The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot

Sam Elliott has the ultimate American face.

(2018) Drama (RLJE) Sam Elliott, Aidan Turner, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Ron Livingston, Sean Bridgers, Larry Miller, Ellar Coltrane, Rizwan Manji, Mark Steger, Anastasia Tsikhanava, Kristin Anne Ferraro, Kelley Curran, Nikolai Tsankov, Alton Fitzgerald White, David Armstrong, Rob Levesque, Rocco Gioffre, Harold Rudolph, Joe Lucas, Mark Lund, Melissa Jalali. Directed by Robert D. Kryzkowski

 

Sometimes a movie title will give you one expectation and the film deliver a totally different experience, one that’s unexpected and maybe even welcome. Sometimes, you have to be receptive to a curveball in this business.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is such a movie. From the oddball title, one might expect a quirky action film with comedic elements a la Tarantino. And there is some of that in here, make no mistake, but the film isn’t played for laughs at all. The tone is bittersweet, which caught me by surprise and then, delight.

Sam Elliott, he of America’s most iconic moustache, plays Cavin Barr, a haunted man living alone in a small town with his dog, propping a bar from time to time. Nobody really knows him, except for maybe his brother Ed (Miller). He hides a secret; as a young man (Turner) during the War, he was a special forces operative who assassinated Hitler. However the war continued on as the Nazis put a look-alike in charge and their ideology survived. Elliott’s risky assignment accomplished nothing, and cost him the girl he wanted to marry (Fitzgerald).

He is sought out by a government agent (Livingston) who asks him to take one last assignment; to kill the Bigfoot (Steger) who is carrying a deadly plague that could conceivably wipe out mankind. Calvin himself is apparently immune. Calvin at first is uninterested; “I am done with killing, man or beast,” he proclaims laconically. However, the chance to finally matter, to put the ghosts of his past to rest prove to be too much so to the Pacific Northwest he goes.

Much of the movie is about Calvin’s regrets and in that sense, Elliott is perfectly cast; he has a naturally world-weary face and that gravelly drawl reinforces it. Elliott gives one of his finest performances ever here which is saying something, but matching it is Miler as his brother Ed, which is saying something quite different.

The Pacific Northwest cinematography is lovely as you might expect, although the Bigfoot make-up is decidedly unconvincing. The last third of the film is almost a survivalist thriller as Bigfoot and Calvin go mano a mano in the woods. The title is a bit of a spoiler though, although the ending has a note of grace that I admired. Director and writer Kryzkowski has quite a bit of talent, although he might want to have someone else come up with a title in the future. Still, this is a solid picture and any opportunity to see Sam Elliott at work is a worthwhile endeavor, in my book.

REASONS TO SEE: Elliott and Miller are both perfectly cast. I liked the melancholy tone.
REASONS TO AVOID: The Bigfoot makeup is pretty lame.
FAMILY VALUES: There’s some profanity and violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Turner and Fitzgerald’s onscreen romance led to an offscreen romance after filming was completed.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Hoopla, Hulu, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/1/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 71% positive reviews, Metacritic: 51/100
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Inglorious Basterds
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Disclosure (2020)

New Releases for the Week of March 30, 2018

READY PLAYER ONE

(Warner Brothers) Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Ralph Ineson, Claire Higgins, Laurence Spellman, Perdita Weeks. Directed by Steven Spielberg

Based on a bestselling book by Ernest Cline, the movie shows a dreary future in which there are few jobs and little hope. When the owner of the OASIS, a virtual reality world which is also the richest corporation in the world, dies suddenly it is revealed that there is a hidden Easter Egg that will give the finder control of the corporation and a virtually unlimited fortune. A young gamer sets out to claim the ultimate prize and his knowledge of the 1980s may be his big advantage

See the trailer, interviews, video featurettes, motion posters and SXSW premiere coverage here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, DBOX, DBOX-3D, Dolby Atmos, IMAX, IMAX 3D, RPX, RPX-3D, XD, XD-3D
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release (opens Thursday)
Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of sci-fi action violence, bloody images, some suggestive material, nudity and language)

Baaghi 2

(Fox Star) Disha Patani, Tiger Shroff, Randeep Hooda, Manoj Bajpayee. A detective is hired by an ex-lover to find their daughter, who has been kidnapped. Baaghi 3 has already been approved and will be filming later this year.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: NR  

Birthmarked

(Vertical) Matthew Goode, Toni Collette, Fionnula Flanagan, Michael Smiley. Two scientists quit their jobs to take on the ultimate scientific experiment; to determine once and for all the nature vs. nurture question. To do this, they decide to raise three children contrary to their genetic predispositions. Have fun with that.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: NR

Finding Your Feet

(Roadside Attraction) Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, Timothy Spall, Joanna Lumley. After discovering her husband of 25 years has been cheating on her, an upper class British woman moves in with her Bohemian older sister. The two women agree on virtually nothing but when the elder sibling gets the younger involved in her dance class, there are sea changes ahead for both of them.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG-13 (for suggestive material, brief drug use and brief strong language)

Flower

(The Orchard) Zoey Deutch Kathryn Hahn, Adam Scott, Joey Morgan. A teenage girl who is beginning to experiment sexually forms an unlikely and unorthodox relationship with her mentally unstable step-brother.

See the trailer and a video featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: R (for crude sexual content and language throughout, graphic nude drawings, some drug content and a brief violent image)

Foxtrot

(Sony Classics) Lior Ashkenazy, Sarah Adler, Yonathan Shiray, Shira Haas. An Israeli family must come to terms with their own dysfunction when things go terribly wrong at their son’s isolated military outpost. This was Israel’s official submission for the 2018 Foreign Language Oscar.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Dramedy
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for some sexual content including graphic images, and brief drug use)

God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness

(Pure Flix) David A.R. White, Tatum O’Neil, Ted McGinley, John Corbett. A pastor must reaffirm his faith after his church burns to the ground.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Faith-Based Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for thematic elements including some violence and suggestive material)

Goldstone

(Lightyear) Aaron Pederson, Jacki Weaver, David Wenham, David Gulpilil. A young indigenous detective arrives in an Australian frontier town on a missing persons inquiry. His investigation opens up a web of corruption and deceit that he couldn’t have expected. He must work with the local police detective if he is to solve the case – or survive it.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: NR  

The Last Movie Star

(A24) Burt Reynolds, Chevy Chase, Ellar Coltrane, Clark Duke. An aging movie star must reluctantly face the reality that his best years are behind him. Like all of us, he must adjust to and accept the reality of growing old. This was released initially exclusively for DirecTV subscribers and is now making a brief theatrical run as well as becoming available on VOD.

See the trailer, a clip and a video featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: AMC Universal Cineplex
Rating: R (for some sexuality and partial nudity)

Tyler Perry’s Acrimony

(Lionsgate) Taraji P. Henson, Lyriq Bent, Crystle Stewart, Jazmyn Simon. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When a faithful wife discovers that her husband has been cheating on her, she reaches the boiling point and means to take revenge on his ass – by any means necessary.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong sexuality, graphic nudity, language and a brief disturbing image)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

The Cage Fighter
First Reformed
Outside In
Rangasthalam

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Journey’s End
Rangasthalam

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Caught
Rangasthalam
Status Update

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

None

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Caught
Finding Your Feet
Ready Player One

The Circle

It looks like Tom Hanks is trying to recapture his Cast Away look.

(2017) Thriller (STX) Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Ellar Coltrane, Glenne Headly, Bill Paxton, Karen Gillan, Beck, Nate Corddry, John Boyega, Patton Oswalt, Mamoudou Athie, Eve Gordon, Poorna Jagannathan, Elvy Yost, Ellen Wong, Lauren Baldwin, Nicola Bertram, Julian Von Nagel, Amie McCarthy-Winn, Regina Saldivar, Amir Tatai, Smith Cho. Directed by James Ponsoldt

 

There’s no doubt that the world is changing. Social media and the presence of cameras nearly everywhere have guaranteed that our concept of privacy will have to change radically. We must learn to live with the reality that everything we do is not only findable online but is subject to the scrutiny of trolls.

Mae (Watson) is a customer service drone in a dead end job she can’t stand. Coming to her rescue is Annie (Gillan) who works in management at The Circle, a sort of cross between Facebook, Google and Big Brother. Like all social media outlets, The Circle seems to be almost an obsession with its users who post the most mundane details of their day so that friends and strangers can pass judgment.

Mae’s dad (Paxton in his final role) has Multiple Sclerosis and her mom (Headly) has been worn ragged caring for him. Her ex-boyfriend Mercer (Coltrane) is suspicious of the ongoing loss of privacy and is retreating from the modern connected world, moving to a rustic artist retreat that is essentially off the grid.

Mae however has picked a grand time to join up with The Circle. Co-founder and CEO Eamon Bailey (Hanks) is releasing a new product – a miniaturized camera that people can wear all day long that utilizes facial recognition software to allow them to find friends nearby and of course post everything they do – literally every moment of their day – online. Mae, after a rough start, has become a convert “Circler” and is selected to be the first person to have total transparency online.

However with total transparency comes collateral damage – not everyone wants their every moment on display and it ends up causing friction with those Mae loves the most and leads to a tragedy nobody could have predicted. This leads her to do some digging and she soon finds out that not everything at the Circle – or everyone – necessarily has benevolent intentions.

This is based on a book by Dan Eggers who gets the Silicon Valley culture nicely. In some ways, the movie pokes fun a bit at the tech culture of “play hard, work harder” with Mae getting a visit from Circlers who are concerned she’s not participating in any groups – or working on weekends. In some ways the big problem with this poorly-reviewed movie is that it really doesn’t know what it wants to be – at times it feels like a corporate espionage thriller, other times a social commentary and still others a sci-fi cautionary tale.

The graphics are nifty and nicely extrapolate what our online experience is going to look like in maybe a decade or less. The film is also blessed with a marvelous cast. You literally can’t go wrong with Hanks who doesn’t play villains often and even this villain is less villainous than Oswalt’s corporate weasel who is more of a traditional villain. Bailey is charming and folksy, a cross between Steve Jobs and Garrison Keillor. And, of course he’s Tom Hanks, the modern Jimmy Stewart.

But then there’s Watson who is a marvelous actress and perhaps one of the most beloved actresses in the world. She was simply flat here, never really gathering my sympathy or attention. I was far more drawn to Hanks’ character which is not unexpected given Hanks ability and screen charm. But as she proved in Beauty and the Beast Watson is thoroughly capable of carrying a movie and here she simply doesn’t.

I liked the social media aspect which the movie seems to be on the cusp of exploring further but it never really does. It feels like the filmmakers were anxious not to offend millennials which they figured would be a large chunk of their target audience; unfortunately what that wound up doing was diluting the message and taking away much of the film’s bite. Overall it feels a bit like cinematic pablum.

That’s not to say that this is a complete waste of time. The movie does accurately portray our society’s obsession with celebrity and the growing importance of internet celebrity; it also makes points about our obsession with connection and the growing loss of privacy. These are all valid and salient points and I would have loved to see more exploration of them. Instead we end up with something of a generic thriller that ends up disappointing more than it excites. Circles, after all, have a tendency to end up where they start out – and so does The Circle.

REASONS TO GO: Hanks is a riveting quasi-villain. The graphics are nicely utilized.
REASONS TO STAY: There’s a wasted opportunity in terms of sociopolitical commentary. Nothing here really impresses.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of sexuality, some drug use and a smattering of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Headly and Paxton who play Mae’s parents have both passed away since they filmed their roles.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/19/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 15% positive reviews. Metacritic: 43/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Eagle Eye
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Unforgettable

New Releases for the Week of April 28, 2017

THE CIRCLE

(STX) Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane, Glenne Headly, Karen Gillan, Nate Corddry, Mamoudou Athie, Patton Oswalt. Directed by James Ponsoldt

A young woman goes to work for the world’s largest hi-tech social media company. As she rises through the ranks she is mentored by no less than the charismatic founder of the company, but as she takes part in testing a new iteration of the software, she discovers that the program does far more than what it was advertised to do and that her decisions are affecting her friends, family and ultimately the human race as she realizes that the personal freedom of every human being may be at risk.

See the trailer, clips and a promo here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for a sexual situation, brief strong language and some thematic elements including drug use)

How to Be a Latin Lover

(Pantelion/Lionsgate) Eugenio Derbez, Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell. Maximo wants to be rich; he just doesn’t want to work for it. He figures out that the easiest way to accomplish those things is to marry a rich woman and so he does. After 25 years of an idyllic existence of wealth and privilege his wife unexpectedly dumps him for a younger man. Moving in with his estranged sister, he bonds with his young nephew who has a crush on his schoolmate; Maximo encourages this because it gives him an “in” with the girl’s grandmother, a widowed billionaire. However, Maximo begins to learn slowly that there are things more important than money.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for crude humor, sexual references and gestures, and for brief nudity)

Sleight

(BH Tilt/WWE) Jacob Latimore, Seychelle Gabriel, Dulé Hill, Storm Reid. A savvy street magician is all his little sister has after their parents pass away. Trying to keep a roof over their head and food on their table, he resorts to some illegal activities. He gets pulled in deeper and deeper into a dangerous lifestyle until his beloved baby sister is kidnapped. To get her back, he must use his intelligence, his magic and his street smarts.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, AMC Loew’s Universal Cineplex, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Waterford Lakes, Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for language throughout, drug content and some violence)

Barry

Even reading a Ralph Ellison book in a Harlem schoolyard as a 20-year-old, the future President can’t get away from Joe Biden!

(2016) Biographical Drama (Netflix) Devon Terrell, Anya Taylor-Jay, Jason Mitchell, Ellar Coltrane Jenna Elfman, Linus Roache, Avi Nash, John Benjamin Hickey, Ashley Judd, Sawyer Pierce, Eric Berryman, Ralph Rodriguez, Danny Henriquez, Tessa Albertson, Tommy Nelson, Annabelle Attanasio, Matt Ball, Markita Prescott. Directed by Vikram Gandhi

 

Barack Obama is a President who has provoked very extreme reactions. To the left he is a hero, a model of decorum and grace, whose intelligence and class has carried him through one of the roughest most vitriolic attacks from the opposition in the history of the Presidency. To the right he is nothing short of a terrorist, a Muslim whose mission was to destroy our country from within. There are some who take the middle ground between the two of course but largely those two extremes have been the popular conception from each political point of view.

But there was a time before that when he was just an ordinary college student. Back then, everyone called him Barry (Terrell) and he had about as much confidence in his future as any college student, maybe even less so. I suspect if anyone had told Barry that he was going to be the 44^th President of the United States he’d probably want some of what you’ve been smoking – Barry after all is not above occasionally partaking in the wacky weed.

He has just transferred to Columbia University in New York City looking for a degree in political science. The product of a white mother and an African father, his parents are divorced; his mom is in Hawaii where he grew up, his dad has returned to Kenya. Barry is trying to write a letter to his dad to express what he feels but can’t find the words. Barry also feels like an outside in both the white and African-American spheres.

He meets Charlotte (Joy), the daughter of wealthy parents and the two begin dating but as always Barry isn’t sure where he fits in. He plays street ball with local guys from the neighborhood like PJ (Mitchell) with whom he strikes up a friendship, but he feels like an outsider. Similarly he doesn’t belong in the world of country clubs and pricey restaurants that his girlfriend is used to. His roommate Will (Coltrane) tries to help but mostly the two get high together.

To my way of thinking this isn’t so much a biography of the President as it is an exploration of how young men can be lost in not knowing who they are. Of course, it’s especially true for someone in Barry’s situation but it should ring true for just about everybody. This isn’t, strictly speaking, a biography in any case (Charlotte, for one thing, is a composite character) but it supposedly reflects Obama’s inner turmoil and his personality pretty well at that time of his life.

The overall tone is pretty laid-back which flirts with actual boredom from time to time. There is a whole lot of philosophizing going on and not a ton of conflict. Most of the conflict is pretty much internal; while Obama struggles with finding a place he’s truly comfortable with in both the white world and the African-American and there are moments in which he feels discrimination from both sides, it isn’t as if he is overly oppressed here. There are times he is hassled by a University Security guard for likely the color of his skin. He also is targeted by angry African-Americans who resent the opportunities he is getting because of his Caucasian blood.

Terrell does a pretty good job of playing Obama, capturing his very recognizable cadence of speech. This isn’t always a flattering portrait but then again, think of yourself as a 20-year-old and see if a film biography of you at that age will be one you’re particularly proud of. It’s a pretty layered performance and Terrell captures the essence of the man. How close it is to the real man is best left answered by those who know the ex-President well (which certainly doesn’t describe me) but I think that there are at least elements of the real Barack Obama here, or at least the real Barack Obama at 20.

As I’ve said with similar movies about public figures of recent years, I don’t know that this gives us any real insight into the heart and mind of our 44^th president who is a notoriously private individual. It isn’t scintillating material but those who admire President Obama will find this interesting. Those who feel the opposite aren’t going to watch this anyway.

REASONS TO GO: It seems to be an attempt to humanize the 44^th President by portraying him as a young college student trying to find himself.
REASONS TO STAY: I thought it went a little too low-key.
FAMILY VALUES: You’ll find a little bit of violence, some drug use, a smidgen of sensuality and a small amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the debut feature film of both director Vikram Gandhi and star Devon Terrell.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/29/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 80% positive reviews. Metacritic: 72/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Southside With You

Boyhood

Life is an ongoing investigation.

(2014) Drama (IFC) Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Elijah Smith, Steven Prince, Bonnie Cross, Marco Perella, Libby Villari, Jamie Howard, Andrew Villareal, Richard Jones, Karen Jones, Zoe Graham, Nick Krause, Angela Rawna, Evie Thompson, Brad Hawkins, Barbara Chisholm, Jenni Tooley, Savannah Welch, Taylor Weaver, Jessi Mechler. Directed by Richard Linklater

Seinfeld was famously a sitcom about nothing. Here we have a movie, filmed over a 12 year span, in which nothing much happens. Nothing much, maybe, except life.

That is what this movie is all about. Richard Linklater, one of the more respected directors in the indie ranks who has such seminal films as Dazed and Confused and Slacker to his credit as well as the ambitious Before trilogy, took the time to film this movie with the same core cast of actors over a 12 year period. What he ended up doing is filming a series of short films which he later stitched together into a full-fledged feature film as we watch the cast grow up and age before our very eyes.

Mason (Coltrane) lives with his mom (Arquette) who is divorced from his dreamer of a father (Hawke) and his sister Samantha (Linklater) with whom he bickers constantly. She’s got a bit of the princess to her and she knows how to stomp her feet and declare her position without equivocation.

They live in various locales in Texas as mom takes on a series of boyfriends and husbands with varying degrees of success. She also goes back to school and gets her degree, enabling her to teach at a local community college. Dad in the meantime returns back to Texas from Alaska and means to take on a more active role in the lives of his kids. At first he’s just another, larger-sized kid along with them, but as time goes by he starts to change and becomes more the father he should have been all along.

Critics have been falling all over each other to praise this movie as you can tell from the scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, so much so that I can’t help wonder when the inevitable backlash is going to hit. All I can say is not now and not here. This is a magnificent film, one that will engender discussion for a very long time; certainly when you leave the theater you’ll be talking about it.

This was always a project that was going to need a little bit of luck. Getting the parents of the child actors to agree to taking a couple of weeks each year to film for 12 years is quite a commitment to ask for, even from the professionals. What if the kid actors turned out to be terrible? What if one of them decided they didn’t want to do this anymore – and in fact one did. Surprisingly, it was the director’s daughter who asked her daddy to kill her off in the movie. Thankfully, Linklater had enough vision to insist his little girl see it through – and eventually she came back on board.

The point is, there were a lot of ways that this project could have been torpedoed but in every sense of the word this movie was charmed. For one thing, who would have guessed that Coltrane would turn out to be a charismatic young actor? Linklater may well have suspected but there really was no way to know for sure when a kid is eight years old how he’s going to react to things when he’s eighteen.

Nonetheless, Coltrane gives an unexpectedly terrific performance. Sure there are times when as a young boy his acting is a bit forced by as the movie continues you see him grow more and more confident in his ability. By the time Mason heads off to college, there is a maturity to the boy and the performance that simply put gives the movie a grand shot in the arm. I don’t know what Coltrane’s future plans are but he certainly has the presence and the talent to make a go of it in the motion picture industry.

Arquette, who filmed concurrently to her work in the TV show The Medium for a good portion of the movie, has a complicated role. In many ways, her character is the least defined; while Hawke’s dad has a defined journey from flamboyant and immature daddy wannabe to responsible and surprisingly wise father, her character is always the most responsible one of the two. Her issues stem from her very poor choices in men, some with devastating consequences to her family. She’s a very bright, attractive woman but by movie’s end she’s alone. One wonders if her character deserved that fate.

We watch Mason and Samantha grow up before our very eyes while their parents grow older and wiser. One of the complaints that I’ve heard is that there are stretches where nothing happens, but those who make that complaint miss the point. Life happens, and sometimes life happens subtly. It isn’t just the big watershed moments in our lives that make us what we are – it’s the little things as well, sometimes as small as bowling without bumpers.

The late Gene Siskel was a huge fan of slice of life films and undoubtedly this is the kind of film he would have championed. There is no slice of life movie that takes such a slice out of life and makes it seamless and organic. We don’t watch this movie so much as live it; throughout we are reminded of the events and situations in our own lives either as children growing up or as parents raising children, or even both. Those of a certain generation will find nostalgia in Harry Potter book release parties, a spot-on soundtrack, Ninetendos and campaigning for Obama. Others will recognize the kinds of challenges they faced growing up in the era, or raising kids in  the era.

Either way, this film will move you and take you places that while you may have already been there, will give you a fresh perspective on the matter. We all react to movies based on what we take into them from our own experiences, but this is one movie that most people are going to find value in, even in its quietest moments.

REASONS TO GO: Incredibly authentic. Basically appeals to kids that age. A primer for what to expect when raising kids.

REASONS TO STAY: Long periods of “inactivity.”

FAMILY VALUES:  A fair amount of swearing, some sexual references and teen sex, drinking and drug use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In the film, Morgan and Samantha’s dad take them to an Astros game against the Brewers and tells everyone that the Astros won on a three-run homer by Jason Lane in the bottom of the ninth. In reality the game, filmed on August 18, 2005 was won by the Brewers and Lane’s homer was a solo shot in the second inning.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/6/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 99% positive reviews. Metacritic: 100/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Cinema Paradiso

FINAL RATING: 10/10

NEXT: Get On Up