The Commuter

First Hit:  There are excellent and overdone parts in this engaging film.

I will start with that this film was very creative in providing the audience with the setup about who Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson) is. He’s married, he has a very predictable routine, and he works hard to help his son get a good education. All this is delivered before the opening credits are complete. In other words, if you don’t get to the film on time, don’t bother because then the point of the film is lost.

At work one day, after closing another client on buying an insurance policy, he gets called into his boss’s office and gets terminated. Because the audience was part of his selling the insurance policy just a few moments earlier, we know how this puts him in deep financial straits.

Heading home on the train to tell his wife and son, he’s approached by Joanna (Vera Farmiga) who gives him a proposition, find someone on the train, put a tracking device in their bag, and be paid $100K. Given the financial situation he’s in, being a former cop, and his inquisitive nature he tries to solve the riddle.

However, soon after he begins, everything falls apart and the story gets intense real quick.

This is also where the film begins to get unreal, overly complicated, and overdone. How does Joanna know exactly what is happening on the train, moment by moment, is difficult to buy. The number of fights, the length of the fights, and how undamaged Michael is after all the fights wasn't realistic. The train crash, although spectacular, was not realistic. The crash lasted too long and wouldn’t have happened in the way that it did. Additionally there are a number of other scenes that were not realistic. However, it’s engaging because Neeson is always fun to watch and he’s a great “every” man.

Neeson is excellent as Michael. He can make an unrealistic film good enough to watch and stay engaged with. Farmiga was very good as the elusive Joanna. Her calm demeanor and controlled engaging voice really worked. Patrick Wilson as Police Lt. Alex Murphy was very good and convincing as walking two different sides of the street. Jonathan Banks as another commuter named Walt was very good. His gruff, yet inviting self, worked perfectly. Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle wrote a convoluted script, which delivered action. Jaume Collet-Serra directed the film with the assurance of having Neeson as his protagonist.

Overall:  Despite its flaws, it is a fun film to watch and it’s the actors that make it work.

The Post

First Hit:  A powerful film about the power of the press to share the truth to the American public and how a woman finds own her power and strength.

People who weren’t born early enough to experience the power of the press in 1971, as depicted in this film, may get a chance to witness this power with today’s political climate.

However, one of the most powerful parts of this film has nothing to do with the press, government secrets, or how the government lied to the public; it has to do with how a woman, Kay (Katharine) Graham (Meryl Streep), found her inner strength and resolve to make a decision that changed history.

Graham grew up privileged, pampered, and cared for. Her life was a world where men, for the most part, ruled the world and roost.

The film opens with her in the throes of finalizing a public offering of The Washington Post's stock. She’s doing this because she's in-charge and the company needs money to survive. When her father died, he'd given control of the paper to her husband who committed suicide which left her in control of the paper.

With a cadre of all male advisors, she is being coached through the steps to make The Post financially stable. However, she struggles to find her words while balancing her social duties as a well-to-do hostess of the Washington elite.

The scene where all the secretaries (that’s what assistants were called then) are gathered in front of the meeting room where she alone would enter a room full of male bankers and other investors, said it all.

As the film unfolds, we get a glimpse of the men she relied on to help her navigate the rough and tumble world of newspapers, the company, and finance. Among the men she works with were her Executive Editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), who seems to hold Graham in high regard and encourages her to stand up and take charge. Additionally there was Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) who was Secretary of Defense in the lying Nixon administration and a very close family friend of Graham’s. Then there was Fritz Beebe (Tracy Letts) the Post’s Chairman of the Board, in addition to a few others.

The issue that takes her to task and brings her to the forefront is that The New York Times has a headline written from the stolen Pentagon Papers. These secrets were taken from The Rand Corporation by Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys). On the same day The Times headlines this information, her paper has Trisha Nixon's wedding as their headline.

Ellsberg had discovered that the government, through a recent study sponsored by McNamara, had been lying to the country about our involvement in Vietnam.

With this exposed, Nixon's Department of Justice sent The New York Times a cease and desist. In the background, Bradlee, hating to be scooped by the Times sent Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) to find out how to get a copy of the leaked papers. They contact Ellsberg and get boxes of the original papers and begin to write stories to publish.

The awakening and climax is: Will Katharine publish the papers and risk being shut down by the government? Will it negate the public offering? And, will everyone at The Post lose their jobs? This is where the film really is dynamically excellent. The conversations Katharine has with her daughter Lally (Alison Brie), Bradlee, McNamara, and Letts are beautifully constructed and powerfully executed.

Streep was sublime as a woman discovering and then using her power. The evolution of Graham during this film is exquisite. Hanks is extremely strong in his role of protecting the freedom of the press. Odenkirk is fantastic as the assigned Post reporter to find the papers and get The Post back in the fray. Rhys was excellent as Ellsberg for whom I bow to for taking the risk of losing his freedom to tell US citizens the truth of our government’s deceit. Greenwood was great as McNamara. Serving Nixon and being honest with Graham, his friend, was a difficult task. Letts was strong as The Post’s chairman. He wanted and supported Katharine's growth. Brie was perfect as Graham’s daughter. Her role in the bedroom scene added so much to Katharine’s growth. Liz Hannah and Josh Singer wrote an excellent, inviting, and movingly strong script. Steven Spielberg hasn’t lost his touch to create ways for the audience to become fully engaged with his films. The scenes (living room with the papers strung about, the corporate boardroom, the rumbling of the presses starting up shaking the upstairs desks) are typical Spielberg, full, complete, and excellent. However, it was coaxing excellent performances where his ability to work with actors that shined most.

Overall:  This film is perfect for the times; the growing strength of women and holding our government accountable.

I, Tonya

First Hit: A very engaging story, supremely well-acted, and one of this years best films.

I loved how this film effectively dances between talking directly to the audience through interview cameras and commenting right at the audience during dramatic scenes, while giving us a straight up film. Breaking the plane between the story and the audience isn’t always done very effectively, but here it is perfect.

Tonya Harding (Margo Robbie) was well known as a rough, scrappy, and physical ice skater in the mid 1980’s through the mid 1990’s. She was raised by her abusive mother LaVona (Allison Janney) who threw her on the ice rink because that is all the seven-year-old Tonya wanted to do.

According to the film, LaVona hit Tonya, once threw a knife at her, but most egregiously never showed any empathy, love or caring towards Tonya. All she kept harping on was that she spent all her waitressing money on Tonya’s skating. She was so cold and mean that Tonya grew up knowing nothing about what a supportive, caring, or loving relationship might even look like.

What kept Tonya going through life was her ability to skate and skate well. She was the first woman to ever land a triple axel (3.5 spins in the air landing backwards on the outside edge of the skate) in a competition as well as completing two triple axels in a single competition. As a competitor, she was heads above everyone else in technical merit, scoring the first perfect 6.0 in the U.S. Championships. However, her hard scrabble background was reflected in her presentation scores. Because she was less graceful than physical and had poorly created handmade costumes, these scores were always low. Lastly, she also suffered from asthma which, at times inhibited her ability to skate with inner ease.

The worst and defining moment of her career was when her husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), helped to plan a physical attack on Tonya’s chief skating friend and rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). The actual attack by Shane Stant (Ricky Russert) on Kerrigan’s knee was set into motion by Gillooly’s closest friend Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser). This attack was to give Tonya an advantage at the U.S. Championships and Olympics.

The film used faux, current day and after the fact, interviews of Tonya, Jeff, Shawn, and LaVona to set up certain sequences and sections of this story. The ice skating scenes were well done and effective in showing Tonya’s skating style. Having remembered watching these performances back when they actually happened, they conjured up the direct memories effectively.

Robbie was exquisite as the hard scrabble, poorly educated, and socially inept Tonya. Robbie did some of the skating scenes, and her ability to own Tonya’s physical presence while channeling her inner struggles was what made this work. Janney was beyond amazing as the uncaring emotionless LaVona. She was almost scary and her sitting in the faux interviews with the bird picking at her ear was inspired. Stan as the poorly educated and impulsive Gillooly, whose name became a verb for knee beating, was excellent. Watching him smolder, ready to burst into anger, reflected his inability to help Tonya. Hauser was perfect as the self-promoting dolt who was proud that he made history by hurting Kerrigan. His insistence that he was in international spy and agent was excellent. Julianne Nicholson as Tonya’s skating teacher and trainer, Diane Rawlinson, was excellent. Her slightly distanced engaged caring in working with Tonya and LaVona when Tonya was young and later, as an Olympian, was wonderful. Steven Rogers wrote an excellent screenplay. Craig Gillespie’s direction was spot on perfect. The vision came alive on the screen and I was fully engaged from the beginning.

Overall:  This was truly a fun, empathetic, and engaging story and film about Tonya Harding.

Molly's Game

First Hit:  Although a very interesting story, I felt pummeled by the constant voice overs and rapid fire conversational tone of most of the scenes.

This is a powerful and interesting story about a young woman who had a promising career in ski racing, but because of an injury, headed to California to clear her head and ended up running a gambling operation.

Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) was raised by her father, Larry (Kevin Costner), to be competitive and self-reliant at whatever she did. He was her primary ski coach and was a well-respected psychologist and pushed her with little mercy. There are numerous scenes in the film to help set-up this important dynamic.

When Molly leaves the skiing scene and heads to CA, she is doing it to relax, save some money and get her head together before she heads to law school. However, she ends up working for Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong) who is a small time real estate developer who happens to have a gambling problem as well. To make money, Keith holds gambling nights and invites Hollywood stars to his games. One such person, Player X (Michael Cera), plays well, wins often and likes to destroy his opponents. The games start out as cash games with the buy-in being $10K per player.

Keith tells Molly to set-up and run the games while he participates as one of the players. She gets really good tips from the players which far exceeds what she makes as a waitress and working for Keith’s real estate firm.

At one point Keith decides he cannot afford to pay Molly for her employment work and tells her to subsist on her tips from the running the games. She decides to run her own games when Keith fires her.

She becomes the "go-to" person for holding these card games. She knows that as long as she doesn’t take a skim/draw from the table it is all legal. However, some of her clients don’t have the cash and she ends up carrying them. So to protect herself she begins to skim from the table stakes which means that what she’s doing is now illegal.

When she opens a game in New York City, with $250K buy-ins, the Russians become players and this is when the shit hits the fan. The FBI is looking to see how the Russians are laundering money and they suspect Molly is doing this. When they raid her home as well as many of the other player’s homes, Molly refuses to give up any names. Because she’s facing huge prison sentence, she hires Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) to defend her.

Much of the film uses Molly and Charlie’s meetings as a jumping off point for viewing past scenes. During these flashbacks, Molly does voice overs to set-up the scenes. This happens a lot during the film and is generally effective. However, the intense, combative, and defensive way Molly speaks in the voice overs to set up the flashbacks, to Charlie, and to everyone else wore on me and I think the audience as well.

It became almost affrontive and I found myself wanting to tell Molly to take a break, breath and tell me what’s going on.

At the end when her father, Larry, comes back into the picture and they have three years of therapy in three minutes, Molly finally breathes.

Chastain was very strong as Molly. I felt Molly’s drive through her. Elba was also very strong as Molly’s attorney. His own intense nature was equally matched with Chastain’s. Strong was excellent as the semi-slimy guy who took advantage of Molly and got his comeuppance. Cera was great as Player X. His inner intelligence and drive to win and make people feel their losses was excellent. Costner was wonderful as the father and the scene of them during the three-minute therapy session where he will give the answers she’s looking for was perfect. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this story with an edge that didn’t quite work for me. The rapid fire conversational tone, eventually wore me down and pushed me away from the film.

Overall:  I loved the story and didn’t like the rapid fire beating I took to get the story.

All the Money in the World

First Hit: An interesting and slow moving detailed story giving light as to why it took so long get John Paul Getty III released.

I was curious about the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III (played by Charlie Plummer) when it happened. He was imprisoned by Italian mob kidnappers for almost 6 months before he was released.

At age 16 and part of the wealthiest family on earth at the time, the kidnappers thought this would be an easy way to extort $17M dollars from the Gettys. The kidnappers believed that because this amount of money was small pittance to J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), the boy’s paternal grandparent, it would be an easy score.

However, as the film points out, J. Paul Getty had no intention to pay any amount for anyone in his family that was kidnapped for ransom. J. Paul believed that people were not reliable and that the only things that were reliable were physical things, like paintings, buildings, sculptures, and other such things. The man was a focused miser.

When the kidnappers contact John Paul’s mother Gail Harris, she said she had no money and couldn’t pay the ransom. Her former husband John Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan) was a drug addled and addicted person. He was little and no use to either his former wife Gail or his father J. Paul.

Paul assigned Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg) to find his grandson and help control Gail. However, the persistence of the kidnappers was extraordinary and only after sending Gail one of John Paul’s ears did J. Paul decide to assist a little.

The scenes inside J. Paul’s home was very reflective of his miserly ways. Lights were kept low and the coldness of the interior rooms was a perfect representation of the coldness in his heart and the disdain he had towards his family. The ultimate knife in the heart moment was when he finally agreed to spend some money to free his grandson, but he wanted full and complete custody of all Gail’s children and would only spend an amount that was tax deductible to free the boy.

The oppressive and obnoxious paparazzi were properly represented and displayed the low life jobs and intentions they make money from. The cold heartedness of the kidnappers and the obedience of their womenfolk was sad to witness. I kept wondering where was the compassion and the passion for which Italians are also noted?

Williams was strong in this role. Her intelligence and clear focus of what her priorities were was signified the difference between her and the family she married in to. Wonderful performance. Wahlberg was good as the man who wanted to serve both the man who paid him, J. Paul, and the needs of Gail. Christopher Plummer was fantastic. Although I occasionally wondered how the original actor, Kevin Spacey, would have done the part, Plummer’s physical presence, age, and acting abilities were sublime. Charlie Plummer was good as the privileged kidnapped grandson. Romain Duris as one of the abductors, Cinquanta, was excellent. He realized over time that he cared about John Paul’s welfare. David Scarpa wrote the script. The story and storyline was excellent but the execution by director Ridley Scott was un-inviting which made it difficult to care about the characters.

Overall:  This film was more interesting than engaging and I must commend Scott for the seamless way he replaced Spacey with Plummer in a month’s time.