A Hidden Life

First Hit: A long and beautifully shot study about how one man wouldn’t compromise his beliefs.

Terrence Malick creates and makes statements in his films. Often, the films are long, always beautifully shot, and require the audience to think about the point he’s making.

In this movie, the focus is on living and acting on your beliefs. Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl) was profoundly religious and had a personal relationship with his idea of God,  Christ, and what was right and wrong. He was faithful to the Catholic church in his tiny Austrian hillside village, called St. Radegund. As part of his commitment to the church performed duties at the church almost every day.

Married to Franziska, Fani (Valerie Pachner), they began their life together, farming and then having two children. They farmed their land by hand and were an integral part of their small community. During harvest season, the community worked together to bring in and store the harvested crops. The town felt like it was a long way from the war that Hitler was bringing to the world. However, when the war started turning against Hitler, the army drafted all eligible men to serve the Third Reich. This included Franz.

A requirement for serving the German Army was to sign a pledge of allegiance to Hitler and the German government. Franz couldn’t do this. He could not live with himself if he signed something that was against what he believed, and after the army attempted to persuade him with physical and verbal abuse, they threw him in jail. The German officers even solicited the assistance of his local priest to convince him to sign the oath of loyalty. In essence, the priest was saying that God would overlook his signing the document to save his own life and the life of his family.

He couldn’t and wouldn’t sign the oath and therefore spent years in jail. But Franz wasn’t the only one who paid the price, so did Fani. In scenes back in the village, Fani and the girls are depicted being shunned by almost everyone in the village because her husband Franz was giving their town a bad name in the eyes of ruling Germany.

The film spends time going back and forth between Franz in prison being harassed and beaten into signing a loyalty oath and the village where Fani and the girls were continuing to be harassed by the people in her town.

The immense pressure building up in Franz didn’t break him down and his wife, despite the immense movement to ostracize her and the girls, continued to support him and his decision despite what she was going through.

This film shows the cruelty of people when someone stands up for their beliefs. Because the people, including the priest, are unwilling to stand for their true feelings, they make Franz and Fani the enemy.

The physical beauty of the area of the village was well captured by the cinematographer. The integration of archival footage of Adolf Hitler and the huge parades he commanded was well done.

Diehl was terrific as Franz. His ability to show his internal struggle in a contained, in prison, way was perfect. Pacher was sublime. Her looks of intensity and passion towards other characters , amazing. Michael Nyqvist’s performance as the local Bishop that tried to persuade Franz to sign the document was excellent. Alexander Radszun’s performance as the judge that sentenced Franz to death was very good. You could see that he understood and struggled but had to follow his own loyalty oath. Malick wrote a script that was too long. I think the film could have had a stronger impact if it was more crisp in its presentation.

Overall: Long and pretty, it needed to be tightened up to make its point even stronger.

Uncut Gems

First Hit: A wild ride with a Jewish, gem selling, obsessive gambler.

This film starts oddly because we move between the inside of a large black opal to the colon of gem and watch seller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). Eerily some of the camera images reflect the similarity between both, and I guess that was the point.

We follow Howard on the streets of New York, gregariously saying “hello” to many individuals he comes across as he makes his way to his store through the double door security system these small gem sellers use. I want to note that these doors become part of the story. Getting buzzed in by his beautiful assistant and girlfriend Julia (Julia Fox), he heads to his office in a very anxious, nervous way.

The one characteristic behavior Howard displays throughout the film is one of being chased, corralled, and almost being caught but finding a way to talk himself out of being beaten up or killed each time. This is the ride we are on with Howard throughout the film.

As a gambler that owes his brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) over $100K, and other people money from his sports gambling losses, we see him in sequences of pawning stuff, giving people watches as collateral, and making wild, complex sports bets.

Arriving at his desk in an early scene, he receives a Styrofoam box, which has him very excited. Opening the box, there are two fish, he squeezes each of them looking to feel something. We know this is an illicit shipment of something. He finally cuts one open to reveal the sizeable uncut opal we saw, and were inside of, in the opening sequence.

His plan is to auction the opal off for nearly a million dollars, and it will free him from the money he owes to bookies and to finalize the divorce his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) while providing for his three kids, and make his girlfriend happy.

Enter Kevin Garnett, the basketball player. He’s brought to Howard’s store because of their mutual friend “The Weekend” (The Weekend) wanted Howard to do business with Kevin. Howard shows him some of the stuff in the store and in a moment of pride, shows him the uncut opal. Kevin is mesmerized by the opal and asks to take it for a night. Reluctantly, Howard agrees if Kevin gives up his Boston Celtics championship ring as collateral. Thinking he can get away with it, Howard pawns Kevin’s ring to make a quick bet hoping to capitalize a big win and pay everyone back, get the ring out of hock, auction the stone, make a bunch of money and live a happy fulfilled life with his girlfriend.

However, we know compulsive gamblers rarely finish first, and the film follows this big setup until its end.

The scenes where Howard is having difficult conversations with his wife, bookies, or employees, are amazing and probably not easy to do. He seems to never hear what the other person is saying and continues the conversation as if the person whom he’s speaking with understood and agreed with what he has said. This is rarely the case and so there are many scenes where people are merely talking over each other. Listening to these two different dialogues and attempting to follow both conversations during a shouting session was both amusing and challenging.

I thought the scenes were very well set up in that they seemed to always have an edge that everything was going to come off the rails any minute. There was a franticness in everything on the screen that kept the film moving along at a rapid clip despite its 135-minute running time.

Sandler was perfect for this role, and I could easily see why the Safdie brothers wanted him for the part. Like the film “Punch Drunk Love,” Sandler can bring a desperate dark edge to his characters and make it totally believable. Here the monster is his addiction to the big win. Maybe an Oscar-worthy performance. Garnett was terrific as himself. That might sound funny, but often sports stars are awkward when being filmed, but Kevin was dynamite. The Weekend was perfect as the sly, trying-to-make-a-buck, go-between. Two scenes stood out; one in Howard’s office when The Weekend discovers Howard has been selling, hawking, or giving away the watches that he’s stored in Howards safe. The other scene that stood out was in the nightclub when Howard confronts The Weekend about the opal. Fox was excellent as Howard’s lover. The scenes in the apartment and in the Vegas betting room were well done and it’s the latter where she stood out. Menzel played Howard’s wife as a sarcastic person who is disengaged from her relationship with her husband. The look on her face when she opened their Mercedes trunk with Howard inside was priceless. Bogosian was outstanding as Howard’s brother-in-law and loan shark bank. Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, and Josh Safdie wrote an engaging script. But it was the directing and acting of Sandler and the rest of the team that made this film work.

Overall: This film left me with mixed feelings, but I loved the story and the wild ride.

Little Women

First Hit: I liked the theme of women being strong and independent and disliked the jarring time shifts.

I’ve made no bones about Saoirse Ronan is one of the very best actors in her generation and in film today. Here as Jo March, the oldest of the four sisters, she is the focus of this story and therefore, we see this story through her eyes.

She has three sisters Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Each of the sisters has talent. Meg is an actress and in early scenes, she and her sisters are shown making a play together and Meg has the lead role. Amy is a painter and she aspires to be the best and ultimate painter alive. Beth is the youngest, is shy and more unassuming, but plays piano like she was born with one in her soul.

The girls are being raised by their mother, Marmee (Laura Dern). She’s alone as her husband, and the girl’s dad is away fighting the civil war. They live in a large home but because the father is away and cannot provide for them, money is tight which is part of the drive for some of the girls, especially Jo, to provide for themselves as they get older. They don’t want to be dependent on men.

As a strong independent young woman, Jo wants to make her living and livelihood from the stories she writes. She thinks the way women are treated and the limits put on women to be independent is absurd. There are numerous scenes where this plays out. One such scene is when she’s attempting to sell a story and the publisher/editor tells her the girl in the story has to marry and be happy in the end; that’s the only way people will accept the story. This infuriates Jo.

Jo is also stubborn, as shown in a couple of brief scenes. One such scene is when she is in New York to make her living as a writer, meets a handsome writing professor, and asks him to honestly critique her work. He thoughtfully does this, and the criticism stings, so she calls him inept and storms out of the room, blaming him for lack of thoughtfulness.

There are many acts where her feminism and stubbornness play out, and they are wonderfully done.

Meg is different in that she wants to marry. She wants to create a household with children. This is a source of disappointment for Jo; however, it also is a way for Jo to see and accept that people are different from her.

Amy is like Jo in many ways in that she wants to be the best and known for being the best. However, in a scene of self-actualization, she realizes that her perfectionist painting technique is outstanding, but she doesn’t create anything unique and probably will never be the painter she envisioned herself to be. I really liked this about Amy because the actualization was subtle yet very clear and it came through in her expression.

Beth was quiet and meekest of the sisters; however, her piano playing was extraordinary. Her weakness was that she didn’t like playing in front of anyone. She was also the weakest of the sisters physically and we watch her demise through catching scarlet fever.

All this to say, I loved each of the sister’s stories. I thought each of them was superbly acted as well. What hurt this film was the sometimes-jarring way we segued into other time frames. Watching a particular segment of a sister’s story and then boom, we find ourselves with that person in some different storyline. Sometimes it made sense and other times it was too obscure at the time to be an addition to the story or the particular sister. With the type of time jumps this film presents it is difficult to tell if they were future or past events because the actors never looked older or younger in the scenes. I just don’t think the audience needs to be trying to figure out when the previous scene happened in the overall storyline.

One particular scene when Jo cut her hair for money for the family, we see her in subsequent stages with long or short hair but the storyline at one point meant that she should have had short hair but it was long and bunched up in the back.

It also appeared that men were only used as place holders and role players to propel the sister’s stories, and this isn’t a bad thing and it came across as a bit too obvious.

Ronan was powerful as Jo. The fault I found with the film was the time jumps that diminished the storyline and had nothing to do with her performance. Watson was wonderfully elegant yet showed a side of fun and enthusiasm as well. The scene where part of her hair gets burnt off and later the vulnerable elegance of her coming down the stairs in a coming-out event showed the breadth of her abilities in this role. Pugh was the surprising actor for me. She was sublime in this role, and when she was on the screen, her look alone commanded you watch her. The moment that Amy realizes she won’t be a famous painter was genuinely inspirational. Scanlen was beautiful as the meekest of the sisters although she harbored some of the biggest talents in the family. Dern was terrific as the mother who’s compassion for others rang throughout the movie. I loved her scene with Jo when discussing patience and anger. Timothee Chalamet as Theodore ‘Laurie’ Laurence was sharp. As the rich boy neighbor who had fallen in love with Jo because of her strength and independence, he was sufficiently arrogant, boisterous, and kind. Chris Cooper as Laurie’s father Mr. Laurence, was excellent. His thoughtful kindness as the rich neighbor was well placed throughout the film. Meryl Street gave an outstanding and funny performance as the arrogant, very wealthy Aunt to the sisters. Her well placed and pointed jabs at women having careers were perfect. Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this film. I didn’t like her choice to make time jumps without giving the audience clues about the past and future. The actors never really looked different in these time sequences and that was bothersome. Otherwise, she got excellent performances from the actors and the sets and scenes were beautifully filmed.

Overall: A terrific film interrupted by time jumps that caused confusion.

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

First Hit: In the end, it was satisfying and that’s all that mattered.

I was one of those guys standing in line the first day that the original “Star Wars” film, later subtitled “Episode IV – A New Hope,” was released (1977). The moment the words “Star Wars” came on the screen, followed by the storyline scrolling up and fading into deep space, and lastly, the cruiser coming in overhead, I was hooked.

I liked some of the subsequent films. The prequels were a mixed bag, as were the sequels. Yesterday the final movie, number nine, was viewed, and I was happy I saw the ending to the film that started it all some forty-two years ago.

This film brought in many of the old characters in different scenes signaling this saga of stories’ conclusion. Most of these scenes worked well, but some did not.

The highlights included how they intertwined Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) stored archival footage quite effectively into this story. Because of Fisher’s passing, she had a more significant part than I would have imagined. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), was terrific and became the Jedi teacher, just like his teacher Obi-Wan, was to him. Luke gave Rey (Daisy Ridley) her final lessons to become a true Jedi Knight and with that lesson, the sword (OK, lightsaber) was passed to her.

Her rival and representing the dark side, as Darth Vader once did to Luke, was a continuation of the previous film and well played by Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. The story also included small scenes with Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), who once owned the Millennium Falcon before he lost it in a poker match to Hans Solo (Harrison Ford) and his sidekick Chewbacca.

However, it was Harrison Ford’s addition that didn’t work as well. His talk with Kylo seemed odd because of his casual GQ attire look didn’t seem to fit the Hans of the past. Despite this, I appreciated the closure these additions provided.

The goal of this story was the defeat of the dark side still headed up by Emperor Palpatine. Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) who was secretly managing the demise of the Resistance with the rest of the Siths from their planet Exegol. One of the twists - aren’t there always twists in a Star Wars film, was that Rey was Palpatine’s granddaughter. Palpatine was hoping to turn Rey to the dark side and together with Kylo, they would rule the universe and everything in it.

Heading up the Resistance’s battle against the dark side was Rey, Finn (John Boyega), and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), who had inherited the Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca after Hans death in the previous story. Together they pulled all the outliers of the resistance to do one final battle against the dark side.

The scenes were well done, and the photography and special effects were A-1. The first 2/3rds of the film was a mishmash of battles and strategy sessions attempting to set up the final 1/3rd. The last section built up in a predictable yet effective way.

We know who’s going to win this battle of light and dark, but there was enough there to make one wonder along the way. It’s enough to keep you in your seat when the full-screen cinematography throws up images that touch your joy, curiosity, and memories of days gone by.

Ridley is strong in this role. I never warmed to her in the previous two films, but as this one moved along I started to accept her as the Jedi Knight savior and leader of the Resistance. Driver was excellent as Kylo. He had immediately picked up where Vader left off and even with his helmet off, Kylo’s face scar says it all. Isaac isn’t Ford. And to create a new captain of the Falcon is a significant role to jump into. Ford had his way, and eventually, I bought into Isaac’s version of the Millennium Falcon’s captain. Boyega’s part was good but his overall role seemed to be minor in the scope of things. Williams was okay as Lando, and there was one scene in which his charm was at the level it was when we were first introduced to him. Ford’s role seemed just a bit out of place and almost like an add-on. Hamill’s character was well done and I liked the inclusion. Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams wrote a satisfying finale to this nine-film saga. J.J. Abrams also directed this effort and was able to put a final period at the end of this well-intentioned set of stories.

Overall: I’m more glad that sad that this saga is over because at least it ended strong.

Bombshell

First Hit: I thoroughly enjoyed the acting and how this story shines a light on a behavior that was kept under wraps for far too long.

This is a story about the pain, degradation, and humiliation caused by the sexual abuse of women by the President of FOX News, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) was the woman who sat between two men in the morning “Fox and Friends” television program. She put up with the snide and overly complimentary comments by her co-hosts and Ailes himself. As an integral part of the FOX News team, Carlson wanted to be seen as a peer and not a sexual object to be ridiculed. Her desire was to have her own show where she could call the shots. Over the years, she’d had many encounters with Ailes, many of them sexually charged and suggestive, but as a good reporter, she documented their meetings.

As she got older, Ailes wanted fresher and younger faces on the morning program, so he gave her a much-desired show of her own. However, it was placed it in the small audience afternoon time slot. However, that did not shy her away from doing some controversial stories, like older women without makeup show. This show, in particular, struck Ailes the wrong way, and we see him railing at Carlson and ended up not renewing her contract.

Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) was an up and comer in the news organization. And we slowly begin to learn, she also had sexually charged encounters with Ailes.  However, Ailes did support her challenging Donald Trump on the campaign trail and at the debate. She hated becoming the story. The story shows how becoming the story opened her up to changing how she needed to work.

Then there is the story about the young woman, a conservative FOX employee, who wanted to be on air. Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) was a charger and aggressively sought out a way to speak to the man in charge, Ailes. The film shows their one on one meetings and Ailes propositioning her about how she could get to the top. The scene when Ailes asks her to stand, twirl, and hike up her skirt so he could see her legs were incredibly humiliating.

The movie cuts quickly from scene to scene and assaults you just as the news stories on television do from time to time. Scenes do not languish in this movie but are weaved together to create an account about how one woman Carlson decided to stand up to Ailes by suing him personally in hopes that others would join her.

Kidman was terrific as Carlson. Her internal strength to bring on a lawsuit was well presented. Theron was Megyn Kelly. The use of archival footage of Kelly and then segueing into scenes with Theron was seamless. It was a dominant performance. Robbie, as Pospisil, was sublime. I loved how she was able to show wide-eyed wonder, wanting to please, and desire to be noticed by senior management, then turn on a dime and show complete humiliation. Robbie’s ability to explain all this in one scene and still give the audience a cohesive character was flawless. Lithgow was perfect as the angry slimeball Ailes. His displays of anger and indignancy were well-founded in his being caught being a predator. Allison Janney as Susan Estrich, Ailes's lawyer, was excellent. Kate McKinnon as Jess Carr, a co-worker of Pospisil on “The O’Reilly Factor,” was perfect. She hid that she was a gay liberal working for Fox because it was the only job she could get. Charles Randolph wrote a pointed and robust script. Jay Roach did an excellent job of portraying the slow shifting tide at Fox News.

Overall: The event documented in this story helped to give wings to the “me too” movement.