Birds of Prey

First Hit: This movie was absolutely horrible and a waste of time and money.

The original title of this film is “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.” The title alone is a warning enough, and when you read it, it is all you’ll need to know about this story. I do not know what the screenwriter or director was thinking, but it wasn’t about making a movie that had conscious cognizant coherence.

From the get-go, this film is a mess. Using narrative and disjointed clips of film to attempt to put the story in place and time was useless here because there really is no place or time.

I thought “Suicide Squad” was a quirky fun movie. It is where we meet Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) for the first time. She was odd, “out there,” and on the edge of crazy. This film Birds of Prey is supposed to give us the backstory of Ms. Quinn. It is also a way to introduce other characters, the “Birds of Prey,” consisting of Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), “The Huntress,” aka Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and “Black Canary,” aka Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell).

There’s little character development, Instead, narration and snippets of past stories are used to fill in the backstory of these characters.

This group of women come together because of and over the improbability of a young pickpocketing girl, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), swallowing a large, I mean colossally large, diamond stolen from a thieving, conniving, and self-named lord of Gotham, Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor).

Lots of fighting ensues, and we always know who wins. The fighting scenes are not well-choreographed and felt staged. The logic stream of the story was virtually non-existent. It seems as though the director Cathy Yan threw together a bunch of film scraps she shot with this cast doing stuff and called it a day.

Robbie is an excellent actress. She’ has proven her abilities in many films. Therefore, I’m surprised she co-produced and acted in this hot mess. Despite her talents, this was not good work. Perez, who has been missed in recent years, did what she could with this limiting role. Winstead was the best of the lot. Her quiet demeanor and her story of how she came up with “The Huntress” when everyone else like called her “Crossbow” was amusing. Smollett-Bell tried to make her character mean something but, again, the script and direction let her down. McGregor was okay as the foil for the Birds of Prey. Christina Hodson created a disjointed and lackluster screenplay with little substance. Yan has no business directing a film with this film as proof.

Overall: This movie was a total waste of time.

T2 Trainspotting

First Hit:  A wonderful 20-year follow-up film to Trainspotting.

Director Danny Boyle did what many people don’t know how to do, and that is create a follow-up film that works on many levels.

The characters are back and still attempting to find their way through life. Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) is back in Scotland after being in Amsterdam. He’s coming on the pretense that he has a happy life in Amsterdam and he’s back to settle up with his buddies after making off with £20,000 that the crew had stolen at the end of the previous film.

Daniel “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Bremner) is still struggling with heroin, is now divorced and loses connection with his son Fergus. Simon “Sick Boy” Williamson (Johnny Lee Miller) is now regularly doing cocaine and supports himself by having his girlfriend Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova) sexually pose with rich people so that he can compromise them and blackmails them. He also runs a rundown bar that he inherited.

Lastly there is Francis “Franco” Begbie (Robert Carlyle) who has been in prison nearly the whole time. I loved that his accent was so strong that Boyle used captions allowing the audience to understand his rants. Near the beginning of the film, he breaks out of prison, returns home to find his son is in school for “Hotel Management”. Franco is an angry mean sort of man who wants to fight everyone and he especially wants revenge on Renton for stealing the money.

The film dives back to when they were kids together along with when they were all doing heroin together. The film uses these flashbacks along with very interesting imagery to tell the story. The one scene with Mark and Simon doing heroin in Daniel’s living room was surrealistically realistic. The friendship between the men, except Franco’s anger towards Mark, was touching.

McGregor was wonderful in his reprised role, thoughtful enough for the audience to like, and twisted enough to keep audiences interested and engaged as to what might happen next. Miller was appropriately intense, violent, and high strung. Each time he was one the screen, one wondered if he would blow-up and explode. Bremner was amazing as a very lost man but slowing finding his voice by writing stories. Carlyle was amazingly intense. He was like a firecracker each time he was on the screen and I kept wondering how long he could live his life like this. Nedyalkova was really wonderful by balancing her need to make enough money to go back home to take care of her child with how to get the most from both Williamson and Renton. John Hodge wrote and excellent screenplay filled with turns and truths about the characters. Boyle is on the top of his game with this film.

Overall:  This film is not everyone’s cup of tea but it is an excellent second film about these characters and very well done.

Beauty and the Beast (3-D)

First Hit:  Although sweet enough, this film is why I generally don’t like musicals.

Those that have read me for years know I’m particular about and generally not a fan of musicals. The songs have got to work, not take me out of the flow and feeling of the film, and make sense. Songs that are difficult to understand or take too much thought, or fail to help the film’s flow, are not worth singing or having in the film. This movie fails to meet my tolerance levels from the get go and therefore it was hard for me to sit through it.

In the prologue, prior to being introduced to the oddity of Beauty (aka Belle - Emma Watson) and the townsfolk, the film sets up the reason why we have the Beast (Dan Stevens). He’s full of himself and because he doesn’t care about anyone else, a spell is put on him by the Enchantress (“Agatha” - Hattie Moran) that damns him and others around him to a life of non-humanness unless he is loved by another. The Enchantress gives him until the last petal of a rose, encased in a glass cover, falls to find someone to love him. When the last petal falls, he dies and the others are doomed to a life as inanimate objects.

After the brief prologue, we segue back into the local town we have Belle prancing and walking through town with the townsfolk singing out how odd she is because she reads books. Because we’ve no other background, except knowing that her dad Maurice (Kevin Kline) is a tinkerer, lives with his daughter and her mother is long gone; were just suppose to believe she's odd. It was hard for me to believe this. The film story just wants us to believe this "oddity" story.

Belle is being wooed by Gaston (Luke Evans) who is all brawn (self-labeled) and no brains. Belle sees through Gaston and spurns him at every pass. Gaston’s man Friday LeFou (Gosh Gad), is one of the best parts of this film with fanfare, flair, and a jousting way, he quips through this role only to backtrack on them later.

One of the difficulties of listening to the songs was that Watson’s singing was overly processed and, at times, sounded like it was through a vocoder and unnatural. I’m not sure if this was done for effect or because Watson doesn’t have the kind of singing voice that worked for the character. This use of processing singing voices cropped up in multiple places throughout this film.

Although many of the characters were cute, Lumiere (Ewan McGregor), Maestro Cadenza (Stanley Tucci), Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), Madame de Gerderobe (Audra McDonald), Chip (Nathan Mack) and Plumette (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), I only found an occasional enjoyment watching their interaction with each other and with Beauty or the Beast.

For the most part, within fifteen seconds after a song started I wanted it to end as these songs were taking me out of story.

Watson was good and believable as Belle, although I really didn’t like what was done to her voice when singing. Her slight English accent and obvious intelligence was helpful in making this film seem enchanting. Kline was even keeled, believable and strong as Belle’s father. His character felt grounded. Stevens was OK as the Beast although the CG Beast was what the audience mostly experienced. Only in the beginning and end did we have Stevens as the Prince. Evans was good as the swashbuckling Gaston. Gad was the best part of this film. He was funny and was obviously committed to his role. The remaining of the actors were basically CG objects for most of the film which makes reviewing their work difficult. Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos were responsible for the screenplay. Given it is an established story, their modifications were OK. Bill Condon had a clear vision of what he wanted and for the most part it was executed well, however it just isn’t my cup of tea.

Overall:  My wife loved the film, and I was occasionally amused and mostly bored because the songs took away from the actual story.

American Pastoral

First Hit:  Interesting look back into the 1960s and, although it was confusing at times, it did make me think about a powerful time in America.

If you grew up in the 1950s and 60s, you probably knew or had heard of “the guy” who was the most popular guy in school, was on all the high school teams, was a letterman on all those teams, and married the prettiest girl in class. They led the idyllic lives.

Here we have Seymour “Swede” Levov (Ewan McGregor) as that man. We are introduced to his legend through the 45th high school reunion where his the Swede’s brother Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans) speaks with Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn), a friend of his and Seymour’s. It is through Jerry telling Nathan the story that this film unfolds.

Swede marries Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) a New Jersey beauty queen. Because she is Catholic and Swede is Jewish, the Swede’s father Lou (Peter Riegert) wants to meet and question Dawn prior to their marriage. The Swede tells her to be strong during the meeting because this is what Lou admires. This discussion is well done and a strong scene in the film.

Swede ends up running the family business in Newark and is easily in the upper middle class. He and his wife move to a small rural town where they begin to raise their daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning). The film sets the ideal life with family dinners, mother and daughter working their cows, and even the birth of calves.

However, this pastoral scene starts to get darker as Merry begins to show her independence and anger towards the US Government’s involvement in the war of Vietnam and societies’ bent towards making money. I recall this attitude in many people including myself and the protest movements during this time. What complicates her internal struggle is that she also stutters. The psychologist they have tells Dawn and Swede that it is because she is struggling with her mom’s beauty and perfectness.

Merry runs away and is accused of blowing up the local rural post office (government facility) and killing the proprietor, whom the whole family knows. She disappears and Swede is distraught and beside himself and cannot let go that his daughter might have become part of an underground movement. Dawn begins to disappear from living, sells her cows and begins to slip into a deep depression.

From a filming standpoint, if feels over controlled and directed. The film is longer than needed to tell the story and this is a director issue as well.  To know what I mean watch a Clint Eastwood directed film and this one, Eastwood’s films are crisp, sometimes almost too crisp, and he gets the story told. In this film we have some long and languished scenes that supported the idyllic life they were living but some could have been cut or made shorter and made the film better. I also didn't believe the reasons for Merry’s stuttering and I don’t know if this was a screenplay issue or a directional issue.

McGregor was good as Swede but I also think his directing of himself got in the way of his performance. I did think, as a director, many of the scenes were well presented and setup well. Connelly was fantastic. I was mesmerized by her ability to put together a wonderful series of transitions as Dawn went from beauty queen romanced by the absolute best guy available, to a mother who cared, to cow farmer, to concerned and troubled mother, to depressed wife, and to remade wife through plastic surgery. Fanning was very strong in this very difficult and complex role. Although I didn’t fully buy her scripted logic for her actions, I bought how she made it work. Riegert was particularly good as Swede’s opinionated and robust father. John Romano wrote the screenplay from the Philip Roth novel. I do think there were some weaknesses in the script, and McGregor didn’t help this much.

Overall:  This could have been a stronger film with a crisper screenplay and clearer direction.

Our Kind of Traitor

First Hit:  Really nice build up for first half,  just sustains the intensity through the back half, but ends quite nicely.

My wife mentioned to me that she thought “Our Kind of Traitor” is a lackluster title for a film and I agree.

There are a couple of stories going on in this film:  First we have and see a Perry and Gail (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts respectively) struggling as a married couple. And second we have a Russian laced espionage thriller. How do these two stories meet? Struggling as a couple, Perry and Gail are on holiday in Morocco to try to bring some romance back into their ten-year relationship.

They are very different people; Perry is a poetic professor at a prestigious university and Gail is a workaholic lawyer who makes a lot of money. In a Moroccan restaurant, Gail gets a work call and has to leave so Perry gets propositioned by a gregarious Russian named Dima (Stellan Skarsgard) to join his party for a drink. Dima takes a liking to Perry and invites him to a late night party followed by an early morning tennis match. Their friendship grows and Dima asks Perry to deliver a thumb drive to MI6 in London when he returns home.

As head money launderer for the Russians, Dima suspects he and his family will be killed soon after a bank deal transpires in London. Gail thinks Perry is not doing a smart thing by going through with the delivery but despite her opinion, he follows through.

The tale heats up after they deliver the thumb drive to MI6 Agent Hector (Damian Lewis) but starts to fall off in intensity as the cat and mouse game begins to drag on. However, in the end, Dima wants to save his family, Perry and Gail may get closer, and Hector wants to put a nail in the coffin of his former boss whom he suspects as selling his soul and being a traitor.

McGregor was perfect because he portrayed the intelligence, compassion and integrity this role required. Watts was wonderful as the smart, quick witted wife while in the end wholly supporting her husband’s actions. Skarsgard was sublime. His intensity, deep boisterous growls, and single-minded objective made him the right man for this role. Lewis was adroitly a great choice as the MI6 agent, who was willing to move outside the box to follow his revenge. Hossein Amini wrote a good screenplay from the John le Carre novel. And despite the strong start and mediocre back half, Susanna White’s direction, in the end, brought the whole thing together rather well.

Overall:  One of the better film versions of a John le Carre story.