American Made (2017)

Jack and I really liked this story of Barry Seal, a real pilot who worked for the CIA, the Contras, and others in the late 70s and early 80s. Tom Cruise is perfectly cast as the impulsive, audacious Seal, in an entertaining performance.

Cruise (last blogged for Edge of Tomorrow) makes us think of Top Gun and even Risky Business as his Seal has talent, charisma, and guts to get ahead. Domhnall Gleeson (rhymes with PHONE-ull, most recently in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens) has bravado of his own as "Schafer," Seal's CIA recruiter, and Sarah Wright (I can't be sure why she looks familiar, maybe her series arc on Parks & Recreation?) is great as Barry's devoted wife Lucy.

There are occasional historical film and still clips from the real events, including the disclosure that director Doug Liman's (helmed Edge of Tomorrow) father Arthur L. Liman was Chief Counsel to the Senate committee investigating the Reagan Administration's arms-for-hostages scheme known as the Iran-contra affair, which definitely involved our pilot, Barry Seal. The script by Gary Spinelli (his second) was on the 2014 Black List of most liked unproduced screenplays. We also appreciated the technical explanations of some of the aeronautics feats.

The cinematography by César Charlone (last blogged for Blindness) is terrific, and I must mention the magnificent aerial photography by Dylan Goss (here are the movies in this blog for which he's done that job: Up in the Air, Valentine's Day, Samsara, Rock of Ages, Now You See Me, Elysium, Million Dollar Arm, Annie, Sicario, Straight Outta Compton, Concussion, The Boss, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Blade Runner 2049. And that's not close to all of his aerial photography credits).

A warning to my fellow sufferers of MPMS, also known as Motion-Picture-Motion-Sickness: you will not do well watching this on the big screen without medication, so be prepared or wait for video. Here's my full list.

We boomers loved the period music from one of the periods we lived. Here's a playlist that includes pop tunes as well as some original music by Christophe Beck (last scored Sisters, another one full of recent period music). Imdb has a pretty complete list of the songs.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics at 87 and its audiences at 80 are flying high with this one and we agree.

There's a little bonus written at the end of the credits--geography buffs will enjoy it. And with 32 producers, this movie goes on my list for the producers plethora prize, though it's going to be hard to beat the current leader with 41. Here's my list of those.

This movie is a big milestone for babetteflix. It is number 1000--I have now written about one thousand movies on this blog since September 3, 2008 (a few weeks after my only child left for college). Inspired by Julie & Julia, wherein Julie Powell kept count in her blog of how many recipes she cooked, I began counting movies on my blog. Sometimes I forget to write about one and add a short summary later in honor of my obsessive-compulsive personality (not a disorder in my case, I guess). Another milestone will be coming up because the blog contains summaries of nineteen movies that I saw before the start date and OCP makes me want to know exactly how many distinct movies I have seen in that time period. Three drafts to write (as of today) and still counting! I have an alphabetical list where I update the numbers each time.