Hereditary

First Hit: A rather complex or complicated horror film that worked reasonably well.

This is a dark film and attempts, in its own way, to pose question about evil being hereditary. The story revolves around the horrible death of Charlie (Milly Shapiro). She is killed in an accident (or is it) when her brother Peter (Alex Wolff) is driving her to the hospital.

Although this scene is early in the film, the strangeness of the family and their dynamics are shown because Annie (Toni Collette), the mother, makes models of the house and other things in her work studio. Charlie sleeps outside in a tree house that's very cold. The main house itself is way out in the country and is given the feeling of being a bit dark. Peter is shown to be somewhat ambivalent about life, school, and spends a lot of time high on pot.

We learn later that this Annie’s accurate models are her art and livelihood. Her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) is rather stoic about the family’s oddness and acts as the solid foundation of the family.

After Charlie’s death Peter and Annie have fights blaming each other for Charlie’s death while Steve tries to referee these fights.

Annie meets Joan (Ann Dowd) who speaks with her about losing a child and quickly becomes Annie’s confidant. But things become more bizarre and sinister when Joan teaches Annie about how to conjure up the spirit of her deceased Charlie.

From here the film takes some bizarre turns and outside of the strong performances, the story is not believable or, in the end, horrifying.

Collette is amazingly and bizarrely strong in this role. She’s required to portray a wide range of feelings and emotions and she does this very well. Wolff is the other prime role and his lack of outward rage was either script driven, or he didn’t have the ability to share this. His actions after the accident didn’t seem to fit the event and that was disconcerting to me. Byrne was OK as the stoic father who rarely ventured out of this role’s comfort zone. Shapiro was good in her short-lived part. Dowd was excellent as the friendly helpful person who also had a dark side. Ari Aster wrote and directed this film. I trust he got what he wanted but for me, the horror in the film was the shocking accident that killed Charlie, the rest was just oddly bizarre.

Overall: This film was unique in its storytelling that had strong performances.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

First Hit:  The interaction of the actors in this film make it work – I enjoyed it.

It is hard to miss the funny mark when you’ve got Jack Black (as Bethany), Kevin Hart (as Fridge) and Dwayne Johnson (as Spencer) together in a film. The wonderful part is that Karen Gillan (as Martha) held her own quite well with these three funny and larger than life guys.

A young Spencer (Alex Wolf) is nerdy and unsure of himself. As the film begins, he’s being taken advantage of by a young Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), who is a big strapping young man. Intimidating Spencer into doing his homework Fridge creates a friendship of convenience.Although Spence is somewhat resentful of being taken advantage of he does it anyway. After they get caught cheating, they are sent to detention.

Young Bethany (Madison Iseman) is the class popular beauty. She’s constantly on her phone and uses her contrived sexuality to get her way in school.  She ignores a teacher’s request to put away her phone and gets sent to detention.

Young Martha (Morgan Turner) is a nerd and introverted. She hates PE and tells the teacher she won’t participate in the exercise class and gets detention.

This is the setup and together in detention they discover an old electronic version of Jumanji. Getting sucked into the game they end up in a jungle where they arrive as the opposite of who they are outside the game. Spencer (Johnson) is no longer an intimidated skinny nerd, he’s a big, strong assertive man. The big man on campus football player Fridge (Hart), has turned into a small wise cracking man. The beautiful Bethany (Black) turns into a short dumpy man. And the nerdy quiet Martha (Gillan) has turned into a beautiful, strong woman who is a martial arts expert.

Given this setup, a lot could go wrong if the situations and dialogue are weak or don’t allow the actors breathing room, however this is not the situation. It works: The situations and dialogue create scenes that are funny and allow the actors to interpret both their former younger selves while embodying their new older bodies and skills.

Johnson is fun to watch here because his ability to seem like his size and strength are new to him really works. His interactions with Hart are priceless. Hart does a great job of trying to make the others still believe he’s still the size of his younger self instead of his shorter self. The script makes good use of his innate talents of making wise cracks and barking out his intentions. Black is perfect. He makes you believe that he was once a beautiful young lady who is now trapped in a stubby man’s body. I enjoyed the scenes when he gave Martha lessons on how to seduce the men guarding the transportation building. Gillan was fantastic because, despite her beauty, she embodied the nerdy girl of her younger self. She was great as the martial arts expert, ready to kick some butt. Wolff, Blain, Iseman and Turner all did a wonderful job of being the younger characters. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers did a nice job of creating a screenplay that enhanced the story and actors. Jake Kasdan elevated the story to something fun and engaging.

Overall: I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this film.

Patriots Day

First Hit:  This was an interesting perspective of a very tragic event in Boston and America’s history.

This dramatization of a horrific event was both; interesting from a historical perspective and not very engaging from a character standpoint. The film took a very broad perspective of the people to be included as characters. It included the various law enforcement agencies including; the Boston Police Department, the FBI, Watertown Police Department, MIT Police Department and a couple of other US Government agencies. From a citizen perspective, there were both students and citizens from various neighborhoods.

The filmmakers made attempts to provide backstories, or history per se, of certain characters, however despite being helpful at a small level it was difficult to engage with anyone at an emotional level. For example; Police Officer Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) was the lead character and we learn early on he’s got a history with the department and is on probation. Why? We never really find out but there are multiple references to alcohol and there are a couple scenes where he drinks when it might have been better if he didn’t.

But this isn’t the story, but it nagged at me that we didn’t have this history. The story is about how Boston and others captured the brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze respectively), who become radicalized Muslim bombers and exploded two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The film tries to track a lot of people including: the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist), Officer Saunders, bomb injured married couple Patrick Downes (Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan), MIT Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking), car jacked Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), Boston Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Vincent Curatola), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffery Pugliese (J. K. Simmons), Carol Saunders (Michelle Monaghan), Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), and a host of others. It begins the evening before the bombing and goes to when they were captured (Dzhokhar) and killed (Tamerlan). One thing that was interesting was that this film had one of the largest credited and uncredited casts for any film in recent memory.

The filmmakers used some archival footage as well as re-enacted scenes in following the brothers, law enforcement, and citizens over subsequent week as the brothers tried to escape, go to New York to place another bomb, and how they were captured through the use of technology, law enforcement officers, and the bravery of citizens.

Wahlberg was very good as the film’s key focal point. I wanted to know more of why he was being punished, but from a character point of view he was very strong. Wolff and Melikidze were both very solid as the brothers who brought this havoc to Boston. I think they did a great job of emoting the attitude as affected Muslim radicals. Bacon was wonderful as the FBI agent trying to get the bombers identified and captured quickly. O’Shea and Brosnahan were wonderful as the married couple that lost limbs, survived, and made it back to a subsequent race. Yang was really good as the young man whose car was hijacked by the brothers during their escape. Simmons was OK as the Watertown Sergeant. Goodman was strong as the Commissioner. Picking was wonderful as the caring officer that was shot by the brothers. Monaghan was engaging as Officer Saunders’ wife. Peter Berg, Matt Cook, and Joshua Zetumer wrote a very ambitious screenplay that attempted to cover numerous stories around this very tragic event. In this ambitious effort, it lost a little heart and focus. Peter Berg did his best to cover this expansive story.

Overall:  This is an amazing story to tell and it does honor the affected people.