Movie Review - Manchester by the Sea

I haven't been to too many movies lately because Hollywood is putting out too much crap. Also, the local theater is a hang out for young thugs so it has to be a good movie for me to go see it.

 Manchester by the Sea is a small town in Massachusetts on the coast and a little north of Boston. It's not quite to Gloucester but along the way there. I'm familiar with the area as I went to college in Boston and used to scuba dive off of Cape Ann. Enough of the personal history.....

Let me be straight up about this movie - it is NOT a feel good movie. It is a movie about personal tragedy and dealing with loss. as the trailers will tell you, Casey Affleck's character is called back to his hometown to become the guardian of his 15 year old nephew. The movie uses a series of flashbacks to tell you how he came to leave home and what happened to his brother. Some may say that the acting is stilted but to me it seemed that the characters acted exactly the way I would expect real people to. Because of that, the pace is a little slow and much of the emotional interplay is done with facial expressions and body language than dialog.

While the area can be picturesque, the story takes place in winter when the scenery is bleak and trees are bare which adds a depressing note to an already sad story line. The  characters are realistic. They do not live in chrome and glass beachfront houses but in wood frame mid century cookie cutter houses furnished with second hand furniture and cheap paneling. They are clearly people stuck in the low middle class who have little hope of improving circumstances who have to deal with real problems.

I think selecting Affleck was an excellent casting choice. He fits the part well and got a Golden globe nomination for Best Actor. Michelle Williams also got a Best Supporting Actress nomination but she was only on screen for less than 10 minutes out of a 2 hour movie so I thinks that is a stretch.

If you can handle a depressing movie with a good story line and decent acting, you may want to catch this one.

Submarine History

I was browsing Amazon videos looking for something interesting when I found something titled History Rediscovered - Submarines at War. It turned out that it was a compilation of several post war US Navy films. The first was about submarine action in the Pacific and was titled Now it Can be told. The next one, and the most interesting IMO, was actual footage of the capture of U-505 by Dan Gallery. It was produced as part of a morale boosting program for workers in the shipyards. The next two were about post war submarine training and the beginning of the nuclear program.

The quality was a little rough and the narration was overly patriotic and corny. Actual war footage is edited with movie segments. (If you are a WW II movie buff you will recognize some of the scenes) and the special effects are typical of the era. But if you are interested in submarines, its worth the effort to find this and take a look.

Movie Review - Phantom

This is an obscure movie starring Ed Harris, William Fichtner and David Duchovny. It was released in 2013 and never did well at the box office. I found while I was browsing on Netflix. Ed Harris plays an over the hill Russian submarine captain who is given one last command. His boat is carrying a secret device and a couple of KGB men to operate it. It turns out that the device is a cloaking device that can make his submarine sound like any other vessel on the water and the KGB men have plans that are outside of the captains orders.

The movie was filmed in a real submarine so you get a true feel for the cramped nature of the boat. It must have made filming a real pain in the butt. To their credit, the actors do not try to put on fake Russian accents and the dialog is in US military vernacular which makes things understandable and more realistic.

If you like submarine adventures, it's worth a quick hunt to find this.

Movie Review - Emperor

Tommy Lee Jones as MacArthur. That's gotta be good. Unfortunately, he only had about 15 minutes of screen time during the entire movie and I had to spend my time watching Matthew Fox wander around like a refugee from the "Lost" set. I had expected to see a movie about MacArthur's relationship with the Japanese Emperor during the occupation. What I got was a bad characterization, and not a historically accurate one either, of Gen Bonner Fellers. Gen Fellers was on MacArthur's staff and was charged with investigating the emperor for war crimes. This opened up the opportunity for some dialog accusing the west of being as big an imperialist power as Japan. And, of course, Gen Fellers had a romantic relationship with a Japanese girl before the war and he used his office to try to find her. His investigation culminated with a description of the attempted coup by the militarists once they learned that the Emperor had made a recording about surrendering to the Americans. This was shown as proof enough that the Emperor had resisted the militarists and was therefore not guilty of war crimes.

The actual history, of course, is more complicated. The government had done several studies on Japanese culture during the war that underscored the need to keep the Emperor in place as a pacifying influence on the population. Keeping him was a central part of the occupation planning.

I can't recommend this movie, even if it does have Tommy Lee Jones. It's not a good love story, it's not historically accurate and Fox is not a good actor.

Movie Review - Killing Season

DeNiro. Travolta. One on one shoot 'em up. Should be good, I'm thinking. But I thought wrong. Travolta spends the entire movie with a fake Serbian accent that makes you think he has rocks in his mouth. He was barely understandable. He, oh so realistically, tracks down a man (DeNiro) who shot him during the war and seeks his revenge....in the USA, of course. DeNiro plays a hermit army officer who is guilty of war crimes (against Travolta). Of course, no US soldiers participated in the Bosnian war and the idea that a member of a known Serbian death squad could get into the US is mind boggling.

They spend most of the movie alternately hunting and torturing each other and each one manages to let the other escape so that the games can continue. I only paid $7 to see this in streaming mode from Amazon. Don't pay any more than that to see it.

An Education in the Classics

The other day my son and his wife had to go to a wake so we kept the grandsons for dinner. It was a slow TV night but I noticed that the Turner Classic channel had "Fobidden Planet". You know. The movie with Robbie the Robot and a sound track that was all electronic sounds. Made in 1953, it was one of my favorites as a kid.

I thought the boys might find the special effects a little hokey since they were brought up on CGI but after about 15 minutes in to the movie, the 12 year old turned to me and said, "This is a good movie, Grandpa."

Now the challenge is to find another SF classic. What about "The Day The Earth Stood Still"? Any others?

Margin Call

I rented this movie because it had Kevin Spacey as one of the stars. He always does quirky stuff and sometimes its good. This happened to be one of those times. Other stars in the cast included Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons. The movie was the first major film by director/writer J.C. Chandor.


The movie opens with Tucci's character, the head of the risk management department, being fired during a general personnel purge at the investment firm where he works. If you have never seen the process in action, this was a realistic representation - cold, quick and brutal. As he walks out the door, he hands a memory stick to a young colleague and warns him that it may contain dangerous stuff. The young trader spends the night figuring out the risk model and realizes that it spells doom for the company. He sounds the alert. This kicks off an all night session with top management to try to reduce the damage to the firm while knowing that the economy in general will be heading down the tubes.

The appeal of the film is in the reactions of the various characters to the impending economic doom while they struggle with moral and ethical issues in the face of extreme financial losses. If you liked Glengarry Glen Ross, you will like this film.

While this film did not cause box office raves, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing/Screenplay as well as several other awards including an Independent Spirit Award. If you see this movie on the hotel or airline movie list, be sure to see it.

Red Tails

My wife was giving a bridal shower for one of our nieces on Saturday so I did the manly thing - I got out of the house and went to see a war movie. Red Tails had been in the press because of George Lucas' problem getting funding for this movie. It was also about an interesting part of WW II history. I expected there to be technical inaccuracies and exaggerations but, since it was Lucas, I figured the action scenes would be good. In a word, I was disappointed.

Except for the fact that he used black actors in airplanes, this movie could have been any generic war movie. It had all the usual suspects, cliches and caricatures. There was the flawed, self doubting flight leader, the cocky pilot who ignores orders, the religeous kid seeking acceptance. And they threw in a romantic side story for good effect. You knew within the first 10 minutes who was going to live and who was going to die because you have seen this 100 times. Lucas had an excellent opportunity to tell the story of a unique piece of Black American history and he blew it. (FYI, each service had black units. The Army had the 761st Tank Battalion and the Navy had USS Mason (DE-529). All of these units had distinguished records)

IMHO, Lucas had touble getting funding because the movie was mediocre. Save your money and give this movie a pass.

Movie Critique - Get Low

I like Robert Duvall. I like any movie he has been in. He has been acting since 1956 and you can find him anywhere. But his latest movie, Get Low, is one of his best. He plays a hermit that decides to have a "funeral party" that he can attend while he is still alive. As the plot unrolls, you find that he is a much more complex person than you first thought and he had a deep reason for his self imposed exile. His funeral party is the way he has chosen to seek redemption for his past.

Some reviews claim that this movie is a comedy. It is definitely NOT a comedy but a drama with some humerous moments.

If you're a Bill Murray fan, he does a fine job of portraying the greedy funeral director who hopes to make big bucks off of the party. The key roles are rounded out with Lucas Black who always seems to be cast as the county bumpkin and Sissy Spacek playing an old love interest to Duvall's character.

According the IMDB, the movie cost $7,500,000 to make and has grossed a little under $10 mil - not a box office hit. It has been nominated for a couple of low level awards but not any big ones. In short, this is a movie that has missed box office acclaim but is well worth seeing. Check your cable company to see if it's playing or get the DVD when it comes out.