Tag: Michael Bay

Screening Room: ’13 Hours’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment
Pablo Schreiber, John Krasinski, and David Denman in '13 Hours' (Paramount Pictures)
Pablo Schreiber, John Krasinski, and David Denman in 13 Hours (Paramount Pictures)

When the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked by an Islamist militia in September 2012, they were quickly overwhelmed. Their only fighting chance was a small team of contractors stationed at a nearby CIA station. Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is based on those contractors’ tell-all book about the massive firefight and bureaucratic snafus that followed the assault.

13 Hours opens this weekend, in case you’ve already seen all the December awards movies. My review is at Film Journal International:

That sound you hear while exiting the theater as 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi rumbles to a finish is something like relief. Because the last thing that our panic room of an election season needed was a Michael Bay gasoline bomb getting dumped onto the simmering garbage fire that is the Benghazi investigation. That hasn’t happened. The closest that this bruising but respectful film comes to sounding like a cable-news shouting head is when one character, bemused that the news back home is attributing the attacks to protesters, says matter-of-factly, “We didn’t hear any protests.” Then it’s back to the shooting; we are in Bay country, after all…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Shadow Dancer’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment
shadowdancer1
Clive Owen as an MI6 agent trying to use an IRA operative to spy on her own family in ‘Shadow Dancer’

shadow-dancer-posterClive Owen continues to frustrate with his choosing of roles in films that no amount of his innate greatness can save. Case in point is the glum Shadow Dancer, which opened yesterday in limited release. Though it boasts Owen, a solid supporting cast, nail-biter premise, and crackerjack director (of documentaries, at least) James Marsh, the film barely registers a heartbeat.

My full review ran at Film Racket, here’s part of it:

The pregnant pause is one of the more useful items in a director’s toolbox for heightening drama and tension. One can’t have just nonstop chatter and explosions, after all, no matter what the oeuvre of Michael Bay might argue to the contrary. But like any tool, it can be overused. Case in point: Shadow Dancer, a smartly cast but drearily inactive IRA thriller that tries to be all pregnant pause. This constant sidestepping manner means that by the time the credits roll, viewers understand as little about the characters on screen, and the morality of their actions, as they did when the film began…

You can watch the trailer here:

 

New in Theaters: ‘Upstream Color’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment
Amy Seimetz and Shane Carruth try to figure out whose memories are whose in 'Upstream Color'
Amy Seimetz and Shane Carruth try to figure out whose memories are whose in ‘Upstream Color’

upstream-color-posterAlmost a decade ago, Shane Carruth made a tight little puzzler of a science-fiction film called Primer about engineers who accidentally create a time machine; the results make Inception look as easy to decipher as a Michael Bay film.

For his second film, a just-as-puzzling but wider-ranging psychological experiment going under the name Upstream Color, he broadened his scope and palette, throwing a love story into the midst of a mesmerizing thriller about a bizarre kidnap plot. The result is obfuscating, but in a gorgeous and possibly life-illuminating way.

Upstream Color just opened in limited release; it should be sneaking into smarter cinemas around the country over the next couple of months. Expect it to show up on a lot of most-loved and most-hated lists at the year’s end.

My full review is at Film Journal International.

You can watch the trailer here; it’s a beautiful thing to behold.