Black Sea

First Hit:  Jude Law was great, the film lacked gripping drama and action.

There is a scene when they are pulling the gold across the bottom of the ocean floor and there was nothing that made all this compelling. This was the problem with the whole film; the setups and results were lackluster.

Captain Robinson (Law) did his best to make all this work but it wasn’t enough to carry the film. In essence this film is about working class people trying to find a way to use their skills to get something back. This group of men British and Russian decide to locate a sunken German U2 submarine that is carrying ~80 million dollars’ worth of gold. The crew is motley and they may or may not be trustworthy.

The film explores this with a few choice characters and script choices. Most of the film takes place in an old sub, therefore the sets are limited but they were wonderfully detailed.

Law brings a wonderfully full and expressive character. His maturation as an actor really shows here and I found myself very drawn into his character. All the other actors we OK including; Ben Mendelsohn, Tobias Menzies, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Michael Smiley, Karl Davies, and Konstantin Khabenskiy. Dennis Kelly wrote the plodding script. Kevin Macdonald directed this, and as with most underwater movies, it was dark.

Overall:  Law was the film.

Cake

First Hit:  Jennifer Aniston was great in an OK film.

The pain Claire Bennett (Aniston) is in is palpable. Although we don’t learn what caused her to be in this pain until much later, we do piece the possibilities together during the 92 minutes.

The film consists of us following Bennett from support group, to physical therapy, and to home while she pops pills from her hidden stashes. Her former husband Jason (Chris Messina) feels for his former wife, but cannot save her from her self-destruction.

Her mainstay is housekeeper Silvana (Adriana Barraza) who helps to keep the ship upright. She cooks, cleans and mostly cares about Claire and does this in extraordinary ways. She is haunted by dead fellow pain prisoner Nina Collins (Anna Kendrick) who decided she couldn’t stand it any longer and had committed suicide. Nina’s husband Roy (Sam Worthington) is just barely hanging on, with his son Casey (Evan O’Toole) and Claire finds some solace with him.

Aniston is wonderful in this role. I fully believed that she was in pain and she held the space of pain and addiction in an amazing way. Wonderful acting. Barraza was fantastic as Claire’s housekeeper and friend. Messina with a small and meaningful role, done wonderfully. Kendrick was perfect. Although being a hallucination she was perky and intelligently perfect. Worthington was very good as a lost husband of grief. O’Toole was perfect. Patrick Tobin wrote a strong scrip, however it seemed to labor at times. Daniel Barnz did a good job of directing Aniston’s extremely strong performance.

Overall:  Although there were strong performances the subject and pacing won’t have this become a crowd favorite.

Mortdecai

First Hit:  What a wasted piece of fluff.

There is nothing interesting about the characters and with this cast it's shocking. Although I’m not a Johnny Depp (Mortdecai) fan here he is just bad with a bad script.

He plays an eccentric English Lord who is going broke and married to his college sweetheart Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow). She rules the roost and there is little that tells the film’s audience why she is married to him. There is a second story in this film about him growing a mustache.

This is where the comedy comes in, from time to time. Ewan McGregor (another great actor) plays Martland a British investigator, friend of Mortdecai, and longs for Johanna. Really? Paul Bettany plays Mortdecai’s man servant Jock and he’s the best thing in the film. The storyline is bad and the acting, for the most part, is worse.

Depp is difficult to watch. The fake spacer between his front teeth was way too obvious and the character wasn’t interesting at all. Paltrow tried to rise above the character and film, but it just didn’t work. McGregor tried to play it straight but this role in this film as a waste of his energy. Bettany was fun to watch and made his scenes interesting. Eric Aronson wrote a silly script that didn’t have a good focus. David Koepp had a bad script, great actors and no idea where he was going.

Overall:  This was a waste of my time – as well as the actor’s time.

A Most Violent Year

First Hit:  The acting, especially by Jessica Chastain, is superb.

This story takes place in the 1960’s, in New York and in the highly competitive home heating oil business. Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) has built his business with hard work and in a short period of time.

One struggle is that his drivers hurt when his trucks are getting hijacked by someone unknown to him. He’s also trying to buy a piece of riverfront property to give him a leg up on his competitors. His growth and the whole sleaziness of the industry is being monitored by a politically hungry DA name Lawrence (David Oyelowo).

Morales' wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) has a background in the mob and it shows with her attitude, actions and strength of character. She occasionally alludes to her ties to the family with threats to Abel that she wants to bring in the family in to resolve the hijacking as well as other things. The exchanges between Abel and Anna are wonderful and charged.

The scenes of Abel teaching how to sell their service is powerfully priceless. The addition of Albert Brooks as Abel’s lawyer Andrew Walsh was an amazing selection because he brings intense pointed guidance to both Abel and the film.

Isaac is very strong and he exudes drive to make it all work. Chastain is sublime, she is so strong that you know she is the foundation that makes Abel’s business (and the film) work. Oyelowo is good as the DA trying to “clean up” this industry but also seeing where his future bread could be buttered. Brooks is phenomenal. J.C. Chandor wrote a very strong script capturing the time and industry well. His direction was clear and concise and he made his script work for him.

Overall:  I’m glad the film wasn’t as violent as the title but the intensity was surely represented.

Match

First Hit:  Because Patrick Stewart is so much better than rest of cast the film comes off very uneven.

Stewart playing a former ballet star and current Juilliard ballet professor named Tobi Powell is being interviewed by Lisa (Carla Gugino) and her husband Mike (Matthew Lillard) under the guise of a dissertation on the history of dance in New York City in the 1960’s.

As the interview proceeds it is clear this isn’t historical research on dance but of something else. Most all of the film takes place in Powell’s apartment. This means that the dialogue and acting must be crisp, meaningful and dynamically interesting.

Unfortunately the actors are not well matched and therefore this film becomes uneven quickly. Only Stewart seems to get the importance of making the dialogue dynamic.

Stewart is the standout in this film. Gugino is OK but doesn’t bring enough to her role to make it work. Lillard makes attempts to match Stewart’s level but I think the script falls a little short. Stephen Belber both wrote and directed this film. From a scripting point of view the idea is a good one but the unevenness of the script and execution by the actors brings down this film.

Overall:  In the end this film fell a little flat.