Mary Queen of Scots

First Hit: Saoirse Ronan (Mary Stuart) and Margot Robbie (Queen Elizabeth 1) give powerful performances in this adaptation of how Mary Queen of Scots tried to claim her title to the throne of England and Scotland.

Mary, by lineage, had rights to the throne of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales but her upbringing in France, that she was Catholic, and that her cousin Elizabeth also had throne rights to England, Wales, and Ireland, caused her to fight to claim her sovereignty.

At six days old, Mary was enthroned as Scotland’s ruler. However, Mary was raised in France and as a Catholic. Because England had long since rooted out Catholicism and the control of the Vatican over their nation, this Protestant nation was at odds with Mary claiming England’s throne while being Catholic.

After Mary lost her first husband in France, Mary came to Scotland to rule her country. She longed and aspired to rule England as well under a single throne. Although popular with her subjects, often because of her religious tolerance, she was manipulated by her supporting cast and therefore struggled to rule effectively over men, the lords of her land.

Mary realized that if she got pregnant and Elizabeth didn’t, her child would be heir to the throne of both English the territories and Scotland. Mary took on her second husband who did impregnate her although he wasn’t attracted to women and preferred one of Mary’s gay servants. Elizabeth didn’t have any desire to have children although her court tried and begged her to wed and have a child. She didn’t want men to have power over her and that meant in the bedroom as well.

Both queens were reviled by the men in their court. Elizabeth dealt with this prejudice in ways that allowed her to be less affected by this sexism.

Mary’s behavior, intelligence, and open heart allowed her to be threatened by her advisory court and therefore a coup took place. She was driven to England as Elizabeth told Mary she’d be safe in there. Her son James VI, however, was left in Scotland and eventually after Elizabeth’s death became ruler of England and Scotland.

Elizabeth suffered from smallpox and the makeup effectively portrayed how badly this affected her facial features. In the film Elizabeth sometimes wore white pancake powder to cover the scars on her face.

After escaping Scotland, without child, Mary was imprisoned for some eighteen years prior to Elizabeth having her killed.

The film begins with Mary being walked to her beheading and then ends with her beheading.

Because this was the 16th Century most of the film has a darkness to it. Fires in fireplaces and candles were the only light in the dank stone castles. However, Mary’s fire red hair along with the very stylistic hair designs brought powerful color to the screen as did Elizabeth’s wig and makeup.

Ronan is amazing. As probably one of the greatest young actors of our time, this film is yet another powerful entry in her resume. Robbie is fantastic as the strong thoughtful Elizabeth. Although there are a host of other actors in this film, they are minor characters to the power brought forth by these two women. Beau Williams wrote a strong screenplay that highlighted the differences between these two powerful women. Josie Rourke did an excellent job of showing the difficulties women in the throne faced by men who believed they knew better.

Overall: The film is lifted by the superb acting from Ronan and Robbie.

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.

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.

Chappaquiddick

First Hit: We all knew how despicable Ted Kennedy’s actions were, this film just puts pictures to it.

When the headlines came out that “Teddy” (Jason Clarke) had driven off a bridge with Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) in the car and he survived while she drowned, the nation was shocked. As the story came out that Ted did not report this accident well into the next day, Ted became despicable and his and the Kennedy family's credibility sank to a new low.

This film shows the privileged way that Ted acted based on his being a Kennedy. Ted’s father Joseph (Bruce Dern) ran the Kennedy family with a iron crooked fist. His team of people who were on-call to protect the Kennedy name only exaggerated the privileged arrogant family ways.

Recalling the original news in the newspaper and seeing film footage of Teddy wearing a neck brace to gain sympathy was horrible then and even worse in this film. His manipulation of his Chief of Staff Joseph Gargan (Ed Helms) was painful to watch.

From a film point of view, using true accounts and the documents from the inquest, what is presented appears to be a fair reenactment of this tragic event.

Much is said about the horrific events of his older brother’s untimely deaths, two through assassination, and how Joe Kennedy expected the remaining son to carry on the family legacy. All Teddy wanted was his father’s love and respect for who he was.

Does Teddy make up for his lack of integrity around this and other events? That’s a judgment call and even though he was called “The Lion of the Senate,” this film does little to shed light on his career. It is a film about his doing nothing for Mary Jo as she slowly suffocated and drowned in an upside-down car.

Clarke was OK as Teddy. I didn’t think he showed enough of the “lion” within him but maybe the “lion” came later in life. He did a great job of being arrogant and childlike in his decision making. Mara was very good. Unfortunately, she’s not in the film a long time, but her Mary Jo stays with you during the remaining part of the film. Dern was excellent as a handicapped and old Joe Kennedy. His looks of disdain towards Teddy were perfect. Helms was excellent as Teddy’s right hand man who finally couldn’t take being Ted’s slave and foil and therefore left. Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan wrote a good script that seemed to capture the time and the feeling of crime. John Curran directed this film.

Overall: This film only validated my feelings about Teddy as a guy spending his life trying to make amends for being an unthoughtful arrogant man from an influential family.

The 15:17 to Paris

First Hit:  Absolutely dull and uninspiring until the very end.

This film intersperses quick flashes of the dramatic event of these three men thwarting a terrorist attack on a train to keep you in your seat. If they didn’t most people would walk out of this uninspired effort by Clint Eastwood.

My first turn-off was when a grade school teacher for two of the featured young men stated to the mothers, "your children have ADD and they need drugs." The retort as Spencer and Alek's mothers storm out of the meeting was “my God is bigger than your statistics.” Are you kidding me? This is how Eastwood ends a dramatic scene?

One of Eastwood’s biggest mistakes is having the actual hero’s play themselves in this film. They had actors portraying them as young boys (ages 11 – 14), but as adults the stilted acting, insipid dialogue, and poorly created scenes made this film drag on and on and on.

We experience Alek Skarlatos (played by himself and Bryce Gheisar), Anthony Sadler (himself and Paul-Mikel Williams), and Spencer Stone (himself and William Jennings) when they met at a grade school, how their initial friendship developed in Sacramento, and vaguely how it lasted through the years till we see them together again traveling through Europe.

The early years are OK in that there are scenes that give the audience cause to believe these boys supported each other because they were all misfits in some way. I was saddened to see how their playing together was focused on gun play, with realistic paint (and one real) guns that looked like an AK and a M-16.

There is a bent in this film about God and Christian religion although we don’t see them in church. The extent of their faith seems to be praying for something to happen or for things to be different.

Finally, they go to Europe but there is only some background on Spencer because we follow him failing through several military job trainings. However, these failings were a precursor to him actually learning stuff along the way; then using this knowledge to make a difference later on. There was virtually no history about Anthony as to what he was doing prior to going to Europe with Spencer. And there wasn’t much about Alek who was fighting in Iraq and mistakenly left his back-pack at a village. What was this about?

Arriving in Europe Spencer and Anthony, awkwardly travel from place to place. At one point they meet a young asian woman, they go a couple places together but a couple scenes later she's gone. What was this about? They finally get to Germany and meet up with Alek who was staying with a German exchange student.

Getting on the 15:17 train to Paris, they disarm a terrorist and save the life of a man shot by the terrorist. Then they get honored by the French government and all is right with their lives. This is the crux of the film.

Because Eastwood used the real men to portray an actual event, their lack of acting abilities and the way Eastwood works was a mistake. The men cannot project into the camera thereby making it feel real to the audience. Adding to this mistake was Eastwood’s penchant to only do one or two takes, and with real actors they can deliver something good, non-actors generally cannot. The film comes off as amateurish.

The storyline was haphazard, felt thrown together, and despite being Christian based, had little meat on the bones.

The best acting job in this film was Paul-Mikel Williams as young Anthony. Judy Greer as Spencer’s mom Joyce was OK. The acting by the real men was obviously poor which took away from their own heroic story. Kudos for their actions against the terrorist but I’m not sure this story was film material as it was presented. Dorothy Blyskal wrote a horrible screenplay and Director Eastwood failed in all cases to deliver something interesting until the very end when the terrorist tried to take over the train car.

Overall:  This film will more than likely be the worst film I see this year, if not it will be close and it’s only February.