The Beguiled

Overall:  This film was a slow-moving beast that was ultimately unsatisfying.

With a cast consisting of Nicole Kidman (as Miss Martha), Colin Farrell (as Corporal McBurney), Kirsten Dunst (as Edwina), Elle Fanning (as Alicia) and Oona Laurence (as Amy) and being directed by a Sofia Coppola, you’d hope to see a strong interesting film.

However, I was bored through most of it as it languished in the dark moody scenes both inside and outside the home where the girls lived.

The basic story is that Miss Martha runs a girls home and school in her large southern styled columned mansion. The civil war is going on around her home, but she does her best to keep the home going and girls shielded from the outside strife. One day, when Amy is collecting mushrooms, she finds an injured Corporal McBurney. Carrying him back to the home Martha puts him in a locked room and fixes his wound. His presence changes the tone of the home because the girls start discussing him and do little things to get noticed by him.

The film takes forever to move the story along and finally the corporal shows his lusty stripes by sweet talking Martha, tells Edwina to run away with him, and gets caught in Alicia’s bed by Edwina. As the corporal attempts to calm Edwina down she pushes him down the stairs and reopens his leg wound.

Martha determines she has to cut it leg off. When McBurney wakes up to find his leg missing he freaks out and goes on a rampage. Using guile and pressure on Alicia, gets out of the locked room and takes control of the home by using Martha’s gun.

Martha and the girls decide they must do something to protect themselves and find a way to get rid of the corporal.

Kidman was good as the head of the home. However, the script and direction let her down. Farrell was good as Corporal McBurney but the story let the audience down as to how he ended up in the woods and as to what his motivation was for seducing all the women. Dunst was strong as the pretty and dour Edwina but I wondered why McBurney selected her as the one he wanted to love and run away with. It didn’t make much sense. Fanning was very good as the young girl wanting to be an adult and experience more in life. Laurence was excellent as the young Amy whose kind compassionate heart was put to the test. Albert Maltz wrote an uninteresting script from a very interesting novel. Coppola had a vision but it was an uninteresting one and the result lacked reason and engagement unlike one of her other efforts “Lost in Translation.”

Overall:  This film was painful to watch as the two women sitting down the aisle would attest to by their comments while the film played on.

Megan Leavey

First Hit: I was fully engaged emotionally with this film and maybe it's because I have a dog and we're close.

Megan Leavey’s story is a true one and I appreciated seeing the real Rex and Megan in the final credits.

This story is about a young lost girl who finds love and a path through life by joining the US Marines and becoming a dog handler. Megan (Kate Mara) perfectly portrays a life not worth living. She is in constant dispute with her mother Jackie (Edie Falco) who just seems clueless about her daughter’s life and what she’s hurting from. Megan also hates her job and has recently lost her closest friend.

There’s a great scene in this film that emphasizes the struggle between Jackie and Megan. Jackie is complaining about her former husband Bob (Bradley Whitford) not giving her the $2,000 he owes her, and Megan’s retort points out that Jackie slept with Bob’s best friend Jim (Will Patton) so Megan doesn’t think Bob owns her mother anything.

Early on she drinks herself out of a job she hates, and drinking gets her in trouble in the Marines as well when she gets caught peeing next to the base provost’s home. Making wrong decisions are her trademark, but this latter one gets her duty cleaning up the kennel. And with most detrimental things in life, there are opportunities as well and Megan suddenly realizes she wants to be a dog handler.

The film takes us through the process and gives the audience a clear picture of how unique these dogs and their handlers are. After Megan meets Rex (her German Shepard), she begins to open up and feels caring and love towards something for the first time in a long time. There are wonderful touching realistic moments that are nicely captured.

Although these dog teams are not well loved by other ground troops and the enemy really dislikes them, they provide a valuable service and when they discover hidden explosives they are beloved.

The movie follows Megan to Iraq where she and Rex are assigned missions. Rex performs perfectly and bravely because Megan performs in the same way, they are connected. They are a team and become inseparable. However, after they both receive injuries, the expectation is that Megan will not re-enlist and Rex will be retired. She wants to adopt Rex but a very unmindful Marine Vet says Rex is unadoptable.

With Megan’s heart broken, she starts to slip away into her previous “I give up” life. However, her dad gives her a talk that highlights her strength and what she learned by being a Marine.

Mara is fantastic. I really felt her despair early in the film and later when Rex was re-assigned to another handler. I also bought her growth as she found strength to tackle the issues or challenges in front of her. Falco was strong has her mother who seemed clueless as to her own behavior and actions towards her daughter. The café scene when she asks about who gets how much money if she happens to die in Iraq was priceless and perfect. Whitford was wonderful as her quiet unassuming father. Common as Gunnery Martin was really good and he’s shown that he's become a strong actor. Ramon Rodriguez as fellow handler Matt Morales was wonderful. I loved his lightheartedness and open caring for both his animal and Megan. Pamela Gray and Annie Mumolo wrote a sensitive and strong screenplay. Gabriela Cowperthwaite did a great job of presenting this emotional strong story.

Overall:  I cried numerous times during this film, which told me it worked.

Land of Mind (Under Sandet)

First Hit:  An excellent, amazingly strong and difficult story to watch.

The Germans planted more than 2,000,000 mines on Denmark beaches in anticipation of an Allied landing. Upon the ending of the war, the Danish were given about 2,000 German, mostly young teen-age prisoners to find and diffuse these mines. Given the atrocities of the Germans, there is no love lost between these two countries or the people.

The first scene is a setup to this point because we see Sgt. Carl Rasmussen (Roland Moller) watching German prisoners walk down a Danish road, when he spies one carrying a Danish flag. He gets up out of his jeep and beats this man mercilessly. Any of the other prisoners eyeballing him doing this, get beat as well.

A short time later he’s assigned about 16 of these young inexperienced boys to manually find, dig up, and defuse 45,000 mines on a section of beach. They are told, if they do this they will get to go home.

The film goes to long lengths to show the high level of animosity the Dane’s have for these Germans. The Germans ruined their country and the Danes expect them to fix what they can before they leave or get killed, either outcome is OK with the Danes.

As they start clearing the beach, there are accidents and mines go off and people hurt. For me, the most difficult part of watching this film was waiting for the inevitable to happen. There were times I held my hand up to my eyes in anticipation of an explosion. However, the filmmaker and director didn’t use the tried and tested “third” time for the accident, which added to the intensity of the film.

At some point, Rasmussen begins to care about these innocent young boys and goes out to find them food. He develops and respectful friendship with Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hoffmann) who is enterprising, resourceful, and a natural born leader of these German youth. One of the more difficult parts for Rasmussen is the man he works for, Lieutenant Ebbe (Mikkel Folsgaard), who wants Rasmussen to be very hard line and mean to these young German men they depend on to defuse the mines.

The cinematography of this film is extraordinary. The pacing, growth and changes in all the characters is fantastic. The beautiful starkness of the Danish coastline was remarkable as the setting. The questions this film creates are perfect. Questions like, is it better to befriend the Germans to get the job done better? Or is it better to treat them like slaves and dirt to support their anger? There are interesting questions brought up by this film and I enjoyed having them dance through my mind as I watched this strong well-done film.

Moller was perfect and captivating as the Sgt. in charge of these lost youth. Folsgaard was perfect as the young, arrogant and single-minded Lieutenant. Hoffmann was sublime as the young German soldier who was a natural born leader. Laura Bo as Karen, the local woman whose farm they worked near, was wonderful. Her anger towards the Germans was perfect as was her gratefulness for them saving her daughter. All of the German soldier cast were perfect, especially Emil and Oskar Belton as twins Ernst and Werner Lessner who embodied both trust and angst in their path moving forward. Martin Zandvliet wrote and directed this film with a perfect eye and feel for the time and the internal struggles for all the characters.

Overall:  This was one of the best films I’ve seen in the past year. It deserved its 2016 nomination for Best Foreign Film.

Bitter Harvest

First Hit:  This film was a bitter pill to swallow let alone watch.

It is incredibly sad when the Holodomora, a hugely historical event of the last 100 years, gets such a milquetoast treatment. Russia admits that between this event of starvation, birth deaths, and war killed between 7 and 12 million Ukrainians.

The film tries to tell this story through a love affair and romance between Yuri (Max Irons) and Natalka (Samantha Barks). One unfortunate circumstance of this film is that there was little believable chemistry between these two. The film portrays her as damaged because of her family’s dynamics and him as a non-warrior because he’s a talented artist. When Russia decides it needs all the grain and riches in the Ukraine because Russia is starving and struggling to survive, Stalin orders his troops to take everything of value in the country by force.

By taking the food, their religious icons, and anything of value, the Ukrainians are starved to death. Unfortunately, the film’s treatment of this horrific event, and the lack of providing clarity around the depth of this historical precedence, turned me off. It might have worked if the love story was well done and a key driver, but it wasn’t. It was sort of a mishmash and smattering of scenes that just didn’t add up to telling this story.

One of the stories has Yuri’s grandfather Ivan (Terrance Stamp), once a famous war leader, leading their village’s resistance to the Russian occupiers by organizing the Ukrainian men. Another story is Yuri goes to Kiev to become an artist, but finding out how bad it is at home he stages, with friends, revolutionary talks in Kiev and gets jailed for his association with Ukraine. You have a story of his wife and villagers being pressed into subservience, including Natalka earning favor for her family by giving her body to a Russian leader.

Even the story of Yuri evolving to a warrior, breaking out of a Russian prison, and coming back to his home village lacked the kind of dynamics to make it work. None of the stories have enough oomph to make it all work.

Irons is flat as Yuri. I never bought him as an artist or revolutionary warrior. Barks was better in her role, but the continual dark scenes and lack of a consistent storyline hurt her part in the film. Stamp looked tired and bored as Ivan. His natural commanding presence was wasted and it seemed as if he knew this while being filmed. Richard Bachynsky Hoover wrote a weak script, especially if he wanted to share this horrific historical event with the world. George Mendeluk probably followed the script and story by Hoover, but I think he probably contributed to this mess.

Overall:  This horrible story was hidden from the world when it took place and as the first film to try to tell this story, it failed.

Allied

First Hit:  Although interesting and at times good, the acting and/or storyline didn’t really hold up well for the life of the film.

This WWII based film is about two agents Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) who are charged with assassinating the German Ambassador to Morocco. Although he’s Canadian and she’s European when they meet they must act like they're married and that he’s been in Paris working and is finally taking a little time off to visit his wife in Morocco. They meet for the first time in a restaurant in front of her friends and it goes off well, with everyone believing they were a couple.

The film spends a nice amount of time letting the audience see them learn about each other. They each learn about the other's skill sets including their marksmanship. Nearing the time for the party where they expect to assassinate the Ambassador, they head out to the desert. After gazing out across the massive sand dunes, back in the car they consummate their relationship with lovemaking.

I bring this up because this scene was one of the best scenes in this film and one of the best, in a car lovemaking scenes, I’ve ever witnessed. The use of a revolving camera and the wind and sand swirling around the car in an ever-rising intensity. It was very effective and it sealed their relationship.

After the job, they head to England together with plans to marry. However, there are complications and that is where the film feels a bit forced. The head of “V” tells him that they think that his wife Marianne is a spy for Germany and that she took the identity of the real Marianne Beausejour.

The remaining part of the film is about Max trying to find out if this story is true or not. In doing so he breaks military rules. There are times that following Max is enjoyable and interesting and other times where it was either overkill or I didn’t believe the character’s (and actor) actions.

Lots of the period items were wonderfully well done, but interestingly I felt that the main actor’s clothing was too well done. It had the feeling of being staged.

Pitt was good, but it was not great by any stretch. Cotillard was one of the best things about this film. She was consistently strong and created an interesting role. Steven Knight wrote a good screenplay and there was some interesting banter and dialogue between the main characters. Robert Zemeckis directed this film and it felt very old style in the way it was presented. Some of the scenes seemed a bit too staged for my liking. In the end, the film didn't seem to know what it wanted to be, was it  Drama, Suspense, Thriller, Romance, or Action?

Overall:  It was engaging most of the time, but quickly left my consciousness after leaving the theater.