Unsung Hero- Please continue to excuse my tardiness as I continue to catch up on the onslaught of films I saw in November/December/Early January. It has been almost three months since I first watched this faith based biopic about Christian musicians. I remember thinking the film was fine, maybe a bit melodramatic, but whenever faith based films have a budget, and competent people making them, they tend to be better on average than the ones that are made guerrilla style with actors of unknown talent, and directors who have never touched a camera before. Unsung Hero tells a story about a family overcoming adversity, and a girl with a voice becoming a major act in Christian music. I’m unfamiliar with her as a real artist, but I also don’t listen to Christian music. I think you could do a lot worse. i remember nothing about the audio description, but this film has an available track.
Fresh: Final Grade: B-
The Silent Hour- Joel Kinnaman is also quickly becoming the go to guy to play an action hero with sensory issues. After teaming up with John Woo for Silent Night, he’s back with this film about a cop whose hearing loss is rapidly progressing, but he needs to do the right thing and save the life of a witness, who is deaf. Betrayed by his fellow officers, this becomes a large shootout inside a building. I believe this was Republic Pictures, an arm of Paramount that produces some truly awful action films sometimes, but this is serviceable if you just want a predictable action film with a lead actor who can act. I saw this, again, about three months ago, and I have nothing specific that I remember about the audio description, but it does have it. In both cases, this usually means it doesn’t have exceptional audio description, nor was it awful. Me not remembering means it was fine, it just didn’t stand out either way.
Barely Fresh: Final Grade: C+
The Terminal- Last year was the 20th anniversary of The Terminal, which is a very underrated Steven Spielberg film. It wasn’t my first time, or even my second, but it was my first with audio description. Again, time has passed, and I don’t remember the audio description track, but this is a much better film than most give it credit for. Hanks is charming as an immigrant forced to live in limbo as he’s told he cannot leave the airport due to his country having a coup while he was flying to America, and his status has changed. However, he made a promise to his recently deceased father, and this guy follows through on promises. We watch him go through absurdity after absurdity simply to keep this promise, while also watching his country fall into chaos on television. He meets a lovely flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and the two of them have an almost romance, while he helps the various airport employees, all of whom except Stanley Tucci really come to care about him. Now, that we are throwing up walls, and tearing people from their families to get them out of our country, a film like this with such a simple story and message, which has a positive representation of an immigrants journey, is needed more than ever. And the fact it has accessibility, in a time when the same angry mob kicking the immigrants is also fighting to exclude and discriminate against disabled individuals, just really makes this experience worth more now than it was in a post 9/11 era.
Fresh: Final Grade: A-