Gomorra

First Hit: Powerful and realistically shot film providing a glimpse at the Camorra coalition of crime families in Italy.

This film is quite different than the set-up execution scenes of a Scorsese gangster mafia film or the lushness of a Coppola mafia film story.

This film is shot in a documentary style. There are a couple of stories within this film but the main one is about two young guys think they are tough enough and smart enough to take a piece of the pie owned by one of the local heads of the family.

They think, he is all talk, out of shape, and out of touch. In their brash young way, the get themselves into a hole with the family they think they can get out of. The family gives them a warning which is strong and direct, but because of their youth they survive the scare and believe their strength is hiding behind their stolen guns. 

This film simply makes the rules known and that the rules will be upheld in the manner befitting the rule. And although this film doesn’t direct itself with the most senior levels of the consortium, it does let the watcher “get” the hierarchy and its importance.

Matteo Garrone did an excellent job of directing no-name actors in this gritty and matter-of-fact film. Maurizio Braucci did the screenplay with Roberto Saviano who is the author of the book on which this film is based.

Overall: This was a great gritty film that brings Italian crime families into a real life view. It is executed (yes that word) in a crisp factual way.

Sunshine Cleaning

First Hit: Although the film felt a little uneven at times, I was really touched at moments by the breadth of feelings expressed in intimate scenes by both Amy Adams and Emily Blunt.

This is a film about a once popular high school cheerleader Rose (played by Amy Adams) who finds herself with a son who struggles at school, a father (played by Alan Arkin) who is still chasing dreams, and a sister Norah (played by Emily Blunt) who seems on the border of giving up, while she attempts to find her way through life.

The film begins and we see Rose working as a cleaning lady in a luxurious home. Her sister is getting fired, again, from a restaurant, and her son is getting kicked out of school. Life is difficult and Rose is deeply driven to find a way. She talks of going into real estate, yet nothing happens in this arena because she is busy keeping her family together.

Blunt plays her sister Norah as dark and troubled and clearly floundering. There are scenes of them separately watching old films on television and we later learn they are looking for a brief appearance of their mom in a very small speaking part in a TV movie.

This is a film about the trials of life and how people deal with them.

Amy Adams brings a complexity and truth to her character and in scenes where we watch her process new developments in her life or her family’s life she is transparently amazing. I fully enjoyed scenes with Adams and Blunt together, but was deeply touch by Blunt’s acting in a scene where she goes “trestling”. Arkin is good and accurately hopeful and crotchety at the same time. Under Director Christine Jeffs, the scenes were allowed to breathe which allowed Megan Holley’s story to evolve fully. The unevenness comes from places where the scenes don’t necessarily add to the film and include scenes with Rose’s married lover.

Overall: I liked this film, its theme of hope and perseverance.

I Love You, Man

First Hit: There are some funny bits in this film along with some good serious truthful moments; however it felt long, repetitious, and overdone in parts.

Paul Rudd plays Peter Klaven a moderately successful real estate agent who has a dream of building a group of homes and stores on a bluff near downtown LA.

To finance this venture he must sell Lou Ferrigno’s home for which he has the exclusive listing. He is engaged to Zooey (played by Rashida Jones) who feels like she has hit the jackpot with Paul as her boyfriend.

As a boyfriend, Peter is thoughtful, kind, considerate, and pays attention to her. All her girlfriends think she’s so lucky but there is an underlying concern; Peter doesn't have any guy friends. The fact is that Peter doesn’t is the gist of the film. He and his fiancé decide that he needs to find some guy friends before the wedding or else the wedding party will be uneven.

In his quest to find a guy friend, he has a number of man dates. There are funny bits in some of these encounters. Then during an open house he is having for Lou’s home, he runs into Sydney (played by Jason Segel) who is blunt, insightful, and outspoken. They hit it off because in many ways they are opposite and they both love the band Rush.

Through a series of man dates, their relationship expands and eventually he asks Sydney to be his best man. However, Zooey doesn’t like that Peter is less available and pays less attention to her now that he has a guy friend to hang out with.

I found the repetition of scenes, like Peter attempting to come up with a nick name for Sydney, to be tiring and overplayed. The direction of the unevenness and the upsides of this film the responsibility of Director John Hamburg and co-writer Larry Levin. Rudd was OK as Peter; while Segel was the strongest consistent character as Sydney. I found the couple Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressly as Zooey’s best friend and husband, to be overplayed, unrealistic, and boorish.

Overall: This film’s unevenness took away from the truly funny parts and in the end, this film felt very long. It might have been better to cut 20 minutes from it by reducing extraneous and repetitive scenes.

Knowing

First Hit: There are some very well done special effects scenes but other than that the story is very uneven and not very well told.

I must have been on a jag this weekend with science fiction adventures and kids being either extraterrestrials or invited to space.

In this film Nicolas Cage plays John Koestler, a professor at MIT, who has become disenchanted after losing his wife in a Arizona hotel fire. His son Caleb (played by Chandler Canterbury) has a hearing problem, wears a special aid that un-jumbles the words, and he misses his mom. Caleb’s school unearths a time capsule that was buried 50 years earlier.

Each of the children gets one of the envelopes, which were created by a former student. Caleb gets one by Lucinda Embry. While the other students get a picture Lucinda wrote two pages full of numbers. While in a drunken state John deciphers the numbers to determine that the numbers indicated when, where and how many people die in a major catastrophe during the last 50 years.

The young girl who wrote it predicted these events. However there are three events yet to happen so John decides to stop them. As he realized it is fruitless he also realized the last one predicts the end of the world.

However the saving grace is that his son and the granddaughter of Lucinda Embry are chosen to leave earth and start life somewhere else.

I don’t ever think I’m not watching Nicolas Cage. It isn't like he embodies a character. It is Cage reading another set of lines and in this film there is nothing strong or compelling about his character. I was impressed with many of the special effects. The plan crash and the devastation of the world was well done and impressive. Alex Proyas directs this film and there is very little exploration of the depth of the characters, it is all pretty shallow.

Overall: The radiation from a solar flare killing all on earth is a realistic phenomenon however this film does nothing to explore it.

Race to Witch Mountain

First Hit: A very poorly constructed film with little to give it any credence in reality.

I certainly don’t mind science fiction adventures; and count many of them on my favorite film list.

This film won’t make it to my top 100 science fiction adventure films and I'm not sure I’ll ever see that many. I didn’t see the predecessors to this film, “Escape to Witch Mountain” and “Return From Witch Mountain”, but due to their popularity I thought this one might be worth seeing.

The film is basically about two extraterrestrial kids who want to get back to their spaceship which is being kept by the US Government in the bowels of Witch Mountain. Once they get to the ship they want to go back home. The kids have learned to not trust humans and therefore part of the story is in the interaction with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Carla Gugino which help these young terrestrials see the good side of humans.

Johnson as a down on his luck cab driver never really seems down on his luck. There is only one scene to set up him being down on his luck and that's when he is in his residential hotel room. Gugino plays a scientist who has been kicked out of 3 universities because of her strange beliefs. The kids played by AnnaSophia Robb as Sara and Alexander Ludwig as Seth didn’t give any indication they were extraterrestrial other than the occasional tricks of levitation and molecular decomposition.

Overall: This movie felt a lot longer than it was and had very little to create any interest of any sort. The young man sitting next, who was about 12, kept fidgeting, and seemed uninterested in what was on the screen, I felt the same way, except I don’t fidget.