THE CIRCLE (France/UAE/US - 2017) Directed by James Ponsoldt. Written by James Ponsoldt and Dave Eggers. Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, Ellar Coltrane, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, Nate Corddry, Judy Reyes, Mamoudou Athie, Smith Cho, Amir Talai, Poorna Jagannathan, Eve Gordon. (PG-13, 110 mins) Based on the 2013 novel by Dave Eggers, who shares screenplay credit with director James Ponsoldt (THE SPECTACULAR NOW), THE CIRCLE has a premise with such a short window of topicality that the movie adaptation feels dated just four years later. It doesn't help that TV shows like MR. ROBOT and BLACK MIRROR have already explored similar themes much more effectively, but THE CIRCLE loses the satirical elements of Eggers' novel and opts for a much more heavy-handed approach. What might've worked on the page doesn't work always work on the screen, as characters here don't have conversations as much as they drop exposition and make important speeches. Everything has to be simplified so the audience can stay caught up, then it starts glossing over things so much that the entire second half of the film is a complete mess. A lot of this was likely due to negative test screenings leading to extensive reshoots being done in January 2017, just three months before the film's release and long after filming wrapped in late 2015. The film goes in a completely different direction than the book, so much so that it's a safe assumption that the finished film isn't exactly a collaborative effort between Eggers and Ponsoldt.
Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is temping in customer service at the local water department when her Scottish college friend Annie (Karen Gillan) lands her an interview with her employer, The Circle. A Google-like tech empire in Silicon Valley, The Circle is always pioneering advances in social media and software dedicated to making people "connected." Their latest product launch involves "SeeChange," a tiny, round camera that can be placed anywhere and go unnoticed, utilizing GPS and facial recognition software and generating much in the way of moral and ethical dilemmas over privacy and surveillance. Circle founder and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) claims that such advances are for the greater good of humanity, but loner Mae's gut reaction is one of apprehension. The mostly millennial employees base their lives around The Circle, living in dorm-like apartments "on campus," and participating in "suggested" activities on their off time with a fervent and almost cult-like devotion to their employer. Mae is passive-aggressively reprimanded by a Circle social media adviser for not taking part in the events and for going home to visit her parents--mom Bonnie (Glenne Headly) and dad Vinnie (the late Bill Paxton in his last film)--and she's somewhat alarmed that The Circle already knows her father is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Mae is chastised for taking a job with The Circle by her childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane of BOYHOOD), who hates texting and the internet and has no doubt condescendingly uttered, at least once in his life, "I don't even own a TV." Her friendship with Mercer falls apart after she shares a pic of his custom-made antler chandeliers and outraged millennials start following him around to harass him get in his face, and shout "deer killer!" After an incident involving her trespassing to go kayaking ends with her being rescued after being seen on a SeeChange camera aimed at the bay, Mae makes the ultimate commitment to The Circle: she goes "transparent," wearing a small camera 24/7 to document every moment of her life for Circle's 240 million members. This plot turn could've been a great BLACK MIRROR episode in the hands of Charlie Brooker, and it also recalls both Bertrand Tavernier's remarkably ahead-of-its-time cult film DEATH WATCH (1980) as well as Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), but once Circler comments turn up on the screen for most of the remainder of the film, it more or less starts to look like INSTAGRAM: THE MOVIE.
Mae's advance up the ladder at The Circle puts a strain on her friendship with Annie as well as her relationship with her parents, who are also required to install cameras at their house. Those cameras are taken offline when Mae's followers, seeing what Mae sees, accidentally catch a glimpse of her parents having sex with the aid of a penis pump for her disabled father, humiliating both of them. Mae also forms a muddled alliance with Ty Lavitte (John Boyega of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), a legendary hacker who works for The Circle, designing a program that's been hijacked by Bailey and his business partner Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) to spy on every Circle user and store all of their personal information, phone calls, e-mails, texts, etc. Much to Lavitte's disgust, Bailey and Stenton use this information to blackmail a senator (Eve Gordon) who's been publicly critical of The Circle, and with Mae's help, they even concoct a plan to tie The Circle into voter registration records and not only allow users to vote through their Circle account, but require them to be Circle users in order to vote ("The US government needs us more than we need them," Stenton says). There's some heady implications in a lot of what goes on in THE CIRCLE, especially the ultimate fate of Mercer as a scathing critique of social media hysteria, but Ponsoldt bungles it at every turn. THE CIRCLE is content to lecture the audience and too often comes off like it's taking an approach to technology that's equal parts Stubborn Luddite and Scared Old Man. What could've been a smart, topical critique of our reliance on technology and our willingness to sacrifice privacy and human interaction for convenience and a feeling of connection with the rest of the world comes off as smug and sanctimonious, complete with a laughably simplistic non-ending that has Mae staging a revolt against Bailey and Stenton and literally Pied Pipering her newly-woke colleagues out of a darkened, pitch black auditorium through an exit door, outside into the light. Watson is a capable actress but she's strangely one-note here. Boyega seems to have been affected most by the reshoots, looking like he spent his entire time on the set unsuccessfully trying to locate Ponsoldt, while Paxton musters what trace amounts of dignity he can with a penis pump and in another scene that requires him to piss himself. What little novelty this misfire offers comes from seeing Hanks and Oswalt atypically cast as quietly sinister villains, but neither seems to have spent more than a few days working on this, enough for one to surmise that when Bailey turns to Stenton at the end and says "We are so fucked," it's very possible that it was just Hanks talking to Oswalt without knowing the cameras were rolling. Altered extensively from Eggers' novel, THE CIRCLE is disjointed, already past its sell-by date, and completely unsure of what point its even trying to make.
The story of Gary Faulkner, the "Rocky Mountain Rambo" who took a series of trips to Pakistan armed with only a samurai sword after claiming God told him to capture Osama Bin Laden, has all the ingredients for an interesting film. It's a surprise then, that ARMY OF ONE--arriving on DVD/Blu-ray just a week and a half after debuting on VOD--fails so spectacularly. Directed by Larry Charles (BORAT, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM) and written by Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman, the duo who scripted the entertaining Kevin Costner football movie DRAFT DAY, ARMY OF ONE hits a brick wall the moment Nicolas Cage opens his mouth. Faulkner, a pony-tailed stoner and part-time handyman with bad kidneys, is an eccentric character who's right up Cage's alley, but the actor sabotages the entire film by playing Faulkner as a nasally, screechy-voiced kook, when the real man's various talk show appearances in the wake of his bonkers pursuit showed him to be an affable, amusing, and occasionally even peculiarly charming oddball nothing like the freakish Bizarro Faulkner that Cage is playing here. Cage's grating, mannered, fingernails-on-a-blackboard performance is arguably the worst of his career, one straight out of a trainwreck ten-to-1:00 sketch on SNL. As soon as he speaks, every subsequent moment of ARMY OF ONE is excruciating.
God (Russell Brand, cast radically against type as "Russell Brand") first appears to Faulkner in 2004, during one of his dialysis treatments, prompting Faulkner to ask his nephrologist (Matthew Modine) for a $1000 loan to buy a boat to sail to Pakistan. When that doesn't work (the small boat capsizes and he ends up in Mexico), he tries to hang-glide into Pakistan and falls off a cliff, breaking his leg. He eventually gets to Pakistan and in 2010, thinks he's found Bin Laden, facing off against him in a swordfight in a cave, but it's all a trippy hallucination since he's gone weeks without a dialysis treatment. All the while, Faulkner is given moral support by his new girlfriend Marci (Wendi McLendon-Covey), who still has the Bon Jovi "Livin' on a Prayer" tramp stamp she got in high school and is now raising the special needs daughter of her dead junkie sister. Marci has made some bad decisions in her life, but she seems sane and entirely too level-headed to be falling for a doofus like Faulkner, or at least the doofus cartoon version of Faulkner that Cage is playing. The actor seems less interested in Faulkner as a character and more concerned with shaping this as his own BIG LEBOWSKI, and it fails on every level, be it slapstick, satire, or biopic. Charles, perhaps accustomed to the off-the-chain magic of Sacha Baron Cohen in BORAT and BRUNO, is content to let Cage run amok, making no attempt to rein him in at all, and the result is less Lebowski and more like a manic, talk-show Robin Williams at his most over-the-top. It's virtually unwatchable and while LEFT BEHIND is an easy pick for Cage's worst film, this might sting a little more because it had the ingredients to be something, and instead it falls victim to its star being in a self-indulgent mood and a director who's completely derelict in his duty. It's a career low for all, including reliable ringers like Paul Scheer and Will Sasso as Faulkner's buddies, and Denis O'Hare and Rainn Wilson as CIA agents on Faulkner's trail, taking time-outs to discuss Michael Dudikoff movies and defend Timothy Dalton-era 007. Dalton's a tragically underappreciated Bond, but not even that sentiment can save ARMY OF ONE. (R, 93 mins)
THE SEA OF TREES
(US - 2016)
Booed at Cannes and barely released by A24 on just 100 screens for a $20,000 box office take, Gus Van Sant's THE SEA OF TREES is the second 2016 movie (after the horror film THE FOREST) to be set in Japan's Aokigahara Forest. Located at the northwest base of Mount Fuji, Aokigahara is a place infamously known as "The Suicide Forest" and "The Sea of Trees," where an average of 100 people per year go to end their lives. The Japanese government forbids filming in the Aokigahara, so THE SEA OF TREES finds an acceptable substitute Suicide Forest in Massachusetts. Written by Chris Sparling (best known for writing high-concept enclosed-space thrillers like BURIED and ATM), THE SEA OF TREES is a maudlin and superficial drama that's completely schizophrenic in tone, a combination marital dysfunction story, a disease-of-the-week TV-movie, a survivalist adventure, and finally, a manipulative Nicholas Sparks-meets-Mitch Albom feelgood movie with a twist that any seasoned moviegoer will spot long before the main character does. Science professor Arthur Brennan (Matthew McConaughey) buys a one-way ticket to Tokyo with the intention of downing a handful of sleeping pills in the Suicide Forest. His plan to find a secluded spot and die peacefully is interrupted by the appearance of Takumi Nakamura (Ken Watanabe), a disheveled, confused man who says he's been lost in the forest for two days. As Arthur repeatedly tries and fails to get Takumi on a trail out of the forest, they're forced to survive the harsh elements and deal with injuries as they bond, Takumi selflessly listening to Arthur's long monologues about his failed marriage to Joan (Naomi Watts in flashbacks) and how her death led him to end his life in the the Sea of Trees. A slowly-paced character piece, THE SEA OF TREES gets good performances from the three stars, but it's a pretty tedious journey, especially once you figure out where this is headed with a big reveal that's a hoary cliche at this point, and even after that, when it just keeps getting more shamelessly manipulative by the moment. There had to be films more deserving of the booing this got at Cannes, as THE SEA OF TREES biggest crime is that it's plodding, simplistic, and obvious, but it's hardly the worst thing to come from the wildly erratic Van Sant. (PG-13, 111 mins)
ITHACA
(US - 2016)
After a seven-year absence from the big screen and without a big box office hit since 2001's KATE & LEOPOLD, Meg Ryan co-stars in and makes her directing debut with ITHACA, based on William Saroyen's 1943 novel The Human Comedy. That was the title of the original movie version, also released in 1943, which starred Mickey Rooney and was a contemporary, topical life-at-home WWII film of its time. Now, this new version is a dated nostalgia piece with no feeling for the time and place and absolutely nothing in the way of narrative drive whatsoever. However sincere and well-intentioned it may be, this is an astonishingly dull film that just never finds a spark or any sense of dramatic momentum on any level. With his older brother Marcus (Jack Quaid, Ryan's son with ex-husband Dennis Quaid) off at war and his father recently deceased, 14-year-old Homer (Alex Neuestaedter) is the man of the house, taking care of his little brother Ulysses (Spencer Howell) and getting a job as a telegram messenger to help out his still-grieving mom (Ryan). Mom still sees visions of Dad (executive producer Tom Hanks, a nice guy doing Ryan a kindness but opting to keep his name off the poster) hanging around the house, keeping an eye on the family he left behind. Homer gets a firsthand look at the war at home, with many of his telegram deliveries coming from the US government, informing parents, wives, and loved ones that their soldier has died in combat. Homer finds father figures in his bosses Tom (Hamish Linklater) and drunk old Willie (top-billed Sam Shepard), and, well, that's about it. Not much happens in ITHACA. Neuestaedter is certainly no Mickey Rooney, but it would be hard for any young actor to make something out of this. Ryan lets scenes linger long past the point of necessity, and it often feels like actors are uncomfortably sitting there waiting for her to say "Cut." There's no interesting arcs or even standard coming-of-age tropes in the script by Eric Jendresen, whose credits include writing a few episodes of the Hanks-produced BAND OF BROTHERS. ITHACA feels like Ryan and Hanks called in some favors from a bunch of old friends (the score was composed by John Mellencamp) and asked them to hang out with no clear endgame. Shepard has nothing to do but sit at his desk and look catatonic, and Hanks appears visibly lost in his few scenes, at one point just stopping and staring at Ryan in what I'm convinced is not character-based dismay. Running a brief 89 minutes but feeling like four hours, ITHACA, which went straight-to-VOD after two years on the shelf, misfires at every turn, a DOA adaptation of a beloved novel of its day, never connecting with the viewer on any emotional level and rendering it completely inert with its bargain-basement, would-be Norman Rockwell sense of forced homespun Americana. (PG, 89 mins)
INFERNO (US - 2016) Directed by Ron Howard. Written by David Koepp. Cast: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Ben Foster, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ana Ularu, Ida Darvish, Paul Ritter, Paolo Antonio Simioni, Fausto Maria Sciarappa, Gabor Urmai. (PG-13, 122 mins) We're pretty far removed from the publishing phenomenon of Dan Brown's breakout 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, the second installment in his series of Robert Langdon adventures. A world-renowned symbology professor and expert in religious and cultural iconography, Langdon is the hero of four Brown novels and three big-screen adaptations directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks: 2006's THE DA VINCI CODE, 2009's ANGELS & DEMONS (based on the first Langdon saga, published in 2000), and, seven years later, the belated INFERNO, from Brown's 2013 novel. While Inferno was the top-selling book of its year, it sold six million copies compared to the 80 million that Da Vinci moved a decade earlier. Likewise, interest in the cinematic Langdon has waned, with the $75 million budget a 50% slashing from the $150 million it took to make ANGELS & DEMONS seven years ago, the corner-cutting apparent in some cut-rate CGI work throughout. Everything about INFERNO feels like a contractual obligation. Howard does a serviceable job directing, and at least this is better than last year's bomb IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, but Hanks just doesn't seem very into this and was probably lured more by the prospect of a working vacation in Italy than any burning desire to go through the motions as Langdon one more time. Even in films that don't work, Hanks is one of the most effortlessly charismatic actors that the movies have ever offered. He was never the right choice to play Langdon but he made it work in the past. In INFERNO, he comes off as irritated and even a little tired, as if he really didn't want to do this, but was afraid he'd look like a dick if he said no.
In a set-up that couldn't be any more staggeringly silly if they'd ditched Langdon and had Hanks play David S. Pumpkins instead, INFERNO opens with a bloodied, amnesiac Langdon waking up in a Florence hospital with no recollection of what happened or how he got there. He escapes with ER doc Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) when assassin Vayentha (Ana Ularu) arrives dressed as a Carabinieri and starts shooting. Struggling to piece together the fragments of his short-term memory, Langdon discovers a small Faraday pointer/projector in a small biohazard tube in his jacket pocket. In it is an image of the Dante's Inferno-inspired Map of Hell painting by Botticelli. But the painting has been reworked, filled with letters and a cryptic message referencing billionaire American bioengineer Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), who committed suicide three days earlier. Prior to his death, Zobrist achieved a prophet-like following among his cult of admirers with his warnings that the world was suffering from overpopulation and that the herd needed thinning. With French agents led by Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) and World Health Organization honcho and Langdon ex Dr, Elizabeth Sinskey (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY's Sidse Babett Knudsen) in pursuit, along with the mysterious Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan), a freelance "facilitator" hired by Zobrist but concluding that his employer had a screw loose, Langdon and Sienna venture from Florence to Venice to Turkey in search of a virus created by the deranged Zobrist, designed to infect 95% of the world's population and wipe out at least four billion people in the first week of its global exposure.
The kind of movie where a character in Florence announcing "We need to go to Venice," is followed immediately by an establishing shot of canals filled with gondolas accompanied by the caption "Venice, Italy," INFERNO, like its predecessors, has to constantly stop the action to drop tons of exposition that the characters should already know for the benefit of the audience. You could almost make a drinking game out of Hanks' Langdon exclaiming "Of course!" followed by something obvious to him that requires a paragraph of explanation to keep the audience in the game (and his emphatic "I need to get to a library...fast!" from DA VINCI is equaled here when he gasps "My God! This is a labyrinth!"). It's stilted and awkward and, as in DA VINCI and ANGELS, Howard and his screenwriter (in this case, veteran journeyman David Koepp, fresh off his MORTDECAI triumph) don't have enough faith in the audience to keep up on their own. It's hard to pick the most guffaw-inducing moment. It could be Langdon analyzing a recording of himself slurring an apology just after his head was injured, concluding "Of course! I wasn't saying 'very sorry'...I was saying 'Vasari!'" But it's the whole tangent with the Dante death mask that's probably where INFERNO completely falls apart, asking the audience to buy that a heavily-guarded museum could go an entire day without any visitors, curators or security personnel noticing that one of its key attractions has been stolen, and that it's been stolen by Langdon (who doesn't remember stealing it) and an associate named Ignazio (Gabor Urmai), who's promptly forgotten about and never mentioned again. This is a ridiculously dumb movie but it's got some scattered positives, with a game, scene-stealing Khan seeing this for the junk that it is and having more fun than any of his co-stars, and Romanian actress Ularu has some standout moments as the driven, ferocious Vayentha and would probably impress if given her own action thriller to headline. The best thing about INFERNO is the catchy, synth-driven score by Hans Zimmer that may sound like leftover cues from his brilliant work on INTERSTELLAR, but he does more to give this some energy and distinct flavor than anyone else except Khan and Ularu. Zimmer's score almost has a retro John Carpenter-meets-Philip Glass by way of Italian horror quality that's quite effective given the predominantly Italian setting. But at the end of the day, there's just no point to this coming out now, years after the Da Vinci Code craze has died and with a visibly disinterested Hanks just wanting to get to the vacation part of the package deal before starting work on SULLY, which was shot after INFERNO but released first.
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.
A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING
(US/Germany/France/Switzerland/Mexico - 2016)
There isn't much of a sense of urgency in this occasionally obvious and heavy-handed midlife crisis/culture clash drama based on the 2012 novel by Dave Eggers. It's a rare instance of a Tom Hanks movie not getting much of a push, with Lionsgate getting it on just 520 screens at its widest release. Hanks' durable, everyman persona makes him perfectly cast in this fish-out-of-water story centering on a skidding sales rep who's seen better days, being offered One Last Chance to Close the Sale of His Life. Alan Clay (Hanks) hasn't really liked himself much since selling out an American Schwin plant to China, a deal that put several hundred people--including his dad (Tom Skerritt)--out of work. His marriage fell apart and though he feels like a failure, his relationship with 21-year-old daughter Kit (Tracey Fairaway) remains strong thanks to her dislike of her mother. Now working for a tech company, Alan's been handed the plum contract of setting up IT service for Saudi Arabia's royal family. Once on site, he's constantly given the runaround, the wi-fi doesn't work, and he's so bogged down by jet lag that he repeatedly oversleeps and misses his shuttle to the work site. He forms a tentative friendship with Yousef (Alexander Black), a buddy of the hotel concierge, who drives him to the palace grounds every day in his beat-up clunker. A rapidly growing cyst sends Alan to a local doctor, Zahra (Sarita Choudhury), for whom an attraction is mutual, but societal customs initially prevent any moves from being made.
And that's about it. There's a health scare and Alan starts drinking to excess in an attempt to counter his malaise, and in his interactions with both Yousef and Zahra, he learns to appreciate life and pull himself together, while doing what he can to help his new friends in their assorted plights (Yousef's involvement with a married woman and Zahra's pending divorce and a life lived as a second class citizen, even though she's a brilliant doctor). A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING is an unusual project for director Tom Tykwer, normally a more rambunctious filmmaker best known for the innovative 1999 cult classic RUN LOLA RUN. Tykwer directed Hanks in 2012's underappreciated CLOUD ATLAS, and Hanks, a huge fan of the Eggers novel, was likely instrumental in ensuring Tykwer could make this film at all. But even Hanks' involvement didn't generate any Hollywood interest, as the film was an independently-financed, five-country co-production, with extensive location work done in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco. It's easily Tykwer's most low-key film to date, and somewhat European in its pacing and style, probably why Lionsgate didn't see much potential for it at US multiplexes, instead relegating it to its Roadside Attractions arthouse division. It really only starts gaining momentum very late, when Alan and Zahra start to admit their feelings for one another, after the symbolic removal of the cyst on Alan's back is the literal weight lifted off of his back. Tykwer more or less abandons Yousef, who's such a prominent character that you expect him to be there by the end, and a potential love interest for Alan in Danish contractor Hanne (THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY's Sidse Babett Knudsen) is a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere. Skerritt's brief performance looks phoned-in from his living room, and Ben Whishaw, a Tykwer semi-regular since 2006's underrated and insane PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER, has even less screen time as the titular hologram, designed as a long-distance meeting facilitator for the Saudi king. It's got some expectedly rock-solid work by Hanks, who gets strong support from Choudhury and a very likable performance by Black, but A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING is a harmless trifle that just never really catches fire. (R, 98 mins) FATHERS & DAUGHTERS (US/Italy - 2016)
The warning signs are all there if you look closely: a movie you've heard nothing about, featuring a star-studded cast with several Oscar wins and nominations between them, debuting on VOD in 2016 courtesy of the Redbox-ready B-movie genre outfit Vertical Entertainment with no fanfare, still sporting its 2014 copyright. Yes, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS has spent some time gathering dust on a shelf, a bad movie that's so earnest and self-serious that is occasionally feels like an act of cruelty to be bagging on it. A maudlin, overwrought tearjerker that will have even the most easy weepers rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, and calling bullshit, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS is directed by Italian filmmaker Gabriele Muccino, who had some success in Hollywood several years back with a pair of Will Smith dramas, THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (2006) and SEVEN POUNDS (2008), before tanking with the instantly forgotten Gerard Butler flop PLAYING FOR KEEPS (2012). Muccino fashions FATHERS & DAUGHTERS as a shameless weepie, telling two intercutting, parallel stories taking place in 1989 and 2014. In 1989, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jake Davis (Russell Crowe, also one of the producers) is behind the wheel when a tragic car accident takes the life of his wife, leaving him to raise their seven-year-old daughter Katie (Kylie Rogers) alone. Jake's grief is overwhelming and, coupled with a head injury he sustained in the accident that causes random seizures that threaten a psychotic break, he's institutionalized for several months while Katie stays with his late wife's wealthy sister Elizabeth (Diane Kruger) and her high-powered lawyer husband William (Bruce Greenwood). Once Jake is out, Elizabeth, still bitter over her sister's death, wants custody of Katie. Jake's latest book becomes a critical laughingstock and commercial bomb, and he's running out of money to fight the impending court battle. In 2014, adult Katie (Amanda Seyfried) is a grad student and social worker attempting to break through to a troubled girl (BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD Oscar-nominee Quvenzhane Wallis) when she isn't trying to LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR her way through her daddy and abandonment issues, frequently picking up random men at bars for public quickies (Jake isn't around in 2014, so it's obvious he's died at some point in the 25-year interim). She meets an aspiring writer, Jake Davis superfan, and all-around good guy in Cameron (Aaron Paul), and their tender lovemaking is a stark contrast to numerous scenes of Katie getting drilled from behind in the backseat of a car or in a men's room shitter at a bar. Of course, nice-guy Cameron is exactly like her father and therefore, the film posits, exactly what she needs, so she repeatedly tries to sabotage a potentially good thing with her inability to commit and face all the trauma in her past with her mother's death and her father's breakdown.
Never mind the cliche of a woman resorting to promiscuity over unresolved parental issues--Muccino and debuting screenwriter Brad Desch have no notion of the concept of storytelling subtlety. They floridly hammer everything home in an overbaked fashion both in dialogue and filmmaking techniques, with one Katie/Cameron argument pointlessly played out in a long, dizzying single take down a NYC street, into a cab, and back out on the street again for no reason other than Muccino trying to make something out of nothing. Or there's clumsy exposition drops like our first look at adult Katie, when one of her fellow grad students runs up to her and exclaims "I can't believe you're about to get a graduate degree in Psychology!" It just grows more laughable as it goes on, in the 1989 scenes with an increasingly distracted Jake repeatedly trying to make amends with young Katie by referring to her nickname "Potato Chip," the two of them singing along to a Michael Bolton cover of Burt Bacharach's "(They Long to Be) Close to You," and Jake being hit by seizures at all the predictable times, like a major book signing (he has pills for this condition--why doesn't he take them?). In the 2014 scenes, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS turns into an all-out howler by the end, with Katie about to leave a bar to partake in an orgy with some strangers when the Bolton cover of the Bacharach song comes on the jukebox, prompting a total meltdown. This is a non-descript little dive bar in NYC that's playing alternative music at the beginning of the scene. Not even the most insufferable Williamsburg hipster douchebag would play a Michael Bolton song. And why is that song even a choice on a jukebox in this bar? And when a night out is ruined by the drunken appearance of one of Katie's one-nighters from a year ago ("I fucked you on your kitchen floor!" he yells), she tries to explain her past to Cameron, a guy so nice and sensitive that a never-played acoustic guitar is visible on a rocking chair in his apartment, with "You thought you were getting Potato Chip, and you ended up with some cheap piece of ass." What else? Oh, during an argument between Jake and William over the looming custody fight, a sneering Greenwood is actually required to bark the line "I've got more money than God!" The film completely strands its capable actors with unplayable roles, whether it's Crowe slipping in and out of a broad Noo Yawk accent or Kruger delivering a shrill, wine-swilling performance as the boozy, bitchy control freak Elizabeth. Younger actors Wallis and Rogers manage to escape unharmed, but there's also nothing supporting roles for Octavia Spencer (an Oscar winner for THE HELP) as Katie's boss, two-time Oscar-nominee Janet McTeer, wasted in one brief scene as Katie's therapist, and Jane Fonda in a small role as Jake's caring agent who can't bring herself to tell him he's washed up. Ludicrous, manipulative, and completely over-the-top, FATHERS & DAUGHTERS definitely has some potential to be an audience participation camp classic down the road. (R, 116 mins)
BRIDGE OF SPIES (US/UK/Germany - 2015) Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Sebastian Koch, Scott Shepherd, Austin Stowell, Jesse Plemons, Eve Hewson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Will Rogers, Peter McRobbie, Dakin Matthews, Mikhail Gorevoy, Michael Gaston, Billy Magnusson, John Rue. (PG-13, 141 mins)
The Cold War drama BRIDGE OF SPIES is Steven Spielberg's first film in three years, and his third historical film in a row following the underrated WAR HORSE (2011) and the overrated LINCOLN (2012). It also marks his first collaboration with Joel & Ethan Coen, who revamped the original script by Matt Charman. Like WAR HORSE, his self-described "1940s John Ford film," BRIDGE OF SPIES is Spielberg crafting a deliberately old-fashioned work that, two F-bombs aside, seems to come straight out of 1965 and would probably be in regular rotation on Turner Classic Movies. From the climax on a bridge where west meets east to East German stasi at the Berlin Wall barking "Papers, please!" and, at its core, a very earnest, Jimmy Stewart/Henry Fonda-like performance by Tom Hanks (in his fourth Spielberg film), BRIDGE OF SPIES is very reminiscent of Hitchcock in Cold War mode, even though nobody really cares much for TORN CURTAIN (1966) and the perpetually unappreciated TOPAZ (1969) these days.
Based on the true events that led to the 1962 Glienicke Bridge prisoner swap of Soviet-captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and American-imprisoned Russian spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, BRIDGE OF SPIES focuses on New York insurance attorney James J. Donovan (Hanks), chosen by the US government to defend accused Soviet spy Abel (Mark Rylance), when he's arrested by the FBI in Brooklyn on espionage charges. Donovan served in WWII and was an assistant to the prosecution team at Nuremberg, and though he's been strictly in insurance law for over a decade, the government believes he's got the skills and his glad-handing boss Thomas Watters Jr. (Alan Alda) thinks volunteering him would be great press for the firm. The judge (Dakin Matthews) makes it clear from the start that Donovan isn't supposed to do anything other than provide the most basic defense possible to fulfill the requirements of "due process," and when Donovan motions to have the search of Abel's apartment thrown out when he learns it was done without a warrant, everyone--from the judge to Watters to his own wife (Amy Ryan)--is outraged that he's actually putting forth effort in the defense of his client. Though he's a spy, Donovan respects the sense of duty shown by the soft-spoken Abel, who never once gives up a Soviet secret no matter how many times he's interrogated. Donovan is alarmed by how calm Abel remains through his ordeal (when he asks Abel how he's not panicking as he could be facing the electric chair, Abel replies "Would it help?" which becomes a recurring line). Abel is, of course, found guilty, though Donovan does manage to convince the judge to put in him prison rather than handing down a death sentence, explaining that if an American was ever in his position, going the humanitarian route and not executing Abel might save that American's life and provide leverage for a prisoner exchange.
Almost prophetically, that's exactly what happens the next year when Powers (Austin Stowell), on a secret CIA reconnaissance mission, is shot down over the Soviet Union and taken prisoner. Like Abel, he refuses to divulge what he knows, and when the US is desperate to get him back but wants to leave the government out of it, they once again call on Donovan to negotiate an exchange of Powers for Abel with the Russians. Once in East Berlin, much to the disapproval of his CIA handler Hoffman (Scott Shepherd), Donovan goes off script with his Soviet contact Schischken (Mikhail Gorevoy) and is forced to negotiate separately with East German Vogel (Sebastian Koch) for the release of a second American prisoner, Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), a graduate student working preparing his dissertation on European economics.
BRIDGE OF SPIES won't go down as essential Spielberg, and it's infrequently prone to the same kind of preachy speechifying that bogged down LINCOLN (sure, Daniel Day-Lewis was an uncanny Honest Abe, but do you remember anything else about the movie?). Fortunately, it's kept in check here and there's quite a bit of snappy wit to prevent it from being a SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD or TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY-style downer, almost certainly a contribution of the Coen Bros. Whether it's Abel's refrained "Would it help?" or a running gag about Donovan's annoyance with how long the official names of the USSR and East Germany are (about the tenth time he hears Schischken say "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," Donovan snaps "Can you just say Russian? It'll save time"), or the CIA putting Donovan up at an unheated West Berlin safe house where he can see his breath as Hoffman informs him "I'm staying at the Hilton," or the way a sniffling head cold makes its way from Abel to Donovan to Hoffman over the course of the film, there's a lot of subtle, sly humor throughout the otherwise deadly serious proceedings. At 68, Spielberg isn't looking to blaze new trails and as such, BRIDGE OF SPIES is hardly SCHINDLER'S LIST or SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, and could even be termed "minor" if one were cynical enough (though it's not as minor as 2004's THE TERMINAL, his last teaming with Hanks and one of the director's weakest films), but second-tier Spielberg is better than most others' A-games. It trucks along quite nicely for a nearly two and a half hour film, Hanks again shows he's the durable master of the game as the American Everyman, and I like this throwback/historical side of Spielberg. Like WAR HORSE and probably LINCOLN, it's easy to label BRIDGE OF SPIES "an old people movie," but doing so is actually a compliment. More of today's directors could learn about shot composition, plot construction, and storytelling from old men like Spielberg and the Coens.
Directed by Paul Greengrass. Written by Billy Ray. Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Keener, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Chris Mulkey, Corey Johnson, Yul Vazquez, Max Martini. (PG-13, 134 mins)
Paul Greengrass brings the harrowing immediacy of BLOODY SUNDAY and UNITED 93 and the relentless pace of THE BOURNE SUPREMACY and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM to this dramatization of the hostage ordeal of Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks). Phillips was the captain of the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama when it was boarded by four Somali pirates while en route from Oman to Kenya in April 2009. When his crew manages to capture pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi), they get some leverage to convince his cohorts to let Phillips go, but the exchange is botched and the four pirates end up taking Phillips with them in the Alabama lifeboat, with the ship itself closely trailing them. Eventually, Seal Team Six is dispatched and a full-scale military operation is launched to rescue Phillips from his captors before they can get him to Somalia.
Like any film "based on a true story," dramatic license is used and liberties taken. Controversies erupted shortly before the film was released as Maersk Alabama crew members began strongly disputing the way the film presents the events and, specifically, Captain Phillips. Hanks portrays the captain as a stickler--fair and just, and one of the team, but he's all business. He takes e-mail warnings of piracy threats seriously and runs the crew through a drill just before a first failed attack by a larger crew accompanying Muse. Not so, say some crew members, who paint a picture of Phillips as vain, arrogant, and even having a "death wish," intentionally steering them into dangerous waters known for pirate attacks. They claim Phillips ignored the warnings and during the first of two attacks (as opposed to one presented in the film), insisted on finishing a lifeboat drill with the crew as the pirates approached the ship. Eleven crew members of the Alabama are suing the Maersk line for Phillips' "willful, wanton, and conscious disregard" for their safety.
There's two sides to every story and the fact is, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is not a documentary. It's Hollywood entertainment first and foremost and if Phillips isn't the heroic figure that Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray (SHATTERED GLASS, BREACH) depict, it would hardly be the first time that a real-life event was fictionalized for entertainment purposes. In the film, the Maersk crew respect Phillips, and he only raises his voice when confronted with irate crew members who "didn't sign on for this" (but they quickly pull together and rally behind him), and prior to the attack, when he passive-aggressively informs some union guys that they're taking too long on a coffee break. Regardless of any alleged liberties taken, the film is a grueling nail-biter of the highest order, with Hanks turning in one of the most subtly powerful performances of his career. It's one that really crescendos into an emotionally draining finale when Hanks displays what might be the best ten minutes he's ever had onscreen. Even knowing the controversies going in, and trying not to compare the possibly very flawed real-life Captain Phillips with the idealized, American everyman "Captain Phillips" being played by Hanks, it's impossible to not get sucked in by the actor's stunning work in this scene. It's the kind of scene--like Jessica Chastain's outburst to her boss in ZERO DARK THIRTY--that guarantees an Oscar nomination.
The Alabama crew features some veteran character actors like Chris Mulkey and David Warshofsky, but other than Hanks, the focus is on the four novice actors who play the pirates: Abdi as Muse, Barkhad Abdirahman as the teenaged Bilal, Mahat M. Ali as Elmi, and Faysal Ahmed as Najee. Recruited in concentrated Somali immigrant enclaves in Minnesota, these four newcomers hold their own with the two-time Oscar-winner. Muse is a reluctant pirate, only doing it because of the lack of opportunities and a need to impress their powerful warlord. He just wants money and goods and has no real desire to harm anyone, which contrasts sharply with the bloodthirsty Najee. You know how every cinematic hostage situation has the one guy with a bad temper and an itchy trigger finger who fucks it up for everyone else when things are going smoothly? That's Najee's function here.
Given the current legal proceedings against the Maersk line and the allegations against Phillips, it's clear that the Captain Phillips story is far from over, but as its own Hollywood suspense thriller, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, after some strangely clunky, ham-fisted foreshadowing in an opening scene with Phillips being dropped off at the airport by his wife (Catherine Keener), is one of the year's most intense and ultimately emotional films. By the time the Somalis attack the Alabama--both the failed first attempt and the successful second--in a pair of heart-pounding, drawn-out sequences where no detail is left unaddressed, you'll be hooked.
Written and directed by Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski. Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Keith David, David Gyasi, Xun Zhou, Robert Fyfe, Martin Wuttke, Brody Nicholas Lee. (R, 172 mins)
Based on David Mitchell's 2004 novel universally considered unfilmable, CLOUD ATLAS is the kind of insanely ambitious undertaking that I suspect many people will respectfully admire from a distance rather than like. It's a film that's bound to be divisive and not everything about it works, but it's a safe bet that you've never seen anything like it. A collaborative effort between Lana & Andy Wachowski (THE MATRIX) and Tom Tykwer (RUN LOLA RUN), CLOUD ATLAS is one of those "everything is connected" films (in fact, that's the tag line on the poster art), but instead of the usual wallowing in self-absorbed ennui, it's a story that stretches across time, balancing multiple stories and timeframes. It demands patience and attention and yes, it all eventually more or less comes together, though it can be a bit chaotic and messy at times. There's a lot of comparisons one could make (I kept thinking of THE TREE OF LIFE if it was directed by Christopher Nolan), but CLOUD ATLAS is a film that stands uniquely alone.
CLOUD ATLAS simultaneously tells six stories across six time periods and places, and almost all of the main cast appear as different characters in each: in 1849, a lawyer (Jim Sturgess) travels by ship to facilitate a slave deal for his father-in-law. In 1936 Scotland, Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) is hired to assemble pieces of a symphony dictated to him by an aging composer (Jim Broadbent). In 1973 San Francisco, journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) gets in over her head investigating a conspiracy involving a powerful oil company and a nuclear power plant after a chance meeting with an elderly man (James D'Arcy) in a stuck elevator. In 2012 London, a scheming literary agent (Broadbent again) is duped into committing himself to a nursing home while on the run from gangsters to whom he owes a significant amount of money. In 2144 New Seoul, a replicant waitress named Sonmi (Doona Bae) is being interviewed prior to her execution for leading a clone rebellion against the totalitarian status quo. And "100 winters after The Fall" in a post-apocalyptic world, the nomadic Zachry (Tom Hanks) agrees to guide a strange visitor (Berry again) into the mountains.
Team Wachowski handled the 1849/2144/The Fall scenes, while Team Tykwer tackled 1936/1973/2012, working at the same time with two different crews and sharing almost all of the actors, who are often unrecognizable under heavy makeup, or at least playing far against type. Most of the actors handle their multiple assignments well (even when playing different genders and races), but Hanks, largely because he's likable and instantly-recognizable Tom Hanks, does seem a bit out of place and miscast in some of his roles. Having said that, it is amusing in the 2012 segment to see him playing cauliflower-eared, scar-faced thug of the "fookin' ell!" variety, dropping plentiful F-and-C-bombs and throwing a guy off a balcony. Actors often fare better in some segments than others: Hugo Weaving is distracting as a female nurse in 2012, but absolutely terrifying as a demonic figure tormenting Zachry in the Fall. Berry is fine as the crusading 1973 journalist, but as an elderly male Korean doctor under a ton of old-age prosthetics? Not so much. But the stunt casting, for the most part, has a point, and ties into the "connected" them, regardless of any controversial "sensitivity" issues, as odd as it seems in 2012 to see British actors like Sturgess and D'Arcy playing Asians. When's the last time you saw eye makeup like this? Peter Sellers in THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU? Joel Grey in REMO WILLIAMS?
CLOUD ATLAS is the kind of film that offers something for pretty much everyone: drama, comedy, romance, art, high seas adventure, conspiracy/paranoia thriller, dystopian sci-fi, horror. It's an incredible achievement in the sheer scope of what it tries to accomplish, and it mostly succeeds. The filmmakers cut no corners with CLOUD ATLAS, and it's fascinating to watch a visual element in one time frame tie into another, or a line of dialogue in one section that has significance to something that happens in another. As expansively huge as the film is, it's mostly very tight in its construction and rarely loses momentum despite two teams of filmmakers juggling six narratives for nearly three hours.
With CLOUD ATLAS, Tykwer and the Wachowskis reassert themselves as among the most visionary of modern filmmakers, even though they've only achieved fleeting mainstream success since their big breakthroughs. The Wachowskis produced and scriped V FOR VENDETTA, but got otherwise chilly receptions for the disappointing MATRIX sequels, the underappreciated SPEED RACER and the unremarkable NINJA ASSASSIN (which they produced), and also had a hand in attempting to salvage THE INVASION (an uncredited rewrite, and their associate and V FOR VENDETTA/NINJA ASSASSIN director James McTeigue handled uncredited reshoots). Tykwer thus far has yet to enjoy a repeat of the critical and commercial success of his 1999 cult classic RUN LOLA RUN, though 2006's PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER and 2009's THE INTERNATIONAL both deserved better receptions than they got. I don't think CLOUD ATLAS is going to be a big US box office hit (it will likely do better overseas), but it's a complex and often extraordinary, one-of-a-kind film that will likely be discussed and dissected for years to come. While not a perfect film by any means, and one where the technique is perhaps more important than the story, it strikes me as a film that will reveal more layers of detail with repeat viewings.
