{"id":4133,"date":"2012-11-03T11:17:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T18:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=4133"},"modified":"2012-11-03T11:17:19","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T18:17:19","slug":"flight-does-not-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=4133","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Watch: FLIGHT Does Not Soar"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWelcome back Bob!!<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n

The man who has given us some modern day classics as \u201cBack to the Future,\u201d \u201cForrest Gump\u201d and \u201cWho Framed Roger Rabbit\u201d has made his first live action film in twelve years. Since the year 2000, director Robert Zemeckis has been solely focused on making cartoons that want to desperately look exactly like the real world. \u201cThe Polar Express,\u201d \u201cBeowulf\u201d and \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d were all animated films that featured photo realistic scenery and, if you squinted your eyes, you would swear that you were watching Angelina Jolie traipse around naked in a vat of molten gold. I always wondered what the point was to spend millions of dollars cobbling together a realistic looking room in a computer with fake Jim Carrey sitting at a fake table when you could just shoot a real room with the real Jim Carrey sitting at a real table. This would save everyone some time and make for a far less creepy movie.<\/p>\n

With \u201cFlight,\u201d Zemeckis proves that the time off has made him a touch rusty after spending so much time on the Grid. A story of morality and redemption, \u201cFlight\u201d features some heavy material that is treated far too lightly.
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\nPilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a broken mess of a person. He is a heavy drinker that likes to use cocaine to break from the haze after he\u2019s ingested a gallon of vodka. Probably not the person you want guiding your life through the clouds 7 miles above the surface of the planet. On a short flight from Florida to Atlanta, Whip\u2019s plane suffers a serious malfunction and begins to nose dive to the ground. Whip pulls off a miracle landing involving much screaming and flipping the plane upside-down. Luckily our hero is a functioning alcoholic. But there is the film\u2019s dilemma: No one else could have landed that plane but Whip did it drunk.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlight\u201d is a character piece that mainly focuses on Whip\u2019s struggle with his disease. It could have easily been called \u201cGrounded\u201d as Whip is forced to face these demons. Denzel does his standard concrete performance but it is a touch too neat, too tidy. Having watched Joaquin Phoenix deliver such a tortured drunk with Freddie Quell in \u201cThe Master,\u201d Whip seems almost made-for-television clean. With his pedigree, Washington might get the nominations, but he shouldn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of Zemeckis signatures here. While he has mellowed on the constantly sweeping camera, \u201cFlight\u201d features a constant stream of classic rock that could have made up Vol. 3 in the \u201cForrest Gump\u201d Soundtrack collection. It\u2019s an odd fit that only reminds us that Zemeckis loves this music. Also the pop-auteur sure knows how to crash a plane. With the one showstopper in \u201cCastaway\u201d coupled with the scene found in \u201cFlight\u201d it is easy to guess that he may suffer from an acute form of travel anxiety that we get to witness him work through on the big screen. After the breath stealing first act, \u201cFlight\u201d settles into comfortable pace that tries to hammer home Whip\u2019s dysfunction. Zemeckis makes much of this material too dry to care much about. Whip drinks, knows he shouldn\u2019t, then drinks again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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\nThe material is incredibly mishandled when it is played for laughs late in the film. After a bender, Whip\u2019s dealer is called upon. Played with great gusto by John Goodman (who may be fighting himself for a supporting nom with his work here and in \u201cArgo\u201d), the dealer barrels into the room with some coke and proceeds to get Whip high so that he can be presentable. My crowd was in stitches as Goodman sells the scene perfectly. But should we be laughing? The film spends too much time establishing Whip\u2019s destroyed world and to have us chuckle at him while he continues sickness is a major misstep. That is when \u201cFlight\u201d loses whatever gravity it could ever muster. It\u2019s also a mistake that Zemeckis probably wouldn’t have made 12 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back Bob!! The man who has given us some modern day classics as \u201cBack to the Future,\u201d \u201cForrest Gump\u201d and \u201cWho Framed Roger Rabbit\u201d has made his first live action film in twelve years. Since the year 2000, director Robert Zemeckis has been solely focused on making cartoons that want to desperately look exactly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5736,7663,10859,15501,17202],"class_list":["post-4133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-denzel-washington","tag-flight-movie-review","tag-john-goodman","tag-oscar-contenders-2013","tag-robert-zemeckis"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}