Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Overall:  Visually entertaining, poignant message and fun to watch.

The “setup” I thought was a bit weak when there’s an explanation as to how and why this very large spaceship/planet/thingy named Alpha become home to species from a thousand planets. However, getting past this we are introduced to Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne) who work for the government of Alpha. Therefore, the best interests of the government, not any particular species is their focus.

The film also documents, at the beginning, the destruction of planet Mul, which was occupied by highly evolved and functioning humanoids that focused on giving back what it receives.

The Defense Minister (Herbie Handcock) instructs Valerian and Laureline to guard Commander Arun Filitt (Clive Owen) because the Commander warns that the ship has an expanding radioactive bubble in the middle of the ship and they cannot figure out what it is or why it's there . Unfortunately for the film, Filitt acts in such a way that he gives it away that he’s implicated in this radioactive bubble. This could be because of the way the character was written or because Owen often plays this type of double crossing character.

Valerian and Laureline are also sent to find the “converter” which replicates items it ingests. It is a survivor from the planet Mul and really belongs to the remaining humanoids as part of their way of life. They also find a pearl which was used by the Mul members to feed the converter and then the planet itself.

Filitt is then abducted and Valerian must search the ship to find him discovers that the “radioactive” menace in the core of the ship is not what they think it is. As they figure out what really happened to Mul and why Filitt is implicated, Laureline convinces Valerian to give the converter and pearl to the rightful owners, allowing them to restart their nirvanic race. It is hard for the major to break his dutiful role and use love as the answer.

DeHann was good and embodied the youthful character required to make this film work. Delevingne was, to me, the star of the film. Her wide-eyed soulful intelligence worked and made the film complete. Owen was, and is always, good as a self-righteous villain. Rihanna was very strong as Bubble. Ethan Hawke was wonderful as Jolly the Pimp. Hancock was OK in a pivotal but distant role. Luc Beeson wrote the screenplay as well as directed this film. It was a visual extravaganza and this made it worth watching.

Overall:  The film’s visuals,  Delevingne and DeHann are what kept me watching this film with interest.

Dunkirk

First Hit: An amazing film that focuses on the event not the actors or their characters.

Easily the best overall film of this year mainly because the vision is true and clear. Not many films make the story the highlight and focus. Mostly films have a character or two that engage the audience into the story. Here the characters are a subset of the story. This doesn’t take away from the actors or acting, but it lays the responsibility of how good this film is on the writer, editor, sound team, music, cinematography, and director.

Christopher Nolen did an amazing job of creating and giving his vision life on the big screen. This is the true story of how 800 boats, most of them small personal pleasure and fishing boats from England, crossed the English Channel to save over 338,000 allied soldiers consisting of British, French, Canadian and Belgium men who were trapped by German soldiers.

Nearly 400,000 soldiers were backed-up to the English Channel, trapped into a corner at Dunkirk, France. German planes bombed the English ships, including hospital ships taking the wounded away from the shoreline. Boats were also torpedoed and sunk. The British Government determined that sending in more large ships and planes to assist these trapped troops would only result in more losses of people and hardware.

The call went out to boat owners in England to sail to Dunkirk and save as many men as possible. Their low water draft meant they could also get closer to shore.

The film follows a couple of the English pilots in their Spitfires as they sacrificed themselves to knock German plains from the sky. It follows a couple of soldiers as they try to find their way to a boat to take them to freedom, alive. It gives the viewer glimpses of British command thinking through Commander Bolton. And it follows a man and his sons in their small boat attempting to save as many as possible. The line shown in the previews and used in the film, “there’s no turning away from this…” was poignantly perfect.

Everyone who played a character in this film is to be lauded. Fionn Whitehead, Damien Bonnard, Aneurin Barnard, Lee Armstrong, James Bloor, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance, Tom Glynn-Carney, Tom Hardy, and Kenneth Branagh, just to name a few, were fantastic in each of their respective roles. The music by Hans Zimmer was astounding. The sound effects and its use was spot on perfect. Hoyte Van Hoytema created a sublime view as director of photography. As I previously noted Christopher Nolen’s script and direction was clearly top-notch. This film is his crowning achievement thus far.

Overall:  As of July 2017, clearly best film of the year.

City of Ghosts

First Hit:  A film that can teach the west about Raqqa, it's people and Syria’s fight against ISIS (Daesh).

What we hear about Daesh and their takeover of Raqqa, we learn from our press. Often it isn't quite right, but there is a group that is giving the world a view of what is really going on.

The citizens of Raqqa, an ancient city on the Euphrates River, took to Arab Spring, rallied against Syria’s oppressive President Bashar al-Assad and tore down his statue while declaring their freedom. However, this revolution left an opening for a strong leader to come in and create a new movement that promised a better life. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Aka: "ISIL", "ISIS" and "Daesh") under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s leadership started controlling Raqqa’s citizens with an Islamic iron fist. The life he promised the citizens failed to manifest.

He controlled the citizens by beheadings, shootings, and starving the citizens Raqqa in mass. This control came swift and hard and took the citizens by surprise. In retaliation, a group was formed called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently (http://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/). This group, a small handful of anonymous activists, came together to provide information about the cruelty of Daesh to the outside world by leveraging Facebook and other social media. Posting video, still pictures and commentary on the way Daesh is controlling the city via  their cruelty, this group is informing the world.

This film is about those anonymous activists. Although not so anonymous any longer we follow their escape from Syria to Turkey and Germany while their friends and family are being tortured and killed back home. This is a film of bravery and sadness. It is a film about love of country and the struggle for life.

Matthew Heineman superbly directed this story by putting together powerful pieces of video smuggled out of Syria and interviews. The long scenes of watching these activists staring at their screens waiting for the next piece of information to come from home were pointedly powerful. Revolution doesn’t always happen in a moment. but when a moment happens, they review it, edit it, and post it quickly.

Overall:  There are scenes in this film that are difficult and sad to watch, but it through these scenes we gain a needed understanding of this fight.

The Last Dalai Lama?

First Hit: A wonderful film about a beautiful man.

Loosely using the 14th Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday celebration in New York City as the centerpiece for this story, this 2015 celebration was a long way from his humble roots in rural Tibet. In this film, director Mickey Lemie paints a short historical vision of His Holiness's (HH) story from child, to spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, to political and governmental leader of Tibet, his forced exodus to northern India and his ascension to world spiritual leader.

The main question is: Will he be the last Dalai Lama? A group of people lead by the Panchen Lama are charged with selecting each Dalai Lama. The reverse is also true; meaning the Dalai Lama leads the selection of each Panchen Lama. The Chinese government has short-circuited this process by kidnapping the last Panchen Lama at age six. He’s not been heard from since. The Chinese have announced that they will select the next Dalai Lama because they want to influence and control the Tibetan people. It is likely they will purposefully anoint a new Panchen Lama, who has their ideals, and then give him directions as to who to select for the next Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition for selecting their leaders has been broken. Therefore, the question is will the Dalai Lama reincarnate? He says not in Tibet or China but possibly somewhere else in the world.

I cried, on and off, throughout the film because of the compassionate beauty of His Holiness’s (HH) spirit that showed through each scene. I was in his current home town of Dharamsala, India in December of 1998 when he gave talks at the public meeting/teacher area. I was honored to be in the receiving line and he blessed my silk prayer scarves. I've also seen him speak in San Francisco twice since then and each time, I sat in humble gratitude.

He is, as his name means, an “Ocean of Compassion.” His clarity of purpose is to give to others and this is his path to happiness. Being altruistic is his way to joy. He believes that if one focuses on giving to others you begin to cultivate true joy and it becomes the example to others.

When he discusses the people who have immolated themselves to draw attention to the Tibetan’s plight of the Chinese takeover of their country, I cried sobbingly out-loud in my theater seat (I apologize to anyone who was disturbed by this). The belief of doing no harm to others is deeply entrenched in Tibetans and to bring attention to their plight, they will not harm or go to war with the Chinese, so immolating themselves becomes one way they can bring needed attention to their situation. Later in the film they showed a few of these people’s pictures on the screen and my tears abundantly flowed again.

Another surprising scene included an interview with former President George W. Bush. I have never liked this President, however seeing how HH touched his soul with compassionate beauty, I was heartened. He did a painting of HH which was nice, but it was that he was the first President to publicly lend his office to be with HH when he received the Congressional Gold medal that struck me as powerful.

There were many other touching scenes that brought tears of joy and sadness and there were many scenes of laughter because HH has a wonderful delightful laugh. However, since spending three weeks in Tibet 18 years ago and finding the country and people to be embedded in my spirit, the film reminded me that my heart ached for these beautiful people to freely govern themselves.

The Philip Glass music was phenomenal. Lemie did a masterful job of capturing the spirit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama physically, mentally and spiritually.

Overall:  I was blessed to see him in person and embraced this film with loving openness.

The Beguiled

Overall:  This film was a slow-moving beast that was ultimately unsatisfying.

With a cast consisting of Nicole Kidman (as Miss Martha), Colin Farrell (as Corporal McBurney), Kirsten Dunst (as Edwina), Elle Fanning (as Alicia) and Oona Laurence (as Amy) and being directed by a Sofia Coppola, you’d hope to see a strong interesting film.

However, I was bored through most of it as it languished in the dark moody scenes both inside and outside the home where the girls lived.

The basic story is that Miss Martha runs a girls home and school in her large southern styled columned mansion. The civil war is going on around her home, but she does her best to keep the home going and girls shielded from the outside strife. One day, when Amy is collecting mushrooms, she finds an injured Corporal McBurney. Carrying him back to the home Martha puts him in a locked room and fixes his wound. His presence changes the tone of the home because the girls start discussing him and do little things to get noticed by him.

The film takes forever to move the story along and finally the corporal shows his lusty stripes by sweet talking Martha, tells Edwina to run away with him, and gets caught in Alicia’s bed by Edwina. As the corporal attempts to calm Edwina down she pushes him down the stairs and reopens his leg wound.

Martha determines she has to cut it leg off. When McBurney wakes up to find his leg missing he freaks out and goes on a rampage. Using guile and pressure on Alicia, gets out of the locked room and takes control of the home by using Martha’s gun.

Martha and the girls decide they must do something to protect themselves and find a way to get rid of the corporal.

Kidman was good as the head of the home. However, the script and direction let her down. Farrell was good as Corporal McBurney but the story let the audience down as to how he ended up in the woods and as to what his motivation was for seducing all the women. Dunst was strong as the pretty and dour Edwina but I wondered why McBurney selected her as the one he wanted to love and run away with. It didn’t make much sense. Fanning was very good as the young girl wanting to be an adult and experience more in life. Laurence was excellent as the young Amy whose kind compassionate heart was put to the test. Albert Maltz wrote an uninteresting script from a very interesting novel. Coppola had a vision but it was an uninteresting one and the result lacked reason and engagement unlike one of her other efforts “Lost in Translation.”

Overall:  This film was painful to watch as the two women sitting down the aisle would attest to by their comments while the film played on.