ne thing you can say about “Sanctum” is that the in-your-face 3-D format in which it was shot has the effect of making you feel like you’re trapped in an enormous, flooding cave with the characters. Alas, the clunky dialogue and painful predictability of the story do not improve in 3-D.
' Shot in Australia with a largely Australian cast (sometimes using unfamiliar Australian slang), “Sanctum” is the story of a caving expedition to a never-explored cavern in New Guinea. The team’s adventure-loving billionaire sponsor Carl (Ioan Gruffudd) and his mountain-climbing girlfriend (Alice Parkinson) are arrogantly confident. Then a storm hits on the surface and causes the cave to flood.
Team leader Frank (Richard Roxburgh) tries to save everyone, but Carl clashes with him, the situation worsens, and people start to die. Footage of team members scuba diving through the cave in search of an exit are harrowing, as are the several drownings and other fatal injuries. The 3-D cameras surely increase the feelings of claustrophobia and danger. A subplot about Frank and his estranged son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), helps float the story a bit, but most of the character-based narrative is soggier than the setting.
THE BOTTOM LINE : Though “Sanctum” is a relatively mild R, the script is full of strong profanity. As the situation worsens, we see severe injuries and several drownings. The dead bodies also tend to reappear later on, washed along by an underground river. In a couple of instances, mortally wounded, suffering characters are “helped” to die.
“Another Year” PG-13 — An utterly un-Hollywood film, “Another Year” unfolds at a leisurely pace and is very much worth the attention of teen cinema buffs. Working with many of his regular troupe of actors, innovative British writer/director Mike Leigh (Oscar-nominated for original screenplay) takes a look at Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a happily married couple who are so genuinely kindhearted that miserable people are forever drawn to their easygoing warmth and they haven’t the heart to turn anyone away. Chief among them is Mary (Lesley Manville), a work friend of Gerri’s who is in her 40s, unattached, and often drunk. The movie follows Gerri, Tom, and their needy circle of friends and family through a full year, each season noted with the couple working in their communal garden plot. They are not beautiful or rich, but they are beguiling all the same.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Themes that deal with adult loneliness (Imelda Staunton is amazing as a patient of GerriÂ’s) and depression may be too intense for some younger teens. Characters drink to excess and smoke. One estranged relative is apparently a criminal and quite threatening in his demeanor. The dialogue includes occasional profanity.
“The Rite” PG-13 — High-schoolers fascinated by occult thrillers may be pulled into the baroque world of “The Rite.” Based on a nonfiction book by Matt Baglio, it’s about Michael (Colin O’Donoghue), a skeptical American seminarian who doubts his own faith.
A professor sends Michael to Rome to train as an exorcist, believing that MichaelÂ’s childhood experience helping his father (Rutger Hauer) run a mortuary will help him handle exorcisms. The filmÂ’s violent episodes are not excessively graphic, but they are disturbing enough to be problematic for some middle-schoolers.
Though it incorporates all the clichés of the genre, “The Rite” also benefits from intelligent writing and a uniformly excellent cast that underplays the story’s lurid aspects. And once Michael meets an aging exorcist, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins) in Rome, and a journalist (Alice Braga) interested in exorcism, the talk and action pick up nicely.
THE BOTTOM LINE : Exorcism scenes show a young pregnant woman (who we learn was raped by her father) contorting and writhing and spitting out nails. A boy who has nightmares about a demon mule has hoof marks and bite marks on his torso. The faces of characters possessed by demons go through veiny transformations. One character has a fatal hemorrhage. The script includes occasional midrange profanity. A couple of lethal road crashes are depicted, and Michael has flashbacks to his childhood, seeing his mother dead on the mortuary table.
“The Green Hornet” PG-13 — The mix of irreverent humor and 3-D action in “The Green Hornet” may entertain high-schoolers, at least for a while. This superhero adaptation has true moments of high hilarity, but it runs out of steam. Even the Green Hornet’s iconic, weaponized Chrysler Imperial can’t relieve the tedium of endless car chases.
Star Seth Rogen co-wrote the script, so it isn’t surprising that he’s given the story a trash-mouth edge. The film has too much sexual innuendo and profanity for many middle-schoolers. Add the offbeat style of director Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” R, 2004) and you have an odd mix: The repartee is straight out of Rogen’s earlier movies (i.e. “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” R, 2008), while the action and chases look arty.
Britt Reid (Rogen) inherits his rich father’s newspaper and meets Kato (Jay Chou), a former employee of his dad’s who is an engineering and martial arts genius. They form a crimestopping duo — the Green Hornet and his (far more gifted) sidekick.
THE BOTTOM LINE : The profanity-peppered dialogue (midrange, not ultra-strong), the portrayal of boozy nights out, and the implication that Britt Reid has serial one-night stands and is sex-obsessed all make this a PG-13 less appropriate for middle-schoolers. The mayhem has a comic tilt, but can be intense, with point-blank shootings and head-banging fights.
“The Mechanic” R — Teens 17 and older who love to see Jason Statham do his engaging tough-guy thing won’t be disappointed in “The Mechanic.” Statham plays a by-the-book hit man caught up in a scheme not of his making.
Arthur (Statham) usually takes his orders from the genial Harry (Donald Sutherland). Then one day the head guy (Tony Goldwyn) at the murky organization for which they both work (a crime syndicate? the CIA?) tells Arthur he must kill Harry, who has become a loose cannon.
Things get more complicated when Harry’s bereft son Steve (Ben Foster), unaware of Arthur’s involvement in his father’s death and another kind of loose cannon himself, asks Arthur to train him to be a hit man. Steve likes violence, but lacks restraint, so it gets messy. “The Mechanic” covers no new ground, but it’s slick.
THE BOTTOM LINE : Victims die by drowning, strangulation, stabbing, point-blank gunfire, beating and in explosions. The deaths are not as graphic as in some R-rated action films, but they are still bloody. The script contains strong profanity and a couple of very explicit sexual situations with partial nudity, one between actual characters and one in a porn video. Characters also smoke and drink.
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