Wknd Box Office: Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle, Inside Llewyn Davis & Mid-Week Box Office: “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle, Inside Llewyn Davis

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
I cannot recommend any of the new movies coming out this weekend (and it’s more bad news for the movies coming out Christmas Day–I semi-liked one of them), but I’m especially disgusted with the Disney offering, “Saving Mr. Banks.” My review of “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” which debuted on Wednesday is here.


* “Saving Mr. Banks“: Disney is marketing this as a cheerful kids film about the making of the Mary Poppins movie. Don’t believe the hype. This is a dreadful movie that tells kids fathers are bad and subjects them to inappropriate storylines about alcoholism, death, and suicide. From Magical Kingdom to Tragical Kingdom–Yay, Disney!
We learn that P.L. Travers, the woman who wrote the Marry Poppins, had a horrible childhood because her father was an alcoholic who died when she was a kid, and she felt guilty that she killed him because, as a kid, she gave him more alcohol and she dropped a basket of pears. The movie keeps flashing back to boring, awful scenes of her drunken father getting fired, embarrassing the family, and being an overall failure. Oh, and the movie shows us how her mother tries to commit suicide, and again, the young girl must stop her mother from committing suicide.
As if that isn’t enough, we learn that Walt Disney’s father was a horrible guy, too. And not just a horrible dad, but a horrible CAPITALIST dad. You see, Walt tells Travers that, when he was a kid, his rich father didn’t want to pay people wages to deliver newspapers (he owned the major Kansas City newspaper routes). So, instead, he made his two young sons wake up in the middle of the night to deliver the papers in the freezing cold snow and then do it again to deliver the evening paper. Oh, and the Disney dad refused to buy his kids new shoes, instead, forcing them to trudge in the cold, wet snow with holes in their shoes and resultant frostbitten feet.

And while the movie does its best to traumatize kids and demonize dads, Walt Disney is, of course, portrayed as a jolly, avuncular, kind, decent guy. In real life, Disney was a fan of Hitler and not a fan of his many Jewish employees. Even his own museum admits he was an anti-Semite. None of this, of course, is mentioned in this love letter to Walt Disney produced by the Disney company. I guess it’s fitting that the anti-Semitism is skipped over, since it jibes with the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel sentiments of Emma Thompson, who plays Travers in this movie.
As for the rest of the movie, well, I’m just not sure there is so little of interest in this world that I needed to waste over two hours of my time watching a movie whose story is that P.L. Travers was a difficult woman and didn’t want Walt Disney to make her books into a musical film. That story could have been told in maybe 20 minutes at the most. So, they keep filling it with these depressing flashbacks about Travers’ alcoholic dad and suicidal, weepy mom. No thanks.
Yes, there are some funny lines and scenes. Yes, the period costumes (this takes place in the 1960s), sets, and so on are eye candy, “Mad Men”-style. And I liked the chauffeur character played by the always pleasant Paul Giamatti. Ditto for Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, and Bradley Whitford, who play song- and script-writers trying to create the Mary Poppins movie despite Travers’ constant objections to everything. But none of that made up for the underlying message and many tragic scenes poisonous to kids and, frankly, poisonous to the movie and any enjoyment that might have been gotten from it. I also don’t believe most kids today know who Mary Poppins is. That was my generation and earlier generations. Kids today know who the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus are.
The story: Travers is a stuck up, difficult woman who refuses to sell Walt Disney (Tom Hanks, who looks nothing like the real Walt Disney) the rights to make a movie out of her Mary Poppins books (he’s promised his daughters, years earlier, that he’ll make a Mary Poppins movie). But after years of saying no, she needs the money and goes to California to do the deal and help make the movie. She’s insisted that she has final approval on everything, and doesn’t want anything Disney and his crew want in the movie. She opposes music, singing, and dancing in the movie. She opposes any comical lines and objects to the casting of Dick Van Dyke. While all of this is happening, Walt Disney is trying to charm Travers and convince her to agree to these things. But, in the end, she doesn’t agree until Walt discovers the real story about her difficult childhood, alcoholic dad and suicidal mother, and shares with her his story about his horrible father.
Dad-hating misery loves company–that’s the cheerful Christmas message of Disney’s holiday offering. But, hey, feminists will love it. And so will the psychologists and psychiatrists who get to treat kids in the aftermath of the viewing experience.
**** UPDATE: A frequent anti-Semitism-denier and commenter on this site is questioning Walt Disney’s anti-Semitism and embrace of Hitler. But facts are stubborn things. From my post on Walt Disney’s anti-Semitic/anti-Israel great-niece Abigail Disney:

Walt Disney had a well earned reputation as an anti-Semite and Hitler fan (some of his cartoons had anti-Semitic themes, he welcomed Nazi filmmaker (and Hitler paramour) Leni Riefenstahl to Hollywood, and even the Walt Disney Museum acknowledges that he had “difficult relationships” with Jews).

That akcnowledgement/admission is quoted in the book, “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination” by Neal Gabler. ****
THREE MARXES PLUS FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “American Hustle“: This movie is mistitled. It should really be called, “Not Abscam.” Since when did Abscam–the successful FBI sting of elected public officials who were willing to accept bribes from a fake Arab sheikh–become a story about a Jewish con artist (who wears a giant gold Star of David, just in case you don’t know he’s Jewish) and his fake-Brit extra-marital girlfriend? Since when was it a story about a bumbling FBI agent who perms his hair, lives with his mother, and blackmails his boss? Well, actually, almost none of these things are true.
Yes, there was a convicted felon, Melvin Weinberg, who was Jewish (in name only), who was recruited by the FBI to help out in the Abscam sting. But he was a side character whom the FBI asked to take part. This movie presents the Jewish con artist, “Irving Rosenfeld” (Christian Bale) as the creator of several giant cons, who invents more cons–including, eventually the fake Arab sheikh, which is a sidebar in this movie–when he gets caught by the FBI. The real life FBI agent, Anthony Amoroso, who successfully helped plan Abscam and posed as the representative of the Arab sheikh (in this movie, Rosenfeld is the representative of the sheikh) is portrayed as a bumbling, coke-snorting, Studio-54-going idiot, “FBI Agent Richie DiMaso” (Bradley Cooper). Weinberg’s wife, Marie, who was nearly 50 at the time of Abscam, is portrayed by 23-year-old Jennifer Lawrence (who was 21-22 at the time of filming).
No surprise that the movie is phony history and a phony version of what Abscam was. No surprise also that the movie is a giant anti-Semitic lie. Hey, it’s Hollywood, which makes gazillions lying to America and creating fake “history” which the movie-going public believes is all true. And it’s, sadly, a fact that so many JINO (Jew In Name Only) Hollywood writers, producers, and directors seem to revel in making Jews look bad. We are less than 2.1% of the American population and nearly 100% of the criminals in the Christmas movies (stay tuned for my review of “Wolf of Wall Street,” next week).
Yes, the movie begins with the caption, “Some of this actually happened.” But the morons who pay ten-plus bucks to see this will, sadly, believe most of it actually happened, just like they believe the BS of “The Butler,” “JFK,” and other faux-history movies as truth. And, by the way, the movie does not mention the name John Murtha, one of several scumbag liberal Democrats who took the bribe money from the fictional sheikh, nor does it mention Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler who declined to take the money, saying it might be illegal. (Frankly, the whole Abscam thing–a foreigner bribing public officials to expedite visas to the U.S.–wouldn’t make sense today because an Arab sheikh can just show he’s going to spend several hundred thousand dollars in America and he can get an expedited “green card” and citizenship.)
Yes, there are some funny lines and funny scenes in this movie (I laughed several times), and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was entertaining. I also liked the cool 1970s clothes and jewelry the women wore, though I don’t remember women wearing so many bra-less, “sideboob”-revealing open shirts (I was going to vote for Amy Adams for “best unsupported actress”). But, on top of being a gross distortion of history and reality, the movie was repetitive and way too long. It went on and on and on for nearly 2.5 hours (it clocks in at 138 minutes running time).
The story: Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) is a con artist who tricks people into giving him $5,000 for large loans they’ll never get. And he also sells fake art. He meets Sidney (Amy Adams), who pretends to be from England and uses a phony accent. Together, they go into the con artist biz together. But they get caught by FBI agent DiMaso (Cooper), and he forces them to engage in a sting operation that involves bribing Newark, New Jersey’s mayor (Jeremy Renner). Soon, Rosenfeld comes up with a larger scam involving a Saudi sheikh and wants to expand it to Congressman and Senators. The mob is also involved (and Robert De Niro, in a novel role for him, makes a cameo as a mobster). FBI agent DiMaso repeatedly blackmails, threatens, and attacks his boss. Rosenfeld’s wife (Lawrence) is an idiot who sticks her nose into his business and nearly ruins everything.
The movie is actually kind of depressing in the end and I felt like I was robbed of nearly 2.5 hours I’ll never get back. We’re doubly and triply robbed because the American public will think this is the real Abscam story and that it was all because of a Jew. None of that is true.
The title of the movie is appropriate though. America is definitely being hustled by this film.
THREE MARXES PLUS AN OBAMA

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Inside Llewyn Davis“: One of the most depressing, pointless, long, boring, waste-of-time movies I’ve seen all year. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a Manhattan-based folk singer in the early ’60s, who is struggling to make it after his partner in a folk-singing duo commits suicide by jumping off a bridge. He has no money, is always broke, and can never catch a break. He lives by sleeping on various friends’ couches. He can’t even afford gloves or a warm coat in the middle of New York winter. He’s gotten a number of women pregnant, including his best friend’s wife. And he pays for them to get abortions, but finds out the first pregnant girlfriend had the baby and lives in Ohio.
Every time he might have a chance at success, he either is struck by bad luck, bad decisions, or a combination of both. He uses every last penny he has to hitchhike a trip to Chicago to meet up with a promoter, and the promoter tells him that there is no money in his act. Davis is also forever chasing around a cat that escaped from the apartment of one of his friends on whose couch he sleeps on.
Dreary and depressing to the max. I wasn’t sure why they made this movie (other than the make money) or why I sat through it. But don’t make the mistake I made. Unless you think you are too happy and in too good a mood and need a big-time cinematic downer, stay away.
TWO-AND-A-HALF MARXES

Mid-Week Box Office: “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues”

By Debbie Schlussel
Was it really necessary to make a sequel to 2004′s “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (other than to fill the coffers of various Hollywood hucksters)?

I’m not so sure. The sequel, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,” in theaters today, is incredibly stupid (with mostly groanworthy jokes) and not nearly as funny as the first one. It is obviously a well-hyped money-making machine and little else. There are lots of celebrity cameos toward the end, so half of Hollywood gets in on the cash action.
On the other hand, there are, at times, some very funny lines and the movie has some surprisingly incisive social commentary about the sorry state of cable news–and TV newscasts in general. The movie is mostly a parody of CNN at its inception, though the criticisms apply to FOX News, too. The best that I can say for it is that I loved the period clothes and set design–the movie takes place in the early ’80s. Ditto for the soundtrack of constant ’70s and ’80s hits. (And the studio gave out cool Ron Burgundy coasters with a “removable mustache” (I’ll post some pics in another post).

The story: TV news anchorman Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is married to co-anchor Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) and, at the beginning of the movie, he’s fired. This results in his breakup with Veronica and a desperate turn as a drunken master of ceremonies at a Sea World-esque water park. But he gets fired from that, too. Soon, though, he’s approached by a producer (Dylan Baker) for a new idea: a 24-hour cable news network. Burgundy laughs at him and the idea, but is desperate for a job and he accepts. Burgundy gets his old news team (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and David Koechner) back together for the gig.
Once in New York at GNN, the new 24-hour cable news network, Burgundy and his team fight with other personnel and manage to finagle their way from a middle of the night newscast to prime time. And Burgundy “revolutionizes” news coverage by insisting on covering live car chases, stupid fights, and other idiocy that are, today, staples of cable, national, and local newscasts.
The rest of the movie is concerned with Burgundy’s interracial affair with his Black boss, his attempt to reconcile with Veronica, and his struggle to make his relationship with his young son a priority. That’s all dumb stuff, kinda like most of the rest of the movie.
If you have nothing to do for two hours and a need for an (only slightly) better investment option than $10 in MegaMillions lottery tickets, this is mildly entertaining (and you’ll have several laughs, but a whole lot more groans). And it’s not anything unexpected for a Ron Burgundy or sundry Will Ferrell movie. You get what you expect. I just expect more from my movies. My favorite line (of those I can remember and wrote down) is when Will Ferrell describes the two times he left the United States: “The second time I left the country, I went to Salem, Oregon.” Spot on.
By the way, while I’m not sure I need to give this warning (given that it’s an understood thing for a Ron Burgundy movie), this isn’t for kids. The movie is filthy, but only got a PG-13 designation. It deserves an “R” rating.
While, as I noted, there are some very funny lines and parts of the movie, I’m being incredibly generous when I give this . . .
HALF A REAGAN

Wknd Box Office: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Book Thief, Delivery Man

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Book Thief, Delivery Man


By Debbie Schlussel



I wasn’t that thrilled with any of this weekend’s new movies, but none of them is particularly terrible, as in many other weeks. I didn’t have time to finish up and post my reviews before the Jewish Sabbath began, so my apologies. Here they are:



* “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire“: While I liked this second installment of “The Hunger Games” movies better than the first (read my review). But it’s basically the same movie, cut in half.   And my objections remain the same: that it’s too violent and bloody for the kids at whom it is aimed, that its anti-capitalist and filled with class warfare–the enemies in the movie are rich people in “The Capitol” (while the oppressed and the heroes are the poor), that it’s a rip-off of other movies, such as “The Condemned” (read my review) and “Battle Royale,” and that it’s simply not believable that a stiletto thin woman can kick butt against males twice her size.   While the first half of this movie is slow and boring, when it finally heats up, it’s very suspenseful, action-packed, and the special effects are better than those in the first movie (the movie includes very cool clothing made of flames). But just as it gets to its most exciting point, the movie ends abruptly, and you have to wait for the next sequel to find out what happens. That’s a rip-off. Also a rip-off is that they merely repeat the same story almost verbatim in this movie as in the original. I felt like the writers phoned it in, and the story’s kinda silly.



The story: it’s a post-apocalyptic world in which there is no longer America, but Panem, a country made up of the rich and gaudy residents of “The Capitol” and several “districts,” which are filled with poor people who are basically enslaved, oppressed, and at the mercy of the President (Donald Sutherland) and the Capitol people. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark won the Hunger Games in the first movie (a teen male and female are chosen at random and forced to compete in a reality show in the wilderness, where they must kill each other and only one winner is supposed to survive).



The President is upset at what he perceives is a growing rebellion against Panem. So, he tells Katniss and Peeta that they must convince the country that they are in love (they aren’t). Since he thinks that Katniss and Peeta are symbols of the rebellion, he decides to do a new Hunger Games, requiring past winners, including Katniss and Peeta, to compete to the death against each other. So the movie from there is really a repeat of the first one.



Also, I felt like I was watching a futuristic version of “The Butler,” when Katniss and Peeta (both White) visit the districts of those who died in their Hunger Games, and the movie only shows the scene when they visit the Black district, showing how oppressed they are and how the families of the two kids who died in the Hunger Games are grieving. But this is the case in every district, so why focus on the Black district? To show us that Blacks are always the victims?



And, finally, when I saw that Katniss’ clothing designer is murdered, I was wondering if we can get rid of Mark Jacobs, too.



HALF A MARX


* “The Book Thief“: I was really excited to see this movie . . . and so incredibly disappointed when I did. It soft-peddles the Holocaust and tries to make us sympathetic to Germans who supported the Nazis and their “plight.” Um, no thank you. America doesn’t need a movie from the “German point of view.” The ghost of Leni Riefenstahl is laughing at us.

My late maternal grandparents struggled to survive the Holocaust and nearly died on a daily basis. Both of their families were wiped out, murdered by the Nazis, but you don’t see any of that, just a Jew who hides in a basement, and then miraculously survives at the end despite all odds against him. Yes, one German couple in a fiction movie risks their lives to save a Jew, but they were–in real life–the extreme exception, NOT the rule. I was disgusted at this Whitewash of the German people. Oh, and they show us the German bodies of “innocent victims” of Allied air raids. Guess what? There were plenty of bodies of Jewish Holocaust victims and American and British soldiers. Those they don’t show.




I realize the movie is based on a fiction book for young adults (although I’m told the book is better and the movie screws it up), but come on. The small German town where this takes place is an idyllic German town that reminded me of the “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” set, with gingerbread houses and charming, cute children. Even the townspeople and kids who support Hitler are cute and charming and not at all hateful.



The story: a young girl, Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), is the daughter of a Communist. The Nazis take her mother away, and she is adopted by a working class German couple in a small, charming town. Her new adoptive father, Geoffrey Rush, teaches her to read, and she eventually warms to her new parents. They are decent people who are reluctant about the Nazi book-burning rallies and so on. And, as they struggle to survive in meager times, they hide a Jewish boy in their cold basement (he is the son of a Jewish German soldier who saved Rush’s life in World War I).



The Jewish boy gets sick in the cold of the basement, and Sophie reads to him as he is unconscious, hoping this will save him. She “borrows” books by taking them from the Burgermeister’s house. And throughout it all, Liesel has her friend, Rudy, a cute blond friend who is a boy her age. He is a decent kid and helps her keep her secret about the Jew hiding in the basement. And that’s despite Rudy’s Nazi-loving, racist father. That’s not very believable either, as it would be rare for a very young kid to have morally sound views in opposition to those of his Nazi-supporting father.



While the acting is very good–Rush is always masterful and newcomer Nélisse is outstanding, the story is revisionist history. The Nazis came to power because the people in towns like these supported them and their Jew-hatred, but the movie glosses over and soft-peddles most of that. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since the movie comes from the film studio owned by Rupert Murdoch and Jew-hating Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal.



Two other things: the movie is very slow and seemed long because of it. And the use of “Death” as the narrator was not that effective.



ONE MARX


* “Delivery Man“: This is a remake of a French-language, French Canadian film, and it’s directed by the same guy. I had mixed feelings about this movie. While there are (a very few) moments that are touching and warm and show the importance of a father in kids’ lives, the overall message of the movie is Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village” BS. And it’s that old world values and nuclear families with a traditional mother and father are passe. And it’s that men, particularly fathers, are dopes and losers.

This isn’t your typical Vince Vaughn movie, in that it’s more serious and less funny. And the real cut-up in the movie is the fabulously funny Chris Pratt, who plays Vaughn’s lawyer friend.




Vaughn plays a screw-up/loser who works at his Polish immigrant father’s meat business in New York. He is growing marijuana in his apartment, owes tens of thousands of dollars to the mob, and his cop girlfriend is pregnant with his kid (though she wants to raise it alone). He wants to be in his future child’s life, so he sets out to show her he deserves to be in her life. But just as he’s finally starting to realize he needs to shape up, he learns that a sperm bank where he made over 600 donations of sperm gave his sperm to every woman who sought the stuff. Therefore, he now has over 500 children, more than 100 of whom are suing to learn his identity.



Vaughn decides to see some of his sperm bank kids and gets involved in their lives. This is against the repeated advice of Vaughn’s best friend, Chris Pratt, who is a suspended lawyer and a father of four, whose young kids never listen to him. And, of course, Vaughn’s sperm bank kids are completely diverse as you would expect from any politically correct movie. He has Black, Indian, Asian, gay, and drug addict kids.



As I said, there are some touching points in this movie, such as when Vaughn repeatedly goes to visit a developmentally disabled sperm bank kid of his who is in an institution. The kid who does not communicate and is basically a vegetable (a term I hate, but is the best way to describe the situation), and yet Vaughn shows him love and respect for human dignity.



But almost all of the father figures in this movie–including Vaughn and Pratt–are dopes and idiots. And the one father who is decent, Vaughn’s married Polish immigrant father is seen as “backwards” and poor. He cannot afford to take his wife on a dream honeymoon to Italy, and yet later in life, Vaughn pays for the trip. But we later learn, Vaughn got the money to pay for the trip from his many masturbating sessions donating sperm to the sperm bank. Ick.



Eventually, Vaughn takes responsibility for all of his actions, but that doesn’t justify some of the many whacked out messages in the movie.



HALF A MARX