Quick takes on 5 films

Widows is a very entertaining heist film with a twist, putting women in the forefront instead of the traditional strong male lead. The film starts with a quartet of men making a getaway from a job, but all are killed by the cops during a standoff. The stolen money is destroyed in the process, and the people it was stolen from come after the dead thieves’ widows for repayment. These women band together and, along with notes left from their husbands’, plan their own heist to get the needed cash. The film has a lot going on, with dirty politicians to go along with the crooks, and a few good twists to keep the viewer guessing. The cast is great, chuck full of award winners, and all brought together by the talented director Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave).

I’ll set you up with the opening scene. A pilot is in a test flight to get just on the other side of the atmosphere in 1961, flying in something not much better than a plane with a rocket attached to it. It is shaking and creaking and sounds like it will fall apart at any second. Something inevitably goes wrong, and the pilot has to make quick decisions to get him back on land safely. It is one of the most gripping scenes in any movie that I can remember in quite awhile. There are a few such scenes in First Man, detailing the life of Neil Armstrong and the American space program trying to get the first person to the moon and back. Moments like the nearly ruinous Gemini 8 mission, the deadly Apollo 1 test, and the landing of Apollo 11 all make from great cinema, interspersed with the private life of Armstrong as he and his wife deal with the death of a daughter. Ryan Gosling plays an Armstrong who often is not in touch with his emotions and doesn’t know how to deal with his family; as such, he comes off as very cold and impersonal. Personally I thought the movie felt a little long, and the slower scenes, meant for dramatic affect, sometimes crawled by, but the charged and emotional action sequences more than make up for those slower moments.

In the safety of the USA, it is easy to ignore the cost of lives of wars happening on the other side of the world. A Private War is about journalist Marie Colvin, who traveled to places where she was often not supposed to be, in order to put human faces and tell human stories of civilians and innocent casualties caught up in the wars of their nations. She traveled to Sri Lanka (where she lost an eye), to Afghanistan, to Libya, and to Syria, where ultimately she was killed. When I’ve heard of press members killed in these dangerous zones, I’ll admit I’ve previously wondered if they had a death wish, but seeing this film and hearing Colvin’s story, I see now the importance of their work. They are telling stories that governments are trying to hide and would otherwise be untold; they are risking their own lives in order to make sure the world knows the truth. This is a tremendous film, with Colvin portrayed brilliantly by Rosamund Pike as a woman who believes in what she does, yet struggles with alcoholism and PTSD from the horrors she has witnessed.

I had the same reaction to Aquaman that I’ve had to most of the DC Universe films so far: pretty much a shrug and a “that was OK I guess.” An origin story of the Aquaman character who showed up in a couple previous DC films, and portrayed by Jason Momoa, the film is about the war that some who live underwater in the lost city of Atlantis want to wage on “surface dwellers,” and the prophesied king who will return to unite them all in peace. Momoa is all right, but I did have a problem that he seemed pretty indestructible, taking hit after hit and displaying superhuman strength. I thought the world only had one Superman? Beautifully shot with tons of computer-aided scenes (it seriously looks like the whole film was shot on green screen), there are some good moments and some funny banter, but overall the film just isn’t that great. This series continues to struggle against the juggernaut that is the Marvel Universe, though they still keep making good money, so they’ll continue making them. I keep hoping they’ll turn the corner and get better.

I also finally got around to watching A Star is Born, the much talked about remake of the rags-to-riches story of a singer, Ally. Portrayed by Lada Gaga and co-starring Bradley Cooper as mega-star Jackson Maine (also his debut as writer/director), the movie lived up to the hype for the first 45 minutes to an hour. Jackson discovers Ally in a drag bar and instantly recognizes her talent, and also becomes smitten by her down-to-earth personality. He drags her onstage at a few of his stadium concerts and she becomes an instant hit, and that’s where the film lost me. Ally up to now seemed to know who she was and what she wanted, but here she started to let a record producer change those things to create her image, changing her hair and making her dance on stage to her music, complete with back-up dancers. I understand that’s what the industry is, but Ally’s half-ass, feeble protests amounted to nothing. Along with her meteoric rise, Jackson sees a precipitous fall, due to his continued alcoholism, drug use, and tinnitus with worsening hearing loss. There are good, tender moments, but I found the overall film fairly average. I’m not even sure why Gaga received so much acclaim. The soundtrack is good, but any scene she shared with Cooper was lost to him, even when she was supposed to be the focus. Cooper’s just too good and takes over the camera. Worth a single viewing, but I doubt I’d want to watch it again.