Movie Review: Whiteout (2009)

A crime thriller, Whiteout enjoys a chilly setting but is hampered by an elemental plot and pedestrian execution.

In a prologue set in 1957, a Soviet military cargo plane crashes during a flight over Antarctica after a violent shootout between the co-pilot and armed guards. Everyone on-board is killed.

In the present, Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is a US Marshal responsible for security at a South Pole scientific research base. Along with doctor John Fury (Tom Skerritt), she starts to investigate when the dead body of a geologist is spotted on the open ice by pilot Delfy (Columbus Short). Carrie learns the victim was murdered and dropped from a plane, and two other geologists are missing and on the run. 

UN investigator Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht) arrives unexpectedly to help, but Carrie is not sure she can trust him. She has to evade a mysterious axe-wielding assailant, and the body count mounts. Carrie finds evidence the geologists discovered the Soviet plane under the ice, the precious cargo triggering greed and murder. With a massive storm moving in and the base being evacuated for the winter, Carrie has limited time to identify the conspirators.

Whiteout boasts an inhospitable locale where the mere act of outdoor survival for just a few minutes can be an arduous challenge. Director Dominic Sena leverages nature's dangerous magnificence with frequent excursions outside the confines of the research base. Whether the characters are on the open ice or battling fearsome storms, the perils of Antarctica are always evident.

Unfortunately, everything else here is routine in the extreme. Four authors are credited with collaborating on the script, and the outcome is still a letdown. Carrie's tired backstory consists of routine emotional trauma prompting her to seek the most remote job assignment on the planet. The MacGuffin secret cargo at the root of the mystery has the lamest of revelations. And all the madman-with-an-axe horror moments - and these are plenty and lengthy - are straight out of teen slasher flicks, and edited into a jerky dark mess.

Kate Beckinsale brings a winning attitude and does her best to power through the material, but she is also unnecessarily subjected to a superfluous shower scene. Tom Skerritt adds welcome veteran heft to the cast. 

Whiteout does pack potential, but it's quickly iced.



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Movie Review: Tears Of The Sun (2003)

A war action movie, Tears Of The Sun has noble intentions to increase awareness of atrocities in Africa, but a feeble script never strikes the right tones.

A civil war erupts in Nigeria with the overthrow of democratically elected President Azuka by a brutal rebel army. The United States Navy conducts dangerous missions to extract foreign nationals from the unfolding chaos. Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis) of the Navy SEALs and his small unit of elite soldiers are tasked by Captain Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from a remote medical mission.

With the rebel army closing in Waters and his men locate Kendricks, but she insists her patients also be rescued. Waters reluctantly agrees and leads a large group of civilians towards the rendezvous site with the extraction helicopters, evading rebel patrols along the way. But both the Lieutenant and the doctor are keeping secrets from each other, and an already hazardous mission gets much more complicated when Waters starts to care about the plight of civilians and gets his squadron involved in the conflict.

Co-produced by Willis, Tears Of The Sun delves into the dirty wars of the dark continent with eyes wide open. Director Antoine Fuqua leaves no doubt the film is intended as a shocking wake-up call to the brutalities that often go unreported, and the film stops and lingers as villagers are slaughtered, raped and set on fire, child soldiers are pressed into service and mothers are maimed and their infants killed.

While Willis and his men (including stock turns by Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker and Nick Chinlund) are supposed to be the jaded veterans jolted into taking a stand by what they are witnessing, the script by Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo falls far short. With no character depth whatsoever, the film delivers plastic and prepackaged emotions and flat drama. Neither Waters nor Doctor Kendricks are provided any context or compelling intensity, and the Africans are all reduced to horribly shallow and stereotypical representations of helpless locals awaiting rescue by mostly white American men.

Stylistically Fuqua does better in portraying an eternally wet jungle aesthetic, and the few but fierce action scenes almost save the movie. One sequence features the SEALs stealthily moving against murderous rebels terrorizing a village, while the final battle is a climactic backs-against-the-wall, few-against-many epic showdown. The action is vivid, including relatively accurate portrayals of battlefield tactics.

But unfortunately Tears Of The Sun ends with a gag-inducing stand-and-cheer (literally) celebration of the all-conquering US military by ever grateful black locals, the film collapsing far from its intentions and into the most crass version of a recruitment tool targeting the easily influenced.

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Movie Review: Contact (1997)

A science drama, Contact is an intelligent story about the passion to search for a connection with alien beings, and the implications once the unthinkable becomes true.

As a young girl, Ellie Arroway (Jena Malone) was encouraged to pursue astronomy by her father Ted (David Morse). The grown up Ellie (Jodie Foster) graduated from MIT and developed a passion for seeking signals transmitted by aliens. While on assignment at an observatory in Puerto Rico, Ellie establishes a rapport with fellow scientist Kent Clark (William Fichtner), and has a brief but passionate affair with Christian philosopher Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey). The Puerto Rico assignment is eventually shut down by National Science Foundation Director David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), who does not believe that searching for alien signals is worthwhile research.

Ellie finds private funding through the Hadden Corporation, led by the extremely rich but dying tycoon S.R. Hadden (John Hurt), and establishes her team at the Very Large Array (VLA) of massive listening satellite dishes in New Mexico. After months of effort Ellie stumbles onto a signal transmitted from the Vega star system. Her discovery unleashes a global frenzy, with the White House getting involved in the form of Chief of Staff Rachel Constantine (Angela Bassett) and National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods). Then Ellie's team uncovers more: the alien signal contains a coded message and reams of advanced data including the blueprints for an advanced, massive machine.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on the novel by celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan, Contact is a spiritual successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Although neither as fantastical as Kubrick's epic nor as fuzzy as Spielberg's opus, Contact brings its own attitude to the search for intelligent life: a science-first stance, a willingness to take a pragmatic look at how politics will interfere with any major discovery, and a deliberate eagerness to delve into the debate about the role of religion when the time comes for human interaction with another species.

The film excels at maintaining a clear-headed, science-based perspective through the eyes of Ellie, including the frustrating chase for funds, clashes with superiors, disappointing initiatives that lead to nothing, and long hours, days and years of research sustained only by hope and belief that a breakthrough must be just around the next frequency.

And when contact is made and Ellie shakes the world with her discovery, Zemeckis takes his time to capture the frenzied reaction. From President Clinton (masterfully weaved into the film) and his army of White House suits to religious zealots, and passing through the journalists and talking heads on the cable news networks and Chevrolet Vega enthusiasts, the world will react to alien communications in unpredictable ways, and Contact imagines the outpouring of emotion and insanity with plenty of colour.

Some parts of the film don't work as well. There is a serious sabotage incident that appears far-fetched and ultimately neither adds to nor deletes from the story. As the machine is being built at enormous cost, Zemeckis dials back the curiosity factor and does not even attempt to explain how it may be expected to work. And the personal scenes between Ellie and Palmer too conveniently and quickly devolve into a complicated relationship that mirrors the tension between her science and his religious philosophy.

Jodie Foster is at the core of the drama, and allows Ellie to not only be a bright and fiercely determined scientist, but also a human being with faults. She has to check her anger and attitude at meetings, and is too honest when it matters least. As Sagan intended, Ellie carries with her the struggle of women scientists to stand alongside the men, and more than once Ellie has to swallow her pride and plan a recovery after men brutishly shove their interests ahead of her rights. The supporting cast is adequate, but none of the men around Ellie achieve much depth.

The film ends with a journey sequence driven by spectacular special effects, and a conclusion built on sober reflection. The search for evidence finds belief and the intrinsically faithful find evidence. The quest to find answers will continue, built on advancements measured simultaneously in light years and milliseconds.

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Movie Review: The Turning Point (1977)

A melodrama in the world of ballet, The Turning Point has little to say, repeats itself endlessly, and then settles for a series of excruciatingly tiresome ballet-on-film sequences.

The American Ballet Company arrives in Oklahoma City on a tour stop, prompting a reunion between principle dancer Emma Jacklin (Anne Bancroft) and her childhood friend DeeDee Rogers (Shirley MacLaine). DeeDee may or may not have been good enough to compete for top roles with Emma, but she settled for a life of domesticity after getting pregnant and marrying fellow dancer Wayne (Tom Skerritt). While Emma achieved the pinnacle of ballet stardom, DeeDee and Wayne became dance teachers and raised three children, including the talented Emilia (Leslie Browne).

DeeDee never came to terms with her decision to walk away from the potential world of glamour, but is pleased when Emma spots the potential in Emilia and invites her to join the Company. DeeDee relocates to New York as Emilia's career begins to take off, leading to continued friction between DeeDee and Emma, whose own career is fading fast. Meanwhile Emilia begins to discover what it takes to get to the top, and starts a relationship with the charismatic Russian dancer Yuri (Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Directed by Herbert Ross and loosely based on the true-life story of Leslie Browne (who effectively plays herself), the goddaughter of Ross' wife Nora Kaye, The Turning Point holds some interest through the dance career versus family debate, but the conflict is set early and stagnates quickly. The characters of DeeDee and Emma are who they are; they are introduced in the first 20 minutes and never evolve. DeeDee grinds on, endlessly bringing up the past and unable to moved beyond her own decisions from decades prior. Emma is the steely-eyed diva who seized her chance and never looked back. Despite the best efforts of Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft, over two hours the women fail to become any more engaging.

Which leaves Ross with plenty of time to kill, and he defaults to filming ballet sequence after ballet sequence. Watching ballet in the theatre is sufficient drudgery, but the live experience at least adds some drama. Watching ballet on film kills any narrative momentum dead in its tracks, and The Turning Point is padded with a solid 30 minutes of stage-bound performances that have nothing to do with the story, complete with on-screen captions introducing the piece, the music and the choreography. The film morphs into an education and attempted celebration of an art form for ballet fans, leaving behind everyone else. MacLaine and Bancroft are more often than not reduced to painfully fake reaction shots.

In a moment of mass imbecility, somehow the film garnered an incredible eleven Academy Award nominations, the most egregious going to the supporting performances by Browne (wooden) and Baryshnikov (who dances a lot but does not act all) for playing versions of themselves and doing little else. The writing nomination is also beyond belief, the Arthur Laurents script unable to create anything resembling an arc for any of the characters, and resorting to a butt-slapping cat fight between middle aged women. Fortunately the Academy came to its collective senses in time and the film was comprehensively and deservedly shut-out on Awards night.

In MacLaine and Bancroft The Turning Point has classy actresses in the lead roles doing their best. They are thoroughly smothered by the tutus, the ballet shoes and the uninspired drama stretching in vain to justify a cinematic experience.

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Movie Review: A Hologram For The King (2016)

A truncated drama and romance, A Hologram For The King plays with a smattering of potentially interesting ideas and does little with most of them.

Alan Clay (Tom Hanks) is an experienced but down-on-his-luck salesperson who has lost his house and divorced his wife in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. Now working for a technology company, Clay is sent to Saudi Arabia to pitch a major sale of holographic teleconferencing equipment. Once in the Kingdom, Clay suffers from jet lag and is exposed to culture shock and the slow pace of doing business, with appointments not met and promises not kept. He is helped to a degree by driver/guide Yousef (Alexander Black), who is suffering through his own personal crisis, and Danish consultant Hanne (Sidse Babett Knudsen), who has more experience in navigating local customs.

Clay is also struggling with a lumpy growth on his back, a condition that finally forces him to seek the help of Doctor Zahra Hakim (Sarita Choudhury). She is also going through a divorce, and the two connect and start to explore the potential for romance. But in a conservative society with its own set of rules, Alan will have challenges ahead in both his business and personal quests.

Directed and written by Tom Tykwer, A Hologram For The King introduces several intriguing themes but fails to find a compelling voice. Alan Clay's past failures are featured in tiny snippets that hint at his failed marriage and regrettable previous business decisions (he relocated a bicycle manufacturing business to China), but these are at best sketched-in headlines with no depth.

The culture shock angle gets the most exposition, but is ultimately left floundering. It's never clear if the film is trying to be factual, disrespectful or judgemental of Saudi culture. Yousef the driver is intended as a gateway to explaining local customs and gets plenty of screen time, including a visit to his ancestral village, but his story ends in an unconvincing whimper. The entire interaction with Hanne appears and vanishes like a hallucinatory desert mirage.

The romance is handled better. Although the serious parts of the relationship with Zahra arrive late, the bonding progresses quickly and there are some pleasing moments of maturity in observing two life-hardened adults as they navigate their way to much-needed relief and pleasure.

Tom Hanks is the main reason to watch A Hologram For The King, and he gives a typically dependable performance. Despite the limited material, Hanks infuses depth into the character, and is convincing in portraying the bottled up frustration of a man close to the limit but forced to push for one final deal in a foreign land. Most of the main Saudi characters, including Yousef and Zahra, are unfortunately portrayed by other ethnicities, while Tom Skerritt appears briefly as Alan's antagonized dad.

A Hologram For A King ends in a remarkable rush, Tykwer seemingly running out of interest and curtailing all the plot elements in 30 seconds of narration. It's a frustratingly fitting end to an overall unsatisfactory experience.

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The Movies Of Tom Skerritt

All movies starring Tom Skerritt and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

MASH (1970)

Harold And Maude (1971)

The Turning Point (1977)

Alien (1979)

Top Gun (1986)

Steel Magnolias (1989)

The Rookie (1990)

Singles (1992)

Contact (1997)

Tears Of The Sun (2003)

Whiteout (2009)

Ted (2012, cameo)

A Hologram For The King (2016)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Top Gun (1986)

A glitzy drama and clunky romance set in the world of elite navy aviators, Top Gun has all the slickness of a polished sales pitch, and all the emotional depth that can be expected when hardware is the subject of worship.

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is a cocky, instinctive naval pilot, living under the cloud of his father, also a Navy pilot who died in mysterious circumstances. Maverick flies F-14A Tomcats with his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards). After a close encounter with enemy MiG 28s over the Indian Ocean, Maverick and Goose are chosen to join the elite "Top Gun" aerial combat training school at Miramar, Florida.

The intense training features numerous flights to sharpen dogfighting skills, overseen by the legendary "Viper" (Tom Skerritt) and "Jester" (Michael Ironside). Maverick finds himself in an alpha male competition with Tom "Iceman" Kazanski (Val Kilmer), a more cerebral pilot, for the prize of top graduate. Maverick also starts a steamy relationship with Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), an astrophysicist and civilian instructor. With the course drawing to a close and Maverick locked in an intense competition with Iceman, tragedy strikes, severely shaking Maverick's self-belief.

A thrilling piece of 1980s confectionery, Top Gun is ridiculous, mindless fun. Every man has a hokey nickname, every woman melts in front of the military uniforms, and every line of dialogue is cringe-worthy. The romance is klutzy, Kelly McGillis puts herself in the running for least convincing astrophysicist in film history (have there been others?), and the music serves as a reminder about how terrifically awful 1980s soundtracks could contrive to be. The geopolitics are at kindergarten level while the manly competitions make it all the way to Grade 8 maturity.

And yet. There is something about the unabashed gloss of Top Gun that allows it to rise above. Director Tony Scott displays a genuine flair for transforming lethal machinery into objects of desire, and Top Gun is filled with quite magnificent aerial photography. The glistening sun, the open skies, the golden silhouettes, and the roar of overpowered fighter jets designed to manoeuvre and kill with maximum efficiency are combined to create an irresistible aesthetic. As an advertisement for life as a navy pilot, the film is an undisputed winner.

Which all means that the story is utterly irrelevant, and serves as a distant backdrop to the sexually charged engines and people. And it's really best not to look too closely at all the decisions made by the military brass, culminating in sending young men off to war on their graduation day and shoving a pilot into combat while he is in a near catatonic state. It's drama torn from the pages of ideas too foolish to be considered as comics.

Tom Cruise continued his rapid rise to the very top with a magnetic performance as the moody, motorcycle-riding, Ray-Ban wearing Maverick. He does not need to act as much as be present and allow his natural pizzazz to glow, and he just radiates energy on the ground and in the sky. Val Kilmer displays a different kind of intensity, still charismatic but adding a snarly meanness. The other guys range from marginally goofy (Edwards as Goose) to pure macho (Skerritt and Ironside, taking it all too seriously).

The black hole is Kelly McGillis, and she threatens to swallow up the entire film with a stunningly unconvincing performance that screams vapid love interest, with Charlie reduced to a ten year old's idea of a fantasy woman. Deep in the cast, Meg Ryan shows up as Goose's wife and Tim Robbins makes a late appearance as a co-pilot.

While most of the individual elements fall flat, as a whole Top Gun amounts to a nonsensical success story. The film rides a crazy, unapologetic energy, buying into its own boyish joy, taking the breath away and inviting all to be swept into the thrill of the danger zone.

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Movie Review: MASH (1970)

An inept war satire, MASH is dominated by self-satisfied narcissists saluting themselves.

In the Korean War, three doctors are serving at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital: Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland), Trapper John (Elliott Gould) and Duke (Tom Skerritt) have no regard for authority and get their kicks by making fun of everyone around them. Favourite targets include a nurse they nickname Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) and religious surgeon Frank Burns (Robert Duvall). Hawkeye and his friends also pretend to help a gay man who wants to kill himself, and conspire to rig a football match. The hospital's commander, Henry Blake (Roger Bowen), is neither interested nor capable of controlling the surgeons.

With the deeply unpopular Vietnam War (clearly the intended target of the film, despite the Korean War setting) rumbling on and the anti-war movement blossoming, MASH attempts to tap into the cultural moment. It's a ghastly exercise in smug satire, neither funny nor smart, just stale.

The opening song "Suicide Is Painless" sets the scene for a film that will take cheap shots at any target. Women, religion, gays, blacks, sports, nurses, and of course the military are all fair game, as the Ring Lardner, Jr. script aims its archaic canon at any and all topics that can possibly be found near the battlefield. 

Doctors behaving badly when all around them suffer are far from funny, with MASH trying to say that war is hell, the doctors are conscripted against their will, and therefore all rules can be broken. It doesn't wash. Hawkeye, Trapper John, and Duke arrive at the front carrying misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-religious attitudes. Director Robert Altman does not bother to portray them as transformed into jerks due to war; they are natural born jerks.

The film is episodic, lacking in any actual plot, and ever more desperate to find the next laugh. The hijinks are intercut with serious scenes of the surgeons patching up wounded soldiers in the field hospital, the tension of saving lives a a flimsy excuse for abject behavior. 

Pre-occupied with poor taste, MASH reacts to tragedy with an idiot's embarrassing guffaw.

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Movie Review: Alien (1979)

A suspense and gore horror movie set in deepest space, Alien is genre-melding classic that redefined the limits of science fiction, launched the career of Sigourney Weaver, and hatched a long-running franchise.

The commercial freighter Nostromo is heading back to Earth on a months-long journey, carrying 20 million tons of ore mined on distant planets. The crew of seven consists of Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), Warrant Officer Ripley (Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Chief Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Engineering Technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton). They are supposed to sleep through most of the journey, but halfway to Earth they are unexpectedly awakened by Mother, the on-board master computer, when Nostromo receives what appears to be a distress signal from a nearby planet.

Dallas, Kane and Lambert descend to the surface of the mysterious planet and discover the remains of a mammoth alien space ship, and deep within it large organic pods harbouring a form of alien life. When Kane gets too close to one of the pods, a small slimy alien being jumps out and attaches itself to his face, crashing through his helmet. Although Ripley insists that the immobilized Kane should be quarantined, Ash ignores her and allows him back on board with the alien still attached. Although Kane appears to make a remarkable recovery, the horror is just beginning, and the Nostromo is soon infected with an ugly, highly intelligent, fast moving, viciously lethal, rapidly growing alien, intent on killing off the crew.

Director Ridley Scott creates an unglamourous, utilitarian environment on board the Nostromo, dominated by endless dank corridors, large industrial equipment, finicky strobe lights, grease stains, oozing leaks, and endless places to hide. Awash in dark murky colours, space exploration is no longer an exciting adventure with lightsabers, laser guns and wars between the planets; it's just mundane soul-destroying blue collar work, and the crew are essentially long distance truck drivers doing their job, bickering, complaining about work conditions and arguing about their pay and bonus.

Within this routine Scott drops in an intruder species that has evolved to survive and kill with maximum efficiency, and Alien draws enormous strength from the lack of symmetry in the ensuing conflict. The crew are beset by infighting and lack of mutual respect, and are definitely not equipped to defend themselves. The alien is nimble, brutal, and soon, very large. It's not a fair fight, there is no help on the way, and nowhere to escape. The suspense is immediate, and Scott makes the most of it. As Dallas orders his team to fan out and hunt down the alien within the grim bowels of the ship, it is painfully apparent that the hunters are the prey, and they know it.

While Alien is dominated by long periods of building suspense, it is punctuated by short, sharp, often gory punctuation marks, Scott sprinkling into his movie several highly effective and memorable scenes of horror that are forever embedded into the cultural landscape. The alien latching itself onto Kane's head is just the beginning. There is a creature birth, a pesky cat, a robot meltdown, and a final confrontation where horror and suspense come together at close quarters, human and alien facing off both knowing that only one can survive.

Scott enhances the impact of the film by quickly establishing a distinct character for every crew member, the opening 45 minutes both setting the context and defining the essential traits of the seven-person team. Dallas is decisive but mostly concerned about steering the ship back to Earth. Kane is thoughtful, Ash scientifically inquisitive and not beyond breaching protocol to satisfy his curiosity. Lambert is a follower while Ripley understands the importance of respecting well-established regulations and not afraid of standing up for what she believes is right. Parker and Brett are resourceful around the ship's mechanical components, but see themselves as separate and a class below the other five. When confronted by a determined common enemy, the individuality of the crew members heightens the sense of dread.

Sigourney Weaver's Ripley starts on the periphery and gradually moves to the centre of the movie, and by the end Ripley emerges as the unlikely crew leader, willing to sacrifice the mission to ensure some measure of survival. She would return in future episodes to confront her demons, as of course would many aliens. Alien is an irresistible start to a conflict between the species, the Nostromo a ship that stumbled onto humanity's most formidable enemy.

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