Category: review

I remember September 11, 2001 as a normal day like any, when I was inside my room and my mother started calling me to turn on CNN. Knowing her preference for drama, I took my time, even as I had a growing sense of foreboding. I remember regretting this, because as soon as I switched on, I caught the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center, throwing a heap of debris across the opposite side.

Approaching this movie, I understood fully America’s hesitation to show such a sensitive period in their recent history. It is not only considered as a turning point in shaping world foreign policy, but as a story of how quickly the lives of many of their countrymen were so easily snuffed out by the wayward opinions and goals of a misinformed few.

So easily was this achieved, as this movie will so dramatically display.

The ‘protagonists’ as it were, are the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), NORAD (North American Air Defense), any of several air traffic control centers involved and finally, the flightcrew and passengers of United Airlines Flight 93.

Much of the 1.5 hour movie deals with the first three, as the FAA struggled mightily to get a handle of what was going on, constantly barraged by information (and misinformation) about hijacked planes, its flights, direction and the occasional plane reported to be hijacked, but was not. Information re these were coursed via traffic control centers across the US, many of which were utterly confused again from planes not responsive to their requests for information, and deciding whether to consider them hijacked or otherwise.

Continue reading United 93

I believe that every good looking Hollywood actor eventually has a ‘suit movie’. In a ‘suit movie’, he gets to look great in a expensive looking suit. Robert Redford did his in ‘Indecent Proposal‘. Richard Gere did his in ‘Pretty Woman‘. George Clooney had his in Ocean’s Eleven and Intolerable Cruelty. Andy Garcia has the Godfather III. I can name countless more.

For me, Antonio Banderas ‘suit movie’ is ‘Take The Lead’, where he gets to wear nice talian threads in this movie adaptation of the true experiences of Ballroom great Pierre Dulaine, as he takes his love for dancing from the studios to the streets, via a ‘Dancing Classroom’ outreach program which had since been implemented in almost 7,500 elementary schools in New York.

The key word of course being ‘adaptation’, the most obvious sign of which, is that the students in the film are in high school, while the outreach program dealt with elementary school kids. To me, this meant that once the producers bought the license for the story, and the rights to do whatever they wished with it, pretty much every need to remain true to the story goes out the window.

So while Banderas and high school crew go through the ups and downs of their relationships with each other, dealing with such things as drugs, prostitution and such, Mr. Dulaine’s most difficult experiences may well have just been the need to occasionally keep his elementary kids’ from putting bubblegum into each other’s hair, or chasing around each other on a big wooden dancefloor. The variations of what may had truly transpired and what the studio writers produced are unlimited, and this bothered me somewhat.

Having said that, all is of course not lost, as the writers can still come up with a good movie. At this, however, they failed.

Continue reading Take The Lead

Obviously, animated films are all the rage these days. I read somewhere on the ‘net (too lazy to find it right now) that a majority of the money makers in previous years have been animated films, and so it’s not a surprise we’ve one or two every month for the year, along with Marvel or DC superhero movies and other surefire formulas.

So what would a Hollywood Investor in movies do? Why, look for a Hollywood company that can spit one out as quickly and as efficiently as possible, of course. And who better to do that than Pixar, the current animated film spit-outer of choice, with many a hit (and occasional miss), notched on it’s much talented crew’s belt.

So, if we think like a financial advisor instead of a ‘artiste‘, and consider Cars as a financial investment, would we have a winner? Definitely, much definitely so.

Continue reading Tipping Tracters is Fern!! (A review of Cars)

As Jill and I were waiting for the moviehouse to empty, we happened onto a wonderful scene. Guys, as we all know, wait outside restrooms for their girlfriends to come out since, even if they both go at the same time, girls take longer. That’s the way it is the world over, and we’re prepared to live a whole lifetime of that. And so as we sat there, we saw a young woman come out, look quickly around the area, and smile as she found her young man standing in said fashion outside. They smiled to each other, and started to walk away. A flower in her hands, the respectable distance, and shy smiles belying the truth – that was a date, and probably early on in the game as well.

All of which, brought me to thinking about the main reason why there are date movies to begin with. Will a movie, say Failure to Launch, get you anywhere with your date?

Continue reading Will Failure To Launch get you some action?

To date, director Wolfgang Petersen has sunk and shot at boats in Das Boot, and turned turtle a smaller boat in The Perfect Storm.

Not content with this, he turns another one on top of its head again in Poseidon. I figure that, as long as there are such things as “rogue waves” (without reference to an X-men character), we’re probably gonna see him flip an oil rig, or how about a whole island next? Wouldn’t that be a great idea for Lost fans?

Continue reading Review of Poseidon (aka They Killed Fergie! )

I didn’t grow up in the X-Men generation, so I approach the X-Men, its characters, story and iterations (the comics, cartoons, spin-offs and the several versions of each) as something I’ve missed, albeit am unwilling to pursue since, well, let’s face it, I’ve outgrown it.

Ok, clarification. I have learned to appreciate other genres, hence need to disperse my attention on a more general plane. Yes, that sounds right. At least better than saying I’m old.

Buuut anyway. Oh yeah, the movie.

Continue reading Executed X-Men

Up to the time I decided to write this, I couldn’t figure out whether I liked this movie. It was lunchtime, I was famished, and I chose to watch it while munching on a Burger King Junior Whopper, regular fries and Coke, so maybe I was distracted.

Or maybe it’s because it’s a movie with animated talking animals, and I didn’t take it seriously.

Or maybe after watching some of the more excellent versions of similarly themed movies, I had such high expectations.

Whatever.

Continue reading (Just Barely) Over The Hedge