Contagion

First Hit: Interesting, scary, overcomplicated stories and created questions of realism.

What would happen if a new disease came to this world that had a high R 0 factor (R Naught). Although it was explained as a primary part of the film, it wasn’t reinforced enough throughout the film for me to understand the some of the dialogue they used later.

From what I understood a high R Naught means that for every one person who dies multiple more will die. Anyway this was just one of the confusing things in this film. Then I kept having questions while the celluloid rolled. If they created a contagious area, sealed it off a whole city, who would man the electric power stations? Who controls all the other social utilities if the city (Chicago) is dying from a disease?

And although the film-makers showed a society degenerating by having people breaking into banks, grocery stores, and pharmacies; I kept wondering who’s running the electrical grid. Anyway, outside of the problems in this film because it compromised the way society would breakdown with this disease, it did bring up great questions about what would happen if a devastating disease struck the world.

Beth (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) is ground zero for this disease (we discover this at the end of the film). She stops on her way home and has a quickie with an ex-boyfriend (why was this important?), comes home to her husband Mitch (played by Matt Damon), who ends up being immune to the disease but her son isn’t and both the son and wife die.

The film includes the involvement of the WHO and a bunch of other agencies which lets us know that this is important and out of control. The way the WHO and the US Government methodically find a cure and plan how to immunize a lot of people was interesting, but overall this film tried to make drama in too many places which dissipated the energy of the film. I would have rather stayed with just a few of the people and not try to give us so much about so many.

One of the opening scenes when they cut Beth’s scull open to analyze her death, I found myself cringing but ready for a film that would be more focused, it fell off the table and became a different film from there.

Paltrow has a small but critical part because she is ground zero. Damon was good as the caring father. Marion Cotillard as Dr. Orantes was very good and probably did the best acting in this film. Jude Law was very good at playing a blogger named Alan Krumwiede as someone who was skeptical of the government’s action on the disease but he was worse in his lying to his public. Laurence Fishburne was OK as Dr. Cheever and I really thought the story was overplayed when he gave his wife a heads up to leave Chicago. There were lots of other actors but this film didn’t require it and in fact dissipated its energy. Scott Z. Burns wrote the script and made it too complicated by adding lots of strong parts. Steven Soderbergh directed this film and, to me, it needed simplification in some areas to create a more powerful effect.

Overall: This was a good film but too many stories with big time actors dissipated the strength of the idea.

Cowboys and Aliens

First Hit: An odd idea turned into an action packed fantasy.

Jake Lonergan (played by Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of nowhere. He doesn’t remember anything from his past, his name or why he has a large metal bracelet on his left wrist.

He does remember that he speaks English (one of my favorite lines). Three guys come up and start to harass him and he takes them out quickly. This sets up his character.

He is generally quiet, fast and strong on his feet, fearless and has an unknown purpose. He takes one of his accoster’s horse and rides into town where the sheriff arrests him because he is Jake Lonergan (thief and killer).

Confused by what is going on, he goes along with the sheriff until spaceships swoop down on the town to steal bodies of the towns’ people. During this attack he discovers he can control this bracelet on his wrist with his mind because it becomes active and a powerful weapon. With this weapon he shoots down one of the spacecraft which gets the attention of the townspeople.

Woodrow Dolarhyde (played by Harrison Ford) the town bully, witnesses Jake’s powerful wrist weapon and because Woodrow’s son Percy (played by Paul Dano) was one of the people kidnapped by one of the spaceships, he wants Jake to go with him to find his son.

Jake also meets up with Ella (played by Olivia Wilde) who thinks he can help her on her mission (which we find out later is strangely different than the rest of the town’s folk). Together with other town-folk and a tribe of Indians, they go off to find their missing relatives. When the Indians give Jake some visioning drink, he remembers who he is, why he has the weapon bracelet, and where the alien mothership is located.

The group finds the alien mothership and together, Cowboys, Indians and an Alien, they save the stolen people the invading aliens.

Craig is curiously stoic and adept in this heroic part. Ford is great as a crusty overbearing rancher. Dano is good as the whiny gutless son. Wilde is ethereal and beautiful as Ella, an alien in disguise. The whole host of 9 writers created an interesting story out of a bizarre and plausible story line circumstance. What I mean by that is, why wouldn’t aliens have invaded our planet during the 1800’s? Jon Favreau kept it interesting when this film could have fallen off course at any point in time.

Overall: This was an entertaining film made well by a fine cast and director.

Super 8

First Hit: Superb acting by the young characters added to an effective story line but some trimming would have made the whole thing work even better.

While watching a film there is one behavior which tells me I’m seeing more than needed, and that behavior is that I look away from the screen to look at other audience members. Such was the case in this film.

There were elongated scenes which needed to be clipped. One such scene was when the kids run through town to find the subterranean chamber where the alien is holed up. The military guns firing uncontrolled everywhere was totally unneeded. We already knew the dangerousness of their task.

Another such scene, and the worst in the film, was the train crash. In their attempt to make it gloriously big and realistic, they made it too big and gloriously unrealistic. Trains do not crash like this one did – ever. The proof lies in wondering how did the driver of the truck that ran into the train head-on survive? No way does that happen with all the blustery crashing and explosions after the initial impact. 

Outside of this flawed scene and a couple over long scenes, this was a wonderful film. What made it work where the young kids. Charles (played by Riley Griffiths) is obsessed in creating a zombie film for a competition against older teenagers.

His best friend Joe (played by Joel Courtney) is the make-up artist, sound man and co-producer. Joe is gratefully surprised that Charles gets Alice (played by Elle Fanning) to play the femme fatale lover of Martin (played by Gabriel Basso) who has decided to leave her to fight the zombies.

Cary (played by Ryan Lee) is crew and special effects man when they need something blown up because he is a pyromaniac of sorts. While shooting a scene at their small town railway station a military train goes by and crashes because their biology teacher Overmyer (played by Richard T. Jones) tries to ram the train with his pickup truck. This crash and the escaping of an alien is captured on their Super 8 film.

The story centers around the kids, their zombie film, and their ability to carry on the truth of the alien’s wishes.

Griffiths is extraordinary in his ability to portray a young filmmaker with vision (Orson Welles Jr.), sensitivity, and honest enough to tell his best friend about why he was upset at Joe’s and Alice’s relationship. Courtney is wonderful at being strong and sensitive to everyone around him while mourning his mother’s recent death. Fanning was genuinely amazing at her ability to be strong and cautiously vulnerable all at the same time. Like her sister, this Fanning can act. Basso was good as the lead character of the film while fighting through his own fears. Lee was funny and fully out there as his character needed to be. I just knew he wanted to blow something up. The adults were also good in their roles, but this is a film about kids and their amazing abilities. J.J. Abrams wrote the screenplay and overall it was great. It was long in sections that didn’t need to be long thereby over making his point. As a director, he has a great touch with these young actors and is to be commended for these efforts even though he let himself get carried away with  big explosions and extended scenes.

Overall: A very enjoyable and extraordinarily well-acted film even after wading through the lengthy scenes.

The Tree Of Life

First Hit: Parts of this film were amazing; the visuals were beautiful and occasionally brilliant but in the end it was unsatisfying and longer than needed.

Sitting in the theater I was incredibly impressed with the visuals put together by Terrence Malick to represent the largeness of life, the universe, nature, the human spirit and human beings.

A comparison of what this film was about would be Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey". I can and do occasionally watch that film again and again, I will not watch Malick's film again. Why? I think the point of the film got lost along the way.

I put the pieces of this film together as I watched but I realized that I could also take sections out and still have it make sense because they seemed needless. Mr. O’Brian (played by Brad Pitt) is married to Mrs. O’Brien (played by Jessica Chastain).

It is the 1950s and the rule of the day is spare the rod, spoil the child. They live in Waco Texas and have three boys. The film begins with a quote from The Book of Job, when God asks, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation… while the morning stars sang together and all the angles shouted for joy?”

This is the theme of the entire film. Are we connected? Is there a beginning and end? Is there God? The quote is quickly followed by one of many colorful visual flames which are book markers throughout the film. While there is a whispering narrator asking the large insightful questions of the film, we enter a house and see Mrs. O’Brien reading a telegraph indicating her son has died.

There is anguish, the questions persist. Why would you (God) let him die? We bullet through time and see the older son Jack (played by Sean Penn) now an architect looking at a tree, asking questions, remembering his brother. We jump back and see young Jack (played by Hunter McCracken) as a troubled young man who struggles with his father and wondering why his father is so hard on him.

In the end, it comes together where the family is together in spirit and of Love. The film does a lot of communication without dialogue and is impressive this way.

Malick uses photos from the Hubble Telescope, and film clips of the Sun, Mercury passing by it, Jupiter, Saturn and other galaxies.

Penn is good as the oldest son and architect who brings the memories together. Pitt is amazing as a 1950’s father who works hard, never seems to find his way, and believes that the world is a difficult place to make your mark. He also knows that he doesn’t work at what he loves, which is music. Chastain, is etherically beautiful and outstanding as the stay at home 50’s mother who is subservient to her husband. McCracken is outstanding as the troubled older son growing up feeling unseen, misunderstood, and sad. Malick wrote and directed this with a focus on creativity but it lacks a pacing to keep the audience fully engaged the entire time. A sharper eye on editing and snipping celluloid would have made this unforgettable.

Overall: A good and interesting film, but it needed to be more crisp in its execution.

Battle: Los Angeles

First Hit: A poorly constructed commercial for the Marines.

In 2009 “District 9” gave us an outstanding film about an extraterrestrial invasion of Earth.

In “Battle: Los Angeles” we get an aggressive alien which wants our water but, besides landing in the Pacific Ocean, there is nothing associated with water during the rest of the film.

What we have here is a story of an aging, near retired Marine named SSgt. Michael Nantz (played by Aaron Eckhart) who, on the brink of retiring, gets pulled into duty to assist in finding some civilians who are holed up in an abandoned police station. They must pull them out within a few hours because the US Government is going to carpet bomb everything in Santa Monica as a way to stop the aliens.

As you might guess, they find the civilians; a young boy named Hector (played by Bryce Cass), his father Joe (played by Michael Pena) along with others. The Marines are tentative under Nantz because it is rumored he left a group of men in Afghanistan to die with him being the only survivor.

The film is supposed to be about survival, intelligence, and redemption of character but what I found was a film which was a continuous commercial about the prowess of the U.S. Marines. Quite frankly this was the worst intention and path the film could have taken.

The screenplay was mixed and when the veterinarian and Nantz dissect an alien to figure out the weak point and the way to kill an alien's body this film dove into the ridiculous. Then of course there is even the worse sub-plot of TSgt. Elena Santos (played by Michelle Rodriguez) and Nantz figuring out how to destroy the drones by destroying the alien command centers.

Eckhart is a good actor and here he gives his best shot but his talent is wasted. Cass is alright as the hero struck child who loses his father. Pena is mediocre as the father who tries to make lessons for his son during the time of crisis. He spends his time having his son honor Marines. Rodriguez is in her standard role as tough girl carrying a gun. I would like to see if she can act as a different character in some other type of film. Christopher Bertolini wrote this story and did a poor job of combining the intent of the Aliens (our water) with the story (how great the Marines are). Jonathan Liebesman directed this and I can’t help but think he was outside his skill set as this film is too loose and needed a lot of tightening up and focus. His first mistake, letting us see the invasion; then backing up the start of the film to before the invasion. For some films this works, for this it destroyed the point of the film, the invasion.

Overall: This film was one long ineffective, boring, and lousy commercial for the U.S. Marines.