The Film Buffa Reviews: 'BlackBerry', 'How to Blow Up a Pipeline', and 'Suncoast'

A lovely mix of recent movies that passed me by finally got watched.

Movies can be a lifesaver, and the reason is simple. They promote empathy, emotion, and pain in a cocktail that is at once addicting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. The best thing about a movie is that they’re not going anywhere.

As in, when a movie comes out, the need to see it right away has lost some of its appeal. Waiting too long on a spectacle like Dune: Part Two would be unwise for someone who scans social media most of the day, but these three movies that I am about to review about just the kind of flicks that skip over your radar upon their release, but eventually find their way back to your gaze, thanks to streaming platforms.

Before the article grows hair on its face, let’s put on the Film Buffa hat, and get into it.

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE

“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos.”

NEON

The Joker had a point, even if the terms should have been less dire for the city of Gotham. In order to break something down, the trees must be shaken hard. The agents of chaos in Daniel Goldhaber’s 2022 movie are a group of young environmentalists who take the growing reality of a climate crisis and choose to do something about it. They come together in West Texas where the pipeline comes above ground due to the coal mine below the dirt, a plan that comes with serious danger and human life risk.

But, sometimes in order to push that first domino over, the cost has to be high. This well-acted (the cast is a sea of kinda-known talent like Lukas Gage and Forrest Goodluck) white knuckle thriller wastes zero minutes in setting up the story. We aren’t dragged down early by the backstory of the characters-a guy has a family fighting cancer and a new baby with declining water quality-but thrown into the 90-minute long science experiment.

One mixes chemicals while another builds a bomb, and there’s another making a detonator. Two women push an oil drum stocked with explosives into a hole big enough to fit three bodies. All the while, drones fly overhead and authorities lurk nearby. You’re never sure if the group will succeed and actually blow up the pipeline, because the writers never tip their hand.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the movie that you skip the trailer on. The tension never lets up, and you’re always wondering who in the group is working with the Feds. Do they blow themselves up? Do they introduce chaos into a corrupt system? It’s worth finding out on Hulu. Speaking of which, all three movies I’m reviewing today are streaming on Hulu.

BLACKBERRY

The cell phone that changed things. While Steve Jobs eventually scored a knockout with the iPhone, the upstart sensation “click friendly” square mobile phone allowed people to communicate in multiple ways with anybody, and not have to be at a house to do it. The world’s first smartphone made people go nuts, and begin to ask all kinds of questions.

How does the network carry all of the users?

What about data?

Where did it all go wrong?

The rise and fall tale of the blackberry is fascinating, and brings out the best in longtime comedy actor, Jay Baruchel, while introducing us to dynamic talents like Glenn Howerton and Matt Johnson (who also directed the movie). Howerton’s Jim Balsillie, the money man with a Glengarry Glen Ross mouth that carried bullets and daggers, is the scene-stealing menace in this story.

While he gave Barchuel’s Mike Lazaridis and Johnson’s Doug Fregin the funding to get their Research in Motion company up on its feet to create the dormant-to-riches company, the hockey-obsessed Balsillie never met a hot temper he didn’t like. The actor, a fella I had no idea existed before this movie, rips into the part with a ferocity that should have landed him an Oscar nomination.

The script sizzles with lines that carry an Aaron Sorkin-fastball and David Mamet-collision strength, exchanges like this one:

Mike: So, there's a reason why your intercom is emitting white noise. It's because it was manufactured in China by engineers who didn't care, and now every office in the world has to suffer an annoying hiss, a blinking red light, fifteen different power cords that are utterly incompatible with one another. So, uh. We are not doing that. We are not just adding to the hiss. I will build a prototype, but I'll do it perfectly or I don't do it.

Jim: Mike, are you familiar with the saying "Perfect is the enemy of good?"

Jim: Well, "Good Enough" is the enemy of humanity.

Like Pipeline, Johnson’s BlackBerry shouldn’t rise and fall like its subject, holding the fort of being the first phone to get smart.

SUNCOAST

There’s a big argument that seemingly will never end: the end of life dilemma facing families, clinics, and hospitals. The battle of ultimate choice when it comes to easing the pain of a decaying loved one. Without jamming the moral debate down our throat, Laura Chinn shoots from the heart with Suncoast, a movie that sits close to her real life.

The compass of the film is Doris (Nico Parker), an older and wise woman trapped in a teenage body. Someone who has been forced to grow up very quickly before 20, Doris spends most of her days with her high-strung mother, Kristine (the brilliant Laura Linney) as they look after Doris’s brother, Max. He’s also a teenager, one who has brain cancer and a quickly depleting clock.

The title comes from the hospice center that patients intend to spend their days with. As Doris and Kristine’s willpower gets tested as they try to quarry with the notion that their caretaker requirements will be gone once Max departs. Outside the facility, protesters gather to rage against the idea of a family accepting the finality of a persistent disease. One of those protesters, Woody Harrelson’s Paul strikes up a friendship with Doris, thankfully taking her off the frying pan that is Kristine’s shedding guilt.

Suncoast/Hulu Original

What’s a mom who has suffered two big losses already to do when her son can’t even reach 20? Linney knows exactly how to tap into the overbearing, angry rage of a mother scorned by fate. She’s a safecracker when it comes to this particular role, but there’s a different shade to Kristine’s tenderness that will throw you off. As Paul aides Doris during a time of need, everyone’s ice around their grief begins to thaw.

Harrelson could be any movie, and make it better. Yes, even Venom 2. Think about the monstrous hillbilly gangster he played in Out of the Furnace, and then compare that killer with the quirky and forgiving Paul. It’s a 180-degree turn from some of his darker roles. He gives the film a lightness that balances out the moral questions that float around the surface of a place like Suncoast.

Parker is the one who steals the show here. You’ve seen her in a few things, but this is a role that feels like a genuine building block. Doris could have been just an innocent, cutesy character who experiences a coming-of-age moment, but the actress injects her with a spark and wisdom that doesn’t usually attach itself to a teenager. But it’s natural due to her subtle work. A speech near the end about choice and how choosing to end a life for the sake of the dying isn’t a relative situation.

Suncoast says a lot without having to bore us with an extended preaching session. Good acting and a witty enough script make up for a playbook that seems familiar at times. The wholesome touch of Chinn, who dedicated the film to what looks like her son in the post-credits, makes the whole thing settle in and land a punch or two of its own.

It punches above its weight class, just like the previous two films. A simple click, or three, on a remote brought me three gems on Hulu. Maybe you should check them out.

Hint: Michael Mann’s Heat is now streaming there, along with four Die Hard movies and three Bourne movies.