Movies I've Seen...: dawnybee

dawnybee

Movies I've Seen...

Oct 02, 2015 02:55

Based on the 2007 documentary of the same name, “Freeheld” feels as if it didn’t want to manipulate viewers emotions that it went the complete opposite direction and takes almost an arms-length viewpoint on the battle career police officer Laurel Hester went through with the New Jersey Board of Freeholders to get her pension transferred to her domestic partner.

Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree

Laurel (Julianne Moore) a dedicated officer has aspirations of being the first female lieutenant in her precinct. A closeted lesbian, Laurel has to drive an hour out in order to freely have a semblance of a personal life. She eventually meets Stacie Andree (Ellen Page) a woman who is 19-years younger and then her and out in all aspects of her life. The two fall in love

despite the walls Laurel has put up in fear of losing her job and the respect of her community and her work partner Dane Wells (Michael Shannon).

The domestic bliss that Laurel and Stacie has created for themselves crumbles when Laurel is diagnosed with terminal cancer. While Stacie is optimistic about the outcome, Laurel takes steps to ensure that Stacie can afford to stay in their house. Laurel makes a request to the New Jersey Board of Freeholders to have her pension benefits transferred to her domestic partner Stacie the same way her heterosexual counterparts can transfer their benefits to their spouses. Denied, Dane takes up the battle for his friend who is too weak to do so. This attracts the attention of Steven Goldstein (Steve Carell)

the Chair of the Garden State Equality who wants to tie in Laurel’s battle with the freeholders

to his coalition’s fight for marriage equality.

Written by Ron Nyswaner who wrote “Philadelphia” and the Showtime film ‘Soldier’s Girl” (another true story, this about the relationship between soldier Barry Winchell and Calpernia Adams, a transgender woman and Barry’s subsequent murder by a fellow solider) made the relationship works but --getting over the aesthetic Mutt and Jeff aspect of tall Moore and teeny Page, their relationship is the winning part of the film. Unfortunately, the battle between and within the Freeholders (only one of the Freeholders, played by Josh Charles, is uneasy with denying Laurel’s request) is so poorly written and at times acted it’s as if the cast is doing a PSA instead of creating real drama. And Carell as Goldstein is bull in the china shop obnoxious, an obvious comedic plant which really does the film a disservice.

Director Peter Sollett and his cast

The cast

~Also in the film is Luke Grimes who notably quit “True Blood” right before the final season. The report from gossip sites and cast member Nelsan Ellis was that he quit because his character James was going to be in a relationship with Ellis’ Lafayette. Grimes clears this up….kinda sorta. Not really.

**His excuse doesn’t hold water because James and Jessica (Deborah Ann Wolk) had sex when they were virtual strangers. James and Lafayette was the slowest (and sweetest) of slow burns and wasn’t anywhere as explicit as James and Jessica. James and Lafayette were PG-rated. Hell, they only close-mouth kissed once IIRC.

James and Lafayette Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eRn7KJTBEA

James and Lafayette Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2nfmvwW0Ak

And I defended you, too. Boo on you, Grimes.

Michael Shannon goes from playing empathetic crusader in “Freeheld” to playing the real estate version of Gordon Gekko from “Wall Street”>

“99 Homes” is further away from a feel good film as you can get-it spotlights the harsh realities of the housing crash of 2010 and the frustrating knowledge that the rich gets richer while the working class slide further down the economic ladder.

Single dad Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) loses his family home due to foreclosure with realty businessman Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) doing the evicting.

Underemployed due to the housing bubble bursting and losing the home which doubled as his mother’s Lynn (Laura Dern) hair salon where, Dennis, Lynn and Dennis’ son Connor moves into a hotel surrounded by guests who were in the same boat.

After a confrontation over Dennis’ property going missing at the hand of Rick’s employee, Rick offers Dennis a job. Needing the money to get his home back Dennis joins Rick in his business of evicting foreclosed home owners out of their homes.

As Rick attempts to broker a deal to get more homes, Dennis struggles with making his living off the pain he knows all too well.

It’s being dubbed as a thriller when to me it’s just a bleak, realistic tale of the financial quagmire that all too many people have fallen into and how banks and other predatory institutions make use of various tactics in order to stay on top even if it means standing on the necks of the downtrodden. I love that “99 Homes” doesn’t sugar coat, doesn’t try to uplift, doesn’t have a message (though it can be said the message that Dennis learns is that not all money is good money). It’s leaves the viewer to take what they want from it. If people walk away from the film wanting change, more the better. I think many more people would just think, “that’s my story” or “at least that’s not my story”.

Directed by Ramin Bahrani (“At Any Price”) Bahrani employed actual people who have lost their homes to portray those being evicted. It’s not a cheap ploy, it’s a great way of seeing the faces of people who have fallen on hard times-people you would see in passing and never the turmoil they are in.

Bahrani with his actors

Also, in striving for reality he also didn’t make Michael Shannon the mustache twirling villain that Rick Carver definitely could’ve come off as. Instead Carver is a proud opportunist who justifies his job by using the usual tact of, “if it’s not me it’ll be someone else”. For Dennis it’s more of a realistic conflict of how far to go to provide for family. If you’re starving would you be too proud to not take a job that conflicted with your moral compass?

I think being Spiderman and all the hoopla that brought with it makes people forget how impressive an actor Andrew Garfield is. He’s real and raw and open-hearted and bold as Dennis fights to keep his head above water. Forget “99 Homes” more like 99 unshed tears (I swear he cries without the moisture reaching landfall. But the emotion comes through!)

Laura Dern is her typical fine, understated Mom role self.

Hey kids, science is fun and to prove it we’re going to show you a too long film to show you how science rocks in hopes that when you finally come of age to be an astronaut the government would not have totally gutted NASA’s funding.

“The Martian” is a surprisingly cheeky sci-fi adaptation of the equally cheeky sci-fi 2001 one Andy Weir novel of the same name. Adapted by Joss Whedon partner in crime Drew Goodard (“Cabin in the Woods”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (series) and “Angel”, “Cloverfield”) the film is a popcorn flick that dares to be smart. I’m sure Neil de Grasse orgasmed watching this film.

The crew of the Ares 3: botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon), captain Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) and the rest Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan) and Alex Vogel (Askel Hennie)

encounter a violent dust storm on Mars. As the crew rush to get to their ship, debris knocks into Mark sending him careening. Unable to locate him and unable to stay lest they get stranded, Lewis has to make the difficult decision to leave Mark behind as Beck feels there was no way that Mark survived the collision.

But survive he did. Mark comes to and rushes straight into action knowing that he will have to come up with a game plan to survive until he can communicate with the Ares 3 and NASA that he is alive.

While Mark strategizes the NASA crew led by NASA Administrator Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), NASA’s PR Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig), the director of the Mars mission Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor)

, the director of the Jet Propulsion Lab, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong) and flight director Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean) have to come up with their own strategy when they realize that Mark is indeed alive.

I saw it in 3D which is unnecessary. It’s set on Mars but it’s not a space film in the vein of “2001” or “Gravity” for in this film Mars looks like Sedona, Arizona. It’s a great mix of energies going on: it is very dramatic as Watney has seemingly insurmountable things to overcome, but it has great humor which is refreshing. It doesn’ t try to dumb down the science, but instead break it down to make it understandable and not too heady.

Adding to the tone is the soundtrack. Yes, there is Harry Gregson-Williams’ piano based score, but there’s disco music (a running joke in the film) which provides a feel-good feeling (which helped keep me from side-eying Damon as I thought about his comments on diversity and gay celebrities).

Right?

Rounding out the cast is Donald Glover and Mackenzie Davis as Rich Purnell and Mindy Park.

The cast

The true story of how high-wire artist Philippe Petit traversed the Two Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. The film is a buoyant film that celebrates Petit’s joie de vivre and drive.

Transfixed by high-wire performers at a young age Philippe taught himself to walk tightrope walk, eventually learning the tricks of the trade from a local circus high-wire performer Papa Rudy (Sir Ben Kingsley).

Philippe’s desires to attempt greater heights and that quest becomes clearer when he sees a picture of the still under construction World Trade Center.

Philippe sets his plan in motion. Much like Dorothy picking up friends along the way to fulfill her wish, Philippe finds accomplices: his girlfriend Alice (Charlotte Le Bon, “Yves St. Laurent”)

; photographer Jean Louis (Clément Sibony, “The Hundred Foot Journey”); mathematician Jeff (César Domboy, Résistance), point-man New York expert JP (James Badge Dale), inside man Barry (Steve Valentine, “Major Crimes”) and reluctant look outs: Albert (Ben Schwartz, “House of Lies”) and David (Benedict Samuel, “The Stanford Prison Experiment”).

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s wig is a fright, the blue contact lenses he wears a distraction, his French accent an homage to Pepe Le Pew (which is surprising since Joe studied French in college and IIRC lived in Paris for a bit so I don’t get why he put on an over-the-top accent while surrounded by actual French and French Canadian actors), but in embodying Philippe Joe is perfection. A natural showman (search is SNL “Make Em Laugh” bit or his lipsynching to Nikki Minaj’s “Superbass”) Joe doesn’t do things in half-measure and he displays the love of the audience and showmanship as a circus performer would.

The cast gels perfectly together. After being in a ton of movies back to back, I wondered where James Badge Dale had gone off to so it was great seeing him in the film as the roguish JP.

I saw it in 3D and not that it’s a must (my friends saw it in IMAX 3D and say that’s the format to see it in but 3D was sufficient) but it is vivid enough to make the experience more intense. Early in the film Philippe drops his staff and it was so realistic that I instinctively ducked my head like a moron. The tightwalking sequences inspired the guy a few seats from me to keep exclaiming, “oh man! This is nuts! OMG! What??!”.

With “Forrest Gump”, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Back to the Future” under his belt Robert Zemekis knows how to make CGI effective and use it to bolster the story and not supersede it.

I found the film surprisingly emotional. I wondered how/if they were going to address the destruction of the Twin Towers and they did in a very subtle way. With the tragedy that befell the people in the Twin Towers on 9/11 it was moving to go back in time to someone who gazed at the Twin Towers and saw life and a manifestation of dreams.

The Cast