Alec Baldwin to Star in 'Supercell' Action Pic

[Jamie H]

I gotta say, I was going to ignore this movie but having watched the trailer and that clip, and knowing that they've tried not to make it too over the top, I'm looking forward to watching it when it is released.

 

[Paul Lemery]

MOVIE REVIEW: I stayed up last night and bought Supercell on Amazon which became available at 11:00 pm CST. I can say I liked it and will watch it again.

The movie began just a little slow as they built the character and plot backgrounds (as usual), but it was still enjoyable as the core cast of Alec Baldwin, Ann Heche and others did a good job acting. The storm and tornado videos (both CGI and real) were mostly very good. The whole story was based on the kid, William Brody, trying to test out his late father's storm data contraption that wasn't explained very well. They never said what its purpose was outside of testing a supercell to see how it was "breathing". I thought the technical terms were used frequently and were pretty much spot on with the exception of one. They called wind that was at their back while looking at the storm "RFD" winds instead of inflow. There were also some unrealistic storm sequences just like there was in Twister, but not too bad. I was worried that it would paint storm chasers in a bad light, but I really don't think that happened. Outside of some speeding, all traffic laws were obeyed. In the end the movie was half William's story and half about storm chasing. Both were good. I almost forgot, Skip Talbot played a cashier in the movie and did a great job with it. Overall, it wasn't the big budget blow out movie Twisters will be, but I thought for a small budget it was very well done.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I was hoping to see this on the big screen (despite the fact that the breakdown of civil society invariably results in idiots in the row behind me inconsiderately talking throughout the entire movie like they are in their own living rooms - but I digress…)

However, it is not playing in the theater near me, and I don’t think Philadelphia is a release location. I plan to watch it on Amazon Prime tomorrow, due to other commitments today…

Here‘s a review I found: Supercell (2023) - Movie Review

This line from the review has me even more excited to see it: “…sluggish patches are far too didactic about storm chasing; it’s akin to being in a science class.” Fantastic! As long as even half-accurate, those may turn out to be my favorite parts! It’s also a way to share storm chasing with family members that have never done it.

Really can’t understand anyone that says they won’t see it. If you truly love storms and storm chasing, how can you not want to see a movie that has storm chasing as its main theme??? There simply aren’t too many of them, so how could you not be interested to see how it is portrayed, to see this fringe hobby of ours highlighted in a movie??? It’s like a boxer refusing to watch a Rocky movie, or a martial artist refusing to watch The Karate Kid. Your loss, you’re only spiting yourself by being such a purist.

 

[Jeff Lieberman]

My takeaway: Never take weather advice from a gas station clerk ("Don't worry. If it was headed this way, all those chasers would still be here.")......even if he looks an awful lot like Skip Talbot.

 

[James K]

Even is it turns out to be 'not that great of a movie' , I'm looking forward to seeing it....because if for no other reason "its a storm movie"!

But that said, I plan on waiting til its out on blu-ray (and at a reasonable price) before seeing it.

 

[Lou Ruh]

However, it is not playing in the theater near me, and I don’t think Philadelphia is a release location.

I saw it on a theater in the Montgomeryville area ... not quite Philadelphia, but, in the greater Philadelphia area (and, I live in Montgomery County, so, an easy trip for me)

 

[Bill Hark]

I found Supercell on my cable (on demand) after a search and watched it last night. Not bad, with some nods to old school chasers. Look for David Hoadley illustrations hanging on the wall. The plot is a bit muddled but overall worth watching. Alec Baldwin (not a fan of him personally) and Anne Heche did well acting with the limited script. Look for some Pecos Hank footage.

 

[Todd Lemery]

I watched it on Amazon. I expected Baldwin to be more of a villain than he ended up being. The movie started slow as they did the character building and ramped up slowly after that. They obviously had help from somewhere in doing a better job of using terminology than Twister did. It wasn’t perfect in that regard, but the best I’ve seen in a storm movie.
I thought they could have spent more time on the storm sequences which might’ve been a reflection of my personal biases. Using Pecos Hank’s footage helped add realism that CGI doesn’t and the acting was believable for the most part.
My bottom line on the movie was that they didn’t make chasers look like a bunch of yahoos and that there’s something special in chasing storms. It was worth watching and I’ll probably watch it again. It didn’t have the hokey thrill ride of Twister, but showed well, especially for a lower budget film.

 

[Randy Jennings]

I had the privilege of attending the permire of this Friday night. I really enjoyed the movie as did the entire theater filled with chasers. I think a lot of us will now buy it and watch it again at home. I don't want to spoil things, so I will not write a full review now, but after seeing it and reading the reviews (which are mixed), I have some advice for you:

1) See it on the big screen. The storm shots are amazing on the big screen and the surround sound when hail hits the van makes you fell like you are in the van. Full list of theaters is at supercellmovie.com . Hurry - it will likely close Thursday 3/23 at many theaters.

2) Let yourself enjoy the movie. Go in with the attitude that you are not there to critique it. They don't have to explain everything. I know the science side of us thumbs our noises at the acoustical detection device and they don't explain the "heartbeat" of the storm it detects. Movies can't explain everything - it would drag the story down. The movie isn't about the device.

3) There are a ton of easter eggs to chasing and Spielberg fans in this movie. From the David Hoadley's drawings,, to paper Stormtracks, to a replica of the phone booth in Spielberg's first movie Duel. Enjoy finding these.

4) This was shot in the style of early Spielberg films. It looks different from modern films. Lots of shallow depth of field, haze in the background. Enjoy the nostalgia and style of a master.

5) Enjoy the sound track. Even the critics who didn't like it say it sounds like John Williams wrote the score. It was done by Corey Wallace. You can hear a lot of his amazing sound track on his SoundCloud at

https://soundcloud.com/user-827599093

6) If you ever find yourself critiquing something, remember this movie was the directors first feature film, was made on less than a $10M budget, and was shot in 20 days. If Jamie makes a movie this good on that, can you imagine how good he will be in a few years with a studio sized budget.

Streaming providers are listed at supercellmovie.com. It is also on Amazon (not listed on website). Here are some pics from the permire:

 

[JamesCaruso]

Haven’t watched this yet, but looks like it might be interesting

Director JAMIE WINTERSTERN goes into the bear cage with SUPERCELL - Exclusive Interview

 

[JamesCaruso]

I was reading a review and saw this:

”…Marking the feature film debut of Herbert James Winterstern and based on a documentary of the same name by the same filmmaker, Supercell tells the tale of William Brody (Daniel Diemer), the son of legendary stormchaser Bill Brody, who dies in the film’s opening, the victim of a super-tornado that he willingly runs toward in the name of research and thrills.”

Anyboyd know anything about this??? I couldn’t find anything online…

Source: Review: Disaster Movie Supercell is Its Own Kind of Unmitigated Mess, If You're Into That Kind of Thing | Third Coast Review

 

[Randy Jennings]

Anyboyd know anything about this??? I couldn’t find anything online…

I don't think Jamie has done a documentary on supercells. I've talked with him multiple times, heard him do several Q&As, and have seeked out and listened to every interview I could find that he has done on this movie, and I have never heard him say anything about having done a documentary on supercells or convective weather. He is currently working on a documentary on seashells that was filmed on an island that later got destroyed by a hurricane and his documentary is now looking at the impacts from that, so the critic might have got the subjects confused.

Speaking of confused critics, I have seen a number of critics talk about the movie having CGI. 100% of the storm footage in the film is real - none of it is CGI. They used the matte process to mate the foreground and background shots (which granted is done digitally today - but the images are not computer generated - they are simply mated together using computers much like photographers stack images in photoshop). Any critic that complains about the CGI in the movie has a poor understanding of the craft of filmmaking and has no business being a critic.

Interesting side note - not all of the storm footage comes from Pecos Hank. Jamie did shot a lot of video on his own real-life chases and some of his own chase video appears in the film.

I watched the film a second time yesterday (this time at home instead of on the big screen) and I noticed even more great background shots. Jamie talked in the Q&A at the premiere about how he drove the crew crazy in post with the details - like having mammatus behind Zane Rogers (Alec Baldwin) when he had a closeup in a scene. When you notice the details like this you can see that in many ways, Supercell is also a documentary about Jamie's - and our - love with looking at the sky.

 

[Jeff Wright]

Baldwin also did voice-over work in a two-hour space documentary that I also liked.

 

[JamesCaruso]

I watched the movie at home via Amazon Prime last Sunday night, but waited until now to post a review. I figured anybody that's interested in seeing it has seen it by now, so it would be safe to include some spoilers. So if you still haven't seen it - *** SPOILER ALERT ***

Bottom line, I really enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised at the way it depicted chasing. While I didn't expect any sort of great plot in a movie like this, it turned out to be even lighter-weight than I expected, if not outright dopey with that stupid device, for which the movie never even attempted to explain a purpose.

Not that chasing appears in the movies very often, but Supercell was really the most faithful representation of chasing I have seen - much more realistic than in Twister. In that context, it is interesting that Twister was still the way more enjoyable movie overall, but it is beyond the scope of this post to analyze why that is the case...

I liked seeing the chaser "Easter eggs" that @Randy Jennings pointed out above - the paper black-and-white Stormtrack magazines (I still have a few myself!), and the David Hoadley drawings. There was also a cool nod to Twister star Bill Paxton, whose name came up in an Internet search box's automatic type-ahead/character-fill as Bill Brody Jr. started to type in his father's name.

The dialogue rang true in how the more you chase the closer you want to get, and how each day you don't know what the sky is going to offer you, and that's what keeps you coming back. I think that was during the scene when Bill Jr. and his uncle were watching the backside of a supercell - I appreciated that part, to show that chasing is about far more than just the adrenaline (for most of us, anyway). I seem to also remember there being a line about the ratio of driving/downtime to chasing (a ratio that was completely inverted in Twister!)

I liked the mention of actual towns and roads out on the Plains. But while some of the meteorological dialogue rang true, other parts were kind of silly or sloppy. No big deal though. Also weird that the final tour was being run with just two other passengers besides Bill Jr. And by the time they finished arguing about it, someone could have run into the convenience store to tell the kid they had to leave…

The downsides were that the overall plot was pretty weak, and even the human drama between the kid and his mother were not that compelling; if anything, he established himself as a less-than-sympathetic figure initially in his tantrum against Anne Heche's character. It was also unclear what it was at the end that really brought them back together, and what made her "proud" of her son... Was it because he had successfully driven away from a tornado (while meanwhile Alec Baldwin's character is the one that risked his life pushing the van out of the mud)? Why did the son suddenly feel respect and affection for his mother, was it just because she showed she could drive in a storm environment? It was just sort of an unfulfilling ending, especially as it deteriorated into typical corny "disaster film" silliness, such as the chase van sailing through the air and landing in the swimming pool.

None of this detracted from my enjoyment, because we never get to see storm chasing in the movies, and here it was, mostly represented in an authentic and respectful - dare I say even affectionate - way.

I do wish such a portrayal of storm chasing could be combined with a good plot in a more substantive movie... As a possible model, Jenna Blum's novel The Stormchasers comes to mind... The book contains realistic portrayals of storm chasing (I particularly liked the descriptions of the difficult mental transition that occurs after a chase trip) as well as a "real" plot, although the main plot is not all that great, and was sort of separate from the chasing, making the book seem somewhat disjointed; the alternating "chasing" and "non-chasing" chapters were somewhat jarring.

 

[JamesCaruso]

One thing I forgot to mention in my review posted above… I interpreted the death of Bill Brody Sr. as alluding to the death of Tim Samaras and the TWISTEX crew in 2013… Now you may say “well of course a fictional chaser getting killed in a tornado is going to remind you of Samaras…” But it was more than that, I think Winterstern intended to specifically reference that tragedy, such as with the scene showing the tornado-mangled car. The senior Brody character was developing his own device, analogous to Tim and his probes, and there was dialogue between other characters talking about Brody as having been conducting experiments despite not being an actual scientist, and not being accepted by the scientific community - which was also the case for Samaras and TWISTEX itself.

While watching the movie, it seemed pretty obvious to me, and I felt amazed that it hadn’t been mentioned in any of the previous posts in this thread - and then I failed to remember to mention it in my own post!