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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER |
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``Arthur and the Invisibles'' (PG, 1 hr., 34 min.) ``Venus'' (R, 1 hr., 31 min.) A gritty, giddy, poignant comic drama about a couple of aging actors, ``Venus'' features too much adult material for under-17s. It could, however, entrance college kids new to art films and theater. The adult aspects of the movie lie in moments of explicit sexuality (not exactly sexual situations, but sexuality), and its strong profanity and crude sexual slang. There is a brief, nongraphic bedroom scene, moments of understated but upsetting violence (against an elderly person), a doctor's visit that strongly implies a prostate exam, brief nudity and much drinking and smoking. This is a chance for those film aficionados 17 and up to see the great Peter O'Toole at work. He plays Maurice, an elderly London actor -- not a star, but a ``working actor'' -- in frail health. His best pal, Ian (Leslie Phillips, also a venerable stage and screen veteran), is miserable because the great-niece, Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), who has come to look after him is a sullen, thuggish girl. Always a ladies' man (Vanessa Redgrave plays the wife he left decades earlier), Maurice flirts with Jessie like mad. Though she belittles his ``old man smell,'' they become friends and, sensing his genuine longing, she lets him touch her -- with limits. The sometimes harrowing friendship changes both their lives. ``Venus'' has flaws -- a couple of odd transitions and poorly integrated scenes -- but it's still a gem. P.S. FOR TEENS 17 AND OLDER: If you're impressed with Peter O'Toole after ``Venus,'' you should check out his earlier films and see why he became a star: ``Lawrence of Arabia'' (1962), ``Becket'' (1964), ``The Lion in Winter'' (PG, 1968), ``The Ruling Class'' (PG, 1972), ``The Stunt Man'' (R, 1980) and ``My Favorite Year'' (PG, 1982). ``Primeval'' (R, 1 hr., 35 min.) This horror/thriller has been billed as a serial killer saga, but in fact it is about a killer crocodile in Burundi and the American TV news team that goes in during that country's recent civil war and tries to catch the croc on video. (The film is supposedly based on ``real events.'') Taken on its own B-movie terms, ``Primeval'' isn't awful and could entertain high-schoolers 16 and older who enjoy B-thrillers, flaws and all. Yes, the pretty reporter (Brooke Langton) wears ludicrously lowcut tops, her producer/potential love interest (Dominic Purcell) is a bit of a stick, and the croc, once it shows itself, looks pretty cheesy. Yet the script often crackles and Orlando Jones as the droll cameraman gives expert spin to the best lines. And though the very idea of a beastie movie set against actual human tragedy seems tacky, the war and its victims are not given short shrift. The movie portrays the war violence chillingly -- one family is executed with a beheading (by machete) and point-blank shootings. Scenes in which the croc tears apart its victims are more stylized than graphically gory -- fast edits and splashing water -- but there is no lack of blood, plus the odd, quick glimpse of guts. An opening scene shows a mass grave full of war dead. Later, it is implied that a swimming child will be a croc victim, but the attack isn't shown. ``Primeval'' also includes profanity, brief homophobic humor, crude sexual slang, smoking and drinking. BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME -- 6 AND OLDER: ``Arthur and the Invisibles'' PG (NEW) (Disappointing family film alternates warm live-action scenes with frenetic, confusing, charmless computer-animated ones in story of lonely boy, Arthur (Freddie Highmore), spending a summer with his Granny (Mia Farrow); he learns she is about to be evicted by a developer because she can't find the rubies his missing inventor-granddad buried on the land; following his grandfather's secret instructions, Arthur enters the invisible elf world of the Minimoys beneath Granny's garden, morphs into one himself (they look like veggie-bug hybrids with punk hairdos, like the old troll dolls); he teams with an elf princess (voice of Madonna) to wrest the rubies from the evil elf (David Bowie) who has them. Animated action sequences feel harmless: flying battles on what look like dragonflies; swordfights; floods and rapids; evil elf looks like a weird skeleton/grasshopper mix that could briefly creep out some younger kids; themes about a boy feeling abandoned by his busy parents; anguished grandmother worries when he goes missing.) ``Happily N'Ever After'' PG (Sitcomish sensibility coarsens and ultimately ruins computer-animated fable's clever premise about Cinderella (voice of Sarah Michelle Gellar) carrying a torch for the moronic Prince (Patrick Warburton) of Fairy Tale Land, while his lowly servant, Rick (Freddie Prinze Jr.), really loves her; her wicked stepmom (Sigourney Weaver) usurps the vacationing Wizard's magic and messes with classic tales. Crass phrases such as ``screw up,'' ``pain in the butt,'' and ``a butt the size of a shopping mall''; toilet humor; scary bits with glowering wolves, trolls, witches on smoke-belching broomsticks; stepmom remarks how nice it is when girls get eaten by wolves; plot giveaways: purists beware of the Giant from ``Jack and the Beanstalk'' squishing Jack under foot, Rapunzel falling from her tower, Rumplestiltskin taking the baby.) ``Night at the Museum'' PG (Enjoyable, if under-realized and internally illogical comic romp (live-action with-computer-generated effects) about a shlump (Ben Stiller) who gets a job as the night guard at New York's Natural History Museum; his aged predecessors (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) don't mention that the exhibits -- a T. rex skeleton, Attila the Hun, Sacajawea, Teddy Roosevelt (Robin Williams, having a bully time), miniature Roman legions, Civil War soldiers and cowboys (Owen Wilson in a cameo) -- come alive and tear up the place at night; he must rein in the chaos, keep his job, impress his son (Jake Cherry) and woo a tour guide (Carla Gugino). Little kids may jump at the dinosaur chasing Stiller, the Huns grabbing him; toilet humor; rude expressions.) -- PG-13s: ``Stomp the Yard'' (Cliched college saga uplifted by exuberant dancing: a Los Angeles inner-city teen and ace street dancer (Columbus Short) loses his brother in a brawl and is sent, still grieving, to live with Atlanta relatives; he enters an historically black university and works part-time for his uncle (Harry J. Lennix), the school's groundskeeper; snobby students look down on him; he enters the fraternities' big ``stepping'' competition (a synchronized dance style inspired by African gumboot dancing) and aims to impress a girl (Meagan Good), overcome the dislike of her dad (Allan Louis) and win her from an arrogant boyfriend (Darrin Henson). Fatal shooting; midrange profanity; racial slurs; implied overnight tryst between college students, suggestive dancing by girls, rapper-style crotch-grabbing by guys, shots of young women's jeans-clad behinds. Too much swearing, macho posturing for middle-schoolers.) ``Freedom Writers'' (Satisfying drama mostly overcomes cliches in fact-based story of Erin Gruwell (a cleareyed Hilary Swank in pearls), who taught high-school English in the early 1990s to ``unteachable'' inner-city teens in Long Beach, Calif.; trying to defuse racial and gang tensions in class, she gets students to keep journals, talk about violence and prejudice in their own lives and read ``Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl''; they meet Holocaust survivors and gain empathy, confidence and academic focus. Nongraphic, but intense portrayals of shootings, including a little boy playing disastrously with a gun; fights; talk of a girl and her mother being beaten; some profanity; racial slurs. More for high-schoolers.) ``Dreamgirls'' (Fun, high-gloss, well-sung and long-awaited film adaptation of 1981 Broadway hit musical about the tempestuous rise of a 1960s girl group inspired by the Supremes; Beyonce Knowles as the pretty Deena; terrific Jennifer Hudson as the talented, temperamental Effie; Jamie Foxx as their machiavellian manager; Eddie Murphy as the eccentric soul singer who hires them as a backup trio; much cultural history of the era neatly woven in. Drug abuse; implied extramarital affairs; unwed motherhood; male singer strips to his skivvies on television; mildish profanity, mostly the S-word. OK for most teens, but likely to attract musical theater buffs and ``American Idol''-ators eager to see one-time losing contestant Hudson triumph.) ``The Pursuit of Happyness'' (Fine, refreshingly un-Hollywood film takes hard look at living one paycheck away from the street; Will Smith as a down-on-his-luck family man scrambling to get out of debt and into a real job in San Francisco, circa 1981; Smith's real son Jaden, a charmer, plays his film son, with Thandie Newton as the despondent wife who leaves them; loosely based on entrepreneur Chris Gardner's life. Rare profanity, including the F-word as a graffito and spoken by a child; smoking; a disintegrating marriage; selling blood for cash; father and son spend nights in a homeless shelter, a subway restroom; shoving, shouting but no real violence. Teens.) -- R's: ``Venus'' (NEW) (Wonderfully conceived, bittersweet comedy stars Peter O'Toole in marvelous, poignant turn as Maurice, an aging London actor who falls for the sullen young woman (Jodie Whittaker) who is supposed to care for his best friend (Leslie Phillips); she rejects Maurice and his ``old man smell'' at first, but eventually they become friends and, seeing his longing, she lets him touch her, within limits; the sometimes harrowing friendship transforms both people. Moments of explicit sexuality (not exactly sexual situations, but sexual behavior); brief, nongraphic bedroom scene; understated but upsetting violence against an elderly person; doctor's visit with strongly implied prostate exam; brief nudity; strong profanity, sexual slang; drinking and smoking. 17 and older.) ``Pan's Labyrinth'' (NEW) (Extraordinary film -- stunningly acted and visualized, but for adult audiences -- explores how a child survives wartime violence and loss by escaping into a darkly beautiful fantasy world; set in Franco's fascist Spain in 1945, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) comes with her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) to an outpost where her stepfather (Sergi Lopez), an army captain, finds and kills anti-Franco guerrillas; as her mother weakens and her stepfather proves a true monster, Ofelia escapes into a fairy world (portrayed with puppetry and animation) through an old garden maze; a horned faun, Pan (Doug Jones), gives her ``tasks'' to do; she survives a creature with eyeballs in his palms who tries to kill her; her courage is tested most when her fairy world and the real one merge. Numerous, bloody point-blank shootings; knifings; strongly implied torture; a bloody childbirth; a fatal beating; a drug overdose; strong profanity; drinking. In Spanish with subtitles. 17 and up.) ``Primeval'' (NEW) (Surprisingly not-awful B-movie thriller about TV journalists on trail of a killer crocodile during African nation of Burundi's recent civil war; the ``leads'' (Brooke Langton and Dominic Purcell) are cookie-cutter types and the croc looks fake, but Orlando Jones is fun as the cameraman and his lines crackle; tackiness of setting a creature feature against a human tragedy is mitigated by vivid portrayal of the political mayhem, poverty. War violence -- a beheading (by machete), point-blank shootings; mass grave full of decaying corpses of war dead; scenes with croc tearing up victims are more stylized than graphic, but still no lack of blood or quick glimpses of guts; strongly implied that a swimming child will be a croc victim, but attack is not shown; profanity; homophobic humor; crude sexual slang; smoking, drinking. 16 and older.) ``Alpha Dog'' (Talented cast overacts mightily in profane, lurid, soulless potboiler about America's youth gone sour with drugs, casual sex, violent video games and brainlessness; based on a real incident, story follows a suburban Los Angeles teenage marijuana dealer (Emile Hirsch), the son of a mob-connected guy (Bruce Willis); angry at a pothead (Ben Foster) who owes him money, the dealer and his pals kidnap the guy's 15-year-old kid brother (Anton Yelchin); every choice they make is bad; Sharon Stone as the boy's anguished mom; Justin Timberlake as one of the dealer's hangers-on. Profanity, explicit sexual language; drug use; explicit sexual situations with nudity; climactic gun murder; fights; ethnic slurs; steaming profanity. Not for under-17s.) ``Letters from Iwo Jima'' (LIMITED RELEASE) (Clint Eastwood's memorable, humane, nuanced companion film to ``Flags of Our Fathers'' (R, 2006), this time viewing the World War II battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 through the eyes of Japanese fighters, from a lowly baker (Kazunari Ninomiya) who just wants to survive, to the principled general, Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), who, though friendly to America, demanded all his men fight to the death; (7,000 Americans and some 20,000 Japanese died at Iwo Jima). Less bloody than ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' film still shows spurting, limbless stumps and soldiers ablaze; one intense scene (though more smokey than bloody) depicts Japanese soldiers committing suicide with hand grenades (pressure for honor suicides among Japanese troops is a key theme); depiction of prisoners murdered by both sides, but acts of mercy also shown; a horse lies mortally wounded; dialogue (in Japanese with English subtitles) has mild profanity; some drinking. Cinema buffs 16 and older.) |
Copyright 2007, Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20071
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