Inferno

First Hit:  It started interestingly and then simply fell off the table by an overly complex and poorly developed script, poor acting, and feeble direction.

I’ve not been a fan of any of the Da Vinci Code oriented films. The best was the first and quickly sank with Angles & Demons. It stays on this downward track with Inferno. Here we’ve got Tom Hanks reprising his character Robert Langdon, who knows more than anyone about Dante, his words, and other’s interpretations of Dante’s work.

The film starts confusingly with Langdon hurt in the hospital with a head injury. He’s confused and is being attended by a physician named Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones). We are also introduced to Billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), who is convinced that the world is on the verge of collapse. It is 11:59 – one minute till the world collapses because of over population and environmental issues caused by the over population. To right this sinking ship, he wants to spread a virus that will wipe out earth’s population.

With these two plot setups; Langdon being attacked, having amnesia, and why he has a projection device showing Dante’s hell in a picture but the picture has been altered, and the other setup is Zobrist wants to destroy the world’s population. Added to this we have people trying to kill Langdon, the WHO (World Health Organization) trying to stop Zobrist, WHO agent Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) who appears to be on some other side, Vayentha (Ana Ularu) a motorcycle riding person wanting to kill Langdon, and Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan) a hired security consultant whose interest in anything is questionable.

Confused, you got it, and that is how the film unfurled itself. What really muddied up this story is that the writer and/or director wanted Langdon to have a tangential and unrequited love interest with WHO’s Elizabeth Sinskey (Sidse Babett Knudsen).

Some of the visual scenes were well shot which helped me to stay somewhat engaged with this lackluster movie. I also loved the, from the air, shots of Venice and Istanbul.

With a bad screenplay and poor direction Hanks was as bad as I’ve ever seen him. There just isn’t enough to be interested in or care about with his character. The device of having him slowly get his memory back during the first half of the film was a waste of Hanks’ talent. Jones character was better than Hanks, but I didn’t buy the shift in her role late in the film. It didn’t surprise me and it just didn’t work. Foster was OK as the guy predicting the end of the world. Khan’s role was sufferable and difficult to watch let alone buy. Knudsen was good in her role until it got to the emotional connection with Langdon, that part denigrated the character. Sy’s role didn’t seem defined and was unclear; it didn’t work for me. Ularu was in a poorly constructed and acted role. David Koepp wrote a horribly convoluted screenplay. Ron Howard knows how to direct so I don’t know what went wrong with the film outside of him just doing his best with the presented screenplay.

Overall:  If there is another film in this series I will not go see it.

American Pastoral

First Hit:  Interesting look back into the 1960s and, although it was confusing at times, it did make me think about a powerful time in America.

If you grew up in the 1950s and 60s, you probably knew or had heard of “the guy” who was the most popular guy in school, was on all the high school teams, was a letterman on all those teams, and married the prettiest girl in class. They led the idyllic lives.

Here we have Seymour “Swede” Levov (Ewan McGregor) as that man. We are introduced to his legend through the 45th high school reunion where his the Swede’s brother Jerry Levov (Rupert Evans) speaks with Nathan Zuckerman (David Strathairn), a friend of his and Seymour’s. It is through Jerry telling Nathan the story that this film unfolds.

Swede marries Dawn (Jennifer Connelly) a New Jersey beauty queen. Because she is Catholic and Swede is Jewish, the Swede’s father Lou (Peter Riegert) wants to meet and question Dawn prior to their marriage. The Swede tells her to be strong during the meeting because this is what Lou admires. This discussion is well done and a strong scene in the film.

Swede ends up running the family business in Newark and is easily in the upper middle class. He and his wife move to a small rural town where they begin to raise their daughter Merry (Dakota Fanning). The film sets the ideal life with family dinners, mother and daughter working their cows, and even the birth of calves.

However, this pastoral scene starts to get darker as Merry begins to show her independence and anger towards the US Government’s involvement in the war of Vietnam and societies’ bent towards making money. I recall this attitude in many people including myself and the protest movements during this time. What complicates her internal struggle is that she also stutters. The psychologist they have tells Dawn and Swede that it is because she is struggling with her mom’s beauty and perfectness.

Merry runs away and is accused of blowing up the local rural post office (government facility) and killing the proprietor, whom the whole family knows. She disappears and Swede is distraught and beside himself and cannot let go that his daughter might have become part of an underground movement. Dawn begins to disappear from living, sells her cows and begins to slip into a deep depression.

From a filming standpoint, if feels over controlled and directed. The film is longer than needed to tell the story and this is a director issue as well.  To know what I mean watch a Clint Eastwood directed film and this one, Eastwood’s films are crisp, sometimes almost too crisp, and he gets the story told. In this film we have some long and languished scenes that supported the idyllic life they were living but some could have been cut or made shorter and made the film better. I also didn't believe the reasons for Merry’s stuttering and I don’t know if this was a screenplay issue or a directional issue.

McGregor was good as Swede but I also think his directing of himself got in the way of his performance. I did think, as a director, many of the scenes were well presented and setup well. Connelly was fantastic. I was mesmerized by her ability to put together a wonderful series of transitions as Dawn went from beauty queen romanced by the absolute best guy available, to a mother who cared, to cow farmer, to concerned and troubled mother, to depressed wife, and to remade wife through plastic surgery. Fanning was very strong in this very difficult and complex role. Although I didn’t fully buy her scripted logic for her actions, I bought how she made it work. Riegert was particularly good as Swede’s opinionated and robust father. John Romano wrote the screenplay from the Philip Roth novel. I do think there were some weaknesses in the script, and McGregor didn’t help this much.

Overall:  This could have been a stronger film with a crisper screenplay and clearer direction.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

First Hit:  Better than the first but still not quite as strong as other loner films, such as the Bourne series.

The first film was entertaining mostly because Tom Cruise (as Jack Reacher) is good at what he does, be intense, entertaining, and be Tom Cruise. One never loses the thought that it is Tom Cruise on the screen. In other words, it is Cruise with a character's name, in this case Jack Reacher. Not that this is bad, however there is never any doubt about who is starring in the film.

In Cruise films there always seems to be a scene where he's in a shower and the shot is a profile of the water hitting his head and then flowing down his face. It is generally to show is anguish and his human side before he gets revitalized to go out and do become the intense focused character he’s playing. This film is no different.

In this version of Reacher, the opening scene has Cruise assisting the government in rounding up a sheriff who is trafficking illegal aliens. This sets up Reacher as someone who gets the job done, even if it sets him up for additional issues. This opening also tells us that Reacher is smart, knows what is going to happen, and has a singular focus. The writer and director tell us all we need to know by telling the Sheriff what is going to happen in the next 90 seconds. The sheriff laughs, then realizes that Reacher has the last laugh.

The biggest flaw I saw at the beginning of the film was how did he have such a close working relationship with Major Turner (Cobie Smulders), the person who took his job in the Army? This was never well established and this little loose end bothered me throughout the film. The film made a big deal about them meeting for the first time, and that they had a phone relationship, but somehow it didn’t work for me. However, their on-screen chemistry worked and they were well match with intensity.

The plot is about Reacher and Smulders finding out who is using the US Government Military complex to perpetrate fraud why. It has to do with arms dealers, government contractors, and drugs. To move the plot, in an interesting and heartfelt way, Reacher is accused of not providing child support to Samantha (Danika Yarosh) who happens to attach herself to him and Smulders as they find themselves in the thick of a battle between the government’s MPs and the contractors.

Cruise is Cruise. He gives you all he has, he does it well but in the end it is never about the character but it is Tom Cruise. Smulders is very strong in her character and in her physicality. Yarosh is very good and I like what she brought to the film. Aldis Hodge was OK as a MP captain charged with bringing Reacher to justice. My favorite character in this film was Madalyn Horcher as Sargent Leach who helps Reacher with information as the story unfolds. Lee Child and Richard Wenk wrote the screenplay and it is works better than the first Reacher film, but all told it isn’t very strong. Edward Zwick did well to present this story and the characters in an interesting way, but it wasn’t an overall strong film.

Overall:  When you compare a film like this with a Jason Bourne film, the storyline, why it is shot, and the acting are far superior.

The Accountant

First Hit:  I walked away liking this film because it drew me into the dramatic story while also being out-loud funny during the interchanges between Christian and Dana.

A young Christian Wolff (Seth Lee) is shown as a highly functional autistic young boy. His wizardry is displayed by completing a complex puzzle upside down. His parents, Chris and his brother Brax (played by Jake Presley as the boy and Jon Bernthal as an adult) are visiting the Harbor Neuroscience Institute home to find out how to help their son survive in the world. Although they are offered help, the father thinks there are other ways to “fix” his son. Throughout this film we are treated to some of those ways, which gives us the back story as to why Christian and Brax are so relentlessly good at using guns and martial arts. What didn’t make sense to me was how these brothers got separated later in life.

To make a living, the adult Christian (Ben Affleck) is an accountant with extraordinary skills to help clients resolve any type of financial issue. Because of his condition, he is relentless at completing the job and is incredibly efficient. We see him help a farmer husband and wife team as well as seeing pictures where he’s working with the mob, other criminals, and foreign entities.

When called on a new case by “The Voice” (a phone voice only with a smiley face in the phone's interface), he's asked to discover where the missing money is for Living Robotics, a company headed by CEO Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow). After arriving at company headquarters, he sits down to meet with the CFO and CEO for an interview. The interview is amusing, but the audience sees why he gets the job. On the first day of work, he’s greeted by Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) who is the company’s accountant that discovered the accounting problem. During the introduction, and almost every interaction past this, the discussion between these two is interesting, funny and engaging. A definite highlight to this film.

When he discovers the problem, and the source reasons behind the diversion of funds, the film changes tenor and it becomes more of an action thriller.

While all this is going on, Ray King (J.K. Simmons) a Director at the Treasury Department, is trying to find out who changed his life before he retires. What he knows is that someone saved his life, and that there are a few brief pictures of a person that seems to know a lot of criminals, helps them with funneling money, but might have a deadly hand as well.

To assist him, King hires Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) by leveraging her past and gives her a month to find this ghost of a person. Yup, you guessed it, it’s The Accountant. This part of the film felt like a side note to highlight a particular aspect of Christian’s background. Additionally, it also provided a level of context of law and authority to Christian’s actions. However I thought it convoluted the story and imagined this film would have worked by leaving this part out, and this isn’t what happened. Regardless, I found many of the scenes very engaging, interesting, and funny.

Affleck is very strong as Christian. The disassociated looks and the matter-a-fact ways of having verbal exchanges worked for me. Because he needed to be both an efficient accountant and ruthless in actions there had to be a line that he walked that didn’t destroy the illusion of either. Lee was perfect - sublime in all ways. Kendrick was her witty, nerdy, inquisitive self, a role she does so well (think Up in the Air). Her exchanges with Affleck were very well done. Simmons was good as the man affected by The Accountant in a good way. Addai-Robinson was very good as the person needing to not be found out by doing her job well. John Lithgow was adequate as the company owner who was concealing secrets. Jon Bernthal was very strong as Affleck’s brother and protector. Jeffrey Tambor (as Francis Silverberg) was outstanding as Affleck’s cell mate who treated him like a son and gave him knowledge, skills and connections allowing him to make a very good living for himself when he left prison. Bill Dubuque wrote an overly complex screenplay, however it did work. Gavin O’Connor did a wonderful job of weaving together the two stories. Many of the scenes were well shot, like when the farmer scoffs that Christian cannot hit a target a mile away, then Christian pulls the trigger.

Overall:  Leaving the theater, I realized that this film kept me interested and engaged.

Don't Breathe

First Hit:  A fairly good horror thriller that had me jumping in my seat a couple of times.

I’m not a big horror fan, but going to this film with my daughter, who loves horror films, was fun. My first jump in my seat happened when a dog jumped up to a window of a car, the second is when a man came through a door. There are a number of car and door type sequences, so I’m not giving anything away here.

The story is about three people; a young mother named Rocky (Jane Levy) who is living a repressed life with her mother and daughter, a nice thoughtful young man named Alex (Dylan Minnette) who cares about Rocky, and a sleazy boyfriend of Rocky’s named Money (Daniel Zovatto). Together they break into houses taking no cash, but gathering and taking as many valuables as they can to fence for cash. Tired of not making much from their efforts and Rocky promising her daughter they’ll move to California; they decide to rob a blind man (Steven Lang) who won a large financial judgement when his daughter was killed by another motorist.

Because he lives in an deserted neighborhood, they believe that robbing blind man will be easy pickings. However, they discover differently. Much of the film is shot in darkened rooms, but there’s enough light to ensure the audience sees all they need to see. The blind man is very adept at creating fear and seems to have multiple lives because just when you think he's out of the picture, he shows up again. The script is clean, simple and not overly complicated. The director got everyone to buy into the script and each played their part well. It had suspense and moments of tension which was the purpose of this story.

Levy was strong as the woman who had lived a hard life and wanted something better for her daughter. She expressed the right amount of fear and courage. Minnette was sufficiently kind and driven to participate in robberies to be close to and help Rocky. Zovatto was OK as an uneducated thief who was brutish towards Rocky and domineering towards Alex. Lang was very good as the blind old man. His unshaven face and blind eyes were intimidating. Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues wrote a strong script which director Alvarez did a great job of getting tense suspense from the actors and scenes.

Overall:  This was one of the better horror films made in the last few years.