Captain Phillips

 In early 2009, for the first time since the early 19th century, an American ship was successfully boarded and hijacked by pirates. The Maersk Alabama was only held for a few hours but for four terrifying days the four Somalia pirates held the captain of the Alabama hostage in a small lifeboat. People said it could've been a movie. Hollywood heard them.

Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama is just trying to do his job: get safely to port and deliver his shipping containers to the right people. Muse is just trying to do his...unfortunately his job is hijacking the Maersk Alabama.... and he's a little better at his. After a tense cat and mouse chase on the open sea Muse is successful in securing Captain Phillips' ship...and then the story gets really incredible.

There is a lot of controversy about this film and Captain Phillips behavior prior to the hijacking. For this review I am going to pretend there is none and the movie is accurate...because its just that good. I am not a fan of Paul Greengrass's film style. While all good stories, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and The Green Zone all showed his 'shaky cam' style of shooting. This has really become the new norm for action films (unfortunately in my opinion) but for the tense thriller that Captain Phillips is, there is no better fit. That paired with Tom Hanks best performance in years makes Captain Phillips an irresistible, visceral thriller. Keep the tissues handy for the last scenes.

Gravity

Okay, time to admit something... I love space but it's also one of the things I'm most scared of. It’s like tigers, beautiful, majestic, and far, far away. I honestly had nightmares about floating un-tethered in space when I was a child. So when I saw the trailer for Gravity on the big screen months ago...yeah...I clenched the seat arms and plastered myself into the back of the cushion while my sister looked and laughed at me in disbelief. Now after I've seen it, it was everything I expected breathtaking, beautiful.....terrifying.

 

Dr. Ryan Stone is part of a five man and woman team (headed by Lieutenant Matt Kowalski) who have traveled to space to service the Hubble Telescope. It is her first mission and is understandably extremely nervous. As it turns out, she has good reason to be. A Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite has caused a chain reaction of debris colliding into each other and has resulted in a mass of orbiting, destructive space junk...and it’s headed straight for them. It’s no spoiler alert to say the other three unlucky members of the team die quickly and Dr. Stone and Lt. Kowalski are left alone...in space...with no communication to earth...and it’s a long space walk to the International Space Station.... and that's their only hope.

Gravity is an incredible movie. It has been hailed as setting a new bar in movie making technology, heralded as Oscar worthy, and been undeniably slaughtering competition at the box office. The hype had set the expectations bar high and when I left the theater and realized I hadn't experienced oxygen in a while, I knew it had succeeded in living up to the hype. If you plan on going to the theater this weekend I can understand why you would gravitate to this movie. (Oh come on, I'm allowed one Gravity pun)

Rush

When Hollywood has released racing films in the past I've been less than impressed with the result. We have the absurd frivolousness of Talladega Nights, the ridiculous action packed Fast and Furious, and the animated Cars. Rush something of a mixture of the above. It shows the result of a truly frivolous lifestyle, the physical consequences of a real car wreck, but unlike Cars, it is very much adult.

James Hunt and Nicky Lauda are both great Formula Three racers. Hunt has the guts and instincts to do what is necessary to win while Lauda has the brains and precision. They both want to be Formula One racers...and they both hate each other. Throughout their respective careers their skill increases. While their skill increases so does their rivalry and respect...but so does the risk.

 James Hunt lives his out his philosophy of "The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It's a wonderful way to live. It's the only way to drive." Nicky Lauda feels that "Happiness is the enemy." Both are right and wrong in certain respects. It is good to live with no regrets but if you want to win, sometimes happiness is the enemy. Unfortunately only one of these men learns from the other. Rush is a tragic story that is also at the same time triumphant. And like I said in the beginning, it is also very much adult.