The Foreigner

First Hit: Entertaining and nice to see Jackie Chan back in action.

This film is in the same bucket as Liam Neeson’s Taken series of films. Here, Quan Ngoc Minh (Chan), runs a restaurant which supports him, his daughter Fan (Katie Leung), and Lam (Tao Liu) who runs the day-to-day of the restaurant.

Quan takes his daughter to select and buy her homecoming dress and while she’s in the store the “Authentic IRA” bombs a department store that kills Fan. Quan, a former special forces operator from Vietnam, is heartbroken and distraught because Fan was his last living relative. After grieving for a short period of time, we know he’s going to make someone pay.

We get a back story of his losing his wife and other daughter when they fled Vietnam and now all he has are a couple pictures and a lot of sadness.

The good part is that at 60+ years old Chan can still fight and he makes it all look good and appropriate for his age and skill set.

His protagonist is the Irish Deputy Minister Liam Hennessy (Pierce Bronson) who led the IRA for years and now curries favor from the British Government for keeping the peace between the IRA operatives and Britain. Holding this peaceful co-existence together means he has compromised his Irish independence values and, per some of his peers, he’s gone soft towards the British Government.

Quan presses Hennessy for the names of the bombers and adds that he will not stop his quest until he has their names. He plans to revenge his daughter’s loss and exercise his demons for the all the losses he’s had.

Hennessy is also trying to find out who bombed the store and then it gets worse when they bomb a bus loaded with people. The peace in Ireland and his cushy job are in jeopardy.

The film becomes a cat and mouse game and Quan holds his own while following through on his objective. Hennessy also follows through on his goal to clean everything up and his ruthlessness comes through. In one of the last scenes in the film he directs his nephew to tie up one last loose end.

Chan is strong in this role and uses his impressive skills appropriately. What didn’t quite work was the use of the same sad face as his primary go-to for dramatic effect. It was a look that was suppose to express his deep sadness for his losses in life and that he was about to explode like a volcano. Bronson was very good in this role. He created a right level of being settled into a bureaucratic job, but still having the fire of being an IRA patriot. Niall McNamee as Hennessy’s nephew Patrick O’Reilly, was excellent. Appropriately responsive to his powerful uncle’s requests. Liu was wonderful as Chan’s restaurant assistant and friend. Her honorable sweetness stood out. Dermot Crowley as former IRA leader Hugh McGrath was very good. I loved how his anger towards the state of the IRA peace pact with Britain was expressed. David Marconi did a great job of writing a script that worked for all the characters. Martin Campbell directed this film with a good eye towards using the skills and strengths of his actors in this story.

Overall: It was an entertaining film.

The Mountain Between Us

First Hit: Although a predictable story, it was touchingly well acted.

The story is relatively simple. Two strangers with very specific needs hire a private plane to fly them from Boise, ID to Denver, CO because their Denver flight has been cancelled, and there are no other flights that will get them to their destinations on time. Ben Bass (Idris Elba) is a surgeon and is expected in Baltimore the next day to perform surgery on a 10-year old boy. Alex Martin (Kate Winslet) is a news photographer who needs to head east because she’s getting married the next day. They are both motivated.

Hiring Walter (Beau Bridges) a veteran pilot, they get in his small plane, and without a flight plan, head out over Rocky Mountains towards Denver. Walter has a heart attack and during his struggle the plane crashes. Walter dies, Alex breaks a leg but is alive and Ben has some cracked ribs and bumps and bruises. Walter’s dog, who came along for the ride, also survives the crash.

They hang out in the partial fuselage that remains hoping to be seen in the mountain snow, but as commercial planes fly thousands of feet above them, they have an argument about what to do. Alex is a chance taker and wants to climb out of the mountains, while Ben is conservative in thought and action and he wants to stay at the plane. Neither of them believe they are going to make it out alive.

One morning, she heads out hobbling along through the deep snow with a temporary splint on her left leg. The dog goes with her. Ben stays back at the plane but decides to catch up with Alex and, reconciling their different views, decide to make an attempt to get out together.

Because they are so different, this story is excellent to have the characters learn about each other in their own ways. Ben is quiet and doesn’t want to talk about his personal life while Alex shares about herself and spends energy coxing more feelings out of Ben.

The excellent script, photography and acting allowed the audience to feel how cold they were, the pain of their injuries, the sadness of almost dying, and their developing relationship. We feel their focus on staying alive and getting down the mountain. We participate in what they go through together and their hopelessness.

Winslet is very good as the adventuring photographer who takes risks. We could sense her adventurous spirit. Elba was excellent as the conservative acting surgeon. His slow unfolding and sharing of his life in the film was wonderful. Bridges was wonderful in his short lived role. J. Mills Goodloe and Chris Weitz co-wrote an excellent screenplay which captured a slow developing caring of the characters. Hany Abu-Assad directed these two gifted actors with clear intention. They were strangers when they started and were both from very different worlds, and Hany elicited a slow revealing of these actors to the audience and to each other.

Overall: Although it had a predictable ending, the meat of story of how they worked together to get themselves down the mountain was worth watching.

Marshall

First Hit:  One of many inspirational stories about this amazing man and his power to change racism in our country.

One of the best things about this film was that Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) was not allowed to speak in court for the accused he was defending. Marshall was sent by the NAACP around the country to defend blacks (colored people) in courts of law. In some cases, because he didn’t have a license to be a defending attorney in some states, he needed a sponsoring attorney.

It’s December 1940 and Sam Friedman (Josh Gad), a soft-spoken insurance lawyer, just finished a case. His office manager, his brother Irwin (John Magaro), surprises Sam that they need publicity and extra money, so he sponsors Thurgood who is going to defend a black man against a white woman’s rape charge. Their first meeting doesn’t go very well as Sam doesn’t like the idea of being involved in a criminal case, let alone one that is defending a black man. Sam’s worried about public opinion and what it will do to his business.

After meeting with the defendant Joseph Spell (Sterling K. Brown), Thurgood and Sam believe him to be telling the truth that he did not rape Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson). Entering court, Sam tries to tell the judge that Marshall will be trying the case and presents the sponsoring paperwork. Judge Foster (James Cromwell) obviously has a thing against the NAACP and refuses to honor Marshall being allowed to try the case. In fact, he states that Marshall can sit at the defendant’s table but cannot utter a word and if he does, Marshall and Sam will be charged with contempt.

The film does a wonderful job of showing how Marshall was able to influence, engage, and mentor Sam into being a great criminal lawyer.

This film is about the power and influence of Thurgood on people to do the right thing and how he was able bring out the power of belief in others.

I thought the film did an excellent job of showing the 1940's and how the fight against racism was slowly evolving and that Marshall was one of leaders and influencers.

Boseman was excellent as Marshall. How he demonstrated and showed the swagger and the inner belief needed to lead racial change in our country was wonderfully convincing. Gad was amazing. I loved his evolving understanding of how to be a good lawyer on the side of right, which was congruent with his inner belief structure. Brown was very strong as the defendant, he showed a perfect level of fear. Hudson was wonderful as the husband abused woman looking for a little love in her world. Cromwell was the perfect judge. His gruff nature was excellent. Jacob and Michael Koskoff wrote a powerful script. Reginald Hudlin did a great job of creating a feel and mood of the times while making the audience see the ways change in America came to us, one case at a time.

Overall:  It was a pleasure to watch this film as it provided a small glimpse of history.

Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story

First Hit: Outstanding film of an enigmatic man who played the best mouth harp ever.

I recall seeing Paul Butterfield in 1969 at Fillmore West prior to my heading into the service. What an experience. It was like a cheetah making its final pounce into the meat that will keep him alive.

“Butter”, as the interviewed Elvin Bishop called him, attacked and coerced sounds and music out of the 6-inch instrument that sounded as if it came from another world. This film excellently captured the man and his path of becoming the best harp player ever.

The film tracks through his life as a musician. This wasn’t surprising, however, what was surprising was that by the film’s end, I realized I learned very little about the man himself. What drove him to be the best harp player ever.

Yes, the film briefly touches on his abrupt and short first marriage to Virginia McEwan and that they had a child named Gabriel. She offered to marry him to keep him from being drafted because the Vietnam war was ramping up.

We also meet the love of his life Kathy, with whom he had a son named Lee. Even though this film dedicates numerous minutes to interviews with Kathy, Lee, and his brother Peter what I learned is that he loved his wife and child, they loved him and he and his brother were once close, not much more. Paul was an enigma a stranger to those around him except when he blew.

His playing was concise, strong, clear, and very intense. It was if he was the sound he made, no more and certainly no less.

I loved how they tracked through his beginnings as the only white guy in a black blues club in the South Side of Chicago, getting asked to sit in by Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. When he blew, everyone knew he was powerfully pure. He blew and sang from his entire body and soul. It wasn’t long before he became the featured performer in these small Hyde Park blues clubs.

Creating a band of his own, two of Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm players bassist Jerome Arnold and drummer Sam Lay, joined him along with guitarist Nick Gravenits, and eventually guitarists Elvin Bishop, Michael Bloomfield, and keyboard player Mark Naftalin. The lineup of the band fluctuated as people came and left. One this is for sure, his sound brought the blues into the mainstream ears of young people everywhere.

A couple things to note, he was probably the first rock and roll blues band to be integrated and he told drummer, when they started touring, if they don’t accept you, we won’t be playing. He never understood racism or segregation.

This film uses a ton of archival footage of “Butter” playing his heart out. One thing I noticed as he played, that he played the harmonica backwards from the standard way. High notes were on his left and low notes on his right. He was left handed. The music choices in this film are excellent as they show off his versatility.

The interviews were well done and intermixed really well with the archival footage. I was so surprised and happy to see shots of the “Golden Bear” nightclub, where I grew up, in Huntington beach as this club was closed and destroyed in 1986 but Paul’s band played there.

Sandra Warren produced and John Anderson co-produced and directed this film. It was outstanding and the audience can see the care and love they put into this effort.

Overall: A wonderful experience in learning about an amazing musician.

Spoor (Pokot – original title)

First Hit: Somewhat confusing, as this film tries to make too many sociological points and wants to be a mystery as well.

What I didn't walk away with was knowing if this film was about honoring and living with nature, gun control, the state of a fading Polish democracy, or women’s rights and a willingness to change all these.

Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat-Grabka) is a women who lives alone in the Klodzko Valley in Poland. She had two dogs, is an astrologer, vegetarian and teaches part time at an elementary school. She is loved by her students as she teaches them about nature and joy.

Early on, she comes home to find her dogs missing. She searches far and wide, puts up posters everywhere, asks friends and the police department, and even her students help her, but to no avail.

There are lots of hunting scenes in the film and to make this point a calendar is shown at key segments listing what can be lawfully hunted in that particular month. There are scenes that saddened me greatly as they show animals being killed by hunters. There is also a local man who captures and cages foxes only to skin them for money. We see these foxes in their cages.

Often when Janina hears the gunfire of the hunters, she either races to where the hunters are located and yells at them to stop, or she goes to the police and asks them to do their job as hunters are killing animals that are not on the monthly list.

The police think she’s just a crazy old lady who is an advocate for gun control and strict hunting regulations.

There are lots of scenes where you notice how men treat women poorly and as second class citizens.

One day one of her neighbors comes to her house and says another neighbor, whom she calls Big Foot, is dead. Together they go to this man's house. She’s not very sad that he’s died but neither is her neighbor. She hated Big Foot because he used illegal traps to snare animals. Waiting for the police to come she finds a picture in his home that she keeps.

Shortly after the death of Big Foot, other hunters start dying. She and others find these bodies and the only tracks around the bodies are deer hoof prints. At one point, she rants to the police that the animals are attacking the hunters for revenge. But when the church burns down the mystery of who is killing the hunters opens the question even wider.

Anyway, there are lots of points being made in this film. The darkness of the subject matters are enhanced because of the clouded sky, the location, and because many of the scenes are shot with little lighting. It is not a bright film. Conversely, there are some funny moments in this dark film and many of them have to do with Duszejko’s interest in astrology and the young man who helps her.

Mandat-Grabka was strong as this in-touch with nature and idealized woman who has strong beliefs. Wiktor Zbrowski as her neighbor Matoga is great. Jakub Gierszal as the young man, who works for the police office, is very capable with computers, and has befriended by Duszejko, is wonderful. His enthusiasm and simplicity of living is great. He's a bright spot in this film. Patrycja Volny is fantastic as the beautiful shop keeper who is being kept by the man who cages the foxes. Her movement towards breaking herself free is wonderful. Miroslav Krobot as the entomologist who teaches Duszejko about how beetles and bugs work together to clean up dead flesh was great. His singing of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ was perfect. Olga Tokarczuk and Agnieszka Holland wrote a slightly over complicated screenplay that felt like it carried too many themes. Holland and Kasia Adamik co-directed this film. I cannot tell you if they purposefully created all these themes or if I projected them, however it complicated my viewing and understanding the film. There were too many physically dark scenes, and this didn’t help the overall film. I thought some of them could have used more lighting, thereby helping engagement to the story.

Overall:  This film couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to make a point of if it was a mystery.