Phone Booth
RATING: R
STARRING: Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker, Katie Holmes, and Radha Mitchell
DIRECTOR: Joel Schumacher
PRODUCERS: Gil Netter and David Zucker
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Ted Kurdyla
WRITER: Larry Cohen
DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox
GENRE: Thriller
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older teenagers and adults
SUMMARY: In Phone Booth, a man accidentally answers a ringing phone, and the psycho with a high-powered rifle on the other end of the line suddenly begins controlling his life. Great suspense and excellent acting are marred by some deplorable language and violence.
In Phone Booth, Irishman Colin Farrell is Stu, a sleazy public relations professional who basically lies for a living and stops daily to talk on one of the few remaining phone booths in New York. After finishing his call, the phone immediately rings and a stranger begins to control Stu's life, while looking through the sights of a silenced, high-powered rifle! The mysterious sniper dramatically convinces Stu that he will kill him if he hangs up. He also makes Stu confess his sins to all onlookers, his wife and would-be mistress, lest, unbeknownst to them, he kills them with God-like impudence. Stu is emotionally stripped bare for all to see, as he tries to cajole, trick and reason with his would-be executioner. Phone Booth is a real nail-biter and delivers as promoted.
CONTENT: Light Romantic worldview with relativistic, emotion-based, spur-of-the-moment moral decisions made, and light secondary moral and redemptive Christian elements extolling truth, repentance, self-sacrifice, and marital fidelity at the end; about 30 mostly strong obscenities and profanities; violence includes death by rifle fire, bloody body throat cut by carpet knife, and fighting; no sex or nudity depicted but man considers cheating on his wife and scantily-clad women are portrayed; smoking; and, lying and deception rebuked.
Anger Management
RATING: PG-13 (sexual content and language)
STARRING: Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, Luis Guzman, Lynne Thigpen, Woody Harrelson, and John Turturro
DIRECTOR: Peter Segal
PRODUCERS: Jack Giarraputo and Barry Bernardi
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Adam Sandler, Allen Covert, Tim Herlihy, Todd Garner, and John Jacobs
WRITER: David Dorfman
DISTRIBUTOR: Columbia Pictures/Sony
GENRE: Comedy
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
SUMMARY: In Anger Management, Adam Sandler is Dave Buznik, a mild-mannered junior businessman in New York, who, through a series of "accidents" is sentenced by a court to go into an "Anger Management" group led by eccentric, but famous, Doctor Buddy Rydell, played by Jack Nicholson. As it turns out, the group is stranger than he could imagine, and the harder Dave tries to leave, the more entangled he becomes with Dr. Rydell. After several more mishaps, Dr. Rydell is in complete control of Dave's life, and the life of his girlfriend, Linda, played by Marisa Tomei. It quickly becomes apparent that "Buddy" is suffering from anger problems of his own.
Anger Management sounds fun, but it has several major problems. First, a significant plot device in the movie revolves around Dave's sexual insecurity. Secondly, the movie has every deviant behavior one could imagine to "color" the film, including scatological humor, distasteful homosexual jokes and foul language. Thus, despite some good writing and funny performances, much of Anger Management fits the category of unacceptable, juvenile locker room humor.
CONTENT: Strong mixture of pagan and homosexual worldviews with characters relying on strange psychology to fix root issues and many overt homosexual/lesbian portrayals; about 35 obscenities, three profanities, 10 jokes about body parts, 10 homosexual references or jokes, five other sexual references or jokes, and six instances of scatological or earthy/body language humor.
