Megan Leavey

First Hit: I was fully engaged emotionally with this film and maybe it's because I have a dog and we're close.

Megan Leavey’s story is a true one and I appreciated seeing the real Rex and Megan in the final credits.

This story is about a young lost girl who finds love and a path through life by joining the US Marines and becoming a dog handler. Megan (Kate Mara) perfectly portrays a life not worth living. She is in constant dispute with her mother Jackie (Edie Falco) who just seems clueless about her daughter’s life and what she’s hurting from. Megan also hates her job and has recently lost her closest friend.

There’s a great scene in this film that emphasizes the struggle between Jackie and Megan. Jackie is complaining about her former husband Bob (Bradley Whitford) not giving her the $2,000 he owes her, and Megan’s retort points out that Jackie slept with Bob’s best friend Jim (Will Patton) so Megan doesn’t think Bob owns her mother anything.

Early on she drinks herself out of a job she hates, and drinking gets her in trouble in the Marines as well when she gets caught peeing next to the base provost’s home. Making wrong decisions are her trademark, but this latter one gets her duty cleaning up the kennel. And with most detrimental things in life, there are opportunities as well and Megan suddenly realizes she wants to be a dog handler.

The film takes us through the process and gives the audience a clear picture of how unique these dogs and their handlers are. After Megan meets Rex (her German Shepard), she begins to open up and feels caring and love towards something for the first time in a long time. There are wonderful touching realistic moments that are nicely captured.

Although these dog teams are not well loved by other ground troops and the enemy really dislikes them, they provide a valuable service and when they discover hidden explosives they are beloved.

The movie follows Megan to Iraq where she and Rex are assigned missions. Rex performs perfectly and bravely because Megan performs in the same way, they are connected. They are a team and become inseparable. However, after they both receive injuries, the expectation is that Megan will not re-enlist and Rex will be retired. She wants to adopt Rex but a very unmindful Marine Vet says Rex is unadoptable.

With Megan’s heart broken, she starts to slip away into her previous “I give up” life. However, her dad gives her a talk that highlights her strength and what she learned by being a Marine.

Mara is fantastic. I really felt her despair early in the film and later when Rex was re-assigned to another handler. I also bought her growth as she found strength to tackle the issues or challenges in front of her. Falco was strong has her mother who seemed clueless as to her own behavior and actions towards her daughter. The café scene when she asks about who gets how much money if she happens to die in Iraq was priceless and perfect. Whitford was wonderful as her quiet unassuming father. Common as Gunnery Martin was really good and he’s shown that he's become a strong actor. Ramon Rodriguez as fellow handler Matt Morales was wonderful. I loved his lightheartedness and open caring for both his animal and Megan. Pamela Gray and Annie Mumolo wrote a sensitive and strong screenplay. Gabriela Cowperthwaite did a great job of presenting this emotional strong story.

Overall:  I cried numerous times during this film, which told me it worked.

Afternoon Delight

First Hit:  At times, very insightful and interesting, other times the film was lost and some scenes needed cutting or a re-write.

The home life of Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Jeff (Josh Radnor) is one of a couple that is out of sync with each other. Rachel isn’t working, or attempts to write from time to time.

Jeff has made it big with developing “apps” and the results have put them in a nice home in Silver Lake California, a close community to downtown LA. They have a young son and hang out with friends, like themselves, mid-thirties, successful, and working a lot.

Their sex life is spoken about by whether they put the dog out or not. It’s code. Mostly they don’t have sex because as we learn Rachel would like it in the afternoon while Jeff is always working. To spice up their life they and another couple go to a strip club where Jeff buys Rachel a lap dance with McKenna (Juno Temple).

It unnerves her in two ways, she’s intrigued by her feelings and also confused by them. She doesn’t want to be curious but is. Rachel tracks down McKenna and begins to have coffee walks with her. One day McKenna is being thrown out of her car and Rachel offers her their nanny’s room.

Rachel discovers that McKenna makes no bones about being a sex worker but is also of a very sweet kind disposition and loves kids. But when Rachel has a real opportunity to let McKenna show this side of her, she fails and things blow-up.

Hahn is very effective as a troubled wife, who has some demons (the energy work scene points out this very powerfully) she needs to deal with. Radnor is good as the pre-occupied husband. Temple is sublime as the sex worker. She brings a real presence to the film and succeeds in being the driver of the story. Jane Lynch is both interesting and horrible as the therapist treating Rachel. She brought a strong presence, but as a comedy sequence where “she shares” her own story, it fails miserably. These scenes needed a full rewrite. Jessica St. Clair, Michaela Watkins, Annie Mumolo were all very good in their roles and Rachel’s closest friends. Jill Soloway both wrote and directed this film. From a writing aspect, some scenes were great while others were horrible. She did a good job of directing the film and giving strength to the characters, however some scenes were just not required or needed re-writing.

Overall:  This film has some very good things to say and could have been better.

Bridesmaids

First Hit: A few good laughs lying on pointless dialogue while being nudged by gross behavior for effects.

The first thing that stuck me about this film was that the only character that I felt was honest and worth connecting with was a male.

Now maybe this is because I’m male, but even my girlfriend said the same thing unprompted. Rhodes (played by Chris O’Dowd), playing a police officer, was kind and centered. In fact he was the only kind centered character in the film (outside of the guy who fixes Annie’s car).

Everyone else was either unlikeable or someone who was difficult to relate to. Annie, (played by Kristen Wiig) is having a tough time in her life. She lives with two Australian siblings who have little or no touch to reality (“At first I thought your diary was a handwritten novel” – are you kidding, no one is that stupid).

Annie works in a jewelry store as a clerk, but her sarcastic attitude scotches every sale. Her car is beat up, missing two working tail lights, and is run down. She once owned a bakery but it failed and we don’t know why. “And hell will freeze over before” she moves in with her mom (we never know why). And on top of this she sleeps with a creep who uses her for sex, she knows it, and doesn’t bother to hide that this disappoints her yet she still sleeps with him whenever he calls (she’s his “Number 3”).

This film makes the mistake most films Judd Apatow makes, no real character mining. Nothing to get me engaged in who the people on the screen are. It is almost like he says; “throw a bunch of shit on the wall to see what sticks.” I didn't care about Annie. I almost couldn’t care about her best friend Lillian (played by Maya Rudolph) because she knew damn well what she was doing by playing Annie off of Helen (played by Rose Byrne) but Lillian was, overall, a sweet character.

The other Bridesmaids where caricatures of people we may or may not know. There was no development of any one of them except Megan (played by Melissa McCarthy) who was one of the grossest characters in the film. Lastly this thing was over two hours long and it needed to be edited by at least 30 minutes.

I know that they team that put this together had a whole listing of jokes and skits they wanted to put in this film to make it funny, but someone forgot the pruning shears.

Wiig couldn’t and didn’t create a character worth caring about. She was playing a role and didn’t let her intelligence see that she needed to develop and sell the audience on someone worth watching. She failed in this task miserably. O’Dowd was perfect in his part and created the only sensible person in the film. He was good. Rudolph was OK, but this role was one she could do in her sleep. There was nothing here to really care about because it wasn’t believable that she was so easily pulled away by Helen’s obvious trivial pursuit. If her life-long friendship with Annie was real, she wouldn’t have acted this way. Byrne was OK as the snotty, have too much money and time, bitch that needed to be the center of attention. However, “so what”? I couldn’t care less about why she was the way she was. Her big scene to lay it all out was un-evolving and uninspiring. McCarthy was simply gross in her character and unbelievable in role, however she did attempt to create a moment of caring when she goes to Annie’s house to try to get her out of her doldrums. Wiig and Annie Mumolo wrote this wasteful script. Paul Feig directed this and needed to toe the line about how much garbage went into this film.

Overall: Not worth seeing this at any point in time – it’s just a bad film.