Reviews

MILD SPOILERS

I had to see "Our Brand Is Crisis" because I've managed political campaigns before. It was as good and as bad as I thought it would be. Good, because it does indeed show how political campaigns are run, for the most part, but bad because it has a stupid, but predictable, ending, and a Left-leaning bias throughout - which I guessed correctly was coming, and simply chose to discount in my judgment of the film.

Sandra Bullock starts off the film having abandoned the profession of political consulting because of a bad event we learn about later. Personal scumbag Billy Bob Thornton - who plays one in the film, too – is her capable adversary. Both are running presidential campaigns in Bolivia.

Here's what rings true: the professional rivalries between consultants (who, nonetheless can be civil to one another) the scenes of actual campaigning, the strategies, families being divided by politics, the stress of campaigns, the fun people have during them anyway, the candidate who doesn't listen to his consultants, the backroom intrigue, and the dirty tricks.

What's silly is the whining about money in politics (in the intro only, don't worry) and the fact that someone who's been in the business doesn't seem to know that people are mean or that politicians do, in fact, lie.

Some of Bullock's lines are hilarious. How she pulls one over on the Thornton character before a big debate is brilliant. How she pulls back and listens in the beginning (though admittedly, she was ill) is exactly how one SHOULD start off a campaign before crafting and announcing a strategy. And the need to sometimes change strategies in mid-campaign is also well illustrated here.

The scene where the two candidate's buses happen to be on the same road, leading to a hilarious "backside" joke, is just the kind of stunt campaigns pull on each other, and there are several "dirty tricks" shown as well that are MORE than plausible.

Bullock's character, "Calamity Jane," shouldn't be as surprised and alienated by the process as is depicted here, given her long history in the profession. But in films about political consulting – like the excellent 1986 Richard Gere/Denzel Washington film "Power" which this resembles in many ways, which I highly recommend – sermonizing about how bad things can get and what's wrong with politics and managing campaigns is typical, and expected. But still, they manage to get a lot right, and it's nicely entertaining even if you aren't a political consultant, so I recommend it.

(Yes, this review definitely contains spoilers!)

Any fan of the show "Forever" or perhaps even the 90s show "Forever Knight" or the Twilight series will understand the concept of extreme longevity explored in "Age of Adaline," and I'm a very big fan of both those shows and the concept, so I was eager to see this.

Blake Lively was amazing as Adaline, and Harrison Ford performed well, too, in all his flustered brilliance. His character here has great depth, as I think only he could pull off.

In a minor but amazing role, newcomer Anthony Ingruber plays Ford in a flashback as a youth and just NAILS his looks and mannerisms (which he's actually done for years on YouTube before being discovered by the director!)

In Ford's great film "Blade Runner," the original, theater release had a voice-over, which was later cut by the director on DVDs. There, it was an under-appreciated homage to 1940s Film Noir movies. In Age of Adaline, however, the ever-present narration seems pointless at best, demeaning and overly expository at worst. And while it may have seemed necessary to fill out the story's scientific details, it's often talking down to the audience in a way that's unnecessary. Verbal exposition often took the place of something that would have been better acted. And everyone who saw the previews already knew she lived a long time. It should be cut in the DVD.

That said, the story progresses well, though I wished for more flashbacks and more rye indications that she had acquired vast knowledge of her hometown - elements that add charm and a bit of humor. A date at an old movie theater, for example, was a charming scene.

It's beautifully filmed, and Lively's wardrobe is a reminder that women used to dress elegantly in their daily lives. I wish they still did (Adaline never gave up dressing well for 100 years and it added to Lively's already stunning looks.) I could have done without the pet storyline, but only because it struck a personal chord, as it will for any pet owner. It illustrated her sense of loss quite beautifully, and asked, without actually asking: How would it feel if everyone you had ever known had died, decades ago, and you were afraid to get close to, or even date anyone, as a consequence? Great post- date or dorm room discussion material here!

Very few flaws or goofs to note here. Some include: Why did Ford's character need that photo - it didn't prove anything. She seems to remember an event in 1906 but she wasn't even born until 1908. Why did she keep going back to that same city, where she would risk being recognized by people just 25 years older than she had been on a previous sojourn there? And wait - wouldn't her new man be grossed out knowing what he finally learned about the Ford character, to whom he was RELATED?

The very end (comet) is deeply flawed and confusing, leaving the audience with a big "huh?" (I suspect that a 2031 scene was cut, or was never filmed) and the narration during the "accident" before it that changes her physical situation is again unnecessary. It's as if people are so dumb they'd miss what was happening.

Overall, a worthy film about an interesting topic, filmed beautifully. Go see this!

SPOILERS!!

Christopher Nolan's film, starring a stellar cast and breathtaking visuals, stands up very well as a Sci-Fi epic and is very entertaining. It will also make you question whether the human race is ready for interstellar travel, because these characters clearly are not.

The film also enters some pretty strange realms of time, space and metaphysics, and even touches on that vast, unknowable emotion called love, and does all these things in an often clunky way. The story (SPOILERS AHEAD, I meant it!) is this: in the near future (perhaps 25 years from now) humanity, presented here only by what's going on in the USA, is suffering from massive droughts and dust bowl-like conditions that are causing all crops except corn to fail. And the corn crop is about to fail, too. The population of the earth has fallen dramatically and the earth is basically dying. We need a new home out among the stars. Matthew McConaughey is an engineer in a world where there is no need for engineers, so he's a farmer dealing with all this misery.

He has two kids. His son plays a minor role but his super- intelligent daughter plays a key role, and in fact, must be played by three actresses across generations. And no, McConaughey does not drive a Lincoln in the film, as he does in his now-famous and extremely odd TV commercials. He drives a very old 2014 Dodge Ram pickup truck.

The film features the struggles on earth, inter-cut with danger and duplicity on distant planets, and the stars include an Affleck, a Damon, a Caine, and a former Spiderman, among many other big names rounded up by Nolan.

The first half of the movie basically sets all of this up, and it's extremely bleak and horrifyingly believable. Leaving aside the CAUSE of all this misery – assumed to be a man-made event – the nation's economic priorities have also changed. No more military (only because it's no longer affordable) and no more space program.

In fact, textbooks that are "government-corrected" – apparently by Oliver Stone – make it clear that we never even went to the moon, and that the faked lunar landings were only a ruse to bankrupt the Soviets. But things get weird fast when a gravitational anomaly in his house leads McConaughey's character to a secret government facility that turns out to be NASA's new home.

He's quickly recruited to pilot a ship and crew, complete with robots, to a black hole/wormhole that's mysteriously appeared near Saturn – put there by a "they" that is at first undefined.

I use the word "quickly" with great trepidation, because it takes these characters years to just get to Saturn in this film and it feels like it takes hours in the theater, too.

WARNING: This film soars to nearly three hours in length. It feels like five. Discrete cutting could have brought it down to two, easily.

On the "other side" of the wormhole, they're in another galaxy, and must explore three planets that have been deemed possibly inhabitable by humans – new homes for the starving millions, or (a Plan B) to repopulate with genetic material the astronauts brought with them.

For the sake of the audience, astronauts approaching the black hole are portrayed explaining how time can bend in an Einsteinian sense. This is something they surely would already know, and many other points seem pedantic and even silly. Some of the dialogue here seems like it could have been cut, leaving less-informed viewers to go to Wikipedia for scientific explanations.

2001: A Space Odyssey, to which this film could easily be compared in many respects (including some trippy wormhole scenes and the "HAL- like" robots, who luckily don't go insane) shows that constant chatter is unnecessary to show the majesty and vastness of space.

The remarkable Hans Zimmer's music added a lot to the effect of the film and gave it a "2001" feeling. He also composed music for Nolan's "Inception," which this film in some ways resembles. The musical score was too loud in places and covered some dialogue at the end.

Back to the plot, three explorers have managed to get messages out to earth, and exploring one of the planets – a water world (a type of planet which does exist and is extremely plausible) – that unfortunately lies too close to the black hole and causes time to run 1/7th slower. This has a devastating effect on the crew and incidentally demonstrates why such long-distance travel would be very difficult for humans.

Some ludicrous and unscientific points here include escaping the event horizon of a black hole by using rocket engines, and then "shedding the weight" of part of the ship. Huh? And the fact that "love" is the key to part of the solution, as elucidated by the love-addled Anne Hathaway, who is smitten with one of the male explorers who has gone to explore one of the promising planets.

The idea that Love should color the decision to explore one planet instead of another is rightly shot down by McConauhey's character.

I suddenly thought I was watching a sequel to "The Fifth Element." Instead, there are five dimensions here, and the final third of the film explores just how this can be and who is behind all of it, and it's here that the film because incredibly surreal, and no description can be given without ruining the "surprise." It IS science fiction, after all, and it lives up to the Fiction element as well as the Science portion. Beautifully filmed, awesome in scope, I recommend Interstellar, but prepare for a long haul into these distant galaxies and back again.

(This does indeed contain MAJOR Spoilers)

In Disney's Tomorrowland, three police officers are shot and killed in cold blood. The fact that it's done by robots (and death rays, which vaporizes them) doesn't make it any more acceptable.

Which is sad, because I'd been VERY MUCH looking forward to this film for weeks, and it disappointed.

Some good first: The young actresses here are wonderful. We'll be seeing a lot more of both Britt Robertson (Casey Newton) and Raffey Cassidy (Athena.)

My opinion of Hugh Laurie (David Nix) is colored by his amazing role as the lead character on House, MD, but in truth his acting was only fair, and I believe any actor – known or unknown – could have better played Frank Walker, portrayed by George Clooney, who was wooden and whose role was poorly written.

The first act is magical, and spectacular. The discovery of the pin and the wonderful place it exposes is amazing. The visuals are captivating – and this is what appeared in the previews. The nostalgic and accurate-feeling 1964 World's Fair was beautifully rendered and Frank's youthful wonder (played sufficiently by Thomas Robinson) pours forth from the screen.

And then the film goes haywire.

For starters, the film's science is absurd, and the way they eventually get to Tomorrowland is even more absurd (no, it's not a bathtub, as hinted at in the TV ads, nor the devise that takes them to Paris, which could have simply beamed them to Tomorrowland!)

Instead, we get numerous plot holes and absurdities that destroy even the internal logic of the film.

Just a few of the mind-numbing number of unanswered questions and plot holes:

For WHOM is the negative/realistic Frank Walker and the optimistic Casey recording the video in the opener? And why is he so negative? Clearly he can't be negative after the events of the film have unfolded, because everything seemingly worked out and new animatronic children are being sent out to revive Tomorrowland. But if it's filmed beforehand, why is he recording a video at all, and again, FOR WHOM?

What has Tomorrowland ever done for the world? That seriously is never addressed. That's why I thought we were getting this movie. It never materialized. We learn instead that a rather bleak looking Tomorrowland now exists, and probably existed like that when Frank was expelled when he was a teenager (in the early 1970s?) So what has it ever done for humanity to warrant its existence?

If, in 1964, a friendly robot device existed that could create bridges in the sky (and fix Frank's jet pack early in the film) why wasn't such a device sent to earth to repair and build roads and sky-bridges HERE? The sad answer lies in the same depressing conclusion: Tomorrowland has helped no one. Ever.

Why have the robots kill ANYONE if the world was ending in a month or so, anyway? Didn't they get the memo?

If Gov. Nix could have expelled Frank to a deserted island (where he would have died in a few years) using that transporter device, then why didn't he do that years ago, instead of putting him in a house and using the threat of killer robots to pacify him?

Tomorrowland was clearly being built in the 1960s. So HOW and WHY was the Eifel Tower being constructed in the 1880s as an inter- dimensional ship? And WHERE was it going, exactly? This ship's very existence is completely illogical and seemingly exists only to insert a bit of cool-looking Steampunk into the film.

If Nix could see the future, surely he could have seen his own demise, and Frank's return?

The moment when Casey has the revelation, standing in front of the portal to the island, I thought INSTANTLY that this film would make a wonderful U-turn, giving Nix and Tomorrowland a chance to redeem themselves. If spreading gloom and doom about humanity's problems doesn't work (and we see it NOT WORKING all around us) why don't they simply change the message of what's being sent out to the earth? But "destroy the array" is the answer, leading to two deaths almost instantly. What a way to end the film on a downer, making the later 'new army' of robot recruiters a poor "Plan B."

Finally, how did the 30-odd-day "end of the world" get fixed, by Casey wishing it away? By her positive energy? That's magic, not science. That someone has Midichlorians that can affect the universe is from another franchise, even if Disney DOES now own it.

Overall, the film's second and third acts are a huge disappointment, marred by unnecessary violence and numerous absurdities. Which is a shame, since the film could have shown the world being positively affected by those working together in harmony to build a better future. THAT was Disney's vision, after all, not just one more stupid movie-themed ride at the parks' Tomorrowlands.

This is a stark-raving hilarious film that I highly recommend. (And I may have MILD spoilers here, so be warned.) Stiller is, as usual, funny in an almost unintentional way. He fills out his character outrageously, and manages to make us forget all other characters he's played - even though a similar outlandish, Zoolander-like thread runs through them all, including this one.

But Robert Downey, Jr. steals this show with his portrayal of a black-face actor who is VERY into his character. The irony is that when critics first got hold of photos of him in black-face, they were outraged. Ironic, because the real black character is outraged IN THE MOVIE that the actor-portraying-actor-portraying-black man is in black-face (you'll see.) The only downside is that some of the sound is quite bad here. Downey's character whispers a lot of his lines - either that, or the sound was "off" a bit. Other characters are at times hard to understand. Then again, they are shouting against gunfire sometimes.

Jack Black was a bit weak, sadly, but he does manage to get a few great lines out while portraying a drug-addled actor going through withdrawal (though in a movie-like, almost cartoonish way, by detoxing almost immediately.)

The opening battle scene is almost awe-inspiring in its realism, up to a point. Some have said the movie's set-up in the beginning, and the first few minutes, are like, in a way, Saving Private Ryan and the D-Day invasion scene. Again, up to a point, when humor takes hold after "cut" is called on that opening scene, letting the audience in on the fact that this is a movie set, and not another fake trailer.

The one-liners throughout are classics. The fake movie ads that intro the characters at the start are jaw-droppingly funny.