The Laundromat

First Hit: Confusing in presentation and often meandering away from the point, this movie fails in presenting how shell companies work to launder money and how this wrongdoing is hidden from governments.

This film attempts to teach and engage the audience about the art of laundering money through a story of tragedy, charts and graphs, and humorous vignettes. It fails on all three fronts.

Jurgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas) are two flamboyant law partners based in Panama City who run a set of bogus insurance and reinsurance companies. These insurance companies scam others by taking their money, hide it, change documentation, and then legally never payout against the claims. They also have set up schemes of shell companies where money is hidden and moved around so that taxes are never paid on the money.

The human life stories they use include Ellen and Joe Martin (Meryl Streep and James Cromwell, respectively) who are in retirement and decide to go on a lake tour boat. The boat capsizes because of a rogue wave, and Joe dies along with several others. Ellen, as one of the survivors, expects a class action financial settlement from the tour boat company’s insurance company.

However, Ellen’s lawyer (Larry Clarke) discovers that the insurance company used by the boat tour company had sold the policy to someone else and that the timing issue means the boat company wasn’t insured.

The film spends a little time with the boat owner, Captain Paris (Robert Patrick), as he discovers from his employee Matthew Quirk (David Schwimmer) that he’d gotten a deal on the insurance, and that’s why he selected this company. The payments were going to a shell company (postal box) on Nevis Island in the Caribbean that is run by Malchus Irvin Boncamper (Jeffrey Wright).

Ellen, who is mad as hell, traces the payment scheme and goes to Nevis, hoping to recover a settlement and discovers that the address is only a postal box.

The film stupidly adds in stuff about how Boncamper has two families, one on Nevis and one in Miami. And he gets caught in this charade while being arrested in Miami by the federal government.

The story also adds in other drama about a wealthy man, from Africa, living in the US having an affair with his daughter’s college friend. Getting caught by the daughter, he bribes her to not tell her mother by giving her a company that’s supposedly is worth $20M. Because of a previous indiscretion that his wife knew about, this man had also given his wife a company. Angry at the bribe and tired of his shenanigans, the wife and daughter head to Panama City to visit Mossack and Fonseca and cash in their stock.

Of course, they discover that their companies are fake shell organizations, and the stock is worth nothing because the husband has transferred all the funds to his own companies.

There are ill-timed and confusing graphics thrown into the mix, and there are additional maudlin scenes of Ellen with her daughter and grandchildren in Las Vegas where Ellen and Joe had met. The whole Las Vegas segue could have been left out as it added little to the story.

This film suffers significantly from the beginning moments with Mossack and Fonseca in contrived scenes with them talking to the camera and attempting to explain financial schemes in horrible accents that make it even more muddled.

Streep is wasted and horribly underused in this story. Oldman is horrible. I’ve no idea of what he was attempting to represent because one moment he’s sitting in a beach chair and the next he’s pretending to be a lawyer using a perverse accent. Banderas was slightly better than Oldman, but not much. Wright was okay as the elusive representative of a fake insurance company. Schwimmer was OK as the relative and employee of the tour boat company that had looked to save them money on insurance premiums. There are nearly forty other actors playing roles in this story, but because the story is confusingly contrived, no one character is developed. Scott Z. Burns wrote a disastrous screenplay. Steven directed this, and it would have been interesting to better understand what was in his head. I was thrown from one ill-conceived scene to another while being interrupted with graphic explanations with poorly articulated voiceovers.

Overall: I learned little to nothing about shell companies and tax avoidance because the stories thrown up on the screen were poorly conceived.

Pain and Glory

First Hit: At times, this story of a filmmaker in decline was engaging.

At times I could begin to feel the pain of Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) as he slowly moved about the confines of his home. Other times I didn’t sense the embodiment of pain at all. It felt inconsistent.

The film begins when Mallo has just been asked to talk to a group about a presentation of his movie “Sabor.” It is a 30-year retrospective presentation of this film for which he’d become famous and had received praise and recognition. We learn that he disliked the way the lead actor in that film, Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia), made the main character. But having just seen it again after all this time, he ended up liking what Crespo did with the role.

Wanting Crespo to join him on the stage for the a Q&A about the film, Mallo reaches out to Crespo and asks to meet up with him. There were awkward moments at this first meeting in thirty years, but they become soothed when Crespo introduces Mallo to heroin. The drug eases his physical and inner pain along with his angst towards Crespo.

During Malo’s sleep and when he’s drugged up, the film flashes back to these moments when he was a boy, and we begin to learn something about this creative man and where his creativity comes from.

We see an early scene where Salvador is a young boy (Asier Flores), and he’s with his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz) in a train station after having left their home. They are waiting for Salvador’s father (Raul Arevalo) to come take them to their new home. They are tired, and he lies on the bench to sleep, while she lies on the floor. This is a sharp image early on in the film and is used again at the end.

The flashbacks include when his mother is much older (played by Julieta Serrano) and Salvador’s attempt to care for her. She uses guilt to have him attend to her as she wishes.

The story also explores his first love Federico Delgado (Leonardo Sbaraglia). Salvador gives Crespo a one-person play he’s written (Addiction), and when Federico happens to see it, he locates and calls Salvador. Their reunion is incredibly sweet.

There is also a flashback of Salvador teaching an adult young man, Eduardo (Cesar Vicente), how to read and write. These are beautifully choreographed scenes, especially when you see Salvador sitting with Eduardo, tasking him to work on his writing. 

 I’m not sure I understood Salvador’s relationship with Mercedes (Nora Navas) other than she was an actress looking for work and genuinely cared for Salvador. 

Many of the shots and scenes are beautifully presented, and then pull away at the end was clever and poignant. 

Banderas was good. I didn’t think he expressed his pain very well because there are scenes where he moves with a particular gait and then delivers a different opposing stride in another scene. I also wanted to better understand why he had this pain, both physical and mental. Etxeandia was excellent as the drug-addled actor. In his scenes where he’s performing the play “Addiction,” he was excellent. It was very moving. Sbaraglia was very strong as Salvador’s old friend and flame. Cruz was excellent as Salvador’s younger mother. Vicente’s performance as the young man whom Salvador teaches was excellent. Flores as young Salvador was terrific. He rebelled against going to school at a church because he hated the thought of being a priest. Pedro Almodovar wrote and directed this film. While watching this film, I kept thinking about how close this film is to being a biography. 

Overall: The next day, I wasn’t very impressed or impacted by this film.

Knight of Cups

First Hit:  An interesting, esoteric and ethereal film of a man reflecting on his place in the world through his relationships.

This film is not and will not be everyone’s cup of tea. In general it is about self-discovery, our purpose in this life, and understanding ourselves individually and collectively.

Those who value self-reflection and contemplating their own life as a way to see and better understand their current place and have patience for the film to unfold in its own way may like it.

One particular sequence early on with Ben Kingsley’s voice over states something like; it takes us so long to begin to see the depth of who we are because we spend most of our time responding to outside stimuli. During this sequence the images on the screen are of a young Rick (Christian Bale) on the beach with his family and in other settings.

The film is divided into 8 named sequences. Each, except the final section called Freedom, are named after Tarot cards, as is the name of the film. The "Knight of Cups" is the heart filled Knight in the Tarot deck. Although the Knight is on a horse (strength), because the horse is in a walking position, the Knight and the other representations on the card represent calmness and being ruled by the heart when important decisions are made.

Rick goes through the film in this etheric way, little outside emotion is seen, and each scene gives a view into his feelings. The people speaking to him fade in and out and one can begin to sense that Rick is Hollywood connected.

Each of these sections, which reflect the names of the cards are about the women he’s been with, his angry and lost brother Barry (Wes Bentley), his controlling, angry, and demanding father Joseph (Brian Dennehy) (their section is named “The Hangman”), and an immoral playboy Tonio (Antonio Banderas) (his section is named “The Hermit”).

My sense was that the latter was Rick’s own reflection of his playboy ways. The women are Della (Imogen Poots) whose section is “The Moon” and she is young and rebellious. The section called “Judgement” is played by his former wife, a physician, Nancy (Cate Blanchett). “The Tower” is played by Freida Pinto as a serene model named Helen. Teresa Palmer, as a spirited playful stripper named Karen is the section called “The High Priestess”. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) is “Death”, the person Rick wronged. And finally, “Freedom”, an innocent Isabel (Isabel Lucas) who assists him in seeing ahead.

All of these stories are mixed and matched with life events, like robbery, heated arguments, disagreements, moments of bliss, and each of them lying on a backdrop of natural reflective scenes of Rick in the desert and on the beach at sunset.

Bale says little in the film, much of his thoughts and feelings are shared through visuals of him solitarily reflecting, with others but almost always on the edge of being disengaged, and the scenes outside himself, what he’s seeing. Because he had no physical script to work from, he was genuinely perfect for the role because of his ability to be silent yet communicative at the same time. Bentley is very strong as the angry, lost brother. Dennehy was perfect as the father. It was so nice to see him again. Poots was very good as Della. She clearly provided an edge to Rick’s life. Blanchett was very strong as his former physician wife. Her compassion to the people she worked on was amazing. Banderas was great as the playboy and during the A-List Hollywood party, he was like a kid in a candy store. Pinto was elegant in her role as a serene presence in Rick’s life. The model shoot was very realistic. Palmer was strong as the enticing playful stripper. Portman was extremely strong as a tortured married woman who both loved and felt wronged by Rick. Lucas was very good in representing a path forward. Terrence Malick wrote and directed this film. His strengths are getting creatively strong improvisational performances from his cast. The visual shots in the film are often arrestingly beautiful.

Overall:  As I said, this film isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it was mine.

Machete Kills

First Hit: As expected bloody, poorly acted and shows why the original not worth having a sequel.

I found the first “Machete” an interesting anomaly but this one showed that a "one off" doesn't deserve more film or time.

The gall of the film starting with a quasi-preview of the next Machete was even worse. Although Danny Trejo looks mean and tough, his overall stature, lack of graceful movement, and inability to create a character worth caring about was a waste of Trejo’s talents.

A convoluted uninspiring plot including a schizophrenic drug lord Mendez (Demian Bichir), a mean and clueless Miss San Antonio (Amber Heard), an amusing El Camaleon (played by: Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr.), and a scientific eccentric cult leader Voz (Mel Gibson).

The fun parts of the film were Cuba Gooding Jr. in his turn as El Camaleon. He brought a campy humor to a film that when I left the theater I murmured, with nodded agreement from another guest, “a waste of my time”.

Trejo would do well to get out of working with Director Robert Rodriguez on this sort of film, if he wants to advance his career. Michelle Rodriguez as Luz was fully underused. Cuba Gooding Jr. was the only real fun person to watch. Gaga was OK as was Banderas and Goggins as other personalities of El Camaleon. Bichir tried his best but it was more a poor story than his acting. Heard was probably the second best thing in the film as she spit out a conservative set of lines about immigration and gun control. Gibson attempted to bring up the magic that made him great in Mad Max and the Lethal Weapon series. Kyle Ward wrote a screenplay that probably matched Robert and Marcel Rodriguez's idea for a story. Robert Rodriguez’s direction was immature, lacked focus, and attempted to build a resume off of his first Machete effort – not very smart. He may get money for it but not raising the bar is inexcusable. I will not waste any money of the next sequel.

Overall:  Do not waste your time or money – just remember the first Machete and know it is a cut above this.

The Skin I Live In

First Hit:  Odd and interesting film about obsession, retaliation and redemption.

Almodovar does some interesting films, some are oddly funny while other films are unique in their view of life and behavior.

Here Robert Ledgard (played by Antonio Banderas) is a surgeon who performs magic on burn patients. Additionally he performs sex change operations out of his own operating room in his home. His wife dies from suicide because she is horribly burned and when she sees her reflection in a window for the first time, she cannot stand what she sees.

His daughter gets raped by a young man named Vincente (played by Jan Cornet) and because she is traumatized, commits suicide as well. Legard, as part of his research, is working on how to replace and grow skin as a replacement for burn victims.

In his anger at losing his daughter, he kidnaps Vincente the boy who raped his daughter and changes him into a woman named Vera Cruz (played by Elena Anaya). Because she is with him for years they develop a relationship.

However, this film is about revenge and redemption so it has its twists. The one thing that amazed me was how perfect Vera’s skin was. I know that this must have been the expert use of makeup as well as special effects.

The skin was amazing.

Banderas is very good as the somewhat mental, yet intelligent doctor. Cornet was well cast as the troubled rogue young man. Anaya was superb as Vera. Pedro Almodovar wrote and directed this interesting and thoughtful film.

Overall: A good film and worth watching.