Larry Crowne (2011)

Had the title been Late to Class, this movie would clearly have been a romantic comedy about a newly-unemployed boomer who heads back to school in order to give his life new direction, but with the austere title Larry Crowne and a screenplay written by director Tom Hanks that keeps the romantic leads at a remove, held apart by educator-student propriety, the movie, drily funny, not hilarious, remains an oddity, not a Sleepless In Seattle or You've Got Mail romcom great.

★★★☆☆

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Elvis (2022)

It garnered the lead, Austin Butler, BAFTA and Golden Globe awards but he never has a chance to act given the relentless strobe of Baz Luhrmann's three-hour docudrama: the camera flicks, spins, and sweeps, never resting for a second on anything - Butler included - and we unnecessarily spin and enter Graceland upside-down several times, so, while interesting, this is an exhausting look at Elvis's life, his upbringing, dizzying rise to stardom, financial exploitation, and premature death. 

★★★☆☆

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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

If you happen to have seen the actual children's tv show or perhaps the 2018 documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, or even better, if you've read the Esquire magazine article upon which this movie is based, you will know not to expect a child sex scandal during the story of Lloyd Vogel, a bitter, unhappy journalist who has a series of therapeutic encounters with the hero-worshipped children's television show presenter, Mr Rogers, an inner child whisperer...and an oddbod stare-bear if Tom Hanks' rather creepy portrayal is to be believed.

★★★☆☆

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Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)

12-year-old Josh Baskin couldn't wait to grow up and, wish granted by a Zoltar Fortune Telling machine, made a good go of corporate life in the body of a 30-year-old Tom Hanks, whereas in this comedy released two years after Big and in some ways its reverse, another J.B. played by Tom Hanks, the adult Joe Banks, believing himself to be dying, rejects his dreary corporate life and embarks on a childish, absurdist Candide-esque round-the-world trip to an island where he is prepared to sacrifice his life for an orange soda-loving tribe.

★☆☆☆☆

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Sully (2016)

This workmanlike Clint Eastwood-directed movie tells the story of the 2009 emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after the plane hit a flock of geese and even though it is all still fresh in our minds and we all know very well the miraculous outcome and the celebrity status achieved by the pilot, Chesley Sullenberger, it still proves as engrossing as any episode of Mayday/Air Crash Investigations, to see how the aviation investigation played out behind the media frenzy. 

★★★☆☆

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Big (1988)

When 12-year-old Josh Baskin has his wish to be big granted by an unplugged Zoltar Fortune Telling machine and wakes up in Tom Hanks' body, he charms his way into a top-level job at a toy company even before he has time to check out what's in his underpants, then charms his way into the bed of one of the company's executives, but apart from two or three genuinely icky sex-with-a-minor moments, this is a great fun 80s comedy classic with Hanks at his 80s peak.

★★★★☆

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The Circle (2017)

The subject matter is rich with thriller potential and timely given big data miners Facebook and Google are now privy to so much of our personal information - it is not hard to imagine this movie's world where individuals are encouraged by corporations to live completely transparent lives - but with an especially uncharismatic cast (Emma Watson and John Boyega are like automatons) delivering especially dull dialogue, the movie plays out with all the excitement of a tv community service announcement of a budget-constrained, alarmist organisation of Luddites.

★☆☆☆☆

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Splash (1984)

No sooner had Australian Senator Cory Bernardi proclaimed that gay marriage would be the first step towards people having sex with their pets than the Gay Marriage law passed and The Shape of Water, that cinematic manifestation of all of Bernardi's worst human-beast coupling nightmares, was released in theatres, but in 1984, the world was already well along this road to destruction when the original The Shape of Water, Splash (Ron Howard's comedy about a romance between a human and a sea creature) proved so popular, it launched the career of little-known star Tom Hanks, introduced the world to the future Elle Driver, and was so light, frothy and warm that this very early death knell for world decency probably didn't even make Cory Bernardi blink.

★★★☆☆

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Bridge of Spies (2015)

During the Cold War, James Donovan (Tom Hanks) finds himself lumped with the task of negotiating a spy/prisoner exchange between three countries even though, according to this film, he is not an expert negotiator - towards the movie's end he still fears he may have "really f***d things up" in his dealings on behalf of the US with Russian and East German diplomats - but the movie has him grappling with the extreme cold and language barriers, not negotiations which are just meetings he inexpertly muddles through, and though the story is true and full of interesting historical detail, director Steven Spielberg starts it way waaaaaay back, far earlier than he needs to, and draws out the ending, padding out a story the middle stretch of which feels very slight.

★★★☆☆

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Turner and Hooch (1989)

Turner and Hooch is essentially a buddy cop movie except that one of the buddy cops is whiny, dopey, incessantly barks, and has an irritating schtick - he teams up with a drooling Dogue de Bordeaux to solve a not very interesting crime and of course the mismatched pair grow to love each other despite their initial differences.

★★☆☆☆

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Cast Away (2000)

Tom Hanks plays a plane crash survivor stranded on an island with a Wilson volleyball Man Friday in this extended Fedex advertisement that seeks to demonstrate the extreme lengths the company will go to ensure its parcels get delivered - lengths much greater than most attention spans.

★★★☆☆

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Cloud Atlas (2012)

Ok, perhaps not the one with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry sing-songing about the "true true and the whatnot" (which was terminal), but any other story thread in this overlong new age scifi jumble, told artfully, carefully, and in isolation would have expressed in a more engaging way the same well-meaning message - that we are all drops in an ocean, that our lives are not our own, that both our kindnesses and evils contribute to a greater story - but as it is, with its myriad poorly told choppy, changey, superficial "chapters", its ridiculous makeup and costumes, and its Peter Sellers-, Mickey Rooney-style Asianification, Cloud Atlas is a cringeworthy yawnfest.

★☆☆☆☆

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Captain Phillips (2013)

The real Captain Phillips can't be blamed that his true story Somali pirate hostage situation, as a movie, descends into a messy, overlong stalemate at the two-third mark due to an extended "in the water" scene that surely can't have occurred as depicted - it should have been cut to keep matters relating to Seat 15 - and the movie - much more gripping.

★★★☆☆

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