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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - The Grey

 

February 10-13
Showtime: 7:30pm

The Adventures of Tintin
Paramount Pictures
MPAA Rating: Rated PG for adventure action violence, some drunkenness and brief smoking.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Edgar Wright, Steven Moffat, Joe Cornish
Running Time: 107 Min.
Cast: Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Cary Elwes, Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis
Plot: Tintin and his friends discover directions to a sunken ship commanded by Capt. Haddock's ancestor and go off on a treasure hunt.
Genre: Animation | Adventure | Family

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Colin Covert / Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Welcome back, Steven. After a so-so run culminating in the regrettable "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the most successful filmmaker of the modern era proves he's still got the goods. "The Adventures of Tintin" is a tightly edited avalanche of thrills and a barrow load of laughs. Spielberg's first venture into animation is his most delightful dose of pure entertainment since "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

His sensibility is typically youthful; plugging into the graphic power and visual energy of this classic cartoon strip has re-energized him and given him permission to be goofy. Adapting the perennially popular Belgian comic books has liberated Spielberg's boundless imagination. Through computer-generated imagery he can stage stunts that could never be filmed live, realizing a brand of supercharged slapstick that's both uproarious and near mythic. We can see the movies that unreel inside his head, and they'll be echoing inside our skulls for years.

The story is a rollicking mystery-adventure that sweeps intrepid boy reporter Tintin into the search for a pirate treasure. When the lad buys a replica of the 17th-century buccaneer ship the Unicorn, a silky, menacing model collector named Sakharine tries to acquire it for himself.

In short order there's a burglary of Tintin's apartment and a dead man on the doorstep ("Not again," fusses his landlady). With the help of his clever canine sidekick Snowy, Tintin follows clues that take him to the spooky mansion Marlinspike Hall, onto a shabby ocean freighter overrun with thugs, and to a glittering Moroccan palace. With the sinister Sakharine and his henchmen on Tintin's heels, our hero braves gun battles, plane crashes, tank chases, burst dams and a painful recital by an operatic soprano.

The film's photorealistic visual detail is awe-inspiring. Spielberg puts camera motion into almost every frame. To avoid the sterile, over-controlled look that wrecked such early computer-generated films as "The Polar Express," he even adds lens flares here and there for a sense of spontaneity.

Tintin fans will find subtle references to his many globe-trotting adventures hidden in scene after scene. When Captain Haddock, stranded with Tintin in the Sahara, begins to hallucinate towering waves and a pirate ship under siege, the transition is a great moment of pop fantasy. Spielberg has such intuitive rapport with the child in the adult viewer that the image sweeps you along into the next five minutes of swashbuckling fantasy. And there's always time for a throwaway joke: Look for the scene where Tintin swims underwater, his upswept forelock cresting the waves like the "Jaws" shark's fin.

The motion-capture performances are state-of-the-art, and then some. Andy Serkis, who has been Gollum, King Kong and the lead simian in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," is in fine form as Haddock, a volatile boozer with mood swings measurable on the Richter scale. As the hissable Sakharine, Daniel Craig injects evil implications into every glance and syllable. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg bumble entertainingly as Interpol's twin inspectors, Thomson and Thompson.

Jamie Bell has a challenge as the title character, a not-quite-child, not-exactly-teenager whose bravery and pluck are rather vanilla. He's mostly called upon to achieve miraculous escapes, and he carries our hearts with him in every death-defying leap. Appropriately for a movie about locating a lost treasure, the real thrill here is witnessing Spielberg rediscover his magic.

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February 14 - 16
Showtime: 7:30pm (Except Wed. Feb. 15th @ 6:30pm)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Focus Features
MPAA Rating: Rated R for violence, some sexuality/nudity and language.

Director: Tomas Alfredson
Writers: Bridget O'Connor, Peter Straughan
Running Time: 127 Min.
Cast: Gary Oldman, Ciaran Hinds, Jared Harris, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Svetlana Khodchenko
Plot: In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6's echelons.
Genre: Drama | Thriller

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Bill Goodykoontz / Arizona Republic:

It's just as accurately described as a bunch of British guys sitting around acting. But what actors! The cast includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong,Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones. The tale is intricate and sometimes hard to follow, the action slow to non-existent. And it doesn't hurt the movie one bit. These guys make proper English diction as compelling as a gunfight, and "Tinker Tailor" as satisfying as any shoot-'em-up using real bullets instead of words to get its point across.

The film is set in London in the 1970s, the height of the Cold War.Oldman plays George Smiley, a veteran agent with MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. Smiley is well-respected, but when a mission involving another agent goes wrong in Budapest, he is swept out by way of forced retirement, along with Control (Hurt), the director. This leaves a power vacuum at the top of the Circus, as the agency is known, with Percy Alleline (Jones) angling for Control's old spot. Alleline's got a line on Soviet intelligence, an operation known as "Witchcraft." Before his exit, Smiley made it clear he didn't trust Alleline's sources.

And then word comes from a rogue agent named Ricki Tarr (Hardy) that a Soviet mole has infiltrated the Circus, at the highest levels. A smarmy government minister (Simon McBurney) wants Smiley to figure out who it is -- even though, like everyone else at the Circus, evidently his old boss and confidante Control had Smiley under suspicion, as well.

Guns are fired in the film, but not often, making the impact of the shots more meaningful. Instead of action, Alfredson builds tension through glances, snippets of dialogue, tiny details that add up to a bigger payoff. In other words, it's a film built on observation, the tool that these men employ in their jobs. Everyone is good -- Firth is a star, of course, and Hardy is always great. But Oldman's performance is amazing -- particularly considering that he doesn't say anything until about 20 minutes in and doesn't say a whole lot after that.

With his oversized glasses, Smiley is a silent observer, taking in the details, weighing the information, chipping away at the larger picture. There is a great scene early on when he is riding with other agents in a car when a bee gets in. The others flail at it, but Smiley quietly rolls down his window and the bee flies away. That's his method of intelligence work, as well -- sit and let the others make all the noise, as he simply watches, waiting for his moment.

Le Carré's book was also the basis of a popular BBC miniseries with Alec Guinness in the role of Smiley. Alfredson doesn't have that much time to tell the complex story, but it doesn't really matter. The details are murky, but they're meant to be. These guys aren't James Bond-type heroes. They exchange dribs and drabs of information in drab, depressing offices and apartments. They're watchers, a word Jim Prideaux (Strong) uses in another context, which makes the word all the more chilling.

Give Alfredson credit. His patience in telling the story is remarkable, given the non-stop action that passes for a spy movie today. Smiley is asked to sort through a large amount of information, to work at it till he gets it right. Alfredson asks the same of the audience, but the payoff is worth the effort.

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February 17 - 20
Showtime: 7:30pm
(4pm Matinees Sat & Sun, Feb 18th and 19th / Doors at 3:30pm)

Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
20th Century Fox
MPAA Rating: Rated G for General Audiences.

Director: Mike Mitchell
Writers: Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger
Running Time: 87 Min.
Cast: Jason Lee, David Cross, Jenny Slate, Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Christina Applegate
Plot: The vacationing Chipmunks and Chipettes are turning a luxury cruise liner into their personal playground, until they become 'chipwrecked' on a remote island. As the 'Munks and Chipettes try various schemes to find their way home, they accidentally discover their new turf is not as deserted as it seems.
Genre: Animation | Comedy | Family

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Joe Neumaier / New York Daily News:

Either the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies are getting better, or I’ve accidentally buried my brain for the winter. The third entry in the franchise — “Chip-Wrecked” — is, dare I say, the charm. The filmmakers have slowed down the chitter-chatter, cut some of the incessant pop-culture riffs that went over the heads of its young audience and minimized the inane musical numbers. The result does right by kids.

While on a cruise ship, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, along with the Chipettes -— Eleanor, Jeanette and Brittany — accidentally hitch a ride on a kite. They land on an island where they have to fend for their furry selves, and, in Alvin’s case, learn to grow up a little. There’s a survivalist on the island (a fun and silly Jenny Slate) who talks to a variety of sports balls, a la Tom Hanks in “Cast Away.” She’s an adventuress looking for a treasure, and thinks the ’munks might be able to help.

Meanwhile, Dave (Jason Lee) and obnoxious Ian (David Cross) — in a seagull outfit — follow the chipmunks, and wind up learning something, too. Cross, whose parallel career as a kids’-film staple may have reached its zenith here, is very funny, and Lee has more to do than just look flustered.

The Chippy voice performances are unrecognizable (Justin Long, Amy Poehler, Anna Faris and Christina Applegate are again among them), but the animation is more precise than in the original or in the dreadful “Squeakquel.” Down at their level, we can see some expressions, and, yes, appreciate their dilemmas.

Director Mike Mitchell, who also made “Shrek Forever After” — also the best film in that franchise — respects his audience, who are, obviously, relating more to the Chipmunks and Chipettes than the exasperated parent figures. But both groups can ease into “Chip-Wrecked” without having to squirrel away their brain cells.

MAGIC MOMENT: Dave uses Ian as a flotation device while swimming toward the island.

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February 21-23
Showtime: 7:30pm (Except Wed. Feb. 22nd @ 6:30pm)

Warhorse
Dreamworks
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Lee Hall, Richard Curtis
Running Time: 146 Min.
Cast: Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell
Plot: Follows a young man named Albert and his horse, Joey, and how their bond is broken when Joey is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War One. Despite being too young to enlist, Albert heads to France to save his friend.
Genre: Drama

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Roger Ebert / Chicago Sun-Times:

The closing shots of Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" will stir emotions in every serious movie lover. The sky is painted with a deeply red-orange sunset. A lone rider is seen far away on the horizon. The rider approaches and dismounts. He embraces a woman and a man. They all embrace the horse's head. Music swells. This footage, with the rich colors and dramatic framing on what is either a soundstage or intended to look like one, could come directly from a John Ford Western.

It is Spielberg's homage, I believe, to Ford and to a Hollywood tradition of broad, uplifting movies intended for all audiences. The performances and production values throughout the film honor that tradition. "War Horse" is bold, not afraid of sentiment and lets out all the stops in magnificently staged action sequences. Its characters are clearly defined and strongly played by charismatic actors. Its message is a universal one, about the horror of war in which men and animals suffer and die, but for the animals there is no reason: They have cast their lot with men who have betrayed them.

The movie, based on a best-selling novel and a long-running London and New York stage production, begins on a small family farm in the English county of Devon. We meet young Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine), his usually drunken but not unkind father, Ted (Peter Mullan), and his hard-working, loving mother, Rose (Emily Wat­son). Lyons (David Thewlis), the landowner, presses them for past-due rent.

There is a horse auction in the village. Ted's eye falls on a handsome horse named Joey, and he determines to outbid Lyons for it, even if it means spending all the rent money. Rose is distraught: He was meant to bring home a plow horse at a low price and has purchased a sleek thoroughbred. But Albert and Joey bond, and Albert trains the horse to accept a collar and plow their stony fields. Then World War I breaks out. Drunk as usual, Ted sells the horse to the Army. Albert vows he will see it again.

Now begins a series of self-contained chapters in Joey's life, as the horse passes from British to German hands, has a respite on a French farm and then finds itself helping to drag a cannon much too big for the team. All of this is embedded in front-line battle footage as realistic as we saw in the landing at Normandy in Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan." All wars are hell. Surely few were worse for private soldiers trapped in the muddy, cold, desolation of the trenches. Horses thrown into this satanic chaos were confused, terrified and sometimes driven mad.

Joey meets a series of masters, most of them on both sides men who respected horses. Yet war is no place for sentiment, and as an officer explains with brutal realism, a horse is a weapon and must either be used or destroyed. Surely some of the best footage Spielberg has ever directed involves Joey and other horses running wild outside the trenches, galloping in a panic through barbed wire lines and dragging wire and posts after them as their flesh is cruelly torn. There's one of those scenes of temporary truce when soldiers from both sides meet in No Man's Land to share wire-cutters and set the horses free.

All of this is magnificent. But it reduces the center of the film to a series of set pieces. The narrative thread is supplied by Joey, who is such a helpless protagonist that watching his adventures becomes painful — especially, I suspect, for younger viewers. A famous film by Robert Bresson, "Au Hasard Balthazar," follows a humble donkey through years of good and bad times, and shows all of the events as implacable chapters in the book of its life. Bresson makes no attempt to elevate the donkey; its lot is the common lot of all dumb animals in a world of arbitrary cruelty.

Spielberg ennobles Joey and provides an ending for the film that is joyous, uplifting, and depends on a surely unbelievable set of coincidences. I suppose it must be that way for us to even bear watching such a story. I am reminded of "Schindler's List." Six million Jews were exterminated in the World War II, but in focusing on a few hundred who miraculously survived, Spielberg made his story bearable. Among the horses of World War I, it can only be said that Joey's good luck was extraordinary.

The film is made with superb artistry. Spielberg is the master of an awesome canvas. Most people will enjoy it, as I did. But not included in the picture is the level of sheer hopeless tragedy that is everywhere just out frame. It is the same with life, and if you consider the big picture, all of us, men and beasts, have extraordinary good luck.

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February 24 - 27
Showtime: 7:30pm

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for emotional thematic material, some disturbing images, and language.

Director: Stephen Daldry
Writer: Eric Roth
Running Time: 129 Min.
Cast: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Thomas Horn, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, James Gandolfini
Plot: A nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist, searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks.
Genre: Drama

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Laramie Legel / Film.com:

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is extremely well done … and incredibly effective. The acting, pacing, and massively large life questions posed within keep the film hurtling forward, building layer upon layer, first with waves of sadness, then joy, until you can’t help but admire the overall execution. This was no sure thing, as many of the subjects, when considered broadly, tilt awkwardly toward sentimentality, but Extremely Loud stays fully aloft. Every year we get a few of these, the ones that “matter,” and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is one of those films, the type that matters, though it’s a difficult watch, and potentially upsetting to an audience.

Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks are married, and they have a son named Oskar, played with verve by young actor Thomas Horn. Oskar is an extremely curious boy — you’d likely call him “precocious” if you were watching Annie. He sees the world through a prism of uber-intelligence masked by an utter confusion about human emotions. He’s prone to angry outbursts when life doesn’t fit his logical standards, but his father (Hanks) keeps roping him back to a state of normalcy through a series of planned adventures he calls “reconnaissance expeditions.” These missions serve to get Oskar out of the house and interacting with the community, a skill his father knows he’ll need to cultivate to help young Oskar relate to the world at large.

The film begins with Oskar ruminating on death, and the reason he’s doing so will become apparent as the story progresses. He’s a youngster who is all rough edges, tough on the sensibilities, not gifted with an ounce of tact, and that was before something terrible happened to him. The film refers to it as the “worst day,” though to say more on this front would undermine the narrative heft. Let’s just say it was a bad day, and Oskar and his family are left picking up the pieces.

From these ashes, Oskar begins his most demanding quest yet, trying to find the lock for a key he’s found, an impossible and daunting task in a city of millions. He breaks down the task scientifically, and he’s aided along the way by the people he befriends. Notable performances can be found here from Viola Davis and Max von Sydow; they take in young Oskar and try to impart a few life lessons along his journey. Throughout the running time of the film, the “weight” of people is routinely considered, not their physical weight, but the emotional toll we all exact on each other.

The score, haunting, conveys the sense of dread that pervades. Thankfully, it’s not the same depression found in director Stephen Daldry’s previous work, The Reader, where the point seemed to be that there isn’t a point at all. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a point, but even more importantly it has chemistry. Accolades must be given to Bullock and Horn, as their mother-son relationship is often tumultuous and jarring … but entirely moving.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is as much of a quest as it is a continually asked question, though some are never adequately answered, and people thrive and fail in a manner that reflects the world we live in, as great art must. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close‘s greatest strength is that it prods and provokes, never relenting, protagonist voice-overs and “quest” questions spurring us on to even greater depths of introspection. The imagery is periodically (and purposefully) horrific, terrible things are witnessed and heard, moments of loss are punctuated and overcome by the even greater strength of the ties that bind us together as a culture. The film’s central message — that we’ve got to try to be good to each other, and that we’re all slightly lost — evokes a sort of everyman earnestness that’s good for the soul. A treatise on faith and grief, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is an exceptional film.

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February 28 - March 1
Showtime: 7:30pm (Except Wed. Feb. 29th @ 6:30pm)

The Grey
Open Road Films
MPAA Rating: Rated R for violence/disturbing content including bloody images, and for pervasive language.

Director: Joe Carnahan
Writers: Joe Carnahan, Ian Mackenzie Jeffers
Running Time: 117 Min.
Cast: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, James Badge Dale, Frank Grillo, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, Dallas Roberts, Ben Bray, Larissa Stadnichuk, James Bitonti, Jonathan Bitonti
Plot: Liam Neeson leads an unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks when their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan wilderness. Battling mortal injuries and merciless weather, the survivors have only a few days to escape the icy elements – and a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt – before their time runs out.
Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller

IMDb: Link
Official Website: Link

Review excerpted from Rex Reed / New York Observer:

Prepare to be devastated. Films of hair-raising terror about people doing unspeakable things to each other are a dime a dozen, usually with a built-in hole in their armor (people can always outsmart people). But movies about helpless humans versus uncontrollable nature are rare. A new one called The Grey, about the survivors of an airplane crash in the frozen wastes of Alaska at the mercy of carnivorous wolves, is the movie equivalent of a wet finger in a hot socket.

This is the scariest wilderness survival movie about men stalked by animals since Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins landed on the menu of a bloodthirsty, 10-ton grizzly in Lee Tamahori’s 1997 thriller The Edge, written by David Mamet. Liam Neeson stars as a decent man doing a tour of duty in an isolated oil refinery in the Alaskan wilds with a crew of ex-cons, drifters and other rejects from society with whom he has nothing in common. Haunted by memories of better times, a woman who left him and a small ray of hope that when he gets back to civilization he’ll play a better hand of poker, he boards a plane home that crashes in an explosion of flames with only six survivors.

Cut off from cell phone signals and every other form of communication, the men are wounded, suffering from frostbite, understandably pessimistic, pondering suicide and surrounded by howling wolves. As the men crawl away from the wreckage to search for a sign of life, the sound of a helicopter overhead or the curl of smoke from a remote cabin chimney, the wolves get closer. I’ve read that wolves get a bad rap; they’re not aggressive and run from people. These wolves are different. They’re ravenous, territorial timber wolves—carnivorous, bloodthirsty, hungry for meat. While the dwindling handful of survivors search for a way to defend themselves, scenes filled with nerve-frying suspense build steadily, paralyzing you with anxiety. If possible, wear gloves or your nails could get chewed to the quick.

With a lack of oxygen to the brain in the altitude, the men suffer from hallucinations and wander away from the fire into harm’s way. Without weapons and unable to run because they’re up to their knees in snow, they’re tough alpha males, but before they can even formalize their strategy they get picked off, one by one, torn limb from limb and devoured by killers with molars like fangs. There’s graphic gore, but miraculously, the writers also find humor in the men’s natural coarseness. When they cook one wolf to stay alive, the gruffest man says, “I’m more of a cat person myself.” The word harrowing doesn’t begin to cover it. You can’t avoid wondering, “What would I do if this happened to me?” One last rant at the sky, one final plea for help, one more challenge to the Almighty to prove His existence, and escape remains impossible. All the more reason for men with nothing in common to turn their conflicted tensions into a sustained interdependence to stay alive.

Alaska is played by the wilds of Canada. The men who support leader Liam Neeson are played by actors with more brawn than beauty, including Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney, unrecognizable with long, matted hair and a white beard, as one of the more pragmatic survivors. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan (The A-Team), it’s basically a one-note narrative with nowhere to go except straight into the jaws of tragedy, but the film manages to give each man enough room for character development to make you feel like you’re living through this white-knuckle experience with them. It’s one of the most captivating studies of shared peril. The Grey avoids smug clichés, takes you to places you least expect and settles for no comfortable solutions, while it explores the dark shadows of the male psyche and finds more emotional fragility there than you find in the usual phony macho myths from Hollywood.

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