Little (2019) * 1/2

Directed by:  Tina Gordon

Starring:  Marsai Martin, Issa Rae, Regina Hall, Tone Bell

The difference between Little and Big (1988), the movie which inspired it, is that Tom Hanks embodied a twelve-year-old inside an adult body.   There wasn't a moment in which I wasn't convinced there was a child inside the grown Hanks.   Marsai Martin, playing the younger version of her contemptible adult self, performs as if she is a child impersonating an adult in a child's body.   
We watch a tiresome sitcom-depth comedy roll out in front of us, and mostly because we can't buy the premise.

Little starts strongly, and we can only wonder how good it could've been had it not become an gender-swapping update of a movie made over thirty years ago.    We first meet Jordan Sanders (Hall) as a youngster being bullied while performing at a talent show for her school.    After suffering public embarrassment, she vows to never again be victimized by becoming a bully herself.  
Years later, she runs a fledgling tech company and terrorizes her petrified assistant April (Rae) and her staff.   Jordan makes unreasonable demands, such as wanting April to ensure her slippers are exactly 53 centimeters from the edge of her bed so she can get out of bed and slip right into the slippers without having her feet touch the floor.   

Thanks to a magical spell put on her by a child, Jordan wakes up the next morning to discover she is her younger self again.    She doesn't recognize this fact until she looks in the mirror, and apparently doesn't seem to notice when she looks down that her body size has shrunk tremendously.    Jordan still behaves as if she were older Jordan, but after an impromptu visit from a child services worker, she is forced to go to school.    Jordan doesn't seem to be much affected that she went to bed an adult and is now a child again.    While in school, Jordan becomes a mentor to a group of nerds and outcasts who are being bullied.   

Jordan, of course, learns to accept her assistant's input and respect her as a person.    She lets her boy toy (Bell) in emotionally and with a little luck, they may become more than just sex buddies.    All is well and good, and in a movie a little less ineffectual might create some warm cockles in my heart.   But Little never dives too deep into how Jordan feels about being a child again, and the Martin performance is more of a precocious child than an adult trapped in a child's body.   Watch Tom Hanks in Big, and you will see a big difference in the performances, and why Big works while Little doesn't. 

Avengers: Endgame (2019) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Joe Russo and Anthony Russo

Starring:  Robert Downey, Jr, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johannson, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Karen Gillan, Don Cheadle, (voice of) Bradley Cooper, (voice of) Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth

I won't give away spoilers, since if I did there may be a warrant issued for my arrest.   The spoilers are mostly inevitable and the events which unfold are anticlimactic.   Perhaps it was asking too much of the Russo Brothers to top their far superior Avengers: Infinity War.   Endgame is among the middle of the pack of Avengers films.    It seems to have borrowed its inspiration not from Infinity War, but from Back to the Future II and the lesser Avengers movies.

I will tread lightly.   At the conclusion of Infinity War, Thanos (Brolin) succeeded in his plan to gather the six infinity stones into a giant metal glove and finger snap half of the population of the universe out of existence.   Some members of the Avengers disintegrated into nothingness, but some survived, such as:  Iron Man (Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Evans), Hulk (Ruffalo), Thor (Hemsworth), Black Widow (Johannson), and others.   Thought to be lost was Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Rudd), who was seemingly stuck in a quantum zone during Thanos' finger snap and escaped death. 

The remaining Avengers attempt to undo the present by time traveling, as suggested by Lang, and away they go to the past to capture the stones before Thanos could get to them.    There are some heartfelt moments created by the Avengers meeting people from their past, and a few comic ones in which they run into their past selves.    This is where the movie reminded me all too much of Back to the Future Part II, while the ending battle reminded me of the endless war of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, with thousands of CGI figures hurling themselves at each other in a dizzying, confusing fervor.    Soon, the outcome hinges on who can stop whom from snapping his or her finger. 

Avengers: Endgame pushes a three-hour running time, but to its credit, it doesn't move slowly.  However, the movie doesn't exactly take us anywhere inspired or challenging, unlike its predecessor.
Even some moments in which Tony Stark runs into a key person from his past, or Captain America's ultimate fate, aren't the emotional powerhouse scenes they should be.    It is amusing to see Thor sink into a drunken stupor of self-pity and wind up looking like, well not the Thor we've come to expect.
It is fun to see Hemsworth's comic side after having Thor behave as a platitude-spewing bore in the first two Thor movies.    The actors aren't bored with playing superheroes after many films together, which is also a testament to the caliber of performers here.

After a climax which leaves us with more questions than answers (and not the good kind of questions), we realize it is fitting that Endgame is said to be the final Avengers movie.    There isn't much more which can be done with the gang, and their final journey together isn't terrible, but surely disappointing. 

The Dirt (2019) * 1/2 (showing on Netflix)

Directed by:  Jeff Tremaine

Starring:  Douglas Booth, Machine Gun Kelly, Iwan Rheon, Daniel Webber, Tony Cavalero, Pete Davidson, David Costabile

The Dirt's opening scene gives us a sad indication of the road it will travel.    Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee (Machine Gun Kelly) gives a groupie oral pleasure and she climaxes by shooting streams of liquid from her vagina.   Uh huh.   The film's director is Jeff Tremaine, who directed Jackass 3D and now has the employed the same sensibilities to this otherwise standard biopic of a band which saw its heyday almost forty years ago.

If you believe everything in The Dirt, Motley Crue was a band who partied to near collapse and somewhere in between those parties recorded multi-platinum albums and toured incessantly.    The road was one big morass of drugs and sex, which led to nearly tragic consequences for all four of the group's members.    Nikki Sixx (Booth) became lost in a $1,000 per day heroin habit which almost killed him.    Vince Neil (Webber) killed a drummer from another band while drunk driving.    Tommy Lee marries and then is divorced from Heather Locklear, while Mick Mars (Rheon) suffers from a degenerative bone disease.    These guys aren't a lot of fun to be around, as their manager Doc McGhee (Costabile) and their Elektra Records representative Tom Zutaut (Davidson) found out.    Doc has the unfortunate job of handcuffing Tommy to his hotel room bedpost so he could sleep off all of the mayhem he caused the night before while in a drug-crazed haze.

Besides the woman squirting, we see a scene in which Ozzy Osbourne (Cavalero) snorts ants off of cement, urinates on the cement, and invites the band to join him in snorting and licking up the urine.
Who wants to watch this?    It is more vile than shocking, and soon The Dirt begins to feel like an extended Jackass episode.    If you like bodily fluids flying about with reckless abandon, this is your movie.   They are pretty much all accounted for.

Then, it decides to get serious as the band members begin suffering from the fallout of their years of partying and self abuse, but by this point the damage was done to themselves and the movie.   The most relatively sensible member of the band seems to be Mick Mars, who seems to like his vodka but otherwise generally avoids the self-destructive impulses of his bandmates.

Based on the band's 2001 tell-all book, some of which was reportedly exaggerated or simply tall tales, The Dirt hastily moves past the band's genesis and creation of some of their biggest hits.    I don't necessarily need a documentary on their music, but at least make it somewhat clear why a biopic of the band needed to be made and why they were a big deal way back when.    The Dirt is more focused on, well, the dirt.    There isn't much here which we haven't seen before in other rock biopics or even movies about fake rock bands.    The Dirt puts us through the same paces, without much energy or insight.   

The Dirt isn't into much else but the low road.    The band's music plays over the soundtrack, while the onstage performances are lip-synched.    This isn't new, and Bohemian Rhapsody made a boatload of money with more or less the same attitude toward its subject's music.    I don't know.   Lip synching doesn't bring much to the proceedings because I am constantly aware it is lip synching.    If I wanted to see Motley Crue or any other artist lip sync to a record, I would dig up an episode of Solid Gold.   

Black Monday (2019) * * 1/2 (series on Showtime)

Starring:  Don Cheadle, Regina Hall, Andrew Rannells, Paul Scheer, Melissa Rauch, Casey Wilson, Horatio Sanz, Bruce Dern, Kadeem Hardison

Black Monday is an erratic series which occasionally threatens to become something more, but it frustratingly never does.    Sure, there are moments of heart and depth.    These characters can't all just be money hungry.   Some are hungry for love, which is made so obvious with Maurice Monroe (Cheadle), who leads the up-and-coming Wall Street firm The Jammer Group into increasingly risky financial ventures during the 365 days leading up to Black Monday in October 1987.

Maurice is not a million miles removed from Cheadle's Marty Kaan from his previous Showtime series House of Lies.   It is practically a copy and paste performance from that series to this one.    Maurice is fueled by bravado, greed, drugs, and ego, all underlined by his need for the love which eludes him, that of Dawn (Hall), who eventually becomes his partner in the firm.     There are times in which we tire of Maurice's antics, as well as the occasional brief solemn glances which lets us know "Hey, I'm an okay guy underneath this insufferable exterior."    Which isn't to say Cheadle doesn't infuse Maurice with energy and flash.    He does indeed, and like Maurice, there are times he is nearly able to pull this off. 

Dawn is the only woman in an all-male firm which has yet to be enlightened about sexual harassment in the workplace.    She plays along like one of the guys, mostly because that is the only way she can survive.    Hall provides the heart Black Monday searches for, and her rich performance anchors the show's best dramatic moments.    Andrew Rannells (from Girls) is on-hand as novice broker Biff who falls under Maurice's tutelage.   He is engaged to Tiff Georgina (Wilson), whose family is wealthy and runs a famed fashion company.   She is slumming it with Biff to prove she can make it on her own without her parents' money, but she really, really wants Biff to land a high-paying job so the slumming can be a lot more tolerable.

Biff has a deer-in-the headlights look about him until he finds his footing at The Jammer Group, and his engagement to Tiff becomes an intense pressure cooker for reasons made clear later.    He doesn't have the killer instinct to succeed on Wall Street at first, but predictably develops it as the show progresses.    There isn't anything wrong with the Rannells performance, per se.   He plays the role as written, which is mostly as a blank slate.    Comedian Paul Scheer, with his Michael Strahan-like front tooth gap, is a macho asshole stockbroker with a wife, kids, and a male lover, which is inconvenient for a macho asshole stockbroker.    This subplot only provides mild intrigue.

Each episode counts down to Black Monday, which was one of the worst stock market crashes in U.S. History.    Maurice and The Jammer Group do their thing without an inkling, or even a care, that their world will come crashing down on October 19, 1987, nearly sixty years after the Stock Market Crash of 1929 which plunged the U.S. into a decade-long depression.    In the ensuring years between the 1929 crash and the 1987 crash, it appears Wall Street learned absolutely nothing.    The same with the 2008 economic crisis which screwed up the economy for years.    Wall Street pretends it will clean up its act, like a reformed sinner, but after a while it falls back into the same behaviors.    As long as there is the lure of get rich quick schemes, the questions isn't if a crash will happen again, but when. 

Gloria Bell (2019) * * *

Directed by:  Sebastian Lelio

Starring:  Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Brad Garrett, Sean Astin, Holland Taylor, Michael Cera, Caren Pistorius, Jeanne Tripplehorn

You start to sense Gloria's palpable loneliness early on, and her courage to keep on keeping on, even after heartache after heartache befalls her.    She has been divorced twelve years from Dustin (Garrett), who has since remarried, but Gloria's love life remains stuck in neutral.   Until she meets Arnold (Turturro) one night at a singles club where it is forever 80's night, and maybe, just maybe, he could be the one to break her out of her slump.

But Arnold, even at his most sincere, appears to be hiding something.   At first, we question whether he is truly divorced.    He is, but what is the deal with his two thirty-plus year-old daughters blowing up his phone with outrageous, childlike demands?   Why are they still so dependent on their father long after they should be?    Arnold is a bit...off, and poor Gloria Bell will likely have to search for another mate in her late 50s.

Julianne Moore is touching in the title role.    She isn't unhappy per se, but she sure wouldn't mind an injection of bliss into her stale L.A. life.    Her own children live their own lives (they are the opposite of Arnold's pathetic daughters), but things aren't rosy for them either.    Her son (Cera) is a father with a newborn whose wife is "finding herself in the desert somewhere," while her daughter (Pastorius) is in love with, and soon impregnated by, a Swedish surfer dude.   Her family doesn't provide much stability for her.    Where does Gloria find elusive joy?   Wherever she can, whether it be pot smoking or martini sipping or dancing alone to Laura Branigan's inevitable "Gloria", which fits the narrative here like a glove.

We come to care about Gloria, who suffers from the subtle effects of ageism on older women in society.   She works at an insurance agency, but the employee ages are skewing younger and younger.  Her best friend at work is shown the door just a few short years before her pension plan matures, and the same could happen to Gloria.    At first, Arnold reads her a poem and she is in her glory, until a phone call from a needy daughter or ex-wife sucks the love right out of the room.   Throughout the movie, when Arnold's cell phone rings, our hearts sink, as does Arnold's.    He is seemingly conflicted by wanting to break free from his family's neediness and his subconscious need to be needed.   The problem is:  Gloria simply isn't needy enough for Arnold.    She at least has her boundaries, unlike Arnold, who is run over by his family.

Turturro is at home nursing those inner conflicts which put so much pressure on him.   His shoulders sag like a man carrying cinder blocks.     They travel to Vegas after a reconciliation, but the reunion is soon ended as quickly as it started.    A night of partying follows with an unnamed married guy (Astin), and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, though that doesn't exactly give her a way back to L.A.    And throughout the movie, a hairless cat continually finds its way into Gloria's apartment even though she locks everything up.    She would be wise to keep the cat around, because at least he seemingly walks through walls to be near her.

Written and directed by Sebastian Lelio, Gloria Bell is a low-key character study of a fiftyish woman's search for happiness, or at least some sort of excitement.     She sings along in her car to 80's tunes, which not coincidentally and transparently reflect her situation at that moment, which is a tad hokey, but the songs are good.    When she dances by herself to the tune of "Gloria" at the conclusion, her facial expressions change from joy to uncertainty to sadness over the course of the song.    It's a microcosm of what she must feel every day, and Gloria Bell never forces this range of emotions on us.   We are tuned into Gloria, and the Moore performance makes that possible.

Pet Sematary (2019) * 1/2

Directed by:  Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch

Starring:  Jason Clarke, John Lithgow, Amy Seimetz, Jete Laurence

I came into Pet Sematary wish a fresh set of eyes.   I did not see the original made three decades ago, so no comparison with that version is possible.   From what I've read, the 1989 version wasn't very good.   Well, this one isn't very good either.    It evokes a creepy atmosphere and I enjoyed John Lithgow's nuanced performance as an old fellow who unwittingly opens a Pandora's Box when he suggests his new neighbor bury his deceased cat in a part of the woods where the soil brings back things from the dead.

It is apparent no one knows how to spell "cemetery" in this movie.   The old, tattered sign which reads Pet Sematary in the woods can be excused.    When Louis Creed (Clarke), a doctor, Googles cemeteries in his new hometown, he spells it "cemetary".   You would think a doctor would know better.   When the Creeds, consisting of Louis, his wife Rachel (Seimetz), daughter Ellie (Laurence), and a two-year old boy, move to a new home deep in the woods of Ludlow, Maine, things seem off right away, especially as a tanker whizzes by their driveway out of the blue.   The tankers play a big part in things to come, although it is a wonder no one sues the company which owns them. 

The family cat is found run over on the side of the road, and in an attempt at subterfuge, Louis and Jud (Lithgow), bury the cat in a remote part of the woods where things were said to have been resurrected once buried there.   Louis doesn't want to break it to Ellie that her cat is gone. The cat comes back, alright, but it is mangy and in a lousy mood.   Jud feels awful about the cat, and shortly after, Ellie herself is killed by one of the speeding tankers. 

Jud warns a grieving Louis against doing the same thing with Ellie as he did with the cat, but Louis
doesn't heed the advice, and Ellie returns as a psychopathic killer.    Why the things which return from the dead are so pissed off is a question which isn't adequately answered.   I suppose if they came back grateful for a second chance at life there wouldn't be any stabbings, blood, and gore to populate the screen.

Pet Sematary soon becomes a depressing slasher film.    The Creeds are nondescript and flat, so why should we care what happens to them?    At least Lithgow provides some dimensions and mystery.
Poor Clarke is asked to shoulder an awful lot of nonsense here.   He has been better than some of the movies he has been in previously, but he is given so little depth in Pet Sematary that he can't make anything out of it.    If there is a sad moral to this story, it is this:  Better to cremate the dead.   And stop remaking bad movies in hopes you will do better this time around.    This is what the dummy Louis did when he resurrected Ellie in this movie, and look how well that turned out.

Shazam! (2019) * * *

 

Directed by:  David F. Sandberg

Starring:  Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Mark Strong, Djimon Hounsou, Jack Dylan Grazer, Faithe Herman, Grace Fulton, Cooper Andrews, Marta Milans, Ian Chen

It is a relief to report that Shazam! is more dependent on innocent charm and cheesy appeal than flooding the screen with CGI.    Its story is simple, and must have been easy to pitch at the producers' meetings.    Think Big meets Superhero movie and you have Shazam!    Add to it the awkward likability of Zachary Levi playing a superhero who is still trying to get the hang of being a superhero even during the final showdown with the villains.    Wearing a cape can't be all that comfortable, although if a superhero can fly, he doesn't need one anyway since he can fly without it.

In a quick recap of how teenager Billy Batson (Angel), a foster child who has run away from 23 different foster homes in search of his birth mother, becomes Shazam!, a wizard (Hounsou) passes off his powers of the gods to Billy after a worldwide search.   Years earlier, a youngster named Thad was given the same opportunity, but was not allowed to take possession of these powers of good.    Years later, Thad has become obsessed with finding the fortunate person to whom the wizard bequeathed his powers.    He ventures back into the underworld and takes possession of a glowing ball (which seems to be the object everyone fancies in these movies), and assumes the powers of the seven deadly sins. 

Billy, once he is given these supernatural powers, transforms into a grown man donning a red suit with a bolt of lightning emblazoned on the front.    He quickly enlists his new foster brother Freddy (Grazer) to help him harness his powers, and wouldn't you know it, being able to shoot fireballs from your hands is cool stuff.   But Thad comes calling soon enough, and the battle is on.   Shazam! does fall back into superhero movie cliches including a montage of Shazam! trying out his superpowers on unsuspecting people and objects and the hero and villain clashing by flying into each other.   If this happens once in this movie, it happens ten times.

But, these are minor quibbles.   What makes Shazam! stand out is its humor and heart.    When Billy finally meets his birth mother, the payoff unfolds in unexpected ways.   Through it all, Billy/Shazam! maintains its pluck, and so does the movie, which thankfully doesn't overdo the visuals or heaviness like other superhero films do.    It is appropriately silly, but also knows when it's time to get down to the business of being a superhero movie. 

The Best of Enemies (2019) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Robin Bissell

Starring:  Taraji P. Henson, Sam Rockwell, Bruce McGill, Anne Heche, Babou Ceesay



The true story of The Best of Enemies is one which you would think couldn't miss.    The head muckety-muck of the Durham, NC Ku Klux Klan changes his heart about his racism toward blacks after working with a local black activist over the touchy subject of school integration.     But despite some powerful individual moments, The Best of Enemies never fully satisfies.    C.P. Ellis (Rockwell) and Ann Atwater (Henson) have arguments, showdowns, and shouting matches over their opposite positions, but nowhere present is the bonding moment which convincingly allows us to see why C.P. publicly renounced his Ku Klux Klan membership.    The scene, which still generates some emotional resonance, is still more muted than it should be, as if C.P.'s change of heart was dictated by the screenplay more than real life factors.    

The early scenes showing us the complicated lives of C.P. and Ann set things up nicely.    C.P. conducts his customary meeting with his Klan brotherhood, promising to protect the white race against Communists, Jews, and Blacks.   He is a god in the eyes of the younger members which are organized as a Klan youth group.    This entire sequence is appropriately unsettling.    Ann's plight as a fair housing activist battling a slumlord in front of an unsympathetic town council of all white men is equally as enraging.    But we see how the indefatigable Ann won't take any guff from the powers-that-be in Durham circa 1971. 

Durham seemed to have taken the "with all deliberate speed" clause to heart from the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.    Seventeen years following the historic decision, Durham's schools are still segregated, until an electrical fire guts the bulk of the all-black elementary school, forcing a showdown with the town council over having the displaced black students go to the all-white school.    The town council punts the issue to a federal judge, who in turn calls on Raleigh-based attorney Bill Reddick (Ceesay) to oversee a charrette (a series of discussions between citizens in order to resolve the conflict).   The charrette's majority vote will determine whether integration happens or not.   Reddick chooses C.P. to represent the extremists who don't want segregation under any circumstances, in the interest of fairness, I suppose.

We know what is coming, and that is okay.   C.P. and Ann will fight until they begin to open up to each other and let the other see inside.    Only, the latter part doesn't really happen.    The two never truly connect.   Ann gives an assist to C.P. by helping his special needs son move to a private room at the local institution, to which he responds, "don't help with my family," or something to that effect.
I suppose this act of kindness moved C.P. to see the error of his ways, but it isn't spelled out.  

The Best of Enemies was a movie I wanted to like, but instead I find it frustrating.    More attention is paid to C.P. than Ann, who is reduced to a one-dimensional dramatic arc.    She is either pissed off or about to be pissed off, and I was happy to see her in scenes in which her blood pressure wasn't being elevated by the dirtbags around her.    Rockwell played a racist who underwent a moving change of heart in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.    He won a well-deserved Oscar for the role, and he was helped by the film's intelligent writing which showed us the genesis for his change.    In The Best of Enemies, he is channeling his Three Billboards redneck character and is given everything but motivation for his reversal of his lifelong ideology.    The performances are solid, albeit not very deep because the screenplay doesn't allow for much depth.

Despite my misgivings, The Best of Enemies nearly works.   Anytime a KKK member can denounce his past and move forward to enlightenment, there is inherent interest.    We learn C.P. and Ann became friends for the rest of their lives after C.P. left the KKK, and we see their interactions in interviews and home videos.    I just wish I knew for sure how this came to be.   Maybe a documentary on this very subject would've been more enlightening.

The Aftermath (2019) * *

Directed by:  James Kent

Starring:  Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, Alexander Skarsgard, Flora Thiemann, Jannik Schumann

Even if I hadn't seen the trailers for The Aftermath at least two dozen times, there is nothing about the film which would captivate or surprise.    Everything is laid out in front of us.    We know where the story will lead.   The inevitable outcome (which is the correct one) is never in doubt.     The Aftermath looks great, but its love story is as cold as the German winter in which it is based.   

The Aftermath begins in late 1945, months after the Allied victory and takeover of Germany.   Hamburg is one of many German cities in utter ruins from Allied bombings.    "We dropped more bombs on Hamburg in one weekend than the Germans did to England in the entire war," says one of the British command.    Buildings are now rubble, with survivors combing through the rocks to locate the missing.    Food is scarce, and doled out in small rations to impatient people waiting in endless lines.    Many are sent to camps, which was supposed to the fate of Stefan (Skarsgard), a German engineer who lives in a miraculously still-standing estate outside Hamburg.   

The estate has been requisitioned as the living quarters for Capt. Lewis Morgan (Clarke) and his wife Rachael (Knightley), who lost their son to the German bombings and absolutely despises Germans.   Or at least until she catches a few glimpses of Stefan.   Lewis treats the Germans with a degree of civility and dignity, possibly to atone for the many he was forced to kill in combat.    This fair treatment stretches to Stefan and his testy teenage daughter, both of whom he allows to live in the attic instead of kicking them out.   Clarke's performance is the best in the movie.    As a career military man, he is constantly either working or abruptly leaving home to go to work, forcing Rachael to fend for herself at dinner parties.  (Oh, the horror!)  His absence allows Rachael's budding romance with Stefan to flourish right under his nose.    But Clarke makes us easy for us to sympathize with his inner conflict and pain, and understand why he seems to shut out Rachael.

Rachael is tormented by her loss of her son, while Stefan broods over the loss of his wife in the Allied firestorm.    Their mutual pain and distrust of each other leads to inexorable infatuation and an eventual affair.    The love story doesn't move us much, and it doesn't help matters that Stefan is rather dull.    Sure, he has the looks and the intense stare, but he's no match for Lewis in terms of which guy is inherently more interesting.    But since Stefan is around more often and doesn't seem to have much to do, Rachael gets it on with him.   

Clarke has a particularly moving scene in which he finds a piece of his son's clothing and mourns him for maybe the first time.    He never allowed himself the time to mourn, since the war was going on and he felt the need to return to duty more quickly than expected.   Or was he running away from the pain?    At least with Lewis, we dig a little deeper into what makes him tick.    Stefan is never allowed such a luxury, and Skarsgard is unfairly not given a chance to explore Stefan's own grief.    He is there for one purpose: to fall for Rachael and ultimately be thrown over in favor of Lewis.   No this isn't a spoiler.    If such a development surprises you, then you haven't seen many movies before.