Everybody's Fine

First Hit: A very slow lifeless film with very little to say.

The premise of this film is that a dad, who is a recent widower, expects his children to come home for a holiday. One by one they tell him they cannot make it for some reason or another, so he decides to go visit each of them unannounced.

Although this is an interesting premise, this film really fails to deeply explore the reasons why his children don’t tell him the truth of their lives. It fails to explore family dynamics.

Robert De Niro plays Frank Goode (the dad) who is sick with a disease he picked up from his job of putting plastic coating on telephone wires. Every once in a while, when the children talk to each on the phone, the audience is treated to pictures of these plastic coated telephone wires while we hear slightly garbled dialogs of the conversations.

This is supposed to be symbolic about the distance between the children and the dad while also expressing the calls wouldn't have happened without his work. He starts his trip by visiting his oldest son who lives in New York. He gets there and he isn't home. He waits a day or so but gives up, slips an envelope under the door and leaves. We find out later that this son has a drug problem and is in Mexico.

The next stop is to visit the oldest daughter Amy (played by Kate Beckinsale). She is a smart high-powered advertising executive but appears to be very distant from her husband and child. Frank suggests to her that he'd like to stay there a couple of days, but Amy rushes him out of the house on the pretext she is busy but she is really headed to Mexico to try to find her older brother.

The next visit is to second son Robert (played by Sam Rockwell) who has somehow given his father the impression he is a conductor in an orchestra when in fact he plays the drums in an orchestra. Frank is clearly disappointed that he didn’t know this.

Then he visits his youngest daughter Rosie (played by Drew Barrymore) who is outgoing and attempts to tell her father why the children don’t tell him all of what is going on in their lives. However, at each reason, Frank fires back his justification.

The fact of the matter is that Frank didn’t and doesn’t listen to the truth only to what he really wants to hear.

De Niro, doesn’t have the feel for this part. He portrays very little depth on the screen and doesn’t seem very engaged to this film. Beckinsale is adequate as an ad executive but the role has little going for it. Rockwell gets a little more meat in his lines and does bring some friction and interest to the interchange between him and De Niro. Lastly Barrymore is good at bringing some sunshine and truth into this little story. I don’t think the writing level mined the depths of family dynamics which would have propelled this story into an interesting film.

Overall: This was a tired attempt to bring forth how siblings find it difficult to communicate their truth to their father.

Invictus

First Hit: A solid well intentioned film about how a rugby team helped Nelson Mandela create an important social shift in South Africa.

Clint Eastwood knows how to make a well executed and solid film. His films are well paced, don't waste time and he makes his intentions very clear.

I've heard say that he pulls obvious heart strings to evoke emotion. But so what, it works because it is the heart being touched which allows us to be open to stories about people. In Invictus he gets to the heart of the matter which is “forgiveness”.

Forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools we humans have to move our lives forward with grace and dignity. Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) gets this principle and brings this lesson to the people of South Africa. He also knows that people with differing points of view can be brought together if they have a single focal point.

In this film the focal point is the white supported national rugby team called the Springboks. With the Rugby World Cup being held in his country in less than a year he challenges the team through their captain Francois Pienaar (played by Matt Damon) to win the world cup. By doing this he suspects that his countrymen, whites and blacks, will come together and unite around the team because they will have an opportunity to be seen worldwide as an important and united nation.

Pienaar bites on the challenge given to him by Mandela because he sees and feels the truth in the words Mandela offers him in their brief conversations.

The rest is history and just because we know the outcome it doesn’t mean we cannot revisit the beauty and power of a nation coming together under the most auspicious of circumstances. It is the heart of the matter.

Freeman was the perfect choice to play Mandela. Besides some of the facial likenesses, it is a great character for Freeman to embody. Freeman has the intelligence and inner peace to play this amazing man. Damon was outstanding as the rugby captain. He put on the necessary weight and muscle required to make his role believable and his single minded determination brought his role to life. It wasn’t flamboyant, like many of our sports superstars; it was a deep understanding of what it would take to achieve the stated goal, bringing the country together if even for one single moment in front of the world. The rest of the cast was equally good and definitely brought out part of the struggle of the shifting political situation of that time.

Overall: A wonderful film to watch and to reflect upon the truth; that forgiveness is the heart of the matter.

Up in the Air

First Hit: A very enjoyable film with some very superb acting from the principals and supporting cast.

In the 1990’s I was a consultant and my job required me to travel from client to client spending more than ¾ of my time away from home. In fact there were multi-year segments in which I didn’t even eat a meal at home. If I was hungry, I would just walk up the street to a restaurant and get something to eat.

With this background, I was really interested in seeing this film to see if they could show this kind of lifestyle accurately. As I sat there watching Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) I was convinced that the director Jason Reitman had gotten the essence of this sort of life.

In the film, Bingham’s job is to fire people from their jobs because the company’s management cannot do it. Doing this job requires that he not get emotionally attached to their pleas to understand why they are being fired and the hurt and anger that follows his devastating news. Because of the economy, business is booming so he is on the road for months at a time; never going home.

He loves this lifestyle. He has few responsibilities and nothing to tie him down or make a commitment about. He meets up with Alex (played by Vera Farmiga) who portends to have the same unattached lifestyle.

Their first meeting is a contest on who has the most and best frequent flier and express cards. Ryan indicates that he’ll quit the road when he hits a certain number of miles. They have a blissful one night exchange and like it so much they decide to plan their flying schedules to meet up again and again.

When Ryan’s company calls him home they tell him they’re putting in new technology that will make is traveling moot. To prove this new technology is a mistake, he takes the innovator Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick) out on the road so she can experience the real gist of the job. Being a new MBA graduate she is fired up but learns quickly that theory and practicum are different worlds.

Reitman gets the nuances down just right; the secret drive of business travelers to move through airports, hotels and car rental lines quickly and efficiently. I felt the rush, fun and aloneness of it all, just as I remembered. Clooney has the look and feel of this character and is absolutely ideal for this character. He’s funny, melancholy, intelligent, aloof and direct. He was made for this role. Kendrick is perfect as the MBA who wants to make a name for herself and is filled with idealism. Farmiga is very good as a fellow traveler and hides her duel life well. Lastly, I thought all the people who played the parts of the people getting fired were great. They felt real, like everyday people suddenly faced with losing their jobs.

Overall: This is a really good film. Even the tone and texture of the film itself gave it the feel of realism and accuracy.

The Road

First Hit: A very dark story about what it might be like if we keep heading down the road we’re on.

The world, as we know it, has ended and a few people are alive. We don’t know what ended the world; it could have been war but mostly it looks like a disaster of some sort hit our planet. The mood is dark and stays dark throughout most of the film.

The characters don’t have names and Viggo Mortensen plays the man, Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the boy, and Charlize Theron plays the woman. Through dream flashbacks you learn that the woman, somewhat regretfully, has a child during our planet's deterioration.

She is strong and doesn’t want to live this long slow painful death she sees for the remaining humans. She chooses death. The man believes he must live on with the boy so they travel South looking for warmer weather.

They run into gangs of people who kill and eat strangers and it is clear that women and children are the prized killings and first to be eaten. The man and boy survive these tribulations as they move South and towards the ocean.

The boy is naïve and yet wise and guides his father towards kindness when possible. They run into one old man on the road played by Robert Duvall and befriend him for a couple of days. This is a dark story with small nuggets of kindness here and there.

Mortensen is intense as the man and is very good in this part. He was an excellent choice for this part. Smit-McPhee is sweet and looks as if he could have been Theron’s son (I’m sure he was picked for this part because of the resemblance). Duvall is wonderful for is portrayal of the old man who has most, but not all, of his marbles left. The constant darkness of this film both in color and texture of the scenes is powerful. A scene showing humans being stored and harvested for their meat is tough to watch. There are a handful of scenes in dream sequences where Theron and Mortensen are young lovers when the world was still hopeful and these scenes bring some light colors to the screen but those scenes are few and far between.

Overall: Make no mistake; if you don’t like dark foreboding films then don’t go to see this. However, it is a story that could be telling of our future if we’re not careful.

Shrink

First Hit: Although a bit tedious, it is a watchable film with some good acting and interplay.

Kevin Spacey plays Henry Carter a psychologist who has a hit book out about how to be happy. But he is anything but happy.

From the moment the film opens we know something is really wrong with Carter. He’s stoned all the time. He is seen sleeping everywhere but on his bed. He sleeps on the floor, on a pool deck chair, on the couch and most anywhere but on his bed. He pays passing attention to his dog and barely a bit more to his patients.

He occasionally says something of wisdom to his patients but mostly spends his time thinking about his next hit on a joint. There is a great intervention scene where his family, patients and friends try to get him into a abuse program and he just blows them off.

His father who is also a psychologist decides to send Carter a young girl for pro-bono therapy. Jemma is a young girl who is missing school to go see films and is missing her mother. Carter finds out her mother committed suicide which is what his wife did. At this moment Carter and Jemma begin to heal.

Spacey is perfect as the arrogant, intelligent, and personally lost “psychologist for the stars”. His patients represent Hollywood people with Hollywood type problems which are amusing to watch. Keke Palmer plays the girl and drew me in to watch her. She has a strong presence. Saffron Burrows plays a centered Kate Amberson the wife of a country/rock star who is fully narcissistic.

Overall: This is an OK film, not great, but I found myself interested in how it would turn out.