Chappaquiddick

First Hit: We all knew how despicable Ted Kennedy’s actions were, this film just puts pictures to it.

When the headlines came out that “Teddy” (Jason Clarke) had driven off a bridge with Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) in the car and he survived while she drowned, the nation was shocked. As the story came out that Ted did not report this accident well into the next day, Ted became despicable and his and the Kennedy family's credibility sank to a new low.

This film shows the privileged way that Ted acted based on his being a Kennedy. Ted’s father Joseph (Bruce Dern) ran the Kennedy family with a iron crooked fist. His team of people who were on-call to protect the Kennedy name only exaggerated the privileged arrogant family ways.

Recalling the original news in the newspaper and seeing film footage of Teddy wearing a neck brace to gain sympathy was horrible then and even worse in this film. His manipulation of his Chief of Staff Joseph Gargan (Ed Helms) was painful to watch.

From a film point of view, using true accounts and the documents from the inquest, what is presented appears to be a fair reenactment of this tragic event.

Much is said about the horrific events of his older brother’s untimely deaths, two through assassination, and how Joe Kennedy expected the remaining son to carry on the family legacy. All Teddy wanted was his father’s love and respect for who he was.

Does Teddy make up for his lack of integrity around this and other events? That’s a judgment call and even though he was called “The Lion of the Senate,” this film does little to shed light on his career. It is a film about his doing nothing for Mary Jo as she slowly suffocated and drowned in an upside-down car.

Clarke was OK as Teddy. I didn’t think he showed enough of the “lion” within him but maybe the “lion” came later in life. He did a great job of being arrogant and childlike in his decision making. Mara was very good. Unfortunately, she’s not in the film a long time, but her Mary Jo stays with you during the remaining part of the film. Dern was excellent as a handicapped and old Joe Kennedy. His looks of disdain towards Teddy were perfect. Helms was excellent as Teddy’s right hand man who finally couldn’t take being Ted’s slave and foil and therefore left. Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan wrote a good script that seemed to capture the time and the feeling of crime. John Curran directed this film.

Overall: This film only validated my feelings about Teddy as a guy spending his life trying to make amends for being an unthoughtful arrogant man from an influential family.

Blockers

First Hit: There are some very funny scenes although at times they felt too staged.

Anyone that has been a parent to a teenager and any teenager, can and will appreciate, laugh, and smile at many of the setups and scenes in this film.

Lisa (Leslie Mann), Mitchell (John Cena), and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) have daughters who meet up in grade school.  They are going to be lifelong friends.

Julie (Kathryn Newton) is Lisa’s daughter and doesn’t have a father. She and Lisa are very close and it is obvious that when Julie leaves for college, Lisa will be alone. Oddly we have no idea how Lisa financially survives so well. The only hint is that Julie is the product of a famous rocker.

Mitchell’s daughter is Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan). Her mother Marcie (Sarayu Blue) is a strong feminist who runs the show in their house. However, Mitchell has a close relationship with his daughter and guided her to become physically strong and confident, like him. Sam (Gideon Adlon) is Hunter’s daughter. Her parents are divorced and Hunter has been less active in Sam’s life recently.

Together the three girls decide to lose their virginity on Prom night as a way to do something momentous together prior to leaving high school and going off to college. The parents learn about this plan and decide to stop the girls from making, what they think, will be the biggest mistake of their lives.

The film takes you on this journey of them trying to find their daughters, how they confront their daughter’s choice in men, and what they ultimately learn. Conversely the movie also shows how the daughters find what makes them strong fine human beings and their honesty with each other.

The upside is that there are numerous out-loud funny scenes and situations. The downside is that there are moments that seem overly set up. It is almost like they looked at the script and said, the next scene we’ll do this, then they did the scene. It felt blockish at times.

Mann is always interesting because she can be very funny in a very straight sort of way. She’s quirky, goofy, and funny. Cena was funny and his physical size and presence was put to good use in this film. That he wore his phone in a hip holster added to his goofiness. Barinholtz was good and his final scene with his daughter was wonderful. Newton was excellent as Mann’s daughter. Viswanathan was wonderful as a young girl ready to try anything while mindfully figuring out what is appropriate for her. Adlon was perfect as the young girl finally acknowledging her sexuality to herself, friends, and father. Ramona Young was very good as the young girl who entices Sam to come into her own. Blue is wonderful as the strong mother. Miles Robbins (as Connor, Kayla’s boy choice) was excellent. Graham Phillips (as Austin, Julie’s boy choice) was very good. Jimmy Bellinger (as Chad, Sam’s original choice) was hilarious. Brian Kehoe and Jim Kehoe wrote a good script, it just felt too set up at times. Kay Cannon directed. Her strength was making funny scenes funny but some scenes were too pre-setup.

Overall:  If you want to laugh at some silliness, this movie will provide the laughs.

Ready Player One

First Hit: Entertaining visual story into a possible future filled with a decayed reality and virtual fantasy.

Steven Spielberg knows how to create complete stories on the screen. I never leave a Spielberg film with questions, and this film does the same. He always provides a full story. This is one of his strengths and much of the time it is the small details that ties the knot on the bow. Spielberg also knows how to relate with young actors to get the best out of them. However, his obvious strength is the visual rendering of the story in an impressive pictorial way, and he does it again in this film.

This story takes place in 2044 and the world and its resources are falling apart. This is rendered impressively by the vertical stacking of mobile homes in a way that shows both ingenuity of the owners and slum like conditions in which they exist. Most people have given up hope and the few scenes displaying this poverty is enough. To escape their lives, people put on virtual reality (VR) headsets. In their VR world, their lives are given a new level of purpose and dreams. Through their avatars, they can be what they want to be and participate in the games and different worlds as they wish.

Halliday aka Anorak (Mark Rylance) is the creator and maker of the most popular game, Oasis. He’s a bookish man, who does not relate well with people although his business partner Ogden Morrow, aka OG, (Simon Pegg) seems to create a place and space for Halliday to flourish.

Before Halliday’s death, Halliday decides to create a contest that, when a gamer finds the three keys hidden deep within Oasis, the winner will receive the golden egg. This golden egg includes owning and running the company that makes Oasis as well as unfounded riches.

A competitor company IOI (Innovation Online Industries), run by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), wants the golden egg so that his lagging company can reap the fruits of Halliday’s work. To do so he hires lots of people to be avatars with one goal; to help him find the three keys and to obtain the golden egg.

The film’s main character and hero is Wade Watts, aka Parzival, (Tye Sheridan) who is smart, kind, thoughtful, and an excellent Oasis player. Wade’s parents died years ago and he lives with his aunt and her wildly erratic husband. In the VR world Parsival’s best friend is Aech, aka Helen, (Lena Waithe). On his trek to find the first key, he helps out Art3mis, aka Samantha, (Olivia Cooke). He does this because he thinks her avatar is beautiful and believes they connect at a deeper level.

Together Parzival, Art3mis, and Aech work to solve the puzzle's problems and find the three keys. Along the way they are joined by other players who carry the same ideals.

This film spends more time in the VR mode than reality mode, however the switches between the worlds was done in a wonderful way. The switches make sense. There are also scenes when there is a belief that a character thinks they’re in reality mode, when they aren’t.

The best part is that the team working with Parzival are strong and interesting in both reality and VR modes. Both worlds created by Spielberg are wonderful in that they are realistically flawed and complete. The visuals are not so overladen and overdone that they overwhelm the film and story.

Sheridan was excellent as Parzival, the films main hero. He makes an excellent Clark Kent type character. Waithe as Aech was so much fun. As a male avatar, she was wonderfully strong and compassionate which reflected her deeper reality character as well. Cooke was great as Art3mis. Her bad-ass avatar character belied her reality character of being insecure. Pegg was wonderful as OG and his kindness carried through the film. Rylance was sublime as the quirky, lost, smart creator of Oasis. His social ineptness was perfect. Mendelsohn was very good as the villain running IOI and wanting to be the top dog. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline wrote and engaging screenplay effectively rendered by the inimitable Spielberg.

Overall:  This is a film the audience can sit back and simply enjoy the ride.

Isle of Dogs

First Hit: I liked the premise and animation a lot, however, there were scenes that were not needed which made this film longer than needed.

Director Wes Anderson creates quirky and interesting films. Here, Wes uses stop-motion animation to create a world that, at times, reflects current events. The film references earthquakes and a power plant failure that spread radiation. All events that happened in Japan.

The general plot is that Mayor Kobayashi (voice by Kunichi Nomura), mayor of Megasaki, is a cat person as are his immediate family and his ancestors. However, dog lovers have been ruling Megasaki and therefore dogs reign supreme in Megasaki. Coming into power Megasaki sends all the dogs to “Trash Island,” a place where trash is piled up.

The reason he states is because the dogs have a disease that cannot be cured and eventually it will affect humans.

Atari Kobayashi (voice by Koyu Rankin) is a young twelve-year-old boy who wants his dog Spots back. He commandeers a small plane and crashes it on Trash Island. He runs into a pack of dogs Chief (voice by Bryan Cranston), Rex (voice by Edward Norton), King (voice by Bob Balaban), Boss (voice by Bill Murray), and Duke (voice by Jeff Goldblum, who decide to help him find Spots.

Many of the scenes were fun to watch and extremely well developed. However, scenes like when the dogs in the overhead lift going through a destruction and crushing building were not needed. It added little to the overall suspense and only created a unneeded scene and added to making the film longer.

The personalities of the dogs were great and a wonderful combination of animal and human points of view. This held up well. The focus of a boy’s love of his dog works. And when it comes forth that all dogs love twelve-year-old boys was perfect.

Rankin, Balaban, Norton, Cranston, Murray, Goldblum, and Nomura were wonderful in their voice characterizations. Anderson and Roman Coppola wrote a wonderful script although there were scenes that could have been cut to make the film crisper. Anderson’s direction was excellent although some scenes were unnecessary.

Overall: A strong and entertaining film in a format we don’t see very often.

Leaning Into the Wind: Andrew Goldsworthy

First Hit: If you liked River and Tides, you’ll love Leaning....

I first heard of Andrew Goldsworthy when I happened to see Rivers and Tides in 2001. I was blown away by how this artist sees, feels, and engages with nature.

In this film, we’ve seen the growth he’s had to where the difference between him and nature is blurred even more. Scenes where he revisits old haunts and even a creek where an old Maple has fallen turns into an adventure in visual sensory amazement.

An added delight is the addition of his daughter Holly who is now working with him on these pieces of art.

The film takes us to various places around the world where he explores how nature creates itself and how amazing it is. As a lay person, I see what he’s seeing but as he shares his visual and inner reflections, the audience sees a far greater beauty than was seen before the narration.

His stone work is amazing and as we visit his inspirations and then his art based on the inspiration they meld into one amazing picture.

Being fortunate enough to live in, and now near, San Francisco, I’m able to see some of his work in the Presidio and Golden Gate Park. The logs and tree spire are things of beauty, but I’m always taken aback and follow the cracked rock outside the DeYoung Museum.

The ending scene is perfect, and as a boy and grown up, I recount my time of leaning into the wind.

Goldsworthy is delightful and venerable in his narration and discussions during the film. Thomas Riedelsheimer must have an excellent collaborative relationship with Andrew to get this close and to give us this experience.

Overall: If you want a visual spiritual experience see this film.