After the Wedding

First Hit: In this film, a challenging and complex situation unfolds through fantastic acting.

Isabel (Michelle Williams) is the co-founder of an orphanage in India. She very fond of the school, children, and organization. She is especially attached to a young boy Jai (Vir Pachisia) who appears to be a bit hyper and possibly having some attention disorder. This is wonderfully portrayed when Isabel, leading a meditation of the orphanage’s children, opens her eyes to see Jai lying on his back looking at the sky and waving his hands around. She lies down next to him and then says he can ring the bell to end the mediation. He is very enthusiastic ringing the bell and because the other children affectionately laugh, we know he is loved by them – he’s not an outsider.

The story then moves to New York where we find Oscar (Billy Crudup) finalizing a sculpture exhibit of his work, while his wife Theresa (Julianne Moore) is hard at work, making decisions, speaking with lawyers, and appears to be finalizing a deal to sell her large media company.

They have a daughter named Grace (Abby Quinn) who is young and with an impending wedding is nervous.

Reluctantly Isabel goes to New York because she’s been asked by a benefactor to come to New York to meet them in person to obtain a substantive amount of money to support her orphanage. When she gets to New York, we (and Isabel) finds out that Theresa is the benefactor. Their first meeting is slightly contentious because Isabel doesn’t think she needs to be in New York and Theresa seems a bit non-committal. To learn more about Isabel, Theresa invites Isabel to Grace’s wedding at their home.

Arriving at the wedding slightly late, Isabel is shocked to see that the father of the bride is Oscar, someone she had a previous history with.

The audience is getting some inkling that something is up and when Oscar gives a toast talking about how Grace helped him select Theresa as his wife.

But was this set up? Did Theresa know what she was doing when she brought Isabel to New York? Does Grace really know her history? How will Oscar explain to Grace’s past to her? Why did Theresa set this all up?

Lots of questions and the excellent acting make this complicated situation come together rather well.

Williams was excellent although there seemed to be darkness around her through the entire film. Part of me felt as though this was because of a decision she made many years ago or was Isabel’s character a bit sad, cynical and dark unless she was around the orphanage? Moore was solid as the highly motivated media company owner. She’s always on the phone, pushing through her agenda. There’s a sense of something underlying her drive to sell the business. Crudup is outstanding as Theresa’s husband and Grace’s father. There are a creative strength and vulnerability he shows that makes his character work. Quinn is good as Grace. She’s a little whiny about her nervousness of getting married, and I’m not sure why this was needed. Pachisia is perfect as the young orphan, to whom, Isabel is emotionally connected. Susanne Bier, Bart Freundlich, and Anders Thomas Jensen wrote the screenplay. It is an interesting story, and for me, because I adopted my daughter, I felt a deep connection to the story. Freundlich also directed his story. I liked many of the sets; specifically the hotel and office spaces.

Overall: I thought this was an extremely well-acted story.

Gloria Bell

First Hit: I thought the concept was interesting, but it fell a little flat on the screen.

This story is about a middle age woman who has two grown kids, has been divorced for 12 years, and her flirtation with another romance.

Gloria (Julianne Moore) works for an insurance firm as an adjuster. Her favorite pastime is dancing at a local club. The club she goes to is filled with people her age (40 – 60) who are also looking for a good time and possibly a hook-up. Gloria drinks and dances her evenings away. She meets nice gentlemen, but there isn’t any spark and it doesn’t seem to matter.

I never got the feeling that she wanted to get involved in a relationship, and to fill the spaces of time in her life she tries to get more involved in her grown children’s lives. They are slightly open to her intrusions.

Anne (Caren Pistorius), her daughter is a yoga teacher who is engaged to a big wave surfer. She loves her mom, but she’s a young woman who wants to create distance from her mom, despite loving her, to dive into her own life. Her son Jeremy (Michael Cera), is raising his daughter alone as his wife is off “finding herself.” Gloria tries to be helpful and Jeremy tells her to back off because he wants to show her that he’s got everything covered, his way.

One night, while dancing, Gloria meets Arnold (John Turturro). He’s recently divorced and wants to be in a relationship. In fact, his hunger for a relationship is almost too telegraphed.

Gloria and Arnold hit it off. However, the sticking point is that his daughters and his ex-wife keep calling him because they are dependent on him for everything. Although his daughters are grown, he’s expected to pay for everything and solve every problem. The phone ringing in each scene with him is a moment in abject disgust and suffering for him, Gloria and the audience.

Despite their powerful physical intimacy, the calls, his insecurity around her family, and his dependence on being a savior for his girls, give this film it’s saddest and troubling moments.

My favorite scene in the film is when Gloria shoots paintballs at Arnold and his house. A very freeing moment for Gloria.

Moore is very good at portraying what she wants, her vulnerabilities, and what makes her happy. One of those things that makes her happy is singing in the car with complete abandon. These moments are priceless if you are a car singer. Pistorius is very good as the daughter that wants to follow her own dream and not have to live up to mom’s expectations. Cera, likewise, is strong in his portrayal of living up to the father he wants to be and do it his way. Turturro is excellent as the guilt and caretaker man who is caught between his love for Gloria and providing for his family’s needs. Brad Garrett is good as Gloria’s ex-husband. Alison Johnson Boher and Sebastian Lelio wrote a tepid screenplay that had more possibilities. However, it is a difficult subject to film. Lelio directed this film and many of the scenes were captured nicely.

Overall: Although at times tedious there are moments of laughter.

Suburbicon

First Hit: A poorly conceived attempt to be relevant, darkly funny, and mysterious.

I generally like films written by Joel and Ethan Coen. I've previously enjoyed films directed by George Clooney. Actors Matt Damon and Julianne Moore always make roles better than they are written so I was looking forward to seeing this film. However, the mixture of this group didn’t resonate as something valid or comprehensive.

There were out-loud funny moments in a dark humor sort of way, but most of the time, the lack of information to string the film together had me a bit flummoxed.

Based in 1959, planned clean beautiful communities were sprouting up all over the United States. In Suburbicon there are two major stories. One, is about a black family moving into this all white neighborhood and how they are treated. Horribly is the answer to this part of the film. The second is how does Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) respond to being pressured to repay an outstanding loan? Not very well.

The set up to the neighborhood of Suburbicon is that this is an upcoming proactive modern community that allows everyone to be prosperous. Everyone can live there, unless you have a different skin color. That's what Mr. and Mrs. Myers (Leith M. Burke and Karimah Westbrook respectively) quickly find out. Each night neighbors gather around their home and shout racist epithets at the home. Each night, the crowd gets larger. And the Myers simply, elegantly, and clearly ignore the rants.

In a symbolic scene in the grocery store, the store manager stands behind the checker and tells Mrs. Myers that each item she wants to buy is $20.00, is pointedly outrageous; “bread? $20.00, Milk? $20.00.” Instead of raising her voice and acting out, with a smile on her face, she leaves the store to go shop somewhere else.

The upside of this aspect of the story is that the Myers' son Andy (Tony Espinosa) strikes up a great friendship with Nicky (Noah Jupe) who is Gardner and his wife Rose’s (Julianne Moore) son. They ride bikes together and play catch with a baseball together. Both boys are surviving their own private hell.

Gardner’s story is more elusive in that we don’t know why he’s in debt. We are introduced to him and his wife Rose, who is in a wheelchair, as they are being shaken down in their house by loan enforcers. His wife dies from the incident but we later learn that Gardner may have something to do with the death, just like he had something to do with her being in a wheelchair. Margaret (also Julianne Moore), who is Rose's twin sister is visiting them and helping to manage their household.

The way Gardner deals with the death of his wife, the inclusion of his wife's sister into the household, the moralistic and societal way he tells his son that he’s too young to understand what is going on in the family and the world, and how the violence is used to resolve his issues, just didn’t work well. There were too many unanswered questions nor was there a clear plot line.

There seemed to be an element of this film that was trying to be cutesy while also being edgy and it just didn’t work. Many of the sets were nice to see as they reminded me of growing up in that time period. I didn’t think the two major stories were integrated very well and certainly weren't well matched to make it work holistically.

Damon was OK and it wasn’t his acting that failed, it was mostly the script and Clooney’s poor direction of the poorly conceived script. Moore was OK in both roles and I thought the best part was her being interviewed by the insurance investigator. Westbrook was probably brought the best acting to the film. She embodied the role of smiling through the racist actions against her and her family. Jupe did a really good job as the son trying to figure out why his mom is gone, his dad is fighting people, and his aunt Margaret is living with them. Espinosa was very good as the neighbor kid who was attempting to put the racism behind him and just be a young kid. The Coen’s script had some bones but it wasn’t a good final product. Clooney just didn’t have a handle on a unifying theme and objective point to this film.

Overall:  Not worth the time to see it.

The Kingsman: The Golden Circle

First Hit:  Terrible story with few bright spots.

What a waste of talent. How do Julianne Moore (Poppy), Taron Egerton (Eggsy), Colin Firth (Harry Hart – whose character died in previous film), Channing Tatum (Tequila), Halle Berry (Ginger), Jeff Bridges (Champ) and Elton John (as himself) all sign up for a story that has disaster written all over it? I don’t know. Maybe the Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn script read better than it worked out to be. Maybe it was Vaughn’s issue because he couldn't deliver what he envisioned in his mind.

I just don’t know, how this happened. Besides a couple reasonable fight scenes and a couple slightly amusing tongue-in-cheek scenes, the premise that Poppy was going to blackmail the President of the United States so that she could freely sell her drugs all over the world, was preposterous.

Maybe the film needed to be WAY over the top in the tongue-in-cheek category to work.

Hart died in the previous film, and to make-up a story that he miraculously survived the shooting by some someone using a FEDEX  or UPS looking plastic bubble wrap around his head and followed by an emotional shock to make him be the same person as before is ludicrous.

Anyway, the Kingsman, who have a limited crew, with Merlin (Mark Strong), Eggsy and the partially defective Hart, are trying to find and destroy Charlie (Edward Holcroft) who makes an attempt to kill Eggsy. Charlie blows-up the country mansion and the tailor shop in London and now want Eggsy. Charlie being a shunned former Kingsman, unbeknownst to Eggsy, is really working for Poppy. Poppy is running her drug trade in a lost city in a jungle. She’s turned it into a 1950’s style base of operations. Really? This is the setup. Really, I kid you not.

Then the writers add this: For help, The Kingsman team up with the Statesman, which is run by Champ. The Statesman is the US version of the Kingsman; an independent spy security agency. It is run out of a distillery, hence the names of their agents, Tequila and Whiskey (Pedro Pascal). Now this is exciting! But wait, there's more...

Not only does Poppy build robotic dogs to protect herself, she likes being entertained, so she has hired Elton John to play songs for her in an empty theater anytime she likes. Elton does have a couple other key momentary appearances, but he’s not an actor and it shows.

Egerton is, at times, fun to watch but the script is so disjointed and unfounded that it lets him and the role down. Moore’s role is hopeless. She attempts to be part tongue-in-cheek and part serious, but because the role is ill defined in an ill-defined movie, it falls flat. Firth seems so out of place in this role it just made me cringe. He needed to stay dead. Strong was one bright spot in the film and his centered acting made his role work. Berry was driven to be so much less than what she is by the role. She's made to be a girl Friday and I disliked her scenes completely. Bridges' role was insipid. That he chose to act in this film is disheartening. Holcroft was good as the maniac bionic armed villain. He made it work. Pascal didn’t fit in this film at all. He seemed out of place and it was clear from the beginning, he wasn’t on the side he said he was on. Tatum was fun at times and it seemed as though he was used in this film as eye candy for a female audience. He added little to the story. John can stay away from acting, even as himself. Goldman and Vaughn script was a mess from the beginning to the end. Vaughn had no vision as a director to deliver a story that would engage the audience. The film was thrown at the audience.

Overall:  Don’t waste your time for this insipid film.

Maggie's Plan

First Hit:  Oddly interesting story about love, marriage and life through three very different personalities.

The three are Georgette (Julianne Moore), her husband John (Ethan Hawke) and Maggie (Greta Gerwig).

Georgette is a precise, egocentric professor that is focused on her career. She works at a prestigious university (Columbia) and her career path is to be well known and a department head. She has two children with John and abdicates most household care to him.

John works as a part time professor at a lesser college while also working on a novel. He’s famous for some of his anthropological work, but his heart is on writing a novel. On the campus he teaches, he meets fellow professor Maggie who believes she can only have relationships that last 6 months.

Because she wants children, she decides to get pregnant by asking a friend (mathematician) to give her his sperm that she can insert. However, she engages John in conversations and begins to give the attention he’s not getting at home. The relationship starts with John giving her sections of his book to review and ends in a marriage. However, things go array, the relationship changes and realizing that there needs to be a change she creates "Maggie’s Plan".

Moore is very solid as the precise, smart and career focused Georgette. Hawke is very good as the guy who continues to succumb to an illusion of what he wants and what love is. Gerwig is great as the main character who has a clear idea of what she wants and how to get it. Travis Fimmel and Maya Rudolph are very good as friends of Maggie. Rebecca Miller wrote and directed this quirky independent film in a sure handed way.

Overall:  I enjoyed the way this film played out.