Sully - Movie Review

Starring Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O'Malley, Anna Gunn, Jamey Sheridan, Holt McCallany, Chris Bauer, Ann Cusack, Molly Hagan and Jerry Ferrara.
Written by Todd Komarnicki.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.

★★★½

The genius of this movie about an event where everyone survived is how it captures the emotions of the people involved who did not know everyone survives. Never in history has a passenger plane landed in a body of water and had no casualties. And so we can feel the heightened emotions of those involved.

Tom Hanks plays Capt. Sullenberger, and I'd never wondered if he'd had PTSD after the Miracle on the Hudson. The movie goes back and forth between that day but also the investigation afterwards, where Sully was actually criticized for not turning back and landing at La Guardia.

It's actually a perfect New York movie to put out over the 9/11 weekend. It's a story about how New York's finest all came together and had a happy ending on a story involving a plane. We feel the anxiety and fear of the passengers, and therefore feel their gratitude at the miracle of surviving.

Clint Eastwood had stumbles as a director recently but after American Sniper and now this, he's back at the top of his game.

Olympus Has Fallen - Movie Review

Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott, Robert Forster, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser and Ashley Judd.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua.

★★3/4

Die Hard in the White House!

I actually saw a few people in my Twitter feed compare it to a Die Hard sequel (mostly favorably) before I went to the movie, so that was in my head.  And they're right.

Olympus Has Fallen is a straightforward action B-movie where one man has to take on a small army of terrorists who've taken over the White House, and they're holding the President, VP, Defense Secretary and a few other notables in the safehouse bunker underground.

One man, ex-Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Butler), makes his way into his former place of employment before the terrorists manage to lock it down.  Now he must kill off the stray guards that go looking for him as he searches for the President's son, unaccounted for and somewhere in the White House.

Meanwhile the head of the terrorist group (Rick Yune) sends demands to the Speaker of the House (Morgan Freeman), acting president while POTUS and VPOTUS are hostages.

The whole thing takes place over the course of 24 hours, so a lot of it is at night, where fight scenes can hide more in their choreography. It amused me how often Mike and the other guy would have their guns knocked away so they'd fight with fists and kicks until one of them found a knife or something.

There were a couple plot points that were so stupid - and I mean so stupid! - that my brain had to actively fight and wrestle with them to not kill my enjoyment of the movie. If you tell me a failsafe, and I can instantly think about how to get around it and exploit it to kill millions, why did this potential exploitation never occur to anyone in the White House, Pentagon, contractors...?

Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) fills the supporting roles with plenty of champions.  I really liked how Melissa Leo (Academy-Award-winning actress...) threw herself into what could have been a throwaway role as the Secretary of Defense. (She was probably thinking, "I probably won't be in too many more action movies, so I'm going to have fun!")  You want the Speaker to be a man with gravitas? You don't mess around; you just get Morgan Freeman.

The body count is high, and the bullets fired are plentiful. Fuqua really doesn't mess around.

I can already see a sequel where Mike Banning is just visiting Buckingham Palace...

Battle: Los Angeles - DVD Review

ll 1/2

Starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Michael Pena, Bridget Moynahan, Ramon Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, Lucas Till and Jim Parrack.
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman.

My teens liked it, so it pretty much does its job of trying to be a PG-13 Black Hawk Down about an alien invasion.

So I tried to determine why I didn't like it more. Part of it, I believe, is that Black Hawk Down was based on a true story. It had a very you-are-there feel to it, to being in the middle of a historic moment. This is one day in the life of a military group dealing with creatures from outer space.

BHD was also a series of characters building to one great whole. This one centers on Aaron Eckhart, and while I like the guy, I was never compelled by his central story, and for some reason, he gives all his lines with that gravelling intense whisper, even during his big inspire-the-troops speech. And anytime he commanded a soldier to go off by himself and secure this perimeter or that tower, we knew that soldier was toast.

I appreciate that the aliens weren't another variation on the multi-tentacled exoskeleton xenomorph. I liked that they wore armor too. It's just that they looked like unsellable droids that Jawas left in the back room. We'd better win; we've been invaded by nerds.