Beauty and the Beast (3-D)

First Hit:  Although sweet enough, this film is why I generally don’t like musicals.

Those that have read me for years know I’m particular about and generally not a fan of musicals. The songs have got to work, not take me out of the flow and feeling of the film, and make sense. Songs that are difficult to understand or take too much thought, or fail to help the film’s flow, are not worth singing or having in the film. This movie fails to meet my tolerance levels from the get go and therefore it was hard for me to sit through it.

In the prologue, prior to being introduced to the oddity of Beauty (aka Belle - Emma Watson) and the townsfolk, the film sets up the reason why we have the Beast (Dan Stevens). He’s full of himself and because he doesn’t care about anyone else, a spell is put on him by the Enchantress (“Agatha” - Hattie Moran) that damns him and others around him to a life of non-humanness unless he is loved by another. The Enchantress gives him until the last petal of a rose, encased in a glass cover, falls to find someone to love him. When the last petal falls, he dies and the others are doomed to a life as inanimate objects.

After the brief prologue, we segue back into the local town we have Belle prancing and walking through town with the townsfolk singing out how odd she is because she reads books. Because we’ve no other background, except knowing that her dad Maurice (Kevin Kline) is a tinkerer, lives with his daughter and her mother is long gone; were just suppose to believe she's odd. It was hard for me to believe this. The film story just wants us to believe this "oddity" story.

Belle is being wooed by Gaston (Luke Evans) who is all brawn (self-labeled) and no brains. Belle sees through Gaston and spurns him at every pass. Gaston’s man Friday LeFou (Gosh Gad), is one of the best parts of this film with fanfare, flair, and a jousting way, he quips through this role only to backtrack on them later.

One of the difficulties of listening to the songs was that Watson’s singing was overly processed and, at times, sounded like it was through a vocoder and unnatural. I’m not sure if this was done for effect or because Watson doesn’t have the kind of singing voice that worked for the character. This use of processing singing voices cropped up in multiple places throughout this film.

Although many of the characters were cute, Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), Maestro Cadenza (Stanley Tucci), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), Madame de Gerderobe (Audra McDonald), Chip (Nathan Mack) and Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), I only found an occasional enjoyment watching their interaction with each other and with Beauty or the Beast.

For the most part, within fifteen seconds after a song started I wanted it to end as these songs were taking me out of story.

Watson was good and believable as Belle, although I really didn’t like what was done to her voice when singing. Her slight English accent and obvious intelligence was helpful in making this film seem enchanting. Kline was even keeled, believable and strong as Belle’s father. His character felt grounded. Stevens was OK as the Beast although the CG Beast was what the audience mostly experienced. Only in the beginning and end did we have Stevens as the Prince. Evans was good as the swashbuckling Gaston. Gad was the best part of this film. He was funny and was obviously committed to his role. The remaining of the actors were basically CG objects for most of the film which makes reviewing their work difficult. Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos were responsible for the screenplay. Given it is an established story, their modifications were OK. Bill Condon had a clear vision of what he wanted and for the most part it was executed well, however it just isn’t my cup of tea.

Overall:  My wife loved the film, and I was occasionally amused and mostly bored because the songs took away from the actual story.

The Last Word

First Hit:  I really enjoyed watching Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, and AnnJewel Lee Dixon’s characters and interactions.

After seeing this film the other day, I read a couple of reviews about it and although I enjoyed reading their mostly negative views, I’m not in agreement with them.

What worked for me, was Harriet’s (MacLaine) obsessive compulsive behavior. Anyone that knows me, knows I have these tendencies. Therefore, I could easily laugh out loud at her statements and actions. I can understand other people not finding this amusing. I also liked the way both Anne (Seyfried) and Brenda (Dixon) could make their less overwhelming characters be seen, heard and integral to the story as well.

Briefly, Harriet is a wealthy woman living in a large meticulously kept home. The opening scenes see her as feeling forlorn and without purpose. She isn’t liking her life. She picks on her gardener while he cuts her hedges by telling him he’s doing it wrong. Her cook and housekeeper get supplanted preparing Harriet's meal when she steps in and starts cutting the vegetables. Sitting at the table with the meal, she looks at it and doesn't eat it because of her sadness.

When her futile attempt to kill herself fails thereby ending up in the hospital, she tells the doctor what he is saying to her is incorrect and demeans his ability. She’s outright rude to people. She glances at the obituary page in the local newspaper and realizes that she wants to have some control over what her obituary will say about her.

Storming into the local newspaper’s office she demands Anne, the obituary writer, write her obituary over the weekend. By giving Anne an alphabetical list of family and people she knows, she expects to see a wonderful orbit. As Anne does her research she discovers that nobody likes her. Her priest tells Anne that he "hates, just hates," her. Some of these interview scenes are very funny.

But as with most Hollywood films, we’re going to have a great ending. To get there the filmmakers have Harriet deciding to do some good things to redeem herself. One of them is to “help a poor unfortunate black or handicap” person. And into her life comes Brenda (Dixon), who is spunky, thinks the Dewy Decimal System is stupid, and has a fireball firecracker personality. As the film evolves, we get these three people learning to change who they are to become people they want to be. That’s what this film is about. Living closer to one’s truth.

I really enjoyed the scenes where the three of them interacted. The dynamic and different personalities were made for enjoyment: The pulling the “L” off the sign at her old advertising firm, the road trip, the swimming in the swimming hole, Harriet speaking with both her ex-husband Edward (Philip Baker Hall) and her daughter Elizabeth (Anne Heche), were all well thought out. I also really liked how alive Anne became when she was DJ’ing at the local radio station.

MacLaine was strong and there are few that could have made this role work as well as it did. Seyfried was excellent. Her understated strength was well intentioned in this role. She made her wall almost invisible yet clearly defined and prominent. Dixon was so much fun and created a wonderful energy throughout the film. It was a remarkable casting. Heche was perfect as the success oriented estranged daughter. Hall was strong as her former husband sharing his love for her. Stuart Ross Fink wrote a good script that had some clever lines and scenes. Mark Pellington did a good job of directing these three diverse characters. However, there were a couple of scenes, like the three of them walking with sunglasses on in slow motion, that were overdone and tried to be too clever.

Overall:  My own struggles with perfectionism were touched and laughed at while watching this film.

Land of Mind (Under Sandet)

First Hit:  An excellent, amazingly strong and difficult story to watch.

The Germans planted more than 2,000,000 mines on Denmark beaches in anticipation of an Allied landing. Upon the ending of the war, the Danish were given about 2,000 German, mostly young teen-age prisoners to find and diffuse these mines. Given the atrocities of the Germans, there is no love lost between these two countries or the people.

The first scene is a setup to this point because we see Sgt. Carl Rasmussen (Roland Moller) watching German prisoners walk down a Danish road, when he spies one carrying a Danish flag. He gets up out of his jeep and beats this man mercilessly. Any of the other prisoners eyeballing him doing this, get beat as well.

A short time later he’s assigned about 16 of these young inexperienced boys to manually find, dig up, and defuse 45,000 mines on a section of beach. They are told, if they do this they will get to go home.

The film goes to long lengths to show the high level of animosity the Dane’s have for these Germans. The Germans ruined their country and the Danes expect them to fix what they can before they leave or get killed, either outcome is OK with the Danes.

As they start clearing the beach, there are accidents and mines go off and people hurt. For me, the most difficult part of watching this film was waiting for the inevitable to happen. There were times I held my hand up to my eyes in anticipation of an explosion. However, the filmmaker and director didn’t use the tried and tested “third” time for the accident, which added to the intensity of the film.

At some point, Rasmussen begins to care about these innocent young boys and goes out to find them food. He develops and respectful friendship with Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hoffmann) who is enterprising, resourceful, and a natural born leader of these German youth. One of the more difficult parts for Rasmussen is the man he works for, Lieutenant Ebbe (Mikkel Folsgaard), who wants Rasmussen to be very hard line and mean to these young German men they depend on to defuse the mines.

The cinematography of this film is extraordinary. The pacing, growth and changes in all the characters is fantastic. The beautiful starkness of the Danish coastline was remarkable as the setting. The questions this film creates are perfect. Questions like, is it better to befriend the Germans to get the job done better? Or is it better to treat them like slaves and dirt to support their anger? There are interesting questions brought up by this film and I enjoyed having them dance through my mind as I watched this strong well-done film.

Moller was perfect and captivating as the Sgt. in charge of these lost youth. Folsgaard was perfect as the young, arrogant and single-minded Lieutenant. Hoffmann was sublime as the young German soldier who was a natural born leader. Laura Bo as Karen, the local woman whose farm they worked near, was wonderful. Her anger towards the Germans was perfect as was her gratefulness for them saving her daughter. All of the German soldier cast were perfect, especially Emil and Oskar Belton as twins Ernst and Werner Lessner who embodied both trust and angst in their path moving forward. Martin Zandvliet wrote and directed this film with a perfect eye and feel for the time and the internal struggles for all the characters.

Overall:  This was one of the best films I’ve seen in the past year. It deserved its 2016 nomination for Best Foreign Film.

King Kong: Skull Island (3-D)

First Hit:  Although a couple of characters were OK and the CGI was strong, the film’s story lacked in generating any interest.

Really? The reason our government paid for this team of people to explore Skull Island was to beat the Russians to it. That this island had never been seen before, was clouded in its own weather system, and Bill Randa (John Goodman) believed it held secrets to ships sinking was neither believable nor explained.

What we got were strongly divided characters, a pacifist photographer named Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), mercenary James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), angry Army helicopter platoon leader Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson) and an oddly lost WWII pilot Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly). All of these, except Marlow, make it through the island’s protective weather in helicopters and as they begin dropping sonic bombs to develop an understanding what is underneath the island’s surface, the disruption wakes up King Kong who knocks helicopters out of the sky.

Now they all think that Kong is the enemy. Because he hurt his team, Packard is hell-bent on killing Kong. The audience knows this is a stupid idea. While the remaining exploratory team members try to find each other, they run into very tall spiders and some mean flying reptiles.

During all the commotion, one group finds themselves surrounded by a silent tribe of painted and scarred men and women. Just as this tribe is about to hurt them, Marlow appears in a jokingly funny sort of way. He has influence with the silent tribe because they let these new island invaders go.

We are given the story that Kong protects the tribe and humans from the skull eaters which are lizard like animals that live below the surface. This storyline can get worse and it does, however the CGI of Kong fighting the skull eaters was effective and interesting.

The storyline is weak and made up to only have these great fights between these large creatures. The filmmakers have some of the landing team be kind and helpful towards Kong which makes Kong become a  positive sympathetic character as he helps them survive the attack of the skull eaters.

Goodman is mediocre as someone who lost his son and wants to uncover the mystery of this island. Hiddleston is OK and is above the fray of this film's poor story and poor script. He’s believable in an unbelievable story. Larson is good as the photographer who is looking for shots that make her known. Jackson is fine but it is his character that I didn’t like. He was way too hawkish and illogical to make me care or want him to succeed. Reilly was the most interesting and amusing character in the film. He brought levity and fun to the overall experience. Jing Tian had a minor part and seemed out of place.  Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, and Derek Connolly wrote a very mediocre screenplay that had little depth. There were moments that they tried to create back stories for the characters, but there was little effort in this and therefore it failed. Jordan Vogt-Roberts did what he could with the story. Many of the shots were well crafted, but it is hard to make a good film with a mediocre story and script.

Overall:  This film fails to entertain and is lost because of the story and script.

Table 19

First Hit:  Poorly conceived, not funny, and poorly executed.

When a film isn’t clearly defined, and has no real point, the audience will struggle. When a film adds poor execution to a lack of direction it ought to be tabled.

There is so little about this film that works, I cannot imagine the producer seeing it for the first time in the screening room saying, I can’t wait to get this distributed. So why did someone put this in theaters? They may have been hoping that the stars who are in it would fill seats ($).

Briefly, Eloise (Anna Kendrick) has become the ex-maid of honor after being dumped via text from the bride’s brother Teddy (Wyatt Russell). The story tells us she had known the bride her whole life and she was shocked to find out that she was also dumped from the bridal party as maid of honor. I did like the scene where she kept checking both the regrets and acceptance boxes on the wedding invitation. In her own disgust at her behavior, she finally sets it on fire and then puts out the flames and sends the burnt invitation back to the bride Francie Millner (Rya Meyers). Arriving at the wedding, her seating assignment is Table 19 the table furthest from bride a groom. This is the table for outcasts, people who the bride and groom wished had sent their regrets.

When Eloise gets to the table, she finds Nanny Jo (June Squibb), Bina and Jerry Kepp (Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson) Renzo Eckberg (Tony Revolori), and Walter Thimple (Stephen Merchant). Eloise explains the entire room table setup because she did the seating chart and why the people she’s sitting with are not important to the wedding party. With this knowledge, the table leaves the wedding party and spends time outside learning more about each other.

There are several scenes when the camera is aimed at the wedding reception and wedding party and it is just wasted film. There is no reason for the camera pan and these scenes add no value to the story. There is a set of scenes when Eloise meets a handsome guy named Huck (Thomas Cocquerel) who dances with her, but the team at Table 19 find out later he’s the groom to a wedding just down the hall. There are several set-up scenes which could have evolved into a funny sub-plot or something interesting but they all failed.

The film tries to be funny and it has some wonderful actors who could have made it funny like Kendrick, Squib, Kudrow, Robinson, and Merchant, but most everything failed to be funny. The other side of the film wanted to be dramatic with the subplot of having Eloise pregnant with Teddy’s baby but it failed to gain traction.

Kendrick was as good as she could be with the material she had. I’d suggest that she do a better job of script selection. Squib was thoroughly underutilized and didn’t have an opportunity to share her comedic chops. Kudrow and Robinson as a couple failed. There was no chemistry and I could buy their story of how they got together. We know they both can be funny given good material but… alas. Merchant had a very odd role which if stretched could have been funny, but again the script and direction failed. Revolori was interesting as I couldn’t figure out why he was in the film. His character didn’t fit and the comedic scenes with him didn’t work. Walking up to a table and telling a young woman about the size of his penis didn’t work. Meyers was gracious in her minimal dramatic role. Russell was mediocre in his role. I know the role has him being a bit slow and not too bright, but it didn’t work. Jay and Mark Duplass wrote this strangely weak and poorly constructed screenplay that really had no real beginning, middle, or end. It just started at one level, ran for a couple hours and fizzled out all-together. Jeffery Blitz had no chance to make this film work because of the script, but it is important to note that his direction didn't help the film either.

Overall:  One of the worst films that will come out in 2017.