Based on a memoir, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is the “true story” of Kim Baker, an American journalist sent to Afghanistan to be a war reporter despite having absolutely no experience (being unmarried and childless was short straw enough). In Afghanistan she is immediately confronted with the concept 
of “Kabul cute” – women who were a 4 back home in New York are suddenly 10s. Tina Fey plays the 4. Margot Robbie plays a 15.
Afghanistan is windy and gritty, basically a forgotten war now that Iraq is a better news story, but the more she sticks with it, the more Kim elicits candid remarks from her subjects. Billy Bob Thornton plays the guy who finds her nothing but a nuisance, admonishing her not to sleep with his marines.
It’s actually not a bad movie, considering it bombed at the box office. What went wrong? Possibly people didn’t like to see one of their favourite comediennes amid such a serious backdrop – it’s hard to laugh at limbs being blown off. And the very same war fatigue mentioned in the movie may contribute not wanting to hear about it in theatres, either. Bill Murray’s Rock the Kasbah suffered the same fate. And maybe Tina Fey’s just not ready to cross over genres, or to headline her own movie alone. Martin Freeman was great support in the movie but didn’t get any screen time in the trailers. And 
the trailer, for that matter, played up the movie’s comic aspect even though the movie’s a dramedy at best, lobbing one-liners like hand grenades into a pretty grim war zone.
But Fey actually does well, if you give her the chance. I thought she and Freeman were great together. The movie just doesn’t have a lot to say. It’s not a commentary on the war so much as one woman’s less glamorous version of Eat, Pray, Love. The real Kim Barker never broke any major news stories so there’s not a lot of insight and not much authenticity. I think the script had some great pieces but suffered from abrupt lurches in tone. Overall though, I’m glad I gave it my time, even if I didn’t Lima Mike Foxtrot Alpha Oscar.
an Oscar nomination for his work in 
box-office draw for four years running in the late 1930s, with hits like Curly Top and Heidi defining her career. Her wholesome image led to merchandising opportunities and soon she had a line of clothing, dolls and dishes, which doubled what she made in movies. She was tabloid fodder too: in American people gossiped about whether her curls were real, often tugging on her hair in person. Abroad it was thought that she was not a child at all, but a 30 year old dwarf, and even the Vatican set about confirming it. At the top of her fame she even got to meet the Roosevelts at the White House, but her popularity decreased sharply when she hit puberty, a fate all too many child stars know, but her agent didn’t see it coming and actually turned down the part of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (Judy Garland would snap it up). Several films made while she was a teenager flopped and she was retired completely at the ripe old age of 22.
Michael Jackson’s trial for sexual molestation), and followed up with a successful sequel, and memorable roles in My Girl, Richie Rich, and The Good Son. But guess what? Puberty! Macauley Culkin retired from acting at age 14 and nobody heard much from him except for the occasional arrest for drugs. He’s since popped back up doing very sporadic work and performing in a comedic rock band called Pizza Underground (he has previously stormed off a stage during a kazoo solo, which is not weird at all), and looking so haggard at times that fans worry he’s dying. So far, still alive.
portrayed a child prostitute. The role earned her her first Oscar nomination. She followed that up with successful turns in Freaky Friday and Bugsy Malone, making her a bona fide teen idol and the first on this list to continue working into her teens, and of course beyond. She interrupted her successful career to attend (and graduate) Yale, and though she loved her time as a student, she knew she wanted to pursue acting as a career. [Sidebar: during that time she was stalked by John Hinckley, who later attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagon in a bid to impress her.] Roles as an adult were sparse at first but she broke through for a second time playing a rape survivor in The Accused, and this time she won her Academy Award. She followed that up with The Silence of the Lambs, a wise choice that cemented her as a star, and then turned director with Little Man Tate. Her career has had some ups and downs but she’s worked consistently and just got her star on the walk of fame earlier this year, having directed George Clooney and Julia Roberts in 
al for Pizza Hut and achieved fame by the age of 11 , thanks to a starring role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense that garnered him an Oscar nomination (though he’d also appeared in Forrest Gump). He capitalized on his fame with follow-up roles in Pay It Forward and AI: Artificial 
Intelligence, earning him praise and Roger Ebert’s assessment that he was one of the finest working actors of the time. But you know what happens next: puberty, and its accompanying acting slump. He went dormant for a while, except for the obligatory child actor DUI, but is now back at it, acting in films that nobody sees.
opposite Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho established him as an edgy heartthrob with leading man potential, but immersing himself in intense roles was taking its toll, as were his struggles with addictions. River had turned to acting in a bid to support his family but music was his first love, and he started playing in a band. He even got to play with his friend Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), which is what his siblings were there to see that night at the Viper Room. Flea was onstage playing with Johnny Depp when River was outside dying on the sidewalk. His brother Joaquin dialed 911 while his sister Rain gave him mouth to mouth. He was rushed to the hospital but died, of a drug overdose, at the age of 23. Fans were shocked – he’d had a squeaky-clean image until then (“the vegan James Dean” they called him) and the press loved the story, so much so that they broadcast Joaquin’s 911 call and snuck into the funeral home to snap pics of him in his casket. He was slated to start filming Interview With the Vampire just 2 weeks after his death – Christian Slater replaced him, and donated his salary to two of Phoenix’s favourite causes, Earth Save and Earth Trust.
Abigail Breslin: A familiar refrain: she began appearing in commercials at the age of 3. Her first film role was with Joaquin Phoenix in Signs, but of course what you really know her from is putting the sunshine into 
this list, Jodie Foster, for Nim’s Island, and had a fun and memorable role in Zombieland. She also took on Broadway, playing that role that Patty Duke made famous in The Miracle Worker, and acted opposite powerhouses Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep in August: Osage County.
father, which culminated in her getting molested by his drug dealer. She went on to star in The Bad News Bears and Little Darlings, and even became Michael Jackson’s first girlfriend, but she couldn’t hold on. Drugs derailed her. She made her one-time husband, volatile tennis star John McEnroe, look like the stable one in the relationship. She’s a millionaire smoking crack in her Manhattan apartment, unable to stop even when her behaviour was destroying her relationship with her own kids. Let’s hope the cycle does not repeat.
Piano, with her only previous credit playing a skunk in a school play. Did it fuck her up? Looks like no. She continued with moderate success as a child actress while also attending school, including one year at Columbia before roles in Almost Famous and the X-Men franchise helped her to transition into acting as a young adult. Then she hit it out of the park with her first role in television, starring in True Blood where she not only earned professional acclaim, she also met her husband, co-star Stephen Moyer. She has children who love her, step-children who tolerate her, and is managing to live scandal-free.
supporting her parents and paying their mortgage. This made her father increasingly volatile, and his abuse made Judith act out, pulling out her own eyelashes as well as her cat’s whiskers. Judith’s mother planned on leaving him but never got around to it – he shot his wife and 10 year old daughter in the head as they slept, then soaked them in gasoline and burned them before later killing himself.
cigarettes at Studio 54 at the age of 9, drinking at age 11, and baby’s first snort of coke by 13. It’s not a joke – the poor dear was in rehab at 14 and spent 18 months in a facility for the mentally ill. She attempted suicide and went back to rehab, and it wasn’t until she lived with David Crosby and his wife that she was able to turn things around, suing for emancipation at the age of 15. The rockiness continued though. She posed nude with her fiancé at the age of 17, and then again for Playboy (her godfather, Steven Spielberg, gifted her with a quilt to “cover herself up” and her Playboy photos doctored by his art department so she appeared fully clothed). Eventually she straightened herself out and went on to act, produce, and start a loving and stable family of her own.
appearing in the 1999 
You may remember young Danny as Jack Nicholson’s co-star in 
unable to accept his new limitations and circumstances, Will is surly and depressed. It makes for an unpleasant work environment for Lou but her financial desperation keep her hanging on, just barely, and that’s BEFORE she finds out he’s wickedly suicidal. Will’s in favour of going to Switzerland for end of life treatment now that life’s rather small and joyless, but he’s promised his parents six months, so he’s gritting his teeth as he suffers through them. Lou’s going to save him of course, with her quirk and her chattiness and her colourful penchant for terrible shoes, even if she has to make him fall in love with her to do it.
are always so ridiculously wealthy. Life might actually look a little bleak without the tricked out vans, front row orchestra seats, fully accommodated living spaces, round the clock care, and even accessible tropical travel destinations. It kind of makes you wonder whether these poverty-stricken caregivers are falling in love with their patient, or with their patient’s lifestyle. And in this movie at least, Will truly does not have anything to give but his money. He’s just an angry guy in a chair.
project onto the world, and they’re not wrong. Is this a disability snuff film? Disabled lives are worth living, and many are living well. However, living with a disability and living with pain are not the same. 
Writer\co-director Andrew Stanton had no desire to revisit Nemo’s world until he rewatched it in 3D and realized how many unanswered questions peppered Dory’s storyline. So good news, folks: those burning questions that have been keeping you awake the last dozen years finally get their time in sea – Why does Dory speak whale? How did she learn to read? And does her disability make for a lonely life?
the exhibits of an aquarium where she believes her parents live. Ty Burrell, who plays Ed’s son-in-law on Modern Family, voices a beluga whale with dubious echolocation abilities but a willingness to play “guide whale” for his visually impaired friend. In fact, the nice thing about this new world presented in Finding Dory is that the marine rescue centre in question rehabs sick fish – everyone’s got some sort of disability but they’ve got plenty of ability too, even Dory. Or especially Dory. My favourite new character is a bird named Becky, who, okay, maybe has some mental health issues, maybe is a little intellectually challenged, maybe isn’t as finely feathered as some, but MY GOD. The minute she was introduced I had a mini meltdown, wracked with laughter.
it in laughs and heart. Last week on our 
56 animal trainers had to be on set to corral the 1000 animals it took to bring the production together. The talking pig herself was actually a series of 48 real Yorkshire piglets because the babies grows so fast, plus an animatronic double (all the pigs were female – pig penises are too noticeable). A makeup artist would add a toupee and eyelashes to each, and the snout would be digitally manipulated so it appeared to be talking. The film was such an ordeal that James Cromwell, a vegetarian at the time, decided to become a strict vegan afterwards. In fact, the movie made trouble for the whole pork industry.
as played by Beasley, a Dogue de Bordeaux, one of the most ancient French breeds. He was so strong that during scenes where Tom Hanks walked him, he would often escape, besting Hanks who would drop the leash. Bad Hooch!
revenge. Glenn Close starred in the live-action remake, and was so convincing in her wig and makeup that one of the pups, a little guy named Perdy, would always run away. There are 101 Dalmatians in the movie but it took 230 puppies and 20 adults to complete the filming, and an untold number of raw hot dogs to rub over Jeff Daniels’ face in order to induce puppy licking. The dogs were highly-trained actors, but when the handler yelled “Sit”, it was invariably Daniels who did the sitting.
animatronic bears to use as stand-ins but when they were flown out to the Dolomites it was clear they just weren’t convincing enough and were hardly used. Bart was an Alaskan Kodiak bear, standing 9 and a half feet tall and weighing 1500lbs, although do remember that the camera always adds 10. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud called Bart “the John Wayne of bears.” His trainer insists that frequent collaborator Anthony Hopkins (he and Bart starred together in Legends of the Fall and The Edge) “respected him like a fellow actor” and indeed one movie critic credited Bart with “a milestone in ursine acting.” Bart made an appearance at the 70th Academy Awards in a tribute to animal actors, presenting an envelope to un unflappable Mike Myers.
Andre was played by a sea lion named Tory because seals are “notoriously hard to train” and “easily distracted.” Tory, like most sea lions, could not be house broken, making scenes shot indoors extra tricky. And little Tina Majorino’s tears were real in the final parting scene in part because Tory smelled so goddamned bad. But Tory went on to have a son named Andre who lives in Memphis Zoo where he pursues his dreams of being an artist – his paintings are available by auction.
this film, choosing horses familiar with parades or rodeo work for their crowd exposure, and then worked on their not spooking around gunfire. The trainer’s own Andelusian, Finder’s Key (star of Seabiscuit), did a lot of the heavy lifting and even did horse “drag” for the birth scene, where he played the mother since using a foal’s real mother would be too distracting. Finder is also the horse who was trained to jump clear over a tank – a feat accomplished using many carrots for bribes, as you can imagine.
captivity. The film’s popularity brought attention to his living conditions in a too-small tank with too-warm chlorinated water which made him sick. A custom tank was built for him in Oregon so he was flown from Mexico to his new home where he recovered enough to be moved to a sea pen in 1998. He was finally released from captivity in 2002 after 22 long years “behind bars” but he died just a year later at the age of 27 after the sudden onset of pneumonia.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Sophie the sea lion for Dr. Dolittle. Nowadays it’s all about the Pawscars, hosted by the American Humane Society, where Crystal the Capuchin monkey, aka “The Angelina Jolie of animal stars”, star of Night at the Museum and The Hangover: Part II, received the Lifetime Diva Achievement award recently. And this year the horses who trotted up the mountain in The Hateful Eight were awarded as well as Buttercup, the cat from the Hunger Games series.
reformed himself and leads a life of intrigue. Unfortunately for Hart, that intrigue’s about to hit a little close to home.
characters are one-note but a pleasure to spend an hour and a half with. The movie is action-comedy, which means there is never quite enough comedy, and the action itself becomes part of the farce and thus has no real consequence. But if you can put that aside, Kevin Hart is as good as we’ve seen him at the movies to date, even if he’s basically relegated to being The Rock’s straight man. Say what??? Yes – you read that correctly. The Rock is bringing the giggles. Together have crackling chemistry and they bro down in some pretty unexpected ways.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 