Argo
This is one of the best movies I have seen in a long, long time. I’m no Affleck fan – though I did enjoy him in Bounce – I usually find him wooden, as though every facial muscle has been botoxed, nothing moves. However I went into this knowing there was a great supporting cast and an interesting story so I wasn’t so worried about that. Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber.. these were all great performances. Bryan Cranston continues to amaze with his talent to completely vanish inside the character he is playing.
I personally would have suggested Affleck focus on the directing and find someone to play the main role that was not himself. However it worked quite well in this case. I guess the character he was playing needed to be pretty unflappable and wooden plays as unflappable nicely. Regardless he did an incredible job of directing this movie. It was a rollercoaster ride of awesomeness.
One of the best things about this movie in my opinion is the travelling back in time – things like stewardess uniforms, eyeglass frames, clothes, furniture, cars, hairstyles.. all of it looked like it jumped directly out of 1979 onto the screen.
This movie was fantastic and I highly recommend it. 6 thumbs up from Snoskred! :) Click here for the IMDB listing.
Flight
Any movie that involves a plane as one of the major characters, I’m there. Sounds weird when you put it like that, but being an aviation nut the usual thing you see in a movie is a happy jumbo landing at random airport when x character moves away etc. A movie where the story is about something going wrong with a plane and what happens as a result is interesting to me.
When you put that kind of story with someone like Harrison Ford (see Random Hearts) it becomes a movie that whenever I stumble across it on the cable I am glued to the chair, until it ends. Even though there is not so much about the plane in there, it has Harrison Ford and aviator sunglasses, so..
Flight was not another Random Hearts sadly. I don’t think the entire movie is a re-watch. The first half of the movie possibly. The crash sequence is on the edge of your seat stuff and it is extremely well done. However, it goes mucho downhillo from there.
Because the pilot (Denzel Washington) is an alcoholic and takes drugs as well and was under the influence of these while flying and is generally not a nice person, but he was the only person who could possibly have crash landed this plane as well as he did even if he was drunk and high and he meets up with this random woman at the hospital blah blah yadda yadda I have no idea what the rest of this movie was about because my brain drifted off and created a much more fascinating movie.
Where the pilot was not an alcoholic and in fact the movie was not so much about the pilot and his issues as it was about finding out what went wrong with the plane, kind of like a fictional big screen air crash investigations.
I have been reading lately that Denzel Washington is not the nicest of people in real life which may have colored my view of this movie. And contrary to Ben Affleck, Denzel spends much of the movie with a sulky or angry look on his face.
There was a great scene where the night before the NTSB investigation, they put Denzel’s character in a hotel having dried him out and they have emptied the minibar. But did they think to make sure the interlocking door into the next room was locked? No sir, and so Denzel has himself a few drinks drinks the entire contents of the minibar. A condition that can only be fixed with the arrival of a cocaine toting John Goodman (fantastic as always).
On the plus side, it did contain Tamara Tunie usually only seen on Law and Order – SVU – as a flight attendant and she was brilliant as she always is. So for that alone I give it one thumb up. Click here for the IMDB listing.
