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.

Charlie St. Cloud

First Hit: This was a good film which held together well.

A number of films which deal with the loss of a loved one, life after death, the space between life and death, and the dealing with death don’t do it very well.

Some films, like Sixth Sense, Heaven Can Wait and even Ghost, do it in interesting and thoughtful ways. Charlie St. Cloud can be added to this list.

The story is about a young man who, through his sailing abilities, gets a scholarship to Stanford. His single mother, Claire (played by Kim Basinger), has worked extra shifts at the local hospital to support Charlie (played by Zac Efron) and his very close younger brother Sam (played by Charlie Tahan).

Because Charlie is a good 6 years older and they have no father, Sam looks up to Charlie and Charlie reciprocates by teaching Sam what he knows about sailing, life and baseball. Charlie gets in a car accident and Sam dies in that accident. Charlie cannot forgive himself and forgoes his life at Stanford to keep the memory of his brother alive.

Five years after the accident we see him as the caretaker of the local cemetery. One evening out he wanders down to the dock and starts admiring a wonderful sailboat. He discovers that Tess Carroll (played by Amanda Crew), an acquaintance from high school, owns the boat and is preparing to sail around the world in a solo race.

Through a confluence of events of which I won’t go into detail here, he saves both their lives in different ways. What works about this story is that it is well crafted. It doesn’t waste time with over long setups. It doesn’t telegraph the ending, the script is clean and it stays on target all the way until the ending.

Efron is a good looking young man and he can act. It was great to see Basinger again; it has been a long time. Tahan is wonderful as the hell bent younger brother who is both feisty and thoughtful. Crew is wonderful and fits especially well with Efron. Ray Liotta has a small but key part in the film which was good as well. Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick wrote a good script and Burr Steers directed this film with a clear vision.

Overall: Yes it is a romantic drama between very young people and it works very well.