Big Miracle

First Hit:  This film is predictable but interesting enough to stay watching.

The “Big Miracle” lets the audience know the outcome before you even buy a ticket. Nevertheless it is film version of a real story that took place back in 1988 when Ronald Reagan was president.

Three California Grey whales were trapped 5 miles from the ocean and were only breathing through an air hole in the ice. The air hole was closing fast and the native Eskimos wanted to harvest the whales for food.

Adam Carlson, local reporter (played by John Krasinski) had been trying to find fame in a story so that he could move to the lower 48, filmed a segment which got picked up around the world and all of a sudden the whales had a rooting gallery.

Adam feeling the plight of the whales call his former girlfriend Rachel Kramer (played by Drew Barrymore) who is a Greenpeace honcho. Rachel comes up to rally everyone to save the whales and also makes some enemies while she is as it. The one machine which can break up the ice is owned by an oil company which is run by J. W. McGraw (played by Ted Danson).

He’s always at war with Rachel over the oil drilling rights to a wildlife sanctuary. He thinks it will be good press to help. Everyone in this film has an objective to better their standing in the community. Rachel is the only one who is focused on only doing her job but as pointed out by others this publicized effort will provide a campaign boost for Greenpeace. T

he Russian’s assist in the end with an ice breaker ship and there is a reasonably happy ending to it all. However, the film is extremely predictable, even if you weren’t alive in 1988. The set-ups are very obvious and there is really no suspense to this.

I don’t know if the director made it this way to make it PG friendly or if the story really was this obvious. The highlight of the film was in the credits, where they showed the real people in scenes who really saved these whales back in 1988.

Krasinski does a good job of making us believe his character makes the right choices for his career and life. Barrymore wasn’t her best here. Some scenes she was great and others, she came off a little shrill and without a deep basis of the knowledge of her position. Danson was particularly over done as an oil company executive. Ahmaogak Sweeney as Nathan a native young boy caught between the modern world and his ancestral ways was good and very entertaining. Jack Amiel and Michael Beglar wrote this mediocre script. Ken Kwapis directed this with a lighthearted hand especially when he brings in two guys from Minnesota who have a machine that keeps the ice holes open longer.

Overall: A light-hearted film which was entertaining and interesting enough to have it be enjoyable.

Going the Distance

First Hit: Drew Barrymore and Justin Long make this film work in many ways.

Barrymore plays Erin, who is a writing graduate student at Stanford University doing a summer internship at a New York City newspaper called The Sentinel. While there, she happens upon Garrett (played by Justin Long) who is sitting and moping to his friends about the girl who just walked out on him.

His friends, Dan and Box (played by Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis respectively) listen to his bemoaning all the time because he never really commits to a girl and they often end up in a bar having some beer lamenting his misfortune.

He and Erin find they have things in common and end up having a few drinks, then spend the night together. She tells him the next day she only has 6 weeks left in town and therefore doesn’t want to do anything serious. She also explains that she has already once followed a man around the US only to lose sight of her life and she won’t do this again.

As you would expect, they fall in love, have a long distance relationship and spend the rest of the film finding out a way to be together.

What worked about this film was the dialogue. It was crisp, open and very much built on today’s ideas and ideals. I also thought that, as a couple, they were well matched and seemed to fit both physically and emotionally.

The other characters, Dan, Box, and Erin’s sister Corrine (played by Christina Applegate) were extremely useful to the plot, dialogue and movement of the film.

Barrymore was great, open, fully charged and engaging as Erin. She seems to gaining more maturity and strength personally which results in deeper characters. Long was in one of his better roles. He usually is the calm, cool and collected guy, who is clearly in-charge of his feelings, but here there is a movement to expose himself more and with Barrymore there was a connection which he didn’t hide. Day and Sudeikis were perfect amusing foils to Long and gave the film some of its funniest moments while also making sure there was some truth to the whole story. Applegate was a joy to see as the Barrymore’s older sister. She was vulnerable, possessive, controlling and supportive at all the right times. Geoff LaTulippe wrote a strong script while Nanette Burstein did a great job with both the story and the characters.

Overall: This was a well done romantic funny film and even though we all know the ending long before it arrives, it was a fun ride.

Everybody's Fine

First Hit: A very slow lifeless film with very little to say.

The premise of this film is that a dad, who is a recent widower, expects his children to come home for a holiday. One by one they tell him they cannot make it for some reason or another, so he decides to go visit each of them unannounced.

Although this is an interesting premise, this film really fails to deeply explore the reasons why his children don’t tell him the truth of their lives. It fails to explore family dynamics.

Robert De Niro plays Frank Goode (the dad) who is sick with a disease he picked up from his job of putting plastic coating on telephone wires. Every once in a while, when the children talk to each on the phone, the audience is treated to pictures of these plastic coated telephone wires while we hear slightly garbled dialogs of the conversations.

This is supposed to be symbolic about the distance between the children and the dad while also expressing the calls wouldn't have happened without his work. He starts his trip by visiting his oldest son who lives in New York. He gets there and he isn't home. He waits a day or so but gives up, slips an envelope under the door and leaves. We find out later that this son has a drug problem and is in Mexico.

The next stop is to visit the oldest daughter Amy (played by Kate Beckinsale). She is a smart high-powered advertising executive but appears to be very distant from her husband and child. Frank suggests to her that he'd like to stay there a couple of days, but Amy rushes him out of the house on the pretext she is busy but she is really headed to Mexico to try to find her older brother.

The next visit is to second son Robert (played by Sam Rockwell) who has somehow given his father the impression he is a conductor in an orchestra when in fact he plays the drums in an orchestra. Frank is clearly disappointed that he didn’t know this.

Then he visits his youngest daughter Rosie (played by Drew Barrymore) who is outgoing and attempts to tell her father why the children don’t tell him all of what is going on in their lives. However, at each reason, Frank fires back his justification.

The fact of the matter is that Frank didn’t and doesn’t listen to the truth only to what he really wants to hear.

De Niro, doesn’t have the feel for this part. He portrays very little depth on the screen and doesn’t seem very engaged to this film. Beckinsale is adequate as an ad executive but the role has little going for it. Rockwell gets a little more meat in his lines and does bring some friction and interest to the interchange between him and De Niro. Lastly Barrymore is good at bringing some sunshine and truth into this little story. I don’t think the writing level mined the depths of family dynamics which would have propelled this story into an interesting film.

Overall: This was a tired attempt to bring forth how siblings find it difficult to communicate their truth to their father.

Whip It

First Hit: This was very entertaining and brought back fond roller derby memories.

I use to like watching roller derby on television. There were teams called the Bay Bombers from San Francisco and from LA there were the T-Birds. And then there was the voice of roller derby in Southern California. His name was Dick Lane (voice of the LA T-Birds) and he would yell out with a particular inflection “Whoa, Nellie” when a skater would do something wild or get whipped out from the pack.

Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar a lost young girl who is forced into beauty pageants by her once beauty pageant maven mother (Marcia Gay Harden).

Bliss works at a local diner, wears combat boots on her own time, and with her best friend Pash, they keep looking for ways to leave their small hometown outside of Austin Texas. Seeing a flyer to a roller derby contest in Austin, Bliss and Pash drive over and watch the contest.

Bliss falls in love with the idea of roller derby and with a singer in a band who happens to be watching the same contest. Bliss goes home and decides to drag out her old Barbie skates and, with practice, ends up making the Hurl Scouts, a team that always loses.

There she meets Smashley Simpson (played by Drew Barrymore), Rosa Sparks (played by Eve), and Maggie Mayhem (played by Kristen Wiig). All the teams play in the same building every Friday night and the Hurl Scouts are absolutely the worst and they are proud of it.

However with Bliss’s speed, by listening to their coach, and executing his plays for the first time they start winning games. They actually win enough to challenge the perennial champions headed by Iron Maven (played by Juliette Lewis) in the playoff match which is on the same night as the biggest beauty contest in Bliss’s home town.

Faced with a major decision, a missing boyfriend, and an alienated family life, Bliss must make some hard choices.

Ellen Page is believable, strong and wonderful to watch as Bliss (AKA Baby Ruthless). Drew Barrymore as Smashley Simpson was good but better was her direction of this film as she got the feel and touch just about perfect. There was the sporting aspect and kept it fun as well. The updating of roller derby as it might be today was probably as good as one could get. I was overjoyed to see Juliette Lewis back on the screen. She’s been mostly involved in her band but it is always great to remember she has acting chops. Jimmy Fallon is the voice of the roller derby as "Hot Tub" Johnny Rocket and although he wasn't Dick Lane, he brought an effective style to the genre.

Overall: This was a very enjoyable film and had the grit of a sports film and the touching sense of a coming of age film.

He's Just Not That Into You

First Hit: Overall, I really liked this film because it does tell a truth about relationships: If a guy doesn’t contact you, he’s not interested and the converse is true as well; a woman will let you know they are interested.

This film is loaded with big name female talent with Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, and Drew Barrymore. Outside of Ben Affleck, the men’s talent, which performed admirably, consisted of lesser known actors.

However, the primary vehicle of this film is Ginnifer Goodwin who plays Gigi an open, forever hopeful and radiant girl who is looking for love. She is charming, available, and maybe a little too ready to the men she meets. She sees the good side in each of them, lets them know she is interested but they just don’t call her back.

Her anxiousness around getting called is displayed in a number of scenes of her watching and checking (to see if it still works) her phone and they are truthfully funny. She is getting advice from her co-worker, a married woman, named Janine (Played by Connelly) whose marriage isn’t working well but hides it well under a matter of fact and busy life.

Gigi finally gets some good men’s coaching from Alex (played by Justin Long) who simply tells her what the signals are and helps her to see things more clearly. Johansson does a good funny and realistic turn as Anna, a woman who hopes the married man (Happens to be Janine’s husband) she met is going to leave his wife for her.

Aniston and Affleck (playing Beth and Neil respectively) do a good turn as a couple struggling with different ideals around the form of a committed relationship. Barrymore is funny and really good in a lesser role.

Goodwin was excellent in her role as a forever hopeful person reaching for and learning about relationships. All the other actors were good as well and the direction Ken Kwapis was very good as demonstrated by keeping this 2+ hour film moving along, and interesting. The biggest downside for me were the 4 or 5 breaks (like chapter headings) where the screen goes black and they there is a statement indicating what issue will be addressed next. The film didn’t need it and only disengaged me from the well thought out script.

Overall: I was surprised by how well this film flowed and the points about relationships it made.