Game Night

First Hit: This film was funny from the get go and I laughed out loud all the way through.

I haven’t played games in years, so I didn’t relate to Max and Annie’s (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams respectively) way of life.

Every week they hold game night with their friends Ryan (Billy Magnussen), Kevin (Lamorne Morris), and his wife Michelle (Kylie Bunbury). They meet up at Max and Annie's house to play all sorts of games.

Each week, Ryan would bring a different girl which was part of the joke with the group because they all must look the same and they aren’t very smart.

Annie and Max's neighbor Gary (Jesse Plemons) , who is a policeman with a very hardened personality. He and his wife participated in game nights but since they divorced, Max and Annie don’t invite him and find odd and funny excuses to not invite him to game night.

When Max’s brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) shows up, Brooks invites the group over to his house for game night. However, he has a plan that they are going to solve a kidnapping that is being put on by a company Brooks’ knows.

Unbeknownst to the group, Brooks has been a crook most his life and is wanted by The Bulgarian (Michael C. Hall). The Bulgarian’s men stage a kidnapping just before the fake kidnapping but the game night group doesn’t know the difference.

This mix up causes some very funny scenes and mix-ups which make this film work.

There is enough farce and realism in this film to make it work and I found that the funniest parts and segments had Rachel McAdams in them.

Bateman was excellent as the competitive husband Max. His reverence for the games and love for his wife Annie was well balanced. McAdams was the star of this film in that her quips and way of expressing her determination and fearlessness in an amusing way was perfect. Magnussen was very good as the guy who was mostly clueless to his women preferences. Sharon Horgan as Sarah, Ryan’s girlfriend for the big game night, was perfect. She was smart and showed determination to see the events through. Plemons was perfect as the really strange policeman neighbor who was pining for his wife. Chandler was strong as the jealous brother who over compensated by living large. Morris was great, especially when he was quizzing his wife about the movie star his wife slept with. Bunbury was excellent as Morris’ wife. She showed her strength and love in a very believable way. Hall was perfect as The Bulgarian. He was appropriately ruthless. Mark Perez wrote an excellent funny script. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein did a good job of directing this ensemble cast to elicit a funny film.

Overall:  This film was definitely worth the price of admission.

Fifty Shades of Freed

First Hit:  Although not a good film, it was a good way to conclude the series.

I, for the most part, painfully waded through this series of films telling the story of sex, control and asking questions to discover what love is.

In this final of the trilogy, Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) accepts Christian Grey’s (Jamie Dornan) proposal for marriage. Marrying shortly thereafter they settle into a life together and when there is a discussion about children, Christian balks and states that he’s not willing to discuss it now.

Although they bring up Grey’s past upbringing and his being adopted, if you didn’t see the prior films, you won’t really understand the impact of this and why he’s not willing to discuss children.

As an audience member, this plot device is obvious that this is what is going to separate the couple and then bring them back together. There are no surprises in this film or story.

They add elements from previous films including Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) who was Anastasia’s boss until he tried to make an unwanted move on her. We’re led to believe that he really wants Anastasia but the film attempts to make it deeper by showing us that he and Grey were in the same foster home and he’s jealous of who Grey got adopted by.

The sex and bondage sex scenes were not erotic. This might be because, as I noticed in all three films and it is more pronounced here, there is virtually no chemistry between Dakota and Jamie. I was also put off by the obvious product placements, especially Audi.

Johnson is OK as Anastasia. Dornan is a poor actor. I simply cannot buy his character as someone real and there’s little in this film to tell me anything different. Eric Johnson is one of the better parts of the film as he’s sufficiently a bad man. Niall Leonard wrote an OK final film screenplay to this series. James Foley directed this final film with some great scenery and a fun car chase.

Overall: This is a weak storyline but it doesn’t make a mockery of the film series and lets it conclude with some integrity.

Black Panther

First Hit:  The inspiration was lost in the excessive fighting.

I’ve stated before and I’ll say it again. I’m not the target audience for Marvel type films. I find them excessively violent, do not base enough of the film on believable, or an attempt to make believable, characters, and don’t have interesting stories behind them. This film was no exception. It may be the last time I see a Marvel film.

That there is an entire country in Africa having such a superior technology and basis for living and not taking advantage of it to lead the world out of its stupidity, just didn’t work. Yes, the screenwriters gave a reason for this and I didn’t think it was intellectually based.

The best part of the film was how the story elevated women as the leaders in scientific and protective warrior prowess. The second-best part of the film were the effects. In many sections the special effects were first rate.

The essence of the story, from what I could figure out, is that because of mistrust, the previous king T’Chaka (John Kani) goes to Oakland, CA to find out how Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) had infiltrated his country Wakanda and stole Vibranium, the secret component that allows Wakanda to be technology light years ahead of everyone else in the world. The thieves were planning to use the secret powers of Vibranium in the world at large.

Exposing this plot, King T’Chaka, kills his brother, and leaves his brother’s son Erik Killmonger (as an adult Michael B. Jordan) in Oakland. The king dies and his other son T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) becomes King and the Black Panther after drinking the essence of flowers grown in Vibranium.

Because of a heist of vibranium from a museum, the Black Panther and his intellectual lieutenant Shuri (Letitia Wright) and special forces chief Okoye (Danai Gurira) go out into the world with their super powers and attempt to recapture the stolen Vibranium.

Being throwarted Killmonger in his plan finds a way to Wankanda to get ahold of all the Vibranium. He challenges T’Challa for the throne of Wankanda and succeeds. With his new-found conquest, he decides, with vindictiveness, to rule the world with Wankanda’s technology.

However, as we all know, T’Challa wasn’t killed and comes back to save Wankanda from Killmonger's change in plans for Wankanda.

The fighting sequences were overdone, the use of rhinoceroses as battle weapons was sad and a bit overdone, and the line that seemed odd to me was when and Killmonger proceeded to say that he was fighting for his ancestors that were sent to the new world as slaves. What was peculiar about this was, that his ancestors came from Wankanda, a privileged society, long before slavery was began in Africa.

Boseman was good as the King and Black Panther, but there wasn’t anything outstanding about his performance. Strongest performance of this film goes to Letitia Wright. Her powerful character as intellectual leader was fantastic. Gurira was also excellent in her role as leader of the special forces. She embodied this role. Jordan was very good as the protagonist. His dynamic personality came through in this role. Lupita Nyong’o as T’Challa’s former lover Nakia, war dog, and undercover spy was very strong. Forest Whitaker as Zuri as the wise elder statesman and keeper of the secret Vibranium herb, was OK. He seemed to press his lines to make them important. Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole wrote this script that focused more on fighting and special effects than substance of a story, but that is what Marvel wanted and paid for. Coogler directed this film.

Overall:  I’ve got to stop going to Marvel films because I get bored quickly and find them to lack substance beyond the displaying ways to present action.

The 15:17 to Paris

First Hit:  Absolutely dull and uninspiring until the very end.

This film intersperses quick flashes of the dramatic event of these three men thwarting a terrorist attack on a train to keep you in your seat. If they didn’t most people would walk out of this uninspired effort by Clint Eastwood.

My first turn-off was when a grade school teacher for two of the featured young men stated to the mothers, "your children have ADD and they need drugs." The retort as Spencer and Alek's mothers storm out of the meeting was “my God is bigger than your statistics.” Are you kidding me? This is how Eastwood ends a dramatic scene?

One of Eastwood’s biggest mistakes is having the actual hero’s play themselves in this film. They had actors portraying them as young boys (ages 11 – 14), but as adults the stilted acting, insipid dialogue, and poorly created scenes made this film drag on and on and on.

We experience Alek Skarlatos (played by himself and Bryce Gheisar), Anthony Sadler (himself and Paul-Mikel Williams), and Spencer Stone (himself and William Jennings) when they met at a grade school, how their initial friendship developed in Sacramento, and vaguely how it lasted through the years till we see them together again traveling through Europe.

The early years are OK in that there are scenes that give the audience cause to believe these boys supported each other because they were all misfits in some way. I was saddened to see how their playing together was focused on gun play, with realistic paint (and one real) guns that looked like an AK and a M-16.

There is a bent in this film about God and Christian religion although we don’t see them in church. The extent of their faith seems to be praying for something to happen or for things to be different.

Finally, they go to Europe but there is only some background on Spencer because we follow him failing through several military job trainings. However, these failings were a precursor to him actually learning stuff along the way; then using this knowledge to make a difference later on. There was virtually no history about Anthony as to what he was doing prior to going to Europe with Spencer. And there wasn’t much about Alek who was fighting in Iraq and mistakenly left his back-pack at a village. What was this about?

Arriving in Europe Spencer and Anthony, awkwardly travel from place to place. At one point they meet a young asian woman, they go a couple places together but a couple scenes later she's gone. What was this about? They finally get to Germany and meet up with Alek who was staying with a German exchange student.

Getting on the 15:17 train to Paris, they disarm a terrorist and save the life of a man shot by the terrorist. Then they get honored by the French government and all is right with their lives. This is the crux of the film.

Because Eastwood used the real men to portray an actual event, their lack of acting abilities and the way Eastwood works was a mistake. The men cannot project into the camera thereby making it feel real to the audience. Adding to this mistake was Eastwood’s penchant to only do one or two takes, and with real actors they can deliver something good, non-actors generally cannot. The film comes off as amateurish.

The storyline was haphazard, felt thrown together, and despite being Christian based, had little meat on the bones.

The best acting job in this film was Paul-Mikel Williams as young Anthony. Judy Greer as Spencer’s mom Joyce was OK. The acting by the real men was obviously poor which took away from their own heroic story. Kudos for their actions against the terrorist but I’m not sure this story was film material as it was presented. Dorothy Blyskal wrote a horrible screenplay and Director Eastwood failed in all cases to deliver something interesting until the very end when the terrorist tried to take over the train car.

Overall:  This film will more than likely be the worst film I see this year, if not it will be close and it’s only February.

Winchester

First Hit:  This film needed to be taken out back and shot with a Winchester rifle.

I’ve been to the Winchester mansion in San Jose. It is a very interesting structure and although currently it is large, 4 stories in some sections, it was once much larger at seven stories high in places. But after the 1906 earthquake, also a plot device in the film, it got reduced in size.

The basic story about the house is that Sarah built this house to capture and confuse the ghosts resulting from people who died by her husband’s rifles. She was told by a medium, that she needed to amend for her husbands invention of the repeating rifle. This film takes the bent that because she owned a huge portion of her deceased husband's company, Winchester Repeating Arms Company, the board of directors thought she was crazy to be building this house, and wanted a negative evaluation of Sarah Winchester’s (Helen Mirren) mental capabilities to take back control of the company.

The directors hire Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) who’s imbibing Laudanum to ease the pain of losing his wife who killed herself with a Winchester Rifle after wounding him with the same rifle, to analyze Sarah and report back to the board.

They pressure him to determine that Sarah is crazy. He arrives at Winchester’s house and has dealings with staff, niece Marion Marriot (Sarah Snook), her son, and ghosts. Because Sarah is driven to house and appease all the ghosts, building rooms onto the house goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. People are always working on the house.

The film tries to make a compelling ghost and horror story about Sarah, Marion’s son, and Eric and how, together, they fight to kill one rambunctious ghost, Ben Block (Eamon Farren).

I cannot tell you anything I liked about this film. It was shot way to darkly (in color) and they showed very little of the peculiarities of the house itself. Winchester House is interesting and fascinating and this film does nothing with this, they just made a poorly constructed and contrived ghost story.

Mirren was OK in a role and script that didn’t become her abilities. Clarke was poor. His choices, as directed in the film’s script, were poorly done and not well thought out. The story of his demise felt contrived. Snook tired to be sincere but it was the role and script that failed her. Peter and Michael Spierig wrote and directed this mess. I’m not sure how they got funding for this, and my guess is that they will be hard pressed to get funding for a future project.

Overall:  This film is a waste of any money used to go see it, let alone make it.