Unfriended: Dark Web

First Hit: This was an interesting and reasonably solid attempt to use the world of personal technology as the vehicle to create fear and horror.

A group of friends gather weekly at one home or online to play games. In this group we’ve got Matias (Colin Woodell), Serena and Nari together (Rebecca Rittenhouse and Betty Gabriel respectively), Dj Lexx (Savira Windyani), Aj (Connor Del Rio), and Damon (Andrew Lees). When the film begins they are gathering together online using a facetime app.

Matias is also attempting to create a program that will allow him and his deaf girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras) to communicate better. He’s hoping that his speaking will end up as printed words on her screen. However, he’s done nothing to help her communicate with him. This frustrates Amaya. While he's online with his group, he's also attempting to communicate with Amaya.

To help him with the program he's trying to create, he’s picked up a newer computer that was left at a coffee shop. Using this computer, he runs out of space for his program and his buddies guide him to explore the hard disk and delete some files. In doing so he finds some very disturbing files.

In the meantime the group is connected and deciding what game to play together on facetime.

As a movie watcher you think you’re looking at this film from the viewpoint of Matias, but in the end you learn differently.

The lifted computer he's working with really belongs to someone who exploits the dark web. And unbeknownst to the group, they are being watched and played themselves in a game that is about life and death.

I was fascinated by the quick alternating points of view Matias was taking when he becomes engaged with juggling the group facetime, a separate facetime with his girlfriend Amaya, and with Charon IV whose computer he’s taken.

Woodell was sufficiently paranoid and taken aback when he gets caught by his friends for lying and leading them into this path of horror and death. Rittenhouse was wonderful as the young woman flush with excitement to be engaged to Nari. Gabriel was perfect in her anxiousness towards the events as they were unfolding. Windyani was strong as the independent woman doing her own thing. Del Rio was good as the young man still living at home and wanting to strike out on his own. Lees was very good as the computer geek of the group that they all looked towards for technical guidance. Stephen Susco wrote and directed this ambitious story and script. I was torn between being caught in the story and fascinated by how the story was presented.

Overall: This film is and will not be everyone’s cup of tea, however aspects of how easily people fall into electronic set traps was fascinating to me.

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot

First Hit: A unhurried film revealing the power of how forgiveness of others and self, can make one’s life different.

Many of us know of people who have struggled and paid prices by their addiction to alcohol. Here we get a glimpse into the life of cartoonist John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix). As an orphan he struggled early with his own identity and reconciling his life. He claimed he knew “three things about my mom; she was Irish, had red hair, and she was a school teacher. Oh, yeah, and she didn’t want me. I guess that makes four things.”

He was molested at age eight by a school teacher and began drinking by age twelve. He claims that the last day he walked, he woke up with a hangover.

The film spends a fair amount of time showing the audience how blatantly he liked his drinking. One scene that exemplifies his cluelessness to his drinking is when he’s walking along a beach, he spies a beautiful young woman surfer. He tries a pickup line from a song, offers her a drink from the bottle he’s got in his pocket, and her look of polite disgust, says it all.

The film follows his journey of drinking and when he meets Dexter (Jack Black), the two magnificent partier’s have a wild night of drinking. It finally ends with Dexter driving John’s car, having an accident, leaving John a quadriplegic, and Dexter walks away with a few scratches.

As you might imagine, he’s angry at his predicament and takes it out on a number of people who are attempting to help him. However, one person who comes to help him weekly was Annu (Rooney Mara). She’s assists people who have a physical handicap. The way she enters the scene, she’s angelic and that’s exactly how John sees her.

One of the people he needs for support and whom he also antagonistic towards, is Suzanne (Carrie Brownstein) who oversees monitoring social, services expenses to keep him in an apartment, with wheelchairs, and covering medical costs including Tim (Tony Greenhand) who takes care of John. Tim’s job is to wash John, do his grocery shopping and clean his house.

Eventually, John finds himself going to an AA meeting, but he doesn’t speak much. Eventually he gets a sponsor named Donnie (Jonah Hill). Donnie is rich, gay, and calls the people he sponsors “piglets.”

He begins to draw crudely renditioned cartoons using his two handicapped hands pressed together to hold the pen. They are very funny because they are extremely poignant and targeted. One that I easily recall from the film shows two men in sheets (as KKK people), talking to each other, and one says, “Don’t you love it when they’re still warm from the dryer?” Another caption is the title to this film, where a small band of cowboys are in the desert find an empty wheelchair and the lead cowboy says “(see movie title)”

The group he sponsors are wildly honest and engaging to watch while they work out their stuff in front of one another.

When Donnie tells John to work on AA's Step 9, which is about making amends, he begins to see the power of forgiveness.

Phoenix was powerful in his portrayal of Callahan. He definitely shared a depth of pain in never thinking his mother wanted him. Black was perfect as his alcoholic friend. The scene when John comes to make amends is with Dexter was extremely well done. Mara was fantastic as a woman who always looked passed John’s handicaps and appreciated him for him. Brownstein was excellent as the caring yet restricted by policy social worker. Greenhand did a great job as the caretaker. Hill was amazing as the AA sponsor and friend. John Callahan wrote a pointed and direct script. Gus Van Sant directed this thoughtful film.

Overall: This probably isn’t everyone’s kind of film, but as the ending began to reveal itself, I loved the theme of forgiveness.

The Equalizer 2

First Hit: Although the plot premise was slightly forced, I loved how Denzel Washington makes sure he’s on the right side of things.

I had difficulty understanding why the couple were murdered at the beginning of this film. Although the film attempts to provide enough information to make it understandable, for me, something was missing. It needed a bit of context in some way.

However, the subsequent murders by a small group of men, doing cleanup, had more clarity.

Meanwhile, we watch Robert McCall (Washington) living his life as a Lyft driver occasionally, using his killing skills to right a wrong to a friend or a societal criminal activity.

The strongest statement to McCall’s effectiveness as a do-gooder was when he rectifies the wrong done to a call girl by a group of young rich entitled men. After taking the woman to a hospital, he goes back to the apartment and pulverizes the group of men for their actions towards the woman.

His closest friend and former boss, from his active government days, Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo), investigates the initial couple’s murder and because she’s so good, the band of men responsible for the initial killing, decide to kill her as well.

This puts McCall over the line and how he’s out for complete revenge. When he discovers the responsible party for the killings are former men he worked with, he ensures they know he’ll come after them, and that his only sadness will be he can kill them only once.

There is a side story about his wife’s death and his inability to go back to where they lived together.

However, it is his guidance towards Miles Whittaker (Ashton Sanders) that really brings out his deep seated patience, caring and mentorship. Miles is torn between wanting to join a gang to earn some coin for himself and his mama and his ability to draw. His brother died by a bullet and in some ways he wants to get revenge. The other, more sensitive side of him, wants to honor his talent for drawing and painting. The film does take time to explore this side as well.

Washington is perfect as the thoughtful, competent killer. His ability to break into a smile, then look someone down with a glare that exudes death is perfect for this role. Makes me want to hope for yet, another episode. Leo is perfect as the no nonsense former leader of a secret government assassination team. Sanders was wonderful as the young man trying to find his way. Pedro Pascal (playing Dave York) as McCall’s old running mate when they worked for the government together. Thought he carried his role with perfectly. Richard Wenk and Michael Sloan wrote the script. For me, the beginning wasn’t set up well enough with the killing of the couple, but other than this, I liked how it unfolded. Antoine Fuqua directed this film. What didn’t work well for me, besides the opening couple’s murder sequence, was the having the final war between McCall and the clean-up team be shot in a storm. For me it didn’t add to the tense ending only made it harder to follow.

Overall: I love Denzel in this role and therefore I enjoyed the film.

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.