Uncut Gems

First Hit: A wild ride with a Jewish, gem selling, obsessive gambler.

This film starts oddly because we move between the inside of a large black opal to the colon of gem and watch seller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Eerily some of the camera images reflect the similarity between both, and I guess that was the point.

We follow Howard on the streets of New York, gregariously saying “hello” to many individuals he comes across as he makes his way to his store through the double door security system these small gem sellers use. I want to note that these doors become part of the story. Getting buzzed in by his beautiful assistant and girlfriend Julia (Julia Fox), he heads to his office in a very anxious, nervous way.

The one characteristic behavior Howard displays throughout the film is one of being chased, corralled, and almost being caught but finding a way to talk himself out of being beaten up or killed each time. This is the ride we are on with Howard throughout the film.

As a gambler that owes his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) over $100K, and other people money from his sports gambling losses, we see him in sequences of pawning stuff, giving people watches as collateral, and making wild, complex sports bets.

Arriving at his desk in an early scene, he receives a Styrofoam box, which has him very excited. Opening the box, there are two fish, he squeezes each of them looking to feel something. We know this is an illicit shipment of something. He finally cuts one open to reveal the sizeable uncut opal we saw, and were inside of, in the opening sequence.

His plan is to auction the opal off for nearly a million dollars, and it will free him from the money he owes to bookies and to finalize the divorce his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) while providing for his three kids, and make his girlfriend happy.

Enter Kevin Garnett, the basketball player. He’s brought to Howard’s store because of their mutual friend “The Weekend” (The Weekend) wanted Howard to do business with Kevin. Howard shows him some of the stuff in the store and in a moment of pride, shows him the uncut opal. Kevin is mesmerized by the opal and asks to take it for a night. Reluctantly, Howard agrees if Kevin gives up his Boston Celtics championship ring as collateral. Thinking he can get away with it, Howard pawns Kevin’s ring to make a quick bet hoping to capitalize a big win and pay everyone back, get the ring out of hock, auction the stone, make a bunch of money and live a happy fulfilled life with his girlfriend.

However, we know compulsive gamblers rarely finish first, and the film follows this big setup until its end.

The scenes where Howard is having difficult conversations with his wife, bookies, or employees, are amazing and probably not easy to do. He seems to never hear what the other person is saying and continues the conversation as if the person whom he’s speaking with understood and agreed with what he has said. This is rarely the case and so there are many scenes where people are merely talking over each other. Listening to these two different dialogues and attempting to follow both conversations during a shouting session was both amusing and challenging.

I thought the scenes were very well set up in that they seemed to always have an edge that everything was going to come off the rails any minute. There was a franticness in everything on the screen that kept the film moving along at a rapid clip despite its 135-minute running time.

Sandler was perfect for this role, and I could easily see why the Safdie brothers wanted him for the part. Like the film “Punch Drunk Love,” Sandler can bring a desperate dark edge to his characters and make it totally believable. Here the monster is his addiction to the big win. Maybe an Oscar-worthy performance. Garnett was terrific as himself. That might sound funny, but often sports stars are awkward when being filmed, but Kevin was dynamite. The Weekend was perfect as the sly, trying-to-make-a-buck, go-between. Two scenes stood out; one in Howard’s office when The Weekend discovers Howard has been selling, hawking, or giving away the watches that he’s stored in Howards safe. The other scene that stood out was in the nightclub when Howard confronts The Weekend about the opal. Fox was excellent as Howard’s lover. The scenes in the apartment and in the Vegas betting room were well done and it’s the latter where she stood out. Menzel played Howard’s wife as a sarcastic person who is disengaged from her relationship with her husband. The look on her face when she opened their Mercedes trunk with Howard inside was priceless. Bogosian was outstanding as Howard’s brother-in-law and loan shark bank. Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, and Josh Safdie wrote an engaging script. But it was the directing and acting of Sandler and the rest of the team that made this film work.

Overall: This film left me with mixed feelings, but I loved the story and the wild ride.

Men, Women & Children

First Hit:  Interesting film about how social media is navigated and used.

I’m not a big Social Media person. I have a Facebook account which I look at about once every six months and I’ve a twitter account that I used 5 times 2 years ago.

However my company uses these and other social media vehicles to help us be seen and to grow our presence. In this film we have a paranoid mother Patricia (Jennifer Garner) monitoring every interaction her daughter Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever) has in her social media accounts. All except a secret account where Brandy dresses up and posts pictures as someone else.

She begins to like and meet up with Tim (Ansel Elgort), a loner guy whose mom left him and his dad and he’s wondering if life is worthwhile. His mom posts her adventures in California with new boyfriend on Social Media - then blocks his access to her account. Then there is Hannah Clint (Olivia Crocicchia) whose mother Donna (Judy Greer) takes suggestive photos of her and posts them for payment and view by clients.

There is also Don and Patricia Truby (Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt respectively) who have lost sexual interest in each other and use websites to find sexual partners. There were a lot of stories in this film and above were only some of them.

The point, which it did well, was to highlight how over control, under awareness, and not knowing what is going on with your child or partner leads to interesting uses of social media. With social media we separate ourselves and don’t talk face to face.

Conversely, we also will use it to also connect with strangers, call them “friends” although we don’t know them, and create relationships. Scenes where people were walking in shopping malls and school halls with their phone’s text message bubbles over them while they walk, heads down, looking at their screens was very telling.

Sandler was good as the man and husband who has lost his way and finds that treading old water won’t be helpful. The last scene in the kitchen with this wife as very good. DeWitt was very strong as the wife who was looking for some excitement in her life. Garner was so over the top (in a good way) and great as the paranoid mother. Dever was wonderful as the young girl hamstringed by her mom (Garner) and finding strength to live her life. Crocicchia was perfect as the girl who would do anything to be on reality TV and who thinks that what she looks like is the most important thing. Greer is very good as the mom who wanted to be a Hollywood star, didn’t make it, so she pushed and sold her daughter’s beauty. Elgort was excellent as the boy, who lost his mom, and was trying to make sense of his life and what was important. Additionally Elania Kampouris was very effective as the girl who made a guy’s opinion of her more important than her own opinion of herself. Chad Kultgen and Jason Reitman wrote the interesting but a bit too scattered script and Reitman got good performances out of his actors and the script.

Overall:  I think the story tried to tell too many stories and therefore there wasn’t enough depth in any one of them.

Just Go With It

First Hit: Very funny at times, but wallowed at times in poor humor and a mediocre storyline.

I like Adam Sandler (as Danny) much of the time, but the humor in this story at times was unnecessary.

Example: Michael (played by Griffin Gluck), who is plays Aniston's son, takes a crap and does this on Danny's brother Eddie’s (played by Nick Swardson) arm as he sleeps in the bathtub while his arm is draped into the toilet. Why was this scene necessary? It wasn’t.

There are a number of scenes like this. I also thought the opening wedding scene where Danny hears that his wife has been sleeping with other men and that Danny and his sister are ridiculed by having overly prominent noses as the unnecessary setup for Danny to become a plastic surgeon and never let himself get close to a woman.

However as we witness the seamless relationship between Danny and his surgical assistant Katherine (played by Jennifer Aniston) we see some good, funny and interesting acting going on. The basis of the story is that Danny wears a wedding ring to obtain sympathy from women and has intimate temporary relationships with them.

He meets Palmer (played by Brooklyn Decker) and falls in love with her. However she thinks he’s married so Danny tells her he’s getting a divorce. Katherine plays his wife to collaborate his story but it becomes convoluted from there. Additionally, while in Hawaii Katherine runs into her college nemesis Devlin (played by Nicole Kidman).

Some of the scenes with Katherine and Devlin are well done and funny. In the end we all know what’s going to happen.

Sandler is OK, nothing great and generally is playing the same character he always does, semi sensitive and always wisecracking. Aniston is the one of the prizes of this film. She is so easy to believe in her character it just doesn’t look like acting. Gluck played a ridiculous character and he did it poorly. Decker is OK as the young beautiful woman. Kidman is funny in this role and she actually has more facial expressions here than she has shown in the past 3 films - think about her plastic surgery. Allan Loeb and Timothy Dowling wrote the up and down screenplay. Dennis Dugan directed all the scenes good and bad, but overall just an OK movie.

Overall: This is a film that is worth watching on DVD.

Funny People

First Hit: At times interesting and funny but there were long wasted scenes that didn’t drive a cohesive story so the film felt longer than its very long running time.

There are Adam Sandler films that are funny, introspective and interesting as well as some that were less than good.

This film will fall in the latter bucket and I don’t think it is because of his acting as much as the script and direction he received. The story follows the life of George Simmons who (a lot like Sandler’s own life) went from stand-up comedy to making funny films.

Simmons makes more than enough money, has no real friends, does what he wants, is arrogant and lacks humility. Then a dose of reality hits as he discovers he has a rare disease and will probably die because only 8% of the people treated recover.

Simmons, takes some stock in his life and does some stand-up but it is laced with gallows type humor. He longs to connect with people in a more meaningful way but his entrenched behavior holds him back. This becomes obvious when he attempts to meet up and reconcile with is former girlfriend. He also hires a struggling comic named Ira Wright (played by Seth Rogen) to write him jokes.

Ira lives with two roommates who are comics and actors as well and this side story, which we keep going back to, takes away from what could be a good film. It was almost like the Director Judd Apatow created these characters to get some friends employed.

The film spent too much time trying to get us to care about his roommates when the real story is about Simmons and what will he do to get his life in order.

The film makes Ira an integral part of the story and it would have worked except that Ira is hard to understand. There isn’t enough character building to create an honest background as to why he makes certain moral judgments or makes some stupid decisions; we’re supposed to take it all at face value.

Judd Apatow, the writer and director of this film has made his mark in the land of mediocre with his past films. This one doesn’t move him from this place. He makes obvious blatant attempts at driving towards moral points by creating scenes he thinks are funny yet supportive of his view. Seth Rogen is well intentioned but really lacks the chops to be a good actor at this point in his career. He always is the same person; Seth Rogen. Sandler shows moments of brilliance in this film, like much of his effort in Punch Drunk Love, however, the script and direction left him in a lifeboat without a paddle and his arms got weary of rowing this boat ashore.

Overall: This is a long film and I felt it all the way to the end. There are moments of brilliance, but as a cohesive interesting story it lacks a something to care about.

You Don't Mess With the Zohan

First Hit: Occasionally and sophomorically funny with attempts to make points about the absurdity of race and religious belief issues.

This Adam Sandler film attempts to make fighting terrorism or the reasons for terrorism to exist, funny.

The premise is Zohan (Played by Sandler), who uses hummus for everything, is the supreme Israeli fighter and anti-terrorist agent. We first see him on vacation showing off to the women doing almost inhuman things. He gets the call to cut his vacation short to capture (again) “The Phantom” (played by John Turturro).

Because Zohan wants out of the terrorist fighting business and longs to be a hairdresser in New York, he fakes his death in a fight with “The Phantom”. When he arrives in New York he finds it’s harder to get a job as a hairdresser than he thought.

He finally gets a job at a Palestinian shop run by Dalia (played by Emmanuelle Chriqui). His climb to being a great hairdresser is based on paying attention to his clients, their needs, and from “servicing” them.

During the film most races get skewered. In the end everybody sees the fruitlessness of discrimination between the Palestinians and Jews and everyone is happy.

Some of the bits are really stupid and done again and again while others are funny and on the absurd side. However, the sophomoric way in which most of the comedic intentions are expressed (the constant bumping and grinding of his “really large bush”) just become wearing, thin and with a lack of imagination.

Overall: This is a see it on video film if you are in for a couple hours of stupid sophomoric comedy with an obvious ending.