"Hateship Loveship" Movie Review

My review of "Hateship Loveship" starring Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Hailee Steinfeld.

"Hateship Loveship"

Published on April 25, 2014 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of IFC Films

“Hateship Loveship” (2014)

When we first meet Johanna (Kristen Wiig) is seems she is living in the 1950’s.  She wears old fashioned lace up shoes, dress that seem to be bought at a 5 & 10 store and when she does housework, an apron so old fashioned that you might have seen on “Leave it to Beaver.”  She works as a caretaker for an elderly woman who suddenly, though not unexpectedly, dies.  As Johanna quietly goes about fulfilling the woman’s last request of wanting to wear her blue dress, we learn that she is loyal, hardworking and determined.  We also learn, as the oxygen supply picks up the old tanks, that she has a new job in a new city set up by her clergy.

Johanna arrives by bus to her new city to work for Mr. McCauley (Nick Nolte) as a live-in maid/nanny.  McCauley lives with his teenage granddaughter Sabitha (Hailee Steinfeld), who is estranged from her recovering addict, ex-con of a father, Ken (Guy Pearce).  We soon learn that Sabitha’s mother (McCauley’s daughter) was killed in a car accident caused by Ken.

Sabitha is a little out of control, especially when around her best friend, Edith (Sami Gayle), who encourages her to drink and act up.  Sabitha, while adoring her father, seems to have never recovered from her mother’s death and Ken, makes things worse by living in another town, only seeing his daughter when he wants something from McCauley.  Now Johanna is thrown into a family at the brink of a breakdown, and we get the feeling that no matter what Johanna does Sabitha isn’t going to allow her to become any sort of a mother figure.

After a chance encounter with Ken in a bathroom as he was stealing McCauley’s drugs, Joanna visibly reacts with a blush and a tiny smile when Ken calls her “gorgeous.”  When Ken sends Joanna a short thank you note for taking care of Sabitha, Joanna responds as if it is from “Romeo” himself, and immediately responds.  Edith and Sabitha intercept the return note from Joanna and then launch an elaborate scheme to interact with Joanna, posing as Ken.

Wiig gives the performance of her career, creating a character that in any other actress’s hands would come off strange and unsympathetic.  But we slowly fall in love with Joanna, understanding that this is a woman who at her core just wants to care for someone and have them care back. Wiig, using just little tells, gives us insight into the simple on the outside but emotionally complex Joanna, so that in every scene, if we watch carefully we will discover more about her character.

Guy Pearce plays Ken as a man who cares about his daughter but can’t overcome the demons of this past enough to change for her.  He is a man that seems to be filled with quilt, but keeps making the same mistakes, whether it’s with drugs or his relationships.  Ken is a man that isn’t going to change unless something drastic happens, and Pearce lets us see this through his reactions with the people that he cares about.

Hailee Steinfeld is very moving in her performance of Sabitha, a girl who is desperate for attention, even if it comes from the wrong places. Steinfeld plays the character as someone who is constantly observing people, seeing how they will react to her interactions before she proceeds.  The rest of the cast is outstanding, with Nick Nolte, in a very restrained performance, leading the way.  Instead of chewing up scenery and dominating the screen, he is quiet and thoughtful, letting the scenes play out without overreaction.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Ken’s addict girlfriend and Christine Lahti plays a love interest for Nolte’s character.

Director Liza Johnson does a phenomenal job of getting great performances out of her cast. She lets us sit back and slowly discover new things about the characters, never quite knowing which direction the film will take. The film has an incredible soundtrack by Dickon Hinchliffe, with most of the music in the film is provided by songs played on radios that perfectly match the moods and emotions of the scenes they are in. The screenplay, written by Mark Poirier, never gives us too much at one time and lets the characters speak through their actions more than their words. It’s a film where the audience hopes that each character in the film can find love and peace, and maybe with Wiig’s Johanna  at the center of the action, they will find it.   My Rating: Full Price

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

“Hateship Loveship” is playing exclusively at the Plaza Theatre

“Hatehip Loveship” Website

"The Railway Man" Movie Review

My review of "The Railway Man" starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgård. 

"The Railway Man"

Published on April 18, 2014 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company 

“The Railway Man” (2013)

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) has a chance encounter with a beautiful woman, Patti (Nicole Kidman), on a train traveling across the English countryside. As they converse about the history of the towns they are passing, a spark is ignited between the two.  Eric reluctantly leaves the Patti when the train arrives at his destination. Meeting his fellow war veterans at a bar, he gets their advice and decides to track down Patti, knowing that she will be arriving back in town by train later in the week.  They meet at the station and both know this is too big a thing to pass up.  And so starts the film “The Railway Man.”

Lomax has a very painful past, one that he isn’t willing or able to share with Patti. During World War II, he was a prisoner of war, held captive by the Japanese in a labor camp. Their job, to build the Thai/Burma railroad (the same railroad depicted in the 1957 Academy Award winning film “The Bridge on the River Kwai).  The Japanese want to build a railroad deemed by the British a few years earlier, too costly in men’s lives to try. Lomax is so scared by the memories and experiences as a POW that it affects not only his everyday life but also his relationship with Patti.

The film is based on the bestselling autobiography by Eric Lomax and moves back and forth from his relationship with Patti in 1980 to flashbacks of his life in the labor camp. Colin Firth gives a moving performance of a man who can’t escape his past. Firth is able to work with silence so well, letting his face and his body language gives us all the information we need to know that Eric is a troubled soul.  Nicole Kidman is sensational as the put upon Patti, who struggles to deal with Eric’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even though she was a nurse for 20 years, Patti doesn’t know how to support or reach Eric. Kidman allows us to sympathize with Patti, investing us in their relationship and making us want for it to work out.

While Kidman and Firth give excellent performances, the performance to watch is the one that Jeremy Irvine gives as the younger Eric. Irvine is one of those actors who when he appears on the screen, you instantly like him. Irvine gives us an Eric that is far braver than his young appearance and seemingly easy going manner projects. His scenes in the labor camp, especially ones where he is being beaten by his Japanese captors are intense and amazing to watch, making those scenes the best part of the film.  Irvine also makes us believe that he is a younger version of Firth.

As fine as the acting is “The Railway Man” they can’t overcome a script, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson, that has a rather jarring timeline, switching at a moment’s notice from 1980 to the POW labor camp. I think I would have enjoyed the film more if it hadn’t gone back and forth so much. It made the scenes between Kidman and Firth seem far less important than they really were, mostly because they were far less intense than the POW scenes.

The cinematography by Garry Phillips does an excellent job contrasting the rainy, haunting gray English coast with the sticky, hot jungles of Thailand, making the POW scenes seem very real and stark. Director Jonathan Teplitzky gets all he can from the weak script but the film ultimately isn’t as touching and moving as you want it to be. Overall, it’s a good film, with a great performance by Jeremy Irving, that shows love and compassion can overcome just about everything, including man’s inhumanity to man. It’s just not the great film that it’s subject matter deserved.    My Rating:  Bargain Matinee

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

“The Railway Man” is currently playing in select theatres in Atlanta.

“The Railway Man” Website

"The Unknown Known" Movie Review

I review the documentary "The Unknown Known"

"The Unknown Known"

Published on April 11, 2014 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of RADiUS-TWC

“The Unknown Known” (2014)

Donald Rumsfeld is one of the most fascinating political figures of the last 50 years. Besides serving four terms in Congress, Rumsfeld was the youngest person to serve as the Secretary of Defense (1975-1977 under President Gerald Ford) and the oldest (2001-2006 under President George W. Bush). Academy Awarding winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris points his camera at Rumsfeld in this portrait of a man who was in government when so many important events happened.

Using Rumsfeld’s own memo’s (Rumsfeld estimates he wrote over 20,000 of them in the years under President Bush) as starting material for each subject, it gives us an inside look on how he sees the world and the United States place in it. The film starts out with one of Rumsfeld’s memos dealing with “the unknown known,” which he defines as “The Unknown Known are thing you know which turns out you do not.”

The film centers on the two tours that he did as Secretary of Defense, especially his time serving under Bush. Morris shoots Rumsfeld strait on, almost always in close-up with very dramatic lighting. It almost makes Rumsfeld appear as a college professor in for a talk with a favorite student. Morris (always off camera) asks Rumsfeld a number of questions but rarely follows up on the questions when Rumsfeld evades or doesn’t really answer the question that was asked.

A number of subjects in the film are covered, such as Watergate (Rumsfeld didn’t fit in with the Nixon staff and was shipped off to be an ambassador to NATO), the Ford administration, and the big elephant in the room, 9/11 and the Iraqi war. The film intersperses shots of Rumsfeld with news footage, to give each subject some historical context. Rumsfeld does talk at length about each subject but sometimes you feel as though you are not getting the whole story and, unfortunately, Morris never really goes after Rumsfeld to expound on his answers.

There are some startling claims made by Rumsfeld during the film. One is on the subject of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Rumsfeld makes it seem like that notorious prison was the best run prison in the whole system and that not one person was water boarded by the military. He does admit that the CIA may have water-boarded three people and that other means were used to make prisoners give up information.

Rumsfeld talks about 9/11 which seems to be a subject close to his heart (he was in the Pentagon when the airliner hit it). He talks about how the military and the intelligence communities were taken by surprise by the attacks, calling it a “failure in imagination.” He also covers the subjects of the hunt for both Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The Unknown Known is an interesting film about a very sure and dynamic personality. I just wish that it had been more hard hitting and that Errol Morris had questioned Rumsfeld to give us more detailed and precise answers. Its a film that you leaving thinking, I didn’t get the whole story but only the story the subject wanted me to get.   My Rating: Bargain Matinee

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

The film is playing in Atlanta exclusively at Lefont Sandy Springs

"Anita" Movie Review

My review of the documentary "Anita"

"Anita: Speaking Truth to Power"

Posted on April 4, 2014 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films

“Anita” (2014)

In 1991, the country was glued to their TV’s watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings where a young, African-American woman law professor out of the University of Oklahoma, Anita Hill, was testifying. She had brought forth claims of sexual harassment against President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas.

Academy Award winning filmmaker Frieda Lee Mock has made a documentary on Anita Hill, a woman that to this day is still feeling the repercussions of her testimony. Anita Hill speaks for the first time at length, in this documentary, about her experiences before, during, and after the hearing. It’s an inside look at one of the most infamous incidents in Washington politics.

Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

Hill served under Thomas at the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), an agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. While there, she claimed to experience numerous incidents of sexual harassment by Thomas. She never filed charges, but she did tell a number of co-workers and friends about the incidents. When Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court, Hill was interviewed by Democrats, looking into Thomas’s past. She sent the Senate committee a statement detailing her claims of harassment, thinking that would be the extent of her involvement in the process. Little did she know that very soon she would be called to testify about the claims of sexual harassment by Thomas in front of not just the Senate Committee but also the nation itself.

Mock uses Hill’s own words to narrate the film, giving us an insight to a woman that became of symbol of strength and power to many women across America that had suffered sexual harassment in the workplace. Mock also uses extensive footage from the nine hours of testimony that Hill gave that day.

Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

We first meet Hill as she is walking into her office at Brandeis University, while an old voice-mail message is played from Ginni Thomas, the wife of Clarence Thomas. The message is asking for Hill to apologize to the nominee and suggests that Hill as alternative motives in bringing the charges to light. We go from that scene to a video clip of Hill testifying in front of the senate, giving them details in very graphic detail.

The film interviews a number of people about Hill’s testimony, including friends, co-workers, family and lawyers brought in to help her get through the testimony. One of the films faults is that it’s a one-sided look. No one is interviewed on camera that defends Thomas’s testimony that he did not do these things, nor are any of the senators that served on the committee. It makes the film seem a little bit of an “attack film” on Thomas and the Republicans in the Senate.

The film does do a good job of capturing what it was like to have a big press event (people watched all nine hours of her testimony on TV) in a time before Twitter, TMZ and cell phone cameras. One of the most amazing things that’s revealed in the film, is how little Hill was prepared for her testimony. She thought she was going to a hearing that would only contain Senators for the Democratic party. What she got instead was a grilling for 9 hours that questioned not only her honesty but her character as well.

Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

The film also does a marvelous job of showing the effects of the testimony of Hill’s life. That she had to leave the state and the University that she loved due to all the publicity and the pressure. In the film she shows 25 file cabinets of mail she has received over the years due to the hearings, some of it good but most are of the death threat variety. We also see that Hill has moved on, becoming a champion of woman’s rights in the workplace and that she is looked on as a role model for young females.

This is an interesting film, but it seems to reflect it’s subject. Like Hill, the film is a little reserved and somewhat hard to know what is happening under the surface, but the film does do a good job showing how much Anita Hill had to go through and also how far we have come as a country in dealing with sexual harassment.  My Rating: Bargain Matinee

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

“Anita” is playing exclusively at the UA Tara Cinema 4.