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JANE HORWITZ - FAMILY FILMGOER |
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``Night at the Museum'' (PG, 1 hr., 48 min.) ``Rocky Balboa'' (PG, 1 hr., 2 min.) Many teens may not know the ``Rocky'' films and it is an open question whether they'll warm to this meandering, hugely likable, portrait of the 50-something ex-fighter, his fortune gone, his wife Adrian (Talia Shire in flashbacks) dead, his son (Milo Ventimiglia) semi-estranged and his days focused on visiting the cemetery and regaling customers in his Italian restaurant with anecdotes. What a great character Sylvester Stallone created. The last films in the series (``Rocky V'' PG-13, 1990; ``Rocky IV,'' PG, 1985) were not great, but in ``Rocky Balboa,'' Stallone as writer, director and star harks back to the simplicity and generosity that made ``Rocky'' (PG, 1976), which he wrote and acted in as an unknown, so good. In ``Rocky Balboa'' the (fictional) heavyweight champ (Antonio Tarver) challenges Rocky to a Las Vegas exhibition match after commentators opine that Rocky in his prime could have beaten him. While training for the fight, Rocky expounds charmingly on his philosophy of life, and brings cheer into the lives of a poor waitress (Geraldine Hughes) and her son (James Francis Kelly III). In addition to a few hard punches, cuts and bruises in fairly nongraphic fight scenes, ``Rocky Balboa'' contains mild curse words, a couple of shouting matches and drinking. ``We Are Marshall'' (PG, 2 hr., 5 min.) Touching and involving, even though it is also too long and a tad too impressed with its own seriousness, ``We Are Marshall'' explores, in the form of a sports saga, how people recover from tragedy. Its themes of grief are better suited to teens, despite the PG rating. The film includes repeated use of the S-word, a few milder oaths and scenes in which college kids drink beer. It depicts the site of a plane crash, though the crash itself is not re-enacted. (We see passengers in the plane, there is a flash, and all goes black.) We see burning wreckage, a body bag, and loved ones in anguish. ``We Are Marshall'' stars Matthew McConaughey as Jack Lengyel, the real-life coach who came to Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., to revive the school's decimated football program after a Nov. 14, 1970, plane crash killed nearly the entire team, the coaching staff and many school boosters. Lengyel and his still-stricken assistant coach (Matthew Fox as Red Dawson) build a new team, but the real issue is how to galvanize people still raw with grief. McConaughey plays Lengyel as a kind of driven goofball with a thoughtful side -- in ghastly 1970s checkered slacks. Intense portrayals by Anthony Mackie as a player who wasn't on the plane and feels a survivor's burden, David Strathairn as the shy college president and Ian McShane as a grieving board member all lend emotional weight. ``The Good Shepherd'' (R, 2 hr., 37 min.) High-schoolers 16 and older who have a taste for sophisticated espionage yarns will be primed for ``The Good Shepherd.'' A hypnotic, metaphor-filled yarn, the movie offers a fictionalized but history-fuelled account of how the CIA evolved from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II into a massive Cold War intelligence (and covert ops) shop. The film shifts between 1939, World War II, postwar Europe and the 1950s and '60s. Matt Damon plays the gifted, guarded and emotionally stingy Yale student, Edward Wilson, recruited by that school's secret society, Skull and Bones, around 1939, then by OSS and the CIA. We see all the cloak-and-dagger and moral compromise through his eyes. Angelina Jolie plays his unhappy socialite wife. Robert De Niro (who directed), William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, John Turturro, and Billy Crudup play his colleagues. There are relatively nongraphic acts of murder, betrayal, torture and suicide, explicit sex scenes, an unwed pregnancy, nudity, profanity, ethnic slurs, smoking, drinking, drugs, and toilet humor. BEYOND THE RATINGS GAME -- 6 AND OLDER: ``Charlotte's Web'' (G) (Entertaining, if not sublime, semi-Hollywoodized adaptation of E.B. White's beloved 1952 book -- live-action but with computer-generated effects -- about a piglet, Wilbur (voice of Dominic Scott Kay), rescued from slaughter (because he's a runt) by a little farm girl, Fern (Dakota Fanning), who must move him into a neighbor's barn, where he is befriended first by the spider, Charlotte (Julia Roberts), and eventually by geese Gussy and Golly (Oprah Winfrey and Cedric the Entertainer), cows Bitsy and Betsy (Kathy Bates and Reba McEntire), the spider-phobic horse, Ike (Robert Redford), and the rat, Templeton (Steve Buscemi), among others; Charlotte saves Wilbur from a second threat of slaughter by weaving a message, ``some pig,'' into her web; humans deem it a wonder; tale still brings a tear at the end when Charlotte passes on. Mildly crude barnyard expressions; cow-flatulence joke; subtle references to the killing of pigs, including Fern's father carrying an ax, and the smokehouse.) -- 7 AND OLDER: ``Night at the Museum'' (PG) (NEW) (Enjoyable, if under-realized and illogically scripted comic romp with computer-generated effects about a loser (Ben Stiller) who gets a job as the night guard at New York's natural history museum and discovers, after his aged predecessors (Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs) leave him, 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) all come to life and tear up the place; he must contain the chaos to keep his job, impress his son (Jake Cherry) and woo a cute tour guide (Carla Gugino). Little kids may jump at the dinosaur chasing Larry, the Huns grabbing him and the monkey biting him; toilet humor; a few rude but unprofane expressions.) ``Happy Feet'' (PG) (Computer-animated fable spends its first two acts as a glorious, funny, touching penguin pop musical celebrating diversity; act three morphs into a grim screed about human encroachment on the birds' Antarctic habitat; despite a happy ending, it feels like two films; Mumble (voice of Elijah Wood), a fledgling Emperor penguin, doesn't have the singing voice, or ``heartsong,'' crucial to finding a mate; instead, he's driven to tap dance and his colony rejects him; he finds comical friends among an Adelie colony (led by Robin Williams as Ramon) of Latino penguins; sad about rejection by silver-throated Gloria (Brittany Murphy) at his home colony, he treks off to learn why the fish supply is shrinking and encounters humans. Scary bits include looming ships, 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.) -- 10 AND OLDER: ``Eragon'' (PG) (Rather silly, warmed over mythic ``Dungeons & Dragons'' tale (from Christopher Paolini's book, the first in a planned trilogy) -- live-action with added special effects -- about teenager Eragon (Edward Speleers), who finds a dragon's egg, sees it hatch and grow into the flying beast, Saphira (voice of Rachel Weisz), and realizes he is destined to be a Dragon Rider, taking her into battle against an evil king (John Malkovich) and sorcerer (Robert Carlyle); a wise ex-Dragon Rider (Jeremy Irons) and a lovely elf warrior (Sienna Guillory) help him. Battles with demons, their faces swarming with bugs; implied impalements and arrow-piercings, nongraphic except for occasional bloodless gashes; nongraphic scene (with screams) implies soldiers torture a man; cool/scary, swooping flights on Saphira; newly-hatched Saphira eats a rat, mostly off-camera.) ``Unaccompanied Minors'' (PG) (Thudding, ethically iffy farce about tweens traveling alone, stranded in an airport during a Christmas Eve blizzard and raising Cain -- running up bills they can't cover, taking stuff from unclaimed bags and escaping a curmudgeonly airport official (Lewis Black) trying to keep them in check; one boy (Dyllan Christopher) aims to get to a hotel where his little sister (Dominique Saldana) has been sent with the ``good'' kids. Car explosion and realistic chases might unnerve under-10s who would like the silliness otherwise; adults come off as mean and/or idiotic; one grown-up is shown drunk; semi-crude humor; kids discuss pain, loneliness of having divorced parents.) ``The Nativity Story'' (PG) (Reverent, understated dramatization (based on gospels of Matthew and Luke) of the story of Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus; good actors, authentic-looking settings, and a fervent yet non-proselytizing tone will move believers, but won't put off non-Christians. In Massacre of the Innocents, a soldier draws his sword and a parent weeps over a dead child -- nothing graphic shown; pained talk among Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes), her family and intended husband Joseph (Oscar Isaac) about her pregnancy -- at first they doubt her claims of virginity and divine intervention; crowd threatens to stone her; dead prisoners shown bound to trees, crucified; a snake startles Mary's donkey; labor pains. Kids need good concentration for this slow, quiet film.) -- PG-13s AND TWO PG's MORE FOR TEENS: ``Rocky Balboa'' (PG) (NEW) (Sylvester Stallone's hugely amiable, meandering swan song for the great South Philadelphia boxer and philosopher he created (with many sequels) 30 years ago (``Rocky,'' PG, 1976) harks back to that first film very nicely; now in his 50s and widowed, Rocky regales customers at his little restaurant with boxing tales, until the (fictional) heavyweight champ (Antonio Tarver) challenges him to an exhibition match; as usual, Rocky gives 120 percent, despite objections of his estranged son (Milo Ventimiglia), but with the support of his brother-in-law (Burt Young) and a struggling waitress (Geraldine Hughes) he befriends. A few hard punches, cuts and bruises in fairly nongraphic fight scenes; mild curse words; a couple of shouting matches; drinking. Teens.) ``We Are Marshall'' (PG) (NEW) (Matthew McConaughey has a winning goofiness and drive as real-life college football coach Jack Lengyel, who rebuilt the football program at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., soon after a tragic Nov. 14, 1970, plane crash killed most of the school's football team, coaching staff and many local boosters; Matthew Fox as a still-hurting assistant coach, Anthony Mackie as a haunted varsity player, David Strathairn as the shy college president, Ian McShane as a tortured board member. Aftermath of plane crash depicted, with burning wreckage, a body bag, anguished loved ones; crash is not re-enacted -- we see passengers on a plane, a flash, then blackness; repeated use of S-word, a few milder oaths; college kids drinking beer.) ``The Pursuit of Happyness'' (Will Smith tugs hearts as a down-on-his-luck family man scrambling to get out of debt and make it through a stock brokerage internship that pays zilch in San Francisco, circa 1981 -- a fine, refreshingly un-Hollywood film; Smith's real son Jaden plays his film son, with Thandie Newton as the despondent wife and mom who leaves them; a gripping, unvarnished look at being one paycheck away from the street; loosely based on entrepreneur Chris Gardner's life. Rare profanity, including the F-word as a graffito and spoken by a child; smoking; depiction of a tense, disintegrating marriage; scenes in which Chris gives blood for cash and in which he and his son spend nights in a homeless shelter and in a subway restroom; shoving and shouting but no violence. Teens.) ``The Holiday'' (Utterly phony but quite watchable (pretty people, pretty locales) romantic comedy may delight sentimental high-schoolers; a shy London magazine writer (Kate Winslet) and a self-absorbed Los Angeles producer of film trailers (Cameron Diaz, mugging rather than acting), eager to escape wretched love lives, arrange via a Web site to swap houses over Christmas; the English girl meets a nice composer (Jack Black) in L.A.; the L.A. girl meets the English girl's dishy brother (Jude Law). One couple starts an affair minutes after meeting; no sexual situations apart from semi-passionate kisses and bedroom cuddles; sex discussed, but in muted, nonexplicit language; brief allusion to suicide; rare profanity; sexual innuendo; drinking. Not for middle-schoolers.) -- R's: ``The Good Shepherd'' (NEW) (Terrifically wrought, hypnotic fictionalized saga traces in a looping, non-linear narrative the growth of the CIA from its World War II inception as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) into a covert Cold War behemoth, seen through the eyes of Matt Damon as a counterintelligence agent recruited while still a student at Yale in 1939, already a guarded, non-trusting, emotionally remote fellow; directed with brains and style by Robert De Niro, who also acts in it, with William Hurt, John Turturro and other heavyweights; Angelina Jolie as the agent's neglected wife. Fairly non-gory acts of murder, torture, suicide; betrayal theme; explicit though stylized sex scenes; unwed pregnancy; nudity; profanity; ethnic slurs; smoking, drinking, drugs. 16 and older.) ``The Good German'' (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) (Swell-looking, often compelling attempt by director Steven Soderbergh to work in the style of post-World War II films noir, borrowing heavily from the likes of ``Casablanca'' (1942) and ``The Third Man'' (1949), with a circuitous (too much so) plot and shadowy, sharp-angled images; fun, if something of an academic exercise; George Clooney as an American magazine correspondent in occupied Berlin in 1945, trying to seem more savvy than he is; Tobey Maguire as a corrupt officer dealing in black-market goods and prostitution; Cate Blanchett as a German widow Clooney's character once knew, now with many secrets. Explicit sexual situations; semi-nudity; beatings, shootings; strong profanity; ethnic slurs; smoking; drinking. High-school-age cinema aficionados.) ``Curse of the Golden Flower'' (NEW; LIMITED RELEASE) (Director Zhang Yimou's ravishing, opulent visual and aural feast spins, a confusing and melodramatic web of power grabs and betrayals among an emperor (Chow Yun Fat), his empress, whom he is slowly poisoning (Gong Li), and their sons -- set during China's later Tang Dynasty, around 928. Balletic, bloody, computer-enhanced sword fights and massive battles, with implied runnings-through, throat-slashings; an attempted suicide; much sexual innuendo; incest theme. In Mandarin with subtitles. High-school cinema buffs.) ``Blood Diamond'' (Gripping thriller -- ultraviolent and tough to watch, but riveting -- explores issue of ``conflict diamonds'' mined and smuggled in Africa's war zones; Leonardo DiCaprio as hardened white Zimbabwean smuggler; Djimon Hounsou as a fisherman caught in the middle; DiCaprio's smuggler offers to help fisherman get his son (Kagiso Kuypers) back from guerrilla fighters who abducted the boy (to be a child soldier) in exchange for a rare pink stone the fisherman hid before escaping forced labor at a mine; Jennifer Connelly as a journalist demanding the smuggler take a stand. Bloody point-blank shootings, hacking of men, women, children; implication limbs are chopped off; strong profanity; smoking, drinking. Too bloody for under-17s.) ``Apocalypto'' (Mel Gibson's wholly involving, visually ravishing, ultraviolent thriller set during last days of Mayan empire in Central America, nearly 500 years ago, using all indigenous actors; told mostly from viewpoint of a hunter (Rudy Youngblood) who struggles with mythic intensity to escape captivity of brutal troops from a Mayan city who overrun his village, so he can rescue his hidden wife and son. Graphically, gaspingly violent (a Gibson trademark); children being hurt; a hard childbirth; implied attempted rapes; partial nudity; sexual innuendo; rare profanity. In Mayan dialect with subtitles. 17 and older.) |
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