Bully

By John Mulderig , Catholic News Service

With the poignant documentary “Bully” (Weinstein), filmmaker Lee Hirsch sheds light on a widespread and tenacious social problem and provides a valuable – though not unproblematic – starting point for important family discussions.

Hirsch reveals the victimization of a trio of teens from different parts of the country who have endured verbal and physical abuse from their peers at school. He also recounts, primarily through interviews with their grieving parents, the stories of two other students whose sufferings apparently led them to commit suicide.

Perhaps the most effective part of the movie is that which concerns a Sioux City, Iowa, seventh-grader named Alex. Wisely and effectively, Hirsch and his team simply trail Alex through his various experiences.

Thus we can hear him almost hyperventilating with dread as he prepares for the first day of a new school year. We later witness Alex’s fears being cruelly fulfilled as some of the other riders on his crowded school bus hit him, strangle him, stab him with a pencil and slam his head into the high backrest of the seat ahead of him.

Awkward in manner, and stonily uncommunicative with his parents, Alex unwisely jokes with the boy sitting next to him, at one point, that they are “buddies.” He’s met with a sadly predictable torrent of foul-mouthed abuse.

That doomed social gambit grows out of Alex’s determined conviction that his tormentors are actually his pals. Accepting the truth, of course, would mean acknowledging that he is, in fact, friendless. That’s a reality of which we catch a heartrending glimpse as we see Alex engaged in one of his after-school pastimes of choice: standing alone in a vacant lot watching freight trains pull into and out of the local train yard.

Adult administrators who appear on screen seem either indifferent or impotent. Kirk Smalley, the father of an 11-year-old boy who took his own life, by contrast, has become engaged in an energetic initiative: Together with his wife Laura, he has established a consciousness-raising movement called Stand for the Silent.

Considerable debate has been provoked by the Motion Picture Association of America’s original R rating for “Bully.” While their detractors – online and elsewhere – have argued that this classification bars precisely those who would most benefit from seeing the film, the MPAA presumably applied it based on the same objective criteria they use in evaluating every other picture, regardless of its social and aesthetic worth or lack thereof.

The distributors, who originally spurned the R in favour of releasing the film as unrated, have now made the edits necessary to earn their project a PG-13, though whether some of the vocabulary still spouted by the schoolyard barbarians would be allowed to pass in other films with that rating remains open to question.

The new classification stands, in a sense, as an invitation to youthful audiences. Before allowing their teens to accept it, parents should be aware that, in addition to the small-scale brutality on display, the narrative also focuses on the fact that one of those being profiled – a 16-year-old girl named Kelby – is enduring persecution in her small Oklahoma hometown for being an avowed lesbian.

We see Kelby embracing the schoolmate she identifies as her girlfriend. But we also learn that she has been expelled from her church, made the target of a slow-speed hit-and-run incident and prevented from participating in the team sports she loves – and which, she feels sure, would have earned her a college scholarship.

Accordingly, younger viewers will need sufficient maturity – or guidance – to distinguish between the individual rights of the homosexually oriented and a broader social agenda out of keeping with Scripture and sacred tradition. Still, after careful parental consideration, “Bully” may possibly be found, on balance, acceptable for older adolescents.

The film contains scenes of cruelty and petty violence, adult themes, including suicide and homosexuality, at least one use of the F-word and numerous crude and crass insults.  Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

By Joseph McAleer , Catholic News Service

The 16th president of the United States uses his trusty ax to split a lot more than rails in “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” (Fox).

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted”) from a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith (based on his 2010 novel), this goofy mash-up of American history is not for the squeamish, as the Great Emancipator – recast as our country’s first superhero – slashes his way toward truth, justice and the American way.

The narrative begins with the young Lincoln (Lux Haney-Jardine) in the shelter of his trademark log cabin, watching as his mother Nancy (Robin McLeavy) dies from a mysterious illness. Mummy was bitten – not by a deadly bug but by a vampire. (History is more prosaic, attributing Ma Lincoln’s demise to a malady called milk sickness.)

Years pass, and Lincoln (Benjamin Walker), consumed by a thirst for revenge, crosses paths with equally bloodsucker-averse mystery man Henry (Dominic Cooper). Henry becomes Abe’s mentor, training him in the art of vampire hunting. For the uninitiated, this involves a good deal of stabbing and shooting, as well as the lopping off of undead heads.

The most effective weapon, we are told, is silver. Ever since Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of it, the metal has been cursed. Lincoln’s ax is given a silver blade, and soon we’re on our way to Vampire Central: New Orleans.

According to Grahame-Smith’s back story, vampires have been around for some 5,000 years, wandering the earth in search of a place they can call home. Seems they’ve found one in the American South, where they own the plantations and keep the slaves. This gives Lincoln another motive for their eradication.

Not so fast, Henry tells his protégé. “Real power comes not from hate but from truth,” he says. “If vengeance is all you seek, you will never be able to save mankind. Fight this war with me, not for one man but for the whole world.”

And so Lincoln puts his ax aside, takes up the law and enters politics. He vanquishes his rival, Stephen A. Douglas (Alan Tudyk), and steals the heart of Douglas’ fiancée, Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Mary is a feisty lady and handy with a rifle. (The latter quality, at least, is presumably quite untrue to the real-life Mrs. Lincoln, who was the refined, if not always stable, scion of an aristocratic Kentucky clan).

Before long we’re in the White House, and the Civil War erupts. Adam (Rufus Sewell), the chief vein-drainer, strikes a deal with Confederate President Jefferson Davis (John Rothman) to defeat the Union Army at Gettysburg. Lincoln, however, has other ideas: He rearms himself, rounds up as much silver as he can, and faces his destiny.

The tone of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” is, for the most part, so serious that viewers ignorant of American history might easily be lulled into thinking this is how it all really happened, were it not for the occult overlay. A certain levity does creep in now and then, though – as when Mary calls to the president from her carriage window, “Hurry up, Abe, or we’ll be late for the theatre.”

The film contains relentless bloody violence, fleeting upper female nudity, and the occasional use of profanity and rough language.

Total Recall

By Adam Shaw , Catholic News Service

Remakes are all the rage in the movie industry at the moment. While some retreads manage to introduce classic films to a new generation, others leave theatregoers scratching their heads, wondering why anyone involved bothered. The latter reaction, alas, is likely to be provoked by “Total Recall” (Columbia).

Director Len Wiseman has sanitized Paul Verhoeven’s extremely violent 1990 action thriller – an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yet although toned-down, the new version still contains more than its fair share of objectionable content.

The year is 2084. After an apocalyptic war that blighted the global environment, Earth has been divided between the United Federation of Britain on one side of the world and the Colony, a stand-in for Australia, on the other. While people in the Federation live in luxury, the oppressed working classes who serve them are housed in the Colony. The two regions are connected by a transport line through the Earth’s core known as “The Fall.”

Unhappy with his boring life and troubled by nightmares, Everyman Colony drudge Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) seeks relief through the services of a company known as Rekall. Rekall specializes in turning fantasies into memories, thus allowing its customers to believe they really are whoever it is they wish to be.

Before Rekall can work its magic on Quaid, however, a routine mental screening uncovers the surprising fact that this blue-collar grunt is, in fact, some sort of secret agent who has had his memory wiped.

Stunned by this revelation – which instantly makes him a wanted man – Quaid goes on the lam with the authorities in hot pursuit. He’s thrown even further off balance when his seemingly devoted and loyal wife Lori (Kate Beckinsale) turns against him.

Things take a political turn when an Irish Republican Army-like guerrilla group known as the Resistance reaches out to Quaid in the person of young activist Melina (Jessica Biel), a figure Quaid has already encountered in his dreams.

Clever plot twists and impressive futuristic visuals can’t make up for an ensemble of humourless two-dimensional characters – nor for their favoured vocabulary of foul language. The dialogue in Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback’s screenplay, moreover, is bloated with clichéd ruminations on the nature of reality, e.g. “The past is a construct of the mind.”

One tiresome philosophical diatribe succeeds another. Not only do these speculations quickly stale, they make no reference either to God or to the soul.

So, by the time the infamous three-breasted prostitute from the original film makes her reappearance, viewers of faith may be hoping for a mind-wipe of their own.

The film contains frequent action violence, including gunplay; upper female and brief rear nudity; references to prostitution; occasional uses of profanity; at least one rough term; and pervasive crude language.