Blade Runner 2049

First Hit:  Although this film was well shot and interesting in its context, I ended up not caring about the characters.

The original 1982 ‘Blade Runner’, projected our life in 2019. It was bleak and focused on the creation, use, and abilities of replicants. It left us with questions as to whether replicants could re-create. Given that we are developing robots, self-driving autos and other interesting things, we are not what was projected back then.  Given this, it is my guess that we won't be what this film says about 2049. The only caveat would be, we could be worse off than what is projected.

The original wasn't popular (gross sales) when it came out, however it did organically grow a larger and wide-ranging audience because of its questions, pacing and the way it was shot. It became more of a cult film that aged really well. In other words, as time went by, its positive qualities came forth and lasted. In that film replicants went back to Earth to find their creator and Rick Dekard (Harrison Ford) was sent back to kill these renegade replicants and in doing so, he started having questions of his own.

In this new version, again the languid pacing is in its own world, and because we have a history of this, it's expected. This makes this better understood in the first viewing. We are placed into the year 2049 and Los Angeles is this bizarre sort of world of real humans and replicants. If replicants can reproduce, then what use are humans? The story then, is about a Blade Runner “K” (Ryan Gosling) who thinks he’s found the remains of previously pregnant replicant and is tasked by his boss Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) to find out if this baby lived and destroy all evidence of its existence.

This is asked of him because there is a fear that there will be a war between humans and replicants. As he learns more about this person’s possible existence he learns more about his possible part of this evolution.

This film’s storyline isn’t easy to follow; however, one aspect is that K thinks he may have real memories, versus programed memories and he tries to validate this by official memory maker Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri). He also speaks with the head of company that makes replicants Niander Wallace (Jered Leto).

Wallace is trying to program replicants to reproduce and in one scene, a fully grown and replicant reproduced woman drops onto a padded platform in the middle of an empty room. To make the point that this is a reproduced replicant, she arrives via a replica of an amniotic sac. Rather interesting and telling scene.

In search of his own beginnings, K then goes to San Diego which is a waste dumping ground, and speaks with Mister Cotton (Lennie James) who helps him put real context to a dream he has. Then he heads to a deserted and dust filled Las Vegas and finds Deckard (Harrison) hiding out with a rangy dog. At first Deckard doesn’t trust K that’s validated when all of a sudden others come to kill them both. Deckard is abducted by Luv (Syliva Hoeks) as a way to control the future.

However, K feels kindred to Decker and helps him escape. In the end, this film leaves the viewer with questions, as it's suppose to do, and makes one wonder if there will be one more film.

The music is a great part of this film. It enhances the sense, time, and etheric feeling of this film. The visual pacing is variable; however, the overall sense was, for me, too slow and pedantic. There were sections I wanted sped up or removed as the sense of the pace was already established and it was taking too long to develop and I was losing interest.

Gosling is strong is this type of role. His inner quiet and strength is what made him the right person for this part and he does it well. Juri is wonderful as the manufacturer of memories. Wright was good as K’s boss. Hoeks was strong as the steely person wanting to control what information gets out and what doesn’t. Leto is very good as the person creating the replicants. His otherworldly presence is felt. Ford was perfectly grumpy and irritated that his life was discovered and made more complicated by K. Ana de Armas as the hologram Joi was enticingly strong. James was excellent as the leader of the orphan kids in San Diego. The music by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch was a very strong part of this film. The mood, sets, and pacing by Denis Villeneuve was very strong under his direction. Hampton Fancher and Michael Green wrote the complex screen play that did a good job of moving the overall story forward.

Overall:  I struggled with the pacing, loved many of the sets, and thought the overall story was interesting enough to keep me engaged.

American Made

First Hit:  It’s a Tom Cruise film and therefore you will always get everything he can give; full tilt entertainment.

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it. Tom Cruise will probably never be in a film and be someone other than Tom Cruise. This isn’t a bad thing because he gives everything to each film he’s in. The issue is that you always know and see ‘Tom Cruise’, not the character he’s playing.

Here he uses the role and true story of Barry Seal, a TWA pilot that ended up working for the CIA and even the White House, to give the audience his, boyish charm, intensity, and action. Seal was a bored airline pilot who, on occasion, would turn off the auto-pilot and make the plane turn and twist in the sky just to wake up his co-pilot and passengers.

One day he’s approached by Monty ‘Schafer’ (Domhnall Gleeson) a CIA operative to fly spy camera photo missions in Central America. For this he will get a cool plane to fly, have lots of excitement, and make a little money. Without telling his wife he quits TWA and takes this new mission on, full tilt. Soon afterward, he gets a deal to smuggle drugs from South America on his way back from taking spy photos. This becomes very lucrative for him and he begins making a lot of money.

However, the DEA finds out and wants to bust him in his Louisiana home. The CIA is willing to turn a blind eye to the drug smuggling because of his excellent spy photographs and therefore move him and his family to Mena, AK. Here they give him more than 2,000 acres of land, an airport, hanger, home and a new plane.

He does so well for the drug cartel and the CIA that he buys more planes and men to fly them. He’s got hundreds of millions of dollars in banks, all over town, in his house, in his hanger, and buried in the ground around his home.

All the while he gets into scrapes that he gets bailed out from. Finally, he has to turn witness against the drug cartel and when he does, he’s in trouble. His punishment for all the drug smuggling was 1,000 hours of community service with the Salvation Army, which he does. However, the cartel isn't so lenient.

As I said the film is fun, and the action scenes are good with Tom making it all good fun.

Cruise knows how to make a film fun with his personality and ability to make the audience feel good. Sarah Wright as his wife Lucy was good. I loved her line about having to go back to work at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Gleeson was good as the CIA agent who recruited Seal. Jayma Mays was strong as the AK State DA who wanted to prosecute Seal. Gary Spinelli wrote an event filled script. Doug Liman let Cruise be himself and bring engagement and excitement to the screen. Just don’t think you’re going to see a meaningful story about Barry Seal.

Overall:  It was an excellent vehicle for Cruise to be, well; Tom Cruise.

Battle of the Sexes

First Hit:  Thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining and educational.

What makes this film work really well are the actors and clear direction that added insight into one of the most outrageous and important moments in women’s sports history.

Being old enough to recall the original battle of the sexes tennis matches (both one and two), it was important to make it true to the story while adding depth of character. That is what this film did. Learning more about Billie Jean King (Emma Stone), her husband Larry (Austin Stowell), Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) and their paths was powerful, clearly defined and heartwarming.

King wanted equal money for the women who played in the same tournaments that men played in. Receiving less than 10% of what the men earned in winning the U.S. Open was degrading to women and women’s tennis everywhere. She wanted equal pay because they put people in the seats just as well as the men.

USLT (United States Lawn Tennis) leader, tennis great, Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) told King that this wasn’t possible and that men were just better, stronger, and more interesting tennis players. Being rebuffed on her request, she and Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman), founder of World Tennis magazine decided to start their own tennis tour.

This tour got off to a rocky start but when Virginia Slims (cigarette maker) started sponsoring their events with real prize money, women’s tennis started to take hold and capture their supportive audiences.

Then there was incurable gambler Bobby Riggs who lived very well off of his wife’s money. Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) loved her husband, his funny ways but struggled with his constant gambling. Fed up after he comes home with a Rolls Royce he won in a card game, she kicks him out of the house.

Nowhere to go, Bobby as a former Wimbledon singles, doubles and mix doubles tennis champion, he carries through with an idea one of his gambling buddies comes up with. Could a fifty-five-year-old former Wimbledon champ beat the best women’s tennis player? Capitalizing on this idea, he hounds Billie Jean to play him and offers her $35K. She refuses him and eventually Bobby calls on the new women’s #1 player, Margaret Court (Jessica McNamee) to take on the challenge. She does and gets publicly trounced by Bobby in two straight sets. As expected this hurts women's tennis and therefore Billie Jean decides to make this right.

All through this Billie slowly is discovering she is attracted to women, which in those days was not well accepted. The scene where Billie becomes gob-socked by her attraction to a woman was amazing. As she’s getting her hair done for photos just prior to their first Virginia Slims tournament, the hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), starts touching Billie’s hair and you can feel them both melt away. This was one of the best, most effective scenes in the film because of the acting and direction. I sat there and felt Billie Jean breaking down and opening up with barely any words spoken.

Of course, as we all know, after the Court fiasco, King plays Bobby and makes history.

The tennis was extremely well done. The director recreated many of the winning points just like they actually happened. Billie and women’s tennis did get invited back into the USLT tour for equal pay because of Billie Jean’s perseverance and skill.

Learning what drove Billie Jean as a little girl to excel in tennis, how her husband supported her throughout her personal discovery and how chauvinistic men thought of women was superbly covered.

Stone was amazing. The scene of her sitting in the hair salon meeting Marilyn for the first time was amazing. How she slowly evolved Billie’s character towards acceptance of both her tennis greatness and her attraction to women was sublime. Carell was perfect. He played Bobby just as we saw him on television. But what made this really work besides the physical likeness was giving his home life honest depth. Risenborough was wonderful as Billie’s first lover. Pullman was great as Kramer. Silverman was exquisite as the woman who put together the Virginia Slims tour together out of nothing. Natalie Morales as co-tennis player Rosie Casals was super. She reflected the persona of the real Rosie. Shue as Riggs wife was perfect. It was wonderful to see Shue again and her reflection of a wealthy woman of the era was spot-on. Stowell was good as Billie Jean’s understanding and supportive husband. McNamee was good as tennis rival Margaret Court. In real life Court’s current homophobic rants echo the subtle opinions her and her husband expressed in the film. Alan Cumming as Cuthbert ‘Ted’ Tinling tennis clothing designer for the women on the Virginia Slims tour was excellent. I liked his encouragement to King at the end of the film. Simon Beaufoy wrote an excellent script. He caught all the nuances of the time and I appreciated it. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris as co-directors were spot on in all ways. I loved how they integrated television clips of the time, 1973, (Howard Cosell and Chrissy Evert among them) into a film made in 2017. Their vision was sublime.

Overall:  For anyone interested in knowing how today’s women’s tennis stars got the equal money recognition they deserve, see this film.

Stronger

First Hit:  I was very surprised at how much I like this film, it had heart.

Jake Gyllenhaal is one of my favorite actors. I can tell he puts in a lot of work to each role to make it real for him and the audience. Here as Jeff Bauman, the young man who lost both legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Jake does Jeff proud. He shows Jeff’s humanity and the cycle of up and downs that he had to go through after the event.

Jeff and his family are true blue collar Boston loving people. Jeff works at Costco (a shout out to them for their unending support of Jeff) and, as most Boston people do, loves his Red Sox. He spends a fair amount of his off time in bars with his buddies and family.

The one early scene when he tells his drunk mother, Patty (Miranda Richardson), to F#%& off in the bar is indicative of the family’s love and bickering with each other. His father Big Jeff (Clancy Brown) is a self-proclaimed know it all but doesn’t always know very much. His attempts to control situations was evident in the hospital waiting room.

The family dynamics are perfectly matched with Jeff’s inability to grow up. It is exemplified in his off and on relationship with his girlfriend, Erin Hurley (Tatianna Maslany), whom has just broken up with him again. He loves her and you can tell she loves him but she tires of his childish behavior and for not showing up to events with and for her. To convince her he needs another chance, he tells her he’s going to be at the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a sign he’s going to paint for her. And as we all know, that isn’t where you wanted to be that day.

This film then moves through Jeff’s struggle to deal with the event, losing his legs, and how is he going to be someone in the world. Erin commits to him, but Jeff does his usual flaking out and finally, after she tells him she’s pregnant with his child and he says he cannot be a part of this, she leaves for good.

Avoiding his internal bombing traumatic issues, he finally meets up with and talks with the man who saved him from death by putting tourniquets on above his knees to keep him from bleeding to death. After Carlos (Carlos Sanz) tells him his story, Jeff gets real and starts to take charge of his life.

It is a sweet, heartfelt story. The in-hospital scenes and staff were real. By using these hospital staff and a hospital, it felt solid and true to the story. The visuals of showing Gyllenhaal without legs was extremely well done. The film felt real through many of the scenes.

Gyllenhaal was amazing. When the doctor is taking off the bandages and dressings for the first time in the hospital, I felt his pain all the way to my seat in the theater. Excellent work. Maslany was amazing. Her ability to share so many feelings of love and doubts with her eyes and mouth were spot on. Great work. Richardson had me totally believing she was an alcoholic self-serving mess. She gave a very strong performance. Sanz was sublime. The way he told the story of his two sons to Jeff was ethereal. Brown was perfect as Jeff’s father. Proud, boisterous and overly confident of his ability to process and manage situations. John Pollono wrote a wonderfully expressive screenplay. David Gordon Green caught the magic of the story and brought it to life by guiding his great actors through the feeling vision.

Overall:  Far better film that I’d thought it would be. I love being surprised.

mother!

First Hit:  It was not very interesting, was poorly scripted and had little to offer.

Director Darren Aronofsky probably had something to say by making this film, but I can only come up with snide thoughts like:  The battle between control and chaos is difficult. One needs to ask their partner before inviting people into the house. People like Him (Javier Bardem), need to have their ego stroked. Well-known artists, Him, would sacrifice his family for outside admiration. People will give the artists they admire leeway to act poorly. Life is a never-ending sequence of the same stuff over and over again. I could go on.

One troubling aspect about this film was that Darren had some great actors, but Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) seemed like she was saying lines and occasionally her actions were more engaging. Him seemed to take on the poor struggling artist role rather mediocrely. Together they were a shipwreck ready to happen throughout the entire film.

The story is that Mother has rebuilt a very large house because it burned down in a fire. It was Him’s family home. She’s doing this because she loves Him and the poems that he’s written in the past. However, he’s had writer's block since the fire burned down his family’s home.

One day, Man (Ed Harris), a chain smoking doctor, shows up at their home thinking it is a place where he can rent a room while doing research. Without asking Mother, Him tells Man that he can stay there as long as he wants. Feeling pushed aside, Mother reluctantly goes along with this.

Then the rest of Man’s family shows up. Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) is pushy and is very passive aggressive while Mother waits on her. All the while Him likes their company. Woman tells Mother that she needs to have a baby to really know what life is about.

During an argument, Him and Mother have make-up sex and she gets pregnant. Also, Woman and Man’s boys come to the house and start a big fight and one of the boys gets killed.

With Mother being pregnant and the killing of the boy, Him writes another poem that causes a national stir and now thousands of people come to the house to both grieve the dead boy and the celebration of this new poem. This makes Mother angry as she tries to kick everyone out because they are wrecking the house she built.

Then the film heads into over weird with rituals and demons and other stuff. Why? I cannot tell you why even if I knew. It is beyond my understanding of the point and purpose of this story and film.

Lawrence gives a uneven performance. It was both difficult and easy to understand her love and devotion based on whatever scene she was in. Bardem had an easier role of being egocentric and caring about himself more than the people for which he professed his love. Harris was OK as the initial interloper. Pfeiffer was interesting because her sarcasm and disdain towards Mother was well done. Aronofsky wrote a confusing and unclear script that came off as being overindulgent towards bizarre behavior. If the audience doesn’t get the point, why do a film like this? As director, the point was lost in the script, and therefore the acting wasn’t reflective of a cohesive story leaving the audience lost.

Overall:  This was self-indulgence at its finest and a waste of my time.