Portrait of a Lady on Fire

First Hit: The film was a slow evolution and stretched at times, but also it was an engaging story about slow smoldering love.

From the opening moments after Marianne (Noemie Merlant) lands on the island and treks up to a large stately home and is greeted by the housekeeper Sophie (Luana Bajrami), we know this is going to unfold slowly.

The premise is that Marianne is there to secretly paint Heloise (Adele Haenel) who has been pulled out of a convent, where she wanted to be, by her mother, La Comtesse (Valeria Golino). Heloise is to take her sister’s place in a marriage to a man in Milan, Italy. Her sister committed suicide. The painting is to be sent to the perspective suiter.

To secretly paint Heloise, La Comtesse has told Heloise that Marianne is there to be her companion for walks. On their strolls, Heloise is brooding, inquisitive, and sullen. But the audience knows there is something deeper brewing.

The side story with Sophie being pregnant and wanting an abortion is well done. The moment she subjects herself to a procedure in a home, with a baby by her side is enormously powerful and thought-provoking.

The lighting and sets are both stark and dark but they create a beautiful space for love to flourish.

Merlant is terrific and compelling as the artist whose job it is to capture the essence and beauty of Heloise. Hanel is a smolderingly sublime reflection of beauty in this role. As a woman who is slowly falling in love, she is perfect. Bajrami is divine as the pregnant housekeeper. The scene, as described above, is very emotional. Celine Sciamma wrote and directed this film and it felt as though it came from her heart.

Overall: I loved the story, but I felt it took too long to develop.

The Call of the Wild

First Hit: I was very distracted by the computer-generated dog, Buck, that acted more like a human than a dog, therefore, I missed the power of the story.

This film is based on the great Jack London short novel of the same name. From the moment we meet Buck, his looks and mannerisms reflect the humanization of the dog. Being a dog owner, I really disliked this. Reading into a dog’s eyes and looks to reflect our human emotions is a fantasy I don’t particularly like.

Basically, the story goes that Buck is stolen from his owner Judge Miller (Bradley Whitford), in Santa Clara, CA. While with the Judge, Buck had the run of Miller’s home, and the opening scenes we see him eating whatever food he can find, and then he ruins a whole table full of food, by sampling or eating more food than a dog, of that size, could ever eat.

Now stolen from his home, Buck is shipped to Alaska and meets John Thornton (Harrison Ford), who is grumpy but sees something in Buck he likes and gives a wry smile.

Buck is purchased by the mail delivery team of Perrault (Omar Sy) and Francoise (Cara Lee). Although Buck is a huge dog, he’s out of his element because Perrault and Francoise are dog sled mail delivery workers, and Buck has never been a working dog and knows nothing about snow or being a sled pulling dog. He’s been a home dog.

Buck is mystified by the snow and then becomes demoralized after being hooked up to a harness and asked to pull a sled led by other computer-animated dogs. He does his best but, in a human way, makes mistakes.

But CGI Buck decides to become the best dog in the team, which comes across as another human aspect. The lead dog appreciates Bucks's efforts (more human emotions), but the entire movie audience knows what is coming, a confrontation with the lead husky.

This confrontation ultimately ends up in glory for Buck, Perrault, and Francois, but as the story would have it, Buck gets sold again to a greedy miner Hal (Dan Stevens) who wants to find gold. He and Thorton get into it, and bad blood arises over Hal’s treatment of Buck.

Buck escapes Hal, finds Thornton, and they walk together into the wilderness, the call of the wild sort of speak.

Together they create an excellent partnership. Upon arriving at a remote cabin, they set up shop, and Buck starts to flirt with and hang out with timberwolves. Of course, there is one final predictable confrontation with Hal, and we all know what will happen.

There are lovely and poignant moments, and they mostly revolve around Thornton’s grumpy demeanor and Buck’s loving, caring way.

Not being able to forget just how humanized Buck was made to be, the film’s real story about self-redemption and following your dream, was left on the cutting room floor.

Ford was terrific as John Thornton, a man who was still mourning the loss of his son. Sy was great and engaging as Perrault, the sled driver. Gee was excellent as Perrault’s co-sled team driver. Michael Green wrote this screenplay. There wasn’t anything wrong with the screenplay, but the execution of the CGI dog just failed the film. Chris Sanders did a reasonable job of directing this story, but the CGI hurt the effort, and Sanders is part to blame because he allowed too much humanization of Buck.

Overall: This was a difficult film to watch because it seemed too made up.

Downhill

First Hit: Despite an excellent performance by Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Billie, this film goes downhill because of Will Ferrell as Pete.

Most of you who have read this blog know that I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan. It was in this film that he shows how incapable he is of showing a depth of character. He had the opportunity to show real wisdom in this role, and with a partner like Louis-Dreyfus, who serves as an incredible, intense foil in this film, he didn’t show up. Just as he didn’t show up as the character struggling about his marriage in this film.

The story is about Billie, Pete, and their two sons Finn and Emerson, on a once in lifetime ski trip in the Alps. There is a slight tension as they check into the hotel revealed by Billie’s tense facial expressions.

As the film wears on, there are moments when this tension subsides momentarily, but the marital discord becomes clear when Billie has to keep reminding Pete to get off the phone and quit texting his workmate Zach (Zach Woods) and Zach’s new girlfriend Rosie (Zoe Chao). You get the sense that he’s jealous of Zach.

When a controlled avalanche barrels down on the lodge deck where they are sitting down to eat, Pete runs away from his family out of panic. Leaving Billie to wrap her arms around Finn and Emerson protecting them from the snow crashing around them.

Pete’s running away becomes the elephant in the room until they have cocktails with Rosie and Zach. Billie tells the story, and Pete tries to defend his behavior, which erupts into a huge fight bringing their marriage issues to the table.

Here is where Ferrell’s failings as a dramatic actor come to fore. When the camera focuses on him and the expression in his narrowly spaced eyes, there isn’t much at home. He’s like a child, and the audience realizes what Billie has been dealing with, raising three children, not two.

As a side note, this is a remake of “Force Majeure”, a film I saw in 2014, which was better in many ways.

Louis-Dreyfus is fantastic in this film. I’ve never seen her act in a dramatic role, and she excels here. She has a very expressive face, and it tells the story as you need to know it. Ferrell is like a man child. He has minimal range, and his previous role as an overgrown santa helper in Elf, probably fits him perfectly. Miranda Otto (Charlotte), as the hotel representative who tries to give Billie advice about living her life more fully, is hilarious. Jesse Armstrong and Nat Faxon wrote a good screenplay. Faxon directed the film, and despite Ferrell’s inability to put depth into his role, the rest of the film was terrific.

Overall: I was severely disappointed in the way Ferrell’s performance hurt this movie.

The Assistant

First Hit: It is no coincidence that this film is out during the Harvey Weinstein trial.

This is a powerful film for numerous reasons. The most compelling aspect for me was that we never see the studio head, the person who has everyone in the story intimidated and contrite towards him. It is an essential and scary message. Another reason is that we are reading about Weinstein’s trial in the newspaper for the past week, and he’s been accused of doing just what this film is about. Then there is the way this film uses the unspoken issue about predatory sexual behavior to intimidate, coerce, and manipulate people.

The story begins by following Jane (Julia Garner), assistant to the studio head, from her early morning ritual of leaving her apartment and going to the office in downtown New York City. Entering the office, she’s the first one there. She prepares, prints, and distributes reports. Then she turns on the lights on the rest of the floor and goes to the boss’s office to clean up after him. This includes picking up an earring, wiping crumbs and stuff on the desk, and tellingly, cleaning off stains that are on the couch, which we suspect to be from a sexual encounter.

As the story moves on, other office workers arrive, they all carry an air of fear, afraid of doing something wrong. We hear mumbled raised voices coming from behind the closed office door of the boss.

Phone calls are taken, plans rearranged, people don’t smile. Jane gets routed a call from the boss’s wife, who complains that her credit cards won’t work, gets angry at Jane’s attempt to placate her, and hangs up. The boss calls Jane and yells at her. The audience barely hears the mumbled yelling on the phone call. Jane’s response is to type an email to her boss stating that she is sorry and it will never happen again.

This type of intimidation is the theme throughout the film.

The climax of Jane’s concern happens when she escorts a “new assistant,” Sienna (Kristine Froseth), to a posh hotel. Sienna tells Jane that she was waitressing in Boise, Idaho when the boss told her she should come to NYC and become one of his assistants. We then learn that the boss leaves the office to visit Sienna at the hotel. When Jane takes her concern that the boss is misbehaving to the head of Human Resources, she once again gets intimidated. Inappropriate sex by the boss is never said but implied, and, as a final insult, Jane is told, “Don’t worry. You’re not his type.”

The way this film is shot feels almost voyeuristic. We don’t see the boss. We only follow Jane. We carefully watch her actions, and all the conversations she has on the phone are muffled, barely audible. When the door is closed and the boss is yelling, we hear some of the swear words and when the boss is with a woman, we hear muffled laughter and other noises.

Garner is phenomenal. The way she internalizes her fear, her sadness, and disdain is expressed to the audience with subtle mouth movements and very expressive eyes. Everyone else is strong in their roles, but their characters are minor and don’t warrant a mention here. Kitty Green wrote and directed this excellent portrayal of intimidation and predatory sexual abuse.

Overall: The impact of seeing this film stayed with me through the next day.

The Rhythm Section

First Hit: This is Blake Lively’s (as Stephanie Patrick) movie from beginning to end.

Blake Lively can act, and here we see how good she can be.

The story opens by letting us know that Patrick is a lost soul. She is slowly destroying herself by using heroin and supporting this habit through prostitution. We learn that Stephanie has turned to this life of self-destruction because she lost her entire family in a suspicious plane crash three years earlier. She was supposed to be on that plane.

A reporter named Keith Proctor (Raza Jaffrey) comes to the brothel and buys time with Stephanie so that he can speak with her about what he’s working on. Proctor is investigating who are the people who planted the bomb on the plane that killed her parents. Patrick, unsure of Procter’s real intention, dashes out of the room and gets the house bouncer to physically throw Proctor out. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her pain.

However, Proctor left his business card, and as Patrick gets ready to hit up with another dose of smack, she decides to bolt out of the brothel ending up at Proctor’s London apartment. The verbal sparring here is wonderfully done because Proctor holds his ground of just wanting to get more information and to give Patrick information about what really happened to the plane. Patrick, on the other hand, is utterly scared about having to face her own demons and re-live the emotional loss of her family.

Proctor has a room where there is a photo of each of the plane crash victims along with piles of folders containing information and evidence about what really happened on that plane. It includes information about who ordered the bombing, who made the bomb, and who set it off.

Getting the name of the person who built the bomb, Raza (Tawfeek Barhom), Patrick sets out to find him and get payback. But as she confronts Rasa face to face, in a moment of panic she cannot pull the trigger. However, because he’s now been discovered, Raza finds and takes it out on Proctor.

With Proctor no longer being able to help, Patrick uses one more bit of information from the files she took from Proctor’s apartment, a location on a map. Traveling to this location in a remote norther area of Scotland, she finds Iain Boyd “B” (Jude Law), a former MI6 agent.

She convinces B that she is going to kill the bomb maker and all the people associated with the bombing of the plane and asks him to train her. Skeptical of Stephanie’s abilities, B relents and teaches her how to shoot, fight, and keep fit while also giving her information on where she might find Raza and the unknown mastermind.

The thing that is most compelling in this story is how slowly we see Patrick’s incremental change from strung-out addict (pale, thin, haunting eyes, and bruised up) to someone who is not a fighting machine but a healthier person. We see her dive to right the wrong to her family and assuage her underlying guilt for not being on the plane with them.

Like an everyday person, Patrick never overwhelms anyone when she’s fighting, she’s authentically fighting for her life. She’s appropriately scared and clearly driven. And this is what makes this story engaging as Stephanie makes her way to find and resolve her family’s death.

All the scenes are well shot from the car chase scene to her training with B to the bus explosion. However, it is the time with Marc Serra (Sterling K. Brown), especially their last scene, where we see that Stephanie Patrick has learned what she needs to learn about herself and her abilities. She has freed herself from her past.

Lively is absolutely mesmerizing as this character. It is the grittiest role I’ve seen her in, and she nails it. Law is terrific as the elusive former MI6 Agent put to pasture. His direct approach to helping Patrick was excellent. Brown was engagingly cagey and incredible as the former CIA agent who sells information to bad people. Jaffrey was wonderful as the news reporter wanting to get to the truth. Mark Burnell wrote a powerful and pointedly direct script. Reed Morano got the best out of the actors while engagingly directing scenes keeping the audience fully engaged the entire time.

Overall: I really liked the way this story came together and the acting, all around, was superb.