The Finest Hours

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Craig Gillespie/Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Eric Bana, Ben Foster and Holliday Grainger

Based on the book: The Finest Hours: The True Story of a Heroic Sea Rescue, director Craig Gillespie's film tells the story of a T-2 oil tanker that literally split in half during a particularly savage sea storm in the Atlantic, which prompted a harrowing sea rescue. Braving terrifying, towering waves, the Coast Guard's rescue operation stands as one of the more amazing feats in American maritime history.

Having stated that, one might expect a movie depicting something so mind-boggling to be sufficiently nail-biting. Unfortunately, Gillespie's film falls well short of translating the story's more harrowing aspects. We're left instead with a technically accomplished action flick that would have been better off being projected from a plasma display than a movie projector. What was most likely a life-altering experience for all involved plays like a pedestrian sea disaster on-screen. One might find the story interesting and the visual effects impressive but if you're like me, you might also become drowsy; even during some of the film's climactic sequences.

The events depicted in the film took place off the coast of Massachusetts, early 1950s'. During said snow storm, the aforementioned tanker encountered violent, colossal waves. The tanker crew, led by Ray Sybert (Casey Affleck), watch nervously as the welded seam of the hull threatens to crack with the ship's every crashing descent from the mighty waves. When the seams does give, a powerful blast of water penetrates the interior, knocking crew-members against the bulkhead. Unthinkably worse, the ship actually splits in two which one crew-member discovers to his horror. While one half the ship sinks beneath the angry waves, Sybert and the remaining crew struggle to keep their half afloat. While the ship threatens to drift, sink or capsize, Sybert realizes their only hope is to steer what remains of the vessel onto a shoal, thus stabilizing it until help arrives.
Meanwhile, a Coast Guard crewman named Bernie Webber (Chris Pine) undertakes a dangerous and ill-advised mission to rescue the survivors of the tanker crew; well aware of the mission's slim chances for success. He and his small crew are nevertheless brave, knowing their small, Coast Guard boat must negotiate the roiling sea. Adding a wrinkle to Bernie's efforts is his fiancee Miriam (Holliday Grainger), who waits anxiously for him to return.

The story draws a parallel between the two crew chiefs as both Sybert and Bernie are burdened by the need to prove themselves as able leaders and earn their respective crews respect.
In an attempt to make the film more female friendly, the action is frequently interrupted to show us Miriam's anguish, as she clings desperately to the hope of her fiance's return.

The action is divided evenly between Sybert's attempt to ground the ship and Bernie's crazy brave effort to find the survivors, which seems hopeless in the unforgiving tempest.

Both narrative threads provide some minor thrills--accent on minor. The visual effects are effective enough to give a landlubber like myself an idea of what violent sea really means but the action didn't make me squirm. One might say; hey, cool CGI, but shouldn't this be more exciting? Knowing the story is based on fact was a sure tell that all would work out for everyone, which robbed the film of tension crucial to the narrative.

As mentioned earlier, I couldn't help but think the movie might be an okay late night, channel surfing stop but on a movie screen, it just seems several sizes too big.
The characters also fail to register as real people; they're more realized personality types. Eric Bana, Affleck and Pine aren't given much to interpret, character-wise. The same can be said for British actress Holliday Grainger; whose performance consists almost solely of teary-eyed stares into the oceanic horizon. Her character is really the producer's carrot to lure women into theater seats.

Craig Gillespie has done better work; the odd Lars and the Real Girl and the light and whimsical The Million Dollar Arm demonstrate his quirkier, more humorous trademark style. This film seems all wrong for him. This stuff is the domain of a seasoned hack like Michael Bay.

The men who lived through the horrific ordeal were undeniably at their finest. If only the filmmakers could claim the same. A better title for the film might have been; A Passable Two Hours.

My Favorite Films of 2015

I've come to that time in the early part of the year when I reflect on the films I found to be the previous year's most exceptional. What an incredible gathering it turned out to be! I whittled my list to 16 this year in the interest of concision; the twenty-six films I compiled from the year before proved to be too much. I'm sure you'll understand. There were those films I hated to omit but I offer them due compensation by bundling them together in an Honorable Mentions list that will follow my top 16. Believe me when I tell you the selection process was no easy task.

I don't know that a common thread links the films on the list but I noticed something that might be called a trend: the number of movies featuring strong female leads. I hope this becomes a habit in 2016.

If you feel I've left off one of your favorite films, please let me know in the comment section below. I hope my list evokes thoughts, some good memories and maybe spark some argumentation.
The list is arranged chronologically and not according to degrees of excellence.

FAVORITE FILMS OF 2015

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Easily one of the best of the year and one of the most powerful. Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz, who also co-wrote and co-directed the film, gave one of the more amazing performances on-screen last year. The story of an Israeli woman seeking divorce from her husband seems simple and straightforward but as we see, the process becomes an emotionally grueling, bureaucratic nightmare. The woman's struggle to be free from her husband is a powerful metaphor for the plight of women everywhere. Viviane is a character I won't ever forget.

It Follows
This film proves conclusively that a creatively creepy story never needs a bloated budget to achieve maximum terror. Director David Robert Mitchell may have only had a $2 million dollar budget but he wielded it as if it were $100 million.
A woman becomes the target of a malevolent, supernatural force, which she finds impossible to shake. Her efforts to elude said force and free herself from its deadly agenda are the stuff of nightmares. The film deserved more attention than it got.

Ex Machina
Author Alex Garland's directorial debut showed a cerebral film could also be thrilling and tension-filled. The story's ideas about artificial intelligence touches upon ethical and moral concerns. Word to anyone creating humanoids with the capacity for abstract thought; beware of your creation's ideas about self-determination and self-preservation.

Salt of the Earth
Wim Wender's documentary on photographer Sebastiao Salgado isn't merely a bio but a beautiful film about a man whose artistic ambitions are inextricably linked to his humanitarian causes. Wender's images are as striking as those of his subject. The scene that details Salgado's efforts to reforest the land surrounding his boyhood home should serve as motivation for those who care about the planet's welfare.

3 and 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
Director Marc Silver's film arrived during a year when news articles about blacks being gunned down across America (mostly by police) became more commonplace. In Silver's film, we see how it easy it is for a white man with a twitchy trigger finger to loosely interpret what constitutes a threat to his person. That his victim was only guilty of playing his music loudly underscores the travesty of some state's gun laws, which grant gun-owners great latitude in how they apply lethal force. Silver's film is paradoxically rousing and sobering.

A Poem is a Naked Person
A previously unreleased film from the late, great documentary filmmaker Les Blank finally reached movie screens forty-one years after its 1974 birth. Blank's film isn't merely about rock legend Leon Russell but the odd, sometimes surreal world of his home state, Oklahoma. Blank's camera captures some wonderful images; one being an artist painting the surface of an indoor swimming pool inside Russell's soon-to-be recording studio. The beautiful mural is but one memorable shot in a film spilling over with them. We also get Russell's great music and live performances to complete a complete film.

Straight Outta Compton
Overlooked at the Oscars, F. Gary Gray's film about the legendary hip-hop group N.W.A. not only captures the triumphs and travails of five ambitious men en route to stardom but also the violent, bullet-riddled world that inspired their music. Excellent performances all around, particularly by Paul Giamatti and O'Shea Jackson Jr.; Ice Cube's own son. Scenes of the group being harassed by the LAPD seem very current and very relevant.

The Witch
This is really a 2016 film but I was fortunate to catch an advanced screening. If I had to limit my best film choices to three, director Robert Eggers' brilliant, frightening story about an early American colonial family's encounters with a witch would hover at the top of my list, if it doesn't already rest on the summit. The commitment to authenticity is admirable, including period-authentic language and the film's look of deprivation and dirt. Truly an exceptional film.

Goodnight Mommy
Don't let the film's innocent title fool you; nothing about directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's story is so benign. Young, twin brothers become suspicious of their mother after she undergoes cosmetic facial surgery. Unconvinced that the woman living with them is their mother, the boys' distrust leads to some horrific acts of violence. An unforeseen twist arrives in the third act, which helps make sense of the boys' motivations. Darkly psychological, much about the film is designed to make one squirm.

Room
I saw Room the same weekend as The Witch and Goodnight Mommy, which made for a fairly intense, cinematic triumvirate. Brie Larson and young actor Jacob Tremblay offer searing performances as a mother and son who escape an enclosure where they've been kept 7 years. The wrenching aftermath, where the mother must deal with psychological fallout and the boy with a bewildering world he has never seen left me feeling simultaneously teary and in awe of the film's visceral strength. The film was rightly nominated for several Oscars.

Meru
Three world class mountain climbers attempt to scale a seemingly unscalable mountain in the Himalayas named Meru. The story of their second attempt on the mountain and the backstory of their lives lead one through an array of powerful emotions, including fear, excitement, heartbreak and finally joy. What distinguishes this mountaineering film from others is the footage; captured by the climbers themselves. It is an unforgettable story about unforgettable men.

The Martian
Sci-fi films have made a comeback in recent years. Last year's offering in this genre was an absorbing, harrowing and exhilarating story of an astronaut who becomes stranded on Mars. The steps he takes to survive the hostile environment are fascinating and a testament to human ingenuity. The visual and sound effects are stellar (excuse the expression) while the ensemble cast is outstanding. It had been literally decades since I had last seen a Ridley Scott film I actually liked. This film shows what magic he is capable of.

Youth
Paulo Sorrentino's dreamlike meditation on aging is visually mesmerizing and beautiful. One might think an entire story set in a spa in the Swiss alps would impose impossible limitations on a director's vision but nothing seemed to impede Sorrentino. The film's final shot asks us to question veracity of what we've seen. In fact, we often learn that no one and nothing are what they seem.

Joy
David O. Russell strikes cinematic gold again with his story of a woman whose tenacity, grit and smarts become indispensable attributes in her trying ascent to success. Jennifer Lawrence's amazing performance almost blinds us to the film's other standout qualities, like Russell's superlative direction. The film celebrates female empowerment and does so convincingly.

The Revenant
Alejandro Inarritu's gritty and tough film about revenge is also otherworldly and visually breathtaking. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance is sure to garner an Oscar. He is as dazzling as the images of the unforgiving landscapes Inarrritu holds in his lens. The often talked about scene of the grizzly attack and a shot of a horse and rider plunging over a cliff are but two of many searing moments in the film. If The Revenant wins best picture, I myself will hardly object.

Anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's poignant film is the only one of the aforementioned that is animated. The film manages to be quite moving in spite of the inherent challenges in creating a drama with stop-motion puppetry. A man's struggle to be connected to people meets with some success as he begins a romance with a woman he finds refreshingly unique. But also he finds his anxieties are difficult to overcome and hard to define; leaving him a in an unrelieved state of existential despond.

And so that brings my list to a merciful close. I hope you find some of my choices to be stimulating if not compatible with your own. I also hope you take the time to sample those you may have missed or just find intriguing. Thank you for taking the time to read over my list.

Honorable Mentions: Love and Mercy, Inside Out, Stanford Prison Experiment, The Walk, Steve Jobs, Chi-raq, The Hateful Eight, The Wave, The Big Short and Spotlight.

The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2016: Live Action (2016)

*Some Spoilers*

I think the idea of giving the Oscar-nominated short films a theatrical release is a good idea and a welcome trend. The crop of Live Action short films in 2015 was particularly good and though I found one or two flawed in some minor ways, they were nevertheless poignant and memorable. American and European directors comprised the majority of nominees in this category; the lone exception being a Palestinian. The themes spanned the political and the religious and sometimes both while stories of the more personal variety were also well-represented.

Ave Maria--Director: Basil Khalil
A Jewish man, his girlfriend and his cantankerous mother find themselves at the mercy of nuns in a monastery in the occupied territory in Palestine. Though the order is one committed to vows of silence, they find they must violate their oath to aid their Jewish interlopers, whose crashed car has toppled an icon of the Virgin Mary outside their doors. But the nuns find the Jewish man, Moshe, is bound by a religious oath of his own. The restrictions of Shabbat prohibit any usage of electronics, including telephones, which Moshe needs to call a taxi. A funny situation arises when Moshe asks a nun to make the call for a taxi, unaware that the request only disturbs the order's self-imposed silence further. How the nuns help the three Jews makes for a funny short, which in turn offers commentary about the intricacies of Middle-eastern culture with its multi-faith, politically combustible climate. The region's constrictive regard for gender roles is also addressed as Moshe discovers a young nun is more more resourceful than he when it comes to auto-mechanics.

It is astonishing how much Khalil packs into fifteen minutes.

His visual sense is also impeccable. One shot of what looks like blood trickling from the head of the icon is actually fluid flowing from the crashed car. Another visual gem is the final shot of the deserty expanse.

What statement Khalil is making about the various faiths of the region is food for reflection but I like that his approach is light and amusing. It isn't often that films on politics and faith in the Middle-east are so humorous.

Shok--Director: Jamie Donoughue
An Albanian man driving through Kosovo stops before an abandoned bicycle. The sight of the bike triggers memories of his childhood during the Serbian occupation and a friendship fraught with joy and tragedy. The friendship is tested when one boy dares to sell a contraband item to one Serbian soldier, which earns his friend's reproach. Their Albanian ethnicity is but one target of Serbian hostility, which the soldiers never hesitate to express when the boys are in their presence. The enterprising activity of one friend threatens to fracture their friendship until mutual sacrifice reestablishes their bond, though nothing comes without a high price in the Balkan conflict.
Director Jamie Donoughue, though hardly a witness to the conflict or a native of the Balkans, demonstrates a sensitivity for the politics and the mutual distrust between the various cultures of the region. But the power of the story is in its depiction of a friendship and its inviolability in the face of war and race hatred. The film's artistic success can mostly be ascribed to the performances of the two boys, who match the subject matter's intensity with intensity of their own.

Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)--Patrick Vollrath
Like Shok, which precedes director Patrick Vollrath's film, Everything Will Be Okay focuses on a child in crisis. A father, Michael Baumgartner (Simon Schwarz), arrives at a home to pick up his young daughter Lea (Julia Pointner) from his ex-wife's home. Their seemingly innocent, familial excursion becomes a nightmarish ordeal for Lea when Michael takes desperate steps to flee the country with his daughter for a flight to the Philippines. Knowing he is committing an illegal act, Michael makes haste to the airport but is informed his flight is cancelled. Promised a compensatory morning flight, he accepts an complimentary overnight stay at a local hotel, much to the bewilderment of his daughter, who has little idea what her father has planned. The next morning, the frightened girl uses her father's cellphone to call her mother. Sometime later, her mother arrives, with police in tow, demanding entry. When the police burst into the room, they are unable to pry Lea from her father's embrace.
What makes a seemingly simple story so powerful is Julia Pointner's wonderful performance. Lea's fear and anguish; her desperate, unheard pleas, leave one wondering how such a young actress could navigate the emotionally demanding aspects of the role. No less moving is Simon Schwarz's Michael, whose unyielding hold on his daughter contains so much unspoken fear and anxiety. We wonder what prompted such a extreme act, which makes him both on object of pity and horror.

Stutterer--Director: Benjamin Cleary
A man with an intense stutter but an eloquent internal voice texts a woman with whom romantic possibilities emerge. The man's crippling vocal affliction leaves him unable to complete a phone call or interact with people on the street. But inside his head we hear his thoughts, as he keeps a list of "snap judgements," personality profiles he forms while people-watching. From the texts, we can easily gather that his female texting partner shares his love for words.
After she proposes a meeting, he stalls; aware of the problem his stutter may present. After he finally agrees, he makes his way to her and spots her from across a street. What happens after is something I anticipated early in the short; a development I hoped the filmmaker would avoid. In spite of the story's improbably coincidental conclusion, I found the story to be quite affecting. The actor who plays the stutterer; Matthew Needham, has an unforgettable look. His shaggy hair and striking blue eyes, which project both vulnerability and keen intelligence, are a character unto themselves.
I liked the idea of a character who has so many words in his head and perspicacious thoughts but is unable to express them vocally. The voice in his head expresses multitudes but his condition shackles their potential.

Day One--Director: Henry Hughes
The last short in the overall film is the emotionally-wrenching Day One. An Afghan woman named Feda begins her first day as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. After an awkward moment out in the field when she has to relieve herself, a mine kills a motorcyclist on a road nearby. She is called to be an interpreter in the arrest of the suspect, only to find his wife is pregnant and worse, ready to deliver. Complications arise when the Afghan doctor present is unable to enter the room to assist (a strict moral custom about men being in a room with a woman not his spouse or family), leaving the interpreter in the role of delivering the baby, despite her lack of experience. The doctor and an American soldier are ultimately compelled to be in the room with the expectant mother and the suspect, who is granted temporary freedom to help his wife. After Feda finds one of the baby's arms protruding from the womb, she checks its pulse, only to find it is dead. The doctor, having to advise her from behind a wall, tells her it will be necessary to cut the baby's arm off, as well as the rest of its body for removal, to save the mother's life. This grim, unthinkable prospect horrifies her (and the audience); forcing her to balk at the task but situation being as it is, she sets out to perform the horrific dismemberment anyway. Before Feda can perform the cutting, she discovers the baby is actually alive and shortly thereafter, she helps deliver it. But in the aftermath, the story turns tragic before ending on a hopeful, life-affirming note.

As in Ave Maria, a cultural clash of sorts takes place.
We learn from post-film subtitles that the story was inspired by the director's own experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan. Layla Alizada, who plays the interpreter Feda, has a beautiful face one is unlikely to forget. Her lovely, dark features and expressive eyes compliment her terrific performance. I liked the story's intensity and the sudden turns of tragedy and hope. We see how one day actually changes the character's life irrevocably.

The nominees this year are a powerful lot. I don't envy the committee who has to award a prize; it seems criminal to deny any one of them an Oscar. This is a stronger group of films than last year, I think. As we all know, any one of the filmmakers could become a future household name. The various directors all showed they have solid storytelling skills while a few, like Basil Khalil, betray a knack for arresting, visual imagery.
Now we wait to see who gets the gold.

The Boy

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: William Brent Bell/Starring: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Jim Norton, Diana Hardcastle and Ben Robson

It looks like another horror flick featuring a doll has made its way to multiplex screens. I've lost count of the films in recent years that have cast a doll as the antagonist and it would be foolish to think we've seen the last of them. The latest addition to this horror sub-genre is a film called The Boy: a pedestrian and mostly dull story whose few mildly, creepy scenes involve--what else--an expressionless doll that may or may not be the repository of a dead child's spirit. One might wonder what director William Brent Bell's film might have to offer that's new. You might be relieved to learn the film adds a twist to this shop-worn genre but you might also be disappointed to learn that his new take simply morphs into something Jason Voorhees-like, which might elicit a sigh from the audience.

Laura Cohan plays Greta Evans, a youngish American woman who has accepted a nanny gig for the Heelshires (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle); an elderly British couple living in their quaint, English manor. The manor's interior and exteriors are horror movie standard issue; dusty attics, taxidermal mountings and wood paneling. Or what one might also find in any episode of Scooby-doo.

Upon arrival, Laura makes the acquaintance of the man delivering groceries; Malcolm (Rupert Evans), who tells her a little about the Heelshires and their home. His immediate attraction to her is almost palpable. Soon after, Greta meets the elderly Heelshires themselves, who immediately introduce her to Brahms; a doll with the features of a young boy. Greta naturally feels she is being put on when the couple treat the doll as if it were indeed alive; talking to it, changing it's clothes, reading poetry to it and tucking it into bed. When Greta laughs, the Heelshires' withering glances preclude further mirth. She makes amends by talking to Brahms, which placates the couple. Mrs. Heelshire explains to Greta that the son they lost in his boyhood is living in the house still; a statement we are meant to take figuratively. We see that the couple's doting care for Brahms is the their way of keeping his spirit alive. We learn Greta is to care for Brahms for several months while the Heelshires are on holiday.

Mrs. Heelshire leaves Greta a specific set of rules on how to care for Brahms; a list she intends Greta to follow faithfully. The Heelshire's departure is somewhat mysterious as their faces are shrouded in angst. Observing their gloomy departure, we are left to wonder if the couple has ulterior motives for being away.

In short time, we discover Greta's decision to pursue the babysitting position partly serves as a means of escape from a miscarriage and an abusive ex back home. Greta's lost-child backstory seems to dovetail with the Heelshire's a little too neatly but what the heck, we go with it.

After the Heelshire's departure, Greta becomes very casual about Brahm's care; ignoring the list and even tossing the doll contemptuously on a rocking chair. But soon strange things begin to happen as she begins to hear a young child's voice and thumpings and bumpings about the house. Brahm's blank expression also begins to unnerve her. When she suspects that the doll might be inhabited by the Heelshire's dead child, she tries to convince Malcolm that Brahms is moving on his own, which she accomplishes during one of his visits. As the sounds of a child fill the house, Greta's compassion for the Heelshire's lost son and Brahms awakens. She begins to follow the instructions faithfully.

Rejecting Malcolm's pleas to leave the house and Brahms and the house behind, Greta is set upon by another problem; the arrival of her ex-husband Cole (Ben Robson), who has little patience for Malcolm and even less for Brahms'. Expecting Greta to return with him to the states, Cole meets vigorous resistance from both Greta and Malcolm. Violence ensues, which leads Cole to smash the doll to fragments. The house begins to shake, leading one to believe the boy's spirit has been unleashed but we learn what has really been behind all the supernatural happenings. The rest of the film is Greta and Malcolm's flight from the real mystery of the Heelshire home; a silly and anti-climactic development. The real motivation for the Heelshire's flight from their home is also explained in the film's third act.

I can respect the screenwriter and the director's attempt to give the haunted doll story a new twist but a horror film has to dispense horror, which Bell's film fails to do. A woman alone in a large house with a doll that may or may not be spirit-possessed is a great set-up for a scary story but Bell can't make the necessary transition from creepy to terrifying. Some shameless horror film staples are given some air, like frightening moments turning out to be only dreams. He uses this dusty device twice and it is no less cheap the second time around.

Lauren Cohan doesn't depict a woman with a wounded psyche; one who seeks escape from both a miscarriage and an abusive ex. She doesn't seem to be running from anything more than Montana; her home state. Her performance is all surface and serviceable. Rupert Evans and Ben Robson are more convincing though their roles scarcely have more substance.

I liked that Bell refused to turn the Heelshire's home into something like the house in Crimson Peak; something cartoonishly Gothic, but little effort was made to make the house menacing; a place to dread.

By the third act, I found myself caring little for any of the characters or the story, save the mystery behind the doll. In the end, The Boy is just something I come to expect to see in January. It didn't help that a trailer for The Witch preceded the movie (see my blogpost on the film). That film, my friends, is a horror film, as you will soon discover next month.

Moving forward, I hope to see a moratorium on haunted-doll horror films, unless one can come up with something genuinely creepy, like Annabelle, which played back in 2014. Otherwise, let's keep the dolls in the toy chest, okay?

The Fifth Wave

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: J. Blakeson/Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Alex Roe, Maika Monroe and Nick Robinson

The Fifth Wave, based on the story of the same name by novelist Rick Yancey, is a hodgepodge of sci-fi movie plots welded together that work story-wise but is incapable of making the audience forget any of the films it shamelessly borrows or steals from. Films that immediately come to mind when watching Blakeson's film are: Independence Day, District 9 and the various movies about young people uniting to resist oppressive overlords, such as The Maze Runner and Divergent series. There isn't anything inherently wrong with a pastiche but The Fifth Wave (the title kept reminding me of The Fifth Element. Maybe someone will make a sci-fi movie called The Fifth of Jack Daniels) doesn't fuse what it plunders into anything original or thrilling. And what's worse, the movie seems like another greedy producer's calculated attempt to create a franchise cash-cow. And to give this franchise-manque credibility, some considerable talent was recruited; Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber and Maria Bello; who have all acquitted themselves better elsewhere.

Has anyone noticed that in ALL alien invasion movies these days, we seem to see the same kind of massive spaceships floating menacingly in the skies above Earth? We see the same here though I noticed Blakeson was very sparing in how he deployed shots of the alien ships. Maybe the producers are saving more detailed images for the sequels they hope to mid-wive from this flick.

The whole plot can be summarized succinctly: aliens, referred to as Others, invade Earth, wreaking havoc in successive waves. One wave knocks out electricity and power, another visits Biblical-scale destruction across the planet in the form of literal waves; tidal waves, which is followed by the lethally mutated spread of the Avian virus, which is in turn followed by the alien infiltration of the human species while the last involves the use of children to carry out the mass extermination of humanity. A young woman named Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz) struggles to survive after her parents die in the initial waves. Her attempts to reach an air force base where her brother and other children have been taken for battle-training meet with danger, as she befriends a young man who displays superhuman fighting skills. Cassie manages to unite with her brother and the other children after they discover their military leaders are in fact Others who have recruited them for their plans of global conquest.

That is the story in its semi-concise form. The story does come with romance. Cassie is the focus of a triangle that includes her classmate Ben Parish (Nick Robinson) and Evan Walker (Alex Roe); said young man with extraordinary fighting abilities. The other burgeoning romance involves Ben and a tough, goth-ish girl named Ringer (Maika Monroe); who handles a gun as well as her army instructors.

About half-way through the film, it becomes clear the filmmakers want to ride the Hunger Games/Divergent/The Maze Runner wave of films about young people fighting totalitarian forces. I guess this attempt to draw young viewers makes sense but it really seems like a cheap and easy way to market future installments. I have to say I can't stomach many more of these films but then again, only young tastes count here, I guess.

It seems pointless to expect a movie like The Fifth Wave to be logical or uniformly plausible since the movies it sometimes mimics, like Independence Day, can't be troubled to play by the same rules. What bothers me about the aforementioned movie and Blakeson's film is what I call the Bumbling Advanced Civilization Syndrome. An alien race masters interstellar travel; overcomes all the paradoxes and problems of Einsteinian physics, arrives on Earth with superior weapons and the means to destroy the planet; only to suddenly become thwarted by the relatively primitive human race. If one has the power to create tidal waves that tower above coastline hotels and London Bridge and the means to knock out power world-wide, why does it suddenly have problems wiping out a survivalist village, particularly when it knows its location? Instead, it sends Others-controlled army soldiers to gun down the inhabitants of said village. Very sloppy and inefficient for an advanced alien race, que no?

One character says destroying the Earth isn't part of the Others' agenda, as they need our planet mostly intact. Okay, but if you've already wiped out most of the human race without destroying ALL life on the planet's surface, how hard would it be to wipe out the survivors? It does make sense that an invading alien race would employ an electromagnetic pulse to knock out our power, inundate the planet with quasi-natural disasters and create a pandemic to wipe out humans but I don't think it would suddenly be troubled by those same creatures when the resistance cells are comprised of children and teens.

Suspending disbelief and every mental faculty, one should still find the story thrilling but it didn't take an alien intellect to see where everything was headed and how it would get there. The movie became dull and I did little to resist the sleepy fairy that coaxed me into a brief state of drowsiness.

Mr. Blakeson, you'll forgive me if I don't bother seeing the sequels. The Hunger Games series satisfied any and all desires I had to see films like yours. But I'm sometimes stubborn and if a movie weekend happens to be painfully wanting, I just might pay to see A Fifth Wave sequel. But then again, I resisted The Maze Runner and Divergent follow-ups so I know my will power hasn't weakened.

The key word here is resist. If a determined unit of tykes can resist an alien invasion, I can resist a franchise. And I won't even need an M-16.

Dirty Grandpa

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Dan Mazer/Starring: Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Hough, Zoey Deutch, Aubrey Plaza, Adam Pally, Brandon Mychal Smith and Danny Glover

Now that 2015 is pretty much in the archives, film-wise--with some Oscar contenders still trickling into theaters--the Season of Swill (runs from January to roughly the end of April, unofficially) has begun in earnest. We are all familiar with the S of S because the films that studios dare not premier in late December are tossed like filthy rags into the January/February refuse pile. Usually the worst films of the year turn up here if they turn up at all. This time of year is toughest on cinephiles because the Oscar contenders have been consumed and digested by late January, which leaves us at the mercy of said Hollywood discards.

Let the preceding paragraph serve as a preamble to Dirty Grandpa, director Dan Mazer's rarely funny but hyper-crude comedy about a grandfather; Dick Kelly (Robert De Niro) and his efforts to bond with his grandson Jason (Zac Efron). It is reasonable to assume the film is inspired by Bad Grandpa; which starred Johnny Knoxville as a grandfather who is often a very bad role model for his grandson. Mazer's film doesn't restrain its anti-pc approach to comedy. Everyone and everything is fodder for dumb jokes about homophobia and Jason's lack of manly resolve. A few jokes test the boundaries of good taste, such as a naked Jason being mistaken for a pedophile on the beach. I've never been a prude and I do appreciate filth when it is actually funny (Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America made me laugh heartily) but the dirt in Mazer's film is dirty but it's smut of the gratuitous variety; and yes, not very funny at all. Some scenes and some characters earned a few chuckles but for the most part, the movie is dull and nigh tedious.

The story and characters themselves are mostly plucked from an assembly line and follow a predictable course. Jason, an uptight, preppy-ish stiff is set to marry Meredith (Julianne Hough); a squeaky-clean, very white (why they made her Jewish is puzzling; she's all WASP) more uptight version of himself. His job at his father's law firm is firmly set; a perfect life seems all but assured.

Jason's grandmother has just passed away, which brings together his father, David (Dermot Mulroney) and his grandfather Dick (Robert De Niro); who has been mostly absent from his son and grandson's lives.
Though tensions between Dick and his family are rife, he insists one of his wife's last wishes was to see him unite with his grandson. And though Jason is a week from his wedding, Dick coerces him into driving him to Florida as part of a bonding experience. Highly reluctant, Jason agrees, knowing his grandfather's cataracts have denied the ability to drive himself.

From the outset, we see Dick is hardly shy about slinging F-bombs about and is even less shy about expressing his desire for sex. The film goes to great lengths to feminize Jason; to make him seem like his wife's castrated puppy. Dick is ever ready to call attention to his grandson's prissy nature; even mocking the vehicle they are forced to drive to Florida: Meredith's hot-pink Mini-Cooper (an easy target, eh?). It also doesn't help that the khakis, polo shirt and a sweater wrapped around his neck make Jason look and seem positively asexual.

At a restaurant stop along the way, Dick derides Jason's decision to become a lawyer at his father's firm and mentions that his grandson once had a passion for photography. The moment we learn of Jason's real avocation, we know precisely where his character will go. One of Hollywood's mustiest cliches is the character who has forsaken a creative, artistic pursuit for a legal or corporate career, which is funny when one considers how the studios are run almost exclusively by both types.

At a table out of earshot, two young women and a young black guy deride Jason's preppy get-up, which inspires word-play such as "he looks like Abercrombie f-ed Fitch." One of the young women, Shadia (Zoey Deutch), recognizes Jason from a school photography class. When she approaches him, he mistakes her for the waitress and hands her the money for the bill. Miffed at being ignored, she and her friends run off with the money. Discovering his mistake, he sees the three making a hasty escape. When he catches up with them, Jason finally recognizes Shadia. Romantic embers begin to burn. We also know where this is headed. Earlier, in the restaurant, Shadia's friend Lenore (Aubrey Plaza) stated her sexual objective of sleeping with three different kinds of men, one of them being a professor. When Dick introduces himself as such outside the restaurant, she is frank about what she wants to do to him, which he hardly finds insulting. Their black, gay, friend Tyrone (Brandon Mychel Smith), immediately becomes the butt of Dick's gay jokes. Tyrone's gayness and blackness is Hollywood's efficient way of meeting a minority quota.

En route to Florida, Dick forces Jason to stop in Daytona Beach to satisfy his single-minded goal of getting laid. Jason resists, reminding his grandpa of the wedding. Of course Dick finds Meredith to be all wrong for Jason and never hesitates to let him know. Jason and Dick run into Shadia, Lenore and Tyrone at which point, the rest of the story is laid (excuse the expression) before us while the characters and situations settle into the expected.
We already know Daytona and its spring break distractions and Shadia's presence will test Jason's commitment to his career and engagement as Dick does his level best to show his grandson a wild, rollicking time. Lenore continues her seductive designs on Dick, even after she learns he isn't a professor, and Jason discovers Shadia belongs to hippy-ish environmental group that studies the effects of global warming on the ocean. Naturally the love-interest would turn out to be an artist and a hippy; two things the straight-arrow Meredith could never be. And a whole bag of issues bundled together are dealt with in the remaining half-hour, including the grandfather-son-grandson relationship and Jason's career and engagement, which we know will be altered forever under Shadia's influence.

Most of the characters I found amusing were the more peripheral ones, like the surf-shop owner/drug dealer Pamela (Jason Mantzoukas), who turns up often in the film, always peddling drugs or encouraging others to use them. Another amusing character is Jason's cousin Nick (Adam Pally), who has a funny habit of saying exactly what's on his mind; usually something obscene. Unfortunately I didn't find the other characters, particularly De Niro's or Efron's, very funny. Danny Glover's cameo is puzzling and almost pointless and strange; leaving us to wonder why the filmmakers bothered to include his character at all.

As I state earlier, the film's crude humor didn't bother me so much as Mazer's inability to find the material's comic potential, which is strange; given that his writing credentials include Borat and Bruno; two films that found much hilarity in daring and risky situations. Dirty Grandpa has dirty talk but a prudish walk and becomes slave to its Hollywood comedy conventions. Even Dick, who can't open his mouth without sexual comments or profanity spewing out early on, turns out to be just an elderly man who misses his wife and who longs to re-establish a relationship with his family. Aside from a few moments, the theater was gravely silent throughout the film, which always says much about the quality of a comedy.

Zac Efron and De Niro have proven elsewhere that they can be funny but this film let them down. Still, they gave it the old college try. Maybe another time.
Yeah...maybe another time.

T-Rex

Directors: Zachary Canepari and Drea Cooper

Claressa "T-Rex" Shields; a young, female boxer from Flint, Michigan, is the subject of directors Zachary Canepari and Drea Cooper's observant documentary T-Rex. What makes their film so emotionally engaging is its equal measures of heartbreak and triumph. T-Rex isn't another entry into the now popular sports docs genre one sees fairly regularly in any given cinematic year but a story that is sensitive to problems gripping a family in the once-thriving but now economically-distressed little sister of Detroit. If the documentary is about a young woman achieving a seemingly impossible dream, it is perceptive enough to see that realizing a dream isn't necessarily isn't the same thing as solving all of one's problems. And for a young, black woman from a city in perpetual decline, the problems she faces are always a persistent and aggressive threat.

We see Shields early on in the film; sparring in the ring. Her coach and father figure, Jason Crutchfield; a former professional boxer now trainer, is ever attentive.
We learn that Shields took to boxing at the age of eleven and under Crutchfield's tutelage, she became a national champion. If a documentary can be said to have a first act, then Shields' training for a spot on the fledgling U.S. woman's boxing team could be said to be just that. Her goal to box at the 2012 London Summer Olympics is a dream she pursues with a burning passion. The fact that she is a 16-year-old high school senior (at the time of filming) isn't an obstacle, but the stresses of living in Flint and contending with her mother's substance abuse problem, a father with a prison record and being thrust into the role of a mother to her dysfunctional family all threaten to derail her plans.
Adding to her troubles is her sparring partner Ardreal Holmes Jr., with whom Shields is smitten. Seeing the potential danger of pregnancy, Crutchfield's continuous efforts to steer Shields away from Holmes requires his constant vigilance.

We also learn something about Crutchfield himself; his former career, his serendipitous love for coaching young kids and his telescopic focus on Shields' nascent boxing career. We also see him at work as an electric company technician when he isn't in the gym. Securing a spot for Shields on the newly-created Women's Olympic boxing team is a dream which he, like his pupil, tirelessly pursues.

Shields is given a chance to qualify for the Olympics in a competition held in China. Finishing in the top eight automatically earns her a spot. With a sterling record of 24-0, Shields chances of making the team are excellent but in competition, she encounters a taller, British boxer with a longer reach who she is unable to overcome and thus, a painful first defeat is dealt. The devastating loss is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Shields is still able to qualify by virtue of her opponent's subsequent victory in the competition.

Shaken but not despondent in defeat, Shields begins training in earnest. But more family troubles arise when Shields must decide how to handle a potentially combustible situation with her mother and step-mother, who vie for her affection and a chance to travel to London. Heeding Crutchfield's sage advice, she opts to leave both behind to preempt any distractions.

Scenes of Shields' competing in London are thrilling and tension-filled. Because Olympic rules only allow Shields to have the U.S. Olympic boxing coaches at ringside, Crutchfield is forced to shout instructions from the stands. Her earlier defeat in China leaves the audience with some doubt as to whether Shields would stand up to top international competition.

We see Shields' homecoming is joyous but soon after she finds that anticipated endorsements are hardly guaranteed and people unfairly perceive her as having accumulated wealth. Television and radio appearances abound but problems at home persist. Shields is also confronted with the dilemma of turning professional or pursuing another Olympic run.
For Crutchfield, he finds he is unable to keep the Shields/Holmes romance at bay, which forces him to play a stern, fatherly role.

Later in the film, we hear much reflection about Shield's success and how it has effected her family. We also hear Crutchfield's perspective on the Olympic experience's impact on his life, which is decidedly unromantic and level-headed. As to what Shields' plans will be, the subtitles clue is into her plans for Rio in 2016.

So much of the film's power derives from its refusal to look away from Shield's home-life and all its disappointments and challenges. The ring becomes a metaphor for the greater fight that awaits her out of the ring; the struggle to keep her family afloat. The city of Flint could serve as an effective metaphor for Shields' family, with its constant threat to decay and collapse.

The plaintive comment heard most frequently in the film is one's hope of leaving Flint. For poor, black residents like Shields' family, the thought of escaping the city seems virtually impossible. But Shields' success at least leaves the exit door slightly ajar. For Shields herself, who has traveled to China and London, the dream is more substantial.

I was genuinely moved by the film and found it to be superior to Hollywood's boxing narratives from 2015; Creed and Southpaw. Canepari and Cooper's film is the real thing and Shields herself is a more compelling individual than the main characters of the aforementioned films.

T-Rex is a profound portrait of a tough, determined fighter whose fiercest opponents are often outside the ring. Will she make it to Rio and if so, how will she fare? Shields' future, like her nascent boxing career, remains uncertain. The film makes us care enough to keep tabs on her. Shields is an extraordinary young woman; an indisputable fact anyone sees this film will plainly see.