I Do... Until I Don't

First Hit:  Although not well crafted, it had some funny sections and the film ended nicely.

Lake Bell as both director and lead actor did a fair job in developing this film. What didn’t work was that some scenes seemed forced while others ended with little reason for being and did not set up another scene. What did work for me was that there were some very out-loud funny moments and I liked how the film came together in the end.

The film follows three types of relationships partially through the eyes of a relationship guru named Vivian (Dolly Wells). She wants to prove her theory that marriage between two people cannot be "until death do you part." She surmises that people live longer these days so that this promise is not in tune with the changes in our aging process. What she thinks and believes is that after seven years of marriage a couple should have the option to renew or not. To prove her theory, she wants to video a couple falling apart to prove her point.

One relationship that Vivian follows is Bell as Alice who is married to Noah (Ed Helms). They own a window blind store that is failing. The reason it is failing is that he holds on to the ways his father and his grandfather ran the business and doesn’t want to change. They need money as they are about to go into Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Alice thinks by working with Vivian she might make some money. Adding to their issues, Alice doesn’t want to have children while Noah does. Alice also thinks that Noah is hot for her sister Fanny (Amber Heard).

Fanny and Zander (Wyatt Cenac) are not married but have been together for six years. They are raising a son and have publicly declared they’re in an open relationship. There is talk about having other partners but in the end, we find out that they're more talk than action (more sizzle than steak). This is another couple Vivian decides to video because she thinks their relationship will fail.

Lastly, she makes a deal to video Cybil and Harvey (Mary Steenburgen and Paul Reiser respectively) who appear to be tired of their long term marriage. Their communication is mostly made up of snide and snippy remarks towards each other. Cybil is intent on serving Harvey with divorce papers for Vivian’s video and has been guaranteed $10,000.

What the film follows is how these couples set up both their failures and successes with each other. In the course of their interactions, there are naturally developed situations and scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny. Two such scenes are when Alice tries to make money by becoming a massage therapist that gives happy endings to clients. Her first time attempt to do this happens to be with Harvey, who gets a happy ending massage coupon from his wife, Cybil. Their interaction is very funny. Another amusing scene is when Alice and Harvey meet, after the massage, Alice’s reaction is priceless.

When the couples learn about how they are being used by Vivian and that they still love each other, they plan to teach Vivian a lesson.

Bell is up and down in her character, there are times I thought her reactions were not congruent with her character. Helms is okay as Bell’s husband and as consistent in his character. Steenburgen was wonderful. I loved her shift through the film. Reiser is very strong as Harvey the quiet, semi-lost, husband looking for a way to share his deep caring for Cybil. Heard is very good as the free flowing and free spirited sister. Cenac was very good as Fanny’s partner and when he shows his true color for someone trying to seduce Fanny, it is perfect. Wells was funny and okay as the videographer who has a strong opinion about marriage based on her own failings. Lake Bell wrote and directed this film along with starring in it. Not many people do all three successfully and as the film and story evolved it got better which gives me hope that future offerings by Bell will continue to be stronger.

Overall:  The ending made up for some of the failings of the beginning scenes.

Tulip Fever

First Hit:  This film personifies the idea that having wonderful actors doesn’t mean the film will be good; this one isn’t.

How can a film with Judi Dench, Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Zach Galifianakis, Jack O’Connell, and Tom Hollander be so unentertaining? Easy have a lousy script and screenplay and a director that didn't see the problems and fix them.

An Abbess (Dench) takes in lost children and raises them to be taken into homes, be married or become an apprentice nun. One of her grown children is Sophia (Vikander) who is solicited for marriage by a wealthy Amsterdam spice trader named Cornelis Sandvoort (Waltz).

This story takes place when the Dutch in Netherlands become infatuated with Tulips. The bulbs of particular flowering types are auctioned for enormous sums of money. They are bought and sold, as commodities in a riotous bar and brothel near the canals.

Sandvoort is much older and is looking for a wife to bear him a child, preferably a boy. He’s proud of his new young wife, Sophia, and commissions a young painter, Jan Van Loos (Dane DeHaan), to paint a portrait of them.

The film shows their live as very routine and their nightly unenthusiastic sexual attempts to conceive. as time goes by, they become disheartened.

Meanwhile their maid Maria (Holliday Grainger), is having an affair with Willem Brok (O’Connell) and she becomes pregnant. By buying and selling a particular tulip, Willem makes enough money to marry Maria, however he thinks he sees Maria having an affair with the painter, Jan, and in shock and being distraught, leaves Amsterdam without saying goodbye.

The mistake was made because Sophia took Maria’s coat to hide herself while going to see her new lover the artist, Van Loos. Sophia is in love and wants to leave Sandvoort and escape with the artist. To make enough money he gets involved in the tulip options market which is regulated and controlled, in part, by the Abbess. However, the blossom is falling from the tulip market and bidding becomes stagnant. He's panicked that he cannot make enough money.

I won’t bore you with more of this plot but the intense part of the film has to do with fooling Sandvoort about pregnancies and Sophia’s very life.

Vikander did the best she could do with the part. Waltz was strong as the wealthy merchant and his “first to flower, first to fall” line was quintessential Waltz. Dench was good in her limited role as Abbess and tulip controller. Galifianakis was very good as Gerrit, the drunk who lets Jan down. DeHann was okay as the young idealist painter. Hollander was very good as well as Dr. Sorgh, the guy who helps the deception of childbirth. O’Connell was great as the man who loves and eventually comes back to his love. Grainger was fantastic in her role as maid and friend to Sophia. Deborah Moggach and Tom Stoppard wrote a poorly conceived screenplay. Justin Chadwick directed this mess. The overly dark scenes of Amsterdam, Netherlands canal districts with constant fighting, drinking and debauchery didn’t add to this film whatsoever.

Overall:  This film was uninteresting and lagged from beginning to end.

The Only Living Boy in New York

First Hit:  I liked the idea of the story more than the pithy clichés and lines that filled up the screen.

Thomas Webb (Callum Turner) is a mid-twenty-year-old man who is living on the lower east side of New York City. His parents live on the upper east side and are wealthy as his dad Ethen (Pierce Bronson) owns a publishing house.

He meets W. F. Gerald (Jeff Bridges), a rumpled mess of a man, as he walks into his building one day. W. F. tells him he has moved into Apt 2B. He seems very personable in wanting to know more about Thomas. Thomas succumbs to his inquiries and begins to tell W.F. his story.

Thomas is in love with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) after one magical night they had together under the influence of molly and alcohol. But she only wants to be friends. He’d like to be a writer but when he showed his dad some of his writings, he said they were “serviceable.”

One day he sees his dad having an intimate lunch with an unknown woman named Johanna (Kate Beckinsale). He’s hurt and is afraid to tell his mom Judith (Cynthia Nixon) because she’s so mentally fragile. At a loss of what to do, he follows Johanna and confronts her.

However, he ends up having an affair with her and falls in love with her.

Sound twisted? Yes, because this is used to crack open the real story of the film, which isn’t about his love for Mimi and Johanna but how he came to exist.

Turner was adequate in this role but we never see him suffer, grow, or even write which he says is his passion. He almost played victim throughout the film. Bridges was good as the writer who held the secret and was writing a story about “The Only Living Boy in New York”. Clemons was good at the beginning but I thought her character to be not honest. She shunned Thomas because of his affair with Johanna when she had an affair with Thomas when she was with another person. Beckinsale was interesting as the desired woman. It was only till the end did I think she cared about something. Bronson was OK but his moments were few and far between. Nixon was OK as the fragile mother. Still didn’t think the story warranted such fragile behavior. Allan Loeb wrote a weak script that was poorly conceived to tell this story. Marc Webb had some nice sets to work within. I thought the lower east side apartments that both W.  F. and Thomas lived in were perfect. The other inside sets were equally good as well. However, this plot needed a reworking before being committed to filmed.

Overall:  This was a long and ineffective way to tell the real story of Thomas, 'The Only Living Boy in New York.'

Ingrid Goes West

First Hit:  A wonderful reflection of the impact of social media on people.

This is an interesting story about how getting caught up in social media, like Instagram, can alter one’s perception of what relationships consist of.

The film begins with Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) getting herself in a tizzy over not being invited to a wedding. She perceives that she is a best friend of the bride. Breaking into the wedding, she squirts pepper spray into the eyes of the bride and escapes. We learn that the bride never met Ingrid before – just through Instagram.

Ingrid’s mom has just died and because Ingrid was her caretaker, this probably contributed to her isolation and use of social media to reach out to the world. After the wedding fiasco, she isolates herself and searching social media, discovers Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) on social media.

Taylor makes her living by being an “influencer” on Instagram. She photographs herself in locations and with products and because of the size of her audience, companies pay her. Taylor lives in Southern California with her artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell). Ingrid, armed with money her mother left her, heads to CA to find Taylor and to find a new life.

She rents a studio from Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) who ends up becoming her friend. Her first step after “following” Taylor on Instagram, is to track her down by going to the places she posts on Instagram. One day she runs into Taylor and stealthily follows her to her home. Noting that Taylor and Ezra have a dog, named Rothko, she creates a plan to steal the dog and return the dog to get in good, close graces with Taylor.

This plan works and they end up becoming pals hanging out together. What Ingrid doesn’t know is that Taylor has no teal intention of making Ingrid a real friend. As long as Taylor gets something from the relationship, she lets Ingrid hang out with her and Ezra.

The film evolves to where it gets pretty twisted because Ingrid will do anything to be close to and hang out with Taylor. As Taylor’s brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen) comes into the picture, he brings new audiences for Taylor and so Ingrid slips out of favor and importance to Taylor.

As we see how far Ingrid goes to stay in good graces with Taylor, I started to cringe. Nicky adds additional leverage against Ingrid by stealing her phone and threatening Ingrid with exposing her phone’s negative and intimate posts of Taylor to Taylor.

Spiraling into oblivion, Ingrid finds out that there are people who care, even if they were only known to her through social media. She also learns that she has the possibility of creating a real human relationship.

What I liked was how well Ingrid showed what it is like to be obsessive about pings on her phone. She made the feeling that her life depended on the pings, perfectly real.

Plaza is wonderful in this role. Her eyes and behavior really reflected the desperateness of her trying to connect the only way she knew how. This was a strong performance. Olsen was very good as the influencer who really didn’t care about the people who followed her. Russell was OK as Taylor’s husband. His abdicating to his wife’s preferences was well done. Jackson Jr. was strong as the landlord, friend, and lover with a Batman obsession. The story how he came to this obsession was wonderful. David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer wrote a fun script that came alive with the actors and direction by Spicer.

Overall: I liked how the social media obsession was portrayed as I am aware of people who’ve been hooked.

Birth of the Dragon

First Hit:  Although this is a poorly done film, I liked knowing more about what it took for Bruce Lee to create his empire.

The sad part of about this film is that it didn’t make the real story the main subject of the film. What came on to the screen was a love story between one of Lee’s students and women who was enslaved by the owner of a Chinese restaurant. However, there was enough in the film about how Lee learned there was more to Kung Fu than just the physicality, to make me sit through the rest of the drama.

Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) was a self-promoting wizard who wanted his Kung Fu school to grow and do well. He is driven by money and fame and will try anything to achieve this, even trying to create a homemade film. Because he teaches both white and Asian students, his school and method are frowned upon by the traditional Chinese martial arts based community.

One school that frowns upon his technique is the Chinese Shaolin Temple and order of priests who use Kung Fu. Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia) is a priest from this Shaolin Temple. He comes to America because he’s serving penance for almost killing someone during a demonstration match. He decides to do this by working in a restaurant as a dishwasher.

One of Lee’s students, a white man named Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen), wants to meet Man and heads to the dock to meet him as he arrives in the US by boat. Lee learns of this and leverages this connection to send a message to Man. He tells McKee to tell Man that Lee wants to challenge him to a fight. Lee knows that if he wins this sort of challenge, it'l raise his popularity and create more fame and money. Man refuses to fight him.

Here is where the film fails to be true to the real story, McKee asks Man to fight Lee to free a woman, Xiulan Quan (Jingjing Qu), from the clutches Janet Wei (Lillian Lim) owner of a famous Chinese restaurant and the person for whom McKee has fallen in love with. That Man fights Lee for this reason, denigrates the story, but supposedly makes it palatable to a wider audience.

In the end Lee does learn something about fighting from his heart. Man learns that Kung Fu can be spread beyond China. McKee gets the girl.

The choreography of the major fight scene was splendid at times and other times seemed a bit forced.

Ng was OK, outside of a few Bruce Lee type squeals while fighting, I didn’t get a "Bruce Lee" from his performance. I got someone who wanted to imitate Lee. Xia was strong and I liked what he brought to the part. McKee was a OK for a character that wasn’t really part of the real story being portrayed here. Qu was sweet in her role as enslaved love interest. Lim was good as the woman in-charge of the restaurant and the Tong she commanded. Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson wrote a very altered screenplay from the real story. George Nolfi did a good job directing most of the fight scenes, but the story and screenplay, lacked a level of authenticity that took away from the real story.

Overall:  I liked the film conceptually more than its reality.