Colossal

— Okay, this was a good time. It’s not a monster film, but it is a little strange and outside the box. Well, it’s really a lot outside the box, but enthralling and imaginative and fun too. You’ll be tempted to try to make it into an allegory, but why bother. At some point you’ll wonder what the heck is really going on as it moves between the story of a down and out New Yorker who’s moved back to her small hometown and taken a job as a cocktail waitress, and a bizarre world where a Godzilla-like monster in Seoul is somehow linked to the woman who’s back in her hometown but not managing to get her life under control. It’s far-fetched and offbeat with an ending that’s unsatisfactory, but I left very happy to have had a different kind of movie experience. A good cast and an imaginative script really make a difference. (“5 Films About Technology”, Peter Huang’s 5-minute satire about digital devices, runs before “Colossal” and left me wanting more and more—it’s great!)

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[2016. 109 min. Written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo. Starring Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Austin Stowell, Tim Blake Nelson, and Dan Stevens.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/colossal-2017

The Circle

— I liked “The Circle” for what it wanted to be which is a vehicle for us to think about technology and privacy, and about the balance between personal rights and the rights of the group, and a possible future where that balance gets out of whack. With Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, it has a very capable cast for a semi thriller centered around a Facebook/Apple/Google-ish super corporation, but they just aren’t developed very fully and, while the broad strokes of the plot are all there, it lacks enough focus to add any depth to all the significant issues its juggling. I think they may have tried to uncomplicate a book that was probably a good deal more complicated, dumbing it down a little too much for the film.

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[2017. 110 min. Directed by James Ponsoldt. Starring Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Glenne Headly, Bil Paxton, and Karen Gillan.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-circle-2017

The Lost City of Z

— I was surprised at how captivating this film was. It's based on a nonfiction book about Percy Fawcett, a Brit who was convinced there was a lost city in the Amazonian jungle and spent his lifetime mounting expeditions trying to find it. Charlie Hunnam does a very believable job as Percy and conveys the explorer’s spirit on the verge of obsession. Since much of journey is in the jungle, the scenes are often in shade or candlelight or moonlight and there are times when you yearn for the sun, for some brightness ahead, but always there’s uncertainty about what lies in the distance. We also get a good look at Percy’s family life when he isn’t exploring and of his time in the trenches at the Somme in WWI. Some of the most interesting scenes revolve around the changing relation between Percy and his oldest son, practically abandoned as a child by his father while spending so much time on expeditions, but who grew to be similarly curious about the unknown, shifting the focus from one generation to the next. It is an odd throwback of a movie, not seeming to want to exist as much more than a story of discovery—of the lost city and of the main character.

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[2016. 141 min. Directed by James Gray. Starring Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lost-city-of-z-2017

Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press

— Yes, I smiled at mentions of the “Bollea (Hulk Hogan) v. Gawker” case when it was in the news but Brian Knappenberger’s documentary makes a compelling case for its critical importance among First Amendment tests. After fighting the case in federal court and having Gawker’s right to publish the material in question affirmed, the case was refiled in a St. Petersburg, FL, civil court where the local jury pool wasn’t as likely to care so much about Gawker’s rights. In an age of billionaires, Hogan’s case was financed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, not necessarily to safeguard Hogan’s rights or to change Gawker’s policies, but to break Gawker—and that’s just what it did. Both Gawker and its founder, Nick Denton, were bankrupted after Hogan was awarded $115 million. In the past, wealthy people bought newspapers; now they can eradicate them. A good amount of time is also spent looking at the surprise, secret sale of the "Las Vegas Review-Journal” to billionaire Sheldon Adelson and the resulting departure of most of their long-time reporters. The film does a good job with these parts of the story but obviously was nearly complete before the surprise election of Donald Trump resulted in expanding the film. Remember, Thiel was a member of Trump’s transition team and Adelson contributes heavily to Republican candidates, so the filmmaker has added Trump and his attitudes toward the media to the mix. The potential threat is clear, but this documentary suffers from too many edits as it tried to keep up with the shifting sands affecting the free press. Even so, the message is so credible as to make this worth seeing.

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[2017. 95 min. Written and directed by Brian Knappenberger.]
http://blogcritics.org/sxsw-review-nobody-speak-trials-of-the-free-press/

The Salesman

— This is an excellent film that looks at a complicated relationship stressed to a point of near breaking. Emad is a high school literature teacher who’s loved and respected by his students. He and his wife, Rana, are also actors, playing the roles of the worn out Willy Loman and his dispirited wife, Linda, in "Death of a Salesman". An earthquake causes cracks to form on their bedroom walls and forces them to quickly move to a new apartment. Unbeknownst to them until they have moved, the apartment had previously been rented by a prostitute. One night Rana buzzes someone she thinks is Emad in, and leaves the door ajar thinking he's on his way up the stairs, but a stranger enters the apartment instead, believing the previous tenant is still there and ends up assaulting Rana. Other people in the building find her and get her to a clinic. Emad feels guilt and rage and pity. He wants to report the assault but Rana, now nervous and frightened, wants nothing to do with the Tehran Police. The tension builds as Emad works to find the assailant himself while Rana tries to put it behind her. As the couple tries to hold it together before an audience on stage, their relationship is unwinding in private. When the assailant is identified, Emad, now blinded by revenge, want to humiliate him in front of his wife and children. We see Emad’s worst side and the assailant somehow seems more human. The line blur and everything is ambiguous. It’s a complex story and the loose parallels with Arthur Miller’s characters work well. In the end, Rana’s assailant is a sort of Willy himself and the audience’s sympathies have shifted. There’s not much to fault with this wonderful script, great direction and acting, and beautiful camerawork, making it easy for us to see the domino effect of one action.

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[2016. 124 min. Directed by Asghar Farhadi. Starring Taraneh Alidoosti, Shahab Hosseini, and Babak Karimi.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-salesman-2017

Personal Shopper

— Kristen Stewart definitely has some talent (remember, she was the child with Jodie Foster in 2002's "Panic Room") and she does an admirable job of building the suspense in “Personal Shopper.” The film itself is a little uneven, but that may be intentional. I would have liked a bit more editing, particularly during the section with back-and-forth texting to carry the plot, and the two or three times there was a soft fade to black that felt a lot like the projection lamp was fading. In the end, those are somewhat minor blemishes on a good mix of drama, thriller, and ghost story. Stewart’s character is a personal shopper for a fashion celebrity she rarely sees. She’s also probably working below her potential, but it gives her time to use her medium skills, a trait she shared with her recently deceased twin brother along with the heart anomaly that killed him. She’s looking for a sign from her brother, of life beyond death, and she’s flirting with the forbidden in the rest of her life. The seen and the unseen world are sometimes hard to define in this moody work even if some of the signs are a little too obvious, but the twists and turns keep coming. Assayas' "Clouds of Sils Maria" was in my list of favorite films for 2015 and "Personal Shopper" reminds me why; I liked watching "Personal Shopper" and I like films that have some unanswered questions in the end.

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[2016. 105 min. Written and directed by Olivier Assayas. Starring Kristen Stewart, Lars Eldinger, and Sigrid Bouaziz.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/personal-shopper-2017

Wilson

— Woody Harrelson is Wilson, a curmudgeon just past middle age. He operates mostly without a filter on his speech, with no love of technology, and with only one “friend” who’s moving to St. Louis. Only his dog receives any of his love. He’s reunited with his ex-wife, Pippi, a recovering junkie who lets him know the baby he thought she’d aborted when she up and left him 17 years earlier had been put up for adoption. In Wilson’s world, fatherhood brings the hope of family and future. Of course, Wilson finds his daughter, Claire, and manages to create an occasional, imitative family, failing to consider everyone else’s lives. We end up in the midst of a story of redemption, where there’s hope that a man’s isolation and loneliness can evolve into a life of love and hope. As the film winds down, the main narrative tells us hope is just in front of us and we only have to open our eyes to find a better life. Unfortunately, we’ve just sat through another film about a depressed and bitter white guy whose only hope for happiness is depicted as coupling and fatherhood; otherwise, he might as well accept the piteousness of his life and the reality that he’ll have no legacy and be forgotten in fifty years. If we learn anything from this movie, it’s that life sucks without a wife and child...and that curse words used unnecessarily and too often are a bad idea. This film just doesn’t live up to his pedigree.

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[2017. 94 min. Directed by Craig Johnson. Starring Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Isabella Amara, and Judy Greer.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wilson-2017

The Zookeeper’s Wife

— There are some problems with this film but the audience was not deterred—they liked the film and there was applause when the credits rolled. I felt the odd mix of emotions myself, having had a few tears comes to my eyes, letting the film take me from sadness to joy a few times, and marveling at Jessica Chastain who always seems to be riveting, even though she can’t pull off an accent as well as Meryl. It’s hard not to like the film since its story is so compelling and many of the scenes are certainly memorable. Chastain plays Antonina Zabinski who, along with her husband Jan, ran the Warsaw Zoo and saved around 300 Jews during the war by hiding them until there was a way to get them out of the country. The problem with the film seems to be that the images are a little too “clean” and the horror of the Holocaust is somehow lessened, along with the fact that there’s not much backstory about any of the characters, but it is worth seeing and I liked it. As much as anything, it probably suffers the fate of so many others that beg to be compared to “Schindler’s List” and really can’t compare.

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[2017. 124 min. Directed by Niki Caro. Starring Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, and Daniel Bruhl.]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-zookeepers-wife-2017