Flawless

First Hit: This was very enjoyable film and made so by two really good actors, Demi Moore and Michael Caine.

This is an interesting London based 1960s period piece. It is easy to forget that there was such an obvious glass ceiling for women in that time but there was.

Demi Moore plays Laura a smart no-nonsense American woman who was top of her class at Oxford and is the only female manager in the London Diamond house. Her outfits are extremely conservative with neck high blouses and jackets with longish skirts. She continues to be passed up for promotions even though she is clearly heads above the others in the company.

A contract with the Russians is coming due and with the strife associated with blood diamonds the company is concerned that there may be trouble in their diamond monopoly. However, Laura finds a solution that can save the company and Russians embarrassment.

However, the Russians only want the top senior managers to know about this plan which means Laura is going to be fired because she isn’t top senior management and she knows the plan.

Then along comes Michael Caine playing Mr. Hobbs a longtime simple janitor who knows a lot about what is going on in the company. He approaches Laura with a plan to steal some of the diamonds in the safe as a way for her to get back at the company. To motivate her he tells her she is going to be fired. Laura doesn’t believe it but when she secretly looks at her personnel file and sees a future dated letter indicating her upcoming termination, she’s convinced. She begins to get drawn into the plan and discovers that Mr. Hobbs needs money for retirement and that is why he wants to rob the diamond company. The day after the robbery, when the safe is opened it is discovered that all the diamonds, tons, are gone she is shocked and dismayed. With more than $100,000 dollars worth of diamonds gone, Laura tracks down Mr. Hobbs and quickly begins to learn that Mr. Hobbs really had another agenda for the robbery, vengeance.

Overall: This was a very well acted film. Demi Moore shows why she is a top actress and Michael Caine still knows how to deliver multiple levels of a character at any point in time.

Stop-Loss

First Hit: This film does a fantastic job of letting the audience a glimpse of understanding regarding the unseen impact and trauma of war through characters that people can relate to.

Kimberly Pierce (the Director and writer) did her homework. This is a very strong film about the impact on our soldiers when they are “stop-lossed”.

Because the requirements for troops in Iraq is larger than the number of people available to serve and we do not have a draft (as we did in Vietnam), our government gives itself the right to break the agreement it has with our soldiers.

In breaking this agreement, the soldiers are kept from leaving the armed service and sent back to Iraq for additional war duty. The toll this takes on people is what this film is about. Ms. Pierce sets the stage effectively by opening the door slowly by beginning with important shots during the opening credits.

The audience is immediately engaged with the squad of men led by Brandon (played by Ryan Phillippe) as their different personalities are displayed while they hang out together in their billets. This scene is true to its tale; it is how men bond in the service and especially in war.

As the film unfolds Brandon leads his squad into a narrow alley in pursuit of three men who shot at them at a checkpoint. Going into the alley was a mistake and the men become trapped and are assaulted by rockets, gunfire and grenades.

Brandon loses a couple of men, his best friend is hurt and one of his guys loses an arm and leg. They come back home to their small Texas town to a hero’s celebration. After their short leave they will be processed out of the army, their contract finished. This is when they find out some of them are to be stop-lossed. Brandon cannot believe his ears. He thinks there’s been some clerical mistake.

Learning he has to go back he sees the toll on his friends and himself and so he refuses. He soon learns how difficult it is to live your beliefs and also believe the government after they broke their contract with him.

Pierce captures small town Texas perfectly; the sights, sounds, and the people. She also captures how these men attempt to just slide back into their old life and cannot, they are forever changed by the act of war. At one level they act the same as they did before they left but it is clear there is a deeper underlying level fear and hiding of what they saw, what they feel, and what they did while in Iraq. All of this is excellently captured.

Overall: This film is a very strong addition to the body of work representing our misguided flight into Iraq.

21

First Hit: The film started out well. In fact I enjoyed the premise of a young strong mind finding traction in the hot fast world of gaming, however at some point it turned more towards being unbelievable or false.

Based on a true story, Jim Sturgess plays Ben a young bright MIT student doing what he can to enter Harvard Medical School.

In one scene he is meeting with a Harvard representative who is telling him that to receive an all paid trip to Medical School on a grant, he must have, besides perfect school and test scores, a dazzling life experience story to tell.

The rep wants to be dazzled. Ben walks away dejected because his life has been all study and no play he doesn’t have any life experiences to dazzle the Harvard rep, nor does he have the $300,000 it takes to pay for school.

During a class taught by Professor Micky Rosa (played by Kevin Spacey), Ben impresses Mickey with an answer to a math problem. Upon further questioning by the professor Ben impresses the whole class with his thought process and brilliance.

Days later Ben is invited to sit in a meeting with the Professor and some students who have created a team that counts cards in 21 and plays for money in Las Vegas on the weekends.

They want him to join the team because they lost one of their players. On this team is the girl of his dreams Jill Taylor (played by Kate Bosworth). Although it tempting as a way to pay for school he initially declines their offer.

Jill comes to see him and he is finally convinced to try this but sets a limit that he is only there to win $300,000 for his tuition and after that he is out.

At this point the film starts telegraphing itself with the high life he gets caught into while gambling in Las Vegas. After a few trips, he finds himself to be really good at the game and starts to think he is better than the rules set up by the team.

At one point he disregards the signals by his team members and ends up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although counting cards is not illegal, casinos don’t like it and anyone suspected of counting gets a reminder that counting is not tolerated.

Ben gets his lesson from Laurence Fishburne who has strong feelings against card counters and as we find out Professor Rosa.

Overall: This was an entertaining film, more at the beginning than at the end where the real character seemed to get lost. Some of the gambling scenes are great.

Summer palace (Yihe yuan)

First Hit: This is a somewhat interesting and rather long film that follows a young woman and her search for intense love. It is well shot and the use of a hand held camera was well executed.

Hao Lei plays Yu Hong as a young woman working away in her father’s small retail store in a town a long way from Beijing. She has a boyfriend who is excited for her when she receives a letter stating her acceptance to Beijing University.

At first she plays the quiet one, the almost faceless person, in her dorm room. She meets a more outgoing girl who is curious about this smoldering newcomer. They form a friendship and Yu is introduced to a Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo) and immediately she falls deeply in love with him. He completes her at all levels.

From this point on the film is about their relationship and how they split up, re-meet, split up, re-meet and slit-up. Surrounding this relationship is the supposed societal and student unrest.

There are actual shots of the Tiananmen Square uprising mixed into this film; however I couldn’t really connect that the students in the film were engaged enough to be part of the march in the square. In other words there was virtually nothing in the film telling me that these students were the students that Marched in the square that day. It rang false.

After this event, the couple go their separate ways. The film follows them both but the thread between them, their lives, and the film, was mostly lost.

Written and Directed by Lou Ye, there were aspects of this film that were very well shot and presented and this he needs to be commended. The dark almost dank hallways of the student housing, the feeling of lots of people living in small spaces, and the ever present smog making most all outside shots fill up with the dreariness of today’s cities in China were dead on. However, in most all conversations, the dialog lacked substance. The best dialogue came from when Yu Hong spoke her thoughts and diary writings.

Overall: I was both interested and bored with this film. There appears to be more hype to this film than substance. It is a OK film and it’s long and felt long.

Paranoid Park

First Hit: This is a very good Gus Van Sant directed film. I loved the fluidity in which it was filmed in both Super 8 and 35mm and how the character slowly and fluidly understands what happened one night.

Alex (played by Gabe Nevins) is a directionless teenager who admires the good skateboarders at Paranoid Park. He lacks confidence in his own ability to skate at the Park so he practices out of the sight of others. Paranoid Park, which is an illegal skate park, is used and was built by skaters and is under a freeway.

Alex goes there with his slightly older friend Jared (played by Jake Miller) to watch and learn how to skate better and because he feels at home there with the other skaters.

The film begins when Alex is called into the school office to talk to a detective who questions him about the death of a train yard Security Guard who was cut in-half by a passing train. We also discover that this man was hit on the head first by a skateboard which was fished out of the river.

His friend Macy (played by Laura McKinney) notices that he’s struggling and confused and suggests writing down what is bothering him, like a letter. By doing this, she explains, then sending it to someone else, burning it, or giving it to her will help him with his troubles.

During the film Alex writes pieces of the story which lead the viewer to better understand his interactions, intentions and experience with his girlfriend, some older guys at the skate park, Macy, and his dad. The film fluidly moves between the past, present and future. The ability to use Super 8mm film with little light and marry it with and 35mm film in most other scenes was inventively good and gave the film the feel as if you were with him at the skate park and on his terms. Additionally Van Sant did an excellent job of mixing slow motion, lighting, and long languid shots to create and expressive film.

Overall: Fluid was the word that stayed with me throughout my viewing. I really liked how this film held and embraced youth and in particularly this lost confused young man who is attempting to understand recent events.