Gravity (FILM REVIEW)

Gravity

Film Review by Kam Williams

Astronauts Struggle to Survive Shuttle Disaster in Harrowing Outer Space Thriller

            Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) is set to retire following a distinguished career as a NASA astronaut. The veteran captain is currently in command of his final flight of the Space Shuttle Explorer with a primary mission to replace solar panels on the Hubble Telescope.

            Upon rendezvousing, the spacewalk proceeds so routinely that devastatingly-handsome bachelor is comfortable engaging in flirtatious chitchat with attractive Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), a medical engineer on her maiden voyage. But then Mission Control urgently orders them back into the capsule because the debris field from a damaged Russian satellite is headed in their direction at the speed of a bullet.

            However, it causes catastrophic damage to the shuttle before they have a chance to reenter it, killing all their crewmates and destroying the vehicle beyond repair. Suddenly, Kowalski and Stone find themselves floating in space, no longer in radio contact with Houston, and with a very limited amount of oxygen left in their tanks.             

            This is the intriguing premise established practically at the point of departure of Gravity, a gripping sci-fi thriller written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron (Pan’s Labyrinth). What ensues is a desperate race against time in which the unflappable Kowalski does his best to keep the frightened rookie calm while trying to survive more by his wits than by the book.

            The impromptu plan involves using their thrusters to reach the International Space Station 100 kilometers away before the shrapnel returns upon completing another orbit of Earth. This is just the first of many challenges to be faced successfully if the protagonists’ are ever to feel solid ground under their feet again.

            Rather than ruin the plot’s unpredictable developments for you one iota, permit me to heap praise on a pair of nonpareil performances by Oscar-winners George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Of equal note are the picture’s breathtaking 3D cinematography and the magical way in which weightlessness is convincingly created onscreen.

            Buckle up for a relentlessly-riveting, roller coaster ride through a deceptively-close outer space you can virtually reach out and touch!

Excellent (4 stars)

Rated PG-13 for intense peril, disturbing images and brief strong profanity

Running time: 90 minutes

Distributor: Warner Brothers  

To see a trailer for Gravity, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTiKOy59o4        

The Purge (DVD REVIEW)

The Purge

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Anything Goes One Day a Year in Futuristic Horror Flick 

            The setting is America in 2022, a disturbing dystopia where the prisons are even more overcrowded than we find them today. Consequently, the overwhelmed authorities have come up with a unique way of dealing with crime, namely, designating one night a year on which the rule of law is suspended, and anything is legal, even murder.

            The idea is that, with the cops turning their heads the other way, armed vigilantes can indulge their bloodlust and dispense justice simultaneously, thereby doing society a favor by ridding the streets of vermin. However, this means that it isn’t safe to be outside during that very dangerous 12-hour period known as The Purge.

            For that reason, James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) has carefully barricaded his family inside its heavily-fortified mansion. Besides outfitting the house with a state of the art security system, the wealthy homeowner has purchased a couple of guns just in case an intruder still manages to break in post-lockdown.

            But that seems highly unlikely once James punches in the computerized code, thereby dropping bulletproof steel shields over all the windows and doors. As the 7 PM siren signals the start of the gruesome festivities, he settles down with wife Mary (Lena Headey), son Charlie (Max Burkholder) and daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane) in front of a bank of video surveillance monitors to watch whether anyone attempts to enter the premises.

            What they didn’t bargain for was Zoey’s boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller) hiding in her bedroom, or the sight of a wounded, homeless black man (Edwin Hodge) on the perimeter of the premises begging for sanctuary from a bloodthirsty mob. Soon, the boundary is irreversibly breached when kindhearted Charlie lets the stranger inside at a moment of weakness, leading to a terrifying ordeal that lasts till dawn.

            So unfolds The Purge, a futuristic horror flick written and directed bv James DeMonaco (Little New York). This riveting thriller plays much bigger than a picture shot on a relatively-modest budget of just $3 million. 

            Be ready to scream at the top of your lungs in response to the spine-tingling fare tautly edited to make you jump out of your seat when you least expect to. Meanwhile, the picture proves to be equally thought-provoking, given the philosophical questions it raises via a most unusual method of social engineering.

            A cerebral screamfest guaranteed to give you goosebumps!

Excellent (3.5 stars)

Rated R for profanity and disturbing violence

Running time: 86 minutes

Distributor: Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Extras: Surviving the Night: The Making of The Purge.

To see a trailer for The Purge, visit: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qI7wuFnQ08  

Or: http://blumhouse.com/film/thepurge#video&MC0vg9A3Q8Y 

 

Top Ten DVD Releases for 10-8-13

This Week’s DVD Releases

by Kam Williams

Top Ten DVD List for October 8, 2013      

         

Resolution

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Psych: The Complete Seventh Season

La Cage aux Folles [Criterion Collection]

The Purge

Aliyah

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold [Criterion Collection]

Chucky: The Complete Collection

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts

 

Totally Spies Collection: Seasons 1-3

Honorable Mention

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life [30^th Anniversary Edition]

The Guild: Complete Megaset

 

Monster High: 13 Wishes

League of Super Evil Megaset

 

Curse of Chucky

Sexual Tension: Violetas

 

Frat Brothers

The Hangover: Part III

Transformers Prime: Predacons Rising

Caillou: Let's Go Sledding

Tumbledown

PBS Kids: We Are a Dinosaur Family

 

Complicity

Static

 

Dancing Ninja

Berlin Job

Dead in Tombstone

Zombie Hunters

The Guild: Season Six

The Mermaids

Approaching Midnight

Nothing Left to Fear

Kam's Movie Kapsules for 10-4-13

OPENING THIS WEEK

Kam's Kapsules:      

Weekly Previews That Make Choosing a Film Fun         

by Kam Williams

For movies opening October 11, 2013

BIG BUDGET FILMS   

Captain Phillips (PG-13 for intense violence, sustained terror, bloody images and substance abuse) Tom Hanks stars in this action thriller, directed by Paul Greengrass, reenacting the 2009 rescue by Navy SEALs of an American container ship hijacked by Somali pirates. With Catherine Keener, Barkhad Abdi and Faysal Ahmed.  

Machete Kills (R for profanity, sexuality and pervasive graphic violence) Danny Trejo reprises the title role in this high body-count sequel which finds the intrepid detective-turned-spy recruited by the U.S. President (Charlie Sheen) to foil a terrorist plot being hatched by a Mexican madman (Demian Bichir) and an eccentric billionaire (Mel Gibson). Ensembler includes Lady Gaga, Sofia Vergara, Jessica Alba, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Antonio Banderas and Amber Heard.

INDEPENDENT & FOREIGN FILMS  

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (R for sexuality, nudity, profanity, violence and pervasive drug and alcohol use, all involving teens) High attrition-rate horror flick about a 16 year-old blossoming beauty (Amber Heard) invited by classmates intent on taking her virginity to a wild weekend party at a remote ranch in Texas where kids start disappearing one-by-one. With Anson Mount, Edwin Hodge and Michael Welch.

Broadway Idiot (Unrated) Punk rockumentary highlighting the effort to turn Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s hit album “American Idiot” into a Broadway musical. With Michael Mayer, John Gallagher, Jr. and Michael Esper.

CBGB (R for sexuality, drug use, violence and pervasive profanity) Rock & Roll retrospective revolving around Hilly Cristal (Alan Rickman), the founder of CBGB, the legendary, Greenwich Village nightclub which launched the careers of such New Wave groups as Blondie, the B-52s, the Ramones and the Talking Heads. Cast includes Malin Akerman as Debbie Harry, Joel David Moore as Joey Ramone, Mickey Sumner as Patti Smith and Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop.       

Design Is One: The Vignellis (Unrated) Fashion documentary revisiting the career of the husband and wife team of Massimo and Lella Vignellis, influential Italian designers of futuristic modern furniture, packaging, housewares and signage.  

God Loves Uganda (Unrated) Born Again documentary chronicling the campaign by Evangelical Christian missionaries to encourage the citizens of Uganda to abandon their cultural traditions in favor of Biblical law.

The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (R for profanity, drug use and sexuality) Coming-of-age saga about a 9 (Ethan Dizon) and 13 year-old’s (Skylan Brooks) attempt to survive the summer on the sweltering streets of New York City after their substance-abusing mother (Jennifer Hudson) is arrested by the police. Cast includes Anthony Mackie, Jordin Sparks and Jeffrey Wright.  

Romeo and Juliet (PG-13 for violence and mature themes) A tale of forbidden love, set in Renaissance Verona, loosely based on the Shakespeare classic about a star-crossed couple (Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth) hailing from feuding clans. With Paul Giamatti, Stellan Skarsgard, Damian Lewis and Ed Westwick.

 

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (DVD REVIEW)

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Jay-Z Produced Romantic Romp Arrives on DVD

            When a gangsta rapper like Jay-Z decides to dabble in filmmaking, it only makes sense that the flick might remind you more of his genre of popular music than a typical movie. That’s precisely the case with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, an unorthodox romance drama produced by the incomparable hip-hop icon.

            Written, directed, edited, scored, narrated by and animated by Terrence Nance (How Would You Feel?), the surreal adventure co-stars Renaissance Man Nance opposite Namik Minter as friends in a platonic relationship on the verge of turning venereal. The ambitious, multimedia undertaking not only mixes cartoon and live-action images, but it also walks a fine line between drama and documentary.

            While the protagonists try to sort out their feelings, the picture poses some thought-provoking questions, such as, “How do you balance logic and emotions?” Unfortunately, the film is afflicted with a fatal flaw, namely, a virtually non-stop narration of the play-by-play which starts to get on your nerves after about five minutes.

            Granted, this could just be an age thing, since the Hip-Hop Generation is already used to hearing incessant, mindless, staccato-style chatter in their favorite songs. So, it might not be that big a jump for them to have to listen to a non-stop voiceover for the duration of a movie. Nevertheless, the slick poetry slam approach definitely didn’t do it for this critic.

             Another annoying aspect of the experience was how the audience is addressed directly by the disembodied voice, as in “You arrive at your home,” “You empty your pockets,” “You have no bed and no money,” “You possess no means of personal transportation,” and so forth. Granted, Jay McInerney effectively employed the 2nd person in his best-selling novel “Bright Lights, Big City,” but it simply fails to work here as a cinematic device.

            Ghetto psychobabble strictly for the attention-deficit demographic. 

Fair (1 star)

Unrated

Running time: 93 minutes

Distributor: Cinema Guild

DVD Extras: Audio commentary with director Terence Nance; audio commentary with actress Namik Minter; Exorcising Rejection (2008, 8 mins), a short film by Terence Nance; How Would You Feel? (2006, 7 mins), the original short film by Terence Nance; deleted scenes; and the theatrical trailer.

To see a trailer for An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, visit: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7UB0QjTRjA     

 

The African Americans (BOOK REVIEW)

The African Americans

Many Rivers to Cross

by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Dr. Donald Yacovone  

Smiley Books

Hardcover, $34.95                        

304 pages, Illustrated

ISBN: 978-1-4019-3514-6

Book Review by Kam Williams

            “One of the central themes of African Americans is the exploration of the diversity of ethnic origins of the people from Africa and their descendants whose enslavement led to the creation of the African American people, as well as the multiplicity of cultural institutions, political strategies and beliefs, and religious and social institutions that the African American people have created….

            Above all else, this book is concerned with showing that even in the midst of great political adversity and personal vulnerability, even under the harshest conditions, black people for 500 years have explored the fullest range of human emotions and actions, falling in and out of love, inventing novel ways to worship, stressing over the fate and fortunes of their children, and wondering about God’s purpose for their lives and their afterlives.

            In other words, the Black Experience is just one wondrous rendition of the larger experience of being a human being and collectively fashioning a civilization.”

            -- Excerpted from the Introduction (pages xi-xii)

            By and large, the history books have marginalized the African-American community by either omitting or minimizing its cornucopia of contributions to the country. Similarly, the African-American psyche has been trivialized by a host of harmful stereotypes which suggest that we aren’t as diverse or as capable of experiencing the same full range of emotions as Caucasians.

            How else can you explain that the Mayor of New York City might rationalize employing the “stop and frisk” police tactic against blacks in wholesale fashion, as if criminality is a racial trait instead of judging people by the content of their character as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King a half-century ago? Fortunately, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross has just been published in the face of such persisting, institutionalized prejudice.

            Co-written by Harvard’s Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Dr. Donald Yacovone, the book is basically a companion piece to the 6-part television series of the same name that’s set to premiere on PBS on October 22^nd. But this relatively-encyclopedic opus has been afforded the luxury of being able to explore the same subject-matter in much greater depth.

            Arranged chronologically, it starts with a chapter covering the period from 1500-1540 when Africans first arrived in the so-called New World. Next comes the period during which skin color-coded slavery became institutionalized, followed by 1700-1811, which the authors dub “The Age of Revolutions.”

            That’s followed by “Half Slave, Half Free,” the awkward ante bellum era when many Africans were emancipated while the majority remained in chains. Subsequently, in succession, came the Civil War, Reconstruction, lynchings and the rise of the Klan, en route to the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements and President Obama in the White House.

            An engaging journey through African-American history from a fresh perspective reflecting the rich inner lives of black folks irrespective of station.   

 

The Croods (DVD REVIEW)

The Croods

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Cavemen Explore Earth in Enchanting Animated Adventure

            Are you better off than you were four million years ago? That’s the evolutionary question playfully posed by The Croods, a visually-captivating, action-oriented cartoon revolving around an agoraphobic clan of cave dwellers that summons up the courage to abandon their home in the face of impending climate change.           

            The enchanting message movie was co-directed by Kirk De Micco (Space Chimps) and Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon) who assembled an ensemble featuring Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and Cloris Leachman to breathe life into a colorful array of prehistoric characters. Besides the talented voice cast, the film makes a most effective use of 3-D technology guaranteed to keep the tykes enthralled for the duration, whether they’re ducking projectiles aimed directly at their heads or trying to touch objects dangling just out of reach.

            At the point of departure we find the Croods huddled inside their dank, dark cave where they sleep in a pile to keep warm at night. The family is presided over by Grug (Cage), an overprotective patriarch whose mantra is the double-negative “Never not be afraid!”

            The other members of his primitive brood include naggy mother-in-law Gran (Leachman), long-suffering wife Ugga (Catherine Keener) and their three kids: feral baby Sandy (Randy Thom), man-child Thunk (Clark Duke) and rebellious teen Eep (Stone). Grug feels it is his duty to remind them on a daily basis of the many dangers lurking just beyond the entrance of their boulder-fortified abode.

            That’s why he’s so fond of telling bedtime stories in which any curiosity about the outside world invariably proves fatal. Grug’s scare tactics work until the fateful day Eep sneaks off to explore on her own only to encounter a boy (Reynolds) about her own age.

            Not only has handsome Guy figured out how to harness fire to keep hungry creatures at bay but he forecasts imminent doom for any humans who fail to move to higher ground. When Eep brings word of this frightening development to her Neanderthal of a dad, it becomes abundantly clear that it’s going to take more than a little convincing to get him to lead the family out of the cave on a perilous trek to safety.

            Mother Nature plays a part in nudging him to grudgingly join forces with Guy, and the ensuing sojourn across a vast wasteland to Shangri-La allows for a priceless lesson about risk-taking as relevant in the 21st Century as it must have been back in the Stone Age. A side-splitting, thrill-a-minute adventure reminiscent of the best of The Flintstones. Wilma!

Excellent (4 stars)

Rated PG for scenes of peril 

Running time: 96 minutes

Distributor: Dreamworks Animation / 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes; Belt’s Cave Journal; and World of Dreamworks Animation.

To see a trailer for The Croods, visit:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrbwgn_kRBo

To order a copy of The Croods on DVD, visit: