Review: Allied (2016)

* * *
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Brad Pitt, Marion Cotillard

Allied is one of the most beautiful looking films of the year. Meticulously assembled and working very hard to evoke a more classical style of movie storytelling, Allied is a different kind of film than those that populate the multiplex these days, though I wouldn't quite agree with critics who call it "old fashioned" or a "throwback" to the films of the 1940s. It draws its inspiration from films of the past - borrowing visually from David Lean (but also from the not-so-old The English Patient), a little bit from Casablanca, and structuring its second half like a noir - but its sensibility is too modern for it to properly be called old fashioned. The sex is too explicit, the violence is too explicit, and its depiction of WWII servicemen and women as surrendering to a "we could die at any moment so anything goes" hedonism is definitely outside of the realm of any old school film. It exists somewhere in between the movies of yesteryear and the movies of today and though it's not flawless in every step it takes, it succeeds in being entertaining.

Review: Flight (2012)

* * *
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle

Flight is a film that places itself firmly in a moral gray area. On the one hand, its protagonist, Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), is right when he says that he was given a broken plane and that, inebriated or not, no other pilot could have landed it as safely as he did (the question of whether even he would have been bold enough to try what he does had he not been drunk and on drugs remains unspoken). On the other hand, there's really no excuse for being drunk on the job, especially if you're a pilot. Though the film is advertised as a disaster and aftermath drama, it's actually a cerebral addiction drama in which its protagonist tries again and again to justify his actions, until finally getting to the point where he no longer can. It's a film that often descends into inelegant manipulation, but that ultimately succeeds in spite of itself and on the strength of its extraordinary cast.