Movie Nation

“Bears” is exactly the sort of nature documentary we’ve come to expect from Disneynature, the film division of the company that rolls out a new nature documentary every year at Earth Day.
It’s gorgeous, intimate and beautifully photographed. And it’s cute and kid-friendly, with just enough jokes to balance the drama that comes from any film that flirts with how dangerous and unforgiving The Wild actually is.
Here, it’s Alaskan brown bears whom we follow as cute cubs through their first year of life. A mama bear and her two cubs endure a year of hunger, dangerous encounters with other bears, a wolf and a riptide as they trek from snowy mountains, where the cubs were born, down to the coast where salmon streams feed into the sea.
The mother, “Sky,” needs to fatten up on salmon to be able to survive and nurse her cubs Amber and Scout through their upcoming second winter. The cubs need to discover the world, and stay out of the way of omnivorous male bears and assorted other dangers. We’re told, right off the top, that only half of the cubs born each winter make it through their first year alive.
Uh oh.
More than once, “Bears” flirts with the grim realities of less sentimental films such as “The Last Lions” and Disney’s own “African Cats.” The adult bear fights are quite intense and frightening.
But John C. Reilly narrates this nature tale with a hint of whimsy, especially when the cubs get into mischief as, for instance, they try to learn how to dig up clams, and discover getting “clamped.”
“Leggo of my claw, clam!”
They’re craving salmon, but until the salmon run starts, the cubs have to get by on chewing grass.
“It’s like settling for a dirty salad!”
The cubs ride mamma’s back across freezing rivers, stick close when danger is near and roughhouse with each other and mother, forcing that involuntary “Awwww,” out of even the most jaded viewer.
The filmmakers get right underneath the fur to see the tiny cubs just after birth, and the extreme close-ups and very cinematic tracking shots take us into a pristine wilderness where survival is a matter of instinct, pluck and more than a little luck. It’s reassuring to see that there are still places as unspoiled as this, and that Disney is willing to pour some of its theme park and Marvel Studio millions back into documentaries that are more worthwhile than profitable.
So yeah, they’re cute. But forget that, and that there’s a whole TV channel devoted to this sort of film and use these Earth Day delights the way they were intended — as big screen rewards for the intrepid filmmakers who devote years at a time to making them and as a taste of nature most of us, especially the very young, will never be able to experience in the wild.
　
MPAA Rating: G
Cast: Narrated by John C. Reilly
Credits: Directed by Alistair Fothergill and Keith Scholey, written by Alastair Fothergill ad Adam Chapman. A Disneynature release.
Running time: 1:18

“Fading Gigolo” is John Turturro’s idea of an old school Woody Allen comedy,
so he wrote Allen into it.
It’s a sentimental farce that presents Turturro as a Brooklyn Jack of All
Trades whose pal (Allen) decides another trade this Jack, named Fioravante,
would be good at is pleasing women.
Allen is Murray, one of Fioravante’s several bosses, as the younger man has
to juggle several service sector jobs to make ends meet in what we call “the gig
economy.”
Murray runs a rare book shop, and he’s about to give up the ghost.
“Only rare people buy rare books.”
But those rare people figure the grandfatherly Murray can help them find
something a little special — like a third for a planned menage a trois.
“Yeah, I know somebody. But it’ll cost you a thousand bucks!”
Mild-mannered Murray has to talk milder-mannered Fioravante into it. It helps
that Sharon Stone was the woman doing the soliciting.
“Is he clean?” the society trophy wife wants to know. “I’m a little crazed. I
just came from an AIDS benefit.”
And we’re off, with Sofia Vergara as the “trois” in that menage. Fioravante
tackles this new gig with sensitivity and compassion. That’s why Murray figures
there’s no harm in offering him to this lonely Orthodox rabbi’s widow he’s just
met.
Avigal (Vanessa Paradis) is lonely, depressed and, Murray figures, in
desperate need of a man’s touch. But how do you “help” an Orthodox woman?</P>
“I don’t shake hands,” she says. Her culture doesn’t allow her to touch a
man. Her elders watch over her like a hawk. Her Bensonhurst community even has
its own NYPD sanctioned neighborhood watch, and one of those over-zealous
watchers (Liev Schreiber) watches Avigal with love, and a lot of suspicion. Even
passing off Fioravante as a masseuse with hands “that bring magic to the
lonely,” this is going to be tricky.
The ancient Allen gamely makes Murray a doting, baseball-playing father in an
interracial marriage full of kids he has to keep entertained. Thirty years ago,
he’d have made Murray’s “new pimp throws around the cash” scenes very “Broadway
Danny Rose” and funnier.
Bob Balaban is amusing as Murray’s trusted, kvetching lawyer, Vergara and
Stone set off comic sparks. But Turtorro winds up playing the sad straight man
in his own comedy. And he and Paradis play this too somber. Sex scenes are more
explicit than silly. The movie gropes around for a lighter touch.
Moments when the Orthodox religious police nab Murray for an Inquisition are
meant to play like farce, but the often scary Schreiber lends that an alarming
theocratic, fascist feel. Seriously, New York allows “religious police” to
enforce dogma?
But by then “Fading Gigolo” has mimicked its title and faded, a failure in
tone, a romantic comic juggling act where every dropped ball kills another
potential laugh in a movie that desperately needs them.

MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content, language and brief nudity
Cast: John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vergara, Liev
Schreiber
Credits: Written and directed by John Turturro. A Millennium release. </P>
Running time: 1:31

of his many associations with Spike Lee — from “Do the Right Thing,” to “Clockers” to “He Got Game” — eight films stretching back to the ’80s.
Or maybe it’s the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” connection, his four films with The Coen Brothers, including “The Big Lebowsky” and “Miller’s Crossing.”
But he’s also done a couple of films with Woody Allen, and that’s what led to his latest — “Fading Gigolo.” Turturro not only stars in it, he turned the tables on his “Hannah and Her Sisters” director by writing and directing a film in which, as The Guardian newspaper noted, “Turturro has given Allen his biggest and best on-screen turn in years.”
“We’d always talked about doing something together,” Turturro, 57, says of Allen, 78. So Turturro cooked up a comedy about a Brooklyn Jack of all trades that he’d play, with Allen as his boss at a rare book shop who becomes, sort of by accident, the younger man’s pimp.
“Actors have to reinvent themselves a lot,” Turturro says. “And that’s a lot more common in the world at large, now. People have to change who they are to be viable, to make a living.
That is something that we wanted to get into the movie. Woody’s character is a guy whose business is out of date. My character is comfortable with women, so out of necessity, these two friends both re-invent themselves.”
Allen “gave me a lot of construction criticism and feedback as Turturro dug into what would be his fifth film as director. And with Allen on board, lining up a supporting cast became a breeze.
Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara play women who want to enjoy Turturro’s character’s company at the same time. French actress Vanessa Paradis plays the widow of a Hassidic rabbi who needs a man’s touch to lift her out of her mourning. Liev Schreiber is a fellow Orthodox Jew who longs to make the Paradis character part of his life. Bob Balaban’s a kvetching lawyer, Jill Scott plays Allen’s character’s wife.
“People will do you a favor when you’re an actor and you’re casting an indie film, sure,” Turturro says. “They knew Woody and I would be in it. Which helped. But if the material is good, they want to do the movie. Actors like being around other good people, too.”
Turturro knows New York well enough to make the city’s Hassidic subculture a major setting and component for the film. In “Fading Gigolo,” as Fioravante (Turturro) spends more time with the rabbi’s widow, Schreiber’s character uses his city sanctioned Orthodox citizen policeman status to harass and eventually kidnap Allen’s pimp for a comical Hassidic Inquisition.
The Italian-American Turturro has taken heat in the New York press more than once for his portrayals of Jewish characters (“Mo Better Blues”). Was he worried about crossing the line with the Orthodox Jewry of New York?
“I poke fun at everybody,” he says. “I think the film is very respectful of the Orthodox community. I did a lot of research on it to get a candid and fair depiction of that world. Nobody comes off as a buffoon.”
But he laughs when he remembers the ace up his sleeve.
“Besides, people in the Hassidic community, they don’t go to the movies!”
The film’s uneven blend of romantic longing and ribald sexuality, family farce (Allen’s mixed-race/vast age difference household has him teaching small black children how to play baseball) and wistful mourning is earning “Fading Gigolo” mixed reviews. “At times the movie’s a mess, but it goes to such special places that you don’t mind,” the Boston Globe noted in a typical notice.
But that’s fine with Turturro. He embraces the messiness of this world and the movie he made from it.
“Most movies don’t have a lot to do with life. I like making movies that do.”

In the ’80s, when he was a young lad, Bruce heard the siren’s call. More likely, it was Gloria Estefan’s call. The “rhythm is gonna getcha,” and it did.
As a teen, he danced salsa with his sister Sam all over England. They won
contests. He was a devil in Cuban heels and spangly pants — “Cuban Fury.”
But then the teenage bullying got the best of him, and “the fire in my heels,
it just went out.” His teacher, his hairy-chested dance guru (Ian McShane) was
crushed.
Decades later, gravity and the British diet have caught up with him. Bruce
(Nick Frost of “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End”) doesn’t dance and barely
exercises. He works as an industrial machine designer at an engineering firm, is
still bullied and has only his fellow losers, drinking and golfing buddies, for
comfort.
“Have you had any contact with a member of the opposite sex in which money
does not change hands?” is their weekly query.
But there’s a new single woman at work — his American boss (Rashida Jones).
She is approachable and ever-so-fine. If only Bruce could keep her out of the
arms of the office Irish Lothario (Chris O’Dowd). If only Bruce wasn’t “a two.
She’s a ten…It’s like a butterfly going out with a parsnip.”
If only they had something in common. Oh, but they do.
“Cuban Fury” is a quite funny if entirely predictable farce built around the
sight gag of portly Nick Frost kicking up his heels on the dance floor. He is
the latest in long line of graceful men of girth, a nimble comedic butterball.
And this film is a giggle of a showcase for him, a silly romance that surrounds
him with an over-the-top villain (O’Dowd of “Bridesmaids”), an over-the-top guru
(McShane, who was born to wear tan in a can) and a quirky-cute and accessible
Jones, now on TV’s “Parks and Recreation.”
O’Dowd makes a wonderful creep, given all the lines a ladies man would ever
need to scare off the competition.
“Women like that use guys like you to get advice about guys like me.”</P>
McShane’s dance teacher, Ron Parfitt, runs a dance studio and salsa club long
past salsa’s expiration date (“Dancing with the Stars” brought it back). He
wants to see Bruce back “in a pair of one and a half inch heels.” He wants him
quoting Cuban crook Tony Montana from “Scarface.”
“Say HELLO to my leetle friend!”
He wants him to remember that yoga nothing on salsa when it comes to
cutely-named positions.
“Arms of an eagle! Legs of a stallion!”
As juicy as his support is, it is Frost who totes this formula funny business
across the finish line with sweaty skill and aplomb. We believe he can dance. We
believe he MUST dance.
And thanks to him, we can even believe the parsnip has a shot with a
butterfly. If only for 90 minutes.

MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual references
Cast: Nick Frost, Rashida Jones, Chris O’Dowd, Ian McShane
Credits: Directed by James Griffiths, screenplay by Ron Brown. An eOne
release.
Running time: 1:38

Ever since “Insidious,” April has been a benchmark month for smarter-than-genre ghost stories. And this year’s installment, “Oculus,” is earning the same sort of solid (not rapturous) reviews and should give horror fans a tiny taste of what they like. Not a hard “R-rated” horror picture, just a reasonably complex one with decent actors doing the heavy lifting.

I have been waiting for the NFL to jump the shark as the sport of choice in these United States. Overexposed — it’s not quite on every day or night of the week. But close. It’s a year round obsession of sports talk radio. “Draft Day” feels like a manifestation of that, an NFL approved, ESPN connected dramedy about a general manager’s machinations pre-Draft Day, which the league turned into a post-Super Bowl/pre-training camp TV spectacle some years back. Weak reviews for “Draft Day.”

Kevin Costner’s box office drawing power is WAY down. As your audience ages, they stop going to the movies you’re in. “3 Days to Kill” proved that earlier this year. His future would appear to be where “Hatfields & McCoys” lie — TV, cable.

“Rio 2” does what middling sequels do — the same things that the original film did, only more so. More songs, more voice actors (Bruno Mars plays an old flame for Anne Hathaway’s “Jewel”). The novelty of the first film is lost despite moving the setting from Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon, bringing in all sorts of new critters. There are too many characters to ably service them all with the script. Indifferent reviews for this one.

If Nic Cage’s “Joe” is opening in your market, it’s the movie to see this weekend. A genuine comeback picture, earning him back some of the goodwill he’s squandered over the years.

Box office? “Rio 2” shows signs of doing a generous $40 million or more, lacking kiddie competition in the cartoon department. Box Office Guru is saying $32, which seems very low for a pre-branded cartoon franchise.

Neither prediction will let this one pass “Captain America”, which could do another $40 million+.

Funny thing about decently reviewed horror films. They don’t draw the faithful. They’d rather see dead teenager movies, with nudity and more graphic gore. “Oculus” will be lucky to earn in the teen$.

“Draft Day” will bomb. Couch potatoes and fantasy league gamblers who obsess over the draft won’t show up, and without them, this movie will be lucky to clear $10 million.

“Noah” will have faded to a point where the Evangelical-approved “God’s Not Dead” could challenge it at the box office — $7-8 million. “God’s Not Dead” has been adding screens, which allowed it to maintain $7-8 million per week for the past month. It should start to fade this weekend, but if it doesn’t, “Noah” will slip behind it for the weekend.

He’s a huge TV star, thanks to “Mad Men” and funny turns in “30 Rock” and “SNL.”

But the movies haven’t happened for Jon Hamm. Not yet.

His best shot, his first starring role in a major motion picture, is in “Million Dollar Arm.” It’s based on the true story of a struggling sports agent who tries to turn India on to baseball, converting cricket “bowlers” into major league pitchers.

Tricky, as bowlers do not bend their elbows and get a running start to create velocity.

Anyway, Mr. Hamm and I will be chatting about Disney’s newest leading man. I’m looking for lines of questioning? Comment below. Thanks for the help.

“Draft Day” is a “ticking clock” thriller built around the NFL draft, a movie
that counts down to the fateful decision that one embattled general manager
(Kevin Costner) makes with his team’s first round pick.
It’s a reasonably interesting — to NFL fans, anyway — peek behind the
curtains at the wheeling, dealing and over-thinking that goes on as teams and
managers and coaches try to avoid looking as if they don’t know what they’re
doing. They’re nagged into making hasty or ill-advised decisions by agents and
the players they represent, and showboating owners who like to “make a splash,”
get their faces on ESPN and impress the hometown folks with their football
acumen.
The GMs have their own slang and their own swagger, which makes this a
natural for Costner, for decades, the movies’ go-to guy for jock roles. </P>
<P>But for the casual fan and the casual filmgoer, it can be a bit of a
melodramatic bore. This ticking clock thriller doesn’t really get going until
the teams are truly “on the clock.”</P>
Costner is Sonny Weaver Jr., GM for the hapless Cleveland Browns. They have
an antsy owner (Frank Langella) and a new, preening coach (Denis Leary) who
likes to flash his Superbowl ring under everybody’s nose. Will Sonny pick a
cocky, pushy defensive back (Chadwick Boseman of “42”) or trade up to land the
Heisman Trophy winner (Josh Pence)?
What’s fascinating in these wheeling and dealing early scenes is the way
gossip gets started, the way the veteran GMs play each other and read each
other. Rumors about the Heisman winner bubble to the surface.
“How important is winning, to you?”
Sports talk radio covers this sort of “How much does he want to play?” stuff
from a speculative point of view. “Draft Day” sets out to show how a Johnny
Manziel or Jadaveon Clowney’s stock rises and falls in the hours leading up to
their big payday.
“You only get drafted once,” Sonny tells his prospects. Better enjoy it.
 Sonny gathers intel from his staff and steels himself to make a decision he
knows the owner will not like. Then, more gossip comes in, and he’s on the
fence, which gets the coach all worked up. Everybody is playing the angles
against everybody else.
“You’re panicking, Sonny. I’m gonna take advantage of that!”</P>
What doesn’t work is the added melodrama in all this. Sonny’s dad used to be
the Browns’ coach. His dad just died. His mom (Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn) won’t
get off his back.
And his not-that-secret inter-office romance (Jennifer Garner) just gave him
some news.
“Draft Day” is an NFL and ESPN sanctioned dramedy designed to cash in on and
maybe goose interest in the draft, which TV and the league have turned into a
spring spectacle. It doesn’t have a lot of rough edges to it, nothing
unflattering to the league or the cable company in its back pocket, which only
serves to remind us how this sport swallowed American sporting culture
whole.
Costner and Garner are good and Langella properly menacing, but Leary has
lost his fastball and seems to be holding something back in his quarrel scenes
with Costner. Costner has to carry the film, which he does. But he hard a time
making this tale of accountants and agents and athletes with off-field issues
exciting. </P>
<P>Filling the screen with character players ranging from Chi McBride (a rival
owner) to assorted NFL Network and ESPN (past and present) stars, shifting from
city to city, stadium to stadium as the phone calls zip back and forth doesn’t
really ratchet up suspense or entertainment value.
But for the fans, it’s a competent eye-opener, a movie that makes you
understand Jets QB Geno Smith’s fury at falling out of the first round and the
sort of whispering campaigns that this closed culture of front office folks
mount to let them win in May, even if they don’t win in the fall.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 on appeal for brief strong language and sexual references
Cast: Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Chi McBride, Frank
Langella
Credits: Directed by Ivan Reitman, written by Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph.
A Summit release.

Running tmie :1:49

MIAMI BEACH — Nick Frost came up with the idea for “Cuban Fury,” his latest film, which has him playing a once-competitive salsa dancer gone to seed, yet moved to get his moves back when a pretty woman enters his life.
He found a screenwriter, helped cast it and produced the film. But the rotund English funnyman had his moment of truth in a London dance studio — long before shooting started.
“About an hour into the first day I caught myself in the mirror of the dance studio and thought, ‘Never ever mention your crazy ideas in front of people who might turn them into a movie you have to make, you idiot!'”
Seven months of sweaty, muscle-straining seven hour days, and the guy who specialized in daft, oafish sidekicks in films from “Shawn of the Dead” to last year’s “The World’s End,” a man who “always fancied myself a dancer,” had his “big, old-fashioned dance musical.” “Cuban Fury” let him kick up his heels, battle the office heel (Chris O’Dowd) for the hand of the lovely lady (Rashida Jones) and get the girl, as they say.
Frost, 42, best-known for his films with his best friend, Simon Pegg (“Hot Fuzz,” “Paul”), is part of a long comic tradition of graceful big men — a round mound of twinkle-toed clown in the Zero Mostel, John Belushi and Chris Farley mold. Dancing comes naturally to guys like that.
“The problem, as it is with most blokes and dancing, is GETTING you to do it,” he says. ” If I’m expected to dance, I can’t. But if you leave me alone with some Stella Artois and some tunes, I’m dancing. Dance happens.”
His prep work took him into London’s Latin community salsa underground, where he got his training and cast all the extras for the big dance competition scenes in “Cuban Fury.” He talked Ian McShane (as his character’s dance guru) and O’Dowd, Jones and British funny woman Olivia Colman (as his sister and dance partner) into joining him in his quest.
“They didn’t realize it was a full-on dancing movie when they signed on.”
He dealt with his own trepidations about strutting his stuff in front of experts.
“The finale…every extra in the scene was a great dancer, the whole London salsa community. Some of Europe’s best dancers were there…Three times during that week of shooting I had to find Morag (Webster), our unit nurse. You know, slip off and find her and kind of casually say, ‘Hey Morag, can I see you for a moment?’ Panic attacks. Terrible nerves about doing this complex choreography in front of people who will KNOW if I mess up.”
But he made it. The movie earned mixed reviews in the UK, and grudging respect for Frost’s moves, with Quickflix noting that “Nick Frost’s ideas may not be all that original, but he knows when he’s got a good one.” Frost figures it has to do with the dancing, and that famed reserve of the British male — Keep Calm, and Whatever you do, Don’t Dance.
“We just don’t dance with girls. We don’t. We dance AT them or near them. Maybe, at the end of the night, when you’ve had a few drinks and she’s had a few more, she might dance in front of you. And you think ‘YES! This is IT!’ .
“Miami or Manchester, it’s the same all over the English speaking world. We segregate ourselves, sexually, which is why when you’re a man who can dance, it’s such an attractive thing to a woman. It shows you don’t care who sees you. You’re confident as you’re literally shaking your tail feather.”

But in the end, it all comes down to this — not the dancing, not the machismo.

“It’s the fiery ladies, mate. The Latin lovelies! Need I say more?”

With “Rio 2,” the creators of “Rio” give us more of everything that their first film had in just the right doses. But if this sequel proves anything, it’s that more is not always better.
They are more stars to this birds of the Amazon musical, with Broadway’s Kristin Chenoweth, Oscar winner Rita Moreno, Andy Garcia and pop star Bruno Mars joining in. And all of them sing. Because there are more tunes.
There are more animals for those stars to play, with Chenoweth voicing an exquisitely-animated spotted tree frog, and anteaters and tapirs, scarlet macaws and pink Amazon River dolphins.
And there’s more story, as Jewel (Anne Hathaway) and Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) take their brood (they now have three kids) into the Amazon to help Linda (Leslie Mann) and her scientist husband Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro) track down a rumored lost, last flock of bright blue macaws of their species.
But one thing the cluttered, overlong “Rio 2” lacks in extra supply is jokes. A script designed to give cute moments to everybody from the first film as well as all those brought in for the second is a cumbersome, humor-starved affair.
The simple situation of the first film was a nervous flightless pet bird, Blu (Eisenberg) shipped south to ineptly mate with the last female of his breed, the the born-to be-wild Jewel (Hathaway). They’re birdnapped and forced to survive in the wild — or on wild the streets of Rio during Carnival. The subtexts of the evils of the tropical bird trade and the destruction of habitat were there, easy for the youngest child to embrace.
The new film is all about that subtext, as Linda and Tulio and Blu and Jewel and Jewel’s old flock (Garcia is her dad, Mars voices an old suitor) race against clear cutters to save the rain forest, full of the Brazil nuts that macaws love.
Their old friends Nico (Foxx), Pedro (Will i. am) and Rafael (George Lopez) tag along to audition new singing stars for this year’s Carnival, leading to a cross-species “South American Idol” bit (Capoeira Turtles try out their act) that works.
The evil cockatoo Nigel (Jemaine Clement) survived the first film, and with an anteater and lovesick sidekick frog, Gabi (Chenoweth) sets out for revenge. Chenoweth sings the daylights out of the best song in the new film, “Poison Love.” We’d expect no less. Clement does a killer version of “I Will Survive,” which morphs into a rap breakdown with Gabi.
“Watch what I can do without Autotune!”
Mostly, though, the humor aims much younger here, with kid-pandering gags (an avian soccer match) that only tiny tykes will find funny, along with the occasional fart-and-worse joke.
“I’ll be pooping on your party presently!”
Which is kind of what the movie does by trying to replace the quality of the first film with mere quantity. Blue Sky Animation is back to cranking out good-looking animated sausage to its old “Ice Age” formula, which is a singing, crying shame.

MPAA Rating: G
Cast: The voices of Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Kristin Chenoweth, Andy Garcia, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Mann, Bruno Mars
Credits: Directed by Carlos Saldanha, written by Don Rhymer and Carlos Saldanha. A 20th Century Fox release.
Running time:1:41