Quick takes on 5 films

Louder Than Bombs is a great title for this film. Quiet and subdued, the movie is still sharply focused and mesmerizing. Jonah and Conrad are brothers with a somewhat sizable difference in years between them. Jonah is married and expecting a child, while Conrad is still in high school. Jonah is called back by their dad, Gene, to help go through their deceased mother’s things. The mother was a famous photographer, who had died a few years prior. The running thought was it was by suicide (though never proven), and all know this except Conrad, who was too young at the time to tell this kind of news to. The movie is told in the present day, where Conrad is going through a teen angst faze, to the point that others worry he might take a gun to school or some similar catastrophe, and Jonah is feeling the crush of real life with his pending child; and also in the past, showing their parents tension-filled marriage. In the end, we realize that Conrad sees more that we thought, and everyone carries their demons with them. A very well written, well acted film (Jesse Eisenberg, Devin Druid, Gabriel Byrne), almost must-see territory for film lovers who enjoy a dialogue-driven drama.

I really connected with The Hollars, though it didn’t get the critical praise that the above movie did. This one is also about a pair of adult brothers, brought home because their mother has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and will be facing a serious operation soon. John (John Krazinski, who also directed) seems to have his life more in order with a baby on the way and a career ahead of him, though inwardly he feels the stress of living up to expectations. Ron (Sharlto Copley) is living with the parents already, having been recently divorced. Their mother, Sally (Margo Martindale), is the glue that keeps their family together, and their father Don (Richard Jenkins) seems lost. Don has spent his life supporting the family and is the “head of the house”, but Sally is the real rock. So much so that when she collapses in the beginning of the film, Don thinks she is joking, as he cannot fathom a weakness in his strong wife. I really don’t want to give anything away about this film, but suffice to say it is a tear jerker (for many reasons). There are comedic moments for sure, but the high level drama is what makes this one. And as I said, this one hit close to home for me. My parents are still around thank God, but the family dynamic is there, as my Dad has always been the hard working, go-getter, “support the family at all costs” father figure, but everyone knows my Mom is the cog who kept the wheels turning as we were growing up.

Touched With Fire is very good, and I know it is one of those movies that I’ll remember a month from now and think it to be amazing, so I’m writing my blurb now, having just finished it, to remind myself that while good, it isn’t great. Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby play a couple, both severely bipolar with extreme manic and depressive phases. They feed off each other to devastating results, sort of egging each other on to greater and greater euphorias, and in Kirby’s case, utmost paranoia. This all changes when they decide to really try to build a life together outside of the mental hospital. She is willing to stay on her meds and try to be “normal,” but he likes the rush of his manic phase too much to give it up. A chilling movie at times, but a little too disjointed, and maybe that was done on purpose to give the viewer a glimpse of what it feels like to be in our protagonist’s shoes.

The Innocents is a fantastic French foreign film. It is about a Red Cross worker in Poland in 1945, at the conclusion of World War II, who stumbles across a local convent holding a secret. The Polish nuns in the convent, having been persecuted by the Germans during the war, were subsequently raped by the liberating Russian army. Many are pregnant and ready to give birth, however they are keeping their secret for fear of the church closing them down. The Red Cross nurse agrees to help them give birth in secret. That is just the opening plot setting, and there is a lot going on. The nurse has to hide her comings and goings from her superiors. Several of the nuns, having taken vows of chastity, refuse the nurse’s help at first, seeing her interference as a sin. Other plot elements open up towards the end of the film that I don’t want to give away. I recommend this one for foreign film lovers, well worth a viewing.

Pawn’s Sacrifice is the telling of chess legend Bobby Fischer’s life, starting at childhood and taking us through his famous Cold War era match against Russian Boris Spassky. Played by Tobey Maguire, we see Fischer’s rise in brilliance and fame, even as he descends further and further into paranoia and mental illness. A fairly straight forward biographical film (though I do not how accurate it is), the movie spends most of its time showing how far Fischer goes down the rabbit hole. He is surrounded by “yes men” who give him what he wants and do nothing to dispel his paranoid episodes. They only seek to push Fischer towards playing and beating the Russians for the sake of USA’s pride at a time when the country was in a dark place (Cold War, ongoing Vietnam War, and at the end, Watergate). Fischer doesn’t see himself as an American hero, but he is extremely egotistical and thinks the Russians, and later in his paranoia, the Jews, are all trying to rig the game against him, and possibly even kill him. An OK film, a little boring at times (and not because it is about chess, those quietly tense matches are actually the highlight).