Ready Player One

First Hit: Entertaining visual story into a possible future filled with a decayed reality and virtual fantasy.

Steven Spielberg knows how to create complete stories on the screen. I never leave a Spielberg film with questions, and this film does the same. He always provides a full story. This is one of his strengths and much of the time it is the small details that ties the knot on the bow. Spielberg also knows how to relate with young actors to get the best out of them. However, his obvious strength is the visual rendering of the story in an impressive pictorial way, and he does it again in this film.

This story takes place in 2044 and the world and its resources are falling apart. This is rendered impressively by the vertical stacking of mobile homes in a way that shows both ingenuity of the owners and slum like conditions in which they exist. Most people have given up hope and the few scenes displaying this poverty is enough. To escape their lives, people put on virtual reality (VR) headsets. In their VR world, their lives are given a new level of purpose and dreams. Through their avatars, they can be what they want to be and participate in the games and different worlds as they wish.

Halliday aka Anorak (Mark Rylance) is the creator and maker of the most popular game, Oasis. He’s a bookish man, who does not relate well with people although his business partner Ogden Morrow, aka OG, (Simon Pegg) seems to create a place and space for Halliday to flourish.

Before Halliday’s death, Halliday decides to create a contest that, when a gamer finds the three keys hidden deep within Oasis, the winner will receive the golden egg. This golden egg includes owning and running the company that makes Oasis as well as unfounded riches.

A competitor company IOI (Innovation Online Industries), run by Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), wants the golden egg so that his lagging company can reap the fruits of Halliday’s work. To do so he hires lots of people to be avatars with one goal; to help him find the three keys and to obtain the golden egg.

The film’s main character and hero is Wade Watts, aka Parzival, (Tye Sheridan) who is smart, kind, thoughtful, and an excellent Oasis player. Wade’s parents died years ago and he lives with his aunt and her wildly erratic husband. In the VR world Parsival’s best friend is Aech, aka Helen, (Lena Waithe). On his trek to find the first key, he helps out Art3mis, aka Samantha, (Olivia Cooke). He does this because he thinks her avatar is beautiful and believes they connect at a deeper level.

Together Parzival, Art3mis, and Aech work to solve the puzzle's problems and find the three keys. Along the way they are joined by other players who carry the same ideals.

This film spends more time in the VR mode than reality mode, however the switches between the worlds was done in a wonderful way. The switches make sense. There are also scenes when there is a belief that a character thinks they’re in reality mode, when they aren’t.

The best part is that the team working with Parzival are strong and interesting in both reality and VR modes. Both worlds created by Spielberg are wonderful in that they are realistically flawed and complete. The visuals are not so overladen and overdone that they overwhelm the film and story.

Sheridan was excellent as Parzival, the films main hero. He makes an excellent Clark Kent type character. Waithe as Aech was so much fun. As a male avatar, she was wonderfully strong and compassionate which reflected her deeper reality character as well. Cooke was great as Art3mis. Her bad-ass avatar character belied her reality character of being insecure. Pegg was wonderful as OG and his kindness carried through the film. Rylance was sublime as the quirky, lost, smart creator of Oasis. His social ineptness was perfect. Mendelsohn was very good as the villain running IOI and wanting to be the top dog. Zak Penn and Ernest Cline wrote and engaging screenplay effectively rendered by the inimitable Spielberg.

Overall:  This is a film the audience can sit back and simply enjoy the ride.

Thoroughbreds

First Hit: The oddity of the characters and the quirky story and acting worked for me.

Two wealthy girls living in a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood, have lost touch since grade school when they use to also ride horses together.

Amanda (Olivia Cooke) was a loner, especially after she killed her ill horse with a knife. She was seen by people as a sociopath. As we are introduced to her she is dropped off at Lily’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) mansion and while the maid is finding Lily, she’s exploring the rooms.

Amanda is there to get tutoring from Lily, and quickly figures out that Lily is being paid to be her friend by Amanda's mom.  They start talking why they're ostracized in school.

Amanda begins to tell her tale and it begins with that she has no feelings and cannot ever recall having them. This makes for a weird sort of story because I spent time trying to see Amanda have feelings.

Lily’s father died some years earlier and now her mom, Karen (Kaili Vernoff) is married to a man named Mark (Paul Sparks) who is a real jerk.

Lily wants Mark dead, Amanda killed her horse, they are troubled girls who are planning something together. They bring in Tim (Anton Yelchin) who is a small-time drug dealer who thinks he’s going to be the premier drug dealer on the east coast, but we all know this isn’t going to happen.

Hatching a plot to kill Mark, this whole thing goes haywire and we watch as Lily becomes the new cold girl in town.

The scenes of the girls talking, or attempting to cry on cue were fun, but for me the odd sparse musical accompaniments to certain scenes added to the overall quirkiness of this film.

Cooke was oddly engaging and grabbed the screen with her role. Taylor-Joy was very effective as someone who wanted to stretch her boundaries and find a new way of living. Vernoff and Sparks were strong as Lily’s mom and step dad. His attempts to be perfect were well represented. Yelchin was great as the wanna be drug dealer. Cory Finley wrote and directed this oddly interesting story.

Overall:  I liked this more than I thought I would.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

First Hit:  I was deeply touched by the story, quality of acting, and the full range of emotions I felt while watching.

Greg (Thomas Mann) has a poor view of himself. He’s a senior and has figured out a way to be both invisible and part of every group at school (we all remember the different groups in high school). His being associated with each group is at the level where he can say "hi" to each, but he’s not directly associated with that group to everyone else, so he has no up or down sides in these relationships. His association or non-association allows him to basically disappear from everyone.

His long term friend Earl (RJ Cyler) and he make films and each lunch together everyday in his sociology teacher's office, where they watch old films. The films he and Earl make are funny parodies of famous films (like Creature from the Blue Bathroom). When the camera pans across the titles of the film cartridges – the effect is hilarious and the audience gets to learn more about Greg and Earl with each title they have.

Greg’s parents are a hoot as well. His dad hangs around the house all day in odd outfits trying different kinds of foods. His mom inspects all his communication devices and leaves Greg feeling as if he has no privacy or control of his life - he feels smothered. Greg also is an amazing and funny monologist. Him mom tells him that one of his classmates has leukemia and wants him to visit her.

Although he complains he’s not friends with Rachel (Olivia Cooke) he reluctantly goes to visit her. Their friendship grows during her months of chemotherapy which drives Earl and Greg attempt to make a film for Rachel. One thing I wanted to see more of, was Rachel's ability to cut books – when you get to the end of the film, you’ll know what I mean – fascinating.

Mann was amazing. His ability to make his long monologues natural and revealing was divine. Cyler, although his role was smaller, was strikingly present in his scenes. Thoroughly enjoyed his character. Cooke was very strong and the revelations of her character as she progressed through chemo-therapy were great. Jesse Andrews wrote an amazing script (especially for Mann). Alfonso Gomez-Rejon captured the feeling of the characters with his inimitable direction.

Overall:  This film may not get seen by a lot of people and it definitely is one of the best films in the first six months of this year.