The Florida Project - Review

The Florida Project

Director Sean Baker, who’s 2016 film “Tangerine” won high appraise at the 2016 Sundance Film festival delves once again into the world of people we subconsciously pass by everyday day in “The Florida Project”. A warm, vivacious, glorious, deeply moving and equally unforgettably look at adolescent childhood.

Taking place mostly at art deco lavender colored hotel called the “The Magic Castle” on a stretch of highway just outside the Disney World, the film largely follows the adventurous of a free spirted vivacious six-year-old little girl named Moonee (Brooklynn Prince)  and her rebellious mother Halley (Bria Vinai) over the course of a single summer. The two live week to week – sometimes day to day at a low budget hotel managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe.

Despite the sometime harshness of Moonee’s surroundings, the precocious and ebullient Moonee has no trouble making each day a true celebration of life with day after day endless afternoon excursion in and around her hotel complex with her two other playmates named Jancey and Scooty. Together they fearlessly explore the utterly unique world their parents have thrown them in. A sometimes monstrously unfit world in fact where their mothers and fathers who do love them dearly are terribly short on the necessary emotional and maturity skills to raise them properly.

REVIEW: To be honest, I had to take 24 hours to really think about how to describe my thoughts on “The Florida Project”. It’s hard to put into words. Some of you will not like it and others of you will be affected as I was, totally unable to stop thinking about these wonderful  characters. 

I guess I was captivated by them because in some measure they reminded me  of my childhood, relying less on TV and technologies and more on the many inanimate objects around the home and in my community as gateway adventures to my magical fantasies. A dairy farm with cows as a safari. An old abandon home as a castle of kings and queens. Going inside unlocked doors that say “do not enter” just to see what was inside you were not suppose to touch.  Even sitting with a friend high in a tree branch just to be able see farther away. “The Florida Project” captures these experiences and many more as one of the most effective cinematic portrayals of American adolescent childhood you will ever see. An amazingly authentic tale of children living happily with no real stability in their lives while completely immersed in abject poverty. A touching film from beginning to end as a microcosm of the many people in rural America we see each day, especially on those long family trips while passing many old hotels - motels along the way. Minimalist looking buildings filled with essentially good people who are locked into the daily equation of living each waken moment like gypsies perpetually on the run and yet always trying to make do from one minute to minute of turning bad situations into something better.

This film is not some romantic sugarcoated story. It’s a strip down in your face humanist tale of people facing long odds on having any kind of meaningful successful life. And yet in spite of their meager existence they’re happy, always taking the necessary steps forward they hope will offer the promise of a new glimmer of hope for the next day.

As for the casting, I have to start with six year Brooklynn Prince who plays the central character “Moonee” is absolutely brilliant. She doesn’t recite lines, she inhabits them. I could only imagine she’s what British Actress Dame Judy Dench must of been like as child – born talented to be an actress. I really don’t know if the Academy has the courage to nominate a small child of the age of six for the Best Actress category, but she damn sure deserves it. She gives an unflinchingly funny, equally moving and heartfelt performance. Hands down Miss Prince is the acting discovery for 2017.

Willem Dafoe, the only real veteran actor in the film, gives an astonishing performance as the manager Bobby. He gives the film the mature grounded core that is needed of a man whose stern exterior gruffness hides a more deep seeded soul of fatherly kindness and compassion. He’s probably seen more than his share of good people he has to evict from his hotel and probably knows with a wrong turn or two in his life “there but for the grace of God go I". Dafoe is almost a certain lock for a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Finally, first time actress Bria Vinaite who plays Moonee’s mom Halley is also noteworthy as well. She does a delicate balance of being a loving mom and equally someone you despise. She is lazy, trashy, quick to anger, vulgar and impulsively despicable, so much so that at times you actually wish you could leap out of your theater chair to strangle her on the screen. She tries to give her daughter Moonee a world of endless enchantment and yet exposes her to the harshness of reality by turning tricks with her “Johns” while Moonee is locked in the bathroom. Over time (and In the end) you find yourself judging less Halley’s many bad choices and wondering more just how many Halley’s are there in America resorting to these choices just to survive.

The Florida Project is a totally innovative original piece of work that feel less like a movie and more like documentary. But if you can get past its oddly nuisance dialogue and seemingly oddly disjointed mixture of children acting like the adults and the adults behaving like children, I promise you by the second half of the films’ 1:55 minute running time you will find yourself totally absorbed by these children’s sense of daily discovery, sadness, heartbreak and hopefulness……a sense of childlike hope to be sure of the unbreakable possibility of a better tomorrow.

Sometimes funny. Sometimes hilarious. Sometimes brutal to contemplate. Sometimes heartbreaking. Sometimes poverty. Sometime paradise. Sometimes the truth for millions of Americans we pass by on the highway, The Florida Project tells their real story as one of the Best Films of 2017.

4 Stars

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women - Review

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Luke Evans and Rebecca Hall (aka for “The Town”) star in the film called “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”. An unconventional true life story of Dr. William Marston, a Harvard psychologist and inventor of the lie detector, his academic wife and their student assistant who all collectively became the inspiration for the iconic “Wonder Woman”.

Taking place around the early 1940’s the film itself isn’t just a story about creating a comic book character named “Wonder Woman”, it’s an up in your face sexually charged film that is both a honest and positive depiction of a polyamory relationship between the three people that contributed mightily to the comic book super heroine’s creation. In the film, William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Rebecca Hall), and Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote) slowly come to having a triangular relationship that includes working professionally together, becoming emotional and romantic bonded through steamy ménage à trois with one another to eventually moving in with one another for their entire life and having children with one another.

Director Angela Robinson does a solid job in bringing this film to an intellectual light without making it simply a super awkward story about people just having sex together. She effectively  recreates the political and social environment where their comic book and their personal relationship were considered both taboo and illegal for the 1940’s. But it is Robinson's direction ultimately that moves the story skillfully along as we see initially the well intention married couple's raison d etra (their reasons for being) in their legitimate academic pursuits become increasingly side track by their growing intimate passion for their female assistant. Its this romantic transition in their personal lives and their exploration of their unusual sexual relationship - their own experiences that help give rise to the conceptual idea of "Wonder Woman", the Amazonian female hero.

“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" is not a feminist film, but a very sincere film about acts of personal bravery where (in their case) these three unique people did in fact find love with each other. A profound passionate deep seeded love bound by a genuine commitment to one another, that even after some initial episodes of anger and confusion, a realization that they could never ever live without the other.

3.00 Stars

Brawl in Cell Block 99 - Review

Brawl in Cell Block 99

Known for his comedic portrayals of characters, actor Vince Vaughn takes on a more serious dramatic challenge as a man named Bradley Thomas, a former boxer, now tow truck driver. Bradley sees himself as a respectful normal hard working blue collar stiff just trying to make ends meet providing for his home, his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter aka for Showtime’s “Dexter” Debra Morgan) and the child they are so desperate to have after several miscarriages.    

After getting laid off from his job, he head directly home to discover that not only is he at a crossroads financially apparently his personal life is unraveling as well with his wife sitting in her car in the driveway. She’s leaving him from feeling neglected and for the fact she is involved with another man. After promising to his wife he will do better, he goes back to an old friend for work. A job while more lucrative got him hooked on drugs 14 years ago which was being a drug courier for a local king pin.

When the money starts to come in, he also discovers the risks are increasing as well, including one night when he gets involved a gunfight between police officers and Mexican drug dealers he thought were allies. When the smoke clears, Bradley is badly hurt and thrown in to prison, where his enemies force him to commit an act of violence that turns the entire place into a savage battleground.

REVIEW: With a running time of 2:12 minutes “Brawl in Cell Block 99” initially is a quiet, somewhat stoic film about Bradley just trying to survive day to day. He’s not a bad man, actually he is quite the opposite as he seems to take great effort in always being very respectful to people he meets while simultaneously internally projecting a heighten sense of guarded suspicion to whomever is in the room with him. But as the film moves from his life on the outside of prison to a life inside of prison, Bradley becomes an entity of pure intellectual meanness and calculating violence for his survival and revenge.

 “Brawl in Cell Block 99” while a bit over the top at times still reminded me of a smart HBO styled drama filled with effective intimidating violence. A taught thriller filled with blood stained nasty and brutishness as Bradley goes slowly and deeper into sadistic prison hell. But it is Vince Vaughn masterful work here that makes his character sympathetic all the while he calmly, with a constant unsympathetic demeanor, crushes bones and bashes everyone who gets in his way. AND I MEAN EVERYONE.

Available now as a film that went straight to On-Demand.

3.25 Stars

Marshall - Review

Marshall

Starring Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, Sterling K. Brown, and James Cromwell, Director Reginald Hudlin's tells the 1941 story of a young man named Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) who crisscrossed the nation, North and South – East and West fighting for the legal justice of Negroes in America. The same young lawyer who eventually would try 32 cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown vs The Board of Education that ended segregation in America and who also would be appointed as the first African American Justice on the United States Supreme Court.

Principally based on an early 1941 trial in the career of Thurgood Marshall it follows the parallel track story line of his legal career as chief legal counselor for the NACCP as well as the specific legal drama itself of a black chauffeur limo driver named Joseph Spell (Sterling Brown) who is charged with raping a wealthy white socialite Eleanor Strubing (Kate Hudson) in very conservative Connecticut.

Specifically, Joseph Spell is charged with both sexual assault and attempted murder of his white socialite employer (Kate Hudson). Marshall realizing his client is going to be steamrolled he request that he be admit to represent his client in court by a residing Connecticut based lawyer. But he is quickly muzzled by the segregationist court Judge named Foster (James Cromwell) and is denied to be the lead counsel in the case. Instead Marshall develops another strategy by compelling local lawyer Jewish Sam Friedman to represent his client in court as the lead attorney while Marshal would provide the day to day strategy of the trial itself. But Friedman initial bucks at the idea of helping Marshall and Spell fearing his involvement in such a highly racially charged case would bring about Anti-Semitic actions towards him, his family and the local Jewish community as a whole. But after much artful persuasion by Marshall Attorney Friedman reluctantly agrees to try the case.

Together you see two the men Marshall and Friedman working as equal partners with both mounting a vigorous and compelling defense in the backdrop of an environment of northern racial and Anti-Semitic bigotry. It’s their partnership in this high profile case that eventually served as the template for Marshall's creation of the NAACP legal defense fund to help fight injustice and everywhere in the United States.

REVIEW: “Marshall is a solid piece of film making with plenty of surprises and excellent acting across the board. Overall, Director Reginald Hudlin show’s “Marshall” from many layered human perspectives. As a highly intelligent trial lawyer, then as a smart and intuitive judge of personalities and human temperament. As a standing tall fearless warrior for justice under constant threats to his life to a loving and nurturing husband. But what comes through above all else was that Thurgood Marshall was a personable principled man of great character and deportment and it is Actor Boseman who gives a top notch fine performance (again) in his interpretation of Marshall character without ever resorting to any moments of Hollywood clichés or superficiality. Boseman keeps his Thurgood Marshall very grounded throughout as a pillar of constant strength, intellect and personal fortitude, always keeping his actually interpretation of this historic man’s life seemingly fresh in every film frame. Humanely fresh where the larger principled idea that “right always beat might” was his guide. But Boseman also showed Marshall not to be anyone’s push over either. He was also a man completely unafraid even under extreme racial duress and pressures to use his mind and books to great effect as quickly as any cowboy would use his guns.

But it is actor Josh Gad as Jewish attorney Sam Friedman who is the surprising revelation in the film. Gad’s “Sam” goes from being a rather unassuming character to an earnest powerful personality in both his private – religious life as well as his work as the lead lawyer in the court room during his compelling questioning and cross examination. We watch Sam Friedman evolve from being a reluctant shy man, not wanting to make any local waves, to someone who comes to the realization of a much larger moral reality. Specifically putting the moral pieces together in his own mind that he too was a believer and fighter for justice of all.

I enjoyed every minute of this 1:58 minute running time film. And while at times the story did get a little over melodramatic and theatrical you will still see it as I did as a brilliant encapsulating brief moment in time. Ultimately the film showcases quite effectively how sometimes a small insignificant footnote in time can have a much broader historical impact on a nation as a whole.

The movie title may say “Marshall”, but the story masterful shows that actors Boseman and Gad are equally both very, very good. And because they were very, very good together, that makes the film “Marshall” very, very good as well.

3.50 Stars

Blade Runner 2049 - Review

Blade Runner 2049

Director Ridley Scott (“Alien”, “Prometheus”, “Black Hawk Down” & “The Martian”) who’s 1982 film called “Blade Runner” became a cult classic, now has his initial story of a dark and cold future revisited with the return of the highly anticipated sequel titled “Blade Runner 2049” with Director Denis Villeneuve formerly of “Sicario”, “Arrival” and “Incendies” (a great film if you have not seen it) taking over the directing duties.

BACKGROUND: “Blade Runner” of 1982 takes place in Los Angeles in November 2019, where we find ex-police officer named Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who’s previously job was that of a  “Replicant Hunter” aka synthetic lifeforms’ who in fact look like real human beings. But when it is revealed from his former Boss that four “Replicants” have committed a bloody mutiny on the “Off World” colony Deckard is forcibly called out of retirement to track down those murderous android synthetics and eliminate them who have apparently returned to Earth to avoid being retired or to be direct euthanized.

Before starting the job, Deckard goes to a company called the Tyrell Corporation where he meets someone named Rachel (Sean Young) who is in fact a Replicant girl. She is an experimental ‘”Replicant” who believes herself to be human mostly because Rachael has been given false memories to provide an "emotional cushion" from being easily detected.

Events are then set into motion that pit Deckard's search for the “Replicants” against their search for the Tyrell Corporation to extend their lives. Compounding matters further we find Deckard becoming emotionally conflicted by what he is charged to do when he falls in love with Rachel. Confronted with his dilemma Deckard tries to find a path to going away with her with also an ending leaving open the possibility that Deckard also might not be human also.

Fast forward 30 years later to “Blade Runner 2049” where we find Officer K (Ryan Gosling) who is a bit of a mystery early on as to whether he is human or not. What we do know is he is called LAPD Officer KB36-3.7, aka K, officially a “Blade Runner” who tracks down and “retires,” aka kills, older model “Replicants” that have gone off the grid. But in his pursuit of “Replicants” Officer K unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into total chaos. A secret so altering that if revealed could change humanity’s place on earth forever. With this discovery Officer K (also referred to at times as “Joe”) goes off on a personal quest to find a former Blade Runner named Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who's been missing or hiding for 30 years to get some answers.

REVIEW: DAZZLING, AN UNFLINCHING EVENT ON YOUR SENSES. “Blade Runner 2049” retains the full measure of the atmospherics of its original, but what jumps out at you from the first second of the film’s 2:44 minute running time is the complete suspension of big city reality as you know it or will ever imagine. This Los Angeles of 2049 is an endless vista wasteland conjured up out of the pure brilliance of Director Villeneuve as something completely original, imaginative and well beyond anything I have ever seen in a film. Every frame is a delicious experience of haunting aerial scenes of a cityscape below that is a modern hybrid of pure technology and flesh morphed into a dystopian paradox. A paradox of gleam and debris, grittiness and modern and decrepit and high-tech. At times it has a painfully old look about it and yet has moments of a wonderful nostalgia glow.

When closely examined from the ground “Blade Runner 2049” environment is a congested mingling of humans and artificiality all seamlessly conjoined together. Every facet of daily life looks and feels unpleasant with its overly narrow and overly broad streets, endless nonstop clusters of degrading concrete and steel as well as an omnipresent mist of gray and brown always lurking about as if clinging to every structure and people like some floating glue. This city is so tightly configured together it appears that its design had the idea of real humans living there more of an thought as to it ever making it someplace comfortably or habitable to live. LA is not a city, it’s a Rubix's cube of humanity tightly compressed by artificiality collectively trying to survive in an endless sea of minimalist and mega environmental strangeness.

As casting goes Ryan Gosling's as Agent K is impeccable cast as he creates the perfect balance of coldness and sympathy all the while keeping a poker face stare of being either human or not. Either way he is a soulless man with an occasional grin that showcases appropriately the required coolness and masculinity to survive in this futuristic dog eat dog world.

Jared Leto, known for his method acting style, plays a mysterious blind industrialist named Niander Wallace and while I consider Leto a fine actor I thought his “method” interpretation of his character was a little too cryptic and overall just being strange for strangeness sake leaving me at times confused about who he was and what his dialogue was trying to convey. I would have preferred Director Villeneuve’s originally casting choice in famed rocker David Bowie who unfortunately passed before film began. Bowie would have in my opinion brought a bit more diabolical soulfulness and diabolical warmth that Leto’s effort seem to severely lack. However from a technical perspective I was very impressed how Leto’s blind Wallace was given a totally imaginative way of letting him see who and what was in front of him; it just blew me away.

Harrison Ford to my surprise has very little screen time in the film. Still he manages to deliver some solid minutes as the recluse Rick Deckard tortured by decisions in his past that will have you questioning again is he human or not. But more importantly to this character and the film’s overall story plot, we are left to wonder why has he been hiding all these many years?

The musical score by Oscar Winner Hans Zimmer is brilliant as it is an exercise in raw pounding spine tingling sensation effectiveness. His score created memorable mood atmospherics of scenes from the air as well as on the ground evoking a real sense of ominous emotions and ominous dread. Zimmer in my opinion does Oscar worthy consideration work here that both massively improves on the original 1982 film’s score and at the same time pays respectful homage to the original musical work.

Overall while not every moment in the film is always coherent nor is every subplot offered (and there are many subplots) will make compete sense at every turn, “Blade Runner 2049” still works fabulously as a pure fictional story and is in my estimation is a marvel in movie making. It also asks a profound question that we can see without own eyes right now today with the ever advancements, enhancement and dependence upon self-thinking  and self-aware technology in our own time ……..”What is life?”

If you choose to see this, please, please, please don’t wait to rent this. The CGI is brilliant and will leave an indelible imprint in your mind. To rent this would be the equivalent of waiting to view and experience a one time joyful family event by way of video animation on a smartphone. And just as many of you who flocked to see the Best Picture Oscar nominated film "Gravity", this “Blade Runner 2049” also can only be experienced in the format of the theater where you can gain the full measure of the scale, the scope, the intricacy, the detail and the exquisite grandeur of a totally reimagining of desolation. Summarily a futuristic place completely consumed with unimaginable technology as well dust, pollution, oversized artifacts, hovering shades of brown-ish gray mist and piles of rust and decaying trash as far and wide as the city itself.

“Blade Runner 2049” is one of the better films you will see for 2017.

4 Stars

(Updated) – Contenders for Oscar Best Picture Nominations

 (Updated) – Contenders for Oscar Best Picture Nominations

This year’s Oscar Best Picture contenders are harder to read than ever. But once again, I will take a monthly stab at listing those films that have the buzz as they stand today.

  Ø Blue are absolute locks.

  Ø Green are probable.

  Ø Red are strong sleepers.

1            Dunkirk

2            The Shape of Water

3            The Post

4            Call Me By Your Name

5            Get Out

6            The Florida Project

7            Last Flag Flying

8            Darkest Hour

9            Downsizing      

10        Phantom Thread     

11        Wonderstruck                                                   

12        Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

13        Mudbound                                                       

14        Blade Runner 2049

15        All The Money in the World

16        The Big Sick

17        Molly’s Game

18        The Greatest Showman

19        You Were Never Really Here

20        Wind River