MOVIE REVIEWS

Death at a Funeral

By John Mulderig

Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Death at a Funeral (Screen Gems), director Neil LaBute's Americanization of Frank Oz's 2007 British comedy of the same title, mostly seeks its laughs in the bedroom and bathroom. The results are predictably woeful, with LaBute and screenwriter Dean Craig -- who also wrote the original film -- largely wasting the gifts of a potentially winning cast.

This ensemble farce relates the various outlandish mishaps that befall estranged brothers Aaron (Chris Rock) and Ryan (Martin Lawrence) and a number their relatives and friends (notably James Marsden, Tracy Morgan and Danny Glover) as they all gather to bury the family patriarch.

Among the supposedly humorous developments delaying the obsequies are the insistent pleas of Aaron's wife, Michelle (Regina Hall), that the couple slip upstairs and take advantage of her fertility cycle to conceive their first child, and an incident in which Morgan's character helps Glover, playing wheelchair-bound and cantankerous Uncle Russell, to use the toilet, only to find himself the victim of a repulsive -- and vividly portrayed -- accident.

Another story line hinges on the played-for-laughs revelation of the deceased's concealed relationship with a mysterious stranger named Frank (Peter Dinklage), who now threatens to show incriminating photos to the widow (Loretta Devine) unless he's paid $30,000 in hush money.

Though Marsden initially has some daffy fun with the role of a future in-law who mistakenly takes a hallucinogenic, thinking it's Valium, by the time he ends up climbing around on the roof of the family home stark naked, it's pretty clear that "Death at a Funeral" is DOA.

The film contains frivolous treatment of adulterous homosexuality, rear and partial nudity, a drug theme, graphic scatological humour, sexual jokes and references, a half-dozen uses of profanity and frequent rough and crude language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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Mulderig is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.

Kick-Ass

By John Mulderig

Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The seemingly never-ending search, among some in Hollywood, for those rare screen taboos that have yet to be toppled results in the jaw-dropping spectacle of Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz).

She's the blithely murderous masked tween with a fondness for spouting such vulgarities as the C-word whose viciously efficient mowing down of her enemies is central to the plot of Kick-Ass (Lionsgate), an intentionally outrageous but deeply perverse actioncomedy.

Home-schooled as an assassin by her father, Damon (Nicolas Cage) -- a deranged ex-police officer who also has a costumed alter ego named Big Daddy -- Hit Girl serves as an ally in Big Daddy's feud with Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong), the straight-from-central-casting mob boss who frame-up of Damon landed the honest cop in prison. The trauma of Damon's jail time, we learn, resulted in the death of Hit Girl's mother and the birth of an obsessive vendetta.

Stumbling into the midst of this conflict comes the film's hero, ordinary high school student Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson). Fed up with the petty thievery by which he's constantly victimized, nerdy Dave has taken time off from habitually pleasuring himself with the help of Internet porn to create the would-be superhero of the title.

As Dave soon discovers, however, it takes more than the mail-order wetsuit that constitutes Kick-Ass' outfit to bring down the bad guys, and he first encounters Hit Girl when she saves him from the potentially fatal consequences of his well-intentioned but ill-advised overreaching.

Intent on using Kick-Ass to get to his father's enemies, Frank's spoiled son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a fellow student of Dave's, creates a persona of his own called Red Mist whose hip lifestyle includes a fancy sports car and easy access to marijuana.

As the plot approaches its ultra-violent conclusion, director and co-writer (with Jane Golman) Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Mark Millar and John S. Romita Jr.'s series of comic books fills the screen with bloody mayhem. Characters from either side who fall into the wrong hands find themselves crushed by machinery, riddled by Gatling guns and even exploded inside a giant microwave designed to dry lumber.

The film contains much gory violence including torture and dismemberment, brief graphic sexual activity and offscreen masturbation, upper female nudity, drug use, a few instances of profanity and pervasive rough and crude language. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Oceans

By John P. McCarthy

Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- The second movie released under Walt Disney Studios' new nature label is even more ambitious and wide-ranging than last year's Earth. Arriving in theaters on Earth Day 2010, Oceans (Disneynature) offers as many visual delights as its predecessor while making a surprisingly sophisticated, indeed metaphysical, argument for responsible environmental stewardship.

Shot over a four-year period, the marine documentary has a poetic, meditative quality that ultimately echoes even more resoundingly than its portrayal of the awesome power and tumultuous wonders of the sea.

The best nature films present spectacular pictures, tell a dramatic story (which usually entails a high degree of anthropomorphizing) and impart facts. Co-directors and writers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, who previously collaborated on the Academy Award-nominated Winged Migration, don't skimp on arresting images but have difficulty piecing together a cohesive narrative.

And because they decline to transmit much data, at times the viewer is left wanting more explanatory detail. (Why exactly are those thousands of spider crabs attacking one another in Melbourne Bay?)
Their stated goal is to provide an emotional experience that will heighten viewer sensitivity to the aquatic ecosystem. Although they touch on a handful of ways in which the human race threatens the oceans (seeing fish caught in commercial nets is particularly poignant), their philosophical approach sees humankind as the potential hero of the piece, not merely its villain. Messieurs Perrin and Cluzaud are hopeful, accurately contending that our collective will to protect the ocean has never been stronger.

They begin by posing the question "What is the sea?" and end by claiming that to understand the ocean is to put a mirror up to ourselves. The journey of communal self-examination they lead spans all five oceans, submerging viewers into the waters off the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, South Africa and the Antarctic (to name only four shooting locales) in loosely connected sequences featuring myriad sea creatures, both familiar and exotic.

Highlights include a thrilling segment during which hosts of marine birds, sharks and whales simultaneously feast on schools of sardines; a suspenseful nighttime visit to the ocean floor; and dynamic footage of dolphins playfully cutting through the deep. Co-operation between different species is showcased as prominently as predation. And those needing their penguin fix won't be disappointed.

Visually, Oceans scores high marks, and it's a bit surprising that the movie isn't being released in 3-D or on Imax screens. The 35mm digital cinematography is most remarkable for its ability to capture fast movement. Sonic phenomena -- birdcalls, whale songs, plus the sounds of churning, storm-tossed waters -- are as memorable as the film's eye-catching splendours. They're well matched by the pleasing tones of narrator Pierce Brosnan.

The message that conservation is in humankind's self-interest and that we must endeavour to live in harmony with every denizen of the sea is unassailable.

In addition to refraining from eco-scaremongering, the filmmakers avoid disturbing images. When, for instance, killer whales and great white sharks are seen hunting sea lions and fur seals, or frigate birds pluck newly hatched turtles from the sand, they cut away before showing anything too graphic, and so the film contains nothing objectionable.

The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-I -- general patronage. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is G -- general audiences. All ages admitted.

Copyright (c) 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops