DailyView: Day 199, Movie 281

One of the films that will be leaving HBO Max at the end of November came up for the DailyView today. It was a movie that I had not heard of before featuring Sir Anthony Hopkins in an adaption of a Stephen King work.

The film also stars the late Anton Yelchin in an early role. While some of the other child actors in Hearts in Atlantis were not very strong, Yelchin showed the promise as an aspiring actor, as he handled a couple of powerful scenes and stood well opposite an Oscar winner in Hopkins.

When an aging man (David Morse) returned to his hometown for the funeral of a childhood friend, the began to reminisce about the time he met a mysterious man named Ted Brautigan (Sir Anthony Hopkins), who moved into an open room just after the death of Bobby’s (Anton Yelchin) father. Bobby and Ted bonded as Ted told Bobby a strange and somewhat horrifying story about men who were after him. Bobby would discover that Ted was more perceptive than he thought.

This film had a low Rotten Tomatoes score, but I did not think it was that bad. In fact, it was decent. Yes, there was problems with it. In particular, there was a lot of forced sentimentality which did not feel right. Some of it worked, but a lot went over the top. Another issue was that the dialogue was not good, especially the dialogue written for the kid actors. It did not feel accurate.

Bobby’s mother, Liz (Hope Davis) was a terrible character and was shown to be selfish. Sure, we see a terrible event that happened to her during the film, but it was not a reason to be that terrible prior to it. I thought she got off pretty easy at the end from Bobby.

Anton Yelchin did a great job and should have grown up to win Oscars. It is a sad situation involving the car accident that took his life earlier in the 2010s.

Anthony Hopkins was his typical outstanding self, taking the strange story and characters to a level that one would expect from a top line actor as Hopkins.

Stephen King must have an issue with bullies because it seems as if all of the kid bullies in his stories are just the worst people ever, and this is not exception. They are never quite the most developed of characters in his work.

In the end, Hearts in Atlantis was a decent enough watch and, despite its flaws, I thought its strengths surpassed the problems.

DailyView: Day 198, Movie 280

I love baseball. There have been so many amazing stories over the decades of baseball and the story being told in the Netflix documentary, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, is one of those.

After the departure of the local Portland minor league baseball team, actor Bing Russell, father of Kurt Russell and actor from Bonanza and the Magnificent Seven (1960), set up an independent Single A baseball organization named the Portland Mavericks, competing with other minor league baseball teams aligned with MLB clubs. The Mavericks were together from 1973-1977 and experienced an unlikely level of success.

Portland Mavericks kept making me picture the Cleveland Indians from the movie Major League. The same idea of bringing in players who the rest of the league may not value and having them exceed all expectations is on display in this documentary as much as there was in that classic baseball film.

Some of the ideas that came from this time are staples in the world of baseball now, such as Big League Chew. It also paints a picture of Major League Baseball not being a supporter of the little team in Portland that was defeating the minor leaguers owned from MLB teams.

There were several interesting real life characters that helped to create a sensation with the Portland Mavericks.

The documentary is an easy watch, quick run time and tells a fascinating story that you may not be familiar with in the wolrd of baseball. All baseball fans should take the hour and 20 minutes and watch this documentary.

DailyView: Day 197, Movie 279

With the Rocky IV special release tonight that I will be attending, I needed to dip into the well of Charlie Chaplin shorts once again this morning and I came out with a great one.

The Cure is set just prior to prohibition in the USA and this plot involves the potential evils of alcohol, and perhaps some of the fun of it as well.

There are some exceptionally funny sequences that really bring out the mastery of the slapstick format that Chaplin is so brilliant at performing. There is a scene involving Chaplin and a revolving door that is amazingly choreographed and brilliantly laid out. There is another scene with a masseur that devolves into a fistfight of epic porportions.

As always, the silent film is anchored with the music. The music changes and flows with the antics of Chaplin, blending beautifully with the visual smorgasbord.

Chaplin seemed to be in his Little Tramp character, but it was noticeable that he was not dressed in the same manner as he usually was. He did not have his black suit coat or the recognizable bowler hat (though it does make a cameo in the film). The slight change was very effective as well.

Charlie Chaplin is the master of these silent shorts. With all due respect to Buster Keaton (who I have watched a few times recently), Chaplin makes this incredibly difficult art form look remarkably simple and totally entertaining.

DailyView: Day 196, Movie 278

Studio Ghibli is one of the most successful. beloved animation studios of all-time and has created some of the greatest, most beautiful animated movies ever released including such classics as Spirited Away, Princes Mononoke, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Those were all traditional style of animation with each frame hand drawn, creating images of beauty and wonder. For better or worse, Earwig and the Witch, which debuted in the last part of 2020, was the first animated movie from the studio that was made with full 3D CG animation.

Baby Earwig was dropped off at St. Morwald’s Home for Children by her mother. Her mother was a witch and left Earwig to keep her safe. Renamed Erica by the matron, Erica reached 10-years old and was quite rambunctious. When she was “adopted” by a strange couple,  Bella Yaga and Mandrake, Erica realized that she was only taken for another pair of hands.

When Bella Yaga revealed that she was a witch herself, Erica tried to bargain with her. She said she would help Bella Yaga if she would teach her magic. Bella Yaga had no intention of teaching magic to anyone and this only serves to irritate Erica.

Meanwhile, Erica discovered an old tape with a song on it, listed Earwig, and discovered that the cat, Thomas, could speak.

While the CG of the film was fine, it was a sharp difference from the beautiful animation of the past Studio Ghibli films. This was rather unremarkable, with only the animation of Mandrake being anything more than average. The animation, being a standout of the studio, does not make this film special. In fact, I would say that the look of the characters were lacking any depth or realism, especially in the faces which are like marionettes.

None of the characters are interesting. The story is fairly simplistic and apparent. And it wraps up in a rapid manner that felt like it was out of nowhere.

Overall, this was not to the level of the Studio Ghibli films and, if this is their new direction, they may want to reconsider.

DailyView: Day 195, Movie 277

I had stumbled across a book I bought a few years ago by YouTube movie reviewer Chris Stuckmann, called The Film Buff’s Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 200s to See Before You Die. I remember purchasing the book because I always enjoyed and respected the opinions of Stuckmann. After finding it tonight, I flipped through to see if there were any good choices that I could use for the DailyView. In the 2004-2007 section of the book, I found an entry for A History of Violence.

I had heard the title before, but I really had no idea about the premise or of the plot, which was basically what Stuckmann had written. The three paragraphs that Stuckmann had written intrigued me and I went to try and find it. I rented it on Amazon Prime and, with a nice run time of 1 hour and 36 minutes, I had found my DailyView binge movie for the night.

Once it started, I was completely swept up in the story and it took me on an unexpected journey through the life of Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his family. I had no idea where the film was going to take me, but I was all aboard from the start.

Tom was a small town man working at a diner, with his lawyer wife Edie (Maria Bello), his high school aged son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and little daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Then, one night, a pair of violent men arrived at the diner with every intention of causing trouble and hurting people. Tom jumped into action and was able to kill the two perpetrators in self-defense.

Tom became a local cable news sensation as the media arrived and wanted to know everything about Tom. Unfortunately, the word got out to other factions who were interested in Tom and his past.

This was such a great movie. Viggo Mortensen was absolutely sensational as Tom, one minute mild-mannered local man and the next a viciously violent killer. William Hurt appeared later in the film and I will not spoil the role, but he was excellent too. The performances were all fantastic.

There were some times in the early part of the story that made you think that Jack would be at the center of the plot. He had to face off with a bully at school and he responded in a violent manner, but this was just a part of the story, with everything leading back to Tom.

David Cronenberg directed the film and does a really solid job of providing a contrast between the lifestyle that Tom and his family was living with the past world that seemingly would not stay in the past. The violence was brutal, but worked beautifully in the context it appeared in. There were plenty of scenes that leave the viewer uncomfortable and ill at ease, which is great and works with the tone and theme that Cronenberg was going for.

The final scene of the film left me a little cold, but I believe the uncertainty and the uncomfortableness I was feeling, along with the desire to have things work out more was something the creators were going for. Even though I wanted more, the ending was the perfect ending for what Cronenberg was going for.

If you can go into the movie with as little knowledge as you can, as I was able to do, this is a wonderful and surprising film.

DailyView: Day 194, Movie 276

Today, for the DailyView, we jump into the world of Japanese animation with one of the classic films based on a seinen manga series, Ghost in the Shell. Directed by Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk thriller animated anime that has become one of the most iconic available.

In Ghost in a Shell, the year is 2029 and humans can be augmented or even replaced with cybernetic parts. This may include the “cyberbrain, a mechanical casing for the human brain that allows access to the Internet and other networks. An often-mentioned term is “ghost”, referring to the consciousness inhabiting the body (the “shell”)” (Wikipedia)

Our main protagonist is Major Motoko Kusanagi, one of the leaders of the assault-team of Public Security Section 9, was after a fellow ghost, the criminal Puppet Master.

I will say that I had a hard time staying focused on the film and my distraction made it a difficult film to understand. I should have given it more of my attention, because it just does not seem that Ghost on the Shell is an effective film to put on in the background while you work on other items. So this review may not be as fair as it should be. I did try to refocus as the film pregressed, but by then I was confused.

The animation was beautiful and was a definite standout. It used the process of “digitally generated animation” (DGA) which combines cel animation and computer graphics and digit data. It brought some wonderful imagery and animation to the storytelling of Ghost in the Shell.

I watched the English dubbed version and the voice work was fine. While I usually do not like the dubbed versions, with the animation it was not as obvious as the live action and the English voice acting was fine.

There are a lot of good to this movie, but I was still confused. That is probably my fault, but Ghost in the Shell never truly grabbed my attention either.

DailyView: Day 193, Movie 275

Ben Kingsley has played some amazing parts in his career, from Gandhi to Trevor Slattery. There may be no better role for the actor than the role of Don Logan in the psychological crime black comedy film, Sexy Beast.

Safecracker Gal (Ray Winstone) had retired with his wife Deedee (Amanda Redmon) to a villa in Spain, leaving the life of crime behind him. When Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) comes to his villa to attempt to recruit him for another job, robbing a bank’s vault planned by crimelord Teddy Bess (Ian McShane). Gal did not want to accept the job, but the immature and violent Don Logan was a difficult man to refuse.

Kinsley is clearly the standout of this movie. His performance as the foul-mouthed, childish, vicious sociopath is just astounding and borderline comical. Kinsley walks the line of parody with Don Logan the entire time, creating a character that is just to the left of ridiculous.

Ray Winstone played off the ravings of Kingsley beautifully, doing his very best to tip-toe around the crazy criminal.

The film is shot with a great deal of style and flair by director Jonathan Glazer, flipping between moments in time throughout the second and third acts.

And the very last scene is a laugh out loud moment that I won’t spoil for you right now, but it was an unexpected treat.

Sexy Beast is an excellent British film, with plenty of different tones scattered throughout. Ben Kingsley showed the level of his acting range as he went with a role that was completely opposite that of Gandhi.