Suicide Squad

Writer/Director David Ayer’s Suicide Squad is a wild ride in the vein of The Dirty Dozen, although, in this version, the dirty half dozen team is composed of meta-humans with extraordinary powers, plus a woman possessed by an evil witch, who wants to take over the world.

The team is excellent, composed of Will Smith as Deadshot, an assassin who never misses, Margot Robbie as Harlie Quinn, the crazy girlfriend of The Joker (Jared Leto), Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Ezra Miller as The Flash, Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje as Croc and Jay Hernandez as fire-hands Diablo.  The witch Enchantress is well played by Cara Delevingne.

 

The Lee Marvin role is played by Viola Davis, who convinces the powers-that-be to let her use these reprobates as a team to fight aliens such as Superman, who might not be friendly to humanity.   

When the Enchantress escapes, the team is brought into service, albeit reluctantly.

Suicide Squad is definitely a guy-flic with action galore, all well-done and fun.

Margot Robbie is the standout performer, earning Suicide Squad a 4 out of 5.

Equity

Director Meera Menon’s Equity is a bleak look at the financial community where, it seems, no one can be trusted and even those, who are supposed to protect us from corruption will, eventually, sell out for money.

The problem is that there is no character the viewer can really care about.  Even the ones you’d like to root for turn out to be scumbags.

Anna Gunn, Sarah Megan Thomas and Alysia Reiner, all perform excellently, but it’s too bad they weren’t in a more engaging story.

Production work is fine, but I couldn’t help feeling this was more an HBO film rather than made for theatrical release.

Still, Equity gets a 3.4 out of 5.

Maggie's Plan

Writer/Producer/Director Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan is one of the reasons independent film is so important.  Unfortunately, jewels like this are not being financed by the major companies and the world is poorer for it.

Maggie (Greta Gerwig) wants to have a baby and chooses a pickle producer (Travis Fimmel) to donate his sperm.  But, then, she meets a would-be writer (Ethan Hawke) whose in-process novel enchants her and they fall in love with each other.  That ends his marriage to an aggressive Danish academician (Julliane Moore) and repercussions ensue.

 

The cast, including Bill Haber and Maya Rudolph, who are her married best friends, are all at their very best and the viewer soon bonds with all the characters

Miller’s script is funny, poignant and sharp.  Sam Levy’s cinematography is spot on and Sabine Hoffman’s editing is superb.

 

Maggie’s Plan is truly a fun romp.  I give it a 4.3 out of 5.