Tom Hanks fights for his crew and his ship in another tense thriller from expert director Paul Greengrass
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (Paul Greengrass, 2013)
Intrepid Summer Movie Series
Thursday, August 14, Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Pier 86, 12th Ave. & 46th St., free, dusk
RiverFlicks: Big Hit Wednesdays
Wednesday, August 20, Hudson River Park, Pier 63 lawn at 23rd St., free, dusk
www.captainphillipsmovie.com
Based on the true story of Somali pirates hijacking a Maersk container ship in the spring of 2009, Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips is a nonstop action thriller, a gripping film that is solidly one of the best of the year. Tom Hanks gives a riveting performance as Captain Richard Phillips, a merchant marine guiding the MV Maersk Alabama on its mission to deliver relief supplies to Somalia, Uganda, and Kenya, in addition to more standard cargo. A family man, he kisses his wife, Andrea (Catherine Keener), goodbye, then heads out on his journey, paying close attention to a memo warning of possible pirate activity. When small motorboats do indeed start approaching, Phillips tries diversionary tactics — the ship and crew were not permitted to carry any weaponry whatsoever back then — but he knows that it’s only a matter of time before they come back, and indeed the Alabama is soon boarded by four armed pirates led by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who capture Phillips and take over the ship. But things don’t go quite as planned for Phillips or the pirates, leading to a marvelously staged showdown finale. Greengrass, who has made such previous expert thrillers as Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy, and United 93, once again builds unrelenting tension every step of the way, even for those in the audience who might already know the outcome. The film centers on the complex relationship between the relatively easygoing Phillips and the desperate Muse, their eyes constantly meeting in penetrating gazes as they play an intense psychological game of cat and mouse. Hanks is a marvel as Phillips, giving brilliant nuance and texture to what could have been a one-note role but instead ends up being one of the finest of his outstanding career. All along the way, Greengrass keeps upping the ante, whether in a chase on the high seas or a claustrophobic battle of wills inside a lifeboat. There has been some controversy over the factual accuracy of the film, which is based on Phillips’s bestselling A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (written with Stephan Talty), but that doesn’t take anything away from what is a breathtaking cinematic experience. Nominated for six Academy Awards, Captain Phillips is screening August 14 at the Intrepid Summer Movie Series and August 20 at Hudson River Park’s Pier 63, concluding the free RiverFlicks: Big Hit Wednesdays series. (For a day-by-day listing of free summer movie screenings throughout New York City, go here.)
Japanese director Takashi Miike’s first foray into the samurai epic is a nearly flawless film, perhaps his most accomplished work. Evoking such classics as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Mizoguchi’s 47 Ronin, Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, and Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter, 13 Assassins is a thrilling tale of honor and revenge, inspired by a true story. In mid-nineteenth-century feudal Japan, during a time of peace just prior to the Meiji Restoration, Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki), the son of the former shogun and half-brother to the current one, is abusing his power, raping and killing at will, even using his servants and their families as target practice with a bow and arrow. Because of his connections, he is officially untouchable, but Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira) secretly hires Shinzaemon Shimada (Kôji Yakusho) to gather a small team and put an end to Naritsugu’s brutal tyranny. But the lord’s protector, Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura), a former nemesis of Shinzaemon’s, has vowed to defend his master to the death, even though he despises Naritsugu’s actions. As the thirteen samurai make a plan to get to Naritsugu, they are eager to finally break out their long-unused swords and do what they were born to do.
“I really don’t understand what this film you are making about me is all about. If it’s a film about a subject, I must know what role it is I am to play,” Iranian-born, Rome-based artist Bahman Mohassess tells director Mitra Farahani in the captivating, bittersweet documentary Fifi Howls from Happiness. “I don’t know the structure of your work. How does it start? What does it want to say? And where does it end?” he continues. A successful artist in his home country, Mohassess ultimately left Iran for Italy because of regime change and political unrest, which eventually involved government destruction of his work. He was so outraged that he destroyed even more of his own creations and eventually stopped showing his paintings, sculptures, and collages. Iranian artist and documentarian Farahani (Just a Woman, Zohre and Manouchehr) went in search of Mohassess, finding him living as a near-recluse in a hotel in Rome. The iconoclastic artist opens up to Farahani, talking about his parents and the end of his era while expressing his doubt about future generations. He also shares his views on the censorship and destruction of his art, political and social mores, inheritance, legacy, the general devastation going on around the world, and death. “I am only one John the Baptist, preaching alone in the desert,” he says. “It will make no difference. It never will.” In addition, he regularly tells Farahani what she should be doing with her film, directing the director, even though he points out, “I am not directing. I am only giving you my opinion.”
In Daniel Peddle’s debut feature narrative, Sunset Edge, four disaffected teens go slumming in a supposedly abandoned North Carolina trailer park and run into an unexpected part of its sordid past, with the park itself serving as a character all its own, a constant threat always lurking right below the surface. Just looking for something to do, Jacob (Jacob Kristian Ingle), Blaine (Blaine Edward Pugh), Will (William Dickerson), and Haley (Haley Ann McKnight) hang around the dilapidated park and the surrounding woods, riding their skateboards, shooting paint-ball rifles, and making an enormous, vile mixture of soda and sickeningly sweet candies, trapped between childhood and adulthood. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, local boy Malachi Smith (Gilberto Padilla) is slowly uncovering terrible things about his family history as a mysterious old woman in white (Liliane Gillenwater) appears and disappears in the background. As the two tales begin to intersect, an uncertain immediate future awaits them all. 
