Race

First Hit:  What a wonderful story of a man whose greatness and perseverance had him rise above and over race and discrimination.

Jesse Owens (Stephen James) was one of the greatest Olympic track and field athletes the United States has ever had.

Raised when racial discrimination was still a huge issue in the US, learning to ignore the external noise, and do what he did best made this story even more phenomenal.

The story follows Jesse, his depressed father, supportive mother and Ruth Solomon (Shanice Banton) his girlfriend and mother of his daughter, as he finds is way through all the external noise to greatness. Guiding him along the way was his Ohio State University coach Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis).

One of the most powerful lesson delivering scenes was when the track team was in the locker room when the OSU football team comes in and demands that the track team leave, especially because of Jesse and other blacks on the track team. While the football coach is yelling at Larry and the football team yelling at the track team to leave, Larry is speaking about how concentration and listening to one voice, his voice, is how Jesse will be able to persevere against all the racial noise he’s going to get as he races.

During all the yelling, all of a sudden you hear the coaches voice say to Jesse, do you understand? Do you hear me? And the noise drops away from Jesse and hearing his coaches voice above the loud arguing, he says “Yes, I hear you coach.”. It is a wonderful scene and serves Jesse well especially when he goes to the 1936 Olympics and 110,000 people are yelling at him.

As he shows his greatness, the crowd becomes unified with him. It is a great story.

James is outstanding as Jesse. He plays him with humble awareness of doing well and honoring himself as a person. Sudeikis was great as the occasionally sarcastic, caring, and wonderful coach. Banton was wonderful as Jesse’s fiancé and then wife, making sure Jesse makes his own choices. Jeremy Irons was fantastic as the inimitable Avery Brundage. David Kross as Jesse’s Olympic long jump German rival Carl ‘Luz’ Long was great. Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse wrote a wonderfully engaging script. Stephen Hopkins did a wonderful job of directing this film and the shots of Jesse entering the Olympic stadium for the first time were especially effective.

Overall:  This was a wonderful biography of a man who stood heads above the fray of racial injustice.

Joy

First Hit:  Wonderful story about a woman who learned to understand her creative inventive power and used it to change her life and the world around her.

This is the story about Joy Mangano. Yes, dramatic license was taken in presenting this story, however the essence and path of the story is true.

Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) married the wrong guy Tony (Edgar Ramirez), who lives in her basement because he cannot afford to live anywhere else. Her mom Terry (Virginia Madsen), lives in her house and spends all her time watching soap operas from her bed.

Her Dad Rudy (Robert DeNiro), helps to pay the mortgage because when he’s not living with a girlfriend he’s living in her house as well. Then, like bookends, also living in her house are her two children who require her time and attention and her grandmother Mimi (Diane Ladd).

Mimi keeps pushing her to get back to the creative person she was as a child so that she can become the true successful matriarch of the family. Joy's life is filled with one problem after another. She addresses and deals with them in a robotic way so that she can take just one more step. Resignation is the sign she carries in her eyes and in her spirit.

Finally, the creative inventive person she was when she was young perks back to the surface when she cuts herself cleaning up wine and broken glass with a mop. This event pushes her to invent a mop which revolutionizes the mop and cleaning.

The rest of the film is about the difficulties of getting the product sold. She sells the head of QVC Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper) that this mop can be a success on his network. He takes the chance, it fails, but her perseverance gets her another opportunity. The interaction between Lawrence and Cooper is magnetic. They work so well together.

Another one of my favorite scenes is preceded by her admitting defeat and then with all being lost, she digs into the paperwork and agreements and shows up in Texas (think showdown on main street) with someone who claims he owns a patent on her product. The dialogue in the hotel room – perfect.

This film is about perseverance, belief, and the ability to find one’s inner strength to explore what might be next.

Lawrence gives another top-notch performance. It will be considered for possible selection in the Oscar race. De Niro is strong as the flighty unfocused father. Isabella Rossellini’s performance as Trudy, De Niro’s latest girlfriend, was inspired. Madsen was funny and oddly interesting as the soap opera watching mom. Ladd was sweet as the solid motivating family matriarch grandmother. Ramirez was great as the ex-husband who supports his former wife’s plans. Cooper was fantastic. He fully embraced the role as guide, cheerleader and occasional heavy. Dascha Polanco was outstanding as Joy’s supportive friend Jackie. David O. Russell wrote and directed this team of actors with originality, focus, and clarity.

Overall:  I loved the inspiration that emanates from this film.

The Big Short

First Hit:  This film amazingly and with clarity explains how trusted financial bankers and Wall Street traders used their greed and arrogance to create a mortgage system that collapsed and ruined the lives of 10’s of thousands of people.

The impact of the mortgage credit bubble bursting in the mid-2000s affected thousands upon thousands of people. Not since the 1929 crash had so many families lost their homes, their jobs, and ended up on the street. Why?

Because Wall Street bankers and others running hedge funds thought they were smarter than everyone else and deserved to make as much money as they could at the expense of other people. The sad part was that these guys either; never thought about how it might hurt others, or they didn’t care about anything or anybody else except themselves.

There is something amazingly depressing about our society that promotes ways for people to act in the way they did. To teach us about this complex situation, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay wrote a quirky and intelligent script based on true characters and fact while using various ways to tell the story.

They used odd vignettes with Selena Gomez and Margo Robbie playing themselves and had them share fun examples of how the scheme worked. Director McKay also had one character as a narrator allowing him to break the fourth plane and speak to the audience directly, then drop right back into his character. All this added to the quirkiness of this film.

In the story Christian Bale played the extremely intelligent Michael Burry who predicted the fall of the market. This highly focused numbers guy read and analyzed each loan in many of the packaged loan portfolio bundles and saw how their high rating belied the loans within them.

There was Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a big bank trader who knew the banks were packing high risk and junk loans with good ones to hide their risk. He wanted to find a company that would allow him to bet against his own company. He also narrated from time to time. Mark Baum (Steve Carell) a trader who felt that there was a lack of integrity by most of the people in the world. He was always railing against society and how it rips people off. He and his team did their research by going to Florida and talked with the people who owned or rented the homes that were in these portfolios.

For example; when he learned that a female stripper owned 4 homes and a condo and didn’t make any down payments in purchasing them, he was convinced. Then there is Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittlock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) who accidentally picked up a prospectus while being turned down by Citi-Bank to trade on their floor. Reading the prospectus their interest was sparked and they dug deeper.

After seeing the numbers, they asked their friend and retired famed trader Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) what he thought. These four groups (and their people) ended up being right. They bet the market would fail, it did, and they made a ton of money. I didn't get the sense they felt good about it because they knew people were going to lose their homes, banks were going to fail, and that the federal government (read this as taxpayers) would bail out the the arrogant bankers and their companies. To add insult to injury, these bankers took their annual yearly bonuses, and the banking laws changed little.

Carell was manic in a good way. He embodied many people’s sense of outrage at how people take advantage of others and don’t care. His unfiltered way of interacting with people is what many want to be like. Gosling was smooth in transitioning from a character in the film and also the narrator. Bale was almost uncomfortably quirky in his amazing portrayal of a disconnected numbers genius. He sold me on his character’s solid belief that he knew what and when the bust would happen. It was amazing when he walked out of the office one last time and posted his company’s % gain. Wittlock and Magro were perfect as the small time fund managers, who were making great trades and wanting to play with the big banks. Their bright enthusiasm and commitment was spot on. Pitt was interesting in his role as a transformed trader that wanted to help his friends. Randolph and McKay wrote an outstanding script by making this complex issue understandable. McKay’s direction worked and made this into a top notch film.

Overall:  I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about how our financial system failed and was left with some fear that it may happen again if we don’t watch ourselves.

In the Heart of the Sea

First Hit:  Started interestingly, ended good, but the large middle was monotonous and slowly sank into the dark of the sea.

Films based in the ocean with underwater sequences have a higher likeliness of not being good. I’m not sure why except they become dark and slow.

Yet, films shot inside submarines and underwater tend to be better (Like: Hunt for Red October 1990 or Run Silent Run Deep 1958) as my dad would have attested to. He probably watched the latter more than 20 times and could recite the dialogue of every character. Why? Probably because submarine films are character based while ocean films must have ocean characters. Of course the film "Jaws" would be an exception.

This story is about a whale called Moby Dick and how Herman Melville wrote this famous story. The view of the story is from one of the survivors of a multi-year whaling adventure which included 90 days of being stranded on the ocean in a dinghy.

The survivor Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson and the young Tom/Thomas portrayed by Tom Holland) is being interviewed by Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) about the experience he had when the whale scuttled the Essex after almost 2 years hunting whales. Moby destroyed the ship and left the remaining crew to drift.

The other part of the story is about the disagreements and personality differences between Captain George Pollard (Benjamin Walker) and First Mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth). This initial focus of the film was interesting as was Melville’s interview with Nickerson. However, the rest of the film tried to be interesting through visuals and very little on the strength or weaknesses of the individuals and when they tried it wasn’t very interesting.

Hemsworth was OK but there seemed to be little depth to his character. Walker was mediocre as the privileged captain. Holland was good as the young seaman learning how to me a man. Whishaw was very good in his small part as Melville. Gleeson was the spirit of this film and the best part of the film. Charles Leavitt wrote a so so script for most of the characters except Gleeson and Melville. Ron Howard didn’t come close to creating the masterpiece I think he wanted.

Overall:  The previews I saw telegraphed this uninteresting film.

Trumbo

First Hit:  Although I didn’t like the main character much, this was an excellent well executed film.

This is one of a few new films that reach back into the 1950’s and the cold war with Russia. All of them, including this one, are very good.

This movie is about how Congress, more specifically a few Republican members, decided to railroad anyone in Hollywood that was connected with the Communist party. The fear based thought of these politico was a reminder of some of the fear based thought we have today in the Republican candidates.

The film doesn’t focus on Communism or anything other than people sticking up for their beliefs under the rules set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the United States. This is the heart of the story and how a group of writers, led by Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), were blacklisted from writing Hollywood scripts and therefore making a living because they were Communists.

Famous Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) was a major source for identifying Hollywood folks who had communist leanings. When actors and sympathizers like Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) couldn’t find work, they named names as well.

Led by John (Duke) Wayne (Davis James Elliot), a group of Hollywood stars jumped on the Congressional band wagon and supported rooting out and keeping Communists from getting work. Trumbo’s family suffered and did everything he could to keep his family with a roof over their head.

He also helped his writer comrades as well. But of course it was hard and it hurt his relationships with his wife Cleo (Diane Lane), family, and especially his admiring daughter Niki (Madison Wolfe and Elle Fanning). On his side was B level film producer Frank King (John Goodman) and fellow writer Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.).

Bryan Cranston was very good. He embraced this character fully and made it work very well. Mirren was fantastic as Hopper – very believable. Davis James Elliot was very good as John Wayne. He embraced the man I ran into once in Newport Center coming out of a bookstore. Stuhlbarg was fair as Robinson however, my history of watching the real Edward G. on film this performance didn’t quite match up. Lane as Trumbo’s wife was perfect: Strong, intelligent and also devoted with perseverance. Both Wolfe and Fanning were great as daughter Niki. Extra kudos to Fanning as she showed once again how to command the screen and scene when needed. Goodman was very good as B film producer King. C.K. was very strong as blacklisted writer Hird. John McNamara wrote a very strong script. Jay Roach did a great job of piecing together real historical footage and filmed footage.

Overall:  This was a valuable story and came through the lens elegantly.