We Are Marshall

So what's better than a sports movie? A sports movie with underdogs! As a movie lover, there are few things better than rooting for the underdog against some behemoth favorite. And wouldn't you know it? Most of the best underdogs are the real ones. Take the true story of the 1971 season for the Marshall Thundering Herd football team. A remarkable story, one that was turned into one of the most underrated sports movies around, 2006's We Are Marshall.

It's November 14, 1970 and the Marshall football team has just lost a late-season game to East Carolina. Flying back to campus in Huntington, the plane crashes just a mile short of the runway, killing all 75 people on-board including the coaching staff and most of the team. It is a tragedy that rocks the campus and college town, leaving the administration to decide if the next football season should be suspended. Following raucous, loyal support from the fans, Marshall decides to go forward with the upcoming season, hiring a little-known but energetic coach, Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey), to build the program up from nothing. With just a trio of players remaining from the team, Lengyel has his work cut out for him as one barrier and roadblock after another awaits. As Jack says though, sometimes it's more than just about winning. It's about giving it your all.

What a crazy, incredible true story. Director McG turns in a gem, an excellent sports story that hits all the right notes. It's difficult watching this in 2016 without thinking "How would a tragic incident like this play out in '16?" Like so many other sports movies tend to do, 'Marshall' actually does a good job of sticking to the truth, to the real-life people and events that developed following the plane crash. Maybe some smaller, quieter moments are tweaked and twisted, but the history and guts of the story are spot-on. That really appeals to me because McG and Co. aren't pandering to the audience for emotional responses. It's a heartfelt story about how the people, the students, the families, the football players coped with such a horrific. life-taking incident.

This is an interesting leading part for star Matthew McConaughey, featuring some of the best of his work. He plays Jack Lengyel, a coach who takes on the gargantuan task of starting a program from the ground-up with just three returning players, no coaching staff and lingering doubts about if they should do this. McConaughey brings a ton of energy to the part, and that's what Marshall needs. Quirky, funny, and very real, it is an excellent performance. He's taking on this difficult job for all the right reasons, which we see in a couple of the movie's most effective scenes. In the football scenes, he throws himself into the action with reckless abandon and it shows, adding something necessary to the proceedings. This isn't a part that will go down as one of McConaughey's best, but I certainly think it should. He's rarely been better.

Watching the new coach arrive, we see how he interacts with so many different people in so many different ways. In a movie featuring several very strong performances, Matthew Fox is a scene-stealer as Red Dawson, a coach who was supposed to be on the doomed plane but changed plans last second. Now, he's dealing with horrific amounts of survivor's guilt. His scenes with McConaughey are heart-breaking, funny, and like two brothers getting to know each other. Next up, Anthony Mackie (a favorite here) as Nate Ruffin, a star player who wasn't on the plane and now feels he must start up the team again as if it is his calling. He pushes and pushes himself through injury and the pain of losing his teammates. And last but not least, David Strathairn as Marshall President Donald Dedmon, tasked with making the decision to not suspend the football team and then back Jack in his crazy plan to get the team going again. Three excellent supporting parts.

Because this isn't a movie just about football, also look for Ian McShane as the father of one of the players who died in the accident. His son was engaged to a cheerleader, Annie (Kate Mara), who similarly struggles with what to do in the wake of the crash. January Jones and Kimberly Williams-Paisley have thankless roles as the coaches' wives.

Running 131-minutes, 'Marshall' covers a ton of ground with a lot of characters, but things never feel too rushed. We go from the crash to the aftermath to the coaching hire to building the team, practice through the first two games. The football -- from the practices to the games -- has a great energy, especially the movie's last game as Marshall looks to do the impossible. The soundtrack? A drum-heavy college marching band playing as the different plays develop, drumming in step with the on-screen action. It's a cool, stylish moment that anyone who's ever been to a college sport event with a marching band will definitely appreciate. The soundtrack itself is heavy with some classic 1970's rock, adding another welcome, nostalgic layer to the story.

A gem, one that as I read some critics' reviews, I see I may be on an island with my love of 'Marshall'! I'm a sucker for sports movies across the board, but this one is really, really good. Highly recommended.

We Are Marshall (2006): *** 1/2 /****

World War Z

Thanks to AMC's The Walking Dead (among other things), the zombie genre has gotten an energy boost the last couple years from film to books to TV shows. I read Max Brooks' World War Z and loved it, an interesting twist on the zombie genre, most of all a smart, well-written book not interested in horror(ish) shock value. It was apparent the book just couldn't be adapted for one feature length film, making me suspicious of 2013's World War Z. Long story short? It has little to do with Brooks' novel, but it's pretty good just the same.

A former United Nations employee, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Karin (Mireille Enos), and their two daughters. Caught up in traffic driving to work, Gerry and his family are caught up in mass chaos, seemingly deranged human beings attacking other ones at will. The Lanes manage to escape the city and all its death and violence, Gerry getting a call from his former boss with the U.N., Thierry (Fana Mokoena), asking him for help. The attacks are not an isolated events, something happening across the world, thousands and maybe millions of people dying. What's going on? The word 'zombie' is beginning to pop up, the undead attacking live human hosts, the victims then turning into zombies themselves. Working with survivors among the military and government, Gerry is tasked with finding a solution; a clue, a lead, something that will help the human race survive. The world is tearing itself apart. Can Gerry survive long enough to find those desperately needed answers?

The difficult part of Brooks' novel is that it isn't a novel, but an oral history. It is a series of interviews with people who survived World War Z -- the zombie takeover -- and what they saw. We meet common people, government officials, brilliant minds working to combat the zombies, military, medical staff and everything in between. We see nothing live, simply hearing about it later. There is a subtle brilliance to its storytelling device. The trick then...how does any two-hour film somehow manage to pack all that detail on a worldwide level into such a short run-time? Basically, it doesn't. The film makes a valiant effort to do so -- Pitt's Lane globe-trotting to find a solution/cure -- but if you're looking for a literal, spot-on adaptation of Brooks' novel, you're going to be disappointed. Take solace in the fact that the movie is still really good.

What I liked about director Marc Forster's film is that it doesn't spell everything out for us in crystal clear fashion, just like the novel. We never find out exactly what caused the zombie takeover, whether it be a disease, a virus, Mother Nature rearing its ugly head. Early on, we don't see the zombies directly, just blurry motion as they race by the camera. It's only as Gerry learns what's going on that we start to see these undead attackers head-on. A doctor (Elyes Gabel) does a great job with a monologue that lays out what's going on, and maybe more scary, if there's anyway to stop it. Without explaining every little detail, we get a picture of what's going in the world as the epidemic takes over. We hear in the background that Washington DC is gone, that other cities aren't far behind. I thought that was a really smart movie. We get that big picture, but it doesn't lose the personal element we get from Gerry, his family and those he meets along the way.

As the only cast member who is in basically every scene, Pitt does a fine job carrying the movie. We learn tidbits about his past, but mostly we're in the here and now. With his past work as a respected, trusted United Nations employee on an international level, his Gerry knows how to handle himself in sticky situations. The rest of the cast is an ensemble (a nice nod/attempt to adapt the novel), the people Gerry meets in his investigation. We meet Segen (Daniella Kertesz), a young Israeli soldier, Capt. Speke (James Badge Dale), an Army officer with a small crew of surviving soldiers in Korea, Warmbrunn (Ludi Boeken), an intellectual helping Israel survive the epidemic, David Morse as an ex-CIA agent caught up in Korea, (Pierfranceso Favino), a World Health Organization doctor in Wales, and Tomas (Fabrizio Zacharee Guido), a young boy caught up in the chaos with the Lanes from Newark. Even Matthew Fox makes a blink and you'll miss it appearance as a parajumper who helps the Lanes. The variety of the people we meet does help give a touch of what Brooks' novel did so well.

The scale is pretty impressive, as it should be with a film featuring a $190 million budget. We go from Philly to Newark to following the U.S. Navy in the Bahamas to Korea, Israel and Wales. There are some pretty impressive set pieces, especially the initial takeover in Philadelphia and a surprising attack in a walled-in Jerusalem. A nighttime encounter with Speke's troops at an isolated base in Korea is the most action you'll see, small scale but unsettling and highly effective. The same goes for the finale in a half-infested W.H.O facility, Lane and several doctors trying to navigate their way through its sterile, fluorescent hallways. It's the finale that was supposedly re-shot by Forster and his crew (at quite the cost), replacing this finale with an epic zombie vs. human battle in Red Square in Moscow. I'd be curious to see that ending, but this one's pretty cool too on that smaller scale.

So there we are. I think this zombie flick is missing something from being a classic, but that didn't take away from a very entertaining, very tense movie. I really liked Brad Pitt leading the ensemble cast in a movie that does a good job balancing out the large scale with the personal. Also worth mentioning is Marco Beltrami's score (listen HERE) as well as dropping in some songs from one of my favorite musical groups, Muse, including Isolated System and Follow Me. Both provide some nice electronic touches to Beltrami's very solid score. Well worth checking out, whether you're a fan of the book or not.

World War Z (2013): ***/****

Emperor

Win a war. Rebuild a country. Well, that's the nice way of doing it. Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era was a dark mark on U.S. history. After World War I, the Allied powers basically neutered Germany, demilitarizing the army and placing harsh limits on the country. The Marshall Plan followed the conclusion of World War II, but what to do with Germany, and as is the case in 2012's Emperor specifically, what to do with Japan?

World War II has come to a close, and U.S. forces are occupying Japan, plans going forward to help rebuild the country but also to search and investigate war crimes committed during the war. General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) has been named Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and has been tasked with deciding where American forces and Japan go from here. One of his biggest decisions is coupled with the war criminals. First, they must be found and second, they must face trial for their crimes. More than that though, he must decide what to do with Hirohito, the Japanese emperor. How much involvement did the Emperor have in getting Japan into the war? How much was he responsible? Did he order the attack on Pearl Harbor? MacArthur passes the investigating mission to an officer on his staff, General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox), to find out how the Hirohito issue should be resolved, but there won't be easy answers.

I was encouraged when I found this movie at IMDB and then Netflix. A post-World War II about the U.S. occupation of Japan -- just months after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- sounded like a great jumping off point. It's a touchy, messy and uncomfortable topic in history that hasn't been dealt with much in terms of film. That's when the movie is at its best, seeing the Japanese cities in ruin, the channels the American military must still go through following the war with the Japanese power structure, the differences in culture between America and Japan and plenty of other things. It's a war movie but not quite. It's a drama about the military and based on a true story at that. Read more about Bonner Fellers HERE.

So that's all and good, right? You would think so. The movie unfortunately only partially focuses on that part of the story. Director Peter Webber works off a script from Vera Blasi and David Klass decides to go down a different route. Instead of focusing solely on the investigation into Emperor Hirohito, 'Emperor' follows Fox's General Fellers and his own personal investigation into finding a past love, Aya (Eriko Hatsune), an exchange student he met in America but visited in Japan prior to the start of the war. We get one mindless, lyrical flashback after another showing their past, slowing down an already slow-moving story to a standstill. We're talking about a huge moment in international history, and it is minimized to a love story that cannot be. Gag me. The best thing to come from it is some more exploration of the Japanese culture -- what makes the Japanese people who they are -- but that doesn't make the majority of it interesting.

The casting in general is just okay. Fox is acceptable as General Bonner Fellers, but his entire part is hamstrung by the long lost love script. Tommy Lee Jones is an interesting choice to play MacArthur, one of the most iconic generals in American military history. Physically, nothing was done to make him resemble the famous general, but he gives it the old college try in terms of speech patterns and physical mannerisms. It's a good part, not a great one, but his character is basically an extended cameo. It's a part that keeps him in the background far too much in general. As for the rest of the cast, not too much else to recommend. The other American officers at HQ are basically faceless, and the Japanese officers and government officials don't make much of an impression.

There are some moments late that are worth mentioning. Fox's Fellers has an emotional scene late with his Japanese translator, Takahashi (Masayoshi Haneda), a man dealing with his own grief but trying to move on as best he can. A Japanese official (Masato Ibu) talks to Fellers about the day Japan surrendered and what led to it, a part of history I wasn't aware of that you can read about HERE. As well, the scene late where MacArthur actually gets to meet with Hirohito (Takataro Kataoka), an odd meeting in terms of cultural differences as two men feel each other out. Unfortunately, these are just individual scenes that get lost in a movie that wastes a chance to be pretty decent considering the subject matter. Too bad because I wanted to like this one.

Emperor (2012): **/****