Thoughts on movies, comic books, life, and other nonsense, by someone who should know better
It happens to everyone – we get old and our appeal fades. We see the power we once had exercised by a new generation, and our movies start grossing less and less at the box office. It’s inevitable … but sometimes the natural decline is pushed harder down the slope by our own choices. Case in point, Tom Cruise’s newest movie Jack Reacher: Never Go Back.
If I’d never had Operation Avalanche recommended to me by an old friend, chances are I might never have watched it. I’d seen some promotional materials for it, even read the synopsis early last year before it was released by Lionsgate, but a found-footage conspiracy drama about the faking of the first moon landing just didn’t grab me. Well, cut to January 16, 2017, and I’ve just watched it. There are a few things to like, but it does fall short of being a worthwhile 80 minutes.
Everest, directed by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (Contraband, 2 Guns), and written by William Nicholson (Unbroken) and Simon Beaufoy (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) tells the true story of the ill-fated 1996 attempt to ascend Mount Everest that saw multiple commercial guided tours fall victim to a blizzard during the descent. The movie is based on the book Left For Dead: My Journey Home From Everest by Beck Weathers, a Texan climber who survived the ordeal, but in doing so lost half an arm, all the fingers on the other hand, and the tip of his nose to extreme frostbite. Weathers is played by Josh Brolin here, part of an ensemble cast that also includes Jason Clarke (Terminator: Genisys), who plays Rob Hall and Jake Gyllenhaal (Nocturnal Animals), who plays Scott Fischer.
The new year is only two weeks old, but Nocturnal Animals is likely going to make my top 5 movies of 2017. I saw this a couple of days ago on my birthday, a few weeks after being disappointed that it had already left the major theater chains here in Minnesota around Christmas, and I left the movie impressed. It’s hard to ignore a movie with a cast boasting Jake Gyllenhaal (Enemy), Amy Adams (Arrival), and Michael Shannon (Midnight Special), and even though I still haven’t seen Tom Ford’s first movie, A Single Man, I remembered the good buzz around it. On the strength of this sophomore effort, I’ll move it up the queue.
The Girl on the Train was a “maybe I’ll see it in the cinema” for me. The previews were decent enough, but never really set me alight. I didn’t read the book, and while I like Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow), she too has never really made me sit up and notice. There was that plus the feeling that the vibe just seemed to skew a little too closely to Gone Girl for comfort. Being a David Fincher fan, and feeling Gone Girl was a solid evolution in Fincher’s career, going to see a rip off, in the end, put paid to whether or not I went to see it in the cinema.
AT THE FOOTHILLS OF MADNESS 