Skizzerflake's Movie Ramblings - Reviews of the Stuff I See

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Also the franchise awakens

We’ve had the Star Wars universe around for 38 years now, longer than we’ve had a significant part of our population. More than any other film franchise, it’s spawned games, t-shirts, costumes, books, global brand recognition and sold an uncountable number of theater seats. And, yet, the creator of this wild west-samurai-roman empire-nazi-sci-fi epic came close to killing it himself by directing the flat, middle-whelming prequel series that was episodes I, II and III. It’s said sometimes that George Lucas can only direct robots, not humans. After all, anybody who turn Sam Jackson as Mace Windu, into a flat character, and leave us unimpressed with actors like Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson must be only adept at directing robots. I give great credit to Lucas for starting the series, creating the universe and introducing so much of the pre-digital FX that made the first trilogy work, but he really should stay away from direction. Thankfully, this time, direction was turned over to J J Abrams. If he hadn’t done anything else, keeping the whole story arc of Lost together indicates that Abrams respects the need to have story telling and human characters as the core of a series, even if it is a techie, epic monster such as Star Wars.

I don’t want to spoil anything for anybody who manages to isolate themselves from all of the hoo-raw that’s going around, but just to put things in context, in The Force Awakens, we see the plot of the original trilogy continuing, only 30 years later, as though the prequel trilogy had never happened. The Empire is gone, but the First Order has taken their place. The Death Star blew up a long time ago, but there’ s a newer, more powerful one now. The Emperor is gone, but now we have Supreme Leader Snoke, seemingly bigger and stranger. Darth Vader is gone, but he’s been replaced by Kylo Ren a younger and seemingly more merciless adept of Vader. It’s a generational turnover. Some of our old characters are still there and the rebellion, as usual, is hanging on by a thread, trying to strike and run against an empire that has overwhelming resources, technology and ruthlessness. Given that there are two more episodes in the epic and that the title tells us that The Force has only just awakened, you can probably guess that this episode will leave us with plenty more story to tell before it’s all really over. Spoiler-Phobia is rampant for this movie, so I'm not going to say much about the actors. Even telling you who their characters are could be interpreted as a spoiler, so, if you're interested, check out IMDB. The new characters are a good addition to the series.

I have to admit that I was unenthusiastic about seeing this on the opening day. I correctly expected long lines, a jammed theater, people in costumes, geeks carrying on fervent debates about the average springtime temperature of Hoth of the number of equivalent watts commanded by Darth Vader’s hands. People cheered when the movie started, cheered when familiar faces appeared and cheered when the rebellion did something good. Apparently, the magic has not been lost. I also felt disenchanted by the previous series and would have almost preferred to have no new series if they didn’t do it right. I’m happy to say that The Force Awakens has brought the franchise back from the brink (kinda like the rebellion). There’s a bunch of new characters (including a new cute robot). It’s full of links to the first trilogy, carries on the plot themes, AND…J J Abrams CAN direct human actors.

Unlike some recent films I have seen, the visuals in Force are not sketchy. Thankfully, it looked as though, as much as was possible, the movie was filmed on real sets, with props and costumed actors. Obviously it was also a great opportunity for the animators who added the space vehicle dogfights and giant explosions, but the animation that was done was done really well and integrated into the movie seamlessly. The acting and human drama was also done well. It was the focus of the movie. There’s not a whole lot of subtle drama here, mainly action acting, moralisms by the rebellion and evil from the Empire characters, but it was far better than the flat recitations in the prequel series. Focus on the characters is back and, thankfully there’s no new Jar Jar Binks to revile. There is a new cute robot, but that’s fine. We would have been disappointed if we didn’t have a new robot. The new characters you see in the trailer are fleshed out well, connected to the larger plot and have their own story lines. The old characters have predictably aged, but are well integrated into a story that had to contain a generational turn-over.

All things considered, I have to say that The Force Awakens is a roaring success. I was glad to have my diminished expectations exceeded. This film is an excellent continuation of the saga that’s been going on for nearly 4 decades now. The audience in the theater I attended was really happy, more people were lining up for the late showing. I can’t imagine that this will not be a huge success and hopefully the rest of the series (currently in production) will keep the momentum going. This is a really fun movie…don’t miss it.

I actually have seen Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing and enjoyed it.

And glad to see another VERY promising review of the new star wars. Looks like I need to get my but into a theater seat some time soon.

Concussion - Will The NFL Take a Big Hit to the Pocket?

Concussion hit our area theaters recently and seemed like a change from the usual holiday fare, so we tried it. The story revolves around an actual Nigerian doctor, Dr. Bennet Omalu, played by Will Smith. Omalu has multiple medical degrees and was working as a forensic pathologist, doing post-mortem exams in the Pittsburgh area in 2002. We (the audience, that is), see the last days of the life of former Steelers center Mike Webster, living in his pickup truck, seriously troubled and apparently suffering from dementia. When Webster is found dead of an apparent heart attack, Omalu is the pathologist who does the autopsy on him. Having some knowledge of Webster’s story, Omalu examines Webster’s brain but is surprised that he doesn’t see anything abnormal. It isn’t until Omalu becomes intrigued by the case that he takes on (at his own expense), a costly microscopic examination of Webster’s brain and finds that it’s riddled with abnormal proteins. Apparently, Webster isn’t alone and similar examinations of brains of other players who subsequently die from suicide, homelessness, etc yield similar abnormalities. Omalu begins an initially quiet campaign among co-workers, colleagues and supervisors to find out just how football and this abnormality are linked. This problem is almost certain to be difficult to discuss, since the damage is subtle, can only be confirmed post-mortem and because football, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, is a near-religion. As one character puts it, the NFL took Sunday away from God; it’s the only sport with it’s own day of the week.

Omalu gets the dubious privilege of naming the disorder, calling it Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). It’s very similar to the more familiar Dementia Pugilistica, also known among boxers as being Punch Drunk. It’s been subsequently associated with blast injuries, ice hockey, professional wrestling and accidents in cheerleading. None of those activities, however, have the level of cultural “importance” attached to football and the NFL. Omalu’s findings, if made public, threaten to damage the sport and probably, more importantly, threaten the NFL with liability problems that might slow the profit machine, so the NFL doesn’t want to hear or see anything about this. For Omalu, however, this is about getting out the truth. He has nothing to gain and a lot to lose, but he’s a fundamentally decent and moral guy who thinks that this story is more important than his fate. The rest of the story is about how the NFL and Omalu are both forced to come to grips with this problem.

The movie was written and directed by Peter Landesman, who has not done any other films I have seen. In addition to Smith, Concussion features Alec Baldwin as a medical colleague and a number of lesser known “character actors”, who are not marquis names. It’s a fairly minimal production, without any action scenes or big FX, and includes some of what may be actual or virtual archival footage of football action, but not much in the way of big scenes. It’s NOT a football epic, but a medical story. If you’re looking for sports glory, this is not your movie; nobody in the story cares about completions, interceptions, fumbles or pass blocks. It’s really a mostly medical story about how many hits a person’s head can take from childhood through the completion of an NFL career, with the added element of Omalu taking on the NFL, wanting them to acknowledge the problem.

For Will Smith, he’s not playing one of his usual flamboyant characters. Omalu is a polite, sincere, soft-spoken character who did not start out with the intention of “ruining” football. Smith’s portrayal and his fake accent mostly work. According to the credits, the actual Omalu was a consultant to the movie, so I guess it’s mainly correct. In general, it’s a decent film, a good example of the “ripped from the headlines” sort of expose. Everything about the movie seems to exude sincerity, including the plot, dialog and the actor’s performances. It’s also somewhat pedestrian, occasionally slow-moving and full of medical dialog. I had the impression that some of the audience, expecting an over-the-top Will Smith extravaganza or a sports movie, were somewhat disappointed that the character was not any of that. I liked the movie and Smith’s performance, but didn’t think it was much more than a decent historical flick. I already knew most of the story from media reports when it was actually happening, so the movie mainly served to flesh out Omalu as a character. It’s enjoyable enough and well crafted, but it won’t be the centerpoint for the best of 2015.

I don't know if you've seen it or are aware of it, but League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis is a documentary well worth looking at if you've an interest in this.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Interesting; I'll have to look for it. What's especially creepy about this story is that, in spite of the somewhat misleading "Concussion" title of the movie, it's not about diagnosable concussions where there's bruising of the brain and symptoms, but it's the sub-concussive blows that don't cause any symptoms but that do lead to cumulative damage. Someone calculated that a guy who starts playing football as a kid, plays in high school and college, then goes on to an NFL career, has about 50,000 blows to the head. Everybody gets these sort of blows, but a career football player gets an order of magnitude more of them. It's not just the helmet crackers, but every time player's heads get lurched from side to side or back and forth that causes the increments of damage when the brain sloshes around inside the skull. I don't know just what can be done about it, but in the case of this story, it's about just owning up to what's happening.

The Revenant - Everything and Everybody out there in the wilderness WANTS to kill YOU.

The Revenant is the latest film from Alejandro Inarritu, following up on his Oscar winning Birdman and other similarly intense movies like 21 Grams and Babel. It’s also a word meaning “one who returns after death or a long absence”. The story is based on a novelization of a real story, that of Hugh Glass. Glass’s story was widely known in the 19th century and has been the subject of books, TV and movies before, notably Man in the Wilderness, Apache Blood, an episode of Death Valley Days and several books, the most recent of which was The Revenant, written by Michael Punke in 2002.

This most recent adaptation is a partially fictionalized version of the actual story of Glass. In the movie, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explorer and guide for a fur “trapping” expedition in the general vicinity of North Dakota and Montana in 1823. Glass had a Native American wife (killed in a raid) and their son Hawk accompanies the gnarly group of hunters on an expedition they are not prepared for. Previous hunters in this area have over-harvested the animal population and alienated the local population so badly that one tribe stages a deadly raid on the party, killing a large number of its members. The remainder of the party wants to retreat, splits up, takes the hides they have and want to get out as the brutal winter sets in. That’s when things get really bad. Their guide Glass encounters a mother bear and her cubs. The bear attacks Glass, badly mauling him before Glass manages to kill the bear with his one-shot rifle and Bowie knife. A small group of the hunters stays with Glass, who is essential to the party but the angry redneck villain among them, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), wants to let Glass die, kills his son and urges the party to return to “civilization” (an army outpost). The rest of the story is one of an almost unbelievable (if it were not true) survival and the desire for revenge.

I’ll begin my comments by saying that his is a brutal, tense and difficult story, not for the queasy of stomach. Vivid human and animal violence is never more than minutes away. Happy endings are rare in this time and place. The destruction of Native American tribes, as well as the spoiling of the wilderness, are constantly foreshadowed and well underway. Just how much of this mythologized story (aside from Glass's survival) is literally true is beside the point. The context is a big part of the story.

Direction in this movie is similar to last year’s amazing Birdman. It’s relentless, up close, and unflinching, except that this time, it’s an epic struggle rather than the ravings of a Broadway producer. I can’t imagine that Inarritu will get the Best Direction Oscar two years in a row, but this movie is just as taut as Birdman. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity) is amazing, ranging from scenic long shots of mountains, snow and wilderness to extreme close-ups of blood, violence and evisceration. The color of almost everything in this frigid winter horror is white or dull brown, but the splotches of color here and there become the visual accents that really drive in the story.

The acting is dominated by Leonardo DiCaprio’s mostly wordless body language. Much of his “dialog” consists of grunts and screams as he tries to survive alone in this landscape. There’s a lot of the “Oscar Buzz” that usually surrounds a highly promoted movie like this, and it’s well deserved. Most of the movie appears to have been filmed on location, in a real wintery wilderness, soaking wet, buried alive and nearly frozen. It’s not a role for the physically timid. Tom Hardy, as the scary Fitzgerald, is clearly a supporting role, but it’s the sort of role that Hardy does best, a guy who’s nearly as grizzly as the bears he fears, is always walking around with an attitude that scares everybody else, and a man of few words that you probably wish he would keep to himself.

This movie is well worth seeing as long as you’re not in the mood for something light. Like the other current survival move, The Heart Of the Sea, there’s barely a smile or light moment in the entire 2 1/2 hours, only brief moments when nobody is near death or killing someone else. There’s nothing about this that romanticizes the frontier in 1823. It’s all there, the danger, conquest and exploitation that we don’t like to think about. It’s not a story with epic sweep, but a small, personal story that’s a metaphor for the bigger events. The movie was first shown before the new year, so I can’t imagine that it will not show up prominently in the upcoming Oscars. It's far better than Heart of the Sea, so, if you want to see one survival movie this winter, this one is it.

The Finest Hours - Heroism in Action

It was movie time, but due to the antics of the recent nor’easter Jonas, several of our regular theaters were still snowed in, so out we go to the recently plowed cineplex, which is mainly showing films we have already seen. What we had not seen was The Finest Hours, which received middling reviews (7.2 on IMDB, 59% critics, 72% viewers, on Rotten Tomatoes) in the movie press. The Finest Hours is the fictionalized true story of 4 Coast Guard guys who went out in a small boat to rescue the crew of a large tanker that was one of two that were being pounded by a huge coastal storm in 1952. For those of you who have never been in the teeth of a storm like this, the coastal storms (nor’easters) that occasionally strike the mid-Atlantic and Northeast coast approach and sometimes reach the intensity of hurricanes, but are generally much larger, geographically speaking. They raise enormous waves (sometimes as high as 90 feet), flood coastal communities, wreck buildings, can include blizzards, and can literally rip a 500 foot long steel ship in half. I’ve sat through a couple of them on the coast in my life, fortunately in a safe building on the land. I can’t imagine being out there in a small boat, or even a large ship. It looks like a fundamental force of nature has aroused and wants to drown you.

(Spoiler Alert, in case you don’t watch the trailer) The Finest Hours tells the true story of one specific rescue, that of the USS Pendleton, a WW II tanker that had been sold as a bulk carrier after the end of the war. The ship went into distress during a huge storm off the Massachusetts coast, broke in half with 32 crew members left in the rapidly sinking stern. The 9 members in the bow were all lost. A small Coast Guard boat with a crew of 4 was launched into huge seas and managed a daring rescue, saving all but one of the 32 crewmen in the stern section of the ship. The rescue was a milestone in Coast Guard history and led to the Coast Guard getting bigger ships.

The film was directed by Craig Gillespie (Fright Night and the likeably silly Lars and the Real Girl). It was a Disney project, complete with castle and Tinkerbell logo, so it had to be morally clear and family-friendly. Stars included Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Eric Bana and Holliday Grainger. The movie was packed with digitally created storms and ships and was filmed in 3D.

My first observation about this movie is that it is much like a World War II story. Instead of human enemies, however, it’s the storm. A mismatched group of unlikely heroes is dispatched to perform a dangerous mission, goes way beyond the call of duty against a ruthless enemy and saves the day, while the crew leader (Chris Pine) has a girlfriend waiting at home, not knowing whether she will ever seem him again. The base commander is sincere, but in over his head, never having seen a nor’easter up close, and the crew goes beyond their orders to undertake what seems like a suicidal rescue attempt. It’s a simple story of hometown grit against amazing odds.

The Finest Hours is not a movie with a lot of subtlety and doesn’t require much cognitive analysis. Like those old WW II movies, the story is simple and morally clear, the acting mostly consists of being sincere and purposeful for the CG members, desperate for the crew of the sinking ship and, for the characters on land, worried. It’s very physical acting and they spend a lot of time cold and wet. If this crew had not been rescuing a ship’s crew, it might have been storming the beach on Okinawa or holding back the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge. Over the years, a number of movies have been made with “Finest Hour” in the title, the title implies this sort of moral urgency and heroism, so there’s nothing especially new about the theme. This film doesn’t add anything to the genre, but also doesn’t do anything bad. Chris Pine is OK as the crew leader, as is Holliday Grainger as his waiting girlfriend, but neither their romance nor the watery drama point toward any Oscars. It’s not surprising that the film is laden with FX, between the sinking ship and the horrifying sea. Dialog is sometimes unclear, both because of the tremendous roar of the storm and because of the sometimes dense New England seafaring accents. Most of the effects are pretty good. I did not see it in 3D (thankfully) but I don’t think it would have really added much. I can give this film a middling recommendation. It doesn’t do anything that has not been in many movies, but it’s still a story well worth telling. The first third of the film that establishes the characters drags and doesn’t have the quick pace of that segment of old “right stuff” movies, but once the action kicks in, the pace is quick. Fortunately the storm does not growl or act evil; it’s just a huge, indifferent force of nature. The Finest Hours is not my favorite film of the season, but I enjoyed it. If you need something to let you know that winter can really be much worse, this will do it.

Hail Caesar! - The Myth of Hollywood

I have to preface that by admitting that I have enjoyed nearly all of the Coen Brothers’ movies, and their loose grip on some combination of truth, fiction and outright fantasy, combined with sarcasm and wit. They are a metaphor for Hollywood, which never saw a truth it could not twist or enhance. Why stick to truth when you can take the same event and write a better story? Hail Caesar centers around fictionalized events in the dubious career of Eddie Mannix. Mannix, played by Josh Brolin, was a notorious Hollywood “fixer”, a guy who watched over actors and directors who had a contract with “The Studio”. He ended sleazy affairs, quietly bailed misbehaving actors out of jail, arranged temporary marriages for pregnant stars, dragged directors out of bars and back onto the set, etc. Mannix himself was no paragon of virtue, being a devout catholic who could not divorce, he had numerous affairs, encouraged his wife to do the same and may have been involved in the death of Superman George Reeves, who had enraged Mannix by jilting Mannix’s wife, ending one of her affairs. Mannix has been a movie character before, in Hollywoodland, portrayed by Bob Hoskins, who has a cameo in this film.

The movie also centers on Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a fictional actor who has a lead role in one of early “sword and sandal” epics, Hail Caesar, in 1951. A send up of Quo Vadis and Ben Hur, Caesar is one of those sanctimonious epics that explains Jesus to the movie world after titillating us with a couple hours of Roman decadence. Whitlock was to deliver an important line as a converted Roman legionnaire until he (the actor, that is) is drugged, kidnapped and held for ransom by “The Future”. The whole production is being held up because of this important scene. Whitlock’s kidnapping requires a “fixer”, the notorious Eddie Mannix, with a suitcase full of money. Along the way, we are brought along on other fixes by Mannix that takes us on a journey through the back lots of the studio. We encounter a pregnant Esther Williams-like starlet, a singing cowboy who channels Eddie “Cattle Call” Arnold or Roy Rogers, a scene involving the pre-Lucy version of Lucille Ball (the Queen of B Movies in her first career), temperamental directors, a Gene Kelly-like character doing a dance centered musical, a Hedda Hopper-like harpy-reporter, a group of writers who really ARE soviet-style communists, unlike Dalton Trumbo…a whole list of the movie fixtures of that time. They are all related in this incestuous, scandalous version of 1951 Hollywood.

Josh Brolin stars as Mannix and does an excellent job of fleshing out that film-noir-like detective/strong arm character. George Clooney also excels as a clueless, but sincere, Whitlock who stumbles his way to Hollywood immortality. Ralph Fiennes, Scarlet Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum all are really enjoyable in their own twisted characters. Tatum gets to do some solid dancing too. The Coen Brothers do their usual job of keeping things light. Like their other movies, it’s not a movie that gets big laughs, but it’s a constant stream of witty, strange moments where you try to figure out whether this moment portrays something real, whether it’s complete fantasy or just who is being sent-up. I will have to see the movie again in order to catch all the references to old-timey Hollywood. I love the movies of that period. My only regret is that the Coen’s didn’t find a place to satirize Bogart too, but I guess they were out of time.

I’m giving this film a 4 star rating. Some other reviews have not been so kind, but, I enjoy that 40’s - 50’s period of movies, grew up on re-runs of sanctimonious Roman Empire/religion movies (I own the Blue Ray version of Ben Hur), enjoy the noir-detective thing and love the myth of Hollywood. It’s a fun way to enjoy a couple hours of the movie fantasy world.

very solid reviews. Revenant is one i REALLY need to see on the big screen and I've been a bit curious about Finest Hours and now I'm more curious - thank you.
I've heard both ends of love and disappointment for Hail Caeser but then the Coen's bring that out of everyone and being a fan, I'll be checking this one out at some point as well

Thanks for the reviews!

The Big Short - A Horror Movie About Money

For anybody that was aware in 2008, The Crash was a scary event. It seemed as though the bottom was dropping out of the US economy, taking the world with it. You might recall that the media talked a lot about things like credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligation and shorting. It described the investment climate that preceded the crash as being not unlike Las Vegas gambling but with billions of dollars. Regulatory officials seemed blind-sided by the complex gambles with mortgage bonds that were being made. All that madness came crashing down when a hiccup in the “real” economy (risky mortgage loans) brought all those gambles to ruin.

The Big Short is what you may consider docu-fiction. It follows three separate groups of investors as they climb the ladder of success for a while and then become the focus of the disintegration. It’s also the story of a government effort to understand and stop this, but it’s too little and too late. It’s the sort of story that might be the topic of a Micheal Moore expose, except that all of this has been out for years and most people still don’t understand it, so something similar is probably happening now. It’s really not unlike a horror movie, except that the monster is not a big reptile or a vampire. In this case, the horror is greed, the kind of stupidity that often afflicts really smart people and the fact that nobody in power could or would be the punitive parent that tells these people to stop what they were doing. A recent estimate put the cost of the bailout at 7 trillion dollars (!!!) and few of the people in this story were ever prosecuted; many are back in the game.

The director of The Big Short is Adam McKay, a guy whose history includes a bunch of comedies, including The Step Brothers and the Anchorman series, nothing that really suggests an inclination to take on a project that involved finding a way to explain and fictionalize such complex financial machinations. Stars include Christian Bale as Micheal Burry, a badly socialized but brilliant manipulator, Steve Carell as Mark Baum, a guy who is perpetually worried about the implications of what he is still doing, Ryan Gosling as Jared Vennett, another of the investors and Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert, an older but not terribly wise investment geek and advisor to some of the young guns.

This is a difficult movie to review. There are 3 separate sets of characters following a converging course and the subject matter (the complex, convoluted investments) is very difficult to explain to someone without an MBA in investment. The drama consists of the fact that the audience already knows the outcome of the movie (The Crash) and has to unscramble how all of these characters will be contributing to it. Detailed attention to the dialog is needed and many people will still come out befuddled. Because we all know the end before the movie begins, even if we don’t understand the money, we do understand that this is going to end very badly and all of these “smartest guy in the room” characters will be a part of this bad ending. Putting all of this into a 2 hour movie makes it verbally dense. Many of the usual aspects of movies (sets, FX, action, cinematography) are mostly irrelevant. Most of the camera work is up-close, with a “you are there”, video quality. The dense dialog and the impending outcome, however, makes Big Short a tense movie and one where you want to stand up and shout to the characters to stop this RIGHT NOW. Fact intrudes on fiction here and makes you realize just how crazy all this really was. You probably need to see it twice to understand it.

My choice for the best performance is Steve Carell. As Mark Baum, he merges a sort of evangelizing moralism with the quality of not being able to stop himself. If his tool was a knife instead of a portfolio, he’d be like a serial killer who feels guilty. Christian Bale also excels as the geeky, uncommunicative guy who speaks in riddles, has bad hygiene, but understands everything. Brad Pitt’s character, is the older guy who should know better, keeps himself somewhat removed from the action, but gives the youngest group of investors enough rope to hang us all and then walks away telling himself that he didn’t do it.

I’m giving this a 4. I think I would have actually preferred it as a mini-series, but it’s a dense 2 hours as it is. The financial manipulations are so complex that more explanation would have helped, in spite of occasional on-screen text messages that defined terms. All of that financial insanity took a while to happen; we would have benefitted from more exposition. Nevertheless, I recommend the movie. It’s the best 2 hour history of these events you will find and, in spite of its complexity, it is suspenseful and keeps you engaged. You are close enough to the actors to catch their sweat as the end approaches so it’s tense in a personal way. I recommend reading something like a Wikipedia article on The Crash before you see it, but don’t miss it.

The Witch - Is it a horror movie or a horrifying movie?

The Witch is the mainstream directorial debut of Robert Eggers, and, what a start! This film is being categorized as horror movie, but I don’t think that is exactly right. It certainly is scary, creepy and full of suspense, but the usual cheesy devices of horror moves are not present. Instead, the horror is that of the human mind, pressed to the extremes of physical and emotional stress. The Witch is set around 1630, in early New England, decades before the famous Salem Witch Trials. The story begins when the family of William (Ralph Ineson) is exiled from a puritan compound for theological crimes that are not specifically described. Like much of the puritan community of that time, the family includes William, a bible-quoting patriarch, with a wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie) and 5 children, the oldest of which is teen-aged Thomasin (Anna Taylor-Joy). William is terrified of an outer darkness, the scary forest beyond the village, possibly inhabited by unseen hostile Native Americans, wild animals, witches, demons and everything else that the mind can imagine. The family is completely alone, with no help from the village. It is also cold, gray, winter is coming, food and firewood are needed and they have to build their own house with nothing to protect them except their prayers and a cumbersome matchlock musket. The evil begins when Thomasin, their adolescent daughter, is taking care of her youngest sister, the new baby, and, all of a sudden, the baby disappears. There are brief hints of witches in the woods, evil women who can change from seductresses to naked crones, possibly eating babies. A frantic search begins and things only get worse from there. The kids are terrified, Katherine is grief stricken over the loss of the baby and William is overwhelmed with the realization that he can not protect his wife and children, a sacred duty he takes very seriously as a patriarch. It seems like the powers of hell are intent on bringing them down.

This is really an interesting film in several ways. As I said, it’s not really a horror movie. Nothing in the movie is entirely clear, including the reality of the horror. The forest does seem to harbor evil, but it’s never seen for more than an instant. Even in the context of these terrified, superstitious puritans, there’s no clear, objective reality to the horror. As the viewers, we don’t know whether the “monster” is really there, or whether it’s the mental projection of these traumatized people. The Witch is entirely fictional, but the events in the story are basically what was reported as “fact” by the people who suffered from the events in Massachusetts in the period that culminated in the infamous witch trials. Baby stealing, people waking up with bite marks, barnyard animals being possessed by evil spirits, spoiled grain, people having convulsions that caused them to levitate are all events that were accepted in court as evidence during the trials. The “culprits” in those trials, as well as many of the accusers, were mostly women, labelled as witches, communing with Satan, holding evil ceremonies in the forest, being able to fly, all mortal terrors for those early colonists. We look back on that period, not understanding how any rational person could believe in such things, but the simple fact is that they DID. They were people just like us, but their beliefs made all this madness seem like fact. In this paranoid environment, accusations seemed like truth and denials insured guilt.

I thought that The Witch was a terrific movie, far more unsettling than the usual horror fare of monsters, vampires and mutant teenagers. I can walk away from most horror movies, realizing that I probably won’t encounter anything that happened in that movie. In the case of The Witch, however, I walk away thinking that, put in that situation, I don’t know that I would react any differently than William. That’s far scarier than dinosaurs trashing Tokyo or mutant worms. Nothing in this film is certain; we don’t really KNOW whether there is or is not a witch. People’s minds can contort reality in truly amazing ways and spirits were real to them. The uncertainty of anything in this story really makes the film work. Acting is excellent by all of the cast. I don’t know any of the actors. The production is very minimal, with little in the way of effects, nothing but the forest and fear. The sparse ancient Swedish string music is used excellently. Cinematography is excellent in its minimalism, full of close-up fear, and cold grayness. I see that The Witch was a Sundance pick, from the production company A24, who also produced the equally disturbing Room last year. Don’t miss it.

Eddie The Eagle - Your Feel-Good movie of the week.

If you’ve been around long enough and pay attention to all of the Olympic hoo-raw, you would probably recall an unusual event in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, like big rounds of applause for a guy on the British ski jumping team who came in dead last, by a large margin. That guy was Micheal Edwards (Taron Egerton), an awkward, less than thin guy with coke-bottle glasses and a cheerful, upbeat attitude that made him a crowd favorite. Nicknamed Eddie The Eagle, this guy provides the main character in this upbeat, saccharine film. At the time, Britain had not even had a ski jumping team since the 1920’s when the sport was decidedly more primitive. Edwards was a miserable jumper who, with some coaching, managed to qualify for the team using the 1920’s standards. He only had to jump 60 meters (the 1920’s standard), in spite of the fact that contemporary jumpers were jumping 90 meters. Edwards lacked the physique, training or experience to be a good jumper, but he did have relentless determination and an extroverted, self promoting attitude that won millions of fans for a while. Eddie the Eagle, the movie, is a fictionalization of that event.

To appreciate this film, you have to go in, knowing that it’s going to be an inspiration that should make you come out happy and teary. After all, the most unlikely of schlubs, with enough desire, pluck and determination can get to the Olympics..right? In this story, we see Eddie, deciding that he wants to transcend his father’s wish that he join in his multi-generational family occupation of wall plasterer. Eddie wants to fly. He gets his chance with some reluctant coaching from a burned out former jumper, Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman and all of his muscles), who is running the machinery that grooms the ski slope. Peary is alcoholic, cynical and insulting, but Eddie is so cheerful that Peary can’t help being won over to Eddie’s side.

I find it difficult to review a movie like this. It’s like a religious movie in that it has a desired emotional outcome, it wants you to leave with a cheerful mood, thinking that Eddie is a hero. You are supposed to feel good when it’s over. It does that, as long as you can suspend your disbelief. I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade if this sort of fare makes them feel good about life, but, as a skeptic, I usually need to do some fact checking, so when I did, I found that the movie made some fictional twists from fact, all in the name of making me come feeling like anybody can do anything with enough pluck and desire. There’s nothing wrong with that message exactly, but I did feel used.

Eddie was directed by British director Dexter Fletcher; I have not seen any of his other films. Aside from Hugh Jackman and a brief cameo from Christopher Walken, I am not familiar with any of the other actors in the film, but all of them do a creditable job in their roles. The mechanics of story telling, music (a lot of 80’s songs with glassy sounding synths) and cinematography are all done reasonably well, but nothing here is remarkable. Taron Egerton plays the role of Eddie quite likably; he spends the movie conveying an innocent and guileless determination, without a mean bone in his body. If you like this sort of movie, and think that there are not enough happy stories in the world, you will probably enjoy this. There were some people coming out of the theater, proclaiming “Greatest Movie Ever”, but I have to say that in my opinion, it was mainly a little better than made-for-TV fare. I didn’t dislike it, I wish it were all true, but I don’t think it will be much more than a footnote in movie history. Like its religious cousins, once we leave the building and dab our tears, life will go on as usual. I found Eddie to be mainly a showboat, not nearly the inspiration he would have been if he had risen from his humble beginnings to really do the work and master the sport he exploited. In spite of his likability, he WAS a sham, only a superficial hero and not a good athlete. As a movie, it was made well, but only hits a middle mark for me.

Zootopia - The Social Travails of Disney Animals

Well…it was a slow week for new movies, so we decided to do something we hadn’t done for a while, like see an animated Disney movie. I was somewhat interested because it’s been sitting at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.3 on IMDB….what’s going on here? I knew what to expect, having done the rounds with Disney movies when my kids were young and having visited Disneyworld a couple times. It would be an animated movie with wisecracking animals, bright colors, a basic plot line with non-threatening plot twists, a few teary moments, a couple songs with easy hooks, jokes easy enough for a young kid to understand and a bunch of covert topical references (including a sequence with an animal version of Walter White) so the adults who take the kids would feel like the writers knew they were part of the audience. Also, as long as I can remember, Disney has always found a way to rake in huge amounts of money by being as PC, inclusive, environmentally benign as they can be without messing up their profitability. It’s not surprising that a movie with a title like Zootopia will have some sort of message about being all we can be, accepting ourselves in spite of our differences, etc.

Zootopia didn’t violate the formula. We have a future animal-only utopian city, where all of the animals live in peace together in a diverse, but respecting city. Our hero, Judy (Jennifer Goodwyn) is a rabbit that wants to join the police force. My first thought was just why utopia needs police, but apparently, they do. Anyway, like most rabbits, she scares easy but is willing to overcome her fear, has pluck and energy. She encounters resistance, however, from the police chief (Idris Elba), an intimidating, gruff, but honest cop, who is also a water buffalo. Doubting her, he assigns her to be a “meter maid”, writing parking tickets. She also finds out that enforcing the law requires not just rigid adherence, but judgement as she meets a likable fox (Jason Bateman) who is also a con man. She learns not to judge “people” too quickly; he’s more than just a con and would actually like to join up with the police. Things crank up though, when we find out that a lot of animals have gone missing. In a fit of bravado, Judy tells her doubting boss that she will crack the case in 48 hours. The plot darkens when we find out that a high ranking politician is part of a plot to use a flower known as night howlers in a way that turns animals into fierce, hostile predators, not in line with any animal utopia. The lion won’t be lying down with the lamb as long as the night howlers are around. It’s up to Judy to crack this case, and it’s the scariest thing going on in Zootopia.

I went into this movie, feeling fairly sarcastic….yeah, I know that it’s a great, big beautiful tomorrow, that wishes are fulfilled and that everybody is our friend, just like in Disney World. Knowing that I had to do an attitude adjustment, I kept my Disney mouse ears on and let the movie roll. It was really pretty good. As always, whatever Disney does will be the best animation that money can buy. The voice actors were good (I’m not familiar with most of the names). The music was fun. In spite of the somewhat moralistic tone of the movie, it was light and easy for kids. The whole moral thing was interesting and not completely simplistic. Yeah, all the animals live in peace and harmony, but not all the time. There’s a lot of knee-jerk suspicion of predators and the citizens are finding it easy to believe that they are basically bad until it’s discovered that night howlers, the crack or meth of Zootopia, are really the problem. Zootopia also has political corruption, the howlers are a drug that makes ok characters do bad things and sometimes authorities get heavy handed. The drama is all played out with cute, Disney animal characters that don’t reference anybody in particular in the real world, so it’s a play on what you might think of as basic human weakness. Somehow, however, unlike the real world, by the end of the movie, all this will be fixed, Zootopia will go back to what it should be and things will all end up with a Shakira song.

I’m not sure what a director does in an animated movie, but this one had three, Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush, none of them known to me. Most of the cast and crew seem to be Disney corporate people, imagineeers, company performers, etc. It had a PG rating. There was also one scene, in which the fox, who had been a cute wisecracker, temporarily turns evil and scary. That metamorphosis had some little kids (real kids, that is) crying. The moral in the tale is wound all around the story, isn’t too preachy, but is definitely in line with the Disney corporate attitude.

I liked the movie. I might have liked it even more if I had a kid or two with me, but, like much of what happens in Disney World, if you drop your cynicism for a while and just go on with the ride, you can enjoy it. I don’t know that I would place it in the top 1% of all movies like Rotten Tomatoes, but, if you’re OK with a movie that makes cute animals get up and dance, you will enjoy it.

10 Cloverfield Lane - Tense and scary but is it Cloverfield?

The name 10 Cloverfield Lane was obviously intended to suggest something, but what? This film seems like a mashup of Cloverfield suggestions, with a strong hint of Room and The Witch. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), is driving along an unremarkable rural road in Louisiana when she’s hit by another vehicle and rendered unconscious. She wakes up in a bed, with and IV dripping fluid into her body, but she’s not in a hospital. Instead, she’s in a windowless concrete block building, being attended by a very gnarly looking Howard (John Goodman). He does his best to assure her that he has rescued her, but the fact that she’s chained to the bed isn’t exactly reassuring. She tries to escape, but is overpowered by Howard. Howard tells her that some sort of attack is underway, that the air outside is poisoned and makes allusions to a previous female resident. Michelle realizes that Howard has her in a home-made underground bunker, elaborately supplied with food, water, alcohol and air purification sufficient to last for several years. She doesn’t know whether to believe Howard, but strange, ominous, rumbling noises coming from above make her unsure.

Soon after, she meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr), a local guy who is also in the bunker. He informs her that he’d convinced Howard to take him in. Between the two of them, however, doubts emerge while Howard tries to create the trappings of “normal” life inside the bunker, in spite of being their captor. What is Howard up to? Why can’t they leave or at least take a peek out of the bunker to see what’s happening? Should they come up with an escape plan? Howard confesses to being a strange, reclusive survivalist. In spite of how twisted Howard might be, the sounds from outside suggest that something is going on out there and it’s not good.

If you have been around long enough, or know some recent history, you might recall that in the dark days of the Cold War, there were lots of people who bought and sold bomb and fallout shelters, either facilities in their basement or even as a complete underground bunker, not unlike Howard’s. That sort of paranoia was not even considered to be paranoid at that moment, just zealous caution. In this case, the Cloverfield name of the movie suggests not Soviet attack, but something extraterrestrial. Is this true or did the movie’s producers, which include J J Abrams, just use the name as part of a franchise, a small movie in place of the big FX spectacle that Cloverfield was, or a Room II? I’m not telling.

This film was quite well crafted and very tense. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who has mainly done shorts and TV episodes, this movie really works. Suspense builds by the moment and what’s actually going on isn’t directly revealed until late in the film so you just don’t know what is next. The claustrophobic bunker provides most of the movie’s sets, so the cost of the film must have been low. Nevertheless, like Room and The Witch, the minimal sets require the style of the movie to scare you with things you never see, often a much better way to be scary. As you might expect in such a small world, cinematography is close up and personal. Aside from a few other minimal appearances, the cast consists of only Goodman, Winstead and Gallagher. The three of them are excellent at conveying the menace of this awful setting.

I don’t know just what the germination of this film was and why the Cloverfield reference was invoked. Unless there is some larger franchise, trilogy or series in Abrams mind, it’s not at all clear what the connection is. It’s certainly possible that Abrams just wanted to use the name to give the film a boost in name recognition. On the other hand, the style of the movie is either a follow up or a new trend, based on two previous hits, Room and The Witch, for which low budget minimalism succeeds in being much more scary than giant digital monsters or yet another digging up of overproduced vampires or shape shifters. As in Room and The Witch, I was on the edge of my seat, an accomplishment for a guy who has seen an overdose of horror movies in his life. I don’t think it was quite as good as either of those, but it’s a worthy addition to this genre, which seems to be a trend looking for a name.

Hello, My Name is Doris - Time for a strange Rom-Com

So, just who is Doris? We immediately recognize her as Sally Field, veteran of many movies and TV shows, all the way back to her teen years as Gidget and one of the all time oddest TV shows, The Flying Nun. In this movie, she is Doris Miller, somewhere in her unflattering 60’s. She is doing some sort of data entry for a New York fashion company, as one of the employees left over from a corporate acquisition in that predatory industry. The movie begins with the funeral of Doris’s mother. Doris had lived with her mom up to the end, in a house on Staten Island, commuting by ferry into Manhattan each day. Oh, and, by the way, either Doris, her mother or both of them are hoarders. They live in a large house crammed with trivial junk that’s “important”. After her mom’s death, however, it is finally Doris’s moment to break free….sort of.

In addition to Doris’s change in status we also have a new fashion guru coming to work in the company. John Fremont (Max Greenfield) is a handsome, 30-something, likable, big-smile guy who meets Doris and is nice to her. Doris, a newly liberated woman, has an instant crush on John. She starts enhancing her look, which, to be true, is mainly weird, including regular wearing of two pairs of glasses at once and a strange wig, which looks pretty much like the strange, raggedy hair under it. After some relatively innocent responses by John, she starts to think he returns her attraction. Doris begins a one sided relationship with him that looks like some sort of relatively innocent stalking. Unfortunately for Doris, she also meets John’s more age-appropriate fashion model girlfriend, but she takes encouragement after a stormy in-the-office breakup. Whenever she sees John, she fantasizes what she wishes would happen to their “relationship”. Her relationship with John, as well as her position in the company get more entangled as John brings her into a promotional effort that brings Doris into his social life.

Meanwhile, the other subplot concerns Doris’s brother Todd (Stephen Root) and his harpy-wife Cynthia. They want to bring in a hoarder therapist to help Doris. Not surprisingly, we find that Todd is split in his motivations. He wants to help his sister, but also wants his part of the inheritance. Cynthia, on the other hand, doesn’t have any such family concern. She’s ALL about the inheritance. Is there a resolution to Doris’s romantic fantasies? What about her hoarding and her avaricious family? A lot of things are right on the edge for Doris.

A lot about this movie sits on an edge. It’s somewhere between funny, creepy and pathetic. Sally Field does an excellent job of conveying this. As a character, Doris is likable, eccentric and funny. As an enthusiastic, data-entering office geek and it’s hard to not like her. As a 60-something, who has a crush on a much younger, handsome, fashion guru, and as a hoarder and an innocent stalker, however, she’s pathetic. As an audience, we wish we hadn’t seen that side of her life since, after all, we all secretly want fairy tales to come true and we wish that Doris could reclaim some the years she spent single and hoarding with her mom.

My take on this film is that it’s a fairly weak plot and script, accompanied by an excellent performance by Sally Field. It’s the best I’ve seen her do since her fine portrayal of the mercurial Mary in Lincoln. As for the plot and script, that is serviceable but underwhelming. The jokes mainly work, but from about 5 minutes in, you know what’s going to happen and most of how it’s going to turn out. Most fairly tales are NOT true, including this one. About a quarter of the movie is the hoarder subplot and that part seems to be lifted verbatim from one of the episodes of the Hoarders TV show. I had the feeling that AMC should have gotten a line in the writing credits. The rest of the cast, as well as the production are adequate, John (Max Greenfield) is cute as is his girlfriend, but the rest of the film is mainly decent TV-style production. Establishing shots are in New York, but the rest of the movie could be anywhere, like probably a studio in Hollywood. 90% of the movie is Sally Field. That said, I bump it up one half star in deference to her performance. In general, however, it’s decently entertaining, but nothing else. If you’re short on cash this week, you might wait until you can stream it.

Eye in the Sky - Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war

Throughout the history of war, armies have striven to kill more of the enemy while taking fewer losses themselves. Catapults, Greek Fire, bowmen, guns, machine guns, long distance artillery, airborne bombers have all been ways to kill with fewer risks to your own forces. Eye in the Sky takes us to the current frontier, remote drone warfare. It is also one of those “ripped from the headlines” political movies, fictional but a plausible story. Movies like Fail Safe and it’s evil twin, Dr Strangelove, the Manchurian Candidate, All The President’s Men, etc, take believable situations, and fictionalize them. Sometimes they are good enough to reveal truths about politics that are more understandable than real news. In this case, it’s somewhere around the present, and Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is the commander of a military group assigned to take out high value terrorists. Her “eye in the sky” (satellite and drone surveillance) has located the hide out of a bunch of notorious players, high up on the “kill or capture list”. They have a clear drone view on a building in Kenya and have a chance at a capture. Things change, however, when surveillance reveals that two men are preparing vests for imminent suicide bombings. The story plays out in multiple locations, Powell in the UK, the crew that operates a drone that will fire the missile in Las Vegas, political leaders in Europe and the US and the target in Kenya. It looks like a clear shot with little probability of “collateral damage” until an innocent girl sets up a table, selling bread on the street, right outside the building. It it’s hit, she will likely be blown to pieces. If the shot is not taken, the two terrorists with explosive vests will be detonating in public places within minutes. Many innocent people, including other young girls, will certainly be killed in the explosions.

The other half of the drama is how the military and politicians will handle this choice. The crew has initial approval to make the shot, but, in the US, the drone operator, Steve Watts (Aaron Paul), sees the girl and is unwilling to make the shot unless the politicians acknowledge that the girl will be killed and order him to do it. Meanwhile, General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman) is trying to get a clear statement from the politicians, up to the British Prime Minister and even the US President, on how to proceed, wanting someone to take direct responsibility. Is it OK to kill the girl if her death prevents many others? Is it OK to shoot if her survival chance is 60% rather than 40%? Who wins the propaganda war? Does the US lose if it kills the girl; does Boko Haram lose if they detonate their bombs? Since some of the terrorists are British and US citizens, are those political leaders OK with killing their own citizens?

The tension in this story is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. Moral conundrums abound and constantly collide with military expediency. It’s a very uncomfortable movie because, while it’s fiction, you can’t help thinking that these sort of decisions are made in your name every day. We don’t even know about them but will still have to live in the world where these things happen. What I really liked about the film is that it is NOT preachy but it really drives home the deadly seriousness of what they have to do without making the players into villains. There’s no escaping the fact that this is a really ugly business and nobody wants responsibility. Politicians understand the controversy and the military guys have to deal with the reality. As a world weary Gen. Benson says to a group of politicians, “NEVER!!! tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war”.

As much as you can enjoy this sort of story, I did. The script is intelligent, poses the moral quandary and the subsequent reality but doesn’t hammer in a “correct” decision. Helen Mirren is excellent as the Colonel trying to get approval to make the hit. She realizes how much is at stake and wants a resolution. Alan Rickman, in his final on-screen appearance, is also excellent as the General who has to deal with the politicians and who has a first hand, “on the ground” understanding about the consequences of both action and inaction. I also liked seeing Aaron Paul, outside Breaking Bad, as the drone operator who has personal misgivings about killing the girl and knowing that it will be he who presses the button and watches her die. Also excellent is Barked Abdi as Jama Farah, the spy on the ground, who risks his life trying to see inside the building and get the girl away. I put this up high on my list of political/military thrillers. It’s tight, smart and really brings home the ugliness of a war that seems so remote. Eye in the Sky was directed by a director I'm not familiar with, Gavin Hood; filmed in South Africa. It was written by Guy Hibbert. Both definitely have a feel for drama. It’s well worth seeing.

Midnight Special - Strange Happenings in the Gulf Coast

Midnight Special is the third feature I’ve seen that was written and directed by Jeff Nichols. Nichols seems to have a razor edged feel for dark side of the southern heartland. His previous films, Mud starring Matthew McConaughy (before he dedicated his life to adjusting his cufflinks inside the Lincoln) and Take Shelter (starring an intense, brooding Michael Shannon, “Knowing” that a monstrous tornado will come) were methodical but engaging films that kept you thinking that something’s about to happen…and it did.

In Midnight Special, Roy (Micheal Shannon) flees from an apocalyptic evangelical cult in Texas, with his 8 year old son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher). Alton has some sort of special power that manifests itself in glowing eyes. He also can’t stand sunlight. Otherwise, he seems like an unremarkable kid who doesn’t really understand what’s happening to him. Roy is scared, being pursued by police, having an Amber Alert issued and also being pursued by heavily armed members of the cult, who want Alton back, at any cost, probably the cost of Roy’s life. Roy has been joined by Lucas (Joel Edgerton), a State Trooper and former friend, who doesn’t really know why he is going on the run with Roy, especially since the law is after them, but trusts Roy. The three of them link up with Roy’s wife Sara (Kirsten Dunst) and now, all of them are on the run, across the Gulf Coast, into a remote part of the Florida panhandle.

Just what power Alson has is not quite clear, but the seriousness of this is revealed when Alton uses his power to pull down a satellite, which brings down a shower of hyper-speed fragments that devastate a gas station and probably kills a number of customers. Meanwhile, not only the police, but the FBI and the NSA are seeking Alton. Sevier, from the NSA (Adam Driver), seems to have some understanding that Alton is seeking a location that has been found in some sort of version of speaking in tongues and that is decoded from a bunch of dates and times. Weird conspiracy theories are running on overtime among the pursuers as well as the fugitives. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that something very, very real is happening, but nobody knows just what. Is it extraterrestrial, theological, magical? We’re not sure, but we are sure that it really is happening and it centers on Alton and a specific location in Florida. This isn’t just a case of ET phoning home. He needs to get there and everybody else seems determined to stop him and his helpers. What follows completely alters the world view of all of the persons involved.

Like Nichols’ other films, Midnight Special is a slowly revealed story that takes its time to let you know what is going on and, even then, doesn’t answer all of the questions. The style of story telling has a distinct Southern feel to it, not unlike To Kill a Mockingbird. Loose ends and uncertain motives abound for all of the characters, including law enforcement people, the cultists and, even the characters helping Alton. The characters are all caught with lives in progress. We don’t really know who we should trust because they all have a dark side, but we are willing to go along with Alton’s family and Lucas. Even the “Big Evil Government” people don’t understand and don’t really seem to have any sort of conspiratorial plan, but in that mythic Southern mindset, they are outsiders, probably yankees and probably merit suspicion.

I really enjoyed this film. Like Take Shelter and Mud, it really has a feeling of belonging in a time and place and it trusts that the audience will follow the story, even though it is complicated and sometimes unclear. The suspense never relents, right up to the end. Like much of life, all questions are NOT answered at the end. Only some of them are, and probably a lot of people won’t believe the answers that ARE given, in spite of the size of the events.

The acting is excellent for all of the main characters. As usual, Michael Shannon brings a brooding intensity that’s hard to match. Joel Edgerton is excellent as the friend who doesn’t know why he’s here, but trusts his friend more than any law or institution. Jaden Lieberher shows an amazing amount of depth in a confusing and complex role as the troubled 8 year old. The rest of the cast is all excellent. In spite of all of the strangeness and special effects, it’s basically a movie driven by plot and acting, not just an arms race for digital animators. Most of the sets are dark and seem to harbor danger wherever they go; the environment seems to be part of the event. If you like this sort of film and enjoyed Mud or Take Shelter, this is a must. I have to give this a high rating, because it’s unlike anything else out there, doesn’t abuse us with stupid special effects and decades-old superhero stories that just won’t freakin’ DIE long after they should have. It’s more “believable” than any of them and hits on the sort of questions we have about our place in the cosmos without giving us stupid answers. Like The Witch, which went to the heart of darkness of puritanism, this movie takes us somewhere we don’t want to be and tells us things we don’t want to hear. It isn’t fun, but you can’t look away.

Miles Ahead - A Maybe For Jazz Fans?

Miles Ahead is not a conventional linear biopic. Instead, it leaps back and forth between several time periods in the life of this amazing jazz innovator. The real Miles Davis was a a seemingly inscrutable character, obviously musically brilliant but with a very disorderly personality. His damaged vocal chords reduced speech to a whisper and he suffered from a number of chemical addictions. He was hard to work with, and often was disdainful of his audience. Fortunately, he mainly let his music speak for him, being one of the great jazz innovators and an unforgettable trumpet player.

Miles Ahead focuses mainly on the silent period of the late 70’s, when he burned out and stopped performing altogether. I don’t know a lot about this period or Davis’s personal life, but from what I can find on the web, it seems as though this movie is a gathering of incidents and characters, into a fictionalized narrative. As such, it’s not as much of a biography as it is a fiction in which Miles Davis is a character. The movie was written by Don Cheadle and Steven Baigelman and directed by Cheadle. Cheadle also stars as Davis.

The movie begins when Dave Brill (Ewan McGregor) barges into Davis’s home, claiming to be a Rolling Stone reporter looking for a big story about Davis’s absence from the music world and his messy personal life. Brill seems to be slinging as much BS as Davis, who initially kicks him out of the house, but in a sort of twisted buddy-movie way the two of them end up going on a caper. Columbia records wants Davis back working, making records. A gangster-like character has acquired a tape of some preliminary work Davis did in his basement studio. Miles and Brill go on a mad quest to recover the tape, complete with a car chase, guns, a Miles imitator and some tough guys. Davis has a strange, one sided relationship with his wife in which she gives up her career as a dancer in order to live in Miles’s house, suffer physical abuse but still be loyal to him.

If all of this sounds non-linear and episodic, it is. Miles Ahead sacrifices linear plot development for a quick-cut, flash forward - flash back sort of story telling that gives us pieces of his past, suit-wearing jazz club days, intercut with his disorderly state in 1980. In between, there are brief cuts of his music, but unfortunately (for me at least), music seems almost peripheral to the story. If this were any other fictional action movie, that would not bother me, but as a guy who loves Davis’s old jazz and who knew that he was a sketchy character in some ways, I really would have preferred to see a story that focused on what he did well, which was his music. He was not good at being a husband, a gangster and nobody’s good at being a drug user, but the real Miles was amazing as a musician. That seems to be mainly lost in this film, sacrificed to the parts of Miles that I didn’t really need to know and fictionalizing them at that. We know that he could play the trumpet, but we don’t know why he was great.

All that said, the film did keep my interest, from beginning up to end. Cheadle, the actor, is excellent at channeling Miles Davis as a movie character. Nobody has been able to make a film about Davis before and this one sorta works, although in a strange way. Miles Ahead is Cheadle’s first feature length project and somehow he managed to juggle 3 balls at once, as script writer, star and director. I’m not sure just how he did that, but (ignoring my reservations about plot choices for the moment) Cheadle did manage to keep all those juggler’s balls in the air. The frantic, back and forth cutting worked well and the action never lagged.

As for the plot, I’d like to see Cheadle come back, mimic Davis again, but the next time, focus on his music. Davis was a brilliant player and innovator. He had a messy life, not unlike a lot of famous musicians, but if I had the choice of reliving Miles Davis as a musician or as a bad actor in an action movie, I’d definitely stick with the music. Somewhere, I read that several people had tried to make a Miles Davis movie in the past, but failed. This one did make it into the theaters and I don’t have any reason to think that Cheadle was not in awe of the musician, but I do wish he had made better choices for the plot line. If the movie was to be a biopic, it could have been done without all of the fictionalized plot twists in the life of a real person.

The Family Fang - One of the oddest movies I’ve seen recently

It’s movie time again and the cineplexes are brimming with fans and repeated showings of the first crop of summer super hero movies. I just was NOT In the mood for more spandex, so we tried this at random. The Family Fang was based on the novel of the same name, directed by Jason Bateman who also co-stars with Nicole Kidman. It also features Christopher Walken and a musical score by Carter Burwell.

I had not read the book, so I went into this with an open mind, not knowing what to expect. The story revolves around a brother/sister pair, Baxter and Annie Fang (Bateman and Kidman) and their bizarre relationship with their parents, Caleb and Camille (Walken and Maryann Plunkett). Unfortunately for them, Baxter and Annie grew up with a father who is a weird, self-absorbed narcissist and performance artist. All through childhood they were props in his performances, sometimes including staged death and murder. Baxter is a slightly successful novelist, Annie a middling movie actress of minor fame. The story develops when they are notified by police that their parents have gone missing, on the way home at night, that blood was found in the car and that there have been other crimes committed on this road. Suspicious…just how many times has Caleb staged his own death? A blood test confirms that his blood is in the car, but so what; he’s willing to bleed for his so-called “Art”. Annie and Baxter go through the motions of being involved in the investigation and being concerned that their parents really are in trouble or perhaps dead, but suspicion remains. In the process, they begin to reconnect their lives in respect to each other. Are their parents dead, abducted, have they staged all this as a piece of performance art? Are Annie and Baxter (kids A and B in their childhood performances) finally fed up with their parents’ antics? Is their mother a willing part of Caleb’s self-aggrandizing weirdness or is she a “victim”? If they DID stage this cruel hoax, do A and B really WANT to find their parents?

If you’re guessing that this is a strange family story, you’re right. It’s also a fairly dark comedy. Much of the movie sits on the edge of comedy and just plain sadness at so much family dysfunction. Having sat at the edge of the art world in my real life for a while, I have direct personal experience with self-absorbed narcissists like Caleb (who also make frequent appearances in religion and politics) and have no need for them. In real life, you can walk away, but it’s more complicated when they are family and parents and you have been props in their hoaxes. Then it really IS sad. Caleb is that sort of character, whose idea of inspired parenting borders on abuse and manipulation. The script and Bateman’s direction keep the entire movie on the razor edge of humor and pathos. Performances by the stars are good, although I don’t see them as being noteworthy. The plot and script are the stars here. Family Fang is not suspenseful, highly dramatic and has no action or FX. It’s a simple but sometimes confusing story with a lot of flashbacks to A & B’s childhood and recent adulthood. I have to admit that I don’t see that much in Bateman’s acting, personally. Baxter is mainly a reprise of Michael Bluth from Arrested Development. Christopher Walken is a good as he needs to be, as is Nicole Kidman but it’s really not an actor’s movie.

In spite of those reservations, I do give Fang a qualified recommendation. It’s a smart plot that keeps you guessing about what’s happening right up to the end, which either is or is not obvious, depending on what you expected or preferred. It’s a novelist’s movie and an enigma of a plot. I’m more pleased with Bateman’s direction than his acting. He might have more of a career behind the camera than in front of it. My qualified recommendation is that you should be prepared for a wordy, no-action movie with no character that you want to identify with. Nevertheless, it’s better than that because it all holds together well in spite of its strangeness and is a welcome relief from FX heavy spandex movies. Production is simple but effective and the musical score by Carter Burwell is excellent in its minimalist simplicity. The most recent revision on Flixter tells us that, so far Family Fang has grossed $94,000, so I guess you don’t have to worry about not getting a ticket if it’s showing near you. In spite of my reservations, I do suggest seeing it. When it comes out on video, I will probably watch it again to pick up on the many clues and suggestions that abound in this subtle movie.

Love and Friendship - AKA, The Return of Jane Austin

Being somewhat spandex fatigued by summer superhero movies, it seemed like time for something very different, so we decided to be about as different from Captain America as the current film offerings would allow. A new movie, “Love and Friendship” was starting at our local art house. The film was directed and written by Whit Stillman, who, surprisingly, is not British but American, and stars Kate Beckinsale as the scheming Lady Susan Vernon. I have to admit that it’s been a long time since I read anything by Austin, who originated the story (Lady Susan) as that strangest of genres, an epistolary novel, and I have never seen Beckinsale dressed in lace and frills using her native British accent, and I have not seen anything this old-timey British for a long time, so it’s a bit of a culture shift. There are no Underworld vampires anywhere in this movie. Love and Friendship is a comedy-lite; the laughs are mainly polite chuckles, but only if you comprehend the antiquated English language, endless sentences and subtle nuances of this sort of conversational story.

The story is set somewhere in the late 1700’s, in a large ruling class country house, outside what one of the characters describes as the grime, vile odors, dust and disease of the city (London). It’s also a world where people you know or family members feel free to just have the footman drive the carriage up to the front door with a bunch of trunks, so you can stay for some weeks or months. The interior of the big house, tinkly china, polite conversation that’s loaded with barbs and subtle insults, stoic servants and “help” with lower class accents are the setting for this drawing room story. There’s NO action. At all.

The story begins when Lady Susan and her marriage-aged daughter show up at her in-laws house, as expected, with coach and trunks. Susan is recently widowed, lacking in fortune, and is the subject of rumors and gossip that she is a schemer. In addition to Susan, a variety of other hangers-on, relatives and neighbors pop in and out of the house or come to stay for a while, throughout the story. Susan wants to scheme a marriage, both for herself and her daughter. Suitable men could be young and handsome with good breeding and prospects, older and already rich or both (preferably stupid if they are old and rich), but certainly NOT none of the above. The wealthy De Coucys, the Martins, and Manwarings are all targets of her plots. Her calculations are without end, all taking place in this bucolic estate, centered around tea, good manners, meals, sitting rooms, parlors, and any other polite venue. Lady Susan is quite a character. She might seem to be a villain, being such a schemer, but when you realize that her lack of money and widowed status could easily leave her and her daughter scrubbing floors for these overprivileged characters, you can’t help thinking that she’s doing what she needs to do to keep a good life for herself. She’s playing the wealth and class game as the rules are written, an understandable anti-heroine who’s smarter than anybody else in the drawing room.

I won’t go on much further about the plot, since all the twists and turns of who is cheating on who, who is “available”, who is reaching above their status in society, etc would be longer than the movie itself and WAY above MY social status. I will clearly say that you need to be in the right mood to see the movie, but that, if you are, it’s really quite good. I probably should see it again, since a lot of the language and manners were lost on me until I got my bearings on the time and place. It’s not an easy movie for viewers who are used to the FX heavy scripts and terse language of a lot of popular fare. There’s no revealed sex, no violence, no chases (even in a carriage) and all of the characters are clearly earthlings of the old English sort.

My previous experiences with Kate Beckinsale have mainly been as a pretty face in Pearl Harbor or a leather-clad warrior on the hunt for werewolves, so her performance in Love and Friendship surprised me. The rest of the cast is very British and seemed to slip into their roles easily. Cinematography is quite florid, and the entire movie appears to be made with sets, costumes and makeup, no special effects are evident anywhere. You really have to be ready for a very talky movie. Susan’s endless plotting is the fun part of the movie, so you have to listen carefully to all of the subtle implications of her dialog. I ended up enjoying this more than I might have expected. It’s really well done. I don’t know Austin well enough to have any idea whether the movie does justice to the original, but it’s such an alien time and place to me that I’m not sure I would appreciate the difference from the source. I give this a good recommendation IF (a big IF) you’re in the right mindset. The enjoyment of the movie is in the characters, scheming, wit and dialog, so you have to pay attention, but if you do, it’s quite good. It’s currently sitting at an exalted 99% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, 84% with audiences and 7.5 on IMDB, so not everybody is thrilled, but I did enjoy it.