Tag: Aaron Eckhart

The Academy loves them some nostalgia. That is the only way I can explain why they continually love Clint Eastwood directed films. They elevates the okay American Sniper, and now there is wind out there that they will elevate Sully as well.

I didn’t want to see Sully, honestly. I just didn’t care. I don’t care who was involved, it was a story that didn’t feel like it should be a movie. A guy landed a plane in the water, no one died. Shit, didn’t they make Flight just to sort of go off the good will of the Sully situation?

Yes, this film just seemed like a combination of Flight plus Captain Phillips. You know, plane crash landing, but true story with Tom Hanks.

Yep, plane, water, crashing, it is all there.

Did you hear about the plane that went down? Which one? Oh, the one in January of 2009, that left LaGuardia and crash landed in the Hudson River after it ran into some birds and lost both of its engines. It couldn’t make it back to an airport, despite being NYC an close to about a dozen of them, so the pilot just knew he had to glide it down into the Hudson River. Some people came and rescued them quickly, none of the passengers or staff died. And everyone left happy, giving us a movie!

Just kidding. Some people were angry.

Sully (Tom Hanks) is a long flying pilot, who did what he thought he needed to do. He flew in a war, he was a crop duster, the typical stuff, and he has survived many hard situations, and he survived this one as well. Now the guys in charge are saying he had time to get to a couple different airport and needlessly endangered lives on a hunch. They have computer and other pilot situations! Looks like Sully is fucked. Unless he…isn’t fucked!

Aaron Eckhart is his mustache wielding co-pilot, and it also features Mike O’Malley, Anna Gunn, and Laura Linney. And other people I recognize as minor passengers, but they aren’t important.

Mustaches tend to raise a rating on average a single point!

Somehow like I imagined, Sully ended up being a very simple movie. It is only an hour and a half and even that seems too long. We get to see the crash from their point of view, from an air traffic controller, from flashbacks from news people, from random passengers. Eastwood literally made this movie 90% about this one event and that is it.

We received two flashbacks from Sully’s youth of other situations and training, but honestly, they drag the movie further. The only other aspect of the movie is a couple scenes of investigation threats, and the final conference involving computer and pilot simulations.

My biggest beef with the film is obviously the point of the movie. It is about a true event, technically not a super heroic landing all things considered, and it feels too long at only 90 minutes. This maybe should have been a documentary, a 45 minute one, with some re-enactments. That might have been worth my time. The re-enactments for this movie had some intense moments, but that was about all it had going for the movie.

Sure, Hanks’ acting is fine in it (not extraordinary), Eckhart is okay. But there is nothing really worth writing home about. I don’t see why this film is in the awards talk at all. Hell, final scenes ends on a joke, people laughing, and then a fade to black, like a crappy TV sitcom.

My All American is one of those films that came out in 2015 that I just flat out avoided. Football films have been extremely disappointing lately. Heck, for quite a few years I guess. After the extreme disappointment that was When The Game Stands Tall I knew I couldn’t see another one in theaters for some time.

On top of that, Aaron Eckhart has also been equally disappointing, almost entirely, since The Dark Knight. Dude needs to step up his game, I am tired of being let down.

According to IMDB, this movie is actually called Courage. I just have not heard that said about it in any other context, except for it being a big part of a title of one of the many books on this subject. Fucking IMDB, stop being weird.

There is no way this image is not a hand job. Can they show this in a family movie?

This is a true story of course, and of course, some of this is a bit unbelievable.

Despite the billing, it is about Freddie Steinmark (Finn Wittrock), a boy with a lot of heart. But you knew that, why else would he get his own movie? He is a smaller guy, like Rudy, sure, but he gives it his all, he is super fast, and smart on the defense. He is a safety, and fantastic. But because of his size, no one gives him a chance. Except for one guy, Coach Royal (Aaron Eckhart), at the University of Texas. The Longhorns.

He sees his drive. And he also has a friend, Bobby Mitchell (Rett Terrell) who might come by as well. A nice two for one.

Well, sure enough, Freddie becomes their main defensive player. He is on the highlight reels. He is top form. He wants a national championship. And he might be able to force his body to go places no single human body should go. But will he become an All American? That is really what is important. He won’t. Nope. Sorry. But they let you know that one right away.

His parents are played by Michael Reilly Burke and Robin Tunney, girlfriend by Sarah Bolger, and other quarterbacks are played by Juston Street and Donny Boaz.

Holy shit, is everyone on this college football team a guy in their thirties?

Heart. Drive. Inspiration. I already made the Rudy connection, but apparently Steinmark was a bit better than Rudy. Rudy got to play one game, because he was willing to practice so hard and make it his one goal. Steinmark had family support since he was kid to be the very best and it actually showed, despite his size. Steinmark helped championship games get won and rivalries get stomped down.

My All American is better than it has any right to be. It is more or less a by the numbers inspirational sports film. It is PG, it shows mostly just some personal struggle, and it is about an optimist. It has a lot of really easy material to pluck from to get people nostalgic and tearjerking. In fact, by the end it feels like it is trying to hard just to get some cries out. Did I cry? Yes, but only like half of a cry. It didn’t fully get to me, despite giving its best.

The film is also surprisingly well shot. You can generally tell what is going on during the plays, everything looks really nice and you can tell that someone wanted to put their best foot forward for the film. In terms of acting, most of the side characters are understandably average, being reduced to mostly one or two bit players. But Wittrock as our lead was a joy to watch and is the type of lead you want in a sports bio pic like this one.

My All American won’t be for everyone. In fact, I probably won’t watch it ever again unlike what I do almost bimonthly for Remember the Titans. But it was a better effort than recent fair and hopefully means we can get some better football movies in the pipeline soon.

In 2013, our main Doppelganger films were Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. The former was mostly serious with some jokes, the latter, full on action comedy in the middle of summer.

And you know what? I liked both of them. They had their charms and were unique enough from each other that I didn’t mind their similarities. They both worked and did what they needed to do to make an entertaining product.

But the Movie Gods have spoken, and Olympus Has Fallen has a sequel now, London Has Fallen, meaning it must have been the superior film. After all, the best films always get sequels, right?

And that was with Olympus Has Fallen having a shitty president. I could write a whole review on just why his character is stupid, but no one wants me to rant about fiction. The real presidential situation is crazy enough for us to not need that in our movie lives.

In order to take over London, you first must kill its rivers.

Two years before the events of this film (probably before Olympus Has Fallen? Or right after? Who knows), America did something stupid, as they tend to do. Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul) was a weapons dealer in the middle east, and he sold big boomers to lots of bad guys. He was a high target and so we drone striked his ass. Of course we also did it at his daughter’s wedding, during a huge celebration with a bunch of bad guys, but who cares, we got him!

And now, a prime minister in London is dead. He died young in his mid-40’s, with a heart attack over night. So now world leaders from all over are heading to London for his funeral with not a lot of time to plan it out. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is thinking about quitting the secret service, because his wife (Radha Mitchell) is about to give birth and he wants to be there for his kid. The president is still Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart).

Guess what? Terrorists! They had killed the prime minister and set a huge trap throughout London to kill most of the world leaders. This is of course orchestrated over two years by Barkawi, who didn’t die, just all of his family. Joy. Leaders from France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and more all die, but they can’t knock America down. Now Banning has to lead Asher underground and around London, until the bad guys can all be shot and he can be extracted. Barkawi wants Asher, and he wants to execute him live on the internet for the whole world to see.

Returning characters are still played by Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett. Jackie Earle Haley is a dude in the war room, and we have MI-6 agents now to help and hurt, featuring Patrick Kennedy, Colin Salmon, and Charlotte Riley, who happens to be married to Tom Hardy!

I bet if Tom Hardy was here, they would have escaped right away without all the death.

It is clear that London Has Fallen isn’t as good as Olympus. The terrorist attack in the first film was plausible, given enough time, sure. But the terrorist attack in this film was make every police, EMS, service worker a bad guy in disguise (all of which totally end up being Middle Eastern, cheers), and blow the fuck out of every major landmark. Not all of the landmark, just parts, to show they mean business. In fact, all of the world leaders who die seem to die mostly by accident, not by planning.

All of the destruction and wanton death happens early on with the President narrowly escaping each time. And then it just turns into a simple man hunt for him. This is after they contacted the White House and said they would stop killing everyone if they had the president. They obviously didn’t turn him over, and guess what? The random killing stopped anyways. There weren’t later attacks, or more death, so the good news is America didn’t have really any more death on their hands. The bad news is the movie is full of scenes like that. They sound intimidating, seem like they will lead to somewhere and don’t do shit.

I mean, apparently they always wanted to capture the president for a live execution, despite blowing him up, shooting at him and such. The president also seemed to know he was wanted for a public execution, despite not knowing who is behind the attack and not receiving any intel.

The worst part about all of this is the drone strike that started the whole thing. One would imagine that this would bring some sort of discussion about drone strikes, killing civilians and responsibility of America overseas. That would make sense. It did cause this horrible event to happen in London as a response, and America gets away with it scott-free (spoilers?). But no. It ignores it. It doesn’t discuss the morality of any of this. Not only that. NOT. ONLY. THAT. But it ends the damn movie (again, spoilers), with another fucking drone strike to get the bad guy again. Literally. No lessons learned. No sign of change. Just a nice fuck you, it’s America time.

The only scene I really enjoyed was when Banning and MI-6 agents were storming the bad guys base. It was full of long shots and shooting and was well choreographed. Everything else was lack luster.