Puzzle

First Hit: I thoroughly enjoyed this poignant film about a woman finding herself through a passion.

There was a moment in this film when Robert (Irrfan Khan), tells his new jigsaw puzzling partner Agnes’ (Kelly Macdonald), that what makes puzzling so satisfying is that it is one of the few things in life that she can control completely. His dialogue is far more eloquent than how I wrote this previous sentence; however, it doesn’t take away from the truth of it.

Agnes is married to Louie (David Denman) who owns an auto repair business. Their youngest son Gabe (Austin Abrams) is sometimes seen as the “prince” of the two boys because he gets good grades in high-school. The older boy Ziggy (Bubba Weiler) works at his dad’s auto repair garage and is both sullen and lost in life.

Louie runs the show at home because Agnes has served her family as she thought her role was. It is generally felt that she didn’t deserve to have her own desires and wishes paid attention to. In fact, she has totally ignored herself. She takes care of the men in her life doing everything for them, their laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking them their meals. She serves in her church the same way.

At a birthday party gives herself, because no one else would have, she gets an iPhone from her family which she resists and also a 1,000, piece puzzle. Feeling down and acknowledging an inner curiosity, she pulls out the puzzle box and works to solve it.

Watching her solve the puzzle, the audience sees a subtle glow of satisfaction at accomplishing something on her own. A spark has been lit and it was perfectly shared with the audience. Curiously pulling out an old puzzle in the basement she finds that at only 100 pieces, she solves it quickly and with less satisfaction.

Calling the person who gave her the puzzle to find out where it was purchased, she's told that it was at a small store an intersection in New York City. Agnes’ facial expression was perfect. She hadn’t been into NYC for years and had been stuck in her little town. The trip to the city was priceless as the cost of the train and taxi to the little puzzle store, both surprised and intimidated her.

Leaving the shop with two new puzzles, she sees a posting for someone looking for a puzzle partner. She writes down the texting phone number. Sending a text, it gets immediately responded to. She goes back into the city to meet Robert who tells her he’s looking for someone to partner with in a puzzling competition. Taken slightly aback she decides to interview for this partnership by doing a puzzle with and for him. Completing the puzzle in record time, he’s impressed.

This is the films’ set-up. The rest of the film is a wonderfully paced story about how through this puzzling partnership, Agnes discovers her herself and her voice not only towards Robert but also her family. One of the most beautiful scenes was when she goes to help sort out Louie’s invoices and books, when her and Ziggy get into a conversation and he admits, he’d like to be a chef and that is the only thing he really enjoys doing.

There are wonderful scenes of Agnes and Robert puzzling, Agnes using her voice to tell her family subtly and not so subtly that this are changing for her and therefore them. She does this with love in her heart and without anger or malice.

Macdonald was sublime. I was captured by her micro expressions of strength, sadness, love, and guilt. I was fully transfixed on her expressions as well as physical movements. Khan was fantastic as the inventor who fell in love with Agnes and that puzzling filled his life with controlled joy. Denman was perfect as Agnes’ husband in that he felt he was man of the house, charged with making all the decisions, yet his vulnerability was exquisite when he asked if she was having an affair. Abrams was very good as the younger, easy going son who felt a bit entitled. Weiler was amazing as the struggling son, looking for a way through life where he might be happy. Polly Mann and Oren Moverman wrote a strong, true to life, script. Marc Turtletaub, with a light touch, deftly guided this film to wring out wonderful performances from everyone.

Overall: This film was a true surprise in how much I enjoyed Agnes’ journey.

Eighth Grade

First Hit: Outstanding acting and script gives us an insightful view of what it is like to be in the Eighth Grade today.

I cannot express the wonderful way Elsie Fisher (Kayla) expressed the insecurity and desire to be a confident eighth grader.

The film drops in on Kayla while she makes videos that give the audience the belief that she’s confident and very secure in herself. The fact is that her videos represents what she wants to be, not who she is.

She lives with her dad Mark Day (Josh Hamilton). He’s trying to be both mother and father to Kayla and he does the best he can. Their interaction is very genuine in that there is an awkwardness that it palpable, and also ensconced in love.

When Kayla unexpectedly gets invited to a pool party at the most popular girl’s house, her awkwardness and vulnerability were perfectly expressed. Loved her interaction with Gabe (Jake Ryan) and her dream love Riley (Daniel Zolghadri).

Her eighth-grade class goes to high school to spend a day with a shadow high schooler. She prays in bed the night before that she really wants the day to go well. Her prayers are answered, she’s linked with Olivia (Emily Robinson). Olivia likes her and shows her genuine friendship. For the first time, it seems as though she has a real friend that sees and accepts her as she is.

There is a wonderfully sweet scene with her father as she burns a box of memories in the back yard. There is a corresponding sweet scene as she makes a box of memories for her future self.

Fisher is absolutely amazing. She was the perfect confused, self-questioning, eighth grader. Hamilton is wonderful as her dad. He’s appropriately unsure of how to respond and guide an eighth-grade girl. Zolghadri is very strong as the cute guy in the class who expects girls to like him. Ryan is very funny as the awkward young man who has some interest in Kayla. Robinson is great as the girl who was maybe once like Kayla but, in high-school, found her group. Bo Burnham wrote and directed this film. His ability to write this dialogue for a girl is to be commended. His direction was spot on and provided a glimpse into today’s young girls.

Overall: This was a wonderfully developed and executed film.

Blindspotting

First Hit: Extremely powerful and pointed film and raises the bar for Best Picture of the Year.

Opening the film, is a sequence of short video shots of Oakland. Among the short montage of clips are the Fox Theater, Oakland homes, jump roping, Whole Foods, and a shoving match between two women on BART. Each of these are perfectly brief and set the stage for the racially tense film to come.

Collin (Daveed Diggs) is living in a probation facility and he’s got just a few days to go before he’s free. He came out of Santa Rita prison for something, we find out later, was a horrible fight outside a bar.

He’s working for a moving company with his lifelong friend and troublemaker Miles (Rafael Casal). Miles has a hair trigger and lashes out from time to time. As a racially mixed friendship, they have each other’s back and have had their fair share of run-ins together.

One of the early opening scenes, they are sitting in a very tricked out car, smoking weed, while Collin laments that he’s only few days away from being free of his court mandated probation. When Miles finds a pistol between the seats he brandishes it about, Collin gets upset and asks Miles to keep it away from him.

What does Miles do? He finds more guns in the car, playfully holds them up, and buys one. Collin, although upset, just asks Miles to not let me see or know that he has the gun on him while they work or hang out together. The way this scene unfolds is both pointed and funny.

Miles lives with Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones) and they have a son Sean (Ziggy Baitinger). Collin picks Miles up for work the moving truck. Because Collin is on probation he uses the truck to get home and to work. Arriving at the moving company's office to punch the time-clock, you can tell that Collin and Val (Janina Gavankar), the front desk receptionist and dispatcher, have some history together. It is obvious that she’s called off the relationship by the way they interact.

After dropping Miles off at home one night, Collin is waiting for the light to turn green when all of a sudden, a black man appears in front of his truck, looks at Collin, and continues to run. An Oakland policeman soon follows and when the policeman is adjacent to the truck’s door, he fires four shots and kills the running man. The policeman turns and looks directly at Collin.

This scene and image haunts Collin throughout the film. From this point on, the ominous tone of guns, racially charged words, social-economic and cultural differences begin to shape this film. The gun Miles owns plays a prominent role in two incredibly powerful scenes, as does their friendship and how it is tested. Collin wants to clean up his act, but racial tensions that build in the community because of the shooting, the have and have nots, and what he's going to do next once he's off probation makes his path difficult to master.

The term "Blindspotting" is explained in a very moving scene with Val and Collin and it’s usage is one I will not forget as it points out something we all do.

Diggs is sublime. The range of emotions and actions he shows as Collin are engaging and powerful. Casal as Miles was amazing. He’s powerfully rowdy but when Ashley reaches out to him about a particular incident, his compassion and love is amazingly evident. Gavankar is wonderful as Collin’s former girlfriend and truck dispatcher. She holds true to her beliefs and is a powerful force in Collin’s life. Jones was wildly wonderful. Her clarity of boundaries was perfectly expressed. Baitinger was great as Miles and Ashley's young boy. Ethan Embry as the Oakland Police Officer who shoots the running black man is incredibly engaging in both his scenes; the shooting and in his confrontation with Collin. Tisha Campbell-Martin as Mama Liz, Collin’s mother, is a scene stealer. Casal and Diggs wrote this insightful engagingly powerful script. Carlos Lopez Estrada directed this story with amazingly deft hands. He totally captured the feel of this powerful story.

Overall: Because this film is so powerful it must be considered one of my favorites as film of the year.

Skyscraper

First Hit: Slow beginning, unrelatable and overdone storyline, and there isn't much that saves it from itself.

The one thing about Dwayne Johnson (playing Will Sawyer) is that he’s earnest in his acting and gives his all in each role.

Here, as Will Sawyer, he’s a former FBI leader that made what may have been an error in judgment on a raid. In this error, agents and a family lost their lives, people got burnt, and he lost his lower left leg.

This raid is shown at the beginning of this film. It also shows him lying in the hospital when he meets the doctor (Neve Campbell) that works on him. There is obvious chemistry we know immediately that the doctor will be part of the story.

The film moves ten years into the future and now, as a couple, they have two kids, he has his own building security business, and they are in Hong Kong to analyze the tallest building in the world. If he gives his OK, then the building owner can obtain insurance to open the residential section which are on the upper floors.

However, as required, something goes wrong and we find out that the building owner Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han) has made some enemies and Koras Botha (Roland Moller) is leading a band of turncoats and operatives to set the building on fire to obtain a disk that has revealing information worth a lot of money.

Unbeknownst to Botha, Will’s wife Sarah (Campbell), and their two kids Georgia and Henry (McKenna Roberts and Noah Cottrell respectively), are occupying the upper floors but decides to let them burn, while later using them as hostages.

These events have Will spring into action to save his family from the burning building. This is the main course of the film. To do this he races through the city on a motorcycle, climbs a crane, scurries out to the end of the crane’s arm, jumps into an open space some 97 floors from the ground, and single handedly gets his wife, and son out of the building. However, the desert is his saving his daughter from Botha’s clutches, while his wife, on the ground, saves the building from burning all the way down to the ground.

It’s a bit much although some of the shots looking down while on the crane are a little unnerving, the fanciful reflective, ever changing, panel room was ill conceived and didn’t really add much to the drama. Additionally, the storyline seemed weak in that I didn't provide an overridingly powerful reason for Botha to burn down the whole building and kill a bunch of people.

Johnson always does his best to make this film work. He was a producer as well, so he was vested in this. However, the storyline lacked believability. Campbell was great. She showed strength, intelligence, and an honest caring for her family. Moller was good as the villain. The issue was I didn’t get the motivation for his actions. The destruction he was creating didn’t seem to fit the prize he was seeking. Roberts was wonderful as the daughter. Cottrell was good as the boy who struggled with asthma, although I didn’t seem to think his asthma was relevant or necessary. Han was OK. Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote and directed this film. He knew what he wanted and probably got it, however what he wanted was neither strong nor believable.

Overall: This film was created to show Johnson as an amazing loving father who would do anything for his family, while doing this it also wasn’t believable.

Leave No Trace

First Hit: Sublimely acted and evenly paced film about a man and his daughter living in a public forest.

From the very beginning this film is work of elegance. The beauty of the forest in the public park, near Portland, OR, where Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) are living, presents a sublime backdrop to the beginning of this story.

Will teaches Tom how to cover her tracks, how to hide, and how to escape surveillance. Why? The answer to this, is slowly dosed throughout the film, but never outright explained. This is part of what makes this film excellent.

Each time a helicopter passes overhead, the looks and actions Will takes and makes, gives the audience enough clues pointing to his participation in a war (Middle East) that has him skittish of the public, cities, and the government.

Tom, his daughter is loyal to him and he is her only parent. What happen to her mom, Tom’s wife is not explored. They don’t talk a lot with each other but when they do there is some short speak which has enough in it to keep the audience informed and engaged.

They get found by the Park Rangers and Portland Police and are taken in for questioning. They are separated and questioned and tested. Are there any sexual improprieties between the two? How has she been educated? What is Will willing to do to become more engaged with the world so that he can be reunited with Tom?

The government agencies figure out that he’s not harming Tom, but they insist that Will and Tom need to live in a home, Will needs to work, and Tom needs to go to school. A tree farmer sees an article in the paper about their predicament and offers them mobile home on his land where Will can work helping him, and Tom can go to school.

However, after a few months Will cannot tolerate the lifestyle and tells Tom to pack, they are leaving. They hitch a ride to Washington state where they begin a hike on a logging trail. After spending a very cold night in the wilderness they finally find a logging cabin and get warm.

After Will gets hurt and almost dies, Tom finds help in the way of a group of people living off the grid in a forest. The community is aligned with Will and Tom, in that they don’t like outside interference, help each other out, and leave well enough alone.

In the end, Tom decides she must find her own path while Will finally trusts that she’s found a home without him.

Foster was magnificent. His inward, hidden, brewing of a past that he’s struggling to live with, are fully evident in his performance. His looks and physical movements were perfect for this part. McKenzie was utterly amazing. Her display of loyalty, strength, and integrity towards the truth, her father and being resourceful were sublime. Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini wrote a powerful insightful script. Granik did an amazing job of creating an engaging story with minimal dialogue. The scenes in the forests and in the small places they lived were exceptional.

Overall: This film was finely crafted and Granik’s story was wonderfully presented.