The Sense of an Ending

First Hit:  Somewhat slow, subtle, and insightful film about someone coming to grips with things as they are and not what he thought they were.

I didn’t mind that this British film plodded along because its plodding was even and unfolded the character and the past of Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent) in a thoughtful and realistic way.

Tony is a quiet grumpy (“curmudgeon” according to his daughter) retired old man. His best friend is his divorced wife Margaret (Harriet Walter). He’s a retired professor, but owns and works at a very small antique camera business. He receives a registered letter one day that tells him that his first college girlfriend Veronica’s (Freya Mavor as young Veronica and Charlotte Rampling as the older Veronica) mother, Sarah (Emily Mortimer), left him a diary by his old college friend Adrian Finn (Joe Alwyn).

Curious, he goes to the solicitor’s (lawyer) office to collect the diary, however he’s told that Veronica still has it and isn’t giving it up to Tony. This prompts him to discuss his university story to his former wife, who sees through the surface representation and tells him, come back and tell me the real and in-depth story.

The film is about this slow unfolding of his reconciliation of his actions as a student. To assist the story, his daughter Susie (Michelle Dockery) is pregnant and having a baby, which is used to enhance Tony’s inability to connect at an emotional empathetic level to the possibilities of what happened a long time ago.

To tell the story the film goes back and forth in time often to explore his relationship with Veronica, her mom, Adrian, and his other close friends. It takes a bit of getting use to because the segues between the two time periods are not always matched.

Broadbent was perfect for this role. He’s got the look and the acting ability to make me believe he was learning about his whole life through the story of the film. Being an occasional curmudgeon myself, I got why he asked the questions he did and the way he isolated himself. Walter was wonderful as his understanding and caring ex-wife. Mavor was interesting as young Veronica but it was Rampling as the older Veronica who really put the right flavor on his growing up, so-of-speak. Mortimer was really strong in her brief but impactful role. Alwyn was OK as Tony’s friend. Dockery was wonderful as Tony’s daughter. I liked their interaction and was touched by his being with her during the birth of her baby. Nick Payne did a wonderful job of creating a script that unfolded slowly. Ritesh Batra did a good job of letting the dialog unfold the scenes.

Overall:  This was enjoyable to me, but I can see why it may not be enjoyable to others.

The Last Word

First Hit:  I really enjoyed watching Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, and AnnJewel Lee Dixon’s characters and interactions.

After seeing this film the other day, I read a couple of reviews about it and although I enjoyed reading their mostly negative views, I’m not in agreement with them.

What worked for me, was Harriet’s (MacLaine) obsessive compulsive behavior. Anyone that knows me, knows I have these tendencies. Therefore, I could easily laugh out loud at her statements and actions. I can understand other people not finding this amusing. I also liked the way both Anne (Seyfried) and Brenda (Dixon) could make their less overwhelming characters be seen, heard and integral to the story as well.

Briefly, Harriet is a wealthy woman living in a large meticulously kept home. The opening scenes see her as feeling forlorn and without purpose. She isn’t liking her life. She picks on her gardener while he cuts her hedges by telling him he’s doing it wrong. Her cook and housekeeper get supplanted preparing Harriet's meal when she steps in and starts cutting the vegetables. Sitting at the table with the meal, she looks at it and doesn't eat it because of her sadness.

When her futile attempt to kill herself fails thereby ending up in the hospital, she tells the doctor what he is saying to her is incorrect and demeans his ability. She’s outright rude to people. She glances at the obituary page in the local newspaper and realizes that she wants to have some control over what her obituary will say about her.

Storming into the local newspaper’s office she demands Anne, the obituary writer, write her obituary over the weekend. By giving Anne an alphabetical list of family and people she knows, she expects to see a wonderful orbit. As Anne does her research she discovers that nobody likes her. Her priest tells Anne that he "hates, just hates," her. Some of these interview scenes are very funny.

But as with most Hollywood films, we’re going to have a great ending. To get there the filmmakers have Harriet deciding to do some good things to redeem herself. One of them is to “help a poor unfortunate black or handicap” person. And into her life comes Brenda (Dixon), who is spunky, thinks the Dewy Decimal System is stupid, and has a fireball firecracker personality. As the film evolves, we get these three people learning to change who they are to become people they want to be. That’s what this film is about. Living closer to one’s truth.

I really enjoyed the scenes where the three of them interacted. The dynamic and different personalities were made for enjoyment: The pulling the “L” off the sign at her old advertising firm, the road trip, the swimming in the swimming hole, Harriet speaking with both her ex-husband Edward (Philip Baker Hall) and her daughter Elizabeth (Anne Heche), were all well thought out. I also really liked how alive Anne became when she was DJ’ing at the local radio station.

MacLaine was strong and there are few that could have made this role work as well as it did. Seyfried was excellent. Her understated strength was well intentioned in this role. She made her wall almost invisible yet clearly defined and prominent. Dixon was so much fun and created a wonderful energy throughout the film. It was a remarkable casting. Heche was perfect as the success oriented estranged daughter. Hall was strong as her former husband sharing his love for her. Stuart Ross Fink wrote a good script that had some clever lines and scenes. Mark Pellington did a good job of directing these three diverse characters. However, there were a couple of scenes, like the three of them walking with sunglasses on in slow motion, that were overdone and tried to be too clever.

Overall:  My own struggles with perfectionism were touched and laughed at while watching this film.

Land of Mind (Under Sandet)

First Hit:  An excellent, amazingly strong and difficult story to watch.

The Germans planted more than 2,000,000 mines on Denmark beaches in anticipation of an Allied landing. Upon the ending of the war, the Danish were given about 2,000 German, mostly young teen-age prisoners to find and diffuse these mines. Given the atrocities of the Germans, there is no love lost between these two countries or the people.

The first scene is a setup to this point because we see Sgt. Carl Rasmussen (Roland Moller) watching German prisoners walk down a Danish road, when he spies one carrying a Danish flag. He gets up out of his jeep and beats this man mercilessly. Any of the other prisoners eyeballing him doing this, get beat as well.

A short time later he’s assigned about 16 of these young inexperienced boys to manually find, dig up, and defuse 45,000 mines on a section of beach. They are told, if they do this they will get to go home.

The film goes to long lengths to show the high level of animosity the Dane’s have for these Germans. The Germans ruined their country and the Danes expect them to fix what they can before they leave or get killed, either outcome is OK with the Danes.

As they start clearing the beach, there are accidents and mines go off and people hurt. For me, the most difficult part of watching this film was waiting for the inevitable to happen. There were times I held my hand up to my eyes in anticipation of an explosion. However, the filmmaker and director didn’t use the tried and tested “third” time for the accident, which added to the intensity of the film.

At some point, Rasmussen begins to care about these innocent young boys and goes out to find them food. He develops and respectful friendship with Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hoffmann) who is enterprising, resourceful, and a natural born leader of these German youth. One of the more difficult parts for Rasmussen is the man he works for, Lieutenant Ebbe (Mikkel Folsgaard), who wants Rasmussen to be very hard line and mean to these young German men they depend on to defuse the mines.

The cinematography of this film is extraordinary. The pacing, growth and changes in all the characters is fantastic. The beautiful starkness of the Danish coastline was remarkable as the setting. The questions this film creates are perfect. Questions like, is it better to befriend the Germans to get the job done better? Or is it better to treat them like slaves and dirt to support their anger? There are interesting questions brought up by this film and I enjoyed having them dance through my mind as I watched this strong well-done film.

Moller was perfect and captivating as the Sgt. in charge of these lost youth. Folsgaard was perfect as the young, arrogant and single-minded Lieutenant. Hoffmann was sublime as the young German soldier who was a natural born leader. Laura Bo as Karen, the local woman whose farm they worked near, was wonderful. Her anger towards the Germans was perfect as was her gratefulness for them saving her daughter. All of the German soldier cast were perfect, especially Emil and Oskar Belton as twins Ernst and Werner Lessner who embodied both trust and angst in their path moving forward. Martin Zandvliet wrote and directed this film with a perfect eye and feel for the time and the internal struggles for all the characters.

Overall:  This was one of the best films I’ve seen in the past year. It deserved its 2016 nomination for Best Foreign Film.

Table 19

First Hit:  Poorly conceived, not funny, and poorly executed.

When a film isn’t clearly defined, and has no real point, the audience will struggle. When a film adds poor execution to a lack of direction it ought to be tabled.

There is so little about this film that works, I cannot imagine the producer seeing it for the first time in the screening room saying, I can’t wait to get this distributed. So why did someone put this in theaters? They may have been hoping that the stars who are in it would fill seats ($).

Briefly, Eloise (Anna Kendrick) has become the ex-maid of honor after being dumped via text from the bride’s brother Teddy (Wyatt Russell). The story tells us she had known the bride her whole life and she was shocked to find out that she was also dumped from the bridal party as maid of honor. I did like the scene where she kept checking both the regrets and acceptance boxes on the wedding invitation. In her own disgust at her behavior, she finally sets it on fire and then puts out the flames and sends the burnt invitation back to the bride Francie Millner (Rya Meyers). Arriving at the wedding, her seating assignment is Table 19 the table furthest from bride a groom. This is the table for outcasts, people who the bride and groom wished had sent their regrets.

When Eloise gets to the table, she finds Nanny Jo (June Squibb), Bina and Jerry Kepp (Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson) Renzo Eckberg (Tony Revolori), and Walter Thimple (Stephen Merchant). Eloise explains the entire room table setup because she did the seating chart and why the people she’s sitting with are not important to the wedding party. With this knowledge, the table leaves the wedding party and spends time outside learning more about each other.

There are several scenes when the camera is aimed at the wedding reception and wedding party and it is just wasted film. There is no reason for the camera pan and these scenes add no value to the story. There is a set of scenes when Eloise meets a handsome guy named Huck (Thomas Cocquerel) who dances with her, but the team at Table 19 find out later he’s the groom to a wedding just down the hall. There are several set-up scenes which could have evolved into a funny sub-plot or something interesting but they all failed.

The film tries to be funny and it has some wonderful actors who could have made it funny like Kendrick, Squib, Kudrow, Robinson, and Merchant, but most everything failed to be funny. The other side of the film wanted to be dramatic with the subplot of having Eloise pregnant with Teddy’s baby but it failed to gain traction.

Kendrick was as good as she could be with the material she had. I’d suggest that she do a better job of script selection. Squib was thoroughly underutilized and didn’t have an opportunity to share her comedic chops. Kudrow and Robinson as a couple failed. There was no chemistry and I could buy their story of how they got together. We know they both can be funny given good material but… alas. Merchant had a very odd role which if stretched could have been funny, but again the script and direction failed. Revolori was interesting as I couldn’t figure out why he was in the film. His character didn’t fit and the comedic scenes with him didn’t work. Walking up to a table and telling a young woman about the size of his penis didn’t work. Meyers was gracious in her minimal dramatic role. Russell was mediocre in his role. I know the role has him being a bit slow and not too bright, but it didn’t work. Jay and Mark Duplass wrote this strangely weak and poorly constructed screenplay that really had no real beginning, middle, or end. It just started at one level, ran for a couple hours and fizzled out all-together. Jeffery Blitz had no chance to make this film work because of the script, but it is important to note that his direction didn't help the film either.

Overall:  One of the worst films that will come out in 2017.

Logan

First Hit:  As a superhero movie, it's realistically dark and thoughtful.

Most superhero films are either tongue in cheek, lighthearted, go overboard on the superpower action, or all of these things. This film doesn’t do any of this. It is downright about the characters some who have superpower traits.

We have Logan (Hugh Jackman) as Wolverine who is aging, ill, and driving a limousine to make enough money for him and Caliban (Stephen Merchant) to take care of X-Men leader Charles (Patrick Stewart) who is dying. They are living out in the middle of nowhere and seem to be counting their days till they fade away and die. There haven’t been any new mutants born in the last 25 years and the clan is dying out.

However, a Dr. Rice (Richard E. Grant) has been experimenting with genetics on embryos and young children trying to create warriors/soldiers with superpower abilities. He's trying to create his own mutants. However, he's discovered that they have feelings and minds and cannot be controllable easily. He thinks he's got a way to make mutants that don't act on their own so he decides to kill all his previous experiments. Learning this, the young kids who are still alive, stage a revolt and escape.

Laura (Dafne Keen) is assisted by a nurse in the clinic and is in search of finding Logan because Laura has Logan's genetics and his wolverine superpower. The story is about how Logan helps Laura escape Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), Dr. Rice and a group of soldiers whose job is to kill all the remaining mutant children.

The effective parts of the story include strong acting by Jackman as a superhero whose both aging and slowly being poisoned by the adamantium (fictional metal alloy) that is imbedded in his body. The high-strung touchiness by which Logan and Caliban have towards each other while taking care of an ever-fragile Charles is indicative of their fading lives. The scenes are designed to breathe and nothing was rushed to show the strength of the mutant children, Laura, Charles, Logan, or Caliban. However, the ending fight was a little elongated and the men brought in to capture the mutants were too large an army to be believable.

From an acting point of view Jackman was perfect. It would be my guess that he’s probably glad to end his reign as Wolverine. He ends it with dignity which is a good thing because Marvel has let other characters in its stable get too far afield to enjoy or believe. Merchant was wonderful as Caliban with his ability to track and find. He made this role work. Stewart was wonderful and, like Jackman, is probably glad to have this role end because series like these can get too wildly convoluted. Grant was appropriately arrogant as Dr. Rice. Keen was mind-blowingly sublime. I loved her character and silence throughout the film until the end. She was totally believable. Holbrook as the soldier tasked with finding Laura was appropriately demonized. Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green wrote a very solid, strong and not overdone script. Characters could grow and develop which is rare in a superhero type film. Mangold did a wonderful job of directing this story and making it work.

Overall:  This was one of the best superhero mutant films on the books.