The Invisible Man

First Hit: Despite Elizabeth Moss’s excellent performance, the film dragged on.

Moss, as Cecilia Kass, plays a wife who is being controlled by her husband, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), and is looking to escape his clutches.

The story begins with Cecilia sneaking out of bed, packing some clothes, and sneaking out of the house. As she moves through the home and the surrounding property, we figure out that Adrian must be wealthy because the home is amazingly new, large and modern, and the walled-in yard is extravagant. There is also a quick clip with someone saying he’s done very well in the world of optical science.

Cecilia’s sister, Emily (Harriet Dyer), picks her up on an empty two-lane road near the home, and just as Emily attempts to ask why Cecilia is doing this, Adrian’s fist comes through the window and tries to pull Cecilia out of the car. The two just escape his clutches and speed down the road.

Cecilia gets dropped off at James Lanier’s (Aldis Hodge) home. James is a police officer and lives with his daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). Cecilia feels safe there as we learn that her husband doesn’t know about James or where he lives.

Cecilia learns that Adrian has committed suicide, which, to Cecilia, seems out of character. Adrian’s brother Tom (Michael Dorman) is the executor of Adrian's estate and tells Cecilia that she is to receive $5M in payments.

However, strange things begin to happen to Cecilia, and she suspects that Adrian is still alive and invisible. This is when we begin to see some great acting by Moss. Her terror from being stalked by an invisible person is so true-to-life that her audience is drawn in to her efforts to convince others of the reality of her experiences. Yet, this is also where the film begins to wane because we just spend too much time, in different circumstances, watching Cecilia evading an invisible Adrian.

We all know how it is going to end, so there is no surprise. However, the way it is handled by Cecilia is good and does add to the enjoyment of the overall film.

I didn’t think any of the relationships were well developed, which was disappointing. Don’t know why Cecilia would even be with Adrian in the first place. Where did Cecilia and James know each other from? What was Tom and Adrian’s relationship based upon? The film attempts to have the audience believe the dialogue, but the over subservient way people acted with Adrian was incongruent.

Moss was excellent at portraying fear of an invisible person, and she showed this through her very expressive face. Hodge was wonderful as Cecilia’s friend and protector. Dyer was perfect as Cecilia’s sister in the way she protected, listened to, and cared about her sister. Reid was terrific as James’s daughter. Dorman was good as Adrian’s subservient brother. Leigh Whannell wrote and directed this movie. The writing was good, but the story got old waiting for Cecilia (and the audience) to see Adrian and to get to the end. Part of the problem for me was the lack of character and relationship development.

Overall: This film had possibilities but failed to engage me fully.

The Kitchen

First Hit: At the beginning, this film had promise, but this promise fell away to mediocrity in the end.

The idea of three housewives taking over their husband’s gang-related activities because the husbands were jailed had intrigue and promise.

Kathy Brennan (Melissa McCarthy) is married with two children. Her husband, Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James) is part of the local Hell’s Kitchen crime group that fleeces businesses for protection. He’s probably the least aggressive of the three men.

Ruby O’Carroll (Tiffany Haddish) is married to Kevin (James Badge Dale) who is currently the leader of this local crime group. His mother Helen (Margo Martindale) provides her son with direction about the band of thieves he runs. Her husband started the group, and therefore, she still holds some power over the neighborhood.

Claire Walsh (Elizabeth Moss) is married to Rob (Jeremy Bobb) who is a brutish bully of a man, and he regularly beats Claire and is a primary thug in this Hell’s Kitchen enforcement group.

The three men get caught by the FBI while robbing a local business and are sent away. The new temporary leader of the enforcement group said they will continue to financially provide for the wives while their husbands are doing time. However, the stipend is not enough. So the girls get together and decide they can become an enforcement group, thereby overriding their husbands' protection club.

Upon hearing that Rob, Claire’s husband, is in jail, Gabriel O’Malley (Domhnall Gleeson) comes back to the neighborhood and announces his return by shooting and killing a man who is attempting to rape Claire.

Teaching the three women how to efficiently cut up and get rid of the body, he becomes their primary enforcer. However, Claire wanting to never be bullied again, learns to kill and is exceptionally competent at this and cutting up bodies - she's a natural.

As the three women build their protection business, the old group comes after them. But are stymied because as the women take over another neighborhood, the local mafia head Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) calls for a meeting, and a deal is created between his group and the girls. Together they neutralize the original Hell’s Kitchen group and gain support by providing protection and labor jobs for the community.

There’s a side story that is hinted at and finally brought to life that Ruby is having an affair with one of the FBI investigators Gary Silvers (Common). This, to me, creates an unnecessary distraction and side story and is not required to advance, what could have been, a good story.

Ruby slowly tries to take over the group that Melissa, Ruby, and Claire started together, and the writer used this FBI link as a significant part of the reason for the takeover by Ruby.

When the women’s husbands get out of jail early, there is trouble as expected, and the conflict doesn’t end well for the husbands.

This story is about women taking charge and with Ruby’s link to a male FBI agent seemingly having some influence, took away the power and guts of this story.

Additionally, I thought the movie was too long by taking too much time to prove points. Also, I didn’t believe the FBI piece of the story needed to be even part of the film. There easily other ways to create motivation for Ruby.

Another part of the film which didn’t quite work was that the director, Andrea Berloff, didn’t ensure each scene was correctly set in the 1970s. For comparison to this sort of attention to detail watch Quentin Tarantino’s latest film and this one – the aspect isn’t there in this film.

McCarthy is strong as the Irish woman who, loves her children, works at creating a good home life, but when push comes to shove, she is tired of playing second fiddle. Haddish is equally strong in this role; however, the whole FBI relationship back story just wasn’t needed. There were other ways she could claim her race, sex, and power. Moss was outstanding as the pushed around wife who wasn’t going to take it any longer. Having been a punching bag for her husband, she commits to protecting herself and does this in spades. But it was her eyes and facial expressions that sold both sides of her really well. Camp was great as the honorable mafia head that kept his integrity in tack by honoring his agreements. Gleeson was excellent as the guy who finally got to have a relationship with Claire that he always wanted. Martindale was instrumental as the once-powerful wife and mother to her family’s mob protection group. She gets her comeuppance. Berloff wrote and directed this film, and as I’ve previously stated, the story lost its effectiveness by adding the unnecessary Ruby and Gary Silvers relationship. The film also ran out of steam and probably needed pruning.

Overall: This film had potential, showed it at times, but ultimately failed to deliver.

Us

First Hit: Started off OK, but then became a contrived, overburdened, and almost laughable story.

I was a fan of Jordan Peele’s Get Out. However, here the characters felt pressed in their roles and the premise and ending was apparent to me early on.

The ability to keep the audience focused on one thing while using sleight of hand to set us up for a surprise is what this film is about. However, when the crowning moment appears and I sat there and said to myself, “yeah, that was expected,” it didn’t work.

Us didn’t work for me because Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o also plays Red) was a little too odd from the beginning. Her looks and way of being stood out a too much.

The set-up from her going into the house of mirrors as a child and being adversely affected wasn’t strong enough to make me buy her subsequent adult behavior. Therefore I started trying to figure out why is she was the way she was — darkly edgy.

The story is, that as a child, Adelaide enters a house of mirrors and gets scared. We are to believe this had a profound effect on her. Then we meet her later in life married to Gabe (Winston Duke also plays Abraham). They have two children Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex respectively). On a family vacation, they decide to take a day trip to Santa Cruz. Adelaide doesn’t want to go because this is where the house of mirrors, where she was frightened in as a child, is located.

Events, with Jason wandering off at the Santa Cruz beach near the house of mirrors, spark’s a visit from their dark underworld counterparts.

The story gets more complex by adding in their friends Josh and Kitty Tyler (Tim Heidecker and Elizabeth Moss respectively) and their twin daughters Becca and Lindsey (Cali Sheldon and Noelle Sheldon respectively).

The underworld expansion and counterpoint to each of the characters were mildly entertaining.

Nyong’o telegraphed the part more than I would have liked. I’m not sure whether this was at Peele’s direction or her interpretation. Regardless, outside of a few strong scenes, I didn’t buy it. Duke had some funny scenes, like his first foyer in his boat, but his role didn’t work for me and I didn’t think he and Nyong’o worked as a couple. It just didn’t seem to fit. Joseph was probably the best thing in the film. When she got in the driver’s seat of the car and insisted in driving, and when she took the golf club in hand, the audience knew she meant business. She was excellent. Alex was good as the son, however, the mask fixation didn’t work for me, and I understand why it was part of the role. Heidecker and Moss were strong in their supportive roles. Peele both wrote and directed this film and for the most part it didn’t work. It made me wonder if he’ll fall into the same trap as M. Night Shyamalan; create a wonderful first film and then slowly fall into the abyss of ever increasingly bad films.

Overall: This film was failure of suspense, thrill, and horror.

Get Him to the Greek

First Hit: There are moments that this film is really funny and there are times it felt sophomoric and I wanted the scene to move on.

Russell Brand plays Aldous Snow an aging rock star that was a wild child singer who made lots of money making rock albums then made a horribly conceived album. He decided to get clean of drugs but that didn't help his marriage or his career so he starts drinking and doing drugs again.

It is here we pick up the story because Sergio Roma (played by Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs) is a record label producer who looking for something big to create more income so that he can provide Nike Air Jordans for his six kids.

His minions have some stupid ideas but when he calls on Aaron Green (Jonah Hill), Aaron thinks that a 10th anniversary concert at the Greek Theater in LA with Aldous Snow will be a huge hit. He explains how it will be great and generate a lot of money by doing a simulcast with Facebook, Twitter and a "pay for view" cable channel.

Roma agrees and sends Green to fetch Snow and bring him back for the concert. The film has enough moments of well represented typical rock star lifestyle and its juxtaposition to a regular person’s life. There is the; I’ll do what I want when I want to do it thing.

There is the focus on “banging” as many girls as I can thing. And there is the I’ll do what it takes to get high to not feel what my life is really about stuff thing. To Green, at first it is fun but he sees the hurt and shallowness in it Snow and wonders if this is the life for him.

What detracted from the film are the sophomoric bents like the often seen Green vomiting because he can’t hold his liquor scenes.

Brand is great as Snow and held his own as a Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, and Lars Ulrich version of a rock star. Hill is not an actor I find very entertaining as he appears to play the same sort of guy most of the time. He’s a semi thoughtful, unimaginative guy who longs to have a normal life and is a bit slow on the uptake. He uses his size to create sympathy and humor but there is little coming from his brain and heart. The chemistry between him and Daphne Binks (played by Elizabeth Moss) is virtually non-existent. Combs is funny and great as the music record producer. I love the dialogue about mind fucking. Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel wrote this and there are moments of truly funny, laugh out loud, scenes and dialogue which director Stoller used really well.

Overall: Where I enjoyed watching Hangover a second time with my girlfriend, this film doesn’t have the ability to be funny or interesting the second time around because the laughs are one shot and some of the stuff gets old quick.