Flight (2012)

It is remarkable just how unlikable Denzel Washington's character, Whip Whitaker, is in this movie. The movie opens with a protracted plane crash, and the ensuing events are about what you would expect to happen in the aftermath of such a disaster.  The plot is largely predictable and none of the rest of the characters are all that likable.  So, you might ask, why bother with this?

The first reason is that Washington was nominated for an Academy Award for this role.  Regardless how you feel about who wins those awards each year, whether they are predictable, or rigged, or unfair, or spectacularly accurate, it is almost always true that the nominees in each category have done a good job.  They may not be better than some who have been overlooked for a nomination, but in and of themselves, the nominees are worth watching.

The second is that this is a pitch perfect depiction of a man on a self-destructive path to the bottom of the alcohol and drugs ladder of life.  He is several rungs up from where Robert De Niro was in 'Being Flynn', but it is the exact same ladder.  While everyone around him is trying to hide the fact that he was drunk on a plane that crashed, he is dead set on continuing to drink and push literally everyone away from him.  He is the poster child for someone who failed his intervention and is hell bent on going down with the ship (or in his case, the plane).  There is a lot of truth in his performance, and it is worth slogging through the rest of the movie to get to the end.