Mortdecai

First Hit:  What a wasted piece of fluff.

There is nothing interesting about the characters and with this cast it's shocking. Although I’m not a Johnny Depp (Mortdecai) fan here he is just bad with a bad script.

He plays an eccentric English Lord who is going broke and married to his college sweetheart Johanna (Gwyneth Paltrow). She rules the roost and there is little that tells the film’s audience why she is married to him. There is a second story in this film about him growing a mustache.

This is where the comedy comes in, from time to time. Ewan McGregor (another great actor) plays Martland a British investigator, friend of Mortdecai, and longs for Johanna. Really? Paul Bettany plays Mortdecai’s man servant Jock and he’s the best thing in the film. The storyline is bad and the acting, for the most part, is worse.

Depp is difficult to watch. The fake spacer between his front teeth was way too obvious and the character wasn’t interesting at all. Paltrow tried to rise above the character and film, but it just didn’t work. McGregor tried to play it straight but this role in this film as a waste of his energy. Bettany was fun to watch and made his scenes interesting. Eric Aronson wrote a silly script that didn’t have a good focus. David Koepp had a bad script, great actors and no idea where he was going.

Overall:  This was a waste of my time – as well as the actor’s time.

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First Hit:  Scenes of this film are really good and reflective.

I can understand the lack of an audience for this film. People aren’t necessarily compelled to watch something that has such a stigma – yet it would be wise if people did.

Adam (Mark Ruffalo) is a recovering sex addict. Although he has 5 years of sobriety from sex, he’s still scared every day of what can happen if he acts out on his underlying desires. His sponsor, Mike (Tim Robbins), is encouraging him to consider dating and being open and honest in a full and engaged relationship.

Mike is an addict himself with multiple additions, or so we are led to believe and his steadfast guidance is honored in the weekly meetings. His wife Katie (Joely Richardson) has been through it all with him and she continues to be a supportive because she loves him.

To view the obsessiveness of this addition, the film uses Neil (Josh Gad) a doctor who rubs against people in the subway, tries to film up his bosses dress, watches porn films he’s made and on the internet. He is out of control and tries to BS his fellow AA meeting group about his sobriety.

The scenes in the meetings were good, and some were very good. The scenes of Neil falling to his obsessive behavior are tinged with Gad’s own humor, but also show to the lengths some go to, to not acknowledge their disease. Bringing Adam out and into the world of a sexual relationship is Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow). She has had a prior relationship with an addicted person (alcohol) and makes it clear she doesn’t want to be with someone who’s in a “program”.

When Adam honesty opens up this part of himself to Phoebe is a powerful part of this film. Then seeing Adam’s fall into past behavior was equally powerful. The film also shows how addictions affect family by sharing Mike’s son Danny (Patrick Fugit) own fight to sobriety although it is different than his father’s.

Ruffalo is really good and believable is presenting the constant vigilance he has to take and how easy it is to fall down again. Robbins is very good as the slightly self-righteous sponsor who has years and years of sobriety and his arrogant behavior leads him to being humble. Gad is great and willing to put obsessive behavior on film. Paltrow is beautiful, and carries her character in the ways many people share about addicted people. Fugit is good as the son who is attempting to make amends his own way. Pink as Dede, another addicted person, is wonderful and she brought a strong woman’s voice to the film. Stuart Blumberg and Matt Winston wrote a very good script and obviously did their homework. Blumberg’s direction was very good while some scenes were exceptionally strong.

Overall:  I really like this film because the closeness of addiction in me and my extended family’s life.

The Avengers 3D

First Hit:  Quips abound as these action heroes give the audience a good time.

A film with Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man) will have quips and he’s one of the best. However, in this film every one of the Avengers gets their day in the sun in both quip world and demonstrating their super powers.

The basic premise is a little unwieldy in that some super power generating light cube is found at the bottom of the ocean and aliens decide they need to control earth and the rest of the universe.

This story is enough for uniting superheroes to fight a common enemy. What makes this film fun are the separate storylines with each hero. When they each talk to each other it is of mutual respect and pointed sarcasm. I won’t share any of the quips here because it would take away from the best parts of the film.

With Iron Man, the Avengers are: Captain America (played by Chris Evans), The Hulk (played by Mark Ruffalo), Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner). They are loosely led by Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson). Additionally Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) makes a couple of appearances which pulls Iron Man’s ego down appropriately.

I’m sure Downey made up a good portion of his lines and he’s good at it.

The 3D is effective in portraying depth and the visual effects. Unlike other films, scenes weren’t set-up for 3D, they just looked better in 3D.

Downey Jr. was wonderful as Iron Man and was the glue of this team. Evans was muscularly fantastic as the straight-laced Captain America. Ruffalo was wonderful and the guy who struggles to maintain inner peace or else his other self, “The Hulk”, reigns over havoc. Hemsworth is powerful and funny as the god Thor. Johansson is funny, fun, and strong as the Black Widow and the only female Avenger. Renner’s role as Hawkeye is first controlled by the enemy but then gets the sense knocked back into him and joins his buddies to fight the aliens. Jackson is alright, not great or as strong as the other characters, in his role as Nick Fury. Paltrow is perfect as Potts. Zak Penn and Joss Whedon wrote this funny, lively script. Whedon did a great job of making the film interesting through strong characterization of the Avengers, allowing each their day in the sun and humanness.

Overall: Although the film’s story is highly improbable, it was only there to showcase a lot of fun these actors had in their roles.

Contagion

First Hit: Interesting, scary, overcomplicated stories and created questions of realism.

What would happen if a new disease came to this world that had a high R 0 factor (R Naught). Although it was explained as a primary part of the film, it wasn’t reinforced enough throughout the film for me to understand the some of the dialogue they used later.

From what I understood a high R Naught means that for every one person who dies multiple more will die. Anyway this was just one of the confusing things in this film. Then I kept having questions while the celluloid rolled. If they created a contagious area, sealed it off a whole city, who would man the electric power stations? Who controls all the other social utilities if the city (Chicago) is dying from a disease?

And although the film-makers showed a society degenerating by having people breaking into banks, grocery stores, and pharmacies; I kept wondering who’s running the electrical grid. Anyway, outside of the problems in this film because it compromised the way society would breakdown with this disease, it did bring up great questions about what would happen if a devastating disease struck the world.

Beth (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) is ground zero for this disease (we discover this at the end of the film). She stops on her way home and has a quickie with an ex-boyfriend (why was this important?), comes home to her husband Mitch (played by Matt Damon), who ends up being immune to the disease but her son isn’t and both the son and wife die.

The film includes the involvement of the WHO and a bunch of other agencies which lets us know that this is important and out of control. The way the WHO and the US Government methodically find a cure and plan how to immunize a lot of people was interesting, but overall this film tried to make drama in too many places which dissipated the energy of the film. I would have rather stayed with just a few of the people and not try to give us so much about so many.

One of the opening scenes when they cut Beth’s scull open to analyze her death, I found myself cringing but ready for a film that would be more focused, it fell off the table and became a different film from there.

Paltrow has a small but critical part because she is ground zero. Damon was good as the caring father. Marion Cotillard as Dr. Orantes was very good and probably did the best acting in this film. Jude Law was very good at playing a blogger named Alan Krumwiede as someone who was skeptical of the government’s action on the disease but he was worse in his lying to his public. Laurence Fishburne was OK as Dr. Cheever and I really thought the story was overplayed when he gave his wife a heads up to leave Chicago. There were lots of other actors but this film didn’t require it and in fact dissipated its energy. Scott Z. Burns wrote the script and made it too complicated by adding lots of strong parts. Steven Soderbergh directed this film and, to me, it needed simplification in some areas to create a more powerful effect.

Overall: This was a good film but too many stories with big time actors dissipated the strength of the idea.

Country Strong

First Hit: A far cry from last year’s intense and well executed “Crazy Heart”, this film falls flat everywhere.

I really wanted to see this film. I wanted to see Gwyneth Paltrow deliver like I know she can.

But what this film does is compromise every character in every way. If you want us to believe Kelly Canter (Paltrow) is a raging out of control drunk, and then give it to us – early. What we get is her lying on her bed in rehabilitation, dreamy eyed while listening to Beau Hutton (played by Garrett Hedlund) create a song.

When they decide to show us her darker drunk side, believe me it doesn’t stand up as real. Her husband James (played by Tim McGraw) is her manager and has, long ago, lost contact with Kelly. But why? He keeps her going with stories of their past about how much he loved her. He is also in pain because Kelly, while drunk, fell off a stage a year earlier while 5 months pregnant and lost their baby.

Maybe this is where the film needed to begin. Maybe the film needed to identify what their relationship was like prior to Kelly being pregnant. But this isn’t what happened. Kelly is having an affair with Beau. Kelly thinks James is having an affair with new singing talent Chiles Stanton (played by Leighton Meester).

James is obviously attempting to keep the gravy train rolling while hoping to heal his inner demons. Kelly is clearly a lost woman and only seems to light up with someone compliments her or when the audience praises her. Beau pretends to be the keeper of the truth in the film, but he is just a screwed up in his ability to communicate effectively. Chiles is simply starstruck and believes in fairy tales and that she will be happy being a big country star. She is totally unprepared for her next step.

The only time the film tries to put context to Kelly's life as a star against Chiles naivete is when Kelly comes into her dressing room and tells her all that she knows to be true about this life Chiles has chosen.

Paltrow is either a victim of a poor script, poor direction, or just a poor performance. I think she tried, but the basis of this story needed to be re-worked. McGraw is very reserved and felt very constricted in this role. Again, the script, direction, or that he lacked the chops to deliver something other than a mediocre performance. Hedlund felt like a one trick pony. He provided little depth throughout the film although he probably had the best lines and enough screen time to make something work. Meester is moderately believable and her doe eyes and innocence wouldn't have allowed her to get as far as she had gotten in the music world. Shana Feste wrote and directed this poorly constructed film. It was a long way from being well thought out. How she got this kind of talent engaged with this script is beyond me.

Overall: This is a barely watchable film with no lessons or redeeming value.