Birds of Prey

First Hit: This movie was absolutely horrible and a waste of time and money.

The original title of this film is “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” The title alone is a warning enough, and when you read it, it is all you’ll need to know about this story. I do not know what the screenwriter or director was thinking, but it wasn’t about making a movie that had conscious cognizant coherence.

From the get-go, this film is a mess. Using narrative and disjointed clips of film to attempt to put the story in place and time was useless here because there really is no place or time.

I thought “Suicide Squad” was a quirky fun movie. It is where we meet Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) for the first time. She was odd, “out there,” and on the edge of crazy. This film Birds of Prey is supposed to give us the backstory of Ms. Quinn. It is also a way to introduce other characters, the “Birds of Prey,” consisting of Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), “The Huntress,” aka Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and “Black Canary,” aka Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell).

There’s little character development, Instead, narration and snippets of past stories are used to fill in the backstory of these characters.

This group of women come together because of and over the improbability of a young pickpocketing girl, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), swallowing a large, I mean colossally large, diamond stolen from a thieving, conniving, and self-named lord of Gotham, Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor).

Lots of fighting ensues, and we always know who wins. The fighting scenes are not well-choreographed and felt staged. The logic stream of the story was virtually non-existent. It seems as though the director Cathy Yan threw together a bunch of film scraps she shot with this cast doing stuff and called it a day.

Robbie is an excellent actress. She’ has proven her abilities in many films. Therefore, I’m surprised she co-produced and acted in this hot mess. Despite her talents, this was not good work. Perez, who has been missed in recent years, did what she could with this limiting role. Winstead was the best of the lot. Her quiet demeanor and her story of how she came up with “The Huntress” when everyone else like called her “Crossbow” was amusing. Smollett-Bell tried to make her character mean something but, again, the script and direction let her down. McGregor was okay as the foil for the Birds of Prey. Christina Hodson created a disjointed and lackluster screenplay with little substance. Yan has no business directing a film with this film as proof.

Overall: This movie was a total waste of time.

The Gentlemen

First Hit: A few scenes were to fun watch, but as a film, it was poorly constructed.

I’ve never seen a Guy Ritchie film that I thought was constructed with thoughtfulness and skill. He either attempts to cover too much ground or is more inclined to use pop and dazzle to engage the audience.

In this film, he has to use narration throughout to create, set up, and deliver the story. He hides his inability to write a good screenplay by making the narration of his story part of the storyline his characters say to each other.

Specifically, watch most of the scenes between a dirt-digger detective and reporter Fletcher (Hugh Grant and Ray (Charlie Hunnam). Ray is the right-hand man and consigliere for Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), the weed lord of England. Because Fletcher is attempting to blackmail Mickey and Ray, he explains the whole story to the theater’s audience by reading the screenplay with Ray.

This is the main issue with this film. Having to rely on this narration to provide a lot of the movie’s context is troubling. However, I will say the way it is done here is better than having an unknown voice over-explanation.

The story as I saw it, was that Mickey wants to sell his vast marijuana growing and distribution empire to Matthew (Jeremy Strong). The reason for selling was unclear and unconvincing. Matthew is a wealthy eccentric Englishman who is intrigued with the possibility of buying this empire for $400M. However, it is a lot of money, and to drive the price down, Matthew engages “Dry Eye” (Henry Golding and a term used for Asians). Dry Eye makes an offer that Mickey scoffs at, but because the offer to sell to Matthew was supposed to be secret, Mickey is now on guard.

Then the story adds complexity because we learn that Matthew and Dry Eye are working some sort of side deal to assist each other in reducing the price, but each plans to screw the other as well.

Adding to this is Fletcher, who, through his detective work, documents all the goings-on between all the parties, which led to the script he reads from. His hopes are to sell the screenplay to Mickey and Ray for $20M so that Mickey and Ray will know all the subversive planning that is going on to drive the price down.

The most fun part of the film is when we have scenes with Coach (Colin Farrell). His group of boys is caught raising havoc in one of Mickey’s underground farms, so he owes Mickey and Ray. The payback to Ray and Mickey are amusing and fun to watch.

Confused? One could be, but this convoluted story is kept on track by the narration scenes. This saves the film from being a total disaster and it also makes it a poorly constructed film.

Anyway, there are lots of side plots and stories in this movie, including Mickey’s wife, Rosalind Pearson (Michelle Dockery). She’s supposed to be the most magnificent woman in the world, but it is only in the eyes of the beholder. There is the newspaper owner who hired Fletcher. There is Lord George (Tom Wu), head dragon, heroin distributor who crosses Mickey.

The movie has lots of twists that are used for creating interest and complexity, and in some cases, it works, but mostly it doesn’t.

McConaughey's role in this makes me wonder. At times he selects fantastic parts like in film Dallas Buyer’s Club and other times, he chooses roles like this one. He does it well enough, but it’s really a role of false, blustery, and cool-man behavior. Hunnam is outstanding as Ray, Mickey’s right-hand man. Grant is oddly compelling as a bad guy. I’ve not seen him recently, and seeing him here was fun. Farrell is brilliant as the Coach of a group of guys and honest to his word. Actually, I liked his character and role the best of all. Dockery is okay as Mickey’s wife and auto builder entrepreneur. Strong is mediocre as the wealthy and odd Englishman who wants to buy Mickey’s empire. Golding is formidable as Dry Eye, a youngish Asian who wants to make his mark. Wu was perfect as the wry old heroin distributor. Ritchie wrote and directed this film, and as I’ve indicated, Guy has little to offer in the realm of filmmaking and his background in music videos is where his talent may lay.

Overall:  Although entertaining at times, being so convoluted the required narration means the story and film needs additional work.

Bad Boys for Life

First Hit: Funny at the right times, but confusing gun battles took away from the story.

Will Smith as Detective Mike Lowery and Martin Lawrence as Detective Marcus Burnett can be engagingly funny together. And in many scenes, they hit that sweet spot by bringing outright out-loud laughter from the audience.

The background of this story is that these two have worked together for twenty plus years and, during this time, created havoc in the Miami Police Department by being both hasty in their actions and unconventional in their investigative methods. The directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah put this right up front in the opening scenes when they have the detectives drive through Miami at recklessly high speeds in Lowery’s 911 Porsche.

Burnett wants to retire but gets yanked away from fulfilling this dream when Lowery gets riddled with five bullets from Armando (Jacob Scipio), an assassin riding a motorcycle down one of Miami’s boulevards. In another early scene, we see Armando breaking his mother Isabel Aretas (Kate del Castillo) out of prison.

Isabel is intent on revenging an old score which resulted in the death of her husband. She asks Armando to kill all that had to do with her former husband's death. One of the aspects of Isabel that the audience is made aware of early is that she sees herself as a witch of some sort.

Directing the detective’s work over the years was Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano). After Lowery’s shooting, he brings on his newly formed AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations) squad to solve the cases of all the current assassinations by using data and more conventional crime resolution techniques. This team is led by Lowery’s ex-girlfriend Rita (Paola Nunez).

Lowery won’t be held back and goes out to find his assassin and finally convinces Burnett to come out of retirement to help him one last time.

The rest of the film is about the slight conflicts between the AMMO squad and Lowery and Burnett’s tactics on finding and dealing with the assassins.

The AMMO team has some hilarious interactions with Lowery and Burnett, which helped set the stage. However, it is Marcu’s comments to Mike that gets the most laughs. One funny scene is when Mike names the color dye Mike uses to cover the gray in his goatee.

However, what didn’t work was the convoluted shootouts, two specifically, one in a warehouse garage and the other in an old hotel that was confusing. Just too much noise and shooting that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Smith is his typical smart-alecky competent self. As such, he is perfect for this role. Lawrence is terrific as the sidekick attempting to bring some sanity to his partner’s life. Pantoliano is solid as a police captain. Nunez is good as Lowery’s former girlfriend and leader of AMMO. Castillo is okay as the woman looking for revenge. Vanessa Hudgens, as Burnett’s all-knowing supportive wife, is terrific. Chris Bremner, Peter Craig, and Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay. Directors Arbi and Fallah did a good job of bringing both action and comedy to bear.

Overall: There was nothing memorable about his film or story, but it was a fun experience.

The Irishman (I Heard You Paint Houses)

First Hit: An in-depth introspective and a sliver of a story into the mob world’s connection to Jimmy Hoffa.

This was a historical storytelling film of the life of “The Irishman” Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). Accordingly, the movie begins and ends with Frank sitting in an old folks home telling the story of his life.

The young Frank starts his tale when he has just returned from his WWII stint in Italy, and is now a truck driver delivering meat. He finds that he can skim some of the carcasses off and sell them for extra side money. In doing so, he slowly begins to sell to mobsters who appreciate a good deal. A chance meeting, followed by a more formal introduction with rising mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) begins a lifelong friendship. Russell gets Frank odd jobs including painting houses (which is a mob euphemism for murder) as needed by the mob.

When the trucking company catches Frank as he arrives at a store that purchased the meat with an empty truck, wants to convict him for theft. What happened to the meat? Frank sold it to gangsters but acts as if he’s no idea what happened to the beef in the truck. It is one of the few amusing scenes in the film.

Frank knows the value of keeping his mouth shut, and this trait along with his support of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters run by Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) gets him a new job as Hoffa’s chief bodyguard.

The movie generously uses CGI to move these characters back and forth through at least 50 years of life, from young men in their 20s and 30s to old men in their 70s and 80s. For the most part, it works well.

We follow these three gentlemen through their lives, including mob family wars for power.

We watch them fight with the government about expanding to Cuba and the Castro regime. We watch them struggle with John F. Kennedy’s election and subsequent assassination. We see how Bobby Kennedy tried to bust up the unions and Hoffa in particular because of how Jimmy loaned the mob millions of dollars, interest-free, in union pension funds. In fact, the film makes a point of indicating that mob-controlled union pension funds built Las Vegas.

There are softer moments in the film like how Frank’s daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin as the older Peggy) visibly disliked Russell but liked Hoffa. The story also has a few tender scenes with Frank and his second wife, Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba).

The scenes are shot with an authentic and matter of fact feel to them, not splashy. One-shot that stuck with me was when Russell takes Frank to a small airport to get on a plane to meet Hoffa in Detroit; the camera looks out the tiny private plane window to see Bufalino sitting in the Lincoln. Russell will wait in the car until Sheeran returns after meeting Hoffa. There was something about this shot that brought the craft of making even the small things to the forefront.

De Niro was excellent as the Irishman turned mob strong arm and Bufalino confidant. The scenes with the priest towards the end were powerful. De Niro skillfully expressed his character's refusal to deeply go into making amends. Pesci is terrific as mobster Bufalino. The scene which he and Frank are just getting to know each other, speaking Italian with Russell, and asking him how he learned to speak Italian is very engaging. Pacino as Hoffa was convincing. I’ve no idea who Hoffa is privately, but the way Pacino portrayed him here made it feel real. Paquin as Peggy is perfect. She knew deep inside who her father was and what he did, and her way of keeping her distance and her looks of disapproval are excellent. Harvey Keitel is sublime in his brief scenes as mobster kingpin, Angelo Bruno. Steven Zaillian wrote a strong and in-depth screenplay from the book “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Martin Scorsese showed his strength in using actors he knows and trusts to bring another compelling Italian mob film story to the screen.

Overall: Although very informational, it was a long film.

Uncut Gems

First Hit: A wild ride with a Jewish, gem selling, obsessive gambler.

This film starts oddly because we move between the inside of a large black opal to the colon of gem and watch seller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Eerily some of the camera images reflect the similarity between both, and I guess that was the point.

We follow Howard on the streets of New York, gregariously saying “hello” to many individuals he comes across as he makes his way to his store through the double door security system these small gem sellers use. I want to note that these doors become part of the story. Getting buzzed in by his beautiful assistant and girlfriend Julia (Julia Fox), he heads to his office in a very anxious, nervous way.

The one characteristic behavior Howard displays throughout the film is one of being chased, corralled, and almost being caught but finding a way to talk himself out of being beaten up or killed each time. This is the ride we are on with Howard throughout the film.

As a gambler that owes his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) over $100K, and other people money from his sports gambling losses, we see him in sequences of pawning stuff, giving people watches as collateral, and making wild, complex sports bets.

Arriving at his desk in an early scene, he receives a Styrofoam box, which has him very excited. Opening the box, there are two fish, he squeezes each of them looking to feel something. We know this is an illicit shipment of something. He finally cuts one open to reveal the sizeable uncut opal we saw, and were inside of, in the opening sequence.

His plan is to auction the opal off for nearly a million dollars, and it will free him from the money he owes to bookies and to finalize the divorce his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) while providing for his three kids, and make his girlfriend happy.

Enter Kevin Garnett, the basketball player. He’s brought to Howard’s store because of their mutual friend “The Weekend” (The Weekend) wanted Howard to do business with Kevin. Howard shows him some of the stuff in the store and in a moment of pride, shows him the uncut opal. Kevin is mesmerized by the opal and asks to take it for a night. Reluctantly, Howard agrees if Kevin gives up his Boston Celtics championship ring as collateral. Thinking he can get away with it, Howard pawns Kevin’s ring to make a quick bet hoping to capitalize a big win and pay everyone back, get the ring out of hock, auction the stone, make a bunch of money and live a happy fulfilled life with his girlfriend.

However, we know compulsive gamblers rarely finish first, and the film follows this big setup until its end.

The scenes where Howard is having difficult conversations with his wife, bookies, or employees, are amazing and probably not easy to do. He seems to never hear what the other person is saying and continues the conversation as if the person whom he’s speaking with understood and agreed with what he has said. This is rarely the case and so there are many scenes where people are merely talking over each other. Listening to these two different dialogues and attempting to follow both conversations during a shouting session was both amusing and challenging.

I thought the scenes were very well set up in that they seemed to always have an edge that everything was going to come off the rails any minute. There was a franticness in everything on the screen that kept the film moving along at a rapid clip despite its 135-minute running time.

Sandler was perfect for this role, and I could easily see why the Safdie brothers wanted him for the part. Like the film “Punch Drunk Love,” Sandler can bring a desperate dark edge to his characters and make it totally believable. Here the monster is his addiction to the big win. Maybe an Oscar-worthy performance. Garnett was terrific as himself. That might sound funny, but often sports stars are awkward when being filmed, but Kevin was dynamite. The Weekend was perfect as the sly, trying-to-make-a-buck, go-between. Two scenes stood out; one in Howard’s office when The Weekend discovers Howard has been selling, hawking, or giving away the watches that he’s stored in Howards safe. The other scene that stood out was in the nightclub when Howard confronts The Weekend about the opal. Fox was excellent as Howard’s lover. The scenes in the apartment and in the Vegas betting room were well done and it’s the latter where she stood out. Menzel played Howard’s wife as a sarcastic person who is disengaged from her relationship with her husband. The look on her face when she opened their Mercedes trunk with Howard inside was priceless. Bogosian was outstanding as Howard’s brother-in-law and loan shark bank. Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, and Josh Safdie wrote an engaging script. But it was the directing and acting of Sandler and the rest of the team that made this film work.

Overall: This film left me with mixed feelings, but I loved the story and the wild ride.