Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“Silver Linings Playbook” Contrived and Over the Top
Feb 6th
“Contrived and Over the Top”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Silver Linings Playbook has already won some awards and will likely win more, but some of you might be disappointed in this so-called “dramedy” about two troubled souls.
Bradley Cooper stars as Pat, he is in a psychiatric facility in Baltimore, where he has been ordered to stay by a judge after Pat went home, found his wife Nikki in the shower with another man, and went berserk, which is now referred to as “the incident.”
While there, Pat has been diagnosed as being bipolar with mood swings, but we see him on the phone talking to someone, and he says, “I’m better now, and I hope you are, too.”
After being in the facility eight months, Pat’s mother takes him out and drives him back home to Philadelphia, where Pat will now live with her and his father, played by Robert De Niro.
You see, Nikki has left Pat, sold their home, and now has a restraining order against him, but Pat plans to get in shape, get his old job back as a substitute history teacher, and get Nikki back, too.
Pat’s mother tells him that she didn’t tell his father that she was bringing Pat home and to take things easy, because his father lost his job and is now a small-time bookie, who is also a fanatic obsessed with the Philadelphia Eagles professional football team.
In fact, Pat’s father is such a fanatic that he had his own “incident” in the past and is now banned from ever attending another Eagles home game.
Meanwhile, Pat is invited to Sunday dinner by his friend Ron, who is married to Nikki’s friend, Veronica, they just had a baby, and Ron is feeling crushed.
Veronica’s sister, Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is also at the dinner, and she has problems of her own, having recently lost both her husband and her job. Her husband was a policeman who was killed on duty, and she lost her job for reasons I won’t go into here.
Well, you can guess that Pat and Tiffany will have a troubled relationship, that they will have many obstacles to overcome, but not that the climax is a big dance contest, which substitutes for the Big Game at the end of many movies.
Silver Linings Playbook is too contrived and over the top.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Rust and Bone” Is French Murkiness
Jan 29th
“French Murkiness”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Rust and Bone is a French film, and sometimes that is all that needs to be said, but in this case that describes only half of it.
It stars Marion Cotillard, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 2007 La Vie en Rose, in which she portrayed French songstress Edith Piaf.
In this film, she plays an orca trainer at a Marineland in the south of France who has a tragic accident.
When the film opens, we see a man named Ali traveling with his five-year-old son, Sam, on a train to southern France.
Once they arrive, they go to his sister’s house, whom he hasn’t seen in five years, where she is living with another man, Richard.
When Anna gets home from work as a store clerk, Richard says to her, “Some reunion. Not kissing your brother?”
We don’t know the reason that Ali and Sam have moved to stay with Anna and Richard, but it could very well be that Ali has fallen on hard times.
Ali gets a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, and one night he meets Stephanie, rescuing her from a fight and afterwards taking her back to her home, where he treats his bloodied hands by putting them in ice.
Then Stephanie has an accident where she works at Marineland, and she loses both her legs below the knees.
About four months later, she calls Ali, and he comes to visit her. She now gets around by a wheelchair, and Ali takes her out to the beach, where he goes swimming and convinces her to go swimming, too.
So, the rest of the film is about the growing relationship between these two people. She is physically crippled, and he is emotionally crippled.
Ali changes jobs, and eventually he makes extra money by fighting in underground kickboxing fights, which he is successful at and which fascinates Stephanie.
Stephanie gets some artificial legs and is able to get around more easily, but Ali gets into trouble where he is working as a security guard, and he has to leave town.
However, even though Cotillard has received praise for this film, you might ask what the point is, especially with the phony ending.
Rust and Bone might be to your liking, or you might think it is just French murkiness.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Zero Dark Thirty” Deserves All the Awards It Receives
Jan 19th
“All the Awards It Receives”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Zero Dark Thirty is the fascinating story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden by the C.I.A. and the attack by SEAL Team 6 on his compound in Pakistan which ended with his death.
It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously directed the 2009 The Hurt Locker, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and for which Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director, the first time a woman had ever won that award.
That feat could easily be duplicated with this outstanding film.
The title refers to 30 minutes after midnight, and Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, based on the real C.I.A. agent who was most responsible for the work it took to track down and locate where bin Laden was hiding almost 10 years after the attack and destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Chastain has already won an award for this role and most likely will win many more awards for her outstanding acting in this film.
We see Maya at a so-called “black site,” where she is observing the “enhanced interrogation” of a detainee, which is being conducted by Dan, a fellow agent.
Dan tells the detainee, “When you lie to me, I hurt you.”
And Dan does, which is a bit ingenuous, because how can you tell that a person is lying when such interrogation tactics are being used on him?
Maya is based in Pakistan, and we learn that she didn’t volunteer for this assignment to track down bin Laden, but she was appointed to it because Washington believes she is a “killer” at her job.
While we watch Maya and her colleagues gather the evidence they need in order to uncover the whereabouts of their target, we also see the terrorist attacks around the world that occurred during those years, which were attributed to al Qaida, if not to bin Laden himself.
Maya concentrates her search on one man, Abu Ahmed, whom she believes to be the courier for bin Laden, and time is lost over a confusion brought about by his name.
In fact, Arab names are confusing and hard to understand by westerners, including those in the audience.
Familiar actors also appear in the film, but Chastain stands out.
Zero Dark Thirty deserves all the awards it receives.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”