Demolition

First Hit:  There were strong and weak aspects to this film, however I liked the concept of tearing things apart so that one can rebuild one's life.

Pema Chodron, an American Tibetan Buddhist, wrote a book called “When Things Fall Apart.”

The beginning of this film reminded me of this book. Sometimes when things in our life fall apart (internally or externally), it can be a calling to deconstruct one’s life so that it can be re-built with more mindfulness and understanding.

Now this might sound too philosophical when writing about a film where the main character loses his wife in an auto accident and due to a malfunctioning vending machine, he decides to look at his life.

Here Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Julia (Heather Lind) are driving and get into an accident. She dies, he lives, and as he begins to view his life, he realizes that he didn’t really know his wife or his life. To find out more he begins by tearing his physical possessions apart. It starts with his refrigerator, then computer, then his house. These are funny and cathartic scenes.

Opening to viewing what he feels inside, two outside influences push him along; his father-in-law and boss Phil (Chris Cooper) and Karen (Naomi Watts) the vending machine customer service representative. Additionally, she has a son, Chris (Judah Lewis), who is struggling being a teenager and together, Davis and the boy learn valuable life lessons.

Gyllenhaal is strong and ever present in his scenes. There is a scene where he’s listening to a song he and Chris created together while walking down the street in NYC. Watching him free dance down the street, one can sense the amazing versatility and skills he has as an actor. Watts character wasn’t as clearly defined and was probably set up this way to bring her son’s confused life into focus. Lewis was very strong and very good in his role as a confused 15-year-old young man. Cooper was very good as the strong determined man who held his daughter in very high regard. Bryan Sipe wrote and interesting script with a great concept. Jean-Marc Vallee directed this story in some creative ways and I loved the bit about buying anything on Ebay.

Overall:  This wasn’t a great film but, for me, the point of the story was set early on and I bought into the way it was presented.

Marguerite

First Hit:  This film was, at times, very funny, sad, and too long.

Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot) has always wanted to be an opera singer. She’s very rich, married Baron Georges Dumont (Andre Marcon) because she loved him and he had a title (Baron).

The problem with Marguerite’s singing is that she sings off key. Nobody has told her this and when she sings for her music club everyone applauds because she’s got money and contributes to the club’s cause. Her husband never comes to these events at their home because he cannot stand her singing and hates to be part of the delusion everyone perpetuates to get her money, just like his own delusion.

There is a side story as well with Lucien Beaumont (Sylvain Dieuaide) and a wonderful singer named Hazel (Christa Theret). Unfortunately, this story is not well established and poorly executed.

Marguerite insists on having a public concert and hires Atos Pezzini (Michel Fau) a fading quirky opera singer who has no prospects and needs the money. The scenes of him and his team (a bearded lady and a deaf piano player) are generally funny. But watching the scenes of Marguerite singing off key were hilarious.

It requires an amazing skill to sing that badly so well. However, the film seems to drag and it could have been shorted by 15 – 30 minutes and been just as good.

Frot was strong as Marguerite the loving wife and it was amazing how she could sing off key so well. Marcon was good as the husband who never wanted to hurt his wife’s feelings and grew to really care about her. Fau was very good as the gay fading opera singer who tried to help Marguerite. Denis Mpunga was fabulous as Madelbos, Marguerite’s servant and assistant. His double edged presence was great to watch. Xavier Giannoli wrote and directed the film. Some of the dialogue was amazing, especially from Mpunga and Frot. The length of the film was bothersome as it seemed to elongate sections for no apparent reason.

Overall:  Although I laughed and enjoyed the off-key singing and the story of truth and love was good, it just seemed to be overly managed/directed.

Eye in the Sky

First Hit:  A complex film giving a really multifacited view of how fighting wars remotely, through cameras and armed drones, is changing the face and mental complexities of war.

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is in charge of a mission to capture a British woman who is, with her Arabic husband, helping Islamic revolutionaries with suicide attacks. Powell has been tracking this person for 6 years from England through the use spies, informants and remote tracking devices.

At the time, her remote surveillance is provided for by the US using drone pilots located in a USAF unit stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the first time she has a chance to capture this person in Nairobi, Kenya along with two other people who have become radicalized, one a US citizen and the other a British citizen.

Also working with her is the Kenyan army who are ready to apprehend this group when the opportunity arises. Watching her and the surveillance feeds remotely from another part of England is General Benson (Alan Rickman), who is with others from the British Government including the Attorney General.

This group is viewing the remote feeds to ensure the actions the Colonel takes are legal. However, the radicals move to an area where the government army cannot go, therefore the capture is off and now it is about finding a way to take out this group by using rockets from the drone.

There is a lot of discussion about doing this, including the amount of possible collateral damage. When they “Eye in the Sky” a drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) sees a 9-year-old girl named Alia (Aisha Takow) near the target area he asks for a re-assessment of the collateral damage area. While this is being assessed, Col. Powell is pressing for the attack, British Government sitting with the General are mixed in their assessment of weather to attack or not.

The US Government, which comes up in two different calls, states clearly they want the attack regardless of the collateral damage, and the Pilot and his co-pilot Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) will do what they are ordered while showing the extreme signs of the stress and difficulty of the situation.

Mirren is really strong as the obsessed Colonel that will do almost anything to meet her objective. Rickman (in probably his final film) was really good using his typical droll and intelligent way of communicating. Paul was excellent as the drone pilot that was participating in his first use of deadly force. Takow was wonderful as the Kenyan girl causing all the questions. Fox was very good as the new inexperienced co-pilot. Barkhad Adbi was superb as the Kenyan undercover agent using miniature drone camera devices and finding ways to help minimize the collateral damage. Guy Hibbert wrote an exceptional screenplay. It was complex, filled with great dialogue and fully explored the dilemma afforded by fighting war with technology and remote abilities. Gavin Hood did an excellent job of creating the intimacy of each remote area and the wholeness of how remote wars are being fought.

Overall:  This film was excellent in so many ways and did a great job of bringing in both the political and military aspects of this type warfare to light.

The Bronze

First Hit:  It was tough to watch and listen to Hope's (Melissa Rauch) dialogue, however, I think the overall concept held together.

Hope is deeply holding on to the fame she gained by winning an overall gymnastic bronze medal she won in the 2004 Olympics.

Her winning overshadowed other gymnastic Olympians because she severely hurt her ankle on the balance beam but did finish the completion by doing the uneven bars which earned her a Bronze Medal.

Coming back to her hometown she received a hero’s welcome and benefited from  perks the town gave her (own parking space in town, free sneakers, and other things) ever since. This even includes a sign of her achievement under the town’s “Welcome” sign.

She doesn't have a job, she steals from her dad’s mail truck, she wears her Olympic warm-up suit each and every day. She’s gained some weight but keeps the hair style, including the bangs she had during her heyday. She’s rude to almost everyone she meets and has a horrible attitude. Watching the scene when she first meets Maggie (Haley Lu Richardson), the town’s new gymnastics super star, she barely looks at her during the entire conversation.

She is challenged, by money, to coach Maggie because Maggie’s coach dies. They end up working together at Ben’s (Thomas Middleditch) gym. There are a few nice gymnastic sequences to watch and if you can get by the raunchiness of Hope, it actually isn’t a bad film.

Rauch holds her character most all the way though the film, but it isn’t a character we can really care about, even at the end there’s an edge that is bothersome. Middleditch is very good as Ben (Twitch). Richardson is almost too naïve as the upcoming gymnast. Gary Cole as Hope’s dad Stan was very good in that he was believable. Melissa and Winston Rauch wrote the screenplay which erred on the side of too raunchy and mean. Bryan Buckley directed this with reasonable clarity and what failed was the script.

Overall:  The concept for me worked well but the film’s main character seemed overboard in the role.

Knight of Cups

First Hit:  An interesting, esoteric and ethereal film of a man reflecting on his place in the world through his relationships.

This film is not and will not be everyone’s cup of tea. In general it is about self-discovery, our purpose in this life, and understanding ourselves individually and collectively.

Those who value self-reflection and contemplating their own life as a way to see and better understand their current place and have patience for the film to unfold in its own way may like it.

One particular sequence early on with Ben Kingsley’s voice over states something like; it takes us so long to begin to see the depth of who we are because we spend most of our time responding to outside stimuli. During this sequence the images on the screen are of a young Rick (Christian Bale) on the beach with his family and in other settings.

The film is divided into 8 named sequences. Each, except the final section called Freedom, are named after Tarot cards, as is the name of the film. The "Knight of Cups" is the heart filled Knight in the Tarot deck. Although the Knight is on a horse (strength), because the horse is in a walking position, the Knight and the other representations on the card represent calmness and being ruled by the heart when important decisions are made.

Rick goes through the film in this etheric way, little outside emotion is seen, and each scene gives a view into his feelings. The people speaking to him fade in and out and one can begin to sense that Rick is Hollywood connected.

Each of these sections, which reflect the names of the cards are about the women he’s been with, his angry and lost brother Barry (Wes Bentley), his controlling, angry, and demanding father Joseph (Brian Dennehy) (their section is named “The Hangman”), and an immoral playboy Tonio (Antonio Banderas) (his section is named “The Hermit”).

My sense was that the latter was Rick’s own reflection of his playboy ways. The women are Della (Imogen Poots) whose section is “The Moon” and she is young and rebellious. The section called “Judgement” is played by his former wife, a physician, Nancy (Cate Blanchett). “The Tower” is played by Freida Pinto as a serene model named Helen. Teresa Palmer, as a spirited playful stripper named Karen is the section called “The High Priestess”. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is “Death”, the person Rick wronged. And finally, “Freedom”, an innocent Isabel (Isabel Lucas) who assists him in seeing ahead.

All of these stories are mixed and matched with life events, like robbery, heated arguments, disagreements, moments of bliss, and each of them lying on a backdrop of natural reflective scenes of Rick in the desert and on the beach at sunset.

Bale says little in the film, much of his thoughts and feelings are shared through visuals of him solitarily reflecting, with others but almost always on the edge of being disengaged, and the scenes outside himself, what he’s seeing. Because he had no physical script to work from, he was genuinely perfect for the role because of his ability to be silent yet communicative at the same time. Bentley is very strong as the angry, lost brother. Dennehy was perfect as the father. It was so nice to see him again. Poots was very good as Della. She clearly provided an edge to Rick’s life. Blanchett was very strong as his former physician wife. Her compassion to the people she worked on was amazing. Banderas was great as the playboy and during the A-List Hollywood party, he was like a kid in a candy store. Pinto was elegant in her role as a serene presence in Rick’s life. The model shoot was very realistic. Palmer was strong as the enticing playful stripper. Portman was extremely strong as a tortured married woman who both loved and felt wronged by Rick. Lucas was very good in representing a path forward. Terrence Malick wrote and directed this film. His strengths are getting creatively strong improvisational performances from his cast. The visual shots in the film are often arrestingly beautiful.

Overall:  As I said, this film isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was mine.