Review: Captain Phillips

I’m not the biggest Tom Hanks fan.  I readily admit that he’s a good (sometimes great) actor, but I just don’t find myself terribly interested in his work.  In fact, my favorite Tom Hanks movie dates back to 1988 (Big) when Hanks was still a comedic talent.  So count me in the minority when it comes to the academy award-winning actor.  So it truly was a rare occasion this past weekend when I ventured out to the cinema to see a movie in Captain Phillips that features the aforementioned Hanks.  And truth be told, I was surprisingly entertained.

The plot of the movie tells the tale of the Maersk Alabama, a US freighter navigating international waters off the coast of Africa.  When a group of Somali pirates hijack the American ship, Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his crew work to ensure the safety of the ship and its cargo until the U.S. Naval authorities can intervene. 

In what has become an increasingly annoying trend with Hollywood productions based on true stories, there has been much dispute about the accuracy of the film.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but it’s a vehicle to entertain, not to educate.  I don’t think writers, actors, producers, or the industry as a whole try to purport themselves as objective documenters of history.  So I find it completely baffling that there are people out there who bristle at the use of creative license to enhance the entertainment value of a film.  But I digress.

What makes this movie entertaining is director Paul Greengrass’ ability to incrementally build tension throughout the first half of the movie.  The threat is slow but imminent and all the players know where things are probably headed, but Greengrass and company are still able to tighten the proverbial screws.  There’s a methodical rhythm to the open ocean that makes reactionary movement slow and Greengrass expertly uses that as a mechanism to keep the narrative taut.  It also sets up a nice contrast to the rapid movements that occur in the closed spaces aboard the ships.

As for the aforementioned Hanks, he does a nice job of creating a character in Captain Phillips that feels real and has depth.  Rather than pull from past performances, as other actors with long resumes are wont to do, Hanks puts something to film that feels fresh.  The role calls for something understated but still compelling enough to carry a feature film and Hanks manages to walk that tight rope.  It may not find its way into his pantheon of performances, but it deserves some recognition – especially when you consider that he was surrounded by a very inexperienced cast.

Yet as inexperienced as the supporting cast is, collectively they perform admirably.  Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat Ali, and Barkhad Abdirahman – all newcomers to the acting game – come together to portray the Somali pirates in a compelling manner.  The combination of Billy Ray’s writing and their respective performances works to develop the characters into something more than gun toting villains.  Of the group, Barkhad Abdi (as Muse) exhibits the best onscreen presence and puts together the most layered performance.   Don’t get me wrong.  They are not always perfect and there are moments where the delivery feels hammed up, but given their inexperience and the quality of the finished product, it’s hard to find too much fault with what makes it onto the big screen.

Like any other film, Captain Phillips is by no means perfect.  The balance of the film feels very uneven, as the pacing comes to a screeching halt in the third act to such an extent that it almost feels like two different films.  While you are waiting for the payoff through multiple false endings and a glut of detail, you can literally feel the goodwill built up by the taut first half of the film quickly erode.  I can immediately count a number of moments that probably should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

Issues aside, Captain Phillips is a decently entertaining movie.  While I don’t think you necessarily have to run out to the cinema to see it on the big screen, there are far worse ways to spend two hours of your life.  You’ll probably get the best value from this movie as a rental, unless you are one of those people who believes all movies should be true to life, in which case you should probably take a pass.  For everyone else, it will not only occupy those two hours of your life, but will entertain you for another hour thereafter as you will definitely feel compelled to go online and figure out where the line between fact and fiction resides.

Standout Performance:  Tom Hanks.  He is by far the most seasoned and most prominent member of the principle cast and thus deserves the lion’s share of the credit.

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Review: Cloud Atlas

It’s time to pull the plug on Andy and Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski.  Fourteen years ago they put together a cleverly written and directed mega hit known to all as The Matrix. Since then, their careers have been on a steady descent into ineptitude.  How so?  They greatly devalued their one claim to fame with two disastrous sequels (Matrix Reloaded, and Matrix Revolutions); milked said franchise for every single penny with mediocre video games and other licensing ventures; and they turned a cult classic of a cartoon in Speed Racer into a cinematic assault on the senses.  The latter led to a four-year hiatus from the film game that officially came to an end with the release of Cloud Atlas.

Typically this is the point in the review where I give a synopsis of the plot, but with Cloud Atlas that is really difficult to do.  This difficulty is born from the film’s unbalanced detailing of a handful of plots ranging from the distant past to the distant future, all edited with neither rhyme nor reason and presented with no sense of order or sensibility.  This renders viewers disoriented and completely disconnected from the film and its characters, which is incredibly ironic because the movie fancies itself a highbrow attempt at showing how all life is interconnected, when in fact the film’s many plots are anything but that.

In the line of things that went horribly wrong with this film, first and foremost would be the aforementioned odd choices in editing.  However, right on its heels would have to be the casting and acting choices.  It is a slippery slope to ask one actor to play multiple roles in a film.  I am hard pressed to name two or three times where it has worked and can rattle off movies ad nauseum in which it didn’t (Norbit, The Nutty Professor, Jack and Jill, Last Action Hero, et al).  Besides the fact that none of those movies are in anyone’s pantheon of greats, another thing they have in common is that they all aspire to be somewhat comedic.  Why?  Because the same actor in multiple roles feels gimmicky and is distracting, hence it works best as a sight gag. 

In Cloud Atlas, not just one actor takes on multiple roles, but nearly the whole cast of principles including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant.  Let me not mince words here when I tell you that it just flat out does not work.  Forget that the costume changes border on the ridiculous, that the makeup jobs appear absolutely amateurish, and that for the duration of the film you will find yourself constantly struggling to discern the who, what, when, where, and why of any given moment, the fact of the matter is that none in the cast are up to the task of taking on this endeavor.  Never is this more glaring than with Tom Hanks.  This is a guy with some serious hardware in his trophy cabinet and he is made to look like an absolute fool in this flick.  The asinine appearances, over the top accents, and rudimentary logic render the cast inept and completely tear this film down. That I made it to the end of the movie is simply the result of disbelief - disbelief that the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer could a film together of this nature.  In my mind there had to be an “ah” moment at the end that would bring every all together.  But sadly that never happens. 

Even now in thinking about this film, I can’t tell you for sure if I watched five, six, or seven storyline in this movie, but I can tell you for sure that each one of them was bad.  I have heard the words ambitious, genius, and intelligent attached to this movie by the people who will spend forty minutes detailing the difference between a movie and a film, but that’s merely the “nothing musings” of a societal blowhard.  Cloud Atlas is essentially the cinematic equivalent of a bronze rendering of dog poop sitting on a pedestal in an art gallery.  And because someone somewhere calls it is art, people stand there and ponder it, all the while thinking that it is nothing more than dog poop.  That’s Cloud Atlas – dog poop.  Don’t see it.  Don’t rent it.  In fact, never watch another movie made by the Wachowskis again and hopefully their brand of pseudo intellectual cinema will just go away once and for all.

Standout Performance: If there was anyone who acquitted himself of the nonsense surrounding the entire production it would have to be Ben Whishaw who did a nice job as aspiring composer Robert Frobisher.

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Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I have never really been a fan of movies set against the backdrop of 9/11.  Well, I guess it is not so much that I am not a fan, but more that I have chosen to avoid such movies (i.e. United 93, World Trade Center, Reign Over Me).  I know people who were lost in the tragedy and that is most definitely a contributing factor to my reluctance.  However, I think the driving force behind my reasoning is that while I love movies, I don’t take them too seriously.  I don’t look to movies to learn about the world or to be educated – not even documentaries because the finished product is always the filmmaker’s take on a given subject matter – especially in this day and age when subjective reporting is a lost art.  But I digress.  For me, movies are about escapism and as a member of my own generation, nothing about 9/11 can ever offer a temporary escape.

So for the first half hour I did not particularly care for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and though that feeling never completely went away, I did become interested in seeing the protagonist Oskar Schell – played by Thomas Horn – find some closure to the task at hand and to an immensely painful chapter in his life.  The plot centers on this task of finding a key left behind by Oskar’s father played by Tom Hanks, who passed away in the 9/11 tragedy.  Discovering the mystery behind the innocuous key becomes a journey of emotional turmoil and learning for a young boy struggling with the question, “why?”

What worked best for me was the presence of Tom Hanks’ Schell even when he was just a voice on an answering machine or not even onscreen at all.  I am not a huge Hanks fan – I actually think that in his prime he was greatly overrated – but he does great work and in limited screen time makes his presence felt throughout the film.  He and veteran actor Max von Sydow – as the Renter – stretch their acting chops and offset the over-the-top histrionics of Thomas Horn.

What didn’t work for me was the execution of the plot.  His journey to encounter everyone in the five boroughs named Black is overwrought and the direction by Stephen Daldry falls into the trap of indulging the excess.  There are too many moving pieces, too many hidden lessons, and too many secrets that ultimately fail to deliver with the big reveal.  And while Sandra Bullock, Jeffrey Wright, and Viola Davis are all accomplished veteran actors, they fail to rescue the movie from the morass of neurotic emo-sentimentality that poor writing depicts as the cure to post 9/11 blues.

There are things that occur in this movie that make it worthwhile, but it is in no way a great product as some have dubbed it.  It’s a mid-queue Netflix rental at best that you should not watch when you are having a particularly good day, because no matter the outcome of the movie, the subject matter will leave you in a somber state. 

Standout Performance:  Tom Hanks.  It is probably his best performance in years.

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Review: Larry Crowne

Here is a one-line synopsis about the movie Larry Crowne.  The film is about a really nice guy who is recently divorced, recently laid off, and short on money.  All one hundred minutes of the movie play out in a fashion as bland and ordinary as that synopsis.  Beyond that, I don’t know that I feel compelled to expound much further.  The film runs about one hundred minutes and as those minutes melt away, you get the impression that Tom Hanks – as the director- intends it to be precisely so, as if such an approach gives the proceedings the feeling of authenticity.  Ultimately, it just feels like lazy filmmaking.

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are the two draws to this movie but their cache is not enough to keep this film from plunging into the depths of apathy.  In fact, their presence detracts from what few merits there are about this film, as clearly their respective star powers have diminished.  What makes it onto screen are two performances completely void of the vitality and charisma that planted Hanks and Roberts firmly onto the A-list – this seemingly the result of years of complacency combined with Nia Vardalos’ and Tom Hanks’ milquetoast script.  It is not quite to the level of watching the 1972-version of Willie Mays stumbling around the outfield as a New York Met, but their respective drop offs are palpable. 

Hanks is at his tolerable best when he is acting opposite Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Talia, who shines as Crowne’s youthful newfound life coach.  She is funny and her free spirit brings energy to the middling proceedings.  The strength of their dynamic though is problematic to the film, because the chemistry between Hanks and Roberts – which is supposed to be the driving force in the film – pales in comparison.  In fact, the best scenes in the movie are those that involve the supporting cast.  Rami Malek, Malcom Barret, George Takei, and Wilmer Valderama inject a little bit of life and some light-hearted humor to offset the real world issues plaguing the protagonists.

You really do not need to see this movie.  You probably know someone who is living Larry Crowne’s life and probably doing so in a much more interesting fashion.  If this movie is to be viewed, then in my mind it is best watched on cable on a night when you find yourself in front of the television with some other work to do.  If you are a Julie Roberts fan, then you’re better off avoiding this one and waiting for the much-anticipated Mirror, Mirror.  As for Hanks, he can be seen in the Oscar nominated Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Standout Performance: Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Talia turns in a refreshing performance.

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