‘Red Tails’ — The Real Story of the Tuskegee Airmen

Posted on January 15, 2012 at 8:00 am

George Lucas wrote the story for this month’s release, “Red Tails,” about the heroic WWII fighter pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen. It will be in theaters on January 20.

The American armed forces were not integrated until 1948, so throughout WWII they were still segregated. The 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps, informally known as the Tuskegee Airmen, were the first African-American military aviators. The historically black Tuskegee Institute initiated a flight training program. When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited for an inspection and was taken for a ride by one of the instructors, it brought some visibility and support to the program and the work of civil rights pioneers like the NAACP’s Walter White and labor leader A. Philip Randolph led to the passage of legislation specifically allocating funds to train African-American pilots.

The pilots and support crew of the Tuskegee Airmen had an extraordinary record of skill and heroism.

According to Wikipedia:

In all, 996 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1941 to 1946, approximately 445 were deployed overseas, and 150 Airmen lost their lives in accidents or combat. The casualty toll included 66 pilots killed in action or accidents, and 32 fallen into captivity as prisoners of war.

The Tuskegee Airmen were credited by higher commands with the following accomplishments:

15,533 combat sorties, 1578 missions

One hundred and twelve German aircraft destroyed in the air, another 150 on the ground

Nine hundred and fifty railcars, trucks and other motor vehicles destroyed

One destroyer sunk by P-47 machine gun fire

A good record of protecting U.S. bombers, losing only 25 on hundreds of missions.

Awards and decorations awarded for valor and performance included:

Three Distinguished Unit Citations

99th Pursuit Squadron: 30 May–11 June 1943 for the capture of Pantelleria, Italy

99th Fighter Squadron: 12–14 May 1944: for successful air strikes against Monte Cassino, Italy

332d Fighter Group: 24 March 1945: for the longest bomber escort mission of World War II

At least one Silver Star

An estimated one hundred and fifty Distinguished Flying Crosses

Fourteen Bronze Stars

Seven hundred and forty-four Air Medals

Eight Purple Hearts

An excellent made-for-television film, The Tuskegee Airmen, starred Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding, Jr., who appears in this film. “Red Tails” also stars Terrence Howard, who played a downed Tuskegee airman taken prisoner in “Hart’s War.” There is a PBS documentary, The Tuskegee Airmen, with the pilots and crew of the 332nd and those who are working to tell their story and restore one of their planes.

There are also many books, including The Tuskegee Airmen: An Illustrated History: 1939-1949 and the oral history Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II and the children’s book, Tuskegee Airmen: American Heroes.

More “The Real Story” posts:

We Bought a Zoo

Unstoppable

Soul Surfer

Sanctum

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The Real Story War

Joyful Noise

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 7:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for language including a sexual reference
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense family confrontations, bullies, brief fight, gun, sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters including disabled character
Date Released to Theaters:	January 13, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	April 30, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B007HHWJSA

Joyful indeed — this movie is pure cinematic sunshine, guaranteed to brighten the heart and gladden the spirit. Super-divas Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah play rival gospel choir leaders in an inspiring and heart-warming story filled with love, laughter, music, and praise.

G.G. (Parton) is still mourning the loss of her husband Bernard (Kris Kristofferson) when she receives another blow. She expected to take over his duties as choir leader but the church council picks Vi Rose (Queen Latifah) and her more traditional approach instead. Vi Rose’s husband is in the military and out of contact. She has to take on extra work to support Olivia and her son Walter (Dexter Darden), who has Asperger’s syndrome that makes social interaction difficult. She is devoted to the choir, a source of stability and connection for her. She wants it to be competitive but it is more important to her that it be clear that the focus is on the music as worship, not performance. When they get a chance at the national title — and a budding romance between G.G.’s grandson Randy (Broadway star Jeremy Jordan) and Vi Rose’s daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer of Akeelah and the Bee) — G.G. and Vi Rose will have to find a way to work together harmoniously. And that, after all, is what a choir is about.

Writer/director Todd Graff demonstrated in the underrated Camp and Bandslam that he understands teenagers as characters and works well with them as performers. His sincere and sympathetic appreciation for their stage of life is a pleasure to experience. Graff also understands the passion of those who love to perform before a live audience and the challenges they face. As an experienced theater nerd himself he knows how to stage musical numbers. And he is remarkably adept at managing a lot of characters and story lines gracefully, giving each element of the story its own dignity and spirit and sensitively evoking a touching sense of a small-town Georgia community hit hard by the economic upheavals of the past five years. I would have excised a not-very-comic sub-plot about one choir member’s difficulty finding a date after a man dies following their first night together. But the rest is skillfully blended with some sharp dialog. “You’re so country you’ve been married three times and have the same in-laws,” one character teases another. “Your train of thought makes all local stops,” says another.

Queen Latifah gives her best performance to date because Vi Rose is the most complex character she has played to date, giving her a chance to show her confidence, her humor, and her warmth. She shines in a terrific speech about what incandescent beauty really means and sings a moving “Fix Me, Jesus.”

Parton makes a welcome return to feature films after nearly two decades in a role as tailor-made for her as her fitted choir robes. G.G. is flashy and outspoken. But she, too, is trying to hold on in difficult times. She is estranged from her daughter and trying to care for her grandson. In a scene of piercing sweetness, she remembers her life with her husband in a tender duet that gently evolves into a trio.

Jordan and Palmer are enormously appealing, with a quiet chemistry that lights up the screen.

Parton’s three tuneful new songs are mixed with raise-the-roof adaptations of gospelized classics Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” and Michael Jackson’s “The Man in the Mirror.” On stage and off, Graff shows us the characters’ kindness and sense of connection even when they frustrate each other and it feels very genuine. There is a lot of heart in the musical numbers that deepens our pleasure in seeing the characters find what the harmony they are looking for.

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The Iron Lady

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 6:43 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violent images and brief nudity
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violent images including war and terrorism
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the film
Date Released to Theaters:	January 13, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0059XTUVI

A performance by Meryl Streep of endless intelligence, skill, and sensitivity cannot keep this impressionistic portrait of Baroness Margaret Thatcher from being exactly the sort of sentimental nonsense she spent her career trying to avoid. “People don’t think anymore; they feel,” she says in this movie, with infinite disdain. “It used to be about trying to do something,” she says in an earlier scene. “Now it is about trying to be someone.” This film recognizes her point of view but then comes down on the side of feelings and of being rather than doing.

Margaret Thatcher was one of the most influential and polarizing figures of the last half-century. She was the first woman to serve as the British Prime Minister and she held the position for an extraordinary and transformational decade that included highly controversial privatization initiatives, major reductions in the power of unions, and a brief war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

Based on this film, however, one would conclude that she is a dotty old lady who was once fierce, peremptory, and ambitious, but now cannot quite remember what it was all about. It is always a relief to be spared the usual biopic structure of highlighted anecdotes as a shorthand explanation for the person’s motives and fears, followed by assorted personal and professional high and low points, all conveniently assembled to create the illusion that lives can be neatly dissected. But, as with “J. Edgar” a few months ago, this film goes too far in the other direction, leaving us with an unreliable, subjective approach. A movie about a real life should not pretend to be definitive, but it should be illuminating.

Streep is truly magnificent, creating a vibrant character of passion and strength and her scenes with Jim Broadbent as Thatcher’s supportive husband are touching. But without some sense of what made her so passionate and how she formed her ideas about economics and foreign policy it’s just a less glamorous version of “My Fair Lady.” A young woman is literally groomed for success, her hair shellacked into an intimidatingly immobile helmet, her voice lowered, her accent raised. Without a “why,” though, it’s just a trip to the ball. It is a shame that a film produced and directed by women takes such a diminished view of Thatcher, reducing the scope of any doubts or regrets she might have at the end of her life to house and home and overlooking the fierce engagement with ideas that was truly her core.

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Carnage

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 6:23 pm

Some boys are arguing in a park but we are too far away to hear what it is about. One of them whacks another in the face with a stick.

And then we are in a spacious apartment as the parents of the two boys are at the computer, finishing up a joint statement about what happened. The parents of the boy with the stick are Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), who have come to the home of the boy who was hit, Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) for a civilized conversation about what happened. Everyone is polite, even gracious. The Longstreets have decorated for guests with a vase of tulips and offer homemade cobbler. The Cowans compliment their hosts. There ar social smiles and reassuring comments all around. The Cowans walk toward the elevator to go home.

And then — they don’t whack each other in the face with sticks. It’s much worse than that.

Based on the Tony award-winning play by French playwright Yasmina Reza and scripted by Reza and director Roman Polanski, this is a sly and ultimately devastating story about the thin veneer of civilization and its uneasy co-existence with the savage spirit within us all. If things had gone well, the Cowans might have made it to the elevator and as soon as its doors closed both couples would have immediately started talking about how impossible the other couple was and how superior their own child was. But the Cowans just can not let that last statement go, so they march back into the Longstreets’ apartment to begin to attack, first with thinly veiled digs, then with stark, direct statements, then with insults, then with chaos.

This is not just about the social hypocrisy of privileged New Yorkers. The play was originally French and the director is originally Polish and famously living outside the United States to avoid imprisonment for statutory rape. Its treatment of its characters is as brutal as their treatment of each other. Every shred of pretense is stripped away — the pretense of a loving relationship, of being good parents, of concern for the injured child, of concern for each other and for the world at large. Everything politely overlooked in the first half hour (Alan’s constant interruptions to answer his cell phone to defend a drug in litigation over the adverse side effects, a cherished item, the tulips, the merits of the cobbler) comes back up (literally and graphically, in the case of the cobbler). The Longstreets bring out the hard liquor and cigars and alliances shift from couples-based to gender-based to everyone for his and her self. Reza makes it about more than the fatuous insularity of upper-class New Yorkers but does not go overboard. When Michael trashes Penelope’s concern for the deprivations and injustice in Africa, both are portrayed as insular and unhelpful. And a hopeful note in a coda shows her to be gentler with her characters than they are with each other.

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Based on a play Comedy Drama

Contraband

Posted on January 12, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Oh, not another one last job movie! This remake of an Icelandic thriller, directed by the actor who played the lead role in the original, is a by-the-numbers heist, chase, and shoot-em-up. It’s too gritty to be escapist fun and too predictable to work as a thriller.

Mark Wahlberg plays Chris, a one-time smuggler turned legitimate family man with a loving wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and two sons. He is committed to staying on the right side of the law. But Kate’s young brother gets into trouble with the local drug dealer (Giovanni Ribisi as an oily predator named Briggs) the same way Han Solo got into trouble with Jabba the Hutt, dumping the payload to avoid capture, and Briggs says he will come after the whole family if he doesn’t get paid. So, Chris has to get the band back together for one more run. He gets approved by the Department of Homeland Security to work on a ship going to Panama and arranges for trusted associates to be assigned to the crew. He leaves his closest friend Sebastian (Ben Foster), a recovering alcoholic, to watch over Kate and the boys and takes off for many locations where bad cell reception will add to the tension and frustration.

We’re supposed to be on his side because he keeps saying he won’t smuggle drugs and he loves his highly photogenic family and because the bad guys are so thoroughly loathsome. And because he such a good smuggler. But that can’t make up for the increasingly sour taste of the story as Chris and his gang get caught up in some ugly situations, including a detour to meet up with yet another strung-out drug dealer who wants everyone to call him El Jefe, keeps deadly animals in cages, and yes, needs Chris to ride along for just one more last job. There is one good exchange when the drug dealer says he fed a colleague who disappointed him to the wolves and Wahlberg responds, “Literally?” And there are scenes that are either commentary on the conundrum of abstract expressionism in a realist world or an ironic statement on valuation models, or perhaps a pearls/swine reference, but most likely just a cheap joke about real guys who know how to fight being smarter than people who pay millions of dollars for paintings no one can understand. Chris may love and defend his family and even try to protect Briggs’ little girl but his callousness to the carnage and other damage around him and inflicted by him makes it hard to stay on his side.

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Action/Adventure Crime Remake