Cosmopolis [2012]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1480656/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120822/REVIEWS/120829995

Cosmopolis (screenplay and direction by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo) is an eiree, and excruciatingly slow-moving film about "the day" a 20-something billionaire Wall Street magnate named Eric Parker (perfectly cast and played by Robert Pattinson of vampire Edward / Twilight Saga fame).  At the beginning of the film, we find Eric standing by his gigantic stretch limo presumably outside of his Manhattan office building deciding that he's going to "go for a haircut."

Most of the rest of the film takes place in the simultaneously coffin / casino like interior of his limo as the limo navigates the terribly slow moving traffic from his office to the barber shop in his old neighborhood to get his hair done.  Immediate parallels could be made to James Joyce's Ulysses [Amaz], Orson Welles' [IMDb] Citizen Kane (1941) [IMDb], and even Dante's "descent into Hell" in his Inferno.  For it's one heck of a slow-moving ride that Eric takes that day.

(SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO READ BEFORE-HAND WHAT ALL HAPPENS DURING ERIC'S LIMO TRIP TO THE BARBER).  During the course of his limo ride Eric (1) meets with various consultants who dutifully "wait on the curb" for "their master's limo" to pass by before entering its hallowed confines; (2) has the associate of his personal doctor give him his _daily_ physical complete with a prostrate exam (the real-time ultra-sound of which is dutifully displayed on the ghostly flatscreen monitors that grace much of the inside of the limo, even as Eric meets, face-to-face, with one of his consultants; (3) loses most of his fortune on an ill-conceived bet on the Chinese Yuan in the currency markets; (4) has sex twice, first with his French-accented 40-something "Mrs Robinson-like" longtime mistress (played by Juliette Binoche) who laughs at him for having apparently recently married his "cold fish" 20-something wife Elisa (played by Sarah Gadon) from an old moneyed patrician family, the second time with the wife of his trusted bodyguard (why? because he was bored? because he was miffed at his truly somewhat "cold fish" newly-wed wife? because he could? because he hated his trusted bodyguard precisely because he was so trustworthy? who knows? but was clear was that Eric didn't particularly care), (5) loses his wife, though not really for his beyond-obvious infidelites ("Eric, you smell like ...") but for the far more "unpardonable sin" of, well, losing his fortune in the course of the day...; (6) has the outside of his limo trashed by Anarchists (whose protests are partly responsible for the terrible traffic delays that Eric experiences that day); (7) gets "pied" by a Euro-loon "reality showman" who's "famous" for "pieing the rich and famous;" and (8) _possibly_ meets his death at the hands of a loser gunman (played masterfully by Paul Giamatti) who tells Eric that (a la JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald) the only way anyone was going to remember a loser like him would be if he killed someone as "important" as Eric.  And through the course of the day, the ghostly white complected Eric does not seem to care ... (END SPOILER ALERT).

The film (therefore) becomes a grand parable about a search for meaning.  Like the Buddha in his youth or the Biblical writer of Ecclesiastes/Qoheleth, Eric seemed to have it all, but none of it seemed to mean anything to him.  In Gospel terms, "What profit would it be to gain the whole world and yet lose one's eternal soul?" (Mark 8:36).  My sense is that Eric did not particularly feel that he even had one to lose...

It all thus makes for one heck of a movie IF one can bear its slow-moving pace and excruciatingly monotone dialog.  But then both the pace and the dialog were obviously intended to be that way.


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Premium Rush [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1547234/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv098.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120822/REVIEWS/120829996

Premium Rush (directed and cowritten by David Koepp along with John Kamps) is a film about a New York City subculture (that of bicycle couriers) that I'm positive would annoy many residents/commuters.

On the other hand, I've known a fair number of cycling enthusiasts -- sometimes, while always nice people, they've bordered on being fanatics;-) -- that I went to the theater happy to enter "their world" for a while and to enjoy the ride.

The plot is clearly thin: Ace bicycle courier nicknamed Wilee (after Wiley Cayote from the Warner Bros. cartoon and played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is given what would seem to be a typical job -- carry an innocuous looking letter from one end of town to another.

However there are some surprises right from the start.  The client, turns out to be the quiet, studious Chinese roommate (named Nima and played Jamie Chung) of his girlfriend Vanessa (played by Dania Ramirez).  Vanessa also worked as a bike courier (on the side) but her main job was being a student (as of course was her roommate).  In fact, early in the movie it was clear that Wilee and Vanessa had something of a recent falling-out.  Vanessa had just graduated law school and bike-couriering/adrenaline junkie Wilee had missed her graduation.

Early one afternoon, Nima calls Wilee and Vanessa's South Asian dispatcher Raj (played by Aasif Mandvi) asking specifically for Wilee to run this letter, from her office at the university on one end of Manhattan to Chinatown near the other end.  Why did he choose him?  Well, from what she heard from Vanessa, "he was the best."  Much ensues ...

Among that which ensues is that almost immediately after receiving the letter and dutifylly putting it in his courier bag, someone, a man in his 30s-40s (played by Michael Shannon) wants the letter.  This man stops him right as Wilee leaves the Nima's building and asks for the letter (giving some story along the lines that he's actually the one who's supposed to receive it anyway).  Wilee responds AS ANY 20-SOMETHING with this kind of job would respond: "You see, sir, once I receive a package and put it in my satchel, I don't give it to anyone until I deliver it to the address requested," and leaves.  The man proceeds to chase Wilee first by foot and a few minutes later shows-up behind him in a car.  A chase then ensues ...

What's going on?  Well, I'm not going to say more because to do so would take away from the story, except to say that the story itself, while at times poignant/touching, is really beside the point.  What we viewers get in this movies is the opportunity to watch an hour and a half of some really, really cool bike-riding on the busy streets of Manhattan.

We also get a sense, in as much as bike couriers really cycle like this all over the streets of Manhattan of why these bicycle couriers would probably be hated by both motorists and pedestrians over there.  Still to more sedentary film critics the cinema-world over, THE SHOTS IN THIS FILM ARE JUST AWESOME.  Yes, Wilee, Vanessa and Raj work for a "Premium Rush" courier service.  However, just watching the film honestly gives one a rush as well!

So kids, PLEASE DON'T DO WHAT'S SHOWN IN THIS FILM.  The crazy cycling in the film is done by true stunt cyclists who know what they're doing.  On the other hand, I do have to say, THE FILM IS REALLY, REALLY COOL ;-) and anybody who's ever liked cycling or known a cycling enthusiast/fanatic before would certainly enjoy this film!  Good job folks!

ADDENDUM:

A specialized "niche" film like this inevitably brings the question of how many other "bicycle" films are out there.  A list is of such films, ranging from the Neo-Realist (and very sad) post-WW II Italian film, Bicycle Thieves [1948] to Spielberg's ET [1982], was compiled by the good folks MassBike Online and is given here.


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Hit and Run [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (0 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2097307/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv096.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120822/REVIEWS/120829991

I suppose we learn a number of things about Dax Shepard in the film Hit and Run, which he wrote, codirected (along with David Palmer) and costarred in: He likes cars, can write a decent slacker comedy/rom-com, but for some reason is either really stupid or a racist:

There is a scene in this film, which he wrote and codirected, in which co-star Bradley Cooper drags a large, otherwise powerfully-built African American man out of a convenience store with a leash around his neck and then proceeds to force feed the African American man the "slightly cheaper" dog food that he was trying to buy for his dog.

Was the scene necessary to the plot?  Even if "the point" was to portray Bradley Cooper's character, a former bank-robber as a psychopath, there would have been any number of ways that Shepard and the rest of his film-crew could have made it.  Instead, they chose _this_ way, which congers up the dragging death (SENSELESS MURDER) of James Byrd, Jr in Jaspers Texas, one of the worst hate crimes to have occurred in the United States in past 20 years.

The choice of including this unnecessary scene is unfortunate because the movie is often very funny as both a "slacker comedy" and as a "romcom" about a smart talented, but not particularly confident young woman (who really should have been a professor, having gotten a PhD from Stanford University in "Conflict Resolution Studies") played by Kristen Bell, and a nice/supportive if not particularly bright ex-con played by Shepard.

Some more conservative Catholics/Christians would have probably objected to the generally lighthearted/positive portrayal of a couple of gay characters in the film.  Yet this is always the frustration when it comes to trying to take a stand against bigotry.  The film challenges anti-gay bigotry (even that, if we are honest, which exists within many places in the Catholic Church today) and then features the utterly needless scene above featuring the humiliation of an African American man.

Shocking hate crimes, after all, have been committed against homosexuals as well, notably in the case of the torture and de facto lynching Matthew Shepard in Wyoming a few  years after the Jame Byrd's dragging death in Texas.  (Dax Shepard shares Matthew Shepard's last name but is apparently not related to him).

So I am disappointed with this film and do hope that its young stars which include Dax Shephard, Kristen Bell and Bradley Cooper choose to do better in the future.  To carelessly walk into a situation which leaves viewers scratching their heads and wondering if the film-makers/actors were a bunch of racists, can't possibly be a wise career move.  After all, these talented young actors are one day going to want to work with likes of Zoe Saldana, Viola Davis, Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.  Yet, thanks to this film, they've probably made such future collaboration somewhat and _stupidly_ "awkward."


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Why Stop Now? [2012]

MPAA (UR) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853643/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120815/REVIEWS/120819988

Why Stop Now? (written and directed by Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner) is a well-crafted "indie" film about a young struggling classical musician named Eli (played by Jesse Eisenberg) who's had a really bad day.  Eli's mentor had gotten him a big break, a chance at an audition for a top of the line music conservatory in Boston.  But Eli comes to the audition late and with one of his hands (!) in a bandage.  His mentor asks: "What happened?"  "Well if you've had the day that I've had, you'd understand ..."  The rest of the movie follows.

Eli begins his explanation "Actually my day began the night before.  A rich jerk down the street was throwing a party and I, of course, wasn't invited.  And so I, of course, had to show-up anyway..."  Eli crashed the party, had gotten really drunk, and just as the host was going to throw him out, Eli spotted a piano.  He forced himself to it, sat himself down, played enough bars to impress everyone there, and then stopped and threw-up right next to it.  That of course got him now definitively thrown out of the place and probably more roughed up than he would have been if he had just left the party quietly ...

The next morning, clearly hung-over from the night before, he had to face the tasks of the new day.  He had, of course, the audition sometime in the late morning/early afternoon.  But before that, he had to get his mother Penny (played by Melissa Leo) finally to rehab.  Of course, she didn't particularly want to go, saying, of course "My problem isn't _that bad_, etc."  But even before that, he had to take his little sister Nicole "Coli" (played by Emma Rayne Lyle) to school.  By now you could imagine that Coli would have come to have some "issues" of her own.  And, of course she does: she's made a hand puppet out of a sock (actually put a face on it and all that...) and through this hand puppet friend who she calls "Diego" (I believe), she's been able to vent a lot of anger at the world.  Basically she's been (err.  "Diego's been"...) telling teachers and other school kids to "go to hell" and so forth.  So when Eli and ma (going to rehab ...) come to drop Coli at school, there's her teacher waiting for them, waiting to talk to her ma' (and Eli if ma's really going to go to rehab...) to tell her/them that, well, Coli's "got problems" that need to be dealt with ... Eli tells teacher that well "we know..." but that he has to take ma' to rehab first ... (Folks, if you've ever thought that your life's been a mess ...)

So Coli's been dropped off at school and now Eli and ma' are standing in front the rehab center.  Will ma' actually go in?  Well after some further persuading, she does ... and about 20 minutes later she's steps out again.  WHY????? Well, she hasn't actually used drugs in 4-5 days and so her urine tested clean!  The attending official told her that without dirty urine (and no insurance on her part) he can't let her in.  But he (seriously ... ;-) suggested to her that she "go get some drugs, get high, and come back then with the needed ditry urine" and THEN he could admit her...

It is here where the movie really begins.  Along the course of the rest of the film, we get to meet Ma's drug connections, two brothers nicknamed Sprinkles (played by Tracy Morgan) and Black (played by Isiah Whitlock, Jr) as well as their supplier Eduardo (played by Paul Calderon).  Very much ensues ...

Why Stop Now? proves to be a very funny, well crafted comedy about someone's epicly "bad day."  I also think that Jesse Eisenberg proves here that he may be the true successor to Woody Allen's nerdy on-stage persona.  And Melissa Leo certainly proves again (as she did in The Fighter [2010]) that she can really play some difficult/challenging moms.  Again, if you've ever thought you had it rough ... ;-)

ADDENDUM:

Like many independent films, while "in theaters in major markets," this film is available through the IFC Video On Demand service (type in your zipcode and cable provider to see if this service as available to you) as well as for download (for $6.99) via the Sundance Now service.  Eventually, these films become available for rent in the U.S. via NetFlix or Blockbuster.com.


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The Expendables 2 [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Roger Moore (1 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764651/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv093.htm
Roger Moore's review -
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-16/entertainment/sc-mov-0814-expendables-2-20120816_1_expendables-2-meep-jean-vilain

Let me begin by saying that Expendables 2 (directed by Simon West, screenplay by Richard Wenk and Silvester Stalone) is clearly not going to be up for any Academy Awards come winter this year.  There are entire sections of the film that feel like a "1st person shooter" video game (PARENTS DO TAKE NOTE) rightly earning the film a relatively hard-R for violence in the film universe and _definitely_ an M in the video game one.

That said, there is both enough humor and "sappy" trademark Stalone-esque "Rocky style" melodrama in the film, that I'm not at all surprised that it made the top spot in the box office on its opening weekend.  Like many Silvester Stalone products, the editing is _superb_, the pacing keeps one from getting bored, and yes, both the often self-deprecating humor and the doses of sappiness, argh! WORK!  Yes, THESE "Dogs of War" have a heart. It's Blackwater, Inc wrapped in a "Have a Nice Day" Smiley-Face.

Seriously Silvester Stalone, Bruce Willis, Ahhrnald Schwarzenegger and to a lesser extent Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris (all in this movie) all know this game and give still relative newbies/wannabes like Jason Statham and possibly Jet Li (both also in the film) lessons on how to become truly transcendent "tough guy" superstars. 

Still, in my line of work (as a Catholic priest) I do have to say that in my assignments in both Florida and in Chicago, I have met real life "tough guys" (some even who have even done or I'd suspect have done some intelligence work before) who fit the "tough guy" but still "loveable" model.  So Stalone and Schwarzenegger (both Catholics incidently), et al, are, in fact, onto something.

Yes, someone like me has to regret the blood in these films/video-games.  And the Church has long sought to find ways to divert, dilute, (and more problematically, occasionally sought to utilize) the bloodlust apparent at times in society. Arguably Pope Urban II's call for the First Crusade was to divert the Christian Knights' propensity to fight and kill each other to a "worthier goal" of winning back Jerusalem and the Holy Land.  I also wonder if the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role playing game had existed in the time of Richard Wagner fanatic Adolf Hitler's youth, if Hitler and his inner circle Nazi friends, would have been content enough to "form a party" and be 25+ level "fighters", "clerics" and "magic users" in some fantasy world inhabiting the Internet rather than seek to conquer the actual world ...

Yes, I understand that at times this film _is_ appalling.  There's even a scene, when, the group finds itself somewhere in Russia (and combating some really evil, bent on stealing plutonium, sort of guys), Jason Statham's character disguises himself as an Eastern Orthodox priest and then kills a bunch of them using, among other things, the Orthodox priest's ever present incensor ;-).  And I think then of the similarly violent but also clearly stylized sci-fi-fantasy film called Priest [2011] which was based on a South Korean comic book series where an Order of Catholic-looking Priests (Next to the Philippines, South Korea is probably the most Christian/Catholic nation in East Asia with Vietnam following relatively closely afterwards) used martial arts to vanquish a race of humanity threatening vampires.

All this is to say that this film is clearly not for everybody and yes, it is bloody.  But yes, with the twinkle in Stalone's, Willis', Schwarzenegger's, et al's, eyes, I don't think that anybody would really take the film seriously even as it does take-up issues of relatively serious concern -- internationalized mafia networks and nuclear weapons trafficking.

So "Fan boys of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but a few hours (until you'll probably buy the game, after which you'll probably lose a lot more)."  And it doesn't surprise me at all that when I checked a couple of my favorite movie sites that I've found since starting my blog, that this film has been a hit among the young in Ireland [2] and Russia [Eng-Trans] and for the same reasons as it has been popular here in the States.  It entertains (and yet remains, _thankfully_, fake ;-).


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ParaNorman [2012]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB ()  Michael Phillips (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1623288/
Michael Philkips' review -
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-16/entertainment/sc-mov-0814-paranorman-20120816_1_paranorman-george-pal-puppetoons-movies

ParaNorman (written and codirected by Chris Butler along with Sam Fell), since it is a movie in a sense about witchcraft, is one that many Catholic and otherwise Christian parents will probably not particularly like.

Yet, Catholics and other Christians did burn heretics and then specifically women accused of witchcraft at the stake throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and up until the time of the Enlightenment.  Further, this practice extended to the early settlers of the English colonies that eventually made-up the United States through the (if we are honest, the "Taliban-like") Protestant sect called the Puritans.  The Salem Witch Trials in the Massachusetts colony are a matter of historical record as are various atrocities committed by Catholic/Christian fanatics across the ages.  Indeed, the Muslims were as appalled at the behavior of Christian Crusaders like Richard the Lionhearted a millenium ago as Westerners (Christians and non) today have been rightly appalled by Muslim fanatics like Al-Queda founder Osama Bin Laden.  (Then ask a Serb Orthodox Christian about what he/she thinks of the (generally Catholic) Crusaders, and you'll _still_ get an earful ...).

So a movie like this, intended for children, does give everyone, including Christian/Catholic parents, a chance to reflect on: (1) what happened? and (2) what do we want to preserve of the Christian message?  The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus ought to be a message of hope: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Rom 8:38-39).  This "Good News" ought never to become an excuse to hate one or another or even a large number of groups that are declared to be in some way (and they're _always_ cast as being in some "important way") "different" from us.

Catholics in particular, since they belong to a Church that sees its mission to be UNIVERSAL (hence big enough for all) ought to be (and, again if one is honest, actually _generally_ have been...) very careful in drawing boundaries that would out-of-hand exclude entire groups of people from communion with it.

Indeed, Catholics/Christians have the Christmas tree today because St. Augustine of Canterbury, when coming to Christianize the pagan (and by reputation even _cannibalistic_) Anglo-Saxon "savages" in Southern England decided that ultimately there's nothing wrong with the Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) practice of bringing evergreens into their homes in the winter.  The Bible, after all, is full of references to trees.  Why not just "baptize" the symbol and be done with it, rather than _choose_ to condemn the practice as some sort of "nature sorcery?"  Throughout the history of the Catholic Church/Christianity, similar accommodations to local culture/sensitivities have been made to the obvious enrichment of the whole).

The Second Vatican Council's declaration Nostra Aetate declared that the Catholic Church "rejects nothing that is true and holy in other religions." [NA#2].  If then for its past sins, the Church has to "eat crow" for a while, well that's something that average Christian / Catholic experiences in his/her day-to-day life _anyway_ when one realizes that one has failed or otherwise sinned against someone in the past and embarks then on a path toward restitution and reconciliation with the hurt/offended party.  But this is not the end, and indeed, admitting one's sins actually lifts the burden of continuing to have carry them and offers us an opportunity for New Life.  And how Catholic / Christian is that! ;-) ;-)

So then ... returning to the film.  The film's about a little boy named Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit McPhee) with a gift.  He "sees dead people."  Why?  Well probably because film-makers saw The Sixth Sense [1999], and like a lot of others found the gift of the child in that film (again of "seeing dead people") really, really cool and then useful in the telling of this new story.

Norman also lived in a town somewhere in the American North East, a town that was "celebrating" the 300th anniversary of a "witch trial," in which a young girl was accused of witchcraft.  Prior to her awful death (again witches were _burned at the stake_), the girl had cursed those who condemned her to suffer as a result.  In the film, no one among the townspeople particularly believed the legend.  But the town certainly enjoyed the "tourism business" that the legend brought in ... ;-).

Well it turns out (in the story) that there was something to the legend.  Indeed, Norman's family had actually "kept the peace" in the town over the 300 years since the trial and burning of the poor little girl by each year going to her grave to read her a bed-time story (THE LITTLE POOR GIRL HAD BEEN THAT YOUNG...) and this would cause the ghost of the little girl to sleep for another year without rising to wreak vengeance on the town that had so mistreated her.

The year of the film, however, Norman's uncle, the last one to keep up this tradition was no longer able to fulfill this task (he had died just before the anniversary) and so the town was in danger of finally feeling the little girl's wrath, and on the 300th anniversary of all this having taken place, no less!  Enter Norman ... (a little boy who was also rather misunderstood/picked-on in his time...) ... Much ensues ...

Actually, sounds like a nice story, huh?

And one can't help but feel sorry for the little girl who was named Agatha (voiced by Jodelle Ferland): "They used to call me Aggie" she tells Norman.  (And whether the film makers realized it or not, Agatha is actually the name of an early Christian Martyr, St. Agatha, who had been horribly tortured and ultimately murdered for refusing to renounce her Christian faith when Christians were being tortured and killed for holding onto a "new" and "subversive religion.")

So parents, this is a complicated story.  I would understand why a lot of Christian / Catholic parents would not necessarily like it.  However there's a lot to this story that is very nice and it does invite us all to reflect on (and teach our kids) what is actually essential to our faith.  And hopefully hate isn't part of it.


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Sparkle [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Roger Ebert (3 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Sparkle [2012] (directed by Salim Akil, screenplay by Mara Brock Akil [IMDb] based on the story by Howard Rosenman and is a remake of the 1976 original by the same name).  The story was inspired at least in part on the beginnings of the 1960s Motown girl group, The Supremes.  The current version will probably be remembered for a number of things: (1) as the debut film for 2007 (season 6) American Idol contest winner Jordin Sparks [IMDb] (who plays the title role of Sparkle in the film), (2) another triumph for the African-American husband and wife film-making team Salim and Mara Brock Akil (even if due to the popularity of the 1976 original film in the African American community posed risks for them), and perhaps above all (3) the "swansong" for superstar but increasingly troubled Whitney Houston [IMDb] (who played Sparkle's and her two sisters' mother in the film).  Houston was found dead in her hotel room sometime after the shooting of the film apparently the result of an accident following the her use of cocaine.  Since the dangers of drug use in the context of celebrity was very much part of the story in this film (and Houston herself was playing a character who was trying to impress on her three daughters exactly those dangers that she (the character) had experienced first hand in her own life: "Is not my life enough of a cautionary tale for you girls?" she tells the girls at one point), Houston's [IMDb] death following the making of this film perhaps is even more poignant/tragic.

The film itself is set in Detroit in the 1960s.  It's about three young adult sisters -- the oldest named Sister (played by Carmen Ejogo) who's certainly the most driven/outgoing and the one who one would guess "shows the most promise," Sparkle (played by Jordin Sparks [IMDb]) who's much shier than her older sister but is a smiling and sympathetic songwriter, and Dolores (played by Tika Sumpter) who loves her sisters, will go along with them, but is the one who probably listened to her mother the most and thus (to her mother's relief) has other _more sensible plans_ with her life, plans that _don't_ involve "fame, bar halls and lights." (Honestly, _from a parent's perspective_ SO LONG AS THE CHILD PROVES HAPPY, having a "Dolores" among one's children IS A BLESSING.  Indeed, over the years, I've told not a few couples preparing for marriage that the ideal number of kids to have would probably be about 4-5.  That way one kid could die, another could end up in jail a third or fourth could really end up "going his/her own way" but there'd be _a pretty good chance_ that at least one kid would end up being what "one hoped that at least one kid would end-up being."  Otherwise there'd be an enormous pressure for the 1-2 kids to end up fulfilling all (or at least _some_) of the parents' hopes.  And that could be a lot of pressure on an only child or only son/daughter.  Yet the converse is also sad ... the unfulfilled aspirations of the parents for at least one of their kids).

Very well ... the film starts with two of the sisters -- Sister and Sparkle -- having sneaked out of the house to sing at a club, proving to be rather good, so good in fact, that a young man, Styx (played by Darek Luke) would like to manage them.  But how to explain this to mom?

The rest of the film with much good music and many rather simple but basically true life lessons ensues ...

Parents, the film is properly rated PG-13.  Some of the themes of drugs, domestic violence, etc, making poor choices (and the consequences of poor choices effecting the people you love) would really be too much for little kids, but it'd be a good film for teens (perhaps even with one's parents) to see.  All in all "a good discussion piece" for families with kids of high school and approaching high school graduation age.


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