FRANCES HA

I was hoping to thoroughly enjoy Frances Ha. I mean, the name of it is Frances HA. When the title of a film appears to be laughing at something, I take that to mean it will be fun or maybe even funny. I was wrong. In Frances Ha, you have a 20-something female living in New York City, being annoying, making bad choices, and still coming out okay in the end. There isn't much funny in that. Unless of course the joke is on the audience. And I suspect it may just be.

Frances' frustrating and directionless life choices are mirrored by the equally aimless course of the film. Not a horrible way to make a film. Stories don't need to have a clear path to be enjoyable. But when it makes an 86 minute long film feel like a 186 minute long mistake, I'm not sure I can, or would want to, jump on board with that. The meandering story-line could have been the worst part of the film. Surprisingly it was not.

Frances bounced between being charismatic to being super-duper unlikable in the blink of an eye. Greta Gerwig gave a quite convincing performance as the selfish and flawed Francis. Her character often went off on broken streams of consciousness. She seemed more to be talking to herself than the people around her throughout most of the film. That's probably not an altogether awful representation of more than a handful of the young folks of today, which was more frightening than impressive. Even with the often effective dialogue, it was difficult to care much about the characters at any given moment...except perhaps for the break-up scene between Frances & her boyfriend. It happens early in the story and it gives you a pretty good idea whether or not you will like or dislike Frances. I ended up only liking the boyfriend and he never showed up again. Yet somehow even that was not the most disappointing thing about the film.

So what was most objectionable, the most vile, the most atrocious part of the film? The answer is remarkably simple...It was filmed in black and white. Noah Baumbach made quite the pretentious and unnecessary choice to shoot Frances Ha this way. It can work for some films, but it really doesn't for this one. He may have intended to add some charm and whimsy to the film or possibly some depth, but for me it added an artificial, insincere quality to it. Plus the grungy black and white accentuated all the other deficiencies in the film. It's a shame...I liked his film The Squid and the Whale. And before seeing Francis Ha, I didn’t realize that one of the reasons for my liking Squid was because it was in color.

FLIGHT

It's weird and upsetting to know that Flight was directed by Robert Zemeckis. The man made Back to the Future and Castaway, proof positive he can make films with interesting characters, good pacing, and few wasted moments. Neither of those films could be considered the best ever made, but they were certainly made right. Flight? This film is just made wrong. It is proof positive Zemeckis can also make films with predominately uninteresting characters, horrible pacing, and bucket loads of wasted moments.

Denzel Washington plays Whip Whitaker an alcoholic airline pilot who happens to pull off an impressive in-air maneuver/crash landing that makes him a hero. But this isn't really what the film is about; it's about Whip's crash and burn with his addiction to drugs and alcohol. The breakdown of his character is more important than the plot and that's a pity because the plot is intriguing while Whip Whitaker is not. He is an irksome character who comes across as frustratingly boring. When it came to the acting, Washington was convincing as a pilot. But Washington as an addict? Not so much. Yes, he looked drunk and had dark circles under his eyes for much the movie, but I’m pretty sure my 12 year old nephew could have done just as good a job given the chance. I know, my young nephew would have been a strange casting choice but if it had been him playing the part, I probably would have cared a tad bit more about Whip. And I probably wouldn’t have found myself making imaginary casting changes and hoping his story would quite stalling and end already.

(Paramount Pictures)

Writer John Gatins must have realized Whip was too insipid to carry the whole film, so he sprinkled in a variety of characters to add depth and prop Whip’s story up. This doesn't work out too well with his ex-wife and son. And it certainly doesn’t work with the flight attendant he was sleeping with (I think her name is 'naked chick' or something similar to that). Of course, they aren’t as extraneous as the character Nicole, played by Kelly Reilly. Nicole is a recovering heroine addict who, I'm sure, was in the film solely to help develop Washington's character. She has a substantial amount of screen time in the film, most of which feels wasted. The funny thing is Whip meets her at the same time he meets a cancer patient who seems to do more to affect Whip in three minutes than she does in her exorbitant screen time. But for as much as I don't care for her being a part of Whip's story I would rather watch a movie about Nicole, the addict, than Whip Whitaker, the addict.

The characters who actually do add something of interest to the film are played by Don Cheadle, John Goodman, and Brian Geraghty. They have the best bits, but they are few and far between. Their characters are written well and played superbly. None of them are enough to save the film from being the life-sucking machine that it is though. To be honest, the plane inversion and crash scene isn't enough either. And that scene comes so early in this considerably long, drawn-out film, it gives a false sense of awesome. Flight is a flimflam of a film. That is all.