Hotshots Movie Reviews
Hotshots Movie Reviews by Dan Culberson
“The Road” More Style than Substance
Dec 2nd
More Style than Substance
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE ROAD is based on the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, it stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, and it is a depressing story about two people traveling on foot to the ocean in the United States after some cataclysmic event has destroyed the world and left hardly any hope for the future.
And if that isn’t depressing enough, along the way they see scenes of extreme destruction and desolation, they see terrible things both natural and as the result of other human beings who are still alive, and they do some terrible things themselves.
The two people are a man and his son, who is about 12 years old, the man believes that it is his job to kill anyone who touches his boy, and everything depends on their reaching the coast, where the man believes that living by the ocean will be better and easier than living inland is.
To set the mood for the audience, in a voice-over narration, the man says, “I think it’s October, but I can’t be sure. I haven’t kept a calendar in years.”
The man has a revolver with him, but it is not so much for protection as it is for some perverse sense of “survival.” He shows his son the two remaining bullets he has left and says, “Two left. One for you and one for me.”
Along the way, we see flashbacks to when the man was living with his wife and she was pregnant with their son, but even these scenes don’t represent happier times for the man, just times of less hardship and despair.
Whenever the man and the boy encounter other people, they usually have to hide from them, because the people are generally gangs of marauders who will take whatever they find that is useful to them and kill anything that isn’t useful. Not only that, but the gangs will also resort to cannibalism in order to have something to eat.
The man tells the boy that the two of them are the “good guys” and that they always will be no matter what happens to them. He says that they both carry the fire inside them, the desire to be good which makes them the good guys.
THE ROAD is more style than substance, and even the style is depressing.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Blind Side” Watch Your Blind Side
Nov 25th
Watch Your Blind Side
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE BLIND SIDE tells the true-life story of how Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher was a homeless teenager who was taken in by a wealthy Memphis family and helped to get into college.
Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the woman who was the driving force behind this remarkable story, and she gives a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination and could just as easily win next year for Best Actress.
Tim McGraw plays Sean Tuohy, Leigh Anne’s husband, and one night the family is out driving in the rain when they spot Michael walking along the road. Leigh Anne’s two children know who he is, because he attends the same school they do, and so Leigh Anne makes Sean stop, and she gets out to ask Michael if he has a place to stay that night, adding, “Don’t you lie to me.”
As Sean and his son and daughter watch, Sean says, “I’ve seen that look many times. She’s about to get her way.”
So, the Tuohys take “Big Mike,” as he is called at school, home with them and let him sleep overnight on the couch, which leads to a much longer relationship and the basis for this heartwarming, inspirational, and tearful movie.
Because of Big Mike’s size, he is a natural to try out for the school’s football team, but he is not a natural at playing the game, and some of the humor in the story comes from the scenes of coaching and working with the Tuohy’s son, Sean Jr., who knows the game, but is too small himself to play.
However, it is Leigh Anne who teaches Michael the fundamental reason for playing left offensive tackle, which is the basis for the title of the film. She says that Michael has to protect the quarterback’s blind side from an onrushing defensive player and that he should think of the quarterback as he does his new family: When he is protecting the quarterback, he is protecting them.
Everybody in the family pitches in to help Michael with his grades, too, so that he can remain eligible to play, and Leigh Anne even hires a tutor for him to help him get a scholarship for college.
THE BLIND SIDE is so good that you will need to watch your own emotional blind side.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Pirate Radio” Will Never Sink
Nov 18th
Will Never Sink
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
PIRATE RADIO is based on the fact that back in the Sixties the British government–meaning “the Establishment”–didn’t approve of rock ‘n’ roll music, and so it wasn’t allowed to be played on traditional radio stations.
As a result of that ban, “pirate” radio stations developed, some even broadcast from ships anchored off the coast of Great Britain and thus outside the law and safe from the long arm of the Establishment. This is one story, which takes place in 1966.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays The Count, an American disc jockey on one such ship in the North Sea playing rock ‘n’ roll music 24 hours a day to an enthusiastic audience, one of whom isn’t Sir Alistair Dormandy, played by Kenneth Branagh, a government official who spends his time in the film trying to shut down the radio station by the end of the year.
This causes the following response: “They can’t shut us down. We’re pirates!”
There is one woman on board, Felicity, but that is okay, because she is a lesbian, or as one character says, she is “of the lesbionic tendency.”
Serving as the catalyst to the story is Carl, a young 18-year-old lad who has been kicked out of school and sent into the care of his godfather, Quentin, who owns the pirate-radio ship and is also in charge of running it.
Carl’s father had sex with his mum and then left without leaving his name or address, and the search for the identity of Carl’s father is a subplot of the film.
Now, you might think that life aboard a ship would be cramped in terms of a story, but we have many colorful characters, and occasionally Quentin arranges for adoring female fans to be brought aboard in order to meet their favorite deejays–if you know what I mean.
Also, the music might not be historically accurate, but it is great nonetheless.
One disc jockey even gets married, which allows his wife to come live aboard with him, but that causes more problems than he bargained for.
The film doesn’t exactly have a TITANIC ending, but it might be the only time that the expression “rock ‘n’ roll” brings tears to your eyes and a smile to your lips.
PIRATE RADIO also shows that rock ‘n’ roll will never sink.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
