Movie Reviews

Anna Karenina (Focus)
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. (A-III, R)

Flight (Paramount)
Morally ambiguous drama about an airplane crash and the emotional impact it has on the survivors. Despite being an alcoholic and a cocaine addict, the pilot (Denzel Washington) of a doomed airliner becomes a hero after miraculously landing his craft with only a small loss of life. When the accident investigation reveals his impaired and illegal condition, however, he faces manslaughter charges and a prison sentence. While one of his buddies (John Goodman) continues to enable the swaggering flyboy by supplying him with drugs, a fellow addict (Kelly Reilly) --- the proverbial prostitute with a heart of gold --- tries to persuade him to join her on the path to reform and redemption. Director Robert Zemeckis' film dwells far too much on its protagonist's failings, filling the screen (often gratuitously) with sex, drugs and booze, as well as with "friends" who condone his bad behavior. It also ridicules organized religion, cynically making light of survivors who thank God for the gift of life. Disdainful treatment of religious faith, intense disaster scenes, full nudity, a nonmarital situation, drug and abusive alcohol use, frequent profane and rough language. (O, R)

Life of Pi (Fox)
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. (A-III, PG)

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. (A-III, PG-13)

The Man With the Iron Fists (Universal)
Repulsively violent martial-arts fantasy in which a blacksmith --- played by rapper RZA, who also directed and co-wrote the script ---- a secret agent for the emperor of China and the heir of an assassinated warlord join forces to battle a variety of villains. Far from administering stylized karate chops, warriors on both sides dismember, disembowel and even liquefy their enemies to sickening effect. Excessive bloody violence, gruesome images, graphic sexual activity, implied aberrant sex acts, a prostitution theme, drug use, an anti-Catholic slur, much rough language, a few crude or crass terms. (O, R)

Red Dawn (FilmDistrict)
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. (L, PG-13)

Rise of the Guardians (Paramount)
Delightful 3-D animated adventure, based on books by William Joyce and focusing on the destiny of the legendary bringer of winter, Jack Frost. 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. Jack's newfound comrades include Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy 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. (A-I, PG)

The Sessions (Fox Searchlight)
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. (O, R)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (Open Road)
Dopey horror sequel, based on a series of video games, in which a teen girl and her widowed father are pestered by demons who reside in the titular ghost town. When Dad disappears, our heroine gains the aid of an admiring school chum as she journeys to the haunted locale hoping to rescue papa and solve the mystery of her cursed identity. With its messy mythos, uninteresting characters and cliched imagery --- an insane asylum, check, a ruined amusement park, check --- writer-director Michael J. Bassett's follow-up to 2006's "Silent Hill" is as stiff as its innumerable corpses. While not as blood-soaked as the worst in the genre, moreover, his movie also features an excess of gory wounds and severed limbs. Much gruesome violence, including torture and dismemberment, brief upper female nudity, at least one use of profanity, occasional rough and crude language. (O, R)

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. (A-III, PG-13)

Somewhere Between (Long Shot Factory)
Filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton's documentary offers an unvarnished look at the awkwardness involved when Chinese-born adoptees in the U.S. seek to reconnect with their original culture and birth families, and as they struggle to forge an identity for themselves as adults. Knowlton, herself the mother of a child adopted from China, follows the lives of four teenage girls in different parts of the country, one of whom is a devout evangelical Christian. She also charts the varied levels of interest those profiled display toward their homeland. Mature themes. (A-II, no MPAA rating)


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. (A-III, PG-13)

Wreck-It Ralph (Disney)
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 of the title wants to be just like his good-guy opponent. So he abandons his game for others in search of fame and glory. Along the way he encounters a violent warrior and an outcast 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. (A-II, PG)

Catholic News Service classifications: A-I ------ general patronage; A-II ------ adults and adolescents; A-III ------ adults; L ------ limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling; O ------ morally offensive. Full-length reviews: www.catholicnews.com/movies.htm.