Gringo

First Hit: This was a quirky film that I liked more than I thought I would with a few over the top scenes.

I didn’t know what to expect from this film and that was a good thing.

The premise is that Richard Rusk (Joel Edgerton) and Elaine Markinson (Charlize Theron) run a pharmaceutical company that is struggling to survive. Working for them is Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo) who is a close friend of Richard.

Harold oversees their drug producing operations in Mexico. Unbeknownst to Harold, Elaine and Richard have made a deal to sell the company and a new formula to someone else. However, another group knows about this new formula that will make someone a lot of money. This formula is in a safe in the Mexican operational building.

Additionally, Harold is out of the loop about his wife, who has asked him for a divorce. He doesn’t know that his wife is having an affair with Richard.

Despondent over his impending divorce, and discovering his bosses do not support him, he quits his job and plans to disappear in Mexico.

Throughout all this, the deal with the purchasing pharmaceutical company is falling apart, the formula has been stolen and warring factions are brought into play. Then Richard hires his mercenary brother Mitch (Sharlto Copley), to find Harold, kill him if needed, and help resolve the theft.

All of this sets up situations that are both suspenseful and over the top funny. Some of the funniest scenes are with Elaine as she uses her sexuality to lure people to decide things her way.

Edgerton was good as the sex charged company man. Theron was over the top funny and bawdy in her portrayal of Markinson who wanted to get ahead using any means possible. Oyelowo was very funny as the trusting husband and employee believing that if he worked hard and obeyed all the laws, he’d be successful. The ending helps this ongoing riff. Copley was great and over the top and a skilled mercenary. Anthony Tambakis and Matthew Stone wrote this quirky screenplay that I enjoyed. Nash Edgerton did a fine job of getting the actors to engage in this film.

Overall: This film had enough laughs and engaging scenes to make it worth its’ while.

The Leisure Seeker

First Hit: This film is, at times, funny, sad, and depressing, and well acted.

Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren are two very strong actors and I’d be hard pressed to find two other actors capable of pulling these characters off as well as they do.

Donald plays John Spencer a former literary professor who loves the writing of Ernest Hemingway. He’s losing his memory but can remember long passages of Hemingway’s writings. He often forgets much of his past life including the names of his grown children. But his wife Ella (Mirren) remembers almost everything, likes to talk to strangers freely but has cancer and it’s taking over her body.

The film opens with son Will (Christian McKay) coming by John and Ella’s house with a cake for John’s birthday. He finds no one home. He calls his sister Jane (Janel Moloney) who is on her way over for the party asking her if she knows where their parents are.

Not discovering anything, they look in a covered storage area next to the house only to find their Winnebago Indian, they call the Leisure Seeker, gone. This thing is old and hasn’t been driven for years.

The audience catches up the John and Ella as they tool down the highway, Ella navigating and John behind the wheel.

Many of the scenes and dialogue while they are in the Leisure Seeker and during their stops, allows the audience to learn about their histories, current foibles, and mostly how they really adore each other.

There are some very funny scenes, like when they visit Ella’s first boyfriend. The ending is apropos in that, they do not want to be a burden to each other or their children.

Sutherland did an excellent job of being lucid in sparse moments. The color of his life were added in these moments showed why he was a good man. Mirren was excellent at putting up with having to be John’s memory as well as keeping herself together. The character liked to talk and would talk with anyone, and she did this extremely well. Her flowing segues were perfect. Moloney was wonderful as the daughter. When John shares his pride of her, her reaction was perfect. McKay was good as the son who was more lost in life and used his parent’s challenges for his martyrdom. Stephen Amidon wrote a smart script as it had a wide range of emotions. Paolo Virzi did a great job of putting enough of these wide-ranging emotions to us.

Overall: Although most critics didn’t give this film much regard, my own experience tells me the writers had some real life experience to draw upon.

7 Days in Entebbe

First Hit: The film creates intrigue and an artsy buildup but the ending falls flat and was unsatisfying.

Being old enough to remember the actual incident as it unfolded, at 26 I didn’t have enough world-wide or middle-east education to understand it.

However, today, I better understand the Palestinian Israeli struggle. In seeing this film, I was hoping for a better understanding of the events that took place forty-two years ago. Here, Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) and Wilfried Bose (Daniel Bruhl) are two idealistic Germans who assist two Hamas Palestinian freedom fighters (aka: "terrorists"), in hijacking an Air France plane filled with passengers of all nationalities, 83 of them Jewish.

The hijacked plane, with permission from Idi Amin Dada (Nonso Anozie) the President of Uganda, lands at the old airstrip en Entebbe Uganda. Ushering the passengers off the plane and into the old dirty dilapidated terminal, the hijackers begin to negotiate with the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi). The ransom for the return of the plane and all the passengers and crew was $5M and the release of 53 Palestinian and pro-Palestinian militants 40 of whom were in Israel’s custody.

Rabin's Defense Secretary, Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan), was a  hardliner holding the line that Israel does not negotiate for prisoners or ransoms. This is despite Rabin stating at some point in time we have to negotiate with the Palestinians and others, else they will never really flourish.

Because this is history we know what happens, Peres team successfully develops a rescue raid which eventually plays out.

The issue with this film is that they use a wonderful dance company to illustrate tension and well as back and forth scenes from the original planning of the hijacking and current scenes of the captured plane and hostage imprisonment. This part is excellent at building interest and tension, but when the big payoff comes, the details of the raid and rescue of the hostages from Entebbe, the film falters and shows little of this event and shows more of the dance company executing the dance we see them practice throughout the film.

I also thought the personal link between one of the dancers and one of the raiding Israeli soldiers was poorly developed and not defined.

Bruhl was good and interesting as the bookseller who wanted to  make a difference in the world, especially for the Palestinians. The film did share the issue of him being German taking Israeli hostages and that the world might bring up the Nazi holocaust. Pike was very strong as an obsessed woman who was fighting this cause and her own personal demons. Her intense wild-eyed stares after being up for seven days straight was excellent. Marsan was peculiarly strong. His half lidded facial expressions and being a supreme hawk, he had this “I told you so” way of getting his agenda completed. Anozie was excellent as Idi Amin. He physically imposed his Amin remarks just like I remember Amin, slightly off center and childlike. Ashkenazi was strong as Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin. His distaste for Peres’s hawk and kill only attitude was well acted. Gregory Burke wrote an engaging screenplay; however the ending was too creative for me, I wanted to see more of the actual rescue. Jose Padilha directed this with a nice touch except for the ending.

Overall: Although this was a good film, I kept wondering how close was this story to the real story.

Thoroughbreds

First Hit: The oddity of the characters and the quirky story and acting worked for me.

Two wealthy girls living in a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood, have lost touch since grade school when they use to also ride horses together.

Amanda (Olivia Cooke) was a loner, especially after she killed her ill horse with a knife. She was seen by people as a sociopath. As we are introduced to her she is dropped off at Lily’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) mansion and while the maid is finding Lily, she’s exploring the rooms.

Amanda is there to get tutoring from Lily, and quickly figures out that Lily is being paid to be her friend by Amanda's mom.  They start talking why they're ostracized in school.

Amanda begins to tell her tale and it begins with that she has no feelings and cannot ever recall having them. This makes for a weird sort of story because I spent time trying to see Amanda have feelings.

Lily’s father died some years earlier and now her mom, Karen (Kaili Vernoff) is married to a man named Mark (Paul Sparks) who is a real jerk.

Lily wants Mark dead, Amanda killed her horse, they are troubled girls who are planning something together. They bring in Tim (Anton Yelchin) who is a small-time drug dealer who thinks he’s going to be the premier drug dealer on the east coast, but we all know this isn’t going to happen.

Hatching a plot to kill Mark, this whole thing goes haywire and we watch as Lily becomes the new cold girl in town.

The scenes of the girls talking, or attempting to cry on cue were fun, but for me the odd sparse musical accompaniments to certain scenes added to the overall quirkiness of this film.

Cooke was oddly engaging and grabbed the screen with her role. Taylor-Joy was very effective as someone who wanted to stretch her boundaries and find a new way of living. Vernoff and Sparks were strong as Lily’s mom and step dad. His attempts to be perfect were well represented. Yelchin was great as the wanna be drug dealer. Cory Finley wrote and directed this oddly interesting story.

Overall:  I liked this more than I thought I would.

A Wrinkle in Time

First Hit:  I love the concepts in the film but the execution was generally very poor.

I wanted to like this film more than I did.  Almost from the beginning, there was something not quite right about this film. When Mr. Murry (Chris Pine) is teaching his daughter Meg (Storm Reid) about how vibrations can affect sand on a flat plate, there was a clunky sense to their interaction.

There was little sense or buildup as to why her peers were giving her a hard time. We slowly find out that she misses her dad, who disappeared some 4 years earlier. He just disappeared and the kids made fun of her because of this? Didn’t make sense and didn’t stick with me, given Meg’s attitude and personality on the screen.

Her adopted brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) is a genius and pushes the envelope at their mutual school. He calls people out on their stupidity and Meg has to break up the fight.

Regardless, Charles Wallace believes that their father slipped through a wrinkle in time and traveled to another galaxy (I interpreted this as a different dimension). He finally convinces Meg that something like this happened and introduces her to Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) who is a quirky and a renegade spiritual human presence and form of light.

Meg and Charles Wallace are join by a classmate Calvin (Levi Miller), who says he got “a call” to join them. He struggles at home because his father beats him even though he’s a great student. This part of the film is poorly done and doesn’t work well.

The three kids meet up in Meg’s backyard and Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) take them through a wrinkle in time and end up on a new planet (new dimension).

The place is made of light as are the three Mrs. However, when they fly on Mrs. Whatsit’s back and encounter The It (the dark forces), the light bearers say that the kids might not find Mr. Murry.

The concepts of light and dark are great to express in written form and in film, but here the direction and substance of this story fails to make this journey compelling.

Pine was good as the scientist first guy, setting aside his family for the sake of science. Gugu Mbatha-Raw was good as Mrs. Murry, there was a sweet genuineness to her. Reid was very strong as Meg. Her passion and intelligence came through. McCabe was excellent as young Charles Wallace. He did a great job of being a smart kid and one that was taken over by the dark side (The It). Witherspoon was funny as Mrs. Whatsit. She brought humor but her character was also inconsistent. How can you be new as a light being and run out of energy so quickly. Kaling was OK as a seer, but I just didn’t buy the role. Winfrey was Winfrey. The extra-large size physical presence might have been more about inflating that it was Oprah than the role. It made little sense and adding the stiff gown she was fit into made her performance stiff. Miller was OK, but I struggled as to why he was part of the journey, the case wasn’t well made. Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell wrote a mediocre script when it could have been great. Ava DuVernay’s direction was poor. But some of this is based on the poorly created script. However, I think she could have made better choices about the story’s direction and how it was constructed.

Overall:  This film falls flat when it comes to telling a strong story, but it does have a strong point to make if the audience sees through the uneven film.