I've already seen Zero Dark Thirty, and even if I hadn't, that movie's narrative has been cast in doubt to put it lightly, and I've seen Argo, so this was the best thing I could think of and it turned out to be better than either of them.
I'm from Northern New Jersey and could see the towers when I went into the town I ended up going to high school in. You could apparently see the impacts from that high school. I was in 7th grade at the time so I was in Moonachie, where you couldn't see it, but it was still surreal as kids had parents and relatives who worked there. Nobody knew what was going on, but there was a human impact that people not from the area can't understand. It's why you'll never see me taking a happy selfie at the 9/11 memorial or really going anywhere near it. I worked a block away from ground zero and never went anywhere close to that memorial.
I lived through that and saw it from New Jersey and don't want to relive it again. I've seen the footage and it still doesn't seem real. If I had lost someone that day, I would go to the memorial, but probably as a perfunctory exercise as it's now basically a tourist trap. Which is sad, but in NYC presented by Bank of America, you could see it coming.
United 93 brought back a lot of those memories and gave a different perspective for once. I think the greatest trick you can pull in a movie is getting me to doubt an outcome I know 100% for certain is going to happen. I know how United 93 ends up and I know what happened with everything else in the movie. But I still didn't believe that these people were all going to die and that we were going to be ultimately helpless that day to stop them, aside from those on United 93.
There really isn't that much to say about it, especially the first two thirds, as it's a dramatized version of what really happened, except with many people playing themselves. That gave it a more real feel and just made it seem more unbelievable that this actually happened.
People always talk about where they were that day. I was walking to my first period art classroom where my art teacher and another teacher, Ms. Henion I think, were watching the news looking confused. I was confused too and it didn't really seem like anything significant until the 2nd plane hit. But even then, you thought it was just a fire and everyone would get out ok. When the first tower imploded and fell and the jet fuel melted the steel beams, it was surreal. That's the part I remember watching on TV. That's when you knew you were living history.
And it was surreal watching the dramatization of it that was really a reenactment, not a movie. Seeing the plane go in front of the people, flying low, and then hitting the tower was the most memorable scene for me.
The third act was the most dramatized since nobody is alive to talk about everything that really happened. The famous sayings like "let's roll" are downplayed because they would have been in real life, and you know nothing about anyone more than you would a normal guy sitting next to you on a flight, but it felt different because it was the one part nobody's sure about.
And it was fantastic. I wasn't sure the exact details of how they took over the plane besides water being boiled, but it was one of the best action sequences I've seen this side of Mad Max: Fury Road. You knew they were racing against time, and the fact that they made this decision not knowing how little time they had left to make it, makes it all the more amazing.
I always wondered what had happened that prevented them from reenacting Airplane and trying to land it, and when there was a pilot and ATC guy on board, I really was wondering, but that ending scene where you slowly focus in on the oncoming ground before fading to black, was fantastic.
They were bigger heroes, I think, than pretty much anyone in this entire millennium, and they couldn't do enough to save themselves but didn't seem to care.
That movie was amazing and registered personally having lived in North Jersey during that time.
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I also watched Rutgers alum Carli Lloyd take down Japan singlehandedly and that made me happy. GO USA! ROLL DAMN KHALEESIS!
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Anyway, here are my rankings as of July 7.
1. Frank
2. Snowpiercer
3. United 93
4. Gone Girl
5. Magic Mike
6. A History of Violence
7. John Wick
8. The Guest
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