Thor

First Hit: This attempt at complicating a simple story resulted in a thud.

Kenneth Branagh has never been an actor or director that touched me with his work. I found his work pretentious and felt I could see through his acting. This attempt by Branagh to make money will probably succeed, but for storytelling, it just was overwrought – like Branagh.

The overt complicating of stories or characters doesn’t make great acting or directing. Clarity of vision with clarity of execution does tend to make good and watchable films.

In Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth), the arrogant namesake acts like most cocky kids, strong, idealistic, and quick decision making. Experience and wisdom, which cannot be willfully passed on through generations, is what he lacks. He has a brother, Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) who obviously is not of the same blood, that Thor truly loves and admires.

Their father, Odin (played by Anthony Hopkins), banishes Thor and his hammer to Earth for his exuberance in killing people and displaying his power. Because of the 9 vectors in space (yeah right), he gets banished to Earth via a wormhole. After Thor is banished, Odin falls into a coma like sleep and Loki decides to seize the throne from his father.

Loki plots to have his father assassinated by the Ice Giant people who are from another planet. But his real plan, we think, is that he wants to be seen as saving his father at the last minute from this assassination. This act, he believes, will make him worthy of the crown. Loki also discovers that he is originally from the Ice Giant planet that his father conquered years earlier. Odin found Loki as a baby and saved him as an act of humanity. 

All the while, Thor meets up with some scientists who are studying phenomena in New Mexico. The scientist, Jane Foster (played by Natalie Portman), finds Thor roaming the desert. He happens to speak English, as do all the characters do no matter what planet or solar system they reside, and continues with his arrogant ways on Earth. The havoc from Thor and his hammer landing on the ground bring in a secret government agency to find out what is going on.

The government agency steals Jane’s materials, Thor likes Jane so he tries to get the materials back, Loki visits Thor and tells him Odin is dying, Thor gets humble and saves the day by fighting an all metal flame belching 20 foot tall robot sent by Loki to kill Thor, Thor goes back home through the wormhole promising to return but ends up killing Loki by destroying the wormhole machine.

Finally, Odin wakes up from his coma, is proud that Thor learned his lesson, and they are all sad that Loki ended up being dead because of his lust for power and wanting to prove to Odin he was deserving of being King.

Hemsworth made a good Thor. Being well built and self-effacing enough, he did a good job with a screwed up story. Hiddleston was OK and was a good enough villain. Hopkins was a great king and ruler of their kingdom – simple voice inflections and inner strength made his character work. Portman was not very believable but funny enough in this throw away role. Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz wrote a screwy script. They could definitely take some lessons from other Marvel stories which have been more interesting and fun to watch. Branagh doesn’t really know what to do behind the camera and his intelligence should have given him a better feel on how to make this character and story come alive.

Overall: Some nice special effects but beyond this the film is a flat liner.

Fast Five

First Hit: Some fun car chases but mostly an unrealistic ill-advised script attempting to masquerade as an interesting film.

Vin Diesel has screen presence as does Dwayne Johnson. In this film they are adversaries and in a country, Brazil, where they are out of their element.

Dom (Diesel), Brian (played by Paul Walker), and Mia (played by Jordana Brewster) have to leave the US because both her brother Dom and her boyfriend Brain are fugitive escaped prisoners from the United States.

The US Government sends Hobbs (Johnson) to bring back these most wanted men but in Brazil the problems are more complex. Dom, Brian, Mia and a crew of misfits want to do one last job where they each will get 11 million dollars.

Their idea is to rob a local mob leader named Reyes (played by Joaquim de Almeida) who illegally runs Rio de Janeiro through drugs, prostitution and other graft. He owns the police and neighborhoods by bribes and giving people the minimum to survive. He wants a car which has been seized by the U.S. DEA. The car has an electronic chip in it that tracks where his money is collected and when all of it is transferred to banks. Dom and Brian find the chip and plan a robbery.

Reyes, worried about a theft, puts all his money (over $100 million) in a safe which is in the basement of the main police station. However Dom and Brian take two cars and some cable and are able to drag a multi-ton safe filled with money all around Rio (Yeah, sure). Hobbs is simply trying to catch Dom and Brian but runs into problems because he tries to strong arm Reyes thugs with his American arrogance. This gets everyone to be shooting everyone. 

Granted some of the car scenes are fun to watch and I would have like to seen a list of the cars used in the credits but, it just didn’t happen that way even though after a majority of the credits rolled there was a clip of more film. (Yes folks, I sit through the credits.)

Diesel was, as he usually is, gruff with a soft heart and plays a good outlaw. Walker is a pretty face but his role is marginalized and minimized by stronger actors. Brewster is attractive. Johnson is always a dynamic person on the screen and here he is thuggish and righteous. Almeida is very good in his role as tough master criminal. Chris Morgan and Gary Scott Thompson wrote this unrealistic script. Justin Lin spent a lot of money blowing things up, car chases, wrecking cars and creating long complex foot chases. The difference between amazing foot chases and long and uninteresting foot chases is to watch Daniel Craig in Casino Royale and this one. Craig’s chase is amazing.

Overall: This “Fast” series needs to end as the stories and execution are getting worse and worse.

Water for Elephants

First Hit: One great performance in a mediocre film.

Jacob (played by Robert Pattinson) is a depression child (although his character didn’t experience it) following in his father’s footsteps as a Doctor of Veterinary Science.

We see him just about ready to take his final exam and the voice over tells us he’s going to have sex with someone in the class. Not sure why this is important except to say he’s ready to start his new life after the exam.

However, before he can put pencil to paper, he is called out of class and learns that his parents have just died in an auto accident. Settling their affairs, he finds out that the house is no longer his because his parents mortgaged it to pay for his schooling. He is, in fact, broke and homeless like the tens of thousands of others of this time period.

While walking down a railroad track a train comes so he hops it only to quickly find out that it is a traveling circus train. The circus is run by August (played by Christoph Waltz) who is married to the main attraction Marlena (played by Reese Witherspoon).

Her main act is to ride and demonstrate elegance and control over her horses in the center ring. She is far younger than her husband whom she met when he found her on the streets of a small town. She didn't know her parents and had lived in foster homes all her life. He offered her a different kind of life and home with a family of other societal misfits.

When Jacob meets Marlena she is working with her lead horse who has a leg problem. Jacob quickly diagnoses the ailing horse and takes the risk of putting it out of its misery. August both punishes and rewards Jacob for the efforts because the horse was the star attraction and he had enough conviction to do what was right.

To create a new crowd pleasing and money making act, August buys an elephant named Rosie. August tells Jacob that he is in-charge of Rosie and must train it to be the money making attraction the circus needs to stay in business. August tells him he needs this act to be great because, his circus will otherwise go bankrupt (like others of his time) and they will all perish. 

Jacob is kind in his training of Rosie but little progress is being made with the training, so August takes this task into his own hands by telling Jacob he must make Rosie know who is boss. August goes into Rosie’s rail car and beats the elephant bloody. This makes Marlena and Jacob sick, unites them in their cause to treat the elephant kindly, and also emotionally brings together as a couple.

I won’t share more of the story but to say that it has a Hollywood story type ending.

Pattinson is ill suited for this part. His moody (James Dean spin off) presence and good looks (to young girls that want to make his moodiness go away) may work for “The Twilight” series of films but here it is a distraction. Witherspoon, doesn’t fare much better. There isn’t much to make me believe her background and why she married August. The chemistry between Pattinson and Witherspoon was minimal and it showed in their scenes. Waltz was the star and the great performance of this film. From his opening scene, till the end he was a man of great contradictions of passion and manic anger. His whole face and especially his eyes kept me totally on edge in every scene thinking “how would this scene end?” When he is on the screen, he’s the one you watch. Hal Holbrook plays the senior Jacob and it is always great to see and hear his intelligent acting. Richard LaGravenese wrote the screenplay which was pretty good. Francis Lawrence directed this and leaving the theater it felt like a lot of great possibilities were left on the table.

Overall: This film was a great disappointment but might be OK to view on video with nothing else to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I

First Hit: Atlas Shrugged and so did I.

I fondly remember reading Ayn Rand’s book about capitalism and its main characters, Taggart Transportation, Rearden Steel and John Gault.

And although I liked some of the principles I read then (self-reliance, we deserve the spoils of our labor and efforts and if someone has a monopoly on something that works, so what) it also assisted me in thinking about concepts of sharing wealth and the government’s role in servicing and supporting the poor. It was a book that provided some clearer understanding about how some people feel about wealth and the distribution of wealth.

Therefore I was looking forward to this film and wondered why it hadn’t been made before. It seemed to be a ripe story, especially with today’s abilities with special effects, to be made into film to enjoy what the future might hold and how people thought about wealth.

What actually happened was that this film provided a feeble and amateurish idea of what Rand shared in her book. Often the acting was amateurish with back and forth dialog between people being stilted and forced. Also some of the sets appeared to be just that, a set. A potted plant put in a corner because something needed to be in the corner (this was one of many visualizations that stayed with me the next morning).

In other words, the feeling of being taken or swept away by the actors, story and scenes was, for the most part, absent. Granted there were some good scenes and some good acting but mostly it felt as though it was created on a limited budget (which I’m sure it was) and that this “Part I” was made to generate enough money to allow Part II to be made at a higher and more professional level.

Briefly the story: Dagny Taggart (played by Taylor Schilling) co-owns Taggart Transportation with her brother James (played by Mathew Marsden). He milks the family owned company for all the profits he can get but sees a problem coming up with the latest rail breakage and train pile-up. Dagny, on the other hand, is the smart one who wants to create a great business and sees an opportunity to do this from the incident.

With the accident, Dagny has had enough of her brother’s ineptitude and decides the company is going to go into another direction. She wants to rebuild the infrastructure with a new metal from Henry Rearden (played by Grant Bowler) who owns Rearden Steel. The government doesn’t want this to happen because the steel could be so good that it will put all the other steel mills out of business and it could make Taggart Transportation the only viable rail line in the United States and Rearden Steel the only steel company.

A Coloradan named Ellis Wyatt (played by Graham Beckel) wants the rail line done right so that he can move his oil in Colorado out to the public (to make more money). After their initial success of the new rail line on Rearden steel, he tells Rearden and Dagny that this new rail line will be used to move the “sea of natural gas” lying below the oil which will make them even more rich. 

As was in the book and in this film, the characters playing the government’s case to distribute the wealth and control monopolies are weak and self-serving which is disappointing. At least in the book there was more attention paid to their case and it was more logically supported.

However, as in the book, John Gault is finding and removing these capitalists from public society. For what reason? Who knows. Who is John Gault? The answer to these questions and more will be revealed in Part II.

Schilling is good enough, but the type of strength required for her role isn’t really present (or acted out as Dagny) in her. She is one of the better people in this film. Marsden is ill prepared to be in the role he is in. He is the primary character in a number of poorly acted scenes. Bowler is OK as Rearden, but his actions and relationship to his wife and family do not fit (why would he marry the person who is his wife in this film?). Yes he is supposed to be disassociated from everything but his work, but his passion for his work doesn’t come through. Beckel was the one actor that felt fully engaged in his character and when he was in the scenes, I felt more engaged. John Aglialoro wrote the screen play from Rand’s book. The screenplay appeared to be OK but through some of the bad acting it was hard to discern. Paul Johansson directed the film and again I don’t know if it was the limited budget, bad actors and overall bad directly that left me with the feeling, why was this film made.

Overall: This was an unfortunate expression of a book that has a clear point of view whether one agrees with it or not.

The Conspirator

First Hit: A very well acted, historically accurate, drama.

As the credits rolled on this film it struck me how much our government has not changed over the years and not in a good way.

This story is about the US Government railroading the prosecution and killing of a non-guilty person because certain high government officials needed to “show the public" that they are setting things right. A number of years ago, September 11th brought out actions by the US Government which killed thousands of innocent people because we needed to have a strong and definitive response.

If Osama Bin Laden was the perpetrator of the NYC tragedy then why have we killed thousands of Iraqis and Afghans instead of the guilty party? Why have we lost thousands of our own soldiers in this misaligned endeavor; because we ignored our own beliefs (being fair and democratic) and rules of our democratic society (the Constitution). 

We dropped thousands of bombs to make a point to our public that we're taking care of business. And to prove this we killed lots of people (innocent or not) and we've taken away some of your private rights (US Patriot Act). In the Conspirator, the Secretary of War, Edward Stanton (played by Kevin Kline) makes the point over and over again that we have to throw out the constitutional rights of citizens for the sake of getting the revenge he believes the public wants and entitled to.

The story is about a trial of Mary Surratt (played by Robin Wright) whose son, John Surratt (played by Johnny Simmons) conspired with a group of men, including John Wilkes Booth, to kill President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. The group was successful in killing Lincoln but only injuring the other two.

Mary Surratt was put on trial because her son held meetings with these conspirators in her boarding home. She did not know what they were conspiring to and she wouldn’t tell anyone where her son was hiding out and because of this, she was hanged as a conspirator. The trial was a military tribunal and was not a civil trial of her peers.

The trial was unconstitutional. Her initial lawyer Senator Reverdy Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson), gave the case to Frederick Aiken (played by James McAvoy) who didn’t want to defend Mary because he believed she was guilty. But as a lawyer of people’s rights he changed his tune and saw the injustice that was being done to a fellow citizen.

After Mary’s conviction, he got a Writ of habeas corpus to have her tried in a civilian court as was her right but President Johnson denied the writ and she was hanged. Subsequently laws were passed to never allow this sort of behavior to happen again.

Wright was strong as a mother protecting her son and showed a wonderful clear grace in her faith as she was put to death. Great to see her on film again. McAvoy was excellent as a young northern Army Captain seeing clearly through his prejudiced beliefs as a union officer and being a fair lawyer. Kline was excellent as a government bully wanting to make believe might makes right. Wilkinson was good as a southern senator who was a Lincoln pallbearer and also supported the defending attorney. James D. Solomon wrote a very strong screenplay from his own story. Robert Redford directed this story with clarity of the story and not over dramatizing it for the sake of filmmaking. I appreciated the detail and clarity of this film and the point it was making.

Overall: I really liked the clarity and point of this story as Redford filmed it.