Their Finest

First Hit:  A very sweet and thoughtful film about making a propaganda film in World War II England.

The story takes place in London during war time and between the German buzz bombing. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) interviews for, what she thinks is, a secretarial position at the Ministry of Information only to discover she gets the job as scriptwriter for propaganda films. She needs to money as she is supporting herself and her, almost, husband Ellis Cole (Jack Huston) who is an artist and was injured in Spanish Civil War. She's not officially married to Ellis but wears a wedding ring and takes his name.

The British propaganda films, designed to motivate the population to work hard for the war effort, are not being well received. Fellow writer Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) is hard on Catrin because she’s a woman and screenwriting is a man’s world.

However, he sends her on an assignment based on a newspaper article where twin women stole their father’s boat to go to Dunkirk to help save the lives of men. When Catrin interviews the women, she discovers that the boat stopped off shore. Never getting to Dunkirk, they did get wounded home because some of the boats that came from Dunkirk were overloaded and those boats gave them wounded personnel to take home.

The written article makes it more than what they did, but Catrin, Tom and the film making team make a variation of the adventure. The film uses an older famous actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy) as part of the characters and as the only strong actor, he has ideas of how the plot and his part needs to go.

However, he begins to trust Catrin’s writing as she knows what she’s doing and when writing in concert with Tom, they excel.

What was interesting was this film also showed how important women were and their strength in helping the country defeat Germany. It also showed how people had to scale back their lives to support the war effort. I genuinely enjoyed watching Catrin watch the film she wrote and how the audience around her were engaged with the story. This was touching.

Arterton was fantastic in this role. Her reserved, yet expressive ways through the film created a wonderful character. Huston was good as the injured artist. Buckley was strong as Catrin’s fellow writer. His disbelief in women being able to write subtlety changing as the film enfolds was wonderful. Nighy was superb as the aristocratic and self-obsessed actor who comes to appreciate what he has. Gaby Chiappe wrote a wonderful screenplay, which unfolded with greater strength as the film went on. Lone Scherfig did a great job of directing this story and keeping the feel of the time and how films were constructed in the 1940’s just right.

Overall:  I was surprised by how much I liked and felt this film as it moved along.

Runner Runner

First Hit: Great actors in a weak and poorly conceived story.

An enterprising college student Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake) gets his peers to go to a gambling site where they lose money. He gets paid to refer people to this site.

This is how he is paying for school because he lost his previous job as a broker and what he wants his MBA. Because one of his student clients loses a bunch of money, school officials tell Richie he can’t continue in his business. With few options left, he bets all he has on a poker gambling website. His quick mind, and with a friends computer help, he figures out that the site cheated.

He decides to go meet the owner of the site – Ivan Block (Ben Affleck). Block is not allowed back into the United States because of his business behavior of not paying taxes etc. The FBI is after him as well, but cannot touch him because he’s in Belize.

Block convinces Richie to work for him and but Richie doesn’t know he’s being played, again. In the end Richie is smart enough and finds a way to turn the tides against Block. The story is weak, parts of the idea are strong. The actors are strong, but in a weak script and under poor direction this film fails in many ways.

Timberlake is OK but only because the script he’s given. He makes it work well enough to keep the audience engaged, but overall the film falls flat. Affleck does great in great roles and under decent direction and under poor direction with a mediocre script, he looks lost. Gemma Arterton played Affleck’s and Timberlake’s lover is only OK, but again this is probably because of the script and direction. Brian Koppelman and David Levien wrote a weak script. The idea was good but the execution was really poor. Brad Furman didn’t have a lot to work with but some of the sequencing of scenes was awkward and poorly done.

Overall:  This was a mediocre film but the idea was OK.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

First Hit: An interesting story with strong acting but minor components missing kept it from being great.

There are only three actors in this film. Danny (played by Martin Compston) who is the younger of the two kidnappers. Vic (played by Eddie Marsan) the other kidnapper and appears to be person who is in-charge and is the driving energy of their abduction of Alice Creed (played by Gemma Arterton).

The film begins with the two men systematically and without dialogue stripping out a room in a building somewhere in England and putting in soundproofing, locks, and covering the windows with plywood. The only thing in the bedroom is wooden bed with metal loops for attaching handcuffs and rope cinches for tying feet.

After setting up the bedroom they strip out the living room and kitchen with the bare essentials and leave. Immediately they steal a van, hijack Alice, and bring her to the bedroom where they strip her clothes off, handcuff and tie her to the bed. Working efficiently, they re-cloth Alice, gag her with a ball-in-mouth muzzle and put a hood over her head. Vic and Danny are have masks on so they cannot be seen and then finally reassure her that she will not be harmed.

As the story unfolds, the twists in their relationships begin to reveal cracks in Danny and Vic’s plan to obtain a lot of money for the return of Alice to her father. The aspects of the film that made it a bit unreal were the lack of any other outside noises, people and influences. How could they have brought this screaming girl into this building without anyone noticing? How come there aren’t any other people or outside influences on the road, in the warehouse, or in any other scene outside the apartment?

This stuff kept gnawing at me and took away from the film. It made it more like a play in which the environment was sequestered from real life.

Compston was strong as the young boy being influenced by the older man who kept him safe when he was in prison. He effectively had me believing he loved both the other man and the woman they abducted for very different reasons. Marsan was perfect as the older, in-charge, driven man who loved the younger boy. Arterton was effective and good as the abducted young lady. J Blakeson wrote and directed this and for the most part it was excellent.

Overall: Outside of the nagging thoughts about where is the rest of the world in this picture, it was well acted, directed and effective.