State of Play

First Hit: Well filmed, moved into the tightly woven story, was well paced, but after the film was over while driving home in the car, I realized that the ending didn’t make sense.

This film has a lot going for it. The opening grouping of scenes creates the basis for a good story. A major Washington newspaper is on the edge of collapse. A murder of a homeless person and a pizza delivery man; are they connected? A congressman’s research aide is killed, is it homicide and why? A private security contractor being investigated by congress; pulling these pieces together is premise for this film’s story.

We are expertly guided along with strong acting by Russell Crowe, the reporter who is trying to be a friend and a reporter. We’ve got Ben Affleck, the friend and congressman; Helen Mirren, Crowes’ boss; and Robin Wright Penn, the congressman’s wife, all doing their part to create a strong story, only to have it make no sense at the end. Why?

Here it is the day after, and I still don’t understand why the writers and director let this film fall apart. The information presented in the story doesn’t add up when the end is played out.

Right after the film ended, I was OK but I felt questions developing. Exploring these with my girlfriend on the way home quickly exposed the flaws in the story. By the time we reached home the holes were wide open and big enough to drive a tank through.

The surprise is that this film fails at its objective, to tell a good cohesive story, and I don't know why.

Kevin Macdonald directed this film and I don’t know if it was him, the writers Matthew Michael Carnahan, Bill Ray, and Tom Gilroy, or all of them that let this thing flail and fall apart at the end. I don’t know if others will see and sense what we did, but when one takes the facts of the story and attempt to piece them together, you’ll find that the pieces of the puzzle don’t fit. Shame, though, the acting was really good.

Overall: Sad to have this very disappointing aftertaste when the appetizers were so good and the meal was excellently served.

Frozen River

First Hit: A stark film set in a stark environment and although some of the acting was excellent I wasn’t moved by the film.

Growing up in Southern California I was generally aware of the problem of people being smuggled across the border. In fact driving down the freeway near Oceanside, there are big yellow caution warning signs showing a family running across the highway.

The signs are to warn drivers to beware of people who’ve been smuggled across the border and are avoiding the highway checkpoint by crossing lanes of high speed freeway to the other side. However, it didn't occurred to me that smuggling people across the border was happening along our northern Canadian border as well.

Frozen River brings this to acute awareness as the story unfolds of a woman Ray Eddy (played by Melissa Leo) whose husband has just left her again with the money they’ve saved for a new double wide mobile home. Feeling helpless and at a loss and feeling burdened by the promises to her kids that a new home is on the way, she finds an extraordinary way to make some money. 

While her youngest son is unaware of why the new home isn’t here yet, her older 15 year old son T.J. (Played by Charlie McDermott) has a more defeated view of the sad events of their life. Ray works hard at a retail outlet but never gets promoted.

Ray is always on the edge of being a victim and because of her need to get money to pay for the double wide, she gets entangled in a smuggling scheme with Lila Littlewolf (played by Misty Upham).

The acting by Leo and McDermott was outstanding and Upham’s work felt realistic. Although the film felt flat to me but I’m hard pressed to know what was missing from the film to have it be something more interesting and engaging.

Overall: The powerful acting by Leo and McDermott made this film watchable and engaging.

The Great Buck Howard

First Hit: I rather enjoyed this light hearted film which loosely mimics some of the Amazing Kreskin’s life.

In this film Buck Howard is played by John Malkovich who has more than enough ego to satisfy the role and its requirements.

Howard is a mentalist and who was invited on to the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 61 times is seen playing a circuit of small towns like Bakersfield in half full houses, but the crowd who comes to see him, love him and are enthralled. He does a combination of magic tricks, hypnosis, and mentalist tricks like guessing a number between 1 and 100 as written down by one of the audience members.

However his coup de grace is when the audience hides his performance fee and he comes out from his dressing room, where he is being watched by two audience members, and finds the money. He has performed this trick successfully all his career; this is his signature trick.

The film moves along with the introduction of Troy, his new personal assistant played by Colin Hanks (son of Tom Hanks who makes a couple of appearances in the film as Troy’s father). The story of Buck is told through the eyes of Troy and when he meets press promotion person Valerie Brennan (Played by Emily Blunt) both Buck and Troy’s lives are changed subtly.

This film is about change, doing what we love to do, chances, and acceptance.

Sean McGinly both wrote and directed this film with a real taste and feel for letting the characters breathe. He didn’t let the audience get caught up in sentimentality and it was also a reminder of letting me not forget that there were odd and interesting people like the Amazing Kreskin whom I loved watching on Johnny Carson’s show.

Overall: I liked the film for its lightness and nostalgia without being too much of either.

Adventureland

First Hit: This early adult film was easy to watch and its acting made it enjoyable.

Some early adult films feature a lot of horror scenes, others portray silliness, but this one attempted to bring some current themes into play, like job loss and the reality of having to make one’s own way in life.

Jesse Eisenberg plays James a young man who has been fully supported by his parents during his college years and lives in an idealized belief of how life will be for him. Reality hits home when his parents tell him they cannot give him any money for a summer trip to Europe and that they will not be able to pay for his graduate schooling at Columbia.

In fact they tell him he has to work during the summer. We watch him apply to jobs and with no job history, he cannot even get a job at a restaurant. He ends up working as a carney at Adventureland. At Adventureland he meets a cast of interesting other misfits including Emily (played by Kristen Stewart).

Emily has had a difficult family life, drinks too much, is sullen and acts out by having an affair with a married guy who perpetuates a rumor that he is a budding musician and once played with Lou Reed. James is still a virgin and has not had much luck with girls and he falls completely in love with Emily.

The film tells this story in an easy going way but does fail in many ways to add depth to key characters.

Eisenberg is gentle, complete and effective as the somewhat shy entitled young man who has to start coming to grips with the realities of life. Stewart is, yet again, a sullen, quiet, shy girl who is the attention of the male lead. She is good and fairly compelling to watch on screen, and I’d like to see if she can play something else as a way to cement her acting credentials. Gregg Mottola directed this film evenly and with a sense of giving the audience a slice of real life.

Overall: I enjoyed watching this film and it’s sense of realism as portrayed by the actors, especially Eisenberg.

Gomorra

First Hit: Powerful and realistically shot film providing a glimpse at the Camorra coalition of crime families in Italy.

This film is quite different than the set-up execution scenes of a Scorsese gangster mafia film or the lushness of a Coppola mafia film story.

This film is shot in a documentary style. There are a couple of stories within this film but the main one is about two young guys think they are tough enough and smart enough to take a piece of the pie owned by one of the local heads of the family.

They think, he is all talk, out of shape, and out of touch. In their brash young way, the get themselves into a hole with the family they think they can get out of. The family gives them a warning which is strong and direct, but because of their youth they survive the scare and believe their strength is hiding behind their stolen guns. 

This film simply makes the rules known and that the rules will be upheld in the manner befitting the rule. And although this film doesn’t direct itself with the most senior levels of the consortium, it does let the watcher “get” the hierarchy and its importance.

Matteo Garrone did an excellent job of directing no-name actors in this gritty and matter-of-fact film. Maurizio Braucci did the screenplay with Roberto Saviano who is the author of the book on which this film is based.

Overall: This was a great gritty film that brings Italian crime families into a real life view. It is executed (yes that word) in a crisp factual way.