RED

It’s not paranoia if they are really out to get you, and that’s the conclusion that four ex-spies come to when they learn that someone is trying to kill them. Classified R.E.D., (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) they have been targeted for assassination so they must bond together in order to survive. Bruce Willis (Die Hard) plays Frank Moses and he is the first to discover the plot. When he uncovers that his phone line has been tapped he realizes that he has put a young woman in serious danger. Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) portrays Sarah, an associate at the Social Security Administration and she and Frank have been talking on the phone. Frank is enamored of her and their frequent conversations about spy novels and travel have been misconstrued. Her life is now in jeopardy and Frank must find a way to get her out.
 
Frank decides to kidnap her and after a brief struggle he takes her to a retirement home where his friend Joe, Morgan Freeman (Invictus) lives. After warning Joe to watch his back they move on to see Marvin, John Malkovich (Secretariat) who is already paranoid and at the ready. After loading up with heavy weaponry they are discovered and must move on. Next they collect Victoria, Helen Mirren (The Queen) who in her day she was the best Wetwork operative alive. Now in retirement she admits that she still takes the occasional odd job. Her special skills will soon prove to be most helpful.
 
Together again, these former spies must find out who is trying to kill them and why. They break into the CIA and visit an old friend, 93-year-old Ernest Borgine (Marty) for some secret files. More informed than they were before they call in a favor from Brian Cox (The Escapists), a former Russian spy. They learn that CIA agent William Cooper, Karl Urban (Star Trek) has been ordered to kill them all. Now they must find the reason why.
 
RED is a lot of fun and I really loved this film. It was like watching stylized mayhem. Borrowing from the graphic novel that inspired the film, the shots are artistic which adds to the over-all look of the film. Bruce Willis is at his charming best but he is also still the badass that we’ve grown to love. The chemistry between him and Mary-Louise is precious. Mary-Louise Parker is completely adorable and her comedic sense is excellent. She really contributes a lot to this film.
 
Morgan Freeman is a bit underused but I guess at 73 he wasn’t up to some of the action sequences. But Helen Mirren makes up for that. She displays a lot of sex appeal slinging around her heavy weaponry. Braced behind a machine gun with an unblinking reserve, she is one hot senior citizen. John Malkovich supplied the explosives and some additional comic relief. A true paranoid, his conspiracy theories are suddenly coming true. At first he is seen as a crack-pot but when his instincts are validated he comes off as a wise and resourceful man. This is an excellent role for him and he really chews it up.
 
Karl Urban as the assassin is almost as relentless as the 2-1000 and he really shows his grit. He has one weakness though; he’s not a machine. Agent Cooper, like Frank Moses is an ex-Marine and is dedicated to his country. He follows orders without question, but he is also a man of honor. In private life he has a wife and children and this makes him vulnerable as a spy. Will he do the right thing when the truth comes out? Frank is betting yes.

RED is a fun spy romp and is full of great characters and has plenty of action. I loved its youthful graphic novel look, yet it will also appeal to the AARP crowd. Just seeing Helen Mirren man a machine gun in a white ball gown is incentive enough. The script is smart, the stunts are fantastic and with this cast you can’t loose. This film has something for everybody.

Rating: First Run Being over 50 never looked so cool
 
 

Secretariat

It is interesting how where you see a film and who you see it with can impact your movie-going experience. When I saw Secretariat it was in a small local theatre located in the middle of an urban mall. I went with my best friend who is a horse lover and there were only about 30 people in the theatre, and this was on a Saturday night. I was surprised by the low attendance, but there was one woman in our row that was enthusiastic enough for all of us. She clapped, cheered, shouted out encouragement; I was beginning to think that she had a wager on the race. It was almost like she was a Disney employee or perhaps a Secretariat shareholder. Her reactions to the film were over the top, which made me wonder why mine were so lackluster. It really was an strange experience.
 
I personally love horses and I enjoy a good horse racing film. My favorite is The Reivers with Steve McQueen. I also appreciated Universal’s Seabiscuit, but there was something flat and unmoving for me in this film. I found Secretariat a little too sanitized and simple which made me feel like I was missing out. The woman in my row was having a great time. Why was this film not working for me?
 
Diane Lane (Nights in Rodanthe) plays Penny Chenery, the daughter of a Virginian horse breeder. When her mother dies and her father starts having health issues Penny leaves her Colorado home in order to save the family farm. This action is unusual for a housewife in the 70’s, which is one reason why I had trouble with this film. It never explains how she juggled her responsibilities in a realistic way. It shows her missing a daughter’s play and how exhausted she was trying to do housework after hours of doing books. But it glosses over the real drama. I’m sure her husband gave her a much harder time than it shows on the screen, and the bit about her being a woman in a man’s field is true, but it has been done before. It is just not that typical.
 
Diane Lane tries really hard to give Penny gravitas and verve, but for me it came off too easily and pat. It takes more than a song on the radio or some encouraging words to solve life’s problems. And if your biggest obstacle in life is whether or not to sell a horse worth 8 million dollars, well that’s not a problem most of us will face. Penny had the choice of selling the horses, paying off the debts and returning to her husband and family. But instead she chose to hang on to a dream and see it through to the end. The stakes were not life or death, it was whether this horse could be proven to be a winner. A failure was not the end of the world.

My friend the horse lover liked the movie but then he is a guy. He is not as sensitive as I am to the way women are portrayed in film. This story is just as much about Penny as it is about the horse, yet the script did not do her justice. It was way too shallow and two-dimensional. This film could have been so much more.

John Malkovich (Con Air) plays a horse trainer who is coaxed out of retirement to bring Secretariat to victory. Unlike other horse movies, I never understood what his special skills were. In The Reivers the horse trainer learned that the horse loved sardines and used this secret to get the horse to run. And in Seabiscuit the trainer was a gentle soul with the ability to repair a broken body as well as a broken spirit. But what did Lucien Lauren bring? I’m sure in real life he was quite the trainer, but as John Malkovich played him he was just a flashy dresser who liked to cuss in French. I never understood what he brought to the equation.

Secretariat is not a bad film. I did find it entertaining. But I seem to be hard on movies that disappoint me. Secretariat is a family film and would be great to see at home with the kids. But to pay full price at the theatre is a little too much. I like my movies with more depth and I found this Secretariat seriously wanting.

Rating: Bargain Matinee Great family film for the kiddies
 

Let Me In

When I heard that someone was remaking Sweden’s Let The Right One In I had the same reaction as everyone else who has seen it; why? The original movie is so good, it translates well and is only a couple of years old. But since the majority of Americans seldom get a chance to see foreign language films, even if they want to, I guess it is a sound marketing decision. However, the aggravation for us film buffs is that the Americanization of these films so often ruins them. We hate to see a good movie destroyed.
 
To answer our fears, director Matt Reeves appeared at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con. His goal was to show respect for the original material while at the same time-sharing his vision with us. He followed his remarks with a clip from the film and I have to admit, it looked pretty good. Now that I’ve seen the movie I can say with all honesty, he did a remarkable job.
 
Let Me In is a vampire movie, but don’t let that keep you away. If you are turned off by Twilight, True Blood, and the Vampire Diaries, this is completely different. It is more of a relationship drama with kids. Kodi Smit- McPhee (The Road) plays Owen, a twelve year old boy whose parents are getting divorced. Small and slight, he is constantly being bullied at school but keeps it to himself rather than worry his already overwhelmed mother. Unable to deal with her sadness, he spends a lot of his time sitting on the playground in the snow. When he is called in to his room, he likes to spy on his neighbors with a telescope. Owen is an isolated and lonely little boy.

One night Owen spots a mysterious girl who arrives very late to move into the apartment next door. When she appears on his jungle-gym the next evening at first he is disturbed. It has always been his place of solitude and he was loathe to share it. But when he notices that she is barefoot and unaffected by the cold he becomes intrigued by her. Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) appears to be his age and just as lonely as he is, but he is wary. There is something different and strange about her. She informs him that they can’t be friends and he informs her that she smells funny. Despite this inauspicious beginning they become very close. Once Abby can trust him, she tells him her secret, she is a vampire trapped in the body of a twelve year old girl. She must kill in order to survive.

Due to Abby’s small size and the attention she would bring traveling alone, she has a caretaker who does her hunting for her. We know little about this repressed melancholy man. As a father figure Richard Jenkins (Eat Pray Love) protects Abby and tends to her every need. It is a well rehearsed routine that has been going on for ages and she definitely has a hold on him. Every night he leaves with his murder kit and looks for his next kill. He then hides the bodies and conceals them for as long as he can. When the murders are discovered, things will get too hot and they’ll have to move on again. You can tell that this is a pattern that has been going on for a long time.

I know that this sounds like an odd premiss for a movie, but it is really a beautiful film. Both the Swedish and the American films captures the loneliness of adolescence and the terror of being bullied. Owen is so full of rage over his circumstances that he practices revenge fantasies in his head. It is no wonder that he doesn’t run from Abby when he finally finds out the truth. He knows that he is capable of murder himself. Only his physique and size keep him from putting his tormentors away. If he had the courage and the means, they’d all be dead by now. That’s how angry and helpless he feels.

Let Me In is a masterpiece of mood and tension and parts of it are truly terrifying. But unlike your typical horror film this film won’t jump out and grab you. Rather it will seduce you and bring you in to its world. What would you do to protect your child? And to what lengths would you go for a friend? This is a horror film that will make you think. It is not your typical vampire film and it truly deserves your time. Let it in to your schedule and find the time to see it. Rent it if you have to. It is an excellent film.

Rating: First Run Let this film in, please

The Social Network

One evening I was on the Warner Brothers lot and I cut down a side street to save time. Along the way I saw two men talking and when I passed them I realized that it was Rob Lowe and Thomas Schlamme. My heart skipped a beat because I am a big fan of The West Wing and I thought it was cool to see them in person. On my way back they were still there so I decided to be bold and went up and introduced myself. I told these gentlemen that the reason I loved the show so much was because it took a subject that I hated (politics) and challenged me to be interested. It made politics human and for once in my life I could appreciate the art of it. I could also see how hard it is to get things done in government. It really takes men and women with passion and resolve to institute change. Politics is not for the feint of heart.

One of the main reasons that The West Wing is so accessible is the brilliant writing of Aaron Sorkin. He took something complicated and remote, and made it relatable. He has done the same thing for The Social Network. Everything in this movie is outside the area of my expertise; computer science, corporate law, algorithms, collegiate society, yet I was able to follow the entire story and was engaged throughout the process. Somehow Aaron made nerd stuff cool and understandable. This movie is intense and I was intrigued from beginning to end.

The Social Network tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg and how he created the computer sensation Facebook, a multi billion-dollar company. Jesse Eisenberg (Zombieland) plays Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield (Never Let Me Go) plays his best friend and co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Created in a college dorm room, the idea took off and spread like wildfire, but along the way, others claimed credit or tried to wiggle in on their success. This film chronicles the creation process and the litigation that followed.

The brilliant writing and directing in this film keeps the story moving but the acting is excellent as well. Armie Hammer (Blackout) plays both of the Winklevoss twins. They along with their associate Divya Narendra, Max Minghella (Agora), had the original networking idea that Zuckerberg expounded on. They brought Zuckerberg in as a computer programmer, but he immediately saw their shortcomings and took their idea to a whole new level. The film never decides for us who is right or wrong. It just lays out the facts and allows us to decide.

Justin Timberlake (Alpha Dog) portrays Napster creator Sean Parker. He came along later with a lot of big ideas and razzle-dazzle and created a wedge between Zuckerberg and Saverin. This divide destroyed their friendship and almost ruined the company. This movie is interesting on so many levels it really needs to be seen. I highly recommend this film. On Facebook I vote “like”.

Rating: Must See The history of genius