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"The Final Season" (PG, 1 hr., 53 min.)
It's hard to go completely wrong with a small-town high-school sports story. Despite built-in cliches, an element of excitement and heart usually saves the day, cinematically speaking. Yet the makers of "The Final Season" have managed to churn out a real dud. Based on real events in a tiny Iowa town in the early 1990s, this endless film is flat-out boring, its baseball scenes drained of suspense, its narrative utterly jumbled. Star Sean Astin, famous for the sports saga, "Rudy" (PG, 1993), and as Frodo's loyal pal Sam Gamgee in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy (all PG-13s), does nothing to save "The Final Season" with his flat characterization.
Although the movie contains nothing unacceptable for kids 8 and older, it may well put them, their older siblings and parents to sleep. Even true baseball buffs may doze. The PG rating does reflect an alienated, citified teen in the story who smokes cigarettes and asks about buying marijuana. The same kid "borrows" his granddad's pickup and gets stopped by a cop. The film also features rare mild profanity, very muted sexual innuendo and adults drinking.
In this fact-based fable set in tiny Norway, Iowa, circa 1991, Astin plays Kent Stock, a one-time girls' volleyball coach who signs on as temporary assistant to the legendary coach of Norway's amazing high-school baseball team, the Tigers, who over the years contributed stars such as Mike Boddiker to the major leagues. When the team's revered coach, Jim Van Scoyoc (Powers Boothe), is shoved aside for bad-mouthing a merger with a big high school that will decimate the Norway team, Kent is hired to replace him. Local movers and shakers hope he'll wreck the team, but Kent has other ideas. Enter Mitch (Michael Angarano), a troubled Chicago teen brought by his dad (Tom Arnold) to live with his grandparents (James Gammon and Angela Paton) in Norway. And guess what? Mitch can pitch.
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"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (PG-13, 1 hr., 55 min.)
Myth, legend, history and fashion vie for screen time in this gorgeous sequel to "Elizabeth" (R, 1998 -- that first film rated R for more graphic violence and sexuality than in this new one). For high-schoolers into history and literary romance, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" offers a tasty treat with a bit of intellectual whole grain. Issues of religious freedom versus fanaticism will resonate. Director Shekhar Kapur, in the second part of a planned trilogy, now explores Elizabeth I's reign in 1585, at the height of her power, culminating in England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Elizabeth (radiant, supple-voiced Cate Blanchett, terrific again) is bedeviled by plots -- fueled by Spain, the Catholic Church and her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots -- to assassinate and/or overthrow her. The lonely "virgin queen" takes a fancy to New World explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (dashing Clive Owen), who entrances her with tales of the high seas, showing off native people he brought back from the Americas, along with potatoes and tobacco -- a good hook for discussion of colonialism. (He also throws his cloak over a puddle for her majesty, as in the legend.) The queen's favorite lady-in-waiting, young Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish), and Sir Walter become lovers, which greatly conflicts the queen. The film moves between Elizabeth, Sir Walter and Bess, the queen's adviser Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), Philip II (Jordi Molla), Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) and various plotters. The defeat of the Spanish Armada is an oddly underwhelming, computer-enhanced climax. The film shines best in its intimate scenes, as fine actors in stunning clothes play off one another.
Not really for middle-schoolers, the movie includes scenes with captured plotters tortured in "iron maidens," bloody puncture wounds, abductions, shootings and a hanging. Fiery battle scenes show few graphic injuries, but a sailor is depicted with a bloody leg missing a foot. The queen muses demurely about the nature of "male desire" and her own longings. A bedroom scene is nongraphic, but the film contains backview nudity and an unwed pregnancy theme. Though profanity is rare, the language can be quite harsh. Elizabeth and a lady-in-waiting try tobacco in a pipe.
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BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME
-- OK FOR KIDS 8 AND OLDER:
"The Final Season" PG (NEW) (Even young baseball fans will doze through this amateurish, overlong, sloppily plotted real-life saga. Sean Astin stars colorlessly as an inexperienced coach who leads a great high-school baseball team from tiny Norway, Iowa, in their final season, circa 1991, after their legendary coach (Powers Boothe) gets fired for opposing the city fathers' decision to merge Norway High with a bigger school, which will decimate the team. An alienated, citified teen in the story smokes cigarettes, asks about buying marijuana, "borrows" his granddad's pickup; rare mild profanity; very muted sexual innuendo; adults drinking.)
"The Seeker" PG (Well-acted adaptation of Susan Cooper's 1973 novel "The Dark is Rising" (one of a series of books, whose fans will note liberties taken in the film) about Will (Alexander Ludwig), a 14-year-old American living in England; village elders (Ian McShane, Frances Conroy as leaders) tell him he's fated to be a time-traveling Seeker in an ancient war between light and darkness, the latter forces led by the evil Rider (Christopher Eccleston); the film at times plays like a less inventive "Harry Potter" flick, but it isn't bad. Scary moments do approach PG-13 intensity: Rider's messengers chase Will, morphing into ravens; flood waters and ravens crash through a huge window; a mansion where villagers gather for safety freezes, lethal icicles falling; masses of snakes slither; threats with a knife; subplot about the disappearance of a baby; adults drink. Christian symbolism mixed with Celtic and Arthurian themes, but fairly subtly.)
"The Game Plan" PG (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, whose acting is OK in action flicks, falls short in this harmless but clumsy and wholly artificial family comedy, grimacing and lumbering about as he tries to show the emotional growth in his character; kids 8 and older will be entertained, but many adults will note the movie's bald contrivances; Johnson plays a star Boston quarterback whose selfish life turns upside-down after the 8-year-old daughter (Madison Pettis) his long-ago ex-wife never told him he'd fathered shows up for a visit. Scenes that gently imply footballers partying, with no details; mild hints that Joe has a girlfriend who stays overnight; a child's life-threatening food allergy; themes touch on a child's fear of abandonment, grief over a lost parent.)
-- PG-13s OF VARYING INTENSITY PG-13s:
"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" (NEW) (Myth, legend, history and fashion vie for screen time in this gorgeous, less explicitly violent or sexual sequel to "Elizabeth" (R, 1998). Director Shekhar Kapur explores the reign of Elizabeth I (stunning Cate Blanchett) at the height of her power, culminating with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The big battles are underwhelming, but the film triumphs in quiet scenes. Elizabeth is bedeviled by plotters -- Spain's Philip II (Jordi Molla), in league with the Catholic Church, and Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton). Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) entrances the queen, but falls for her lady-in-waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish). Captured plotters are tortured, with bloody wounds, abducted, shot or hanged; fiery sea battles show few injuries, but a sailor is depicted with a leg minus a foot; Elizabeth muses about the nature of "male desire" and her own longings; nongraphic bedroom scene; backview nudity; unwed pregnancy; rare profanity, but the language can be quite harsh; Elizabeth and a lady try tobacco in a pipe. For literary and history-loving high-schoolers. Not for middle-schoolers.)
"Feel the Noise" (NEW) (This cliched tale about an inner-city teen trying to make it in the music biz stays afloat on energy and atmosphere. It unfolds in Puerto Rico and the music showcased is Reggaeton -- a catchy fusion of rap, reggae, salsa and bomba. (Jennifer Lopez is a producer.) Recording artist Omarion Grandberry stars as Rob, a New York kid eager to make it as a rapper, though he sometimes resorts to stealing. After thugs take shots at him, his mom sends him to his estranged father (Giancarlo Esposito) in Puerto Rico for safety. Rob's stepbrother (Victor Rasuk) acquaints him with Reggaeton. Joining with pretty dancer C.C. (Zulay Henao), the three get a break in the music biz. Brief, nongraphic violence includes a woman beaten up; pot smoking; drinking; cigarettes; sexually suggestive dancing, revealing clothing; mild bedroom scene; a woman struggles to escape sexual advances in another scene; rare profanity; racial slur; one scene seems to support vigilante justice. Not for middle-schoolers.)
"The Jane Austen Book Club" (Occasionally sudsy but comfy and enjoyable romantic comedy (based on Karen Joy Fowler's book) -- geared more to women and teen girls -- about a group of love-challenged friends who find wit and wisdom in the surprisingly relevant novels of Jane Austen; Kathy Baker as the oft-married Bernadette; Maria Bello as loner dog breeder Jocelyn; Amy Brenneman as Sylvia, whose husband (Jimmy Smits) is cheating; Maggie Grace as their lesbian daughter; Emily Blunt as an unhappily married high school teacher attracted to a hunky student (Kevin Zegers); Hugh Dancy as a sci-fi lit lover trying to woo Jocelyn. Occasional strong profanity; drinking; brief marijuana use; steamy, but nonexplicit love scenes. Too adult for tweens.)
"Across the Universe" (Ravishing, if occasionally incoherent musical from theater genius Julie Taymor, beautifully weaves Beatles songs, well sung by the cast, into a love story among artistic, anti-war activist teens in 1960s New York; Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) joins an underground newspaper; her slacker brother Max (Joe Anderson) drops out of Princeton and gets drafted; Jude (Jim Sturgess), a visiting Liverpudlian, falls for Lucy; cameos by Joe Cocker, Bono, Eddie Izzard. Drug use; psychedelic references; drinking; smoking; profanity; implied promiscuity; war scenes. Some high-schoolers will love the romanticized take on the '60s; not for younger teens.)
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"The Darjeeling Limited" (NEW) (In Wes Anderson's overly precious yet nearly irresistible saga, three adult brothers -- all dysfunctional, spoiled trust-funders estranged since their father's funeral a year earlier -- go on a picturesque train trip through India, seeking spiritual enlightenment and reconciliation, while also indulging in narcotic cough medicine, booze and party drugs. Owen Wilson plays Francis, their self-appointed leader, his head bandaged from a motorcycle accident; Adrien Brody as Peter, the married one, petrified of becoming a dad; Jason Schwartzman as Jack, still numb from a lost love. Strong profanity; steamy, semigraphic sexual situation; upsetting scene in which a child drowns; funeral pyre in Indian village; chain-smoking. OK for sophisticated cinema buffs 16 and older.)
"The Heartbreak Kid" (Ben Stiller in a painfully crude, emotionally unplumbed remake of the 1972 comedy classic (rated PG), now slimed into a lewd farce by the Farrelly brothers (of "There's Something About Mary" R, 1998); he's a 40-ish guy (Stiller) who weds a pretty woman (Malin Akerman) too fast, then finds her crude and stupid on the honeymoon; while she nurses a mega-sunburn, he meets the perfect girl (Michelle Monaghan) at the hotel bar, then lies a lot, trying to squirm out of his situation. Very explicit, comic-athletic sexual situations; graphic (occasionally misogynistic) sexual slang; brief frontal nudity; much seminudity; much drinking; verbal references to rape, drug abuse; graphic homophobic jokes; gags about old people, overweight people; toilet humor; graphic porn photo. Too lewd for under-17s.)
"Michael Clayton" (Writer/director Tony Gilroy's stunning morality tale, rich in secrets and betrayals is a board room drama made epic with sharp dialogue, inspired symbolism, clever time-line manipulation and great acting; George Clooney stars as a law firm's "fixer," struggling with his own issues when asked to clean up a mess made by senior litigato (Tom Wilkinson) who goes off his meds and decides the firm is on the wrong side of a pollution suit against a client company, whose general counsel (Tilda Swinton) is desperate to settle the case. Strong profanity and sexual language; a quiet, bloodless murder; a car bomb; theme about divorce, alienation from one's kids; drinking; drug references. OK for thoughtful teens 16 and older.
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (Gritty, gripping, gorgeous tale explores the myth surrounding the demise of outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and the worshipful young Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) who joined the James Gang in its waning days and shot Jesse in 1882, making himself, to his surprise, not a hero but a pariah; Pitt's James is steely-eyed, given to scary rages. Thunderous shootouts; bloody injuries, including a bullet in the skull, a pistol-whipping, a suicide; James tortures a boy, cuts the heads off snakes; implied shooting of a horse; lewd, misogynistic sexual slang; racial slurs; steamy, but nonexplicit sexual encounter; smoking. For true film buffs and western fans 17 and older.)
"Into the Wild" (LIMITED RELEASE) (Sean Penn's ravishing, emotionally complex adaptation of Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book (including some narration) about Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch in a raw, brave portrait), an idealistic, intensely self-absorbed college grad who responds to the rat race and family troubles by shedding his name and worldly goods to trek cross-country, making friends on society's fringes (Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as a hippie couple, Hal Holbrook as a lonely widower) and eventually meeting his fate in Alaska's wilderness. Frontal nudity; semiexplicit sexual situation; sexual innuendo; marijuana; drinking; profanity; graphic illness; cutting up of animals shot for food, including a moose. For thoughtful older teens, college kids.)
"The Kingdom" (Riveting white-knuckle action flick pushes all our buttons about terrorism, but with a rational, torn-from-the-headlines flavor; Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman as FBI agents who go to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terror attack against U.S. citizens living in a compound there; Ashraf Barhom as a Saudi colonel who helps them. Terror attacks done with shattering realism and a seasick-making lens; victims with bloody injuries, missing limbs, shattered skulls; children at risk; point-blank gun battles; terrorists prepare to decapitate a hostage; occasional profanity; rare mild sexual innuendo. 16 and older with strong stomachs for film mayhem, interest in world affairs.)
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