Dom Hemingway

Hit:  This is a well done story about a man who is not likeable and continually makes bad choices.

Dom (Jude Law) is full of himself. He’s been an angry criminal his whole life.

As the film begins he’s in jail and telling the audience, over and over again, why his “cock” is a work of art. You don’t see the person giving him a BJ but you know he’s getting one.

That is the opening scene. He’s Dom Hemingway and the audience and the other character’s in the film know this. He gets released from jail after serving 12 years for not ratting out Mr. Fontaine (Demian Bichir).

His first act is to find the guy who supported his wife while he was in prison and beat the holy livin’ crap out of him. He’s not seen his daughter in all this time and wants to see her and maybe develop a relationship. But he is afraid of reaching out because he knows he's done wrong by her. To deal with it, he drinks himself into his next mistake.

This film is dark, Dom is dark and makes a slew of bad choices thinking he’s invincible. Did the film work? Yes. Was the subject likeable? Not to very many people. And that is the hard part of this film. It is really difficult to like Dom. However he does have a friend in the film Dickie Black (Richard E. Grant) and it is this friend that eases the film through Dom’s tirades.

Law is fully engaged with the character Dom and played him well. It is just difficult to like the character. Birchir is very good as the mob chief who owes Dom money for his silence. Grant is superb as Dom’s grounding friend. Richard Shepard both wrote and directed this film. The writing and direction was good, it is simply a dark film with an unlikeable character.

Overall:  Not very likeable.

Draft Day

First Hit:  Overall, it was enjoyable, partially predictable and at times surprisingly unpredictable.

The world of drafting sports players onto professional teams has become big business. Television rights, high-level news reporting and “fantasy leagues” all contribute to the business side of televising this event. Although I’m aware of the draft days (mostly for football and basketball), I do not care enough to watch these events because it just isn’t that important or interesting to me.

What interested me about this film was hoping to see how deals were made before the choices are announced on television. I also thought that Kevin Costner, playing Cleveland Brown’s General Manager Sonny Weaver Jr., would be good at playing this sort of character. He did and so did Dennis Leary as Coach Penn. They both played great antagonist, power control issue roles. 

The story begins with 24 hours on the clock before teams, in their draft order, have 10 minutes name the player they want to sign to their teams. There is always heavy competition by the players to be picked high up in the draft because that guarantees’ them more money. Weaver begins the final day receiving phone calls from players who want him to draft them and also from the team’s owner Anthony Molina (Frank Langella) who wants his GM to “make a splash”.

The pressure is building because Coach Penn wants specific people drafted. Then the calls from other GM’s wanting to trade people and draft choices begin to come in. To add a more human aspect of Weaver’s life, he has a relationship with Ali (Jennifer Garner) the team’s financial guru. She had told Weaver the night before that she is pregnant with his baby and supposedly their relationship is hidden from the staff. But it is the final moments of when the league commissioner begins to announce the choices and how the dealing of people quickens.

Costner is smooth, intelligent and believable in this role. He was very strong as the general manager. Leary was perfect as the strong ego centric coach that wants to prove himself with the right players. Langella was sublime as the team’s owner – he carried this role perfectly. Garner is plenty smart and good in this role and I guess there was more of her character in the film. Griffin Newman as Rick the intern was specifically fun to watch and he did the intern role very well. Scott Rothman and Rajiv Joseph wrote a credible screen play. Ivan Reitman directed this with a good view of the way a draft day could play out.

Overall:  I people knowledgeable of the draft process would appreciate the way it is done here because it is educational. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

First Hit:  The story didn’t hold together and was simply a place to display CGI’s.

The best character parts of the film were in the interchanges between Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). And although Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce, brought a level of sophistication to his part, this film was all about creating HUGE computer generated imagery and having people do battle with the images.

The other interchanges that were engaging were with Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and the Captain. Didn’t have the same sense with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and other characters – he seemed removed from them (or the story) although he was a key piece. I had no interest in the story about CGIs because they are non-characters – only machines.

The film appeared to feature the technology that was being created but so what – it was uninteresting. Was any part of this story believable? Yes, the greed and lust for power. But, after just 12 hours of seeing the film and writing this, I can’t remember anything positive outside of what I’ve mentioned.

Evans is a good but the screen play written for him is rather lame and uninteresting. The scenes with his co-star Johansson were the best part of the film. I suspect it was Johansson that made those scenes work – she was really good. Mackie was perfect as Evans’ right hand guy. Redford was good with what he had, which wasn’t much. Jackson just seemed like he was in a film of his own. Although the scenes included him, he also seem detached from them. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote a week character screen play while the direction by Anthony and Joe Russo seemed disjointed and without life.

Overall:  One of the worse Marvel produced films – they cannot make CGI be a character in this way.

Bad Words

First Hit:  Funny at times but were the reasons for his behavior enough to justify his acting this way – I didn’t buy it.

A 40+ year old Guy Trilby (Justin Bateman) takes advantage of junior high spelling bee rules so that he can enter and win. The story is why? He’s got a Jane Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn), a reporter, writing a story about his attempt to win the Golden Quill (think Scripts) world famous spelling bee and hopefully tell the story as to why.

She is paying for his hotel and travel expenses and is having a hell of a time getting Guy’s story out of him. Why would Guy face the vile words thrown at him from fellow spelling bee competitor’s parents and organizers just to get to the Golden Quill final? We do learn and I won’t reveal it here – and to be quite frank, it wasn’t enough for him to act the way he did to the other kids.

I think the screenplay writer and Bateman, as director, could have lightened up the foul name calling and antics aimed at the kids, and made a more engaging and likable story. The other option would have to change the story line and made it aimed at older people – therefore making the name calling a little more equalized and age appropriate.

To create a soft spot for Guy’s role, we have a young man, Chaitanya Chopra (Rohan Chand), who is left by himself because his parents want to have him learn life’s lessons, befriending Guy. His persistence by asking Guy questions and making conversation, breaks through and make many of the scenes of him and Guy out on the town funny and endearing. However, the overall vengeful tone is more than I enjoyed.

Bateman was occasionally good but the character was over done most of the time. Because he was also the director I would also aim most of the film’s issues directly at Bateman. Hahn was good in her role as the reporter trying to get a story and have a relationship. Chand was fantastic and was the star of this film. Philip Baker Hall as the Quill’s founder, Dr. Bowman, was OK. I found some of his word enunciation (slurring) raised questions to me about his viability and don't think it was on purpose. Allison Janney’s performance as Dr. Bernice Deagan, Quill’s director was strong. Andrew Dodge wrote the screen play. For me it went too far in the way he had Guy speak to children. Bateman directed this and really had the ability to make a better film than he did.

Overall:  I was disappointed at the level of negative energy directed at the kids by the main character.

Noah

First Hit:  Initially bored, story interpretation unbelievable, and a few minor amazing scenes.

I enjoy watching biblical stories and a director’s interpretation of this book. I was put off by the beginning of the film with the screen captions stating the story of the beginning. Then we were led into an interpretation of the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, then the story of Seth.

Then we are introduced to angels that ended up as moving rocks which are their prisons for assisting human kind. Director Darren Aronofsky shows the earth as mostly barren because of Cain’s clan mining of glowing rocks. First, I don’t believe for a minute that the Earth would be that barren in that time period by clans of people mining rocks.

There was a hint of technology by showing the audience some of the deserted mines, yet there was a primitiveness to everyone that seemed incongruent. Another item that didn’t work for me was the different accents of the actors. We had Australian/New Zealand (Russell Crowe as Noah), English/Wales (Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah), American (Jennifer Connelly as Naameh – Noah’s wife), English (Emma Watson as Ila), and it goes on.

There was no attempt to change this by the Director or Actors. Some of the highlights were some of the shots. One in particular that took my breath away was a shot of dusk, Noah and Naameh were silhouetted on a slight round hill against the sky – truly one of the most beautiful shots I’ve ever seen on film. I was also very impressed with the scene where Noah tells the story of life on earth because they used evolution and biblical terms and mixed them very well. It was simple and perfect.

I thoroughly enjoyed the full engagement Watson gave in her performance – it was stellar. Crowe also gave his all to his performance and I believed that he believed he was doing “the creator’s word”.

Crowe, as I previously stated was very good. He emanated the strength of the role and story. Connelly seemed like a fish out of water – almost too sophisticated for the part. Hopkins was cute more than anything. I got that he probably enjoyed being a Yoda of sorts. Watson was sublime. Her innocence, beauty, and wisdom were all present and forthcoming in this role. Aronofsky and Ari Handel wrote an uneven script and at times implausible. Aronofsky’s direction followed the unevenness and implausibility of his own script.

Overall:  I was severely disappointed by this film.