Aug

4

Comedies are always refreshing, whether one is a child or the adult ferrying said tot to the dark, healing sancta of frosty air conditioning in the presence of popcorn and celluloid.

Despicable Me

Animation this clever, this delightful, is rare. Children delight in its silliness and ultimate message (redemption conquers even mean-spirited villains who let the love of kiddies into their hearts), and adults thrill to the vocal stylings and hilarity of Julie Andrews, Russell Brand, Kristen Wiig and Will Arnett. In a nutshell, the plot can be summarized in two words: Superbad superdad. A piece-of-work criminal mastermind (Steve Carell, a superb dastard) deploys a cute troika of orphan girls to accomplish his scheme of foiling his arch-enemy (Jason Segal), and becoming the most fearsome thief, ever. (He wants to steal the moon.) Winningly, he is soon felled by a sudden rise of love and caring for this trio of tykes (Say it ain't so!). Witticisms dot the script for the alert: The meany's bank vault is supertitled "Formerly Lehman Brothers." The banker himself is a no-frills nasty. For market followers, jokes and ribbing galore at the expense of the money industry, tech wizardry and science biz.
My Dog Tulip

 Almost as wonderful, the multiply-diverting animated panels of My Dog Tulip. This is the quirky, gigglesome touching tale related by a widower grump (voiced by Christopher Plummer) who acquires an obstreperous Alsatian he never wanted, and how he got his now-beloved female dog well-mated and house-trained. Written, directed and animated by the glorious filmmakers Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, this is the first feature to be entirely hand-drawn and painted using paperless computer technology. Wonderfully voiced by the late Lynn Redgrave (her last work) and the plumy Isabella Rossellini. A bit more adult than most children under 5-feet might 'get,' a bit more sexual than most children will comprehend, it is a delight to voting-age and above viewers who have the blessings of literary, novelistic and movie references. Witty, astringent, British.

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

CATS AND DOGS (The Revenge of Kitty Galore), a live-action film interpolating human voices into the aforementioned popular house-pets, is another in the growing annoyance of 3D (for extra oomph–but also extra dollars). The eternal guerrilla battle between felines and pooches is enjoined here, with generous borrowing references to the full James Bond galaxy of fond memories, MEN IN BLACK set pieces, STAR WARS nudges, and the panoply of sci-fi stories of world conquering, except writ small. Kitty Galore (recall, of course, Bond's Pussy Galore)—Bette Midler–is an elite spy for intel service MEOWS, but has gone rogue. She will bring her canine enemies to heel and control the world of humans. Faced with this cataclysmic menace, cats and dogs have to bury the hatchet and…work together to fell the feisty feline. Live action mixed with cutting-edge puppetry plus computer animation, the voices featured include Chris O'Donnell, Christina Applegate, Neil Patrick Harris, Nick Nolte, Joe Pantoliano, Paul Rodriguez, SNL regular Fred Armisen and rapper/comic Katt Williams. The first half is an ongoing series of open-mouthed amazement that filmmakers (Andrew Lazar, who made his first go-round in 2001, CATS & DOGS) could pull this off: These are the paw-soldiers of a vast network of canine and feline coverts, surveillance pros, and 4-legged assassins of every fur and stripe. the second half palls somewhat, and becomes cloying. Children will not get much beyond the secret lives of pets, which will initially delight them. Parents will find it a bit tiring after an hour, and the audience in which we sat, some 400 people, did not feature many delighted chortles from the dozens of tots in tow. The 3D glasses are cumbersome and annoying after a time, too.

Helen

HelenNot for the kids, HELEN, directed by Sandra Nettelbeck, is a sober consideration of how long-hidden clinical depression, and an unexpected breakdown, fatally compromises the life of a beautiful, talented, happily married college professor, a loving mother of a gifted daughter. Sophisticated viewers will soon cotton onto the baffling reason behind Ashley Judd's sudden incapacity and withdrawal. What surprises is that in 2010, her savvy businessman husband (handsome Goran Visnjic) does not seem to be aware of depression and the symptomatology attendant on this well-known and pandemic disorder. He seems to be completely at sea as to how to handle recovery or treatment. Only another depression sufferer, Mathilda (Lauren Lee Smith), helps bring a ray of something resembling hope to the protagonist, When we were editing SELF Magazine (a national woman's monthly) a few years ago, we noted that every issue, without fail, covered depression in one form or another, in medical briefs or major features. Depression, either clinical or subclinical, bulks large in the lives of American adult females. It took Nettlebeck a decade to get this project onto the screen. It is not clear that she captured the scenario at present, with her hospital personnel and treatment modalities; the film seems to be about someone a few decades distant from present-day consciousness. It is beautifully acted, but scarcely a pick-me-up for audiences seeking either an entertainment compilation, or a comprehensive wardrobe of contemporary responses to this disturbing, persistent problem afflicting so many. Director Nettelbeck hoped, she says, that "audiences might be able to provide direction and hope to victims of depression in their own sphere"; or "seek help" themselves. Do we need a 2-hour disintegration of a fine family to tell us to go to the doctor?


 Neshoba: The Price of Freedom

A documentary that seems to be heavily indebted to clips and tapes, photographs and family portraits from a dozen other such documentaries, NESHOBA is the revisiting—40 years on—of the terrible murders of civil rights workers, in 1964 Mississippi, by Klansmen never prosecuted or indicted when the murders occurred. Directors Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano had been just slightly younger then the Freedom Riders of that ugly summer, 1964. Murdered and brutalized were idealistic young men James Chaney, New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had come down to Mississippi to help register blacks to vote. In 2005, one man, Klansman-preacher Edgar Ray Killen (odd name for a man responsible for so much death) was finally tried and held accountable for the injustices of 1964—though there were at least a dozen more implicated (a dishonor roll unspools with the end-credits) who even today have not been brought to the court of justice. The city of Neshoba still boasts people with the livid mentality of hate and bigotry we all thought expunged by the Civil rights Act of 1965 and the passive of much time. Hearing Killen and his compatriot "ex-Klansmen," the viewer is sickened by their unregenerate hate and bile, even today. Some 100 other civil rights workers and associates disappeared in those years, found in the riverbed or shallow graves, but their murderers have not ever been identified. A powerful, not altogether immaculate documentary, NESHOBA is a hard-to-stomach but riveting account.


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