‘Flight Risk’ is a Pretty Chillaxing Plane Thriller

January 23, 2025

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Look at them taking risks! (CREDIT: Lionsgate)

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace

Director: Mel Gibson

Running Time: 91 Minutes

Rating: R for Guns, Knives, and Choking

Release Date: January 24, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Deputy U.S. Marshal Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) has found her man! His name’s Winston (Topher Grace), he’s the accountant for the high-profile crime boss Moretti, and he’s hiding out somewhere in the wilds of Alaska, just trying to microwave a cup of soup in peace. But he knows his days outside the grasp of the law are limited, and quite frankly he’s very ready to become a cooperating witness. So Madelyn cuffs him up and charters a private flight from a pilot named Daryl Booth (Mark Wahlberg). But it turns out that Booth isn’t exactly who he says he is. Instead, he’s a hit man sent by Moretti to keep Winston quiet. That’s what we call a Flight Risk!

What Made an Impression?: Autopilot: Flight Risk runs a lean 91 minutes, unfolding more or less in real time. You might think that would make for an edge-of-your-seat, white-knuckle thriller, and I suppose it could be described that way. But more than half of the plot is fairly mellow, or at least as mellow as it can be when you’re thousands of feet up in the air and someone with no pilot experience is forced to navigate the sky. That low-key quality is attributable to the decision to keep the villain unconscious or otherwise incapacitated for most of the film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; in a way, it’s kind of fascinating how Mel Gibson’s directing and Jared Rosenberg’s script allow us plenty of room to catch our breath. So if you have a heart condition and were worried that you couldn’t handle the stress of a movie like this, well, you might actually be able to give it a chance!
Limiting Stress: The most memorable moment of Flight Risk is surely the reveal that Fake-Booth wears a toupee. It doesn’t have any bearing on the plot and doesn’t reveal anything about his character whatsoever, but I’m glad that it was included because it’s definitely worth the laugh. A significant chunk of the movie operates on that vibe of keeping it light. Dockery spends most of the movie on a headset checking in with her Marshall colleagues, as well as a pilot who’s guiding her through to the landing. Many of these conversations had me thinking, “Are these people aware of the death-defying gravity of this situation?” But I appreciated that they were keeping it light, whether or not it was realistic. And in the case of the pilot, it definitely made sense, as he shamelessly flirts Madelyn to put her at ease and get her through an impossible situation. So weirdly enough, Flight Risk is a breezy, talky hangout flick, which is certainly not what I expected out of a Mel Gibson-directed movie with this premise in 2025, but it’s nice to take little surprises where you can get them.

Flight Risk is Recommended If You Like: Conversations in the sky

Grade: 3 out of 5 Pilots

‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant Wants to Play a Game

November 5, 2024

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Pie! Pie! Pie! (CREDIT: Kimberly French/A24)

Starring: Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East, Topher Grace, Elle Young

Directors: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Climatically Bloody Moments

Release Date: November 8, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Not since Elders Price and Cunningham have there been Mormon missionaries more excited to spread the message of the Church of  Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints than Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East). While knocking on doors one fateful evening, they end up at the residence of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), who invites them in with promises of blueberry pie and enthusiastic conversation. But soon enough, the young ladies notice warning signs that he might have more sadistic intentions in mind. When they attempt to leave, he assures them that they’re perfectly allowed to do so, but it must be through the back door. Alas, actually getting there involves completing a maze/thought experiment of his devising.

What Made an Impression?: A Flurry of Metaphors: If you’ve always wanted a horror movie that could teach you the history of one of the most popular board games of all time, well then, Heretic has you covered. You see, Mr. Reed is a student of all the world’s religions, and he’s noticed that the history of the major monotheistic faiths is strikingly similar to that of a certain real estate competition. If classic Christianity is Monopoly, then Judaism is its lesser-known forerunner The Landlord’s Game, while Islam is the game for a new era, and Mormonism and all the other more recent offshoots are the wacky spinoffs. It makes a lot of intoxicating sense when Mr. Reed explains. He has a way of summing up this entirely Earthly existence with tidily convincing metaphors. While he has an advisable mix of healthy skepticism and genuine interest when it comes to matters of faith, his intellectual self-assurance is bedeviling.
Not So Naive: Mr. Reed has designed his test so meticulously that Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are really no match for him. Or so it might seem. As it turns out, they’re nowhere near as clueless as you might expect twentysomethings who grew up in a deeply religious community to be. Thatcher plays Sister Barnes as battle-hardened and a stiff judge of character. Meanwhile, East is an outgoing bundle of friendliness as Sister Paxton, but she knows how the world works. The movie even starts with her talking about a deep philosophical revelation that came to her from watching porn. If anyone could muck up Mr. Reed’s plans and challenge him in ways that are just the least bit unexpected, it’s these two.
How Do You Play the Game?: I can’t endorse Mr. Reed’s methods, but his lesson plans and instinct for metaphor are quite useful. As he points out at one point, either we’re living in a universe run by a god who allows cruel, awful things to happen, and that’s terrifying; or, we live in a godless, totally random universe, and that’s also terrifying. He’s far from the first person to say something like that, but not many others have redesigned their whole house to make this point viscerally clear. Entering Mr. Reed’s domain is a microcosmic confrontation of the existential dilemma that perhaps all human beings grapple with at some point in their lives. Maybe Heretic will help you come up with a satisfying answer for why it’s worth it to keep on keeping on, or maybe it will leave you more racked with doubt than ever. But either way, you’re unlikely to ever forget it.

Heretic is Recommended If You Like: Theology lectures, Saw, Fresh baked goods

Grade: 4 out of 5 Doors

This Is a Movie Review: Under the Silver Lake

May 11, 2019

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CREDIT: A24

Under the Silver Lake is Inherent Vice crossed with The Shining.

Shaggy dog mysteries (which seem to exclusively be set in L.A.) have their charms, but they also have an underlying sense of frustration because the mystery is most definitely never solved satisfyingly, or at least not transparently. But they act like they want to solve the mystery. In the case of Under the Silver Lake, though, it’s clearly more satisfying to leave everything confusing. With his tendency to beat people up for minor offenses, Sam (Andrew Garfield) is certainly not a nice person, so it’s fitting that he doesn’t find all the answers. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some sort of “conspiracy,” or at least conspiracy-ish happening or series of happenings, going on. Disappearing Neighbor Riley Keough may be part of only a small portion of the whole tapestry. Sam enters Shining territory as his experience of supernatural occurrences feel inextricable from the real thing. He seems to have crossed through a looking glass wherein he might as well have been a part of all this for all eternity, especially considering his aimlessness. It’s an unmoored journey that I enjoyed.

I give Under the Silver Lake 400 Numbers out of 500 Questions.

This Is a Movie Review: A Wild Real-Life KKK Infiltration Makes ‘BlacKkKlansman’ an Essential Spike Lee Joint

August 9, 2018

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CREDIT: Focus Features

This review was originally published on News Cult in August 2018.

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pääkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser, Ashlie Atkinson, Robert John Burke, Corey Hawkins

Director: Spike Lee

Running Time: 135 Minutes

Rating: R for Incendiary Language and Images, Plus a Few Outbursts of Violence

Release Date: August 10, 2018

Going undercover is the most nerve-wracking work I can possibly imagine. Living in a constant state of dishonesty causes so many problems. Maybe this is one type of lying that can be justified morally, but that does not mean it is without consequences. It warps your sense of self and tears at the seams of all your close relationships. I have never had to go undercover myself, and thank God, because watching it in movies is stressful enough. The undercover experiences of Jewish Colorado Springs detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) only serve to confirm this perception. But the approach of his black partner, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), reveals that at least one person is built to handle the cognitive dissonance of going undercover.

Stallworth and Zimmerman’s infiltration into the Ku Klux Klan is the electrifying and infuriatingly relevant story of BlacKkKlansman, one of the most crowd-pleasing and just plain best joints in Spike Lee’s career. My main reaction to this flick is that if the real Stallworth is anything like the way Washington plays him, then he is one of the most righteously insane people who has ever lived. This is the first black officer in the history of the Colorado Springs police department, and his instinct when he sees a classified ad in the newspaper for the KKK is to contact them for more information. Furthermore, he treats his phone conversations with David Duke (Topher Grace) as an opportunity to pull off a long con to prove to the notorious grand wizard that he is not so adept at telling apart the races as he thinks he is. Stallworth’s actions may put himself and his fellow officers in the line of cross-burning fire, and Zimmerman calls him out for treating what should be a job as a crusade. But when unabashed racism is still delivering deadly violence to its targets, bold action is required to keep people safe.

Lee, of course, does not shy away from the rotting, anti-humanist message at the core of the KKK, but directly calling it out for what it is can still be a lot of fun. The entirety of Stallworth’s dialogue seems designed to inspire the dual reactions of “Can you believe what he’s saying?” and “That’s probably exactly what we need to hear, though.” “With the right white man, we can do anything” might very well be the slogan of American as filtered through the lens of Spike Lee. The KKK members are also a hoot without hiding their despicableness, with Grace seamlessly capturing the banality of evil and Alec Baldwin cameoing as a bumbling propagandist. Laura Harrier is just as essential as a Black Student Union leader who Ron becomes romantically involved with. Their discussions about blaxploitation and where the soul of fighting for justice should lie are the stuff of geeky film buffs’ delight. If you’re looking to have a fun time, seeing BlacKkKlansman is a great option, but Lee makes sure to unequivocally remind us of what we’re fighting for by including a coda of real-life footage from the 2017 Charlottesville riots. The historical passage of time in America is in many ways not so linear, and Lee is doing his best to capture it like lightning.

BlacKkKlansman is Recommended If You Like: Malcolm X, Chi-Raq, American Hustle

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Crank Calls