Released: October 2016

Director: Mario Van Peebles

Rated R

Run Time: 128 Minutes

Distributor: Lionsgate Studios

Genre: War/Drama

Cast:
Nicolas Cage: Captain McVay
Tom Sizemore: McWhorter
Thomas Jane: Lt. Adrian Marks
Matt Lanter: Bama
James Remar: Admiral Parnell
Yutaka Takeuchi: Hashimoto

In my preview of USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage last year, I used this clip from the movie Jaws.  It’s one of the most haunting moments in that entire movie, and you can thank Robert Shaw’s performance for that.  It was spine-tingling.  Like many people, my initial knowledge of the USS Indianapolis incident came from that movie.  At that point, I didn’t even think it was real.  Oh, it was real.  It’s considered to be the worst disaster in the US Navy’s history.  But again, I use this clip from Jaws, because it’s been the inspiration for many adaptations of the story, and the Nic Cage movie is no different.  So, does USS Indianapolis respect the source material, the event, and the people who survived this horrific event?  Let’s find out.

Because this movie is based on actual events, I’m basically just going to cover what happened with this ship.  The USS Indianapolis was commissioned by the President of the United States to deliver top-secret materials to the island of Tinian.  The thing was, the mission to deliver those materials was so top-secret, the Navy refused to send an escort of destroyers with the Indianapolis.  They felt that having destroyers would have drawn attention to the vessel by the Japanese Imperial Navy.  The top-secret materials that were loaded onto McVay’s ship were parts to a top-secret weapon developed during what is now known as The Manhattan Project.  The materials, which included enriched uranium, were to be used in construction of Little Boy, the first atomic bomb which would be dropped on Hiroshima.  After delivering the weapon, the Indianapolis was struck by two Japanese torpedoes.  The ship sank in 12 minutes taking 300 men down with her.  The rest of the crew, including the captain were adrift for several days after the ship sank.  900 men died to exposure, starvation and shark attacks.  317 men survived.  Captain McVay was unfairly court-martialed for hazarding his ship during war.  Ironically, the captain of the Japanese submarine that sank the ship came to his defense.  Captain Hashimoto basically said that zig-zagging would have made no difference, because the submarine was so close.  The story of the USS Indianapolis is one of the most intriguing stories in US history.  It’s an amazing story about survival in one of the worst possible positions to be in.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage is directed by Mario Van Peebles, who, in a bizarre twist of irony, starred in one of the Jaws movies.  I don’t consider Mr. Peebles to be a terrible director or actor, he really isn’t, but his handling of this movie is a bit of a mixed bag.  Let’s start with some of the performances.  Nicolas Cage will always be one of the most spectacular actors in cinema, for both good and bad reasons.  Nicolas Cage plays Captain McVay.  There are moments when Cage’s performance is very emotional and compelling, but there are other times when he’s either stiff as a board or is just hamming it up like it’s nobody’s business.  Tom Sizemore’s the same way, he’s got some scenes that really genuine and introspective, but the rest of the time, he’s so over the top, it’s hard to take him seriously.  These are the two actors that really needed to sell their characters, and they kind of didn’t.  The performances from the other actors are just standard-fare.  Nothing else really stands out.

One of the other major issues I have with the film are the special effects.  I understand that Men of Courage is not exactly a big-budget movie, but more effort could have been made to make the effects more believable.  As it stands, some of the effects are so laughably bad, it looks like they came from a bad 90’s video game.  For a film like this, you really need to portray it with the utmost realism, so the audiences can get involved with the story and the characters.  But you can’t do that, when the sharks and some of the planes are obviously CGI.  That being said, there are moments in this film that are genuinely good.  The sinking of the ship is spectacular and really intense.  While the survivors are adrift, there is some real tension there, because you have no idea who is going to die next.  The court-martial of Captain McVay has some real emotional weight to it, especially when Captain Hashimoto comes in to testify.  This scene really highlights one of greatest travesties that the US Navy ever committed against one of its own.  Of all the ships that were lost during the war, Captain McVay was the only one to be court-martialed.

Captain McVay ended up committing suicide in 1968 due to the all the guilt that was on his shoulders for the incident.  In 1996, a sixth-grade student did some research into the USS Indianapolis, which would lead to United States Congressional investigation.  In October of 2000, Congress passed a resolution which exonerated McVay of any wrong-doing during the Indianapolis incident.  President Bill Clinton signed that resolution and the Secretary of the Navy ordered McVay’s record cleared of any wrong-doing in 2001.  There are lessons to be learned from the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis, but the Nicolas Cage film isn’t really the right movie to tell them.  It doesn’t change history to fit its narrative, thankfully, but there were some serious missteps along the way.  This could have been one of the most powerful films of 2016, if Mario Van Peebles reeled in some of the outlandish performances of the film’s cast, and with better visual effects.  As it stands, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage isn’t a terrible movie.  It really isn’t.  While it definitely suffers on several levels, there’s enough here that can satisfy people who are interested in history and fans of Nicolas Cage.

Final Score: 7.5/10.

Released: November 2016

Director: Mel Gibson

Rated R

Run Time: 139 Minutes

Genre: War/Drama

Distributor: Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate Studios

Cast:
Andrew Garfield: Desmond Doss
Sam Worthington: Captain Glover
Luke Bracey: Smitty Ryker
Hugo Weaving: Tom Doss
Teresa Palmer: Dorothy Schutte
Rachel Griffiths: Bertha Doss
Vince Vaughan: Sgt. Howell

History books often show most major events in human history with a “big picture” mentality.  That means that history books look at events like World War I or II as an entirety.  The thing is, is that these “bigger pictures” are often made up many more “smaller pictures.”  How I define a smaller picture in the grand scheme of a major world war is that there are smaller things that happen during the course of the war or event that are just as important as the final outcome of the battle.  While these “minor” events may not figure heavily into the final outcome, they are nevertheless very important to some people.  Sometimes these smaller events are more important to some people than the bigger picture.  Sometimes it can come down to just one man who can make a difference, not necessarily for the world, but for the people around him or her.  Sometimes, people forget that a handful of soldiers or even just one, can make the difference between victory or defeat.

Hacksaw Ridge begins its story in Virginia where young Desmond Doss sees another young man get pinned underneath a car.  He runs out to help him and gets him to a hospital where Desmond meets a lovely nurse, Dorothy Schutte.  After taking her out on a date, Desmond enlists in the US Army.  However, being a Seventh Day Adventist, he cannot hold a weapon or take another life, so he enlists as a medic, where he believes he will do the most good.  This doesn’t sit well with his superiors and they try to run him out of the army for his religious convictions.  When I first previewed this movie last year, I had to do research on Desmond Doss, as this film is based on Desmond’s experiences in the war.  This is one of those “smaller picture” events that I was alluding to in the paragraph above.  This was not something I was aware of when I was taking history in high school and college.  It’s not one of those things that everybody knew about and yet it was one of the most compelling events during the war.  The story is extraordinary, not just in the battle that takes place in Okinawa, but also the battle between the army and Desmond Doss.  The first hour of the movie is basically introducing Desmond and his conflict with the Army.  Ultimately, he was allowed to serve without using a weapon.  During the course of the battle, Doss saved the lives of 75 soldiers.  As a result, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award that anyone can receive.  For me, the story is compelling because it’s about a man who refuses to comprise his convictions.  The film is not about religion, even though it does play a part.  It’s more about faith.  The man’s personal belief in what was right really drives the story, and it is one of the most interesting stories ever told.

A story like this couldn’t be told unless you have the right actors.  This is one of the film’s greatest strengths.  Andrew Garfield is absolutely incredible as Doss.  He plays the character with a great deal of humility and respect and sells the character as someone who has the courage to stand up for what he believes in.  There’s a reason he was nominated for Best Actor.  Teresa Palmer is not just simply stunning as Dorothy Schutte, but her character is Doss’s anchor.  She’s a little feisty, but the character is very warm and charming.  Hugo Weaving is astonishing as Desmond’s father.  You can tell that the character has been through hell, because he fought in World War I, so he doesn’t want to see his kids make the same mistakes that he and his buddies did.  But because of his experience, the character is a drunk, and not necessarily the most pleasant person to be around.  Hugo makes the character sympathetic at times.  He’s not in the movie for very long, but his presence is very much needed.  Sam Worthington is an actor that I actually like.  Is he the greatest?  No.  But he’s definitely made an impression over the years.  In Hacksaw Ridge, we get to see him really flex his acting muscles, and he’s really damned good.  He plays Captain Glover, who at first doesn’t like Doss, but comes to respect him over the course of the film.  Of all the actors in this film, Vince Vaughan was genuinely surprising.  While he does come across as the usual gruff and loud-mouthed drill instructor, the character is far more complex than you would think.  Vaughan’s performance is very surprising considering the actor’s comic background.  Yeah, the acting in this film is really good.

While Hacksaw Ridge is a character drama at its core, it is definitely a war movie.  The first half of the movie is a philosophical war film, so to speak.  The second half of the film is where the real war takes place and like Saving Private Ryan, it’s ugly and terrifying.  Like Ryan, it’s handled very realistically.  You have the big explosions caused by artillery fire, but the detail on the ground is very striking.  People, both Americans and Japanese alike, are torn to shreds.  Limbs are blown off, and people are blown in half.  It’s gruesome.  I love it when movies portray war as realistically as possible, because it shows the audience that it’s not fun and games.  It’s a very real and ugly situation for everybody involved.  Doss’s actions during this particular sequence is nothing short of amazing, and that’s how it actually happened by all accounts.  Hacksaw Ridge is the first movie that Mel Gibson has directed since Apocalypto in 2006.  This man knows his business.  While there is definitely chaos in the film, it’s all filmed so we can see what’s happening, which makes the experience that much more visceral.

As far as war movies go, I would honestly put Hacksaw Ridge right up there with Saving Private Ryan.  It’s that good.  Obviously, some liberties had to be taken during the film, such as Desmond’s near-lethal confrontation with his father that never actually happened, but it added to the tension and it helped us really understand why he never wanted to hold a gun.  I would honestly have to say that this movie was one of the best movies of 2016.  Mel Gibson is in fine form as a director and he really knows how to tell a story.  Hacksaw Ridge gets a very solid recommendation from me.

Final Score: 9.5/10

Released: July 1985

Directors: Ted Berman, Richard Rich

Rated PG

Run Time: 90 Minutes

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

Genre: Animation/Fantasy

Cast:
Grant Bardsley: Taran
Susan Sheridan: Eilonwy
Freddie Jones: Dallben
Nigel Hawthorne: Fflewddur Fflam
John Byner: Gurgi/Doli
John Hurt: The Horned King

Most of Disney’s animated films from the 1930s all the up until today have been mostly successful with amazing stories, animation and fantastic music.  Disney essentially had a “monopoly” on the animation aspect of film making.  Believe it or not, there was a period in which some of Disney’s movies were not particularly successful.  This also includes some of their live-action films.  From 1979 until 1989, Disney suffered a number of setbacks with some of their movies.  The Fox and the Hound was met with a simple…meh from both critics and audiences, Oliver and Company was panned by many critics despite a strong box-office showing.  Some of their live-action films including Dragonslayer were not well-received, but gained a following on home video.  A good number of these films were fairly dark in tone.  There was one animated film that was very dark and damn near bankrupted Disney’s animation studio: The Black Cauldron.

Based on The Prydain Chronicles by author Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron follows young Taran as he dreams of becoming a great hero and warrior.  One day, while attending to his duties as a pig-keeper, the sow Hen Wen begins acting strangely.  Taking the pig to Dallben, who manages to get Hen Wen to show them her visions of a mysterious black cauldron and the evil Horned King who seeks the cauldron to destroy the world.  Afraid for the pig’s safety, Dallben sends Taran and the pig to a cottage at the edge of a forbidden forest.  After meeting some interesting characters along the way, Taran inevitably runs afoul of the demonic Horned King.  The story is actually rather interesting that is centered around a cauldron that is essentially the source of evil in the land of Prydain.  Sure, it’s pretty the standard Hero’s Journey that you see in so many adventure films, but this film has a far more gothic element to it that makes it unique.

The tone of The Black Cauldron is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness.  It’s great because it doesn’t really pull punches when it comes to the visuals.  This is a visually stunning film.  There’s a lot of fantastic animation involved here.  The character designs are pretty stellar across the board, including the Horned King himself.  On the other hand, a lot of the visuals in this film can be very frightening to younger children, hence the PG rating.  The skeletons and the Gothic overtones of the film can be very disturbing.  The Horned King himself is a very terrifying character in his own right.  He desires the cauldron to summon an army of the dead so he can rule the world.  That’s not exactly the kind of film you really want to be showing your kids at an early age.  The imagery is haunting.  This would be great to show at Halloween, though.

Let’s talk about the characters.  Like I said before, all the characters have their own unique designs and personalities.  Taran as a character, though, is rather bland and absent-minded.  As a result, his character ends up in more trouble than he needs to be in if he would just pay attention instead of day-dreaming.  Then again, I guess that’s kind of the point.  Gurgi is this little furry man-beast that shows up and steals an apple from Taran.  If there was a character that was almost annoying as Jar Jar Binks, Gurgi would be it.  He’s a thief and a coward.  He also has this really irritating voice that just won’t go away.  The princess Eilonwy shows up out of nowhere and inadvertently saves Taran’s neck.  She’s not exactly a damsel in distress, though, so she’s got that going for her.  On the villain-side, we have these three witches who were apparently the original owners of the black cauldron, but they’ve been relegated to turning people into toads and eating them.  The Horned King is one of the most visually freaky villains that Disney has ever created.  That being said, he’s not exactly the most competent villain in Disney’s library.  Like many Disney villains, he surrounds himself with incompetent fools.  The characters are uniquely designed, but they’re not particularly well-written.

While the characters themselves may not be the best written, the performances by the voice actors is nothing short of fantastic.  The real standouts in the film are Freddie Jones as Dallben, who is Taran’s mentor and the late John Hurt as the Horned King.  John Hurt makes the character positively frightening, as delivers a very menacing voice to the goings-on.  Freddie Jones does pretty well as Dallben.  Everyone else is pretty standard fare, though.

It’s not hard to see why this movie wasn’t a hit at the box office.  It’s a little too scary for the audience it was aiming for, namely little kids.  It was not received well by critics or fans.  The author of the Prydain Chronicles himself said the film doesn’t bare any resemblance to his books whatsoever, which is a very damning accusation.  The film cost a whopping 44 million dollars to make, which made it the most expensive movie at that particular time and it nearly bankrupted Disney’s animation studio.  It was so poorly received that it didn’t even receive a home video release for about a decade.  That’s how embarrassed Disney was with The Black Cauldron.  Is it really that bad of a movie, though?  I don’t think so.  It surely has its problems as I mentioned above, but it still some really good things going for it.  The animation and artwork is simply stunning, and the music by Elmer Bernstein was phenomenal.  I can’t say that I would give the film my full-blown recommendation, but it’s a really interesting look at one of Disney’s darker pictures.  It is surprisingly entertaining.  It’s worth renting, that much I will say.

Final Score: 7/10.