Sully
Dir. Clint Eastwood
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The problem with many real-life stories depicted on screen, especially if they were covered in the news as much and as recently as Captain "Sully" Sullenberger's emergency plane landing in the Hudson River, is that we already know how things turn out. There's no tension as to whether or not Sully will "make it"; we know that all the passengers survived. It's a story about a nice guy who saved a bunch of people and was immediately hailed as a hero - that doesn't exactly make for satisfying drama. However, what I didn't know about this story going in, and what the film primarily focuses on, is the aftermath of the crash and the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into whether or not Sully's critical decisions put the passengers in unnecessary risk. I found the procedural nature of this investigation to be really engrossing, and the clinical, unsentimental manner in which Clint Eastwood captures everyone - from the captain to air traffic control to the investigative team - just doing their jobs extremely proficiently in a time of crisis made Sully a surprisingly intense, dramatic, dynamic experience. Plus it features possibly one of the best plane crash sequences ever put to film.
Tom Hanks - in his first collaboration with Eastwood - is predictably fantastic as Sully. Continuing his recent trend to play "All American Heroes" in films like Captain Phillips and Bridge of Spies, you truly get a sense of both the pure professionalism and inner conflict he faces in regards to his decisions. When he lands the plane, he makes sure that all the passengers are accounted for before leaving himself, and thinks to grab his coat and notebook from the cockpit probably because that's what he does after every flight - it doesn't matter that the plane is in the middle of a river. Eastwood also connects Sully's guilt with some startlingly chilling visual allusions to 9/11, reminding us how close Sully's heroic deeds could've ended in tragedy.
I saw this movie in legit, full IMAX (at the Jordan's Furniture in Reading, Mass), and surprisingly, I found this to be one of the better experiences in that format. You'd think that big of a screen would only benefit epic space operas or grand fantasy adventures, but the sound design and scope really add to the intensity and characters. For instance, there's a brief sequence with Sully running alone at night through Times Square, and the overwhelming size of the buildings and spectral ambience created by his cold breath and the glowing lights adds considerably to the character's sharp sense of guilt.
My biggest complaint about the movie is that, while I enjoyed it, it feels padded out, even for its relatively short 90 minute run time. Sully will call his wife (Laura Linney) whenever something major happens, and their relationship felt totally perfunctory - only to remind us that Sully has someone waiting for him at home. There are also a handful of unnecessary flashbacks to Sully's youth when he was first learning to fly. None of these little extra beats add up to anything, even if they were directed and acted well. The actual plane river landing is even played THREE times! Granted, with each showing, we get a slightly different perspective, and I didn't mind seeing it again because it's seriously one of the best plane sequences EVER put to screen. The flight attendants chanting "Brace, brace, brace, heads down, stay down..." will forever haunt my mind whenever I step onto an airplane.
What makes Sully work is that Eastwood takes the "Miracle" aspect out of the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' What saved the day wasn't some divine accident - it was thanks to the training, teamwork, and pure skill exhibited by all involved. Sully is a well-acted, dramatically satisfying, unsentimentally directed ode to professionalism that's worth seeing even if you know the "full story" already.
Rating: B+
Snowden
Dir. Oliver Stone
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The story follows Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) as he's interviewed by a documentary team headed by director Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) and journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto). The film is primarily told via flashback a la Citizen Kane, where we see everything from Snowden's military training, to his relationship with his activist girlfriend Lindsay (Shailene Woodley), and of course his inevitable uncovering of shady government spying. While some might find the biographical information here an interesting "bonus" to what is already commonly known about Snowden's life, in the end all these details feel tedious and certainly don't add much urgency to the film. The relationship between Snowden and Lindsay felt strained at best, and not helping matters was JGL's distracting impression. Granted, he does look and sound a lot like him (i.e. a bit robotic), but it felt like an SNL sketch without the humor. If you thought Levitt's French accent as Philippe Petit in The Walk was insufferable, just skip this movie altogether or you'll risk losing your hair after you tear it out.
The "symbolism" that Stone tries to inject here is also distracting. There's one scene where one of Snowden's bosses tries to intimidate him in a video conference, and his head is projected to be as big as the side of a wall (oohh..."big brother is watching you"...give me a break...). I also wish the movie delved deeper into Snowden's psychology regarding his decision-making; he simply just does what he does without much contemplation, guilt, or second-thoughts. The movie ends in purely pro-Snowden propaganda with a packed auditorium of audience members giving him a standing ovation after a video interview, which I found totally off-putting considering the complex nature of the issue at hand. Stone portrays Snowden as heroically as Eastwood portrays Captain Sully, but the ramifications of what Snowden did (possibly compromising intelligence that could lead to stopping terrorists) requires more nuance than a simple "American Hero" story, no matter what your opinion on the man ultimately is.
Disappointingly dull, simple, weakly-scripted, weakly-acted, and blandly-directed, I think I'd rather watch hackers code for 2 hours than sit through this again.
Rating: C-
Blair Witch
Dir. Adam Wingard
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The Blair Witch Project from 1999 is not only one of the scariest movies of all time (in my opinion), but it's also one of the most fascinatingly-marketed films ever made. Arguably the first "found footage" movie that sparked the horror gimmick behind the Paranormal Activity films and Cloverfield, it marketed itself as something that could very well be a real documentary about a group of student filmmakers who get lost in the woods and are killed by the "blair witch." It was one of the first movies to create a website, further perpetuating the myth that the film was real, and also an unironic, unwinking documentary about the missing students was produced for television before its release. When I first saw the film, I believed that what I was watching may have actually happened, which not only made the experience scarier, but it was also a testament to the craft of filmmaking at hand.
Flash-forward to 2016, and director Adam Wingard (You're Next, VHS) is at the helm for the remake to a film that seems to defy being remade - it was lightning in a bottle and a phenomenon that can't be repeated (it made almost $250 million on a budget of $60,000). Seeming like a hopeless task, in order for Blair Witch to succeed and justify its existence, it needed to do something new, something we've never seen before, to bring the story and 'Blair Witch" mythology to a whole new level. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on nearly every front.
The story follows the brother of Heather, who after the events of the first film has been missing for 17 years. This 20-something douchebag who looks like he came out of a Sears catalogue and a bunch of his annoying friends decide to head back into the woods with a bunch of cameras and a couple of locals to see if they can find her. Already, the story is pretty thin as you're supposed to believe that Heather would just be hanging around the woods for SEVENTEEN YEARS. The story doesn't even really matter anyway; none of the threads established at the beginning ever pay off. They introduce new technology, like a drone camera that can get aerial shots, but it never captures anything creepy the entire film. Also there's an element of distrust between the locals and the filmmakers - perhaps maybe they are faking the whole thing just to get "hits" on Youtube or something - but again, it never goes ANYWHERE and Blair Witch simply goes through the motions, beat-for-beat what the first film did, without any of the subtlety.
Any adherence to a kind of "reality" is thrown out the window immediately. Although Wingard again creates a found-footage aesthetic, the acting is so unnatural - the actors themselves just have that "youthful model" glow to them that feels straight out of a casting agency - and the entire thing is a loud, jump scare-filled mess, that anyone in their right mind wouldn't believe this could've actually happened. The original film established a brilliant, quiet horror that ran throughout the movie, including in its sound design. The tiniest snapping of a twig in the distance was terrifying. Here, there are loud noises even when friends interact with each other. One guy taps another on his shoulder: "BBWAAMMM." It's just lazy.
Especially after being spoiled with Don't Breathe recently, the characters in this movie are insufferable, idiotic, and have almost no personality. Possibly the dumbest moment I've seen in a movie this year: it's the middle of the night, you're separated from the group, there's potentially a monster chasing after you, and your leg is badly injured. The best decision: time to climb a thinly-limbed tree and get the drone that's caught up there. Spoiler alert: she falls. Dumb on every level.
While there are a few elements that could've had some promise (I did like how it was almost revealed that the hillbillies could be responsible for it all, and there is a scary moment in a narrow tunnel towards the end), but overall, Blair Witch just pissed me off, especially as a huge fan of the original. Everything I seem to hate about most modern horror movies - a show don't tell mentality (you actually see the witch), jump scares, young n' dumb characters, cameras that are about as steady as a "shake weight" - is present here, and Adam Wingard, as evidenced by his surprisingly good slasher flick You're Next, should know the genre better than to make such a "nothing" film as this.
Rating: D-
The Innocents
Dir. Anne Fontaine
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There are so many WWII movies it can make your head spin, but The Innocents tells one story I can honestly say I've never seen or heard of before: In the winter of 1945, a Red Cross doctor (Lou de Laage) tries to help a group of pregnant nuns in a convent in Poland.
Just seeing a pregnant nun is kind of surreal and shocking - since you know that each round belly in a way is a sign of rape - and The Innocents creates a kind of haunting, heavy beauty that features a disturbing moral complexity regarding how to handle the situation and the shame it could bring on the convent. While the film does get bogged down in monotony after you start to understand its rhythm and I didn't really buy the central relationship between the doctor and her coworker Samuel (Vincent Macaigne), it's a fascinating, little-told story from a neglected point of view during WWII that has some great cinematography and a (literally) chilling atmosphere.
Rating: B-
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