Category: Movies You Might Have Missed

The Tillman Story (Mad Movies)

The Tillman Story, Pat Tillman

The Tillman Story (2010) is one of those movies that reveals information about a story you thought you already knew. As you probably recall from extensive media coverage, Pat Tillman was an Arizona Cardinal football player who enlisted in the U.S. Army after the 9/11 events in June 2002. Director Amir Bar-Levi’s movie delves into the story behind Tillman’s life and his death in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.

At the time of his enlistment and after his death, Tillman was portrayed by the government and the media as an American hero who gave up a lucrative NFL contract out of patriotism and then died as a hero saving the lives of other American soldiers. The truth, however, was something more complex.

Much of the movie focuses on the struggle by the Tillman family to discover the truth about Pat Tillman’s death. Tillman was a hero, but he did not see himself as anything special and he did not want his life or death used for propaganda purposes. Similarly, his family is interesting, colorful, intelligent, and sympathetic in their attempts to cut though all of the government deceit.

The movie is both heartbreaking and uplifting. You can see the pain in the faces of the Tillman family members when several government officials appear before Congress to lie about the cover-up regarding Tillman’s death. It is frightening to see people with power who are incompetent, dishonest, or both. But you also admire the determination and love of the family to seek the truth, no matter what the costs.

The family worked hard to honor Pat Tillman as a real person, not as a cartoon character created to serve the government’s purpose. Among their efforts, there is the Pat Tillman Foundation, developed to assist veterans through education and community.

I have intentionally avoided revealing too much about the movie, because you should see it for yourself and find your own outrage.

The Tillman Story, which many people missed when it played in theaters, is narrated by actor Josh Brolin and was recently released on DVD and Blu Ray.

Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Missed Movies Link Roundup

    The following websites discuss some very good movies you might have missed:

    (1) Captain Obvious discusses David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999), about an old guy who drives a tractor from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his brother. The movie, based on a true story, is unlike most of David Lynch’s movies, although there are some nice small Lynch touches.  Richard Farnsworth was a great actor, and this may be his best role.

    (2) Concrete Hunter talks about Please Give (2010), one of the best movies from last year that received good reviews but was more overlooked than it should have been. The movie follows two families living in New York and how their lives intersect, and the characters seem very real.

    (3) You likely have seen this one, but if not, run out and get The Night of the Hunter (1955). The Onion has a review of the new Criterion DVD release.

    (4) Salon has a good slideshow discussion of 10 Brilliant Comic Book Movies, featuring several interesting surprises and reappraisals of flawed but compelling movies.

    Finally, in the category of “Movies You Wish You Would Have Missed,” Popdose has a fun article about movie sequels that killed the good will of the originals, thus called “Killogies.” Star Wars anyone?

    Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Army of Shadows vs. Inglourious Basterds

    French Resistance Movie When watching Army of Shadows recently, I could not help comparing it to Inglourious Basterds.  It might not be fair to compare Army of Shadows’s realistic portrayal of the French Resistance to the Nazi-killing fantasy, but let’s do it anyway.

    There was something disorienting about the way that Quintin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds glorified violence while also portraying the enemy as a regime that glorified violence.  The movie is supposed to be fun, and I understand that.  I love some of Tarantino’s violent movies, like Pulp Fiction.  And Inglourious Basterds had some excellent scenes, with Tarantino doing an outstanding job of portraying building tension in the opening farmhouse scene and in the scene in the bar.

    But I just could not fully enjoy a movie where we were supposed to root for a sadistic character (played by Brad Pitt) against sadistic Germans when it almost seemed the Pitt character would have fit just as well in a Nazi uniform instead of a U.S. uniform had he been born in Germany.

    By comparison, one cannot imagine the “heroes” of Army of Shadows working for the Nazis, even though we see those characters doing acts of violence in a much darker movie.  Army of Shadows portrays members of the French Resistance in day-to-day activities to survive and continue the movement.

    This film seems to show what it was really like to resist a totalitarian powerful authority like the Nazis.  The individual’s struggle is to keep the resistance alive in the shadows while betrayal lurks around every corner.

    There is no large-scale successful destruction of Nazis in Army of Shadows, and, in fact, you do not see any successes toward stopping the government.  But the main characters are still heroic in their existential struggle to continue in spite of the appearance that everything is doomed.

    In the movie, Resistance leader Phillipe Gerbier (played by Lino Ventura) speaks of facing death but might as well be speaking of the movement itself when he says, “It’s impossible not to be afraid of dying.  But I’m too stubborn, to much of an animal to believe it.  If I don’t believe it to the very last moment, the last split second, I’ll never die.”

    The 1969 movie is directed by famed French director Jean-Pierre Melville and based upon a 1940’s novel by Joseph Kessel, which in turn was based on Kessel’s experiences in the Resistance.  The book appears to be out of print, and the movie only made it to the U.S. a few years ago.

    When the movie was released in 1969, French critics campaigned against it.  They believed it glorified the Resistance and Pres. Charles de Gaulle (although the movie is not about de Gaulle) during a time when the president was not popular due to his reaction to a 1968 student uprising.  So the film did not do well in France, and it was not released in the U.S. until 2006.

    More than five million viewers have watched the trailer of Inglourious Basterds on YouTube while viewers have only seen the trailer there for Army of Shadows less than 35,000 times.  After more than 40 years, it’s time to see this excellent movie you might have missed.

    Bonus Subtitle Note: Yes, for you non-French speakers, Army of Shadows is in French with subtitles, and I understand the “resistance” to foreign movies.  You cannot type on your computer or play with your iPhone while reading subtitles.  I understand.  When I put a foreign movie in my Netflix queue, I often move it down the list as it makes it way toward the top.  But do not miss out on great movies like this one just because you have to read a little, and if you saw Inglourious Basterds, you made it through the German subtitles at points.  If you want to read more about Army of Shadows, the Onion AV Club has a good discussion of the movie here.

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    Missed Movies: Solitary Man

    Michael Douglas There are two types of good movies.  First, there is the movie that you enjoy while you watch it and then never really think about again — until you are flipping TV channels and come across it and think, “Oh yeah, this was good.”  Second, there is the movie that you continue to ponder long after you watch it. The movie may stay with you for any number of reasons.  Maybe a character reminded you of someone. Maybe the movie puzzled you in a good way. Maybe there was a scene you cannot stop thinking about.

    The 2009 movie Solitary Man falls into the latter category for me. The movie features one of Michael Douglas’s great acting roles and is worth it for that alone.  Douglas plays a womanizer and former car dealership owner who sees many of his bad decisions catch up to him. You may not like or admire the character, but he comes across as a real person, not a caricature, and you most likely will want to see what happens next.

    Solitary Man has an excellent cast, including Susan Sarandon and Jesse Eisenberg (recently in The Social Network).  The scenes between Douglas and Danny DeVito are excellent in a way that may only be possible when played by two old friends portraying two old friends.  In the DVD extras, Jenna Fischer (who you might know from The Office) recalls how when she read the script before knowing the cast, she could only think of Michael Douglas in the lead role.  Douglas does such a great job, there is only one other person I could imagine in the role.  As he has aged, Douglas reminds me more and more of his father, Kirk Douglas, who I might also imagine here as Ben Kalmen.

    [I am not giving away much about the ending, but if you plan to see the movie and do not want to know more about it, skip this paragraph.]  The ending of Solitary Man is one reason I keep thinking about the film.  The end is not an exciting explanation point, but more of a small question mark.  I was reminded of a Tom Hanks movie where a lot of people did not like the ending, but I did.  Here, the ending seemed perfect and true to the movie and the character.  If you have seen Solitary Man, you may read more of a discussion of the ending in this interview with the writer/directors.

    Like many movies in my Movies You Might Have Missed series, you should not watch Solitary Man expecting it to be one of the great movies of all time, but it is a small, entertaining, and thoughtful movie that you might enjoy.  I’m surprised that the movie did not get the attention that it deserved.  Some reviews at the time praised the movie as a smaller version of Douglas’s fine work as an aging English professor in Wonder Boys, because of some similarities between the characters.  But the movies are very different, so you should not be expecting Wonder Boys II.

    While Douglas’s Wonder Boys character had more of a slapstick element, Solitary Man seems more grounded in day-to-day reality.  There are moments of humor, but Douglas creates a real character of flesh and blood.  And, even though you may not admire the character, you will see flashes of humanity and real life here. And that is what creates movies you think about long after the screen goes dark.

    Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Missed Movies: Amelia

    If you avoided the movie Amelia (2009) in the theater because of the bad reviews, you might want to check it out on DVD/Blu Ray/HBO.  The movie about Amelia Earhart may not be a great movie, but it is an entertaining story about one of the most interesting people from the early twentieth century.

    I may have a lower standard for biography movies than fictional movies because biopics have the added bonus of teaching me about events that actually happened while I also realize that the director and writer are restrained by true-life events.  For example, because we don’t have the information, the movie rightfully avoids showing the actual crash that ended Earhart’s life in her 1937 attempt to circle the world, although it follows her up until the moment radio contact was lost.  A fictional story would have been able to dramatize the crash.  Further, biopics often are restrained to a certain formula to try to cover a large number of years in a person’s life and to make it a cohesive story.  That’s one of the reasons that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was able to do such a funny send-up of otherwise excellent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line.

    Amelia Earhart’s life was so ground-breaking it’s difficult to convey how important she was for aviation and women’s rights in less than two hours.  But the movie does a good job in telling the story, with excellent acting from Hillary Swank as Earhart and Richard Gere as her husband, George Putnam.

    One small piece of history I learned was that when Gore Vidal was a child, he knew Amelia Earhart because his father had a relationship with her.  Gore has seen a lot of American history.

    Earhart was an amazing person and aviation pioneer:  first woman across the Atlantic as part of a crew in 1928, first woman and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, first person to fly solo across the Pacific between Hawaii and California, as well as a leadership role in several organizations promoting aviation.  The movie does a decent job of telling the story, and it’s worth a rental.

    Bonus History Tidbit:  Who was the second person to fly an airplane non-stop across the Atlantic after Lindbergh?  Clarence Chamberlin, although he carried a passenger.  He was in the competition for the Orteig Prize money with Charles Lindbergh and others to be the first to fly an airplane across the Atlantic.  He would have beaten Lindbergh, but a former navigator sued him and kept him grounded for awhile, which allowed Lindbergh to beat Chamberlin.

    Chamberlin flew across the Atlantic on June 4-6, 1927.  Lindbergh made his flight on May 20-21, 1927, winning by just two weeks.  Had Chamberlin beaten Lindbergh, would Lindbergh still have been the national hero?  It’s possible, as his was the first solo flight, but the media focus was on on being the first non-stop flight and winning the $25,000 Orteig prize, and Chamberlin would have won the prize if he were first.  If Chamberlin had been the national hero, would that have spared Lindbergh the tragedy of his son being kidnapped and killed?  Would it have spared America of seeing its national hero accused of being pro-Nazi?  Few have heard of Chamberlin because Lindbergh beat him, and Chamberlin may have been the lucky one after all.

    Missed Movies is our series on very good movies that many people did not see when first released.

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    Amelia