Only the Brave

Plot: Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) is the supervisor of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots who fight fires near Prescott Arizona and the rest of the west. Opening scene show him recruiting new firefighters and getting certified as Hot Shots. We follow the Hot Shots home and meet their wives including Amada Marsh (Jennifer Connelly). As the season progresses, we get fire fighter action scenes, and this leads to the ending twist.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Fire fighting movies have natural tension, and the fire scenes are the best in the film. Most of the movie is sleepy slow, and the dialog sucks.

I liked Miles Teller as the new guy, and Jennifer Connelly as Eric's wife. Jeff Bridges was laughable as the old guy fire chief.

The twist ending elevates the movie, and after it happens, I could see several of the other scenes were there to set it up. 

Cast: Josh Brolin, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges

Directed by: Joseph Kosinski

Written by: Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer

The Music: There was a lot of silence and the music was low key strings and synthesizers. Kind of like the music at a wake.

The Visuals: The fire scenes were realistic. I hated the flaming bear. The bears was way cooler when Josh Brolin described it then when they actually showed it. I still don't understand what happened when the burning trees fell into the Grand Canyon. 

Rating: 1.5 stars: While parts deserved 2 stars, I am disgruntled as I write this. 

More: The real Granite Mountain Hot Shots

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Marshall

Plot: Rich Bridgeport (CT) native Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson) accuses her black chauffeur Joseph Spell (Sterling K Brown) of raping her and throwing her off a bridge afterward. NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) partners with local attorney Sam Friedman (Josh Gad) to defend Joseph. Thurgood and Sam investigate the case, and take it to court. The plot twists as evidence comes out and witnesses change their stories. The movie ends with a dramatic jury announcement.   [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Forget this is a biopic of a supreme court justice; Marshall is different than and more than that.

It is an underdog story overlaid with 1950's era racism plus an upstairs/downstairs relationship with a lonely woman and her manly driver.  It's got the young scrappy lawyer and his bumbling partner as underdogs against the evil district attorney and the stone-age judge.

With a winning story, and its historic setting in the early days of the civil rights movement, plus the excellent acting from everyone especially Sterling Brown, Chadwick Boseman and Josh Gad, this was interesting, entertaining and enjoyable.

Legal dramas have many conversations about evidence that could have been dull, but it wasn't. The script and the performances were always strong enough to keep the action flowing.  

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Sterling K Brown, Kate Hudson

Directed by: Reginald Hudlin

Written by: Michael and Jacob Koskoff

The Music: Slow jazz by Marcus Miller, with two old-fashioned soul songs by Andra Day. There were some great saxophone riffs, including in Marshall V. Friedman which is on the soundtrack.

The Visuals: I loved the jazz club scene; it was rich and stylish. There were a number of artsy tableaus. They did not skimp on the production value.

Rating: 4.0 stars: Good story, good acting, great looking art direction, good social message

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Blade Runner 2049

Plot: . [imdb]    [photos] K (Ryan Gosling) is a Blade Runner, which is an LA Cop who specializes in killing rogue "Replicants, who is a genetically engineered race of sterile slaves. In a more bleak and depopulated Los Angeles than in the original movie, the people are subsisting on worms. Most of the Replicants come from Niander Wallace (Jerad Leto)  and they are much more docile, or so the humans think. 

K, who is also a replicant, comes to believe that he once was a child rather than being born in a factory. He goes to find his mother and father, and after a long time he meets Deckard (Harrison Ford) from the first movie. They join forces to fight the evil Niander Wallace and his cute body guard Luv (Sylvia Hoeks.)

Review: Blade Runner 2049 picks up two themes from the first movie, the replicant rebellion and the lone lawman against crazed evil doers. They dropped the questions about whether replicants have a soul, and the geeky fascination with synthetic biology, which is too bad. 

Like the first movie the visual looks are striking. Here they are clean & cool, where as in the old movie they were complex and cosmopolitan. 

I liked K's relationship with his holographic girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas). It brings up the same issues from Her. Joi loves K, and there is a very cool love scene. Later when Joe and Joi are parted, we see giant video ads for Joi, and we see that she is a mass market product. The whole notion of personal romance and individual experience in a consumer society is in question.

I just rewatched the 1982 original, and it was pretty unconventional, and so it this movie. It is not your typical action movie. It is will be too slow for most people and while it has a happy ending, most of the likable people die. 

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Jerad Leto, Harrison Ford, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas

Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

Written by: Hampton Francher, Michael Green,  and Hampton Fancher, based on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K Dick

The Music: Some great spare & quiet electronica like Sapper's tree and Joi, and some awful noisy drum heavy Han Zimmer music. I am sick of Han Zimmer's pounding drums. 

The Visuals: Strong Visuals. Often spare and simple. There are several striking giant human figures which are striking. Some nude women which were gratuitous. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Disappointing because I expected more, but still pretty good. Not so fun to watch, but with some fun ideas. I was glad I saw it. 

 

More: Director Villeneuve felt the slow pace was needed to keep the feeling of immersion that the original had.

Even More: SPOILER Joe's fate at the end of the movie is ambiguous. Always the optimist, I believe he lives on for the next sequel.

Yet More: Not sure why it was snowing in LA. I think it is because Villeneuve liked the silver-blue colors and the soft light.

It Keeps Coming: The architecture in the film was designed by concept artist Syd Mead, who did the original movie.
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American Made

Plot: Pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise) gets a job flying for the CIA in Central America and Columbia; he takes aerial pictures, smuggles guns, and also smuggles drugs back into the US on the side. Meanwhile he is raising his kids at home in Arkansas, and trying to find a place to stash all the cash. He gets involved with Reagan's war against Nicaragua's General Noriega, and a complicated deal to help the Contra's while smuggle cocaine into the US for the Medellin drug cartel. Soon the DEA track him down, but the CIA gets him off. This goes on for a while until it all comes crashing down.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: American Made is a fun. It has a light-hearted and Tom Cruise is cheerful and likable as the anti-hero Barry Seal. The story is unlikely, but the most unbelievable parts are completely true.

Good performance by Tom Cruise. The script is well written and the direction has a keeps it light. 

Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sara Wright

Directed by: Doug Liman

Written by: Gary Spinelli

The Music: .A spectrum of 80's music from pop classical to country, backstopped by zippy orchestral music from Christophe Beck

The Visuals: Good flying shots. 

Rating: 3.0 stars: Fun to watch, and a true story. Kinda glorifies crime

More: They really shot those jungle scenes in the jungle. Sadly,someone died during the shooting in a plane crash.

Even More: .Director Liman's father was an investigator in the Iran-Contra Affair.

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Wind River

Plot: Wind River is a who-dun-it on an Arapahoe reservation, where a barefoot young woman Natalie (Kelsy Asbille) is found frozen to death by Fish and Wildlife Service Officer Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner). Murders on the reservations are federal crimes, and FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) shows up to investigate. Jane is a city girl who grew up in Fort Lauderdale. Cory shows Jane around because his daughter was also found frozen to death. The trail leads to a drilling camp populated by 2017's most depraved cinema characters.[imdb]    [photos]

Review: Wind River is a detective story overlaid with commentary on Native American life. It is a deluxe version of a Longmire episode, which also solves crimes on a Wyoming reservation. Jeremy Renner is a great actor, and he makes the movie worthwhile. Elizabeth Olsen's character, Jane, starts out comic -- ditzy, hopelessly unprepared arriving on the wintery scene without gloves, and later she enacts familiar girl-in-man's-world themes, but happily in the third act she delivers some good lines and good acting. By the end of the movie, we see and feel the depth crime through these performances, and that is the best part.

The movie has a slow pace presumably to suit wintery geography and dignify the Native American themes. Detective movie fans might not like that. 

Cast: .Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Green

Written and directed by: Taylor Sheridan (Taylor is a male; which is relevant because of the feminist themes of the movie.) Taylor also wrote Sicario which I loved, and Hell or High Water which was decent. 

The Music: No music until the very end, and then just a few orchestral instruments

The Visuals: Some great pictures of the mountains

Rating: 3.0 stars: Great performances. A story that stays with you. Now that I have spent time with it, I like it better. It contends for 3.5 stars. 

[SPOILER] More: Movies need bad guys, sure, but these guys in the drilling camp are some of the most evil people. This tiny camp had a small army of security guys who were rapists, and had no issue with shooting a half dozen cops.

It is strange how movie script writers set these terrible crimes in peaceful places like the Wyoming mountains.

Even More: Wind River closes with a statistic about missing native American women. I didn't know this was an issue. More here.

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Logan Lucky

Plot: Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), his brother Clyde (Adam Driver) decide to rob the Charlotte NASCAR racetrack on race day. They spring explosives expert Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) from jail, and he invites his two idiot brothers into the gang. In a complex scheme, as in Ocean's Eleven, they steal the cash. (Soderbergh also directed Ocean's Eleven.) They return back home, and try to avoid attention as FBI agent Grayson (Hillary Swank) digs into the case.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: This is an crazy caper movie with strange characters leading to situation comedy humor -- not so many jokes or laugh-out-loud gags. The plot's silliness builds the humor early, and the scheme's cleverness keeps up the interest toward the end. x

All the characters are likeable, especially Daniel Craig's character Joe Bang and Riley Keough's Mellie Logan. At the end Hilary Swank shows up as an FBI agent, and I liked her take-charge persona. 

Our heroes are not Robin Hoods. The dim-witted Bang Brothers joke needing altruistic motive because they are born-again. The altruism is just a fig-leaf for their underlying criminality. Unlike most action movies, no one is killed. 

There are jokes about the dim-wittedness and lack of sophistication of country people, which is contrasted with the clever heist plot at the end. The silly country people win. 

Cast: Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, 

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Rebecca Blunt, which is pseudonym for  Soderbergh's wife Jules Asner or possibly Soderbergh himself or maybe both. 

The Music: I liked the main score by David Holmes a lot. I even got the download. It is a jazzy mix of drums, and guitar like a 70's Bond film. The rest of music is assorted rock and country-rock that were new to me. David Holmes also scored the Ocean's Eleven movies.  

The Visuals: I kept wondering how they hid Adam Driver's arm. There were some cool shots of the race cars and of the tunnels under the stadium. 

Rating: 3.0 stars: Fun to watch

More: Soderbergh had said he was going to retire from film making and paint, however he made this movie instead.

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The Glass Castle

Plot: Jeannette (Brie Larson/Chandler Head/Ella Anderson) had a dynamic, larger-than-life and alcoholic Dad, Rex (Woody Harrelson). He and her Mom (Naomi Watts) lived an alternate lifestyle, moving to stay ahead of bill collectors, and trying to live in the moment. Rex was by turns caring and neglectful with imaginative play and often not enough food to eat. As the kids grew, they hated their Dad, and they all ran away.  Jeannette became a writer in NYC, but reconsidered everything when her Dad became ill.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The best part is thinking about how Rex is like people in my own life -- chiefly my departed father-in-law Bob. I can relate to how son-in-law David (Max Greenfield) going though hell at family gatherings.  I also liked the heartwarming child-rearing parts of the movie, and the humorous car trips.

There were parts I didn't like. It was needlessly slow paced, and the story-telling was oral, not visual: sometimes I closed my eyes to listen only. Rex was not a likable person, and it was grating to spend so much time with him.

I liked the performances especially Woody Harrelson, but also the school-girl aged Jeanette, Chandler Head, as well as the adult Jeanette Brie Larson. Woody is plausible supporting actor nomination. 

Cast: Woody Anderson, Brie Larson, Chandler Head, Ella Anderson, Naomi Watts

Directed by: Destin Daniel Cretton

Based on the book by: Jeannette Walls

The Visuals: Not very imaginative. As mention, you can follow the action just fine with your eyes closed. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Glass Castle was not that much fun. Great performance by Woody Harrelson. A good story. 

 

More: Stay for the credits they showed the real family.

Even More: I liked the arm wrestling scene. I could easily see that happening.

Yet More: I really wanted to see Rex build the Glass Castle. I'm disappointed I didn't get to see it. It would have been cool.
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