Movie reviews

The following are capsule reviews of movies recently reviewed by Catholic News Service.

Apollo 18 (Dimension/Weinstein)
An inventive horror film presented — in the spirit of "The Blair Witch Project" — as a documentary, purporting to tell the story of a top-secret mission to the moon, and why we dare not return there anytime soon. Christmas 1973 finds NASA preparing the titular spacecraft and training its eager astronauts (most prominently Warren Christie and Lloyd Owen). Once on the lunar surface, Owen's character goes walkabout, stumbles upon footprints and a dead Soviet cosmonaut, and the fun, so to speak, begins. Before long things start to go bump in the night, shrieks are heard, and creepy crawlies are on the march as Spanish director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego's Hollywood debut morphs into a monster movie. Sporadic but intense moments of terror and fleeting profane and crude language. (A-III, PG-13)

Brighton Rock (IFC)
This powerful adaptation of Graham Greene's 1939 novel — first brought to the screen in a 1947 noir thriller — revolves around a depraved young hoodlum (Sam Riley) who manipulates a naive waitress (Andrea Riseborough) to avoid being arrested for two brutal murders he commits in the coastal resort of Brighton, England. By setting the story in 1964, writer-director Rowan Joffe puts the violence and the two lead characters' Catholic faith in a more relatable social context than in the original. Yet the picture poses timeless and tough questions about good and evil while evoking visceral menace and moral dread; its potentially objectionable elements can be judged acceptable for adults willing to grapple with Greene's richly complex view of Catholicism and of faith in general. Considerable violence, primarily involving knives, brief nongraphic marital lovemaking, some profanity and sexual innuendo, and much rough and crude language. (L, no MPAA rating)

Colombiana (TriStar/Stage 6)
Over-the-top action flick in which a highly trained assassin (Zoe Saldana) carries out contracts for her uncle (Cliff Curtis) while awaiting the opportunity to turn her skills against the Colombian gangsters (led by Beto Benites and Jordi Molla) who murdered her parents when she was a child (Amandla Stenberg). But the dogged pursuit of an FBI agent (Lennie James) and her romance with an increasingly nosy artist (Michael Vartan) threaten to thwart her revenge. Pure pulp, director Olivier Megaton's shoot-em-up expends ammo at a "Scarface" pace, yet generally demurs from showing the gory consequences of its gun battles, or of its heroine's more creative hits, such as that involving a shark tank. Constant, largely bloodless, action violence, vengeance theme, brief nongraphic premarital sexual activity, a few uses of profanity, at least one instance of rough language, frequent crude or crass terms. (L, PG-13)

The Debt (Focus)
This stylish — though frequently violent — remake of the 2007 Israeli spy thriller of the same name is a game of cat-and-mouse across two time periods as three Mossad agents (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds) track down and capture a Josef Mengele-like Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen). Their feat — told in flashback by their younger selves (Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington) — has made them national heroes. But it seems there's more to their exploit than the official story recounts. While suitable only for mature viewers open to challenging material, as directed with flair by John Madden, this gritty drama will certainly keep them guessing right up to the end. Considerable bloody violence, a disturbing portrayal of anti-Semitism, brief nongraphic premarital sexual activity, some rough language. (L, R)

Shark Night 3 (Rogue)
A gaggle of Tulane University students — played by Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Alyssa Diaz, Chris Carmack, Katherine McPhee, Singua Walls and Chris Zylka — head out to a Louisiana saltwater lake for a bacchanal, only to find they're all on the menu of the titular predators. Director David R. Ellis borrows his stale formula from any number of 1980s screamers in which nubile young people are slaughtered by some relentless killer — a repulsive recipe to which he adds only the fins. Excessive gore, rear male and partial upper female nudity, sexual banter and frequent profane, crude and crass language. (O, PG-13)

—CNS


Catholic News Service classifications: A-I — general patronage; A-II — adults and adolescents; A-III — adults; L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling; O — morally offensive.