The Debt

First Hit: This is a film about how important it is to live the truth.

The film flashes between 1966 and 1997 with ease. Not many films do this without some jarring of the senses and story logic but the direction by Jon Madden on the screenplay by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman was superb.

Rachel Singer (played by both Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren), Stephen Gold (played by Marton Csokas and Tom Wilkinson) and David Peretz (played by Sam Worthington and Ciaran Hinds) are sent to find Doktor Bernhardt (played by Jesper Christensen) who was a Nazi surgeon that experimented on people in WWII.

The Jewish Israeli government sent these three to East Berlin to capture him and bring him back to Israel to try him for war crimes. In 1997’s time, Rachel and Stephen’s daughter Sarah (played by Romi Aboulafia) has just published a book on this attempt to critical acclaim, but something is brewing.

As the story goes back and forth between the two times zones, we slowly begin to figure out the real story and why there is such deep sadness and fear in the main characters.

The strength of this film is the strength it gains through interlocking segues between time, the story line, and the truth.

Chastain showed strength and mettle in her wonderful portrayal of young Singer. Mirren was extraordinary as the older Singer. Csokas was overtly powerful as young Gold while Wilkinson carried this strength pointedly as older Gold. Worthington was immensely focused and sublime as the single minded Peretz and Ciaran had minimal presence as the older Peretz. Christensen commanded screen presence as the powerful and brutish Nazi surgeon. Aboulafia was very good as Sarah. Vaughn and Goldman wrote an outstanding script. Madden wove this immensely powerful story with an adroit hand and understanding of how to create a logical and comprehensive story spanning 30 years.

Overall: A powerful film which was well made.

TrollHunter

First Hit: At first it seemed like the film might keep a suspenseful believable air about it, but as it went on it became a more unbelievable. 

If I were to select a film that this film emulated in some way, it would be Blair Witch Project.

Here, we have a reporter Thomas (played by Glenn Erland Tosterud), his sound woman Johanna (played by Johanna Morck) and his cameraman Kalle (played by Tomas Alf Larsen) attempting do a story on some mysterious farm animal deaths.

However, they find themselves following a quiet strange man named Trolljegeren (played by Otto Jespersen) who lives in a beat-up trailer, which he pulls with a beat-up Range Rover. While following him one night in the darkness of the forest, they see flashing lights over a hill. Then out of the darkness, Trolljegeren dashes by them insisting that they turn and run.

They gather behind his Range Rover, he peels back the tarp covering the equipment on the roof of the car, and exposes lights mounted on the top. As the three headed troll approaches he turns on the high intensity lights and the troll turns to stone. Then grabbing a big sledge hammer he hits the trolls frozen rock like leg and the troll crumbles to the ground.

Now the young reporters are hooked by this newsworthy event. But, Trolljegeren is a member of a secretive part of the government and the existence of trolls cannot be shared with the public. The last adventure they have together is when the attempt to find and corral a super troll in the far north.

 Jespersen is better in the first part of the film when he is more illusive. Tosterud is OK as the lead reporter. Morck is good as the female crewmember with the right amount of bravado and fear expressions. Larsen is off camera most of the time, but displays a fair amount of fear. Andre Ovredal wrote and directed this film and made this unbelievable story almost work.

 Overall: This film started better than it ended but it was fun to watch and I was very curious as to how trolls would be expressed on film.

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.

Source Code

First Hit: I liked it because it required me to think and made me wonder if it was possible.

What the film lacked was a strong, clear, and viable explanation for the ability to program one person into another person’s body to replay events that have already happened.

In a 1993 film called “Brainstorm” scientists were able to record someone’s experiences onto a form of video tape. Then a completely different person could put on a specifically designed headset, play back this recorded experience and the wearer would have the same experience that was recorded.

This bit of new technology seemed plausible because the film took some time to explain how it worked to the audience. In "Source Code" the ball is dropped here by either the actor playing Dr. Rutledge (played by Jeffrey Wright), the scientist who invents this “Source Code” phenomenon, or by poor scripting. What I think I heard was; that when a human dies there is a 8 minute segment of experiences still active in the brain (like RAM) and if tapped into (through the use of electrodes and “Source Code”) within a short period of time after their death, another person, who is compatible in physical characteristics, can experience the dead person’s last 8 minutes.

The interesting thing is that they are only renting the body, because the person who is being sent in is the conscious one. OK, I tried and I’ll think about it some more but I think it goes something like that. In this film Captain Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a helicopter pilot only being brain alive, wakes up on a train.

Christina Warren (played by Michelle Monaghan) is sitting across from him and talking to him. He is perplexed about what she is saying. He's thinking; who are you? Why am I on this train? He's asking these questions because his last memory is being a helicopter pilot on a mission in Afghanistan. He’s feeling nauseous goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror only to find the body and face he's looking at isn’t his; it's somebody else’s.

Confused he makes his way back to the train car with Christina and then a bomb goes off and he is blown up with everyone else on the train. He wakes up in a small metal capsule, which I took as being the helicopter wreckage he died in (this is his last known living experience).

Captain Colleen Goodwin (played by Vera Farmiga) appears on a small video screen in front of him asking him what he learned. “Did you find the bomb?” “Did you find the bomber?” Stevens answers negatively and starts asking about what is going on. Who is in charge? What happened? Coldly Goodwin tells him he’s got to find the bomb and bomber quickly so that other lives will be saved. She turns to an assistant and tells him to recharge and bingo, Stevens is back on the same train at the same time with the same sequence of events. He sets his timer on his watch for 8 minutes and begins to try to do the job Goodwin told him to do.

He gets blown up again and again until he finds the bomb and then starts to make caring connections with Christina (who calls him by Sean Fentress - the name of the guy whose body he’s replacing). Each time the train blows up he goes back to his capsule as Stevens. He questions Goodwin and Dr. Rutledge attempting to find out more about how he is able to be in another place and time than what he knows was his last memory as Stevens. Goodwin tries to tell him more and Wright, who comes off as arrogant and self-serving, tries to explain his invention.

In the end, Stevens does complete the mission, Goodwin gives Stevens his wish, and people are saved.

Gyllenhaal is very good at giving us both an intelligent dutiful officer doing his duty as well as having compassion for Warren and others on the train and wanting to resolve an issue with his father. Monaghan is beautifully engaging and provides just the right amount of willingness and openness to understand what is going on. Farmiga is really good as the duty constrained officer who is working for an arrogant but bright boss. Wright played an either poorly written character or he poorly acted the character and I don’t know which. But this was the weakest part of the film. Ben Ripley wrote the script and I’m not sure if he did a good job and the explanation was poorly acted or if it was just one part of the script that was poorly written. However, the rest of the script was great. Duncan Jones did a great job of engaging the audience, getting Gyllenhaal to slowly realize what was going on and to make this film compelling about the possibility of being yourself in someone else’s body.

Overall: I enjoyed this film and although I’m not sure the logic hung together well with the given explanations; overall it was well done and interesting.

Limitless

First Hit: The concept is very interesting and the execution was a little uneven.

The opening camera sequence is one long camera moving shot which travels down streets, through cars through signs, walls and finally into a brain where we see a rendition of a brain cell firing.

This opening sequence provides a great foundation as to the speed and vision in which this film is going to move. Eddie Morra (played by Bradley Cooper) is attempting to be a writer, has some great ideas, has an advance, but cannot get anything on to paper.

He’s depressed, looks almost homeless in appearance, and in an opening scene his girlfriend Lindy (played by Abbie Cornish) is dumping him because the relationship is no longer working. He runs into his former drug dealing brother in-law Vernon (played by Johnny Whitworth) who turns him on to a pill. He says this pill will allow him to use 100% of his brain instead of the 10% we normally use.

In a fit of depression and hopelessness he takes the pill. In a matter of 30 minutes he starts being everything he can be. Writes most of his book, cleans his house, and gets his act together. The next day he feels the way he felt before he took the pill so he seeks out Vernon for more pills. Vernon sends him on an errand and when Eddie returns Vernon is dead and his apartment is trashed out because someone was looking for something, the pills.

Eddie figures out where the pills are and takes them. He begins taking them regularly and becomes an innovative investor. He ends up getting the attention of a powerful investor named Carl Van Loon (played by Robert De Niro). 

Van Loon has him assist in creating a takeover deal of a financial rival who, as we discover, is also using the pills but has run out. The pills have a side-effect which includes physical debilitation, reverting to a prior limited way of thinking, and death.

Cooper is very good as Morra. He has the ability to come off as very intelligent as well as grounded at the same time. Cornish has a limited role but is solid as Eddie’s girlfriend. De Niro is pretty good as the high level financier who gives Eddie a chance for success. Leslie Dixon wrote the screen play and although it was overdone at times, it worked in the end. Neil Burger directed this film with some effective shots however, at times it felt a little lost and could have been tightened up.

Overall: Conceptually this was a very good film and in execution it was good but not great.