Uncut Gems

First Hit: A wild ride with a Jewish, gem selling, obsessive gambler.

This film starts oddly because we move between the inside of a large black opal to the colon of gem and watch seller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Eerily some of the camera images reflect the similarity between both, and I guess that was the point.

We follow Howard on the streets of New York, gregariously saying “hello” to many individuals he comes across as he makes his way to his store through the double door security system these small gem sellers use. I want to note that these doors become part of the story. Getting buzzed in by his beautiful assistant and girlfriend Julia (Julia Fox), he heads to his office in a very anxious, nervous way.

The one characteristic behavior Howard displays throughout the film is one of being chased, corralled, and almost being caught but finding a way to talk himself out of being beaten up or killed each time. This is the ride we are on with Howard throughout the film.

As a gambler that owes his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) over $100K, and other people money from his sports gambling losses, we see him in sequences of pawning stuff, giving people watches as collateral, and making wild, complex sports bets.

Arriving at his desk in an early scene, he receives a Styrofoam box, which has him very excited. Opening the box, there are two fish, he squeezes each of them looking to feel something. We know this is an illicit shipment of something. He finally cuts one open to reveal the sizeable uncut opal we saw, and were inside of, in the opening sequence.

His plan is to auction the opal off for nearly a million dollars, and it will free him from the money he owes to bookies and to finalize the divorce his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) while providing for his three kids, and make his girlfriend happy.

Enter Kevin Garnett, the basketball player. He’s brought to Howard’s store because of their mutual friend “The Weekend” (The Weekend) wanted Howard to do business with Kevin. Howard shows him some of the stuff in the store and in a moment of pride, shows him the uncut opal. Kevin is mesmerized by the opal and asks to take it for a night. Reluctantly, Howard agrees if Kevin gives up his Boston Celtics championship ring as collateral. Thinking he can get away with it, Howard pawns Kevin’s ring to make a quick bet hoping to capitalize a big win and pay everyone back, get the ring out of hock, auction the stone, make a bunch of money and live a happy fulfilled life with his girlfriend.

However, we know compulsive gamblers rarely finish first, and the film follows this big setup until its end.

The scenes where Howard is having difficult conversations with his wife, bookies, or employees, are amazing and probably not easy to do. He seems to never hear what the other person is saying and continues the conversation as if the person whom he’s speaking with understood and agreed with what he has said. This is rarely the case and so there are many scenes where people are merely talking over each other. Listening to these two different dialogues and attempting to follow both conversations during a shouting session was both amusing and challenging.

I thought the scenes were very well set up in that they seemed to always have an edge that everything was going to come off the rails any minute. There was a franticness in everything on the screen that kept the film moving along at a rapid clip despite its 135-minute running time.

Sandler was perfect for this role, and I could easily see why the Safdie brothers wanted him for the part. Like the film “Punch Drunk Love,” Sandler can bring a desperate dark edge to his characters and make it totally believable. Here the monster is his addiction to the big win. Maybe an Oscar-worthy performance. Garnett was terrific as himself. That might sound funny, but often sports stars are awkward when being filmed, but Kevin was dynamite. The Weekend was perfect as the sly, trying-to-make-a-buck, go-between. Two scenes stood out; one in Howard’s office when The Weekend discovers Howard has been selling, hawking, or giving away the watches that he’s stored in Howards safe. The other scene that stood out was in the nightclub when Howard confronts The Weekend about the opal. Fox was excellent as Howard’s lover. The scenes in the apartment and in the Vegas betting room were well done and it’s the latter where she stood out. Menzel played Howard’s wife as a sarcastic person who is disengaged from her relationship with her husband. The look on her face when she opened their Mercedes trunk with Howard inside was priceless. Bogosian was outstanding as Howard’s brother-in-law and loan shark bank. Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, and Josh Safdie wrote an engaging script. But it was the directing and acting of Sandler and the rest of the team that made this film work.

Overall: This film left me with mixed feelings, but I loved the story and the wild ride.

Little Women

First Hit: I liked the theme of women being strong and independent and disliked the jarring time shifts.

I’ve made no bones about Saoirse Ronan is one of the very best actors in her generation and in film today. Here as Jo March, the oldest of the four sisters, she is the focus of this story and therefore, we see this story through her eyes.

She has three sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Each of the sisters has talent. Meg is an actress and in early scenes, she and her sisters are shown making a play together and Meg has the lead role. Amy is a painter and she aspires to be the best and ultimate painter alive. Beth is the youngest, is shy and more unassuming, but plays piano like she was born with one in her soul.

The girls are being raised by their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern). She’s alone as her husband, and the girl’s dad is away fighting the civil war. They live in a large home but because the father is away and cannot provide for them, money is tight which is part of the drive for some of the girls, especially Jo, to provide for themselves as they get older. They don’t want to be dependent on men.

As a strong independent young woman, Jo wants to make her living and livelihood from the stories she writes. She thinks the way women are treated and the limits put on women to be independent is absurd. There are numerous scenes where this plays out. One such scene is when she’s attempting to sell a story and the publisher/editor tells her the girl in the story has to marry and be happy in the end; that’s the only way people will accept the story. This infuriates Jo.

Jo is also stubborn, as shown in a couple of brief scenes. One such scene is when she is in New York to make her living as a writer, meets a handsome writing professor, and asks him to honestly critique her work. He thoughtfully does this, and the criticism stings, so she calls him inept and storms out of the room, blaming him for lack of thoughtfulness.

There are many acts where her feminism and stubbornness play out, and they are wonderfully done.

Meg is different in that she wants to marry. She wants to create a household with children. This is a source of disappointment for Jo; however, it also is a way for Jo to see and accept that people are different from her.

Amy is like Jo in many ways in that she wants to be the best and known for being the best. However, in a scene of self-actualization, she realizes that her perfectionist painting technique is outstanding, but she doesn’t create anything unique and probably will never be the painter she envisioned herself to be. I really liked this about Amy because the actualization was subtle yet very clear and it came through in her expression.

Beth was quiet and meekest of the sisters; however, her piano playing was extraordinary. Her weakness was that she didn’t like playing in front of anyone. She was also the weakest of the sisters physically and we watch her demise through catching scarlet fever.

All this to say, I loved each of the sister’s stories. I thought each of them was superbly acted as well. What hurt this film was the sometimes-jarring way we segued into other time frames. Watching a particular segment of a sister’s story and then boom, we find ourselves with that person in some different storyline. Sometimes it made sense and other times it was too obscure at the time to be an addition to the story or the particular sister. With the type of time jumps this film presents it is difficult to tell if they were future or past events because the actors never looked older or younger in the scenes. I just don’t think the audience needs to be trying to figure out when the previous scene happened in the overall storyline.

One particular scene when Jo cut her hair for money for the family, we see her in subsequent stages with long or short hair but the storyline at one point meant that she should have had short hair but it was long and bunched up in the back.

It also appeared that men were only used as place holders and role players to propel the sister’s stories, and this isn’t a bad thing and it came across as a bit too obvious.

Ronan was powerful as Jo. The fault I found with the film was the time jumps that diminished the storyline and had nothing to do with her performance. Watson was wonderfully elegant yet showed a side of fun and enthusiasm as well. The scene where part of her hair gets burnt off and later the vulnerable elegance of her coming down the stairs in a coming-out event showed the breadth of her abilities in this role. Pugh was the surprising actor for me. She was sublime in this role, and when she was on the screen, her look alone commanded you watch her. The moment that Amy realizes she won’t be a famous painter was genuinely inspirational. Scanlen was beautiful as the meekest of the sisters although she harbored some of the biggest talents in the family. Dern was terrific as the mother who’s compassion for others rang throughout the movie. I loved her scene with Jo when discussing patience and anger. Timothee Chalamet as Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence was sharp. As the rich boy neighbor who had fallen in love with Jo because of her strength and independence, he was sufficiently arrogant, boisterous, and kind. Chris Cooper as Laurie’s father Mr. Laurence, was excellent. His thoughtful kindness as the rich neighbor was well placed throughout the film. Meryl Street gave an outstanding and funny performance as the arrogant, very wealthy Aunt to the sisters. Her well placed and pointed jabs at women having careers were perfect. Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this film. I didn’t like her choice to make time jumps without giving the audience clues about the past and future. The actors never really looked different in these time sequences and that was bothersome. Otherwise, she got excellent performances from the actors and the sets and scenes were beautifully filmed.

Overall: A terrific film interrupted by time jumps that caused confusion.

Bombshell

First Hit: I thoroughly enjoyed the acting and how this story shines a light on a behavior that was kept under wraps for far too long.

This is a story about the pain, degradation, and humiliation caused by the sexual abuse of women by the President of FOX News, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) was the woman who sat between two men in the morning “Fox and Friends” television program. She put up with the snide and overly complimentary comments by her co-hosts and Ailes himself. As an integral part of the FOX News team, Carlson wanted to be seen as a peer and not a sexual object to be ridiculed. Her desire was to have her own show where she could call the shots. Over the years, she’d had many encounters with Ailes, many of them sexually charged and suggestive, but as a good reporter, she documented their meetings.

As she got older, Ailes wanted fresher and younger faces on the morning program, so he gave her a much-desired show of her own. However, it was placed it in the small audience afternoon time slot. However, that did not shy her away from doing some controversial stories, like older women without makeup show. This show, in particular, struck Ailes the wrong way, and we see him railing at Carlson and ended up not renewing her contract.

Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) was an up and comer in the news organization. And we slowly begin to learn, she also had sexually charged encounters with Ailes.  However, Ailes did support her challenging Donald Trump on the campaign trail and at the debate. She hated becoming the story. The story shows how becoming the story opened her up to changing how she needed to work.

Then there is the story about the young woman, a conservative FOX employee, who wanted to be on air. Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) was a charger and aggressively sought out a way to speak to the man in charge, Ailes. The film shows their one on one meetings and Ailes propositioning her about how she could get to the top. The scene when Ailes asks her to stand, twirl, and hike up her skirt so he could see her legs were incredibly humiliating.

The movie cuts quickly from scene to scene and assaults you just as the news stories on television do from time to time. Scenes do not languish in this movie but are weaved together to create an account about how one woman Carlson decided to stand up to Ailes by suing him personally in hopes that others would join her.

Kidman was terrific as Carlson. Her internal strength to bring on a lawsuit was well presented. Theron was Megyn Kelly. The use of archival footage of Kelly and then segueing into scenes with Theron was seamless. It was a dominant performance. Robbie, as Pospisil, was sublime. I loved how she was able to show wide-eyed wonder, wanting to please, and desire to be noticed by senior management, then turn on a dime and show complete humiliation. Robbie’s ability to explain all this in one scene and still give the audience a cohesive character was flawless. Lithgow was perfect as the angry slimeball Ailes. His displays of anger and indignancy were well-founded in his being caught being a predator. Allison Janney as Susan Estrich, Ailes's lawyer, was excellent. Kate McKinnon as Jess Carr, a co-worker of Pospisil on “The O’Reilly Factor,” was perfect. She hid that she was a gay liberal working for Fox because it was the only job she could get. Charles Randolph wrote a pointed and robust script. Jay Roach did an excellent job of portraying the slow shifting tide at Fox News.

Overall: The event documented in this story helped to give wings to the “me too” movement.

The Two Popes

First Hit: Very engaging film about the Catholic Church’s 2012 shift towards being more liberal.

I had basic knowledge about how the Catholic Church choose a pope and that the Pope is chosen for life. But that was it. This film opens this door a little more, and it was interesting.

This movie tells the exciting and unusual 2012 story of Pope Benedict’s ascension after Pope John Paul ll passed away, his subsequent resignation, and the ascension to the papacy of Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), Pope Francis.

The film points out that Benedict really wanted to be Pope, and his chief rival, Cardinal Bergoglio didn’t want to be Pope. From a philosophical point of view, they were diametrically opposed to the direction of the church. Watching the interaction of all the Cardinals before and during the selection of the new Pope was impressive.

When Benedict became Pope, his plan was to move the church back towards its more traditional values. However, these values were in opposition to increasingly more liberal ways Catholics around the world who were embracing like gay marriage and women having a more active role in the church.

Benedict didn’t understand or support these things. He wanted the church to go back to Latin services and for the church to be opaque in its operations. He also liked the old fashion adornments of being the Pope, and he struggled with the sexual assault suits being brought against the church, and the financial improprieties perpetuated by his right-hand man.

Bergoglio decided he wanted to retire because he felt the church wasn’t heading in the right direction. He wanted to quit being a Cardinal and go back to being a simple priest so that he could be closer to his followers in Argentina. When he flies to Rome to present his resignation letter to Pope Benedict, his letter is rejected; actually, more like his letter keeps getting ignored.

The two spend time together talking about their differences, and eventually, these discussions bring them to a point at which they are able to share their deepest secrets and failings as priests. These stories are deeply touching and when Benedict asks Bergoglio to hear his confession, the beauty of how these two different men find their genuinely humble priestly roots is remarkable.

The filmmakers make great use of the Vatican itself as scenes there are elegantly shot. There are some amusing moments when Bergoglio tries to get the Pope to sign his letter of resignation, but the Pope just ignores each request.

When Benedict shares with Bergoglio his plans to retire and hope that the Cardinals select Bergoglio to move the church in a more positive direction, Bergoglio’s plaintiff pleas to Benedict to stay in power are real and sweet.

This film does a great job of providing an honest glimpse of how the Pope selection process works and how seriously the Cardinals take this responsibility.

Pryce was sweetly sublime in this role as Cardinal Bergoglio and Pope Francis. The sweetness and humbleness of the real Pope Francis’ beliefs were wonderfully shown. Hopkins was excellent as Pope Benedict. His firmly held beliefs of how the church should work, versus what was actually happening in the church was perfectly presented. Anthony McCarten wrote a fantastic screenplay that felt real and honest to these two people. Fernando Meirelles got excellent performances from these two great actors and was able to make the Catholic Church both interesting and attempting to fix the Vatican ship.

Overall: This story brought the Catholic Church to life for me.

Richard Jewell

First Hit: Outstanding film and portrayal of a man who went through hell because of the FBI and the malfeasance of a newspaper reporter.

I so bought into Richard Jewell’s character as portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser. He was terrific and gave me a real sense of a man who really tried hard to follow the rule of law and be someone people could count on to protect them.

This is based on a true story about Richard Jewell, who was pretty much a loner, lived with his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), and wanted to be part of the law enforcement community all his life.

When we first engage with Jewell, he’s a supply clerk in a company and we see that he is thoughtful and careful about his work. We are shown this as he overhears a loud, aggressive telephone conversation by Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) and a client of the company they work for.

Apologizing for overhearing the conversation (there’s no way he couldn’t hear), he tells Watson to look in a drawer because Jewell has filled it with the pens Watson uses in his work. Also, asking Bryant to open another drawer, it is filled with Snickers candy bars, the snack food Bryant eats when stressed.

Through this interchange, they become acquaintances and chat from time to time. One day Jewell gets a job offer to be a security guard at a local college campus. Jewell’s goodbye to Bryant is very sweet. Bryant, caught off guard, gives him a $100 bill in case he might need anything during the transition between jobs. Jewell is touched, and for him, their friendship is now rock-solid.

At his new job, he has a run-in with some students who are breaking campus rules and he gets fired for this and because he’s overstepping his bounds by stopping cars on the highway near the campus looking for drugs.

These things highlight a couple of things about Jewell. He believes in following the rules, and he can and will step outside the bounds of his authority.

Jewell finally gets a security guard job at AT&T’s events at Centennial Park which are part of the celebrations for the 1996 Atlanta, GA Olympics. His thoughtfulness and kindness are highlighted here, as well. He provides water or Coca Cola to pregnant women so that they do not become dehydrated, and he also supplies the lighting and filming crew in the nearby tower with food or other things they need. He wants to be helpful.

He’s also looking for suspicious items and people. When he discovers a backpack that has been left under a bench where he was sitting, he tells the police. The police team brings in some experts and they realize it is a bomb. While moving the crowd back, the bomb explodes, and two people are killed, and many others are injured.

At first, he’s seen as a hero and is on television. He’s proud of his work, and his mother is especially pleased because her favorite newscaster, Tom Brokaw, spoke glowingly about her son.

FBI Agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) was also stationed at the park and is disappointed that he was stationed there, and even worse, something happened on his watch, and he didn’t prevent it. After interviewing Jewell’s past records and after meeting with the college who fired Jewell, Richard becomes a suspect. What does Jewell do when he realizes the FBI is considering him a suspect? He calls Bryant.

Local newspaper columnist Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), who only wants to make a name for herself, uses her sexuality towards Shaw to extract this FBI probe about Jewell. She writes an unconfirmed expose front-page article in the newspaper, and in a New York minute, it jumps up to become national headlines.

Now Jewell is seen as the vilified criminal, not the hero, all in a span of about a week.

The film then tells the story of how his friendship with Bryant and the undying support of his mom, and longtime friend Brandon Walker (Mike Pniewski) help him through the onslaught of the rush-to-judgment people – the FBI and Media.

I did find it interesting that this film has come out when both the FBI and the Media are under a public spotlight and scrutiny.

Hauser needs to receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jewell. He was terrific in bringing this confused, caring man to life. His sincerity, thoughtfulness, and helpfulness (even at the wrong times) are excellently portrayed. Rockwell gives yet another robust and stunning performance as Jewell’s friend and attorney. His sarcasm and pointed jabs at the FBI’s flawed work were excellent. Hamm was good, but it would be nice to see him in a role where drinking and sex are not his only motivation. Wilde was all over the place and enjoyable as Scruggs, who clearly had only one thing on her mind, fame. Bates was terrific as Jewell’s mother. Her demonstration of faith in her son and that he wasn’t who people were making him out to be, was sublime. Nina Arlanda, as Watson Bryant’s office manager and friend, Nadya Light, brought a beautiful blend of humor and persistence to Bryant’s actions. Billy Ray wrote an outstanding screenplay that was crisp and painted each character entirely. Clint Eastwood did an excellent job of directing this story. He is usually efficient in telling stories and here he stepped it up a notch.

Overall: This was a wonderfully entertaining film and brought to life a story I read about some twenty-three years ago.