer/director Woody Allen.

That’s where British journalist Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) comes in. Joe will do anything to get a good story – even try to cheat death. So while traversing the river Styx at the hands of the Grim Reaper and accompanied by a group of stiffs, he meets a woman who says she was the last victim of the fabled Tarot Card killer. And that the killer, Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), is the son of a British lord.

In pursuit of his last scoop, Joe manages to contact Sondra as she is placed into a disappearing booth – a dematerializer -- by Sid Waterman (Allen), a Vaudeville-type magician who goes by “the Great Splendini.” Telling her she’s being handed “the biggest story since Jack the Ripper,” Joe becomes an unimpeachable source – if he were alive, that is.

After several tips from Joe, Sondra decides to prove she has what it takes to become a journalist and to break free from her familial destiny as a dental hygienist. But she creates a false persona for herself, introducing Waterman as her father to Lyman and his lordly crowd. The details she uncovers are merely circumstantial. And to make matters worse, she begins to fall in love with Lyman, the subject of her investigation.

Allen’s second consecutive film in London (following Match Point), Scoop provides some entertaining slapstick and barbs, particularly from Allen’s character. “I was brought up in the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism,” he explains to the aristocrats. While the film is entertaining, it lacks the weight of Match Point and of Allen’s best morality plays, such as Crimes and Misdemeanors.

But it does give us the familiar neurotic characters Allen plays best. “I never gain an ounce,” Waterman tells Sondra. “My anxiety attacks work like aerobics.”

The 96-minute film illustrates the level of deception needed to maintain a good story – or a bad lie. In the end, the film turns on the characters’ ability to tell the difference between truth and fiction. But, as the jokes suggest, their collective discernment is somewhat lacking.

As Waterman and Sondra follow Lyman, Allen’s character speculates that perhaps the mysterious British lord is driven by some secret and shameful passion short of murder.

“Maybe he belongs to one of those clubs where they are cross-dressers?” he says. “Or maybe he does folk dancing.” Scoop is full of such fun. But this story has a shorter life than newsprint.

Monster House

2006-07-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

“Every neighborhood has a house with a secret,” promises the trailer to Monster House. And those tantalizing secrets take three kids on an exciting adventure that will have children in nervous anticipation and adults, like me, in nostalgic contemplation.

Perhaps this year’s best animated film to date focuses on two boys, DJ (Mitchel Musso) and his friend, Chowder (Sam Lerner), whose ball rolls onto the lawn of their crotchety old neighbor Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi). The man is possessed with rage for anyone who trespasses on his lawn, so much so that in his anger at DJ he apparently suffers a heart attack. DJ feels remorse, while Chowder tries to convince him that their troubles are over. But are they? What explains the mysterious phone calls to DJ’s home or continuing disappearances?

One of the strengths of Monster House is that it is rooted in the familiar idiosyncrasies of American suburban life. Its message – “Whatever you do, don’t go on the lawn” – is a familiar refrain to many of us.

Monster House recalled for me several of the people in the neighborhood where I grew up – from the woman with her hoarded collection of footballs and baseballs to the man who would go into tirades if anything brushed a blade of his grass. Their bizarre and anti-social behavior always baffled my friends and me, until we discovered some deeper emotional issues that were at the root. The woman, for example, had an estranged relationship with her adult son, who now wanted nothing to do with his mother. Living a life of remorse, she acted out against boys who, for her, represented the kind of friends that took her son away.

But learning about the psychological underpinnings of adults’ emotional problems, didn’t excuse their behavior. Nor did it take away from the comical behavior we sometimes witnessed. Imagine a woman in her late 50s in a dress and heels, her arms loaded with groceries, sprinting down a sidewalk to try to snatch a football that came to rest against the edge of her lawn before my friend could retrieve it. Could you blame him for doing a Billy “White shoes” Johnson celebration with the ball after he beat her to it by only a step?

But Monster House is a delightful animated feature, because it takes instances like that and goes one step further. The behaviors of a frightening neighbor become personified in his residence, which snatches balls, kites, small pets – even police cars. When the boys rescue Jenny (Spencer Locke), a prep school over-achiever, they gain a new friend and a motivation for competition.

Adults don’t believe what’s going on. At best, failing to understand, they resort to simple solutions. “No more Mountain Dew,” says the babysitter. At worst, they’re self-absorbed and completely oblivious. “We’ll be back tomorrow night. Oh. If anything happens, call the police and hide in your closet,” says the mom (Catherine O’Hara). “He knows that,” adds the dad (Fred Willard). The message is clear, as sometimes it is in life, you’re on your own to figure this out. And so, DJ turns to his friends as he tries to deal with both the Monster House and puberty.

The PG film was directed by Gil Kenan with the motion-capture animation technique used in The Polar Express. But the characters in Monster House seem less artificial than their images in that film. There are a few scary points for little ones. (There was at least one moment when my 8-year-old was beginning to cover her eyes.) But, at its heart, Monster House is a love story that contains both the good and the bad – the positive feelings of love and the possessiveness that can result when love becomes overbearing.

The film provides a good illustration of St. Paul’s famous “love poem” in 1 Corinthians 13 in which he describes love’s nature as one that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We can learn that sometimes what appears to us as madness is driven by motives we do not fully understand, including love and self-sacrifice.

The 1-hour-and-31-minute film brings together Executive Producers Stephen Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, whose previous partnerships include Back to the Future. And Monster House shares some of the fun spirit of that classic ‘80s adventure trilogy. It’s a roller-coaster ride that surprises you with moments of tenderness and insight.

Nacho Libre

2006-07-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

How can I free myself from the mundane tasks I’m now doing to become what God truly wants me to be? (And if it just so happens that I’m lousy at what I think God wants me to be, can I blame God for it?)

Those questions are at the heart of Nacho Libre, the new Paramount comedy by the writer/director of 2004’s cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. Nacho Libre literally means “free nacho,” and the 1-hour and 40-minute film follows the haphazard journey of Ignacio “Nacho” (Jack Black), an orphan turned friar. Nacho seeks to break free from his humble occupation as an orphanage cook to become one of Mexico’s greatest lucha libre wrestlers. Lucha libre, which means freestyle fighting, is a form of professional wrestling begun in Mexico in the 1930s, and this PG film captures some of its quirkiness. The script, co-written by director Jared Hess and his wife, Jerusha, has several funny situations, but seems more a collection of gags or sketches than a cohesive story.

En route to his dream, Nacho faces some obstacles. The monks and beautiful Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera) think wrestling is ungodly and its heroes “false idols.” And then there’s Nacho’s own lack of talent. He keeps on losing, but the loser’s share of the purse helps him buy better food for the orphanage anyway. “I don’t want to get paid to lose. I want to win,” Nacho says, praying: “Precious Father, why have you given me this desire to wrestle and then made me such a stinky warrior?”

Nacho seems all style – bad style – and little substance. Just when it seems he’s on a path to victory and the crowd chants his name, he revels in the moment, ripping open his shirt rather than finishing the match. He gets clobbered and loses again.

Like many of us, Nacho searches for quick fixes to his success – a better outfit, “Eagle powers,” a professional classification – rather than having the discipline to work hard for what he desires. Yet what passes as training for Nacho is slapstick silliness. Although Nacho’s own songs are comical, he is like the songwriter who confess that “God gave me” the words to a song so bad that God couldn’t be the one to blame.

Nacho tries to keep his moonlighting a secret, but is discovered by one of the orphans trying out his lame pants. “Chancho, when you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants in your room,” he tells the boy. “It’s for fun.” When he is finally unmasked, he announces his desire to win for the orphans, “so the school could have a bus for fieldtrips.” The sister responds, “If you fight for something noble, something right, only then will God bless you.” But is that always the case?

This film’s namesake, nachos, are fun food – especially if they’re accompanied by other fun foods. But at about 50 calories per chip, they’re not very nutritious. They simply don’t deliver nutrition if you’re really hungry.

Nacho Libre has moments of sheer fun. But it neither captures the magic of Napoleon Dynamite nor does it present a coherent retelling of a hero’s journey. And if you didn’t like or get Napoleon Dynamite in the first place, you might as well stay clear away from Nacho Libre. But if this kind of humor is for you, then bring the salsa, melted cheese and bean dip.

On A Clear Day

2006-06-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

We live in a disposable society. It’s really great for surgeons and preventing the spread of disease. But it’s horrible for the environment and especially when it happens to people. On A Clear Day, an award-winning Scottish film in theaters this spring and set for release on DVD later this month, profiles one man’s response to feeling broken and discarded.

“Things aren’t made to be fixed nowadays,” laments Frank Redmond, a 55-year-old shipbuilder in Glasgow, Scotland, who finds himself among 6,000 “made redundant” from the only job he has ever known. He suffers a panic attack while visiting the unemployment office. He tries to ignore his wife’s efforts to get a job as a city bus driver. And he’s bewildered by his adult son’s willingness to be a stay-at-home dad in support of his working wife. Frank’s relationship with his son has been estranged since the death of a second son at age 12 in a swimming accident. This distance even is visible to Frank’s grandson, who tells his father, “Pappy doesn’t like you.”

“What are you looking for?” asks a friend who meets Frank aimlessly wandering at the library. “I don’t know,” Frank replies. “But whatever it is, it’s not in here.”

If Frank’s trying to find the answer in a place, it seems to be the Glasgow swimming pool. Frank (portrayed by Peter Mullan, previously featured in My Name is Joe, Braveheart and Trainspotting) works out daily as if he’s swimming for his life, or for the life of his dead son. One day, an offhand remark by a co-worker, “on a clear day, you could swim to France,” leads Frank to consider a 20-mile-plus swim across the English Channel. “How mad do you have to be to swim it?” Frank asks his friends. “Totally,” one replies.

On A Clear Day debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. But the Scottish film is in broader, but limited, U.S. release this spring and is scheduled for a June 16 release on DVD. Filmed in Scotland, the Isle of Man and Dover, the 99-minute film’s location and circumstances have certainly brought about comparisons to The Full Monty. Although the challenge of the athletic feat serves as the focus of the film, the strength of On A Clear Day lies in the relationships between its characters.

Danny Campbell, one of Frank’s younger co-workers, is the film’s comic show-stealer. Portrayed by Billy Boyd (who played the hobbit Pippin in The Lord of the Rings films), Danny’s one-liners and antics add timely levity to offset the rising interpersonal tension. Indeed, the healing power of laughter seems to be embodied in this film’s screenplay by Alex Rose.

As Frank wrestles with whether he should swim the Channel, he meets a physically disabled boy who expends all his energy simply to swim one length of the pool. In seeing the boy struggle through his brokenness to achieve his goal, Frank gains inspiration for his own attempt on the Channel. Yet why does Frank seek to accomplish this goal?

Frank, himself, doesn’t really seem to understand why he needs to swim this distance, much like St. Paul in his own confessions: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” One of Frank’s friends, a Chinese shop owner, tells him, “A gem cannot be polished without friction; neither a man perfected without trials.”

As with Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, Frank is driven to accomplish a task by something outside of himself. Even though neither man understands consciously what he is struggling for, the struggle itself leads them through brokenness onto the path of healing.

In this gap, this lack of conscious understanding of motives and purpose, these men find the leading of Providence. Just as creation one day will be set free from the bondage of decay, these men learn that their sufferings bring redemption they did not anticipate but which was their greatest hope.

Akeelah and the Bee

2006-05-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (school)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Having survived the nerve-racking experience of watching multiple spelling bees as the father of a contestant, I’ve seen spelling bees bring out the best in their competitors – and the worst in some of the parents.

Akeelah and the Bee, the story of a trip to the National Spelling Bee by a girl from south-central Los Angeles, accurately captures the feel of spelling bee competitions as it tells an inspiring and uplifting personal story. The National Spelling Bee has been the subject of films before, most notably 2002’s independent documentary, Spellbound. What sets Akeelah and the Bee apart is that it’s like Rocky for the mind.

Eleven-year-old Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) plays Scrabble on her family’s computer as a way to grieve her dead father. Not wanting to be criticized by her peers for her spelling abilities, she refuses invitations by her teacher and principal to compete in Crenshaw Middle School’s first spelling bee. “Why would anyone want to represent a school where they can’t even put doors on the toilet stalls?” she says. But forced to choose between spelling and detention, Akeelah enters and wins the school spelling bee, where she encounters Dr. Joshua Larabee, a UCLA professor (played by Laurence Fishburne) and friend of her principal, who offers to be her coach.

Both Akeelah and the viewers are taken on a journey through not only difficult spelling words and languages of origin, but into self-understanding, an examination of the nature of competition and into grasping communal nature of self-advancement.

It always surprises me how many Christians express difficulty with any form of competition, advocating a de-emphasis of sports and games of strategy as well as promoting non-competitive games (which sometimes are even duller than a film without conflict). “Iron sharpens iron,” says Proverbs 27:17, “and one person sharpens the wits of another.” At its heart, Akeelah and the Bee is about competition: what it takes to be our best and to bring out the best in others.

In her first major competition, the Los Angeles citywide bee, Akeelah meets Dylan Chiu (Sean Michael), who has finished second twice in the National Spelling Bee. Almost from the start, a rivalry begins. When Akeelah is the first person ever to almost defeat Dylan in Scrabble, she overhears Dylan’s father tell him: “If you can’t beat a little black girl at a silly board game, how can you expect to win the National Spelling Bee? You’re not coming in second three years in a row.”

Lest you think that father’s characterization over the top, here are the first words of consolation my wife heard from a parent’s mouth after his son didn’t advance beyond a city spelling bee: “You’ve got some word lists to go over when we get home, young man.”

Another contestant, Javier (J.R. Villarreal), provides the best example of a worthy competitor. A spelling bee veteran, he gives Akeelah some tips in her first major bee competition and, afterward, invites her to a study group at his school. His character’s self-confidence, charm and empathy provides some of the high points in the film, including when he stalls to gain more time for Akeelah by asking repeated questions, including, “Could you use the word in a song?”

The 1-hour-and-52-minute film also demonstrates that it takes a village to make a speller. Contestants make it to the National Spelling Bee because they have a depth of support including parents, friends, family, teachers, schools and coaches. At first, Akeelah competes over the objections of her mother, Tanya Anderson (Angela Bassett), who is too focused on the problems of single motherhood. But as she succeeds, Akeelah stands as an example of encouragement to her mother, her brother and even one of the local gang members who recalls with fondness his school days of writing poetry. Much like a champion local sports team, Akeelah’s success lifts up the hopes of her neighborhood.

Akeelah also learns that good spelling is not simply an end in itself, but a means to becoming a better person. Larabee coaches her by having Akeelah read from the speeches of civil-rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Dubois. And he challenges the way she perceives her world and understands herself, using this quote from author Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

Through her coach, Akeelah also learns something about the nature of her spelling gifts that was present from the start and plays a primary role in her ongoing success.

A great family film and one of the best films of 2006 so far, Akeelah and the Bee was written and directed by Doug Atchison, winning the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting in 2000. Some critics have derided it as overly contrived. Nevertheless, that didn’t prevent the audience at my screening from cheering and applauding each correctly spelled word in its waning moments. When a film enables viewers to lose themselves in the story, it succeeds.

— Overview

United 93

2006-04-30T22:01:00.000-07:00

On the darkest day for the United States in the 21st century, the story of courage by the passengers of United Airlines flight 93 in thwarting the attempts of hijackers to crash their plane into the U.S. Capitol stood clearly as a bright, shining ray of hope.

The first in a series of Hollywood portrayals of the Sept. 11 tragedy, United 93, is at its best for the way it re-creates the feelings of shock and bewilderment, and especially the gradual realization of the meaning of the series of events as they unfolded. For those of us who paid close attention to the events as they developed on Sept. 11, it carries us immediately back to the feelings we experienced on that day.

But United 93 goes one step further. Indeed, it takes viewers behind the scenes at the National Air Traffic Control Center, several regional centers, a number of airport towers and on flight 93, itself. The resulting 1-hour and 51-minute film quickly takes us chronologically through the facts that took weeks and months to become public through news reports and investigations.

As we watch, we see federal and regional aviation officials begin to piece together the facts from faulty transmissions, air data and actual news reports. And we view a system that had gaps between decisions and actions at many points, most notably with the mobilization of the U.S. military. Yet with the tremendous attention to factual details throughout the film, there is one scene that every viewer will expect to see based on the dialog within United 93 itself, yet which never materializes.

Amid a discussion about authority for the military to shoot down unresponsive and presumably hijacked airliners, it is established that such authority can only come from the president or the vice president. It is clear that the president is spending the day in Sarasota, Fla., and even airspace restrictions for the region were discussed near the film’s opening. Yet well-known footage of President Bush reading to schoolchildren and receiving word of the attacks is not incorporated into this otherwise excellent summary of the day’s events.

This is a glaring omission, particularly in light of the heightened attention given to President Bush’s response in Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11. In that film, Moore famously (or infamously, depending on your perspective) argued that President Bush’s indecisiveness was demonstrated when he continued reading a book to Sarasota, Fla., schoolchildren after being informed that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center. If such footage were included in United 93, it would have placed the president’s response in the context of how others, also with partial information, were responding at the same time. Indeed, one of the admirable characterizations is the decisiveness of Ben Sliney, who plays himself in the film, on his first day on the job as FAA operations manager in Herndon, Va. Sliney gave the unprecedented order to immediately ground all airlines.

The film opens with a shot of the hijacker who eventually piloted United 93 reading from the Qu’ran, the sacred text of Islam. Gathered in a non-distinct hotel room, the hijackers say their morning prayers before departing on their suicidal mission starting from the Newark, N.J., airport. The portrayal of the United 93 terrorists is remarkably evenhanded. Perhaps the film’s most interesting juxtaposition occurs as United 93 passengers are reciting The Lord’s Prayer while the terrorists are saying prayers of their own.

Commendably, United 93 is not a star vehicle. Instead writer/director Paul Greengrass cast unknown actors in most roles and used actual U.S. military air-traffic controllers as themselves.

Yet in depicting all the passengers of United 93 as the film’s protagonist or collective hero, Greengrass fails to help us understand the various motivations of the passengers. While the film is gripping and powerful because of its proximity to the actual event, its characters fail to touch us emotionally. The final result is a safe and satisfying depiction of the day’s events, but nothing that tells us anymore about ourselves as a people.

Finally, viewers will find United 93 an extremely difficult film to watch – not just because of the violence. While use of a handheld camera for shots during the hijacking is effective at showing the ensuing chaos, Greengrass uses this effect throughout most of the film, which makes for a dizzying experience.

The film ends in a field near Shanksville, Pa. But the story continues to impact our lives.

Curious George

2006-02-10T20:58:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

We live in a culture that doesn’t allow kids to remain in childhood very long. Mothers pierce their infants’ ears. Children are the targets of intense marketing efforts even before they speak. A violent and sexually charged mass media deprives children of their innocence and robs them of the ability to see their world as a safe place.

The seven Curious George books by Margaret and H.A. Rey portrayed our world as one of adventure limited only by a child’s curiosity. The captivating pictures told the story and, no matter the trouble, the gentle message reassured children that everything is going to come out all right in the end.

The new Curious George film produced by Ron Howard and directed by Matthew O’Callaghan successfully translates the spirit of the beloved books and their visual feel to the screen. Combined with an outstanding and original acoustic soundtrack performed (and mostly written) by Grammy-nominated Hawaiian guitarist Jack Johnson, Curious George is destined to become a classic among primary-grade and pre-school-aged children and their families.

Borrowing visual high points from a number of the books, originally published between 1941 and 1966, Curious George tells the story of “Ted” (voiced by comic actor Will Ferrell), a museum educator who ventures for West Africa to save a failing museum by finding an ancient archeological wonder. In the process, he becomes the Man with the Yellow Hat. As he ventures into a clothing store, Ted is outfitted by two salesmen desperate to unload what they see as a doomed clothing line. “Yellow is the new khaki,” they tell him.

The Man with the Yellow Hat is in search of the Lost Shrine of Zagawa, a towering ape-like statue that aging owner Mr. Bloomsberry (Dick Van Dyke) believes will reverse his failing museum’s fortunes. Yet his son (David Cross) wants to turn the museum into a more financially lucrative parking garage and feels threatened by Ted, whom his father describes as “the son I never had.”

While on his journey, the novice explorer happens upon George, and a never-ending game of peek-a-boo ensues. The man departs without his yellow hat. George, seeking to return the hat, finds himself trapped in the hull of a ship bound for America. A ship full of bananas, of course. Cue Dole product placement.

Although there are many G-rated films produced for small children each year, Curious George is one of the first in a long time that is sweet without being saccharine, cute without being cutesy and adventurous without being frightening. It truly is an awww-filled movie. I heard more “awwws” from children and parents at the early evening screening I attended in the opening few minutes of this film than I’ve heard for the sum of all the other family movies I’ve seen in several years.

Like the books, the visuals dominate this film. Ferrell does a nice job of carrying large portions in, essentially, a monologue with occasional monkey sounds by Frank Welker. The 86-minute film also features a budding romantic interest with Maggie (Drew Barrymore), a grade-school teacher who faithfully attends Ted’s presentations each week, and some curious antics with an inventor (Eugene Levy).

The two-dimensional animation remains faithful to H.A. Rey’s watercolor images. Although there are certainly many more compelling animated films with better visuals and better storylines, there’s enough here to interest adults: visual references to King Kong, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades and a car stunt preceded by Ferrell’s winning line: “Luckily, movies have taught me exactly what to do in this situation.”

Some may criticize Curious George for lacking the depth of some of the most acclaimed animated films or fairy tales, in which the dark side of human nature comes to the fore. But the strength of this film is that it doesn’t try to graft a mature storyline onto something that was developed for small children. It simply tries to allow young children to approach their world with joy, wonder and awe. Or, as the Man with the Yellow Hat says, “The real way to learn anything is to go out and experience it, and let your curiosity lead you.”

— Overview

Hoodwinked

2006-02-04T22:35:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Anne Hathaway)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

What if there was a rush to judgment in the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Did the Wolf get a bum rap? And would some crack-shot criminal investigators have discovered the true culprit in the classic fairy tale?

That’s the premise behind Hoodwinked, a low-budget but highly entertaining animated combination of the fairy tale and police investigation genres.

This tale begins at the penultimate point of the classic fairy tale. Red (Anne Hathaway) is confronting the Wolf (Patrick Warburton) in Grandma’s clothing.

“What big ears you have.”

“The better to hear your complaints with.”

As the Wolf chases Red around the house, Grandma (Glenn Close) pops out of the closet all tied up, followed by the Woodsman (Jim Belushi) crashing through the window.

Then the forest animal cops arrive at the scene, and bring in detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) to sort out the differing stories.

One by one, we are treated to each of the four principals’ engaging stories of what really happened that day as the police try to sort them out and discover the Goody Bandit whose been stealing recipes from all the forest creatures and wreaking havoc on the forest economy. In the process, we discover Red has a martial-arts background, the Wolf is an investigative reporter, the Woodsman is an out-of-work actor trying to get in touch with his inner woodsman for a commercial and Granny is an extreme sports champion.

With a similar feel to Shrek and the classic “Fractured Fairy Tales” that accompanied “Rocky and Bullwinkle” shorts, Hoodwinked appeals to both children and their parents. We meet a colorful array of characters: Twitchy, a hyperactive squirrel who is a photojournalist and the Wolf’s companion; Japeth, a mountain goat with horns for every occasion and who sings (or yodels) all his dialogue; and Boingo, a bunny with the knack of showing up at all the right moments.

While animation by the independent Kanbar Animation Studios doesn’t rival the standards of most CGI animated films today, the script certainly stands above Chicken Little, Robots and most of the higher profile animated features of the past year.

The 81-minute PG film, one of the first releases of the new Weinstein Co. founded by former Miramax co-owners Harvey and Bob Weinstein, shows viewers that things aren’t always as they first appear. “Before you judge a book by its cover, you have to flip through its pages,” the film’s narrator says.

You won’t flip over Hoodwinked. Adults will solve the crime in the first few minutes. But there’s more than enough laughs to keep you entertained, and you won’t feel hoodwinked either.

— Overview

Nanny McPhee

2006-02-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters(Emma Thompson)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

One of the underlying themes of Nanny 911, Super Nanny and other reality TV shows that touch on parenting is that the children’s misbehavior is almost always rooted in the neglect of parental responsibility. The kids’ behavior changes in the end because the parents have needed to learn the primary lesson.

Nanny McPhee, a delightful and charming new family film, picks up on similar themes as we are introduced to the seven ill-mannered Brown children. Since the death of their mother, they have managed to scare off 17 nannies with their calculated and ruthless behavior.

Cedric Brown (Colin Firth) is the widowed father of the brood, who works in a mortuary and only is able to maintain his family’s standard of living because of the conditional benevolence of the domineering Aunt Adelaide (Angela Lansbury). She privately has insisted that she will cut the family off from all support if Brown doesn’t remarry within 30 days. Faced with debtors prison for himself and more dire consequences for his children, Brown’s desperation to keep his family together leads him to dig up the name of a widow he might marry.

Although he has not told his children of these prospects, they have figured it out, and it is at the root of their behavior. “There is not one single story ever of a stepmother who isn’t evil,” says the oldest boy and ringleader Simon (Thomas Sangster, in an excellent performance). “Who likes other people’s children?”

But under the family’s very noses is the kind, beautiful and sensitive scullery maid, Evangeline (Kelly Macdonald). She understands what’s behind the children’s behavior and secret cares deeply for them and their father. He, nevertheless, continues to seek solace in conversations with an empty chair that once was occupied by his wife.

Just as with the problems faced by families on nanny reality TV, the solution seems plain as the nose on your face. But the loss of the last nanny the agency will provide seems to have blinded the Browns to the answer. Enter Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) with a bulbous nose they couldn’t miss. With a unibrow, two hairy warts, enormous ear lobes and a single tooth that protrudes over her lower lip, she’s no Mary Poppins. But then again, the Brown children, whose previous ruses include pretending to eat their baby sister, are no Jane and Michael Banks, either.

Nanny McPhee is a darker, tough-love Mary Poppins, a more mysterious sort whose magic has a way of accentuating the dire consequences in the bad choices the children make. With her enchanted branch-like walking stick, Nanny McPhee says she has five lessons to teach, adding “what they learn is up to them.” In contrast to this post-modern nanny, the rules are traditional and didactic: Go to bed when you are told, get up when you are told, get dressed when you are told, listen and behave. Yet these lessons are not only for the children to learn.

Nanny McPhee also has two other conditions in her contract – Sunday afternoons off and “When you need me, but do not want me, then I will stay. When you want me, but do not need me, then I have to go.”

At the beginning, Nanny McPhee’s warts suggest to the children that she is a witch. But as the children learn their lessons, her ugly blemishes disappear. While this could be misinterpreted as suggesting that physical beauty is more important than inner beauty, I think it rather suggests that as the children come to love Nanny McPhee she becomes beautiful to them. That is highlighted by the film’s log line – “You’ll learn to love her. Warts and all.” – but perhaps not handled as adroitly as possible by director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine).

Thompson, the only person to ever have won Oscars for both acting (Howard’s End) and screenwriting (Sense and Sensibility), wrote the screenplay, which is based on the British “Nurse Matilda” books by Christianna Brand. The 97-minute film also contains some unforgivable clichéd gimmicks designed to pander to the younger set: a talking and dancing donkey, a food fight and using computer-generated imagery on baby Aggy (Hebe and Zinnia Barnes) to make her lips match inserted dialogue.

There also is the stereotypical evil stepmother-to-be Mrs. Selma Quickly (Celia Imrie), a scheming tart who already has buried three husbands.

Nanny McPhee’s strongest moral lesson is that there are consequences to our actions. But that even when the consequences seem dire, we can use our creative abilities to imagine how to achieve possibilities that seem as impossible as snow in August.

— Overview

Munich

2006-01-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Eric Bana)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

In the closing scene of Munich, Director Stephen Spielberg’s new film about Israel’s purported counter-terrorist response to the massacre at the 1972 Olympics, we see a shot of a 1974 Manhattan skyline from the shores of Brooklyn. Two gleaming new towers of the World Trade Center, finished in 1973, sparkle in the distance.

Reaction to this scene, and the film as a whole, underscore the controversy that rages in our world today about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorist actions and the “war on terrorism” as well as what it means to be a person of faith in a world of violence.

Conservatives have accused Spielberg, and screenwriters Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), of suggesting that Americans have brought the World Trade Center bombings upon themselves through their policies in the Middle East. Liberals have countered that the scene reveals the filmmakers’ deep-seated anti-Palestinian bias, because Palestinians had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Some of the harshest criticism has come from those who praised Spielberg the most for his last Oscar-winning best picture, Schindler’s List.

Although Munich is not without its flaws, this 2-hour and 44-minute film ranks among the year’s best. It is an engaging, if not historically accurate, political thriller that is provoking discussion of the most-talked about moral questions of our day.

The film begins with archival TV footage intermixed with reactions to the events in Israeli and Palestinian homes. Yet, Munich seeks to tell what happened after the massacre at the1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist organization, killed 11 Israeli athletes they had taken hostage in the Olympic village. The film is “inspired by real events” based on the 1984 book by George Jonas: “Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team.” Written on testimony by a reputed former Israeli intelligence agent, the book has been discredited in some circles. But that doesn’t diminish the power of Munich to immerse viewers into the compelling story of Avner Kauffman (Eric Bana), an Israeli Sabra (native-born Israeli), son of a Zionist hero and former bodyguard to the prime minister.

“Munich changed everything,” one Israeli intelligence official tells Avner, voicing a conclusion eerily similar to what Americans have said about the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, much as Spielberg has said he would not have made his earlier film this year, War of the Worlds, apart from the changed worldview since 2001, it is impossible to view Munich other than through the experiences of a generation to follow.

Avner is asked to lead a secret effort, disassociated from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, to hunt down and kill 11 Palestinians known to be in Europe who were involved in planning the Munich terrorist attacks. Grieving once more over “Jews dead in Germany” while the world watches, seemingly immobilized, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier (Lynn Cohen) is portrayed as approving the secret effort. “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values,” she says.

As leader of a team of five men who are not known to be paramilitaries, Avner and the others frequently debate the morality of their actions – something that was unquestionably viewed as morally correct by those purported to have been involved. “Strange, isn’t it, to think of oneself as an assassin?” one says. “Think of yourself as something else then – a soldier in a war,” comes the response.

After the first targeted killing, the counter-terrorists debate biblical interpretation of the parting of the Red Sea, in which God expresses compassion for the drowned Egyptians. Do they “celebrate” their first success? Or “rejoice” in the death of one who planned the deaths of others?

Despite criticism from both sides, the film seeks to be even-handed in its depiction of Palestinians and Israelis. Yet, at least one criticism is fair: the unending sequences of violence begetting more violence tend to unfairly create a moral equivalency among all the actions by the Israelis and Palestinians. But I don’t think that is the filmmakers’ point.

Although Spielberg is tackling the most public of issues, his viewpoint ultimately is focused on the personal.

“When we learn to act like them, we will defeat them,” says Steve (Daniel Craig), the most mercenary-like of the team. “The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood.”

“Jews don’t do wrong because our enemies do. … A Jew is supposed to be righteous. All this violence hurts my soul,” says Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a Belgian toymaker turned bomb-maker. “If I lose that, I lose everything.”

Avner chooses to undertake the assignment when his wife is 7 months pregnant; he breaks down not simply because of being a witness to mounting violence but in listening by telephone to his child who is growing up apart from him and into a world situation that seems hopelessly out of control.

So when we come to the closing scene, Avner has relocated to Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. He fears that the same Israelis who hired him as a counter-terrorist want him dead. Despite assertions to the contrary by the Mossad chief, Avner has lost his innocence in the pursuit of revenge. He refuses to return to Israel, and questions whether his actions have simply perpetuated more violence and created more terrorists.

“Why cut your fingernails? They just grow back,” counters the Mossad chief, seeking to persuade Avner to continue his counter-terrorist efforts. The chief nevertheless refuses an invitation to “break bread” with Avner.

Like all films, Munich ultimately is best when raising questions rather than seeking to answer them. Many filmgoers will perceive Spielberg as advocating something other than a violent U.S. response to violent terrorist actions. Instead, I think he’s offering a warning that’s much more personal: Be wary of a response that causes you, as a person or a nation, to lose your soul in the process.

—1. Overview

The Producers

2006-01-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Reviews and Blogs
—3. Cast and Crew
—4. Photo Pages
—5. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—6. Posters (Matthew Broderick)
—7. Production Notes (pdf)
—8. Spiritual Connections
—9. Presentation Downloads

If you’ve never seen any previous version of The Producers, stop reading here and go at once to see this new film by Tony Award-winning director/choreographer Susan Stroman. You’ll enjoy it immensely.

If you’ve seen either the 2001 Broadway musical or the 1968 film on which this is based, you may want to continue reading.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me make something clear at the outset: I think the original 1968 version of The Producers is one of the three funniest films ever made. Mel Brooks won an Oscar for the best original screenplay; despite many other hits that would follow for him, this remains his best film. Even after dozens of viewings, I still laugh uproariously during the presentation of the play “Springtime for Hitler,” in which the attempts of failed Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and neurotic accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) to find riches by raising millions to produce a flop go hysterically astray. In choosing the wrong play, the wrong director and the wrong actors they end up with a hit Broadway comedy.

In addition, I have never seen the Broadway musical version of the producers with songs by Brooks and starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane as well as most of the cast in this 2005 film. So that background will color how I view this new film, which I commend for seeking to take a different approach than the 1968 hit. In doing so, there are some places where it even improves upon the first film.

The most notable difference is the excellent songs and dances. Each wonderfully complements the story and does an excellent job of helping us understand what motivates the characters. While Lane and Broderick are marvelous in the song-and-dance numbers that made them Tony Award winners in the Broadway musical, on film their acting seems too undifferentiated from the original performances by Mostel and Wilder.

For me, many performances are too close to the original film. But two actors who were not in the Broadway musical – Will Ferrell as Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind and Uma Thurman as the secretary Ulla – are wonderful improvements over the original roles, in fairness because their parts are vastly expanded. Ferrell’s character is much expanded over the more-limited character Kenneth Mars played to perfection in the original. Ferrell is at his best leading the producers through “Der Guten Tag Hop Clop,” accompanied by his homing pigeons. And it would be a shame not to see him audition for the part of Hitler in the play. Thurman makes Ulla more than simply a vapid sex object Lee Meredith showed us, or was allowed to show us, in 1968. The 6-foot actress towers over her much-shorter leading men in a way that probably would not have been done a generation ago.

The strength of the new film lies in several choreographed dance numbers, including “I Wanna Be a Producer,” in which Broderick, blending in with a few dozen accountants in green eye shades, dreams of glory with showgirls in costumes laden with 20 pounds of pearls. And Lane’s appearance with dozens of little old ladies dancing in formation with walkers in “Along Came Bialy” is memorable.

Both comedies ultimately are about the relationship between Bialystock and Bloom, how the failed producer befriends Bloom and helps him discover his hopes and dreams. This film strengthens that message by having Bloom, after fleeing to Rio with Ulla, return to defend Bialystock in court at risk of his own imprisonment.

Yet, there are some places where The Producers (2005) makes what I regard to be some critical errors. The play, “Springtime for Hitler,” which was the highlight of the original, falls seriously flat. The audience is supposed to be outraged by the play and then gradually believe it’s a farce. In this version, the turning point in the play is not convincing. The song “Heil Myself,” performed by director Roger DeBris (Gary Beach) who fills in for the lead role when Franz Liebkind literally breaks a leg before curtain, is a low point in the film and would not convince a shocked and outraged audience to remain after starting to walk out of the play.

Also, in the original film, the producers are arrested for blowing up the theater and their scam remains undiscovered. That’s why they again try to raise more money for the new musical, “Prisoners of Love,” they are producing while in prison. In this version, the books are discovered by police so the scam is public. Yet, once again, they try to over-sell their new show.

My bottom line: See the original 1968 film, which I still prefer. I acknowledge there are some who may prefer this new, musical version, particularly those who haven’t seen the original or who enjoy Broadway musicals. But the original will remain a classic, while this is merely an evening’s pleasant diversion.

— Overview
— Reviews and Blogs

The Ringer

2006-01-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVD
—5. Posters Johnny Knoxville
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Steve Barker, played by Johnny Knoxville in the new film The Ringer, is a loser.

It’s not because he turns to motivational tapes to help him advance in a dead-end job he really doesn’t want. It’s not because, rather than follow orders to fire a friend, he hires him as a personal groundskeeper and doesn’t make arrangements for adequate healthcare when his friend has an accident. And it’s especially not because he lets his uncle con him into paying off his debts by fixing the Special Olympics as a contestant.

Steve Barker is a loser because he never pursues his dreams. And he’s a loser because he believes it when others say he will never achieve them. The Ringer is a winner of a film because it shows that we all have our dreams and obstacles, but we can only succeed if we give it our best shot.

With the film’s producers including Bobby and Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary), The Ringer has the over-the-top slapstick one might expect. One of the best examples comes from the film’s trailer, when Barker, who has been masquerading as a high-functioning developmentally disabled Special Olympian, confesses his scam to a priest. The priest’s fist crashes through the confessional screen into Barker’s face, and he physically throws Barker from the church. There also are multiple running gags involving a subplot with Stavi (Luis Avalos), an aging janitor and widowed father of five who cuts off several fingers while working with Steve’s lawn mower. Steve’s low-life uncle Gary (Brian Cox) uses the incident, and Steve’s financial obligations to Stavi, as the motivation for Steve to persist in the scam.

Renamed by his uncle as “Jeffy Dahmor,” Steve, a former high-school track star, begins to discover winning isn’t quite the cake walk his uncle anticipated. The scam fools everyone – except a number of Steve’s fellow competitors. But rather than turn Steve in, they share in his concern for Stavi and become his teachers and friends – in part to help defeat a five-time Special Olympic gold medalist who has begun to annoy them all. They wake Steve up in the wee hours each morning, put him through a grueling training regimen and teach him how to be a true Special Olympian – in every sense of the word.

When Steve confesses at one point that he dreamed of being an actor, they ask him where his dream ended. Hollywood? Broadway? Summer stock theater? Steve admits he never gave it a real effort.

“People tell us all the time what we will never do,” one of the Special Olympians tells Steve, citing several routine physical functions he was able to achieve despite others’ doubtful prognostications. “I would never have done all these things [if I had listened to them].”

The 94-minute film is rated PG-13 for crude humor, some of it sexual. One of the characters, Uncle Gary, makes repeated offensive references to people with developmental disabilities who compete in the Special Olympics. But the film actually has the blessing of Special Olympics and several cast members, including Barker’s roommate, are Special Olympics veterans. In addition, The Ringer does an excellent job showing the range of ways others interact with people with developmental disabilities. As a reporter who covered the 1987 International Special Olympic games, I particularly appreciated the accurate depiction of the range of competitors – from the highly skilled whose motivation is no different from any other athlete’s to the more prevalent participant whose greatest reward is simply the trademark hug at the end of any feat attempted.

The funniest parts in this film won’t produce belly-aching laughs as moments in other Farrelly brothers films have. Ultimately, the strength of this film is not the comedy its makers intended, but the delightful and enchanting moments that occur as Steve interacts with his fellow Special Olympians and learns how to be a better person – the kind he dreamed of being.

—Overview
—Cast and Crew
—Photo Pages

King Kong

2005-12-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

—1. Overview (multimedia)
—2. Overview Basic (dial up speed)
—3. Reviews and Blogs
—4. Cast and Crew
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Albert Einstein once said, “Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.” That thought is at the heart of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, a contemporary adaptation of one of cinema’s greatest monster stories, itself a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast myth.

One cannot avoid the obvious message portrayed through the film’s beautiful imagery: Even a monstrous beast like King Kong can appreciate true beauty – even when beauty leads to love and, ultimately, pain and death. As Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), the object of his affection, says: “If [you] love someone, it’s doomed. Good things never last.”

Yet there is another message interwoven in this film: humans can be downright beastly. While those who love beauty will feel pain, the unscrupulous feel neither pain nor remorse. For them, it’s all about survival.

Carl Denham (Jack Black), a movie producer, is the one beast to rule them all in this monster-filled picture. Denham is seeking to produce his film on a mysterious uncharted island, and to see it through he’s willing to cheat, deceive, lie, steal and even see others killed. It is 1933, the depth of the Great Depression, and he needs to find a leading lady so his cast and crew can set sail before his funding is cut off. Fay Wray (star of 1933’s King Kong) and other stars of the day are booked. So he finds a desperate out-of-work Vaudevillian, Ann Darrow, telling her (in what’s bound to become a classic line), “I’m someone you can trust. I’m a movie producer.”

In a similar manner, he tricks screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody) onto the ship. When they finally land on Skull Island and Ann is taken by natives as an offering to King Kong, Denham is the only one to see her taken but never tells his companions the nature of the creature who took her. “Bring the tripod and all of the film,” he tells his cameraman.

In a year filled with truly awful re-makes, King Kong unquestionably demonstrates that it deserved to be remade. The 1933 RKO version, directed by Merian C. Cooper, is considered one of the greatest monster movies of all time. It generated iconic cinematic images: King Kong fighting a giant pterodactyl, chained to a theater stage, looking in Ann Darrow’s window, fighting planes atop the Empire State Building. Its final line of dialogue is ranked among the most memorable from the silver screen: “Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Peter Jackson’s vision is rich in beautiful imagery: a stampede of dinosaurs, the former Vaudeville actress doing her shtick for the big ape, Kong and Darrow watching a sunset on Skull Island, their reunion on the streets of New York City, Kong experiencing “ice-skating” in Central Park and finally the pair watching a sunrise from the Empire State Building. For once, King Kong is consistently the same size throughout an entire picture, unlike the way he varied from about 18 feet to 50 feet in the original.

This version also improves on the RKO film through use of motion-capture filming. The emotions of King Kong are powerfully portrayed by actor Andy Serkis and the WETA digital team, repeating the same process they used to create Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films. Thus, some of the film’s most powerful scenes are not the epic-scale confrontations, but the smallest of facial expressions from this gargantuan face.

But there are also plenty of beastly images from Jackson, a director with multiple horror films to his credit. Conflicts with the gruesome island natives are full of carnage and an attack from vast spiders and insect-like creatures in an underground cave (a scene cut from the 1933 original) is too much for the squeamish. Parents of younger children will want to strictly adhere to the PG-13 rating or see those moments as opportune times for breaks from the 3-hour and 7-minute film.

Indeed, the film’s length -- nearly twice the 1-hour-and-40-minute original – and Jackson’s strength as a director point to King Kong’s major flaw. There are some wonderful special effects of monsters on Skull Island, but the number of conflicts gets to be almost comical. When film producer Denham loses his film and decides he wants to bring Kong himself back to New York, viewers are ready to move on as well.

Ultimately, the heart of the movie is the relationship between Watts’ actress and Serkis’ monster. Watts’ character comes across as far more nuanced than a shrieking Fay Wray. Darrow recognizes Kong’s appreciation of beauty. One almost has the sense of her viewing Kong with the respect that renowned primatologist Jane Goodall showed for chimpanzees. This film doesn’t attempt to sexualize the relationship as did the miserable 1976 Dino Delaurentis version starring Jessica Lange. But we see her character grow to trust Kong’s ability to protect her on his turf, and she tries to do the same for him in New York.

Although Darrow recognizes the beauty in King Kong, her world is set on his destruction. While her actions demonstrate the beauty and dignity she sees in his life, her human world is populated with beasts who destroy the creature she has come to love to ensure their own survival. That Carl Denham delivers the climactic line “Twas Beauty killed the Beast” underscores the darker message that the Beast has killed Beauty.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

2005-12-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

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Amid dark clouds and searchlights, we hear the drone of planes and the wail of air-raid sirens. We find ourselves inside the cockpit of a German bomber and see the shells falling on British neighborhoods during World War II.

The human cost of war is illustrated in the opening sequence of the long-anticipated film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ beloved, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. As Peter and Edmund Pevensie flee for their backyard bomb shelter with their mother, the younger boy returns, risking his life to save a photograph of his father who is serving in the military.

The scene heightens the emerging conflict between the two brothers and calls greater attention than did the novel to the life-and-death circumstances faced by the children. By effectively placing their ensuing fantastical journey in the context of life and death, the classic tale of love, forgiveness and sacrifice becomes all the more compelling.

Directed by Andrew Adamson (Shrek), The Chronicles of Narnia is an excellent film. Pivotal moments from the tale – the journey through the wardrobe, Aslan at the Stone Table and Lucy’s enchantment by Tumnus the faun – are truly magical. While the film is not without flaws, there is indeed a “deep magic” in a film that is largely faithful to the 1950 novel.

Four children from the Pevensie family are evacuated from war-torn London to the British countryside. Staying in the museum-like home of an old professor, they discover a wardrobe that opens a door into another world. Narnia, a land of talking animals and fairylike creatures, has endured the domination of an evil White Witch. Jadis has cast an icy spell, making it “always winter and never Christmas.” But the children learn “there’s a prophecy that two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve will appear to defeat the White Witch and put an end to this 100-year winter.”

“I think you’ve made a mistake. We’re not heroes,” protests Peter (William Moseley), who slowly evolves into his hero’s journey. The vivid realism of the pre-title sequence also nicely foreshadows the decision by his brother, Edmund (Skandar Keynes), to betray his siblings to the White Witch for all the Turkish Delight candy he can eat.

But just as it was the youngest sister, Lucy, who discovered the wardrobe passage, the portrayal of Lucy by Georgie Henley takes the film into another dimension. She manages to capture Lucy’s tenderness, humor and childlike trust. We experience her wonder with this magical land, her sense of sorrow in viewing Aslan’s plight and her joy when she nuzzles with the lion.

Tilda Swinton is a chilling Jadis the White Witch, capturing both the villainy that inspires fear in other characters as well as her own fear of Aslan, whose power she has faced before. And Liam Neeson provides sufficient gravitas as the voice of Aslan, the great lion who is Narnia’s creator.

Aslan, a word meaning “lion” in a Turkish dialect, is a computer-generated lion two years in the making for this film. The creation is simply outstanding. We see a range of real emotions portrayed in his face. There is an immense sadness in Aslan’s eyes as he journeys toward the Stone Table to settle accounts with the White Witch. When the battle rages between the forces of good and evil, Aslan is on the move and he’s definitely not a tame lion.

The special effects provide an example of the film’s high points and low points. The scenes are breathtaking, especially Cair Paravel, the seat of Narnian government with the four thrones. The mix of live action and CG wolves seems indistinguishable There is great realism to half-human half-animal creatures like the fauns and centaurs. The minotaurs will terrify, as will the creatures the Witch has turned to stone.

Yet there are flaws that mar the film. The CG beavers don’t fit into the film as seamlessly as other creatures. While James McAvoy is a wonderful Mr. Tumnus the faun and his hooves seem quite natural, his prosthetic nose seems to be detaching in several scenes.

Readers of C.S. Lewis’ work will consider this a more faithful adaptation to the screen than either the recent Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings films. (Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ stepson, is a co-producer of the film and contributes his voice as a radio announcer.)

While the film adaptation may not become quite the classic the book has, this Christmas, take your children, or even the child within you, to a world where it’s “always winter and never Christmas,” and watch the spirit of Christmas emerge.

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Pride and Prejudice

2005-11-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

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First impressions are often wrong. True character is measured by our ability to swallow our pride and own up to our initial prejudices.

That challenge is at the heart of Pride and Prejudice, a new film version of Jane Austen’s classic novel set in 17th-century England. This film by director Joe Wright marks this year’s second outstanding adaptation of Austen’s most popular novel. (I also would recommend Bride and Prejudice, a contemporary Indian Bollywood musical adaptation of the same text).

The story centers on the five daughters of the middle-class Bennet family, a family whose livelihood is threatened because their home would be inherited by a distant cousin if Mr. Bennet (Donald Sutherland) were to die. Perhaps this is what has caused Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) to become ruthless in her efforts to marry off her daughters quickly and well. “The business of her life was to get her daughters married,” Austen wrote. The problem, of course, is that Mrs. Bennet obnoxiously blunders about her matchmaking attempts in a manner that shames her family and nearly alienates her two oldest daughters.

We see this world through the eyes of the film’s protagonist, 20-year-old Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley). The second-oldest Bennet daughter is intelligent and quick- witted. When she spurns the loveless marriage proposal of a pompous rector, Mrs. Bennet vows never to speak to her daughter again. Yet Elizabeth’s father, respecting his daughter’s wisdom, tells her, “From this day onward, you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins. And I will never see you again if you do.”

When Elizabeth first meets the vain and aristocratic Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen), she forms quick prejudices, as does Mr. Darcy. He describes her looks as “tolerable, but not handsome enough” for him. “I could more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine,” Elizabeth tells her oldest sister, the beautiful Jane (Rosamund Pike). Later, she tells Darcy “from the first moment I met you, your arrogance made me realize that you were the last man in the world I could ever marry.”

Yet this love story ultimately raises the question of whether its characters will love their view of the world more than they love the truth. By the midpoint, Mr. Darcy has completely rejected his first assessment of Elizabeth. He proposes to her, although in a manner so awkward that it does his cause more harm than good. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, who “swore to loathe him for all eternity” based on what she has heard about Darcy from others, has a revelation that calls into question the truth of her perceptions about him.

At its core, Pride and Prejudice portrays what is meant by repentance. Both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy need to overcome their pride and their initial prejudices in their respective journeys over the course of the film. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, literally means to turn about face, to change one’s mind or to undergo a radical conversion. The principal characters need to see their world with new eyes.

Darcy proves his love for Elizabeth – not only with words but with actions. His deeds demonstrate that he is a completely different person than the one Elizabeth thought he was. Darcy actually needs to undo some of the events his previous actions have brought about. The tasks illustrate the cost required for repentance, particularly as he must humble himself beyond what might be possible for contemporary Darcys. Elizabeth, who had pride in her ability to perceive others, has to acknowledge that she has been completely blind. “He’s been a fool, and so have I,” she says.

Elizabeth’s confession calls to mind the words of Jesus: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” When the truth is revealed to Elizabeth, she quickly casts aside the false view of the world she had constructed. She is able to see Darcy in a new light, as though scales have fallen from her eyes. For it is not Pride and Prejudice, but humility and charity which give birth to love.

From intimate conversations to beautiful landscapes, this Pride and Prejudice captures the wonderful spirit of Jane Austen’s novel in a manner that’s authentic to its source and well-suited to the medium of film.

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-11-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

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Harry Potter has grown.

Not only has Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) aged another year. Not only does he have his first serious crush. Not only does he compete for even greater renown as a contestant among the three wizarding schools participating in a Triwizard Tournament. But because the spirit infused within Harry Potter by his creator is beginning to come to the fore.

As the only one ever to survive the killing curse of the dark Lord Voldemort, the Boy Who Lived begins in this film, through the ordeals Harry experiences because of the Goblet of Fire, to make his mark as The Boy Who Loved.

On the surface, that moniker could seem to result from Harry’s crush on Cho Chang (Katie Leung), the Ravenclaw seeker who first caught Harry’s eye in a school Quidditch tournament. Or from the romance that seems to be blossoming everywhere. The film could almost be subtitled “Young Wizards in Love.” Even Hagrid the gamekeeper gets into the act.

But a deeper kind of love – “an old magic more powerful” than anything in Harry’s world – is beginning to shine. And the timing couldn’t be better.

In his fourth year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry finds himself caught up in his darkest challenge yet. For the first time in generations, Hogwarts is hosting two other wizarding schools in a competition known as the Triwizard Tournament – a contest that has been fatal for some and whose participants must be at least 17 to face the trials. The name of one contestant from each school is revealed from the Goblet of Fire. But no one is more surprised than 14-year-old Harry when the Goblet spits out his name as a fourth contestant.

Initially, Harry is widely viewed as having rigged his own entry – an allegation even believed by his best friend Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint). “I didn’t ask for this to happen,” Harry says. “I don't want eternal glory.” But, eventually, the pair finds more troublesome things to ponder: finding a date for the Yule Ball.

The Triwizard competitors face dragons, underwater challenges and a deadly maze. Ron battles his own dragons of jealousy as he learns that Hermione (Emma Watson) has already been asked to the Ball by someone else. And both Harry and Ron find themselves less than successful in navigating the maze of adolescent relationships.

But in the events surrounding the Triwizard tasks, Harry’s mettle is revealed. He demonstrates fairness, sportsmanship and “moral fiber,” sacrificing his own best interests out of concern for others. Before the film is over, we learn the depth and breadth of what can be achieved through sacrificial love.

The dark Lord Voldemort is back, too. His Death Eaters, the cruel henchmen who spread havoc and fear with his Dark Mark, reveal themselves. They rampage like Ku Klux Klansman at an international competition known as the Quidditch World Cup. Meanwhile, Harry is having dark nightmares and his scar burns with the memory of an ancient pain.

The fourth film in the series is adapted pretty closely from the best of the six Harry Potter books published so far by British author J.K. Rowling. (The seventh and final book is due out sometime in 2006 or 2007.) The action is relentless. Those who haven’t read the books may need to observe closely, turn to multiple viewings or simply be content in allowing themselves to drown in the wave of special effects that are purely magical. It’s the best in the Potter film series, yet still not to surpass the text itself.

As the first film in the series to go beyond the PG rating, Goblet of Fire is definitely too scary for pre-teens. There are several deaths, an aggressive dragon and suddenly hostile mermaids. There’s a different feel to the films as well. After three previous films, we see less of the magical feats to which we’ve grown accustomed, such as swinging staircases and talking portraits. Still, this film introduces us to the Magic Eye of the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody (Brendan Gleeson). We learn of “turn keys” – enchanted objects that have the capacity to instantly transport anyone who touches them to another place. And we follow Harry into the memories of Professor Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) by means of a pensive – a bowl-shaped memory-retention device. These memories provide clues about the one whose trying to orchestrate Harry’s life.

“Dark and difficult times lie ahead, Harry. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right... and what is easy,” Dumbledore says. And Harry often seems swept up in a fast-moving current of events beyond his control. But the film shows that – even in the most difficult of situations – we still have a choice about how we will respond. Harry’s consistent choice of sacrificial love and on behalf of life models a biblical tradition that provides its own moral fiber for this series. As in the Triwizard Tournament, Harry is never the most powerful wizard. He’s simply the wizard who chooses to tap into the source of the power of Love.

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Good Night, and Good Luck

2005-11-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

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Imagine a time when those who voiced public dissent about U.S. policies were criticized as being disloyal. Or when others who had remote ties to suspicious foreign groups were viewed as guilty by association.

The parallels to the contemporary debate about responses to possible terrorist threats are immediately evident in viewing one of the best films so far this year. Good Night, and Good Luck, which draws its name from the signature signoff of CBS-TV journalist Edward R. Murrow, focuses on another time of fear.

About two-thirds of Americans living today (this reviewer included) weren’t alive when Murrow on March 9, 1954, presented his 30-minute See It Now special, “A Report on Sen. Joseph McCarthy.” While Murrow was not the first to criticize McCarthy nor did his report bring about the Senator’s political downfall, the See It Now broadcast was significant because press freedoms were more limited for the embryonic broadcast media than for their print counterparts. And the broadcast became viewed as a turning point regarding public perception on what was later termed the Red Scare.

More than 50 years ago at the height of the Cold War, communism was perceived as the nation’s primary threat. The fear was so great that McCarthy and others conducted aggressive Congressional investigations into prominent individuals accused of being Soviet spies or Communist sympathizers. Many people’s lives were destroyed, while many who knew better stood by silently in fear.

Murrow had become a kind of patron saint of early broadcast journalists, first in radio and later on television. He came to fame at the outbreak of World War II, in which he was noted for his live radio reports from the rooftops of London during the Nazi bombing blitz and later for providing one of the first eyewitness news reports of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Rather than chronicle Murrow’s professional career, Good Night, and Good Luck wisely focuses on the conflict between the rising television journalist and the waning political leader. What we get is a fast-paced and exciting film that gives us a glimpse into the tension and apprehension of the era.

Actor George Clooney, who directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay, made another excellent decision in using archival footage of McCarthy. Any attempt to have an actor portray McCarthy would have come across as an unbelievable caricature. That black-and-white video is woven in with portrayals of CBS journalists, including Clooney included as producer Fred Friendly and a sensational David Strathairn as Murrow. (Although appearing as black and white, the film technically was shot on a grayscale set with color film that was later converted to black-and-white.)

Although we may think of matters as black and white, that technical nuance (provided by Internet Movie Database) illustrates the point that the world really has a lot more gray than is evident at first glimpse. McCarthy never obtained any convictions in his witch hunts, but recently declassified information from the former Soviet Union indicates that some of his targets were actually guilty. Some have raised questions about Murrow’s reporting methods, which did not hold to standards of objectivity. Yet the search for complete objectivity is a fantasy. (McCarthy’s tactics did a great deal to highlight the problems of reporting claims attributed to official sources.) Everyone has biases. What’s important is reporting that demonstrates values of fairness, accuracy, even-handedness and responsibility to seek out the truth that may be known.

Set almost entirely in the CBS studios and a bar frequented by Murrow’s crew (in which we hear much of the fine jazz soundtrack), the atmosphere of Good Night, and Good Luck feels like another world. And it was. No Surgeon General’s warning on the dangers of the ever-present tobacco smoke. Far less equality for women. Only three television networks.

But some things don’t change. Watching Good Night, and Good Luck, the viewer quickly realizes that Murrow’s broadcast was not so much an indictment of McCarthy, but of Americans. Of We the People. “We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home,” Murrow said. “The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it.”

As Murrow said in a speech to his staff on the day of the broadcast, “No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

Perhaps we have a lot more personal responsibility for what goes on in our world than we’d like to admit. May it take something less than standing face to face with God for us to realize our culpability.

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Chicken Little

2005-11-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

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Early in Chicken Little, Walt Disney Pictures’ first attempt at computer-generated animation apart from Pixar, a mother rabbit hears a warning from the title character and turns to flee. She grabs the hand of her infant bunny from the baby buggy, and pulls out an infinite chain of CG-created babies.

That comic scene illustrates the wonders of what can be done with technology. But it also points to a filmmaking approach that is behind Chicken Little and many other films these days. If an audience enjoys something, the false logic concludes, why don’t we repeat it again for them?

And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

You get the idea. There are many great gags spread throughout this 77-minute film. But, as a whole, the movie lacks an acorn of compelling story. It reminds me of a sermon that strings together some of the hearers’ favorite Scripture verses without drawing out a larger theme and message.

If you have a yen for pop songs of the 1970s (“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”), and you enjoy seeing pop-culture references and classic moments from other films made into clichés, then this movie was Designed with You in Mind.

To be fair, the writers of Chicken Little do try to beef up the underlying themes behind the classic fable about the chick that is struck on the head by an acorn and mistakenly believes the sky is falling. This Chicken Little (voiced by Zack Braff) is actually hit by an octagonal object that turns out to be an early warning of an alien invasion. Nobody in the town of Oakey Oaks believes his story. Not even Chicken Little’s father Buck “Ace” Cluck (Garry Marshall), an aging baseball star, who seems embarrassed by his son. And Chicken Little’s reputation is forever tarred as he is defamed in multiple media – movies, billboards, bumper stickers – as “that crazy chicken.”

Chicken Little finds solace in his friends -- Abby Mallard, aka Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack), an over-stuffed pig called Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn) and Fish Out of Water (the most entertaining character in the film). In a school where the gym teacher divides students into the dodgeball teams of cool and not cool, Chicken Little and his mates will not set any trends. Still, they find themselves in a situation where the world’s fate is in their hands. (By now, this may seem to sound like one of Disney’s recent releases Sky High or other films where the future of humanity depends on youth who are misunderstood by their parents and cast aside by their peers. Keep in mind, Sky High was for the teen market, while this film won’t reach beyond tweens in age.)

The writers do attempt to address themes of unconditional love and acceptance, which Chicken Little seeks from his father. Eventually Buck Cluck gets the message that his son wants to be understood. But between an overlong subplot about Chicken Little trying to win his father’s love through success in baseball and an all-out alien invasion that may scare younger viewers, these themes are overshadowed. In an era when many TV and movie dads just never get it, at least Buck Cluck comes around in the end.

Inevitable comparisons are suggested with Disney’s first CG animated film, Toy Story, produced in collaboration with Pixar. In that case, there was more to the movie than cute gags and clever CG effects. Toy Story gave us memorable characters and addressed important themes related to friendship and the realization that love isn’t a limited commodity. Chicken Little never has such high points, yet the sky doesn’t come crashing down either. You could save yourself the price of admission by visiting the movie’s official web site < http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/chickenlittle/>, where you can see its best gags and make Chicken Little dance or the sky fall on his head. Once those are complete, there’s little left to enjoy.

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A History of Violence

2005-10-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

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A popular Victorian story described a wicked and ugly man who donned the mask of a saint to woo the woman of his dreams. After hiding his deceitful past for years, he is unmasked by one who knows the truth. But this unmasking only reveals that his once-scarred face had become the face of the saint he sought to be.

That is what we would like to believe about violence. If there is a willful renunciation of a history of violence accompanied by repentant behavior, the hope is that redemption will occur. But A History of Violence, a new film by Canadian director David Cronenberg, suggests that violence isn’t so easily purged from one’s past. And that the threads of a violent past may entangle us and those we love in unforeseen ways.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortenson) operates a diner in the small, idyllic Indiana town of Millbrook (although the movie was actually filmed in Millbrook, Ontario). He is the church-going father of two children and has a loving relationship with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), a former cheerleader turned attorney. But one day, two thugs enter the diner, intent on robbery and brutalizing the patrons. We have met them in the film’s opening scene, and we know that they have become so desensitized by violence that there perhaps is nothing they won’t do.

Sensing danger, Stall reacts instinctively, quickly disarming and killing the robbers in self-defense. He is hailed as a hero. But television coverage of his heroics brings to town Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), a face-scarred, East Coast mobster, who insists that Stall is really Joey Cusack, a man with a history of violence. He and his henchman begin to stalk Stall and members of his family. His questions sow seeds of doubt within Edie Stall about her husband’s origin. Could her husband really be the Joey Cusack who disfigured Fogarty’s face with barbed wire? Whom does she trust? As Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.”

A History of Violence seems like a classic Hitchcock-like thriller about a case of mistaken identity. Mortenson, who began his film career as an Amish farmer in Witness and gave a highly nuanced portrayal of the hero Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings films, here takes on a more complex role. It’s difficult to tell whether his journey is that of the hero or anti-hero. His portrayal is believable as that of a “good man” with a haunted past. And the film’s suspense, as well as its tragedy, is underscored by plaintive French horns in the soundtrack by Howard Shore.

Violence has pursued Stall all his life. Despite his attempts to “kill” the man he was, Stall finds that the web of violent behavior still remains. It even begins to ensnare members of his family. After the attempted robbery, Stall’s teenage son reacts violently to relentless taunting by a bully, putting the offender and his henchman into the hospital. When Stall confronts his son about his violent behavior, he ends up striking his son.

The 96-minute thoughtful thriller is rated R for scenes of brutal violence, explicit sexuality and offensive language. Although the violent scenes are graphic, none seems gratuitous. Each follows logically from the plot. This powerful film demonstrates that violence begets violence and it draws others into its purveyance as co-conspirators. Although Tom Stall escapes a life-threatening situation with a violent response, even more violent forces continue to besiege him.

At one point, he laments, “What do I need to do to make peace?”

It is only with great cost that a cycle of violence in a family is broken. The question faced by Tom Stall is whether he is willing to sustain those costs.

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—6. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
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—9. Spiritual Connections

Fantastic Four

2005-07-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

—Overview
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—About this Film pdf
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OK, let’s get this straight right off. Fantastic Four is no Spider-Man 2, a marvelous marriage of a classic comic-book tale, incredible special effects and a powerful underlying storyline that speaks to an inner-most urge of every person to be a hero.

And, given the structure of last summer’s hit The Incredibles, the characters of Fantastic Four may seem familiar, unoriginal and redundant, especially to those who haven’t read the longest-running Marvel Comic Book series and weren’t around for the 1970s Saturday-morning cartoon show.

And it’s definitely not fantastic. Granted, there are some very nice special-effects, but there’s little the average movie-goer will remember after emerging into the summer heat that rivals the coolness of the theater’s air-conditioning.

But, judging the film on what it seems to aspire to be, a B movie that provides a couple hours of diversion during the dog days of summer, Fantastic Four achieves its minimalist purpose. This isn’t going to revive Hollywood’s slumping box office, but neither will it disappear from your local Cineplex after a week.

The plot is simple. An experiment in space led by Reed goes awry, giving super-human powers to four scientists and the experiment’s financial backer, who emerges as the film’s antagonist. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), dubbed Mr. Fantastic, is able to bend and stretch his body. Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), the Invisible Woman, can disappear and generate force fields. Her brother, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), the Human Torch, can fly and serve as the conduit for Super-Nova-like heat. Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), the Thing, has incredible strength with skin that takes the shape of armadillo-like plates. For the project’s financier, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), the botched result leads to financial ruin and provides motivation for using his new abilities for power and vengeance.

The PG-13 film as a whole is pretty predictable:

A love triangle between the principle protagonist, the female lead and the villain.
Having lost the girl and his business, the billionaire industrialist seeks world domination.

But the film has a few things to offer.

Each of the Fantastic Four tries to understand his or her new powers and wrestle with questions over responding to this new sense of destiny. At its worst, Susan Storm can’t deal with the choice of needing to be naked for her gift to work. At its best, Ben Grimm faces questions about what he values in life when he experiences rejection from the person who he thought was his loving wife over the Thing he has become.

Another interesting subplot is Johnny Storm’s reckless personality, the relationship of that to the super hero persona, and his characterization as a cross between shameless huckster and a shrewd image consultant in marketing Fantastic Four to their world. Super heroes do take risks, but in Storm’s approach the cost is never ascertained before making the leap of faith.

By contrast, Reed Richards is an over-cautious perfectionist, whose professional and personal failures are rooted in his inability to take anything on faith or move forward without complete certainty in the outcome.

Those instances illustrate best why the Fantastic Four worked as team – just as the individual Beatles never achieved the success resulting from their synergy as a group. And just as the church, the body of Christ, is incomplete without each part fulfilling its necessary function.

In a similar way, Fantastic Four as a film fulfills its necessary function – a temporary relief from a hot summer afternoon, a soon-to-be cheap DVD rental, a dose of entertainment that will do little to occupy anyone’s thoughts beyond its 123-minute running time. Others, perhaps, may think it should have achieved something more. I’ll let you ponder that question further, because I’ve already given it more thought than the movie sought or merits.

—Overview
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—About this Film pdf
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

2005-07-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

—Overview
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—About this Film

There are some times when it makes sense to remake a picture for more than simply financial gain. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a remake of the 1971 classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was not one of those times.

This film, directed by Tim Burton, sought to be a darker Chocolate Factory than the 1971 flavor, which some critics have recalled as too saccharine. Think of the song “The Candy Man” as an example. And the casting of Johnny Depp in the role of Willy Wonka held promise of a different take on the beloved novel by Roald Dahl. Dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, they said.

At its heart, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a morality play in which five children win golden tickets that gain them admittance into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a magical place where everything is edible. While Burton ’s imagery is stunning, the result is less stunning than one would expect given a generation of technological innovations in filmmaking. Vices for each of the children, except Charlie, take them out of the running for the coveted prize, yet the lesson isn’t as clear as a generation ago. It may have to do with the mostly unintelligible song lyrics sung by the Oompah-Loompahs – less memorable, but musically more in tune with the current day.

Most of the children -- with the exception of Charlie and Violet Beauregarde (who matches her mother) – seem to be cast to match as close as possible their 1971 counterparts. Unlike the 1971 version, however, at least we see the characters get their comeuppance and walk away.

There are some funny moments in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One involves a squadron of nut de-shelling squirrels. Another satirizes Disney-like Small World display. The latter is one of multiple pop-culture references – touching everything from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Psycho to popular songs. In this writer’s opinion, the insipidity of a screenplay increases with the number of such references, and this movie gives weight to that theory.

Yet Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ultimately suffers because Depp’s Wonka comes off as a cross between Michael Jackson, Mr. Rogers and Dana Carvey’s “church lady.” While there’s a satisfying addition of a back story, which has Wonka being raised by an obsessive dentist father (Christopher Lee), the painfully dysfunctional characterization of Wonka advances neither the story nor Charlie (Freddie Highmore), who was to have been a greater focus of this version. There were, in truth, dark elements to the ’71 Wonka (magnificently played by Gene Wilder). And Charlie’s screenplay does not compare to the witty dialogue of the 1971 version. When Depp’s Wonka invites Charlie to come live with him, there’s a hint of invitation to Jackson ’s Neverland ranch, particularly when Charlie’s family isn’t allowed. This isn’t dark, just creepy.

By contrast, Charlie Bucket is just too good. There’s no desire here for Charlie to go beyond Wonka’s boundaries as in the original with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. There’s no temptation to use his Chocolate Factory access to sell out Wonka for revenge. But there still are moments of inspiration. In one scene, Charlie offers to sell his prized Golden Ticket to feed his starving family. One of his relatives urges him not to give away something priceless for “only money.”

The film’s thematic strength is its emphasis on the importance of family, which Wonka learns from Charlie’s example. But this focus is not enough to salvage a film that, in retrospect, seems like it was made for “only money.”

MOVIE
—Overview
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—About this Film
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BOOK
—Review: WonkaMania

—Blog: Kevin Miller
—Blog: Jacob Sahms