Love and Mercy

When I heard there was a movie about the Beach Boys I thought, "Yes!"  I,  for one,  always loved the extraordinary harmonies of the California group.  Remember their classics?  I still like to listen to Barbara Ann, Sloop John B, I Get Around, Surfing USA, California Girls, and the 1989 smash hit Kokomo.

Of course I expected lots of Beach Boys songs in the movie.  Well, yes, there was a bit of music.  But mostly the focus of the flick Love and Mercy is about Brian Wilson.  So this is really a biography about one of the Beach Boys rather than a history of the group or a review of their fantastic songs.

Never the spoiler, I won't say much more.  But suffice it say that you will be entranced by the story of Brian Wilson.  He was the major creative impulse behind the Beach Boys, much as John Lennon was with the Beatles.

I had no idea that the gifted songwriter was a very troubled soul.  How?  Can't give it away.  Yet as is often the case, great geniuses are frequently plagued with neurosis and anxiety.  Brian was no exception.  It is worth seeing the movie to learn how he coped with his emotional troubles, found the lady of his life, and fought life's battles with a continued devotion to music.

Great acting in the film:  Paul Dano plays the young Brian Wilson with intensity.  John Cusack plays the older musician with even more subtlety.  Elizabeth Banks is a knockout as the girlfriend who meets Brian later in life and bravely helps him.  And don't miss a fantastic performance by Paul Giamatti, who is the rather despicable psychologist.

After viewing this film, you will have a new appreciation for the Beach Boys and the man who wrote so many of the great songs.

Grade of A.  Definitely a must-see!

Run All Night

Do you like thriller gangster films?  The genre is fun!  If the story and acting are right, you can get mighty tense!

Run All Night is way up there when it comes to action.  I am reminded of the tone of the original Godfather.

NO spoiler, but here's the basic story:  A hit man, played by Liam Neesan, has worked for years for his closest friend, a gangster capo, played by Ed Harris.  The hit man is weary and retired, but he is still close with his former boss.

All would be fine in gangsterland if each of the main characters did not have grown up sons who, well, don't exactly behave themselves!  When the fathers get involved, mayhem follows.  Soon old friends are deadly foes!

Add to that situation crooked cops who chase the hit man.  If you can't trust the cops, who can you trust?  Oh, by the way, even the honest cops are after the hit man!

So you've got your basic gangster vs gangster with a little twist:  The son of the hit man is really a good guy, a family man, but he might go down with his father!

Yikes!

With actors like Liam Neesan and Ed Harris, the film would get my attention right away.  But what really sold me was the storyline:  taut, edgy, gritty, hold-onto-your-seat tense.

Are there good shooting scenes?  You betcha!  Some of the flying bullets are captured in slow-motion.  Count on lots of shootouts in a variety of settings, from train tracks to the woods.

Is there much redeeming value to this flick?  Sort of.  Even gangsters have their own morality, and odd as it may seem, the viewers become part of that dark and different world.

Prepare to watch the film without a break....you can barely breathe, because the pace never lets up.

It is somewhat mindless....but fun nevertheless.  If you're into thrillers, this one is a gem.

Grade:  A+

Badlands (1973)

In my last review, I noted that Hollywood has produced some wonderful cult films about young, lawless folks on the run.

In Love and a .45, I commented on Renee Zellweger in a very early "bad girl" role.  Remember Thelma and Louise?  Gina Davis and Susan Sarandon wowed viewers with their cross-country escapades.  Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis dazzled us with Natural Born Killers.  Who can forget their crazy journey across rural America?  Of course, don't forget about Bonnie and Clyde...with the fantastic acting of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

Amid the great films about felonious types in souped up cars one step ahead of the cops, a little known winner was the 1973 film Badlands.  It is right up there with the other kids-on-the-run gems.

Check out Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek in the pictures above!  Aren't they young?  They were up and coming actors when they did this chase film.  Martin had not yet done his famous Apocalypse Now.  And Sissy had not yet done Carrie.

No plot spoiler, but here is a hint:  As usual, the kids fall in love and their love is forbidden by the powers that be.  Hey, don't blame Sissy's onscreen dad, played by Warren Oates.  If the local bad boy, who could not keep a job, carried a pistol, and wooed your teenager dropped by, wouldn't you tell him to scram?

Of course the dad does.  And that's when things go mighty awry!

As in all the chase films, there is murder and mayhem galore.  But as usual, we are entranced by the amoral, wayward kids on the lam.  He's a real bum, and not too likable.  She's rather innocent, yet totally devoid of any understanding of right from wrong.

The scenery:  It's remarkable.  You follow the kids in their cadillac as they race across the Montana plains toward Canada, where they hope to find freedom.  You see the dust kicking up from behind their car as they traverse deserts and back roads, committing all kinds of felonies!

If you like the chase film genre, you'll love Badlands.  You'll also see why both Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek emerged as top level actors.

Buckle up.  It's a wild ride!

Love and a .45

In the early 90s, Hollywood was focused on cult films about lawless folks on the run.

Remember Thelma and Louise?  The 1991 classic about two women on the lam caught the imagination of viewers. We will always remember Gina Davis and Susan Sarandon on their cross-country escape.  Then in 1994, Quentin Tarantino did Pulp Fiction.  What a masterpiece!  That same year, Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis wowed viewers with Natural Born Killers.

Amid the spate of films about felonious types in souped up cars one step ahead of the cops, a little known gem got lost:  Love and a .45.  It has recently replayed on the film channels, and if you loved some of the movies mentioned above, you'll be glued to this one!

Check out the picture.  That's a very young Renee Zellweger sitting atop the getaway car.  Next to her is Gil Bellows, when he was all of 26 years of age.  They're a dashing couple.  They are down and out, of course, like all the characters of those early 90s felons-on-the-run movies.  They are illiterate and downtrodden. They have lived a life of petty crime.

But there is something vaguely sympathetic about them.  They get into trouble more out of stupidity than larceny. Trouble?  You have no idea!

Never the spoiler, I can only hint at the plot:  Our heroes, or perhaps anti-heroes, are living on the fringes, deeply in debt, and deeply in love.  They need cash!  They owe the mob and they have no way of paying back the gangsters.

So a heist is in order.  Problem is, it is a heist gone bad.  Mayhem ensues.  The couple must hit the road and run for their lives!  They are chased by a bunch of evil cops, very bad gangsters, and a hodgepodge of offbeat characters.  Everyone is after the couple, either for money or for revenge.

This movie is downright fun!  You will be rooting for the couple to make it.  The characters are charming, likable, and real.

Fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

The Imitation Game

What's in a name?  A lot, it would seem.  I, for one, kept shying away from seeing this movie because the title told me nothing...or maybe something....that did not really attract me.  The Imitation Game?  What imitation?  What game?  Huh?

Of course, the film got some buzz, so the word sort of got out that the movie had nothing to do with any imitation game of any kind.  It had to do with the guy who invented computers.  Even that does not seem so enticing.  We all know that someone way back when invented computers...so?

Okay, this review starts with a strong negative. The title is misleading and dumb.  But the film isn't.

What's it really about?  No spoiler here, but I'll give a few clues.  Go back to WWII, when the Germans used codes to communicate their military positions.  Now consider that the Germans had a very complex coding system that the allies could not break.

Enter Alan Turing.  He is a math whiz.  A very eccentric professor.  England calls upon him to break the German codes.  How does do so?  With the world's first computer, that he invented.

Back to the title:  If the film had been called "The Turing Machine" my curiosity would have been piqued.  Actually, that is how the world referred to computers for many years until the word "computer" became more popular.

This is a very tense film.  Will Mr. Turing, the extremely weird professor, figure out the code?  Every day that he tries and fails more soldiers are dying on the battle fields.  How can the ragtag team of scholars he has assembled help him save the world?

Good stuff!

What makes the film fun is not only watching a mad genius at work, but trying to figure out how the social outcast can find success among military men who don't quite understand his style!  There's more:  The professor is gay at a time when gays were shunned and blackmailed.

Turing is brilliantly played by Benedict Cumberbatch.  If you can't pronounce his name, that is because you have probably never heard it mentioned before.  The actor somehow emerged from bit roles in prior movies (Star Trek into Darkness, The Hobbit, Atonement) and landed this very important lead role.

Kiera Knightley is equally as good as the sole female on the code-breaking team.  She got her start as a twelve year old in Bend it Like Beckham and is now an A-List British actress.

Bottom line:  Ignore the silly title and watch this film on Netflix.  It is a winner.  You will be entranced by the odd man who invented today's computers and helped England win the war.

The Hidden (1987)

Do any of you scifi watchers remember The Fallen?  It was a true masterpiece!  In it, Denzel Washington pursues an evil entity that seems to hop from bad guy to bad guy.  The song, "Time, time, time is on my side..." played throughout that little-watched masterpiece and took on a whole new meaning!

Lest I digress, The Fallen was actually a re-make of the earlier masterpiece, The Hidden.  You need just a slight suspension of disbelief (ha!) to enjoy the concept of an extraterrestrial monster that leaps from human to human, causing otherwise nice people to shoot up banks and wreak havoc on society!

Check out the pictures above:  The smiling lunatic with the blood on his forehead has just been invaded by the evil monster and now finds it fun to go out and shoot down folks in the street.  Below him, a bar dancer, rather quiet by nature, changes quite drastically when the outer space being invades her body!

Now look at the next picture.  To the rescue, our wonder cops!  That is cool Michael Nourri on the left.  He got his start in Flashdance, the early 80s hit movie, where he was the handsome hunk who dated the sexy female welder.  On the right, a very young Kyle MacLachian, who would become a big star later on in the rather tasteless film, Showgirls, with Elizabeth Berkley.

There's a significant difference between the cops.  One is human, and other is, well, from some other place!  Problem is, neither is sure of the agenda.  So they are cop buddies but also suspect each other.  You get the drift.  Lots of fun!

The film is full of tense action scenes.  Amazing for the year 1987, when movie action scenes were far more benign than today's shoot-em-uppers.   I could not take a break to go potty!

Leave your good sense elsewhere, open up your scifi imagination, sit back and watch cops chase bad dudes--and ladies--who run amok!

Oh, and be careful of approaching any of these bad dudes....the evil creature might just invade you!

Enjoy.

Boyhood (REDUX)

My illustrious colleague, Valerie, already reviewed this film back in August.  In her review, she said, "You're being handed LIFE on a platter."  How true!

I'd like to add a few additional thoughts.  You have no doubt heard about the originality of this film, which Valerie noted:  You get to watch two kids grow up over a period of fifteen years....and see two big film stars, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, grow older too!

Once you get past the oddity of actually watching kids and movie actors change before your very eyes, you can focus on the real worth of the film:  a searing portrait of divorce and the struggle two kids face having to grow up amid turmoil in a changing world.

Patricia Arquette brilliantly plays the single mom who keeps choosing lousy men as husbands and stepfathers to her kids.  Our hearts go out to her: she struggles to be a wage earner and caring mom in spite of the miserable men she garners.

In the first half of the film, we see all the angst of the broken home.  We feel for the poor kids who must deal with new step-fathers and siblings as they come of age.  We are gripped by portraits of men who would impose, with drunken meanness, their definition of macho upon the kids.

In the second half, the camera shifts more on the boy...thus the title Boyhood.  We watch a young man go through rites of passage in middle school, high school, and early college.  The boy is an artistic, sensitive individual, who seeks answers to some of the larger questions of life.

I must agree with Valerie that his film is a must-see for it's pure originality.  But as a viewer I would strive to look beyond the gimmick and examine the power of the story.  The film offers one of the most memorable, shocking, riveting portraits of marriage, parenting, and coming of age ever presented on screen.

As I read the history of this film project, I was astonished to learn that the film was a joint creative venture.  The film is the brainchild of Richard Linklater, who included his daughter as a main character.  Apparently, the major actors, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, also helped in the writing process, contributing themes from their own life experiences.

Over the twelve years of filming, the story evolved organically from the minds of those involved.  Every actor helped work out the plot and characterizations.  What a concept!


This is a work of art that cannot be missed.

Interstellar

See the picture above?

You might wonder what it depicts.  Well, it's simply a spaceship going through a wormhole.  Why?  How else can you cross galaxies?  Why cross galaxies?  To discover new worlds.  Why discover new worlds?  Well, the earth is dying!

OK, enough of the cryptic questions and answers.  You get the drift.  Interstellar is sic-fi pushed to the limit of reasonableness and common sense.  But hey, it's sci-fi, so let's get into the spirit, shall we?

No spoiler, so you can safely read on.  The basic plot is about earth going downhill due to cosmic disturbances.  It's in the future of course.  There are miserable dust storms and no one can grow crops.  Better find another place to live!

Matthew McConaughey is the hero-astronaut who undertakes the Great Adventure.  He is accompanied by a brilliant young scientist, played by Anne Hathaway.  The two of them, and a few others, must fly light years to get to other worlds to find one that is habitable.

No more details than that. Suffice it to say that the space voyagers have more than a few mishaps along the way.  An example of one?  Well, they land on a planet where one hour of time equates to seven years of earth time.  Think about that.  If they spend just three hours exploring the planet, folks on earth will be 21 years older when they return.

Uh oh!

You can see how you have to stretch your imagination to get into this film.  The common expression is "suspension of disbelief."  This reviewer had no problem doing that.  But what I could not fathom was why the film had to be so convoluted in plot.  And I could not figure out why it had to be over three hours long.

The acting was solid.  Jessica Chastain, who plays the astronaut's grown up daughter wondering about her absent father, is great.  Young Mackenzie Foy, who plays the astronaut's teenage daughter, is even better.  Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, and Michael Caine also play solid roles.  Matt Damon is a good evil bad guy!

My overall review?  Tough to say.  The effects are wonderful.  Some of the time dimension issues are awesome.  The plot, however, is a bit ragged.  Can't say you should rush out and see this one. But opinions differ.

Probably best to check it out for yourself.  Be sure to drive to your nearest theatre.  It's a bit quicker than trying to fly through a Black Hole to find a theater in the nearest galaxy.

If you go, check your logic at the door.  And be sure to have fun!

American Sniper

Clint Eastwood, the director of American Sniper, did it again.  He filmed a stellar cast in a remarkable tale about an American war hero.

The title of the film might not appeal to all viewers.  For those involved in guns and shooting, perhaps the title might grab.  For others, it might do quite the opposite!  Do most folks care about a guy who went to war and killed the enemy with mile long sniper shots?

Perhaps.  But the film transcends the title.  It is the story of a young man who, raised by a father who instilled tough American values, stands proudly to defend the American Way.  He is a hero, a very brave man, who voluntarily leaves wife and family to go to Iraq to fight a war that is dirty, ugly, and gritty.

What fascinates about this film is not the soldier's bravery or uncanny ability to shoot.  What truly captivates the viewer is how hard it is for a man to go to war and then come home to spouse and kids. So many veterans go abroad and do things that soldiers have to do in war.  When they return, they find it nearly impossible to get over the images that haunt them and the violence that kept them alive.

Our hearts go out to soldiers like Chris Kyle who go abroad and fight.  They become brutalized by war, and in a world where it's kill or be killed, they learn to survive.  They often have to do things that are unthinkable in a non-war setting.  Then, when they are done, they have to figure out how to be civilized husbands and fathers again, kind and gentle, caring and loving, sweet and non-violent.  

The main actor, Brad Cooper, is brilliant as the war-torn soldier.  He already dazzled in a prior film, Silver Lining Playbook. There, opposite Jennifer Lawrence, he played to perfection the confused, slow to grow up, slow to fall in love, young man who lives at home with mom and dad.  Cooper is even better as the sniper.  Watch him act and be amazed.

His love interest, Sienna Miller, is good to a point.  Then, in this viewer's opinion, she over-emotes and does not quite convince us.  But that is for you to determine.  The support cast of little known actors is strong and effective.

Clint Eastwood continues to do original and brilliant work in Hollywood.  His western, The Unforgiven, still stands out in my mind as an extraordinary revisionist look at the wild west hero, or anti-hero, as the case may be.

One sad irony:  The real hero, who survived four tours of duty and very close calls, lost his life at the hands of a crazed vet here at home.

American Sniper is a solid film, entertaining, gripping, and enlightening.

Selma

It's incredibly painful to go back and look at how, in the great land of freedom, we shut people of color out of our society.  Selma is not easy to watch.  But I must recommend it for a very perceptive look at history.

Martin Luther King is an amazing profile in courage.  Lest we forget that the South in the 1960s was a battle zone where racists could bully, beat, and murder African Americans, the film reminds us that Dr King and his entourage were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of justice.

MLK was a complex man.  He was driven.  He was a man of principle and dignity.  He was brave beyond all definitions of bravery.  

Did you know that LBJ, who has gone down in history as a champion of civil rights in America, was not quite the champion of human rights that we have been led to believe?  The film shows us how he dragged his feet on helping people of color get the vote, and how he refused to send in troops to protect those who protested.

And there's more:  The famous Pettus bridge, where infamous bloody Sunday occurred, which included the beating and murder of peaceful protesters, still exists as it once was.  No big deal?  Well, it is.  The bridge was named after a grand marshall of the KKK, a man full of hatred who was a legend in the south for his bigotry and racism.  Has the name of the bridge been changed?  Hmmm....

My reaction to the film: Anger.  I must say that I felt rage at those who abused others.  My only wish was that I had been older at the time, so I could have joined those brave folks who stood up to injustice in Selma.

Selma, the movie, is a must-see.  The acting and scripting are great.  My only criticism is wanting even more...more history, more information, more details about a shameful time in American history.  

Prepare to have an incredible movie adventure.  Prepare to get mad.

We all need to get angry again at the thought of what this country did to a minority.

The movie gets  a grade of A+, and I would recommend it above all others.  Be sure to take family and friends. No one must forget.

Lucy

Check out Scarlett Johansson.  She looks anxious!  Well, wouldn't you, if you suddenly had super powers foisted upon you by accident?  Ha!

OK, let's back up a bit.  LUCY is a really stupid, fun movie!  Do the two sometimes go together?  Of course!

No spoiler, but here's the gist of the film.  Poor Scarlett is in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Duped by a sleezy boyfriend, she ends up the target of a very bad villain.  The bad dude uses her and some other innocents as drug mules....

But the drugs Scarlett carries are straight out of sci-fi:  they have a mind altering effect.  How?  Well, the substance seems to allow Scarlett to use 100% of her brain!  Big shocker, because science supposedly tells us that we use under 10% of our cerebrum.

Scarlett's brain expands!  The world becomes her oyster!  BAM!!!

Scarlett becomes capable of mind over matter and even seems to have the ability to travel through time!  Who would have guessed that we could do so much with our heads?  Haha.

Oh, this film is truly fun.  NO details about the where the plot goes, but just imagine lots of great graphics and see our female victim turn into conqueror!

Luc Besson is the creative writer director behind this sci-fi original.  Morgan Freeman rounds out the cast.

If you like futuristic films, and you enjoy a lot of bad guy vs good guy shooting scenes, this film is for you !

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

One bit of advice:  Leave your intelligence elsewhere as you suspend disbelief and marvel at one very unusual, innovative, aesthetic sci-fi thriller.