Movie Reviews & More
Manchurian Candidate (2004)
This movie was not what I expected at all, and boy was it weird at times.
Starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, this is the movie that makes all of your wildest fears come true, the idea of a president that is bought and controlled by a special interest.
This movie is very trippy to follow, and violent at times. The first half of the movie is told is flashback to an opening scene in the Gulf War that goes horribly wrong. Denzel Washington starts to think that what he knows to be true isn’t, and he sets out to find out the truth before it is too late. It leads him right to the White House where the vice president on the Democratic tickets is being controlled by a group called Manchurian Global.
In the end, the movie works out to be pretty interesting. I was put off at first because even some of the footage looked a little futuristic, like the nomination celebration settings, and the live feeds of the presidents talking. Plus there are as always, a ton of close ups of Denzel’s face either breathing hard and sweating, biting his lip, or any of his other “troubled” quirks that he brings out for a movie like this.
If you like Denzel, even though this isn’t really his typical take charge kind of role, it is still solid acting and you may like it. If you like a different movie that you may not figure out right away, but gradually unravels, you may like this movie. But, if you don’t like psychedelic scenes with covert operating tables and sinister things happening to soldiers, you may want to pass.
Overall an interesting remake of a movie I would almost be curious to see the original with Frank Sinatra.
Collateral (2004)
Christine Mulligan said that she felt not scared of Tom Cruise in this movie, that he wasn’t the least bit intimidating. That didn’t scare me off from seeing this movie, but after I watched it through for the second time, I would have to say that I agree with her.
Collateral is about Vincent(Tom Cruise) who is a hitman that visits LA to kill five men in the course of one night and Max(Jamie Foxx) is the unlucky cab driver that he randomly picks to be his escort. Max is kind of a timid but strong man, and Foxx does a nice job showing this transformation of a regular human being trying to do the right thing who is pushed too far.
Being a guy, there are some really awesome action scenes, and you root Cruise on in some of his viciousness, but really until the last fourth of the movie, I just felt like it was Tom Cruise running around in makeup, shooting people. But the high paced ending chase scene between Cruise and Foxx with Jada Pinkett Smith is intense and enveloping. You can’t predict what happens, and in the end you are convinced that Tom Cruise is bad to the bone just as he dies.
Like Tom Cruise? You will like this. Like a strong resolve in your main characters, this is a good movie for you too. But if you like movies that are filmed a little more traditional, I wouldn’t recommend this. Michael Mann gives this movie at times a documentary feel with its close-up jittery camera shots that can be a little distracting. But it wasn’t a bad movie, and you can laugh your butt off at Jada Pinkett running around on a tile floor in high heels.
Ladder 49 (2004)
I am not sure what I really thought of this movie. It stars John Travolta and he does an excellent job like usual, but it also has Joaquin Phoenix who I haven’t ever really liked in any movie I have seen him in. He was pretty strong in this movie, but there was something else about the movie that buggs me.
Maybe it is the fact that any movie that deals heavily with Firefighters I always compare to the great Backdraft with Kurt Russell and Robert Dinero. This movie, the predictable kind of happens throughout the movie. The development of Joaquin’s character is created backwards, after an accident early on in the movie has him recollect on his time as a firefighter. There are deadly accidents that occur to some of his friends, and there is happiness with him getting married and starting a family.
But it is the end that is very sad, and actually, not particularly shocking but at the same time, the movie doesn’t fulfill your desire to have the good guys always win, and they aren’t infallible.
See this movie for John Travolta and the incredible 100 story fire that Ladder 49 has to battle, but don’t expect anything that hasn’t already been done, and anything that will come close to Backdraft from 14 years earlier.
Meet the Fockers (2004)
I went to see this movie primarily because of Sarah’s parents. I had seen Meet the Parents and didn’t see what the big deal was. I don’t really like painful movies, where the main character goes through some major struggle just for trying to be the good guy. But Sarah’s parents laugh their heads at Meet the Parents, where usually they are pretty contained, or asleep at any other movie.
So over Christmas break we went and saw the follow up to the original. I think that this movie was kind of the same idea. Jack (Robert Dinero) still doesn’t completely trust Greg (Ben Stiller) and as a result, he gets into really painful situations, from teaching the baby to say a very bad word, to his eccentric parents showing off his foreskin and then dropping it in the fondue.
Everyone around me keeps saying, “It wasn’t as good as the first” “It was just the same old thing.” And I say, “What is wrong with that?”
The reason that the first movie was so good, was that it was unexpected. At the time, the pairing of Ben Stiller and Robert Dinero in a comedy shocked everyone. The problem with this movie was that it had expectations from people coming in to be the same experience, when in fact it could never be.
But they did come up with even more bizarre situations and continued on in the theme where it seemed believable and you just could barely watch but had to know what would happen. It was funny, and it used the same formula of success from the first one, and was probably more funny. It is just too bad that everyone could have just forgotten all about the first one, and came in with no expectations. This movie would have blown their minds too.
Bourne Identity (2002)
We loved this movie when we saw it for the first time earlier this year, and it is one of those movies that gets better each time you see it.
When we rented this movie, we didn’t have any expectations. It had kind of slipped through the cracks of my “To Watch” movie list and we just got it on a whim. We were blown away.
Matt Damon plays a black ops agent that, at the beginning of the movie, can’t remember who he is or where he came from. The story is told through his eyes as he finds clues and makes a friend in a lowly American gypsy girl. They piece his clues back together all the way back to Paris, but not without major resistance.
Matt Damon, or Agent Jason Bourne, is the number one and his creators can’t just let him go without a fight. High speed chases in little cars through the streets of Europe, blinding fight scenes between trained killers, and a believable performance by Damon as this driven, calculating, confused killer trying to figure out what he was and what to do with that knowledge.
The movie comes to an end when Jason Bourne kills off another agent who is hunting him, (Clive Owen) and then turns and becomes the hunter to set things straight and make sure he is left alone.
Action, espionage, dark secrets, with a just a dash of lust, a great popcorn movie that doesn’t ever make you say, “Yeah, Right”.
How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days (2003)
I can remember seeing previews for this movie and thinking that it looked like one of the stupidest movies ever made. Over Christmas break we had a lot of relaxing time so we popped this in for free and gave it a chance. I actually laughed my head off.
The movie is about a quirky girl who works for a fashion magazine that is writing an article on how to do all of the classic dating mistakes to scare off of a guy in ten days. On the other end, is a guy who owns an ad agency that is trying to land a large diamond account and work his way into advertising for the world of jewelry. He makes a deal to prove how much he understands women, that he could make a woman of someone else’s choosing fall in love with him in ten days. With some insider information, he has this very girl picked for him.
The rest of the movie is all of the terribly awkward types of things that could happen in a serious relationship, from calling too much, to barging in on guy’s night, to buying pets together, they’re all there. I about busted a gut seeing all of these things, and Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey were the perfect leads of cute and southern charm.
Fun movie with a girly ending, I think that you can watch this if you are a secure guy, and laugh at all of the crap he puts up with to win a bet.
Basic (2003)
This movie came highly recommended from my co-workers, and when I found it on the shelves, I was surprised that I had never heard of it before with stars like John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.
That said, I thought this movie was ok. It had a whole bunch of twists where you never knew which way was up, and to tell you the truth, by the end I was so turned around that I didn’t really care.
The basic jist is that Samuel L. Jackson is an un liked Navy Seal officer who is killed and John Travolta is trying to find out who did it. There is corruption in the ranks, drug trafficking, and everyone’s favorite, a graphic scene of vomiting blood from Giovoni Risbi (Who did an excellent job).
Engaging, but I wouldn’t watch it again. I just can’t turn anything away with John Travolta in it.
