The Reel World

"I know what you're thinking: How the heck does a 52-year old milkshake machine salesman build a fast food empire with over 1600

restaurants and an annual income over $700 million? One word:" The Founder.

When I was very young, my mother dressed up as Ronald McDonald for a McDonalds block party for a charity benefit. In those days McDonalds helped organize these things, including the provision of said Ronald McDonald outfit. I was just a kid, but seeing my mother put on the costume kind of killed the last of the childhood fantasies. I guess we all thought Ronald was the guy who invented McDonalds. We thought he was the founder. I figured that was the big reveal. That was until I saw The Founder,

I’ll say this for Vin Diesel, he always returns to a franchise. It doesn’t matter how long has passed between his introduction and his exit; you can always count on him returning and stepping back into a role regardless of how many years it’s been, like nothing has ever changed. Doesn’t matter what it is; Fast and Furious, Riddick, and now XXX: the Return of Xander Cage. For those not familiar with the franchise (though I’m sure there few people who don’t already know about the original), XXX was an action film that was released in 2002 featuring Diesel as Xander Cage, an extreme sports enthusiast who is recruited by the NSA to foil a terrorist plot, which he accomplishes with such flair that an idea is born: create a program for a group of rebels who can get close to the criminals that the government can only dream of.

Too soon? That’s a question filmmakers looking to tackle a real-life tragedy from the recent past must ask themselves. The past several months have nevertheless brought us a mini-run of movies based on true calamities. Clint Eastwood’s Sully used the “Miracle on the Hudson” to explore the nature (and context) of heroism. Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon painstakingly chronicled the events that led to the famous oil rig disaster on the Gulf of Mexico. But the best movie of that bunch is Patriots Day, Berg’s visceral, all-encompassing, and thrilling account of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

When the closing credits rolled the first time I saw this, I was stuck in my seat paying some attention to members of the cast and crew, but mostly I was sitting there in awe.  I’m honestly struggling to think of a film that has affected me on the screen so deeply, and the closest I can get is The Shawshank Redemption. While I’ve certainly seen many good films over the years, and I’ve seen some I would even call great, La La Land is something more, something special that came along that achieved what few would even dare to believe.  It is an achievement that writer and director Damien Chazelle deserves the many accolades that he will soon be showered with as we enter into the award season as 2016 comes to a close.  Just what is it that he managed to capture?  In my most humble opinion, he captured all that was and is great from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

With talks going on about setting up colonies on Mars, long distance space travel is quickly moving away from the pages of science fiction to the next step in space exploration. Passengers is a film that taps into the possibilities of what this could mean for us as a species but also takes a look at the great risk that we would be facing. At a glance it would seem like a surefire Hollywood blockbuster to end the year, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that is a sure thing.  Despite the great effects and set designs, two bankable stars, and a more than capable director, Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game and Headhunters), what you still need is a story that will not only fill those seats but keep people wanting to come back for more.

"You have to start somewhere."

I could sense a great disturbance in the Force. I could not quite put my finger on the reason, but there appeared to be much to worry about with the debut of the first ever Star Wars film that was not one of the driving episodes in the epic story of the Skywalker family and friends. There was worry that Disney might have been pushing their luck with these sidetrack stories. The Force Awakens was very good, but should the Mouse House really be tempting fate with such "filler" material? Then there were the disturbing reports that the film required so many rewrites that as much as $5 million had been spent on the services of Tony Gilroy to provide those touch-ups

In 2009 Tom Ford, the famed fashion designer, came into the Hollywood scene with his stunning first-time writing/directing effort, A Single Man.  It was a somber film that garnered numerous accolades and left many of us wondering what he would be doing next.  It’s been seven years, but we finally get the follow-up film we’ve been waiting for.  Nocturnal Animals is clearly a film that cries out for award attention with its December release and a cast that for better or worse could make a dramatic reading of a telephone book an engaging experience.  When the trailer dropped for the film, I was sold on its stunning visuals and its ambiguity that had me hooked and curious about what Ford would have in store for us.

"Santa ain't no arms dealer?"

OK, maybe he's not selling arms to the Middle East, but when Billy Bob Thornton puts on the Santa suit, there's no telling what kind of dirty dealing might be going on. Bad Santa was a kind of surprise hit back in 2003. It made a respectable $60 million at the box office and pretty much disappeared from most people's holiday film radar. Let's be honest here. Bad Santa wasn't going to make the list for traditional family gatherings in quite the same way as It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle On 34th Street, or even among the irreverent favorites like A Christmas Story. I just can't see the grandkids on granddad's knee watching Santa tell some kid to go f#%@ himself.

Brad Pitt appears to be making this World War II thing a bit of a niche. In recent years he went from Inglourious Basterds to the superior Fury and now to Allied. I wish I could say that he's getting better, but Allied marks a step backwards for the actor in more ways than just the performance. It's an unfortunate aspect of Hollywood that sexy rumors and scandals sell more theater tickets than a good movie. Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have called it quits, and the scuttlebutt is that it was Pitt's fling with Allied co-star Marion Cotillard that caused the split. I don't know if any of that is true and honestly wouldn't care a hill of beans if it were. I only bring it up because if Pitt was having some kind of on-set torrid romance, it's a shame that none of that passion ever made it to the screen. These two have about as much romantic chemistry as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Too soon?) If only that were all there was to sink this period drama.

In the summer of 1974 The Paper Lace released a song called Billy Don't Be A Hero. It has the distinction of being the first and perhaps only hit record to top the charts twice in a year by different bands. The second release in 1974 was by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. For some reason the song was playing over in my head as I watched Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. I'm not sure if it was because the title characters share the same name or because both deal with war. The song was written about the Civil War but was thought by most to be about Vietnam, likely because of the release dates. Vietnam was an unpopular war, and the same can be said for the war in Iraq. The similarities continue. The song ended up fading as summer candy pop music, and the same is likely to be the fate of this film.