Film

“Where’s an ejection seat when i need one?”

It’s a plane!

Historical accuracy be damned in Sully, Clint Eastwood’s take on the heroic actions of pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who landed his plane on the Hudson River and saved the lives of all crew and passengers on board.

The passages about a pilot successfully landing his plane in an ice-cold Hudson River and allowing over 150 people to tell the tale, live long and prosper are really the most important, and most compelling, parts of this movie. As for the evil, fictitious inquisition that basically tortures Sully (played by Tom Hanks in a typically riveting performance) and co-pilot Jeff Skiles (welcome back to decent movies, Aaron Eckhart!), well, that’s basically a lot of made-up horseshit.

That’s not to say Sully wasn’t tormented and obsessed in the days after the event, and the film does a good job displaying his internal struggles. The man had to land a plane after a bunch of birds flew into his engines, and then he probably did have a bunch of dicks asking him too many questions in the aftermath. Undoubtedly, he went through hell during that flight and is haunted until this day. Eastwood and Hanks deliver a compelling psychological drama about a man who doubts his own heroism, to the point of nightmarish visions and self deprecation.

Where the film goes a bit afoul is the depiction of a panel that didn’t even give Sully and his crew a chance to breathe after being plucked out of the Hudson. Yes, there was an inquiry, but it took place many months, not a few days after the event, and the panel’s findings were in favor of Sully and his maneuvers. Surely, Sully worried about the results of the investigation, as any man in his situation would, but there’s no doubt that Eastwood and his scripters got a little carried away creating bad guys.

As for the actual flight, one that only took a few minutes, it turns out a pretty decent movie can be made around that amazing occurrence

as the centerpiece. The 86 year-old—eightyfreaking-six!—Eastwood has put together some of the best scenes of his moviemaking career in this film, especially when that plane takes the bird hit, can’t make it back to LaGuardia, and starts plummeting. It’s scary stuff, and he puts you in the cockpit and in a crowded coach every step of the way. Hanks, deservedly so, should find himself in contention for another Oscar nomination. (Hey, he hasn’t gotten a nomination since Cast Away in 2001! That’s crazy!) His performance is understated, non-showy and straight-up brilliant. Anybody who has seen the real Sully conduct himself in an interview can see the man has a low-key public persona. Hanks gives us a dude with a lot going on beneath that quiet exterior. Eckhart, whose career hit the skids not long after his bravura turn in The Dark Knight, gets things back on track as a man who can’t believe his friend is Sully being grilled shortly after saving so many lives. 12345 His work here is almost good enough to make you forget I, Director: Clint Eastwood Frankenstein. Laura Linney plays Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Sully’s wife, Lorraine, who basiEckhart, Laura Linney cally spends the whole film on the phone acting totally worried. Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn plays one of Sully’s interrogators down at the far end of the table, a role that doesn’t really forward her career. Eastwood has been specializing in biographical films and real-life events in the latter part of his career. Sully joins American Sniper as films about real guys that bend the truth but still entertain a bit—unlike J. Edgar, which was a disaster. I had my doubts that an entire motion picture could be made out of such a short event. As it turns out, Eastwood and friends had to make up some garbage to pad their running time to just over 90 minutes. Luckily for them, and for us, the great parts of this movie put it over the top. It doesn’t hurt that you have that Hanks guy heading up the cast. Ω

1Antibirth If you’re a fan of directors like David Cronenberg and Dario Argento, then you might be able to make it through this rather unpleasant horror-comedy. A party girl (Natasha Lyonne) blacks out at a rambunctious gathering and finds herself going through pregnancy symptoms shortly thereafter. Those symptoms go from standard nausea to skin peeling off and teeth falling out, and she eventually discovers there’s something well beyond standard procreating at play. Chloe Sevigny costars as a fellow low-class party girl for director Danny Perez, whose film gets progressively gross up until the really, really gross birthing scene. Argento and early Cronenberg were never my cup of tea; I just don’t get down with most body horror scenarios. That said, this film will certainly have an appeal to those who like their horror hardcore when it comes to the gore quotient. As for the story, it’s a muddled affair involving drug addicts, space aliens and Rosemary’sBaby-like setups. Don’t watch this if you hated movies like TheHuman Centipede,Rabidand DeepRed. If that sort of extreme horror isn’t to your liking, this is liable to put you in a really bad mood. (Available for rental on iTunes, Amazon.com and On Demand during a limited theatrical release.)

3Blood Father Mel Gibson is a fucking asshole, but he can act with the best of them. As Link, an ex-con with a tattoo parlor in his trailer and a missing daughter (Erin Moriarty), he’s a stunning, grizzly marvel—elevating mediocre material into something completely watchable. When the missing daughter gets herself into some major trouble, she comes back on the grid by giving Link a call. Having never really known his daughter, Link is determined to be the dad he never was thanks to a seven-year prison stint, and he goes into super-protective mode. The two wind up on the run from a drug cartel, and that leads to sights like Gibson on a motorcycle blowing people away with a shotgun. This is a tour de force for Gibson, whose ranting inside Link’s trailer as it is being shot to shreds just might be the best piece of acting he’s ever put forth. Director Jean-Francois Richet lucked out in casting Gibson as this character desperately in search of redemption. It suits Gibson very well at this time. William H. Macy is reliably good as Link’s sponsor. Moriarty holds her own against the insane Gibson, and Michael Parks kills it as a former friend and true bastard. If you should choose to watch it, I think you’ll be surprised. (Streaming on iTunes and Amazon. com during a limited theatrical release.)

2Don’t Breathe Three dimwits (Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette and Daniel Zovatto) try to rob a blind military veteran (a growly Stephen Lang) of his dough in his house. In the course of their heist, they find out a few really bad things about the guy, including his aspirations to be the next Jigsaw (the presently retired, ridiculous villain from the Saw series). Rocky (Levy, who also starred in Alvarez’s Evil Dead) wants to get out of Detroit and move to California with her little sister. She and her boyfriend (Zovatto) have been pulling off minor robberies with Alex (Minnette), using alarm codes from his dad’s security company. They get wind of a boatload of money in the blind man’s house and set out to rob him while he’s home. Yes, the premise is interesting, but things go off the rails pretty quickly when The Blind Man—that’s his actual character name—somehow survives a gassing and interrupts the robbery. His initial thwarting of the break-in is convincing enough, but then the movie becomes all about the robbers standing still while The Blind Man races right by them.

5Hell or High Water Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster all destroy their parts in this absolutely terrific modern Western from director David Mackenzie. Pine and Foster play two brothers who come up with a bank-robbing scheme to save the family farm, and Bridges is the soonto-be-retired sheriff trying to stop them. Pine takes his career into all new territories with his work here, making you forget he’s Captain Kirk and totally disappearing into his part. Foster, an actor I couldn’t stand when he was younger, just gets better and better with each film, with this being his best work yet. Pine is supposedly the more sensible one, while Foster is the nut. What’s great about the writing here is how those roles sometimes switch, and the acting by both makes it mesmerizing to watch. What else can you say about Bridges at this point? He’s one of the best actors to have ever walked the Earth, and this further cements that fact. Mackenzie, whose most notorious prior film was the underrated StarredUp, takes a step into the elite class with this one. His staging of car chases and manhunts is nerve-shredding .

2Morgan While director Luke Scott definitely shows he’s inherited some of his dad’s helming chops, for Morgan, an ultimately derivative script hampers his feature directing debut. The son of the great Ridley Scott shows some major visual flair and an ability to draw good performances from his cast, but the movie itself, with Dad producing, is a pastiche of other science fiction and horror films, most notably his dad’s own BladeRunner. Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an artificially created humanlike being. (I guess that’s the best way to describe it.) She’s only five but looks like a teenager and has superior intellect and physical skills. She’s been genetically engineered to age quickly, and while she is basically a well-meaning entity, her behavioral wires get a little crossed up sometimes, resulting in violent “errors.” Morgan goes apeshit when she’s not allowed outside. This results in the character played by Jennifer Jason Leigh being on pain meds for the whole movie with a big, bloody gauze on her eye. The “corporation” that helped create Morgan sends icy company woman Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) out to assess the matter and recommend a course of action. It all leads up to a lame and unnecessary twist that diminishes the story and overall quality of the film.

4Sausage Party SausageParty, the animated hellcat from writer-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is the first big studio film in a long time with screaming levels of originality. It’s a profanity-laden, blasphemous middle finger to the movie-making establishment that thinks it’s OK to turn out sequels and comic book movies that suck as long as people shell out for them. It couldn’t be more fun, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. In a sunny supermarket, a bunch of vegetables, hot dogs and buns wake up and sing a happy song, convinced that today will be the day they are chosen by humans to enter the great beyond—the world on the other side of those automatic sliding doors. What they find on the other side of those doors is nonstop carnage, certain death, and a generally bad time for all things digestible. What makes SausagePartya cut above your average stoner movie full of food items screwing and being murdered is that it’s actually a smart swipe at organized religion and politics.

1Suicide Squad BatmanvSuperman:DawnofJustice was a skunk blast to the face for most of us trying to have a good time with a superhero movie earlier this year. Suicide Squadlooked like a chance to get DC movies back on the good foot. With David Ayer (Fury, EndofWatch) at the helm, and a cast including Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie, it looked like summer was due to get a fun blast of movie mischief. SuicideSquaddoes nothing to improve the summer blockbuster season. It actually sends a big, stinking torpedo of shit into its side, and sends the thing barreling toward the bottom of the bowl. That’s being kind. After a first half build-up/tease that does a decent job of introducing bad guy characters like Deadshot (Smith), Harley Quinn (Robbie) and the Joker (Leto), the movie becomes what can only be described as a spastic colon, resulting in that big turd referred to above.