Skyscraper

First Hit: Slow beginning, unrelatable and overdone storyline, and there isn't much that saves it from itself.

The one thing about Dwayne Johnson (playing Will Sawyer) is that he’s earnest in his acting and gives his all in each role.

Here, as Will Sawyer, he’s a former FBI leader that made what may have been an error in judgment on a raid. In this error, agents and a family lost their lives, people got burnt, and he lost his lower left leg.

This raid is shown at the beginning of this film. It also shows him lying in the hospital when he meets the doctor (Neve Campbell) that works on him. There is obvious chemistry we know immediately that the doctor will be part of the story.

The film moves ten years into the future and now, as a couple, they have two kids, he has his own building security business, and they are in Hong Kong to analyze the tallest building in the world. If he gives his OK, then the building owner can obtain insurance to open the residential section which are on the upper floors.

However, as required, something goes wrong and we find out that the building owner Zhao Long Ji (Chin Han) has made some enemies and Koras Botha (Roland Moller) is leading a band of turncoats and operatives to set the building on fire to obtain a disk that has revealing information worth a lot of money.

Unbeknownst to Botha, Will’s wife Sarah (Campbell), and their two kids Georgia and Henry (McKenna Roberts and Noah Cottrell respectively), are occupying the upper floors but decides to let them burn, while later using them as hostages.

These events have Will spring into action to save his family from the burning building. This is the main course of the film. To do this he races through the city on a motorcycle, climbs a crane, scurries out to the end of the crane’s arm, jumps into an open space some 97 floors from the ground, and single handedly gets his wife, and son out of the building. However, the desert is his saving his daughter from Botha’s clutches, while his wife, on the ground, saves the building from burning all the way down to the ground.

It’s a bit much although some of the shots looking down while on the crane are a little unnerving, the fanciful reflective, ever changing, panel room was ill conceived and didn’t really add much to the drama. Additionally, the storyline seemed weak in that I didn't provide an overridingly powerful reason for Botha to burn down the whole building and kill a bunch of people.

Johnson always does his best to make this film work. He was a producer as well, so he was vested in this. However, the storyline lacked believability. Campbell was great. She showed strength, intelligence, and an honest caring for her family. Moller was good as the villain. The issue was I didn’t get the motivation for his actions. The destruction he was creating didn’t seem to fit the prize he was seeking. Roberts was wonderful as the daughter. Cottrell was good as the boy who struggled with asthma, although I didn’t seem to think his asthma was relevant or necessary. Han was OK. Rawson Marshall Thurber wrote and directed this film. He knew what he wanted and probably got it, however what he wanted was neither strong nor believable.

Overall: This film was created to show Johnson as an amazing loving father who would do anything for his family, while doing this it also wasn’t believable.

Three Identical Strangers

First Hit: A truly amazing story about how sciences curiosity didn't take into account the effects on human beings.

This film starts out in a very lighthearted fun filled way. The audience, including myself, were out-loud laughing as Bobby Shafran heads to college and despite this being the first time he was on campus, everyone says hi to him and calls him “Eddy.”

As a shy young man this is both overwhelming and shocking but when his roommate figures out that Bobby is a different person from Eddy, they call Eddy on the phone.

When Bobby and Eddy meet and discover they were born as twins, were separated at birth, and adopted by separate families. This becomes a hot news story and gets published in all the newspapers. Then David Kellerman sees this story, meets up with Bobby and Eddy and they now realize that they were triplets, separated at birth, and given up for adoption.

The film goes on to show all the television programs they were on and all the articles that were written about the triplet boys, who at age 19, found each other together, again. At this point in the film I sensed that everyone, me included, thought this was going to be a completely happy film.

However, as one can expect, after we are fully entertained by how the young men discover their lost years together, their respective parents have questions about the adoption agency and if they knew that they had separated triplets and why they didn’t tell the respective parents.

As the film moves along the audience learns that David, Eddie and Bobby learn that they were part of an experiment by Dr. Peter B. Neubauer. He was attempting to determine the answer to an age-old question, Nature or Nurture? What determines human development. In the quest of this goal he designed an experiment to find unwed mothers that are expecting twins or more, that want to give the children up, and have them adopted through an adoption agency. Then he sent teams of individuals out to interview, test, and write up a synopsis of the development of each child.

At no time, did they publish the results of the study, nor did they tell the families, nor did they tell the children. The data, is still unpublished today and the angst in the families and the two remaining boys is prevalent.

Director Tim Wardle did a fantastic job of putting an engaging and interesting story together.

Overall: This real-life story was amazing to learn about and watch.

Sorry to Bother You

First Hit: What I liked about this film is that it is funny, unique, and unlike any other film I’ve seen.

This film is an alternate universe to present day Oakland, CA. Here we have Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) looking for work, living in a garage, and dating artist Detroit (Tessa Thompson). One of the early funny scenes is when he and Detroit start messing around in bed and a garage door opens which exposes his room as a garage and his neighbors say "get a room". Very funny scene and sets a tone for the film.

Enjoyed Cassius’s interview for a telemarketing job because of what we discover about his creativeness to make himself look like he has a great past working record.

Getting the job, he’s coached by Langston (Danny Glover) to use his “white voice.” This was hilarious, and the voice Danny uses, and the voice Cassius uses are perfectly nerdy white. I loved it. His managers tell him if he does well he’ll be elevated to the position of Power Caller. As a Power Caller he’ll make a lot of money and get to ride in the private elevator. Watch for the entering of the elevator code - hilarious.

The film uses funny ways to see how he doesn’t connect, and then connects with people he tele-markets. All of a sudden, he drops from his desk into the home of the person he’s calling and directly discusses his pitch and deal.

The movie also has a story about workers rights. Leading this effort is Squeeze (Steven Yuen)  and working with Cassius’s close friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler) start a protest with all of the other telemarketers. Cassius and Detroit are for the cause however, Cassius has now moved up to the Power Caller floor, he holds back from wholeheartedly supporting the protest movement.

As a Power Caller he starts selling for a company called WorryFree run by Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) that offers people the option of working for no money, but they get a place to live, food to eat and entertainment. But others think this is just slave labor. Steve is so impressed with Cassius’s ability to market that he wants him to manage his newest endeavor, making Equisapiens. Equisapiens are people who take a specific drug giving them the strength of horses and also change their physical appearance to look like a person and a horse. Because of their strength, Lift claims can do more work better.

There is more to this film and it is even more bizarre including a reality show called “I Got the S#*@ Kicked Out of Me”.

As I watched this story unfold, all of a sudden someone I know in real life appears on the screen as a newscaster. Ken Baggott is the newscaster that gives us a play by play during the film. That was a great surprise.

Stanfield was excellent as the creative goal achieving telemarketer who had to decide whether he continues to pursue a career where he excels or support his girlfriend and friends and do the right thing. Thompson was outstanding as Cassius’s girlfriend. She’s very fluid in this role and made it very natural. Yuen was strong as the instigator for workers rights. Glover was excellent as the long-time telemarketer. Fowler was very strong as Cassius’s friend who supported his friend. Baggott was perfect as the newscaster. His voice and reporting of the events were spot on. Boots Riley wrote and directed this very creative and inventive film.

Overall: What made this work was the acting in an inventive creative film.

Whitney

First Hit: Although the film is strong, I didn’t learn much about Whitney and learned a fair amount about her enabling family and supporters whom she financially supported.

One doesn’t need to be a Whitney Huston fan to acknowledge her amazing voice. It is also true that not everyone who has an amazing talent also has the ability and presence to manage their life in a productive mindful way. This film shows this.

The film states that her mother (Cissy) pushed her hard, as a young girl, to learn to use her voice. Music ran throughout her family and extended family with relatives Dionne Warwick and her sister Dee Dee Warwick. At family gatherings the interviewees discussed having singalongs instead of conversations.

Religion was also a backdrop in their lives as both Cissy and Whitney sang in the church choir.

The film shares some Whitney’s early singing as well as her adult singing and when it shows one of her last concerts, where her bloated body tried to belt out “I Will Always Love You” with her tired drug addled cigarette hampered raspy voice, the sadness of her life and her lack of preparedness, for life itself, was astoundingly sad.

As the story is told, Whitney’s parents were gone a lot and that meant they, Whitney and her siblings, were not raised in an environment that allowed them to grow mindful of the workings of the world. When her brother Gary bragged about how he and Whitney could out drug use Bobby Brown, he was stating it with pride – really, he felt good about this. That both Gary and Whitney indicated they were abused by a woman at very young ages only tells part of why they were ill prepared to deal with the complexity of wealth and fame.

What the film lacked was depth and maybe this was because Whitney lacked depth. The film stated, she liked to party, she liked to sleep, she liked sex, and she liked that she was fawned over. Maybe that was the point, Whitney had a talent that she didn’t have to work at and then rode this talent into the depths of insolvency. Her lack of practiced effort to be in-charge of her talent and life was born out by how the film showed that her amazing rendition of the Star Spangle Banner at the Super Bowl was the first time she ever sang it. What made this notable was that her arranger had the music switched from 3/4 time to 4/4 time to take advantage of her voice. Although an amazing rendition and feat to sing it for first time in this way, it also showed that she didn’t work at her gift and relied on it to make her money to support her lifestyle which was loaded with hangers on who ended up bankrupting her.

Proof of this such greed by her team was when her father sued her for $100 million dollars for his part in securing a record deal. Everybody ignored her rampant and public drug use. Her father even told her she didn’t have to go into a treatment center.

Her real only friend, Robyn Crawford, with whom she had an intimate relationship with, was canned because her overbearing and measly talented husband Bobby Brown was jealous and gave Whitney an ultimatum.

What the film didn’t show, and it could have been true, that Whitney was capable of anything much more than singing. Proved out by the people she kept around to do things for her and she even farmed off parenting of her daughter Bobby Kristina.

We all know the end. It was very sad and an end to the life of a major powerful singing talent. However, as this film unfolded, seeing her life as was filmed it could have only ended this way.

All told, the film was well done. Great intersperses of Whitney singing brought some joy and reflective pauses to a film about self-destruction. The interviews were to the point and allowed for and showed the interviewees emotive pauses. When Bobby Brown was asked about drug use, he stated that this film wasn’t supposed to explore this and had nothing to do with Whitney’s life. Bobby’s objective stupidity and his harm on Whitney and their now dead daughter, reign as proof.

Kevin McDonald did a great job of splicing together interesting material about this incredibly voiced person. But who was Whitney? I’m still left with that question.

Overall: I liked the film and the opportunity to hear Whitney’s talent, but who was she?

Ant-Man and the Wasp

First Hit: It’s been a long time since a Marvel film brought joy, fun, and a story that worked—this one did.

I’ve really struggled watching Marvel films of comic book heroes. Most of the more recent Marvel films put these characters into today’s current world or some future world and they must fight some alien power to save the world, or some piece of it.

Here we have fun packed into an engaging story.

Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is under house arrest. He’s got an ankle bracelet and agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) keeps coming over to check his ankle bracelet much to the amusement of Lang’s daughter Maggie (Judy Greer).

His former superhero mate Wasp / Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and her father Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) are attempting to build a machine that will allow them to find Janet Van Dyne / Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer) who got stuck into a microscopic quantum realm.

Dr. Pym invented the ability to shrink and expand physical forms including people and that is how Ant-Man and Wasp were created. When Janet got lost in the realm, he believed she was still alive. In reaching out from her microscopic quantum realm, she contacts Lang.

Lang, Hope, and Dr. Pym believed they could rescue Janet, so the film is about how they find a way to finish a machine to make the rescue. However, there are opposing forces including Ava Starr / Ghost (Hannah John-Karmen) who needs Janet’s energy to unbecome a ghost. Ghost is supported by a former colleague of Pym, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne). Another group trying to get control of the machine Pym is making is Sunny Burch (Walter Goggins), a low level criminal. However, helping Lang is his security firm CEO, Luis (Michael Pena).

Rudd is great in this role. He’s perfect at keeping the humor in this role, while having enough ability to make the role as Ant-Man realistic. Park is hilarious as the agent trying to catch Lang violating parole. Greer was wonderful as Lang’s daughter. Her precocious nature was perfect. Lilly was wonderful as Wasp, Pym’s daughter, and Lang’s old flame. Douglas was fun as Pym. He still carries a bravado that made his earlier films work. Pfeiffer was strong in this limited but pivotal role. John-Karmen was very good as Ghost and one trying to become whole. Fishburne was perfect as Foster. Goggins was good as the lower level mob guy thinking he could make a big score. Pena was fantastic. He carries the humor in this film perfectly. Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers wrote a wonderful film that captured humor, the spirit of superheroes, and had a storyline that was fun and worked. Peyton Reed did an excellent job of putting this story on the screen. I loved seeing San Francisco this way.

Overall: This was a fun film to watch and, in the end, thoroughly enjoyable.