The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

First Hit: Although slow and methodical, the story is worth telling and watching.

This film is based on a true story of a young boy, in Malawi with a thirst for learning, who figures out how to irrigate crops in their dry season.

Trywell and Agnes Kamkwamba (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Aissa Maiga respectively) are husband and wife farmers trying to survive through the growing monsoons and drought cycles of their African nation. The storms are getting worse at washing the land away because trees are being harvested for money which is affecting how the rain affects the area. It is also making the dry seasons worse because with the trees gone, the wind is blowing the topsoil away.

Without irrigation and these wild weather swings in the effects are creating smaller annual harvests. The village is slowly starving to death.

The Kamkwamba’s have three children. The two oldest, Annie and William (Lily Banda and Maxwell Simba respectively), are smart. Being a woman, in a patriarchal society, Annie is not able to continue her education. William is being sent to high school, but because of the poor harvests, the family cannot continue to pay for his education and gets expelled. He returns to the fields to work alongside his father.

However, William’s curious nature, as we witness by watching him fix radios, he continues to explore and learn about electricity and battery power. He studies the physical mechanics of using wind to drive voltage. His thirst for learning and helping the community is held back by his inability to go to school and requirement to assist in the fields.

What the story also highlights along the way, is the corruption and dictatorship aim of the government. How this village lives on the edge of starvation because of government policies and people willing to sell their land for tree harvesting.

When we witness the villagers attempting to buy food from the government, we see the depth of their suffering. People rob the Kamkwamba’s of their stored food. We watch as corruption and control rear its ugly head when the Prime Minister visits the village and dislikes what the village chief says during a speech.

The slowness of the film does reflect the way life moves in this African village. The audience has to be patient as this film unfolds.

When William figures out, he can make a windmill for creating electricity to activate a water pump that could pump water from a well for irrigating crops, he’s excited. Then the battle becomes how he can convince, the village and mostly his father to trust him.

The scenes are expertly filmed and beautifully shot. They provided a real sense of despair and the dilemma facing the family. Additionally, I loved the use of stilt dancers who come to honor someone’s death.

Ejiofor was excellent as the father raising two smart children and trying his best to do what is right for the family and village. He learns to let go and trust his family. Maiga was fantastic as the family’s wife and mother. Her intelligence and strength are the underlying power of the film. Simba was sublime as William. His dance between being curious and smart while also maintaining his responsibility to work the fields with his father was brilliant. Banda was beautiful as William’s sister. Her ability to be smart but also meet the expectations of the family was great. When she sacrificed her independence to assist the family and help William obtain a “Dynamo” was both sad and joyful. Ejiofor both wrote the screenplay and directed this film as well. As I mentioned one has to be ready for the slow pacing, but for me, it was worth it.

Overall: This was an excellent adaptation of a true story, and during the credits, the audience gets a glimpse of this amazing person.

Greta

First Hit: The story portrayed here was poorly constructed and did not keep me engaged.

The plot is about a Greta (Isabelle Huppert), an older lonely woman who plays the piano looking for companionship. To find it, she leaves purses with a few objects in them on the New York Subway, one being her ID. Her hopes are someone will notice and return the handbags.

We are introduced to Frances McCullen (Chloe Grace Moretz), a young waitress who has recently lost her mother to cancer. She’s living with her best friend Erica Penn (Maika Monroe). While coming home one evening, Francis found a purse on the subway. Finding the ID, Frances finds Greta’s home and returns the handbag.

They strike up a friendship based on that they’ve lost loved ones; Greta her husband and Frances, her mother. However, it becomes obsessive on Greta’s part, and the creepiness begins after their first meeting. Greta’s weirdness of Frances’ time and attention hits a high mark when Frances finds additional purses, like the one she returned. The gig is up.

Figuring out that Greta does this to entrap young women, she also realizes that these women, including her, are replacements for her daughter whom Greta says is living in France. But is she?

As the story unfolds, Greta’s behavior becomes more obsessive and creepy. Finally, she drugs Frances and locks her up.

The story continues to unfold from here and how it ends is only slightly surprising.

The best part of the film was the quality of the cinematography and sets. Greta’s home had a beautiful quality, including its own creepiness. The apartment where Frances and Erica lived was perfectly modern for two young women. However, the story and film felt pushed through and forced.

Huppert was, at times, excellent in her expressions, but overdone as the story unfolded. Moretz was good, she carried the naivety of her role well enough, but again it was the story and direction that made all of it not work. Monroe was good as the roommate, and her final scenes were excellent. However, during the movie the story just guided her to be more flighty than needed. Ray Wright and Neil Jordan wrote a mixed-up script that created an overemphasis on the creepiness of the character. Jordan didn’t help matters with the direction because the creepiness was overdone.

Overall: This story didn’t quite work.

Fighting with My Family

First Hit: Mildly entertaining and while it was a bit too predictable at times, there were effective moments of inspiration.

Back when TV wrestling got its real start as (Golden Age) the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) in the early 1950s there were outsized characters like “Gorgeous George.” The narcissistic persona he embraced both elevated the sport’s popularity, but it also created an over-exposure by the late 1950’s early 1960’s.

But as the NWA developed to become the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation) and shortened to WWF, its outsized characters regained its audience both in person and on television. Having to switch to WWE (Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment) because WWF was used by the World Wildlife Fund in 2001, WWE was global, and its ego and brawn based characters were known worldwide. “Hulk Hogan,” “Triple H,” “Stone Cold Steve Austin,” “Ric Flair,” and “The Rock” (Dwayne Johnson) who makes a couple of appearances in this film moved the WWE into the financial and popularity stratosphere.

This movie is based on the true story of Saraya “Paige” Bevis (Florence Pugh), who had her mind set on becoming a WWE wrestler. Coming from Norwich, England her chances were minimal. How she became a WWE wrestler is this film’s story.

She got started in this business because her father, Patrick “Rowdy Ricky Knight” Bevis (Nick Frost), and mother Julia “Sweet Saraya” Bevis (Lena Headley) started a wrestling business to put food on the table. It was either this or crime. Patrick was a thief, and robbing banks was his previous line of work and had already spent time in prison for this. However, he loved wrestling, and it was the life he took on to keep from robbing banks. Although “Paige’s” oldest brother was in jail, her next older brother Zak “Zodiac” Bevis (Jack Lowden) was also a wrestler and part of the family business.

Together the family had a company called WaW that taught younger people to wrestle in addition to putting on small matches throughout England. With pestering calls to WWE to help promote their business and Zak and Saraya, they finally get a call back from the WWE. Their representative for talent, Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn), contacts the family and ask that “Paige” and “Zodiac” come to tryouts in London at the O2 arena when WWE shows up to do a show there.

Only Paige gets chosen to continue the training, and the film follows her in this process. Immediately we see her struggle against other women who happen to be beautiful, sexy and physically healthy and capable. This was the one part of the film’s story I thought the filmmakers could have done more with. Each of the other girls was former models and cheerleaders, and they also needed to work and make money, and they were putting it all out there as well as “Paige.”

Of course, Zak is jealous that his sister got chosen while he didn’t, and therefore the film follows the jealousy track Zak has towards her sister’s success. But when “Paige” wants to quit, we find out how the family stands behind her, and “Paige” finds her strength.

This is a feel-good story of success and perseverance while also finding your place in the world.

The wrestling scenes were reasonably well done, and when “Paige” goes in the ring for the Diva championship, her world and dreams come together.

Pugh was excellent as “Paige.” I like her ability to show vulnerability as well as strength as she made this journey. Lowden was terrific as well. His jealousy was ideally placed as he wanted to be the star of the family but realized he was the star of what he gave to others. Frost and Headley were terrific as the parents of the wrestling family. Vaughn was fantastic as the talent manager and finder. His story about why Zak would fail as a WWE wrestler was wonderfully told. Johnson as himself (The Rock) was appropriately perfect. His personality leaps off the screen. Stephen Merchant wrote and directed this story with his eye on the ball. He kept it moving and did a great job of getting wonderful performances from the actors.

Overall: This isn’t a great film, but the heart shows up well on the screen.

Arctic

First Hit: This film keeps the audience engaged, although there are only about 30 speaking lines in the whole thing.

There are just a handful of movies where the actor can carry the film by themselves. It’s difficult to keep the intense drama high enough while retaining the audience’s engagement. One film that achieved this was 2013’s All is Lost with Robert Redford. In that film, he’s sailing on a boat that crashes into an errant cargo container and tries to stay alive in a sinking ship. He’s the only one in the film.

In Arctic the film opens with Overgard (Mads Mikkelsen) scraping snow away from a large SOS signal he’s made in the snow. He then checks a rig he’s prepared to catch fish through holes in the ice. He goes back to his crashed airplane. At a particular time, he gets up and goes out to a snow hill and turns a crank on a box that sends out a distress signal. After so many turns (we hear him mutter a count), he packs up the machine and heads back to the protection of the fuselage.

We don’t know how long he’s been out here, but it must be quite a while because the plane is deteriorating.

He’s very regimented because of the way he does the same schedule each day. One of the things he does each day is clean a small pile of rocks. We find out only later what this represents.

One day, just as he finishes cranking the signal device, the green light goes on, meaning someone has gotten the signal. Then a helicopter appears. However, the high wind starts tossing the aircraft around, and as it starts to fade from view, it crashes. Overgard’s hopes of being rescued are dashed.

Going to the wreckage he finds the pilot dead, and a young woman (Maria Thelma Smaradottir) injured but alive. Watching him work to help this woman is a study in kindness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness.

Although he discovers that she doesn’t speak English, he finds a way to get her to squeeze his hand, letting him know that she’s alive and her current level of her strength.

Throughout the rest of the film, she murmurs about ten unintelligible words, at most, and the rest of the dialogue is him asking her to squeeze his hand and telling her it will be “OK.” Because he found a map of the area in the helicopter wreckage, and that the young woman is not getting any better, he decides to try to move them to an outpost that’s identified on the map.

Fighting off a polar bear, the intense elements, steep crevasses, and caverns, he makes his way towards the outpost pulling the young woman behind him.

The scenes are shot so well that I felt just as cold as they were sitting in my warm cosy seat. The intensity of the weather and the patient way Overgard stayed focused to his task was unbelievable.

Mikkelsen was amazing. His clarity of staying alive surpassed anything I think I could have dredged up from within. I believed every step of this journey. Joe Penna and Ryan Morrison wrote a fantastic screenplay. Penna must have put himself and the crew through incredible hardships to be able to film this story.

Overall: I was enthralled every step of this journey.

Cold Pursuit

First Hit: This film was a cross between a Liam Neeson Taken thriller and a black comedy using a Taken like storyline.

The film starts as a typical Liam Neeson film about him making violent amends for wrongdoing to his family.

Here as Nels Coxman (Neeson), his job is running a snow plow for the city of Kehoe Colorado, a small glitzy resort town up in the Rocky Mountains an hour or two outside of Denver. His wife Grace (Laura Dern) hangs around the house, smokes pot and has virtually no lines or involvement in this film. She disappears shortly after their son Kyle (Micheal Richardson) is found dead because of a heroin overdose.

Problem is Kyle doesn’t do drugs which Nels holds on to and determines that someone murdered his son. Because of this, he decides to find and kill the people who did this.

Starting at the bottom of the food chain, he begins with the guy who was with his son and actually set up the problem in the first place when he stole 10 kilos of cocaine from the area the kingpin Trevor ‘Viking’ Calcote (Tom Bateman). Nels, works up the food chain killing people higher up in the Viking organization.

Viking is a controlling arrogant bizarre drug dealer. He’s got a son from a former marriage who spends half of his time with him. His ex-wife is an American Indian. The importance of this is that Viking’s father made a deal with White Bull to split up the drug dealing territory.

When Viking wrongly kills White Bull’s son thinking that the son took his drugs, White Bull and his gang go after Viking.

So now the plot has Nels killing Viking’s gang, one by one, and Viking going after White Bull’s people and White Bull planning to do a significant hit on Viking’s gang for killing his son.

Convoluted? Yes, but when the director creates scenes with hang gliding Indians, hotel front desks with white fur on them, and bizarre killing scenes, one has to really wonder what the director was thinking.

I started laughing out loud at some of the audacious dialogue and strange scenes. It took a few minutes, but then others in the theater joined me in seeing the dark humor of this film.

Neeson did his best to keep the Taken guy in play for this film, but Nels is no Bryan Mills. It would have been interesting to hear the direction he got for this role; be Mills but be ready for dark humor. Dern was not used, had virtually no dialogue, and left me wondering why she even took this role unless to get paid. Bateman was OK in this over the top part. Frank Baldwin wrote an oddly constructed screenplay because of the way the actors said the lines. Hans Petter Moland had an odd vision of this film especially when the Taken series was tracked so differently.

Overall: This film was amusing, although I’m not sure that was the intention along with, intense and Neeson delivered what was expected.