Film

Flying high

Flight

A reckless alcoholic, who happens to really know how to fly a plane, gets a rather strange and romantic screen treatment in director Robert Zemeckis’ uneven but entertainingly adequate Flight. As airline pilot Whip Whitaker, who likes vodka, beer, cocaine, cough syrup and flight attendants to excess, Denzel Washington delivers a typically great performance. The movie he’s in could be described as excellent in the first half hour, and just OK after that. Even though the film drags or gets a bit melodramatic or trite in spots, Washington always manages to hold it up. That’s a tough task because this one clocks in at nearly two and a half hours. The film opens with Whip, obviously very hungover to the point of still being intoxicated, waking up in a hotel room. Abeautiful naked woman prances around while Whip has a tense phone conversation with his ex-wife. Washington plays this scene with a wicked sense of finesse, especially when he leers at the nude woman while arguing with the ex. It’s one of those great “Denzel” moments. Whip then snorts a line of cocaine, dons some sexy sunglasses and a pilot’s suit, and is off to commandeer a jetliner with more than 100 people on it. Anybody who sees this movie will probably do a little extra scrutinizing of their pilot the next time they prepare to board a plane. The flight itself is a wonder of filmmaking. Zemeckis has done shocking plane crashes before—Tom Hanks going down in Cast Away—but this sequence is among the best he’s ever directed. It’s amazing enough

when Whip pilots the jet through a storm during takeoff. When that plane takes a dramatic plunge later in its flight, eventually flies upside down, and ultimately glides to a crash landing in an open field, it’s a true pulse racer. The crash results in minimal casualties, and Whip is initially praised as a hero. Then people start seeing the toxicology reports. Watching Whip deal with his alcoholismby Bob Grimm and the eventual legal proceedings against him gets a little tedious and, at times, ridicubgrimm@ lous. The movie hits a real low when Whipnewsreview.com visits his co-pilot in the hospital, who happens to be pumped up on painkillers and far too much religion. It’s a scene the movie3 didn’t need and should’ve dropped. I’m also not a fan of how Whip conveniently picks up on an angelic heroin addict during his hospital stay. This is part of the film chickening out and not allowing Washington to simply portray a man alone in a downward spiral. The screenwriter just had to throw in the addict with a heart of gold to make Whip more of a romantic character. Granted, he’s drunk off his ass for much of the romance, but he’s a romantic character all the same. With Flight, Zemeckis and Washington are faced with making a somewhat despicable man worth rooting for over the course of two-plus hours. In the end, they achieve that feat, but really only because Washington is almost incapable of being totally unlikeable on screen. Heck, you still liked him when his character’s evil ass was getting riddled with much needed bullets in Training Day, right? Bruce Greenwood and Don Cheadle do good work as the union representative and lawyer trying to save Whip’s career. John Goodman gets some uncomfortable laughs as Whip’s buddy and drug supplier, while Melissa Leo makes a good impression in a short time as a crash investigator. Flight is ultimately an OK but inconsistent movie about a man’s struggle with alcoholism, with a stunning plane crash thrown in for good measure. Stay tuned for Elizabeth Winestead and Aaron Paul in Smashed, a much better movie on the subject of alcoholism coming soon to a theater near you. Ω

Flying that plane, high on cocaine, Denzel Washington better watch his speed.

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4Argo Ben Affleck makes another meaty movie with this spellbinding recreation of the late ’70s/early ’80s Iran hostage crisis, and the strange CIA mission that helped to extricate six American citizens from Iran at a most inopportune time. Affleck directs and stars as Tony Mendez, who hatches an elaborate plan to pose as a Canadian film director scouting Iran for shooting locations, with the six Americans posing as his Canadian film crew. The whole scenario seems ridiculous, yet it actually happened. Having lived through this period of American history, I can tell you that Affleck does a terrific job of capturing the look and mood of the time. The late ’70s were sort of humiliating both in terms of our status overseas and the way folks were wearing their hair. Bryan Cranston, John Goodman and Alan Arkin are all superb in supporting roles. This one will be in the running for some Oscars.

3Cloud Atlas Three directors and a game cast tell interconnecting stories over centuries in this mightily ambitious project from Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and the Wachowski siblings (Andy and Lana of The Matrixfilms). The likes of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and Jim Sturgess all don heavy makeup to play multiple roles as the movie tries to show how lives and people interconnect through time. The experiment pays off enough to qualify this as a mostly enjoyable time, although some stories are weaker than others. Berry has a good one as a reporter in the ’70s dealing with crooked energy suppliers, and Hanks has a nice time playing both virtuous and murderous types. The movie does boast some of the year’s worst makeup in some scenes, which does distract from time to time. The film is more a magnificent curio than magnificent entertainment. It will certainly challenge audiences ill prepared for its length and numerous swirling stories.

2Hotel Transylvania This animated take on Dracula (Adam Sandler) and other big monsters like Frankenstein’s monster (Kevin James) and the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi) has a fun setup and some great gags. But its overall feeling is that of total mania in that it barely slows down long enough for you to take it in. It’s often unnecessarily spastic in telling the tale of a nervous Dracula dealing with his daughter on her 118th birthday—young in vampire years). A human (Andy Samberg) shows up at the title place, a building Dracula created to keep dangerous humans away, and his daughter (Selena Gomez) falls for him. The overall story is hard to digest, but there are some great moments, such as every time the vampires turn into bats (cute) and a werewolf baby knowing what plane flight somebody is taking by smelling his shirt (unbelievably cute). Even with the cute moments, there were too many times when I just wanted to look away because the animation was far too frantic.

1The Paperboy Wow, this is a mess. Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman and John Cusack all participate in this strange, plodding 1960s period piece about a reporter looking into the case of a convicted killer in the deep South. While there are some good performances here—especially Cusack as a creepy, sickening person on all levels—director Lee Daniels made a bad choice in trying to make much of the movie look like the Zapruder film. It looks OK for about five minutes, but quickly becomes tough on the eyes. Kidman works hard as a strange woman who falls in love with Cusack and agrees to marry him through letters. Her hard work is mostly a waste. The two share a prison sex scene where they aren’t touching each other. That particular scene probably didn’t need to be filmed. I’m kind of unhappy I saw that scene. Actually, I’m kind of unhappy I saw the whole movie. It’s a total waste of good talent. 1Paranormal Activity 4 In my humble opinion, the Paranormal Activityfranchise peaked in the final two minutes of the first installment. That would be when a rather boring movie about bed sheets moving by themselves actually became recommendable based on its startling ending. Since that moment, the series has been one scene after another of rooms where something—be it a sound, a shadowy figure strolling through, or a basketball coming down the stairs by itself—is going to happen. Or sometimes it doesn’t happen, and the director fakes you out. (The directors of this installment are big fans of the open refrigerator door fake-out.) Kathryn Newton plays a teenager living in a house where a mysterious kid moves across the street. Lots of strange things start happening when she Skypes her boyfriend, and you know the drill. There isn’t one legitimate scare this time around. This thing is played out, yet a fifth chapter is already in the works. It’s not going to stop anytime soon.

4The Perks of Being a Wallflower Writer Stephen Chbosky makes an impressive directing debut with this adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel about high school kids in the early ’90s. Logan Lerman plays Charlie, a shy freshman looking to make friends who eventually winds up hanging out with a fringe group of students including Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson). The new friends help Charlie come out of his shell, and he ultimately realizes things about himself that need to be examined. Lerman is especially good here as the film’s anchor, while Miller continues to exhibit the great talents he showed in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Watson gets to step away from her Hermione role, and she does so successfully, making Sam a complex, real kid. One of the better films about high school to come along in quite some time.

3Sinister Ethan Hawke, who did a great job looking scared in movies like Before the Devil Knows You’re Deadand Training Day, gets to put his awesome hyperventilating on display in this sometimes very spooky demon-in-thehouse yarn. Hawke plays a nonfiction writer long past his last hit who moves his family into a house where the prior family met their death hanging from their necks in the backyard. He finds some home movies in the attic, which turn out to be snuff films, and, rather than calling the cops, watches them as research. He soon discovers an evil force is after his family’s children, and he perhaps should’ve chosen a house where people didn’t die in the backyard or leave snuff films in the attic. And, like most horror movie idiots, he sticks around while very bad things happen. The movie has some bad performances from supporting players, but Hawke anchors it well. Much, much scarier than any Paranormal Activitymovie.

2Wreck-It Ralph There’s a lot of potential in this arcade throwback about the title character (John C. Reilly), a giant video game entity that yearns for a better life as a “good guy” and abandons his game post. There are some cool retro-game sight gags—not nearly enough!— and clever twists, but this one falls substantially short of greatness. I did enjoy Sarah Silverman voicing a little girl character who wants to be a racecar driver, and Reilly voices his character with charm. I just found it a little tiresome as it wore on, and I grew tired of it in the repetitive second half. Major laughs in the group therapy sessions—love the zombie!—and some cute stuff between Reilly and Silverman but, overall, it’s surprisingly boring. Like too many animated films these days, it tries to get by on frantic action rather than story.

Reno

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