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Posts Tagged ‘Tom Hanks’

“ASTEROID CITY”: Eccentricities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 26, 2023| 1 Comment »

Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman

“ASTEROID CITY” My rain: C+ (In theaters)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PB-13

“Asteroid City” may be the most Wes Anderson movie ever.

This is a mixed blessing.

Like his last outing, the fragmented New Yorker magazine parody “The French Dispatch,” this is a meta-heavy concoction that leaves the viewer tickled by its cleverly crafted literary conceits but waiting for some sort of emotional edge to emerge from all the whimsey splattered across the screen.

In the decade since his deliriously amusing and unexpectedly moving “Moonrise Kingdom,  Anderson has cleverly exploited a story-within-a-story format (reaching a high point with “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) but only at the expense of often turning his characters into cartoons rather than people we care about. 

“Asteroid City” begins with a 1955 TV broadcast.  An officious host (Bryan Cranston) informs us that this program (recorded in grainy black-and-white) will take us behind the scenes of the creation of a new dramatic work by one of America’s great playwrights. We see theater legend Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) pecking away at his typewriter, and then the scene shifts to full color.

Now we’re watching Earp’s play, “Asteroid City.”  Except that what we’re seeing is waaaaay too big to be contained by a theater stage.  The yarn unfolds in the middle of a vast desert peppered with cacti and the occasional animated roadrunner. Everything seems to be have been dusted with orange sand and bathed in Day-Glo colors  The town’s buildings (gas station, diner, cabin court) seem real enough, but the Monument Valley-ish buttes in the background look like something out of an elaborate pop-up book.

The plot — to the extent that the film has one — goes like this:  Dozens of travelers (drivers with car problems, a  busload of adolescent science nerds and their chaperone)  are stranded in Asteroid City when an alien spaceship descends over the burg’s main attraction, a meterorite crater. This close encounter of the third kind brings a whole lot of armed soldiers; everything goes into lockdown until the authorities can figure out what to do.

But here’s where the meta comes in:  The characters stuck in Asteroid City periodically wander out of the play and into the black-and-white backstage area; now they are actors discussing their performances or preparing to make their entrances.

It works the other way, too.  At one point Cranston’s narrator stumbles into the full color Asteroid City set, looks panicked and quickly sidesteps his way out of the film frame.

Yeah, clever. But we’ve got to care what happens in Asteroid City to fill in the other half of the equation, and we don’t. There are numerous characters whose stories might be compelling, but Anderson’s off-the-cuff style keeps us at arm’s length.

Still, it sometimes looks as if the entire membership of the Screen Actors Guild was hired for the project:  Jason Schwartzman (as a widowed war photographer on a trip with his brainiac teenage son and a trio of young daughters — like the “Sesame Street” version of Macbeth’s three weird sisters); Scarlett Johansson (as a glamorous but vacuous movie star vacationing with her adolescent daughter), Jeffrey Wright (an Army general),  Tom Hanks (the Schwartzman character’s wealthy father-in-law), Rupert Friend (a singing cowboy on tour with his band).

That’s just scratching the surface.  Look also for Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Bob Balaban, Tilda Swinton, Fisher Stevens, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie and, in an inspired bit of casting I won’t give away here, Jeff Goldblum.

There’s some loopily lovely stuff — periodically a car chase between crooks and cops, guns blazing, rips down main street and out into the distance…apparently they’re on an endless loop. And every now and then a loud boom is accompanied by a mushroom cloud blossoming on the horizon.

But “Asteroid City” is eccentric without ever being truly engaging.

| Robert W. Butler

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“A MAN CALLED OTTO”: Grumpy old man

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“A MAN CALLED OTTO” My rating: B (In theaters)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Marc Foster’s “A Man Called Otto” is a remake of the 2015 Swedish film “A Man Called Ove,” which was based on the international best-seller by Fredrik Backman.

Aside from being set in America instead of Sweden, “Otto” feels like a shot-for-shot copy of the earlier film, with only a few minor variations (a gay character is now trans, an Iranian woman in the European version is Latino this time around).

Both films juggle black comedy and heart-tugging sentiment, both feature a Scrooge-ish fart who in old age discovers a sense of compassion for his fellow man.

Given the overwhelming similarities between the two films, one might reasonably ask the point of a remake. Well, here it is in four words:

Tom Hanks.

Mariana Trevino.

Hanks, among our most affable actors, is cast against type as a dour grinch. A recent widower, Hanks’ Otto fills his days with routine, patrolling the housing estate of which he is de facto manager. He’s continually calling his fellow residents to task for parking improperly, failing to sort their trash, and for just being hopeless morons in general.

Otto, you see is a proudly competent American male (he’s got a garage full of tools for any crisis, and he keeps his 50-year-old Ford humming in tip-top shape). He’s utterly contemptuous of everyone else, an attitude that has only grown stronger in the year since his beloved wife Sonya passed.

Early on we discover that Otto is bent on self-destruction. He’s given suicide a lot of thought, and before the film is over he’ll have tried to off himself with a rope around the neck, with poisonous car exhaust, and with a faceful of buckshot.

But every time he’s ready to do the deed (having laid out plastic sheeting to minimize cleanup) Otto is interrupted by one of his neighbors who needs something of him.

Mariana Trevino, Tom Hanks

Enter Mariana Trevino as Marisol, who moves in across the street with her adorable kids and doofus husband. From his first cranky insult, Marisol has Otto’s number, and over the course of the film she will be the prime mover in his reluctant reclamation (you know Otto’s on the mend when he’s adopted by a stray tomcat…you can’t fool animals).

A Mexican actress with mostly TV credits, Trevino delivers a star turn which should earn her an Oscar nomination. She’s funny, soulful, wise and about as sexy as her pregnant state will allow. And absolutely believable. The complete package.

A good chunk of the film is devoted to the courtship decades earlier of Otto (played as a young man by Truman Hanks — yep, Tom’s kid) and Sonya (Rachel Keller); we learn that the guy has always been socially awkward but that Sonya excelled at drawing out his tender side. If I have a major complaint it’s that I’m not sure I can square the young Otto with the misanthrope he’s become.

But that’s a minor qualm. For the most part “…Otto” works quite well, allowing us to bask in Hanks’ reassuring presence while introducing us to a fresh face who could very well become an audience favorite.

| Robert W. Butler

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“ELVIS”: Glory days

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 24, 2022| 3 Comments »

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley

“ELVIS” My rating: B (Theaters)

159 minutes \ MPAA rating: PG-13

Sixty years on it may be difficult for young people to truly fathom the earth-shaking phenomenon that was Elvis Aaron Presley.

Now, thanks to Biz Luhrmann’s monumental “Elvis,” a new generation can relive the madness and wonder of the early years of rock ‘n’ roll.

At its best “Elvis” is a kinetic fever-dream fantasia on rock’s most enduring icon, with newcomer Austin Butler portraying The King in such convincing style that there are moments when I wasn’t sure if I was watching an actor or old footage of the real man.

At other times the film presents as an overlong saga that bogs down in the unchanging relationship between Elvis and his creator/nemesis, Colonel Tom Parker, played by a prosthetics-heavy Tom Hanks as a sort of mumbling Jabba the Hutt.

Presley’s story is not without controversy. He was a natural performer whose sexual charisma flowed effortlessly, but he also seems to have been lazy, self indulgent and weak willed. He played other people’s songs (did he write any of his hits?) and was accused of hijacking the work of black performers. In latter years he was an addict whose bloated form had to be squeezed into those sequined jumpsuits.

But do not expect a revisionist approach in the screenplay by Luhrmann, Sam Bromell and Craig Pearce. If anything the film is borderline hagiographic (enough so that it carries glowing endorsements from Elvis’ former wife and daughter). What criticism it dishes is aimed squarely at Parker, who boosted his client’s career with brilliant marketing innovations like a Las Vegas residency and satellite concerts while, we’re told, smothering Elvis’ creative impulses through micromanagement.

Remember, this is a Baz Luhrmann movie, one that exploits all the tricks the Australian has perfected over a quarter century of Rococo filmmaking: swooping camera work, insistent rapid-fire editing, variations in film and video stock, animation…the complete contents of Luhrmann’s noggin seem to be splashed across the big screen. It’s such a staggering display that questions and objections fall by the wayside.

“Elvis” works best in its first half, when we get caught up in the giddy, dizzying whirlwind of first-generation rock. We see Elvis as a boy torn between the gutbucket blues he hears in a Mississippi roadhouse and the Gospel celebrations witnessed in a revival tent.

To those fertile elements young Elvis introduced a pelvis-pumping sexual braggadocio. It may have been a calculated act (initially he’s a bit embarrassed by it all), but by God did the girls (and not a few of their mothers) ever respond. These moments are sexy, funny and utterly captivating…after all these jaded years it still seems wholly fresh and original.

“Elvis” is narrated by Colonel Parker…who was neither a colonel nor a Parker but rather a Dutch con artist (he proudly proclaims himself a “Snow Man”) who entered the U.S. illegally and managed to live much of his life off the grid, promoting country music shows. Hanks adopts a near-indecipherable European accent (quite a shock if you’re expecting a good-ol’-boy drawl) that must work its way around an ever-present cigar.

So on top of this being the story of Elvis, we get a heaping helping of Parker apologetics, with the Colonel defending himself from charges that he kept Elvis from realizing his full potential. (For instance, Elvis never realized his dream of a world tour because Parker vetoed the idea. At the time nobody realized that the Colonel didn’t have a passport and couldn’t get one without facing deportation.)

And that’s a problem because Hanks’ Parker is a repellant character. I wanted to spend less time with him and more with Elvis.

More to the point, the Colonel is an unreliable narrator, self-serving and sly. (Luhrmann has fun cinematically name-dropping in the opening scene, referencing Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” as Parker suffers a heart attack in his memorabilia-crammed home — briefly we see that event through the cloudy atmosphere of a snow globe).

Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker

Basically this is a two-character drama. Oh, there are plenty of peripheral characters — Elvis’ parents (Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh), his child bride Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), not to mention fellow musicians like Little Richard (Alton Mason), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh),Sister Rosetta Thorpe (Yola), Hank Snow (David Wenham) and B.B. King (Kevin Harrison Jr.).

But most of these characters are little more than window dressing (or, in the case of the black performers, a way of deflecting charges of cultural appropriation). Aside from Elvis and the Colonel, nobody here seems to have a whole lot of gravitas.

Which means there’s much resting on the young shoulders of Butler. Well, out of costume the kid doesn’t look all that much like Elvis but manages — with the help of makeup and wigs — to absolutely nail Presley’s onstage essence, from the gyrating hips to the slightest cock of his cocky head. Like I said, there are moments — especially a late scene in which an on-his-last-legs King croons “Unchained Melody” to a legion of fans) when Luhrmann seems to be cutting between original Elvis footage from 50 years ago and newly filmed material with Butler. Which is which? Damned if I know.

It’s a high wire act. Butler must suggest the darker side of Elvis, must make a nod to the drugs and women and dissipation without undermining the film’s worshipful attitude toward the man’s capacity to entertain and enchant. In a weird way “Elvis” is as important for what it leaves out as what it keeps in, but through it all Butler somehow keeps this big ship steady through sheer force of his screen persona.

It’s a phenomenal movie debut.

Hanks no doubt captures the essence of the Colonel, but I found myself on edge every time the big creep appears.

So to sum up: Butler is a great Elvis. Luhrmann’s kitchen-sink style mostly proves the perfect way to present the King’s story. But in its final third the film runs out of steam…more importantly, when it’s not recreating one of those iconic concert moments “Elvis” becomes emotionally muted, perhaps the result of the filmmakers’ efforts to present its legendary subject in the best possible light.

It’s not a whitewash, exactly, but it comes close.

| Robert W. Butler

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“FINCH”: Fatherhood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 8, 2021| 1 Comment »

“FINCH” My rating: B (Apple +)

115 minutes | MPAA:PR-13

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks could probably sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

That’s what he does, metaphorically speaking, in “Finch,” a post-apocalyptic science fantasy that is equal parts Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road,” Pixar’s “Wall-E” and Hanks’ “Cast Away.”

If that sounds like an unweildy mashup of unlikely bedfellows…well, it is. But Hanks is such a watchable presence that he makes this one-man show worthwhile.

Fitch (Hanks) lives alone in an industrial bunker beneath the ruins of St. Louis. A decade earlier a sonic flare wiped out modern civilization and left Earth scorched by deadly ultraviolet rays.

Most days Fitch suits up in protective gear to search for supplies. He leaves back in the safety of the bunker the only other living creature in his life, a dog named Goodyear on whom he lavishes affection.

The narrative of Miguel Sapochnik’s feature (the script is by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell) centers first on Finch’s constructing a humanoid-ish robot and programming it to learn more or less like a human child.

This creature, who will eventually name itself Jeff, begins by stuttering static but over time learns to talk (Jeff is voiced by Caleb Landry Jones). It is curious, just like a child, which means that it sometimes gets into trouble.

But it is also loyal to its creator/father and understands that its purpose is to take care of Goodyear should anything happen to Finch. Which seems likely, given the bloody cough he’s developed.

The bulk of the film takes place on the road as Finch loads up Jeff and the pooch into an ancient recreational vehicle in an attempt to outrun the killer storms that are racking the Midwest. They head out West; Finch has it in his head that he’d like to see the Golden Gate Bridge.

There are dangers, both natural and manmade. But “Finch” isn’t so much about reaching a destination as experiencing the possibilities of one’s humanity along the way.

Tom Hanks and “Jeff”

As mentioned earlier, this is pretty much a one-man show. Good thing that man is Hanks, who is able to plumb all sorts of levels without ever pushing too hard, developing his character’s crushing loneliness, his need for companionship, his parental instincts, his fears, his hopes and, finally, his resignation to his fate.

Of course he gets immeasurable help from the designers and animators of Jeff, a creation of metal and plastic that develops a personality before our eyes. I can’t tell you how much of Jeff is puppetry, how much CG, but the results are utterly convincing. Rarely does a human actor get the chance to express a character’s personality through physical performance; it’s rarer still to pull it off with a mechanical contraption.

But that’s what production designer Tom Meyer and his crew have achieved here. Jeff may be all nuts and bolts, but he’s also disarmingly human. This is no small accomplishment.

“Finch” is jammed with improbabilities and explains virtually nothing about Finch’s past or how he came to be in this situation.

But here again Hanks compensates just by being, well, Tom Hanks. His essential “Hank-ness” gently expands to fill the gaps. Watching, we understand that we’re in good hands.

| Robert W. Butler

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“NEWS OF THE WORLD”: Dusty decency

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 24, 2020| 2 Comments »

Helena Zengel, Tom Hanks

“NEWS OF THE WORLD” My rating: B+ (Theaters Christmas Day)

118 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Not merely a celebration of our mythic past, Westerns have usually been a way of looking ahead.

The frontier, settlements, Western expansion, laying rails, driving cattle, overcoming obstacles (be it the weather, Native Americans or outlaws)…these are elements of an inherently optimistic outlook, of a nation on the march.

“News of the World,” though, is that rarest of creatures, the melancholy Western.

While sporting many of the elements of classical oaters (especially John Ford’s “The Searchers”), Paul Greengrass’ effort  is more about loss than a triumphant taming of the wilderness. It is far more concerned with the ache of human suffering and a society in turmoil than in gunplay.

Tom Hanks stars as Jefferson Kidd, a former printer and Confederate officer now living off the back of a horse as he circulates among  Texas towns  to bring his fellow citizens the latest news of 1870.

He’s something of a showman, sporting a black frock coat and spectacles to pore over a stack of recent newspapers, delivering quietly dramatic reports of droughts and floods, plagues and politics.  He’s always on the lookout for human interest stories that connect his listeners to the larger world and its inhabitants (“These are men and women very much like you”). Think of him as a wandering town crier with humanistic tendencies.

It’s a solitary life, at least until he comes across a looted wagon and a hanged man.  Nearby Kidd discovers a white girl (Helena Zengel) — blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles — wearing a fringed buckskin dress.

She speaks no English: papers found nearby identify her as Johanna, who lost her family to a Kiowa war party six years earlier. The kidnapped girl was only recently liberated by soldiers who eradicated her adopted clan. (Orphaned twice, Kidd notes.) The hanged man, her government escort, was a Negro. A handwritten sign on his body announces that blacks are not welcome in the neighborhood.

The only decent thing to do, Kidd concludes, is to bring the girl to an Indian agent who can get her to an aunt and uncle living in south Texas. Of course, government ineptness and the tenor of the times — Indians are hated and feared by the general population — make this a difficult proposition. And so, for the time being, Kidd and the kid become traveling companions (the film was shot in New Mexico and is beautiful without romanticizing the environment).

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“IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD”: Better living through kindness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys

“IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD” My rating: B+ (Opens wide on Nov. 22)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Movie trailers are a hugely effective way of lying. One should always approach them with the same caution brought to political postings on Facebook.

So my tearful response to the trailer for “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” with Tom Hanks as the iconic PBS kiddie show star Fred Rogers, left me wary.  Could the actual movie really be that moving, or would it fall apart in a morass of manipulation and sentimentality?

Good news, Mr. Rogers fans.  “Beautiful Day” sidesteps virtually all the landmines in its path and delivers a funny, touching and uplifting story about a man who was too good to be true.

Fred Rogers was the subject last year of an exhaustive documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”; happily director Marielle Heller (“Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) and screenwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harvester (working from Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire profile of Rogers) don’t turn “Beautiful Day” into another retelling of the famous man’s life. In fact, one could argue that Fred Rogers is a supporting character here.

The film centers on Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a (fictional) investigative journalist whose specialty is digging up dirt on his subjects. He’s tough and analytical and cynical…and appalled when his editor assigns him to write a 500-word piece — essentially a long caption –on Mr. Rogers. (“Play nice,” she urges him.)

He doesn’t want the assignment. His wife Andrea (Susan Kelechi Watson of TV’s “This Is Us”) sees disaster looming: “Please don’t ruin my childhood.”

Lloyd has more than a little baggage from his own childhood.  Early on we see his encounter at a wedding with his father Jerry (Chris Cooper), whom he hasn’t seen for years; it almost immediately devolves into a father-son brawl.

Fifteen years earlier, when Lloyd’s mother became fatally ill, the philandering Jerry abandoned her and his two children. Now Lloyd carries a manhole cover-sized grudge. When Lloyd first interviews Fred Rogers (Hanks) at the Pittsburgh TV station where the show is taped, the evidence of his Oedipal issues is all over his bruised face.

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“THE POST”: Do the right thing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Tom Hanks

“THE POST” My rating: B+ 

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Steven Spielberg’s powers as a storyteller are so secure that not even the miscasting of one of “The Post’s” two leads can do much damage to the narrative.

This sprawling effort — it begins with a firefight in Vietnam and winds down with a firestorm over the Second Amendment — hits the ground running and rarely slows down for a breath. It’s like a Spielberg master class in taking a complicated story and telling it cleanly and efficiently.

And like other major movies about real-world journalism — “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” especially — “The Post” could hardly be more timely.  With a president who shows every indication that he’d love to roll back freedom of the press, this film is so relevant it hurts.

The subject, of course, is the 1971 scandal over the Pentagon Papers.  That massive study, commissioned by LBJ’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looked at American involvement in Vietnam going back to the Truman administration. It revealed that the experts had always known a land war in Vietnam was unwinnable — but had plowed ahead anyway, sacrificing billions of dollars and countless lives on what amounted to political face-saving.

The papers showed that the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public and to Congress so as to continue the war.

McNamara suppressed the study; the public only learned of its existence when one of its authors, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), made an illegal copy of the top secret document and passed it on to The New York Times.

Today  The Washington Post sits at or near the top of American newspapers (thanks to its reporting on the Watergate Scandal in 1972-’73).  But in 1971 The Post was at best a regional paper…and not a very good one.

Its new editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), was pushing it toward greatness, but still felt himself outclassed by the journalistic aces at The Times. He was particularly concerned about rumors that The Times was about to scoop The Post (and every other news outlet) with a major story.

That big story was the Pentagon Papers. No sooner had the first in a series of articles been published than a federal judge — at the behest of the Nixon administration — enjoined The Times from printing additional material.

Bradley’s Post, however, was under no gag order. Working back channels Bradley got his hands on another copy of the papers and prepared to publish even more revelations on the pages of The Post.

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“SULLY”: Mr. Deeds lands an airplane

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Aaron Eckhart, Tom Hanks

Aaron Eckhart, Tom Hanks

“SULLY”  My rating: B  

96 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Clint Eastwood is not a film stylist. No fancy camera angles. No innovative editing. No signature flourishes.
What he is is a terrific and seemingly effortless storyteller, one of the best now making movies.
Exhibit A is “Sully,” Eastwood’s recreation of 2009’s “Miracle on the Hudson,”  in which a crippled jetliner landed on the Hudson River without the loss of one of the 155 souls aboard.
Tom Hanks stars as Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, the 40-year aviation veteran who within seconds of losing both engines to a flock of Canada geese realized a return to La Guardia Airport was impossible…that the only chance of salvation was a water landing.
Todd Komarnicki’s screenplay (based on the memoir by the real Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger) devotes half of the film’s 96-minute running time to the brief flight and the crash itself.  
The near-disaster is experienced from several vantage points (pilots and crew, passengers, first responders, witnesses), with each iteration providing new insights and not a few thrills.
This is absorbing, shocking, logic-defying stuff.
Now we all know that nobody died on US Airways Flight 1549. Still, the film generates tension by revealing that  NTSB investigators were all but prepared to pin the blame on Sully and first mate Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart). (The film takes dramatic license by launching the hearings immediately after the incident; in reality, they came 18 months later.)
Computer simulations suggested that the damaged aircraft could have returned to the airport. Did Sully make a bad call that put everyone on board at risk?

(more…)

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“A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING”: Stranger in a strange land

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 21, 2016| Leave a Comment »

***, Tom Hanks

Alexander Black, Tom Hanks

“A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING” My rating: B+ 

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Tom Tykwer’s “A Hologram for the King” begins with what appears to be a music video.

Tom Hanks, in suit and tie, is moving through a suburban neighborhood singing the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.” As he cover the song’s lyrics — “You may find yourself looking for your large automobile; you may find yourself without a beautiful house, without a beautiful wife…” –those objects of middle-class American happiness and stability vanish in clouds of garish purple smoke.

What the hell kind of movie is this, anyway?

Well, it’s a pretty great one, actually, although its charms are slow in developing.

That musical interlude, it turns out, is a dream that businessman Alan Clay (Hanks) is having while napping on a jet bound for Saudi Arabia. He awakens to find himself in the middle of an Islamic religious ceremony. He’s the only person on board not dressed in white and making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Alan, whose career and marriage both have hit rock bottom, is trying to start over. He’s landed a job with a huge American telecommunications firm and is en route to Saudi Arabia to make a presentation of his firm’s latest technical innovation, a communications system that allows callers to converse with a life-size, three-dimensional hologram of the person on the other end of the line. The Saudi king will personally choose the winning bid; the job will be worth millions.

Being a can-do sort of guy and a born salesman, Alan hopes to reverse his business fortunes. Things aren’t so easily fixed in the marriage department. His ex wife  hates his guts. Mostly Alan feels guilty because he can no longer pay for college for his adoring daughter (Tracey Fairaway), who has dropped out and taken a job waitressing.

From the minute he touches down, things start going wrong. Alan has a killer case of jet lag and keeps missing the shuttle to the city of the future out in the desert where he’s to make his presentation. The Saudi bigwigs with whom he is supposed to meet have made themselves scarce and the three American technicians already on site are working out of a huge tent where there’s no wi-fi, inadequate air conditioning, and nothing to eat.

It’s going to be a disaster. Except that it also may be the greatest experience of Alan Clay’s life.

(more…)

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“BRIDGE OF SPIES”: Cold War, warm heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

‘Bridge of Spies’ by DreamWorks Studios.

“BRIDGE OF SPIES” My rating: B+

142 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

 

Tom Hanks’ singular status as this century’s James Stewart pays off big time in “Bridge of Spies,” Steven Spielberg’s recreation of one of the Cold War’s lesser known stories.

As the real-life James Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer pulled into the world of espionage and international intrigue, Hanks is wry, moving, and astonishingly ethical. He practically oozes bedrock American decency.

Which was precisely what this movie needs.

The screenplay by the Coen Brothers and Matt Charman runs simultaneously on four tracks.

In the first Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested in NYC in 1957 by federal agents. As no lawyer wants to represent him, the Bar Association basically plays spin the bottle — and assigns the job to Donovan.

Jim Donovan believes that every accused person deserves the best defense possible. In fact, he alienates the judge, the feds, and the general public by standing up for his client’s rights and assuming that this is going to be a fair trial when everybody else wants just to go through the motions before sentencing Abel to death.

On a parallel track is the story of Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), a military flyboy recruited for a top-secret project and trained to spy on the U.S.S.R. from a one-man U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.  Alas, on his very first mission in 1960 he’s shot down, fails in an attempt to commit suicide, and falls into the hands of the Commies.

Then there’s the arrest in 1961 of Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), an American grad student studying economics who finds himself trapped on the wrong side of the newly constructed Berlin Wall and vanishes into the labyrinthine East German justice system.

All this comes to a head when Donovan, several years after Abel’s conviction, is dispatched to Berlin in an ex officio capacity to arrange a swap of the Soviet spy for Francis Gary Powers.  And if in the process he can somehow free Fred Pryor from a damp cell, so much the better.

The yarn is so big and dramatic that it seems improbable…yet it happened. (What’s more, a few years later Donovan was dispatched to Cuba to negotiate the release of anti-Communists captured in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.)

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