The Couch Potato Report – April 27th, 2013
A movie based on a Booker Prize winning novel is inside this week’s Couch Potato Report, and so are dinosaurs in 3D!
“Midnight’s Children” is a 1981 novel by Salman Rushdie. It won the Booker Prize – a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe – and it also won the “Booker of Bookers” Prize and was named the best all-time prize winner in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize’s 25th and 40th anniversary.
Toronto based director Deepha Mehta has now turned this beautiful book into an interesting movie.
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN is about a boy named Saleem, one of 1,001 children who were born at midnight on the day of India’s independence from Britain.
Each of these children have an extraordinary gift, a gift that is both a blessing and a curse. For example, Saleem has telepathic powers and he can communicate with the other 1000 children even while he is alone in his room.
The other part of Saleem’s story in MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN is the fact that he was switched at birth. Instead of growing up the illegitimate son of a poor woman, he is raised as the offspring of a wealthy couple.
However, as his life goes on, destiny brings him together with the boy he was switched with, as they are both Midnight’s children.
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN is an interesting film that looks beautiful as it moves through the years against the vast, colourful background of the India of this century.
But as interesting and beautiful as it was…I was never invested in it. I didn’t wish anyone harm, but I didn’t really care what happened to any of the characters in the movie.
MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN isn’t bad, and if you love the book you should see it, but if you only have time for one movie this weekend, this isn’t the one you should watch.
Instead, if you only have time for one movie this weekend, THE IMPOSSIBLE is the one you should watch.
Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star in THE IMPOSSIBLE as a family – with their three boys – who are on vacation in Thailand and get caught in the destruction and chaotic aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Watts was nominated for Best Actress for her work here and she and the entire cast are amazing…and the special effects are also spectacular as the filmmakers recreate the disaster, both physically and emotionally.
THE IMPOSSIBLE is based on a true story and it is very, very dramatic. It is also very, very good. I highly recommend it.
There are parts of the natural gas drama PROMISED LAND that I would also highly recommend, but overall the film is a bit slow.
Oscar winners Matt Damon from GOOD WILL HUNTING and Frances McDormand, of FARGO play salespeople who work for a company that specializes in obtaining natural gas trapped underground through a process known as fracking.
The two are sent to a small Pennsylvania farming town to buy the rights to drill beneath the local’s land for the lowest price possible.
All is going well until a local teacher and an environmental advocate raises the question of the safety of fracking and what happens to the land afterward.
I have seen several documentaries about fracking and the results and after effects, the good and the bad, and while PROMISED LAND does delve into that, it isn’t a documentary. This is a movie, and some of it is very good.
Other parts are slow and predictable, but overall it is very good. Call that a mild recommendation.
The months of January, February and March have become dumping grounds for the movie studios. No matter how big the stars who are in the films released in those months are, they are not going to be great…with the exception of the ones left over from Academy Award Season.
I have two films that were dumped into 2013 for you now…AND two documentaries that weren’t that are actually worthy of your time.
I’ll save the best until the end, and start with the crime drama GANGSTER SQUAD.
GANGSTER SQUAD is set in Los Angeles in 1949. Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling lead a secret crew of police officers who are working to take down mob king Mickey Cohen, who runs the city.
Sean Penn plays Cohen…and when he is on screen, the film has some pop. The rest of the time, no pop…it doesn’t even snap or crackle.
Nick Nolte and Emma Stone are also in the cast of GANGSTER SQUAD, but it doesn’t matter. The film just isn’t very good…in fact at all times it just played to me like a poor imitation of the Academy Award winning 1997 film L.A. CONFIDENTIAL.
Now that is a great crime drama set in L.A.. GANGSTER SQUAD, not so much, so skip it.
And you also need to skip the film BROKEN CITY, even with the tremendous cast it has.
Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones all-star here, along with the great character actor Jeffrey Wright.
Wahlberg is a former police officer, current private investigator. Crowe stars as the mayor of New York City and he hires the PI to investigate his wife and the affair he thinks she’s having…then she tries to hire him to stop.
Yes, BROKEN CITY has some interesting twists and turns, and it is a well-made movie with that great cast, but I just didn’t care…at all. In fact, I was so disinterested in the film that I went to get groceries in the middle of it, and met up with some friends, before I reluctantly returned home to finish it.
Unless you love this cast, and I mean LOVE them…you should skip this movie. You have better things to do…like get groceries, or meeting up with some old friends…which you might do to see some good movies, as the Summer Movie Season will soon be upon us!!
We’ve survived the dumping ground for yet another year!!
Luckily during the time the studios have been releasing less than high quality films in theatres there have been some great documentaries produced, including the latest from Ken Burns’, who also gave us The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), Prohibition (2011) and now THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE.
This documentary examines the 1989 case of five black and Latino teenagers who were convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park.
They spent between 6 and 13 years each in prison before a serial rapist confessed to the crime.
Yet even though they were convicted of a crime they did not commit, and were wrongly imprisoned, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE still haven’t reached a settlement with New York City.
They are still awaiting justice.
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE is a compelling and heartbreaking film. It is very difficult to watch at times, and even more difficult to believe that such a miscarriage of justice took place, and has yet to be resolved.
This documentary is a must see!
Up next is another documentary…actually, this one is a bike-umentary, according to the packaging.
PEDAL DRIVEN shows us the escalating conflict between mountain bikers and their desire to ride trails on their mountain bikes and the land managers who must protect the public lands from damage, ensuring their use for decades to come.
The main question in PEDAL DRIVEN comes from the lyrics of the song THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND: specifically the line: “This land belongs to you and me”. The people in this film wonder if the land does belong to them, and they also want to know why there doesn’t seem to be a place for mountain bikers?
PEDAL DRIVEN – A BIKE-UMENTARY is a very entertaining documentary that shows both sides of the issues at hand. It also features some amazing camera work from riders on trails in the U.S. and in Whistler, B.C.
Search this one out, it is only 63 minutes long and very worthy of your time!
Finally this week is Steven Spielberg’s classic 1993 film JURASSIC PARK! This still-great action film is turning twenty this year and was released to theatres converted to 3D, and that added dimension adds a lot as the dinosaurs look great as they are moving toward and running at the camera.
That 3D version is now available on blu-ray – and you also get the regular blu-ray and DVD as well – and even at home it looks great and the 3D conversion is exceptionally well done!!
As the dinosaurs get loose in the theme park and the people run for their lives, we the viewer get a great movie experience JURASSIC PARK 3D is worth the money and twenty years later the movie continues to be worth your time!!
Steven Spielberg’s classic action film JURASSIC PARK 3D; the very entertaining documentary…I mean bike-umentary PEDAL DRIVEN; Ken Burns’ compelling and heartbreaking doc THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE; the never awful but nowhere near great drama BROKEN CITY; the not great period piece GANGSTER SQUAD; the very strong natural gas drama PROMISED LAND; the superb Academy Award nominated drama THE IMPOSSIBLE; and Toronto based director Deepha Mehta’s interesting cinematic version of Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize winning novel MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN are all available now, either on disc or on demand.
Coming up inside the next Couch Potato Report
Vancouver born actor Seth Rogen from KNOCKED UP and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS co-stars with Barbra Streisand in THE GUILT TRIP; HISTORY OF THE EAGLES is a three-hour documentary about the legendary band; THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION debuts on blu-ray; and Jennifer Lawrence won an Academy Award for her performance in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
I’ll have more on those, and some other releases, in seven days.
For now, that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I’ll see you back here again next time on The Couch!