5 more quick film takes

Best of Me is the latest Nicholas Sparks book-turned-film. It is more of the same from Sparks, meaning if you love his films, you will love this one, and if not, it won’t sway you. Parts are good, if entirely expected, but overall it is just another tear-jerker. Dawson is a good kid from a bad upbringing. He falls in love with Amanda, but before they even have a chance, circumstances put Dawson in jail, where he tells Amanda not to wait for him. Flash forward 20 years, and they run into each other again. The back story is told in flashbacks so you get bits and pieces as you go. I thought the middle of the movie was the best, and the end was a whole lot of cheese. Not my cup of tea, but my wife would love it.

A Most Violent Year is a gripping crime drama, taking place in NY in the early 80’s. Abel Morales owns a fuel company, and is at a crucial moment in his company’s future. He has grown it from humble roots, and needs to buy a plant to expand it, or it will stagnate. Just as he is about to close the deal, his company comes under scrutiny by the government for tax evasion and under-reporting, while at the same time his fuel truck drivers are being ambushed and beaten, and the trucks stolen and fuel robbed. Throughout the film, he tries to do things on the up and up, not wanting to get aid from the mafia or make under-the-table deals, and while they are guilty of cooking the books, he doesn’t want to take drastic steps that will land him in trouble with the cops. His wife Anna on the other hand, seems to be more of the mind to do whatever is necessary for the company to grow. Multiple events come to a head at the end of the film. It isn’t a heavy action mob movie, but it is tense in a quiet sort of way, and at the end, you realize that Abel, like Anna, will do whatever it takes to get ahead.

I Origins is a fascinating movie. It starts out as science but turns into science fiction by the end, with a tremendous premise. Ian is a molecular biologist, trying to find the origin of the eye. If he can prove mutation in each stage of the eye, from the most basic eye in animals to the most complex in the human eye, he can discredit religion that believes in a God that designed us. He is aided by lab partner Karen. Ian’s course is almost thrown off when his love Sofi is killed, but with Karen’s help in the lab (and as a new love interest), he continues on and eventually their work proves successful. His own theory takes a hit though when their child is born. When they scan his baby’s eyes (a new iris scanning system going in to place around the world), they find an exact match for someone that had previously died. This is supposed to be impossible, as no two eyes are ever supposed to be alike. On a hunch, they scan Sofi’s eyes from a photo, and find a match for a child born after her death in India. Ian takes off to see if a higher power after all is running the show. This film is a bit slow at times, but for nerdy types like myself, the mix of true science and fun science fiction is a unique mix definitely worth watching.

Frank is an interesting film with a great cast. Jon is an aspiring musician who hooks up with a band needing a keyboardist. The band is made up of misfits who all seem to suffer from some sort of mental illness or another, and is headlined by Frank, who has been wearing a large paper mache mask for years, never taking it off. Very quickly the band ends up in a secluded cabin to record an album, making all kinds of weird noises for their style of “music.” Jon is inspired by Frank who can find music in anything, and he longs for some personal anguish or trauma that he thinks will give him a foundation for the creativity inside him. When success starts to find the band, they begin to fall apart. This movie has a much deeper meaning that you think from the outset. While funny and quirky in the beginning, it loses all of its laughs about 2/3’rds through, and gets really dark by the end, which can turn some viewers off. I thought it was great through.

Tracks is the based-on-a-true-story hike of Robyn Davidson, who set off from Alice Springs, Australia to walk 1700 miles through the Australian outback and deserts to the Indian Ocean in the mid-1970s. No offense to Cheryl Strayed, but this was the wild before Wild. Robyn spent days and weeks without seeing a single person during legs of the trip, across harsh, rocky, and finally sandy dunes, desert terrain. She is photographed along the way by Rick, for a story for the National Geographic, who drives ahead to meet her at times and resupply her with water. In the film, she is making the trip to move forward past demons, of her mother hanging herself, which prompted her to be sent off to grow up among distant relatives and finally boarding school. I think as a film, Wild is better, but you certainly get more of a sense of loneliness and near-hopelessness in Tracks.