Flight Risk (3/5 Stars)

The appearance of “Flight Risk” in movie cinemas would be a non-story if not for the unexpected pedigree behind the picture. The movie is a small-scale bottle episode that takes place entirely within a 90 minute plane flight from an unnamed non-descript town in Alaska to Anchorage, Alaska. The movie is so small the characters do not have last names. It appears to be the first produced screenplay by screenwriter Jared Rosenberg.

The conceit can be summed up in a few sentences. Winston, played by Topher Grace, plays a fugitive accountant for a mobster. He gets picked up by federal law enforcement, played by Michelle Dockery, and immediately surrenders and pleads for a deal. He appears to be much more afraid of his mobster boss then the feds. In order to get Winston to New York to testify in trial a trial that is happening right now (for the purposes of expediency, it is helpfully mentioned that the judge is a hard-ass and won’t agree to an adjournment) the feds charter a small plane to take Winston to Anchorage and then onto to Seattle and then New York. This plane is piloted by Daryl, played by Mark Wahlberg, who is not who he says he is. Spoiler alert, he works for the mobster, and the totality of the movie is contained in his efforts to kill everybody on board either slowly or immediately depending on his present circumstances. I really can’t say more without going into spoiler territory.

What is interesting about this movie is that it has a legitimate movie star, Mark Wahlberg, that seems out-of-place in such a small-scale project. Case in point, Mark plays a supporting character and yet he is the only person on movie poster. Mark's presence is likely explained by its director, one Mel Gibson. This is the first movie Mel Gibson has directed since 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge (a movie I did not get to review because it was unheralded on release, but one I ultimately considered the best of the year), and second movie since 2006’s Apocalypto (one of the more unique movies ever made). Mel Gibson would have directed plenty more movies since 2006 had he not gone off the deep end and said some very awful things. (I am generally forgiving about what people say and in particular what people say in private. For instance my bar is low enough to give Jon Gruden a total pass. Having said that, Mel Gibson said some crazy shit and as far as these things go, his cancellation is one of the more reasonable ones out there). Which is a shame because whenever he does put something out there, regardless of whether it is enjoyable or not, it is usually well made and distinctly original. If Hollywood truly cared about diversity (and you know I don’t), what it should do is employ more people like Mel Gibson because he actually has a different point of view from most of the movie industry. He has a different point of view from most people in general. I see online that he is making a sequel to Passion of the Christ, entitled The Resurrection of the Christ. It is about time, if only because of the tremendous commercial opportunity that it is likely to represent. It is easy to make a lot of money when you are the only person catering to a very deprived audience (see James Cameron’s Titanic and blockbuster movies made for women as of 1997).

“Flight Risk” feels like a director getting taking a practice run on a smaller project just to remind himself how it works. It is competent. The actors do their jobs with respectability. The screenplay is a little too on the nose with Topher Grace’s sarcasm and Mark Wahlberg’s creepy threats, but really, if you have confined yourself to the cockpit of a small plane for 90 minutes, this is basically as good of a movie as you are going to get. It has a brisk running time, enough action, and some of the jokes land. Michelle Dockery is likable. It came out in January. What are you going to do? Hey, at least it gave me an excuse to write about Mel Gibson as a director. I’ve been doing this blog for twenty years and I haven’t had that opportunity.

Irresitible (3/5 Stars)

At a small-town city council meeting in the tiny town of Deerlaken, Wisconsin, the Mayor and city counsel are voting to impose a voter identification law. In walks Jack Hastings, played by Chris Cooper, who objects to the I.D. law. He makes a reference to what appears to be a latino couple in the back of the room, references high-minded democratic ideals and some tenets of Christianity and leaves. This is all caught on camera and posted to YouTube.

The video is shown to a Democratic political advisor named Gary Zimmer, played by Steve Carell, who absolutely loves it. It is almost too good to be true. Here is a white middle-aged man, veteran, and farmer, from a swing-state no less, that is taking a pro-immigration stance using the symbolic authority (founding fathers and the bible) of Republicans. Gary carpetbags his way to Deerlaken with the intent to finance the candidacy of Jack Hastings for Mayor of Deerlaken on the Democratic ticket. He wants to make a big national deal about this tiny mayoral race in rural Wisconsin.

Jack Hastings, along with his daughter Diana Hastings, played by MacKenzie Davis, allow Gary to serve as campaign manager to the upcoming campaign. Deerlaken has major problems. Its economic base was centered on a military base that has since closed, throwing many local companies out of business. The population of Deerlaken has collapsed from 15,000 people to just 5,000. With problems like that, an astute observer may wonder why the locals would care about national immigration policy.

Gary Zimmer does not connect those dots. And he knows he does not have to meet his ultimate goal. With his connections, money, and election apparatus behind him, he knows that he can simply outspend the other side to victory. The mayoral race does not really matter to national politics, but because of the immigration issue, the location of Deerlaken, and the identity of Jack Hastings, it will make a great story for the national news cycle. A Democrat wins in this rural town with Democratic sound-bytes for the first time in fifty or so years. When the Republicans catch wind of what is happening, they send down Faith Brewster, played by Rose Byrne, to dramatically up the spending game. Gary loves this because it means even more time and money are going to be spent on this symbolic election. Even if Jack Hastings loses, the Democrats would still win because they would have been able to beat expectations.

This is Jon Stewarts’ second feature film as a writer/director following Rosewater. We all know him from his fifteen years at the The Daily Show, an excellent fake news broadcast on Comedy Central. There is a twist to the story which he springs in the final twenty minutes. I hesitate to discuss a twist, but I will because I believe if the movie had not concealed the twist, it might have made for a more effective and funnier movie.

As it is, the movie follows Gary Zimmer around as if he is the main character. But he is not the main character, and he makes a poor main character while the movie allows him to take on that role. The main character is Deerlaken and the people in it. The Youtube video was fabricated and the election is a scam. The people of Deerlaken, helped by an astute understanding of campaign finance laws, know that if their town’s local election can catch the attention of the national media, their local economy will be the recipients of a vast amount of unfiltered unaccountable cash. The town intends to use this sorely needed cash to rebuild the local infrastructure, stimulate the local economy, and do other things that actually matter (as opposed to a purely symbolic national immigration debate).

But you will not know this for the first 90 minutes of “Irresistible” and the marketing campaign for it has gone even further in pulling another bait-and-switch on the expectations of the audience. Jon Stewarts’ fan base is urban and liberal, which is why the marketing is presenting a political comedy between the idealistic democratic strategist Gary Zimmer and a nihilistic republican strategist named Faith Brewster, played by Rose Byrne. But Faith Brewster is not a main character of this story and the movie is not really about a tussle between Democrats and Republicans. Faith shows up, finds Gary’s scheming mostly boring, and does not pretend, like Gary, to patronize the locals. She is here to shower money on the local economy and remind the people that Gary doesn’t actually care about them. She doesn’t care about them either, but her straightforward unashamed manner is less annoying.

Jon Stewart does not actually have much to say about the Republican party here, which makes sense if his purpose is to enlighten and inform those in his audience, his audience being mainly urban and liberal. All his criticism focuses on Gary Zimmer, the out-of-touch liberal elitist, who likes to describe the rural white residents of Deerlaken, Wisconsin as small-minded to the intelligentsia at NYC dinner party fundraisers. It is the urban elitist who ultimately gets outmaneuvered by the small-minded rural folk. I admire Jon Stewart’s willingness to not preach to the choir. That man has got some big ol’ matza balls on him.

As a director, Jon Stewart is still a little happy-go-lucky with his camera. He has some distracting camera angles and shots here where a more straightforward and simple style would have been appropriate. He has an eye casting though. I always appreciate when Will Sasso, from MadTV way back when, shows up in any movie to play anybody. “Irresistible” is not all that funny in the first half. However, as things become clearer, it picks up more and more laughs as it gains speed through the midway point.

The movie ends with a conversation with Trevor Potter, the lawyer brought on screen in many Daily Show and Colbert Report segments to talk about the ridiculous of campaign finance laws. Jon Stewart asks, could a town actually do this? Could they raise all this outside money, funnel it into Super Pacs, and then spend that money on local issues instead of advertising for an election? Yes, Trevor Potter, states. There are no rules for Super Pacs. You can raise any amount of money for them, ostensibly for the purpose of influencing an election, but spend that money however you want. Jon Stewart, wisely suggests, that more people should abuse the law and use the enormous amount of money circulating through our election ecosystem to actually help local communities. I feel like that idea may have had the comic potential of the accounting scheme in “The Producers”, which as you know, was laid out very clearly in that movie’s first scene. I wonder what this movie would have been like if Jon Stewart had led with his great idea.

Interstellar (4/5 Stars)

Whatever can happen, will happen.

Young Murphy Cooper (Mackenzie Foy) asks her father (Matthew McConaughey) why she was named after something bad. Her father replies that Murphy’s Law is not necessarily pessimistic. All it means is that (given enough time) anything that can happen will happen. The pessimistic side of this looks at chaotic unforgiving nature and all the ways it can and will disrupt the best plans of mice and men. But look at it in another light. For instance, if you believed that humans could adapt to anything, well then, given enough time our species should be able to solve any problem that the universe throws at it. Of course, the supposition that must be true is that human beings actually could someday evolve to be capable of anything, even going so far as to say master space and time. That is a wildly optimistic notion and it is surprising to come from writer Jonathan Nolan and director Christopher Nolan particularly since their non-Batman movies have been great explorations of self-delusion (memory in Memento, magic in The Prestige, dreams in Inception). But here it is, and it is a good thing the Nolan’s are in charge of this project because I’m not sure anybody else could have made it. It is perhaps the most expensive and epic intellectual exercise since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and only the Nolan’s have the box office clout to finance a movie like this. Try to see it in the theater because it is not going make any sense on a small screen.

The movie starts with humans on Earth confronted with the extinction of their species. It takes place about fifty years from now. Old Man Cooper (played by John Lithgow) talks of how when he was a kid it seemed like everyday something new would be invented. Imagine that, six billion people all wanting it all at the same time. But something happened in nature. There is this dust storm blight that kills vegetation. The only crop that can grow now is corn. The blight feeds on all the Nitrogen in the atmosphere and every year it creates more Nitrogen, which only makes the blight even stronger. Population has dropped. Technology has stuttered. Pretty soon humanity won’t even be able to grow corn and then everyone will die.

The last ditch effort of humanity is a secret NASA mission led by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to send a spaceship through a wormhole that has just been discovered near Saturn to a distant galaxy where hopefully there is another planet that can sustain human life. Matthew McConaughey, a retired pilot, is chosen for the job. So is Professor Brand’s daughter, Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway), two other guys, and a couple of sentient robots named TARS and KASE. TARS has a humor setting in his A.I. and provides comic relief.

It is a very long journey and one of the most interesting conceits of this story is its portrayal of Einstein’s theory of relativity. One facet of this theory is that as one approaches the speed of light, the slower time goes for the mover. Another is that proximity to a black hole also slows down time for the mover. At one point in the movie a trip to a planet near a black hole that takes merely hours takes many years on Earth. And suddenly Murph Cooper is no longer played by the ten-year-old Mackenzie Foy but by the thirty-something Jessica Chastain. (It should be noted how remarkably similar Mackenzie and Jessica look like each other). I saw a great meme with a picture of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar that harked back to his first movie, Dazed and Confused, where he uttered the memorable line, “You know what I like about high school girls. Each year I get older but they stay the same age.” Of course this meme changed it a little bit. Now it reads, “You know what I like about my children. Each year they get older, but I stay the same age.”

Then there is a cameo by a well-known actor that I hesitate the mention because none of the advertisment material apparently wanted me to know about before he shows up quite unexpectedly. It is a great turn by that unnamed person. Matthew McConaughey continues his bewildering streak of very good movies. The same can be said for Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. And of course, it looks very impressive, the Black Hole and Wormhole especially. 

I don’t think I can say anymore without ruining some of the surprises. It is worth seeing, that is all. 

Spiderman 3 05/19/07

I'm no comic book geek, nor do I stand in line to see every new comic book movie, but I can tell a good movie from a bad one. Spiderman 3 is astounding. A perfect capper to an already stunning trilogy. 
What usually hurts a superhero franchise is that the bad guys become indefinitely more interesting than the superhero. This has yet to happen in a Spider Man movie. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is still as fun to watch as ever. And his charachter grows ever more three dimensional. This time his arc is helped by Venom, a strange substance from a meteorite, that turns Parker into a much more aggressive Spidey. This is entertaining in its own sense since Parker is a nerd and takes alot of unheeded crap from people. So in this movie we relish in the revenge he dishes out. Although the film never quite makes us feel good about it. Good is good and bad is bad. There's morals in this one as with all Spiderman movies. So when Venom goes to far we all see that its hurting rather than helping and it makes the villains essentially even stronger than before.
And what villains. These aren't huge names here but are they ever the perfect choices. Thomas Haden Church brings a certain humanness to the brute Sandman. and Topher Grace my God! This kid blew me away. You would never expect him to be a villain like this, but he's perfect for this role. I can't see anyone else playing it as good. He's come along way. Look for him at next year's MTV movie awards. 
All in all my faith in sequels is being redeemed somewhat. I just have to make sure that its not only the movie's name that stays the same. But also the director (Sam Raimi), the writers (Sargent and Raimi) , the stars (Maguire, Dunst, Franco), and the right actors (Church and Grace) for the right roles. Not the big marketable names essentially, but the right ones. 
All of them do a fantastic job in a movie that has so much considerable range. Notice how they will pull a simple doorknob gag after a mind-blowing special effects sequence or take the time to watch Dunst sing or introduce a French maitre-di fully. Throughout the movie I felt I was watching seasoned veterans do what they do best.