Chris Messina

Pressure

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Stagg takes a phone call

Nerds win the war in Pressure, which entertainingly tells the story about the meteorological johnnies who made the D-Day landings possible. How, when you’re launching the biggest seaborne invading force in human history, do you make sure the weather isn’t going to destroy your armada on the high seas? Whether the gap between England and France actually counts as the high seas is questionable. It’s only a 20-mile gap but it is difficult to navigate at the best of times. All that Atlantic Ocean on one side and North Sea on the other trying to squeeze through a bottleneck, with storms liable to barrel in from off the Atlantic at any time. That’s … Read more

Air

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Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) with his bare feet on his desk

Hollywood fixes capitalism, just like it used to do in the 1980s, with Air, the story of Nike getting together with basketball ace Michael Jordan to create the Air Jordan, the most popular sneaker of all time. Like Jordan, it’s got the skills, is light on its feet and moves at pace, introducing first the era in its opening moments with the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing behind a montage of Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Rubik’s Cubes, The A Team, dial-up modems and Jane Fonda (workout era). Then, barely pausing for breath, it’s on to its dramatis personae – persona, really, since this story focuses hard on central character Sonny Vaccaro (Matt … Read more

I Care a Lot

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Peter Dinlage and Rosamund Pike

You used to see plenty of films like I Care a Lot in 1990s. In the slipstream of Quentin Tarantino’s first burst of success there was a glut of movies with a “who’s zooming who” plot playing out in an “only in the movies” universe of smart talk, skull-cracking violence, hot women, cool men, gunplay and cars. Joe Carnahan – one of the best of the bunch of writer/directors working the territory – summed it up well in the title of his 1998 debut, Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane. There was a real sense of writers and directors having a lot of fun. Sometimes more than the audience. I Care a Lot’s writer/director … Read more