Posts tagged prison
“Flight” Features a “Junior Birdman”
Nov 10th
“Junior Birdman”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Flight stars Denzel Washington as a commercial airline pilot with more problems than just flying and landing the airliner on time.
Right away at the beginning of the movie we know that Captain Whip Whitaker is not who he pretends to be. But, Man, does Denzel Washington look mighty fine in his captain’s uniform as he walks through the airport to take command of his airplane.
The flight is from Orlando, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia, and right after he sits down in the pilot’s chair in the cockpit, Whip starts acting a bit unusual and different from how we would want our pilot to act.
He takes a couple of hits of oxygen before taking off and asks the copilot if he would like a hit.
Then when they encounter some turbulence, Whip personally goes back into the cabin to reassure the passengers, and he tells them that there won’t be any service of beverages for safety reasons, but as he is telling the passengers and crew this, he is fixing himself a glass of orange juice and vodka out of sight from everyone.
Back in his pilot’s seat, Whip suddenly experiences what appears to be a mechanical failure, and the airliner goes into an uncontrollable nose dive in what is one of the most harrowing scenes about an airplane you will ever see.
Miraculously, Whip manages to roll the airliner upside down in order to get control back, and he then glides the airplane to a soft landing in an open field, and only six people of the 102 aboard die.
Captain Whitaker is called a hero, but a required investigation into the accident turns up some evidence that could damage his reputation and career and even send him to prison.
The rest of the movie is about that investigation, and John Goodman and Don Cheadle show up in important roles in the story.
Also, Whip gets involved with a woman who distracts him from his problem at hand: staying sober and getting through the investigation with his reputation and career intact.
This is a very serious movie, but I couldn’t help being reminded of the lyrics to an old song called “Junior Birdman” and flying “upside down!”
Flight is an excellent film about difficult subjects, and we should hope we never experience any of them firsthand.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Snow White and the Huntsman” an Expensive Piece of Nothing
Jun 9th
“Expensive Piece of Nothing”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Snow White and the Huntsman is the second movie about Snow White to come out in two months, and the title indicates that Hollywood is running out of variations on how to make each one different.
Instead, the filmmakers should be concerned about how to make each one better, because this one isn’t.
This time, the evil Queen is played by Charlize Theron, and she even gets a name, Ravenna.
The Huntsman is played by Chris Hemsworth, whom you will recognize as the actor playing Thor in some other action movies, but he doesn’t get a name, just a back story.
And the grownup Snow White is played by Kristen Stewart, whom you will recognize from a lot of other movies.
Once again, we see how it all began, and after Ravenna becomes the stepmother of young Snow White, Ravenna tells her, “I could never take your mother’s place.”
And once again, Snow White is placed in prison by the Queen, high up in the north tower of the castle.
My comment was “Boring!” even before the movie got one-third of the way through.
So, the variation this time is not that the Queen has the Huntsman take Snow White out into the woods to kill her, but Snow White escapes from the castle and the Queen has the Huntsman go into the woods to find Snow White and bring her back.
Now, Charlize Theron chews the scenery as Ravenna, the evil Queen, and that is not easy to do when the scenery is made out of stone walls.
By this time the movie has become a swords and sorcery story, and the woods contain all sorts of menacing things and even a monster.
Finally! About two-thirds of the way through, the dwarfs show up, but right away you notice that there is something strange about them, and the camera doesn’t stay on all of them long enough for you to count them.
Sure enough, you were right, and later in the story an explanation solves the mystery.
Another weird thing about the dwarfs, however, is that you get the nagging feeling that when they are shown in closeup, you think that you recognize the actors playing them, but those actors aren’t actual little people.
Snow White and the Huntsman is an expensive piece of a nothing movie.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”