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The Weather Is Here

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Pressure

by George Wolf

How do you wring new tension from any well-known historical event, much less one with an outcome that’s been globally celebrated for over 80 years?

The films that have done it successfully focus intimately on the personalities involved in making pivotal decisions, and on some lesser-known factors that influenced their actions.

Pressure wisely does the same, turning the final order for the Allied Invasion of Normandy (D-Day) into a standoff between two polar opposite weathermen.

Andrew Scott is terrific as Group Captain Dr. James Stagg of the RAF, the Allies’ Chief Meteorological Officer who comes to General Dwight Eisenhower (Oscar-winner Brenden Fraser) with the highest recommendation from Winston Churchill himself.

Stagg’s blunt, no nonsense and analytical approach clashes immediately with Colonel Irving Krick (Chris Messina). Krick has earned Gen. Eisenhower’s trust through a history accurate forecasts, but Dr. Stagg believes Krick’s approach to the data at hand is suspect.

D Day is planned for the morning of June 5th, 1944. The film opens with 72 hours to go, and Eisenhower needs an answer.

Are we good to go? Krick says clear skies. Stagg says dangerous storms ahead.

Director Anthony Maras and co-writer David Haig adapt Haig’s 2014 stage play as an effective character study of a man who knew enough about the weather to never proclaim certainty. Stagg is quiet but confident, and Scott (All of Us Strangers, Wake Up Dead Man) deftly captures the internal struggle of a man being urged to tell the Generals what they want to hear even though he believes it’s wrong.

When Stagg tells Krick “You’re selecting data that suits you and ignoring the rest!” the line lands hard (just imagine if Krick had social media.) And it’s part of how the script cements Stagg’s courage of conviction as the largest seaborne invasion in history hung in the balance and his pregnant wife’s hospital took shelling back home.

Maras (Hotel Mumbai, The Palace) gets solid support from Fraser, Kerry Condon and Damian Lewis, and only occasionally drifts from the effective intimacies for more broadly brushed, war film grandstanding. And while the actual invasion sequences may not be exactly Private Ryan-worthy, that is a very, very tall order, Maras knows the film needs to go there and kudos to him for reminding us of that those brutal beach sacrifices.

Gen. Eisenhower’s famous quote to JFK credited the success of the Normandy invasion to having “better meteorologists than the Germans.” That wasn’t just a quip, it was an invitation to learn more.

Pressure is a good place to start.

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Formula Won

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F1: The Movie

by George Wolf

With Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski understood the assignment better than any director in recent years. Talent, swagger, airborne thrills and pinpoint vibe control made that film better than we could have imagined.

Now Kosinski brings a very similar blueprint to F1: The Movie, right down to that punctuation in the title.

Brad Pitt effortlessly assumes the role of a rogue mentor flying by his own rules, this time on the racetrack. Thirty years ago, Sonny Hayes (Pitt) had a promising career as a Grand Prix driver. A nasty crash derailed that, sending him to decades of minor league racing, professional gambling and even some cab driving.

But now, Sonny is the Hail Mary called by his old racing partner. Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) is a desperate team owner with a cocky young driver named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and a losing streak about to bring the whole thing down.

If Sonny’s “maverick” approach to driving can somehow get Ruben one win before the season ends, he can save the whole APX team.

Can Sonny be the Crash Davis to Joshua’s Nuke LaLoosh? Is he up for taking one more shot at glory and maybe some sexy time with APX tech director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon)?

It doesn’t matter if you already know, just like it doesn’t matter that much of the dialog is cheesy, many reaction shots deliver sitcom-worthy mugging and the TV commentators narrate straight from “Racing for Dummies.”

Pitt, Bardem, Condon and Idris might as well be winking through it all. They’re clearly having a ball, and elevate material that – like Maverick -would have been insufferable in lesser hands. F1 may not have nostalgia in its cockpit, but the swagger and the vibe are too fun to resist, while Kosinski (also a co-writer this time) delivers the pinpoint control.

Filmed for IMAX, F1‘s racing sequences are as thrilling on the track as Top Gun is in the air. The camerawork and pacing, the editing and some rockin’ needle drops keep the adrenaline pumping, and even that two and a half hour run time doesn’t feel as bloated as it probably should.

F1: The Movie won’t keep you guessing. And it won’t challenge your brain. But that isn’t the mission of this race team. The goal here is (really) big screen entertainment, movie star glamour, plenty of speed-fueled visceral thrills and maybe even a fist pump or two.

Ground control to victory lane: get the champagne ready.

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Silently Screaming

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The Banshees of Inisherin

by Hope Madden

Everything was fine yesterday.

Droll, dry and on point, that is the perfect tagline for Martin McDonagh’s latest bittersweet tragicomedy, The Banshees of Inisherin.

Existential dread picks up a brogue and a fiddle full of longing at JJ Devine’s Public House on an island off the West coast of Ireland in 1923. Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) has finished up with his sheep, horses, and beloved miniature donkey, Jenny. He heads today as every day to round up his best friend Colm Sunday Larry Doherty (Brendan Gleeson, perfect as always) for a pint.

But Colm ignores him. He just sits there, like.

Have they been rowing?

Pádraic doesn’t think they’ve been rowing.

It turns out that Colm has simply decided he doesn’t want to be Patraic’s friend anymore. The ripple effects of this decision are often hilarious, but just as often tragic and even awful. As Pádraic goes about trying to understand, reconnect, and change Colm’s mind we get to know the rest of the folk on the island as the Irish Civil War continues to rage.

It’s a microcosm, simultaneously intimate and universal. More than that, it’s a breathing example of the mournful humor and heritage of the Irish.

Barry Keoghan, honestly one of the most impressive actors working today, plays a little bent as the island’s main fool, Dominic Kearney. I don’t think there’s a performance in the film that won’t break your heart in one degree or another, Keoghan’s among them.

Kerry Condon’s Siobhan, Pádraic’s clear-eyed sister, is the fiery soul of McDonagh’s tale. As you might expect with a cast like this, it’s the chemistry among characters – the lived-in, weary familiarity bred by proximity– that lets McDonagh’s witty screenplay breathe. Gleeson’s soulful artist, Condon’s sharp realist, Keoghan’s lost soul, and especially Farrell’s nice fella orbit each other in a world quickly and irreversibly undone.

Carter Burwell’s camera and Ben Davis’s score remind you that the film is rooted in Irish mourning and melancholy, but McDonagh’s script still crackles with humor and pathos. And it contains maybe the best scene in a confessional ever.

Moments call to mind John Michael McDonaugh’s 2014 treasure Calvary, another Irish heartbreaker starring Gleeson. But McDonagh’s humor and insider’s perspective create something charmingly, achingly relatable.

The Banshees of Inisherin mines a kind of pain uncommon on a big screen. In Martin McDonaugh fashion, the mining is done with wit, insight, humanity and absolutely world-class acting. It must not be missed.