By Dave Montalbano

While attending a Family Reunion in Alabama, circa 1969, my dad made a point of introducing Annie Laurie to me. Annie Laurie was the Watson family cook for many decades.

My mom, aunt and 10 uncles kept in touch with Annie Laurie until she died a few years back. It is nice to know that my family treated Annie Laurie with more respect than the Southern Belles treat The Help in this movie based on Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling book.

Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (Emma Stone) returns from college and lands a job with the local newspaper, writing a “Dear Abby” column about household chores. Being a Dixie princess, Skeeter seeks advice from a friend’s help, Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis). Reluctant at first, Aibileen helps Skeeter with her column.

As Skeeter gains Aibileen’s trust, the young lady learns much about the subculture of The Help, black ladies who raise white women’s children. From cooking tasty food to changing diapers, these maids of Mississippi are the pillar of southern hospitality. Yet, in a culture where people are considered equal, but separate, the help are not allowed to use their employers’ bathrooms.

It is life’s details that plant the seeds of historical evolution. Ticket buyers witness the 1960s civil rights struggle of their neighbors. Director Tate Taylor takes Kathryn Stockett’s words and creates an entertaining motion picture with subtle depth.

Already, there is “Oscar” buzz about The Help. The SAG Awards will likely nominate The Help for Best Ensemble acting. 1970s veterans Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson and Mary Steenburgen sink their teeth into their small, but pivotal character roles, while Stone and Davis move the narrative along. Octavia Spencer will be remembered as the breakout star from this film.

Opening tomorrow is The Names of Love, a French romantic comedy that finds humor in religion, sex and politics.

Sara Forestier portrays Baya, an Algerian Arab hippie chick with leftist politics who is attracted to Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin) a straight-laced Jew whose parents are Holocaust survivors.

Taking a cue from Woody Allen movies, this film tackles dark themes with humor and has belly laughs involving social faux pas and Parisian nudity. Sara Forestier is a force to be reckoned with. She will next be seen in the U.S. as French pop star France Gall in Joann Sfar’s “Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life.”

By Dave Montalbano

While I am not a fan of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-flicks, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a pleasant surprise on so many levels — good story, interesting character development with a clarity of vision. Thought-provoking and fully entertaining, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has set a new standard with summer Science Fiction movies, while remaining true to the wild and original ideas of Pierre Boulle’s novella.

San Francisco Professor Will Rodman (James Franco) seeks to find a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease, as his father Charles (John Lithgow) suffers from this malady. When a female test subject reacts badly to treatment, Professor Rodman adopts her son, a baby ape. While Charles names the ape Cesar (Andy Serkis), Professor Rodman provides a nurturing environment and pharmaceuticals that promote intelligence.

Tragically, paradise is lost and Cesar ends up being a captive in a monkey house run by John Landon (Brian Cox)and his sadistic son Dodge Landon (Tom Felton).  After torture and abuse, Cesar organizes his cell-mates and creates ‘the rise of the planet of the apes.’

Director Rupert Wyatt provides realistic logic to Cesar’s evolution, making Cesar’s growth a joy to behold. The audience gets to know Cesar and his compatriots, as well as the rogues’ gallery of brutal humans. Wyatt is not afraid to present static scenes with no dialogue. When dialogue is spoken, the words actually have meaning.

In spite of the epic grandeur of this movie, this film is full of clever details for the Apes fans. Shortly before one climatic moment, a cameo appearance from the late Charlton Heston helps set the dramatic moment on a subconscious level.  It is a bone-chilling moment.

Given his performances as “King Kong” and “Gollum,” Serkis is the perfect actor to play Cesar in his motion-capture costume. The Academy Awards should create a special category for this type of performance. As Professor Rodman, Franco puts behind his public relations fiasco at this year’s Oscar’s ceremony. Given his success as Draco Malfoy, hopefully Felton will be able to play a nice guy soon, for the actor is quite good as the cad you love to hate.

On Aug. 20, Deerfield Beach High Class of ’81 reunion commences at Deer Creek Country Club. Tickets are $125 and include open bar, buffet, prizes and music. Save $25 by contacting Kelly Palmer-Skidmore at 561-445-6854 by close of business tomorrow, Friday, Aug. 12.

By Dave Montalbano

AdventuresOfCinemaDave.com

Forty summers ago, I saw my first western on the big screen – Big Jake, a box office champion that particular summer. Big Jake starred John Wayne, his family and his stock company; it featured gorgeous landscapes and a morality tale about family values. The Duke’s grandson, Brendan Wayne, was born the following year and now has a small role (as the Sheriff Taggart’s Deputy) in the current box office champion, Cowboys & Aliens.

The film opens when an amnesiac cowboy named Jake (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert with a strange device attached to his forearm. Jake strolls into town and runs afoul Percy (Paul Dano), a spoiled brat son of a cattle baron, Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). It turns out that Dolarhyde and Jake have a bad history together and are headed for a show down.

As a torch-bearing vigilante prepares a lynching, a strange light comes out of the sky. Within moments, the townspeople witness their neighbors get lassoed into the sky. Jake and Dolarhyde put aside their differences to rescue friends and families who have been abducted by sky demons.

With a title like Cowboys & Aliens, one does not need to look deeper for a theological subtext. The sky demons are aliens from outer space, with petty motivations. In fact, the science fiction aspect of this film is routine, yet the film excels when it remains a western.

The best thing about Cowboys & Aliens is the ensemble’s characters.  Character actor Sam Rockwell is given some rare moments to shine as an everyman bartender. Keith Carradine, as Sheriff; Clancy Brown, as Pastor; and Adam Beach, as ranch hand, are given genuine moments of character development.

While top-billed Daniel Craig recalls Clint Eastwood’s younger days, Cowboys & Aliens can be seen as Harrison Ford’s comeback film. Looking more like George “Gabby” Hayes than Indiana Jones, Ford creates a whole character. While gruff most of the time, Dolarhyde is given some quiet moments to shine with a boy who soon becomes an orphan.

While the showdown with the aliens gets a bit clunky toward the end, director Jon Favreau makes up for it by providing great visuals of cowboys riding across the range on horseback. Cowboys & Aliens succeeds as Saturday Matinee popcorn-eating entertainment, but I doubt it will have the durability of Big Jake.

By Dave Montalbano

AdventuresOfCinemaDave.com

Earlier this year, Superman talked about renouncing his U.S. citizenship, claiming to be a citizen of the world. A product of the DC Comic book universe, Superman seemed to forget that he was fighting for “Truth, Justice and the American Way.”

Perhaps seeking public relations leverage, Marvel Comics has unleashed Captain America: The First Avenger,  one of the most patriotic movies to be released in a decade. The American public rewarded Captain America with an impressive non-holiday box office gross of $65 million.

While this film is a stand-alone motion picture, it is part of the series of Marvel Comics movies released since 2008, (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor) that will lead to next Summer’s first blockbuster, in May 2012, The Avengers. Of all of the recent Marvel motion picture heroes, Captain America is easily the most likable.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is the runt of Brooklyn, who wants to serve America during World War II. Despite the protests of Colonel Chester Philips (Tommy Lee Jones), research Professor Erskine (Stanley Tucci) sees a good heart in Steve Rogers and recruits the scrappy Dodgers fan for a special scientific experiment. With Howard Stark’s (Dominic Cooper) technical influence, the experiment is a success and Steve Rogers becomes known as Captain America.

First used as a propaganda tool, Captain America comes under the radar of the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), a villain who takes up where Adolph Hitler left off. As the Red Skull plots the destruction of America, Captain America recruits the Howling Commandos and kicks some “Nazi” butt.

Given his work with The Rocketeer, October Sky and Jurassic Park III, director Joe Johnson is perfect to bring both the spectacle and sensitivity to this picture.

The acting ensemble has fun with this film. Jones’s fast-talking delivery has audiences howling with laughter. As Iron Man’s daddy, Cooper does a good impression of his fictional son (played by Robert Downey Jr.)

Yet, this film belongs to Chris Evans and thrives because of his sincere performance. Captain America is what a summer Saturday matinee blockbuster should be.

For those who cannot get into Harry Potter, Captain America or Cowboys & Aliens this weekend,  the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival presents the 10th Annual French Film Festival at Cinema Paradiso July 28-31. 954-525–FILM or www.fliff.com.

By Dave Montalbano

After a decade, the cinematic Harry Potter series comes to a close.

AdventuresOfCinemaDave.com

My introduction to Harry Potter began 12 years ago when Deerfield Beach Percy White Youth Services librarian David Serchay called me when I was working at Sunrise Dan Pearl Library to check the shelf status of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. (Five years later, David went on a “set-up” date to go see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with Bethany, who is now mother to David’s twin girls).

If the Beatles were the social myth of my childhood
and Star Wars the transitional myth of Generation X’s adolescence, then Harry Potter
and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry has become the cultural hero of the new millennium.

With a record-breaking box office revenue of $168 million, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 delivers upon its original promise. The production team was wise to divide this final movie into two parts, sustaining both narrative flow and the attention to detail.

Part 2 picks up directly from Part 1. The evil Lord Volde-mort (Ralph Fiennes) has obtained the invincible Elder Wand, while Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his consorts, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) bury a loyal ally. As the evil magician grows more powerful, Harry and his allies seek Voldemort’s Achilles heel. As war wages between wizards, beasts and dementors, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry becomes ground zero.

With the exposition out of the way, director David Yates is freed to direct three extremely well-done action sequences involving a heist, a dragon and a fire in a vault. These scenes are the ones that fans have been waiting for since the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The visual clarification is worthy of the action sequences from a John Ford/John Wayne classic.

Since the opening of the first film a decade ago to the current release, the Harry Potter franchise has enjoyed a quality ensemble of British actors. As the monstrous Professor Snape, Alan Rickman deserves kudos for balancing the contradictory motives of the menacing character. Of course, the series would have folded years ago if it were not for the sincere, consistent and empathetic performances from Radcliffe, Grint and Watson.

The closure from this final film is equal to the closure I felt concluding J.K. Rowling’s book. Let’s enjoy the waning days of Harry Potter mania and look toward our next social mythology.

By Dave Montalbano

AdventuresOfCinemaDave.com

As Transformers departs the Museum of Discovery to make room for the final installment of Harry Potter, two more independent movies will be opening locally, The Trip, a funny flick, and Into Eternity, a serious documentary.

Into Eternity asks a simple question – how do you remove nuclear waste? Of course, the answers are not easy when one has to factor in that the contamination is poison to humans and that waste must NOT be touched for 100,000 years. Thus is the dilemma that is debated in this documentary from Denmark.

Writer/director Michael Madsen’s 75-minute documentary has visual echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain. We witness long, static shots of entering storage caves and machines lowering nuclear container into pools of H2O. Presented in subtitles and dubbed English, we listen to the pessimistic “experts” debate the disposal problem.

Dead pan arguments over the philosophical question “How do we explain this problem to future generations?” No answer is truly obtained, but Madsen provides a pointed commentary. As the debate becomes as absurd as the arguments in the war room reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb,  the camera cuts to a reindeer pooping in the forest.

The Trip is a quasi documentary that involves a road trip and fine dining in the
English countryside. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (British Television’s equivalent to Bing Crosby & Bob Hope) portray fictional versions of themselves. Coogan is given an assignment to be a food critic. Unable to take his girlfriend, Coogan takes his married friend and arch rival, Brydon.

As Coogan and Brydon enter each pub, there are multiple montages of gourmet food being prepared. While dining, the two men amuse themselves by doing impressions of celebrities like Michael Caine, Sean Connery and Richard Burton. When the two start getting on each other’s nerves, Brydon breaks into another impression.

This film is a repetitive six- day journey that contains very British references and pithy comments, as one character states, “Behind every joke is a cry for help.”

By Dave Montalbano

www.AdventuresofCinemaDave.com

Since Roots became a ratings-winner in the winter of 1977, miniseries dominated broadcast television until the assimilation of cable television.  Opening tomorrow in local theaters, Bride Flight has the feeling of the miniseries The Thorn Birds. This multilingual epic contains gorgeous cinematography featuring the New Zealand countryside.

The film opens with the death of Frank (Rutger Hauer), whose funeral is attended by three diverse women of Dutch heritage. Bride Flight flashes back to 1953 when these three World War II survivors take a flight that wins a transcontinental race from Europe to New Zealand.

The three women are a diverse bunch. Esther (Anna Drijver) is a Holocaust survivor who masks her Jewish ethnicity. Due to an inconvenient pregnancy, Esther gives her child to the happily married, but barren, Marjorie (Elise Schaap).  Marjorie and Esther’s stories intertwine in tragic and humorous ways. The third bride is Ada (Karina Smulders), a woman who develops a crush on young Frank (Waldemar Torenstra), who is establishing a new wine business.

Slow paced with a rambling, but interesting narrative flow, Bride Flight should appeal to the audience weary of Transformers, Cars and Pirates.  This film is like reading an engrossing book while sipping red wine under the sunset.

Reading, or the lack of reading, is the fundamental concern of the documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times. With the rise of computer usage, the New York Times has become known as “the dinosaur media”. Having relied on bloated advertising revenue streams, the major daily newspapers lost sight of it’s circulation figures.

This film documents this monster medium as it steps into the future. It concludes on an optimistic note, but it feels false, as if this is a propaganda puff piece for this once-respected newspaper institution. To director Andrew Rossi and writer Kate Novak’s credit, they do not flinch showing the tearful layoffs of employees who were devoted to their jobs and showing two reporters who misrepresented the stories they were covering.

But while the film shows the feud with the Tribune organization, it ignores the criticism from The Drudge Report and Fox News. In the midst of this, the one journalistic hero to rise from this film is Times columnist David Carr, who. the story centers around.

By Dave Montalbano

The Bucks Class of ’81 has been reminded of another milestone with the release of Transformers: Dark of the Moon. X-Men: First Class featured the Cuban Missile crisis of Oct. ‘62, and now the third Transformers flick reveals the secret reason why President John F. Kennedy insisted that America land on the moon by the end of the decade.

Using planet Earth as the arena, the intergalactic feud between the good guys, Autobots, and the bad guys, Decepticons, continues. In the middle of this mess is Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeof) and U.S. Army Lt. Colonel William Lennox (Josh Duhamel), two characters who save the world in the previous two Transformers movies.

Sam and William are aligned with Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), who awaits the second coming of his mentor, Sentinel Prime (Leonard Nimoy). Feeling snubbed by this reunion, the menacing Megatron (Hugo Weaving) plots mass destruction, beginning in Chicago.

Heeding my criticism about attention deficit disorder editing, this new Transformers movie is easy on the eyes, making the action sequences the most thrilling of the three movies. The characters are less cartoony and there is a sense of danger in the science fiction violence. The humor is situational, with many in-jokes for science fiction aficionados. On a six-story IMAX screen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is Saturday matinee popcorn-eating fun.

For those seeking similar entertainment minus the budget of a Spielberg production, Kurt Donath’s locally-made Lucky Streak and the Crime Fighters will be screened and discussed tomorrow at 5 p.m. and Sunday at 11:15 a.m. at the Florida Supercon (www.
floridasupercon.com). Lucky Streak (Darlene Dinges), teenage daughter of Amazing Grace (Rachel Galvin), joins crime fighters to foil Dr. Dragon’s plot for world domination. If one can get over theatrical acting, the dialog is quite funny. Anthony Espina’s musical score carries the film.

For those seeking to renew the roots of American culture, Boston’s on the Beach will present their 2nd Annual Red, White and Blues Festival on A1A off Atlantic Avenue, from July 1-4. Much like the late Don Cohen’s Riverwalk Blues Festival, Red, White and Blues will host a three-ring circus of musical performers, such as Joey Gilmore, Iko Iko and Matt “Guitar” Murphy.

Best known as Aretha Franklin’s henpecked husband from the two Blues Brothers movies, Murphy brings Blues authenticity to Delray Beach. Support this Blues legend this Saturday
at 4 p.m.

By Dave Montalbano

He has not made a movie in 35 years, but the ghost of John Wayne still roams the celluloid countryside. With the release of the Coen Brothers True Grit, John Wayne’s original classic has been given much airtime on cable stations. Note that I wrote “John Wayne’s True Grit,” not “Joel and Ethan Coen Brother’s True Grit;” for this foreshadows the philosophical differences between these two fine motion pictures, which tell the same story but were filmed 40 years apart.

Both films follow the novel written by Charles Portis.

In the new film, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfield) wants to avenge the murder of her father by the notorious Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Mattie recruits Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a double tough, one-eyed marshal. The two are joined by Le Beouf (Matt Damon), a cocksure Texas Ranger who antagonizes the Marshal.

Cogburn is Bridges’ best performance in recent weeks and Matt Damon creates the correct balance between naiveté and arrogance. This is Steinfeld’s film from beginning to end. A stoic character throughout, her vulnerable time is a special moment.

As literature, True Grit ranks with To Kill a Mockingbird in terms of presenting a young woman’s rite of passage. Both films open and close with Ross’s perspective. The fundamental difference between these two is that the Coen Brother’s vision is dark and pessimistic, while John Wayne’s vision is more life-affirming.

There are numerous reminders of death in the new True Grit with plenty of corpses strewn about the scenery. Both films end at the grave of a dearly departed character; the tone is somber for the Coen Brother’s interpretation. The John Wayne version shows the value of postponing death and riding beyond the sunset.

The new True Grit is one of the best things on the big screen today and the public has rewarded this film with consistent Box Office revenue. With the absence of Attention Deficient Disorder editing, the shootouts and the showdowns have more emotional clarity.

Like Jazz, Blues and musical theater, Westerns are a great American cultural art form. While the character archetypes are the prodigies of Homer and Virgil’s ancestors, the landscapes and mountain vistas capture the beauty of our nation’s natural bounty. Filmmakers should take heed of True Grit’s success. There is a need in our society today for big screen story telling like this.