MOVIE
REVIEWS
Inception
By John Mulderig
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- With Inception (Warner Bros.) -- an action film resting
on a science-fiction premise -- writer-director Christopher Nolan achieves
a tour de force of spectacle and suspense. But, like many a less-sophisticated
offering in the action genre, this ingenious brainteaser is rife with
explosions and gunplay.
The price of admission to this
wild ride includes accepting that, by the use of a mysterious gadget,
characters can enter and share other people's dreams as they sleep. The
master of this futuristic art is Dom Cobb (played with striking intensity
by Leonardo DiCaprio), a corporate spy who uses his skills to intrude
into the minds of high-powered executives and extract their most treasured
secrets.
But Cobb is also a fugitive whose tempestuous past -- the details of which are revealed to us only gradually -- has left him haunted by the spectre of his deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), and unable to return home to his two young children.
So when Japanese CEO and behind-the-scenes string-puller Saito (Ken Watanabe)
offers to have his legal slate wiped miraculously clean in exchange for
a successful mission targeting Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), heir to
a rival business that threatens to undermine Saito's empire, Cobb accepts.
Instead of tricking Fischer into disgorging information, on this particular
raid into the subconscious, however, Cobb must plant an idea in Fischer's
head and make him believe it to be his own, a nearly impossible undertaking,
which those in the know refer to as "inception."
Cobb is assisted in this by his longtime partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and by a team of new collaborators -- architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page), experienced dream traveller Eames (Tom Hardy) and shady chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao).
With Mal, meanwhile, getting into the habit of making unexpected and unwelcome
appearances in Cobb's dreams -- her incongruous presence could immediately
destroy the elaborately constructed illusion he and his crew have prepared
for Fischer -- Cobb is increasingly caught between his professional aptitude
and his personal instability.
While taut, complex -- by the latter stages of his drama, Nolan is deftly
shuttling among four different adventures unfolding simultaneously at
various levels of Fischer's consciousness -- and undeniably crafty, Inception
engages the imagination more than the heart. Thus, though the Freudian-style
conflict between Fischer and his dying father is at least intermittently
affecting, the bond between Cobb and Mal never quite rises to the level
of a touching romance.
Still, adults in search of challenging fare, and not adverse to some (mostly
stylized) mayhem, will likely find this cinematic Rubik's Cube quite intriguing.
The film contains much action violence, some of it bloody, several uses
of profanity and a few crude and crass terms. The Catholic News Service
classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America
rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate
for children under 13.
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Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service. More reviews are
available online at www.usccb.org/movies.
Salt
By John Mulderig
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- Angelina Jolie
makes a weak script reasonably compelling in Salt (Columbia/Relativity).
But, though well-acted, director Phillip Noyce's action thriller is also
thoroughly violent.
Jolie plays veteran and highly skilled CIA operative Evelyn Salt.
When a Russian intelligence officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) strolls into the offices of the front corporation for which she ostensibly works and accuses her of being a longtime double agent who is about to assassinate the Russian president as part of a plot to destabilize the world political scene, Salt tries to convince her boss, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), that the charge is preposterous.
But another of her colleagues,
counterintelligence specialist William Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), insists
on an investigation. So Salt uses her training to escape from custody
and goes on the run. Fearing that the situation has endangered her husband,
Mike (August Diehl), Salt tries to locate and warn him. But she also makes
her way to New York where the Russian president is scheduled to deliver
the eulogy at the funeral of the US vice president.
This leaves Winter and Peabody scrambling to uncover whether Salt is friend or foe, even as they try to recapture her.
The recent arrest of several real-life Russian sleeper agents may make the film's rather paranoid back story of a vast undercover conspiracy more unsettlingly plausible than it might otherwise have been. Yet, Salt's all-but-superhuman abilities as an unstoppable killing machine register as over the top, while the rampage on which she repeatedly demonstrates them will not sit well with many viewers.
And, though Salt is shown to be strongly motivated by marital loyalty, screenwriter Kurt Wimmer has her pursuers express their frustration over her seemingly limitless ability to elude them -- as they chase her along a path she litters with corpses -- by peppering their talk with numerous profanities.
The film contains frequent violence,
some of it bloody, at least 10 uses of profanity, one instance of the
F-word and six crude terms. The Catholic News Service classification is
L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults
would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating
is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate
for children under 13.
Ramona and Beezus
By John Mulderig
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- Though ostensibly set in a more-or-less contemporary
suburb of Portland, Ore., the gentle, winning comedy Ramona and Beezus
(Fox) occupies a nostalgia-tinted world so idyllic that you half expect
one of the characters to announce, somewhere along the line, that a lovely
family called the Cleavers just moved in next door.
Traditional values and close-knit
family relationships reign in director Elizabeth Allen's squeaky-clean
adaptation of Beverly Cleary's best-selling series of children's books,
the first of them published -- viewers will hardly be surprised to learn
-- more than 50 years ago.
So when irrepressible nine-year-old Ramona Quimby (Joey King), on whom the slightly static story centres, warns her parents, Robert (John Corbett) and Dorothy (Bridget Moynahan), at the dinner table that she has to say a terrible swearword to vent her numerous frustrations with life, the term she eventually produces is so mild, it makes Wally and the Beaver's oft-repeated "Gee whiz!" sound blue.
While good-hearted and imaginative, Ramona is also accident-prone and her minor misadventures, which leave her feeling misunderstood, tend to antagonize her straight-teeth-and-straight-A's teen sister, Beezus (Selena Gomez). Indeed, much to her annoyance, senior sis has been burdened with that ungainly moniker as the result of Ramona's childhood inability to pronounce her real name, Beatrice.
Besides their tiffs, the only source of worry or conflict on the girls' native Klickitat Street -- a real-life address that Cleary's tales have made iconic -- arises from Dad's loss of his accounting job. (Add to that the aggravating factor that the family has just embarked on an expansion of their home, a project they might not have the funds to finish, and this aspect of Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay's script begins to feel very much of the moment.)
Unemployment leads to mild marital tensions, and Dad finds himself spending a night on the couch. But, like the prospect of the bank "taking the house" -- an expression Ramona overhears and interprets with a comic extreme of literalism -- the spectre of divorce seems quite distant along this boulevard of unbroken dreams.
Lightening the mood is the swiftly rekindling romance between Ramona's favourite aunt -- and Beezus' namesake -- Bea (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her high school true love Hobart (Josh Duhamel). Ever the ramblin' man, Hobart is off to Alaska and floats the idea of Bea coming with him. But anyone who fears she might do so before exchanging marriage vows has clearly not been paying attention.
Beezus, too, has an affair of the heart underway, having fallen for childhood friend Henry Huggins (Hutch Dano, not Rex Harrison). In keeping with the delightfully innocent atmosphere of la rue Klickitat, it takes this bashful young pair the better part of 90 minutes to work their way up to a first kiss.
Though some fussy adults with short attention spans may object that nothing very momentous happens as Ramona and Beezus unspools, as should be obvious by now, what does take place transpires in the nicest possible way.
So just you wait, Henry Huggins, just you wait.
The Catholic News Service classification is A-I -- general patronage. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is G -- general audiences. All ages admitted.
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge
of Kitty Galore
By Joseph McAleer
Catholic News Service
NEW YORK (CNS) -- Doctor Doolittle meets James Bond in Cats & Dogs:
The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Warner Bros.), a clever and funny 3-D spy
adventure for the entire family. This followup to the 2001 comedy Cats
& Dogs seamlessly blends live action, puppetry, and computer animation
as -- unbeknownst to their beloved human owners -- the two species of
the title must join forces to save the planet from one very bad kitty.
Said villain is Kitty Galore (voiced with relish by Bette Midler), a former
agent for the cat spy organization MEOWS who has "gone rogue."
Abandoned after an industrial accident rendered her hairless and looking
like Eartha Kitt, Kitty seeks dominion over all pets to make the world
her "personal scratching post." Her weapon of mass destruction
is the Call of the Wild -- apologies to Jack London -- a screech that
will render dogs insane and launch a global cat-astrophe.
But the top-secret intelligence organizations on both sides of the yard have been working overtime to thwart Kitty's plan. Here Cats & Dogs mines the 007 canon to hilarious effect. MEOWS' canine equivalent is DOG, within whose subterranean world headquarters, dubbed "where Petco meets Las Vegas," agents train, are fitted with collars containing laser beams, test jet packs and rocket cars, and, in their downtime, play poker (of course).
"We take 'Man's Best Friend' very seriously," intones Lou (voice
of Neil Patrick Harris), a be-speckled beagle who is leader of the DOG
pack.
DOG needs backup, and finds it in new recruit Diggs (voice of James Marsden),
a police K-9 German shepherd whose best qualification is his hatred of
cats. He and his partner and mentor Butch (voice of Nick Nolte) set out
in search of a sassy pigeon called Seamus (voice of Katt Williams), who
holds vital clues to Kitty's plan. But feline intelligence is also on
the case, and special agent Catherine (voice of Christina Applegate) puts
her nine lives on the line for the cause.
With the fate of the world at stake, MEOWS top cat Tab Lazenby (voice
of Roger Moore, channeling his Bond past) proposes a peace pact with DOG
to bring Kitty down. As Cats & Dogs barrels along to its explosive
climax, the allies visit "Dog Alcatraz," where the notorious
feline felon Mr. Tinkles (voice of Sean Hayes) -- clad in a Hannibal Lecter
straitjacket and echoing some of Lecter's most famous lines -- plays mind
games.
As directed by Brad Peyton ("Evelyn"), Cats & Dogs: The
Revenge of Kitty Galore has plenty of excitement, gizmos, and cute-as-a-button
moments to charm and enthrall the youngsters, while their parents will
enjoy the inside jokes and grown-up references. A few of these, including
Catherine's interrogation by what looks like water-boarding, and a hippy
house in San Francisco where groovy cats are "hopped up on cat nip,"
push the boundaries of family viewing, but remain within the lines of
good taste.
The Catholic News Service classification is A-I -- general patronage.
The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG - parental guidance
suggested.
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McAleer is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service. More reviews
are available online at www.usccb.org/movies.
Copyright (c) 2010 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops
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