Adrift is a fairly well done survivor movie, made more gripping for its true-life muse. It is based on a couple who survived over 40 days on a small sailboat, meandering through the Pacific Ocean after a hurricane left the boat crippled. The story’s present and past is told concurrently, where we see the couple striving to survive, but also how they met, fell in love, and started their adventure. The film is good, though maybe not necessarily great, but the saving grace is the Shailene Woodley in the lead female role. The character is vulnerable yet strong, with Woodley getting to show off her acting chops, and you can’t help but root for her to make it out alive, against impossible odds. A good date movie.
Another one with an outstanding female lead is the heralded I, Tonya, the story of Tonya Harding. From the first few minutes, the film makes it clear that this is not just her narrative, and it does a great job of giving everyone their say (except Nancy Kerrigan, whose depiction is strangely absent). Like most people, I had a cursory knowledge of Harding’s involvement on the attack on Kerrigan before the ’94 Olympics, but I didn’t know the whole story, or anything about Harding’s upbringing. This film shows it all, and holds nothing back. It shows Harding and all of her warts, but does ultimately depict her as a tragic figure who tries again and again to overcome the odds stacked against her, such as her abusive mother and husband, an absent father, and her fight against judges who didn’t want to see her succeed because she was a redneck and not polished like the other figure skaters. Again, you really want Tonya to triumph, though as we all know, that was not to be her destiny. Margot Robbie is absolutely brilliant as Tonya (Oscar nominated), as was Allison Janney as her vile mother (Oscar winning).
A Wrinkle in Time is beautiful, visually stunning, and a mess. Even for a children’s movie, the dialogue is laughably bad, the plot paper-thin, and the only thing keeping the film going is the visuals. Based on the classic book (which I’ve never read), it is about a couple kids who go in search for their father who disappeared a few years earlier. The dad was a scientist who was researching traveling through space in an instant, and apparently it worked, sending him light years away. The kids are aided by some good powers and opposed by an evil one, called simply “it”. I just finished reading the book The Wizard of Oz, and this film reminding me a little of that one, where plot points jump around with less flow than you see in modern films, but Wrinkle lacks the magic of that classic film.
A few years ago I watched Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop and wrote that it was basically Taken on a plane, and while it got bad reviews, I enjoyed it. I thought The Commuter would be Taken on a train, but this one is far less fun. He plays a former cop-turned-insurance salesman who commutes to work, every day for 10 years, but has just lost his job. On his way home from being fired, he is approached by a woman offering $100k to identify a single person on the train for her. He must do so before the last stop when the target will be exiting. If he does it, he gets the movie, but if he doesn’t, his family will be killed. Putting aside the wildly implausible plot, this movie never does find traction. Neeson goes up and down the train interviewing passengers he doesn’t know (he knows many of the regulars all ready), gets in fights, and causes a big stir, and yet all the other passengers just go with the flow, even when people start showing up dead. Eye-rollingly bad.
Not quite as bad, but not nearly good, is 12 Strong, a war film based on a team of elite soldiers sent to Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of September 11. The group find themselves relying on Afghan soldiers on the ground to teach them the terrain and guide them to the Taliban, comrades in arms who the Americans aren’t sure they can trust. The film features a great cast of some of my favorites, including Michael Shannon and Michael Pena, with unheralded Chris Hemsworth leading them. Unfortunately the talent can’t save this boring war flick. The story is simple and thinly plotted, the battle scenes are uninspired, the dialogue is bland and tedious, and the attempts at brevity would only find laughs among the 75+ crowd. Even die hard war buff films like myself will find little to enjoy here.
Jons Movie Takes 