Lucy in the Sky

First Hit: Lackluster and non-cohesive, the story had potential, but distractions and character jolts didn’t work.

First off, when the actual picture on the screen kept changing the size, I thought, oh, we have a projection problem. Then I realized that the shifting from letterbox, to full screen, to square in the middle, square on each side of the screen, and wavy vertical edges was all part of the tricks Director Noah Hawley used to create the physical feeling of Astronaut Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman) was having because she felt disjointed and separate from world after having traveled in outer space.

This is based on a true story about how Lucy got caught up in the ethereal feeling of being back on earth after having floated out in space for two weeks. It's about how she struggled to get grounded after the experience and what happens when she loses focus.

This version shows Lucy slipping in and out of states of quiet estrangement from the world around her. At one moment she’s speaking with her husband Drew (Dan Stevens) in a usual kind of conversation and the next moment she’s got this dreamy, faraway look in her eyes all the while the picture format of the film is changing, sometimes abruptly other times in a smooth wiping fashion.

We learn about Lucy’s background by Lucy’s visits with her grandmother Nana (Ellen Burstyn). Nana is strict and expects Lucy to be tough, not like her flaky brother, who cannot sit still long enough to raise his daughter Blue Iris (Pearl Amanda Dickson).

Blue comes to stay with Drew and Lucy from time to time because it is the only stability and family she has. Her sadness and estrangement from her father are shown in one poignant scene when, after receiving a phone call from her dad, she goes into her room. She turns up the music loud and sits sulks on the floor. There are bits of scattered paper all round. Lucy goes in and reaches out to Blue and holds her, gives her space to try to put her life in perspective. The irony, of course, is that Lucy’s life is out of control, and she doesn’t know it, and she’s consoling Blue, whose life is shattered.

Hoping to get back into space and have that sense of wonder and feeling all of life distantly, she begins working, studying, and training hard to be selected for the next mission. However, she’s missing appointments with a NASA psychologist and starts acting on impulses that are generally foreign for her.

One such impulse is to begin an affair with fellow astronaut Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm). Another is bowling with a select group of others who’ve been in space as her. Together they are an elite club and talk around the edges of their inner experience of being in outer space.

Lucy is competitive and never loses, so when her fellow female astronaut Erin Eccles (Zazie Beetz) and who is competing with her for a seat on the next ride to space, sets a record for one of the tests, she’s determined to beat it. However, there is a mishap, and this is when she obviously starts to spin out of control.

When she isn’t selected to be part of the next team to space and is told to take some time off, she flips an internal switch and sets out to right all the wrongs she thinks are being done to her by NASA and Goodwin.

As I mentioned above, I thought the shifting screen size projections were distracting and seemed like it was being used as a device to make us understand the character better. It doesn’t happen in real life like this, so the technique only set me farther away from the story.

I also felt like the shifts made by Lucy were a bit inconsistent. However, her intensity of tracking down Mark and Erin in San Diego was fantastic. Watch her bark out orders to Blue like a head sergeant.

Portman, at times, was fantastic. There’s a scene where we see just her face, and she smiles briefly, gives a look of being lost in a train of thought, then smiles and on and on was Portman at her best. However, the script or direction had her inconsistent in such a way that the character was difficult to understand, so overall it was one of her worst roles. Hamm did nothing new from his character in “Mad Men,” he drank to excess and screwed everyone. I would like to see if he can do something else. Beetz was excellent as rival astronaut Eccles. Stevens was outstanding as Lucy’s husband who always looked at the bright side of things. He was known at NASA as ever having a smile. Dickson was reliable as the lost girl who was looking for guidance and stability in her life. Burstyn was fantastic and one of the best parts of the film as the crusty hardened grandmother to Lucy. Brian C. Brown and Elliott DiGuiseppi wrote this story with revisions by both of them and Director Hawley. I’m not sure the story worked, but it was the direction by Hawley that led this film astray. The direction issues began with the projection of different screen sizes in attempts to create a physical experience of Lucy’s adjustment issues. They were a distraction.

Overall: This was a weak attempt to tell this story.

Joker

First Hit: Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is powerfully twisted in overt and subtle ways.

Arthur Fleck (Phoenix, aka Joker) works as a clown. Living with his mom Penny (Frances Conroy) in a dark Gotham low rent slum apartment, he’s very thoughtful of his mother’s inability to take care of herself. He has a semi-secret wish to become a standup comedian and bring smiles and joy to everyone.

While watching his favorite program, The Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) Show, he fantasizes about appearing on the show and becoming famous.

In an opening scene, Fleck standing and dancing in front of a going out of business shoe store twirling a sign to entice people to visit the store. He’s got his clown outfit on, face painted, and seems to enjoy what he’s doing. This is the first sign of the subtle way Phoenix shares the depth of his character. There is a glint in the facial expressions that give the audience a notion that all is not right with him. He gets mugged by some kids who take his sign and, in the chase, ends up being beaten.

He gets reprimanded by the company (HaHa) he works for because the sign was broken, and the shoe company wants it back.

Beaten by the young thugs, a fellow clown employee, Randall (Glenn Fleshler), gives Fleck a gun for protection.

We learn that Fleck has an inappropriate behavior of laughing at the wrong times when he’s feeling tense. He carries a card that he hands people stating his illness.

The film digs a little into his mental state with scheduled visits to a city-run social worker who can and does, prescribe a litany of drugs. The social worker, at one of their meetings, tells him the city is stopping this program, and he won’t be able to get his drugs through them any longer. He plows into a dialogue about how the social worker never listens to him, askes him the same questions each and every meeting. Here again, the audience knows he’s right, but we also are seeing ways that he’s slipping through the cracks.

This is one of the points of the film. Society in this story is one of the struggles between the haves and have-nots. Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), father of the young Bruce Wayne, and a wealthy man believes that people that don’t have anything need to pull themselves up from their bootstraps. He’s also running for mayor. It is here and in other places this film touches on today and our current societal state of affairs where the top 1% of the people own 90% of the wealth.

This point runs through this film. The story is filled with moments that reflect how society has become lawless, and there is an uncaring towards our fellow man.

A turning point in the film is when Fleck, after being fired for bringing a gun to a clown gig in a children’s ward of a hospital, he starts laughing while watching a tense encounter between three young drunk well-to-do businessmen who are harassing a young woman on a subway train.

His inappropriate laughing causes the men to start picking on him, and during the resulting fight, he shoots and kills all three. Poignantly this attack becomes a rallying cry for the poor and disenfranchised in Gotham. All they see are the headlines that a man with a clown face (mask or makeup) stood up to three of the “haves” and now there is a slow movement of people having protest marches and rioting with many of the participants wearing clown masks.

This story is complicated, just like Fleck is complex. Being hunted by the police for the killings, learning about his past through his mother, then through records at a mental hospital, and being off his medication creates a man who is acting out of anger, loss, and desperation.

When Murray shows and then posts on social media, a hilarious video of him attempting to do a standup routine, he becomes a laughingstock across the country. However, the viralness of the post, Murray decides to have Fleck on his program.

The depth and complexity of the film, the character, and the way it puts a realness to the “Joker” (DC Comics’ character) was profound. It’s almost a perfect layup to Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” with Christian Bale being Bruce Wayne. The scenes and sets in this film are wonderfully shot. The mental hospital, the social worker’s office, Flecks apartment, and the street scenes all carried the sense of a troubled world.

Phoenix absolutely became this character. The overt and subtle shifts in his eyes and mouth said so much throughout the film. As someone who was disregarded by society, he ended up being the man of the moment. He kept me on the edge of wondering what he will in each scene. De Niro was oddly a curious character and excellent as an aging talk show host. He, partially, reminded me of his role as Rupert Pupkin, a wanna be talk show host, in “The King of Comedy.” Zazie Beetz, as Sophie Dumond, Fleck’s neighbor, and short-term lover was outstanding. The way she saw Fleck as someone who could relate to her was powerfully displayed when they went out, and she saw his comedy routine. Conroy, as Arthur’s mother, was good in this subtle, yet pivotal role. Cullen as Wayne was a perfect reflection of a have’s arrogance. Fleshler, as a manipulative friend and co-worker of Fleck, was excellent in this protective backstabbing role. Todd Phillips and Scott Silver wrote a power-packed script and screenplay. Phillips directed this story with absolute clarity of delivering the story he wanted to make.

Overall: I fell into this story from the very beginning, and it worked.

Deadpool 2

First Hit: This film is fun, irreverent and filled with out-loud laughs.

I thoroughly enjoyed the original Deadpool although many other reviewers didn’t. This one is even better and Ryan Reynolds (as Wayne Wade and alter ego Deadpool) knows how to make the kind of snarky pointed quips, some even at the camera, that bring this film to life.

The opening sequence does a great job of setting things up. We see Deadpool on a tear fighting for the downtrodden and beleaguered. After this burst of energy, he lays down on barrels of highly flammable liquid and blows himself up.

Bingo, we flash back four and a half months, to learn why he blew himself up. Wayne Wade was becoming family oriented and his wife Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) had decided that it was time to think about having children.

However, plans can change quickly and in this story they do as well. With single minded focus we see the reason why he goes on a crime fighting killing spree and decides to blow himself up. However, be that as it may, he decides that he must help Russell (Julian Dennison) a boy who has super powers of destroying things and people with fire.

Wade sees that he’s been physically abused, and this abuse might cause him to simply retaliate and become addicted to his ability to kill others at will. Russell teams up with Colossus to protect him as he goes after his abuser.

Wade sees that he needs help, so he recruits Domino (Zazie Beetz), Cable (Josh Brolin / Nathan Summers), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), Vanisher (Brad Pitt), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgard), Weasel (T. J. Miller), and a whole host of others who end up not getting very far in the overall quest.

The scene of Wade choosing the team was funny as was their subsequent demise. All the characters had a quirkiness about them that made associated dialogue enhance their screen presence. What also worked about this film is that it has heart. There is a heart theme running through the scenes, if you can see through the pointed jokes.

I wish all Marvel and DC films brought this level of fun to them.

Reynolds is perfect in this role. I love how he carries a particular attitude of wise acre, yet with thoughtfulness. Baccarin was strong in her limited role. Brolin was excellent and appropriately tough as Cable. Beetz was superb as the strong supportive woman whose super power was luck. Dennison was very good as the young boy, tired of being picked on and wanting to get revenge. Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Reynolds wrote a quirky fun script. David Leitch did an excellent job of making this film work. The visuals were strong, the fight scenes were well choreographed, and it seemed like it was probably a joy to make.

Overall: This is a fun, full of adventurous action, film.