ALL IS LOST: the Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an indie art house near you:



ALL IS LOST (Dir. J.C. Chandor, 2013)

After his last few preachy pleas for relevancy (LIONS FOR LAMBS and THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, which he both produced and directed), Robert Redford has redeemed himself with his role as a man stranded at sea in ALL IS LOST, J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to his directorial debut MARGIN CALL.



Set, as titles tell us, “170 nautical miles from the Sumatra straits” over eight days, the film starts with Redford being awakened on his yacht by water gushing into his cabin. While he was sleeping, his boat had hit a large stray shipping container floating in the Indian Ocean.



Things don't look that bleak at first, as Redford patches up the hole, and bails out the water, but a violent storm that's soon approaching ensures that his boat is in big danger.



Apart from an opening monologue via voice-over concerning last regrets and apologies, we barely hear Redford speak, and we don't get any back story about his character or get any idea where he's going or why. All we can deduce is that he's a smart resourceful guy, who's wealthy enough to own an expensive yacht.



But despite still having a lot of fight left in him, the 77-year old can't seem to get a break as whenever he thinks he's found some breathing space, a few moments of safety, another life threatening predicament rears its head.



It's a very sad scene indeed when his boat completely sinks and our protagonist, who's only credited as “Our Man,” moves to an inflatable raft, with only a few cans of food, some potable water, and several flares to get him by.



Redford is able to head his raft to the shipping lanes, but he finds that it's extremely difficult to get seen by the large passing cargo ships, even when firing off flares. 



Desperate, defeated, sun burned, broken down, and surrounded by sharks, Redford doesn't just drop an f-bomb at one of his lowest moments; he launches it into the heavens, cursing all creation for what looks like will be his ultimate doom.



ALL IS LOST feels longer than its 106 minute running time, but I mean that in a good way, as it's a riveting journey that never drags as it takes us intensely step-by-step through Redford's worsening situation, and wrings every bit of emotion possible out of it.



The ocean here, starkly shot by cinematographers Frank G. De Marco and Peter Zuccarini, is as vast and scary as outer space is in GRAVITY, another 2013 tale of survival under extreme circumstances that shares similar levels of stressful scariness.



In this spare yet engrossing as Hell story, Redford gets off of his Sundance soap box ass, and reminds us how committed and vital an actor he still is.



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Tom Hanks Holds His Own Against Somali Pirates In CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

Opening today at a multiplex near you:


CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

(Dir. Paul Greengrass, 2013)

Tom Hanks’ most vital and powerful film since CAST AWAY dramatizes to great effect the hijacking of the cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama, which made headlines in 2009. 

 

Working from a screenplay by Billy Ray (based on the book “A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea” by the real Captain Phillips and Stephan Talty), Paul Greengrass applies his action thriller skills, honed on other films based on real-life events (BLOODY SUNDAY, UNITED 93) and BOURNE sequels, to the tension-filled material set almost exclusively on the high seas.

I say “almost” because we get a bit of set-up on land with Catherine Keener, as Hank’s wife, driving her husband in their minivan to the airport. We get a little insight into their home-life as they discuss their son’s future with Hanks worrying aloud that “the world is moving fast. It’s not going to be easy for our children.”

Then Hanks is off to sea on a shipping route along the Somali coast, where his worries change considerably as he’s well aware of how dangerous these waters are. Hanks puts his crew through anti-hijacking practice drills to ensure safety measures, but before long they are face to face with the real thing: four armed Somali pirates.

The pirates, led by Barkhad Abdi in an impressive performance for a first-time actor, were able to board by way of hooking a long ladder to the side of the ship, while Hanks has his men hide in the bowels of the engine room. The Captain offers the pirates the $30,000 they have in the ship’s safe, but it’s not enough to satisfy Abdi, who knows that there will be fatal repercussions if he doesn’t return home with much more than that.

The tension mounts when the Navy shows up, with the macho Max Martini as a SEAL negotiator, but unfortunately this marks where the movie begins to feel a bit routine. The film is perhaps 20 minutes too long, drawn out too heavily by a sequence in which snipers target the pirates as they try to make their escape. The sequence drags because we know exactly what’s going to happen and it takes too long to get there.

But despite the electricity of the pacing fading in its last third, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, like Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, is a sure sign that the Oscar-baiting fall movie season has begun. Greengrass’s shaky-cam shot documentary-style production isn’t as good as the visually stunning and awe-inspiring GRAVITY, but it’s a work of genuine quality with Hanks at the top of his game.

It’s obvious why the part of Captain Richard Phillips appealed to the two-time Best Actor Oscar winner – he’s a by-the-book hard working family man, not unlike Hanks himself. After the over the top stunt casting of Hanks as six different characters in Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski’s CLOUD ATLAS last year, it’s a simply a treat to see him as a normal guy, holding his own in abnormal circumstances. Do I smell a third Oscar?

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GRAVITY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Solar System:

GRAVITY (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are our astronaut audience surrogates in Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, the first great movie of the fall season.



After so many overblown sci-fi epics, it’s so refreshing to find a film set in the heavens, on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to be exact, that doesn’t need attacking aliens or big ass asteroids to be scary - the prospect of being stranded, untethered in outer space is terrifying all by itself.

Bullock and Clooney find themselves in this predicament after debris from a destructed Russian satellite hits their space shuttle during their space walk on a Hubble Telescope repair mission. All other crew members were killed, and contact with Houston, represented by the voice of Ed Harris as Mission Control (nice shout-out to Harris’s roles in THE RIGHT STUFF and APOLLO 13) is lost, so there’s just the two Oscar winning A-listers lost in space.

Clooney, cocky and confident as usual, retrieves Bullock after she spins out of control away from the devastation of the accident, and, with the help of thruster packs, they make their way back to the shuttle. Finding that the shuttle’s been totaled and therefore not their ride back home, they then head towards the International Space Station.

Along the way we get a bit of insight into the characters, though less about why Clooney is driven to break the world record for longest spacewalk, and more about why Bullock prefers the quiet of space to life on Earth, i.e. she’s mourning the death of her four year old daughter.

When it comes to 3D, GRAVITY joins Martin Scorsese’s HUGO and Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in the small club of films that make spectacular use of the format. Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Cuarón’s Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN and CHILDREN OF MEN) glide through the spectacularly imagery with an electric energy that will make you feel as weightless as its leads. It's definitely worth the price of admission for the IMAX 3D Experience.


Clooney is his regular charming self, but Bullock acts her ass off. It’s such an impressive and emotionally invested performance that I wouldn’t be surprised if it garnered her another Oscar nomination.

From the point-of-view visor shots from inside of Bullock’s helmet, to the expansive CGI-ed shiny space station surroundings, there’s a lot of immersive imagery in GRAVITY, a lot of technical beauty, but the film’s most amazing feat is how satisfyingly stressful it is.

One fake-out fever dream scene aside that I won’t spoil, the film is heavily grounded in reality with only existing technology available which adds greatly to the film’s frightening grip.

Although it begins with text telling us how unlivable outer space is, recalling Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci fi classic ALIEN’s tagline: “In space nobody can hear you scream,” GRAVITY is not sci-fi. It’s a thriller in which the cold darkness of the great beyond is more terrifying than any made up monster. 



Seeing it will make you feel as if you’re really starring into the void, and when it’s over you’ll be happy to be safe back on Earth. That’s just a few of this bold, amazing, and breath taking movie’s many sensations.

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