Live by Night

First Hit:  Despite wonderful sets, cars, and clothes, this story meanders and fizzles.

Ben Affleck has directed, written and acted in some wonderful and even great films. The premise of this film was strong, where Joe Coughlin (Affleck), a product of the streets of Irish Boston, does not want to be beholden to his brother Deputy Police Chief Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson) nor any of the mob leaders, while being a criminal. However, because of his affection with a mob leader’s girlfriend Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), he gets blackmailed into working for Italian mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to save his butt.

He and his running partner Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina) head to Tampa to build, manage and run a bootleg Rum business. In Tampa he works with Esteban Suarez (Miguel J. Pimental) and his sister Graciela (Zoe Saldana) to obtain Molasses for rum making. There is immediate chemistry between Joe and Graciela and it appears that Joe will find love again after losing Emma.

To take control of the Tampa market, he finds out what Police Chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) will tolerate and support. During the consolidation, he uses force and his manipulative style and rubs many of the town folks the wrong way, many of them with the KKK. One of those people RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who is Figgis’s brother in law, and he implores Figgis to help him resolve this issue.

To add to all this increasingly complicated story setup, we have Figgis’s daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) who heads to California to become a star. To gain leverage over Chief Figgis’s brother in-law, Joe uses photos of Loretta to persuade Chief Figgis to fully resolve the brother-in-law issue. Then Affleck adds more complications to this movie because the story has the market for Rum changing and prohibition coming to an end and he wants to find an alternative form of income.

After starting to build a gambling casino Loretta becomes a profit of sorts, by preaching morality and thereby ending this new path. This ends up creating new friction in Tampa as well as with his boss Pescatore and an Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister).

Yes, over complication in telling this story led to a long film that tried to have too much detail over an extended period of time. Despite creating beautiful elegantly constructed sets, period automobiles that would satisfy any collector, and costumes that were stylistically sublime, only a few of the characters got older over the twenty or so years covered in this film and Affleck wasn’t one of them.

Affleck was good in this role and his intelligence and smart-alecky way worked for the character. However, he didn’t age in this film that covered many years from beginning to end. Miller was wonderful as an Irish girl that only was out for some laughs and a good time. Messina was great as Affleck’s side-kick and partner. Loved his energy in this role. Girone was strong as the Italian mobster. Pimental was good as the Cuban connection for molasses. Saldana was very strong as Pimental’s sister and Affleck’s lover. Cooper was pointedly effective as the Tampa Police Chief and caring father. Fanning was sublime as the re-born preacher. Maher was wonderfully unhinged as a guy who wanted his cut but didn’t want to do anything for it. Glenister was very good as the Irish mobster. Gleeson was perfect as Affleck’s brother, giving him space where needed and buttoning him down as well. Affleck wrote and directed this film. Problem seemed to be there was too much story to tell and he couldn’t trim his concept into something that filmgoers would sit, watch and like. It just seemed to meander.

Overall:  This isn’t a film to sit though unless you like just seeing beautiful sets, great cars, wonderful clothes, and some great looking people.

Cake

First Hit:  Jennifer Aniston was great in an OK film.

The pain Claire Bennett (Aniston) is in is palpable. Although we don’t learn what caused her to be in this pain until much later, we do piece the possibilities together during the 92 minutes.

The film consists of us following Bennett from support group, to physical therapy, and to home while she pops pills from her hidden stashes. Her former husband Jason (Chris Messina) feels for his former wife, but cannot save her from her self-destruction.

Her mainstay is housekeeper Silvana (Adriana Barraza) who helps to keep the ship upright. She cooks, cleans and mostly cares about Claire and does this in extraordinary ways. She is haunted by dead fellow pain prisoner Nina Collins (Anna Kendrick) who decided she couldn’t stand it any longer and had committed suicide. Nina’s husband Roy (Sam Worthington) is just barely hanging on, with his son Casey (Evan O’Toole) and Claire finds some solace with him.

Aniston is wonderful in this role. I fully believed that she was in pain and she held the space of pain and addiction in an amazing way. Wonderful acting. Barraza was fantastic as Claire’s housekeeper and friend. Messina with a small and meaningful role, done wonderfully. Kendrick was perfect. Although being a hallucination she was perky and intelligently perfect. Worthington was very good as a lost husband of grief. O’Toole was perfect. Patrick Tobin wrote a strong scrip, however it seemed to labor at times. Daniel Barnz did a good job of directing Aniston’s extremely strong performance.

Overall:  Although there were strong performances the subject and pacing won’t have this become a crowd favorite.

Ruby Sparks

First Hit:  Yes a little schmaltzy, but it worked well and I enjoyed it.

I like the idea of a quirky writer, lost in life and in himself trying to find a way to write.

Paul Dano plays writer Calvin Weir-Fields who wrote a bestseller when he was 19 years old but has done little in the last 10 years. His psychologist Dr. Rosenthal (played by Elliot Gould) gives him a reading assignment.

Calvin begins to write about a woman in his dreams – he names her “Ruby Sparks”. Calvin is highly motivated and writes hundreds of pages about Ruby. One morning after falling asleep at his computer, he walks downstairs and there she is cooking breakfast and acting as if they’ve been together for months.

Outside of his Dr., his brother is the only other person he speaks with, so with Ruby trying to make a meal, he calls his brother, Harry (played by Chris Messina), asking his advice. Harry comes over meets Ruby, and thinks she’s an actress Calvin has hired to show he has friends and can have a girlfriend. But Calvin pleads with his brother to believe that Ruby came to life out of his mind and writing.

To prove it, Calvin rescripts Ruby in his book and, low and behold, she complies by behaving as the book calls for. As Ruby (played by Zoe Kazan) becomes restless and wants to do things outside of their relationship, Calvin rewrites the script to suit himself.

How does this turn out? Watch the film because whether it is fantasy or reality the point is clear about letting go.

Dano is very effective as a writer and as a troubled man searching to find himself. It was good to see Gould again and he’s good as the psychologist. Messina is good as the unbelieving and supportive brother. Kazan is outstanding as Ruby, both the writer’s fantasy and as a real person. Kazan wrote a wonderful and innovative screenplay. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris co-directed this with a great wit and mix of characters.

Overall: This was an enjoyable film and the entire audience seemed to like it.

Greenberg

First Hit: A mildly entertaining film with one wonderful performance and one mediocre performance.

Ben Stiller plays another version of Ben Stiller. Comparing this to Woody Allen, who tends to play a version of himself in films, I am more intrigued by Allen and am usually bored by Stiller. Seeing Stiller playing another version himself was disappointing because he came off as self absorbed and not intellectually stimulating enough to warrant this sort of exposure.

Here he plays Roger Greenberg a guy who has just been released from a mental hospital in New York and has decided to stay at his brother Phillip’s (played by Chris Messina) house in California. Phillip and his wife Carol (played by Susan Taylor) have a nanny Florence Marr (played by Greta Gerwig) who becomes Roger’s contact point while he stays in their home for a month or so.

Roger is prone to fits of defensive anger and rudeness. He thinks he’s right and expresses his rightness regardless of how it may affect others. Roger is alone, lonely and generally depressed. The problem with all this is there’s little to indicate how or why he ended up in a mental hospital or what created this self absorbed person.

Conversely we have a small number of scenes with Florence at the beginning which give us a very clear picture of who she is and how she operates in the world.

So is this excellent acting by Gerwig and poor acting by Stiller? Or is this poor story development? My bet is that it is a little of both but mostly because Stiller continues to be Stiller and he just isn’t that interesting and is unwilling to embody the character he is playing.

Stiller is mediocre as Roger. Gerwig is wonderful at Florence. She was totally believable and made this film worth watching. Noah Baumbach had a good cast (except Stiller) to direct and this might have as interesting as “Margot at the Wedding” and “The Squid and the Whale” but fell short.

Overall:  This is worth watching on video but only if you have some time to kill.

Julie & Julia

First Hit: Downright enjoyable to watch, especially if you recall Julia Child’s television programs because Streep brings her back to life.

If you ever had the opportunity to watch Julia Child’s cooking program, then you “get” Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia. She brings Julia back to life although some of the mannerisms might be a little over emphasized; they are never in poor taste or out of character.

The film is a story about Julia’s life from when she landed in France with her husband Paul (played by Stanley Tucci) and lasts through the moment her book is published.

The film is also about Julie Powell who is lost in her life, feeling unaccomplished, and is having to live over a pizza parlor because it is near her husband's work.

Her husband Eric (played by Chris Messina) supports Julie as she decides to create a blog and cook all of Julia’s recipes in one year. She's wanted to be a writer and she loves to cook. We watch these two stories in sections and the only real direct connection is when Julie and Eric watch the old Julia Child television programs.

It is wonderful to watch the different generations deal with their life issues in their generational ways and how love is shown through support of the partner. Julie and Julia are deeply linked through the peace and joy they each receive while cooking. This passion came to each of them while they struggled to find something meaningful in their life.

Cooking was their path to bring out another talent, writing. Although Julia lived an upper middle class existence and her husband’s position kept them out of financial difficulty, Julie’s life is different. She and Eric are living on a lot less which was a way to give this story a wider breath and, in a sense, give the audience two very different stories.

Yet these diverse stories were brought together by one book; Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Nora Ephron did an excellent job of directing the script written by her which was taken from Julie Powell’s book about her experience of cooking and blogging Julia Child’s recipes. I thought Tucci was excellent and beautifully supported Streep’s character. I thought Streep was excellent and really brought forth Julia Child and made me want to watch those old cooking shows again. Adams had just the right amount of drive with a slight bit of defeatist attitude to make the journey of the cooking and blog believable. Lastly I thought Messina was effective at being both a tolerant and supportive guy that really loved his wife.

Overall: This film was a joy to watch and in the end left a wonderful taste in my mouth.