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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER |
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``Deck the Halls'' (PG, 1 hr., 35 min.) ``Deja Vu'' (PG-13, 2 hrs., 8 min.) Denzel Washington commands the screen with his perfect blend of ease and intensity in this time-bending thriller as an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, sent to investigate the bombing of a crowded New Orleans ferry. ``Deja Vu'' strains credulity to the breaking point, but the roller-coaster ride is too much fun to spoil with logical questions. It includes harrowing violence and a domestic terrorism theme that could unsettle some middle-schoolers. High-schoolers ought to find the story pretty gripping. The explosion is frightening, with people hurled overboard, some on fire, though no wounds or deaths are depicted graphically. There are point-blank gun killings, car chases and crashes, an emergency-room defibrillation and a drowning. The movie also includes sexual innuendo, some of it semi-crude (a joke hinting at gay sex in prison), implied nudity, rare profanity and a drug reference. ATF agent Doug Carlin (Washington) focuses on one victim among the hundreds killed in the bombing. Claire (Paula Patton) seemed to have a connection with the bomber. Working with the FBI and a new satellite surveillance technology that messes with the space-time continuum, he can observe Claire's movements in the days before the incident and in watching, he falls in love. A confluence of love, faith and physics pushes Doug to think he can change the course of events. ``Deja Vu'' builds plenty of suspense, but with its fine cast, poignant shots on location in post-Katrina New Orleans, and sheer humanism, it adds nuance to the meaning of ``homeland security.'' ``The Fountain'' (PG-13, 1 hr., 36 min.) Most teens will lose patience with this flawed but visually stunning, dreamlike meditation on death and letting go. It is too obscure and death-focused for middle-schoolers, but rare high-schoolers may find profundity in it. Director/writer Darren Aronofsky has made ambitious, unusual films before (``Pi,'' R, 1998, about a math visionary, ``Requiem for a Dream,'' in R and NC-17 versions, 2000, about drug addiction). ``The Fountain'' is unusual, too, but muddled and even cloying, as it grasps for a spiritual philosophy to help us face death. It moves up and back between the 16th century, our contemporary world, and the 26th century. Tommy (Hugh Jackman) is a medical researcher in our time, looking for a way to stop brain tumors. His wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), a writer, is dying of one and he refuses to let her go. As he reads her unfinished novel, he enters into its world as a Spanish conquistador (Jackman again) sent to the New World by his queen (Weisz again) in search of a hidden Mayan temple guarding the Tree of Life. In the 26th century, we also see him, head shaved, traveling through space. ``The Fountain,'' in its 16th-century scenes, shows sword fights and stabbings, none of them too graphic. Alleged heretics are strung up and then dropped screaming into a pit. Modern scenes deal with terminal illness and the anguish of surviving loved ones. There are understated scenes of surgery, cardiac arrest and someone using a sharp point to tattoo his finger. A bathtub scene with the married Tommy and Izzi ends with the implied start of a sexual situation. There is also rare profanity. BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME -- 6 AND OLDER: ``The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause'' G (Bright colors and slapstick may divert kids from tacky sets, poorly molded elf ears, and a charmless, pseudo-sentimental script in this tired, shamelessly derivative sequel (to ``The Santa Clause,'' PG, 1994, which wasn't bad, and ``The Santa Clause 2,'' G, 2002, which was); Scott (Tim Allen), the regular guy who took up the Santa mantle in 1994, is in his busy pre-Christmas season, his wife (Elizabeth Mitchell) is very pregnant; he brings her parents (Alan Arkin and Ann-Margret) up to visit, but tries to hide the fact that he is Santa and they are at the North Pole; nasty Jack Frost (Martin Short -- droll, but unable to save the film) plots to make the in-laws' visit so bad that Scott/Santa will quit. Under-6's may be scared when Jack Frost freezes people, or Mrs. Santa goes (gently) into labor; one flatulent reindeer.) -- 7 AND OLDER: ``Happy Feet'' PG (Computer-animated fable spends its first two acts as a glorious, gorgeous, funny, touching penguin musical celebrating diversity; act three morphs into a darker screed about human encroachment on the birds' Antarctic habitat; despite a happy ending, it feels a bit like two films; Mumble (voice of Elijah Wood), a fledgling Emperor penguin, doesn't have the singing voice, or ``heartsong,'' necessary to find and keep a mate; instead, he was born to tap dance (his steps reflect ``motion-captured'' moves by dancer Savion Glover) and his colony rejects him; he finds comical friends in an Adelie colony (led by Robin Williams as Ramon) of Latino penguins who think he's cool; sad about losing the lovely Gloria (Brittany Murphy) at his home colony, he goes off to learn why the fish supply is shrinking and sees humans. Scary bits include looming ships, huge fishing nets and debris; extra-scary scenes show leopard seals, killer whales, birds of prey bursting out of water or swooping down at Mumble; a penguin nearly asphyxiates as a plastic six-pack holder tightens on his neck. Intense for many kids under 7, some under 8.) ``Flushed Away'' PG (Deliciously witty computer-animated fable mimics clay-mation style of ``Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'' (G, 2005); many jokes only adults and/or Anglophiles will get, but enough character comedy and action for kids; Roddy (voice of Hugh Jackman), a pampered London pet mouse, gets flushed down the loo by a conniving sewer rat (Shane Richie) and finds a mini-London below, built by rodents and bugs from debris; he and a girl mouse (Kate Winslet) take on an evil cabal of amphibians and rats (Ian McKellen as their leader, Toad). Mild toilet humor (a chocolate bar, partly in its wrapper, floats by; oozy brown slugs that shriek and sing); under-7's could be unnerved by chase scenes on sewer rapids and a tsunami-like flood; insults such as ``dipstick'' and ``get stuffed''; Roddy eats maggots that look like rice.) -- 10 AND OLDER: ``Deck the Halls'' PG (NEW) (Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick waste time, electricity as New England neighbors who feud over the new guy's (DeVito) over-the-top Christmas lights in this crass, throwaway comedy. Mild, but occasionally a bit naughty sexual innuendo: not-quite-naked cheesecake painting, a boy spying on pretty teenage twins, a verbal joke hinting that a man's privates are peeking out of his briefs, homophobic humor, references to the sheriff being a cross-dresser (bra and thong visible at edges of his uniform), teen girls doing a mildly sexy dance routine and their fathers, not recognizing them, cheer as though they were strippers; gross gags (a camel spits); rare mild profanity; irreverent use of holy water; a sleigh falls into a pond; a speed skating pileup.) -- PG-13s: ``Deja Vu'' (NEW) (Denzel Washington rules the screen as an ATF agent investigating the bombing of a crowded New Orleans ferry in a crackerjack thriller that blends suspense, humanism, faith and physics; he focuses on one apparent victim (Paula Patton) among the many dead, observing her life before the bombing with a new time-bending surveillance technology. Ferry explosion is harrowing, with people hurled overboard, some on fire -- no wounds or deaths graphically shown; point-blank shootings; car chases, crashes; emergency-room defibrillation; drowning; sexual innuendo, some of it semi-crude (a joke hinting at gay sex in prison); implied nudity; rare profanity; drug reference. Violence, domestic terror theme too intense for some middle-schoolers.) ``The Fountain'' (NEW) (Writer/director Darren Aronofsky's visually stunning but confusing, even cloying experimental meditation on death alternates between 16th century, contemporary times and 26th century in story of a scientist (Hugh Jackman) searching for a way to stop brain tumors, while his wife (Rachel Weisz) is dying of the disease; in 16th-century scenes -- part of book she's been writing -- he is a Spanish conquistador, sent by his queen (Weisz) to find a Mayan temple and the Tree of Life within; in 26th century he's a Buddha-like figure, traveling in space, seeking his wife's spirit. Sword fights, stabbings, throat-cuttings -- none too graphic; heretics strung up, then dropped into a pit; muted surgery, cardiac arrest, death bed scenes; bathtub scene ends with subtly implied start of sexual situation; rare profanity.) ``Copying Beethoven'' (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) (Thrilling story imagines a collaboration between Ludwig van Beethoven (Ed Harris) near the end of his life -- slovenly, ailing, filled with music but almost totally deaf -- and a young fictionalized female would-be composer (Diane Kruger) who ignores his crudeness and verbal abuse, copies his new scores for the printer and, in a glorious sequence, crouches in the orchestra and helps him keep the beat while conducting his new Ninth Symphony; a vivid take on the gift and pain of artistic genius, film portrays a difficult man with a good heart. Crude humor, including the composer exposing his backside; profanity; sexual innuendo; sexual language; drinking; rats. Arts-conscious high-schoolers.) ``Casino Royale'' (Daniel Craig is an arresting, rough-edged James Bond, newly licensed to kill and capable of mistakes, in crackerjack spy thriller; film departs from some Bond traditions (gadgetry, sly repartee) and uses telling bits of realpolitik (guerrilla fighters in Africa), but is also long and violent; villain is a banker (Mads Mikkelsen) to terrorists; Bond plans to bankrupt him in a high-stakes poker game; a gorgeous money minder (Eva Green) from Bond's boss, M (Judi Dench), tags along. Bone-snapping fights, gunplay, a drowning, a poisoning, a cobra-mongoose fight; one sour note is a prolonged torture scene in which it is strongly implied that a captive, naked Bond (shown seated, from the side) is battered on his privates; steamy, nongraphic love scenes; scantily clad women; drinking. Iffy for middle-schoolers.) ``Stranger Than Fiction'' (Utterly engaging, visually quirky comic-romantic fantasy about wonkish IRS agent Howard Crick (Will Ferrell) who starts hearing a narrator in his head and realizes he is the protagonist in a novel-in-progress and that the writer plans to kill him off; added delights are Dustin Hoffman as a quirky literary scholar, Emma Thompson as the death-obsessed writer unaware her hero is ``real,'' and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the free-spirited cookie maker Howard loves. Passionate kissing, tossing off of outer garments, implied sexual tryst; middling profanity, crude humor; drinking; smoking; back-view nudity; lethal car accidents; footage of animals downed by predators. Literary teens 15 and up.) -- R's: ``Fast Food Nation'' (LIMITED RELEASE) (Fictionalized adaptation of Eric Schlosser's nonfiction book is a passionate, disturbing, well-acted, but also grim and rambling screed about what goes into the fast-food burgers we eat; Greg Kinnear as a fast-food executive who learns indigestible facts about the way meat packing plants are run; story also tracks undocumented Mexican workers (Wilmer Valderrama and Catalina Sandino Moreno) at one plant, a teen (Ashley Johnson) who works at a fast-food restaurant and naive student activists. Bloody, graphic montage of cattle being slaughtered; workers hurt in plant accident; graphic sexual situations; sexual innuendo; nudity; drug use; smoking, drinking; swearing. Some Spanish dialogue with subtitles. Socially conscious teens 17 and up.) ``Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan'' (Brilliant, subversive British comic Sacha Baron Cohen (famed as pseudo hip-hopper, Ali G) as another of his characters, supposed Kazakh TV personality Borat, on a tour of America; shot as cinema verite, with ordinary people largely caught unaware that the crude, sex-obsessed, viciously anti-Semitic, but puppyish Borat is not real. Tone is lewd, sexually explicit, misogynistic, bigoted, scatological, profane, squirm-inducing. Near-frontal nudity; jokes about rape; very graphic sexual language; likely to offend actual Kazakhs with its portrayal. No under-17s -- more for college kids into rude, whacked-out humor.)
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