Ford v Ferrari

First Hit: I love good car movies, and this one qualifies as one of the best.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a night showing of a film. In picking this evening time and this film, it was both pleasing and irritating to be in a nearly full theater. The fun part is that I often see films where there are less than 15 people in the theater, and seeing an almost full theater gave me hope that others will continue to support going to movie theaters.

The irritation part is the noise that people make during the film presentation. Why someone thinks their remembrances of the period, or what they think about what they’re seeing on the screen is essential to spout out while the film is playing, is beyond me. The gentleman sitting next to me turned around just as I did the same thing and together we asked them to be quiet. It took us doing this twice for them to get that they weren’t at home watching cable TV.

Despite the noise interruptions, this film unfolded in a fun way. Remembrances of the 1960s abounded with cars from the era on the streets. Yes, they were perfectly restored vehicles, but it was easy to gloss over the prettiness to enjoy the beauty of those old cars reflecting their time and place in my life. There were Shelby Cobras, Porsches, Ford Falcons, a Mini, a woody (fake wood) wagon, Ferraris, and Ford GT 40s.

The film is about how Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) turned down Henry Ford II’s (Tracy Letts) offer to buy 90% of Ferrari’s car production company. While turning down Ford’s offer and partnering with Fiat, Enzo made unflattering remarks about Ford and his cars to the Ford negotiation team. Angered by the personal comments, Ford vowed to beat perennial 24 Hours Le Mans race winner, Ferrari.

Chief Ford negotiator, Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal), was then tasked with finding a car builder who will build a Ford-based car to beat Ferrari. Finding Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), the one-time winning driver of the 24 Le Mans, to make the car, Ford believes they found their man. Henry Ford gives Shelby carte blanche to build this car.

Shelby, in turn, hires his friend and race car driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale), to be his test driver and co-builder. The main reason is that he can trust Miles as he knows cars and feels their abilities and problems as he drives them. Miles is also creative when figuring out how to make cars work better. The downside of Miles is that he’s a maverick in his thinking and hates to conform to rules and being told what to do.

Miles is married Mollie (Caitriona Balfe), who’s amused by her husband’s friendship with Shelby and there are couple scenes that this loving amusement shows up. One such scene is when Shelby and Ken fight near the miles home. Mollie bringing out a folding chair to watch the frecus was hilarious. One thing the film makes clear is that Ken is a loving devoted father who loved showing his son Peter (Noah Jupe) the ins and outs of racing.

The film spends time showing Miles and Shelby developing the GT40 to race in Le Mans, but when it comes time to ship the car off to the race, Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) Senior VP at Ford, chooses another driver to drive the vehicle at the Le Mans race.

Shelby is pissed, Miles is severely disappointed, and of course, the new driver doesn’t feel the car like Miles would have and ends up blowing it apart during the race.

Ford wants to fire Shelby for the failure, but the meeting between Ford and Shelby is fantastic because Shelby convinces Ford that he, Ford, has Ferrari where he wants him, scared. Scared because Shelby’s car, with another driver, was faster than the Ferrari, especially on the straightaway at Le Mans. This was a great scene. It’s reflecting Shelby’s legendary ability to sell anyone on anything.

Ford tells Shelby to fix the car and get it ready for the next Le Mans and that Shelby has control over the driver.

The rest of the movie shows how they develop a stronger, lighter, faster GT40 car. But when Beebe intercedes again about Miles being the driver at Le Mans, Shelby takes Ford out in the GT40 and scares the crap out of him, literally, and at that moment negotiates with Ford to let Miles drive. As part of the deal he offers Ford his Shelby American company if Miles races and loses.

It’s scenes like this that are fun to watch and reminded me of the time that a friend of a friend, gave me a ride in a Lamborghini Miura, and scared the crap out of me while racing around a sizeable empty factory parking lot at a very high speed.

There were sections of this 152-minute film that could have been trimmed, but I was engaged enough to not care about the lulls of uninteresting or engaging material. Other characters added to this story and made better. One such person was Chief Mechanic Phil Remington (Ray McKinnon). His ideas about creating a way to change the brake assembly were brilliant.

Bale was intensely and independently outstanding in this role as race car driver Ken Miles. HIs ability to show tenderness and love towards his family while being aggressively focused on making the car faster was terrific. Damon was wonderful as Carroll Shelby. The scene with Ford after the first loss and his fight with Miles in front of Mile’s home reflected the off-told stories about the legend of Carroll Shelby. Bernthal was good as the famed Iacocca. Balfe was convincing as Ken’s wife. Her support and understanding of her husband were excellently portrayed. My favorite scene shows Balfe driving Ken home while pressing him on his whereabouts. Her focused intensity was sublime. Letts was priceless as Ford II. The bullying way he used around his staff and factory followed by his being humbled by the spin in the GT40 was fun to watch. McKinnon was excellent as devoted Chief Mechanic for Shelby. Beebe was appropriately arrogant, self-serving, and sharp as a foil to Shelby’s vision. Girone was satisfyingly perfect as Enzo Ferrari. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth wrote an expansive script that could have been shortened and made crisper. However, there are some outstanding scenes in the film. James Mangold directed this film. Racing scenes can get old quick, and Mangolds transcends the genre with excellent editing and cinematography, which make the racing scenes in this film come alive.

Overall: I liked seeing this film for multiple reasons, including that the subsequent Ford built Shelby Mustang GT-350 and GT-500 had parts made by my father’s company in the late 1960s.

Vice

First Hit: I liked this oddly created film about a powerful yet enigmatic man who really ran our country for a period of time.

Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) powerfully found his way into and as a guiding influence in our government especially during the President George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) years.

The scene that points out his guile was when during the transition from Clinton to Bush, when he, not only had is standard office in the Senate (as a tie-breaker vote), but also had his team find an office in the House side of Congress (that’s where the money bills are created), in the Defense Department, and other places in the seat of our government. He moved in and out of these offices to wield the influence of the Executive branch where ever he could.A

He believed in the Unitary executive theory whereas the President possesses the power to control the entire executive branch of government. Sort of like Nixon’s belief when interviewed by David Frost; “If the President does it, it isn’t against the law.” Cheney believed he, as the lever puller for George Bush, he could do no wrong and nothing he did was illegal. A couple of his feats include; torture of captured combatants, invading Iraq when there was no proof that the country had anything to do with September 11 attack on world trade towers.

It was a focus group that indicated that the American public wanted a country as an enemy and not a concept (Al-Qaeda), so we invaded Iraq, because both Bush, H. W. Bush, and Cheney had wanted to this for a long time. This is just a smattering of the bold divisive actions Cheney took as VP.

We see his earlier years as a college drunken mess. His stint as a lineman in Wyoming. Drinking and fighting in bars after work. His comeuppance by his wife Lynne (Amy Adams), who said after one drunken bout, you either shape up or ship out.

He does shape up and becomes an intern in Congress working for Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell) – (the truth is that he worked for Congressman William A. Steiger), then into the White House, eventually rising to Chief of Staff for Gerald Ford (Bill Camp). Then he was elected to Wyoming’s only Congressional seat. This was followed by becoming Secretary of Defense for George H. W. Bush and oversaw Desert Storm, which he believed didn’t go far enough.

The film shows many of these events with sincerity while mixing in scenes with a level of irreverence, and also scenes of Cheney fly fishing in Wyoming. But watching Dick and George’s mistake in both leaving Iraq while pumping up a radical person, resulted in ISIS (Desh). These mistakes are Bush’s and Cheney’s legacy.

Like with the Big Short, director Adam McKay mixes his film’s stories up in ways that various impacts on people. For me this approach was effective, but it was Bale’s Cheney that was amazing.

Bale was Cheney. I believed I was seeing the real guy on the screen. Nothing he did seemed out of character with whom the public knew something about but not how the man thought. And even with this film, most of Cheney’s screen time is watching him think. He wasn’t an impulsive man, that’s clear. Adams was fantastic as Lynne Cheney. Her drive and power over Dick were clear and direct. Carell as Rumsfeld was strong. I never got much of an impression from the real Rumsfeld through his brief public appearances so I’ve nothing to compare this performance to. Rockwell was wonderfully cast as George W. Bush. His breezy, thoughtless manner comes through just as one saw the real Bush in public. Justin Kirk as Scooter Libby was good. LisaGay Hamilton played Condoleezza Rice one of the people Cheney didn’t see eye to eye with. Tyler Perry played Colin Powell who reluctantly spoke at the UN for the bombing of Iraq, although he never believed it was the right thing to do. Alison Pill played Cheney’s older gay daughter Mary whom is stood behind by her family early on in the film and then when the younger daughter Liz (Lily Rabe) runs for office, Dick turns against Mary’s lesbian ways so that Liz can get elected as the Representative of Wyoming. Power was what drove Dick in life and not even family got in the way. Adam McKay wrote an interesting script that reflects the way he likes to create a movie. Dancing across the information while willing to mix it up in ways that are different. I happen to like it.

Overall: The acting is superb and the way this story is told is probably not everyone’s cup of tea.

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.

Academy Awards - The Oscars

OK, here we are again celebrating another year of film going. Some strong films this year, films that broke box office records, and films that failed. Here are my choices for the following awards and some thoughts around some of them.

• Best Actor - Nominees are:  Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), Matt Damon (The Martin), Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant), Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs) and Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl). This is not as strong a field as it was last year. The obvious missing actors are Tom Hanks (Bridge of Spies) maybe because he made it look so easy, and Steve Carell who was so quirky and interesting you just wanted to see what he was going to do next. Both of these were strong performances, yet not in my top two of this listing. Although Cranston's  performance was good, I didn't like the character nor the interpretation. Fassbender was very good, however this role had been done too many times in the last two years. I did not see The Danish Girl therefore I don't have an opinion. However, Damon and DiCapiro's performances were fantastic - beyond amazing. I loved each of them. My guess is that DiCaprio will win the Oscar.
• Best Actress  - Nominees are:  Cate Blanchett (Carol), Brie Larson (Room), Jennifer Lawrence (Joy), Charlotte Rampling (45 Years), and Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn). This is a strong category although I didn't see 45 Years, the others were great. I also see a missing person from this list and that would be Rooney Mara in Carol as well. Between Cate and Rooney I would have picked Mara because I felt as though her evolution through the film was a more powerful statement. However, she is in the Supporting Actress listing. Out of the nominated list, it comes down to two outstanding performances: Ronan and Blanchett. Lawrence's performance was really good and I was fully engaged with her character, however it did not have the power of Ronan or Blanchett's. Larson was also very strong, however so much of her performance is linked to Jacob Tremblay the young boy that it took away from her own performance. For me I'd like Ronan to get this Oscar in an amazing performance in a  wonderful film.
• Best Supporting Actress  - Nominees are:  Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), Rooney Mara (Carol), Rachel McAdams (Spotlight), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), and Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs). As I mentioned earlier I think Mara's performance belongs in the Best Actress category. I didn't see The Danish Girl so I'm making my pick without full knowledge of the selections. However, without Mara I think the most interesting and performance is Leigh's. It was so hidden and yet over the top that I was mesmerized each time she opened her mouth and/or the camera focused on her. These are the top two and in my view either probably deserves the Oscar.
• Best Supporting Actor  - Nominees are:  Christian Bale (The Big Short), Tom Hardy (The Revenant), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight), Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), and Sylvester Stallone (Creed). The missing performance is Jacob Tremblay's in Room. He was phenomenal. But this is probably one of the strongest fields in years, so someone had to be left off the list. They were all great and my favorites out of this list are Rylance and Stallone. Rylance had such a small role yet it was so much impact on the film that it was unforgettable. However Stallone will get it for both this performance and his body of work as Rocky Balboa.
• Best Cinematography  - Nominees are:  Ed Lachman (Carol), Robert Richardson (The Hateful Eight), John Seale (Mad Max: Fury Road), Emmaual Lubezki (The Revenant), and Roger Deakins (Sicario). Although Mad Max: Fury Road was big it did not grab me because I thought the film was more on the mindless side. Carol was elegantly shot and fully deserves the nomination. However, The Hateful Eight and The Revenant are over the top amazingly beautiful and powerful. The Hateful Eight deserves a lot of credit for doing so much in one room, while The Revenant wins this award for how shots were made and the perspective by which they were made. The winner - pick.
• Best Adapted Screenplay  - Nominees are:  Charles Randolph and Adam McKay (The Big Short), Nick Hornby (Brooklyn), Phyllis Nagy (Carol), Drew Goddard (The Martian), and Emma Donoghue (Room). Wow, what a list. All great picks. Any one of these could win in any given year. However, my final two would be Randolf and McKay for The Big Short and Hornby for Brooklyn. In the end I'm picking Nick Hornby for Brooklyn because it was a great screenplay and a wonderful film to watch.   
• Best Original Screenplay  - Nominees are:  Matt Charman and Ethan & Joel Coen (Bridge of Spies), Alex Garland (Ex Machina), Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley (Inside Out), Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), and Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton). Another strong set of contenders. All very different films. In the end I think I like Ex Machina and Spotlight as powerful screen plays for very different reasons. One reflects a horrible set of acts by Catholic Priests and the other about the obsessiveness and controlling nature of technology. In the end I select Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy for Spotlight.
• Best Director  - Nominees are:  Adam McKay (The Big Short), George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant), Lenny Abrahamson (Room), and Tom McCarthy (Spotlight). Missing are:  Ridley Scott (The Martian), J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Todd Haynes (Carol), Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight) and John Crowley (Brooklyn). To me this is the most messed up nominee listing. How is Max: Fury Road better directed than all my exceptions? It isn't and doesn't hold a candle to them. Also given my exceptions, I think Abrahamson's delivery is not quite there. Anyway, from the nominee list, I would say it is between McKay, Inarritu, and McCarthy. In the end I'd select McKay (with McCarthy a very close second) because he did the most to keep the film on track. Inarritu had too many long wistful shots. However this listing of nominees is really flawed.
• Best Picture  - Nominees are:   The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, and Spotlight. Missing here is Carol and The Hateful Eight. Mad Max: Fury Road is nowhere in the league as these other nominees and, in my opinion, doesn't deserve to be listed. I simply was board stiff by the one long chase film filled with foolish philosophy. It is hard for me to pick as I loved "Brooklyn" as being a wonderfully executed nostalgic story. I thought "The Big Short" told a compelling story of how our economy tanked. "The Martian" was beautifully delivered and Damon made it happen. "Bridge of Spies" and "Spotlight" are both amazing stories about something that really happened. I was totally engaged and felt they delivered in all ways; education and story. The only thing I didn't like about "The Revenant" was that there were too many long scenic only shots which took away from the story.  In the end, of the listed I'd like to see "The Martian" win but can also see the others winning except Mad Max.

Some other thoughts about films this year:

• "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" was amazingly edited.
• "Ex Machina's" visual effects were very strong and so were scenes in "The Revenant".
• "Anomalisa" and "Inside Out" were both amazing Animated Feature films.
• "Carol" had perfectly detailed costumes and overall set design.
• "Writings on the Wall" the song for "Spectre" was dreadful.

Note: I'll be England sitting in silence for 30 days starting late next week. I may be able to see one more film before I go, but otherwise I won't be seeing any films or posting any reviews until the first week of March.

Thank you for viewing my site.

The Big Short

First Hit:  This film amazingly and with clarity explains how trusted financial bankers and Wall Street traders used their greed and arrogance to create a mortgage system that collapsed and ruined the lives of 10’s of thousands of people.

The impact of the mortgage credit bubble bursting in the mid-2000s affected thousands upon thousands of people. Not since the 1929 crash had so many families lost their homes, their jobs, and ended up on the street. Why?

Because Wall Street bankers and others running hedge funds thought they were smarter than everyone else and deserved to make as much money as they could at the expense of other people. The sad part was that these guys either; never thought about how it might hurt others, or they didn’t care about anything or anybody else except themselves.

There is something amazingly depressing about our society that promotes ways for people to act in the way they did. To teach us about this complex situation, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay wrote a quirky and intelligent script based on true characters and fact while using various ways to tell the story.

They used odd vignettes with Selena Gomez and Margo Robbie playing themselves and had them share fun examples of how the scheme worked. Director McKay also had one character as a narrator allowing him to break the fourth plane and speak to the audience directly, then drop right back into his character. All this added to the quirkiness of this film.

In the story Christian Bale played the extremely intelligent Michael Burry who predicted the fall of the market. This highly focused numbers guy read and analyzed each loan in many of the packaged loan portfolio bundles and saw how their high rating belied the loans within them.

There was Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a big bank trader who knew the banks were packing high risk and junk loans with good ones to hide their risk. He wanted to find a company that would allow him to bet against his own company. He also narrated from time to time. Mark Baum (Steve Carell) a trader who felt that there was a lack of integrity by most of the people in the world. He was always railing against society and how it rips people off. He and his team did their research by going to Florida and talked with the people who owned or rented the homes that were in these portfolios.

For example; when he learned that a female stripper owned 4 homes and a condo and didn’t make any down payments in purchasing them, he was convinced. Then there is Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittlock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) who accidentally picked up a prospectus while being turned down by Citi-Bank to trade on their floor. Reading the prospectus their interest was sparked and they dug deeper.

After seeing the numbers, they asked their friend and retired famed trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) what he thought. These four groups (and their people) ended up being right. They bet the market would fail, it did, and they made a ton of money. I didn't get the sense they felt good about it because they knew people were going to lose their homes, banks were going to fail, and that the federal government (read this as taxpayers) would bail out the the arrogant bankers and their companies. To add insult to injury, these bankers took their annual yearly bonuses, and the banking laws changed little.

Carell was manic in a good way. He embodied many people’s sense of outrage at how people take advantage of others and don’t care. His unfiltered way of interacting with people is what many want to be like. Gosling was smooth in transitioning from a character in the film and also the narrator. Bale was almost uncomfortably quirky in his amazing portrayal of a disconnected numbers genius. He sold me on his character’s solid belief that he knew what and when the bust would happen. It was amazing when he walked out of the office one last time and posted his company’s % gain. Wittlock and Magro were perfect as the small time fund managers, who were making great trades and wanting to play with the big banks. Their bright enthusiasm and commitment was spot on. Pitt was interesting in his role as a transformed trader that wanted to help his friends. Randolph and McKay wrote an outstanding script by making this complex issue understandable. McKay’s direction worked and made this into a top notch film.

Overall:  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about how our financial system failed and was left with some fear that it may happen again if we don’t watch ourselves.