Last Films - God's Pocket, The Drop and Drone

It's been more than a month since I wrote and I'd like to say it was because I was busy, but I can't. I have managed to watch a few films, however and, by coincidence, the last films of Philip Seymour Hoffman and James Gandolfini, as well as a prescient documentary.

First up, God's Pocket. Mickey Scarpato (Hoffman), resident of tough neighbourhood, tries to give his step-son a decent funeral after his fatal work "accident", while trying to console his grieving wife (Christina Hendricks) and make ends meet selling the proceeds of a heist.

Notable for being one of Hoffmans last films (he filmed Mockingjay parts one and two), he was also a producer. Styled as a black comedy, it does seem to be a bit of a self indulgent film, although not a bad story, and as well acted as you'd expect, with a supporting cast to die for (John Turturro, as well as quality TV actors Peter Gerety, Domenick Lombardozzi, Eddie Marsan and Molly Price). However, it has the feeling, as Hoffmans character does at the end to the place he lives, of being best left behind.

Much better is a crime film, The Drop, written by novelist Denis Lehane (who wrote Gone, Baby, Gone) from his book of the same name. Serving behind a Brooklyn bar, which is also a cover for a criminal money bank (a "drop"), Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) tries to keep his head down while keeping his eye on his cousin Marv (Gandolfini) who used to own the bar.

A genuinely good plot, as you'd expect, with a few twists and turns. Hardy tries a bit too hard to be the innocent criminal, but it's the skilled Gandolfini who makes it look easy as the down-on-his-luck former petty gangster. Worth watching.

Lastly, a documentary all about drone warfare and the impact it's had on a forgotten part of Pakistan.

It's easy to forget that there's been a one-sided war going on fought, not with men but machines. What the film shows most vividly, as much as the victims, is how easy it is to recruit young men, skilled in video games, to kill people on the other side of the world and that this technology, more than plutonium or anthrax, is available to almost everyone.