Far From The Madding Crowd

First Hit:  Strong acting on all fronts and with luscious photography this was a good film but its length took away from it being better.

This long famous Thomas Hardy novel has Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdene;  a woman whose parents died while she was young.

She works on her Aunt’s farm, tills the soil and rides horses like a man; meaning in Victoria England women rode side saddle whereas Bathsheba rides straddling the horse. She is very strong, self assured, independent and wants to stay that way. Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), the sheep herder neighbor, is fully smitten by Bathsheba and after a few friendly visits, asks her for her and in marriage. She is shocked and says "no", explaining she doesn’t want to be married. She ends up inheriting a large home and land. After arriving she takes charge and immediately begins to make the land profitable.

Her wealthy neighbor William Boldwood (Michael Sheen) takes a liking to Bathsheba and also asks for her hand in marriage because he wants to take care of her (“provide safe harbor”). She turns him down as well. Then she becomes smitten by handsome and reckless soldier (Tom Sturridge) who touches her in more ways than one. She agrees to be married and soon regrets the decision. He fritters away her farm on gambling and eventually confides he loves another. This leaves Bathsheba to make some difficult decisions.

The movie is lusciously filmed and many details are exquisitely shared. The cast was well chosen, however the script is a little long winded in the way this story was shared.

Mulligan is very good. She definitely has grown as an actress and reverentially delivers this character role. Her semi-smile is her strong suit as it says so much. Schoenaerts is perfect as the noble, strong, silent, friend and suitor. Sheen is fantastic as the once spurned noble neighbor that sees and wants to have Bathsheba in his life. Sturridge is great as the charming, sexy soldier that has his way with Bathsheba. Jessica Barden is wonderful as Bathsheba’s assistant. Juno Temple as Fanny Robbin is great in the small and pivotal role as Sturridge’s true love. David Nicholls wrote an extended yet colorful screenplay. Thomas Vinterberg directed this well, just a little long.

Overall:  This was a film to just watch and luxuriate in its tone and tenure.

Inside Llewyn Davis

First Hit:  Although the acting was strong, there was nothing about the character to care about.

When I watch a film, it helps me when there is someone or something to care about.

This film’s main character Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) is a former merchant seaman who really wants to be a folk singer. He was part of a singing duo and they put out an album.

For a reason unknown to the audience, his singing partner committed suicide so Llewyn is on his own. He does sets at local New York City clubs, and he sings well, but no one really connects to him. He couch surfs at friend’s homes to sleep. He’s got no money. One of his friends, Jean (Carey Mulligan), who is married, is pregnant by him (maybe). He also manages to piss everyone off that tries to assist him, with his attitude.

We’re dropped into this story midstream and, one day later, I cannot even tell you how it ends – the whole thing was dreary. However, this doesn’t take away from the excellent acting by Isaac, Mulligan, and Justin Timberlake.

Isaac’s voice is wonderful and the songs he sings are sung with woeful sadness and beauty. Mulligan, in a minor role, is excellent. She brings a certain beauty and grounding to the film. Timberlake is mostly fun and the scene where he and Isaac do a song together is funny. John Goodman, as a juiced up jazz musician Roland Turner, steals the scenes he's in with Isaac. Stark Sands as fellow singer and military man, Troy Nelson stands out as a kind simple person and singer. Joel and Ethan Coen both wrote and directed this film. I would not consider this their best by any stretch of the imagination.

Overall:  Although it chronicles life as a folk singer and is well crafted, there isn’t any reason to see or care about the characters.

The Great Gatsby

First Hit:  Visually arresting at times, but the story lagged and acting was spotty.

A good actor can create believability in a character. Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby had me believing. I like how he’s matured and the lines in his face are giving him an air of reliability.

Carey Mulligan (as Daisy Buchanan) didn’t quite make it for me. She appears too intelligent and strong to make me believe she would choose to stay with her husband given the love she had for Gatsby.

Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway, the storyteller, is good at showing vulnerability, intelligence and obsessiveness. One thing that perplexed me from the beginning was how I was expected to believe that Nick and Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) went to school together – the perceived age difference between the two characters didn’t work for me.

I sat there and said to myself multiple times, these two guys didn’t go to college together. Baz Luhrmann directed this film with visual flash at the expense of substance and the real Fitzgerald story is about substance in the world of flash. The choice of using modern attempts at music from the 20’s was extremely poor and seemed way out of place. DiCaprio wanted me to know more about his character and there is where the film could have spent more time.

I did like how the filmed opened with black and white Warner Bros logo and moved into the beautiful 3D world of the film. Another strong aspect of the film was the way we (the audience) were introduced to the story – by having Nick writing his experience while in a mental hospital.

DiCaprio was the strongest character in the film and I wanted to know more about him and the script and director didn’t quite deliver. Mulligan didn’t quite make me believe she was as weak as her character was made to be. Edgerton was a strong Buchanan and was solid. Maguire was good and I believed his character and way of telling his story. Craig Pearce and Luhrmann wrote a good, not great, script but Baz overdressed this film and relied on the glitz and left the story behind.

Overall:  The film was a letdown although some of the performances were very good.

Shame

First Hit: A deep and dark film about a very difficult subject.

The difficult subject is sexual addiction.

How does a director take on this subject and keep it R rated? Probably not and therefore this film does have a NC 17 rating.

The rating comes because of the sex acts and full frontal nudity. However, the sex isn’t arousing, or at least I didn’t find it so, I found it factual and clearly making sex the object of Brandon’s (played by Michael Fassbender) deep driving dependence.

Like other things people become dependent/obsessed/addicted to, sex is very difficult because it is linked directly with others. The addicted person often requires partners to fulfill their addition. Here we find Brandon, using the internet to masturbate to, picking up strangers, and his life is clearly being driven by where he is going to get-off next.

He’ll masturbate in the restroom at work, he’ll hire hookers to come to his house, and he’ll lure unsuspecting women into uncaring sex. To live with this, he has to be smart, calculating, unencumbered and it is best that he is all alone in the world.

He is all these except he has a sister Sissy (played Carey Mulligan) who, in an early scene where we hear her phone message, we can tell is also troubled. Brandon ignores her messages. Sissy shows up to stay with him for a few days because she has nowhere else to go.

Immediately the audience knows that there is painful shameful history between them. Either they know something about the other or there is personal intimacy (incest). We never really know.

We watch their interaction and it is touchy, intimate, explosive, and caring. She is a cutter, he has a sexual addiction, they both want a different life, they do the best to hide their shameful ways.

Fassbender is phenomenal as the intelligent, deeply troubled and addicted to a natural human act, man. His performance was fearless and powerful. Mulligan has fully graduated from playing young girls to showing some real range as Sissy, a confused, wounded, caring woman. Her version of "New York, New York" was haunting and felt as though it walked a very fine line of god awful and genius. Lucy Walters as a woman on the subway was amazingly entrancing. Nicole Beharie, as Brandon’s office mate Marianne, was perfect at drawing out Brandon into almost humanness. Abi Morgan and Steve McQueen wrote a powerful and intense script. Steve McQueen did an amazing job of presenting this very disturbing powerful subject.

Overall: This was a difficult to watch, emotionally deep and thoughtful film.

Drive

First Hit:  A perfect role for Ryan Gosling and a very good film.

When an actor fits the role and it's within their wheelhouse, then add an interesting story, it is a pleasure to drop into the story and let it go.

Drive does this because the film is perfect for Gosling who plays the “Driver”. There are times when a character needs to have a historic storyline to make his character believable. However great acting, as delivered in this particular role, doesn't require this type of development to make the character and film work. In Drive we have the later. 

Driver is a mechanic at a small garage run by Shannon (played by Bryan Cranston). Driver also works as a Hollywood film stunt driver, and does odd driving jobs for robberies. He runs into a neighbor woman named Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) who has a young son. He is immediately attracted to Irene and her boy. The chemistry between them is obvious. There are lots of moments of silence between them, but they say so much.

Irene is married to a Standard (played by Oscar Isaac) who is in prison and when he gets out he owes money to the mob that protected him while he was in prison. For payback, the mob asks him to do a job and he solicits Driver to help him.

The job goes bad and the local mob is now after the money that Driver is holding. Driver wants to give the money back to protect Irene but Bernie (played by Albert Brooks) and Nino (played by Ron Perlman) want everyone eliminated that know about this blown job.

Gosling is perfect as the quiet, private, intelligent and remotely caring Driver. This is a grand performance because he says so very little but provides so much information. Mulligan in a role that matches her age is wonderful. Her ability to play off of the quiet Driver is amazing. Cranston is very good as they guy beholding to too many people and continues to have “bad luck”. Isaac has the right look and feel of the guy scared and tough at the same time. Brooks is the surprise here. He’s great as the local mob ringleader with a dark heart. The defining moment is when he kills Shannon in a caring, subtle, and decisive way. Perlman is just right for this off-handed second in command guy who at “59” continues to screw things up. Hossein Amini wrote a very good screen play including when to have silence in a character’s role. Nicolas Winding Refn directed this with a great feel for LA and the type of characters which reside there.

Overall: I fully enjoyed this film but I would have like just a little more driving.