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Frankly My Dear...

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    Movie Preview: ‘The Grey,’ with Liam Neeson

    Posted: 22 Sep 2011 05:19 AM PDT

    This arctic circle airline crash thriller has Open Road, the Regal/AMC theaters distribution arm, behind it. Drama, hints of tragic romance. Hit or miss director Joe Carnahan. And Liam Neeson.

    “The Grey” looks very good indeed. We will see next January.


    Weekend reviews: See ‘Moneyball’ or ‘Dolphin Tale’

    Posted: 22 Sep 2011 04:42 AM PDT

    That’s the critical consensus Sept. 23-25. “Moneyball” is a terrific and very smart baseball movie that’s earning Oscar buzz.

    And DT is a kid-pleasing kids’ movie that has plenty of heart. The tomatomater is a little deceptive in the “Dolphin Tale” regard. Metacritic’s reviewer numbers are more nuanced and less enthusiastic.

    And skip “Killer Elite” and probably “Abduction,” which is enjoying pretty weak reviews in countries where it has already opened (My review posts at midnight).

    Actually, I thought “Killer Elite’s” dialogue and action set pieces were on the money, the performances OK, but the story and focus and morality of it all a bit muddled. Mixed reviews overall for that one.

    Orlando also lands “Senna,” a solid and fascinating racing documentary opening at The Enzian, and a very fine South African drama, an uplifting film about a child coping with the AIDS that has ruined her family — “Life, Above All.” Regal Winter Park 20 for that one.


    Universal wants a new ‘Scarface’

    Posted: 22 Sep 2011 04:29 AM PDT

    The original was a 1930s gangster tale that had hints of Al Capone’s rise and eventual fall. It had its Italian/Sicilian touches. Paul Muni and George Raft were in it.

    The 1980s Brian DePalma remake was about the rise and fall of a Latin emigre druglord.Al Pacino turned the guy into an icon, a quotable icon, in that over-the-top version of the “American Dream” among gangsters.

    Now producers have come back to Universal for a new version.

    What will be the race/ethnicity of this “Scarface”? No details yet, but as far as pictures that are as American in theme and subject as they come, “Scarface” is it. We’ll keep an eye on this one.


    Today’s interview: Jamie Foxx

    Posted: 22 Sep 2011 04:03 AM PDT

    He’s been in the movie news a lot, of late. He stole every scene he was in (pretty much) in last summer’s “Horrible Bosses.”

    Jamie Foxx has been cast as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” a vengeful ex-slave leading man turn for a guy whose Oscar hasn’t led to nearly as many leading man roles as one would have expected.

    And Foxx is behind this marvelous new documentary, “Thunder Soul,” about a funky high school band that in the 70s lifted its all-black high school to glory, in concert competition and in academic achievement. The message? Music education is important, something Jamie Foxx is behind, to the hilt.

    Got questions for J. Foxx? Comment below.


    Zemeckis adds Cheadle, Greenwood to Denzel’s ‘Flight

    Posted: 22 Sep 2011 03:44 AM PDT

    He hasn’t directed a live action film since his infatuation with motion capture/performance capture began. But Robert Zemeckis is loading up on the talent for his “comeback,” an airborne drama starring Denzel Washington as an airline pilot with issues. Now Don Cheadle and Brue Greenwood have joined the  cast of “Flight.”

    Washington’s pilot character seems like a hero for saving an airliner from crashing. Then comes the investigation (Led by Cheadle or Greenwood?), and things don’t look so clear. British actress Kelly Reilly has a co-starring role in this 2012 film.


    Movie Review: ‘Moneyball’

    Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:00 AM PDT

    “Moneyball” is a thinking person’s baseball movie, and a baseball fan’s thinking movie.

    Sure, it’s based on the Michael Lewis book about Billy Beane, the ex-ballplayer turned Oakland A’s general manager who upended the game by rebuilding his team through cold-hearted statistical analysis called “sabermetrics.”  But “Moneyball” takes a dry story about numbers and no-name ballplayers and turns it into something funny, deep and illuminating.

    And as Beane, Brad Pitt gives perhaps his smartest, subtlest performance ever. His Beane is a man at war with himself. He’s as superstitious as any baseball fan — he won’t watch his Oakland A’s play, even when a trip to the World Series is on the line. He may show a little of Brad Pitt’s swagger when he’s making a trade or imposing his will on the manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) or the team. But in flashbacks, we see the Beane who once was a bonus baby, a promising prospect who spent years trying to break into the big leagues to make use of the prodigious talents all the scouts claimed he had. He knows, better than the crusty, contemptuous coots who are his team’s scouting corps that “confidence” is one thing all their hunches, gut feelings and stats-quoting can’t measure. And confidence just may be what’s holding Billy Beane back.

    Stuck with a small-market club with a limited budget, a team that cannot hang onto its stars, this guy who “hates losing more than I love winning” tells his scouts, “You’re asking the wrong questions.” They grumble. They brush him off. They base decisions on a player’s look, how “ugly” his girlfriend is. And they’ve been doing it for decades.

    But when Billy stumbles into a doughy young Yale economics grad named Peter (Jonah Hill) who has better questions, he’s ready to start a revolution. It’s not about batting average, it’s about getting on base. It’s not about defense, it’s about runs.

    “We’ll find value in players that nobody else will see.”

    I don’t know if director Bennett Miller (“Capote”) is much of a baseball fan, but this feels like a curious outsider’s view of the game and this “system” that exploded 100 years of accepted wisdom. And that’s a great thing. The movie dwells on few players (most were no-names, an “island of misfit toys” they’re called) but instead hangs with Beane as he and Peter struggle with rebellious scouts, a cheap owner, contemptuous peers, a defiant manager (Hoffman brings a glorious contained rage to Art Howe) and players — some of whom will have their hearts broken and their spirits crushed when they’re traded or sent to the minors.

    “Just you and me, Pete. We’re all in.”

    It’s a triumph of tone, and much of this spins off of Pitt, who plays a caring but absent dad, a distant boss who has to be ruthless and a thin-skinned ex-jock who is buried under a mountain of criticism when things go wrong. As they will.

    I love the baseball stuff in this multi-writer script, but also the “Art of War” style maneuvering that Pitt’s Beane becomes known for, the pithy wisecracks that sum up how one plays the game — “When your enemy’s making mistakes, don’t interrupt him.”

    Pitt makes this guy flawed, uncertain, temperamental and impulsive. His is a performance that makes this an inside baseball movie that even non-fans can understand and enjoy. And he plays this confidence-starved gambler with a verve that Oscar voters are almost sure to reward, sometime after the dust has settled on another baseball season.

    MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some strong language.

    Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

    Credits: Directed by Bennett Miller, written by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, based on the Michael Lewis book. A Columbia Pictures  release. Running time: 2:13.


    Movie Review: Killer Elite

    Posted: 21 Sep 2011 09:00 AM PDT

    “Killer Elite” is a guy’s movie and makes no bones about it. It’s an old-school straight-no-chaser action picture about an ex-CIA agent who hunts down assorted troopers from the British Special Forces to save an American agent from a vengeful Arab.

    The film’s hook is that it pits Jason Statham against Clive Owen, the two marquee names among the current generation of British action stars. Statham plays Danny, an ex-CIA assassin blackmailed out of retirement to hunt down Spike (Owen) and his British Special Forces (SAS) colleagues in as payback for a mission they took part in long ago. Robert DeNiro is Hunter, who used to be Danny’s boss. He’s being held hostage by an Arab sheik intent on revenge.

    That sends Danny hither and yon, rounding up his own “team,” trying to take out guys nicknamed “The Clinic,” men who are just as lethal as he is. Danny and his crew must make the murders look like accidents, so there will be no reprisals. Standard killer-for-hire stuff, in other words.

    But what sets “Killer Elite” apart from, say, your typical stubbly-faced Statham B-movie actioner is the dialogue — reams of crisp, punchy hardboiled lines that co-writer/director Gary McKendry and screenwriter Matt Sherring cooked up or copped from the Ranulph Fiennes novel “The Feather Men.”

    “I’m done with killing,” Danny mutters.

    “Maybe killing isn’t done with you,” Hunter mutters back.

    “Killing’s easy. Living with it’s the hard part.”

    Government red tape and restrictions dog both the hunters and the hunted.

    “I’ve got no problem with blood. It’s ink that worries me.”

    Thinking of double-crossing Danny? Maybe going into hiding afterward?

    “Remember, everybody gets found.

    And there’s this pithy lecture on old soldiers  — “No uniform. No war. You’re not ‘Special.’ They don’t know what to do with you. You don’t know what to do with yourself.”

    McKendry, new to feature films, wanders a bit, giving us government intrigues, a love interest for Danny (Yvonne Strahovski) and other distractions. But he handles the assorted “hits” with gritty, period flare. The film is “based on a true story,” so the setting is the early ’80s — a “time of crisis, revolution.” That makes it something of a parable for our times, men sent to do a dirty job for their government, only to have their government back the other side, years later.

    It’s hard to see the victims as particularly deserving of their fate. And that lack of a sense of “righteous kills” creates an unease that strips “Killer Elite” of some of its cool. The actors cast as both Danny and Spike’s “teams” are unfamiliar, generic. More effort had to be made to give us a reason to root for or against them, and not against the rich sheik who set this whole killing spree off.

    But it’s still a decent yarn, decently told, a tough guy film built around veteran screen tough guys. Best of all, the filmmakers took the time to give these hard men just the right things to say — not catchphrases, just lines that smell of blood and gunpowder every time Statham, Owen or DeNiro utter them.

    MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexuality/nudity

    Cast: Jason Statham, Clive Owen,  Robert DeNiro, Dominic Purcell

    Credits: Directed by Gary McKendry, written by McKendry and Matt Sherring, based on a novel by Ranulph Fiennes. A n Open Roads Films release. Running time: 1:45


    Movie Review: Dolphin Tale

    Posted: 21 Sep 2011 08:43 AM PDT

    The story of how Winter, a New Smyrna Beach dolphin, lost her tail and became the star attraction of the Clearwater Aquarium becomes an adorable kids’ film in “Dolphin Tale.”

    No, this isn’t how it really happened. But director Charles Martin Smith (“Air Bud”) wrings plenty of heartfelt tears and a few laughs out of this fictionalized account of how humans helped a dolphin survive a near-fatal injury, and how that dolphin became an inspiration to others.

    Nathan Gamble stars as Sawyer, an eleven year-old boy who helps a dolphin he and a fisherman find stranded on a beach, her tail wrapped up in the ropes attached to a crab pot. Sawyer, a social outcast who is struggling in school, finds new purpose in saving this animal. Cozi Zuehlsdorff is Hazel, the girl who comes with her marine veterinarian dad (Harry Connick Jr.) and a crew from the nearby marine hospital to pick up Winter, as they call her, and try to save her.

    Sawyer fibs to his mom (Ashley Judd) and plays hooky from school to stay with Winter, who bonds with the boy who cut ropes from her tail, a tail she eventually loses due to injuries. But as Sawyer’s wounded soldier-cousin returns home from combat to a Veteran’s Administration hospital full of men who are being fitted with artificial limbs, the kid gets the idea to have a prosthetic specialist (Morgan Freeman) see what he can work out for the poor dolphin missing her tail.

    Freeman does his adorable curmudgeon thing. Kris Kristoffersen is Hazel’s crinkly-eyed grandpa who looks, approvingly, on all the life lessons the little dolphin is teaching his son and granddaughter and her new best friend.

    “Dolphin Tale” is movie of cute scenes and cuter ingredients — the cranky pelican who rules the roost at the aquarium, the way Hazel and her dad live on a houseboat that looks like a Disney World castaways attraction, for instance. The melodrama kicks in as the marine hospital and aquarium are struggling to stay afloat, battered by a hurricane, coveted by a hotel developer (Winter Park actor Tom Nowicki in a nice turn).

    Yes, it was “inspired by a true story.” The “Hollywood version” of this tale of rescue and rehabilitation tugs on the heartstrings and leans on “Free Willy” for inspiration. But the process of fictionalizing Winter’s story makes it kid-friendlier and neatly ties the dolphin with the prosthetic tail to those veterans and others with prosthetic limbs she has come to inspire.

    And you’d have to be a little stone-hearted to not be moved by the message tacked on, here, one line, beautifully delivered by Freeman.

    “Just because you’re hurt doesn’t mean you’re broken.”

    MPAA Rating: PG for some mild thematic elements.

    Cast: Harry Connick Jr. Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Frances Sternhagen, Tom Nowkicki

    Credits: Directed by Charles Martin Smith, written by Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi. A Warner Brothers release. Running time: 1:53


    Global Peace Film Fest — your best bets

    Posted: 21 Sep 2011 06:29 AM PDT

    Orlando's Global Peace Film Festival is in its eighth year. So it's fitting that this annual showcase of films about activism and activists, working for peace, a greener planet and the like should expand to eight venues.

    Between Tuesday and Sunday, 48 films will be shown. Q&As and panel discussions will follow many of the movies, which range from food policy to the philosophical/mystical side of golf to the Ms. Wheelchair America pageant. Here are a few highlights.

    'Civil Indigent'

    Gainesville activist and advocate for the homeless Francis "Pat" Fitzpatrick is seen picketing City Hall, speaking at public meetings and getting under the skin of local officials who want to limit the number of meals a downtown soup kitchen can serve the homeless in this very engaging Florida documentary.

    Showings: 5:45 p.m. Friday, First Congregational Church, Winter Park; 3:30 p.m. Saturday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College

    'The Trotsky'

    Only in Quebec would a kid (Jay Baruchel) who thinks he's the reincarnation of Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky be tolerated, if not actually celebrated, as he organizes the workers in his father's (Saul Rubinek) factory and the apathetic kids in his high school. For a commie comedy, This has lots of cute moments, such as when "Leon" meets the older woman the other Leon was fated to marry and informs her of this with a proposal.

    Showings: 8 p.m. Friday, Plaza Cinema Café; 8:30 p.m. Saturday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College

    'Into Eternity'

    Michael Madsen's haunting documentary is about Finland's construction of a vast nuclear waste repository, which the Finns are planning to be safe from human intrusion for 100,000 years — which is how long that waste will be deadly. Madsen narrates the film as if it will be playing on video monitors in the tunnels of that project, warning future visitors "Go back. You don't want to be here."

    Showings: 6 p.m. Thursday, Bush Auditorium, Rollins College; 3:30 p.m. Sunday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College

    6:00 PM Thu, Sep 22 Rollins College – Bush Auditorium + add to cal buy tickets

    3:30 PM Sun, Sep 25 Rollins College – SunTrust Auditorium + add to cal buy tickets

    'Semper Fi: Always Faithful'

    In this sometimes moving film, filmmakers Tony Hardmon and Rachel Libert follow retired Marine Master Sgt.Jerry Ensminger as he crusades on behalf of families, like his, that were exposed to the deadly toxins haphazardly disposed of, for decades, at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune.

    Showings: 5 p.m. Saturday, First Congregational Church, Winter Park; 3 p.m. Sunday, Bush Auditorium, Rollins College

    'Patriot Guard Riders'

    The Patriot Guard Riders are the bikers, some 200,000 strong, nationwide, who formed up to provide an honor guard for dead soldiers whose funerals are being disrupted by the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, whose members scream homophobic insults at families. The movie is a bit all over the place, touching on the stories and motives of the bikers and those Westboro protesters, but it gives us an "Only in America" story built on the First Amendment.

    Showings: 8 p.m. Wednesday, First Congregational Church, Winter Park; 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Bush Auditorium, Rollins College

    'Passionate Politics: The Life and Work of Charlotte Brunch'

    Charlotte Brunch is a lifelong civil-rights activist who has taken her "women's rights are human rights" message to the world. She marched at Selma, was a lead speaker at a famous Washington rally for gay rights, and is apparently more interesting than this repetitious, undramatic documentary presents her to be.

    Showings: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Gallery at Avalon Island; 1 p.m. Sunday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College

    'My So Called Enemy'

    This engaging documentary is about Building Bridges for Peace, which brings Israeli and Palestinian teenage girls to America for summer camp where they get to know "the enemy."

    Showings: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, First Congregational Church, Winter Park

    'Atomic Mom'

    M.T. Silvia's film about her mother's work in America's nuclear-weapons program captures an old woman with remorse for the work she did. Using interviews with her mom and snippets of "duck and cover" documentaries, the film paints a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking female scientist. But where the film falls short is in providing context. You can't say you're "ashamed" of your country over Hiroshima without showing you know what led up to it.

    Showings: 6 p.m. Wednesday, SunTrust Auditorium, Rollins College; 3 p.m. Saturday, Gallery at Avalon Island


    Renner set to cash in on ‘King of Heists’

    Posted: 21 Sep 2011 05:12 AM PDT

    There’s money to be made from robbing banks. In the movies. It was true during the Depression, and it’s true during the Great Recession.

    Jeremy Renner, the Boston bank robber with an itchy trigger finger in “The Town,” is set to play George Leslie, who assembled a team and robbed a big New York bank during an earlier era of banking outrage — the 1870s – in “King of Heists.”

    There’s an interesting Wiki article on George Leonidas (“This is SPARTA!”) Leslie here, btw. A legendary figure in the underworld of the day.

    I remember a terrific historic train robbery picture back in the late 70s, “The Great Train Robbery,” about a famous British robbery. Michael Crichton write and directed it, Sean Connery, Lesley-Anne Down and Donald Sutherland starred in it, and it struck just the right tone — heist, “inventing” techniques that would be repeated in the future and sex, with plenty of fun amid all the serious business of robbing the train.

    That would be worth emulating for “King of Heists,” as Leslie sounds like an incredibly colorful character surrounded by other colorful characters.