Two Weeks

SALLY FIELD plays a woman reflecting on her life while facing death.

Sally Field dying to act in ‘Two Weeks’
I’m sorry. I can actually remember perky Sally Field as the wirey teenager in the TV series “Gidget” or as “The Flying Nun.”
In “Two Weeks,” she plays the family matriarch who happens to be dying of cancer.
This is a real slice of life film, full of realistic events, people and dialog. It has so many humanistic touches, it makes for compelling viewing.
Field plays Anita Bergman, a woman with three sons and a daughter. She’s divorced and remarried.
She loves her family, especially her grandchildren. She is also dying. There is no hope.
So family members take a break from their busy lives to go home and wait for their mother to die. For some, it appears they secretly hope this will all be done in a timely manner so they can return to work.
Ben Chaplin, Thomas Cavanagh and Glenn Howerton are the brothers. Howerton plays the baby brother, who still gets bossed around, whose self-centered wife none of the other family members can stand.
Two of the brothers end up in their old twin beds. Sleeping there now, the 30-somethings look a little ridiculous.
The daughter, played by Julianne Nicholson, picks up brother Keith (Chapman) at the airport. The back of her car is filled with books she has purchased on a guides to dying, what the person goes through and how you should act.
The Field character tries to rule her family as long as possible but becomes weak and helpless.
She is relegated to lying in bed, pressing a button to feed herself morphine to curb the pain, until she is too weak to do that. Then her children take over appropriating the morphine.
There are sweet scenes, like when an old girlhood friend comes over and they have many laughs reminiscing. When the friend leaves the room, she breaks down crying.
But for the Field character, the laughs are more of a pain killer than any drug.
There are humorous touches, like the neighbors who knock on the family’s door and hand the boys tuna casseroles.
The plot is interrupted periodically by a video interview one son does with the Field character, apparently shortly after her diagnosis.
Here she is alert, funny, pensive, pretty. It’s a far cry from what we see later, as she wastes away, her skin turns white, she experiences lesions.
Boys will be boys, girls will be girls. Daughter Emily (Nicholson) sorts and cleans. She sits stoically beside her frail mother while she sleeps.
Each child takes a turn at the bedside. When it’s a brother, sitting beside mother isn’t enough. Each requires a hand-held game to pass the time.
When brother Keith arrives, his first concern is the house has no high-speed Internet. We hear him on the phone to the Internet provider telling how his dying mother’s last wish is for high-speed Internet.
This is a very human story, something everyone goes through at one time or another.
Field gets special attention for her tremendous acting ability. She has grown up in front of the camera and rarely disappoints.
Kudos to Steve Stockman, who wrote and directs this film, for his decision to take on this important project.
It’s a combination of an excellent story, great cast and especially, fine writing.

TWO WEEKS
• Directed and written by Steve Stockman
• Rated R for language, including sexual references
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Ten, Death at a Funeral

THINKFilms
ADAM BRODY in “The Ten.”








'Ten,' 'Funeral' films good for a few laughs

MGM
RUPERT GRAVES and Matthew MacFadyen in “Death at a Funeral .”

OK folks, it’s time to add some whacky, irreverent but very funny films to your Netflix account.
If you aren’t easily offended and have stilted sense of humor, latch on to “The Ten” and “Death At A Funeral.”
“The Ten” is a series of whacky, almost Pythonesque stories loosely based on the 10 Commandments.
It starts with Adam Brody excited about his first jump from a plane. Out he goes, except he forgot his parachute.
He hits the ground and ends up alive with only his head sticking out. The doctor declares if they try to free him from the ground, he will die.
So he ends up the focal point of a bad situation comedy but loses his girl friend, played by Winona Ryder.
Then there’s the librarian, played by Gretchen Mol, who goes on a rare vacation and ends up having a passionate affair with Jesus Christ. She learns his identify when something falls from the boat they are having a romantic interlude in. He gets up and walks on the water to retrieve it. Remember, these films aren’t for the easily offended.
Ken Marino is a patient who kills a patient as “a goof” and is sentenced to prison when the judge gets bored with the testimony. He — um — becomes romantically involved with his roommate.
Meanwhile, Winona, who left her boyfriend stuck in the dirt, marries a newscaster, then leaves him on their honeymoon for a wooden puppet.
There’s an animated segment and a story about two neighbors who try to top each other by buying more Cat Scan machines.
Not to mention the narrator who leaves his wife during the film to have an affair with a dumb-but-sexy younger woman.
It’s a lot of zany fun that gets thrown at you in fast pace. If one thing isn’t funny for you, hold on, something else will be right behind.
That’s also sort of the premise for “Death At A Funeral.”
This British import was directed by Frank Oz and tells the story of an extended family mourning the loss of one of their own.
Daniel (played by Matthew Macfadyen) and Jane (Keeley Hawes) live with his parents but want their own flat. Then dad dies and all of the friends and relatives are invited to a dignified service at the ivy-covered family home. Well, when the mortuary brings the correct body.
As in “The Ten,” there’s lots of subplots to keep track of with hilarious results.
Daniel gets in a squabble with his self-centered brother, played by Rupert Graves, who is the successful author who now lives in New York City but refuses to do his dad’s eulogy.
Cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan) drags along her fiancé, who she thinks has taken a Valium but actually it’s LSD. He ends up nude on the roof walking around.
Then there’s dad’s special friend, Peter (played by midget Peter Dinklage.) He attempts to blackmail the brothers.
Let us not forget the cranky, ancient, crude uncle, played by Peter Vaughan.
When things get going, they get going. It’s sort of like the disaster that besets “Meet the Parents,” but this time at a funeral.
So pick up these films for a few belly laughs. They are unconventional, they are ingenious, they are imaginative. They are not politically correct.
That’s why they are worth watching.

THE TEN
Runtime: 96 minutes
Directed by David Wain
Rate R for pervasive strong, crude sexual content including dialogue and nudity
4 stars out of five

DEATH AT A FUNERAL
Runtime: 91 minutes
Directed by Frank Oz
Rated R for language, drug content and nudity
4 1/2 stars out of 5

Freedom Writers

Paramount Pictures
HILLARY SWANK in " Freedom Writers."

‘Freedom Writers’ offers saintly teacher

Someday, maybe there will be a film festival about movies where teachers overcome tons of adversities and make a difference in the lives of their troubled students.
Remember “Good-bye Mr. Chips” from 1939? Who can forget “Blackboard Jungle” from the 50s. Sidney Poiter’s breakthrough film was “To Sir With Love,” taking place in London in the 1960s.
Move over films, because “Freedom Writers” profiles a classroom of children who are more troubled, have lived more violent lives and have more of an attitude than the kids in all of those other movies.
More, more, more.
Hillary Swank is the beautiful, naive teacher who is anxious to start her teaching career.
Swank plays Erin Gruwell, who idolizes her dad, played by Scott Glenn. He was an activist for minority causes in the 1960s.
She wants to help the minorities at her new Long Beach high school. The school at one time was known for its great scholarship.
But these days it has opened its doors to troubled, urban children.
The film starts with glimpses of the lives these students live, being beaten, turning a corner only to find someone with a gun chasing them, seeing their parents arrested and hauled off to jail.
But soft-spoken Swank, in her short skirts and pearls, is ready to take on the task of teaching the class.
Trouble is, school officials, including department head Margaret Campbell (played by Imelda Staunton) have already written these kids off.
Many kids have goals of finishing high school, going off to college and maybe becoming a doctor or a lawyer of a teacher.
These kids just want to live to be 18 and there’s a real possiblity they won’t make it.
Why should these kids worry about reading ancient poetry when they have no home?
The school is a series of cliques. There’s the white kids, the Cambodians, the Hispanics, the African-Americans. And you do not mix amongst them.
So what does the nervous, novice Swank character do?
Eventually she garners their interest when she offers an analogy between their gangs and Nazi Germany, an era these kids know nothing about.
The school, fronted by the snooty Campbell, won’t let the students have real books because they are afraid they won’t get them back, or they will be damaged or destroyed.
Eventually, the Swank character, based on a real person, takes one, then two extra jobs to pay for the books herself. She funds a field trip to a Holocaust museum.
The kids begin to change. She breaks through to them. But it ruins her marriage and she is even alienated by her beloved father.
The plot is familiar but boy, is it well executed. It will keep you riveted.
This film pulls no punches. It is an emotional juggernaut.
With school out for a seaon, please spend a few more hours in the classroom watching “Freedom Writers.”
You won’t regret it.

FREEDOM WRITERS • Directed and screenplay by Richard LaGravenese • Runtime: 123 minutes • Rated PG-13 for violent content, some thematic material and language • 3 1/2 stars out of 4

From Star Beacon Weekender, June 13, 2008

Ant Bully

Warner Bros.
HOVA (VOICED by Julia Roberts) and Lucas (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen) in"The Ant Bully."
Small creatures big fun for kids, adults
If you were ever yelled at by your boss all day so you were tempted to go home and kick the family cat, you can relate to nerdy Lucas Nickle (voice of Zach Taylor) in the animated film “The Ant Bully.”
This isn’t a classic, animated film. You won’t mistake it for “Pinochio” or “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
But it’s a fun little film that has some beautiful scenes in Blu-Ray, but not a lot of surprises.
Lucas is a puny kid with glasses bigger than his face. He is constantly pummeled by a big bully, who makes no bones about the fact he bullies because he can.
So upset Lucas turns to an ant colony to release his frustrations. At one point he tries drowning them with the hose, another time stomping them with his foot.
There doesn’t seem to be an fatalities, but the ants aren’t happy.
Lucas’ antagonist is played by Nicolas Cage. He is an ant who is able to conjure up a potion which turns Lucas into the size of an aunt.
But before this happens, Lucas is tricked by sleazy, cigar-chomping Stan Beals (voice of Paul Giamatti) into signing a contract for Stan’s exterminating business. Lucas’ parents are off on vacation and he is left with his spaced-out sister and whacky grandmother, who spends the movie warding off aliens and losing her teeth.
After Lucas is shrunk, he gets to know the ants, including the lovely Hova, who becomes his mentor. She is played by Julia Roberts.
The story is pretty much by-the-numbers. He learns these aren’t just tiny creatures, but living, breathing beings who can climb straight up a wall.
He goes on adventures with them, including a trip inside his home, seeking “sweet rocks,” better known as jelly beans.
A particularly suspenseful segment has Lucas being chased by a bullfrog who eventually slurps him up. Poor Lucas ends up slimed inside its stomach.
As you can tell, this film has all the elements to keep kids happy. There’s suspense, there’s slime, there’s the inevitable flatulent and bathroom jokes and more.
Kids can relate to Lucas’ mom who is just, well, too motherly. She calls her son “Peanut.”
(Ironically, Mom calls him Peanut because he is small. The ants can see why she uses the term, because to them, peanuts are so big.)
It has easily-defined villains. Giamatti is instantly recognizable as the villainous exterminator, who has all kinds of poisons ready to create genocide on the poor aunts.
Kids can relate to the bullying, from one side or another.
There’s really nothing wrong with the film, except a lot of it has been done before.
But the animation is more than acceptable and there are plenty of funny scenes.
Sorry, every time Grandma dropped her teeth, I laughed.
Even Meryl Streep makes a cameo as the queen ant.
The film is entertaining for adults too, although kids may enjoy it a bit more.
That’s no small order.
Read more Viper columns at videoviper.blogspot.com.

Ant Bully • Directed by John A. Davis, written by Davis and John Nickle • Runtime: 88 minutes • Rated PG for mild rude humor and action • 3 stars out of 5

The Invisible

Hollywood Pictures
JUSTIN CHATWIN in "The Invisible."

Eerie ‘The Invisible’ needs better lead
It’s sort of a cross between an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and the movie “The Sixth Sense.”
“The Invisible” is the story of Nick Powell, played by Justin Chatwin.
Nick goes to a particularly violent high school. But he’s smarter than most of the kids and seems to have their respect.
Also at the school is Annie Newton, played by Margartia Levieva, a psychopathic gang leader who has no trouble beating up guys in the boys restroom.
Nick has had it with school. He’s had it with his mother, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She seems cold and aloof. Nick first got that impression when his father died when he was 13 and his mother’s response was, “Don’t worry, Nick. This won’t change anything.”
When Annie has a fight with a boyfriend, he (played by Alex O’Loughlin), turns her in to the cops.
But Annie thinks a student she beat up earlier, played by Chris Marquette, turned him in.
Ah, meanwhile Nick has purchased a ticket for London, where he plans to live and write poetry. When Annie starts beating on the Marquette character, he says it was Nick who turned her in. Why not, he figures, Nick is on a plane to London and they can’t touch him.
Ah, but for plot’s sake he doesn’t get on the plane and when Annie and her gang see him, they beat him nearly to death. In fact, they think he is dead. They dump him down a storm drain.
Suddenly, Nick is on his way to school, but nobody sees him. Nobody acknowledges him. When he knocks books over, they scatter to the floor. But the next moment, they are back on a desk in the same order.
Nick thinks he’s dead, but a special scene involving a dying bird helps him realize he is alive and authorities must get to his body before he does die.
Nick follows his inconsolable mother and learns more about her. He learns Annie has lost a parent, too.
The movie is about finding Nick’s body but also about finding Annie’s soul and determining if she can be redeemed. There is something invisible about her, too.
The premise is interesting and well executed. Chatwin as Nick plays the whole thing just too subdued. He should be the most interesting character in the film and he is not.
Still, “The Invisible” is an intelligent fantasy thriller worth making visible in your home.

The Invisible • Directed by David S. Goyer • Rating: Rated PG-13 for violence, criminality, sensuality and language - all involving teens • Runtime: 97 minutes • 3 stars out of 4
This was published in the Star Beacon May 30, 2008.

Drole de Drame

LOUIS JOUVET (left) is the stern bishop who doesn't know his cousin, played by Michael Simon, is actually a dreaded mystery writer in the French farce "Drole de Drame."
Life gets crazy in ‘Drole de Drame’

“Drole de Drame” is a film where everyone jumps to conclusions, all situations are exaggerated and nobody thinks logically.
It’s all one giant cartoon.
But that’s OK. It’s still a lot of fun.
The fact the film takes place in London in 1937, but is filmed in French makes it all the more bizarre.
You’re a bit taken back when one character gets on the phone and says “Get me Scotland Yard,” but in French.
“Drole de Drame” opens with a lecture by a serious and stern bishop of Bedford, played sanctimoniously by Louis Jouvet. He preaches the evils of one Felix Chapel, an example of all that is evil.
What did this Chapel guy do? Why write mystery novels in which people are dispatched from this world in violent ways.
The bishop even makes his hapless cousin, the scholarly yet befuddled botanist, Irwin Molyneux, played by Michael Simon, an example. He stands him up and asks what should happen to this Chapel. Irwin doesn’t know, he’s a botanist.
His life centers around the study of mimosa.
Also in the audience is a mass murderer, played by Jean-Louis Barrault, who decides he must kill the despicable Mr. Chapel.
Turns out Chapel is a pen name for the learned Mr. Molyneux, who has discovered his income as a botanist isn’t enough to satisfy his status-seeking wife, played by Francoise Rosay.
To make matters worse, Irwin steals story ideas from the fetching young maid Eva, played by Nadine Vogel.
Yes, this is a convoluted plot. It will remind you a little of the Marx Brothers.
Everybody jumps to conclusions. Nobody makes any sense.
The bishop has a passion for duck in orange sauce, which is the specialty of Irwin’s cook, so he invites himself to dinner.
Meanwhile, the cook quits so wife has to prepare the dinner. Cooking is below her status so Irwin tells the bishop his wife is away visiting relatives to cover for the fact she is actually in the kitchen cooking.
The bishop, who we learn frequents dance halls and loose women, gets the idea cousin has murdered his wife.
No body, no clues, but the cartoonish police chief, who looks like Chief Wiggum of “Simpsons” fame, agrees there must be a murder.
Beside the mass murderer, we have a milkman who is head-over-heals in love with Eva, the crime-writing maid. You can tell he is in love because the entire kitchen of the Molyneux home is covered with milk bottles.
So you have Molyneux and wife as fugitives, you have the stern bishop sneaking back in Molyneux’s house (which is crawling with cops), trying to find an autographed photo he left behind of a chorus girl, not to mention the mass murderer, not to mention the love-sick milkman.
There are other bizarre characters, like the journalist who gathers information by sleeping on the Molyneux couch. There’s also the elderly aunts, one of whom keeps looking for her dog, Canada, who died five years before. (At one point the hapless Molyneux is accused of poisoning the long-gone pooch.)
This is one of the movies where when the citizenry learn there might be a murder, they stand outside with nooses in their hands, shouting at those coming and going.
For all of its confusion, the film is a lot of fun. There are many nice touches, too. The bishop has a dozen kids. They all sit uniformly at the breakfast table. When it is time to go to school, he has a clicker. The kids move in their chairs at 45-degree angles with each click until they are facing opposite the table and can get up and head for the door.
It really is funny.
The director, Marcel Carne, went on to do the romantic melodrama “Enfants du Paradis” (Children of Paradise) seven years later, described as the French “Gone With the Wind.”
At more than three hours, I found “Enfants” overly long and overly distraught. “Drole de Drame,” also known as “Drole de Drame ou L’etrange aventure de Docteur Molyneux” is a lot sillier and a lot more fun.
Drole de Drame ou Le’
etrange
Aventure
• Directed by Marcel Carne
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Not rated, but there is brief nudity
• 3 stars out of 4
This appeared in the Star Beacon WEEKENDER May 23, 2008.

Big Hand for the Little Lady

HENRY FONDA (left) and Joanne Woodward (center) enter town with their son, played by Gerald Michenaud, in "A Big Hand for the Little Lady." The saloon keep er is played by James Kenny.

If you pick cards right, you'll like this film

If you grew up in the 1960s, it’s always fun to watch an old TV show or movie with familiar faces from the era.
Even if you weren’t born until 30 years later, you can enjoy the strange twists, funny situations and subtle drama of “A Big Hand for the Little Lady.”
Released in 1966, it includes such big stars as Henry Fonda, a younger Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards and Kevin McCarthy.
It’s a 1960s type of western where the streets are clean and nobody says a discouraging word. They all look like the 60s, too.
It opens with the richest men in Texas dropping everything they are doing to participate in a no-holds, high-stakes series of games of poker.
Players are portrayed by Robards, McCarthy, long-time character actor Chester Conklin, Robert Middleton and John Qualen.
Burgless Meredith is the town physician who likes to listen to wind-up records on the fancy Victrola.
Everybody in town wants to know who is winning and who is losing. This is high drama.
In the midst of it all, a couple, played by Fonda and Woodward, arrive with their son, played by Gerald Michenaud. Their buggy has broken down and the blacksmith must repair it. In the meantime, they need a place to spend the night.
That turns out to the the saloon where the game is taking place. (The rooms aren’t fancy and the boy must sleep in the woodbin.)
They are traveling through to get to a new ranch they are buying with money they have saved.
Trouble is, Daddy Fonda is also a compulsive gambler. But this time, he just wants to sit in and watch.
Well, for maybe 20 minutes. Then he wants to participate. When wife leaves to check the status of the buggy with the blacksmith, the Fonda character gets $10,000 of the family nestegg to buy a stake in the game.
And promptly loses it. Remember, this is when $10,000 was worth $10,000. So, much to the protest of this son, he gets more money. And loses it.
His wife finds out what he has done and it is all too much. Right there during the game, Henry has a heart attack.
But his final hand hasn’t been played. If he walks away (or is hauled away), the family loses the last of its nestegg.
As it is, the money left isn’t enough to stake the hand. So not only does Woodward have to play the hand, she must borrow and be assured of winning.
The film has a wonderful twist I won’t even hint at. Let’s just say it changes the tone of the film.
This was originally supposed to be an hour-long episode of a TV series, directed by Fielder Cook, who worked mostly in television.
Fonda was truly a great actor and has a lot of fun in this little, mostly forgotten film.
If you are looking for a “Deadwood” clone, this isn’t it. But it is a film you can enjoy with the entirel family, if you play your cards right.
This appeared in the Star Beacon WEEKENDER May 16, 2008.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady
• Directed by Fielder Cook
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• 3 stars out of 5