The Irishman (I Heard You Paint Houses)

First Hit: An in-depth introspective and a sliver of a story into the mob world’s connection to Jimmy Hoffa.

This was a historical storytelling film of the life of “The Irishman” Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). Accordingly, the movie begins and ends with Frank sitting in an old folks home telling the story of his life.

The young Frank starts his tale when he has just returned from his WWII stint in Italy, and is now a truck driver delivering meat. He finds that he can skim some of the carcasses off and sell them for extra side money. In doing so, he slowly begins to sell to mobsters who appreciate a good deal. A chance meeting, followed by a more formal introduction with rising mobster Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) begins a lifelong friendship. Russell gets Frank odd jobs including painting houses (which is a mob euphemism for murder) as needed by the mob.

When the trucking company catches Frank as he arrives at a store that purchased the meat with an empty truck, wants to convict him for theft. What happened to the meat? Frank sold it to gangsters but acts as if he’s no idea what happened to the beef in the truck. It is one of the few amusing scenes in the film.

Frank knows the value of keeping his mouth shut, and this trait along with his support of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters run by Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) gets him a new job as Hoffa’s chief bodyguard.

The movie generously uses CGI to move these characters back and forth through at least 50 years of life, from young men in their 20s and 30s to old men in their 70s and 80s. For the most part, it works well.

We follow these three gentlemen through their lives, including mob family wars for power.

We watch them fight with the government about expanding to Cuba and the Castro regime. We watch them struggle with John F. Kennedy’s election and subsequent assassination. We see how Bobby Kennedy tried to bust up the unions and Hoffa in particular because of how Jimmy loaned the mob millions of dollars, interest-free, in union pension funds. In fact, the film makes a point of indicating that mob-controlled union pension funds built Las Vegas.

There are softer moments in the film like how Frank’s daughter Peggy (Anna Paquin as the older Peggy) visibly disliked Russell but liked Hoffa. The story also has a few tender scenes with Frank and his second wife, Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba).

The scenes are shot with an authentic and matter of fact feel to them, not splashy. One-shot that stuck with me was when Russell takes Frank to a small airport to get on a plane to meet Hoffa in Detroit; the camera looks out the tiny private plane window to see Bufalino sitting in the Lincoln. Russell will wait in the car until Sheeran returns after meeting Hoffa. There was something about this shot that brought the craft of making even the small things to the forefront.

De Niro was excellent as the Irishman turned mob strong arm and Bufalino confidant. The scenes with the priest towards the end were powerful. De Niro skillfully expressed his character's refusal to deeply go into making amends. Pesci is terrific as mobster Bufalino. The scene which he and Frank are just getting to know each other, speaking Italian with Russell, and asking him how he learned to speak Italian is very engaging. Pacino as Hoffa was convincing. I’ve no idea who Hoffa is privately, but the way Pacino portrayed him here made it feel real. Paquin as Peggy is perfect. She knew deep inside who her father was and what he did, and her way of keeping her distance and her looks of disapproval are excellent. Harvey Keitel is sublime in his brief scenes as mobster kingpin, Angelo Bruno. Steven Zaillian wrote a strong and in-depth screenplay from the book “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Martin Scorsese showed his strength in using actors he knows and trusts to bring another compelling Italian mob film story to the screen.

Overall: Although very informational, it was a long film.

A Hidden Life

First Hit: A long and beautifully shot study about how one man wouldn’t compromise his beliefs.

Terrence Malick creates and makes statements in his films. Often, the films are long, always beautifully shot, and require the audience to think about the point he’s making.

In this movie, the focus is on living and acting on your beliefs. Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl) was profoundly religious and had a personal relationship with his idea of God,  Christ, and what was right and wrong. He was faithful to the Catholic church in his tiny Austrian hillside village, called St. Radegund. As part of his commitment to the church performed duties at the church almost every day.

Married to Franziska, Fani (Valerie Pachner), they began their life together, farming and then having two children. They farmed their land by hand and were an integral part of their small community. During harvest season, the community worked together to bring in and store the harvested crops. The town felt like it was a long way from the war that Hitler was bringing to the world. However, when the war started turning against Hitler, the army drafted all eligible men to serve the Third Reich. This included Franz.

A requirement for serving the German Army was to sign a pledge of allegiance to Hitler and the German government. Franz couldn’t do this. He could not live with himself if he signed something that was against what he believed, and after the army attempted to persuade him with physical and verbal abuse, they threw him in jail. The German officers even solicited the assistance of his local priest to convince him to sign the oath of loyalty. In essence, the priest was saying that God would overlook his signing the document to save his own life and the life of his family.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t sign the oath and therefore spent years in jail. But Franz wasn’t the only one who paid the price, so did Fani. In scenes back in the village, Fani and the girls are depicted being shunned by almost everyone in the village because her husband Franz was giving their town a bad name in the eyes of ruling Germany.

The film spends time going back and forth between Franz in prison being harassed and beaten into signing a loyalty oath and the village where Fani and the girls were continuing to be harassed by the people in her town.

The immense pressure building up in Franz didn’t break him down and his wife, despite the immense movement to ostracize her and the girls, continued to support him and his decision despite what she was going through.

This film shows the cruelty of people when someone stands up for their beliefs. Because the people, including the priest, are unwilling to stand for their true feelings, they make Franz and Fani the enemy.

The physical beauty of the area of the village was well captured by the cinematographer. The integration of archival footage of Adolf Hitler and the huge parades he commanded was well done.

Diehl was terrific as Franz. His ability to show his internal struggle in a contained, in prison, way was perfect. Pacher was sublime. Her looks of intensity and passion towards other characters , amazing. Michael Nyqvist’s performance as the local Bishop that tried to persuade Franz to sign the document was excellent. Alexander Radszun’s performance as the judge that sentenced Franz to death was very good. You could see that he understood and struggled but had to follow his own loyalty oath. Malick wrote a script that was too long. I think the film could have had a stronger impact if it was more crisp in its presentation.

Overall: Long and pretty, it needed to be tightened up to make its point even stronger.

Bombshell

First Hit: I thoroughly enjoyed the acting and how this story shines a light on a behavior that was kept under wraps for far too long.

This is a story about the pain, degradation, and humiliation caused by the sexual abuse of women by the President of FOX News, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) was the woman who sat between two men in the morning “Fox and Friends” television program. She put up with the snide and overly complimentary comments by her co-hosts and Ailes himself. As an integral part of the FOX News team, Carlson wanted to be seen as a peer and not a sexual object to be ridiculed. Her desire was to have her own show where she could call the shots. Over the years, she’d had many encounters with Ailes, many of them sexually charged and suggestive, but as a good reporter, she documented their meetings.

As she got older, Ailes wanted fresher and younger faces on the morning program, so he gave her a much-desired show of her own. However, it was placed it in the small audience afternoon time slot. However, that did not shy her away from doing some controversial stories, like older women without makeup show. This show, in particular, struck Ailes the wrong way, and we see him railing at Carlson and ended up not renewing her contract.

Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) was an up and comer in the news organization. And we slowly begin to learn, she also had sexually charged encounters with Ailes.  However, Ailes did support her challenging Donald Trump on the campaign trail and at the debate. She hated becoming the story. The story shows how becoming the story opened her up to changing how she needed to work.

Then there is the story about the young woman, a conservative FOX employee, who wanted to be on air. Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) was a charger and aggressively sought out a way to speak to the man in charge, Ailes. The film shows their one on one meetings and Ailes propositioning her about how she could get to the top. The scene when Ailes asks her to stand, twirl, and hike up her skirt so he could see her legs were incredibly humiliating.

The movie cuts quickly from scene to scene and assaults you just as the news stories on television do from time to time. Scenes do not languish in this movie but are weaved together to create an account about how one woman Carlson decided to stand up to Ailes by suing him personally in hopes that others would join her.

Kidman was terrific as Carlson. Her internal strength to bring on a lawsuit was well presented. Theron was Megyn Kelly. The use of archival footage of Kelly and then segueing into scenes with Theron was seamless. It was a dominant performance. Robbie, as Pospisil, was sublime. I loved how she was able to show wide-eyed wonder, wanting to please, and desire to be noticed by senior management, then turn on a dime and show complete humiliation. Robbie’s ability to explain all this in one scene and still give the audience a cohesive character was flawless. Lithgow was perfect as the angry slimeball Ailes. His displays of anger and indignancy were well-founded in his being caught being a predator. Allison Janney as Susan Estrich, Ailes's lawyer, was excellent. Kate McKinnon as Jess Carr, a co-worker of Pospisil on “The O’Reilly Factor,” was perfect. She hid that she was a gay liberal working for Fox because it was the only job she could get. Charles Randolph wrote a pointed and robust script. Jay Roach did an excellent job of portraying the slow shifting tide at Fox News.

Overall: The event documented in this story helped to give wings to the “me too” movement.

The Aeronauts

First Hit: Although the ground scenes lack any conviction or interest, the up in the air scenes are amazingly shot and provide lots of tension.

Two things that surprised me while watching this film. One; how wonderful it was that Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) was the amazingly brave and daring character in this story. Two, the difference between the mediocre ground-based scenes and fantastic air-based scenes was almost too significant to make the whole film work.

In short, James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) was a scientist and part of The Royal Society, where the big thinkers of the day held court where they expound on grand ideas, philosophy and scientific postulates. Glaisher thought that he and others should be able to predict the weather if they had more information about the atmosphere and how it works. The society laughed at him.

To prove his point, he wanted to go up in a lighter than air balloon to take measurements. The person he asks is Wren, who is still mourning the loss of her husband, Pierre, who was also an aeronaut balloon pilot and took his life to save his wife’s during an ill-fated flight.

The film uses flashbacks throughout to show how Wren and Glaisher meet, and how they ended up in the first scene where Glaisher is impatiently waiting for Wren to show up to their launch site. Wren, on her way in a coach, is both scared and brave in her path to confront the feelings she’ll have been in a balloon for the first time since her husband’s death.

When she finally arrives at the launch site, she’s quite the showman and gives the broad audience, who is here to witness this event, lots of ways to enjoy the beginning of this balloon launch. These scenes include a small dog. It is an enjoyable part of the opening scenes.

However, it is after they take off that the real drama comes into play. Enough to say, it is not only the views they get while rising to a then-record of 38,000 feet (without oxygen) but it is what happens to the balloon and how Wren powerfully saves their lives by doing something I don’t think I would ever consider, even if my life depended on it.

These scenes are beyond tense, well shot, and exciting and it makes this film worth watching.

Lastly, one thing I wondered about through the entire film was what were they using for the lighter other than air gases? Because this wasn’t hot air they were using as there was no flame device to heat the air inside the balloon.

Jones is exceptional in this role. Her portrayal of the Amelia Wren as an Aeronaut and woman was first-rate. She also did an excellent job of showing her sadness and love towards her former husband while conquering fear by piloting the balloon. Redmayne was perfect as Glaisher, but for some reason, he was so overshadowed by Jones that he got lost in the film. When his character gives his talk at the Royal Society after his excursion with Wren, I thought that his pride in proving something felt egoic and small. It did show the smallness of humans whereas the big picture was carried by Wren. Hamish Patel was terrific as Glaisher’s friend and supporter. Tom Harper and Jack Thorne wrote a good screenplay, but it really came to life while in the air, and here is where Harper’s direction and filming made this worth watching.

Overall: Having been up in a hot air balloon, I can only imagine what they were going through as they passed through the higher reaches of the atmosphere where a man can survive without oxygen.

The Two Popes

First Hit: Very engaging film about the Catholic Church’s 2012 shift towards being more liberal.

I had basic knowledge about how the Catholic Church choose a pope and that the Pope is chosen for life. But that was it. This film opens this door a little more, and it was interesting.

This movie tells the exciting and unusual 2012 story of Pope Benedict’s ascension after Pope John Paul ll passed away, his subsequent resignation, and the ascension to the papacy of Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), Pope Francis.

The film points out that Benedict really wanted to be Pope, and his chief rival, Cardinal Bergoglio didn’t want to be Pope. From a philosophical point of view, they were diametrically opposed to the direction of the church. Watching the interaction of all the Cardinals before and during the selection of the new Pope was impressive.

When Benedict became Pope, his plan was to move the church back towards its more traditional values. However, these values were in opposition to increasingly more liberal ways Catholics around the world who were embracing like gay marriage and women having a more active role in the church.

Benedict didn’t understand or support these things. He wanted the church to go back to Latin services and for the church to be opaque in its operations. He also liked the old fashion adornments of being the Pope, and he struggled with the sexual assault suits being brought against the church, and the financial improprieties perpetuated by his right-hand man.

Bergoglio decided he wanted to retire because he felt the church wasn’t heading in the right direction. He wanted to quit being a Cardinal and go back to being a simple priest so that he could be closer to his followers in Argentina. When he flies to Rome to present his resignation letter to Pope Benedict, his letter is rejected; actually, more like his letter keeps getting ignored.

The two spend time together talking about their differences, and eventually, these discussions bring them to a point at which they are able to share their deepest secrets and failings as priests. These stories are deeply touching and when Benedict asks Bergoglio to hear his confession, the beauty of how these two different men find their genuinely humble priestly roots is remarkable.

The filmmakers make great use of the Vatican itself as scenes there are elegantly shot. There are some amusing moments when Bergoglio tries to get the Pope to sign his letter of resignation, but the Pope just ignores each request.

When Benedict shares with Bergoglio his plans to retire and hope that the Cardinals select Bergoglio to move the church in a more positive direction, Bergoglio’s plaintiff pleas to Benedict to stay in power are real and sweet.

This film does a great job of providing an honest glimpse of how the Pope selection process works and how seriously the Cardinals take this responsibility.

Pryce was sweetly sublime in this role as Cardinal Bergoglio and Pope Francis. The sweetness and humbleness of the real Pope Francis’ beliefs were wonderfully shown. Hopkins was excellent as Pope Benedict. His firmly held beliefs of how the church should work, versus what was actually happening in the church was perfectly presented. Anthony McCarten wrote a fantastic screenplay that felt real and honest to these two people. Fernando Meirelles got excellent performances from these two great actors and was able to make the Catholic Church both interesting and attempting to fix the Vatican ship.

Overall: This story brought the Catholic Church to life for me.