Film

THROUGH THE SCARY

AT LEAST FOR NOW, THIS IS THE LAST INSTALLMENT

of Through the Scary. For those of you who may have taken a moment to read Through the Scary these last several months — thank you. For those of who shared your stories, your fears, your secrets, your successes — thank you. In the years that I was suffering the hardest with my son’s addiction, the thing I found most unhelpful was when I confi ded in someone, and they said something like, “Oh yeah, that happened to my cousin. He died.” Obviously this was, at best, a thoughtless thing to say. Thus began my desire to share success stories, big and small. When I look back on the stories that were shared with me, here are the common threads:

Parents: Watch your children closely. Trust your intuition. Be a parent, not a friend. Don’t contribute (give your children or their friends drugs/drinks). Get help fast if you suspect a problem.

Addicts: Ask for help and be willing to receive it. Fall down, get back up again. Where there is life there is hope. Guilt will send you back to addiction; learn to forgive. Give back. I learned that it’s not about a specifi c rehab or facility, or a specifi c 12-step, or even a specifi c god. It’s true that for each of us the path Through the Scary is different. That’s what makes it so hard - there is no one remedy. But fl ip side is that there are many remedies, so one is sure to work for you! I leave the space below blank so that perhaps, if you need help, you will fi ll the space with your thoughts of how to begin your personal navigation Through the Scary.

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. JTNN.org

Laura Newman – JTNN Board 775-324-7557

Hammer and cheese

Thor: The Dark World

You can smell the fresh paint on Marvel holiday toys while watching Thor: The Dark World, an enjoyable yet strictly commercial seasonal entry in the Marvel cinematic universe behemoth. The latest installment is a step back from Kenneth Branagh’s goofy and grand first franchise installment, Thor. While not likely to piss off superhero film fans, this sequel from director Alan Taylor is not going to blow many minds away, either. It’s a semiefficient placeholder flick moving us towards the next Avengers movie, due out in 2015. Chris Hemsworth returns as that incredibly handsome man with long hair, a big hammer and impossibly silly dialogue. After the events of The Avengers, he’s off fighting a war in some land seemingly named after a Sigur Ros album, while Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is trying to date new dudes back on planet Earth. As for Thor’s bad brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, owning it), he’s doing dungeon time in Asgard (a land seemingly named after a mini rock opera by Rush), basically in trouble for what he did to New York City. Things come to a head when ancient villain Malekith (Christopher Eccleston looking silly in a lot of makeup) awakens from his slumber and seeks out a powerful dark force called the Aether. With this power harnessed, Malekith looks to cause some deep trouble during an event called the Convergence of the Nine Realms, which sounds like it could be the title of a secret third side to Yes’ Close to the Edge album. OK, I’ll stop making progressive rock jokes.

Jane inadvertently gets herself deeply involved in the universe-threatening activities, and Thor takes her back to Asgard, where she meets the parents, Odin and Frigga (Anthony Hopkins and Rene Russo). Odin wants his son to become king and marry a goddess, as most kings of the universe would want of their spawn, while by Bob Grimm Frigga seems indifferent and just happy to have some girl time. bgrimm@ As Loki, Hiddleston might actually be newsreview.com out-cooling Robert Downey, Jr. at this point as far as the Marvel universe goes. He’s a 3 great talent, able to play a malicious bastard that we strangely find ourselves rooting for. When Thor must call upon his nasty sibling for help in fighting Malekith, it’s one of those “Oh, goody, goody!” moments that will have you rubbing your hands together with a sly grin on your face, perhaps embarrassing and confusing the person sitting next to you in the theater. Minus Hiddleston’s excellent work as Loki, Thor: The Dark World wouldn’t be much of anything. Hemsworth is capable enough in the lead, but he’s starting to feel like more of a supporting player in Thor movies. I have read some fan chatter naysaying the relationship between Jane Foster and Thor, declaring that they have no real reason to be pining for each other. Here are a couple of good reasons: Thor is played by Chris Hemsworth, the most handsome man on Earth, and the tremendously beautiful Natalie Portman plays Jane Foster. I, for one, see no further explanation for why these two would want to hook up, leaving behind their thrones and jobs to see each other naked. Makes sense to me. The credits, in keeping with Marvel tradition, contain two additional scenes, one a few moments into the credits, and another at the very end. One of them features Benicio Del Toro, and it is very weird. The other is actually the real end to this movie, so it’s essential you stick around. As far as post-Avengers Marvel movies go, Iron Man 3 is far superior to this one because it did new things with its character and messed around with the format. Thor: The Dark World is worth seeing, but the hammer has lost a bit of its heft. Ω

“But, brother Thor, the sign says, ‘longhaired freaky people need not apply.’”

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POOR

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FAIR

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GOOD

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VERY GOOD 5

512 Years a Slave A film based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in upstate New York before the Civil War who was abducted and sold into slavery. This latest effort from director Steve McQueen is a towering achievement, one of the year’s bravest and most uncompromising films. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a lock for an Oscar nomination as Northup, forced to work on cotton plantations, one of them run by the despicable Edwin Epps, played by Michael Fassbender in a vicious and brilliant performance. McQueen goes right at his topic, showing slavery for the horror it was, and Ejiofor puts a character on the screen that you will never forget. If you were one of the few people who saw 2011’s Pariah, you know that Adepero Oduye is a stellar actress, as she further proves here as Eliza, a woman sold into slavery and taken from her children. Relative newcomer Lupita Nyong’o is equally heartbreaking as Patsey, a victim of Epps’s sick abuse. The movie is shocking, violent and unrelenting in its mission to show this country in its very worst, most shameful days. It’s about time somebody had the guts to make a movie like this one.

4All is Lost In a movie that features almost no dialogue, Robert Redford delivers some of his best work ever as a man trying to survive a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean. While sleeping in his yacht, Redford’s character (simply called “Our Man” in the credits) is abruptly awakened by the feel and sound of a floating cargo bin crashing into his boat’s side. What follows is over 100 minutes of watching Redford solve problems and fight to stay alive. Much credit goes out to the legendary actor, and relative newbie writer-director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) for making this compelling from start to finish. You’ll be surprised by how gripping the sight of a man simply trying to repair his boat can be. Redford looks like he put himself through the ringer in this one, and the results are well worth it. His character gets no real backstory, and other than one loud expletive, a couple of radio transmission attempts, and a quick beginning narration, we never really get to hear his voice. No need for vocals. Redford does it all with his face in a performance for which he will always be remembered.

3Bad Grandpa Johnny Knoxville has tried to parlay his Jackass fame into an acting career, and he hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire. So, because huge paychecks are tempting, he has returned to the Jackass well numerous times with three official movies, and his body has paid a tremendous toll. The man has thrown himself into the path of buffalos and bulls to score good laughs and, oh man, has he gotten those good laughs. As big as those checks can be, internal bleeding and broken limbs lose their luster after a while. So now we get this, a sort of Jackass movie that has a narrative mixed into hidden camera stunts. It’s very much in the tradition of Borat. Knoxville gets to play one part for the film, that of Irving Zisman, an over-80 letch of an old man that has shown up in past Jackass skits. He’s taking his grandson (Jackson Nicoll) across country, leading to some funny stunts that manage to shock a few. The highlight would be Nicoll dressed in drag and dancing to “Cherry Pie” at a beauty pageant, a moment when he basically steals the movie from Knoxville. Not as outrageous as the other Jackass films, but a nice way to keep the franchise going without destroying Knoxville’s body.

4Captain Phillips Tom Hanks plays Richard Phillips, captain of the MV Maersk Alabama cargo ship. While delivering relief goods in 2009, his ship encounters Somali pirates who could give a rat’s ass about charity and try multiple times to board his ship. They eventually succeed, putting into play a crazy hostage drama that results in Phillips being taken aboard a space capsule-sized lifeboat with his captors. Hanks gives an expert performance that is just another notch in a great career. Fortifying 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, one that basically starts with Muse informing Phillips that he is no longer the captain of his own ship. Director Paul Greengrass mellows out on his shaky cam a bit, and delivers one of his best efforts yet. 2 Carrie If you see this new 2013 version of Carrie starring Chloe Grace Moretz in the role that netted original star Sissy Spacek an Oscar nomination, you’ll probably walk away feeling it has more in common with Brian De Palma’s 1976 film than Stephen King’s sloppy first novel. While Moretz gives it her best shot, and Julianne Moore is delightfully nasty as Carrie’s crazed mother, director Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry) provides very little reason for remaking the movie. And don’t go to the film hoping for a faithful retelling of King’s novel because, other than a few plot elements thrown back in that were excised from the original film, this is a straight-up remake of the De Palma movie. While some of the supporting cast is OK, the presence of Nancy Allen and John Travolta is sorely missed. The Black Prom, a sequence so terrifying in the original film, is reduced to a glossy, silly mess in this version. Don’t waste your time.

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.

2Ender’s Game Finally, Orson Scott Card’s epic novel is adapted for the big screen and, regrettably, it misses the mark. Asa Butterfield plays Ender Wiggin, a future young master strategist who is picked by a determined colonel (a craggy and fun Harrison Ford) to eventually command a crew of teens. The hope is that the teens (including True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld), through a series of drills and exercises can eventually gain the knowledge to lead Earth in a war against an insect-like alien species. The premise is a good one (and a trendsetter for such franchises as The Matrix and Harry Potter, being that Card penned the novel almost two decades ago), but Butterfield is a bust in the title role, rendering much of the movie flat and lifeless. Ford is the best thing in the movie, and I hope this acts as a nice bridge for him to return to the Star Wars franchise. It’s cool to see him doing sci-fi again. This movie feels abbreviated, with a rushed ending. Perhaps they should’ve done it as a TV miniseries, and recast the lead.

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.

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