Directed by: Alejandro Agresti
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Keanu Reeves, Christopher Plummer
Rated: PG for some language and a disturbing image.
Parental Notes: This is a fairly innocuous film for preteens and older kids. Young children might be a bit spooked by a sequence early in the film when a man is hit by a bus.
"The Lake House" is that rare commodity, a time-travel romance. Like "Kate and Leopold" before it, it uses an improbable time-related plot device to bring two people from different eras together -- but in this case, they're from two years apart rather than two centuries. Their inter-annual correspondence involves a number of paradoxes that will likely send any science fiction philosopher into an apoplectic state, but this is after all a romance film. It runs on emotion, not on logic.
Lonely doctor Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock, "Miss Congeniality 2") reluctantly moves out of a beautiful house over a lake as the film opens. She leaves a note for the new tenant saying that both the box in the attic and the dog paw prints by the door were there when she moved in and asks him to forward her mail, then heads off for her new post in a Chicago hospital.
The new tenant is Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves, "Constantine"), whose father designed the house before he became internationally famous for his architecture. Alex is an architect as well, but has rebelled against his father by going into the business of building condos. Alex finds the note but is confused: nobody has lived in the house for years, there are no dog paw prints by the door, and there is no box in the attic. Plus, she got the date wrong. He politely writes a note correcting her and asking if she left the letter at the wrong house, and she finds his reply when she returns to the lake house after a rough day at work.
They begin a correspondence when she writes back to inform him that he's the one with the wrong date and she knows perfectly well which house she means. They soon discover that they are two years apart, but can communicate by leaving notes in the mailbox. They are both at difficult points in their lives and find an understanding friend in each other, so they continue writing and are soon falling in love.
Alex desperately wants to meet Kate, so they arrange a dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in Chicago (one advantage of a cross-time romance is that it makes getting dinner reservations easier). What happens that evening is the first clue that there is some other obstacle than time keeping them apart.
Experienced moviegoers will likely find "The Lake House" predictable and flawed, but as I said before, this is a film about emotion, not about logic. The fact that many of the conversations Alex and Kate have seem to use an instant messenger system rather than letters left in a mailbox must be overlooked, as must the logistical time line problems presented by several of the film's events. This is not a film to analyze for believability, it is a film to allow to wash gently over you and tug at your heartstrings.
Reeves and Bullock have matured greatly since they shared the screen in "Speed," but they are still quite charming. It helps that their roles are well-written and offer them the chance to be thoroughly romantic. A romance movie lives or dies in its lead actors' performances, and by that metric "The Lake House" is a success.
Directed by: Justin Lin
Starring: Lucas Black, Sung Kang, Brian Tee, Nathalie Kelley
Rated: PG-13 for reckless and illegal behavior involving teens, violence, language and sexual content.
Parental Notes: This is a fairly innocuous film aside from the over-the-top racing. Provided you trust your preteen or teen not to be overly influenced to take up street racing, this should be a fine film for them.
If you are reading this review to find out whether or not you should see “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” the answer is probably no. Folks who will enjoy this movie can almost certainly tell from the previews that they will and don't need a reviewer to tell them. This is not a problematic film, full of character development, deep philosophical questions, and complex storylines. Those films may send you to the reviews before they draw you to the theater, but a big, stupid action fest like “Tokyo Drift” is another beast entirely. Although it shares its title with two earlier racing-related films, all that ties the movie itself to “The Fast and the Furious” and “2 Fast 2 Furious” is a cameo near the end.
Shawn (Lucas Black, “Jarhead”) is a teenager in trouble. He likes racing fast cars and getting into trouble, and gets sent to live with his dad, a Navy guy in Tokyo, so that he won't wind up in jail. Black plays Shawn with plenty of country drawl and a terrific cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. He looks like he had a ton of fun playing this rowdy kid, and it's easy to forgive the fact that he's significantly older than the seventeen Shawn is supposed to be.
Of course, Shawn winds up in the underground racing scene in Tokyo too. Run by the local bigwig, D.K. (Brian Tee, “Fun with Dick and Jane”), it's a blend of Japanese fashion, wild parties, and incredible races. The racing scenes are mind blowing, from the big-bang opening of the film to the mother of all chase scenes near the end. There's very little in the way of obvious visual effects -- CGI helps blend camera shots together to give one long view of particularly impressive race sequences, but that seems to have been about it.
The film's subtitle comes from drifting, a graceful method of skidding around corners that is all the rage in the film's races. If you do it right, you are able to slide your car around sharp turns at incredible speeds. If you do it wrong, as Shawn finds out all too quickly when Han (Sung Kang, “The Motel”) loans him a very nice car to race D.K., you crash into things. It's stunning to watch the way the stunt drivers put the cars through their paces, slaloming around slower cars on the streets, around curves in mountain roads, and even up and down the spiral ramp in a parking garage.
While Han teaches Shawn how to drift so that he can race and earn money to cover the car he wrecked, a romantic subplot is offered in the form of D.K.'s girlfriend, Neela (Nathalie Kelley, making her debut). Shawn falls for her nigh-instantly, which only makes D.K. dislike him more. When D.K. and Han wind up on opposite sides of a gang war of sorts, Shawn chooses Han's side, and soon even D.K.'s Yakuza uncle is taking notice of the brouhaha.
Fortunately the violence is fairly low key and mostly perpetrated against cars. Auto lovers will cringe at the damage inflicted on all the beautiful racing cars, but action fans will be cheering. This is a big, dumb racing movie with no pretensions. It's good summer entertainment, but eminently forgettable.
Directed by: Pierre Morel
Starring: David Belle, Cyril Rafaelli, Larbi Naceri, Dani Verissimo
Rated: R for strong violence, some drug content and language.
Parental Notes: This is an action movie with minimal gore, but there is plenty of fighting, gunplay, and some blood. It's a soft R but more intense than a PG-13.
“District B-13” is a French action flick, and although you might not think of a French movie with subtitles as being a way to get your action fix, it just might change your mind. The film stars David Belle, the creator of Parkour -- a sport where individuals catapult themselves over, around, and through obstacles on the urban landscape. His background is apparent in the film's amazing on-foot chase scenes. Co-star Cyril Rafaelli has worked on a number of films as a stunt man and a fight choreographer, and his expertise stands him in good stead here.
The story, developed in part by Luc Besson (“La Femme Nikita”), is straightforward, as an action movie should be. It's 2010, and the worst criminal part of Paris has been walled off District B-13. Damien (Rafaelli) is an undercover cop with incredible martial arts skills. Leito (Belle) is an idealistic resident of B-13 who got thrown in prison while trying to clean up his home neighborhood. When a massive bomb is stolen and accidentally activated by the biggest crime boss in B-13, the two of them are paired up by Damien's superiors to get to the bomb and defuse it before it goes off.
It's a simple buddy movie plot, with Leito and Damien at each other's throats in the beginning and pals by the end. But then, it's not pretending to be a deep, intellectual flick. Sure, there's a little social commentary to be seen if you want to look for it (particularly since the riots in France last year), but this is an action movie. We go to movies like this to see incredibly fit young men leaping around and fighting, and “District B-13” delivers that in spades.
The stunts in the film are spectacular. A baddie who fails to capture Leito during the film's opening sequence describes him as “a bar of soap” and that's accurate. No matter how tight the situation, he finds a way out – leaping over things, bouncing off walls, vaulting over railings. It's astonishing to watch, and one of the highlights of the film. Rafaelli holds his own, and brings an efficient fighting style to the film. The fight sequences are unrealistic, but not compared to the Hong Kong wirework style becoming so prevalent these days. This is more in the vein of “The Transporter” movies (which Rafaelli worked on), with wide views of intense fight sequences and occasional use of slow motion to play up a particularly graceful move. Folks who complain about the close-in filming of fights in most American action films will breathe a sigh of relief at the good views we get here.
There's a subplot involving the big bad crime boss' kidnapping of Leito's little sister, which shouldn't surprise action movie aficionados. She's a good character for a teenage gal in an action film, however, and she holds her own in the handful of scenes where she's not tied up or doped by the bad guys. Even so, it's annoying that the only (and I do mean only) female character in the entire film is essentially a plot device to make Leito angry at the crime boss.
Flaws and all, though, this is a solid action film. The subtitles might scare some folks away, but they shouldn't: action needs no translation. “District B-13” is under hyped but it's playing in a number of theaters and is well worth catching. That goes double for those interested in seeing something a little different than your average action flick.