The Post (2017)

The Post (2017): written by Josh Singer and Liz Hannah; directed by Steven Spielberg; starring Meryl Streep (Kay Graham), Tom Hanks (Ben Bradlee), Sarah Paulson (Tony Bradlee), Bob Odenkirk (Ben Bagdikian), Bradley Whitford (Arthur Parsons), Bruce Greenwood (Robert McNamara), Matthew Rhys (Daniel Ellsberg), Alison Brie (Lally Graham), and Carrie Coon (Meg Greenfield): 

Steven Spielberg pays homage to the specific (All the President's Men) and the general (the look and feel and film stock of 1970's films) in this solid, occasionally inspired take on the release of the Pentagon Papers by first the New York Times and then the Washington Post. Spielberg has also fashioned a paean to investigative journalism that is as timely as it is inspiring. 

The cast ticks along nicely, though I don't think Tom Hanks has quite the brash, Kennedy-style machismo of the real Ben Bradlee. Meryl Streep is terrific as Post owner Katherine Graham, finding her way and her voice in a world of mostly dismissive old white men. The film does a nice job of laying out the relevance of Daniel Ellsberg's release of what were soon dubbed The Pentagon Papers, the malignity of the Nixon White House, and the rumpled majesty of 1970's investigative journalists, especially Bob Odenkirk. It's not a great movie, but it is a good one. Recommended.

Postmodern Paradigm? Pure Power Pop?

Anti-Matter Vatican What???

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (2009): adapted from the novel by Dan Brown by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman; directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon), Ewan McGregor (Chief Pope's Dogsbody McKenna), Ayelet Zurer (Woman Who Knows All Things That Langdon Does Not Know Especially Italian, The Map of Vatican City, Anti-Matter, and Whatever The Hell Bio-ub-Nuclear-Physics Is), Stellan Skarsgard (Swiss Stellan Skarsgard), Nikolaj Kaas (The Non-Albino Albino), and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Suspicious Red Herring Cardinal):

Pure postmodern power pop!

In The DaVinci Code, Harvard Symbologist (not an actual thing)  Robert Langdon battled a conspiracy that hides the true nature of the relationship of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. The conspiracy was dangerous because, um, it might hurt the great-to-the-Nth-power-child of Mary and Jesus. 

Wait, were the stakes that low in The DaVinci Code?

But now, in a tactic ripped from the escalatingly epic pulp space operas of EE "Doc" Smith, Langdon returns to battle a conspiracy that intends to kill all the popes and blow up Vatican City with an Anti-Matter Bomb stolen by The Last Illuminati from the Anti-Matter-Bomb-Making facilities at the Large Hadron Collider in Poussy, France.

Anti-Matter Bomb? WTF?

Angels & Demons is enjoyable nonsense. Tom Hanks looks a lot more relaxed than he did in The DaVinci Code. He runs around Vatican City trying to save the four most likely candidates for Pope because he knows more than anyone about Italian things even though he still cannot speak or read Italian despite Italian things being the focus of 90% of his academic studies and 97% of his exciting adventures.

Tom Hanks is joined in his awesome world-saving adventures by an Italian biosphere genetic astrophysicist who knows everything about Vatican City, the history of the Popes, and Anti-Matter. 

Jesus, these people have weird fucking skill-sets!

The only thing that would make Angels&Demons the greatest movie ever made about anti-Catholic conspiracies deploying Anti-Matter Bombs against the Vatican only to be thwarted by an Italian woman with a crazy skill-set, Forrest Gump, and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) would be if the self-flagellating, Opus Dei-serving, super-Albino super-assassin (Paul "The Vision" Bettany) showed up to turn over a new leaf like Jaws at the end of James Bond in Moonraker and help Langdon, Robert Langdon save the Vatican. Highly recommended!

Tom Hanks Playhouse

Inferno (2016): adapted by David Koepp from the novel by Dan Brown; directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks (Professor Robert Langdon), Felicity Jones (Sienna Brooks), Omar Sy (Bouchard), Irrfan Khan (Harry Sims), Ben Foster (Zobrist), and Sidse Babett Knudsen (Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey): I actually think this is the best of the Tom Hanks/Ron Howard/Dan Brown movies. Tom Hanks's Robert Langdon is tired and bleary for much of the film (for good reason). The historical clues are almost perfunctory, as if the film-makers finally admitted that the whole point of these things, like a James Bond movie, is the globe-trotting scenery. 

There's a decent twist at the two-thirds mark, the supporting cast is all solid, and Ben Foster finally gets cast correctly, as a squirmy, passive-aggressive billionaire who wants to kill 50% of humanity. Director Ron Howard even presents us with a couple of drug-induced visions for Langdon that are creepy enough to suggest that a Ron Howard-helmed H.P. Lovecraft movie wouldn't have been the botch that such a pairing initially suggested. A perfectly good time-filler. Recommended.

Sully (2016): adapted from the book by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow by Todd Komarnicki; directed by Clint Eastwood; starring Tom Hanks (Sully), and Aaron Eckhart (Skiles): "Sully" Sullenberger successfully landed a passenger jet on the Hudson River in January 2009. This film is excellent when it sticks to the landing and much less so when the screenplay tries to grind some ideological axe about how awful bureaucracies and government are, courtesy I assume of right-wing brain-trauma survivor Clint Eastwood. 

The National Travel Safety Board investigation (nay, witch hunt) of Sully after the landing is pretty much entirely invented. It doesn't even make much sense: wouldn't the owner and/or manufacturer of the airplane want to roast Sully if anyone, given that the financial loss would be suffered there? Well, no, I guess, because Corporations Are People Too, and good people at that. Good, good people. Bad, bad bureaucrats trying to protect us. Bad! Tom Hanks is fine, as usual, and the landing sequence is tense and thrilling. All the other stuff is right-wing wankery. Lightly recommended.

Fat Birds

In a World...: written and directed by Lake Bell; starring Lake Bell (Carol), Rob Corddry (Moe), Alexandra Holden (Jamie), Ken Marino (Gustav), Demetri Martin (Louis), Fred Melamed (Sam), and Michaela Watkins (Dani) (2013): Lake Bell does triple duty on this Hollywood-centric comedy. And in her feature-film writing-and-directing debut, she really brings it.

Many of the delights of this film come from surprise, so I'll just note that it's primarily about Hollywood voiceover artists. You know, the voices you hear on movie ads, movie trailers, and in TV commercials. And it's a real delight, a light-hearted industry satire that tackles feminist issues with intelligence and wit.

Bell is terrific as the protagonist, whose father is a great and hilariously self-important voiceover artist and who herself aspires to become the first great female voiceover artist. The supporting roles are all warmly written, with Rob Corddry getting his best film role ever as Bell's brother-in-law. All this, and a weirdly plausible Young Adult movie named The Amazon Games, clips of which we see. Highly recommended.

Saving Mr. Banks: written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith; directed by John Lee Hancock; starring Emma Thompson (P.L. Travers), Tom Hanks (Walt Disney), Annie Rose Buckley (Ginty), Colin Farrell (Ginty's Father), Paul Giamatti (Ralph), Bradley Whitford (Don DaGradi), B.J. Novak (Robert Sherman) and Jason Schwartzman (Richard Sherman) (2013): The often hilariously fractious relationship between Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers and Walt Disney, who's been trying to make a movie of Travers' novel since the 1940's, makes for a pretty funny movie.

Of course, we also have the non-hilarious stuff detailing Travers' childhood relationship with her troubled, alcoholic father in the Australian outback. The movie threads together this formative storyline with one involving Travers' two-week stay in Hollywood as she worked with Disney writers while debating whether or not to sign over the rights to Mary Poppins to Disney.

The cast is excellent from top to bottom. Hanks probably deserved more recognition for his work as Disney, and Thompson is typically excellent as the prickly Travers. Colin Farrell is unusually sweet as Travers' father. B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman play the songwriting Sherman brothers with understated humour. Paul Giamatti is particularly charming in what could have been a thanklessly sentimental role as the driver assigned to get Travers to and from her Beverly Hills hotel each day.

The movie plays fast and loose with certain facts of the movie's development, but much of the film's Hollywood portion really did happen. Really, the funniest thing the movie doesn't address is Dick Van Dyke's terrible attempt at a Cockney accent in the movie of Mary Poppins. There is  a reason Travers didn't want him as Bert -- even Van Dyke thought he was wrong for the part! Recommended.

Holidays in the Sun

Captain Phillips: adapted from non-fiction books by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty by Billy Ray; directed by Paul Greengrass; starring Tom Hanks (Captain Richard Phillips) and Barkhad Abdi (Muse) (2013): Solid hostage drama drags a bit towards the end, with one too many false endings, but nonetheless manages to makes its characters sympathetic. The movie shows the dreadful conditions that lead Somali pirates to hijack an American-registered cargo ship, though the narrative focus remains squarely on Tom Hanks' salt-of-the-earth common-man hero throughout.

As a thriller, the movie especially shines in the first hour, as the cargo ship attempts to repel the boarders before being seized. The second half alternates between the claustrophobia of the life boat the pirates have seized, along with Captain Philips as a hostage, and the U.S. Navy's efforts to secure the cargo ship, the pirates, and Captain Phillips. Trimmed by about 15 minutes, the film could have courted greatness. As is, it's eminently watchable, suspensefully directed and written, and strongly acted by all involved, especially the mostly untrained actors playing the Somalis. Recommended.


We're the Millers: written by Bob Fisher, Steve Faber, Sean Anders and John Morris; directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber; starring Jennifer Aniston (Rose), Jason Sudeikis (David Clark), Emma Roberts (Casey Mathis), Will Poulter (Kenny), Ed Helms (Brad Gurdlinger), Nick Offerman (Don), and Kathryn Hahn (Edie) (2013): I laughed a lot during this uneven comedy hit. I cringed sometimes. And I scratched my head at one incredibly off-base bit about giving a Mexican cop a blow-job that's both tremendously unfunny and painfully drawn out.

It's ultimately a studio comedy, so We're the Millers has to have its characters Learn Better. Thankfully, the cast is good enough to pull the movie through the bad parts. Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn help a lot in supporting roles as a loveable, right-wing couple whom the 'family' meets as they're trying to smuggle a couple of tons of marijuana from Mexico back to Colorado. As the fake family created to smuggle that pot, Sudeikis, Aniston, Roberts, and Poulter do some sharp work.

Freed from playing a nice lead, Aniston manages to be funny, and Poulter as the nerdy teen-aged 'son' may be the most consistently funny actor in the film. Sudeikis seems a bit miscast, possibly because his dialogue sounds as if it were all written for Danny McBride. Despite some rough patches, We're the Millers is that modern rarity, a funny studio comedy. Recommended.