Chuckles Film Reviews-Sully and Silver Linings Playbook

This will be, I hope, a recurring feature that will be on the blog each time I watch a film. I used to love films so much and could watch a pile of them in my spare time. However with my focus on reading, I find little time to enjoy films that are new to me but now I need to start clearing the unwatched pile and get some space back! Here are the latest films I watched.

1) Sully
Starring Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn and Mike O'Malley.

While the world hails Sully as a hero for safely landing his flight in the Hudson river and saving 155 passengers and crew, the NTSB are viewing evidence that suggests he endangered the passengers by not returning to the airport. This is a look at the investigation, with flashbacks to the crash, and how the pilots fought to clear their names.  

I'm a fan of Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart as actors and of Clint Eastwood as a director. I have always had an interest in air disasters, having previously worked in the industry, so I was always going to be watching this film. I remember being gobsmacked by HOW the pilots managed to land safely on the river without death or serious injury and I remember all the news headlines about it. Finally, I sat down to watch it.

I had not been aware that the film is focused on the investigation into the crash, or that the NTSB were looking at pilot error as the cause of the crash. I only heard all the stories about Sully being the hero, not that he was pretty much being accused of endangering the passengers by not returning to the airport after the bird strike. There was an accusation that one of the engines was still in working order and computer simulations that showed the flight could have landed safely in New York or New Jersey. The pilots did not agree with this assessment and had to start fighting to clear their names as their careers were at risk if they were found to have been at fault. 

The flashback scenes to the crash are tense and dramatic and you get a sense of just how quickly decisions had to be made and exactly what kind of disaster was facing the crew. We see how the flight attendants were trying to keep everyone calm as panic was not surprisingly starting to affect the terrified passengers. We see the rescue boats and helicopters coming to their rescue and are with Sully as he nervously waits to see if everyone got off the plane safely. I think the scariest bit for me was watching nervously as the pilots face the final enquiry and have their own theories tested in a bid to clear their names. It was actually quite emotional, something that Clint Eastwood always does well as a director, tapping in to the very human side of the story and making you care about these people. 

The NTSB come across as pretty mean and hostile in the film. I get that they have a job to do but I really didn't like them at all as characters. When it came to the final part of the investigation, they are showing 'evidence' that other pilots in simulators could have landed the plane at an airport and then you are told how many practices they had at doing it before they got it right! This smacked of wanting the pilots to be scapegoats and I really didn't like that. I found myself sticking two fingers up at them as their evidence fell apart! 

I enjoyed this film very much. The acting was excellent and it showed all aspects of the situation-the crash, the escape from the plane and rescue, the media interest, the effect on Sully and his wife, the investigation, reaction from ordinary people, trying to clear their names...it covered everything I wanted to know about the incident. I would certainly watch it again. 

2) Silver Linings Playbook 
Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, John Ortiz and Anupam Kher.

When Pat is released from a psychiatric unit, he is obsessed with getting his wife back, despite the restraining order she has against him. He becomes friends with trauma survivor Tiffany, who agrees to help him get a message to his wife if he'll dance with her in an upcoming competition.

I'm not a fan of the contemporary or romance genres so I read this book on a complete whim and found myself enjoying it more than I expected to. I like a lot of the actors in the film and I was interested to see how they would bring the characters to life when I finally got round to watching it. 

Bradley Cooper gets better as an actor every time I see him. Pat was the kind of character that you root for and want to strangle at the same time! The mental health issues that he suffered from are brought to the fore when he catches his wife with another man and beats him senseless. The plea bargain leads him into a psychiatric hospital, which he is now releases from. He may have been released but he is still obsessed by his wife, ready to break the law to contact her, and unable to get it through his head that the relationship is over. I wanted to scream at him at times but he is also a nice guy so I was rooting for him to move on with his life. Tiffany went off the rails after her husband died, losing her job for sleeping with every guy where she worked. She is battling to find some self worth and a chance meeting with Pat, despite awkward moments, starts a new friendship based on understanding what it is like to have issues. I thought Jennifer Lawrence was excellent in the part, and the pair worked well on screen as a partnership.

Pat's family are just as eccentric with his OCD father, played so well by Robert DeNiro, his worried mother, and his brother who is having his own family issues. I felt for his brother as his social climbing wife was a bit of a challenge at times! I was also amused by the scenes involving Chris Tucker as Pat's friend from the psychiatric unit who makes a few escape attempts. He is pretty funny. One of my favourite bits in the book was the 'asian invasion' at the football game, led by Pat's doctor. I loved those guys! My one complaint with the film is that I wanted to see more of them than we did. I did like the mixture of emotional drama and humour, the conversations between Tiffany and Pat as they both just say what they think all the time.

I can't actually remember if the story plays out in the book exactly as it did in the film as it has been a few years since I read the book, but I did enjoy watching this. I'm not sure if I could watch it over and over but it was entertaining.