Lion will break your heart. The trail of tears carved along the Indian countryside past too many train platforms to count takes little Saroo too far away from his mama to ever find his way back home.
It’s Fievel’s American Tale journey all over again, but this story is true and doesn’t have the peppy tunes to promise a road back home.
The perfectly cast visual carnival begins in a valley of butterflies, winds into the heart of busy Calcutta streets and flies over oceans all the way to Australia. Our tiny, steadfast hero becomes a man and has to deal with demons from his past, has to reconcile being a little boy lost, and must find his way home with a little help from Google Earth.
If all stories are meant to teach us survival skills, meant to show us alternative ways to live, to give us hope, this film certainly does all of this. Saroo, the lion-hearted will show us all how to live if we take the time to let him tell his tale.
Jack to the rescue. Jack on his own.
Somehow it’s the opposite of what Jack Reacher really does stand for. He’s a rogue on a mission… Always alone, always fighting. What is he fighting for if he doesn’t stand for something? Is he actually a vigilante? We asked the same of Batman… So why not Jack?
Fortunately, audiences love a good underdog tale and will go see this plucky film that takes a few of the world’s current heaviest issues and throws them on-screen in a timeline-driven showdown that somehow maintains the snappy, light tone of a Saturday morning tv special without betraying the severity in the series of events.
The plot pacing jolts a bit across the timeline, but the 1960’s color palette in costuming and decor allows for gorgeous screen candy in symmetrical retro shots. The soundtrack time-stamps the era and remains lighthearted while the powerful, true story plays out.
The flaw in these three main characters, these Hidden Figures from history, is that they have no flaws. The tragedy of having a film with angelic protagonists is that that level of idealism is unattainable, less relatable. Audiences crave characters who remind them of themselves, offer survival tips, and can still win despite their human frailties.
Perhaps here, however, the truth of the majority voice in those tragic times in America’s history was more than enough conflict for audiences to handle. Our three heroines deal with the plague of prejudice and discrimination at every turn at work. They bow and bless while others stare and judge and ridicule. Co-workers slap signs that read “colored” on bathrooms and coffee pots and buildings. They are already treated as lower class citizens as women, but adding race tension doubles their trouble. NASA needed these talented women for their innate skills that helped the US catch up in the space race.
The antagonists, white bosses of both genders, snap and shoosh and demand and lord over all of those who they deem lesser, but they slowly learn to respect the three main figures and eventually to accept them. Kevin Costner’s character is really the only one with an arc. He says the oddly satisfying line, “At NASA, we all pee the same color.” 
People know but rarely put into practice the truth that human decency should not have to be earned or determined by color or reserved for the good, but offered because one is human.
They are simply two awake too early on a human transport spaceship headed to a new world to make a new life.
Jennifer Lawrence looks beautiful, rarely a flyaway hair out of place, and is barely allowed to ugly-cry. Pratt reenacts a few Martian-esque sequences, bearded and naked on-board the Homestead II.
Passengers is exactly what you expect it to be: big effects with big name stars on the big screen. Maybe it’s kind of nice to leave the theater feeling nothing. After La La Land, you may need the emotional respite.
She befriends the newest droid addition: a tall, almost Real Steel-esque bot who drops one-liners like parade candy. Erso’s small Rebel battalion also includes a repetitive blind ninja and his gruff and grubby sidekick protector, as well as an angsty Rebellion fighter called Cassian.
Meanwhile, the weak script sadly weighs the action down. Formula without mystery is story structure without voice. Characters announce each move, “I am going to go over there and then light it up.” Even heroic speeches felt like glib driving directions. “I will find out how to find them.” Audiences should get to play detective by engaging curiosity and problem solving before the film leads them to the destination. Even the final line was too much given in an already simple, dark, and scattered story.
Delightfully surprised by this one. It had the best effects to date, and I was equally won by humor and lighthearted giddy snark as Benedict Cumberbatch embraces his Marvel side. The pace of the film somehow works despite the constant embedding of exposition in tectonic spinning and explosive flair. It’s rather beautiful.
Some may complain about the heavy-handed mysticism present, but Strange himself keeps the Film leveled as a man of sarcasm and science.
Log line it: when a self-centered brain surgeon tests fate one dark and stormy night he is left incapacitated without the use of his hands, so his medical quest leads him on a spiritual journey – one which forms his heroic destiny.
Dr. Strange will return and with him a host of Marvel merch and intertwined storylines. Those infinity stones have birthed quite a following from Hydra to heart-valves to Galaxy Guards with great musical taste. Now they have a mystic who can control time, and somehow it works.
In translating the alien language, she learns much about herself, of course.
In 5th grade, schools took whole classes for an overnight field trip to the Science Center downtown Seattle, and we visited the longhouses and dinosaur exhibits and slept in the planetarium. With the stars overhead and dinos to my left, I felt transported by curiosity, allowed to dream beyond space and time, moved by the importance of single moments in time and how single choices affect the universe. See Arrival like that. Sit in awe for a few hours and be inspired by all that collaboration and kindness can produce.
Other traditions run askew as many “no mag” muggles get involved in Newt’s quest, from leftover Salem witch-hunters to a bumbling baker who stumbles into the case of wonders.
Colin Farrell is a vision, though he helps turn the film’s tone much darker than trailers intimated it would go. From glossy pluck to murderous violence, Beasts delights then frightens. It’s very dark, and Farrell’s character plays nearly pedophilic in moments as he mentors a younger boy. The death scenes are equally disturbing.
But one glowing report is in the telling of the story. HP author, JK Rowling, tries her hand at screenwriting with skill and success. She carefully builds up her underdogs through circumstances that shape them into confident heroes, and her cruel antagonists get their proper comeuppances.
And yes, the beasts themselves prove to be incredibly resourceful and resilient wild animals: truly fantastic.
I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers toe tap and twirl as the band played on. In La La Land, writer /director Damien Chazelle offers the same snap and dramatic vibrato expected after his Whiplash hit in 2014 without falling into the traps of most musical fare. This is whimsy, not kitsch.
Besides the group goal to go out guns blazing, the town prepares for war building giant spike gates and booby traps. Even so, without the Seven the town would have collapsed against the Gatling.
Newish actress Haley Bennett made the film more believable by riding out in tears and fighting in tears. She didn’t play the triumphant heroine, or the oppressed female. She showed an honest side to gun-slinging and territory claiming. She bootstrapped and got to work letting the battle begin, come what may.
So much killing was to be expected, but if they’d decided to go beyond the pg-13 rating, it would have been a bloodbath. How do we care for one specific life on the screen when so many are expendable? Surplus cowboys didn’t make the number of deaths easier to palate.
Splatter: on FILM 