New in Theaters
(Playing at the Gaslight Cinema,
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
(Opens Christmas Day)
LOS ANGELES – Marketed as Ben Stiller’s bend toward drama, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” finds the actor, who also directed the feature, seemingly exuding super-human strength while jumping between buildings and battling his nemesis as they surf asphalt.
The lampoon-like scenarios seem far too fanciful when attempting to take Stiller seriously. But these are just the narratives the title character weaves in his mind. In reality, Walter Mitty, played by a poised and sincere Stiller, is an insecure photo editor with an affinity for daydreaming.
Adapted from a short story of the same name, which was written by James Thurber and was published in 1939 in The New Yorker, the outlandish scenes in “Mitty” bring the most memorable element of the original tale – reality bending – to the forefront. Thurber’s sarcastic narrative found Walter Mitty at odds with his bickering wife and escaping his humdrum life by daydreaming he was a war hero, surgeon and sharp shooter. The first rendering of “Mitty,” which maintained Thurber’s comedic tone, was realized on film in 1947. It starred Danny Kaye, who this time, battled with an overbearing mother.
Written by Steven Conrad, the contemporary rendition, in which Jim Carey was originally supposed to star, sees the real world altered with such wild inflection that it’s hard to digest. Visual techniques like interspersing the text of the opening credits into Walter’s surroundings, prove to be the most innovative and clever effect of the picture. Luckily, the CGI-marred moments flood only the first 30 minutes of the film, allowing for a loaded, inspiring experience familiar to other serious Conrad works like “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
In the new “Mitty,” Stiller’s Walter works at Life magazine, which is transitioning from print to digital. A brilliantly vexing Adam Scott plays Ted Hendricks, the ringleader of a band of executives who’ve come to supervise the completion of the last issue and fire a large chunk of the magazine’s staff.
In this take, the women aren’t nags. Shirley MacLaine, who plays Stiller’s mother, Edna, and Kathryn Hahn, who plays his sister, Odessa, are quite pleasant and supportive. It’s Ted who acts as the villain. He takes to bullying Walter, who must pin down the negative image for the final issue’s cover. Walter consistently spaces out, especially when he’s fantasizing about his co-worker, Cheryl (played sweetly by Kristen Wiig).
Unable to locate the image, which was shot by a long-standing Life magazine photographer, Sean O’Connell (an explorer superbly pronounced by Sean Penn), Walter heads to Greenland where he hopes to find Sean and his coveted shot. Once there, Walter jumps out of a helicopter only to be nearly eaten by a shark when landing in the ocean. It’s such a heart-pounding experience that even Walter wonders if what he just endured was real. But, alas, Walter’s finally having actual adventures, as his capacity for taking risks increases.
In the midst of more action – Walter skateboards down a hill in Iceland and escapes an erupting volcano – he receives recurring calls from an eHarmony customer service rep (a facetious Patton Oswalt), who is determined to help Walter make his dull online dating profile more appealing.
As we watch Walter’s world open up, we follow his journey across alluring locations like the Himalayas. When we finally meet Sean, who is perched on a mountain waiting for the perfect shot, he speaks to Walter’s evolution as he tells him he sometimes prefers to savor his personal moments instead of being distracted by his camera.
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” a Fox release, is rated PG for “some crude comments, language and action violence.” Running time: 114 minutes. HHH out of four.
JESSICA HERNDON, AP Film Writer
Philomena
In 1952 Ireland, an orphaned teenage girl named Philomena Lee (Sophie Kennedy Clark) is living in a convent after her mother dies and her father abandons her. When she goes to a carnival one night, she meets boy who likes her, and later becomes pregnant out of wedlock.
After the nuns discover her condition, she is forced to become a laborer to them, give birth without medication or pain killers, and when her baby turns three, he is sent away to a new family without her permission. Fifty years later, Philomena (Judi Dench) is fully determined to find out where her son is and what life he leads, with the help of recently unemployed journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan). Martin has just been let go from his BBC job as a government adviser and is considering new hobbies of jogging and writing about Russian history. That is until he meets Philomena’s daughter, Jane (Anna Maxwell Martin), and she pitches her mom’s story to him.
Michelle Fairley plays the newspaper head who encourages Martin to write the story, and Mare Winningham plays one of the grown-up babies sold from the convent and the adopted sister of Philomena’s son. There are a lot of things going on in Stephen Frears’ “Philomena” that make the audience ponder. The old lady was treated horribly by the Catholic Church, but never lost her faith or connection to Christianity; the journalist is a Catholic-turned-atheist engaged to a Catholic; and there are some pretty awful nuns, as well as a couple of ‘very nice ones’ (in the words of Philomena). Coogan, usually a comic on camera, brings some charm into Philomena’s heavy story (which is remarkably based on a real woman named Philomena Lee) with co-screenwriter Jeff Pope. Coogan and Dench are paired together in an odd couple way, but they create some more genuine awkwardness and charisma to play off each other, instead of the usual predictable gags.
Clark and Dench bring the title character to life effortlessly, with the former making her mark on the acting scene. While Dench has the more tender and bittersweet moments of the film, Clark is heartbreaking and handles the heaviest scenes in the story.
“Philomena” is one of the most intellectual films of the year; not a blatantly biased secular attack on Catholicism, but rather a must-watch for historic perspective. In an interview recently, the real Philomena stated that some sequences were fictionalized for dramatic effect, like most real life-based movies. But Frears, Coogan and Pope use her tale as a way to have viewers contemplate the separation of church and faith, and the abuses of power. Dench is deservedly on her way to her seventh Oscar nomination, and her fifth for Best Actress.
Megan Bianco, special to the Herald
(Playing at the Durango Stadium 9)
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”
Can there be too much of a good thing? Where did that expression come from, anyway? If it’s good, isn’t more always better?
Discuss.
Or, actually, don’t discuss. Because, in the case of “Anchorman 2” anyway, the question is sort of pointless, isn’t it? Everything about both the original 2004 film, a cult classic of the Will Ferrell oeuvre, and its lead character, Ron Burgundy, was puffed up and absurd and ridiculous.
And so, why wouldn’t the sequel be even more puffed up, more absurd and more ridiculous? As long as Ferrell’s back (he is), and reunited with his wacky partners (he is) to form a veritable dream team of inappropriateness (they do), then what could be wrong?
Not that “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” again directed with total self-assurance by Adam McKay, is a work of fine art. It’s a broad, low-brow comedy, which one imagines was concocted somewhat like a huge abstract painting: You throw gobs (or jokes) onto a big canvas, some spills over the edges, and it’s messy and lumpy, but hey, it’s all good, and anyway, the next gob is coming.
For those who may have missed the original, it brought us Burgundy, a TV anchor defined by his goofiness, self-importance, good-natured chauvinism, and polyester. Set in the ‘70s, the theme was gender equality; Burgundy’s foil was Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), who sought her own anchor chair.
In the sequel, the issue isn’t gender but the very purpose of TV news: To inform, or entertain? We’re in 1980, and Burgundy and Corningstone, now married, host a morning show together. Then she – alone – is offered an evening anchor slot. Burgundy? He’s fired (the boss is a gruffly funny Harrison Ford, sounding quite Brokaw-esque.)
Ron tells Veronica she can’t take the job without him. She accuses him of acting like Julius Caesar. “Who the hell is Julius Caesar?” he bellows. “I don’t follow the NBA!”
Veronica takes the job and abandons Ron. But opportunity comes in the form of a job offer that sounds crazy: a new 24-hour news channel, being launched by an Aussie billionaire. Its name? GNN.
Burgundy heads for New York, stopping to gather the old news team from San Diego – er, San Di-AHgo, as he pronounces it: overly emotional sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner), now running a chicken joint; overly sexed reporter Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), now photographing cats; and overly insane weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell, reliably hilarious) now dead. Or so he thinks.
Burgundy’s new nemesis is the impossibly good-looking, self-adoring anchorman Jack Lime (James Marsden, perfect in such self-mocking roles). And his superior is the overachieving Linda Jackson (Meagan Good), who finds Burgundy ridiculous but then inexplicably falls for him. Linda is not only a woman but black, a double-whammy for the chauvinistic Burgundy; their coupling, however improbable, leads to a very funny dinner-table scene with Linda’s disapproving family.
Of course, underdog Ron has tricks up his sleeve. “Why do we need to tell the people what they need to hear?” he muses. “Why can’t we tell them what they WANT to hear?” And they’re off, satirizing today’s infotainment brand of cable news. A routine involving an endless car chase and, well, Yasser Arafat (yes, Yasser Arafat) is one of the more inspired scenes in the film.
The starry cast also includes Kristen Wiig, intensely weird as only she can be. And there’s the finale, a news-team rumble in midtown Manhattan involving more celebrity cameos than you ever thought possible. Sacha Baron Cohen as a BBC anchor? Only the beginning. Of course, it all feels like too much.
But you can’t have too much of a good thing, remember?
“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” a Paramount Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for “crude and sexual content, drug use, language and comic violence.” Running time: 119 minutes. HHH out of four.
JOCELYN NOVECK, AP National Writer
Walking with Dinosaurs
(In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge)
(Not reviewed.) For the first time in movie history, audiences will truly see and feel what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. “Walking With Dinosaurs” is the ultimate immersive experience, utilizing state of the art 3D to put moviegoers in the middle of a thrilling and epic prehistoric world, where an underdog dinosaur triumphs to become a hero for the ages. Rated PG.
(Playing at the Gaslight Cinema)
Saving Mr. Banks.
Full disclosure: On some occasions in my career, including presently, I have done work for television programs owned by the Disney Co.
Equally full disclosure, and some of you will shake your umbrellas at me for this one: While I love many things Disney, including any number of motion pictures, “Mary Poppins” never did it for me. I recognize the brilliance of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, and I admire what were some pretty nifty visuals for 1964, but all those obnoxiously sunny tunes such as “A Spoonful of Sugar” and “Chim Chim Cher-ee” – no thank you.
So I might not have been as keen to see a movie about the making of “Mary Poppins” as the multiple generations of fans who adore the film. But regardless of whether you can type “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” without even Googling or you’ve never heard of the magical nanny, “Saving Mr. Banks” quite likely might be your cup of tea.
It’s 1961, six years after Disneyland was opened in Anaheim, Calif. The avuncular Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) is presiding over an already legendary entertainment empire that continues to expand with great leaps and bounds. (On the wall in Walt’s office is a map of Florida with Orlando circled.) No single project will have too great an impact on Disney’s bottom line, but Walt is determined to the point of near-obsession to bring P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins books to the big screen. It’s a promise he made to his girls some 20 years earlier, and Walt doesn’t break promises.
Tom Hanks doesn’t look much like the Walt Disney we know from old black-and-white clips, and he doesn’t strive for an imitation, but it feels as if he gets Disney’s folksy, friendly manner as well as his keen business acumen and his willingness to outwork anyone. Walt’s best friend might be a cartoon mouse, and we can see he genuinely cares for his employees and he loves the fans who flock to Disneyland – but there’s little doubt he can be as cutthroat as any cigar-chomping old-school movie mogul.
Emma Thompson is a perfect choice to play the prissy, humorless, snobbish P.L. Travers, who shudders at the very notion of her beloved Mary Poppins and her precious Banks family getting the Hollywood musical treatment. Problem is, royalties aren’t what they used to be, and Travers has to entertain the notion of signing away the rights.
Cue to a scene of Travers boarding a flight from London to Los Angeles, sneering as a woman boards with an infant and asking, “Will the child be a nuisance?”
Oh great. Turns out the creator of Mary Poppins is a tightly wound, lonely, bitter fussbudget. And judging by some of her actions in L.A., she’s borderline NUTS.
Director John Lee Hancock (working from a well-structured script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith) gives us a stylized and gorgeous version of 1961 Los Angeles. When Paul Giamatti as Ralph the driver extols the glories of another beautiful day in Southern California, when Mrs. Travers oversees the efforts of the screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and the songwriting Sherman brothers (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman) to win her over, it seems there would be no more exciting place on Earth to be – but Mrs. Travers still refuses to sign over those rights. Her joylessness is waiting for her each morning when she awakens, and it stays with her all day and night, like a curse from a Disney fairy tale.
In numerous – I thought too many – flashback scenes, we go back to P.L. Travers’ girlhood days in Australia. (That’s right, the author of Mary Poppins was Australian, and her real name was Helen Goff.) As a little girl, even as her family suffered declining fortunes, little Helen was mesmerized by the wondrous, adventurous ways of her charming but utterly irresponsible father, Travers (Colin Farrell). The deeper he sinks into his alcoholism, to the point where his wife becomes suicidal with despair, the more we understand how the little girl would idolize and then idealize the nanny who showed up on the doorstep and announced she was there to fix things.
This being a Walt Disney film with one of the most beloved actors of all time playing Walt Disney, it’s no surprise “Saving Mr. Banks” is thoroughly kind to Mr. Disney, who is portrayed as basically the best boss in the world. Thompson has more of a journey to convey, as Mrs. Travers slowly emerges from her shell. (There’s one bit of business involving a giant stuffed Mickey Mouse that’s cute and funny.)
No doubt the real story of Walt Disney’s film-rights courtship of P.L. Travers was much less whimsical and not nearly so tidy. (Travers wrote eight books, but never allowed Disney to make another “Poppins” movie. I’m guessing she hated those damn cartoon penguins until the day she died.)
The end-credit photos illustrate the parallels between actual events and the fictionalized version, which is part docudrama, part pure Disney magical storytelling.
This is a lovingly rendered, sweet film.
Walt Disney Pictures presents a film directed by John Lee Hancock. Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for thematic elements including some unsettling images). HHH
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
Still Showing
Durango Stadium 9
(Next to Durango Mall, 247-9799, www.allentheatresinc.com)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) Bilbo Baggins journeys with the Wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, on an epic quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor. Having survived the beginning of their unexpected journey, the Company continues East, encountering along the way the skin-changer Beorn and a swarm of giant Spiders in the treacherous forest of Mirkwood. Rated PG-13.
Tyler Perry’s A Medea Christmas. Madea gets coaxed into helping a friend pay her daughter a surprise visit in the country for Christmas, but the biggest surprise is what they’ll find when they arrive. As the small, rural town prepares for its annual Christmas Jubilee, new secrets are revealed and old relationships are tested while Madea dishes her own brand of Christmas Spirit to all. Rated PG-13.
Frozen. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) Inspired by the 19th century fairy tale, “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen, “Frozen” marks another Disney film modernizing one of the Danish author’s stories.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Katniss goes on a victory tour after her “Hunger Games” victory, but there’s no time to rest before the next round. Rated PG-13.
Animas City Theatre (128 E. College Drive, 799-2281, www.animascitytheatre.com)
Nebraska. (See review page 1C).
Back Space Theatre
(1120 Main Ave., 259-7940)
Rotating Holiday films: The Back Space will show “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “The Sound of Music,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “White Christmas” in rotation. One show per night Monday through Thursday, two shows on Fridays and Saturdays, through Dec. 29.
Ted Holteen and Associated Press
