Tom Hanks

Apollo 13

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Apollo 13
  • IMDb: link

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Re-released (for the first time in IMAX) to celebrate the film’s 30th Anniversary, director Ron Howard‘s 1995 film based on the real events surrounding the flight of NASA’s Apollo 13 is arguably his best (I’d put it neck-and-neck with the underrated Frost/Nixon.) Casting Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon as the three astronauts whose mission to the moon goes horribly wrong and Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Chris Ellis as those in Mission Control who help bring them home, Apollo 13 is a tense drama where knowing beforehand the ending somehow (despite all logic) doesn’t hurt it’s climactic final act.

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Toy Story

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Toy Story
  • IMDb: link

Re-released in theaters for the film’s 30th Anniversary, Toy Story was never the quintessential film for me that is is for some. While I certainly understand its importance to the company, and thoroughly enjoy the film, the animation is still rough in a couple places (most notably in the human characters) and it lacks the emotional impact to me that both Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 deliver. That said, it’s still a damn fine movie taking us into a world of what happens to a child’s toys once they leave the room. 

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The Phoenician Scheme

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Phoenician Scheme
  • IMDb: link

You know going into a Wes Anderson film it will look great, and in that aspect The Phoenician Scheme doesn’t disappoint. Incredibly designed sets and styles match a wacky tale of a businessman Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) who is of note for two reasons. First, under attack from a shadowy group (which may or may not be tied to the government?) crippling his business by inflating the cost of materials vital to the job’s completion, Korda is attempting to salvage the biggest deal of his career. And second, everyone wants him dead, so much so that unexpected plane crashes due to bombs smuggled onboard his plane are a common occurrence.

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Asteroid City

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Asteroid City
  • IMDb: link

Asteroid City

Writer/director Wes Anderson leans into his quirks and fancies in this 1950s live television production of a play set in the fictional town of Asteroid City. We learn very little about the actors themselves. While most of the events take place in the play itself, characters occasionally break the fourth wall revealing themselves to be the production’s actors and occasionally narration will stop to explain information about the play’s writer Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).

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Charlie Wilson’s War

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Charlie Wilson’s War
  • IMDb: link

“You can teach them to type, but you can’t teach them to grow tits.”

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a junior Congressman from a small district in Texas, did the impossible.  Not only did he spearhead the largest covert war in United States history, but he kept it a secret for years.

Wilson, a member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the only Congressman from a district “who doesn’t want anything,” was in an unique position to change the world while nobody was looking.

After learning about the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, and being cajoled into providing more assistance by a powerful political contributor (Julia Roberts), Wilson with the help of his friends and CIA operative Gust Avrakotots (Philip Seymour Hoffman), over the course of the decade began increasing the money, weapons, and training being put into Afghanistan and began fighting a covert war which only a scant few even knew was taking place.  And we aren’t talking a small increase here; we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

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