The Reel World

In 1997, $17.3 million dollars (or $25.5 million adjusted for inflation) was stolen from Loomis, Fargo & Co in Charlotte, N.C. It was the second largest cash robbery on U.S. soil after a Loomis Fargo armored car robbery by the driver earlier in the same year for $18.8 million in Jacksonville, Florida. The facts of the robbery and subsequent events are pretty ridiculous, and now Hollywood has made an out-and-out silly farce out of something that in reality was a silly farce. After having seen the movie, I tried to compare actual events with the insane stupidity that happened in the movie. That was actually my biggest problem with the movie. If they had tried to adhere closely to reality, it might have played funnier.

Masterminds was directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) who has disappeared after his last two movies tanked. Almost everyone would agree that Napoleon Dynamite is a brilliant comedy. It is inspired from start to finish, but it was a small independent film, and now he’s directing a much bigger budget film. The film stars Zack Galifianakis (The Hangover I, II and III), Owen Wilson (Night at the Museum I, II and III), Kirsten Wiig (Despicable Me I and II, Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, SNL),  Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses I and II, We're The Millers, SNL), Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters, SNL), Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters, SNL) and many other well known crazy comic actors. All these stars are aggressive scene stealers and fall all over each other (literally) to act ridiculous. The main character is David Scott Ghantt (Galifianakis). Almost all the real life names are used, and the actual Ghantt consulted on the movie. Ghantt was one of the few employees of the armored truck company with keys to the vault. He is targeted to be the pawn of a massive robbery even though the movie portrays him as a helpless sap. Steve Chambers (Wilson) manipulates Kelly Campbell (Wiig) to manipulate Ghantt to do 95% of the work involved. Ghantt is not in love with his strange fiancé, Jandice (McKinnon) and falls for Kelly's halfhearted flirtations which is the main motivation for the robbery. Once the robbery has been successfully achieved (although with enormously stupid stunts and miscalculations before that happens), Ghantt is sent to Mexico with $20,000. Eventually Chambers decides to send a hit man (Sudeikis) who has a pathological pleasure in the execution of his duties.

Great, just what we need, another remake of a film that is not only a classic, but the film which it was inspired by is also a highly-praised classic.  I’ll admit I’ve grown tired of Hollywood going to the well and remaking films that simply don’t need to be messed with.  It’s one thing to see Seven Samurai (1954) translated for American audiences to go from a black & white martial arts spectacle to seeing a colorized star-studded western, The Magnificent Seven (1960).  When I first heard about the remake, I had hopes that the film would be modernized yet again, but unfortunately the studios decided to keep the setting in the Wild West, and even when Denzel Washington was hired on to head the film with Antoine Fuqua (Training Day & The Equalizer) in the director’s chair, I still wasn’t convinced.  Then that first trailer came out, and instantly I was on board.  In a lot of ways this is the riskiest film for Fuqua and company to tackle, since it seems the studios still seem to be afraid of the Western genre, but after this remake I can only hope we see this genre get the revival it deserves, because this incarnation of The Magnificent Seven is the kind of popcorn excitement that was missing in theaters this past summer.

The town of Rose Creek is under the control of a ruthless industrialist, Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who aims to buy/steal the land out from under everyone in the town so he can mine it for all the gold he can find.  He’s a scumbag in the worst way and has no problems with putting a bullet into anyone who stands up to him. The opening sequence sets the stage as we get to see Bogue shoot down members of the town in cold blood.  He’s a vision of power with a lust for violence that simply makes its mark on the viewer, which is important in this case because we really don’t get to spend much time with Bogue and his cronies.  Sarsgaard plays this role so well; he seems to be having fun playing such a deplorable character who practically steals every scene he has on the screen.

It’s been just about four years since Savages (2012) hit the big screen.  For me Savages was Oliver Stone simply having a blast, shooting an over-the-top action film fueled by sex, drugs, and violence.  Now it seems Stone has stepped back into the paranoid, government conspiracy form that he seems to be best known for with Snowden.  Whether you view him as a traitor to the United States or a self-sacrificing lamb to expose the government and its illegal wiretapping, it’s a choice that is up to you going into this film.  Personally, while I feel his intentions were good, still he did betray his government and committed treason.  What I had hoped with this film is that Oliver Stone would capture both sides of the coin, but as the title would suggest, Edward Snowden (Joesph Gordon-Levitt) is front and center on this ride, and that’s not my only problem here.

When we first meet Snowden, he’s locked away in a Hong Kong hotel room getting ready to give an interview to two journalists, Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewan McAskill (Tom Wilkinson) along with documentarian Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) to film the event.  It’s this interview that sets up the rest of the film that is told mostly in flashback form.  The dynamic of this opening sequence works so well simply because of the elevated bar of talent on the screen; it sets up for what one could only expect will be filled with snappy dialog exchanges as these figures discuss what Snowden is about to unleash to the world.  Instead we get a whimper of what could have been.

Clint Eastwood is 86 years old. He is also one of the best film directors working today. His latest film shows no signs of a man winding down his life, let alone his career. I obviously hinted that most other actors (or directors) his age have long ago died or checked into a nursing home. Eastwood looks lean and mean and still directs that way. Eastwood is interesting, as well, because he tends to pick projects that are outside the Hollywood studio corporate thinking. In other words, Eastwood is his own man and does pretty much anything he wants. His films as an actor and director have courted controversy way back to the days of Dirty Harry and A Fistful of Dollars. His films as a director and his personal political views are always full of contradictions that suggest a vibrant, searching mind. Sully is Eastwood’s latest film, starring Tom Hanks, and it is deceptively complex as well. On one level, Sully is a textbook depiction of a famous true life event.

On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” (Tom Hanks) Sullenberger piloted a US Airbus A320 from LaGuardia airport. Three minutes into the flight both engines are unprecedentedly hit by a flock of Canada geese (which is the subject of a pretty good joke later in the film) and created 208 seconds of hell for Sullenberger and the other 154 human beings on the US Airways flight. The film starts with a bang, with Sullenberger struggling to control the plane under the worst possible circumstances. This is part of the nightmares that hound the rigorously professional pilot. The fact is that the world is full of people who do difficult and dangerous jobs, and piloting a giant passenger airliner is certainly one of them. But the film also pays tribute to hundreds of other first responders who have to rush to life-and-death emergencies every day. Much of the film is given to second-guessing a top professional who has given a life time of exemplary service. It is fair to compare Sully to Flight starring Denzel Washington, except this time the Captain wasn’t doing cocaine. In this case, we have a serious and earnest man questioning himself despite knowing from years of experience that he has done the right thing. We see the crash played over and over again from different perspectives and with different outcomes, constantly forcing us to think how we would react in a crucial once in a lifetime crisis. Many of the depictions come from the nightmares of Sullenberger showing how thousands might have died if he had crashed into midtown Manhattan. It goes without saying that this has echoes of 9/11, and much of that is addressed head on. It comes back to the fact that Eastwood is his own man. He is one of the few people who could make such a rigorously square movie and pull it off. This is a movie about an honest man with a lifetime of proven integrity forced to defend himself in front of the whole world. This is also a big part of the movie. The world judges someone in an instant in this media-obsessed world.

In 1959 when Ben-Hur came out, it was a massive undertaking that nearly closed the gates for MGM after nearly bankrupting the studio.  It was a huge risk in producing such a large scale epic that fortunately paid off and became one of the studio’s cornerstone successes.  The story of Judah Ben-Hur and his fall from being a prince, to becoming a slave, to eventually becoming a hero to the people in the arena is such a familiar story it’s hard to not feel you’ve seen this before without even entering the theater.  In some parts I look at Gladiator and see somewhat the same film, only being set in a separate time and place.  But really the story of betrayal at the highest levels, and seeing great figures fall only to pull themselves up again is a theme Hollywood seems to relish, and it seems to attract many viewers in the process.  Now it seems Hollywood is desperate for remakes, and I figure someone felt it was time to once again dust off the story of Ben-Hur, only this time throw in all the CGI gimmicks at the director’s disposal; after all, $100 million isn’t the investment it used to be for a film.  But to paraphrase the great Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park, perhaps the producers were so preoccupied with thinking if they could remake the film they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Taylor Sheridan is an actor. Let’s change that. Taylor Sheridan was an actor, and now he’s a writer. He’s a terrific writer. He’s the kind of writer that actors are going to be seeking out and critics are going to love. But he’s also made hard-boiled genre action pieces. He’s coming out of nowhere and getting everything right. He was a series regular on Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars, but he’s going to be in much greater demand as a screenwriter. His first film, Sicario, was one of the top ten films of last year, due in large part to his brilliant script (and also to everyone else involved with the movie, like director Dennis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins). His new film as a writer is Hell or High Water. Both films demonstrate a clear of understanding of the hardcore action film but also show the deceptively sure undercurrents and perceptive intellectual understanding of the grand scheme that creates the violence in our society.

Two brothers in Texas have had a hard time in life. One, Tanner Howard (Ben Foster, Warcraft, The Finest Hours), has been away in jail for robbing banks. The other, Toby Howard (Chris Pine, The Finest Hours, Star Trek I, II and III) had been taking care of their dying mother. That task is done, because the mother has died, and the family farm is going to be foreclosed on in the coming months. Tanner is the bad brother, but they love each other, and they are both tired of life. Toby joins Tanner in robbing banks because it might be a way to save the banks. Anyone who has seen movies in the last 100 years knows that banks are often the villains in these kinds of movies. They are the giant vultures of society waiting for weakness to take from the poor and struggling. Movies like the Grapes of Wrath and Bonnie and Clyde are famous examples. Does that make bank robbers good people? No, they are criminals, but there is a clear dynamic of muddied morality. This is a cruel, brutal world, and time and time again the only people who survive are those who fight for their lives. Toby is doing it with a clear goal in his mind. He will save the farm for his two sons that he never sees. His ex-wife hates him, but he has nothing else in his life but his kids. He also believes there is oil on the land, and his sons will have the life he never had if he can find it. So they go on a bank-robbing spree.

In the days leading up to the release of Suicide Squad, over the internet there has been one of the most vicious attacks on a film before its release that I can remember.  Sure, we had all the negative talk about Ghostbusters,but that was before anyone had ever seen the film, and as screenings came along, opinions seemed to sway.  Now I was lucky enough to attend a screening Monday for Suicide Squad, and there were up to 150 people turned away at the door because the auditorium was filled to capacity. I mean, the buzz for this was high, and we DC fans were giddy, because this film was our hope that WB would be turning things around.  I mention all this because now this has managed to become one of the worst-reviewed films of the year, and I’m just sitting here like WTF happened, did they see some other cut of the film?  I’ve held off on writing this, because I’ve struggled with the direction I wished to write this.  There’s the comic fan in me that has so much to say, then there is the more critical side, and usually I fall somewhere in between. Then I decided the hell with it, I’m just going to come at this full film geek.  My reasoning, it seems 90% of critics out there have forgotten how to have fun at the movies, and it’s a shame, because I know at some point all of them were film lovers, but at some point they decided to turn their noses up at the trashy and the cool popcorn flicks.  So strap yourself in, and let me give you the real rundown on the film.

After the events of Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice, a government official, Amanda Waller, (Viola Davis) has a plan to get a team of the world’s most dangerous villains to fight the battles the government may find too dangerous to openly confront.  Among these villains are “meta-humans” who have special gifts that can be used as weapons against the “Supermans” of the world.  It’s a dangerous prospect, but as she is pitching this idea, you can’t help but agree with where she is coming from.  This leads us to our roll call to our soon-to-be anti-heroes.

Moviegoers tend to have better memories than amnesiac assassins, but I think it’s fair to say we’ve mostly put The Bourne Legacy out of our minds. Universal’s underwhelming, half-hearted attempt to spin off one of its more lucrative franchises all but guaranteed the eventual return of original star Matt Damon and two-time director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum). The duo has re-teamed for the entertaining yet inessential Jason Bourne, which — for better and worse — will feel extremely familiar for fans of the trilogy.

“I remember…I remember everything.”

“Everyone is afraid of the dark…and that’s what she feeds on.”

Despite rumors to the contrary, I am a full-grown adult. That means I can’t in good conscience admit to being afraid of the dark. The most I’ll concede is a sense of uneasiness if I’m in a dark space because I might bump into something. And if I hear a strange noise in the middle of the night, my mind might start creating sinister shapes out of shadows. (Hold on…am I afraid of the dark?!) Either way, that primal and unshakable fear of what could be hiding just out of sight is what powers Lights Out, one of the leaner, nimbler, and flat-out most enjoyable low-budget horror flicks in recent years.

"Space... The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before."

Every Star Trek fan knows the words by heart. For 50 years they've heralded the promise of something special. From the television show that couldn't but did anyway to 12 feature films. Would #13 be the lucky one? The trailers left many of us worried that it would more than likely be unlucky. And we needed so much for this one to be great. Since the last film we lost Leonard Nimoy, who was most certainly the heart of the franchise on the screen. He was also the gateway between the two incarnations. That loss was eventually expected. Then we tragically lost Anton Yelchin, who was one of the industry’s rising stars. It's the 50th anniversary, and with all this we really needed something good. Trailers said we were out of luck. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I'm here to tell you that you can't judge a film by its trailers. Star Trek Beyond turns out to be not only what the fans wanted... but what we desperately needed.