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.

Gemini Man

First Hit: Entertaining story, but it was the special effects of a young Henry Brogan (a young Will Smith) that was the star.

Ang Lee spent time and money using CGI to make Henry (Will Smith) have a Junior, and it worked.

Brogan is the most perfect and lethal sniper the US Government has ever had. To prove the point, we see him in the first scenes preparing to kill a man moving on a train traveling at 248 kilometers per hour (154 mph) while lying on a hillside some 200 meters (~650 ft) away from the tracks. He nails it.

But Brogan is done with killing after he’s shot more than seventy people. He’s tired, 51-years-old and all the deaths are eating away at him. At one point, he says, “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”

However, the powers that be, including CIA director Janet Lassiter (Linda Emond), want Brogan dead, and the funny thing is that the reason for this is poorly explained and developed in this story. This was the weakest part of the plot, but if you buy their explanation, it works well enough to enjoy the rest of the film.

Arriving back home after the initial assassination scene, ready to enter retirement, he heads to the harbor where he has a boat. Going to pay for gas, he finds a new person named Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in the dock shed. She gives him a story that the previous guy retired and that she’s studying marine biology at the nearby University of Georgia.

Taking his boat to meet with a secret contact, he finds a directional bug under the dashboard. Arriving back at the dock, he storms into the shed where Danny is seated and accuses her of being an agent operative for the government. She denies and denies his allegations. Apologizing he asks her out to eat as a way to make up for his rudeness and accusations. When he meets her for dinner, she shows her his research proving she’s an agent.

This scene gives the audience supporting information that Brogan is smart and knows what he’s doing, not only with a rifle, but he’s made it this far because he’s smart. Secondly, being found out implicates Danny in a larger scheme, and now she must support Brogan because she becomes an assassination target as well.

He awakes when assassins come to his home. He takes care of them as only an assassin would and rushes to Danny’s house to tell her she’s surly a target for assassination now and to go with him.

This is the setup. Lassiter is under threat by Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who owns a gun for hire company called Gemini. Verris is holding information that will ruin Lassiter’s career. If Lassiter cannot finish the job by getting rid of Brogan, his team will. Her ego won’t let him take over yet. She wants to prove she can finish the job.

After multiple failures by Lassiter’s team, Verris uses his squad of assassins, including a 23-year-old-clone version of Brogan, to kill Brogan, Zakarweski, and Brogan’s close pilot friend Baron (Benedict Wong).

The rest of the film is about the battle between the clone and Brogan, along with understanding why a clone of Brogan was created.

The action was excellent, although at times it seemed as if the fight scenes were too long. The realism of the younger clone put together by the CGI team was terrific. I loved having Danny as part of the plot because her rationality and the way she added to the story grounded the film.

Smith was strong as Brogan, the supreme assassin and weapon of the United States. He outwardly carried enough of the internal pain of his upbringing to make his character seem real and whole. Winstead was excellent as the agent sent to track Brogan and ends up partnering with him as he gets to the root of the issue at hand. Owen is outstanding and always makes a great evil foil. His voice and attitude are perfect as the antagonist. Emond was good as the CIA director trying to clean up the mess she’s created by losing so many men to Brogan’s skills. Wong was the perfect long-time associate to Brogan. They had great chemistry together. David Benioff and Billy Ray wrote an entertaining screenplay. Lee knows how to create action, and he does here as well. I think they might have gotten more impact by shortened the fighting scenes as they felt long. He didn’t settle for less with the CGI of the Will Smith (Brogan) clone. It was amazingly done it seemed like Brogan was fighting a real person.

Overall: Entertaining enough and at the end with Brogan is telling his clone about his prowess it felt typical good time Will Smith.

10 Cloverfield Lane

First Hit:  I went from engage, to disappointment and disbelief, and finally to satisfied.

This film generated a range of feelings within me; from great story with belief and possibility all the way to disbelief while bordering on “give me a break”. In the end it does redeem itself.

The story begins with Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) packing up and leaving her apartment and life with Ben (voice of Bradley Cooper). Driving to an unknown location she gets into a car accident.

She wakes up chained to a bed with Howard (John Goodman) as her captor. He tells her that there has been an apocalypse in the world outside and he’s saved her by bringing her into his underground bunker.

Howard introduces her to Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who, as she finds out, has chosen to be in the bunker. She hears cars and other noises above her, so she tries to escape only to find someone suffering outside the bunker.

At this point there are a lot of stories floating around in my head about where this film is heading. Then about 15 - 20 minutes before the end, I went into disbelief and disappointment about where the story has taken us, but at the end, I realized that I liked and believed the point of the story and how we got there.

Winstead is very strong as the everyday person finding her strength and being willing to move past her previous fears. Goodman is equally strong as someone who is definitely on his own agenda and belief system which may be true and skewed view. Gallagher Jr. was very good as the other person in the bunker. Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken wrote this story that almost fell off the rails. Dan Trachtenberg did a great job creating an intense environment in a closed space. The set was really good.

Overall:  This film was on the edge of falling over a cliff, but, in the end, stays upright.

Kill the Messenger

First Hit:  Although not a great film, it was an amazing story and in the end, I really felt for the messenger.

This is the story about how the Reagan led administration allowed the CIA to promote selling drugs in the US to create cash to buy arms for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

Congress wouldn’t support arming the Contras so the CIA decided to fund the war by getting Americans addicted to drugs. The irony of course is the Nancy Reagan “Say no to drugs” campaign. Even worse are the deaths of children and adults as a direct result of the CIA action.

Was Reagan in on this - my guess is probably and I "don't know". Jeremy Renner plays Gary Webb the San Jose Mercury News reporter that wrote and broke this story. It so inflamed the government, they called in all their chips with other news agencies and made Webb’s story seem false, unsubstantiated and inaccurate. How this affects his work life and home life are what this film is about.

Shamefully, as history tells us, the CIA’s confession years later didn’t land in the news like the stories made up and published against him. The story ends sadly and is a matter of public record. What it does point out is the criminal nature of our government in the name of stopping “the spread of communism” – yeah right.

Renner is strong as a reporter of integrity. I’m glad this story was told. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Webb’s editor was interesting and failed to trust her reporter. Rosemarie DeWitt as Gary’s wife Sue was superb. I so enjoyed her presence in the film. Lucas Hedges as oldest son Ian was sublime. Small and pivotal roles by Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta were wonderful. Peter Landesman wrote this script from Gary Webb’s own book and Nick Schou's book of the films’ name. Michael Questa adequately directed this film.

Overall:  This was a great story and it saddens me that we cannot trust our government - still can't.

A Good Day to Die Hard

First Hit:  More or less, it was aimless, thoughtless and died hard.

I’ve seen and enjoyed most all of the Die Hard films. There was a personality created in them through Bruce Willis as John McClane, the script, and the situation in which these two things came together.

In this fourth incarnation I found myself not caring, looking around the theater and waiting for the film to end. It was overstuffed with car chases, shoot-outs, and special effects (helicopter sequence at Chernobyl).

The basic storyline was that McClane didn’t know his son Jack (played by Jai Courtney) was a CIA operative in Russia (thought his son was a lost soul, dealing or using drugs in Russia). John goes to help his son and gets caught up in Jack’s job which is to find out and capture the guy who is going to smuggle nuclear weapons out of Russia.

The story complicates itself with the poorly written part of a wayward daughter double crossing her father, and John and Jack trying to reconcile their relationship.

Willis is the only occasional bright spot in this film with his usual McClane quips. Courtney is OK as Willis’ son but there is little chemistry to make it seem real. Sebastian Koch (as Komarov) is not very believable as a Russian scientist who is on the outs with the Russian Premier. There was nothing that made me believe that Yuliya Snigir as Irina was Komarov’s daughter. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Willis’ daughter Lucy was OK and was aspect of the film, in her brief parts, that worked. Skip Woods and Roderick Thorp wrote a lazy script that focused on what sort of shooting and chase sequences can we put in. John Moore wasted my time (and probably yours) by trying to put this story on the screen.

Overall:  The worst of this otherwise reasonably entertaining group of Die Hard films.