FILM REVIEW: Sully

Last weekend I was in Los Angeles and I was able to get together with a group of friends and we went and saw Sully the latest movie from Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, American Sniper) and starring 2-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks (Philadephia, Forrest Gump, Bridge of Spies). The movie is, of course, a cinematic adaptation of the incredible story of the "miracle on the Hudson" that occurred when a U.S. Airways jet with 155 people on board (passengers and crew) experienced a freak collision with a flock of birds that destroyed both engines a few minutes after takeoff from Laguardia and forced Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberg to make a controlled emergency landing on the near-freezing water of the Hudson River in January 2009.

The makers of  Sully has a difficult dramaturgical problem to address: the events of the Miracle on the Hudson are so well-known that making a movie about it means that one has to find a new source of tension separate from wondering what will happen. To their credit, they do come up with some dramatic tension that does pique one's interest in the film.

Additionally, Tom Hanks gives yet another excellent performance, and he has amazing chemistry with Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight) who plays the co-pilot on the famous flight. The acting is just one highlight of this surprisingly short film. In fact, this film almost seems like a play because the story is so slight and the action is so limited. It's pretty amazing that the film was even made, but it does serve as a pretty effective vehicle for Hanks.

Overall, it's probably not necessary to rush out and watch Sully in the movie theaters. It's a good movie, but one that you can enjoy most of its virtues in the comfort of your own home, unless you are a fan who is also a Tom Hanks completist.

Title: Sully.
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Running Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some peril and brief strong language.
Release Date: September 9, 2016.
Viewing Date: September 16, 2016.

Writing: B+.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: B+.
Impact: B.

Overall Grade: B+ (3.3/4.0).

2015 OSCARS: My Predictions For The Nominations

Here are my predictions for the nominations in the Top 8 categories in the 87th Academy Awards that will be announced publicly at 5am PDT on Thursday January 15.

American Sniper
Birdman (Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Boyhood
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Nightcrawler

Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

Best Director

• Clint Eastwood, American Sniper
• Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman
• Richard Linklater, Boyhood
• Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Ana Duvernay, Selma

Best Actress

• Amy Adams, Big Eyes
• Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
• Julianne Moore, Still Alice
• Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl 
• Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Best Actor

• Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
• Benedict Cumberbatch,  The Imitation Game
• Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Michael Keaton, Birdman
• Mathew Oyelowo, Selma 

Best Supporting Actress

• Emma Stone, Birdman
• Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
• Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
• Meryl Streep, Into The Woods
• Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer

Best Supporting Actor

• Ethan Hawke, Boyhood 
• Alfred Molina, Love is Strange 
• Edward Norton, Birdman
• Mark Ruffalo,  Foxcatcher
• J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Best Original Screenplay

• Birdman 
• Boyhood
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The LEGO Movie
• Nightcrawler

Best Adapted Screenplay

• American Sniper
• Gone Girl
• The Imitation Game
• Inherent Vice
• The Theory of Everything

Total Nominations

1. Birdman (10)
2. Boyhood (9)
3. The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything (7)
4. Selma,  Gone Girl, Interstellar, American Sniper, The Grand Budapest Hotel (5)

MOVIE REVIEW: J. Edgar

After a long break, I finally went and saw a movie. A group of co-workers planned an outing to see J. Edgar, the new movie directed and produced by Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River) starring Leonardo Dicaprio, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench and Armie Hammer. The film is a biography about the life of J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and was written by openly gay Oscar-winner Dustin Lance Black (Milk).
The movie has had a mixed reception by critics (rated 40% on rottentomatoes.com) and has been excoriated by some LGBT reviewers. I don't disagree with the disappointed reviews but I do disagree with the intensity of the vitriol that is being heaped on the film.
At its core, J. Edgar is a film about the 50-year-old relationship between two men, J. Edgar Hoover (played by Dicaprio) and Clyde Tolson (played by Hammer), one of whom happened to be the most powerful man in the United States. Black's screenplay jumps haphazardly between different decades, covering the major events in Hoover's (and thus the FBI's) career. The primary event in Hoover's career was his investigation of the so-called Crime of the Century, the kidnapping (and murder) of Charles Lindbergh's infant son. Hoover was obsessed with solving the crime and the movie does a good job of depicting his support and encouragement of forensic science.


Hoover also had some curious relationships with the two most important women in his life, his mother, Anne Marie Hoover (played with brio by Dame Judi Dench), and his longtime secretary and personal assistant Helen Gandy (a thankless role played by Oscar nominee Naomi Watts). There's an incredibly chilling scene where Judi Dench makes it crystal clear that she has no interest in seeing her longtime bachelor of a son ever come out of the closet. Another enlightening scene is between a very young Hoover and Gandy have just began dating and Hoover asks her to marry him. She must realize that Hoover really has no interest in a conjugal relationship with a woman and instead she is interested in having a more enduring (professional) relationship, as his executive secretary.


The performances are the best part of the film, Dench is particularly good, as is Dicaprio. Hammer is easy on the eyes and the depiction of these two single men spending decades together at the #1 and #2 positions at the internal national police force despite a parade of more than half a dozen Presidents is quite compelling.


However, there are some bad characteristic of the film and these flaws most definitely outweigh its strong points. The first that comes to mind is the make-up. Dicaprio looks quite amazing physically as Hoover, but as the film jumps decades into the future they are forced to slather huge amounts of make-up on Hammer and Dicaprio, making Hammer particularly look like some kind of zombie. It doesn't help matters when Tolson has a stroke and spends the last half-hour of the film shaking a leaf. Hammer does a decent portrayal of the physical effects and Hoover's self-centeredness and paranoia are revealed when he starts to turn on the man who has shared his life with him. Even though the relationship lasts 50 years it is completely chaste since neither party really ever acknowledges the love they have for each other, except for one badly written and overly histrionic scene in which the two get physical (violently and romantically). I can understand that some reviewers felt these aspects of the film make it a disappointing exercise, but I would argue that it is still worth seeing, but go in knowing that it is not a masterpiece, but simply an affecting film.


Title: J. Edgar.
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Running Time: 2 hours, 17 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for brief strong language.
Release Date: November 11, 2011.
Viewing Date: November 15, 2011.


Plot: B+.
Acting: B+.
Visuals: B-.
Impact: B+.


Overall Grade: (3.167/4.0).

REVIEW: Letters from Iwo Jima

I finally got around to seeing Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima last Sunday night after the film I was going to see (Rag Tag, a British film about a romace between a Nigerian boy and a West Indian boy in London) at the Pan African Film Festival got its screening time postponed from 7:10pm to 11:10pm suddenly.

Anyway, although I am generally a fan of Clint Eastwood's films (I agreed with the Academy two years ago that Million Dollar Baby should win Best Picture ahead of The Aviator, Sideways, Ray and Finding Neverland (or as the other half likes to call this last one, "the pretty mommy dying of cancer movie.") However I completely disagreed with the kudos heaped upon Mystic River since I think it's a bad adaptation of a pedestrian novel. I just saw The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for the first time last weekend on television and although some people think that's the Best Western ever made I would put my money on the Eastwood-directed Unforgiven. It can't be denied that three Best Directing (and Best Picture) nominations in four years is pretty impressive. However, again I must dissent from the kudos showered upon an Eastwood picture, this time it's Letters from Iwo Jima.

The premise sounds promising, especially after stinking up the joint with Flags of our Fathers, Clint decided to tell the story of the famous World War II battle from the perspective of the Japanese combatants. For me the script (by newcomer Iris Yamashita and Paul "the man" Haggis) is predictable and sloppy. The audience goes into the film with the knowledge that almost all of the Japanese soldiers must die, but it is very clear that one particular soldier must survive since the film follows him so closely. The screenplay loses credibility and reduces verisimilitude by saving the life of this soldier not once, not twice, but three times through too-neatly timed coincidental interventions.

My other complaint is that the film is quite bloody and explicitly violent, which, yes, is an unusal complaint for war movie. We already know "war is hell" and we don't need images of bloody body parts and badly mauled corpses to confirm this.

The most interesting aspect of the film to me was the depiction of the different mental states and psychologies of the Japanese. They ran the gamut from the officers who desperately wanted to kill themselves with their "honor" intact, to soldiers who were just mindlessly following orders to soldiers who just did not want to die.

Although it is refreshing to see a World War II movie where Americans do not play the central or starring role Letters from Iwo Jima still disappoints on other levels.

GRADE: B-.