Atlas Shrugged: Part II

First Hit:  Poor acting, monologue heavy, but better than Part I.

Part I, which I reviewed in April of 2011, was poor from the get go. Part II is slightly better but Samantha Mathis does not bring life or any character to her part as Dagny Taggart.

She is simply not believable as the head of Taggart Railway, and some of her scenes she was not engaged and it seemed as if she was reading the script for the first time. Jason Beghe plays Henry Rearden head of Rearden Steel. He portends to be the guy with all the right morality when it comes to business but not so in his personal life because he is cheating on his wife Lillian (Kim Rhodes) with Dagny.

This film is supposed to move the whole set of films (Rand's story) along so that we wonder how the fight between big private business versus big government turns out and who's right. The government wants the people who have nothing, that don’t create value (according to Rearden), to receive their fair share by bilking big business. If you look at today’s 99% protest marches, the similarities come to light with a slightly different twist. In the film the government creates edicts which will destroy the companies.

Some of the scenes in this film were shot much better than many of the scenes in Part I. And low and behold, Part III will be coming.

It stands on its own that none of the actors in Part I made it to Part II. However, many of the actors in Part II may make it to Part III.

Mathis cannot carry this film in her title role. Speaking dialogue that, in many cases, didn’t work, and when she tried to make it work she wasn’t believable. To her credit, at times, it was completely just a bad script. Beghe was more believable, yet the script led him to have these monologues which got old. Rhodes was more believable and fun to watch in her brief appearances. Esai Morales (as Mine Operator Mogul, Francisco d’Anconia) was amusing and again his role was to spin monologues. Richard T. Jones (as Eddie Willers – Dangy’s right hand man) was good and one of the strongest characters in the film. Duke Sandefur and Brian Patrick O’Toole wrote this monologue driven script with a heavy hand. John Putch did a better job with this film than Paul Johansson did with the first.

Overall:  If you’ve got nothing to do, and it is Sunday, and you like Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, maybe take a gander to see how different this film is from how you might have imagined the story when you read Rand’s book.

Super 8

First Hit: Superb acting by the young characters added to an effective story line but some trimming would have made the whole thing work even better.

While watching a film there is one behavior which tells me I’m seeing more than needed, and that behavior is that I look away from the screen to look at other audience members. Such was the case in this film.

There were elongated scenes which needed to be clipped. One such scene was when the kids run through town to find the subterranean chamber where the alien is holed up. The military guns firing uncontrolled everywhere was totally unneeded. We already knew the dangerousness of their task.

Another such scene, and the worst in the film, was the train crash. In their attempt to make it gloriously big and realistic, they made it too big and gloriously unrealistic. Trains do not crash like this one did – ever. The proof lies in wondering how did the driver of the truck that ran into the train head-on survive? No way does that happen with all the blustery crashing and explosions after the initial impact. 

Outside of this flawed scene and a couple over long scenes, this was a wonderful film. What made it work where the young kids. Charles (played by Riley Griffiths) is obsessed in creating a zombie film for a competition against older teenagers.

His best friend Joe (played by Joel Courtney) is the make-up artist, sound man and co-producer. Joe is gratefully surprised that Charles gets Alice (played by Elle Fanning) to play the femme fatale lover of Martin (played by Gabriel Basso) who has decided to leave her to fight the zombies.

Cary (played by Ryan Lee) is crew and special effects man when they need something blown up because he is a pyromaniac of sorts. While shooting a scene at their small town railway station a military train goes by and crashes because their biology teacher Overmyer (played by Richard T. Jones) tries to ram the train with his pickup truck. This crash and the escaping of an alien is captured on their Super 8 film.

The story centers around the kids, their zombie film, and their ability to carry on the truth of the alien’s wishes.

Griffiths is extraordinary in his ability to portray a young filmmaker with vision (Orson Welles Jr.), sensitivity, and honest enough to tell his best friend about why he was upset at Joe’s and Alice’s relationship. Courtney is wonderful at being strong and sensitive to everyone around him while mourning his mother’s recent death. Fanning was genuinely amazing at her ability to be strong and cautiously vulnerable all at the same time. Like her sister, this Fanning can act. Basso was good as the lead character of the film while fighting through his own fears. Lee was funny and fully out there as his character needed to be. I just knew he wanted to blow something up. The adults were also good in their roles, but this is a film about kids and their amazing abilities. J.J. Abrams wrote the screenplay and overall it was great. It was long in sections that didn’t need to be long thereby over making his point. As a director, he has a great touch with these young actors and is to be commended for these efforts even though he let himself get carried away with  big explosions and extended scenes.

Overall: A very enjoyable and extraordinarily well-acted film even after wading through the lengthy scenes.