Brooklyn

First Hit:  This film shares a wonderful heartfelt story with remarkable acting and stunning visuals representing the 1950’s.

Irish immigration to the US and specifically to Brooklyn during the 1950’s (the 3rd wave) is highlighted in this film.

The film does give homage to an earlier 2nd wave of Irish Immigration to the US by sharing information about how they built a lot of the infrastructure in eastern US cities. Knowing that by 1860 or so, one quarter of New York City’s population was Irish, when we join this story we are aware of Irish influence in the city.

This story begins with Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) living with her mom and sister in a small Irish town. She works as a clerk in Miss Kelly’s (Brid Brennan) small store. Where Eilis has a quiet caring heart Miss Kelly is mean and spiteful. This life is weighing Eilis down, so her sister Rose (Fiona Glascott) sets her up with a Visa and a job in New York City.

Afraid and excited, she leaves on a ship only to land in a repressive boarding house run by Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) and working as a clerk in a fancy department store. She is lonely and sad, misses her family, and is terribly homesick. All this changes when she meets a young Italian plumber named Tony (Emory Cohen). He is totally smitten by her and while she’s slowly warming up to the attention and affection, Tony blurts out his love for Eilis.

The scenes of them together are amazingly precious. The first meal at his family’s house is ripe for enjoyment. Then there are scenes at the Ms. Kehoe’s boarding house dinner table that are simply funny, witty and insightful to the plight of these young girls trying to find a life in New York City.

Then there are the heartfelt and decisive scenes back in Ireland when Eilis returns to pay her respects to her recently deceased sister. The heart pulling wish of her mother wanting her to stay and not go back to New York, along with her ability to see her old friends as well as being seen as someone who is beautiful and smart makes her wonder about staying.

Ronan is beyond wonderful. She gave the kind of performance that elevates her incredible resume. I loved her as a young curious and confused girl named Briony in “Atonement”. She sparkled physically and intensely as the assassin in “Hanna”. Here she gives a deeply moving and evolving portrait as a women coming into her own. This is a great actress. Cohen is so wonderfully charming in his role, you just cannot help but love him here. Walters is perfect as the strict matron of her boarding house, trying to keep her women on solid respectful footing. Glascott was perfect as the thoughtful sister. Brennan was on point as a sharp, pushy, and mean store owner. Jim Broadbent as Father Flood was flawlessly cast as Eilis’s rock during her first months in the US. Nick Hornby wrote a dazzling screen play capturing the feel of the time and the intent of Colm Toibin’s novel. John Crowley captured the innocence, despair, history, and feeling of the time perfectly.

Overall:  Wonderful to watch, beautiful to feel.

Spotlight

First Hit:  Excellent writing, outstanding acting, powerful scenes, and a story that turned out to be spot-on.

This is a story about how Catholic Priests took advantage of young boys (and girls) by molesting them and getting away with it for years.

It begins with the Boston Globe getting a new Chief Editor named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) and while doing his due diligence of current staff, discovers that the Globe has a small group of reporters called “Spotlight”. This team digs deep to uncover meaningful stories that make a difference to Boston and beyond.

An old article comes across his desk about priest abuse and he asks Walter “Robby” Robertson (Michael Keaton), head of the Spotlight team, if this is the kind of story they work on. The team of Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) are asked to take a deeper look. As they begin to dig, the level of cover up by Cardinal Law (Len Cariou) and his crew of Bishops and Priests becomes grossly apparent.

Many people are involved with the cover up including the creation of a cottage business where lawyers and their law firms defending the church reap high fees while the abused is paid next to nothing and told to keep quiet. There were many heart breaking interviews with the abused including Eric Macleish (Billy Crudup) who, with needle marks in his arm, tells how this has affected his life and his family.

The script was sharp, always on point, and reflected a caring towards giving the audience a clear understanding of the problem. This film never lagged and reflected the urgency required to make a difference.

Ruffalo was superb. His ability to be smart, urgent and both careful and reckless and the same time was perfect. Schreiber was excellent as the steady hand looking to make the paper relevant again and seeing that this story was worthy of the effort being put in by his staff. Keaton was amazing as the leader of Spotlight, knowing when to reign in or let his staff loose. The confrontation with Ruffalo was respectfully wonderful and intense. McAdams was strong and especially good in her interviews with the abused. Her empathy and ability to obtain information was excellent. James was wonderful. I loved his caring about the home near his house and how he wanted to ensure everyone knew about the danger lurking inside for young kids. Crudup was so strong in his portrayal of an abused man that I felt his pain while he spoke. Cariou was very good as the Cardinal who tried to come across as Teflon. One of the most outstanding parts is by Stanley Tucci as an independent attorney working for the abused. His role was amazingly great because of him. McCarthy and Josh Singer wrote a remarkably strong pointed script. There was no fat, just great dialogue. McCarthy directed this film with a purpose, to tell a difficult story with clarity of purpose.

Overall:  I was fully engaged and entrenched in this story in every way.

Suffragette

First Hit:  Just before the final credits roll, the audience gets a strong message about just how difficult it has been for women to have a voice in the country they live.

This story takes place in Britain, but when the end of the film comes, it is a testament to every woman in every country in the world.

In the US women didn’t get to vote until 1920. In Switzerland 1971. And there are many countries that women do not have the right to vote. It is one of the primary downsides of Muslim countries and some interpretations of Islamic law – women who make half the world’s population had little say in the way the world is run. It makes me incredibly sad, filled with disappointment and to me shocking that although we can make huge forward leaps in the world technology, we have silenced so many people by not giving them a voice in how the world is run.

The Suffragette movement in Britain was an underground affair where women would meet, with the support of a few men, in clandestine ways to organize marches and protests against the English government. Leading this movement is Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) who in a couple of scenes sets the tone for the real foot soldiers, Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff), and Maud Watts (Carrie Mulligan). Watts has a young boy and she’s worked at a laundry company her whole life. She tries to stay out of trouble, but as her bravery begins to grow with the injustice she sees around her, she ends up being one of the stronger voices and leaders of this group of women trying to make a change.

The cost is high. Men run the country and families and she loses her son to her husband who then sends the boy off with another family. She’s living in the street, family gone, but sees that this is the only path for her – getting the vote, and getting more say in her life and country.

The dialogue is very strong and many of the scenes/sets are perfectly attuned to the time and feeling of this darkness coming to light.

Mulligan is terrific. She is believable and carries the inner strength needed to make her choices congruent with the part through and through. This is a wonderful role for her. Duff is equally strong as a woman having to also make hard choices, especially when she becomes pregnant again. Carter is very strong as a medical practitioner, who uses her connections and supportive husband to keep the movement going. Finbar Lynch as Carter’s husband Hugh is incredibly wonderful in his very subdued background supportive role. Abi Morgan wrote a great script which evoked strength and fear in strong reflective ways. Sarah Gavron had excellent control of the script and subject. She made this come alive in an intelligent manner.

Overall:  The film was very good, but when the list of countries appeared on the screen listing the years they gave women the vote, it put a very loud and strong exclamation point on the subject.

Bridge of Spies

First Hit:  The difference between Spielberg films and other director films is always attention detail through craftsmanship – this film excels in every way.

When a film supplies and fulfills details around my childhood memories and does it with great storytelling, I’m hooked.

I remember the cold war. We use to practice diving under our desks and covering our necks with our hands in case “The Bomb” went off. We were told, we’d see the flashing light of the bomb in LA (I grew up in Southern California) and when we did see the flash we were to "drop, duck and cover".

The way Spielberg crafts the era and the story of three men, Rudolf Able (Mark Rylance) accused Russian spy, high altitude U2 surveillance pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) and lawyer turned negotiator James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) was sublime.

The director takes his time, gives the audience relevant information, and then crafts a story that is interesting and fully engaging. Every scene is crafted to share an emotion or add to the audience’s understanding of story. The CIA agent following Able when the camera moves around the car to introduce the suspicion – perfect.

The story is about how an insurance lawyer, Donovan, is hired by the US Government to first defend Able in the US Court of law and then he’s recruited to negotiate a prisoner swap. The swap was for Powers who was a U2 pilot that was shot down over Russia. Because we were in the midst of the cold war with Russia neither government would acknowledge that they were talking with each other.

The feel of East Berlin, where the swap happened, was perfectly dreary. The relevant side story was that Donovan wanted an additional person included in the trade, Fredrick Pryor (Will Rogers). In this side story Pryor, a student, had gotten caught on the wrong side of the wall and was being used by the East Germans to make a name for their government. It also showed the strength of conviction of Donovan to get what he wanted, to be a humanitarian and how good he was at negotiating.

My favorite line spoken a few times in the film was:  “Would it help?”

Hanks was superb. He’ll probably be nominated for an award during award season. I would also say that Rylance was equally superb in his supporting role. He’s perfect and his ability to portray a subdued man on a mission who can be trusted is brilliant. Stowell was good as the U2 pilot. Matt Charman, Ethan and Joel Coen wrote a compelling, interesting engaging story, but it was Spielberg’s direction through clear vision that makes this film absolutely great.

Overall:  This is a perfect slice of history presented in a way that is simply great storytelling.

Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary

First Hit:  A fantastic film about the friendship and paths of these two amazing spiritual adventurers.

I believe that being a baby boomer helped me to see this film with fascination, wonder, and joyous recognition.

I can imagine that being born in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, these men and their exploits might be new news. However, as a baby boomer who did/used acid (LSD), mescaline, and other psychedelics, I smirked with a knowing smile remembering the great trips and the ones that scared the holy Jesus out of me. Like these two, this experimentation with drugs, along with my burgeoning meditation practice starting in 1967, created a crack within my consciousness wide enough for me to consider the larger picture of the whole and consider living in the now.

Just as with Ram and Timothy, many of our generation's spiritual practice was enhanced by the fissures created in perception by using drugs. Here, Timothy is nearing death and the now’s are pointing straight into the arms of death or non-breathing. Ram is sitting with Timothy and they just have a conversation.

The thrust of the film is their conversation of life's recollections, where they are now, and  how they might address the door of death.The film traces their friendship, kinship and paths to find a way to live from what they learn and not by the rules set up by our structured society.

We learn from each of them, how much they meant to each other’s own growth and how they face or see death. Leary is near death during the film and we have glimpses of him in his last moments. We also have Ram Dass learning how to live after suffering a major stroke.

The documentarian was very skilled at giving light to each’s path along with their communal path, our common path.

Robert Redford's narration was perfectly paced and toned. David Leach wrote the script for narrator Robert Redford. Gay Dillingham pieced together an amazing, funny, and insightful story from current and archive film.

Overall:  I left the film inspired to continue to do more spiritual work.