The Reel World

“Mankind is the cancer of its own body. Do you love humanity enough to save it?”

I remember when I was first introduced to the character of Robert Langdon. I was a late bloomer to the story, not having read the book. My first introduction came from the film. I had just graduated high school, and instead of engaging in the customary family dinner that usually precedes the event, I opted in favor of going to the see The Da Vinci Code. That is a decision that I have never regretted. Fortunately, I didn’t need to skip anything important to see Angels and Demons, and it is a good thing, as the film missed the mark with me. Now here we find ourselves on the cusp of Langdon’s redemption with Inferno.  Will the third film in the trilogy be enough to make people forget about the second one? Is Tom Hanks still convincing in what is becoming one of his most recognizable roles?

Forbes magazine called Jack Reacher and author Lee Childs as the strongest brand in publishing as much for his over 100,000,000 in sales and billion dollar imprint as for the strong loyalty of fans and favorable ratings of the readers. The 21^st Jack Reacher novel, Night School, is coming out in a couple of weeks (which I’m sure Simon & Shuster would thank me for mentioning, but they don’t need my help), and Reacher fans will buying in droves. The second Reacher movie will be out on November 21.

One of the first things I want to address is that Lee Childs had been actively involved in the picking of Tom Cruise to be Jack Reacher. It was a controversial decision, but Childs rightly said there are no big movie stars who could accurately portray the physical characteristics of Reacher. I personally am 6 ft. 4in tall and 250 pounds, so I could be a close proximity except for the fact that I am not a movie star nor could I disable eight opponents simultaneously. The closest movie star I could name who approximates Reacher’s physical dimensions is Vince Vaughn, and I doubt anyone would say he is as big a movie star as Tom Cruise (box-office-wise, that is). Five Mission Impossible movies alone demonstrate that Cruise’s box office is as strong as ever based on their increasing popularity.

David Hare is an extremely prolific and ambitious playwright. He has written over 30 plays, but he has also done television and screenplays as well as directing in all three mediums. One of his first screenplays was an adaptation of his play, Plenty, which starred Meryl Streep, in 1985. He also wrote the screenplay for an adaptation Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours, which starred Meryl Streep as well. He also wrote the screenplay for The Reader, which was nominated for numerous awards and was about a woman guard in a German concentration camp and starred Kate Winslet. It should also be noted that he has been nominated and won awards in all these media and was also knighted in 1998. But David Hare is first and foremost a great playwright, and his meticulous ability to mold character nuance is legendary.

Denial is a true story based on the book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier by Deborah E. Lipstadt. Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) is confronted at one of her lectures by David Irving (Timothy Spall) and insists he has been libeled in her books. Irving had written numerous historical books from 1963 to 1996. In the beginning, Irving’s work was highly regarded by many but controversial because of his unduly high favoritism of the Third Reich. By 1996, when he confronted Lipstadt, he was perceived as a racist. He brought suit against Lipstadt in England for libel. The movie primarily focused on the preparation for the trial and the aftermath. In fact, the movie spends most of its time trying to vacillate between truth, delusion, and confusion. The legal system is in fact a perfect illustration of this idea, because truth and logic are not necessarily the best way of winning. Lipstadt’s solicitor (who with her barrister makes up one half of English legal defense team) insists that she not testify even though he completely supports everything she says about Irving. The strategy means that allowing Irving to actually question her would validate the ridiculous notion of denying the holocaust. The film becomes an examination of how to defeat people who are delusional. The film is maybe one of the best examinations of the inner workings of preparing for a defense case since Reversal of Fortune in 1990 about Claus Von Bulow. We live in an anti-intellectual age where many falsehoods and half-truths are widely circulated in the media. This movie is rigorously intellectual about how most people will support ideas they know are false or rationalize positions that are embarrassing.

It would seem as though Ben Affleck is finally starting to shed the stigma of doing bad films.  He’s been on a roll since he took on the role of George Reeves in Hollywoodland and has also in the process become an accomplished director.  When the trailer first dropped for The Accountant, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but as you look at the laundry list of talent that fills the cast, it quickly became a film I had my eye on.  What is surprising is despite their being franchises that seem to cover the same territory ie: Jack Reacher and the Jason Bourne films, is there room for another lone-wolf-killing-machine film?  Before going into this it was a question that bothered me; heck, I’m already burnt out of the Jason Bourne films, and with a new Jack Reacher film on the horizon, the saturation is noticeable.  But thankfully The Accountant didn’t just come out swinging but exceeded all expectations and has raised the bar for this brand of action film.

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is, as the title would lead you to believe, an accountant.  He runs his own firm and is exceedingly good at what he does when it comes to solving accounting problems people may have.  He’s exceptional at solving problems, and what makes this all the more impressive is he does all of this as a high-functioning autistic.  This may be one of the first times I’ve seen a character with a disability on screen, but not once is it ever played as a way to sway sympathy; instead it’s just another layer to this character.  We see the everyday hell Wolff goes through, but we also see how far he’s come from his childhood after his mother gives up hope and abandons her family.

“My husband used to tell me I have an overactive imagination...”

The idea at the core of The Girl on the Train is equal parts provocative and relatable: a lonely commuter observes an attractive couple from a distance and imagines what their seemingly perfect lives must be like. Anyone who's ever done any people-watching will recognize the appeal of inventing a backstory for a stranger, and the story is a healthy reminder that things are never quite what they seem from the outside. But despite a powerhouse lead performance, this Train is ultimately derailed by an unsatisfying mystery and a lack of flair that causes this potentially juicy story to lose steam as it chugs along.

It really doesn’t seem so long ago that all the major news networks were showing footage of the destroyed oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was pumping out gallons upon gallons of oil into the ocean.  The BP oil rig disaster was all we could talk about in April of 2010, and all of us at home were left wondering if they’d ever plug up that hole and stop the leakage of oil that would go on to destroy hundreds of miles of beach coast property as well as cause long-lasting effects on the fishing industry.  Everyone was looking for someone to blame, and plenty of it went to BP.  While this made for engaging news for a while, it never seemed like a story that Hollywood would want to invest in and make a film about. Now it’s 2016, and Deepwater Horizon is a big-budget blockbuster about to hit the big screen with some of Hollywood’s heavy hitters.  With Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor) at the helm as director and with the material in the back of my head, I was thinking this could be a film to keep an eye on as award season is about to kick into high gear.  Unfortunately, I don’t think this is quite the film I expected, and it has me wondering what could have been.

While the story does focus on the tragedy on the oil rig Deepwater Horizon, it’s Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) who we are following on most of this journey.  Mike is just your regular guy at home with his wife, Felicia (Kate Hudson) and their daughter.  When we first meet them, it’s the morning he’s set to travel out to the rig, and he’s saying his goodbyes since life on the rig keeps him away from home for weeks at a time.  Not much time is wasted here, but it does a good job of setting up the emotional bond we’ll need for this character once all hell breaks loose down the road, but of course we have a scene that conveniently sets up the looming disaster as his daughter discusses a school project with her dad.  It’s not a new method to use foreshadowing, but as I continued to watch I found myself wanting the film to simply move it along and stop beating it over our heads. We even get hints of bad omens as the rest of the crew comes together and travels out to the rig, enough where a superstitious person would have conveniently avoided this particular trip if possible.

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.