Quick takes on 5 films

Auggie is a short drama with a sci-fi twist. Reminiscent of the popular Spike Jonze film Her from a few years ago, it is about a man, Felix, who begins a relationship with a digital assistant named Auggie, a person only he can see when he puts on his augmented reality glasses. The premise makes it sound like it will set up a comedy of sorts, but it is actually a sad, introspective film. Felix is recently retired and is coping with his new, undriven lifestyle. He feels depressed in an empty house, with his wife still working (and in fact, putting in more hours thanks to a big promotion) and a daughter who’s recently moved out. Along comes Auggie, who can read his subconscious and give him everything he wants. It is a person who always has the right word of encouragement to say, and knows what he desires before even he does. Even her appearance is exactly what Felix would define as beauty. At first their relationship is platonic, but it develops into something more, obviously creating strife in Felix’s family. It’s a decent, short film (80 minutes). It took me a few minutes at least to take lead actor Richard Kind seriously, since he’s most well known for being the goof in comedy roles, but he is actually quite good here. I think the film could have explored more about the meaning of a relationship; it just touches on the repercussions of Felix’s decisions and, reciprocally, his wife’s own part, but a solid movie that I’d watch again.

Rosie is a film I’d been wanting to see for awhile, but like a lot of small indie films (especially ones made outside the USA) it took awhile to land somewhere where I finally got the chance. Filmed in Ireland, it is about a family and, particularly, its matriarch, and their struggle in a “working homeless” lifestyle. Every day John Paul goes to work, while Rosie takes/picks up the kids from school, doing laundry at various friends’ houses, and trying to phone hotels to find a place to stay that night. Their situation is made tougher because they are relying on a government assistance credit card to book the room, and not every place wants to deal with that. Rosie is literally making phone call after phone call, all day long, and so far it has worked for the last couple weeks that the family has been living out of their car. With the kids starting to get bullied at school for smelling, and teachers starting to ask questions about their well being, eventually their luck runs out, and they are unable to find a place one night. Really heartbreaking film. I can’t help but be reminded of that old Sound of Music quote, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” In Rosie, unfortunately, the windows all appear bolted shut. Outstanding acting by Sarah Greene as Rosie and Moe Dunford as John Paul (also the star of recent film The Dig, which I highly recommend). Even the kids were great, and as all my friends know, I generally despise child actors. Very heartfelt, emotional film.

If you’ve been following my blog, you know the importance of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books to me. His Lord of the Rings are my favorite books; I’ve re-read them more than anything else. So it is tragedy that the film based on his life, Tolkien, is such a bore. The biopic follows his life from a young boy, sent to a prestigious school after the death of his mother, through adulthood and his fighting in France during World War I. It follows many subjects, including his relationship with his future wife, his friends at school who were important in shaping the man he became, and his love of crafting languages, which was vital to his creation of the entire mythology of the world he built in Lord of the Rings. But all of it is treated as matter-of-factly. There are moments, hints of stirring emotion, but nothing that comes close to the climaxes found in his books. And worse, it portrays some of his muses as nothing more than hallucinations or fanciful daydreaming that he later put down in word. A total bummer for fans like myself.

Ash is Purest White is a Chinese film from a well-regarded director in that country and around the world, Jia Zhangke. I’ve not seen any of his previous films, but this one is highly reviewed, some calling it his masterpiece. It follows a young woman named Qiao, whose boyfriend Bin runs a small-time group of gangsters out of their gambling establishment in 2001. The whole film boils down to Qiao’s constant enabling and protecting of Bin, and his greedy nature to take everything she gives him without returning anything, even affection. She saves him when he is attacked by a younger mob of thugs, even going to jail for him when she tells the cop the gun was hers. When released 5 years later, he has moved on to a new girl and doesn’t have the guts to tell Qiao to her face, getting the new girlfriend to give the news. Years later, after a stroke has left him penniless and alone, confined to a wheelchair, Qiao once again cares for him, paying for rehab and nurturing him back to his feet. Think he will stick around this time? The “professional” reviewers are heaping the praise on this one, correlating the film with China’s rapid rise to modernization and what it has lost in culture in doing so. I’m not smart enough to see that connection, so looking at the film on its own merits, I just don’t get it. Ponderously slow, feeble acting from everyone outside of its lead (and even then, the stone-faced Zhao Tao as Qiao is passable, though far from spectacular), and really no plot to speak of all add up to a dreary film. I’d like to talk to someone who really, truly liked this movie to explain it to me.

Trial By Fire is a drama based a true story, about a man named Cameron “Todd” Willingham, who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for setting a fire that killed his 3 young kids. The film starts powerfully, portraying the violent day when the kids died, with a distraught Todd trying to get back into the house, despite it going up in flames. He is arrested for murder the afternoon after the kids are buried, and his trial is shown as a farce. The state’s experts say it was arson, and all the witnesses paint Todd as a troubled man who beat his wife and even worshiped the devil. His only defender was his wife, who said Todd would never hurt their kids. After the trial, Todd gets put on death row, and we see the hell that life is in that dreadful place. He’s still there seven years later when he gets in touch with a woman who starts looking into the sham that was his trial. She doesn’t know if Todd is innocent or guilty (even we viewers are unsure, purposefully so), but she knows he didn’t get a fair shake at his own trial, and she fights to try to get him an appeal. There are a lot of good moments, some even great, but the story is uneven and the dialogue can at times be worse. The film is very heavy handed too. I don’t mind having my emotions tugged at, but not so much when they are beating me over the head with it.