Julieta

First Hit:  With superb casting, this was a well-crafted story of life, loss and love.

Pedro Almodovar writes and directs thoughtful films and this one is another wonderful offering. Almodovar shoots this film by going back and forth between Julieta’s younger life and older life.

Here we have a young woman Julieta (Adriana Ugarte plays a young Julieta and Emma Suarez as the older Julieta) who is married to Xoan (Daniel Grao) and together they have a young girl named Antia (Priscilla Delgado – adolescent). Antia is close with her father and fishes with him often. As a young mother, Julieta is slightly distant and provides most of the structure in their household. During one summer Antia goes to camp and while away, tragedy strikes.

After this tragedy, Julieta’s distant malaise and distance grows and she is falling apart. Antia and her close friend Beatriz (Sara Jimenez – adolescent and Michelle Jenner as an adult Beatriz) take care of Julieta. However, after Antia turns 18 (Blanca Pares – young adult) she leaves for a retreat and never returns or is heard from again.

Julieta is lost. She lost her husband and now her daughter. Her guilt is that she caused her husband’s death because of a disagreement, and with her daughter disappearing she is hopeless.

This film tracks Julieta’s sadness and slow discovery of how she needs to change her life to get it back. The scenes that show the depth of her despair were Antia’s birthdays that Julieta celebrated alone by making a cake, lighting the candles and then throwing the cake away. This film is about loss, communication, love, and the possibility of resolution.

The choice of actors for both the young and older Julieta was amazing because there was no change in the spiritual energy or depth of character in either of these actors.

Ugarte and Suarez were amazingly sublime in their role as Julieta both young and old. The ease in which I (the audience) moved from one to the other is a testimony to their acting greatness and the casting director. Grao in his small role was wonderful. Delgado as young Antia was very good. She carried a beautiful strength when caring for her mother. Pares was strong as the older Antia and did a nice job of moving the character into adulthood. Jimenez was great as Antia’s close childhood friend Beatriz. Jenner was very good as the older Beatriz. Dario Grandinetti was very strong as Lorenzo, Julieta’s lover and friend as an adult. Almodovar did a wonderful job of crafting and telling this story as writer and director.

Overall:  This was a very strong film by Almodovar.

Patriots Day

First Hit:  This was an interesting perspective of a very tragic event in Boston and America’s history.

This dramatization of a horrific event was both; interesting from a historical perspective and not very engaging from a character standpoint. The film took a very broad perspective of the people to be included as characters. It included the various law enforcement agencies including; the Boston Police Department, the FBI, Watertown Police Department, MIT Police Department and a couple of other US Government agencies. From a citizen perspective, there were both students and citizens from various neighborhoods.

The filmmakers made attempts to provide backstories, or history per se, of certain characters, however despite being helpful at a small level it was difficult to engage with anyone at an emotional level. For example; Police Officer Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) was the lead character and we learn early on he’s got a history with the department and is on probation. Why? We never really find out but there are multiple references to alcohol and there are a couple scenes where he drinks when it might have been better if he didn’t.

But this isn’t the story, but it nagged at me that we didn’t have this history. The story is about how Boston and others captured the brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze respectively), who become radicalized Muslim bombers and exploded two bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

The film tries to track a lot of people including: the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell (Melissa Benoist), Officer Saunders, bomb injured married couple Patrick Downes (Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan), MIT Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking), car jacked Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), Boston Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Vincent Curatola), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffery Pugliese (J. K. Simmons), Carol Saunders (Michelle Monaghan), Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), and a host of others. It begins the evening before the bombing and goes to when they were captured (Dzhokhar) and killed (Tamerlan). One thing that was interesting was that this film had one of the largest credited and uncredited casts for any film in recent memory.

The filmmakers used some archival footage as well as re-enacted scenes in following the brothers, law enforcement, and citizens over subsequent week as the brothers tried to escape, go to New York to place another bomb, and how they were captured through the use of technology, law enforcement officers, and the bravery of citizens.

Wahlberg was very good as the film’s key focal point. I wanted to know more of why he was being punished, but from a character point of view he was very strong. Wolff and Melikidze were both very solid as the brothers who brought this havoc to Boston. I think they did a great job of emoting the attitude as affected Muslim radicals. Bacon was wonderful as the FBI agent trying to get the bombers identified and captured quickly. O’Shea and Brosnahan were wonderful as the married couple that lost limbs, survived, and made it back to a subsequent race. Yang was really good as the young man whose car was hijacked by the brothers during their escape. Simmons was OK as the Watertown Sergeant. Goodman was strong as the Commissioner. Picking was wonderful as the caring officer that was shot by the brothers. Monaghan was engaging as Officer Saunders’ wife. Peter Berg, Matt Cook, and Joshua Zetumer wrote a very ambitious screenplay that attempted to cover numerous stories around this very tragic event. In this ambitious effort, it lost a little heart and focus. Peter Berg did his best to cover this expansive story.

Overall:  This is an amazing story to tell and it does honor the affected people.

Live by Night

First Hit:  Despite wonderful sets, cars, and clothes, this story meanders and fizzles.

Ben Affleck has directed, written and acted in some wonderful and even great films. The premise of this film was strong, where Joe Coughlin (Affleck), a product of the streets of Irish Boston, does not want to be beholden to his brother Deputy Police Chief Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson) nor any of the mob leaders, while being a criminal. However, because of his affection with a mob leader’s girlfriend Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), he gets blackmailed into working for Italian mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to save his butt.

He and his running partner Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) head to Tampa to build, manage and run a bootleg Rum business. In Tampa he works with Esteban Suarez (Miguel J. Pimental) and his sister Graciela (Zoe Saldana) to obtain Molasses for rum making. There is immediate chemistry between Joe and Graciela and it appears that Joe will find love again after losing Emma.

To take control of the Tampa market, he finds out what Police Chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) will tolerate and support. During the consolidation, he uses force and his manipulative style and rubs many of the town folks the wrong way, many of them with the KKK. One of those people RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who is Figgis’s brother in law, and he implores Figgis to help him resolve this issue.

To add to all this increasingly complicated story setup, we have Figgis’s daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) who heads to California to become a star. To gain leverage over Chief Figgis’s brother in-law, Joe uses photos of Loretta to persuade Chief Figgis to fully resolve the brother-in-law issue. Then Affleck adds more complications to this movie because the story has the market for Rum changing and prohibition coming to an end and he wants to find an alternative form of income.

After starting to build a gambling casino Loretta becomes a profit of sorts, by preaching morality and thereby ending this new path. This ends up creating new friction in Tampa as well as with his boss Pescatore and an Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister).

Yes, over complication in telling this story led to a long film that tried to have too much detail over an extended period of time. Despite creating beautiful elegantly constructed sets, period automobiles that would satisfy any collector, and costumes that were stylistically sublime, only a few of the characters got older over the twenty or so years covered in this film and Affleck wasn’t one of them.

Affleck was good in this role and his intelligence and smart-alecky way worked for the character. However, he didn’t age in this film that covered many years from beginning to end. Miller was wonderful as an Irish girl that only was out for some laughs and a good time. Messina was great as Affleck’s side-kick and partner. Loved his energy in this role. Girone was strong as the Italian mobster. Pimental was good as the Cuban connection for molasses. Saldana was very strong as Pimental’s sister and Affleck’s lover. Cooper was pointedly effective as the Tampa Police Chief and caring father. Fanning was sublime as the re-born preacher. Maher was wonderfully unhinged as a guy who wanted his cut but didn’t want to do anything for it. Glenister was very good as the Irish mobster. Gleeson was perfect as Affleck’s brother, giving him space where needed and buttoning him down as well. Affleck wrote and directed this film. Problem seemed to be there was too much story to tell and he couldn’t trim his concept into something that filmgoers would sit, watch and like. It just seemed to meander.

Overall:  This isn’t a film to sit though unless you like just seeing beautiful sets, great cars, wonderful clothes, and some great looking people.

A Monster Calls

First Hit:  Although intellectually interesting, this film fails to engage.

This film deals with acceptance, letting go, and facing fears. Conor (Lewis MacDougall) is a pale and frail young man who is picked on in school, is keeping house because his mum (Felicity Jones) is very sick, and has horrible dreams at night.

This film is dark not only in color in the scenes and topic it addresses, but in the way, all the characters are drawn. Although mum was optimistic in her engagement, there was a melancholy nature in her scenes that seemed to drive all the movie’s scenes.

The main part of the story is about Conor and how his dreams fuel his ability to create an alternate reality by which a Monster (Liam Neeson) appears to Conor at 12:07 and tells him three stories. In return the Monster requires that Conor to tell his truth and tell the Monster his horrible dream.

Adding to the difficulty Conor was having with his mom’s illness and dreams, his Dad (Toby Kebbell) lived in the United States, schoolmate Harry (James Melville) was beating him up, for no reason, on a daily basis, and his Grandma (Sigourney Weaver) was very strict and seemed unloving.

As this film works through this story to resolve the character’s difficulties, I struggled to stay engaged. This film seemed to languish as it unfolded. The slowness of the film, the lack of  character development, and the darkness left me wondering, through sections of the film, what was next.

This is not a children’s film although it is told through the eyes of a young boy. It is complex as the Monster tells stories that are supposed to help the boy however they are a bit esoteric and were lost on the boy and maybe the audience.

MacDougall was amazing in this role. He was very good at being, sullen, a picked on weakling and strong in the face of his mother’s death. Jones was OK. Unfortunately, it was my perception that her youngish look in this film made it hard for me to believe she was Conor’s mom. Neeson’s voice for the monster was really good and portrayed the darkness of this film really well. Kebbell was good as Conor’s dad who loved his son but not enough to bring him to the US and live with his current family. Melville was OK as the bully. Weaver was oddly cast and only until the end of the film did I engage with her in this role as Grandmother. One failing of this film was that there was little back story of the characters which caused me to have too many questions while watching. Patrick Ness wrote the screenplay. The lack of each character's history made it a difficult to believe and engage with. J.A. Bayona created some interesting segues between the fantasy of the dream world and the real world, but the lack of backstory, left me wondering most of the time.

Overall:  The film was lifeless with sparks of wonderful engagement.

Films I Saw and Liked in 2016

These are some of the films I saw in 2016 that I liked and why. Eye In The Sky:  Gave a view of how war has changed through the use of drones and electronics. This was also Alan Rickman’s last film.

Where To Invade Next:  A Michael Moore Documentary about our inability to provide US Citizens with aspects of living we founded but never implemented.

Knight Of Cups:  This film is not everyone’s cup of tea but its esoteric nature touched me.

Hello, My Name Is Doris:  Sally Field was spectacular as a woman who tried to find love with a much younger man.

Deadpool:  Despite the thoughts of most other reviewers, I thought this was a very funny film.

Money Monster:  I like Clooney and the premise of this film about television stock pickers.

Golden Kingdom:  I loved the young monks and their clear devotion to their Buddhist practice.

Dark Horse:  Sweet film about a group of Welsh villiagers.

Nerve:  Although nothing great about this film, it was a blast to watch, which is enough sometimes.

Captain Fantastic:  I loved the premise and story of this film.

Southside With You:  I thoroughly enjoyed this version of Barack and Michelle’s first date.

Hell Or High Water:  Really evoked the old west with fine performances.

Lo And Behold, Reveries Of The Connected World:  Wonderful documentary about how we got the World Wide Web.

Samsara:  Powerful images showing the cycle of life.

Snowden:  I really liked how Oliver Stone told this sotry.

The Beatles:  Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years:  Outstanding documentary about The Beatles earliest years.

Sully:  Tom Hanks was great in telling this amazing true story.

Certain Women:  Very interesting study and story about these women's lives.

Nocturnal Animals:  I loved the acting in this film.

The Edge of Seventeen:  Wonderfully acted film about how hard it can be to be a 17-year old girl.

Loving:  Genuinely sweet film about how love can conquer – even the law of the land.

Moonlight:  Another film that opened the doors to a way of life that needs to be seen and accepted.

The Handmaiden:  Wonderfully filmed story about deception and love.

Arrival:  One of my most favorite films of the year as it shares the concept of non-linear time.

Hacksaw Ridge:  Well executed film about a conscientious objector and a very bloody battle.

Fences:  Although very “play like”, it is a wonderful study of a family.

La La Land:  A thoroughly wonderful engaging film about love.

Elle:  Powerfully acted film about the strength of a woman.

Manchester By The Sea:  The acting in this film is sublime.

When the Oscar Award listing comes out, I’ll share my opinions and best guesses.