Monthly Archives: December 2016

Office Christmas Party (2016) Review: Space Office X For many people, the annual office Christmas party is a droll experience. No one really wants to be there, and it somehow turns the joyous event of Christmas, into a sad lonely affair. ‘Office Christmas Party’ is for those people. It’s an escapist fantasy that brings the reckless and wild goings on of ‘Project X’, to the cubicle rebellion of ‘Office Space’.The story follows the company of Xenotech. It doesn’t really matter what the company does, all that matter is Clay, played by the irreverent TJ Miller runs a failing branch of it. After his big sister Carol, played by Jennifer Aniston, threatens to shut down his business, Clay decides to throw the Christmas party to end all Christmas parties. He hopes that his efforts will win the interest of an investor, save his company, and the jobs of all his employees in the process. ‘Office Christmas Party’ does its job well. It has characters that fit the people you see in an everyday work environment, and it tries to put them in funny situations. Those situations can be low brow, like the HR person who uncontrollably farts in nervous situations, or they can be quite clever, with quips that play on the frustrations of office politics. With jokes that range from the silly to the cerebral, ‘Office Christmas Party’ never loses its genuine voice, making it feel like in the writers room, all jokes…

Sully (2016) Review: Soft Landing As a fairly young, but avid viewer of motion pictures, many of the movies that are based on true stories, are stories I either don’t remember or wasn’t alive to see. However in the ever flowing stream of time, events continue to occur, and then are recreated to be enjoyed from the comfort of the cinema. Recently, there was ‘Captain Phillips’ and now ‘Sully’. Both films about Captains surviving a 2009 tragedy, and both starring Tom Hanks. Go figure.   ‘Sully’ of course is the story of the 2009 forced water landing in which Captain Chesley Sullenberger (It’s a wonder he chooses to be called Sully) landed a commercial airplane with 155 people on board, after both engines failed, on the Hudson River. A story like that is amazing on its own, but is the movie any good? Well yes, but I’m not certain I needed to see it.‘Sully’ is a movie that suffers from its publicity. The sequence of the landing itself is thrilling, and it makes for an incredibly immersive portion of the film, but it’s only a fraction of the runtime. The rest of the movie looks at Sully himself. Tom Hanks gives a, well, sullen performance, as a man who’s suddenly thrust into fame, while dealing with an investigation of the incident. The film attempts to create tension in that investigation of the landing, but it comes across as artificial. The type of dramatic…