21 Bridges: Well Done, Tightly Wound Suspense Film

Movie Review: 21 Bridges (2019)
Version: Library borrow

21 Bridges is a thoroughly complex police drama/suspense/thriller where you can guess the problem, you just don't know when the crap is going to hit the fan. Superb cast, great setting, excellent editing, terrific writing. Well paced. A good time will be had by all!

Two thieves show up to hit a drug den on a rumor there's 30 kilos easy pickings. When they get there, it turns out to be 300 kilos -- uncut -- and they're interrupted by police not busting down the door but knocking politely at the back door. Then all hell breaks loose and the thieves shoot the cops dead to make their escape. Things don't add up.

The rest of the film is Detective Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) trying to figure out why things don't make sense and trying to save the lives of the two thieves, before the real bad guys can snuff them out. Is it a cop killing? Is it a fouled up robbery? Is it a conspiracy? Captain McKenna (J.K. Simmons) is the precinct leader trying to protect the honor of the two cops who put their lives on the line. And Frankie Burns (Sienna Miller) is the consummate insider assigned to work with Davis to make sure nothing goes south. The whole story line is tighter than a bank vault and dirtier than a backstreet alley. Tension pervades every scene as the bad guys try to seal off the city before the two thieves can escape and let loose their secret.

If you aren't entertained by this film, you don't like a good suspense film. 21 Bridges is great viewing.

Rock Dog: Good Family Entertainment with a Good Message

Movie Review: Rock Dog (2016)
Version: Library borrow

It's not often you run into a Tibetan Mastiff who dreams of becoming a rock star. That's the plot behind the enjoyable animated film Rock Dog.

Bodi (played by Luke Wilson) lives in the snow capped mountains among his Tibetan brethren, when a radio falls from the sky, awakening his dream. He leaves for the big city in the lowlands below, where he meets a wily cast of urban characters, including a gang of hungry wolves, a disparate group of street musicians, and a reclusive rock star.

Bodi is working on getting his big break with the hope of getting a music lesson from rock star Angus Scattergood (played by Eddie Izzard), when he is hunted down by the gang of wolves, who want Bodi to lead them to his home with defenseless sheep. He is supported by four hapless street musicians played by Kenan Thompson as Riff, Mae Whitman as Darma, Jorge Garcia as Germur, and Matt Dillon as Trey. Bodi pursues a reluctant Scattergood, who is working on his next big release but is having a major creative block, when he hears Bodi playing a self-written tune he likes. Then the wolves find Bodi and mayhem breaks out as the everyone is out to get Bodi.

This isn't the best movie in the world, but it has a terrific ending, and who can resist the comedic voice talents of Eddie Izzard and Lewis Black as the bad guy, head wolf Linnux. Rock Dog makes good family entertainment for any age, and it has a good message.

Patriots Day: A No-Holds-Barred Retelling of the Boston Marathon Bombing

Movie Review: Patriots Day (2016)
Version: Library borrow

Patriots Day is a no-holds-barred re-telling of the April 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon and the community's heroic response in finding terrorits Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It features fine performances by Mark Wahlberg as a recovering injured police Sergeant Tommy Saunders on security duty at the finish line, John Goodman as Commissioner Ed Davis, Kevin Bacon as FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers, and J.K. Simmons as Watertown police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese, along with Jake Pickering as MIT Security Officer Sean Collier (who was assassinated by the Tsnaraev brothers) and Themo Melikodze as the older brother, Tamerlan, and Alex Wolf as is younger brother, Dzhokhar. Jimmy O. Yang is excellent as Dun Meng, the car-jacking victim, who heroically escapes the Tsnaraev brothers and runs for his life to alert police.

Parts of this film are brutal in showing the carnage from the bomb blasts, but it was the intent of the producers and director to be as honest as possible in depicting the destruction and mayhem of that infamous act. Near the end of the story, as police face off against the Tsnaraev brothers on a neighborhood street, there is a fierce shootout scene with amazing multiple pipe bomb explosions. In another scene, Wahlberg puts out an amazing emotional performance as the policeman who has seen it all in the aftermath of the event, bodies and limbs and death, breaking down before his wife. Much of this film is raw, edgy human reaction to terror, and every bit of it makes total sense. None of it is gratuitous or forced.

Patriots Day starts off by showing how key characters begin their day -- from the police, to runners, to innocent bystanders, to the car-jack victim, to the man who finally finds Dzhokhar Tsnaraev in his boat. The pace picks up as the event organizes and police set up security, then the marathon begins. The Tsnaraev brothers build the bombs, watch TV, interact with their family, pack up their backpacks, and go to the finish line. Dun Meng goes about his day, meets a young lady, goes on a dinner date, sits in his car and texts her. The explosions happen and chaos breaks out. People respond to each other with care. The FBI arrives and takes over the investigation. The search is on for who is responsible. The Tsnaraevs plot more action. And so the story continues to unfold to its ultimate conclusion, a city on edge but never going over that edge.

If you remember that event, you know the main story. But you don't know the whole story. Watching Patriots Day, you will relive the event and get to really know how a city came together over a tragedy and never let it take them down. You will witness their courage and feel their strength, even while you empathize with their anguish. The details here are vivid enough you may not want to let young children watch this film, but it's a good history lesson for the rest of us on the time "Boston Strong" became a national anthem and one well earned.

La La Land: It's a Flawed Film as a Musical

Movie Review: La La Land (2016)
Version: Library borrow

Ryan Gosling as Sebastian
Emma Stone as Mia
J.K. Simmons as Bill
John Legend as Keith
Aimee Conn as "Famous Actress" (third)
Thom Shelton as "Coffee Spiller" (fifth)

A jazz pianist falls for an aspiring actress in Los Angeles.

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

If you didn't grow up watching the great musicals on film, either on the big screen or on television, you might have been wowed by La La Land. Maybe that's why it was nominated for Best Picture Oscar -- lack of memory. Having seen some of the greats over the decades, I have memory and I was underwhelmed. Sorry, Hollywood. 

The movie begins with a song and dance routine, even before it establishes a story line. Fade up on a highway on-ramp crammed with cars, drivers listening to music on their radios and bored waiting while in highway gridlock. Suddenly, they break out in song and then dance. As the song and dance routine wind down, we finally meet the hero, Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling), and heroine, Mia (played by Emma Stone), who are in conflict as Mia gets a phone call and doesn't move ahead with the traffic and Sebastian blasts his horn in frustration, pulling around her in anger. 

Hereafter for the next half to three-quarters of an hour, each change of scene becomes an excuse to break into song. La La Land looks here more like an excuse to break into song rather than a typical musical, in which the music blends into a narrative, the music telling part of the story instead of the story simply filling in around the music. It's almost predictable that when you are introduced into a new scene the characters will break into song, maybe along with a dance. It isn't until that first half to three-quarters of an hour that the music suddenly becomes part of the narrative.

La La Land is about a want-to-be actress and a dreamer jazz pianist who struggle to make it in Hollywood. Finally after that first half hour, Sebastian introduces Mia to jazz at a jazz bar, explaining what jazz is really about and why he is devoted to it, as the jazz musicians play from the bandstand. You sense his excitement. From then on, the music he plays as a pianist and singer folds into a story -- becomes the story. Similarly, Mia explains her love for acting and we discover she really wants to be a playwright. And suddenly the music she sings folds into her story. Their dreams of becoming stars in the City of Stars comes to life.

 "City of Stars" is the theme song of the film and you don't hear the lyrics until halfway through the film!

The music is good, which includes pieces by one of America's most sought-after musical talents, John Legend, who makes an appearance in the film. And Emma Stone shines in her role as Mia, although there is no apparent in-scene chemistry between her and Ryan Gosling as Sebastian. I couldn't help catching a couple of plot holes right at the top of the film, too:  Why is there a skateboarder and a bicyclist on a busy highway on ramp? Why is there bumper-to-bumper traffic on the on ramp when in the distance you can see that the traffic on the highway onto which the on-ramp feeds is light and flowing freely?

But enough of the negatives. Let's talk about some positives. The color in the film is incandescent. The cinematography is beautiful. Also, there are plenty of interesting metaphors, such as toward the end of the film when Sebastian and Mia are having a meal together in Mia's apartment and Sebastian plays an LP album. They chat, catching up on their lives since his road trip with the band Sebastian in playing in has put them out of contact for a while. Then suddenly they break out into a disagreement. Cut to a close up of the spindle on the LP reaching the end of the cut. Mentally you say, "It's over." There is also some great use of lighting during musical scenes, house lights dimming on the surrounding crowds as a single spotlight remains focused on Sebastian or Mia so your focus is on their story and not the crowd.

A lot of these elements come right out of veteran musical cinema. From that perspective, you might be tempted to relive the good old days of hit Hollywood musicals. And likely, that's part of why La La Land was such a hit for the Oscars crowd. And certainly, once you get past that first 30 to 45 minutes, La La Land begins to look like a real musical. But I can't make myself get past that first 30 to 45 minutes, feeling like this was a movie about making a musical instead of a story told in the style of a musical. 

Don't mistake my meaning. La La Land has some great moments. It's worth seeing. It's just a flawed film as a musical, Oscars acclaim notwithstanding. I wish it had been better.

The Accountant: Part Slick Spy Novel, Part Skillful Detective Page Turner

Movie Review: The Accountant (2016)
Version: Library Borrow

Christian Wolf is in the cross hairs of the Treasury Department, so this is a mystery. Bad guys are in Christian Wolf's cross hairs, so this is a thriller. But The Accountant is so much more than a mystery thriller. It's a deep exploration into Christian Wolf as a character that led up to these cross hairs in a complex plot line that switches back and forth over decades exploring his childhood growing up severe autism and his life as an accountant for average Americans but more importantly for gang lords and international money launderers.

Dana Cummings is the special agent for the Treasury department tasked by Director Ray King to track down Wolf. Cummings has a questionable past, which she lied about on her security application, but she turns out to be as good a field agent as the analyst she's been hiding as, and King blackmails her into pursuing Wolf to save her job. Part of the mystery is why.

Wolf is played deftly by Ben Affleck as a quiet, socially awkward accountant with amazing math and pattern-recognition skills. Anna Kendrick is excellent as Cummings, the unsure analyst thrown into field work with the threat of discovery hovering over her head. J.K. Simmons is the consummate brash lead investigator begging for a comeuppance. Then we are introduced to Lamar Blackburn, a billionaire prosthetics developer played by John Lithgow, who can play a bad guy as deliciously as a good guy, so you don't know till it's too late which his character is, and his brash body guard Brax, played by Jon Bernthal. And the plots thicken and twist.

What's remarkable about this film is the way it interplays between slick spy novel with tones of superhero mythos, skillful detective page turner with tones of urgent FBI manhunt, and caring romantic study of the life of an autistic child who is forced to grow into a productive life. Wolf's father is a military man who hires martial arts experts to train his sons in self defense because he fears they may be abused or taken advantage later in life, then encourages them to street fight bullies who have made fun of them in school. The result is that Christian Wolf is still autistic but he can handle the world but the world isn't ready for Christian Wolf.

There are lots of amazing scenes of Wolf's early years that demonstrate severe autism and its effects on children and their families. In one early scene, Wolf is working a jig saw puzzle with the picture side down and nearly completes it by pattern recognition alone, but one piece is missing and he goes ballistic. He must complete the puzzle! It takes another autistic child watching him to calm him down. This scene is key to later in the film as Wolf requires closure on the things he starts and deals with the people in his life. If you have ever wondered about people with autism, this film is an interesting exploration of their world.

This is one of Affleck's better movies. He doesn't come off wooden in it. It paces well for two hours and eight minutes. And the ending is full of surprises. I can highly recommend The Accountant for audiences teen and older. There are some scenes that may be a bit scary for kids, not to mention lots of martial arts and gun shots to the head.