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Family fare: Movie reviews for parents – Chicago Sun
Family fare: Movie reviews for parents
by Nell Minow
Jan 12, 2011 07:40PM
“Season of the Witch”
Assessments from a parent’s perspective of this week’s openings and recent titles:
‘The Green Hornet’
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violent action, language, sensuality and drug content
Translation: Comic-book fantasy violence, with many characters injured and killed, and brief graphic images. Death of a parent. Drinking and drug dealing. Sexual references and a non-explicit situation. Very strong language for a PG-13.
Recommendation: High school ages to adults.
Family discussion: How does it differ from other superhero movies? Why does Britt change his mind about his father?
If you like this, try: The “Green Hornet” television series co-starring Bruce Lee.
‘The Dilemma’
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements involving sexual content.
Translation: Adultery, with many sexual references and situations, including brief nudity (male butt, stripper and animated characters). A homophobic reference. Very strong and crude language. Drinking and gambling. Violence (fistfights and gunfire).
Recommendation: Mature teenagers to adults.
Family discussion: Should Ronny tell Nick the truth? How did Ronny’s experience change his views about his own relationship?
If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
‘Season of the Witch’
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, violence and disturbing content.
Translation: Many disturbing and grisly images including dead bodies and plague victims. Demonic wolves and a devil figure. Battle scenes and sword fights, with characters injured and killed. Alcohol use. A brief sexual reference and non-explicit, non-sexual nudity.
Recommendation: High school ages to adults.
Family discussion: When do the characters require proof and when do they rely on faith?
If you like this, try: “Ladyhawke” and “Dragonslayer.”
Nell Minow is the film critic for the website beliefnet.com.
Capsule reviews of feature films
CASINO JACK 2 stars. Kevin Spacey gives a slick but soulless performance as disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff in this tonally all-over-the-map account of hubris and greed in the nation’s capital. 1 hr. 48 R (violence, profanity, drugs, nudity, sex, adult themes) – Steven Rea.
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER 2 1/2 stars. Maybe it’s the postproduction 3-D enhancements, but in this effects-laden Odyssey for tweens, sometimes humans and beasts seem more wax-and-paint than flesh-and-blood. Director Michael Apted deftly handles the elements of Christian allegory; it’s the infernal digital effects that prove to be beyond his capacity. 1 hr. 55 PG (violence) – Carrie Rickey
COUNTRY STRONG 2 1/2 stars. Gwyneth Paltrow stars in this Nashville romantic quadrangle set at the fork between the roads to redemption and ruin. With the Heath Ledgerish Garrett Hedlund, Taylor Swifty Leighton Meester and Tim McGraw, a complete cipher. 1 hr. 51 PG-13 (sexual candor, alcohol abuse) – Carrie Rickey
THE FIGHTER 3 1/2 stars. Based on the real-life career, and comeback, of welterweight champ “Irish” Micky Ward and the relationship with his wacko half-brother, erstwhile prizefighter Dicky Eklund, this roiling, colorful film is great in the ring, and great outside the ring, too. Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale are the pugilist sibs, Melissa Leo their mom, Amy Adams is Micky’s bareknuckle barkeep girlfriend. 1 hr. 5 R (violence, profanity, drugs, sex, adult themes) – Steven Rea
FOUR LIONS 2 1/2 stars. Fanaticism gets the farce treatment in director Chris Morris’ whopping strange and incendiary comedy about a band of bumbling British Jihads. When it works – and it doesn’t half the time – it’s as if Monty Python were back, putting its merrily imbecilic stamp on the dark world of terrorism. Pushing the envelope of political correctness well into another dimension. 1 hr. 37 R (profanity, violence, adult themes) – Steven Rea
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST 2 1/2 stars. The third and draggiest of the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s wee Millennium trilogy, this is the one that ties up the loose ends, finally meting justice out to the band of pervy old men who have made the punked-out Lisbeth Salander’s life so miserable. For Larsson completists, and Noomi Rapace fans, but not too many others. 2 hrs. 28 R (violence, adult themes) – Steven Rea
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 1 1/2 stars. Jack Black is the big doofus who stumbles on little Lilliput in this brain-dead reworking of the Jonathan Swift satirical classic. With Amanda Peet, Emily Blunt, Jason Segel and Billy Connolly. It’s murderously unfunny, and includes, for want of anything better, a noisy faceoff between Gulliver and a towering, Transformer-like robot. 1 hr. 25 PG (mild profanity, cartoon violence, adult themes) – Steven Rea
Harry Potter AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART 1 3 stars. Rather than breathlessly race from one set piece to the next, this Harry Potter adventure gives its characters and audience time to inhale and process the gravity of the situation. Unprotected by family or teachers, the wizard and his two best friends drop out of school to save Hogwart’s and themselves from the evildoing of Voldemort. 2 hrs. 26 PG-13 (suspense, violence, unsuitable for children under 10) – Carrie Rickey
HOW DO YOU KNOW 3 stars. Enjoyable, if uneven, comic romance more of the prickly-pear than love-apple variety. Reese Witherspoon is a softball player courted by baseball star Owen Wilson and out-of-work businessman Paul Rudd. 2 hrs. PG-13 (profanity, sexual candor) – Carrie Rickey
I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS 3 stars. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor star in this improbably true story of a inexhaustible con artist and his mad passion for a fellow inmate. Prison escapes and wild scams ensue. But so does a wonderfully sweet love story. 1 hr. 33 R (sex, profanity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
INSIDE JOB 3 1/2 stars. Charles Ferguson’s bracing account of the 2008 financial collapse and its continuing aftershocks has the twists and turns of a classic heist movie, one with real-world conequences. Narrated by Matt Damon. 2 hrs. PG-13 (drug and sexual references) – Carrie Rickey
THE KING’S SPEECH 4 stars. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush star in this rousing Odd Couple comedy, drawn from real life, about King George VI, a stutterer, and his speech therapist. 1 hr. 51 R (profanity, but otherwise family-friendly for those 12 and over) – Carrie Rickey
LEAVING KRISTIN 3 stars. Scott Thomas gives another quiet and anguished performance as a doctor’s wife who falls for a Spanish construction worker in this gloomy but engaging film from French writer/director Catherine Corsini. 1 hr. 25 No MPAA rating (violence, sex, nudity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
LITTLE FOCKERS 2 stars. Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller return as the suspicious father-in-law who places unreasonable expectations on his daughter’s spouse. Sporadically funny, with Viagra jokes that don’t so much provoke laughs as cringes. 1 hr. 38 PG-13 (sexual candor) – Carrie Rickey
LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS 2 1/2 stars. Tonally askew romantic comedy with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway naked a lot. But along with the sex jokes and raunch (it’s the mid-’90s, Viagra has just hit the market – and Gyllenhaal is a Pfizer salesman), there’s a “Love Story-like bummer-o-rama element, too. Hathaway’s character has early on-set Parkinson’s. 1 hr. 52 R (sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
MADE IN DAGENHAM 3 stars. The irrepressible Sally Hawkins is the little engine that could in this fact-based story about a 1968 strike at a Ford plant in London that helpd change legislation. A story of labor triumph for this era of labor pain. 1 hr. 53 R (profanity) – Carrie Rickey
MEGAMIND 3 stars. With an origin story borrowed from Superman, a lair borrowed from Batman and a skin complexion borrowed from a robin’s egg, Megamind – the title character of DreamWorks Animation’s smart, snappy superhero send-up – is a villain to love. Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt deliver the snappy dialogue, and the DreamWorks Animation team delivers the goods. 1 hr. 36 PG (cartoon violence) – Steven Rea
MORNING GLORY 2 1/2 stars. With her motormouth delivery, Rachel McAdams nails the role of the morning-TV producer who’ll lower the bar to get a ratings boost. But other than McAdams, this workplace comedy also starring Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton is, at best, sporadic. 1 hr. 50 PG-13 (sexual situations, profanity) – Carrie Rickey
NEVER LET ME GO 3 1/2 stars. Sci-fi for the Belle Sebastian set: a beautifully mopey adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s much-praised novel, with Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield as young Brits in dark mood and rumpled mode, trapped in a mysterious – and, for them, tragic – alternate Britain of the 1970s and ’80s. 1 hr. 44 R (adult themes, sex, nudity) – Steven Rea
THE NEXT THREE DAYS 3 stars. Russell Crowe stars as a Pittsburgh college prof plotting to break his wife (Elizabeth Banks) out of jail, where she’s doing time on a murder rap. Taut B-movie fare, with, alas, a pace-killing police chase tagged on the end. 2 hrs. 13 PG-13 (violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes) – Steven Rea
127 HOURS 3 1/2 stars. Danny Boyle’s blunt, mythic and gutwrenching account of Aron Ralston (James Franco), the outdoorsman whose right hand and forearm are pinned to a canyon wall by a falling boulder, and his Sisysphusean struggle to survive. Not for the squeamish. 1 hr. 33 R – Carrie Rickey
RABBIT HOLE 3 stars. Wrenching, poignant, and quietly healing, John Cameron Mitchell’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play about a tightly-wound wife (Nicole Kidman) and her unraveling husband (Aaron Eckhart), still reeling months after losing a child. It is Kidman’s most engaging and emotionally-layered work and a triumph for all involved. 1 hr. 31 PG-13 (mature themes, profanity) – Carrie Rickey
SEASON OF THE WITCH 1 1/2 stars. Nicolas Cage is a knight of the Crusades, on the lam with fellow deserter Ron Perlman, when they’re recruited to escort a girl accused of witchcraft to her trial. Swordplay, sorcery and anachronistic dialog ensues. 1 hr. 35 PG-13 (violence, pestilence, adult themes) – Steven Rea
TANGLED 3 stars. A fractured fairy tale in the spirit of “Enchanted,” “Tangled” is a boy-friendly version of “Rapunzel,” more of a hair-raising adventure than a yearning romance. 1 he. 32 PG (mild violence) – Carrie Rickey
THE TEMPEST 2 stars. There is little magic to Julie Taymor’s flatfooted rendition of Shakespeare’s late-career play about the sorcerer, Prospero, stranded on a remote island. Taymor has reimagined him as Prospera and cast Helen Mirren,quite fine, but as beached as the character she plays. With Djimon Hounsou, Alfred Molina, Russell Brand and Ben Whishaw. 1 hr. 50 PG-13 (nudity, some scary imagery) – Carrie Rickey
TINY FURNITURE 3 1/2 stars.Writer/director/star Lena Dunham’s fiercely witty, self-lacerating study of a college grad’s aimless return to the family nest (in artsy downtown New York). Bad sex and identity crises ensue. A tiny indie with big, bold ideas – and a big prize from the South By Southwest Film Festival. 1 hr. 38 No MPAA rating (sex, profanity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
THE TOURIST 2 stars. Alarmingly charmless, pace-challenged stab at Cary Grant-Grace Kelly international intrigue and romance, with Johnny Depp (as a clueless decoy) and Angelina Jolie (as a sophisticated Brit). Notable for nice shots of Venice and for the total absence of movie star heat that movie stars are paid to radiate. 1 hr. 44 PG-13 (violence, adult themes) – Steven Rea
TRON: LEGACY 2 stars. With its Zen jargon, martial-arts moves and neon glow, the sequel to the 1982 cult picture that explored the inner life of videogames demonstrates that you can teach an old dog new Matrix. But for the hipster ravings of Jeff Bridges the sequel would otherwise be merely a gaudy Nintendo prototype. 2 hrs. 06 PG (lots of flashing lights and loud noise) – Carrie.Rickey
TRUE GRIT 3 1/2 stars. The Coen Brothers adapt Charles Portis’ novel about a plucky girl who hires a bounty hunter to collect her father’s killer, and rides on the hunt herself, determined to see things right. With Jeff Bridges as the one-eyed, boozy gunslinger Rooster Cogburn, Matt Damon as a comically fussy Texas Ranger, Josh Brolin as the villain and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as the impossibly composed and gumptious 14-year-old heroine. 1 hr. 5- PG-13 (violence, cqcussing, adult themes) – Steven Rea
UNSTOPPABLE 2 1/2 stars. “Inspired by true events,” with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as a veteran engineer and a novice conductor trying to stop a runaway freight train before its deadly load tumbles onto innocent Pennsylvanians. From director Tony Scott, who’s made five films with Washington now. The pair would have been good in preschool – off in a corner, monopolizing the toy cars and trains, slamming them into each other and making kabooming noise. 1 hr. 38 PG-13 (action, violence, profanity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
WAITING FOR ‘SUPERMAN’ 3 1/2 stars. Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s devastating diagnosis of what’s wrong with American public schools and what it would take to heal them. With Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee and Randi Weingarten. 1 hr. 42 PG (incidental smoking) – Carrie Rickey
WASTE LAND 3 1/2 stars. Lucy Walker’s Oscar short-listed documentary offers an inspiring, insightful look at a world-renowned artist, Vik Muniz, and his years-long collaborative portrait project with garbage pickers in a Rio de Janeiro landfill. 1 hr. 38 No MPAA rating (adult themes) – Steven Rea
WELCOME TO THE RILEYS 2 stars. When actors linked to hugely popular roles – Kristen Stewart’s Bella Swan, say, or James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano – a project that offers the chance to try something different had better be good, or else. This flat and predictable tale of a grieving middle aged man and a troubled runaway lap-dancer is that “or else. 1 hr. 50 R (profanity, sex, adult themes) – Steven Rea
WHITE MATERIAL 4 stars. Isabelle Huppert owns the character of a steel-willed French African in filmmaker Claire Denis’ study of a woman trying to hold her plantation business and her family together in the throes of violence and political upheaval. A mournful, frightening, beautiful film. 1 hr. 45 No MPAA rating (violence, nudity, adult themes) – Steven Rea
WILD TARGET 2 1/2 stars. A throwback to an earlier era of comedy, when silliness needed no subtext and soundtracks tooted whimsically, this screwball hitman-on-the-run thriller is worth seeing (1) for Bill Nighy doing his drop-dead deadpan, (2) for Emily Blunt being, well, Emily Blunt and (3) to see what Ron Weasley is up to when he’s not running around with that sorcerer pal. Yes, “HP’s” Rupert Grint, sporting a scruffy beard and cigarettes, also stars. 1 hr. 28 PG-13(cartoon mayhem, sex, adult themes) – Steven Rea
RATINGS:
4 stars: Excellent; 3 stars: Good; 2 stars: Fair; 1 star: Poor
Firework by Katie Perry is one of her finest track
When I initially heard of Katy Perry’s Firework, I believed it is just a different teenage tune and so I didn’t pay considerably consideration to it. But yesterday, my brother showed me a video clip he built employing that tune, and I was moved by the lyrics. Opposite to what I originally judged it to be, Firework is a tune complete of substance, inspiration, and hope. And what I liked most about it is that it presented its message in an undramatic way. I indicate, it’s an upbeat song, the melody isn’t melancholic. It’s merely complete of positivity in all aspects.
“Do you ever experience like a plastic bag drifting by way of the wind, wanting to get started again?” “Do you ever sense already buried deep six feet below scream but no a single appears to listen to a factor?” Let’s admit it, at 1 point or one more, we have answered “Yes” to these inquiries. In our lives, we all have felt worthless, useless, desperate, abandoned. This tune is just telling us that there is hope.
And that hope doesn’t come from anyone else, that hope could not be found anywhere else but inside us. There’s a spark of hope in all of us. And the sooner we understand that, the easier it will be for us to stand up, battle tougher, and exhibit the planet what we’ve received. Katie Perry Firework mp3 download in uncomplicated way of acquiring this mp3 file immediate to your gadgets.
Disturbed by our past or by what other people today inform of us? “You don’t have to experience like a waste of space. You’re authentic, are not able to be replaced.” What ever dark past you have, whatever troubles you encounter, regardless of your mistakes and failures, you are nonetheless crucial. Your future is not at all dependent on your previous. You can attain your full probable if only you awaken that spark of hope in you. And the adverse points that individuals tell you need to certainly not be your truth. The only reality that you will need to feel in is this: You are special like Niche Finder Software. You are unique. You are irreplaceable. And you are capable of executing and accomplishing good things.
As the song goes, “you just obtained to ignite the mild and let it shine.” With a strong belief that music can influence our ideas, it is with fantastic self-assurance that I say that Firework is a ought to-listen to in particular for those who are swimming in the sea of mystery. The track itself is the mild that shines for all to believe and carry on to hope. Firework has just the phrase Beneficial written all about it. Other track that you may want to download is the Bruno Mars Grenade mp3 download.
The 5 Things All Great Birthday Parties Need
Hosting a themed birthday party for your children is getting more and more popular as parents discover just how enjoyable it can be. This simple 5 step tip sheet will show you everything you need to throw a great themed party and see the amazement in your kids eyes as they discover what you have planned for them
#1 Themed Invitations:
If you are going to the trouble of hosting a themed birthday party then why not do things properly and begin with the invitations. Your children will love writing them out and imagine how amazed all of the other kids will be when they get them through the post . Themed invitations are the best possible way to get your party started. Some quick and easy ideas for invitations could be Winnie the Pooh invitations, Hello Kitty invitations or even Strawberry Shortcake invitations. Whatever theme you choose it shoouldn’t be difficult to find lovely looking invitations online for very cheap prices.
#2 The Decorations :
The decorations are a vital part of the party being successful and there are many things you ca do here. You can either make your own decorations (streamers, painted table covers etc but for an easier, and more professional solution, it might be a good idea to shop online for at a party supplies website. They sell special themed kits which include almost everything you ca think of.
#3 Great Party Food With a Theme:
Making great food for the party does not need to be difficult. You can make a themed birthday cake or even buy one from a special store or online. Some other ideas are to decorate your food with colorful baubles which follow the general theme and you can often buy candy etc within the theme
#4 The Games
Themed games are always exciting and will always keep the children entertained, which means you can have a break . Variations on pin the tail on the donkey (substitute your themed character for the donkey) are simple to set up and so are treasure hunts where the children can search for candy in the shape of the character.
#5 The Thank you Cards
Thankfully the party is now over and everything went just as you planned it. Why not put on the finishing touches by getting out the thank you cards and sending everyone a great big thankyou! Your kids will love it just as much as everyone else
I hope you found these 5 tips for a simple themed party to be useful and that you can use them to throw your kids the best party they have ever had and one their friends will remember for a long time to come.