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.

Prisoners

Fall brings a lot of things people like. Pumpkins, holidays, and the end of fan favorite, campy, summer films and marks the start of Oscar bait, adult dramas. Prisoners is among the latter...but everyone knows that just because a film tries to be Oscar worthy, doesn't mean that it is.

Keller Dover is a lot of things: He's a family man who loves spending time with his kids, he is a small business owner, he is a religious man who listens to an audio Bible while he drives, and he is something of a doomsday prepper who tries to be prepared for everything...but nothing can prepare him for Thanksgiving. He and his family go to their neighbors the Birches and by the end of the day both the Dovers and the Birches young daughters are taken. The police have a suspect in custody but no physical evidence and time is ticking. Keller Dover knows the suspect is guilty, he heard him admit it, and if the police aren't going to keep him in custody then Keller is going to take things into his own hands.

Prisoners is a dark, grimy, and tense drama full of hard moral questions and terrifying possibilities. Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal give career best performances. Prisoners doesn't just try to be an Oscar movie, it demands recognition. It is a hard movie to watch (my sister had to leave) as it looks unflinchingly at the hard topics of vigilantism and torture. I loved the story but if you're going to check out Prisoners, don't take the R rating lightly.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

YA book to movie adaptations are a dime a dozen now thanks to the enormous success of titles such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and most recently The Hunger Games. But every genre has its run and since the recent adaptations of Beautiful Creatures, The Host, and Percy Jackson floundered to flopped, it feels like this type of movie has seen the last gasps. Maybe The Mortal Instruments and the yet to be released Divergent series will turn that around....but maybe not.

Clary Fray is an ordinary teen living with her mom in New York...sure she draws weird symbols in her sleep and apparently has only one friend in Simon Lewis but her life is fine. Until she goes to a night club and sees a band of mysterious teens apparently stab a young man to death in the middle of the night club....and then realize she's the only one who can see it. Turns out when her mom disappears and she finally hooks up with this group, who really aren't the bad guys, that she is part Shadowhunter. An ancient order of beings descended from the Nephilim (half angel, half human warriors) who's job is to hunt out demons among the mundanes (humans) and apparently keep downworlders (vampires, werewolves, warlocks, witches, and fairies) in order. Complicated plot to say the least...and that is just the beginning....

City of Bones will be compared to every teen flick before it, and mostimes justly. It could probably be called 'The Host of Twilights Games between Beautiful Creatures at Hogwarts' honestly. But just because it came after all of those doesn't mean its not better than most. I can say I only enjoyed two of those referenced more than I enjoyed City of Bones, mainly because this story has teeth. Obviously like most things, the book is better than the movie, but if you like your teen angst movies with a little more blood, a little more darkness, and a little more twistedness (in the story and the relationships) than you will love The City of Bones.

The Butler

Oprah Winfrey rarely attaches her well known name to a feature film. But this Oscar bait film about an African American butler employed in the White House was to tempting to refuse. With a cast studded with names like Forrest Wittaker, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrance Howard, John Cusack, Robin Williams, Leiv Schreiber, and Jane Fonda and the already Oscar buzz I couldn't refuse it either...

                                  

Cecil Gains knows how to serve. As a black man in the early 1900s he isn't given a lot of choice about it but he is good at it and he likes it. Cecil knows as a black man in a white man’s world he should be silent unless spoken to, secretive about his politics, and completely compliant with whatever is asked of him. His good service is recognized by a white house executive while visiting a swank restaurant and Cecil is given the chance of a lifetime: to be a butler at the white house. Cecil of course excepts and is privy to presidents meetings and conversations during some of history’s most memorable civil rights moments including Federal integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Nashville sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panther Party, the Vietnam War, the Nixon Resignation, the Free South Africa Movement, and Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

I can't refuse a true story, or an Oscar bait movie, or a good cast, or a period piece...  The Butler has all of the above. I enjoyed the story of Cecil Gains very much and would quickly watch it again. Unfortunately at the end of the movie history is muddled in the racial politics of Barack Obama's presidential election and the story of an incredible man reads like a campaign message. The Butler is a movie I couldn't refuse, the politics I can.

Paranoia

Paranoia. First off Paranoia is a pretty cool, one word title. Most people in the world are paranoid about one thing or another. Second, Paranoia has a killer cast (Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Liam Hemsworth) and third: Paranoia has an interesting plot about corporate espionage. With all of this going for it, one has to wonder what could go wrong. (Besides how many times it's possible to write the word 'Paranoia' in a review...

Adam Cassidy has no delusions about the world. He knows that hard work, a good education, and a likable personality aren’t enough to succeed in this world. One has to have something, someone can’t refuse. An idea special enough to get recognized. So when he and his associates are shot down pretty quick and then fired while making a presentation to technology guru Nicholas Wyatt of Wyatt Industries he gets a little mad. He and his buddies then go out on the town...on the company card. Wyatt though is a nice guy and is willing to forgive Adam his $16,000 debt. That is, IF Adam is willing to go to work for Jock Goddard, Wyatt's competition, and steal company secrets. Adam is then forced into a battle between giants in the techno world where lies, bribery, and murder is all part of a day’s work.

Every summer you have the lower budget movies that try to compete in the heavily funded Hollywood market. Most times they live up to their budget and are just mediocre movies. 2013 has been the year of the fantastic low budget movies. Movies that I went into with low expectations and then left with a new Top Five Favorite Movies of the Year contender. Movies like The Great Gatsby, Now You See Me, and The Purge. Unfortunately Paranoia fails to continue that trend. It comes so close to delivering the jaw dropping twist but just falls short. I loved the movie right up until the last ten minutes. Then it devolves into a completely blanket, dumb, and unexciting ending. It felt like the writer/director wanted to deliver the knock out left hook but was scared to take the chance…and the movie suffers for it. Paranoia is a movie that could’ve been a homerun, but instead settled for a softer, less risky bunt.