Monday, September 26, 2016

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

The very first thing that must be said about The Magnificent Seven is that any movie directed by Antoine Fuqua that stars Denzel Washington is automatically worth a look. Having said that, one can’t help but feel that The Magnificent Seven suffers a bit for being an ensemble piece because we don’t get as much Denzel time as we deserve. That’s not to say that The Magnificent Seven is ever boring or unwatchable, but it is underwhelming.

In a remake of the eponymous 1960 western (which was itself a remake of Seven Samurai), Denzel Washington stars as Sam Chisolm, a bounty hunter recruited by Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) to save her village from a mustache-twirling robber baron (Peter Sarsgaard) who wants the exclusive mining rights to the valley. Chisolm assembles a posse comprised of the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest lover” (Chris Pratt), a mountain man (Vincent D’Onofrio), a traumatized Confederate and his Chinese comrade (Ethan Hawke and Byung-hun Lee), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and a Comanche (Martin Sensmeier) on his own path.

Here’s a pretty good cast, and it’s really very evident that they’re all having a terrifically good time together. D’Onofrio is delightfully strange, as is his wont, and the rest of the cast seem to enjoy playing off that peculiarity. (Ten points to anyone who can identify that accent, incidentally.) Washington and Pratt are, essentially playing variations on the Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, with an engaging chemistry between the two of them.

It is, however, a chemistry predicated on Pratt playing the clown and Denzel as the straight man, which is a tragic underutilization of the latter’s skill. It’s no surprise that Pratt is a success as a character that boils down to “Star Lord by way of John Wayne,” but it’s a wonder that Denzel loses to his costar so many opportunities for clever one-liners and sarcastic reactions. This isn’t to say that Denzel himself is a disappointment – in a sense playing both the leads of Django Unchained, Denzel is charismatic and heartbreaking, determined and haunted, and (we sense) withholding a part of himself from his exterior out of a sense of duty and propriety. But it is a bit of a letdown to come to expect a leading performance out of an actor who’s modest enough to embrace his role as 14% of an ensemble.

The Magnificent Seven is not, as its title promises, magnificent. It’s not a transcendent moviegoing experience, but then again in late September I don’t think it has to be. Because on the other hand, The Magnificent Seven is not a disappointment of heroic proportions. It’s fun and fluffy and diverting, and it doesn’t do anything egregiously wrong. It’s in that Baby Bear territory of “just right,” and perhaps it’s gluttonous of me to want the Papa Bear portion of a Denzel Washington western. Moreover, it’s different enough from its predecessors to justify its existence as a variation on a theme. At any rate, keep them coming, Denzel, because I’ll be in the front row every time.

The Magnificent Seven is rated PG-13. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk. Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett and Peter Sarsgaard.

Monday, September 19, 2016

The Personal Canon - By the Numbers

Before we get started with a quick statistical analysis of the Personal Canon, a small update - The Personal Canon now holds 65 films. The updated list is as follows (films in blue have been added since 9/5/16):

Duck Soup (1933)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Adam's Rib (1949)
Stalag 17 (1953)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Psycho (1960)
Goldfinger (1964)
The Godfather (1972) / The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Annie Hall (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
Superman (1978) / Superman II (1980)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Batman (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
The Rocketeer (1991)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Toy Story Trilogy (1995-2010)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Hamlet (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Mummy (1999)
American Psycho (2000)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy (2003-2008)
The Incredibles (2004)
The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012)
The Departed (2006)
Stranger than Fiction (2006)
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Ratatouille (2007)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Burn After Reading (2008)
Iron Man (2008)
Taken (2009)
Black Swan (2010)
Easy A (2010)
Inception (2012)
The Avengers (2010)
Skyfall (2012)
Man of Steel (2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Not too many updates to explain - just the addition of Burn After Reading, which had been excised during the old "limit 50" days, and the other two films in Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which were on cable the other day and likewise were considered "encompassed" by the 2003 film. With that out of the way, let's get on to crunching the numbers.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Sully (2016)

Clint Eastwood’s directed fourteen films since he turned 70 in 2000, and while he may be better known to audiences as no-nonsense detective “Dirty” Harry Callahan or the grimly determined Man With No Name, he’s cultivating a reputation as a no-nonsense director, as well. Sully is one such exemplar of a tight and effective film with little patience for gaudy thrills or big-budget exploits; instead, the film wisely centers on a confident performance and its director’s admiration for the human dimension of heroism.

Sully is the true story of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberg (played by Tom Hanks), who became an international celebrity after successfully landing U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January 2009. The film explores the snap decisions made by the captain and the subsequent investigation following the water landing. From behind a tremendous mustache, Aaron Eckhart co-stars as Sully’s stalwart first officer Jeff Skiles.

At a little more than ninety minutes, Sully is an impressively tight biopic with an effective grasp on the emotions it wants its audience to have. Even though we know the true story and despite the film’s opening moments confirming the safe landing of US 1549, Eastwood manages a compelling amount of tension in the flashback sequences of the events in the cockpit. In a way, Sully reminds me of the more successful parts of Flight, in which Denzel Washington found himself the captain of a similarly troubled flight.

Of course, Flight succeeded on the shoulders of Denzel’s performance, and Sully lives up to the legend in Tom Hanks’s restrained, subtle turn as Sully. Hanks puts his everyman charm to good use in Sully, allowing us to see more easily the toll that such immediate celebrity takes on an average, good-natured human being. Hanks doesn’t have to tell us he’s shaken or weary or confident in his command decisions; he can do it all with a frown or a turn of his head or the certainty in his voice.

But Sully doesn’t verge as hagiographic as we might expect, reaffirming the decisions made by the captain but without overblowing his legend. Instead, Eastwood spends a surprising amount of time on the heroics of those around Sully – Skiles, the flight deck crew, the police, fire, and ferry workers who got the passengers out of the water. “It only took 24 minutes,” the film reminds us, for New York’s finest to rally together. And for a film that plays the numbers game, so often reminding us that Sully’s entire flight lasted 208 seconds, Eastwood is equally (if not more) invested in the way that US 1549 was an occasion for wider heroism.

As much of a piece with Flight as it is with Eastwood’s last, American Sniper, Sully is a portrait of Eastwood’s vision of heroism – patriotic, part of a community, willing and able to make hard decisions and to live with them. It’s a concise portrait from two master craftsmen, both affective and effective, and it shows that whatever directorial touch he’s got, Eastwood hasn’t lost it.

Sully is rated PG-13 for “some peril and brief strong language.” Directed by Clint Eastwood. Written by Todd Komarinicki. Based on the book Highest Duty by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow. Starring Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, and Laura Linney.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Personal Canon (9/5/16 Update)

Happy Labor Day, all. While we're in a little bit of a lull for major motion picture releases, I thought it was the opportune moment to revisit the Personal Canon.

First, a reminder:
It's a list of fifty films that mean the most to me, for one reason or another. I don't purport that these are necessarily the fifty objectively greatest films of all time or the most important films. They're not even ranked in order of favorite-ness, nor do I suggest that they're better than a film that doesn't appear here. Instead, these are my movies. In fact, you might call them perfect movies - at least, as I define perfection, because these movies don't do anything wrong. They don't miss a beat. [. . .] These are the films that reach the pinnacles and plumb the depths of the human condition. They're films that represent my ideals of the best humanity and the aesthetic community have to offer, films I'd put in a time capsule or a Voyager-esque space probe. They're films I can't wait to introduce to my children, contenting myself in the meanwhile to stop and watch them any time they're on television. They're films that, if someone close to me hasn't seen, I take it upon myself to share with them. I get angry if you haven't seen these, sad for the wasted years you've gone without these. Indeed, for one reason or another, the reason I love movies so much is this collection of fifty movies.
As you'll see shortly, part of that definition doesn't hold up any longer. After careful consideration, the limiter of fifty films is gone. It was an arbitrary designation - I could have easily gone with ten, twenty-five, or one hundred - useful as a thought experiment to get my list organized, but I'm realizing that very few of us limit ourselves in that way. If I only had fifty films, suppose a film knocks me out of the water; would that mean excising one of the entries? In the interest of egalitarianism, then, the Personal Canon is henceforth open-ended.

For those playing the home game, last time we had fifty films. This time, we're up to 62, including two new favorites from 2016. Last time, I had said the jury's still out on 2016 movies, but I'm pretty confident in these two.

Next, pairs and trios. And really, this one is all the fault of one film: The Godfather Saga, which joins The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, rearranges its parts in sequential order, and expands with deleted scenes. But really, how can I separate the two in my memory? Ditto for the Toy Story Trilogy, whose holy trinity of animated movies is now together again on the Personal Canon - to be perfectly honest, Toy Story 2 was only cut because of the 50-film limit.

Finally, one cut: Father of the Bride. I had just watched the movie the night I finalized my Personal Canon, and it was a hasty decision. Now that I've had a few months to mellow, I'm not sure it's Personal Canon material. That's not to say it isn't a fantastic film, but it's just not up there for me.

With that said, on with the list! (Films listed in blue have been added since June 2016.)

Duck Soup (1933)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Adam's Rib (1949)
Stalag 17 (1953)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Psycho (1960)
Goldfinger (1964)
The Godfather (1972) / The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Annie Hall (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
Superman (1978) / Superman II (1980)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Batman (1989)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
The Rocketeer (1991)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Toy Story Trilogy (1995-2010)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Hamlet (1996)
Air Force One (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Mummy (1999)
American Psycho (2000)
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)

The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-2012)
The Departed (2006)
Stranger than Fiction (2006)
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Ratatouille (2007)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Iron Man (2008)
Taken (2008)
Black Swan (2010)
Easy A (2010)
Inception (2010)
The Avengers (2012)
Skyfall (2012)
Man of Steel (2013)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)