Black or White

First Hit:  Good theme however the execution was very uneven.

Elliot Anderson’s (Kevin Costner) wife dies suddenly. He and his wife have been the primary care takers for their deceased daughter’s child, Eloise (Jillian Estell).

The child is of mixed race and her black father Reggie (Andre Holland) is addicted to crack cocaine and has not been present in Eloise's life. Reggie’s mother (the other grandparent) Rowena (Octavia Spencer) now wants to have custody of Eloise because she doesn’t think Elliot will be a good parent and because she wants her granddaughter to have a black family experience. To do this Rowena hires her nephew Jeremiah (Anthony Mackie) who is a corporate lawyer.

This film comes to a culmination in a couple of courtroom scenes and a scene at Elliot’s home towards the end of the film. At times, I was waiting for the film to progress and at other times it was interesting. The addition of Duvan (Mpho Koaho) as Eloise and Elliot’s tutor was great. The point of the film was; what’s the difference between how black people see white people and how white people see blacks - only one scene in the courtroom begins to address this important item.

Costner is at times good (as a drunk) and OK with the rest of the role. Estell was fabulous and was the star of the film. Spencer was good as the pushy woman who usually gets her way but having a blind spot for her family. Koaho was divine and joy to watch. Mackie was strong as the Jeffers’ family attorney. Holland was OK as the drugged out father. Mike Binder wrote and directed this film and unfortunately it didn’t live up to the possibilities.

Overall:  The film was contrived at times and funny at others.

Still Alice

First Hit:  Powerful acting in a very strong film.

Julianne Moore plays Alice Howland, famous and prestigious linguistic professor at Columbia University, who discovers that she has Familial Alzheimer’s disease which has a 50% chance of being passed on to her children.

Her three children Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish), and Lydia (Kristen Stewart), all have different relationships with their mother and are accurately testy with each other. Alice’s husband John (Alec-Baldwin) is also at Columbia and is very supportive of his wife’s oncoming illness.

This film is about what happens within this family as Alice’s disease takes ahold of her. The scenes are well done and allow the audience to feel along with both Alice and the others.

Moore is Oscar extraordinary. She delivers on all levels and the ending scene when she utters, says it all. Baldwin is very strong as the loving husband. Bosworth is very good as the know-it-all, professionally focus, and protective of her mother kind of daughter. Parrish was overshadowed by the other actor, but good at times. Stewart delivered. The complex, rebellious and understanding daughter role fit her perfectly. Richard Glatzer wrote this wonderfully compelling script and his own direction with Wash Westmoreland was spot on.

Overall:  This was a very good film and the acting sublime.

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.