A Simple Favor

First Hit: I enjoyed this quirky, twist filled, film.

Stephanie Smothers (Anna Kendrick) is a widowed mother of one young boy named Miles (Joshua Satine). His best friend at school is Nicky Nelson (Ian Ho) whose mother is Emily (Blake Lively) a high powered marketing person and his father is Sean Townsend (Henry Golding) a one novel writer.

Stephanie has a video blog which she dedicates, each filming to her deceased mother. Each vlog has useful household tips, cooking tips, or advice for dealing with the world. However, she’s got a secret.

One day she helps Emily out by watching her child and Emily doesn’t come back. This leads the film back a few weeks, into how Emily and Stephanie met, how they learned about each other, and how they became best friends. One of the secrets is that, although Emily and Sean work, they really cannot afford the house they are living in and they desperately need money.

This leads to a crazy plot that includes death, false identity, and Stephanie’s ability to sort-out and resolve pieces of the puzzle.

When it comes down to who knows what and who can better deliver the goods, Stephanie, Emily, and Sean have their own ways to settle the score.

The dialogue between Lively and Kendrick was funny, pointed and filled with sarcasm. There are plot holes, and things that don’t quite add-up, but from an entertainment value, this film was fun.

Kendrick was strong in this leading role. I believe this is the first film in which she was expected to carry the main work-load and she does it well. Lively was a hoot as this know-it-all, seen the world, been there done that kind of high powered marketing person. She clearly enjoyed the role. Golding was good as Blake’s hangdog husband. I never really got the connection that made it work for them, except that Lively’s character was so strong, he was under her spell. Jessica Sharzer wrote a pointed and rapid fire script which kept the movie moving along nicely. Paul Feig did a good job of keeping it both light and funny as well as dramatic with mystery.

Overall: I enjoyed the dynamics of the two women characters and how Kendrick used her analytical plodding way to uncover the truth.

Peppermint

First Hit: I enjoy a well-acted and thoughtful revenge film and this one fits the bill.

Riley North (Jennifer Garner), her husband Chris (Jeff Hephner) and their daughter Carly (Calley Fleming) are a happy family except money is always an issue. Chris and  his co-worker Mickey (Chris Johnson) hatch a plan to steal a drug dealers loot. But Chris thinks twice and calls Mickey to tell him he wants out, that he cannot risk himself and his family's well being.

However, the dealer learns of the plot, kills Mickey and sends gang-bangers to kill Chris. They find Chris with his family enjoying an amusement park for Carly's birthday. When they kill Chris they do it with automatic weapons and not only kill Chris, they kill Carly and Riley is shot and injured. After mourning her family and getting nowhere with the police investigation, she disappears for five years. Riley leaves the country and upon her return, she’s transformed herself from supportive housewife to killing machine. While away she's learned martial arts, how to stalk people, how to kill with guns and her bare hands, and new she's back and wants revenge on the whole gang who killed her family.

The police and FBI pick up on the trail of bodies she leaves behind, including the three bodies hanging upside-down on the Ferris wheel at the amusement park where she was shot and her husband and daughter died five years earlier.

Riley is being hunted by the FBI, L.A. Police Department, and the gang. Will she win in the end? What price will she be willing to pay?

Garner is fantastic as Riley, a revenge filled killing machine. Her skills in body movement, and the belief in her eyes, had me rooting for her all the way. Hephner was good in his small role. Fleming was excellent in her role as well. Juan Pablo Raba as drug lord Diego Garcia was very strong. John Gallagher Jr. as Detective Stan Carmichael was excellent. John Ortiz as a seasoned Detective Moises Beltran was perfect. Annie Ilonzeh as FBI Agent Lisa Inman was very good. Chad St. John wrote a strong revenge script. It was this script, Garner’s acting and Pierre Morel’s direction that made it all work.

Overall: This was a excellent revenge film and sometimes a woman’s revenge is best.

Pick of the Litter

First Hit: It was an fantastic and interesting way to learn about how guide dogs are taught to be amazing caretakers for the blind.

I’d seen many “guide dog in training” vests on dogs in San Rafael, CA. By seeing this film I learned something about the families that help raise these dogs before they go into their rigorous formal guide dog training. This film takes us all the way through their final testing and assignment to their blind owner.

The film opens with a set of five Labrador Retriever puppies being born to a black lab mother. Two of the puppies are beige in color the other three are black. We follow the dogs as they get farmed out to families who will care for them and record their behavior, before the remaining dogs are given intensive guide dog training.

Each dog in the same litter is named with the same starting letter, and in this film, it is “P”. Patriot, Primrose, Potomac, Poppet, and Phil. We see these cute baby puppies meet their puppy raisers, who in turn, teach them manners, foundational training, and expose them to the world. There are certain criteria the dogs must adhere to if they are to receive final guide dog training. Guide Dogs for the Blind monitors the puppy's progress and keep a detailed spreadsheet of their behaviors, strengths and weaknesses for being a guide dog. If a dog doesn’t meet the required standards, like being too rambunctious and inquisitive and cannot stop exploring the world around them, then they get re-assigned. They will either go to a good home, or be bread to birth more possible puppies.

When the puppies are given to the puppy raisers, the audience gets a chance to learn something about these families. Funny side story, I was recently in Seattle for a writers conference and I saw a cute puppy with the green guide dog in training harness. I told the owner, that I’d seen this great film, and she circled her face with her finger and smiled and, although she'd colored her hair, I realized that she was one of the women puppy raisers in the film. She was there training a new puppy to be mindful in a large conference, with lots of noise and to be quiet in seminar rooms.

After the puppy training, the dogs meeting the criteria will go through intense guide dog training. This will include knowing when to obey or not-obey a command given by their owner. They learn how to keep their chosen person safe while navigating the world around them. How to walk on sidewalks, streets without sidewalks, stop at a corners, know then the light is green, how to avoid a moving car in the street or in a parking lot, how to stop their owner from moving forward into danger, and mostly how to be their owner’s eyes in navigating the world.

There is a final test and it is rigorous and only the Pick of the Litter prevail to become guide dogs.

Dana Nachman and Don Hardy Jr. wrote and directed this amazing and revealing film.

Overall: Having seen the process, when I see a guide dog, my point of view and reference is far more complete and filled with awe.

Juliette, Naked

First Hit: A funny and enjoyable story about how people can awaken enough to create a second chance with their life.

The thing I like most about films that feature Ethan Hawke is that often the dialogue is thoughtful. In the Before series of films he and Julie Delpy have such spirited, insightful, and engaged dialogue that one couldn’t help but really care about the characters.

Here as Tucker Crowe, a 1960’s, retired, aged out rock and roll musician, he’s living in a garage just off his ex-wife’s home while helping to raise one of his children Jackson (Azhy Robertson). His most fervent fan is Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) who is a professor at a small English college. He posts and runs a website where the sole focus is Tucker Crowe’s music and career. He regularly blogs about his hero and there are a few hundred people that regularly follow him. He’s such a fan, he’s got an entire room dedicated to Tucker that is filled with posters and other memorabilia.

His long time live-in girlfriend, Annie (Rose Byrne), runs the local historical museum in this small coastal town in England. Her life is, day in and day out, the same old thing. There is a slight resignation in voice when she speaks and in her eyes. It especially comes out in conversations with Duncan. Her sister Ros (Lily Brazier) is gay, works with Annie at the museum, and keeps prompting Annie to expand her closed in life.

Duncan receives a bootlegged copy of the “Juliette, Naked,” an acoustic version of Tucker’s seminal album. The album was created after Tucker’s breakup with a woman he loved. After listening to it, Annie decides to write a critical review of the blog Dunan wrote of the album. Of course, Duncan is deeply hurt as she is criticizing his hero.

She gets a response to her post from Tucker who says she’s exactly right. This turns everything upside down as she begins to have an email relationship with her husband’s hero and he doesn’t know it.

Eventually they meet, and their lives unfold more fully with each other and the world around them. For him, he’s got 5 kids, and Jackson is the only one he knows or has been active with. Events will have him meet most of them.

For Annie, she realizes she wants children, although her and Duncan vowed never to have children, and she wants to expand her life more. This is the crux of the film, with their lives being so small, meeting each other, their lives begin to open to themselves and the world around them.

Byrne is fantastic. Her subtle looks of desperation belied the deeper anguish she was living. Hawke was wonderful and perfect in his role. The dinner conversation he had with Duncan was pointedly perfect. I loved his rendition of the Kinks song Waterloo Sunset. O’Dowd was great as the star stuck follower of Tucker who got seduced by a young fellow teacher at his college. Robertson was super as Tucker’s son. His quizzing of Tucker’s other children was divine. Ayoola Smart was amazing as Tucker’s daughter who was pregnant. Evgenia Peretz and Jim Taylor wrote a very strong script. Jesse Peretz did a wonderful job of directing these characters in a funny, yet smart pointed story.

Overall: I thoroughly enjoyed this film and the meaning behind it—it’s never too late to change.

Alpha

First Hit: The premise was good but sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting for the film to move along almost made me leave early.

It is known that wolves are the ancestors of our modern-day dog, man’s best friend. Having a dog, albeit a small one, has shown me how wonderful dogs are as companions and especially how loyal they are.

The problem with this film is that it was unrealistic in too many ways to make me believe this version of the story about how wolves and man created a synergy that would last thousands and thousands of years.

What wasn’t believable? That the village of people lived so very far away from the once a year food they’d collect. When they went hunting for buffalo they men traveled for months. We didn’t see much about how they survived, ate and drank water, through these harsh geographic elements. Their teeth were perfect, meaning the make-up didn’t even try to hide this fact. That they killed the buffalo by herding them off a cliff, just didn’t seem realistic. But most of the fantasy was Keda’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee) journey back to his village after his father Tau (Johannes Haukur Johannesson) and his team of hunters, left Keda to die on the edge of a cliff. Not only did I find it hard to believe he survived the fall, I also didn’t believe he could have survived the months long trek back to his village by following tattoos on his arm supposedly mapping stars in the sky. They didn’t provide much guidance and because of the long travel time, those stars would have shifted in the night sky.

Keda was identified by his mother Rho (Natassia Malthe) and possibly the Shaman (Leonor Varela) to be more big hearted and less ruthless than the others in the tribe. Although Keda adequately created a flint spear head, which gave him the honor of joining the hunting expedition, he wasn’t seen as having the killer instinct. This proves out during the trek to the buffalo hunting site as he refuses to kill a boar for food.

First you have to buy that he's big hearted (the most believable aspect of the film), then you must believe he survived the fall off a tremendous cliff with only a hurt ankle. The crown was that the story wants you to believe that he made the journey back to his village looking at the tattoo on his hand every 5 days or so. Just not likely.

However, believing this was the set up was to give credence to his first injuring the wolf, the alpha of the pack, then, because of his kind heart, nurses the wolf back to health. The wolf in-turn helps him hunt and kill food and keeps him warm at night.

At one point the wolf leaves Keda because Alpha's old pack coax the wolf back. But then there is a scene where Keda meets up with the wolf pack and the wolf chooses to save Keda against the elements.

The whole trek back to Keda’s village could have been cut by 50% to help the film. It just didn’t need all the snow driven angst. However, the ending shows how man and wolf/dogs became companions in a larger sense which was nice.

Smit-McPhee was adequate as Keda. His looks and actions, though, didn’t seem like they were correct to reflect being 20,000 years in the past. Johannesson was OK as the tribe leader, but he didn’t look like he came from 20,000 years ago. Malthe was OK as Keda’s mother. Whatever animal played Alpha was wonderful. Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt wrote an OK screenplay (dialog wise). Although I don’t think language had developed that well 20,000 years ago. However, I could be wrong. Albert Hughes had a wonderful vision about how wolves became the forefathers of our modern dog, but this wasn’t borne out in the final product. The best part of the film were some of the geographic shots of the land.

Overall: There were multiple times I wanted to get up and leave because of boredom.