031 – The Finest Hours (2016)

Think back to your favorite movie about the military. Unless that flick is 2006’s The Guardian (and it’s probably not because I don’t think The Guardian is anyone’s favorite anything) I’ll bet it has nothing to do with the United States Coast Guard. The Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines – they all feature prominently in heroic tales of action and suspense, but the Coast Guard has had no such luck. Until now. Disney and director Craig Gillespie bring the public the movie they’ve been clamoring for in the form of The Finest Hours – and the good news for me is that it’s actually pretty well done.

137 – Million Dollar Arm (2014)

In the latest inspirational sports movie from Disney, a somewhat closed-minded sports agent (Jon Hamm) travels to India in search of a golden goose in the form of a couple Indian athletes (Madhur Mittal and Suraj Sharma) he hopes to convert into baseball players. The movie has received mixed reviews, many of which criticize the movie for its glorification of a white savior archetype. This is always a distressing direction for a film, and while I agree that there are aspects of this in Million Dollar Arm, the picture’s big problem is something else entirely.