An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

First Hit:  Powerful sequel about the environmental demise of our planet.

Ten years ago, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was a powerful statement about what is happening to our planet. This follow-up film states this truth more clearly, emphatically, and provides additional data that our planet is suffering from global warming.

It also shows what many are doing to fight this battle. From the Paris Accord, to what other countries and cities are doing on their own. The film also shows how our new President said, in so many words, he doesn’t care about the planet. One example is that he feeds his immediate ego by being a savior to the coal industry. The problem is saving this industry supports killing our planet sooner. It is sad that money becomes the common denominator by which things do or don’t change. What about changing because it's the right thing to do.

Al Gore makes this point many times over and by using his intelligence and negotiation skills, he shows how to balance economics and solving the global warming problem. Fixing the global warming problem can be economically good.

The evidence is clear. When I read about these overt and obvious changes in our environment in the daily newspaper, I am no longer shocked about the stories of flooding, fires, drought, and rising sea levels (take heed Miami). Our planet is in trouble and we don’t do something about it, my grandchildren may not be able to have children, because there won’t be a planet to raise them on.

Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk co-directed this powerful, poignant, and persuasive film. Al Gore was very engaging because he is fully engaged.

Overall:  This film is a strong warning to all of us.

A Ghost Story

First Hit:  Long languished scenes and little dialogue lead to waiting, just like the ghost.

Do not expect to be led into and through this film. The audience must work and carefully watch this film to be able to understand it and I use "understand" very loosely. The basis of this film is to explore love, loss and existence beyond the physical realm.

C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara) are talking about moving from this simple home in suburban America. Then, as they sleep, they hear a bang on the piano in the living room. They explore and find nothing.

C is killed near the home in an automobile accident. M goes to the hospital looks at C lying on the table and pull the sheet up over his head. In what seems like an eternity, after she has left the morgue, the camera focuses on the body lying on the gurney. Then C sits up and gets off the gurney with the sheet over his entire body. When faced with a opening in a wall to walk into the light, the ghost C, turns left and walks down the hall.

Walking in his home, C stands there and watches M live her life, alone, and sad. There is a scene where a neighbor brings a pie over to M’s house and leaves it on the table. M comes home and ends up sitting on the floor of the kitchen, back against the sink cabinet and practically eats the entire pie, runs to the bathroom and throws up. This is a very telling and powerful scene.

The minimal dialogue adds to both the intrigue and patience forcing. At one point M moves away from the home and C is left there alone. He tries to get a small note M has stuffed into the door jamb but because he’s a ghost, he can barely make a more on the door jamb’s paint. Wandering into the bedroom, C looks across at another house and sees another ghost wearing a patterned sheet. They wave and communicate by telepathy, the words appearing as sub-titles on the bottom of the screen. Other people come and go living in the house while he’s still present.

They the film shifts time and takes us both into the future of the land where his home stands and the goes into past of the same land. The ghost simply stands on the property in these time shifts.

Eventually hes witnesses and watches when he and M come to live in the house for the first time. Here is where we see the first smiles from both C and M. It was a reflection of their happier times together. The rest of the film is about re-seeing the beginning of the story again but from a different view.

Affleck is difficult to review because he spends 97% of the film under the sheet. I can imagine that it wasn’t an easy part to fulfill, but it does work. Mara is, as always, an enigma. She is fantastic at being haunting and creating the sense that you want to know what is going on inside of her. She gives few signals but they are the right signals. David Lowery both wrote and directed this effort. I sense he has a lot to share about the flow of life, life after death, and evolution of life and this was a reasonable effort at sharing these ideas.

Overall:  If you go see this film, be patient and you may end up learning something about yourself and how you think about life.

Atomic Blonde

First Hit:  Action filled with Charlize Theron showing strong fighting skills.

Although this film is done in a flashback mode, following the story is not hampered. Although, as the film unfolded and after the end, I wondered how it would have played out if it was done sequentially?

The film begin by showing agent Lorraine Broughton (Theron) being interviewed by her boss Eric Gray (Toby Jones) and CIA department head Emmett Kurzfeld (John Goodman) while Gray’s boss Chief ‘C’ (James Faulkner) watches this behind glass. Lorraine is badly bruised but being sure of her story, she begins telling it.

She starts the interview with talking how she was sent to Berlin to find and obtain “The List” which has been put on microfiche and stored inside a watch. The list has information about each agent in British Intelligence and possibly the CIA, where they are and their possible covers.

Immediately after getting to West Berlin she gets attacked by Russians who what to kill her because they are the ones who are trying to obtain "the list" at all costs. Her contact and co-agent is David Percival (James McAvoy), however, the audience sees that Percival is sabotaging Lorraine’s attempt to obtain the watch (list). The one who put this list together and stored it in a watch has a code name and it’s Spyglass (Eddie Marsan). He’s doing this because he wants to trade giving up the list for freedom to West Berlin.

As the story unfolds and until the end, the audience thinks David is on multiple sides but so is Lorraine, it is just that the audience doesn't know how many she’s on.

Lorraine gets involved in so much fighting, shooting and stabbing that I can only imagine that she was really sore after doing this film.

One of the things I loved about this film was the color mood used to present this film. Everything was muted down from a color perspective. This in honor of being in both West and East Berlin at the time the wall comes down between the two parts of the city.

Theron was amazing in how she used her body and gave the audience a perception that she fights for a living. I loved her character and at times I laughed out loud in the audacity of some of the scenes. McAvoy was strong and his smart-alecky version of the character worked for me. Jones was perfect as Lorraine’s boss. Marsan was very good as the meek Spyglass. Goodman was very good as the CIA connection. Kurt Johnstad wrote an wild and fun screenplay. David Leitch had a clear vision in mind and for me it clearly worked well.

Overall:  It was a fun film and Theron was a joy to watch.

Lady Macbeth

First Hit:  Very little about this film was uplifting – it was dark and brooding all the way through.

From the get go, this film presses downward on the spirit of the film's characters. Katherine (Florence Pugh) was bought and forced to marry Alexander (Paul Hilton). His father Boris (Christopher Fairbank), who lives with them, chastises Katherine for not sexually satisfying his son and demands that she stay inside the house and never “take the air.” Alexander also treats Katherine with disdain, makes her disrobe, face the wall and then masturbates while looking at her back. Given this treatment, Katherine is both physically and sexually drawn towards Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), one of the caretakers who works on the estate.

This attraction leads to sex whenever they have the opportunity. When both Alexander and Boris leave on separate trips, she invites Sebastian into the home, despite the disapproval of her handmaiden servant Anna (Naomi Ackie) who also has had intimate relations with Sebastian.

Alexander suddenly re-appears and this wrecks the love birds’ life together, so they fix it by eliminating him. With this issue resolved another bump in the road appears when Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel) moves into the home with a child. They have papers stating that the father is Alexander therefore it is rightfully the boy's home as well. This pushes Sebastian out of the home, again and the devious way they resolve this issue is horrible.

When the law is called, and is questioning the death of the boy, Sebastian burst into the room and spills the sordid story. But because he's a black servant, he and Anna are not believed and are taken away.

Pugh is strong as Katherine, a young woman trapped, and will do anything to get what she wants. Hilton is appropriately mean and twisted. Fairbank is strong as the mean father-in-law. Jarvis is good as the object of Katherine’s desire. Ackie is excellent as the handmaiden. Rosheuvel is very strong in her role. Nikolai Leskov and Alice Birch wrote this very dark brooding script that had little hope or light in it. William Oldroyd did a good job of directing this film. The sets in the rooms were perfect for the film’s feeling.

Overall:  Although the acting and direction was good, I really disliked the subject.

Girls Trip

First Hit:  Some very funny scenes, a few overly gross scenes, all in a satisfying but too long film.

I don’t mind grossness in a film. However, when more than one person pisses on a crowd from a zip line and the amount of piss and the way it sprays around is totally un-real, it is a turnoff, adds no value and is not funny. This and other stupid scenes when juxtaposed against some very fine and really, out-loud, funny scenes, could keep this film from being a classic hit, years from now.

Strong friendships between four black women is the basis for this strong film as they reconnect and re-find their deep love and respect for each other. Many of us have friendships that have lasted through the years. I’ve got two friends, whom I’ve known for over 50 years. Although we may not speak with each other very often, but when we do we find the place where trust and having each other’s backs rises to the top.

This film explores all this and more because, Ryan (Regina Hall) is in a farce of a marriage, promotes her life as having it all, and subjugates herself for money, her husband’s infidelity and fame. Then there is Sasha (Queen Latifah), who is financially struggling because, her once strong communication skills are being wasted on her TMZ type website that has no viewers. She found herself in this position because Ryan quit their business partnership. Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) has become a protective stay at home divorced mom. The fun, strong, smart girl has been both emotionally and sexually suppressed. Dina (Tiffany Haddish) is the wild girl, the fun girl and the bold girl. She’s the one in the group that pushes the edge of experience for all of them through her boldness.

They get together in New Orleans because Ryan gets an all-expenses paid trip to promote herself and husband Stewart (Mike Colter) to a possible television production company while at a conference. Although the unraveling of their back stories’ is predictable, the humor used is, at times, sparkling and strong. One example was the demonstration of using a grapefruit in sex, very funny. All of these women were perfect and well chosen for the character they represented and it showed that they became friends during the filming.

Hall was perfectly reserved, suppressed, and wanting to live her truth of having it all. She showed the rediscovery of her true self well. Latifah was wonderful and didn’t dominate the film as she has in other films. She fit effortlessly and was perfect as the woman who had Ryan’s back no matter what. Smith’s character evolved the most during the film. The opening scenes where she acts repressed were on the edge of being pressed, but her clothing made it all work. Then as she evolves you can see how she fit into the group years ago. Haddish was like having a wild animal loose in a positive way. She brought spark, edginess and bold fun to this role. She was the spark plug. Colter was strong as Ryan’s philandering husband. His voice is so soft and smooth which he uses as an asset for convincing Ryan to buy into the hype. Erica Rivinoja and Kenya Barris wrote a wonderful story that embodied some real insights to friendship. Malcolm D. Lee did a good job of directing this film. My criticisms are that he needed to remove 30 minutes of film, it was way too long, and that the overdoing of some scenes took it from being a strong film and moved it toward being silly.

Overall:  It needed some tightening up, but otherwise it was a very funny and strong film.