Lady Bird

Plot: Rebelous high schooler Lady Bird (Saorse Ronan) goes through a couple boyfriends and girlfriends on the way to her dream college. She butts heads with her Mom (Laurie Metcalf) as she goes through Senior year, picks a college, gets a summer job, and goes to prom. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: I really thought this was a biopic of President Johnson's wife Lady Bird, just like they made Jackie last year. I was surprised and confused that it was set in 2002. Unexpectedly, it is about another girl named Lady Bird.

This one lives lower middle-class and somewhat rebellious life in a Catholic high school, and has all the problems of regular high school girls, though more rebellious and well-read than most.

Everyone has to love the acting, because it is wonderful. It is a seminar in emoting. Saorse's Lady Bird is fun, quirky, and always likable. The script is strong, but not overwrought like an Aaron Sorkin movie. It's never boring.

 I liked it, and it is staying with me like a thoughtful movie should. 

Cast: Saorse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothee Chalamet, Lucas Hedges

Directed and written by: Greta Gerwig, who grew up in Sacramento. She said she was much more conventional -- though we know she was a drama kid. 

The Music: A variety of pop songs. I liked the oldie from the Monkees, As We go Along. Other highlights are The Crossroads by Bone Thugs and Harmoney, and Little of Your Love by Haim. 

The Visuals: Mostly people talking. I liked the dance scene at the end. 

Rating: 3.5 stars: You have to love the acting. It is a feel good story. Not sure it has a message, and that keeps this from being 4 stars. (4 star dramas should be more than just character studies, see Marshall.)

More: Writer/director Gerwig says the "concept of home [...] only comes into focus as it is receding." I think that is true.

Even More: We saw this because it is an Oscar movie. It is not "Classic" enough for best picture.

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I, Tonya

Plot: The story of Olympic skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie), who is infamous for the attack on  rival Nancy Kerrigan prior to the 1994 Olympic trials. It is told in flashback by actors playing older versions of the characters including Tonya's mother LaVonna (Allison Janney), husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan), and low-friend Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser.)  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: I, Tonya a bio-pic telling Tonya's story before deep-diving into the kneecapping incident on rival Nancy Kerrigan. It is interesting because of the strange characters especially Tonya's bitter and irritable mother LaVonna, played wonderfully by Allison Janney. The drama turns on delusional friend Shawn who is wonderfully played by Hauser. Instead of playing a prank, Shawn decides to play James Bond. Shawn is the pathetic center of the plot. The emotional center is LaVonna, Tonya's mom. She is mean, bitter, and selfish. Her treatment of Tonya makes us sympathetic for Tonya. It helps explain why Tonya stays in an abusive relationship with Jeff.

Writer Rogers blames Harding's working class origins as the real source of the problem. Initially, he runs down the other skaters as too privileged, and later blue-collar American culture is blamed for poor sportsmanship and ineptitude. In reality there are many blue collar Americans with strong character and many upper class villains.

In these #MeToo times, the abuse that Tonya received from fruitcake husband Jeff deserves extra comment. Is poverty an excuse for domestic violence? Tonya's life reminds me the abuse by gymnastics doctor Larry Nasser.

It is humorous to think of Shawn and LaVonna as a hopeless losers, and that serves the interest of the plot. I think Shawn was mentally-ill, and it stops being funny when you think about it too much. He does think he is secret agent after all. LaVonna was probably an alcoholic.

Where are we after it all? Entertained by the acting. Impressed by the special effects. Rethinking the role of poverty in making people miserable.

I wonder if Tonya would have admitted everything and then blamed mentally-ill Shawn. 

Cast: Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan, Paul Walter Hauser

Directed by: Craig Gillespie

Written by: Steven Rogers

The Music: Mostly 1980's music

The Visuals: The skating scenes realistically show actress Margot skating. The movies are smooth and faster -- faster than the real Tonya did them. This was impressive, and I'd like to see how they did it. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Good acting; Entertaining. No extra points for social commentary because it gets that wrong. 

 

More: I finally understand what a triple Axel is.

Even More: Here is the real Tonya

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The Post

Plot: The Post is about the leaking and publishing of the "Pentagon Papers," a history of the Vietnam war that had embarrassing government's secrets and bleak military assessments. We see the Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) give the papers to the NY Times, and the later to the Washington Post. Brash editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) pushes to obtain the papers, and then owner Mrs Graham (Meryl Streep) agonizes about whether to publish them because of the risk of being sued by President Nixon.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: I'm never excited to see a movie starring 69 year old Meryl Streep, but time I see her I get sucked in because she is that good an actress. I am less sick of Tom Hanks, but he good too. Noisy and strutting, but never over the top.

The story of the Pentagon papers is old and well-trodden, and we already know the end. The script takes an offbeat angle by focussing on the editors and publishers. This gave the story more movement, and the content of the papers gets in by osmosis.

The best part is the analogy between Nixon and Trump. Trump is attacking Post owner Bezos today, just like Nixon swears vengeance on the Post in the final scene. The movie was written and shot before the election of Donald Trump. Strange but true.

I liked Don McNamara, who had the Pentagon Papers written for his successors and future historians. Government secrecy & manipulation of the populous reminds me of Machiavelli. McNamara's situation is an interesting example of whether the end justified the means. One takeaway is that states  have a different morality than individuals. As Wikipedia says:

Machiavelli believed that public and private morality had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler must be concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act immorally at the right times.

The Post was entertaining. The acting was great. The script kept moving despite the potentially dry subject matter. It was not super-fun, and the story of Kay Graham's bravery in publishing I had heard before. 

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bruce Greenwood

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Written by: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer

The Music: Orchestrial Score by John Williams; This score is better than his other recent work. I liked The Presses Roll. 

The Visuals: Mostly talking and Tom Hanks scowling. I liked the scenes of the type setting machines and the letterpress printing machine. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Good acting, but it just an average movie. Because it is tired subject matter, no extra points for social awareness.

 

More: I wonder if rich people really wandered around in the pajamas so much in 1972; makes me think of Charlie Rose who at home with female CBS colleagues in his pajamas.

Even More: Here is the real Katherine Graham. Meryl looked a bit like her in the movie make-up.

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Molly's Game

Plot: Molly (Jessica Chastain) learns to run high stakes poker games, and then starts to host them herself. It is a glamorous but tough business, so she is run out of LA and lands in New York, where she starts a higher stakes game. She attracts attention from mobsters, and soon enough the FBI raids everyone including Molly. Molly hires lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), and the court case leads to the final scenes.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Molly's Game is a well-told story. It starts with her athleticism, through her accident, and then into her subsistence wage jobs. Soon she is scraping by with a side-hustle counting chips at a poker game, and before you can say "All-IN" she is running the games herself. We sympathize with Molly because writer-director Sorkin tells the story from Molly's point of view. It is glamorous life, and it looks fun & sexy on the screen. Even after she is caught, Chastain's Molly is principled. At the end the story turns back to Molly's childhood and her relationship with her father. Sorkin's dialog is perfect as her psychologist father explains her childhood in a new way.

Molly's Game has a theme that Molly and her family are high achievers because of their pushy father. Molly is  as-successful-as-she-is because she is smart and principled -- just like her brother the athlete or her brother the doctor. Her principled nature is hard to understand, because of the drugs and her associates. I wonder if it is the puffery of autobiography, or the puffery of Hollywood, or perhaps something unique to her upbringing: My bet is Sorkin's Hollywood script. See Even More below.

Sorkin's dialog is the real star--not everyone likes Sorkin, but I do. The exchanges between Chastain and Elba in the office are well-tuned and dramatic. The final scene with Kevin Costner and Chastain looks simple, but they pack a lot of psychology into the few minutes, and I liked how they flash pack to the girlhood film, where then the words mean something completely different, "I have no heroes," she said.

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera

Written and directed by: Aaron Sorkin; Based on the book by Molly Bloom

The Music: Acoustic music by Daniel Pemberton

The Visuals: Some flashy scenes to make the card games look glamorous. Otherwise, it is mostly people talking in rooms. 

Rating: 3.5 stars: Fun to watch, great dialog. Why not 4 stars? Not sure the drama is that dramatic. 

More: The real Molly Bloom.

Even More: Based on Molly Bloom's Wikipedia page, the final scene may have been overly dramatic. It seems many charges were dropped in a plea bargain -- explicitly different from the movie. Interestingly, the Judge said she was ordered to run this game by her former boss in LA, making her an employee rather than a mastermind. The LA boss faded from the movie plot much earlier.



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Shape of Water

Isn't this a nice poster?

Plot: In a magical version of the 1960's Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning lady at a defense base meets an amphibious man (Doug Jones) being held captive, and grows to love him. Elisa's friend & fellow cleaner, Zelda (Octavia Spencer) helps interpret Elisa's sign language and covers for her visits to the man. Elisa's room mate is a gay man, Giles (Richard Jenkins), whose career struggles help create the films magical and distopic mood. Villainous military official Richard (Michael Shannon) tramples on everyone trying stay ahead of the Russians and later to foil Elisa. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: It's a magical fantasy delivering romance, sitcom humor, and social satire. It is a creative balance of all three. I like magical fantasy so it was easy for me to like it. While it has a monster and some sci-fi elements, it is not a horror or an action movie.

Symbolically, the creature is The Other, and he represents other Others in mid-20th Century America, from disabled people like mute Elisa, black people like Zelda, gay people like Giles, poor people, and women. The Russian scientist represents those whose search for knowledge is crushed by  bureaucracy.

I liked the performances especially Sally Hawkins, who is so evocative without speaking at all. Villain Michael Shannon is such dramatic, over-heated, morally-challenged striver. He creates so much threat and menace with his face. Octavia Spencer's role was more comic and so her performance was less nuanced.

Despite the obvious morality play, it doesn't feel that way. It feels like an thriller with Michael Shannon's Richard scaring everyone.

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Richard Jenkins, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer

Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro

Written by: Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor

The Music: Aquatic orchestral music and lounge music by Alexandre Desplat intercut with show tunes from old movies. Elisa's theme is pretty nice. 

The Visuals: Full of great images including early images of the amphibian man, but less so when he gets into the human world.  The art direction of the science lab is great with sickly colors and menacing metal equipment. The underwater scenes are graceful and artistic. 

Rating: 4.0 stars: Fun to watch in the theater and fun to talk about afterward

 

More: Del Toro says he says: “I wanted to do a movie about an amphibian creature who changes the life of whoever rescues it, in a magical way.”  It is loosely inspired by the Grimm brother's story about a flounder that grants wishes for a fisherman. 

Even More {SPOILER}: One reason sea creature romance worked for me is the Elisa's connection to the sea is foreshadowed early, first she was found on the beach as orphan child, and second is that Elisa has orgasms in the bathtub.



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Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Plot: This is a complex, multifaceted story. Rey (Daisy Ridley) talks with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) but leaves unsatisfied. Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) begin telepathically communicating and eventually meet. Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) meets Rey and Kylo. Poe blows up stuff from his fighter and causes trouble when with the rebel leadership. New character Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) and Fin sneak on to the enemy ship. Through-out the rebels are in retreat, similar to The Empire Strikes Back. [imdb]   [photos]

Review: In the second installment, the good guys are getting their asses kicked. In one case a victory over an enemy ship turns out to be a defeat because the rebel fleet loses the resources to retreat properly, and Poe learns this, so that later in the film he is wiser. Last Jedi is darker, more mystical, and melancholy, leaving the rebellion in crisis going in to the third film.

Because the plot is about retreat, there are few crowd pleasing victories. Victories are tempered by defeat and loss of familiar characters. 

On the bright side, the pluckiness of Rey was still there. Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker returns but not the savior we expected. As a crusty old man, he is troubled by his internal demons and the past. There was an interesting scene we see in three ways where Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren part ways. 

While Rey and Luke are together we get a view into the dark side and an interesting visual effect of Daisy in a metaphysical mirror hall.

Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is powerful and interesting. I enjoyed his scenes with Domhnall Gleeson's General Hux. The facial acting between Ridley and Driver is tops. 

 Oscar Isaac and Kelly Marie Tran were also excellent. I liked Benicio Del Toro's codebreaker. He established a character in just a few lines.

When Carrie Fischer's Leah is on the screen, she always looks tired and weak, perhaps sincere, inspiring and determined too. This is a strength and a weakness. We want a last hurrah from our familiar characters, but the dramatic structure of the film needs to force the old generation to the exits so the young characters can save the galaxy in the next film. The final scene with Leah and Rey is the  emotional closure to the film, and can be seen as a torch passing; especially since actress Carrie Fisher is physically dead. 

Overall, it is a good middle installment. Not a crowd-pleaser, nor a cliff-hanger but entertaining in places, and hopefully setting up a dynamite final chapter. 

Cast: Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro

Directed by: Rian Johnson

Written by: Rian Johnson, George Lucas; Interesting to see that there are only two writers. I tend to think the storyline is all Lucas, and this was written years ago. 

The Music: Good orchestral music

The Visuals: A highlight was the multiple Rey's in the case. Leader Snoke was cool. I loved the crystal foxes, which I find are called vulptex. These were both puppet and CGI. See this video.

Rating: 2.5 stars. It is not that satisfying, but after viewing I can see it needed to be "darkest before the dawn."

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More: I am disappointed Disney is not having any crystal fox/"vulptex", stuffed animals made. More on them here.

Even More: Mark Hamill also credited as Dobbu Scay. Speculation is that he was the voice of space leprechaun in the casino.

Yet More (minor spoiler): Online fans are whining about disrupting the Star Wars canon. I don't care about that at all. I like the idea of blowing up the Jedi temple. The prophecy said Luke's function was to unify the dark side and the light. Hard to see how he did that, except by destroying the old structures and burning the old books.

It Keeps Coming (minor spoiler): .

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Alien Covenant

Plot: Covenant is a space ship that encounters the monster from Alien. It takes time to realize the seriousness of the threat, and that not everyone is on the same side.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: It starts as a Sci-Fi, and a pretty good one. About half way through we meet the monster, and it gets creepy and scary. 

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Written by: Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan, Dante Harper, based on characters from the other Alien movies. 

The Visuals: .Good special effects throughout. I liked some of the spaceship shots. The monster shots are creepy too. 

Rating: 2.0 stars: .

More: I saw it on a plane. It might have been better on a big screen. Certainly scarier.

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