13 minute read
Film
from Oct. 17, 2013
THROUGH THE SCARY
ON THE MORNING THAT ELIZABETH TURNED 17
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her mother came into her bedroom with a little cake and a single lit candle. She sang happy birthday to her daughter the way that only a parent can. But what she didn’t know was that Elizabeth had only been in her bed for a few hours, pushed inside her bedroom window by friends, because she was too high to walk. “I knew, or at least suspected I had a problem for a long time,” says Elizabeth. “But what I was doing seemed normal.” Until it didn’t seem normal. Elizabeth realized that she was addicted to cocaine and that she was continuing the drug to avoid the withdrawal. “I was sick, sleeping all day.” Elizabeth did not want her parents to know, honestly because she loved them. She still wanted to be the little girl that they expected. But on her birthday morning, something changed. “I looked at my mom, and maybe for the fi rst time, I thought of my parents, instead of just myself. What if she walked in and found me dead?” It was this thought, combined with a stone cold acknowledgement that the drug was making her sick, that made Elizabeth want to stop. But Elizabeth still didn’t talk to her parents. She admits that she was afraid that their response would be one of anger. Elizabeth stayed home for two weeks to face her withdrawal alone in her room, blaming her thyroid problem. She deleted phone numbers . “I loved my friends, but I did not love that lifestyle.” She lost all her friends and barely graduated from high school. But she stayed sober. Elizabeth is now a student at UNR studying phycology, as much to learn about herself as others, and she is very involved with NRAP, the student group that supports a sober life. “I wish I would have talked to my parents because they could have helped me. I know now that their reaction would not have been anger - that they would have used a different emotion.” Elizabeth’s advice to parents is to be educated about the drugs that their kids are being exposed to and to look for the physical signs. Her advice to addicts is to keep trying. “It does not make you a failure to relapse. It sucks, but it’s reality. If you have a desire to be sober, you’re almost there.” Let’s help each other Through the Scary. Please share your successes. Contact me at
Laura.Newman8888@gmail.com.
NEED HELP NOW? JTNN offers weekly meetings with THE PARENT GROUP, 6:00pm Thursdays at 505 S. Arlington. Confi dential, FREE, and run by a licensed counselor.
Laura Newman – JTNN Board 775-324-7557
Hanks for the memories
Captain Phillips
Once again, Tom Hanks stars in a true events film where his character is stuck in a very small, dangerous space for a long time with an outcome most of us might know from following the news. Even though the ending is out there, Hanks and director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum, United 93) somehow make the story suspenseful. What he did in the true story of Apollo 13, Hanks does for Captain Phillips. He makes us terrified and confused for his character even though the outcome of said character’s predicament is well known. He does this by, well, doing an excellent job of playing somebody who’s terrified and confused. If you don’t know the outcome of the true story, go see the film and be doubly frightened. If you must know all the details of the outcome before seeing the film, you’re going to have to Google that shit because I’m not telling. Hanks plays Richard Phillips, captain of the MV Maersk Alabama cargo ship. While delivering relief goods in 2009, his ship encountered Somali pirates who could give a rat’s ass about charity and tried multiple times to board his ship. They eventually succeeded, putting into play a crazy hostage drama that results in Phillips being taken aboard a space capsule-sized lifeboat with his captors. In every stage of this thriller, from the moment Phillips spots the pirates for the first time trailing his ship, through his initial confrontation with them face-to-face, and subsequent search for the hiding crew, Hanks is masterful. His Phillips maintains a certain level of calm and smarts, but isn’t superhuman or oblivious to the true terrors of his situation. Augmenting the story with a terrifying yet somehow oddly sympathetic performance would
be Barkhad Abdi as Muse, the pirate leader. One of the major strengths of this film is the relationship between Phillips and Muse, which basically starts with Muse informing Phillips that he’s no longer the captain of his own ship. Without necessarily portraying Muse as a victim, there are suggestions in Abdi’s performance and Paul Greengrass’s direction that by Bob Grimm Muse is being forced into his reprehensible actions. We first see Muse in Somalia, being bgrimm@ bullied into action by a village elder who tails newsreview.com him in a bigger boat and seems to be suggesting dire punishment if Muse doesn’t comply 4 with hijacking plans to extort millions from the Americans. Whether or not this is a true account of Muse’s participation in the actual hijacking, it definitely makes him a more fleshed-out character in the movie. As for the interplay between Abdi and Hanks, it is chilling, fraught with tension, and always on the edge of explosion. Of the supporting cast, Michael Chernus distinguishes himself playing chief mate Shane Murphy. You might recognize Chernus from his geeky role in Men in Black 3. This time out, he’s called upon to show the dramatic goods, and he comes through nicely. Catherine Keener shows up in the first scene as Phillips’s wife, then disappears completely. We don’t get any scenes of her biting her nails while awaiting her husband’s fate. The movie seems to be a fairly accurate overall representation of what actually happened during the event, although some crew members of the Maersk Alabama have taken issue with Phillips’s account of the hijacking in his book, A Captain’s Duty, on which the movie is based. Some of them say Phillips acted irresponsibly, ignoring warnings to stay at least 600 miles from the Somali coast due to pirates in the area, and not following proper procedures when the pirates boarded his ship. Taking all this into consideration, the story portrayed in the film remains engrossing, with Greengrass keeping the action realistic and believable. So future film directors who will be delivering fact-based stories wherein the main protagonist is confined in an uncomfortable, claustrophobic space facing great danger, Captain Phillips is further proof that Hanks is most definitely your go-to guy! Ω
“Yes, that’s right. There are rats in the hold, and I’d like you to go shoot them, please. Just don’t miss because you’ll sink the boat.”
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4Don Jon Joseph Gordon-Levitt writes, directs and stars in this frank sex comedy about a sex addict who thinks porn is better than true romance. Gordon-Levitt is excellent and consistently funny as the title character, a Jersey boy who’s quite the stud, yet finds himself jerking off to internet porn within mere minutes of finishing with a live woman. His little problem comes to the forefront when he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), the first real love of his life, a woman with high standards who doesn’t approve of the porn thing. The movie is full of porno clips, so don’t see it with kids or a first date, unless you and that first date already have some sort of naughty understanding. Gordon-Levitt has given us something akin to a funnier Saturday Night Fever, with porn replacing disco. Julianne Moore is her usual excellent self in a supporting role, and the shock casting of Tony Danza as Don’s dad proves smart. Danza gets to show some cinematic comedy chops that he hasn’t been able to show off before. This is an overall triumph for Gordon-Levitt.
1Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 This is animation done with all the style and grace of a spastic colon saturated with hot sauce. While the first film in this series had a reasonable amount of charm, this one goes haywire from its start right until the finish line. Bill Hader returns as the voice of Flint, the overly excited inventor who, in the first movie, managed to use a crazy invention to inundate his hometown with giant food. Now, the machine has gone nuts, creating a race of living food including cheeseburger spiders and dolphin bananas. The film boasts an intolerably frantic pace, with a plotline that’s scattered beyond reasonability. It’s hard to follow, but it does have the occasional fart and poop joke to make the kids laugh. The only character I managed to enjoy was a jittery monkey trying to put out a sparkler, and that accounts for about 30 seconds of the film. Don’t waste your time and, trust me, your kids won’t like it either.
5Gravity Finally, we get a big event movie that delivers the sort of thrills absent from too many large-scale movies promising big things this year. If you see this movie, you’re going to have a cinematic trip like no other. This is what going to the movies is supposed to be about. I sound like a movie critic quote machine, and I don’t care. In her first true blue science fiction role since Demolition Man, Sandra Bullock puts herself through the ringer as Ryan Stone, an astronaut on her first space shuttle flight. Her mission commander, played by a charismatic and calming George Clooney, ribs her about her upset tummy as he flies around space in a jet pack while she works tirelessly on the Hubble. Space debris comes their way, and an incredible survival story/adventure is underway. Director Alfonso Cuaron has put together something here that will always be remembered and talked about. This is truly a landmark film.
2Machete Kills Robert Rodriguez brings Danny Trejo back for another round of violent B-movie action, and the joke has grown tired. I was a big fan of the original movie and the fake Grindhouse trailer, but this one gets dumb to the point of annoyance. The 69-year-old Trejo, who participates in countless film projects, is starting to look a little tired in the title role. Charlie Sheen (billed under his real name, Carlos Estevez) is actually pretty funny as the President of the United States, but he only has a few scenes. The same can’t be said for Mel Gibson, who mugs his way through a bad guy role in a manner that reveals near desperation to be taken seriously again. I give props to Amber Heard, who gets the film’s best part as a beauty queen/secret agent, but issue demerits to Sofia Vergara who screams her way through her role as a villain with machine gun breasts, a gimmicky rip-off of the girl with machine gun legs from Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Rodriguez seems to be losing it to some degree.
3Prisoners For a good part of its running time, this one seems as if it could wind up being one of 2013’s best pictures. Alas, it frays at the end, with a finale as stupid as the rest of the film is gripping. Hugh Jackman delivers a fierce performance as Keller Dover, a survivalist who goes into vigilante mode after his daughter and her friend are kidnapped. When a semi-irritable detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) apprehends a mentally challenged suspect (Paul Dano), Dover and the detective go head-to-head on how to deal with matters. When the suspect is set free, Dover captures and tortures him. This part of the film is solid, dealing with the lengths a parent would go to find a child. As for the film’s mystery element, that’s where things fall apart. Gyllenhaal is quite good here, even when the screenplay lets him down. The movie was shot by Roger Deakins, so it always looks good. It’s worth seeing, but it’s a bit of a disappointment.
2Runner Runner Was the world aching for a movie about online gambling? If so, was it aching for a movie about online gambling where Justin Timberlake gets beaten up a lot while looking really scared most of the time as Ben Affleck feeds poultry to his pet crocodiles? Timberlake plays a college student making his tuition through online gambling. After possibly getting hustled, he travels to Costa Rica to get in the face of the guy in charge of the gambling site (Affleck). He winds up getting a job and thrusting himself into a seedy online gambling underworld that involves running around a lot and acting real confused. Timberlake is an actor who can look really good, or really, really lost. This time he’s in lost mode. As for Affleck, I kind of like him in this movie, and enjoy when he plays bad guys. The movie lets him down in a big way with its silly subplots and failed attempts at being clever.
2Rush Hollywood has a real hard time making car-racing movies even remotely compelling. The latest genre misfire comes from director Ron Howard, who brings the true story of James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) to the big screen in surprisingly ho-hum fashion. The surprise comes in that the story itself is so amazing, it wouldn’t’ seem possible to render it dull, yet Howard manages just that. For a racing movie, surprisingly little of the film actually takes place on the racetrack. Instead, too much of the film is devoted to routine love stories that seem to be a means of saving budget. Bruhl is decent as Lauda, a determined man who returned to racing mere weeks after being severely burned in a near fatal crash. Hemsworth is charming as Hunt, but little more. Their rivalry was one of the greatest in sports history, yet this movie turns it into a soap opera.
3We’re the Millers Jason Sudeikis plays a small-time drug dealer who gets in over his head and is forced by his boss (Ed Helms) to smuggle drugs from Mexico. Realizing that border agents seem to go easy on families, he hires a fake family to make the trip in an RV. The family includes a wife (a stripper played by Jennifer Aniston), a daughter (a homeless girl played by Emma Roberts) and a son (a hapless neighbor played by Will Poulter). The film has a Vacation movie vibe, especially because Sudeikis is charming in a way that Chevy Chase was for a brief time in his career. Aniston plays a mighty good stripper, for sure. She has another calling in case the whole acting thing doesn’t work out. Roberts gets perhaps her best role yet as Casey, delivering some great eye-rolling moments. As for Poulter, he steals scenes nearly every time he speaks, and his encounter with a tarantula is priceless. Sure, the movie gets a little gooey and sentimental by the time it plays out, but we’ve come to like the characters by then so it’s OK. It’s not a grand cinematic effort by any means, but it does provide some good laughs, with a fair share of them being quite shocking.
Think Free
Department of Theatre & Dance • School of the Arts William Shakespeare’s
ARTS 365
Redfield Studio Theatre University of Nevada, Reno
Oct. 25, 26, 30, 31 @ 7:30 p.m. Nov. 1, 2 @ 7:30 p.m. Oct. 27 & Nov. 3, 2013 @ 1:30 p.m.
Directed by Robert Gander
For tickets:
A National Tier 1 University
