Quick takes on 5 films

Tommy’s Honour is a biopic focusing on a couple of golf’s early pioneers, “Old” Tom Morris and his son Tommy. Old Tom is a golf club maker and is a traditionalist. He plays golf at the behest of rich gentlemen, who place bets on the outcome, and keep all the winnings to themselves. Young Tommy believes that as the player, he should be entitled to a bigger payday. He also has ideas about changing some of the rules of golf, which his father obviously does not agree to. In general, Tommy is of the younger generation, forgoing some traditionalist ideas about golf (and life). The film is rather ho-hum and a bit hard to get through, despite some good acting by all involved. Just ok overall.
It’s hard to root for a drug dealer, and that’s what Sleight wants you to do. A “good kid” and wanna-be street magician, who resorts to selling drugs to support his little school-age sister after their parents die, he gets more and more wrapped up in terrible dealings with his supplier. Personally, I found it hard to pull for him, when I just want to scream, “You shouldn’t have been selling drugs in the first place.” Even when his predicament gets really bad, you can’t help but think he did it all to himself. Not to mention there’s a weird almost super-hero like power he has that makes no sense. This one’s a waste of time.
Warm Bodies isn’t a new movie, but I haven’t seen it before. This is an interesting film. On the surface, it is yet another teen romance, but this one has a twist. A zombie apocalypse has taken out most of the population. An unnamed zombie wanders the ruined city, unable to communicate the thoughts in his head. Julie is on a team of living fighters that scavenge for medicine beyond the safety of their protective wall. Her group is overrun by a mob of zombies, but the thinking zombie saves her. As the two spend time together, he becomes more “alive,” able to speak and feel more every day. This unorthodox relationship has far-reaching consequences. A very good, refreshing movie, it stands out among the multitude of others in the teen drama field.
Maybe if I had liked poetry, I would have liked A Quiet Passion, the story of Emily Dickinson’s life. As I do not, I found the movie to be exceedingly dull. Even I, who usually like period dramas, had to get up and move around to prevent falling asleep through this one. The acting by the lead, Cynthia Nixon, is good enough I guess, but much of the story really doesn’t lead anywhere; it just meanders along, with Dickinson’s discussions with her family showing her feelings about life and family, feelings we later saw from the poems published after her death. This one’s a real snoozefest.

 

Baby Driver is a tremendously fun ride from beginning to end. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a young getaway driver for a group of bank robbers, headed by Kevin Spacey’s character. Constantly found with a pair of headphones in his ears, the tunes he listens to provide the soundtrack to the film, with exciting songs to go along with the thrilling car chases around town. The crew is ruthless and barbaric, yet Baby seems to be a good kid, and he dreams of getting out of the lifestyle. The plot of the film is predictable to a point, yet the awesome soundtrack and the larger-than-life robbers (including Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm) are tons of fun. The movie starts with heart-pounding action in the first 10 minutes and never lets up off the gas.

Quick takes on 5 films

The more-than-a-mouthful movie titled Norman: the Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is a great drama showcasing the oft-overlooked Richard Gere. Gere has been on a tear doing some quite good, but easily overlooked, independent films of late, ones that showcase his talents much better than the big blockbusters he used to do in the ’90s and ’00s. This one is about a Jewish “businessman” who is mostly all talk and little action. He likes to act like a big shot and pretend he has connections to the rich and powerful. However, his talk gets him in trouble when one of his acquaintances actually does become a big shot, and Gere’s character can no longer juggle his obligations. For most of the film, you don’t know whether to cheer or jeer at him, but that conflict resolves by the end, and mostly because Gere is absolutely fantastic in this role.
I finally got around to watching Wonder Woman, even though I’ve actually been looking forward to it for awhile. For all the hype it got, I was pretty excited, and it did not disappoint. It is basically an origin story telling of how Wonder Woman grew up and her first big adventure. Gal Gadot received a lot of accolades as the title character, and all well deserved. She is charming, funny, and energetic as the superhero lead. I actually liked all three of the previous DC series films (even though they received middling reviews), but this one is clearly the best so far, and I’m hopeful that future films can stay at the same bar.

Frantz is a beautifully written movie, within the backdrop of the effects of war on all involved. Following World War I, a young French man, Adrien, visits the grave of a German soldier, Frantz, where he meets Frantz’s betrothed, Anna. Adrien is derided in the German countryside by people who lost many sons to the French army during the war, however, Anna befriends him and introduces him to Frantz’s parents, who also warm to him. Adrien tells them stories of meeting Frantz before the war and becoming friends. After sharing a secret with Anna, he returns to France. Frantz’s parents urge Anna to go to him, which she does, and in France it is now she who is eyed warily, with the French people also remembering the recent, painful war with Germany. Ultimately the film is about guilt and moving on from that hurt, on both national and personal fronts. A very well written and well acted film.
Assassin’s Creed is just a bad film. I’ve played a few of the games this film is based on, and enjoyed the early ones (they get a little too involved for this old man’s tastes later on), but the action in the games is thrilling. Sadly that is lost in the movie. They pull together a great cast involving Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, and Jeremy Irons, among others, to tell the story of the last living descendant of one of the secret Assassin organization’s greatest members, searching his family’s history for one of Earth’s greatest secrets. The plot however is heavily convoluted, and ultimately it gets far too bogged down in the minutia to make much sense. A 10 year old playing the game may enjoy the wild twists throughout the plot, but you’ll be left shaking your head.

 

The Mountain Between Us is a fairly engaging movie based on a book (though loosely so according to my wife, who had previously read it). Starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet as a pair of strangers stranded on a mountain in the Rockies after their puddle jumper crashes, the film is about their survival over the ensuing weeks, trying make it out alive. Winslet and Elba once again show off their acting chops, and though the overall story is a bit weak, the duo are engaging on the screen. A good movie for a date night.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Light Between Oceans is the rare case where I can’t recommend a movie, despite the brilliant acting. Usually I can at least say, “see it for this actor,” but in this case, even the two fantastic leads, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, can’t cover a plot full of disappointment. It actually starts really great. Tom is a lonely man after World War II who takes a quiet, desolate appointment at a lighthouse. He intends to live there alone, but ends up falling in love with Isabel, a girl living in the town across the bay. When a baby washes up on shore in a boat, after Isabel has recently suffered two miscarriages, she convinces Tom to tell everyone the baby is theirs. Tom is racked by the guilt though, especially when he comes across the mother. Here’s where the film takes a turn. Too many plot twists and a rush job hurtles the movie towards an unsatisfying conclusion. I’d go so far as to say nearly any other ending would have been better. Fassbender and Vikander are absolutely incredible, running the gamut of emotions in total brilliance, but they can’t save this one.
The Case for Christ is based on the real life of Lee Strobel (who wrote the book of the same name). A strong atheist, he set out to discount the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection, while working as a journalist at the Chicago Tribune in the 1980’s. He believed so strongly that religion is false, that he thought it wouldn’t be a problem to find mountains of evidence disproving the accounts in the New Testament of the Bible. He finds the opposite though, that there is more scientific evidence proving it than disproving, and he looks everywhere, from eyewitness accounts to medical research. In the end, he realizes the only thing preventing him from accepting all of the evidence as fact is his own desires wishing it to be so. Obviously a Christian-themed movie, but again, that doesn’t mean the facts presented aren’t real. I enjoyed it.
For a super spy movie, Allied is sort of boring. It has its moments, but is overall rather dull. Brad Pitt plays Max, a Canadian air force pilot undercover in Morocco to assassinate a German figure during World War II. Upon arriving in Morocco, he meets Marianne (Marion Cotillard), a French spy who has been there for a couple months laying the groundwork for their spy game, as she is to play his wife. When they accomplish their mission, they head back to London, where they fall in love, get married, and have a baby. After a year or so, Max is approached by his superiors with news that his wife may not be who she says she is, and he spends the rest of the film trying to prove her innocence. The best part of this film is the first half, when the duo’s mission in Morocco is under constant threat of discovery and their inevitable execution, but that tension fades in the second half.
Silence is just dreary. The latest film directed by Martin Scorsese, it tells a fictional tale about the persecution of Christians in 17th century Japan. A very real and very terrible time in Japan’s history, it doesn’t translate well in this movie, despite great actors (Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Liam Neeson are the well-known names). When news reaches priests Rodrigues and Garupe in Portugal that their former mentor has renounced his faith in Japan, they head there to see what is going on, knowing that their lives are forfeit if they are caught. They spend their time in Japan hiding from the authorities and giving comfort to the Japanese Christians who are also forced to hide their faith. They see horrors every day and eventually are each caught, leading to the question of how to balance their faith with the fear of a brutal death. The movie’s “highlights” are the torturing of the Japanese who will not turn from their faith, and the story itself is just dull and predictable, and as it approaches 3 hours long, it is just too long to sit through.

 

Finally had a good one in Land of Mine, a Danish film that shines a light on a forgotten moment in time after World War II. With the beaches across Denmark loaded with land mines placed by Germany in anticipation of a sea landing there, the Danish military enlists German POW’s, many of them just teenagers, the dangerous task of finding and diffusing the mines. This film follows a group of 14 such men, really just boys, under the supervision of a Danish sergeant. The Dane is at first very strict with them, almost brutal, but as their bravery is shown in doing their task, and as a few ultimately die along the way, he starts to open up to them, and they in turn to him as well. A beautifully written movie about the often forgotten moments that follow most wars, but also about true forgiveness, at a time when everyone involved must find a way to move on.

Don’t let It find you in the dark

The reimagining of Stephen King’s It is a genuinely creepy, genuinely scary movie, not for the faint of heart. Rather than telling the story of the kids in flashback-form as the first movie did, this one just takes place in 1988 (ostensibly setting up a future sequel when they come back as adults).

Focusing on a group of 4 pre-teen boys, who pick up another couple friends along the way, the movie shows the town of Derry, a town which is facing a crisis. People, and especially children, are disappearing at an alarming rate. Eventually the insane clown Pennywise shows his face to each of the friends, and they decide to come together to rid the town of the menace. There are plenty of ways for the clown to give you the creeps (and quite a few jump scares, one in particular that got the whole theater to startle). But more than just a scary movie, this film has a great plot and is truly well acted by the young leads, fronted by Jaeden Lieberher of St Vincent and Midnight Special. Don’t take the kids to this one unless you want to be woken up during the night, but fans of the horror genre will find plenty to like.

Quick takes on 5 films

Chuck is a biographical film about the life of Chuck Wepner. I’d venture to guess that most people my age and younger have never heard of Wepner, but his boxing fight against the heavily favored Muhammad Ali was Sylvester Stallone’s inspiration for the original Rocky. Here, Chuck is brilliantly portrayed by Liev Schreiber, with a strong supporting cast including Ron Perlman and Elisabeth Moss. Wepner thought very highly of himself, going so far as to make up stories to enhance his reputation among the boys, but eventually his fast lifestyle catches up to him. And though Schreiber is great, the film falls into the same trap as a lot of bio pics, in that it feels a little too much paint-by-numbers. There’s a lot of “he went here and he talked to this person” kind of action. Reaching only about an hour and a half long, it is still worthy viewing for movie lovers for the performances.
Last Days in the Desert is a dramatization of the waning days of the temptation of Christ, as he is headed towards Jerusalem. If you can get past the subtle hint of a Scottish accent by Ewan McGregor’s Jesus every now and then, I actually really liked this film. Too often I think we only see Jesus as this mythical being, and while he is that, it is easy to forget he lived a human life. This movie puts a human face on him, without being sacrilegious. Jesus is wandering the desert, facing temptations by Satan along the way (who has also taken McGregor’s face, in a subverted, subconscious kind of way), when he comes across a family of three living on the edge of the wasteland. The father is a builder, so Jesus can relate, but the son dreams of leaving and starting a new life in the city, and the mother is ill, most likely of the wasting disease, or cancer. In this family, Satan finds new ways to tempt Jesus. The film feels like a parable lifted from the Bible. It does a great job of showing the kinds of enticements Jesus faced, while remaining sin-free and ultimately, straying true to his calling.
Beatrice at Dinner is a weird film, and for me, not in a good way. Movie critics love it, but I can’t find a single reviewer who’s sole reason isn’t the fact it is about a Mexican immigrant telling her story in the day we live. Salma Hayek plays a masseuse whose car breaks down at a rich client’s house, forcing her to stay with the family during dinner, a dinner they are hosting with other rich business partners. When Beatriz discovers one of them is a real estate developer, much like the mogul who uprooted her whole village as a child, she lashes out the only way she can, with words. A movie about cultural differences, but with some deeper meanings too, the film feels a little disjointed, and the ending tries to make it something else entirely.
Buster’s Mal Heart is another strange one, but this one I kind of dug. Buster roams the countryside, breaking into vacant vacation homes, staying one step ahead of the police. He makes random phone calls into the radio stations to rant about the end of the world coming with the Y2K crossover, what he calls “the inversion.” We also see him floating in a lifeboat in the middle of the sea, but which version is true, we don’t know. His previous life is told in flashbacks, the family he used to have and his job as a third shift front desk worker at a hotel, where he met the man who introduced him to the whole inversion idea. Rami Malek’s straight, stone face is perfect for Buster as he creeps along to lunacy, as we slowly learn what brought him to this place. The movie has a quiet, stirring tension, very mysterious and almost foreboding, and the twist is thought-provoking and emotional.

 

Far From Men is OK I guess. It is a French film starring Viggo Mortensen (who knew he spoke fluent French?) as Daru, a teacher in war-torn Algeria in the early 1950’s. He teaches the local Muslim children how to speak French but more importantly, how to read and write. However, independence fighters are tearing through the area as the Muslims are rising up against the French. One day a French officer drops off a Muslim prisoner,Mohamed, at the school, and tells Daru he must accompany the prisoner the rest of the way to the next city. Along the way, nearly everyone seems to want one or the other one dead. The best parts of the film are the quiet dialogue between the two journeyman, when Mohamed and Daru learn each others tales, and form their bond. Not tremendous, but not bad either.

No super powers found in Marvel’s Inhumans

Marvel’s Inhumans is a rare miss for the Cinematic Universe, so much so that I actually left before the conclusion. I heard the rumblings of bad reviews before I went in, but I didn’t want to believe them, and hoped to be surprised. Unfortunately it was not to be.
This “film” coming to theaters is a weird round-about tale. Originally intended to be a film in the Marvel series, the backstory of the Inhumans was later incorporated into the Marvel show Agents of SHIELD, which I do greatly enjoy. The new Inhumans show is partly backed by IMAX, so the first two episodes were combined together for a limited run on IMAX screens this week, before the show launches on ABC later in the month. Helmed by Scott Buck, it certainly didn’t start off on the right foot (google him to see a list of his failures over the years when he was the showrunner).
Inhumans follows the group of super-humans in their hidden city on the moon. The king’s own brother starts an uprising, forcing the royal family and their friends to Earth. If it sounds like a plot from a 80’s low budget sci-fi show, you wouldn’t be far off the mark. The dialogue is almost comically bad, and the wooden, stuttering acting is the result of either grossly poor direction or just terrible actors. There were about 5-10 minutes of good sequences in the hour I sat through before leaving, and that’s being generous. Makes me wonder if the show will be canceled before it ever airs an episode.

Without the film rights to the Mutants (Fox owns those for their X-Men films), Marvel Studios and Disney desperately needed to develop the Inhumans (the next best thing to Mutants) into something with some staying power. But this terrible miss may mean they never see the light of day again.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Wall is a tense, though ultimately flawed, war movie with a twist. A couple American soldiers are called to a possible sniper situation in Iraq. The sniper gets the upper hand, taking one of them out and pinning the other behind a small wall. The Iraqi sniper and American soldier converse over a short wave radio, while the American tries to think of a way to get out of the situation. There are some pretty implausible actions that take place before it is all over, and while the premise is a good one, the script doesn’t offer enough to really grip you and keep your attention.
The Fate of the Furious is the newest in the franchise, and perhaps they should have stopped after the last. I really enjoyed # 7, Paul Walker’s last, and while the series has continued to feel like nothing more than a money grab for awhile now, at least they’ve been mostly entertaining. I can’t quite say that about this one. Granted, the plots have always been ridiculous, and stunning, impossible-to-believe action sequences have always followed cliche-riddled dialogue, but this newest installment takes it to the absurd. The banter between the leads is nearly always eye-roll worthy with such classic lines as “Speak of the devil” and “You are going to have to take me out too” as the standard fare. And the aforementioned action is beyond the fathomable. The 9thmovie in the series will probably find the team on the moon.
Gifted is about a 7 year girl, Mary, who is a math prodigy, able to advanced college level equations. She is being raised by her uncle Frank (Chris Evans), as her mother committed suicide when Mary was a baby. Frank wants Mary to grow up with a normal life without the pressures of being a genius, but Frank’s mother, Evelyn, wants to push Mary just as she did her mother. The adults end up fighting it out in court. Evans is great as the well meaning protector, letting him show a different side than his normal Captain America role. The movie is just ok though, a little too predictable and heavy handed.
Colossal is a strange film, and you have to ride it out to the end to make the trip worthwhile. Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an alcoholic who moves back to her hometown after being kicked out by her boyfriend. She reconnects with a boy she grew up with, Oscar, played by Jason Sudekis. At the same time, a giant Godzilla-like creature begins showing up in Seoul, Korea, stumbling around and smashing buildings. Turns out the creature shows up in Seoul every time Gloria is in the park in her town, and it follows her actions (her drunkenness stumbling). It is a silly premise, but since the movie chooses to focus more on Gloria’s reaction to this, and the guilt from killing those people during her rampages, it becomes a much deeper film than the superficial science fiction backdrop. A very good movie with fine acting as usual by Hathaway.

 

Based on a book by Daphne du Maurier, who’s Rebecca I read a couple years ago, My Cousin Rachel has the same kind of feel as that novel. Philip is a young man who stands to inherit a fortune from his recently deceased older cousin (who had no children of his own). It is revealed however that Philip’s cousin had recently married Rachel, but had not changed his will to leave her anything. Rachel comes to stay with Philip in her mourning, and Philip starts to fall for her. As the story unfolds, the viewer is left to wonder if this infatuation is truly reciprocated, or if Rachel is simply looking to pry some of the fortune from Philip. Rachel Weisz steals the camera in every scene as cousin Rachel, but the film itself is a bit lacking in depth and development. I’m sure the book is better, as I did enjoy du Maurier’s Rebecca quite a bit.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Other Half is a beautifully done, well acted film, about a love story involving two people with some serious baggage. Nickie is a young man from England, living in the states, where he is running from his past. He has lost a younger brother, and stays away from his parents and anything that reminds him of his loss, acting out with aggression towards anyone who crosses paths with him. He finally starts to come out of his shell when he meets, Emily. Emily is wild and fun, and Nickie falls instantly in love with her. However, it turns out Emily is struggling with bipolarism, and suffers from extreme highs and extreme lows. She has saved Nickie in a way, but he is now faced with the impossibility of doing the same for her. This is a heart-warming and heart-breaking film, and will hit close to home to anyone who has loved someone struggling with mental illness.
Ghost in the Shell is a major letdown for science fiction lovers. Boasting cool visuals and an interesting premise, it can never shake the feeling of a bad Syfy channel film on a big budget. Scarlett Johansson is Major, a fully synthetic cyborg with a human brain. She is built as a weapon for the military, hunting down terrorists in a futuristic city. However, she can’t shake buried memories from her past human life, and the people she is hunting may not be terrorists after all. The pretty computer enhanced effects and rather good acting by Johansson can only take this movie so far. Rough dialogue and a choppy story drown this film before it can get off the ground.
I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island more than I thought I would. I debated even seeing this one, usually these kinds of movies aren’t my thing. But this one, taking place in the ’50’s about an American expedition to a recently discovered island and finding it inhabited by giant monsters, has just enough surprises in the first half to sustain its lack thereof in the second. Upon hitting the island, the military helicopters are attacked by King Kong, and find shortly thereafter he isn’t the only mammoth sized animal on the island. With a good cast and good effects, this film won’t win any awards, but it will entertain, as long as you temper your expectations.
What followed for me was a couple comedies which I could just not get into. Toni Erdmann is a German film about a lonely middle-aged man, divorced with a grown daughter whom he hardly speaks to. When his longtime pet dies, the man goes to visit his daughter at her high-stress job in Romania. She obviously doesn’t enjoy this, and finds an excuse to usher him out the door after just a couple days. As she is regaling her weekend to her friends, her dad pops ups again, in the guise of Toni Erdmann. Toni his much more outspoken and direct than her father. This is where I gave up on the film, 1.25 hours into a nearly 3 hour movie. Maybe I just don’t get German humor, or maybe something was lost in the subtitles, but the moments where the film wanted me to laugh, I couldn’t even crack a grin. I’m sure the film was heading towards a conclusion where she realizes her dad is more than the doddering old fool she sees at first, but good luck sticking around to that conclusion.

 

I also bailed on Punching Henry, and this time I couldn’t blame it on a language barrier. Henry is a down-and-out musician/comedian. He returns to LA after having been laughed out of town (and not in a good way) several years earlier. He is heckled at bars he performs at, has his car stolen 30 minutes after entering town, and when a producer decides to make his dreary tale into a TV show, even the execs at the studio can’t believe how bad his life is. Again, I turned this one off, this time making it about halfway through the 1.5 hour movie. I’ll admit I did chuckle a few times at poor Henry’s expense, but not enough to warrant sticking around for another 45 minutes of tedious wisecracks. After these two films, I need to go re-watch Groundhog Day, Office Space, or something that will actually make me laugh.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Lost City of Z is a biographical film about the explorer Percy Fawcett. I don’t know how accurate the movie is, but it showcases Charlie Hunnam brilliantly. Though he is still playing the same kind of “tough guy” as seen in his Sons of Anarchy days, Percy is a dynamic character and Hunnam is fantastic here. The movie tells of Percy’s several forays into the Amazonian jungle, first as a cartographer and surveyor for England, and later on his own explorations, searching for a fabled “lost city”, or his version of El Dorado. The film has an almost old-timey “journey to the center of the earth” kind of feel, with Percy finding clues here and there but never finding his goal, though it is more of a drama-driven movie than an action flick. The movie ends just as Percy’s real life did, shrowded in mystery. A good film.

As You Are is a very low budget, independent film, written and directed by young filmmaker Miles Joris-Peyrafitte. The title references the famous Nirvana song, and the film is a look at a group of 3 teenage friends trying to survive the early 90’s. Jack and Mark are forced together when their single parents start dating each other. They two young men become close quickly. Jack hides his homosexuality from everyone, as many high-schoolers were doing in the early 90’s, but he opens up to Mark, who responds in kind. However, they drift apart a bit when their parents break up, and each end up dating the same girl, fellow friend Sarah. This film has a nice premise, but ultimately the shifts in dialogue and choppy editing take away from overall performance. The two leads are very good for young actors. Fellow children of the 90’s like myself might fight enough to wax nostalgic about.

A United Kingdom is another biographical drama, this one telling the story of Seretse Khama and his wife Ruth, a black man and heir to the throne of the kingdom in southern Africa, and a white woman from England. Seretse has been in England getting a proper education before claiming his thrown, where he falls in love with Ruth. This union stirs opposition on both sides. The British are eager to keep that African area as a territory of theirs, and with Apartheid developing just south of them, the black inhabitants want their rulers to be of the same background. There is very strong acting from the leads of David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, but the story felt bland for me, and didn’t reach the heights that similar movies in the last couple years have.

There are slow movies (which I don’t necessarily mind), there are bad movies (which can be entertaining in their own way), and then their are just slow, dull movies, which are maybe the worst kind. Their Finest isn’t really a bad movie. The acting by the lead (Gemma Aterton) is actually really great, but the movie is just boring. Taking place during World War II, Catrin is brought on board to lend a female voice to a propaganda film team in England, a team that is trying to help boost morale. The movie shows a microcosm of gender relations at home and in the work environment at this time. Should be fairly interesting to history nerds like myself, but after the first hour I found myself browsing my phone while half-heartedly watching the rest of the film. Unfortunately a movie behind the backdrop of a major wear really should be more exciting.

The Zookeeper’s Wife is just OK, and that’s coming from someone that generally likes historical dramas. About the hiding of jews in the Warsaw Zoo by its owners during World War II, this film is fronted by lauded actor Jessica Chastain, who seems to have a knack for finding these kinds of roles. She and her husband take progressively riskier steps in saving more than 300 Jews from Warsaw ghetto. However, the film doesn’t get as engrossing as it probably should have, and I never felt the “edge of the knife” so to speak, as I did for similar story The Book Thief from a couple years ago, though that one is fiction while Zookeeper is based on fact. A good film from the perspective of learning a historical tidbit, but otherwise fairly forgettable unfortunately.

Quick takes on 5 films

Get Out is a pretty great movie. On the surface it is a fairly simple horror film with an almost absurd premise, but deeper in it is a biting look at how many Americans continue to look at race, despite most of ours ideas of how far we’ve come. Interracial couple Chris and Rose go to meet her parents for the weekend. Chris is worried what they’ll think, but Rose assures him they are not racist and all will be ok. When they arrive, the parents do seem to be very good with the situation, but Chris gets bad vibes immediately. The “help” (groundskeeper and maid) are black and act very weird, almost robotic but with a tense, aggressive feel. Obviously things are not ok, but I’ll let you watch to get the story. This movie opened my eyes too. I saw the white family doing things that I can see in myself and friends of mine, and when it was pointed out as racist in the movie, it was a sharp slap to my senses. Seems I have a long way to go as well.

Before I Fall is a new take on Groundhog Day, but with teenagers instead of adults, and no Bill Murray humor. I’m not often into teenage dramas, but I enjoyed this one. Zoey Deutch is great as Sam, a senior in high school. She is one of the popular ones, and a real bitch to the uncool kids. After a hectic Valentine’s Day at school, which really shows the lines between popular and unpopular at school, and the subsequent party at a friend’s house, Sam and her friends are in a car accident on the way home. Sam wakes up reliving that day over and over again, and finally seeks to be a better person for herself and to those around her. Though you can see the ending coming a mile away, it is still a worthy journey, with tremendous acting in the lead role.

20th Century Women is a coming-of-age art film. And if you didn’t know that, it beats you over the head with that fact every 15 minutes, with slow, singing background music, and black and white stills showing the time period (1979). The movie is about a 15 year old boy (Jamie, played by Lucas Jade Zumann) being raised by his single mom (Annette Bening). Other women influencing him include a 20-something boarding at their house (Greta Gerwing), and his major crush, a somewhat loose girl 2 years older who is his best friend (Elle Fanning), much to Jamie’s chagrin, as he is still a virgin. His mom is a forward thinking woman for her generation, but not prepared for the changing society and feminism pushed by Gerwig’s character. Not a bad film. Bening is incredible, and this is the first time I’ve seen Gerwig play a more demanding role that what she normally does. However, like many other independent films, it constantly tries to remind the viewer how deep it wants to be, when in reality, it is the actors’ strong performances that make this movie.

Elle is a French film starring renowned actress Isabelle Huppert, for which she won a César Award last year (the French equivalent of an Oscar, for which Huppert was also nominated here in the states). She plays Michele, a somewhat cold, detached woman, living alone after her husband has left her for a younger woman. She runs a successful video game company and is very standoffish with her employees, with just a single close friend. The movie begins with her being attacked and raped in her own house, and the film unfolds with Michele continually being harassed by her unknown attacker, via phone messages and continual break-ins to her home. Michele is a brave woman, not letting it deter her, but we find near the end that she is pretty messed up herself, perhaps related to her psychopathic father. Very strong acting from Huppert, and some decent twists (though the most obvious one is readily apparent early in the film). A great movie for foreign film lovers. Poking around online, it looks like this movie was originally intended to be an American film with English-speaking actors, but the violent nature (the film shows rapes after all) caused American A-listers to stay away. I think Huppert ended up being perfect for the role.

The Lego Batman Movie is a followup the wildly successful Lego film a couple years ago, though this one is set entirely inside the Lego world without an “outside” human presence. It sounds more cutesy than it is, and there are actually plenty of laughs for adults as well as kids. Many of the best jokes are probably way over young kids heads, such as cultural references and lots of gags about past batman (and other) films. There are puns galore, and who doesn’t enjoy a good pun? The story involves a lonely Batman who is forced to realize it is important to have friends (and even enemies) in your life for it to have meaning. Well written and well voice-acted, this one is a lot of fun.