The city of London in 1940, near the start of World War 2 had to be one of the most precarious places to live in this history of the world. The constant bombing of the city and the entire population of London was dedicated in some way to the war effort. At any moment your life or the life of any person you know can end because of a bomb or gunfire or a collapsing building or other injury related to a world war. I thought this movie should have been called “Precarious” rather than “Their Finest” and focused more on the real life dangerous existence of the people in London during 1940 by trying to understand how anyone can live a life that you know can end at any moment because of a bomb. There are moments in this movie of bombs going off and injuries, but considering that this is supposed to be at least in part a war movie there was not nearly enough of this reminder of harsh realities World War 2 and living in London.

The back story of this story is about a screenwriter, Catrin Cole played by
Gemma Arterton who has a boyfriend who is a starving artist and they live in the center of London. Through connections and some luck, Catrin is soon one of the screenwriters of a war movie with a famous movie actor Ambrose Hilliard, played by Bill Nighy. For me, what didn’t work here is that the mechanics and writing of a movie within this movie seemed contrived and rather boring and I was much more interested in what was going on with the war in London and less about the day to day problems with making a movie. One could argue that this film is more about the making of a World War 2 movie in London 1940 with some romantic side stories and less about the precarious life of Londoners who lived through World War 2 – and for that reason, this is really not a war movie at all. Bill Nighy provides some very good moments of humor during the making of the movie, but in my opinion, the best reason behind this story and the precarious life of anyone living in London during World War 2 were missed. The best line of this movie was when someone suggests to Catrin that she could not waste any life opportunity considering how quickly a person’s life could end at any moment. Very true considering the precarious times. There is a shocking scene at the end that was completely unexpected that did remind me of how quickly a person can lose their life during those horrible times of World War 2.

I give Their Finest a very marginal recommendation because although I considered the acting very well done, the back story about the making of a movie within this movie I found too long and boring to give this a strong recommendation.

So many movies have been made over the years that if you want to get a new movie idea greenlighted, it has to be different, sometimes very different. The challenge for any screenwriter, when you realize that so many movies have already been made about so many different ideas, is that you have to not only be different but also write a high-quality script. The movie “Free Fire” is without a doubt a very different kind of a movie when you recognize that the entire film is shot in a broken down warehouse after an illegal gun deal goes bad. What follows are people getting shot and killed and crawling around cursing at themselves and each other. I thought the dialogue throughout this film was interesting and unusual however not up to Tarantino standards. The action was good enough for this story but it’s impossible to make gunfire and injuries from gunfire any different that what we all have seen so many times in movies.

This movie stars Brie Larson who has made some pretty average movies since she won the Academy Award for best actress for Room 2 years ago, the most recent one was King Kong: Skull Island. Once you win the Academy Award and you’re at the top of the very fickle movie industry and in demand, it is so important to select high-quality movies. For this reason, I was surprised to see her in this film mainly because I thought it should be beneath not only her standards but below the standards of a very recent Academy Award winner. This movie also stars Armie Hammer, so perhaps there was some kind of a deal made to have 2 named actors in this pretty average movie.

This is a good movie as far as a violent gun play but there is not much of a real story here. The unusual differences with this film are not different enough to make me consider this as a good movie and for that reason, I am giving Free Fire a very marginal recommendation.

The movie Disclosure was released in 1994 and was based on a book written by the late Michael Crichton and personally one of my favorite movies made from one of his novels.

It would have been something had this movie been released today, given the recent rash of sexual harassment stories coming out of Fox News the last few months. This movie is about sexual harassment in the workplace, but in this case, it is an evil woman played by Demi Moore who is the harasser. I thought the story and the acting were great in this film and I consider the portrayal of the lead character, Tom Sanders as one of Michael Douglas, best performances. I remember thinking when I saw this movie for the first time that there should be many more movies made about being an employee of a company to show the inevitable backstabbing and bad people that so many of us have to deal with to make a living.

What made this movie so good was how believable the complex political situations were and the injustice of what an innocent man had to endure once he is falsely accused of sexual harassment. It was amazing to see the attitudes of just about every one of Tom Sander’s co-workers who could just not believe that he was the victim of sexual harassment because he was a man. Tom was considered completely guilty before even getting his day in court. The rest of this movie was also very well done, including the courtroom scenes and the final the comeuppance of Meredith Johnson, played by Demi Moore that we all would love to see in real life but almost never do. The comedian Dennis Miller also makes a very convincing appearance in this movie as one of Tom’s co-workers.

This very good movie also stars Donald Sutherland who is the owner of the high-tech company who does a very believable job portraying the back-stabbing politics of the real working world. I highly recommend Disclosure as one of the few films I can remember about working in the real world.