Sully

Take me to the river.

(2016) Biographical Drama (Warner Brothers) Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Jamey Sheridan, Anna Gunn, Valerie Mahaffey, Holt McCallany, Delphi Harrington, Mike O’Malley, Kate Couric, Jeff Kober, Molly Bernard, Chris Bauer, Blake Jones, Jane Gabbert, Molly Hagan, Sam Huntington, Michael Rappaport, Jerry Ferrara, Ann Cusack. Directed by Clint Eastwood

 

January 15, 2009 was a watershed moment for New York City and all of the United States. On that day, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City bound for Charlotte, North Carolina. It was in the air for just about three minutes when a flock of Canadian geese flew across their path. Several birds were sucked inside each of the two engines and the aircraft lost thrust from both engines. Without power, they had to glide onto a runway but the pilot didn’t think they would make any nearby airport. He determined their best chance for survival was to to make a controlled water landing on the Hudson River. He did so – without a single loss of life. That incident became known as the Miracle on the Hudson.

The pilot, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Hanks) was hailed as a hero by the popular media and the press. He and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Eckhart) had done the remarkable and saved a plane full of passengers and crew (155 souls in all) from almost certain death. But there were questions, questions the National Transportation Safety Board had about Sully’s decision making. Flight data showed that one of the engines was still turning, indicating that there was sufficient power in the engine to make it back to LaGuardia. Also, computer simulations showed that the plane could have made it back to the airport.

However, Sully knew through 40 plus years of flying that it wasn’t so. Doubting himself, his career and reputation at stake, he knows he will have to confront his accusers with the only things he has to defend himself with – his experience and the truth.

It would seem that the story of Sully Sullenberger would be the perfect fit for Clint Eastwood; after all, he’s one of the finest directors working and the Sullenberger story has that same resonance that Chris Kyle of American Sniper did. However, whereas that film was a character study disguised as an action film, this is more of a disaster film disguised as a character study.

Hanks doesn’t really resemble Sullenberger facially but he’s a good choice for the role. This is in many ways very similar to his Jim Lovell role in Apollo 13 although there are some differences we’ll get into in a bit. Still, it’s a portrait of a calm professional doing what he does best in a moment of crisis, just like the Ron Howard film. Hanks has that quality of calm and cool that he has projected throughout his career and while he is not as well-known for those types of roles, he still excels at them, quietly.

What I was a little bit disappointed about is that we don’t really get that much insight into Sullenberger himself. Much of the movie revolves around the investigation of the crash, and while we get scenes juxtaposing the hero-worship going on in the media and the public (which Sullenberger seems definitely uncomfortable with) and the questioning of his competence at the NTSB hearings, we don’t get a sense of what Sullenberger was thinking very often. He’s a notoriously private man in real life and so he may not have shared a lot of that (I haven’t read the autobiography this is based on, I must confess) for writer Todd Komanicki to work with.

The scenes of the crash which are mostly told in flashback (as well as nightmares that Sully has of the plane crashing into buildings) are for the most part pretty well-told, although to be honest special effects are not Eastwood’s forte. Still, the scenes are serviceable and give the viewer the “you are there” feel that is needed.

Of course, there were more folks in the cast than Hanks. Eckhart is rock solid as the co-pilot. Jamey Sheridan also shines as the head of the NTSB investigation. Laura Linney plays Sullenberger’s wife and sadly, she is depicted mostly on the phone with Sully which really puts some strain on the dynamic between them – you never get a sense of the relationship between them. I think the movie could have used some time with the two face-to-face onscreen.

Eastwood is much too savvy a director to churn out a movie without at least some merit (although Jersey Boys might well be the exception to that rule) but this one is a bit too clinical to be among his best. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great story and the depiction of those 208 seconds from the time the birds were encountered to the controlled water landing are harrowing and amazing. Any Eastwood movie – even Jersey Boys ­– is worthwhile viewing. I like Sully well enough but I left it feeling that there could have been more – and should have been.

REASONS TO GO: The performances are terrific particularly among the leads. An inside look at an American hero – and why being a hero isn’t necessarily good news for the hero.
REASONS TO STAY: There’s little insight into Sullenberger himself.
FAMILY VALUES:  A little bit of rough language and scenes of plane crash peril.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  Ferry captain Vincent Lombardi, who was the first on the scene to pick up survivors, plays himself in the movie.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/11/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 82% positive reviews. Metacritic: 74/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Flight
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: ARQ

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New Releases for the Week of September 9, 2016

SULLY

(Warner Brothers) Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Holt McCallany, Valerie Mahaffey, Ann Cusack, Sam Huntington. Directed by Clint Eastwood

Chesley Sullenberger was a commercial airline pilot but on a routine flight in January, 2009, he became a national hero when his engines were crippled when a flock of geese passed through his flight path. He brought the plane down safely without a single loss of life, but the end of the passengers’ ordeal was only the beginning of his own.

See the trailer, interviews, clips and B-roll video here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for some peril and brief strong language)

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years

(Abramorama) Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. This documentary directed by Oscar winner Ron Howard chronicles the live shows and tours of the Fab Four starting from their days in Liverpool at the legendary Cavern Club to their final show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. While this documentary is scheduled to be released on Hulu the same day, the theatrical version will include their legendary 1965 Shea Stadium concert in New York City in its entirety.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard (Two nights only; Thursday (sold out) and Friday September 16)
Genre: Music Documentary
Now Playing: Enzian Theater
Rating: NR

The Disappointments Room

(Relativity) Kate Beckinsale, Lucas Till, Michaela Conlin, Gerald McRaney. A young family moves into a fixer-upper in a quaint Eastern seaboard town. While renovating the home, they come upon a small door in the attic that is locked and for which no key appears to work. The room behind the door doesn’t appear on the home’s blueprints and so their curiosity is piqued. Some doors, however, are better left locked.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for violent content, bloody images, some sexuality and language)

When the Bough Breaks

(Screen Gems) Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, Romany Malco, Jaz Sinclair. A young professional couple, desperate to have a baby, finally goes the surrogate route when every other option fails. At first, the woman they choose as their surrogate seems to be a dream come true and after a harrowing event, they invite her to come live in their home with them. However, she becomes obsessed with the husband and proves to be far more dangerous than they thought possible.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Thriller
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for violence, sexuality/partial nudity, thematic elements, some disturbing images and language)

The Wild Life

(Summit) Starring the voices of Yuri Lowenthal, Jay Jones, Lindsay Torrance, Dennis O’Connor. The tale of Robinson Crusoe is retold (not so faithfully to the original I would imagine) in this animated adventure but in quite the twist, not from the point of view of Crusoe but through the eyes of the animals who inhabit the tropical island which isn’t so deserted after all.

See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for mild action/peril and some rude humor)

The East

All signs point to The East.

(2013) Drama (Fox Searchlight) Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgard, Ellen Page, Patricia Clarkson, Toby Kebbell, Shiloh Fernandez, Aldis Hodge, Danielle Macdonald, Hilary Baack, Jason Ritter, Julia Ormond, Jamey Sheridan, Billy Magnussen, Wilbur Fitzgerald, John Neisler, Pamela Roylance, Ryan Grego, Ava Bogle, Nick Fuhrmann, Patricia French. Directed by Zal Batmanglij

How difficult is it to uphold the law when the law protects the strong and harms the weak? Are you doing the right thing then by enforcing the law – or are you part of a system that preys on those who don’t have the cash?

Jane (Marling) is a former FBI agent now working for the private security intelligence firm Hiller Brood, hired by corporate clients to protect their executives from harm. Of late, a radical eco-terrorist group calling itself The East has been targeting bigwigs at Big Oil, flooding the home of an oil company CEO with crude oil after his company flooded the gulf with the same stuff.

Sharon (Clarkson), her steely boss, picks Jane to go undercover and infiltrate The East to discover who their targets are and what they plan to do with them. Adopting the name of Sarah, she goes cross-country hanging out with free spirits and counterculture types, engaging in freeganism (the practice of eating discarded food, what some call dumpster diving). She hops trains with a group of them including one suspect she thinks might have ties to the organization but he turns out to be a red herring. However, a different member of that group – Luca (Fernandez) turns out to be the real deal and after Sarah is injured protecting him from railroad bulls he takes her to the safe house of his group to let Doc (Kebbell) take a look at her.

Doc isn’t what he used to be – an adverse reaction to a drug meant to protect him and his sister, both working for a Doctors Without Borders-like organization, from dysentery has left him prone to seizures and extreme muscle tremors. Despite the suspicions of Izzy (Page), one of the other members, she is accepted into the group and captures the eye of Benji (Skarsgard), the de facto leader of a group which claims to have no leaders – call him the first among equals then.

As the group continues to exact revenge on corporate bigwigs whose crimes have gone unpunished by the justice system, Jane/Sarah begins to become conflicted and questions whether she’s batting for the right team.

I really like the moral ambiguity here. This is a film that asks the question does the ends justify the means when the system is broken? That’s a question that’s deceptively difficult to answer. In a system rigged to prevent justice when the super-wealthy are involved, how does one achieve justice particularly when you’re a part of the system? There are no easy answers.

Kudos to Marling and Batmanglij who don’t give the audience any easy outs. Benji and his brood have their own issues and motivations and they aren’t the “pure-at-heart” anarchists that liberal Hollywood sometimes likes to parade as heroes taking on the evil capitalists, nor do all of the CEOs here come off as money-grubbing monsters who are willing to trade human lives for an extra billion they couldn’t possibly spend. Obviously their hearts lie with the anarchists but some of the actions they take are troubling.

Marling, a cool blonde who 60 years ago would have made a perfect Hitchcock female lead, is rapidly becoming one of the independent scene’s best actresses. She’s smart and takes smart roles. Her character undergoes a metamorphosis – from a Christian rock, prayerful and ambitious security agent to a radical leftist spouting freeganism and anarchy. Now, I’m not saying such a change isn’t possible but it does seem to be a rather extreme conversion. Skarsgard, who has become a heartthrob on True Blood, shows that he will make an easy transition to the big screen when that series ends if he chooses to.

On the minus side, there are some plot holes. For example, considering how secretive the group is, Jane/Sarah finds them awfully quickly. One would think if it were that easy to find them, some law enforcement agency would have located them first. Secondly, if the dysentery inoculation caused such serious side effects for such a great percentage of those who took it, a) someone would have noticed and pulled the drug from the marketplace, b) the company that was marketing it would likely never have put it in the marketplace to begin with fearing the class action lawsuits that would surely have followed and c), the Pentagon wouldn’t have signed a contract to give their soldiers a drug that would have debilitated them to the point where they were not only no longer useful as fighting men and women but also would require extensive care for the rest of their lives.

However, these things aside, the writing is pretty dang smart and keeps the tension level high throughout. Certainly one’s political leanings will color your appreciation of the film; liberal sorts will applaud the idea of those perpetrating injustices upon the environment and people getting a taste of their own medicine while conservatives might see this as a self-righteous throwback hippie Che Guevara-fest from the ’60s. Neither viewpoint is wrong, by the way.

REASONS TO GO: Raises some timely questions. Taut and suspenseful.

REASONS TO STAY: Politically self-righteous. A few plot holes.

FAMILY VALUES:  Most of the themes here are pretty adult in nature. There is some violence, some sexuality, quite a bit of foul language and some partial nudity.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Marling and Batmanglij, who co-wrote the screenplay, based it on their experiences in the summer of 2009 practicing freeganism and joining an anarchist collective.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/29/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 74% positive reviews. Metacritic: 68/100; this one got some pretty solid reviews.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Battle in Seattle

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: R.I.P.D.

Handsome Harry

Steve Buscemi wishes he could be as Handsome as Harry.

(2009) Mystery (Paladin) Jamey Sheridan, Steve Buscemi, Maryann Mayberry, Aidan Quinn, John Savage, Campbell Scott, Titus Welliver, Karen Young, Jayne Atkinson, Rutanya Alda, Bill Sage, Emily Donahoe, Asher Grodman, Andrew Dolan. Directed by Bette Gordon

 

That which we do in our past often doesn’t remain there. There are things that we do that can haunt us or influence us from the moment it happens all the way until this very moment and all the way to the future. Reconciling ourselves with those events sometimes is the only way to find peace.

Harry Sweeney (Sheridan) is, as the title proclaims, a good looking man who has gone gracefully into middle age. He’s one of those charming Irish guys who strides into a bar and everybody knows him. The ladies adore him and the men want to be like him.

Harry’s son (Grodman) is distinctly different in that sense. He and his father have a relationship that is strained to put it mildly, although why it is so is never really explained. Perhaps it’s just the way of fathers and their grown sons. Harry has been a mechanic most of his life, ever since he got back from Vietnam and the Navy in which he served.

When he gets a call from his Navy buddy Thomas Kelly (Buscemi) to let Harry know he needs to talk to him, Harry is a bit reluctant – he has ambivalent feelings about his military years. However when Kelly tells him that he’s on his deathbed and won’t be around much longer, Harry knows he has to go.

Kelly reminds him of an incident in the Navy in which five men, including Kelly and Harry, beat up a sixth and maimed him. Kelly wants to find the maimed man and apologize. At first Harry doesn’t want to do it; he would much rather say his farewells to Kelly and move on but when Kelly passes away, Harry knows the right thing to do is to find the victim of their attack and try to make amends.

To do so, he first needs to visit the other men involved in the beating and not all of them want to be reminded of it. There’s Peter Rheems (Savage), a wealthy blowhard who’s become an abusive husband to Judy (Mayberry), who takes quite a liking to Harry. There’s Professor Porter (Quinn), who pretends not to know Harry or have been in the Navy. There’s Gebhardt (Welliver), another wealthy man who has a love for golf but not so much for Harry.  All of this will lead to Harry’s face-to-face with David Kagan (Scott), whose potential career as a concert pianist was ruined and whose life was forever changed by the attack on him.

Gordon has directed a couple of indie films over the past 15 years – you wouldn’t exactly call her prolific – but this certainly has the look and feel of an assured hand on the tiller. The movie is on the uneven side but the good does outnumber the bad pretty much.

Let’s start with Sheridan. He can be very charismatic (as he was in “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” and in the TV mini-series of Stephen King’s The Stand in which he played Randall Flagg), and while he mostly does television and mostly supporting roles, he shows the ability to carry a movie here. He has that easy charm that translates well to the screen.

The supporting cast is strong. Buscemi, Savage, Quinn and Scott are all capable actors who rarely give poor performances and the quartet of them don’t disappoint here. Buscemi in particular has become a regular on the indie circuit, although his critically acclaimed and Golden Globe-winning performance on HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” might bring him some meatier roles in mainstream films.

The writing is a bit uneven. Harry’s character doesn’t always act according to his own nature, going from pacifist in one scene to brawler in the next (and no, I’m not talking about the flashbacks either). There is also a feeling that the malaise that hangs over Harry’s life was hanging over the film as well; there are times it lacks energy.

Still, most films that depict middle aged regret in men show the men to be down and out losers who have drank, drugged or otherwise messed up their lives in almost incalculable ways and require some kind of redemption. Here you don’t get that sense; Harry is not after redemption so much as forgiveness, and the way that it is given is actually one of the film’s highlights.

Gordon never allows Harry to be completely forgiven – after all, the act that was committed by all five men was heinous and there need to be consequences for that and those consequences appear in very subtle ways. There is a lot to like here but there is also a lot that doesn’t quite work and so the recommendation is a mild one I’m afraid.

WHY RENT THIS: Middle aged regret is rarely portrayed as well as it is here. Sheridan does a great job. Terrific supporting cast.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The writing can be uneven; certain changes in Harry’s behavior take place that seem a mite extreme.

FAMILY VALUES: There are a few bad words sprinkled here and there, as well as a bit of sexual content.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Handsome Harry premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25, 2009.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $13,500 on a $1M production budget; undoubtedly this lost money.

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

TOMORROW: The Innkeepers