Movie Nation

　The better the obstacles to love and happiness, the more bittersweet the romance. That’s a reminder from “The Lunchbox,” an Indian film (in English and Hindi) that remembers it’s not sizzling sex scenes that make movie love stories work, it’s the longing.
Mumbai’s famous lunch delivery system — in which wives cook meals that are then picked up by bicycle delivery men to transport, in their hundreds and thousands, to the correct office worker husbands in buildings all over the city — has been studied and puzzled over in the West for years. Little or no paper work, bikes crowded with stacked cylindrical lunchboxes that are transferred to trains, trotted up to buildings where an office clerk drops them at the proper desks — it is a daily marvel of inscrutable efficiency.
First-time writer-director Ritesh Batra builds a sad-eyed romance around that rare mistake, a blunder that hurls two lonely people together.
Ila (Nimrat Kaur of “One Night with the King”) is a doting mother and wife who pours energy and her mother’s recipes into her husband’s daily lunch. But Rajeev, that husband, doesn’t notice. And then, her lunches start going to the wrong address.
Saajan (Irrfan Khan of “Life of Pi”) is a grim-faced accountant on the verge of retirement. Widowed, standoffish, his drudgery is only interrupted by the annoying appearance of Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a gratingly charming underling he’s supposed to train to take over his job.
Then these wonderful meals — eggplants and curries, rice and chapatis (flatbreads) to die for — start showing up. He figures his restaurant service suddenly got good, which his cynicism cannot explain.
“There’s no value for talent in this country.”
But Ila, seeing the licked-clean pots and questioning the husband who ignores her, figures it out. She doesn’t correct the mistake. At least a man appreciates her cooking. She writes him a note.
And that’s how it begins, a neglected wife, emptying her heart into food and notes that read like poetic diary entries, an emotionally dead older man lighting up, ever so slowly, at her attention, passing on marriage advice but plainly touched by her predicament and how her predicament makes him feel.

That’s where this film makes its home — the fantasy of flirtation, the romance of finding someone who listens to you and sympathizes. Batra goes to pains to fill this movie about love letters with retro-tech, Saajan doing his work by pen and calculator, watching old videotapes when he gets home. Ila confers with her never-seen upstairs aunt on recipes, life lessons and the like, shouting through the window, sending ingredients upstairs or downstairs via rope basket, listening to old-fashioned cassette tapes.
Will Ila and Saajan meet? Will things turn illicit? Can a fantasy survive a dose of reality?
Kaur is a vital, expressive actress who gives a compassionate performance here, and Khan, with the most mournful eyes in the movies, tells us far more about what he is thinking or feeling with his face than with his character’s few words.
It’s an intimate, quiet and slow-paced romance, a simple, richly rewarding movie in the classic style of India’s greatest filmmaker, the late Satyajit Ray. Batra uses Ray’s serene little slices of Indian life style to comment on the clash not of Old India against New India, but of Recent India colliding with Now India. His “Lunchbox” serves up a multi-course meal of life, love and the sort of coincidences that drive the best love stories.

MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material and smoking
Cast: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Credits: Written and directed by Ritesh Batra. A Sony Classics release.
Running time: 1:44

Producer Mark Burnett and his actress-producer wife Roma Downey are not just show business people. And not just Christians, Downey points out.

“We’re very noisy Christians. With good intentions.”

That’s how she explains their involvement in putting “The Bible” together for The History Channel. And that’s why they culled footage from that series and shot additional scenes to flesh out the story of Jesus for “Son of God,” a faith-based life of Jesus film that hits theaters Feb. 28.

“We believe this story and we believe that it will add value to the planet, that it will uplift and inspire, as it always has,” says Downey (“Touched by an Angel”), who also plays Mary, mother of Jesus, in the film. “We were tired of cursing the darkness, and wanted to create projects that added light to the world.”

It’s been 50 years since “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” 35 years since “Jesus” and a decade since “The Passion of the Christ.” Burnett, best known for TV’s “Survivor,” thinks the time is right for a feature film about Jesus of Nazareth. He wanted to humanize Jesus for the series and for the film, to go beyond the horrors of the crucifixion, which was the focus of Mel Gibson’s blockbuster “Passion.”

“In ‘The Passion,’ he gets arrested on his knees, in Gethsemane,” Burnett says. “If you don’t know his story, you haven’t had time to fall in love with the character. That’s what we wanted to show, this guy kids just loved, this smiling, kind man with all this love about him. He had a sense of humor, so I saw him as a real guy, in ADDITION to being God. You feel the humanity and the divinity in him. It’s a tough thing to try to show.”

They cast Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado as Jesus. He decided to tackle this as “just another role.” But that reasoning, he says, “was out of fear.” He was afraid of messing up.

Burnett wanted to capture the political thriller aspects of the story, as those entrenched in the power structure of ancient Jerusalem scheme to convince the Roman occupiers to get rid of this trouble maker in their midst. But Burnett knew that intrigues aside, Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” raised the bar on how the last days of Jesus are depicted — the excruciating violence of his death.

“We realized you cannot minimize the horror of that,” Burnett says. “Millions of human beings have died for this faith, martyred because they refused to deny their faith. You get that wrong, it’s ‘game over,’ in the eyes of a lot of church leaders and the faithful.

“But we didn’t make it as graphic as Mel Gibson did. We show you Mary’s reaction as the nail is pounded into his hand. You don’t need to see the nail penetrate the skin. We got a PG-13, which was a relief. Because that is a terribly violent way to die.”

And one should never end a “Life of Jesus” picture with his death on the cross, Downey insists. “If you don’t show The Resurrection, you don’t realize that’s just the beginning of the story. It’s a big part of what is so uplifting, hopeful inspiring about him.”

To defuse potential complaints about the project, they ran the film by over 40 religious denominations, from Christian evangelicals to Jewish theologians. “There are no stereotypes or caricatures in our film,” Burnett declares, a major criticism of Gibson’s 2004 film.

And Burnett is fulsome in his praise of the British TV documentary crew he used to shoot the series and the feature film, detail-oriented history buffs who “made sure that nothing, NOTHING looks out of place in our version of ancient Israel.”

It’s almost mean to bring it up, with their sincerity and good intentions and all. But Mr. Burnett, you’ve got Pontius Pilate riding a horse into Jerusalem.

“Yeah.”

He’s got STIRRUPS on the horse. The Romans didn’t saddle up with stirrups for at least 100 years.

“Listen,” Burnett says, laughing, “Greg Hicks (who plays Pilate), MARVELOUS actor. But we don’t put stirrups on his horse, he doesn’t STAY on that horse. So that detail, yeah. We got it wrong. To save the actor.”

Chalk up another $29 million or so for “The Lego Movie,” which added screens this weekend despite the fact that “Pompeii” is opening on over 2500 3D screens nationwide.

“3 Days to Kill” may make it into the low teen$, if things pick up Saturday. $11-13 million for the weekend.

“Pompeii,” which was going to be a hard sell but which Sony botched on the marketing side, may be lucky to open at $10. Suppose Sony had given it a harder sell, suppose they’d screened it for critics nationwide far enough in advance for reviews to count. They labeled it a dog and reviewers reviewed it accordingly. “3 Days to Kill” wasn’t shown in most markets well in advance either, and that didn’t help the reviews for that one.

Better reviews would have helped both films — at least a little. A lesson learned?

The biggest story may be the EPIC drop off in Kevin Hart’s “About Last Night…” remake — from an opening in the mid $20s, to just $7 million or so this weekend. Could word of mouth have hurt it? Funny man, funny movie. Could have been better, but a 65-75% 82% drop is a major rejection of his best movie in years. Overexposed, maybe? It won’t do a third of what “Ride Along” ($120 million and counting) is doing.

“Monuments Men” has slacked off, finally. It’s still done well over $50 million in the U.S. Even a Clooney flop performs, in this case.

Hiyao Miyazaki delivered a lovely, fanciful anime version of Japanese pre-World War II history with “The Wind Rises.” And it takes little away from the film to note that he scrubs Japan’s role in starting the war  out of this account of the life of the engineer who designed the famed Zero fighter plane. Some reviews noted the film’s tidy and sanitized way of treating the Japanese national obsession with denying its warmongering, enslaving ways. And some didn’t.

Luc Besson’s little Franco-phobic touches are much in evidence in the dark, violent and yet sometimes hilarious “3 Days to Kill.” Only M. Luc would think torture can be funny, that taking shots at immigrant rights and lazy French police would fit into a Kevin Costner riff on “Taken.” I thought it worked well enough. Most other critics did not.

“In Secret,” a period piece love triangle that includes a murder and stars Elizabeth Olsen, Jessica Lange, Oscar Isaac and Tom Felton, earned mixed reviews. Again, I erred on the side of “it’s watchable and well-acted.” Others dumped on it.

“Pompeii” was going to have to overcome Sony’s bungled, “damaged goods” handling of the release, keeping critics from it, and the awful rep of Paul W.S. Anderson. I thought it did, a majority of critics did not.

“Barefoot” is earning awful reviews, and while I’ve seen worse, you cannot get away with making the mentally ill (or possibly mentally ill) cute on screen. Evan Rachel Wood is the “Rainman” in this “Benny & Joon” road picture romance.

They’ve turned their History Channel TV series into a New Testament movie. “The Bible” has been boiled down to “Son of God,” or at least “Bible” elements have been added to this faith-based feature film.

Mark Burnett (“Survivor”) and his wife Roma Downey (“Touched by an Angel”) are behind this film venture, opening Feb. 28. Roma plays Mary Mother of God (Jesus) in it.

And Diogo Morgado, a Portuguese actor, plays Jesus.

Questions for them? I am interviewing the trio this afternoon. Post your queries as comments below, and thanks for the help.

Kevin Costner and the director McG are plunged into the madcap mayhem of
Monsieur Luc Besson in “3 Days to Kill,” a serio-comic thriller about mortality,
murder for hire and fatherhood.
This being a Besson script and production, it’s also about car chases and
epic shoot-outs, torture played for sadistic laughs, Paris locations and Peugeot
product placement.
Besson, who morphed into a producer after “The Professional” and before “The
Transporter”, gives Costner the full Liam Neeson in “Taken” treatment, cashing
in on a career of cool in a movie that moves almost fast enough to keep us from
noticing how scruffy, discomfiting and absurdly over-the-top the whole thing is.
Costner is Ethan, a veteran C.I.A. agent diagnosed with cancer. But his new
control agent, a vamp named ViVi and played to the stiletto-heeled hilt by Amber
Heard, wants him to finish one last massacre — taking out a nuclear arms dealer
and his associates in the City of Light. She flirts.
“You’re not my type.”
“I’m EVERYbody’s type.”
The carrot? She has an experimental drug that might give Ethan longer to
live. And that could mean more time with his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and
the daughter he barely knows, played by “True Grit” teen Hailee Steinfeld. They
live in Paris. The girl doesn’t know what dad does for a living, or that he’s
dying. She’s a teen. She probably wouldn’t care.
“You might want to take something for that cough. It’s REALLY
annoying.”
McG (“Charlie’s Angels,” “We are Marshall”) stamps his signature on Besson’s
Euro-action vision with running gags. “Dad” keeps trying to get his rebellious
teen to ride this cool purple bike he brought her, her ring-tone on his phone is
“I Love It (I Don’t Care)” which always goes off just as he’s about the rip a
guy’s armpit hair off with duct tape. Everybody’s always trying to high-five
Ethan, and the French, Germans and others he runs into keep calling him
“Cowboy.” 

Ethan’s clueless about how to deal with a teen, so he’s always stopping the
torture to ask one underworld guy (Marc Androni, funny) how to cope, what to
do, how “to balance work and family.”
Heard, all lipstick and lingerie, long eyelashes and leatherwear — has
little to do here, something of a waste. Steinfeld’s Zoey is a bit of a drama
queen, but not a caricature of one. She is one transgression after another,
which Ethan seems loathe to punish and unable to reign in.
Besson co-wrote the script, and he works in shots at absentee parents, lazy
French cops and a legal system that allows cute African squatters more rights to
Ethan’s apartment than he has. But that turns out to be a warm and fuzzy cul de
sac, one of many in this movie, which veers from shocking shoot-outs to rank
sentiment.Ethan’s illness is forgotten for long stretches, but Costner, a hacking,
weathered study in wrinkles and violence, never lets on that the whole affair is
more of a lark than “Taken” ever was. A canny touch, the old-fashioned
split-screen opening credits, scored to the old R & B tune “Old Man
Trouble.” It fits.

A tone-deaf touch? Having father teach daughter to dance to “I Want to Make
It With You.” Seriously?

Daft and sloppy as it is, “3 Days” rarely fails to entertain. From the bike
riding lessons on Montmartre to dopey interrogation of the Italian “Accountant,”
interrupted for a marinara sauce recipe, it’s all part and parcel of the madness
of Besson, “From Paris, With Love,” filtered through McG and slapping a new
stamp of “cool” on the aging Oscar winner, Costner.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some
sensuality and language
Cast: Kevin Costner, Amber Heard, Hailee Steinfeld, Connie Nielsen
Credits: Directed by McG, written by Luc Besson and  Adi Hasak. A Relativity
release.

Running time: 1:53

Pity Paul W.S. Anderson. He’s directed so many awful movies, most of them with “Resident” and “Evil” in the title, that Sony-Tristar ineptly elected to dump his “Pompeii” at the end of February, to hide it from movie critics until after the last minute.

What Anderson delivers this one time is a genuine spectacle, a gladiator movie with a volcano in the middle of it. “Pompeii” has a first rate effects team that recreates the living hell of Pompeii as it is buried under ash, pumice and fire. It has a fight choreographer from “300.”

And though I thought I’d never type these words in association with a P.W.S. Anderson picture, it’s not half bad. The acting is flat, the story is corny and old fashioned and takes too long to get going. The dialogue is a tad old school, too.

“Is this the end of the world?”

That’s when Milo, the Celt (Kit Harington of “Game of Thrones”) is shipped off to Pompeii, to fight in the arena and become smitten with a young noblewoman, Cassia (Emily Browning). Her parents (Carrie-Anne Moss and Jared Harris) would never approve. But since she’s being pursued by the evil Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), maybe Milo has a shot.

“I will break you,” the Senator sweet-talks her, “and you will STAY broken.”

Too bad that Cassia’s dad is a developer in need of the backing of a prominent Roman for his grand planned remaking of the city. Yes, he’s beholden to the Senator. And yes, 2,000 years ago developers were still trying to make a fast buck on land no sane person would build on.

Because with every rumble, every “Vulcan is speaking to us” belch from the volcano, Vesuvius lets us know that the third act is coming and it’s going to be a doozy.

Anderson, a graceless and heartless filmmaker on most projects, lets only a hint of humanity make its way into “Pompeii”. The opening shots are of body molds, preserved by ash, pitiful images of suffering that humanized this historical tragedy. The film also makes us feel something, here and there — a child separated from her mother, lovers having a last doomed embrace.

Jean Frenette’s fights, hurling Harington against the charming hulk Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, are first rate.

And Sutherland makes a perfectly venal villain.

“Pompeii” isn’t anybody’s idea of high art or flawless history. It’s too long, there are few light touches and the leads don’t have enough moments to set off sparks that aren’t volcanic in origin. But it has more heart than your average sword and sorcery piece (“Immortals”,”Clash of the Titans”) and effects that could have lifted Anderson out of the Z-grade “Resident Evil” sequels he’s been churning out since Hollywood gave him his Green Card.

He could have escaped his past, if only his studio had let him.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for intense battle sequences, disaster-related action and brief sexual content

Cast: Kit Harington, Kiefer Sutherland, Emily Browning, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jared Harris

Credits: Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, scripted by Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler, Julian Fellowes and Michael Robert Johnson. A Tristar release.

Running time: 1:45