De Niro more than ‘Fine’ in family drama

Robert De Niro and Drew Barrymore in "Everybody's Fine" A father (Robert De Niro) pays a surprise visit to his daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore) in the family drama “Everybody’s Fine.”

To its credit, Kirk Jones’ estranged family-in-crisis drama “Everybody’s Fine” refuses to pull out the pliers to yank tears from our ducts. But it thinks about it – really hard.

“Everybody’s Fine” is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1990 Italian film “Stanno tutti bene.” Both serve up ample servings of old-fashioned sentiment, which Jones is more than willing to shamelessly pile on.

It’s Robert De Niro’s transparent performance as Frank Goode, a pudgy, middle-aged, retired father with a selective memory that keeps Jones’ drama grounded and accessible.

As Frank travels around the country visiting his four grown children, he’s forced to examine his parenting abilities. For one thing, he comes to realize he has raised a family of liars, and bad liars at that.

As “Everyone’s Fine” opens, Frank anxiously prepares a dinner for his kids, who have agreed to return home for the first time since their mother died eight months earlier. Frank buys steaks, wines and a new $600 outdoor grill.

But as the dinner approaches, each of his children calls to cancel, citing personal problems and professional commitments. Frank says nothing, but we can tell he’s crushed. (Read more…)

‘Ninja Assassin’ oozes with graphic gore

Rain in "Ninja Assassin" The “Ninja Assassin” (Korean pop star Rain) dispenses his brand of video-game violence in a blood-soaked action movie.

Are the parents sitting on the MPAA’s ratings board out of their minds?

This is not a rhetorical question, because the answer is “Yes, they are” if they honestly believe that the stab ’em, rip ’em, slice ’em, dice ’em, martial arts exploitation action film “Ninja Assassin” doesn’t qualify as an adults-only movie.

In the opening sequence of James McTeigue’s high-velocity, gleefully gory experience, a ninja assassin wipes out a room full of scoffing ruffians. Heads explode in crimson showers. Body parts fall to the floor. It takes one man a few seconds before he realizes he’s been neatly sliced in half, the long way. One half of him can only watch in horror as his other half slides to the floor.

“Ninja Assassin” isn’t just one constant blood geyser. It’s the Old Faithful of blood geysers.

That “Ninja Assassin” would merit a mere R rating shows just how the MPAA’s Ratings Board has abandoned its responsibility to properly advise and warn American parents about the increasingly frank and explicit nature of today’s movies.

There’s nothing wrong with the violence per se in the spectacularly crimson “Ninja Assassin,” which closely approximates the kinetic, pseudo-realism of an ultraviolent video game. (Read more…)

In ‘Red Cliff’ Woo handles insightful saga without smothering characters

Zhang Fengyi in "Red Cliff" Power-hungry Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) gathers his troops to invade Southern China in John Woo’s historical “Red Cliff.”

At a cost of $80 million, John Woo’s historical China war epic “Red Cliff” ranks as the most expensive Chinese-language movie ever made, and Woo puts every penny of it on the screen and in the sound.

Woo is mostly known in the U.S. for his hyperbolic, stylized 1980s action films such as “The Killer” and “A Better Tomorrow.” So, “Red Cliff” might be a surprise – or a disappointment – for loyal Woosters when they see the Chinese-born filmmaker can handle a more conventional period war drama without resorting to many of his oft-used action-film devices.

In subject at least, “Red Cliff” ranks along side such battle movies as “The Enemy Below” (1957) which pitted a destroyer captain against a submarine captain, and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (1982), which pitted a Federation captain against a renegade Khan.

These movies delight in exploring how personality, education and observation come into play when smart, efficient military leaders engage each other in a life-and-death version of chess. (Read more…)

Post-apocalyptical ‘The Road’ leads down one bleak path

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in "The Road" A father (Viggo Mortensen) defends his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from marauding cannibals in “The Road.”

A bleak and barren tale of a post-Apocalyptical world where bands of cannibals hunt down, kill and digest their own kind, “The Road” leads to a hollow and laughable ending that so desperately wants to be sweet, it’s sickening.

I have no idea exactly how Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 futuristic novel “The Road” ended, but John “The Proposition” Hillcoat’s dreary drama wants us to believe that even as the world is dying, the nuclear family unit can still be a happy one.

The cannibals are far more believable.

Viggo Mortensen stars as an unnamed father and husband who has two bullets in a revolver. He is taking his young unnamed son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) across a desolate countryside to nowhere in particular. The bullets are for the dad and son, in case the cannibals catch them.

In a series of prolonged flashbacks, the father remembers his recent, harrowing past.

Some kind of world crisis has struck. Civilization has collapsed. Plants have stopped growing. Livestock have died off. Food is so scarce that humanity has devolved into roving gangs that eat anyone they find who doesn’t belong to their gang. That’s after they rape and kill them, without regard to age or sex.

The man used to be married to an attractive wife (Charlize Theron). But the ugliness, the violence and the fear prove too great for her sensitive nature. (Read more…)

Shallow ‘Old Dogs’ lacks emotional bite

Seth Green in "Old Dogs" Account executive Ralph White (Seth Green) serenades an amorous gorilla in Walt Becker’s comedy “Old Dogs.”

There’s one sure way you can tell that Walt Becker’s new comedy “Old Dogs” is better than his 2007 hit “Wild Hogs.”

“Old Dogs” is 12 minutes shorter.

No doubt, the same crowds of fun-starved filmgoers who made “Wild Hogs” a box office winner won’t be disappointed by “Old Dogs.” About the only major difference is that the comically undercranked John Travolta has traded up in co-stars from Tim Allen to Robin Williams.

The primary appeal to “Old Dogs” rests in the breakneck pace set by the editing team of Tom Lewis and Ryan Folsey, who understand that the success of a slapstick-heavy piece of nonsense depends less on quality of material than on the quantity of material thrown at the viewer in record time.

What? You don’t like the scene where Williams hits golf balls into the groins of his fellow players?

Hold on, here comes that zany part where Seth Green sings to an amorous gorilla to keep the beast happy and content. (Read more…)

‘Blind Side’ a winning combination of grit, idealism

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner in " Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) gives Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) a pep talk in “The Blind Side.”

I dreaded the press screening of “The Blind Side,” because all the TV commercials and theatrical trailers made it look like just another fact-based white savior movie like “Glory,” “Men of Honor” and “Glory Road.”

You know the genre, where noble white characters help and protect downtrodden minority characters who can only develop self-esteem, dignity and a sense of purpose thanks to their generous, selfless white benefactors?

No surprise, John Lee Hancock’s “The Blind Side” is exactly that kind of movie.

It’s about a white, well-off Memphis family who take in a homeless black teenager, feed him, clothe him, buy him a nice set of wheels and maneuver him into becoming a high-school football star with excellent college prospects.

The teenager, “Big Mike” Oher, is played by Quinton Aaron as a gentle giant with a profound sense of sadness in his eyes. He is taken in by the Tuohy family, ruled by steel magnolia Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock), a successful interior decorator married to the extremely patient Sean (Tim McGraw), a fast-food restaurant magnate. (Read more…)

A sold-out ‘Life’

For three months, Chicago’s Kamelya Alexan worked on the set of “The Dark Knight” in the Windy City. She funneled all of her earnings into making a 21-minute film called “One Simple Life,” a drama about a man afflicted with schizophrenia. Her movie’s premiere at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Skokie Theater, 7924 Lincoln Ave., is sold out. Her movie will be shown again Feb. 22. Mark your calendars! For details go to onesimplelifemovie.com

Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7:00pm
Skokie Theater
7924 Lincoln Ave.
Skokie

Reel Life review: ‘The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans’

Werner Herzog’s loose and loony remake of Abel Ferrara’s NC-17-rated, 1992 crime drama “Bad Lieutenant” doesn’t just star Nicolas Cage. It unleashes him in the kind of over-the-top, no-holds-barred performance that has become his hallmark.

His lieutenant, Terence McDonagh, is so bad, he constantly shoves drugs in his nose, racks up humongous gambling debts, claims a high-end prostitute as his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) and misuses the justice system to his own benefit with unabashed arrogance.

Set in a post-Katrina New Orleans, “Bad Lieutenant” depicts not just the city’s physical rot, but the moral decay in which McDonagh, his amoral partner (Val Kilmer) and underworld thugs (led by Xzibit’s drug lord) operate. (Read more…) Rated: R (drug use, language, sexual situations, violence). 121 minutes.

Opens Thursday, November 19 at the River East 21 and the Century Centre in Chicago and the CineArts 6 in Evanston.

Reel Life review: ‘Turning Green’

The dark Irish comedy “Turning Green” never quite finds its proper comic tone as it gleefully immerses us in a raucously nasty, noirish tale of a sexually self-abusing teenager who becomes a successful pornography distributor and eventual killer.

“Turning Green,” originally one of the runners-up in the “Project Greenlight” contest from a few years back, stars newcomer Donal Gallery as James, an Irish lad raised in the U.S. who returns to the Emerald Island with his kid brother Pete (Killian Morgan). James needs money, and when he meets a porno supplier, he rakes in the green (hence the double-meaning of the title).

Local gangsters Bill the Bookie (Alessandro Nivola) and Bill the Breaker (Timothy Hutton) don’t like this, and try to set the upstart kid straight about making money on their turf. (Read more…) Rated: NR (mature audiences only). 85 minutes.

Opens Thursday, November 19 at the Pipers Alley Theater in Chicago.