This review might be a bit biased, as I’m a fan of actor Jim Cummings’ work. I loved The Wolf of Snow Hollow and his brief cameo in Halloween Kills. The moment Francis Galluppi’s Last Stop at Yuma County was released on Apple Films, I bought it. Not even a rental. At 90 minutes, it’s a short crime thriller that fits in well with those late night gems you may come across.
On his way home to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, a Knife Salesman (Cummings) arrives at a gas station in Yuma County, Arizona, only to find that the station’s gas truck is a bit delayed. He decides to wait for the truck in the the gas station’s diner. Additionally, the news on the radio is going around about a recent heist of a nearby bank. Similar to movies such as Legion or Tales From the Crypt Presents : Demon Knight, the Diner makes a great setting for a standoff when the two robbers make an appearance – played by Richard Brake (Barbarian) and Nicolas Logan (I Care a Lot). Can the Knife Salesman and the local waitress, Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue, The House of the Devil) make it through the day and save themselves?
For his first production, Galluppi handled things well, I felt. The shots are evenly paced, well lit and framed in such a way where it doesn’t feel like the camera lingers too much or is too shaky. The strongest part of The Last Stop in Yuma County are the characters. Cummings, Brake, and Logan are the stand outs, but everyone contributes to the story in their way. The film dances between drama and comedy pretty quick, which had me chucking in moments before getting jolted back to reality with the ever changing situation.
If the movie has any kind of drawback, it’s that some of the story’s elements aren’t fully closed up by the time the film ends. It’s not a terrible thing, considering where the focus of the story moves, but a little more closure would have been nice. Outside of that, The Last Stop at Yuma County is worth the watch.
The new film Sully is about several different things.
Most obviously, it’s about what has come to be known as the Miracle on the Hudson. On January 15th, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 had just departed from New York’s LaGuardia Airport when it was struck by a flock of geese. (They say that it was specifically hit by Canadian Geese but I refuse to believe that Canada had anything to do with it.) With both of the engines taken out and believing that he wouldn’t be able to get the plane back to either LaGuardia or an airport in New Jersey, the flight’s plot, Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger (played by Tom Hanks) landed his plane on the Hudson River. Not only did Sullenberger manage to execute a perfect water landing but he also did so without losing a single passenger.
I’m sure that we can all remember that image of that plane sitting on the river with passengers lined up on the wings. We can also remember what a celebrity Sully became in the days following the landing. At a time of national insecurity and cynicism, Sully reminded us that people are still capable of doing great things. It also helped that Sully turned out to be a rather humble and self-effacing man. He didn’t use his new-found fame to host a reality TV show or run for Congress, as many suggested he should. Instead, he wrote a book, raised money for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and appeared in two commercials for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Wisely, Sully opens after the Miracle on the Hudson, with Sully still struggling to come to terms with suddenly being a celebrity. (That said, we do get to see the landing in flashbacks. In fact, we get to see it twice and it’s harrowing. The “Brace! Brace!” chant is pure nightmare fuel.) Tom Hanks plays up Sully’s modesty and his discomfort with suddenly being a hero. Even while the rest of the world celebrates his accomplishment, Sully struggles with self-doubt. Did he make the right decision landing the plane on the Hudson or did he mistakenly endanger the lives of all the passengers and crew members?
A lot of people would probably say, “What does it matter? As long as he succeeded, who cares if he actually had to do it?” Well, it matters to Sully. Some of it is a matter of professional pride. And a lot of it is because the soulless bureaucrats at the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating Sully’s landing. If it’s determined that he could have made it back to airport and that he unnecessarily endangered the lives of everyone on the plane, he could lose his job and his pension. As we see in a few scenes with Sully’s wife (Laura Linney, who is somewhat underused), the Sullenbergers really need that pension.
That brings us to another thing that Sully is about. It’s a celebration of not only individual heroism but individuality itself. The NTSB claims that they have computer-generated recreations that prove Sully had enough time and fuel to return to an airport but, as Sully himself points out, the NTSB has ignored the human element in their recreations. As a result of their obsession with regulation and procedure, the bureaucrats have forgotten that planes are not flown by computers but individuals who have to make split-second decisions.
That’s one of the things that I loved about Sully. In this time when we’re constantly being told that our very future is dependent upon always trusting the bureaucrats and following their rules and regulations, Sully reminds us that the government is only as good as the people who work for it. And, far too often, the people are smug and complacent morons.
(For the record, Sullenberger has said that the real-life hearings were not as confrontational as the ones depicted in the film. However, even taking into account the dramatic license, the overall message still rings true.)
And finally, Sully is a film about what America has become in the wake of 9-11. Just as in real-life, the film’s Sully suffers from PTSD in the days immediately following the Miracle on the Hudson. Even while the rest of the world celebrates him, Sully has nightmares about what could have happened if he hadn’t made the landing. When we watch as Sully’s plane collides with a New York skyscraper, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the horrible images of September 11th. Not only does it drive home what was at stake when Sully made that landing but it also reminds us that, regardless of what some would want us to beg, there are still heroes in the world. Not every story has to end in tragedy. People are still capable of doing great things. Heroism is not dead. With tomorrow being the 15-year anniversary of the day when 3,000 people were murdered in New York, Pennsylvania, and D.C., it’s important to be reminded of that.
Sully is a powerful and crowd-pleasing film. (The normally cynical audience at the Alamo Drafthouse broke into applause at the end of the movie.) Director Clint Eastwood tells this story in a quick, no-nonsense style. During this time of bloated running times, Sully clocks in at 97 minutes and it’s still a million times better than that 150-minute blockbuster you wasted your money on last week. Toss in Tom Hanks at his best and you’ve got one of the best films of the year so far.
Yesterday, I called into work because my asthma was acting up and, in order to pass the time, I watched Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. To be honest, I probably should have just risked having another asthma attack and spent 108 minutes at work, answering the phone. It would have been a more productive use of my day.
Dylan Dog is based (quite loosely) on the same Italian comic book that inspired one of the best Italian horror films of all time, Dellamorte Dellamore. Brandon Routh gives a charisma-free performance as Dylan Dog, a New Orleans-based private investigator who is hired by a mysterious woman (Anita Briem) to investigate the circumstances of her father’s death. It turns out her father was killed by a werewolf and fortunately, Dylan is apparently an expert on New Orleans’ supernatural underground, including the decadent vampires that are led by Taye Diggs (who, seriously, deserves better than this movie.)
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night plays less like a movie and more like a greatest hits collection of other, better movies (and tv shows). We get werewolves and vampires going to war, we get an athletic blonde woman doing karate moves on a bunch of vampires, and we get a lot of casual decadence being committed by vampires who speak with Southern accents that just drip molasses. Now, I love True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the shows that gave me the strength to survive a lot of hard times, and I’ve even got a girlcrush on Kate Beckinsale as a result of Underworld. But I’ve also got all of those wonderful shows on DVD. I can see them whenever I want. I didn’t spend $5.00 to rent Dylan Dog OnDemand just so I could see Dylan become the millionth film hero to walk in slow motion while firing two guns at the same time.
By all accounts, the film’s version of Dylan Dog has very little in common with the comic book version of Dylan Dog. It’s hard for me to say for sure because, while I’ve read and heard a lot about the Dylan Dog comic, I’ve never actually read it. Even if I could get my hands on a copy, it wouldn’t be much help since I’m not exactly fluent in Italian. This is what I assume to be true, strictly based on my own research:
1) The comic book Dylan Dog is a melancholy character who, despite dealing with the supernatural on a regular basis, also suffers from several irrational phobias of his own. The movie’s Dylan Dog is a blank-faced mannequin who utters useless quips and appears, in the tradition of American movie heroes, to have no fear.
2) The comic book Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a Groucho Marx imitator. The American Dylan Dog has an assistant who is a zombie. That assistant is well-played by Sam Huntington and he actually does have a few good moments but it’s still impossible to watch him and not wish he was a Groucho Marx imitator. (In the film’s defence, it appears that the Marx estate took legal action to prevent Groucho’s likeness from being used in the film.)
3) The comic book Dylan Dog lives in London. The movie Dylan Dog lives in New Orleans for absolutely no reason other than these movies always seem to be based in New Orleans. Seriously, New Orleans is one of the most overrated cities in America.
4) Finally, the comic book Dylan Dog is one of the most popular cult heroes in Europe. The movie Dylan Dog is the subject of one of the biggest cinematic flops of 2011.
It’s really hard to know what to say about a film like Dylan Dog other than the fact that it’s really, really bad. In fact, I’m tempted to call it the worst of 2011 so far but, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that title still belongs to The Conspirator. Unlike The Conspirator, Dylan Dog isn’t a pompous film, it’s just a very, very lazy one.
I think the best thin to say in regards to Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is that it might inspire viewers to seek out and watch Dellamorte Dellamore. Now, that’s a film.
Through the Shattered Lens 