Movie Reviews

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back

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  • Title: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
  • IMDb: link

Jack Reacher: Never Go BackTom Cruise seems to have found himself a new action franchise. These movies may not be in league with Mission: Impossible films, but for trashy B-movie action flicks you could do worse than Jack Reacher and it’s sequel. Returning as former Military Police Officer turned hermit Jack Reacher, Cruise is pulled back to Washington when his phone-friend Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) gets herself arrested.

After breaking Major Turner out of prison, Reacher and his new partner search for answers as to who really killed the soldiers under her command and the reason why someone is going to such trouble to hide the truth. Along the way they will also pick-up a teenage girl (Danika Yarosh) who is targeted by the shadowy private military organization (is there any other type?) responsible for framing Turner. Without giving away the reasons for her involvement in the adventure, the subplot does offer a stronger emotional tie to Reacher’s mission the second time around.

The sequel lacks the over-the-top crazy villain Werner Herzog provided in the first film but has plenty of private soldiers for Reacher to take down (sometimes quite brutally) over the film’s two-hour running time.

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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

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  • Title: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
  • IMDb: link

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar ChildrenAdapted from Ransom Riggs‘ novel of the same name, Tim Burton‘s latest tells the story of high school outcast named Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield) who is drawn into a mystical and macabre world following his grandfather’s (Terence Stamp) death as he discovers all the childhood bedtimes stories told to him are actually based on real people and real events just waiting for Jake to find them.

As a film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children features all the trademarks of Burton’s style, although without Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter the movie feels more serious and less madcap than several of the director’s more recent projects. As a story, the movie feels very much like a book (somewhat akwardly) adapted to film. The odd story moves in fits and starts introducing Jake’s life prior to his grandfather’s death, his psychoanalysis, and his journey to England with his father (Chris O’Dowd), before getting down to introducing Miss Peregrine (Eva Green in the role Helena Bonham Carter would usually play) and her unusual students all trapped in a time-loop in a single day during WWII where they are safe from the monsters hunting them.

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The (Not-Quite) Magnificent Seven

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  • Title: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
  • IMDb: link

The Magnificent SevenThe remake of 1960’s The Magnificent Seven starts in much the same manner, with a over-the-top villain (Peter Sarsgaard) threatening the prosperity of a peaceful farming town. Unable to protect themselves a small group (Haley Bennett and Luke Grimes) leave the town looking to hire gunmen with their meager resources. What they find is bounty hunter who helps recruit a motley crew of cowboys and outlaws willing to take on impossible odds for little reward.

There are some important differences between the two films (and not only the fact that the setting is moved from Mexico to a nondescript location somewhere in the Old West). The first is choosing to make the quest personal for one member of seven which changes the climax of the film in ways that aren’t necessarily improvements. As with the other changes (such as the town’s reaction to the outlaws, the makeup of the seven themselves, and a more dramatic tone to the movie), choosing to make the lead character’s choice as much about vengeance as justice is an important distinction. Because of this, and the more dramatic slant to other aspects of the story, the remake lacks the larger rousing heroic scale of the original.

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Sully

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  • Title: Sully
  • IMDb: link

SullyAnointed by the media as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Sully offers the story of pilot Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) whose miraculous water landing of a full-sized passenger plane in the Hudson River was celebrated by the world as a near-impossible feat but questioned heavily by the airline industry. Remarkably, every passenger and crew member survived Sully ditching the plane, but that’s really just where this story gets started.

More analytical than I expected, the screenplay by Todd Komarnicki spends much of its screentime on findings, data, trial strategy, simulations, discussions, and bureaucratic infighting. While this allows director Clint Eastwood to steer well-clear of the film venturing anywhere near the realm of sappy or schmaltzy, it also means much of the movie lacks the emotional impact one would expect. Other than watching his struggle to deal with reluctantly being pulled into the limelight, we don’t learn much about our title character. Although deeper family and drinking issues and are hinted at, the movie’s focus is completely on Sully being the right man in the right spot at right moment and how those few seconds effected the flight and Sully in particular.

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The Light Between Oceans

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  • Title: The Light Between Oceans
  • IMDb: link

The Light Between OceansIn the hands of a less talented cast The Light Between Oceans would be a tedious disaster. Soap opera dressed in drag as high drama, the manipulative tale is made watchable by its choice of leads Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander in what feels very much like a story predestined for Lifetime television. Still, a talented cast can only do so much with the sordid, and extremely predictable, source material.

Adapted from the novel of the same name, Fassbender stars as Tom Sherbourne, a WWI vet who takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on an isolated island. Falling for the daughter of one of the men who hired him for the position, Tom and Isabel’s (Alicia Vikander) life on the island is full of tragedy, but the arrival of a shipwrecked boat promises a new start for the couple. To do so they will make a choice which will not only affect themselves but a woman they have never met (Rachel Weisz) for years to come.

At more than two-hours no amount of pretty (but never quite amazing) scenery or closeups of Vikander and Fassbender can prevent the lull which director Derek Cianfrance can not seem to avoid.

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