Captain Tom Hanks

A day off, and a movie!  Went to see "Captain Phillips" and once again I wish Tom Hanks lived next door to me.  I want to have dinner with him, grill some steaks, have a mediocre bottle of wine, talk about things.  He is, for my generation, what Jimmy Stewart must have been for my parents' generation.  (I will confer with my 93 year old mother and confirm this, of course.)  Just a regular guy who happens to be a movie star.

"Captain Phillips" is a very good movie. Extremely tense; if you are prone to fainting from stress, don't see it. It's exhausting, actually.  Somali pirates, a container ship, a merchant marine captain and a crew who are just doing a job: the confluence of these factors creates a situation you don't always encounter in today's movies.  You are not invested in any character except the Captain, and then only after he is taken hostage, but slowly you almost have Stockholm syndrome for the pirates (what an awful life they lived) and you become completely focused on the fate of Captain Phillips.  Of course you hope he lives but you think he might not. You don't want some of the pirates to die but you think they might.

The music feeds the tension. I often hate movie music for the simple fact that it manipulates the audience. This time it totally does that but it was fine.  We (the audience) needed to have the tension ramped up and the music provided that emotional hype.  It worked.

Whew!  Good movie.  Great Tom Hanks.  The ending scene is enough to break you down into a  blubbering, shell-shocked trauma victim.  Check it out.