Saturday, April 18, 2015

Mini Reviews: 4/18/15

Whatever, I've been busy.


Sons of Perdition:  2010 documentary about teenagers exiled from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS Church).  In case you’re not familiar with the infamous Warren Jeffs, here’s the rundown:  he’s a self-proclaimed prophet and former leader of one of the largest Mormon fundamentalist factions that still practices polygamy. And in what many former FLDS members see as an effort to gain additional wives for Church leadership, many young boys are exiled for such wild infractions as speaking to girls, listening to pop music, and wearing short-sleeved shirts.  Some also flee the community on their own.

These kids are so sheltered and their lives so controlled that when they first leave many don’t know what the nation’s capitol is, or what comic books are.  Free to make their own decisions for the first time, struggling with a new culture, and cut off from their family and friends, they all party pretty hard.  It’s a fairly good documentary, but deeply sad.




Fame High:  2012 documentary directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, about four students at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).  Grace is a senior ballet dancer with amazing technical abilities who is seeking to add emotional depth to her dancing while balancing wanting a boyfriend, excelling in her other classes, and meeting the demands of her conservative Korean family.  Brittany is a senior singer-songwriter who moved from Wisconsin to attend LACHSA but now wonders about the value of an arts education versus real-world stage experience.  Zak is a jazz pianist prodigy with a soft demeanor and a serious Stage Dad.  And Ruby is the quirky freshman drama major who annoyed me half to death.

It shows all the normal drama of high school plus actual Drama.  Amazing teachers, stage parents both supportive and terrible, students both talented and delusional - teenagers earnestly reciting Shakespeare is like my nightmare.  It’s edited well, it draws you in (albeit very slowly) and it had me by the end but man did it take a while.  I’d totally watch it again.




Ender’s Game:  2013 sci fi action film based on the book by Orson Scott Card, directed by Gavin Hood, and starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, and Ben Kingsley.  In the future, citizens of Earth are locked in a struggle against an alien race and prepare gifted children to be the potential new commanders of the space fleet.  Ender Wiggin is selected for Battle School, and has to fight his way to the top against hyper-competitive fellow students and the machinations of his teachers.

                  This summary really doesn’t do it justice.  It’s a decent adaptation of an excellent young adult sci fi novel, which I would highly recommend reading first.




The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug:  2013 fantasy action epic directed by Peter Jackson and starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, and Orlando Bloom.  When last we left our intrepid group of adventurers, they were being tracked by a party of Orcs on their quest to retrieve the Arkenstone from the lair of a dragon and reunite the fractured community of Dwarves.  This second movie of the three-part series (don’t get me started) involves a dude who can morph into a giant bear, huge scary spiders, elves, and Smaug the dragon.  Look, you either like these kinds of movies or you don’t.  It’s a CGI spectacle, highly entertaining, and Lee Pace as Thranduil alone is worth seeing it.  If you like this sort of thing.




Holes:  2003 dramedy based on a young adult novel by Louis Sachar, starring Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette, Jon Voight, Eartha Kitt, Henry Winkler, and Khleo Thomas.  Stanley Yelnats IV is a sweet teenager from a quirky family with uncommonly bad luck.  A misunderstanding over a stolen pair of sneakers lands him in a juvenile detention work camp, where he and other tween offenders spend their days endless digging holes in the desert. Through a series of flashbacks and encounters with the warden, Stanley learns the true story of his family’s unlucky past and begins to set everything right.
         The soundtrack is obnoxious almost to the point of distraction, but it’s otherwise a cute movie.  The plot is interesting, the acting is decent, and it’s so nice to remember the LaBeouf of this era rather than the man-bunned Poor Man’s Culkin he’s become.