SULLY (US - 2016) Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Todd Komarnicki. Cast: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O'Malley, Jamey Sheridan, Anna Gunn, Chris Bauer, Holt McCallany, Patch Darragh, Ann Cusack, Jane Gabbert, Molly Hagan, Michael Rapaport, Jeff Kober, Jerry Ferrara, Sam Huntington, Christopher Curry, Max Adler, Autumn Reeser, Jeffrey Nordling, Valerie Mahaffey, Delphi Harrington. (PG-13, 96 mins) It may seem like a stretch to make a feature film out of a six-minute incident and with SULLY, that proves to be the case. In a sense, it's an unusual project for Clint Eastwood who, at 86, is showing no signs of slowing down, working at a Woody Allen pace that renders a lot of his films a blur (quick: when's the last time you thought of JERSEY BOYS, HEREAFTER, or CHANGELING?). At just 96 minutes, SULLY is the shortest film he's ever directed, when one valid criticism that's been leveled at him over the years is his inability to keep a movie under two hours. But even 96 minutes seems too long for SULLY, which recreates the January 15, 2009 "Miracle on the Hudson" landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River no less than three times over the course of the film, along with a drawn-out climax that consists of characters at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing watching multiple real-time computer simulations. There's maybe a 70-minute movie here, but feature films don't run 70 minutes anymore. The short length aside, SULLY is very much a Clint Eastwood movie, with Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger (played here by Tom Hanks) a classic Eastwood hero: a professional, morally upstanding man who's spent his entire life doing his job and doing the right thing. Sully is respected by his colleagues, loved by his family, a man who follows his gut instincts and gets the job done. He's got problems like everyone else--in his case, a money pit property that's been long vacant and causing some significant financial worry--but his performance on the job is never less than stellar. All of that comes into question in SULLY when, just after takeoff on a flight with 155 people onboard, a bird strike causes both engines to burn out and fail. Quick-thinking Sully and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) run through the protocol and attempt to turn around to land at LaGuardia or at Teterboro in New Jersey. Unable to make it without the risk of a crash-landing in the city, Sully lands the plane on the frigid Hudson, and though some passengers were injured and flight attendant Doreen Welsh (Molly Hagan) suffered a severe laceration on her leg, everyone survived and Sully was hailed as an American hero.
It's a feelgood story for the ages, but Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki (PERFECT STRANGER) need a dramatic element. Sure, there's Sully's post-landing second-guessing of his decisions and a certain degree of PTSD suffered by the two pilots, but that's not enough. Shot entirely with IMAX cameras, SULLY does a convincing job of putting the audience right there with Sully and Skiles in a real-time recreation of the incident. Eastwood has a knack for getting into the nuts-and-bolts minutiae of a job down cold, whether it's here with the flight attendants ("BRACE! BRACE! BRACE! HEADS DOWN! STAY DOWN!") and the air traffic controllers or with the way he showed prison employees going about their preparation for an execution in 1999's TRUE CRIME. With the camera capturing every worried look on the faces of Sully and Skiles and with the skillful, precision-timed editing of Blu Murray, the depiction of the bird strike and the subsequent water landing is unquestionably the high point of SULLY. Outside of the plane, Eastwood wisely lets the film rest on the shoulders of Hanks, who continues to cement his status as the Jimmy Stewart "everyman" of his generation. The actor gets fine support by an understated Eckhart, whose Skiles is such a likable character (his film-ending closing line brings down the house) that he almost manages to steal the movie from Hanks.
But as with other Eastwood biographical works, SULLY plays a little too fast and loose with the facts. It isn't quite the borderline hagiography of Chris Kyle and Frankie Valli that were AMERICAN SNIPER and JERSEY BOYS, respectively, nor is it filled with the hokey simplicity of INVICTUS, probably his worst film as a director. The "Miracle on the Hudson" is a story where the closest thing to a villain is a flock of birds that were flying in the wrong place at the wrong time. To counter that, Eastwood and Komarnicki turn the NTSB investigators into the de facto bad guys, going through the list of standard protocol questions but with a tone that starts out incredulous and rapidly escalates to accusatory and prosecutorial. All of the NTSB computer simulations re-enacted by experienced pilots indicate Sully could've made it to LaGuardia. Sully and Skiles both disagree, but Sully's career and pension are on the line if he's wrong, with the head of the inquiry, Charles Porter (Mike O'Malley), glaring at Sully with a seething contempt that borders on snarling hostility by the end. The names of the NTSB investigators were changed for the movie (at Sullenberger's request, according to Hanks, as Sully himself felt that the script's depiction of them was inaccurate). O'Malley's "Charles Porter" doesn't exist, but Robert Benzon, the actual head of the investigation, has spoken out against the film's presentation of the NTSB officials as hatchet men bent on taking Sully down. The investigation was cordial and without such incident, never as inflammatory and antagonistic as SULLY suggests, but it fits into Eastwood's recurring motif of working men in the field and on the frontlines always suffering at the hands of bureaucrats, desk jockeys, and pencil pushers, and ever-hobbled by an over-reliance on technology when the old ways are still the best.
This idea has gone back to the police commissioner and the mayor never just letting Dirty Harry do his job and blow away some scumbags or how the young brainiacs at NASA need the old guys to bail them out in 2000's SPACE COWBOYS. This was evidenced in Eastwood's last film to date as an actor, 2012's TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, where he was in his now-standard, post-GRAN TORINO "Get off my lawn!" mode as a cranky old baseball scout who has no use for "those damn computers" and young punk scouts who only look at numbers and don't feel the game in their hearts ("Anybody that uses computers doesn't know a damn thing about this game," he growls). Eastwood heroes have no use for that shit--they go with their guts and their instincts. Sully did that on January 15, 2009, but he also wasn't subsequently targeted by the NTSB. Fact-based films have always taken dramatic liberties. Even Paul Greengrass' CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, a film whose closing minutes feature arguably the finest acting Hanks has ever done, had to make you care about a guy who, by most accounts, was kind of an asshole and wasn't really well-liked by his peers. Things have to be depicted in different ways for dramatic purposes, but with SULLY, the shoehorning-in of the NTSB out to "get" Sully only serves to demonstrate just how little material is here for a feature-length film. SULLY can't even find anything for three-time Oscar-nominee Laura Linney to do as Mrs. Sully besides sit at home in her kitchen, sob into a phone and repeatedly ask "Is it almost over, Sully?" To Eastwood's credit, he doesn't go full PATCH ADAMS and have all of the passengers walk into the inquiry and prompt the NTSB meanies to have change of heart and start slow-clapping until Sully gets a standing ovation from the entire room, but it doesn't seem out of the question, especially the borderline mic-drop of a way that Sully shuts down Porter (which never happened). Still, the entire room smiles and nods as if to say "You showed them, Sully!" The flight sequences and the excellent work by Hanks and Eckhart (and, briefly, Patch Darragh as Patrick Harten, the air traffic controller trying to talk Sully down to LaGuardia) make SULLY worthwhile viewing, but the rest suffers from forced and fabricated conflict that simply didn't exist.
An arthouse sleeper hit for grownups released in summer 2015, MR. HOLMES is a low-key affair that many may dismiss as an "old people movie," but it's an engrossing and quietly effective little film that unfolds like a good book. Based on Mitch Cullen's 2005 novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, MR. HOLMES reunites star Ian McKellen and director Bill Condon, who last collaborated on 1998's GODS AND MONSTERS, which netted McKellen an Oscar nomination. The masterful actor is just as great here as a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes, 30 years removed from detective work and retired to the English countryside in the years after WWII. Holmes lives in a 1947 where he's also a noted pop culture figure, as his late friend Dr. John Watson's chronicles of their adventures have led to bestselling novels and popular movies. Holmes is fighting to stave off the early signs of dementia, just returning from Japan to procure some jelly made from a "prickly ash" plant that's reputed to help with issues of memory loss. He lives in a cottage with widowed housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), who lost her husband in the war, and her young son Roger (Milo Parker), who spends a lot of time with the elderly Holmes and comes to view him as a father/grandfather figure. Holmes is haunted by regrets and the memories of dead friends and loved ones--Dr. Watson, his brother Mycroft, loyal housekeeper Mrs. Hudson--as well as an unresolved final case involving the search for a missing wife who never got over two miscarriages and a cold husband who didn't understand why she couldn't just move on with her life--a case that carried so much emotional weight with everyone involved that Holmes no longer had it in him to continue his work and retreated completely from public life, preferring to let the genius legend overshadow the flawed man.
McKellen is just perfect as the elderly Holmes, whether he's letting a wry sense of mischief show in his bonding with young Roger or when he illustrates the changing moods that so often come with the onset of dementia. He never overplays it for dramatic effect and he remains steady and genuine throughout. He's matched by the promising Parker and the always-excellent Linney, but this is really Sir Ian's show. As adapted by screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher, MR. HOLMES still allows Holmes to use his detective skills, but it's really a grounded, serious dramatic piece that bluntly and realistically approaches issues of aging, memories, mortality, and the acceptance that a long life is in its final act. It's a superb film that doesn't move along especially briskly, but slowly and surely draws you in, revealing layers of complexity in its story and themes and resonating with you ways you didn't expect. (PG, 104 mins)
THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (US - 2015)
Dr. Philip Zimbardo's infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment has inspired two films--the German DAS EXPERIMENT (2001) and its abysmal American remake THE EXPERIMENT (2010)--and returned to the spotlight after the revelations of the abuse taking place at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in 2003. But the harrowing indie THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT is the first narrative feature dealing specifically with it by name and place. Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez and screenwriter Tim Talbott (a former SOUTH PARK writer) stay faithful to the events as documented by Zimbardo (played here by Billy Crudup) and the participants, almost to a degree that some would consider a fault. During the summer when the campus is mostly empty, Zimbardo selects 24 out of 75 volunteers to be broken into groups of twelve guards and twelve prisoners (nine of each active, with three alternates on call if a replacement is needed). Zimbardo and his associates set up a mock prison in some empty offices in the basement of a campus building and let things play out as they happen for a planned duration of two weeks. By day two, the "guards" on the day shift were power-tripping and intimidating the "prisoners" to see how much abuse they would take. It starts with an agonizing roll call, with the prisoners being stripped of their names and known only by numbers and forced to repeat those numbers hundreds of times and in different ways ("I want you to sing it to me this time!"), escalating to forced push-ups, jumping jacks, denial of privileges (no cigarettes; the guards refuse to give one prisoner his glasses even though he can't see without them), and time in the hole. The day shift, led by an overzealous student (Michael Angarano) who fancies himself a John Wayne-type, even putting on an affected Southern accent, encourages the night shift to do the same, resulting in more forced exercise and some bonus sleep deprivation. When rebellious prisoner 8612 (Ezra Miller) snaps and grabs a guard by the throat, the guard clubs him across the face and it escalates from there. Prisoners are denied food and use of the toilets, instead given buckets that they aren't permitted to empty. Their beds are dismantled and they're forced to sleep on the floor. They're openly intimidated by the guards during visitation, and eventually emasculated and thoroughly dehumanized, with Angarano's guard even instigating some mock prison rape by forcing three prisoners to bend over while three others are ordered to grind against them from behind. All of this is observed by Zimbardo and his increasingly incredulous graduate assistants--some of whom abandon the experiment after a few days--but Zimbardo is so fascinated what's happened in so little time that he can't bring himself to terminate it, even as his colleague and girlfriend Dr. Christina Maslach (Olivia Thirlby) expresses her disgust at what he's allowing his subjects ("These aren't prisoners," she shouts. "These are boys!") to endure.
The Stanford Prison Experiment, like the 1961 Milgram Experiment, says a lot about people's blind obedience to authority and the kind of authoritative potential within otherwise normal, well-adjusted people if that level of power is allowed to be wielded without boundaries. The film doesn't shy away from making Zimbardo look bad, whether it's his refusal to let the troubled 8612 leave even though he's clearly approaching a psychotic break after just two days, or in the way he pretty much joins the guards in his psychological abuse of the prisoners, even donning the style of sunglasses he has the guards constantly wear to maximize intimidation and minimize any kind of emotional connection between guard and prisoner. Yes, he sees the error of his ways and went on to become a sympathetic authority in the study of the psychology of abuse, but he's shown to be an insensitive and unwavering prick for most of the film, even in the petty way he corrects the mother of prisoner 819 (Tye Sheridan), who refers to him as "Mr. Zimbardo" ("It's Doctor," he huffs). This is a grueling and intense film, with the clinical and almost relentless portrayal of the systematic breakdown of the prisoners' humanity making it a tough sit of almost SALO unpleasantness. Angarano creates one of the year's most despicable characters, though one weakness of the film is that it doesn't delve into the post-experiment analysis to a significant degree. Zimbardo pulled the plug on the experiment after just six days, and Alvarez shows recreated documentary footage of Miller as 8612 and Angarano's guard discussing the after-effects of the experiment. Here's where the actual footage would've been more interesting to see. Or perhaps the first meeting of these opponents after the termination of the experiment. Did they ever see one another on campus? Also with Nelsan Ellis (TRUE BLOOD) as one of Zimbardo's colleagues, Keir Gilchrist (IT FOLLOWS), Moises Arias (HANNAH MONTANA) and James Frecheville (ANIMAL KINGDOM) as guards, and Logan Miller, Thomas Mann, Johnny Simmons, and Jack Kilmer (Val's son) as prisoners. (R, 122 mins)
BOUND TO VENGEANCE (US/Mexico - 2015)
Shot as REVERSAL but christened with the more exploitative BOUND TO VENGEANCE after it was completed, this is an occasionally suspenseful but ultimately empty revenge thriller that leaves too many dangling plot threads to be successful. It gets a lot from a strong performance by Tina Ivlev as Eve, and as the film opens, she's a kidnap victim bashing her captor over the head with a brick. The captor is Phil (Richard Tyson of THREE O'CLOCK HIGH and TWO MOON JUNCTION fame, looking and sounding like a stockier Tom Berenger as he's gotten older), and he's got her chained to a mattress in the basement of a house in the middle of nowhere off a California desert highway. Eve turns the tables on Phil, but she has no idea where she is, the phone doesn't work, and she can't find his car keys, so so fashions a dog catcher's pole out of some pipes and barbed wire and has him completely restrained, forcing him to drive to a series of destinations when he confesses he's got other girls hidden all over Los Angeles, and if she kills him, she'll share responsibility for killing them. It's an intriguing set-up, even though I'd still go for "driving to the nearest police station" as opposed to putting any kind of faith in whatever's up his sleeve. Things go badly when the first girl Eve finds and frees freaks out, trips, and impales herself on a fence post, and the next, a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, puts Eve in a position where she has to kill her in self defense.
Director Jose Manuel Cravioto, making his English language debut, and writers Keith Kjornes (who died in 2013) and Rock Shaink are obviously inspired by the horrific Ariel Castro case in Cleveland, but use it as a springboard to a bigger conspiracy story that never really makes sense. Phil is just a cog in an extensive human trafficking network, and the film blows its big plot twist early on when he keeps mentioning Eve's boyfriend Ronnie (Kris Kjornes). It also doesn't help that they try to humanize Phil by giving him a nice house in the suburbs and a wife and impossibly cute young daughter. Who is this guy? How does he get away with disappearing for long stretches to feed an untold number of kidnapped girls on a rotating basis around the greater Los Angeles area? Who are the people with whom he's complicit? How big is this operation? How long did Ronnie have to court Eve in order to establish a relationship with her just to arrange her abduction? These questions are never answered, though Ivlev, who might have a future as a second-string Jennifer Lawrence, gives it everything she's got and is thoroughly convincing in that rage-filled I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE/MS. 45 way. There's bits and pieces of a better movie infrequently revealing itself throughout BOUND TO VENGEANCE (and there's a very effective '80s-style score by genre vet Simon Boswell), but it never ends up coalescing into something noteworthy. Keep an eye on Ivlev, though. (Unrated, 79 mins, also available on Netflix Instant)
Several SOPRANOS alumni, including creator David Chase, reunited for this semi-autobiographical period piece about one of countless 1960s rock bands that didn't make it. Chase, who wrote and directed, seems to approach his first feature film as if it's an entire season of an HBO show whittled down to two hours. The story isn't exactly cohesive and it's probably not meant to be. It makes sure to mention all the expected '60s touchstones--opening with JFK's assassination, then the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Vietnam, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights, free love, LSD, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Bobby Kennedy--as we watch a small-time Jersey band build a following, squabble, and try to audition for a record label all while dealing with life in a tumultuous decade. The focus is on drummer Douglas (John Magaro) who's invited into a local cover band by guitarist/singer Eugene (Jack Huston). Douglas, Eugene, and Wells (Will Brill) form the core of the unnamed band and tensions flare when 4/5 of the band thinks that Douglas is a better singer and Eugene should just play guitar. Eugene is also reluctant to write original songs and would prefer to play covers. Meanwhile, Douglas falls in love with rich girl Grace (Bella Heathcote) and drops out of college, much to the disgust of his bitter, blue collar father (James Gandolfini) who doesn't approve of his shaggy hair and his clothes that make him look like he "just got off the boat." This formula repeats for the entire film: the band plays, squabbles, pulls it together, Douglas and Grace make big plans about music and film projects, Eugene acts like a jealous dick, and Douglas goes home for the holidays and fights with his dad.
Magaro is very good, and Chase does a great job with period detail, but his construction of the film is frustrating. The narrative jumps all over the place, sometimes skipping months and years at a time (indicated by how increasingly big Douglas' hair gets), and established subplots get cast aside with an almost willful disregard. We never really get to know the large cast of characters (I don't even recall hearing the names of the other two guys in the band), and I don't know why we spend so much time dealing with Grace's troubled older sister (Dominique McElligott). And if you hated the last scene of THE SOPRANOS' final episode, then wait until you see what Chase does here. His fondness for the era is undeniable (I got a big laugh out of Grace dragging Douglas to see Antonioni's BLOW-UP, where he complains "What kind of movie is this? Nothing happens!"), but in the end, it misses the mark and has surprisingly little to say. Produced by Steven Van Zandt, who also served as music supervisor. The song selection is probably the film's strongest attribute. (R, 112 mins)
THE DETAILS (US - 2012)
THE DETAILS is one of those twisty nightmare comedies where one single infraction by an everyman protagonist spirals into out-of-control doom. It's the kind of dark comedy that wants to be FARGO-era Coen Bros., but its frequent moments of excellence never really coalesce into anything all that special by the pat, predictable conclusion. Mild-mannered, nice-guy Seattle doctor Tobey Maguire, who's initially so benignly unthreatening that he spells out his curse words, decides to add a room on to his house without obtaining a city permit, and through an individually plausible but collectively absurd set of circumstances, sees his entire life fall to pieces. He and wife Elizabeth Banks haven't had sex in six months, but they generally get along, and he spends his spare time jerking off to internet porn and battling raccoons who keep digging up his lawn in the wee hours. After an argument, his frustrations boil over and he sleeps with his married med school friend Kerry Washington, who confesses the indiscretion to her husband Ray Liotta, who then threatens to tell Banks unless Maguire pays him $100,000. Meanwhile, Maguire has to contend with crazy cat-lady neighbor Laura Linney after her cat dies ingesting some poison left out for the raccoons. Before Maguire realizes what's going on, he and Linney have a fast and frenzied sexual encounter in her living room and she ends up pregnant. The only good thing going on in Maguire's life is his friendship with Dennis Haysbert, an almost-basketball pro who fell on hard times and needs a kidney transplant. But Maguire's chaotic existence even spills over into Haysbert's, who decides to help his new friend in the worst way possible.
Written and directed by Jacob Aaron Estes, who's been MIA since his acclaimed 2004 debut MEAN CREEK, THE DETAILS has a lot of outstanding moments and killer supporting performances, but it turns into a case where the parts are greater than the whole. Shot in 2009, it's a better film than three years on the shelf and a 73-screen release would lead you to believe. Maguire is good, but it's Linney, Haysbert, and Liotta who steal the film. Liotta, in particular, has an amazing scene where he confronts Maguire on a bridge that features some of the best and most profane acting of his career. And his comedic timing and delivery of bizarrely funny dialogue is spot-on ("I taught you how to make pesto and you sleep with my wife?!"). Linney throws herself into her role, turning in a fearless performance as a character that a more vain actress wouldn't even consider portraying (straddling Maguire, she shrieks "I can feel you getting bigger!"). It's an odd little film that never quite finds the tone it's looking for, careening from near-slapstick with the raccoon business to some really dark, bleak turns in the closing act. Flawed and inconsistent and probably hard to market, but worth a look. (R, 101 mins)
PERCENTAGE (US - 2013)
Two weeks after the unwatchable HOUSE OF BODIES, Netflix drops another Queen Latifah-produced bomb as a streaming exclusive...no theatrical release, no trailer, no publicity, nothing. Like BODIES, the gangsta thriller PERCENTAGE was directed by the astonishingly inept Alex Merkin, who's obviously gunning to be the Albert Pyun of his generation. As terrible and as dated as it is (playing a lot like one of those countless DTV, post-I'M 'BOUT IT Master P joints from the late '90s), PERCENTAGE is at least a technical improvement over BODIES and, if nothing else, almost looks like a real movie instead of cobbled-together cell phone footage. But the praise ends there as we follow unscrupulous NYC thug Ant (rapper Cam'ron, who also "co-wrote" the "script") and his buddy Carter (Omar Gooding, Cuba Jr's brother) fleeing a shootout with the Russian mob and heading to Miami to lay low. Instead, they team up with Carter's cousin Flaco (Antwon Tanner) on a half-assed credit card scam that can't possibly be as easy to pull off in real life as the film presents it. They live large, buying expensive watches, lighting blunts with Benjamins and hangin' at the club, all until Miami crime boss Mama Cash (Macy Gray) and her cowboy enforcer Porter (Ving Rhames) want their cut. The eastern European mob also figures, as per the rules of straight-to-DVD dogshit. Merkin actually tries to go for some style here by clumsily ripping off John Woo (birds!) and Steven Soderbergh (when Ant meets Malinda Williams' Cass at the club, their conversation is intercut with footage of them in bed later on, much like George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in the hotel bar in OUT OF SIGHT), and there's repeat invocations of "The world is yours" from both versions of SCARFACE. But proving he's seen good movies by better directors doesn't give Merkin any credibility, especially in a gaffe-filled montage with Ant's narration ("The terminals was hacked...to place a trace on each card swiped") repeated over two consecutive scenes. Really? Nobody noticed that? Gray is awful and Rhames is phoning it in (though at 66:30, watch what appears to be his impromptu impression of Bela Lugosi in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN), and Queen Latifah really should be using her celebrity and her name on more worthwhile projects. What can you say about a movie that's so bad that it's even beneath Omar Gooding? (Unrated, 83 mins, currently available only on Netflix streaming)
