Colette

First Hit: With the empowerment of women being in the forefront, it was great to watch Colette take charge of her life.

Colette (Keira Knightly) becomes enamored by Willy (Dominic West) who is somewhat of a blowhard male chauvinist who disrespects everyone except anyone who has more money or prestige than him.

He contracts with people to write stories, books, and plays for him and because of his spending and gambling habits, he's always in debt. After their marriage he continues to have affairs with scores of women in Paris, which infuriates Colette but more for the lying than the affairs themselves. Because they are pressed for money, he locks Colette into a room to make her write for him.

She writes books that become the talk of Paris. Everyone loves the books and Willy, the supposed author, becomes the talk of the town. Setting social and artistic trends, Willy and Colette become enamored with their life. But, tension begins to percolate because Colette is the real author of the books and no one knows.

What I really liked about this movie is that Knightly, as Colette, is definitely in her element. Her natural wit and intelligence was never a match for Willy or Georgie Raoul-Duval (Eleanor Tomlinson), Collette’s first lesbian relationship.

Knightly was superb. Her airiness and ease of sharing a strong Colette was sublime. West was excellent as the overbearing chauvinistic husband and ego driven writer. Fiona Shaw was perfect as Colette’s mother supporting Collette’s independence. Denise Gough playing Missy, Colette’s supporter and romantic lover. Tomlinson was wonderful as Colette’s first lesbian lover who was also Willy’s lover. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland wrote a pointed and well-defined screenplay. Westmoreland did a good job of setting up wonderful scenes and sets that exemplified the era of the late 1800’s.

Overall: Using Knightly was inspired casting choice as she brought a lot of life and intelligence to this role.

Beautiful Boy

First Hit: A very personal film about a parent’s deeply felt and dark journey through his son’s addiction.

Despite excellent acting, especially on Timothee Chalamet’s part as the son Nic, this isn’t a joyful film. For anyone who has experienced addiction or has been a parent of an addicted child, it is not an easy film to watch. Its title comes from a John Lennon song about his son Sean.

The story is from the perspective of David Sheff (Steve Carell), Nic’s dad. The film jumps time confusingly but it is clear when we are watching their relationship grow and Nic is a child. David is married to Karen (Maura Tierney) but she’s not Nic’s mother. David divorced his first wife Vicki (Amy Ryan) who ended up moving to Los Angeles. There are telephone conversations between Vicki and David that are realistic in that each parent is blaming the other for not doing enough for their son’s struggle.

Confusingly we dance forward and backward in time through instances of Nic’s addiction behaviors and fiascos. I’m not sure why it was done this way, but when I have to figure out what point in time the scene is referring to, I’m not engaged and dislike having to piece the story together. I get turned off.

However, on the up side of the film, Chalamet does a great job of being an addict. His arguments and persuading his family and others to do what he wants, including giving him money, is spot-on.

There are numerous scenes that expose everyone’s engagement and caring for Nic and this is commendable.

Carell is strong as the father that will do anything to help his son. When he learns to let go, I breathed a sigh of relief because, to survive he had to let go. Chalamet was excellent. His scenes of sliding back into wanting to use again were perfect. Ryan was fantastic as the mother who cared, yet knew nothing about what to do, or how to do it. Tierney was sublime. She showed empathy towards David, cared about Nic, and loved her children. The scene when she follows Nic and his girlfriend after robbing her home, was wonderfully developed and executed. Luke Davies and Felix Van Groeninger wrote a good, if at times, confusing script. Groeninger’s direction needed to be better given the times shifts that caused confusion.

Overall: Deeply personal film that will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

First Man

Fist Hit: Compelling reenactment of an audaciously brave time in the 1960’s where we were challenged by President Kennedy to go to the moon.

When the first man walked on the moon I was packing my bags and heading to Vietnam from Alameda Naval Air Station in San Francisco Bay. Our walking on the moon was an amazing accomplishment. This film gives us a rendition of the challenges these men faced while we made mistake after mistake learning how to build rockets, space suits, and all the other paraphernalia required to send three men in a rocket ship all the way to the moon and return them safely.

I don’t have any point of reference to what Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) was like in real life, but Gosling brought a stoic, determined, quite man to the screen. The back story to his quietness seemed to be made up of two things; it was his default way of being in the world and that he was heartbroken when his young daughter, Karen, died of a brain tumor. He didn’t speak about the loss, but it did not deter him from following orders and doing what he needed to do to be prepared for the event of the century. It was his wife Janet (Claire Foy) that kept his family life and home life grounded and together.

The film begins in 1961 when Neil flying an experimental rocket plane called the X-15 bounces off the atmosphere. He manages to land the plane safely on a dry desert lake bed, however the people he works for think he’s distracted by his daughter’s plight. What struck me about the scenes inside the X-15 cockpit was how basic and utilitarian all the switches and instruments were. The rattling in the cockpit was enough for me to lose faith in man's ability to create a safe rocket.

Armstrong applies to and gets accepted into the Gemini program based in Houston. This program is what NASA has put together to attempt to send someone to the moon as ordered by the President. The family consisting of Neil, Janet and their oldest boy Rick, pick up everything and move to Houston. Arriving in Houston, Claire gets pregnant and they have another boy named Mark.

During the development of these rockets some of the selected astronauts are killed in plane crashes and testing of the equipment. In fact, Neil wasn’t originally part of the fist Apollo crew, but when Ed White (Jason Clarke), Gus Grissom (Shea Whigham), and Roger Chaffee (Cory Michael Smith) are killed inside a capsule during a plug test, the Apollo program leader, Deke Slayton (Kyle Chandler), informs him that Armstrong will head up the first crew to land and walk on the moon. The first crew to go to the moon was Neil, Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll), and Jim Lovell (Pablo Schreiber).

There are numerous amazing scenes in this film; from Neil’s boys roughhousing and playing in the pool, to space capsules spinning uncontrollably in space, to the awe of standing on the moon.

Gosling was excellent in this role. His natural air of solitude worked perfectly for a man driven by adventure, duty, danger, and precise engineering. Foy was fantastic as the woman holding everybody and everything together in their lives. The scene when she instructs Neil to tell the boys that they may never see him again is powerful and poignantly clear. Clarke, Whigham, Smith, Chandler, Stoll, and Schreiber were excellent as part of the Gemini and Apollo teams. Josh Singer wrote an excellent screenplay. Damien Chazelle did a magnificent job of bringing the look, feel, and the technology of the 1960’s to life. The artistic shots against the front reflective face shields of the space helmets were hypnotizing.

Overall: This film is a wonderful interpretation of how we achieved an, almost, unthinkable goal.

BlacKkKlansman

First Hit: Fantastic film about race relations in the United States while reminding the audience about how far we have to go.

This film opens with a clip from the film Gone with the Wind, showing Scarlett walking through hundreds of dead and injured bodies from the Civil War. Then after a horribly racist rant film clip of Dr. Kennebrew Beaureguard (Alex Baldwin) setting the stage for the depth of white racism, this story begins.

We then move to the late 1970’s and Spike Lee captures the feeling, look, and sounds of the time. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is looking to find work and sees a billboard advertising about being a cop in Colorado Springs. He’s got the perfect afro and in the interview he's told he'll be the first black cop on the police force - the Jackie Robinson of their force.

Stuck in the records room, he gets on a detail to monitor a black power meeting put together by Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier). The star of the meeting is Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), now named Kwame Ture, who gives an amazing talk about ending racism in America and embracing black power. Engaging Patrice after the meeting, Ron was both awe struck by Patrice's commitment to the movement along with being smitten by Patrice the beautiful woman.

After this initial work as a detective, he ends up convincing the chief that he could infiltrate the local KKK chapter. Of course, everyone on the force laughs until, on the phone, he gets an interview with the local leader Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold). When Walter asks to meet him in person, Ron elicits the assistance of white Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver).

Together they make an amazing team as they navigate the process of being Ron Stallworth, Klansman nominee.

To move his official membership along, Ron calls David Duke (Topher Grace) to ask him if he could get his staff to hurry the membership along. David says he’d be happy to help and that he’ll come to Colorado Springs for Ron’s induction into the KKK. All during this time Ron is dating Patrice and Flip is pretending to be Ron during one on one meetings with the KKK.

These components plus a possible bombing and cross-burning, the story about Ron, Flip, Patrice, Walter, David, and Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) as Walter’s radical right-hand man, the story became wildly engaging.

As the film unfolds, Spike Lee does an excellent job of giving the audience, scenes that run the gambit from humor (Ron calling David for the last time), to intenseness (Flip being pulled into Felix’s basement because Felix thinks Flip is a Jew), to today’s racist displays (when the end of the film easily segues into the 2017 Charlottesville march). Then, watching Harry Belafonte as civil rights leader Jerome Turner, I was transported to how real this story was.

The brilliance of Ron and Patrice moving down the hall almost surrealistically and comically as they watched a cross burning through a window was inspired.

Washington was absolutely wonderful as Ron Stallworth. He perfectly captured the struggle of a black man believing in the law and the black power movement. Harrier was divine as the President of the local black caucus. She definitely looked the part as a radical black woman and I couldn’t help but think about Angela Davis each time she was on the screen. Driver was amazing as Ron’s white counterpart. He embraced the role of Ron perfectly. Eggold was very strong as the local KKK leader. Grace was credibly incredible as David Duke. Paakkonen as the wildly unpredictable member of the local KKK was sublime. Belafonte was beautiful speaking his truth through his character. Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Spike Lee wrote an engaging power script from Ron Stallworth’s book. Lee showed me again, why you can never count him out from making a powerfully amazing film.

Overall: This is the second film I’ve seen this year that is Oscar worthy.

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot

First Hit: A unhurried film revealing the power of how forgiveness of others and self, can make one’s life different.

Many of us know of people who have struggled and paid prices by their addiction to alcohol. Here we get a glimpse into the life of cartoonist John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix). As an orphan he struggled early with his own identity and reconciling his life. He claimed he knew “three things about my mom; she was Irish, had red hair, and she was a school teacher. Oh, yeah, and she didn’t want me. I guess that makes four things.”

He was molested at age eight by a school teacher and began drinking by age twelve. He claims that the last day he walked, he woke up with a hangover.

The film spends a fair amount of time showing the audience how blatantly he liked his drinking. One scene that exemplifies his cluelessness to his drinking is when he’s walking along a beach, he spies a beautiful young woman surfer. He tries a pickup line from a song, offers her a drink from the bottle he’s got in his pocket, and her look of polite disgust, says it all.

The film follows his journey of drinking and when he meets Dexter (Jack Black), the two magnificent partier’s have a wild night of drinking. It finally ends with Dexter driving John’s car, having an accident, leaving John a quadriplegic, and Dexter walks away with a few scratches.

As you might imagine, he’s angry at his predicament and takes it out on a number of people who are attempting to help him. However, one person who comes to help him weekly was Annu (Rooney Mara). She’s assists people who have a physical handicap. The way she enters the scene, she’s angelic and that’s exactly how John sees her.

One of the people he needs for support and whom he also antagonistic towards, is Suzanne (Carrie Brownstein) who oversees monitoring social, services expenses to keep him in an apartment, with wheelchairs, and covering medical costs including Tim (Tony Greenhand) who takes care of John. Tim’s job is to wash John, do his grocery shopping and clean his house.

Eventually, John finds himself going to an AA meeting, but he doesn’t speak much. Eventually he gets a sponsor named Donnie (Jonah Hill). Donnie is rich, gay, and calls the people he sponsors “piglets.”

He begins to draw crudely renditioned cartoons using his two handicapped hands pressed together to hold the pen. They are very funny because they are extremely poignant and targeted. One that I easily recall from the film shows two men in sheets (as KKK people), talking to each other, and one says, “Don’t you love it when they’re still warm from the dryer?” Another caption is the title to this film, where a small band of cowboys are in the desert find an empty wheelchair and the lead cowboy says “(see movie title)”

The group he sponsors are wildly honest and engaging to watch while they work out their stuff in front of one another.

When Donnie tells John to work on AA's Step 9, which is about making amends, he begins to see the power of forgiveness.

Phoenix was powerful in his portrayal of Callahan. He definitely shared a depth of pain in never thinking his mother wanted him. Black was perfect as his alcoholic friend. The scene when John comes to make amends is with Dexter was extremely well done. Mara was fantastic as a woman who always looked passed John’s handicaps and appreciated him for him. Brownstein was excellent as the caring yet restricted by policy social worker. Greenhand did a great job as the caretaker. Hill was amazing as the AA sponsor and friend. John Callahan wrote a pointed and direct script. Gus Van Sant directed this thoughtful film.

Overall: This probably isn’t everyone’s kind of film, but as the ending began to reveal itself, I loved the theme of forgiveness.