Smashed

First Hit:  For my money, this was one of the better films depicting the struggle to lose an alcoholic addiction.

Kate and Charlie Hannah (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul respectively) are a good time couple. They go to the bar, play pool and drink every night. They love each other but it is all through the haze of alcohol.

Kate is an animated school teacher teaching young kids. One day because of her excess the night before she throws up while teaching class. To cover the incident she tells the school and class that she is pregnant.

This lie, of course, will be uncovered in the end. Kate decides to get sober and her teaching peer Dave Davies (played by Nick Offerman) and her AA sponsor Jenny (played by Octavia Spencer) give her the support and drive to get there. When she and Charlie go visit her Kate’s mother Rochelle (played by Mary Kay Place), we see the history of her illness.

How alcoholism is represented in this film is excellent and the audience is given insight to what can happen.

Winstead is outstanding and give a truly strong performance. Paul is very good as the husband who loves his wife, but loves drinking as well. Offerman gives a great performance of the friend who also breaks the AA rules and has to look at himself as well. Place is very good as the enabling mother. Spencer is wonderful as Kate’s sponsor. James Ponsoldt and Susan Burke wrote a very strong script. Ponsoldt did a wonderful job of directing this film with realism and sensitivity.

Overall: A well-acted film.

Argo

First Hit:  Ben Affleck knows what he is doing behind the camera – excellent film.

The attention to detail in this period piece was outstanding. The hair styles, facial hair, cars, airplanes, interiors, and exteriors – all done with meticulous detail. Affleck even had the “Hollywood” sign in disrepair as it was back then.

Ben Affleck also is the lead character Tony Mendez, an analyst and specialist in getting US Government employees out of countries when they are trapped. In Argo the film is based on a true story to extract 6 people out of Iran after students took over the Iranian US Embassy in 1979.

These 6 people snuck out the back and made their way to a Canadian Embassy employee’s home. Tenseness is generated partially because the Iranians are taking stock of the embassy they’ve taken over but don’t yet know 6 people escaped. The race is to get them out of country before the Iranians learn whose missing where they are hiding.

Jack 0’Donnell (played by Bryan Cranston) is supporting Mendez’s plan to fake scouting for exotic locations in Iran and the 6 escapees become part of the scouting crew and then all leave on a plane. The plan, although absurd is better than all the other plans which Mendez disses as mindless and stupid.

Affleck creates an immense amount of tension during the film and does this in a sweet, slow and creative way. As part of the fake US based film team, Lester Siegel (played Alan Arkin) and John Chambers (played by John Goodman) create both comic relief and developed a strong sense of Hollywood.

One of the best things about this film is that there is no one dominating performance – it is the performance of the entire team that makes this film work really well.

Affleck as Mendez is very good and shows that Affleck doesn’t have a huge ego when directing – he keeps himself in check and this makes his subtle yet effective performance excellent. Arkin is beyond funny and perfect as the guy who makes this fake film a fake hit. Goodman, who is a makeup artist but substitutes as a producer is definitely in his swim lane – exquisite performance. Cranston is very good as Affleck’s boss who believes in his man. Chris Terrio wrote a an excellent script from Joshuah Bearman’s article. Affleck is extremely competent as a director and has a long career behind the camera giving the audience excellent stories. He will be nominated for an Oscar.

Overall:  This is an excellent film – a must see and will give younger people an excellent view of early 1980 history.

Atlas Shrugged: Part II

First Hit:  Poor acting, monologue heavy, but better than Part I.

Part I, which I reviewed in April of 2011, was poor from the get go. Part II is slightly better but Samantha Mathis does not bring life or any character to her part as Dagny Taggart.

She is simply not believable as the head of Taggart Railway, and some of her scenes she was not engaged and it seemed as if she was reading the script for the first time. Jason Beghe plays Henry Rearden head of Rearden Steel. He portends to be the guy with all the right morality when it comes to business but not so in his personal life because he is cheating on his wife Lillian (Kim Rhodes) with Dagny.

This film is supposed to move the whole set of films (Rand's story) along so that we wonder how the fight between big private business versus big government turns out and who's right. The government wants the people who have nothing, that don’t create value (according to Rearden), to receive their fair share by bilking big business. If you look at today’s 99% protest marches, the similarities come to light with a slightly different twist. In the film the government creates edicts which will destroy the companies.

Some of the scenes in this film were shot much better than many of the scenes in Part I. And low and behold, Part III will be coming.

It stands on its own that none of the actors in Part I made it to Part II. However, many of the actors in Part II may make it to Part III.

Mathis cannot carry this film in her title role. Speaking dialogue that, in many cases, didn’t work, and when she tried to make it work she wasn’t believable. To her credit, at times, it was completely just a bad script. Beghe was more believable, yet the script led him to have these monologues which got old. Rhodes was more believable and fun to watch in her brief appearances. Esai Morales (as Mine Operator Mogul, Francisco d’Anconia) was amusing and again his role was to spin monologues. Richard T. Jones (as Eddie Willers – Dangy’s right hand man) was good and one of the strongest characters in the film. Duke Sandefur and Brian Patrick O’Toole wrote this monologue driven script with a heavy hand. John Putch did a better job with this film than Paul Johansson did with the first.

Overall:  If you’ve got nothing to do, and it is Sunday, and you like Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, maybe take a gander to see how different this film is from how you might have imagined the story when you read Rand’s book.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

First Hit:  Despite the clichés of roles, it was easy to suspend belief and enjoy this film.

Entering high school can be traumatic as well as exciting.

I remember my first day, walking and gazing at 3 senior girls who were beautiful beyond belief and as I was walking and gazing, I turned to see where I was headed and I immediately ran into a metal pole – yes they all saw and laughed. I was embarrassed and tried to hide for a week while I licked my wounds.

Despite the good-looking main wallflower characters, it was the pain that each brought from within that made the film work for me. Charlie (played by Logan Lerman) is the main character from which we take this journey. He’s got problems which are not laid out to the audience when the film starts.

He talks of trying to find just one friend. The people he knows of through his older sister and a couple of childhood friends refuse to acknowledge his existence when in school. Maybe it is because he spent time in a mental hospital after his Aunt died – but we don’t know yet.

Charlie happens to meet up with Patrick (Ezra Miller) who is gay, having an affair with Brad (played by Johnny Simmons) - a football player, but Patrick sees Charlie's pain and reaches out to him. He introduces him to his step-sister Sam (Emma Watson) and their friends and they accept him.

For the first time in his life he feels at home and his internal demons subside for a moment. But his ghosts start coming back with memories of his aunt. The sub-plots with Emma and her choice in boys to date, his sister Candace (played by Nina Dobrev) and why she would let her boyfriend hit her we’re all engaging.

Lerman was very good as the guy trying to discover why he is so lost. Miller was truly outstanding as the vocal gay student who is trying to keep busy and his life together. Simmons, was good and convincing as the very confused gay football player. Watson was superb as Lerman’s heartthrob who also was trying to receive the love she deserves. Dobrev was strong as Lerman’s sister who was supportive when it really mattered while learning her own lessons. Stephen Chbosky both wrote and directed this film with a pretty good feel for the internal anguish of young teens.

Overall:  This was an enjoyable film but not a great one.

Taken 2

First Hit:  Almost as good as the original film which many follow-ons cannot claim.

With Liam Neeson getting older, I wondered if he’d be able to deliver on another intense action thriller.

As divorced CIA agent Bryan Mills, he’s about to go to Istanbul for a short 3-day protection job. Before his trip he's spending time with his daughter Kim (played by Maggie Grace) and assisting her with her driving test. He’s, as you might imagine, very controlling and deliberate.

When he goes to pick up his daughter he gets the chance to talk with his former wife Lenore (played by Famke Janssen). She is unhappy and Mills is sensitive to her unhappiness. Yes, he misses her. When he discovers she and Kim cannot go on their trip to China together, he offers them a trip to Istanbul. They take him up on his offer and that is this film's set up.

The people he killed in the previous Taken film because they stole his daughter are after him and his whole family. They are revengeful – this, for me, is the stupid part of the film. However without this revenge there is no film.

Once the killers take Mills and his wife, then the game is on and here is where Mills skills and Kim’s insistence to help her father create a way to kill the perpetrators and save their family.

The action is swift and precise and this alone makes this film come together.

Neeson is wonderful and believable as both a father and action agent. He can do both very well. Janssen was very good as his lost former wife. Grace was great as the daughter willing to help her father. Rade Serbedzija as Murad the primary perpetrator was excellent at embodying the philosophy of revenge. Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen wrote a good screenplay. Oliver Megaton directed the action in an adequate way, although the fight scenes were a little too staccato to watch to make them feel real. It is a way to hide poor action choreography.

Overall: The action was good. And as a follow-on to the original film, this one bodes well.