Quick takes on 5 films

1917 is right up there with the best movies I’ve seen recently. It is loosely based on various missions director Sam Mendes’ own grandfather, Alfred Mendes, undertook in World War I. The film plays out over a single day, in spectacular almost-real time, and deceptively shot to look like a single, long take. This manages to pull the viewers into the action and characters in an immeasurable way. In the film, Schofield and Blake must cross a no-man’s land, past the German front, to find a battalion of British soldiers who are planning an attack on the Germans the next day at dawn. At stake is the lives of 1600 men, including Blake’s older brother, because the attack is doomed to fail. Not only is Germany ready for it, but they’ve set a trap to lure the British soldiers into the attack on their terms. As the two young soldiers creep across dangerous lands, stumbling across multitudes of dead bodies and the signs and leavings of war all around them, they are on a race against time to get their message through. It is 2 hours of heart-pounding action and suspense. The couple times when our heroes get a rest, allowing the viewer to take a breather as well, are only short enough to calm the heart for a brief spell before the action picks up again. This is a tremendous film, I’m confident it is going to go down as one of the greatest war films of all time. ★★★★★

Angel Has Fallen is the third film in the Gerard Butler secret service films. I really liked Olympus Has Fallen back in 2013, and in 2016, despite terrible reviews, I thought London Has Fallen was still pretty good. But the third film has fallen off the rails. Head of secret service Mike Banning is set up as the perpetrator of an assassination attempt on the president, and he goes on the run. He knows early on who is behind the attack, so Mike goes on a quest to clear his name, while he is pursued by the FBI as the lead suspect. All of this is being run by a shady, faceless bad guy who is pulling all the strings, and who also says the most eye-rolling, cliché-ridden lines ever put to film. The previous film suffered some of that, but the action saved it in my eyes. That is no longer the case, even the action is ridiculous now. ★

Hala is a high school senior growing up in the USA. She has all the same issues most typical girls of that age do, and on top of it, she struggles with her parents and their deep Muslim faith and traditions. Her dad is the typical “cool dad” and she likes him more, but she finds her more traditional, Arabic-speaking mother overbearing and too conservative. Hala’s 18 years old, so talk is starting to circle about her finding a good Muslim man to marry, but she has a crush on a white boy, Jesse, at school. Against her parents’ and their faith’s wishes, she starts hanging out with him alone, when others aren’t around. It is on one such date at a diner when she sees her dad out with another woman. This pushes her to be more rebellious, and she has her first sexual encounter with Jesse. Her dad suspects something immediately, and all of a sudden, he’s not the nice one anymore. Hala starts to see aspects of him she never picked up on before, and comes to realize her mother is only the traditional homebody wife because her husband made her so. One night, her parents invite family friends over with their college-age son, in what is obviously an attempt to set up their children together. Hala runs from the house, pulling her hijab out in frustration. Her life is in turmoil, and she does some things that have real world consequences outside of her own life. The film is narrated throughout by Hala’s journal entries, in an introspective and poetic way. It’s a good film, a different take on the tried-and-true coming-of-age, self discovery kind of tale, though the second half is a bit choppy and not as cohesive as the first. ★★★½

I was pretty excited to see Ms Purple. It is from director Justin Chon, and I really dug his film Gook a few years ago. Gook felt real, and raw, and unfortunately Ms Purple feels contrived. For one, it takes a long time to get going, and by long, I mean nearly half of its 90 minute length. We are introduced to Kasey and her estranged brother Carey, adult Korean Americans who are living pretty effed up lives. Kasey is a high end prostitute/escort at night, and takes care of their comatose father during the day. When her live-in caregiver quits, Casey calls Carey asking him to move in and take care of their dad while she works. Carey is jobless and aimless. It isn’t until much later than we learn their individual issues stem from their parents. Their mom abandoned them both when they were kids, and their dad was really horrible to Carey, which is what led to Carey moving out of the house at the young age of 15. Now back home, Carey has taken to wheeling his dad out of the house during the day, bed and all, but he doesn’t know how to properly care for him, leading to large bed sores on the dad’s back. The whole film has a feeling of trying to be something deep and penetrating, but really it’s just a shallow, simple story, with nothing memorable to latch on to, and (nearly) a complete waste of time. Some fine acting by Tiffany Chu in the lead is the only saving grace. ★½

The Two Popes is a biographical drama, mostly focused on Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (who would go on to become Pope Francis), showing his relationship with Pope Benedict XVI as well as his past as a young priest in Argentina. The film, understandably, is heavily dialogue driven, and the banter between the two men was the highlight for me. Benedict is a very conservative figure, loving the pomp and pageantry of his office, whereas Bergoglio very much believes in simplifying the church, bringing it to the people, and also moving the church ahead with the times. Their opposing views create some fantastic dialogue in the film, but other parts bogged down and honestly at times, the movie’s pacing was a bit slow. The actors themselves are great though; Anthony Hopkins is always on obviously, but Jonathan Pryce as Bergoglio is the real show. Pryce has been around a long time, but received just his first Oscar nomination for this role. I’m not Catholic, I don’t know much about the inner workings of the church and its politics, but I mostly enjoyed this film as a picture in time. ★★½