Changeling

First Hit: This true story is very well written, directed, acted, and photographed. It is simply a very good film.

Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins a mother of a quiet, mindful 9 year old boy who disappears from their home before she comes home from working an extra shift as a supervisor in the telephone company.

What creates additional guilt for her is that she had promised her son to take him to a movie that Saturday and reneged from this promise to work overtime. As she was leaving to rush home to her son, her boss stopped her to share that he wanted to promote her to a new position because of her good work.

In having this conversation, she misses the trolley home and therefore gets home later than she had planned. Arriving home her son is gone and after searching the neighborhood, she calls the police who tell her they cannot do anything until 24 hours have passed.

The next day the police show up and take their report. A number of months go by when she receives a call from the police saying they found her boy in Indiana and they are shipping him home to LA. On the appointed day the police, her and the press are there to meet the train.

When the child appears, Christine tells the police captain that the boy they’ve brought to her is not her child. The captain objects and in a beautifully acted 3 minute scene Christine ends up agreeing to take the boy home because there is enormous pressure, in front of the press, to show that the police are doing their job. From this set up the film unfolds in an incredible story of power, corruption, deceit, and justice.

Jolie is fantastic in this film that is filled with both overt, large scale emotions and subtle emotions. In every way her performance is strong and consistent. John Malkovich is good as Reverend Gustav Briegleb a minister who is campaigning to clean up city hall and uses his weekly radio program to target the LA Police Department for their corruption. He comes to the aid of Jolie and supports her through the process of searching for her son. Jeffrey Donovan is strong as the steely, controlling and contained Captain J.J. Jones whose job it is to find Jolie’s son and control the spin as Jolie refutes the found boy as her son. Eastwood directs this cast through this story with patience and clarity of vision. The cinematography is wonderful and the 1920s and 1930s time period is captured nicely.

Overall: This is a very fine film with a compelling story, great acting, and fine execution.

Pride and Glory

First Hit: A predictable film with very little leading into the storyline along with a few moments of good acting mixed in with some really lousy camera shots.

For a film to have base, something to believe or not believe at the beginning, there needs to be some reason as to why the actors are acting the way they are.

In this film there is no base or basis for the actors to be the way they are. We have no idea why Jimmy Eagan (played by Colin Farrell) and his band of 3 other cops are dealing drugs, robbing stores, and killing people.

There is a poorly constructed reason why his brother in-law, Francis Tierney (played by Noah Emmerich), who is in-charge of Jimmy and his rouge band of cops ignores their bad behavior. Then there is Edward Norton who plays Ray Tierney a cop working in the cold case department.

We eventually learn about why Ray, this bright and upcoming cop, is at a desk job through a couple of forced scenes later on in the film. Lastly there is Jon Voight who plays Ray and Francis’ father who is a high ranking cop and is old school using spin and burying the truth as a way to “fix” the messes cops get in to. Now he wants to do it for his family.

This is a story about crooked cops and the illegal use of their power.

Jon Voight has a couple of good scenes and shows his acting chops. My favorite is the drunken monologue about how wonderful his kids are during a family dinner. Edward Norton always is interesting to watch because of his intellectual intenseness. Colin Farrell can sometimes over act and in this film it felt as if he were pressing. This film was mostly shot with handheld cameras and in some cases this is effective, but there is a fight scene in a bar between Colin and Edward that was simply horrible. The shots created no continuity of the fight and lacked intelligible sequencing. The director was out to lunch on this.

Overall: This was a very poorly constructed film with little intelligence in the story line. It was very predictable and brought nothing new to the screen.

A Secret

First Hit: This is an excellent French film about a man uncovering the hidden past of his father and family as it unfolded during a difficult and intense period of our history.

Based on a true story, this film floats between three different time periods but all within a 40 year time span.

Although it is a story about Francois Grimbert’s discovery about his life through the story of his mother and father’s life he really isn’t the main character. In fact I was hard pressed to say there was a main character.

The roles are so well interwoven that it is the whole film that becomes the focus and the beneficiary is the audience. At the age of 14 Francois’ Aunt Louise (played by Julie Depardieu) begins to reveal the story of his parent’s life.

Patrick Bruel plays the father, Maxime Nathan Grinberg, an athletic, distant and driven man who marries Hannah Golda Sirn (played by Ludivine Sagnier) and, together, they have a son. This son is a person who pops into Francois’ dreams as his brother and generally the audience sees him in black and white imagery during the dream sequences.

At Maxime and Hannah’s wedding, Maxime meets his wife’s brother’s wife Tania (played by Cecile De France). Maxime gazes at her with longing interest and she quickly and appropriately diverts her attention. She makes clear that his attention is unwanted.

Tania’s husband has been taken by the Germans and is in a camp somewhere and Tania is living with hope that her husband is safe and that she’ll see him again. Maxine’s initial gaze, over the years, causes a disturbance in Maxime and Hannah’s relationship.

Additionally, circumstances of World War II cause beliefs and truths to be lived and the acknowledgement and non-acknowledgement of their Judaism becomes another deep separating wound between Hannah and Maxime. This is the story leading up to the beginning of Francois’ life.

Sagnier, De France, and Depardieu were outstanding in their roles. Bruel was strong and the incongruence of his face and inner lying feelings was a key element in this film. However, the imagery of “his brother” at times I thought was a little distracting and inconsistent. But in the end I felt the director did the material justice.

Overall: It took about 15 minutes for me to slide into this film and its intention to tell a story. By the end of this film I was hooked by both the acting and the story.

Rachel Getting Married

First Hit: This film was a delicate dance between a docudrama (like the Loud series on PBS) and more conventional drama and once I got into it with a docudrama feel it worked very well.

Anne Hathaway plays Kym who is coming out of a 90 day stint in rehab, and is heading back home for a brief visit before going on to a halfway house. The brief visit home coincides with her sister, Rachel’s (played by Rosemarie DeWitt), wedding.

The strain on Kym, Rachel and each member of the family is palpable during her first 15 minutes in the family home. There is an immense amount of un-managed (bohemian) activity going on in the house which seemed a bit out of place to me, but it also represented how the children were raised.

During the film there are long extended scenes in which we are participating in family, both bride and groom, activities with very little being added to the primary plot. This gives it the “docudrama” feeling. As Kym isn’t always the featured role in these scenes I kept wondering if we were shifting to another focus, but Jonathan Demme (the director) always brought us back to Kym and her learning how to step into her life responsibly.

As the film moves on we learn that she was responsible for killing her little brother, while high, when she was a teenager. Her mother Abby (played by Debra Winger) tries not to stir up the pot during the wedding by taking a subordinate role in the wedding and in communicating with her daughters. 

But when Kym confronts her mother with the question about how could she knowingly let Kym watch her brother when she knew she was high, Abby responds by hitting Kym. However, enough realizations come to pass allowing the wedding to go forward.

This was a different kind of role for Hathaway and I thought she did a good job in it. Her good looks and sullen and hyperactive attitude created a character that was believable to me. DeWitt as her sister, did a good job of playing both the supportive sister and one who is (and was) usurped by her sister’s addictions, issues and problems. Demme did a rather effective job of creating a docudrama feel to the film, however I think some scenes played too long (wedding reception is one) as they didn’t add to the film.

Overall: I liked the feel of the film and nice to see Hathaway stretch in this way. It may assist her in her film career to show this side. It was great to see Debra Winger on the screen again I always enjoy watching her, there is a lot of intelligence in those eyes.

The Secret Lives of Bees

First Hit: This was a very touching film. It may have been idealized, however the acting and the overall subject, of being loved, accepted, and civil rights made this a winner.

I really liked this film. I was very touched by the characters.

The premise is that a young 4 year-old girl, Lily Owens (played by Dakota Fanning), participates in a traumatic event and from that event she gets caught into an abusive life with her controlling father (played by Paul Bettany).

Lily’s mother is gone and she feels alone and unloved. One day she and her nanny, Rosaleen (played by Jennifer Hudson), are walking into town so that Rosaleen can register to vote but are stopped and beat up by some very racist men. Lily breaks Rosaleen out of the jail/hospital and heads off to Tiburon a very small country town where there is a family that makes honey.

Lily picks this town because on one of the few possessions she has of her mother, there is a picture of a black Madonna and on the back it says “Tiburon”.

The home where the honey is made is run by August (played by Queen Latifah), May (played Sophie Okonedo), and June (played by Alicia Keys). May lost her twin sister and now feels the pain of everyone else (and the world). August is in charge of making the honey and June is a musician.

This group of women takes in Lily and Rosaleen and from their love and healing everyone grows.

This was a very special story. Fanning is growing into womanhood and in this role you know she is making the transition from child actor to grown up actress in a strong and powerful way. Hudson is wonderful as a young black woman wanting to exercise her right to vote and as Fanning’s nanny and friend. Latifah is great as the head of the household and keeps the film on an even keel. Keys is strong in her role as a woman who is afraid to love and commitment. However, I was truly and deeply touched by Okonedo in her role. I totally believed her and felt with her during the film.

Overall: I cried often during this film. It was touching and never when too far in any one direction.