Red Tails v The Master

WATCH THIS NOT THAT...

First up RED TAILS (Available from Blockbusters)

My friend Smithers recommended Red Tails to me. Just to be clear this is the man of whom fell asleep to Inception, walked out of Moon and thinks that 12 Monkeys is up there with one of the worst films I've ever introduced him to. That said he can quote Pulp Fiction until the cows come home, but then who can't.
So I had very low expectations for this movie, even more so once I knew George Lucas had a hand in it. (Executive producer). Quick blurb on the film.

Italy 1944. As the war takes its toll on allied forces in Europe, a squadron of black pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen are finally given the chance to prove themselves in the sky.. even as they battle discrimination on the ground.

Ok so to take the edge off what was going to be an inevitable slog of corny dialogue mixed with sub-par special effects I got a 4 pack of Crabbies and a bottle of red. 
The first thing I noticed was how terrible the font was on the opening credits. Now I have a thing for fonts, and if for no other reason, you should just check out the first five minutes of this to see what I mean. They are worse than the font on the opening credits of The Expendables. 

The film has a lot of action in, and it certainly chugs along. The fight scenes in the sky were farcical, remember in Top Gun when Maverick says "I'm gunna slam on the breaks and he'll fly right by." Every scene somehow has a little bit of that in. It's like an incredible maneuver has to be undertaken in order to shoot down any Nazi plane. But that said, the fight scenes weren't without merit. There were some good special effects (not the train crash though, by jove, not the train crash). There was an element of suspense and I would be lying if I didn't say that I was invested slightly in some of the characters. 

Cuba Gooding Junior is given nothing to do apart from smoke a pipe and look thoughtful. Terrence Howard turns up (Crash, Iron Man) and I think great, but his scenes are crow barred in for the racial exposition, they're boring as shit but luckily they are few and far between.
The best thing in this film is David Oyelowo (he was the nasty scientist in Rise of the Planet of the Apes that likes to watch people shoot monkeys from helicopters).
He's like maverick from Top Gun, but even more one dimensional. But enjoyable.

I wasn't bored, I got drunk and plodded through it. I suggest you should do the same.

Now onto THE MASTER (Available at selected cinemas)

The blurb:
a 2012 American drama film written, directed, and co-produced by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. It tells the story of Freddie Quell (Phoenix), a World War II veteran struggling to adjust to a post-war society who meets Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), a leader of a philosophical movement known as "The Cause" who sees something in Quell and accepts him into the movement. Freddie takes a liking to "The Cause" and begins traveling with Dodd along the East Coast to spread the teachings.

I saw it this morning in a cinema on my own. I recommend if anyone in their mid-thirties wishes to see a film at the cinema but can't find a viewing buddy, simply order a cappuccino to look sophisticated, and carry a notebook under your arm so people will get the impression you are a critic of some kind. Ok the Fonts are fantastic, ah only joking. (but really they are!). 

I had very little idea what to expect from this, as the plot is pretty vague. Infact, the only thing I had heard ahead of seeing this film is that there is no plot. It has been accused of being too stylized and very thin on substance. It was quite refreshing actually because the last five or six films I had managed to guess every outcome. (Yes i knew the beginning middle and end to Skyfall, not because I have a crystal ball, but because I have a crystal brain that thinks logically).
What I will say is that it looks incredible, even from the opening scene of the wake of a boat, it is measured, crisp, and filled with beautiful scenery. 
Joaquin Phoenix is ramping everything up to 11 as the boys from Spinal Tap would say. There is an interrogation scene on the boat between Hoffman and Phoenix that is long and intense, perhaps the most intense of the whole film. Paul Thomas Anderson has a habit of long scenes done in one take. Remember in Boogie Nights where William H Macey is pacing around the house looking for his wife, finds her shagging another guy then shoots her, then himself on new years eve? Or in Magnolia as the child prodigy is escorted around the studio before appearing on the gameshow?) Well its longer than those and brilliant. So brilliant that it nearly derails the entire film. 

I'd love to see Joaquin Phoenix get an oscar for this, because you don't get actors throwing in that sort of performance in films that often. Maybe you do in PTA films. Anyway I loved it, but it's the sort of film that Smithers would walk out on without a doubt. I also found it incredibly influential. I wanted to get as drunk as Phoenix does in every scene, but when i emerged from the cinema, it was only 12.30pm. Even I'm not that bad.

Anyway, the ending is slightly nuts, but nothing beats the nutty ending of Magnolia which I recommend every one checks out. So watch MAGNOLIA and not RED TAILS, or THE MASTER.