Teen Spirit

First Hit: This was a well-done film, and it’s Elle Fanning’s performance that seals the deal.

Although the formula for this story is well known it works because of the performances of the actors, the cinematography, and singing by Fanning.

A poor polish girl Violette Valenski (Fanning) living on the Isle of Wight with her mom Maria (Agnieszka Grochowska) in a big farmhouse. They work the farm, both work at jobs in restaurants, and Violette also goes to school.

They are poor, and they need all the money they can make. Both are sad, unhappy, and driven people. Violette’s father left them, and the two women are doing everything they can to keep the farm and survive. They are hanging on by a thread. The father left because Maria was unfaithful to him. They’ve not heard from him in many years. The story makes it seem that Maria is hopeful he’ll return, someday.

Violette is shown in scenes where she sings while listening to her iPod, in her bedroom, in the fields, and in the school church choir. We also see scenes of her dancing her heart out — privately. There is a scene with her singing at an open mic in a pub with maybe 4 people sitting, talking and paying no attention to her except one, an old bearded man named Vlad (Zlatko Buric). But it is us, the audience, that hears the beauty of her heart’s singing voice. Vlad, hears it as well and goes up and tells her that he thinks she sings really well.

She hears and then sees a poster about a contest called Teen Spirit. In this contest, the winner gets a record contract. She wants this and has no confidence in her ability to make it happen. When she talks with Vlad about this, he tells her he will help her but will require her to let him manage her for 50% if she wins. What makes this drunken man someone she can trust; he tells her he was an opera singer but took a wrong turn along the way.

Violette needs an adult to go with her to the auditions and Vlad agrees. When he signs the form as her guardian, the young man at the desk recognizes his name as his parent’s favorite opera singer. Watching the trust between the two building is beautiful.

The rest of the film is about Vlad teaching her how to sing, Violette trusting him and herself while putting herself out there in front of audiences. There are a few scenes with a record producer Jules (Rebecca Hall) attempting to sway Violette to sign a contract with her company before the finals.

I really loved the shot when Violette was called on to her final performance on the Teen Spirit stage, the walk from her dressing room to the stage was incredibly beautiful. The starkness of the halls, the red dress she was wearing, her nervous eyes and turned down lips, flashes of her mom and the congregation watching the program on television, flashes of Vlad standing there, excellent.

Everything was effectively created in the early part of the film so that when it comes together, she lets go and sings from her whole body and spirit. It is a fantastic performance.

Fanning was exquisite. I loved how she showed her sullen sad behavior and letting the volcano slowly build only to make it all erupt in the final singing stage. Buric was great. He was both a little scary and like Violette said at one point, a big teddy bear. His conversation with Maria about helping Violette was joyful and engaging. Grochowska was fantastic as Maria, the concern protective mother. Her joy at watching her daughter sing in the finals brought tears to my eyes. Hall was strong as the record agent putting the pressure on to make a deal before the finals. Max Minghella wrote and directed a wonderfully insightful movie. Some of the shots and the edits between all Violette’s been through were fantastic.

Overall: This was a very inspirational film, and the excellent acting put it as one of the better this year, so far.

The Beguiled

Overall:  This film was a slow-moving beast that was ultimately unsatisfying.

With a cast consisting of Nicole Kidman (as Miss Martha), Colin Farrell (as Corporal McBurney), Kirsten Dunst (as Edwina), Elle Fanning (as Alicia) and Oona Laurence (as Amy) and being directed by a Sofia Coppola, you’d hope to see a strong interesting film.

However, I was bored through most of it as it languished in the dark moody scenes both inside and outside the home where the girls lived.

The basic story is that Miss Martha runs a girls home and school in her large southern styled columned mansion. The civil war is going on around her home, but she does her best to keep the home going and girls shielded from the outside strife. One day, when Amy is collecting mushrooms, she finds an injured Corporal McBurney. Carrying him back to the home Martha puts him in a locked room and fixes his wound. His presence changes the tone of the home because the girls start discussing him and do little things to get noticed by him.

The film takes forever to move the story along and finally the corporal shows his lusty stripes by sweet talking Martha, tells Edwina to run away with him, and gets caught in Alicia’s bed by Edwina. As the corporal attempts to calm Edwina down she pushes him down the stairs and reopens his leg wound.

Martha determines she has to cut it leg off. When McBurney wakes up to find his leg missing he freaks out and goes on a rampage. Using guile and pressure on Alicia, gets out of the locked room and takes control of the home by using Martha’s gun.

Martha and the girls decide they must do something to protect themselves and find a way to get rid of the corporal.

Kidman was good as the head of the home. However, the script and direction let her down. Farrell was good as Corporal McBurney but the story let the audience down as to how he ended up in the woods and as to what his motivation was for seducing all the women. Dunst was strong as the pretty and dour Edwina but I wondered why McBurney selected her as the one he wanted to love and run away with. It didn’t make much sense. Fanning was very good as the young girl wanting to be an adult and experience more in life. Laurence was excellent as the young Amy whose kind compassionate heart was put to the test. Albert Maltz wrote an uninteresting script from a very interesting novel. Coppola had a vision but it was an uninteresting one and the result lacked reason and engagement unlike one of her other efforts “Lost in Translation.”

Overall:  This film was painful to watch as the two women sitting down the aisle would attest to by their comments while the film played on.

20th Century Women

First Hit:  I liked it overall and some scenes are wonderfully funny, but it didn’t impress or stay with me afterwards.

There was something missing in this film and I’m not sure what it was. As I previously said, I liked many of the scenes individually but together as a story it just missed the target.

The basic story is that a single mother Dorothea (Annette Bening), in her late 40’s early 50’s, is raising her fifteen-year-old son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), in Santa Barbara in the late 1970’s. She lives in a large home with people who rent rooms; Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and William (Billy Crudup). Abbie, who’s in her early 20s, has come to Santa Barbara from New York after learning she had cervical cancer to be an artist. William is slightly younger than Dorothea is a handy man with cars and is fixing up Dorothea’s huge rundown house. Dorothea is stressing about her son and wants him to be a smart caring whole man who navigates the restlessness of the ever-changing world. There are peace protests, punk music is flourishing, and there is also the feminist movement.

Julie (Elle Fanning), is a neighbor girl whose mother is a child psychologist and requires Julie to sit in her youth therapy groups. She often spends the night with Jamie but only to talk and rest. She sneaks in by climbing the scaffolding surrounding the house. She comes back into the house, through the front door, in the morning and has breakfast with the rest of the household.

Always worrying, somewhat defensiveness, and not being forthcoming about her past is the byword of Dorothea’s character. Abbie is about finding peace with her life. She wants to express and settle down. William lives easily and as the dialogue stated, women come to him and he gets bored with them easily. Julie is exploring her freedom from her mother through sexual behavior and depressive based rebellion. Jamie is simply growing up and although he’s going out and experiencing new things, his mother seems to think that he needs more help.

Bening is very good, however I didn’t necessarily like her character much. There was a distant neediness to her that didn’t really work for me. Fanning was fantastic. She does the part woman/part girl nervousness with amazement. Watch her hands and feet move as when she’s nervous – wonderful subtle acting. Zumann was very good as the boy learning to become a man. Scenes where he becomes sullen and frustrated are excellent. Gerwig is wonderful. Her energy and engagement with the role and the other characters was perfect. Crudup was strong as handyman William. His soft kindness towards the women in the house and others was delightful. Mike Mills wrote an excellent script, however overall the film felt too scene based which may have been through his direction.

Overall:  Although I enjoyed many of the scenes, the overall film felt a little disjointed and scene based.

Live by Night

First Hit:  Despite wonderful sets, cars, and clothes, this story meanders and fizzles.

Ben Affleck has directed, written and acted in some wonderful and even great films. The premise of this film was strong, where Joe Coughlin (Affleck), a product of the streets of Irish Boston, does not want to be beholden to his brother Deputy Police Chief Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson) nor any of the mob leaders, while being a criminal. However, because of his affection with a mob leader’s girlfriend Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), he gets blackmailed into working for Italian mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to save his butt.

He and his running partner Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) head to Tampa to build, manage and run a bootleg Rum business. In Tampa he works with Esteban Suarez (Miguel J. Pimental) and his sister Graciela (Zoe Saldana) to obtain Molasses for rum making. There is immediate chemistry between Joe and Graciela and it appears that Joe will find love again after losing Emma.

To take control of the Tampa market, he finds out what Police Chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) will tolerate and support. During the consolidation, he uses force and his manipulative style and rubs many of the town folks the wrong way, many of them with the KKK. One of those people RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who is Figgis’s brother in law, and he implores Figgis to help him resolve this issue.

To add to all this increasingly complicated story setup, we have Figgis’s daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) who heads to California to become a star. To gain leverage over Chief Figgis’s brother in-law, Joe uses photos of Loretta to persuade Chief Figgis to fully resolve the brother-in-law issue. Then Affleck adds more complications to this movie because the story has the market for Rum changing and prohibition coming to an end and he wants to find an alternative form of income.

After starting to build a gambling casino Loretta becomes a profit of sorts, by preaching morality and thereby ending this new path. This ends up creating new friction in Tampa as well as with his boss Pescatore and an Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister).

Yes, over complication in telling this story led to a long film that tried to have too much detail over an extended period of time. Despite creating beautiful elegantly constructed sets, period automobiles that would satisfy any collector, and costumes that were stylistically sublime, only a few of the characters got older over the twenty or so years covered in this film and Affleck wasn’t one of them.

Affleck was good in this role and his intelligence and smart-alecky way worked for the character. However, he didn’t age in this film that covered many years from beginning to end. Miller was wonderful as an Irish girl that only was out for some laughs and a good time. Messina was great as Affleck’s side-kick and partner. Loved his energy in this role. Girone was strong as the Italian mobster. Pimental was good as the Cuban connection for molasses. Saldana was very strong as Pimental’s sister and Affleck’s lover. Cooper was pointedly effective as the Tampa Police Chief and caring father. Fanning was sublime as the re-born preacher. Maher was wonderfully unhinged as a guy who wanted his cut but didn’t want to do anything for it. Glenister was very good as the Irish mobster. Gleeson was perfect as Affleck’s brother, giving him space where needed and buttoning him down as well. Affleck wrote and directed this film. Problem seemed to be there was too much story to tell and he couldn’t trim his concept into something that filmgoers would sit, watch and like. It just seemed to meander.

Overall:  This isn’t a film to sit though unless you like just seeing beautiful sets, great cars, wonderful clothes, and some great looking people.

The Neon Demon

First Hit:  Odd, visually striking, with great electronic music but the direct story was way too twisted.

However, there are depths in this story that are poignant and were interesting. Directly, Jesse (Elle Fanning), is a young girl without parents who comes to LA seeking to be a model. As she states: “I can’t dance, sing, or have any skills, all I have is my looks.” At 16 she’s young, she’s beautiful and everyone who meets her is taken by her presence, innocence, inner strength and beauty.

She quickly rises up in the LA fashion modeling scene, and the other models are jealous. There is a lot of gossipy discussion among the other girls about what work they have had done on their bodies to make themselves look better: Nose jobs, breast augmentation, eye lifts, body augmentations and lots of other things so that they can be the “it” girl and continue to work.

Jesse is naturally beautiful and mesmerizes every clothing designer and photographer she meets. She has become the "it girl". Her innocence and surety of her beauty is profound.

The depth of the film comes with what people will do to be seen as beautiful and how much physical beauty matters. I’m not sure I liked the way it was presented as I was bored at times but it also had a power of drawing me into the main character.

Fanning was very good as the young mid-western girl wanting to live her dream of being a model. Her ethereal beauty and strength were evident and why she was chosen for this part - she was perfect for it. Karl Glusman as Dean a photographer and friend of Jesse was OK, but didn’t bring out a strong dynamic. Jena Malone was very interesting as Jesse’s friend and make-up artist. Her twists are edgy. Bella Heathcote as Gigi the model who will do anything surgically to be the “it” model. Abby Lee was interestingly strong as another model who has some odd eating habits (at the end of the film). Keanu Reeves as the intense somewhat twisted motel manager was a nice turn. Nicolas Winding Refn wrote and directed this oddly twisted film.

Overall:  This film was more odd and interesting than engaging.