New in Theaters
Animas City Theatre
(128 E. College Drive, 799-2281)
GMO OMG
GMO OMG director and concerned father Jeremy Seifert is in search of answers. How do GMOs affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice? And perhaps the ultimate question, which Seifert tests himself: is it even possible to reject the food system currently in place, or have we lost something we can’t gain back? These and other questions take Seifert on a journey from his family’s table to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and the lobby of agra-giant Monsanto, from which he is unceremoniously ejected. Along the way we gain insight into a question that is of growing concern to citizens the world over: What’s on your plate?
Durango Stadium 9
Carrie
“Carrie” is going viral.
In the new take on the supernatural coming-of-age story out Friday, beleaguered high school student Carrie White’s torment doesn’t merely occur within the gym showers or on stage at the prom. It’s also online, one of a few modern updates dropped into filmmaker Kimberly Peirce’s reimagining of the landmark 1974 novel by Stephen King.
There are references to the “Today” show and “Dancing with the Stars,” tunes from Passion Pit and Krewella playing at the prom and Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) searching about her burgeoning telekinetic powers online. Outside the movie, “Carrie” is also being marketed with a hidden camera stunt that’s racked up nearly 40 million views on YouTube.
However, the most profound use of technology in this contemporary “Carrie” occurs while she’s antagonized.
The shy outcast isn’t only ridiculed by fellow students when she experiences her first menstruation – and doesn’t know what’s happening – after gym class. The moment is also captured on a smartphone and later uploaded to the Internet by mean girl Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday). It’s played again on screens during their prom after bullies dump pig’s blood on the teen.
This isn’t just Carrie 4.0 though.
Moretz – who at 16, is the same age as the titular character – believes the broadcast of the digital video amplifies the internal rage of this version of the introverted young woman, who’s been sheltered throughout her life by her religiously fanatical mother Margaret (Julianne Moore). It’s a new reading of the tale that’s spawned three movies and a Broadway musical.
“When that blood is dropped on her, I do think she would’ve walked away if that video had not been put up on the screen,” said Moretz. “I do think she would have walked out of that gym, gone home, cried and been fine – figured her life and moved back into her shell. Without the video, I don’t think the telekinesis would’ve taken over her body.”
When it came to filming that iconic scene, which has been endlessly imitated and parodied in the decades since director Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” debuted in 1976, Moretz said she was showered with phony blood just twice. The bigger challenge for the young “Kick-Ass” and “Hugo” actresses was unleashing a totally new interpretation of the classic cinematic moment.
“I had to forget about all that,” said Moretz. “As an actor, I just needed to live in my character and not think about Sissy Spacek’s performance or how this is an iconic scene or anything like that. Carrie is Carrie. She doesn’t know blood is going to be dropped on her. She just won prom queen and thinks her life is going to turn around for the better now.”
With the aid of computer-generated effects, the blood-soaked mayhem Carrie wreaks is certainly more expansive than De Palma’s original “Carrie” film, as well as the 1999 sequel and a 2002 made-for-TV movie. Peirce was tasked with balancing expectations of both “Carrie” fans and modern moviegoers – without turning Carrie into one of the X-Men or Transformers.
“I faced it with humility,” said Peirce . “On some level, of course, I was scared I wouldn’t live up to it, but then I just thought, ‘I love Carrie. I’m going to ground this moment. I’m going to make this as specific and real as possible.’ I do think I ended up making it different. It’s the same reason why people are able to bring a new reality to Shakespeare and other works.”
Moore also purposely veered in a new direction with her nuanced take on Margaret White, wildly portrayed in the original film by Piper Laurie, who along with Spacek earned Oscar nominations for their performances. The veteran “Short Cuts” and “The Hours” actress plays a quieter, self-mutilating rendition of Carrie’s unhinged and overprotective mother.
The filmmakers focused more on the novel than the original film, with screenwriter and “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa incorporating additional elements from King’s book. While the issue of bullying has become more relevant in recent years and is paramount to the story, the cast and crew didn’t set out to make A Very Special “Carrie.”
“It’s a difficult issue to address,” said Moore. “There’s a huge spectrum when it comes to bullying. There are a lot of things that come under that heading like teasing that aren’t necessarily bullying. It’s not something you can be pithy about it. I kept going back to Stephen King’s impetus for writing the book, and that’s how damaging isolation can be to people.”
DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer
Escape Plan
(Not reviewed.) Sly Stallone plays one of the world’s foremost authorities on structural security (fear not, it’s only a movie). He takes on one last job: breaking out of an ultra-secret, high-tech facility called “The Tomb.” Deceived and wrongly imprisoned, he must recruit fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help devise a daring, nearly impossible plan to escape from the most protected and fortified prison ever built. We can only hope they fail. Rated R.
Gaslight Cinema
The Fifth Estate
Ripped from headlines that still feel wet, “The Fifth Estate” dramatizes the fast, controversial rise of anonymous-whistle-blower website WikiLeaks and its figurehead, Julian Assange.
Aiming to provide the kind of speculative personality portrait behind another sweeping digital-age change in communication that touches nearly everyone, a la “The Social Network,” helmer Bill Condon and scenarist Josh Singer’s film must also stuff in a heavy load of global events, all in a hyperkinetic style aping today’s speed of information dispersal.
Results can’t help but stimulate, but they’re also cluttered and overly frenetic, resulting in a narrative less informative, cogent and even emotionally engaging than Alex Gibney’s recent doc “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.”
After an opening-credits montage that rockets through the history of news media, from hand-lettered scrolls to the Internet, the pic leaps into the peak October 2010 moment of WikiLeaks’ fame and notoriety, when Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) began releasing an enormous store of leaked classified U.S. government documents.
The resulting fracas outshone even previous firestorms incurred by WikiLeaks, and as postscripts note, Assange remains in hiding at Ecuador’s London embassy while various angry governments call for his extradition.
The remainder of the film tracks back to 2007, when he first makes contact with German technology activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruehl), whom he trusts enough to make a close collaborator.
Daniel is an enthusiastic acolyte, so much so that the 24/7 devotion Julian demands soon exasperates Daniel’s girlfriend (Alicia Vikander in a standard thankless role).
The mysterious, seemingly large Wiki organization Assange frequently alludes to turns out to be nothing but “a website, a couple email addresses and you,” he eventually admits, though others climb on board.
But even as WikiLeaks appears to be winning the information war in forcing transparency from governments and corporations, pushing them toward greater ethical accountability, Assange show signs of megalomania, instability and questionable judgment.
Returning to the screenplay’s start point, his troops rebel when Assange balks at redacting any top-secret American communiques, even the parts that might put innocent lives at lethal risk in global hot spots.
You can feel the strain on “The West Wing” writer Singer, writing his first big-screen effort, as practically every line has to sum up a philosophy, situation or dilemma. Likewise, Condon, usually a director of admirable cogency and restraint, lays on a battery of audiovisual tactics (onscreen text, graphics, split screen, vertical wipes, etc.), largely set to techno tracks or Carter Burwell’s equally pounding score.
Tobias Schliesser’s camera often jitters as if on its 10th espresso, while Virginia Katz’s editing seldom pauses for breath. There’s conceptual logic behind these decisions, but they are as frequently off-putting as they are thematically apt.
No wonder the two perhaps most memorable scenes are among the very few that slow enough to allow nuance: an uncomfortable visit to Daniel’s parents’ home, when Julian openly disdains them as bourgeois intellectuals; and a let’s-just get-drunk moment between Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as State Department honchos whose careers won’t likely survive the latest Wiki leaks.
German star Bruehl is stuck playing Domscheit-Berg – who wrote one of the two tomes the script draws on – as a single-note nice guy, the standard audience-alter-ego witness to events that spiral out of control.
“The Fifth Estate,” a Disney release, is rated R for “language and some violence.” Running time: 128 minutes.
DENNIS HARVEY, Variety
Still Showing
Durango Stadium 9
(Next to Durango Mall, 247-9799, www.allentheatresinc.com)
Jewtopia. (Wednesday only.) Based on the off-Broadway play. Christian O’Connell (Ivan Sergei) has met the girl of his dreams in Alison Marks (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Unfortunately, Christian told Alison (who happens to be a rabbi’s daughter) that his name was Avi Rosenberg, and that he was Jewish- neither of which are true. Desperate to keep up the illusion, he turns to his childhood best friend, Adam Lipschitz (Joel David Moore) to teach him how to “act Jewish.” But Adam has problems of his own, with a fiancé (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) pushing him closer to a mental breakdown as their wedding approaches. Not rated.
Captain Phillips. Tom Hanks stars in the true story about the captain of a freighter hijacked by Somali pirates. Rated PG-13.
Machete Kills. The blade-wielding ex-Federale is hired to eradicate some of the country’s more troublesome prisoners in his own unique style. Rated R.
Gravity. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) George Clooney and Sandra Bullock star as astronauts stranded in space after a devastating accident in orbit. Rated PG-13.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. (In standard format and digital 3-D with surcharge.) Chester V’s evil machine is still creating animal-food hybrids, much to the chagrin of Flint Lockwood. It’s a sequel – hopefully someone understands what all that means. Rated PG.
Prisoners. Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard play fathers whose daughters go missing after a holiday dinner. A riveting search ensues. Rated R.
We’re the Millers. Jason Sudeikis creates a family from a bunch of derelicts to cover his drug-running activities. Rated R.
Gaslight Cinema
(102 Fifth St. Next to the railroad depot, 247-8133, www.allentheatresinc.com)
Instructions Not Included. Valentin (Eugenio Derbez) is Acapulco’s resident playboy – until a former fling leaves a baby on his doorstep and takes off without a trace. Rated PG-13.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler. Forest Whitaker plays the butler who served presidents for three decades at the White House. Oh, the stories he could tell ... Rated PG-13.
Ted Holteen and Associated PresS
