The Catholic Post Recently released films reviewed on basis of moral suitability

Recently released films reviewed on basis of moral suitability

By: The Catholic Post - December 7, 2012 - Movie Review

Photo Caption: Martin Freeman stars in a scene from the movie “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” The Catholic News Service classification is A-II — adults and adolescents.

Rating: By Catholic News Service

The following movie reviews are supplied by Catholic News Service in conjunction with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting.

For full reviews of these films, as well as earlier releases, visit the CNS movie site at www.catholicnews.com/movies.htm.

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“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (Warner Bros.)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Epic 3-D adaptation of the opening part of Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 children’s novel “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again,” directed by Peter Jackson.
In this first installment of a trio of prequels to Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, also based on Tolkien’s fiction, a homebody hobbit (Martin Freeman) is reluctantly convinced by a wizard (Ian McKellen) to accompany and aid a group of dwarves (led by Richard Armitage) in their quest to recapture their ancient stronghold, a storehouse of fabulous wealth long ago conquered by a rampaging dragon.
The heroism of ordinary people and the potential for everyday goodness to subdue evil are the primary themes of the long, combat-heavy adventure that follows. As the titular character proves his mettle, the corrupting effects of power are also showcased through his encounter with a cave dweller (Andy Serkis) who is obsessed with — and spiritually enslaved by — a magical ring.
Not for the easily frightened or those with short attention spans, Jackson’s sweeping journey across Tolkien’s imaginary world of Middle-earth is an upbeat outing suitable for all others. Much bloodless action violence, some mild gross-out humor.

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“Hitchcock” (Fox Searchlight)

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.

The legendary film director and “Master of Suspense” gets quite a dressing-down in director Sacha Gervasi’s absorbing adaptation of Stephen Rebello’s 1990 book “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho.”
Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is portrayed as a compulsive voyeur and control freak who suspected the motives of just about everyone, even his devoted wife (Helen Mirren).
With stars (Scarlett Johansson, James D’Arcy) playing stars (Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins), the film follows the production of Hitchcock’s biggest success. In crafting it, Hitchcock battled the Hollywood censors to allow an unprecedented degree of explicitness, and contributed to the breakdown of the long-standing production code that had regulated movie content since the 1930s.
Graphic re-creations of movie-making violence, a scene of implied adultery, sexual innuendo, some profane and rough language.

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“Playing for Keeps” (FilmDistrict)

Family values take the field in director Gabriele Muccino’s rather static romantic comedy that recounts the personal travails of a washed-up British soccer star (Gerard Butler). Shortly after moving to suburban Virginia where his American ex-wife (Jessica Biel) had earlier relocated, he agrees to coach his young son’s (Noah Lomax) youth soccer team, teaching them the finer points of the beautiful game as part of his efforts to become a better, more attentive father.
Though he soon has a succession of soccer moms throwing themselves at him (including Judy Greer, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman), he continues to dream of marital reconciliation.
A single, off-screen sexual escapade aside, Muccino and screenwriter Robbie Fox buck the genre’s recent trend toward the sordid as their protagonist turns down opportunities for immoral gratification. Respectable, if not especially compelling entertainment. An implied nonmarital encounter, brief nongraphic sexual activity, fleeting gory images, some crude and crass language.

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“The Collection” (LD Entertainment)

The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Hideous exercise in torture porn about a masked maniac (Randall Archer) who likes to kidnap people and practice dissection on them, both pre- and post-mortem. When his latest victim (Emma Fitzpatrick) disappears, the only survivor of his previous activities (Josh Stewart) joins forces with a team of mercenaries (led by Lee Tergesen) her wealthy father (Christopher McDonald) has hired to rescue her.
Director Marcus Dunstan’s follow-up to his equally sadistic 2009 flick “The Collector” sows mild confusion and deep boredom in between harvesting body parts. Pervasive graphic and gory violence, including torture and dismemberment, some sexual humor, much rough and crude language, an obscene gesture.

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Killing Them Softly” (Weinstein)

The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Brutally violent, deeply cynical crime drama in which a trio of small-time thieves (Vincent Curatola, Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) plots a raid on a mafia protected gambling den, hoping to pin the blame for their heist on the card dealer (Ray Liotta) who runs the operation. But their initial success begins to unravel when a businesslike Cosa Nostra middle manager (Richard Jenkins) sets a relentlessly professional hit man (subdued, smoldering Brad Pitt) on their trail.
Writer-director Andrew Dominik uses sound bites from the 2008 financial crisis to suggest a moral equivalence between Wall Street and organized crime. He also employs then-Sen. Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric from the same year’s presidential campaign to imply that the American dream is an idealistic delusion.
As embodied in Pitt’s casually murderous character, and that of another killer who’s on the skids (James Gandolfini), Dominik’s corrosive satire goes deeper still, undermining all notions of morality and, indeed, of meaning. Excessive graphic violence, including gruesome murders and a prolonged, bloody beating, drug use, brief partial rear nudity, a prostitution theme, seamy sexual talk, numerous instances of profanity, pervasive rough and crude language.

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“Anna Karenina” (Focus)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Keira Knightley stars in this lush adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 novel about a once happily married mother in the high society of imperial Russia who forsakes her upright husband (Jude Law) in favor of an aristocrat (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) with whom she falls obsessively in love.
Director Joe Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard cover nearly all the elements from the novel, but they present about half of it in a highly stylized manner, using a theater as both a framing device and a setting. This creates the unpleasant sensation that the audience is completing an assignment for English class. Morally, though, Tolstoy’s message, that “sin has a price,” remains front and center.
Nongraphic adulterous sexual activity, fleeting rear male nudity, a scene of breastfeeding.

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“Life of Pi” (Fox)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Exotic 3-D fable in which an Indian teen (Suraj Sharma) whose family (led by parents Adil Hussain and Tabu) is emigrating to Canada, and transporting some of the animals from the zoo they owned in their home country, becomes the lone human survivor when the freighter on which they and their menagerie are traveling sinks. But his endurance is put to a further test when he finds himself forced to share a small lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
Religious themes are central to director Ang Lee’s screen version of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel. But, while it features a positive treatment of Catholicism and a sympathetic priest, this visually artful psychological parable — told in flashbacks by its now-adult protagonist (Irrfan Khan) — upholds its main character’s view that he can be, simultaneously, a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim.
Not for the impressionable or the poorly catechized, Lee’s film also becomes somewhat taxing as the rigors of the lad’s unusual ordeal begin to rub off on viewers. Complex treatment of religious faith requiring mature interpretation, potentially upsetting scenes of life-threatening danger and animal aggression, some mildly vulgar wordplay, fleeting scatological humor.

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“Red Dawn” (FilmDistrict)

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.

Gleefully paranoid, hyperviolent and more than a little racist, this remake of the 1984 original has Chris Hemsworth and Josh Peck leading a ragtag teenage militia against North Korean forces who have overtaken the Pacific Northwest.
Director Dan Bradley and co-writers Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore send their protagonists on a mission of revenge against the occupiers, who have managed to shut down the power grid. So they fight ’em in the woods, and blow ’em up downtown. The only morality consists of getting the enemy before they get you, and skin color and eye shape largely determine who’s evil.
Constant gun violence, occasional gore, racist characterizations, fleeting profanity, pervasive crude language.

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“Rise of the Guardians” (Paramount)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-I — general patronage. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

Delightful 3-D animated adventure, based on books by William Joyce and focusing on the destiny of the legendary bringer of winter, Jack Frost (voice of Chris Pine).
Free-spirited and mischievous, youthful Jack is also lonely and uncertain of his purpose in life until he’s invited to join the Guardians, a force of mythical characters who protect children against the machinations of the Bogeyman (voice of Jude Law). Jack’s newfound comrades include Santa Claus (voice of Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (voice of Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (voice of Isla Fisher) and the mute but cheerful Sandman. In his feature debut, director Peter Ramsey, working from a script by David Lindsay-Abaire, pits hope and wonder against fear and self-doubt in a tenderhearted and touching film entirely free of objectionable content. Perilous situations.

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“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2” (Summit)

This fifth and final installment of the popular franchise sees its domesticated vampire hero (Robert Pattinson) and his once-mortal, but now undead bride (Kristen Stewart) enjoying both married life and newfound parenthood.
But when their half-human, half-bloodsucker daughter (Mackenzie Foy) is mistaken for a type of being long banned by the ruling clique of the vampire world, a conflict erupts between the young couple’s allies (most prominently Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli and Elizabeth Reaser) and the elite defenders of the established order (led by Michael Sheen).
Themes of family loyalty, tolerance for others and the corrupting effects of power underlie the easy-to-laugh-at but undeniably entertaining proceedings of director Bill Condon’s gothic romance — adapted, like its immediate predecessor, from novelist Stephenie Meyer’s blockbuster “Breaking Dawn.”
Parents will have to assess how well mature adolescents may cope with the unsettling means by which the vein-drainers dispose of each other during a climactic battle — essentially gore-free decapitation, followed by burning — as well as with scenes of intimacy between the central pair. Some harsh but bloodless violence, fleeting gore, semi-graphic marital lovemaking with partial nudity, a couple of crass terms.

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“Lincoln” (DreamWorks)

Daniel Day-Lewis’ bravura performance in the title role is the highlight — but by no means the only asset — of director Steven Spielberg’s splendid historical drama.
The plot focuses on the Civil War president’s passionate yet wily struggle, during the closing days of that conflict, to steer a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. Aided by his secretary of state, William Seward (David Strathairn), but distracted by his troubled personal life — Sally Field plays his famously high-strung wife Mary — Lincoln uses rhetoric to win over his hesitant Cabinet and patronage to woo his opponents.
The trajectory of the tale is, by its nature, uplifting, while Lincoln’s multifaceted personality — which encompassed idealism, political shrewdness, melancholy, humor and even a few endearing foibles — is vividly illuminated in Tony Kushner’s screenplay. The educational value and moral import of the film may make it acceptable for older adolescents.
Intense but mostly bloodless battlefield violence, a scene involving severed limbs, cohabitation, about a dozen uses of profanity, racial slurs, a couple of rough terms, occasional crude and crass language

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“The Sessions” (Fox Searchlight)

The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Paralyzed from the neck down by a childhood bout of polio, a 38-year-old journalist and poet (John Hawkes) engages the services of a so-called sex surrogate (Helen Hunt) to help him lose his virginity, an undertaking in which he gains the misguided support of his sympathetic but irresolute parish priest (William H. Macy).
Writer-director Ben Lewin’s adaptation of Mark O’Brien’s autobiographical writings displays an initially ambiguous, but ultimately negative attitude toward the memoirist’s devout Catholic faith — which is predictably identified as a source of guilt and inhibition. As for the titular encounters between the two main characters, while not prurient, they are nonetheless excessively explicit. And scenes showing the surrogate’s home life with her husband and teenage son raise the ethical stakes by introducing the element of adultery.
Anti-Catholic bias, a priest character who fails to uphold church teaching, strong sexual content, including graphic scenes of adulterous sexual activity with full nudity, a benign view of nonmarital and aberrant sex, at least one rough term, occasional crude and crass language.

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“Skyfall” (Columbia)

A rousing return for British Agent 007 and a much-needed injection of vitality into the 50-year-old James Bond film franchise, this 23rd outing for the iconic spy is directed by Sam Mendes.
Bond (Daniel Craig) and a field operative (Naomie Harris) are on the trail of a villain (Javier Bardem) who has stolen a computer disc containing the identities of every secret agent in the world. The sleazy megalomaniac uses the data to terrorize London and exact revenge on veteran counter-intelligence chief M (Judi Dench), who is also contending with the threat posed by a government rival (Ralph Fiennes) who seeks her job.
Though the violence quotient is undeniably high, Mendes’ film is thoughtful and character-driven, raising issues of loss, responsibility, patriotism and loyalty amid the battle of good vs. evil.
Scenes of intense action violence and torture, implied nonmarital sexual activity, mild sensuality and innuendo, some profane and rough language.

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“Wreck-It Ralph” (Disney)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested, some material may not be suitable for children.

This clever 3-D animated adventure, directed by Rich Moore, ponders the meaning of life inside a video arcade machine once the “Game Over” message appears.
The perennial bad guy (voice of John C. Reilly) of the title wants to be just like his good-guy opponent (voice of Jack McBrayer). So he abandons his game for others in search of fame and glory. Along the way he encounters a violent warrior (voice of Jane Lynch) and an outcast (voice of Sarah Silverman) from a racing game with whom he bonds. The pair unites to overcome prejudice and embrace their differences, offering a positive lesson in self-esteem for young viewers.
Mild cartoonish violence, some rude humor.

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“Cloud Atlas” (Warner Bros.)

The Catholic News Service classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Sweeping screen version of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel — co-written and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer — that interweaves six connected stories set at different times between the 19th and 24th centuries. Tom Hanks leads an ensemble cast that also includes Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Keith David and James D’Arcy — all skillfully juggling multiple roles.
The half-dozen tales which make up the plot send mostly positive — if sometimes ponderously expressed — messages about the bonds uniting all human beings and the courage required to do the right thing on behalf of others. But one of the central relationships is a sympathetically portrayed romance between two men. An incidental extramarital affair, moreover, is treated as essentially harmless. Another plotline involves the debunking of a fictional faith that may or may not be intended as an attack on real-life religion, and the script at least hints that some of the characters may be reincarnations of people in the earlier sections of the vast chronology.
Considerable gory violence, including torture and a suicide, a benign view of homosexual acts and adultery, graphic premarital and nongraphic adulterous sexual activity, upper female and rear nudity, a same-sex kiss, a few uses of profanity, at least 20 rough terms, occasional crude language.

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“Argo” (Warner Bros.)

The Catholic News Service classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Engrossing thriller, based on real events, and set against the backdrop of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81. Tasked by his boss (Bryan Cranston) with rescuing the handful of U.S. embassy employees who managed to escape capture when that facility was overrun by armed militants, a CIA agent (Ben Affleck) hatches a seemingly far-fetched scheme: He’ll smuggle them out of Tehran — where they’ve been hiding in the Canadian embassy — disguised as a Canadian film crew scouting locations.
To do so convincingly, he enlists the aid of a Hollywood producer (Alan Arkin) and makeup artist (John Goodman), and together they drum up publicity for the imaginary film project of the title. Affleck, who also directed, masterfully alternates between life-or-death drama and high-stakes humor. Though both aspects of the story too frequently give rise to coarse dialogue, the canny patriotism and emotional impact of the picture — as scripted by Chris Terrio — make for a rousing experience.
Potentially disturbing scenes and images, an abortion reference, a half-dozen uses of profanity, many rough and crude terms.

Recently released films reviewed on basis of moral suitability

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