Eye in the Sky

First Hit:  A complex film giving a really multifacited view of how fighting wars remotely, through cameras and armed drones, is changing the face and mental complexities of war.

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is in charge of a mission to capture a British woman who is, with her Arabic husband, helping Islamic revolutionaries with suicide attacks. Powell has been tracking this person for 6 years from England through the use spies, informants and remote tracking devices.

At the time, her remote surveillance is provided for by the US using drone pilots located in a USAF unit stationed in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the first time she has a chance to capture this person in Nairobi, Kenya along with two other people who have become radicalized, one a US citizen and the other a British citizen.

Also working with her is the Kenyan army who are ready to apprehend this group when the opportunity arises. Watching her and the surveillance feeds remotely from another part of England is General Benson (Alan Rickman), who is with others from the British Government including the Attorney General.

This group is viewing the remote feeds to ensure the actions the Colonel takes are legal. However, the radicals move to an area where the government army cannot go, therefore the capture is off and now it is about finding a way to take out this group by using rockets from the drone.

There is a lot of discussion about doing this, including the amount of possible collateral damage. When they “Eye in the Sky” a drone pilot Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) sees a 9-year-old girl named Alia (Aisha Takow) near the target area he asks for a re-assessment of the collateral damage area. While this is being assessed, Col. Powell is pressing for the attack, British Government sitting with the General are mixed in their assessment of weather to attack or not.

The US Government, which comes up in two different calls, states clearly they want the attack regardless of the collateral damage, and the Pilot and his co-pilot Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox) will do what they are ordered while showing the extreme signs of the stress and difficulty of the situation.

Mirren is really strong as the obsessed Colonel that will do almost anything to meet her objective. Rickman (in probably his final film) was really good using his typical droll and intelligent way of communicating. Paul was excellent as the drone pilot that was participating in his first use of deadly force. Takow was wonderful as the Kenyan girl causing all the questions. Fox was very good as the new inexperienced co-pilot. Barkhad Adbi was superb as the Kenyan undercover agent using miniature drone camera devices and finding ways to help minimize the collateral damage. Guy Hibbert wrote an exceptional screenplay. It was complex, filled with great dialogue and fully explored the dilemma afforded by fighting war with technology and remote abilities. Gavin Hood did an excellent job of creating the intimacy of each remote area and the wholeness of how remote wars are being fought.

Overall:  This film was excellent in so many ways and did a great job of bringing in both the political and military aspects of this type warfare to light.

A Little Chaos

First Hit:  As with most period pieces it was slow in its development, yet it kept my interest to the expected conclusion.

Sabine De Barra (Kate Winslet) is a woman that has focused her single and alone life towards gardening. We learn later it wasn’t always that way, she wasn't always alone. Her work is noticed by Andre Le Norte (Matthias Schoenaerts) who is the King’s head garden designer.

King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman) decides to build the Palace of Versailles and wants the grounds to be exquisite. Andre is more conventional in his garden designs and likes organization. Sabine uses organization in a different way which includes natural flows (a little chaos). In those days, men had lovers and wives which, in this film, affects the King, Sabine and Andre in different ways.

The best scene in the film was when the King and Sabine are in an enclosed garden together and have an open peer to peer type conversation.

Winslet is great as the grieving and growing woman finding her place and love. Schoenaerts was a little too reserve for me, but that might have been the direction. Rickman is good and his natural tendency is reserved arrogance. As a King, it works. Jeremy Brock and Alison Deegan wrote this script. It’s a period piece so the dialogue is long winded, but the points they make about society in the time we’re well done. Rickman directed the film.

Overall:  I enjoyed moments of the film. Those times were when the King and Sabine were in conversation.

The Butler (Original Title)

First Hit:  Some of the performances were outstanding while others were miscast and poor.

I do not like the ego of directors or writers who name their film with their name as part of the title. This film was originally called "The Butler" and now it is called and marketed as “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”.

I’m sure there are reasons why, but for me it taints a films’ integrity. Why? Because it means that the director (in this case) views himself as or more important than the film itself.

The best thing about this film was viewing changes in the civil rights movement through Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) life. Where he watched his mother being abused by the slave owner, his father shot by saying something about it to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and finally a black man being elected President of the United States. How it was portrayed by Whitaker, David Oyelowo, and Oprah Winfrey was excellent.

What didn’t work about this film? The representation of the Presidents Cecil served during his time in the White House. This is a great story about how a man learned how to serve with great strength of character and gained respect for his service and being of service. Although his home life was hard at times with his wife being an alcoholic and his oldest son becoming a radical of the sixties with the Black Panthers, he persevered these things as well as losing his youngest son in Vietnam and through it all he continued to be an honorable man.

Whitaker is wonderful and electric in this role. Winfrey is difficult to watch at the beginning because it is hard to separate Oprah from the role. If she acted more, she would be able to have the audience transcend her television persona more easily because she is a very good actress. Oyelowo is absolutely great as Whitaker’s son. Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t capture Dwight’s pace or energy. John Cusack did get the creepiness of Nixon but paled as the film moved on. James Marsden seemed more like Bobby Kennedy than John F. Kennedy. Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson was pathetic. Alan Rickman was slightly worse than Schreiber as Ronald Reagan. However, I though Jane Fonda was a priceless and fabulous choice as Nancy Reagan – she caught the look, feel and ways of Nancy. Danny Strong wrote a good script. Lee Daniels got good performances from some actors but the choice of others for their roles was very weak.

Overall:  The real story got slightly demeaned by the actors chosen to be Presidents.

Gambit

First Hit:  Mildly entertaining in very few places.

Harry (played by Colin Firth) feels unappreciated as a lowly art appraiser and employee of egoist Lionel Shahbandar (played by Alan Rickman).

To get his boss back he thinks of a plan to duplicate a Monet piece where the original is currently in Texas and owned by PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz). Harry gets PJ to be part of the plan by telling her she will get a $500,000 if she pretends to sell her Monet to Shahbandar for $12 M.

What will really happen is that they will sell a forgery made by Major Wingate (played by Tom Courtenay). In this very lame comedy things go array with their plan but, as expected, come together in the end. Wading through the wasted screen time for the few real funny bits (Harry in an old woman’s hotel room with no pants) is painful.

Firth is occasionally funny but more time is spent on being in no-man’s land. It is like we have to wade through a lot of junk to get to any good stuff. Rickman is simply not a good comedic film villain. Diaz is OK, occasionally funny, but mostly seems pressed to make this film work. Ethan and Joel Coen didn’t create much of a screenplay and it was probably made worse by the lazy and unfocused direction of Michael Hoffman. 

Overall:  This was a time waste.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

First Hit: Somewhat better than Part 1 but frankly, I’m glad this long winded tale is over.

Thrusting children who are the bringers of light and lightheartedness to our planet into an ever increasing darker set of circumstances as they get older is part of our life on this planet; or so it seems.

The Harry Potter series of films reflects this transition in a different way and I’m not sure if it is (or was) to our benefit or entertainment. The tales took the mystery of magic and attempted to make it a real life thing and being embodied in a select few children. 

The series of films only focused on the selected few therefore we rarely were able to see or sense the difference between this magical world and non-magically gifted children or adults. This was one of the problems I had with this series of films. Where as the Hobbit tales were all fantasy.

These films originally started in a world where regular people were part of the story but they ended up being only fantasy until the very last scene when the main character's children are in a real life railway station heading off to Hogwarts School.

This film took started where Part 1 left off. Whereas Part 1 of the final chapter was long winded, boring and attempted to set-up our characters for the final resolution; Part 2 was filled with CGI action. Harry (like Luke Skywalker) was connected to the dark force of Lord Voldemort and had to be willing to kill himself to save Hogwarts and all the special magical kids who attend. One has to be willing to lose oneself to find oneself and this is true in the Harry Potter world as well as our own.

Anyway this film was dark (both in concept and visually), long, and, in some ways, filled with senseless action.

Daniel Radcliffe (as Potter) was good to watch in the first couple of films, but became limited and shallow as the series went on. He lacked depth of character in Part 2. My guess is (and I could very well be wrong) he’s glad to be through with this film series because it showed. Rupert Grint (as Weasley) probably won’t have much of an acting career after this last installment, there is nothing engaging about him or the character he played. Emma Watson (as Granger) was and is the strongest actor of the main three characters and will continue to have success as an actor. Alan Rickman (as Snape) is always enjoyable to watch and here he makes his character intriguing. Ralph Fiennes (as Voldemort) is good as the story’s evil dark character and it wasn’t because of the lines but because of his skill at creating presence. Steve Kloves wrote the screenplay from J.K. Rowling’s novel and some of the dialogue felt stiff. David Yates directed this and there seemed to be the belief that the more crap you throw up on the screen the more of it will stick. One scene particularly felt out of place, was when Harry was coming down some stairs after an intense encounter with the vision pool and Ron and Hermione are sitting there. Why were they there, how did they get there, why would they be sitting there as if they were having a private “together” moment in the middle of the battle for their school? Then they get up and after a couple of stilted lines, the three of them get more engaged with the war against evil again.

Overall:  I waded through all of the films and only one or two were noteworthy and engaging. This one excelled only in the amount of CGI stuff thrown up on the screen.