Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Flight (2012)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 11-02-2012, 03:54 PM:

CINEMA: 13th Avenue Warren, Wichita, KS
AUDITORIUM: 14
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital Cinema 2K/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

I see they're charging fifty cents extra for floor level seating in the Grand Auditorium now (over the regular stadium seating ticket). Proceeds had bloody well better be going towards a 4K projector.

They showed the trailer for the Seth Rogen/Barbra Streisand road trip movie. Good lord. When the TRAILER is that embarrassingly bad, the movie must be on a whole new level of bad.

THE PLOT: A drunk pilot crashes a plane. Wackiness ensues.

This is a movie about alcoholism and substance abuse. Sure it has a cool plane crash at the beginning, but the rest of it is Denzel Washington and his drug addict girlfriend drinking and moping and drinking and moping while the crash is investigated. We don't get to be involved in the investigation at all. Just drinking and moping.

Watch the crash and go home. You'll be far more entertained that way.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 12-01-2012, 10:33 PM:

I thought the framing of the movie looked odd, nearly a quarter of the screen (depending on where the action was) looked completely unnecessary.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 02-09-2013, 06:50 PM:

After persisting for 8 years with his flawed motion-capture animation technology utilised in The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, Robert Zemeckis gets back on the dependable live-action track with Flight. Although this story about hero pilot, Whip Whitaker (what is it with Americans and onomatopoeic names?) is not to the calibre of his prior heavy-hitters such as Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Contact, Flight is still an enjoyable film and bodes well for his future (non-animated) projects.

Denzel Washington has been sleep-walking through his roles over the last decade or so (yes, even in his Oscar-winning Training Day), relying ever-increasingly on his charisma to engage with the audience to cover for his typically one-noted everyman performances. But his performance here is impressively multi-layered as the conflicted hero/addict pilot. Indeed this is probably his best achievement since Courage Under Fire way back in 1996.

The film is surprisingly overtly Christian - it's literally about a man who finds sobriety and redemption through an "act of God" - but if you can see past the borderline preachiness, what remains is a fascinating study on the nature of heroism and flawed character, and how society and the law balances these two very human qualities.

The plane crash scene is expertly staged and is reminiscent of Zemeckis' own Cast Away, his last live-action film starring the white version of Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks. Could there be a trend developing here? Let's hope not as both Flight and Castaway, while being competent, enjoyable films, are below his best.

Flight is not quite Zemeckis' return to his days of yore but it's a positive step in that direction and certainly gives us something to look forward to.

7.5 out of 10.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-15-2013, 09:08 AM:

Let's hope Zemeckis finally has left his animation days behind him.

Although the conflict that arises from the fact that a guy with some questionable or even criminal habits saved the lives of most of the passengers on a doomed airplane is quite interesting, the best part of the movie is definitely the cash scene itself.

In my opinion, the movie would have been better if they left the whole religious stuff out of there and purely focused on the social conflict at hand.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-17-2013, 09:21 AM:

This movie sucked my ass.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 02-17-2013, 12:39 PM:

I found one print labeled like this:

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 02-17-2013, 06:58 PM:

quote: Joe Redifer
This movie sucked my ass.

Did the movie pay for the privilege or was it the other way around? [Smile]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-18-2013, 08:45 AM:

I did not give the movie permission to suck my ass. However I should not be surprised. Zemeckis has been sucking ass for a deplorably long time and he is not even a shadow of the man he used to be. He hasn't made a good movie since Forrest Gump (some would argue that Cast Away was good, but they'd be wrong).

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 02-18-2013, 10:29 AM:

I'd say Contact was his last truly awesome movie. Cast Away was good but not anything great.

AJG

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-18-2013, 11:29 AM:

quote: Joe Redifer
I did not give the movie permission to suck my ass.

Must be feeling better, eh?

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 02-18-2013, 02:39 PM:

I agree with Aaron. I'm finding that Forrest Gump is increasingly derided within my circle of movie friends though it's not a notion I agree with.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-18-2013, 05:53 PM:

Contact has that awful Matthew Macounoahey character which serves no purpose at all. The movie itself is somewhat interesting once but once you see it there's really nothing special about it to warrant repeated viewings. It's slow, boring and preachy. Motherfucker needs an editor. And the alien is her dad. LAME.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 02-18-2013, 06:04 PM:

Nice South Park precis there, dude. [Wink]

And, seriously, the Matty McConawhatsie character was half the point of that movie.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 02-18-2013, 06:25 PM:

To slow it down? Add a pointless "romance"? To point out the hypocrisy of said romance out of wedlock by a "man of the cloth"? BORING! Figuring out what the signals meant and how to use them were interesting. The philosophical discussions weren't fun and that debate is best left to the audience rather than the characters. Also, the aliens were assholes. They make us build all that shit and only let one person travel just to tell us we've taken the first step and yet don't let us provide any evidence of said journey? I think everyone should knee their dad in the nuts after seeing Contact.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 02-18-2013, 08:00 PM:

Haha, well it's horses for courses, I suppose. I dig the religious angle personally, it had more relevance in Contact than Flight.