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    ‘Reagan’ Review: Dennis Quaid’s Time-Hopping Cold War Drama

    In this unabashed love letter to former president Ronald Reagan, Dennis Quaid fights the Cold War with conviction.In his long career, Dennis Quaid has sometimes played politicians. He’s been former President Bill Clinton (“The Special Relationship”) and was the president in the musical comedy “American Dreamz” with Hugh Grant and Willem Dafoe. Now, in “Reagan,” Quaid portrays former President Ronald Reagan with, if not brilliance, at least evident conviction. Time truly holds surprises for all of us.The movie, directed by Sean McNamara from a screenplay by Howard Klausner, opens with Quaid as the 40th president leaving a speech site and walking right into an assassination attempt. The picture then moves to present-day Moscow. Jon Voight plays Viktor Petrovich, a retired K.G.B. agent with an accent straight out of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” who narrates the story of Reagan to a younger functionary. And so we shift back to the 1980s, and then back to Reagan’s early years in radio and Hollywood. (Mena Suvari plays Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, and Penelope Ann Miller is Nancy.)In the first eight minutes, the movie makes as many temporal shifts as a 1960s Alain Resnais work, albeit quite less gracefully.Why is Reagan’s story relayed by a K.G.B. guy? Because in this unabashed love letter to the former president, Reagan was the force behind the fall of the Soviet Union. The movie implies that this “evil empire” collapsed as a result not just of his presidency, but of his anti-Communist activism during his entertainment career in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. These eras are depicted in scenes strongly suggesting that before shooting, the cinematographer, Christian Sebaldt, happened upon a fire sale on diffusion filters at the camera store.The cast is dotted with cameos from the actors Lesley-Anne Down and Kevin Dillon; the prominent Hollywood conservatives Kevin Sorbo and Robert Davi also appear as seals of approval, one infers. It all makes for a plodding film, more curious than compelling.ReaganNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘On a Wing and a Prayer’ Review: Faith as Flight Insurance

    A family receives impromptu flight lessons when their pilot dies in the middle of a chartered flight in this spiritually insincere action film.Doug White (Dennis Quaid) is a person whose happiness has grown from deep roots. He possesses a steady Christian faith. He has a warm and loving partnership with his wife, Terri (Heather Graham), and together, they are the proud parents of two teenage daughters. But when Doug’s beloved brother suddenly dies, Doug’s faith in a higher power is shaken. And his spiritual crisis is amplified when Doug charters a small plane to return from his brother’s funeral.The action-driven drama “On a Wing and a Prayer” is based on a true story of the ordeal that the White family faced when they entered the air in 2009. Their pilot suddenly died of a heart attack in the cockpit, leaving the severely inexperienced Doug to guide the plane to a safe landing. The movie follows Doug and his family as they work and pray to defy the odds stacked against their survival, with remote assistance from air traffic controller‌s and flight instructors.The director Sean McNamara includes plenty of computer-generated action, with the plane darting through storm clouds, and narrowly swerving away from the ground. The images portray a weightless crisis, and the film’s emotional narrative feels similarly insincere, with the balance of fate seeming to sway on the placement of a well-timed prayer. Doug and his family call upon their faith as a kind of invisible parachute, a deus ex machina that can always save them from harm. It’s a cynical view of faith, one which removes the mystery and terror from life’s unforeseen calamities, and instead frames survival as a matter of calling into the correct belief system.On a Wing and a PrayerRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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    ‘Blue Miracle’ Review: Fishing Lessons

    Mexican orphans find hope through a fishing tournament in this cloying underdog Netflix drama.Gratingly sentimental and simplistic, Julio Quintana’s “Blue Miracle,” set in Cabo San Lucas in 2014, turns a potentially compelling underdog tale into a sermon. But if you’re in the mood to see Dennis Quaid learning and growing — and engaging in sappy conversations about fatherhood — then step right up.As the prizewinning fisherman Wade Malloy, Quaid evinces a manic desperation that, were it tended to, would be inconvenient to the script’s homily-strewn march toward uplift. Temperamentally grumpy and ethically malleable, Malloy learns he can only enter the latest fishing tournament if he has a local man on his team. Enter Papa Omar (Jimmy Gonzales), the saintly director of an imperiled orphanage. In debt to the bank for over $100,000, Omar needs the contest’s prize money to avoid eviction. That he doesn’t know one end of a fishing rod from the other is seemingly irrelevant.Based on a true story, “Blue Miracle” suffers mightily from slapdash plotting and superficial moralizing. (A scene where Omar is tempted by his criminal past needlessly emphasizes his reformed bona fides.) Realism is not a priority: When the orphanage is flooded by Hurricane Odile, the water appears to disappear of its own accord. Neither is it made clear why three orphans — broadly stamped as the smart one, the funny one and the tough kid with issues — are also included on the fishing crew, given their contribution to the task at hand can charitably be described as minimal.What is obvious, though, is that if the movie’s depiction of events is even close to accurate, its outcome is indeed a miracle.Blue MiracleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More