Ender’s Game falls a little flat

Speciality Theatre

Ender's Game

**

Stars: Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld. 

Director: Gavin Hood

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri-Sat 

2:30pm, 6:15pm, 9pm; Sun 

1:45pm, 4:30pm, 7:15pm; Mon-Thurs 2:30pm, 6pm, 8:30pm.

Runtime: 114 minutes

Action, adventure, sci-fi

In a future where families are encouraged not to overbreed, Ender Wiggin is “a third,” the third child born to his family. “An extra.”

Skinny and pale, he is bullied at school. But he’s been observed, singled out by the state. How he problem-solves during video games, how he copes with bullies — his cunning, ruthlessness and measured compassion — are assets.

“The world’s smartest children are our best hope,” military leaders tell each other. And Ender (Asa Butterfield) is such a “best hope,” chosen for Battle School, selected to be a leader because Young Adult fiction desperately needs another “chosen one.”

Ender’s Game, based on Orson Scott Card’s novel, is a glossy, humourless march through a future where kids are our best warriors, able to multi-task combat duties and reason out strategies for battle success in an instant.

Even taking into account the limitations of an “introduction to a franchise” film, Ender’s Game is pretty stiff. 

Shiny spaceships, vivid space battles (simulations for the trainees) and kids who don’t quite fill out their jumpsuits and cool combat games are all fine. With all the bullying and kids-turned-into-killers stuff, the film never feels less than heavy handed. 

Captain Phillips

****

Stars: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman. 

Director: Paul Greengrass

Rated: PG-13

Showing: Fri 2:30pm, 6:30pm, 9:30pm; Sat

6:30pm, 9:30pm; Sun

2pm, 4:45pm, 7:30pm; Mon-Thurs 7pm.

Runtime: 135 minutes

Biography, crime, drama 

It wasn’t that long ago and we remember how it turned out. So there’s no way that Captain Phillips, the movie about the 2009 pirate attack on the M.V. Maersk Alabama, should be as surprising and entertaining a sea tale as it is. But this thrilling retelling was directed by Paul (United 93) Greengrass, an unfussy director with a talent for tension. 

Neptune Theatre

The Counselor

**

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Ruben Blades, Rosie Perez.

Director: Ridley Scott.

Rated: R

Showing: Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sun 5:30pm; 

Mon-Thurs 7:30.

Runtime: 117 minutes

Action, crime, thriller

There are many signs that The Counselor is a ridiculous movie: the pseudo-intellectual philosophy spouted by various characters, including the leader of a Mexican drug cartel; Javier Bardem’s fright-wig hair; Cameron Diaz’s evil eyeliner, one of the primary identifying factors of her bad-girl character. This, though, is a silly, affected, self-important movie. 

Liberty Theatre

Free Birds

**

Stars: Woody Harrelson, Owen Wilson, Dan Fogler. 

Director: Jimmy Hayward. 

Rated: PG

Showing: Fri-Sat 1pm, 3:30pm, 6:45pm; Sun 2:30pm, 5:30pm; Mon-Thurs 3:45pm, 6pm.

Runtime: 91 minutes

Action, mystery, thriller.

Free Birds is more proof, as if 2013 needed it, that Hollywood has almost killed the animated goose that laid the golden egg.

No matter that in this case, the goose is a turkey. 

You didn’t need to be told that. But a year that has produced the clever and heartfelt The Croods and the  amusing Despicable Me 2 has also had a healthy dose of sausage factory about it. Epic, Monsters University, Planes, Escape from Planet Earth, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and Turbo — all major pictures that hint at a talent pool spread absurdly thin and an industry with sneering contempt for its audience.

Free Birds makes the same mistakes that generations of animators made before them, having a cute idea and a feeble script to go with it, lining up a “name” voice cast to over-compensate. 

Southside Theatre

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

****

Stars: Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll, Greg Harris

Director: Jeff Tremaine

Rated: R

Showing: Wed-Thurs 7:30pm.

Runtime: 92 minutes

Comedy

What to do when good things happen in bad movies... Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa asks that very question. 

The film is wildly inappropriate, ridiculously raunchy, mindlessly dangerous, comes with a warning label — and yet, this reviewer howled at the outrage wrought by 86-year-old Irving Zisman, played with a nifty old-guy limp by Johnny Knoxville.

In this rapidly expanding geriatric nation, and with the Jackass crew hitting middle age, it was just the right time for this Knoxville character to emerge. 

ALL REVIEWS MCT unless stated