Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Rated PG. Our Ratings: V -2; L -0; S/N -0.  Running time: 1 hour

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and

where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:20-12

Our hardy heroes survive the crash of their plane in the desert of North Africa.

© 2011 Paramount Pictures

After an almost 30 year delay, Steven Spielberg has at last brought to the screen the beloved teenaged reporter/sleuth Tintin. Popular throughout the rest of the world during its run as a comic book series between 1930 and 1976, Belgian artist Herge’s hero might just catch on here, so captivating is the movie, shot in 3D motion capture animation. The pace is so fast, and the laughs so many that the attention of neither young nor older viewers is likely to wander.

The Unicorn of the title is not the mythical animal itself but a model sailing ship with that name which Tintin purchases for a pound at a flea market. A sinister looking man tries to buy it for a greater price, but Tintin refuses. (One of the film’s many humorous touches is the vender bemoaning his letting the ship go for such a low price.) Of course, later the model is stolen, setting off a far-flung adventure in which the boy teams up with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), whose cargo ship has been taken over by the evil Sakharine (Daniel Craig), who heads it toward Morocco. (Sakharine was the man who originally had tried to buy the model from Tintin.) Haddock reveals that both he and Sakharine are descendents of 17^th century seafarers whose treasure-laden ship sank off the coast of North Africa. The model ship had contained one of three tiny scrolls of paper giving clues to the location of the old ship. All are needed in order to determine the latitude and longitude of the sunken ship. Finding those scrolls proves to be an arduous and dangerous task, with thrills galore.

This is an anticipated film that lives up to its advance hype. The motion capture animation is so realistic that my companion had to be reminded that the film is animated. The color is gorgeous, especially in the scenes set in Morrocco, and the action virtually non-stop. The sequence in which Haddock and Rackham “swordfight” with two giant shipyard cranes is one of the most inventive action sequences to be found anywhere. Our plucky hero and his smart little dog are delightful, and there is the expected moral lesson, as can be seen at the low point of the story when even Tintin has given in to despair. Haddock says, “I thought you were an optimist.” Tintin, “You were wrong, weren't you? I'm a realist.” “Ah, it's just another name for a quitter.” “You can call me what you like. Don't you get it? We failed.” “Failed. There are plenty of others willing to call you a failure. A fool. A loser. A hopeless souse. Don't you ever say it of yourself. You send out the wrong signal, that is what people pick up. Don't you understand? You care about something, you fight for it. You hit a wall, you push through it. There's something you need to know about failure, Tintin. You can never let it defeat you.” Good words for all of us to take to heart. We all should have a friend and companion like Haddock.

 There is also the good news that this is the first of a planned trilogy. And even though Spielberg will not

direct the second installment, there is still good news in that the co-producer of this show will take over the helm—Peter Jackson. Thanks to these two, Tintin should become as beloved in this country as he is in the rest of the world. It is too bad that Georges Remi (whose nom de plume was Herge) did not live to see this happen, but I believe he would have been pleased with what the American who befriended him long ago has produced,

A version of this is available with discussion questions for VP subscribers.

My Week With Marilyn

Rated R. Our Ratings: V -0; L -5; S/N -6.  Running time: 1 hour 39 min.

Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing…

And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the

weak, be patient with all of them.

1 Thessalonians 5:11, 14

Colin helps Marilyn through a mob of eager reporters.

© 2011The Weinstein Company

This film, based on Colin Clark's diaries, The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn, can be seen as a good addition to the movies about movie making genre, as well as a peek into the private life of what was once the most famous and adored actress in the world. And for people of faith director Simon Curtis’s film has the additional dimension as being a good story about encouragement and grace and their role in life. That the story’s events are more or less true makes it all the better.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) comes from an upper-class English family, his father being the famous art historian Kenneth Clark whose 13-part BBC Civilization: A Personal View is a classic television documentary. Wanting to develop his own life and escape from under his father’s shadow, Colin manages in the summer of 1956, through pluck and persuasion, to land a position at Pinewood Studios. It is an unpaid position at first as a “Third Assistant Director” to Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), which translates as “gofer.”  Olivier is directing and co-starring in The Prince and the Showgirl, and the actress regarded by the press as an American sex goddess is soon to arrive in London. This, of course, is Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams), bringing with her new husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) and drama coach Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), wife of Method Acting guru Lee Strasberg.

Both at he airport and at Pinewood Marilyn is given the red carpet treatment, with Olivier heading the assembled cast and studio staff expressing warm greetings and words of admiration. For Olivier this will be the last time for a long while that he utters anything positive to or about his costar. The insecure actress is always late, sometimes hours late, and when she does leave her dressing room to show up on the set, she seeks guidance and reassurance not from director Olivier, but from Lee, whom she always keeps close at hand.

It is during this tumultuous period that the 23 year-old Colin, who like virtually every other male (Olivier included, as his wife Vivian Leigh observes) has developed a crush on the actress, is invited into the private life of the tormented actress. This becomes the intense week when Arthur Miller, who observes that Marilyn and her celebrityhood sucks all the air from him, decides to return to the USA so that he can get back to his writing. Feeling abandoned (again), Marilyn turns to Colin for the comfort and reassurance that she needs as badly as any heroin addict ever needed a fix.

During a week in which there is little call for her to be on the set, Colin escorts Marilyn around London. Earlier there had been a delightful exchange when someone says to her that she must get out more to see the sites of the city, to which she replies, “I am the sight.” This is not a vain boast, but a wry expression of the truth. She tries to go shopping, but is immediately spotted and quickly surrounded by a crowd pressing in upon her, everyone trying to touch her or acquire her autograph. She is as much a prisoner of her fame as a beneficiary of it.

When Colin takes her to his old university, she is quickly surrounded by admiring students, blessing one with a kiss on the cheek that he will never forget. Standing at the top of a short flight of steps, she senses that they want the screen Marilyn, so she graciously gives to them a brief performance of her famous shimmy and shake steps. They are enthralled. However when Colin is able to get them into the Queen’s palace, she shows her more serious side, making some intelligent remarks and questions to Colin’s grandfather, who is the royal librarian (and unaware of who she is).

Marilyn is wonderfully portrayed by Michelle Williams as a highly talented woman wracked by serious doubts about her ability and haunted by a sense of childhood abandonment. In one telling scene Colin sees two pictures on her vanity desk, one of her mother, he learns, and one of Abraham Lincoln. To his query, she says, “he is my Dad. I never knew my real father, so it might as well be him.” In scene after scene we see also that Marilyn is fearful in the presence of the man considered one of the greatest actors in the world. She worries that she cannot measure up to Olivier’s expectations, and sure enough, time after time she doesn’t, her mistakes requiring retake after retake. It is Colin who during their week spent together provides the comfort and support that not even longtime associate Lee Strasberg can offer.

Kenneth Branaugh should not be overlooked in this film, his performance as the frustrated director also being outstanding, though understandably overshadowed by that of Ms. Williams’. We see in Olivier’s interaction with Marilyn the clash between two approaches to acting, that of the classical in which practice and skill are paramount and that of the Method in which the actor strives to understand the motivation and inner life of the character. As Colin says to Marilyn, “It's agony because he's a great actor who wants to be a film star, and you're a film star who wants to be a great actress. This film won't help either of you.”  Marilyn, emerging from an insecure past and wanting to move beyond the straight jacket of “sex goddess” to which her fans would confine her, struggles to become an artist as serious as Olivier himself—and to be taken as seriously.

Earlier I wrote that this is a film of grace, and so it is. We see how young Colin, even more innocent in some ways than Marilyn, provides a measure of temporary security and comfort for the actress. But so do others serve as agents of grace, the most prominent being Judi Dench’s Dame Sybil Thorndike, an actress who immediately realizes Marilyn’s vulnerability and need for reassurance. Unlike Olivier, who as director is so focused on getting the film made within budget, she is able to reach out to the younger woman at various times. Marilyn as the child/woman also bestows grace—on the students who gaze at her in awe when she briefly performs for them, and also upon Colin, well before their magical week spent in close company. Sensing his concern for her, she treats him as a person and not just as a gofer. She lets him down gently when it comes time to part. And whether or not their relationship became physical the film leaves open to question. For this, and also because it takes us into the process of movie making, this is a film I will cherish henceforth.

A version with discussion questions is available for subscribers to VP.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Rated PG-13.  Our ratings: V -4; L -3 S/N -1.  Running time: 2hours 13 min.

Our hero dangles high above the streets of Dubai.
© 2011 Paramount Pictures

This is a film that shows nothing is impossible if you have vast funds for computer generated effects and a public willing to believe anything—implausible plot devices and a hero able to withstand crushing blows to the head and falls and jumps from great heights that would injure or kill ordinary humans. The most enjoyable part of the film is its use of scenic locales—Moscow, Mumbai, and especially Dubai with its world’s tallest skyscraper piercing the sky like a giant needle.

Our team of heroes is racing to prevent a rogue terrorist from starting a nuclear exchange between Russia and the US that will draw the whole world into destruction. Action fans, who never seem to tire of watching the same plot but with different titles, will get their money’s worth here. Others might wait until it comes out on TV and DVD—no, make that at a cheap seat theater, because the scenery and skyscraper scenes really should be seen on a theater screen.

The main interest to some could be that this is director Brad Bird's first live action film, his previous work being in animatios—I loved his Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.  Because it’s such a cream puff of a film I am not going to the work of finding a relevant Scripture nor a set of discussion questions.

Arthur Christmas

Rated PG.  Our Ratings: V -1; L -2; S/N 01.  Running time: 1 hour  37 min.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 

Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth 

more than many sparrows.

                                                                                              Luke 10:12:6-7 NIV
 

 

 

Grandpa Santa, the Elf Bryony, and Arthur set out in the obsolete sleigh.
© 2011 Columbia Pictures

 
The delightful folks who infused such quirky humor into Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run have updated the old Santa Claus myth in their newest gift to movie loving children and adults. What child hasn’t arrived at the age when they asked the question, “How does Santa Claus deliver in just one night toys to all the children around the round?” The answer in this film is that has ditched the old reindeer sleigh and constructed a city-sized space ship similar to the one in Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind with a team of a million elves trained to be lowered down and deliver the toys.

The current Santa (voiced by Jim Broadbent—we see displayed the portraits of previous Santas going back almost 1900 years) has relinquished Christmas Eve operations to his son Steve (Hugh Laurie), who runs things with great but hurried precision. Steve can hardly wait until his father retires, and is visibly upset that his younger brother Arthur (James McAvoy) is actually preferred by their father to assume command one day.

We soon see why, the difference between the two becoming apparent when Arthur, who is in charge of the Letters to Santa Department, discovers that the elves missed delivering a wrapped bicycle to a little girl in Cornwall. Steve, concerned with cost and efficiency, refuses to send anyone back to deliver the bike. It’s just one little girl.

Arthur is so upset over this that he, against orders from both his brother and his father, decides to deliver the bike himself. So he finds the old sleigh and reindeer, and accompanied by his grandfather (Bill Nighy) and a spunky elf named Bryony (Ashley Jensen), launches forth into the night. They have just a few hours until the sun rises and the child eagerly rushes down stairs to the Christmas tree.

What a series of adventures they have, with obstacles confronting them that seem impossible to overcome—and all of their Herculean efforts just to save Christmas for one child among the millions that were serviced that night. What a delightful tale to make us aware that even the smallest of us is important, and that someone cares enough to go to such great lengths for another. This has been a good year for animated films, 3-D at that, although this device is not necessary to enjoy this film.

This review with discussion questions will soon be available to VP subscribers at visualparables.net

New Year’s Eve

Rated PG-13.  Our Ratings: V -1; L -4; S/N -2.  Running time: 1 hour 58 min.

For everything there is a season, 

and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Hillary Swank as Claire has called in Hector Elizondo’s Kinsky to fix the
Stuck Times Square New Year’s Eve ball.
© 2011 Warner Brothers

Boasting a screen full of stars, Gary Marshall’s latest work is similar to a Robert Altman film (remember Nashville?) with its large ensemble cast, but lacking the depth of any of the great master’s films. Hilary Swank is in charge of operations involving the dropping of the ball in Times Square on New Year’s Eve when it becomes stuck during a daytime trial run. As she struggles to overcome obstacles, a number of other stories—of a broken romance, the revival of hope, a dying man’s last wish, and a wife with her Army husband far off in the Middle East—are interwoven.

Enjoyable if you are not expecting a whole lot, the film does have a touching moment. The latter consists of a brief scene in which Halle Berry, as a night nurse, keeps her rendezvous via Skype with her soldier husband stationed in the Middle East. She is also involved in the moment of grace in which Harry, a dying patient played by Robert De Niro, is granted his last wish. It’s a bit silly—he wants to see the ball drop on Times Square live, not just on TV—so the nurse looks the other way while his daughter violates hospital rules by wheeling him to the roof where there the event can be seen. Two other characters keep a promise made a year earlier to meet again, the incident similar to the climax of 1957’s An Affair to Remember. This could become the movie to watch just prior to a New Year’s Eve, and then maybe not.

A version with discussion questions will soon be available to VP subscribers at visualparables.net.

Young Adults

Rated R. Our Ratings: V -2; L -5; S/N -6. Running time: 1 hour 34 min.

The one who begets a fool gets trouble;

the parent of a fool has no joy.

                                    Proverbs 17:21

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; 

when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

                                  1 Cor. 13:11

Mavis intends to break up Buddy's marriage.

(c) 2011 Paramount

Charlize Theron's Mavis Gary is neither young nor adult in this character study of a pushing-forty divorcee whose life is as messy as her Minneapolis apartment. Since leaving her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota she has become a juvenile fiction writer though the books have not provided her the high profile fame she would like. She is the ghostwriter of a series created by another author, and it becomes clear when we see the books on a “remaindered table” that no one is buying them any more. The book she is struggling to finish probably will be her last in the series. With dismal prospects of searching for a new job plus her failed marriage causing her to live alone, Mavis turns too often to alcohol for escape.

When she learns that her former high school boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson) has become a new father, she decides to return to Mercury to see him again. However, we soon understand that it is not just to renew old acquaintances. She intends to steal him away from his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser). She is so self assured and glamorous looking that she is certain that it will be no contest between the two of them in capturing Buddy’s heart. Is she ever in for a surprise!

Charlize Theron's task is a difficult one--to win our interest, if not our sympathy, as she plays a unlikable character. Mavis is selfish and petulant, used to having her own way all of her life, hence my choice of the above Proverbs passage. And yet there are moments when we see how vulnerable and in need of love she is.
Fortunately there is a character close at hand with whom she spends far more time than Buddy. This is Matt (Patton Oswalt), an overweight nerd whom she at first cannot remember, even though he had the locker right next to hers. Of course, she was the beauty queen, and he was a nobody. They meet in the bar where Mavis has come to drink alone. Matt reminds her that she used to call him “the theater fag,“ even though the gossip about his being gay was not true. Some of the jocks had ganged up on him during his a junior year, their hate crime injuring him so severely that he can get about only with the aid of a cane, and worse, he is sexually impaired. Buddy is so involved with his family that he can spend very little time with her, so Mavis looks upon Matt as her drinking partner. Soon he becomes her confidant.

There is a beautiful moment when Mavis comes to Matt’s home completely crushed and he embraces her. They fall into bed, and for once sex is not a matter of lust or exploitation, but of mutual grace, each giving and receiving what they need at the moment. Of course, this scene might make it a hard sell for a church group to watch and discuss. So too might be the revelation of what Mavis went through when she and Buddy were dating, creating a situation of sorrow and grief, the impact of which explains part of the reason for her stunted growth.

As a study of a woman who has never caught onto what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Young Adult is an excellent film, which should not be surprising in that its director Jason Reitman and screenplay writer Diablo Cody are the pair that brought us the insightful teen drama/comedy Juno. Their Mavis is typical of so many in our culture that thinks beauty is a matter of physical appearance rather than of the heart. Mavis has to learn the hard way that real beauty is not a matter of changing one’s face by applying new make-up, but rather a matter of changing the heart from self-concern to other concern. At Buddy and Beth’s baby naming party we see that the ordinary-looking Beth is the beautiful person. After what happens there to Mavis we can only hope that she eventually she will also discover this. Though billed as a comedy, there is a serious and dark side to the proceedings.

A version of this review with discussion questions will soon be available at visualparables.net.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Rated PG-13.  Our Ratings: V -4; L -5; S/N -1.  Running time: 2 hours 9 min.

Even though a person sins and gets by with it hundreds of times throughout a long life, I’m still convinced that the good life is reserved for the person who fears God, who lives reverently in his presence, and that the evil person will not experience a “good” life. No matter how many days he lives, they’ll all be as flat and colorless as a shadow—because he doesn’t fear God.
                                                                                                      Ecclesiastes 8:11-13 The Message

Transgression speaks to the wicked
deep in their hearts;
there is no fear of God before their eyes.
For they flatter themselves in their own eyes
that their iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit;
they have ceased to act wisely and do good.
They plot mischief while on their beds;
they are set on a way that is not good;
they do not reject evil.
                           Psalm 36:14

Holmes and companions flee while being bombarded by cannons.
© 2011 Warner Brothers

Purists might be even more upset by all the anachronisms in this second computer effects-driven film of Arthur Conan Doyle’s super sleuth played again by Robert Downey Jr., but action fans, meaning the majority of young adults, have taken so to the film that it was the top drawing film during the weekend of its release.
The fast-paced plot involves our martial arts hero and his newly married associate trying to thwart the evil Prof. Moriarty (Jared Harris) from starting World War One 23 years early. A noted Oxford professor, Prof. Moriarty apparently is very wealthy, as he has been busy buying up weapons and munitions factories all over Europe. Beginning with the assassination of a crown prince, Moriarty hopes to poison relationships between the major nations so that they will go to war, thus enriching him even further. “War on an industrial scale is inevitable,” he says to Holmes. “All I have to do is wait.”
The evil villain boldly tells Holmes that he will strike at him through his friend and confidante Dr. Watson (Jude law), who is getting married. What turns out to be the briefest and strangest honeymoon (until you see Melancholia) is an exciting sequence involving Holmes’ pushing the bride out of a speeding train as it speeds across a bridge high above a river.

A number of new characters are introduced, such as Stephen Fry as Holmes well connected brother and Noomi Rapace (star of the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) as a gypsy whose compatriots are involved in revolutions. But Downey and Law remain at the heart of the film, the two interacting well as they exchange remarks and put downs. A few delightful examples: Watson, near the beginning of the film, “Oh, how I've missed you, Holmes.” The reply,” Have you? I've barely noticed your absence.” Or, Holmes, “Get that out of my face.” Watson, “It's not in your face; it's in my hand.” Get what's in your hand out of my face!” And when Holmes appears on a train dressed as a woman, Watson expresses surprise, “What?” to which Holmes replies, “I agree, it's not my best disguise.”

This is a fun, escapist film that nonetheless upholds the age-old battle of Good against Evil. Holmes is a very flawed hero, overly rational, rude, under appreciative of his loyal friend, and even arrogant, but at least he is on the right side.

A version with discussion questions will soon be available to VP subscribers at visualparables.net..