Taut thriller starring Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, ex-CIA operative, whose seventeen-year-old daughter is kidnapped while on a trip to Paris. He has 96 hours to find and rescue her before she disappears into the criminal underground forever. You’ve seen all this before, just generally flabbier and lazier. Here all the clichés and stereotypes of the genre are used to good purpose: to strip away the fat. What’s left is a lean, hard tale of a man with the skills to battle evil on its own turf and the uncompromising drive to do so. Neeson, who has to carry the plot, gives a terrific performance, imbuing Mills with an inner conviction to match his physical prowess. For all his cold-bloodedness, we never forget that Mills is exactly what he tells his daughter he was, when he worked for the CIA: a man who prevents bad things from happening.
****
Taut thriller starring Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, ex-CIA operative, whose seventeen-year-old daughter is kidnapped while on a trip to Paris. He has 96 hours to find and rescue her before she disappears into the criminal underground forever. You’ve seen all this before, just generally flabbier and lazier. Here all the clichés and stereotypes of the genre are used to good purpose: to strip away the fat. What’s left is a lean, hard tale of a man with the skills to battle evil on its own turf and the uncompromising drive to do so. Neeson, who has to carry the plot, gives a terrific performance, imbuing Mills with an inner conviction to match his physical prowess. For all his cold-bloodedness, we never forget that Mills is exactly what he tells his daughter he was, when he worked for the CIA: a man who prevents bad things from happening.
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** Poorly written story of a woman who attempts suicide (for no apparent reason), is committed to an asylum (because it's convenient), and masturbates in front of an inmate who never speaks (since that's what one does in a mental asylum, right?). Fortunately she falls in love with the guy to whom she gives her impromptu sex show, for otherwise this movie about taking risks might in fact have taken one, and that would have spoiled the whole mood. Oh, and there's something about how her drug overdose resulted in an aneurysm that is going to kill her in a few days. Ironic, huh? Sarah Michelle Gellar is fine, but too subdued to give the film much of the life it ostensibly celebrates. Based on the novel by Paulo Coelho, who as a teenager spent time in a mental institution. *** Addictive thriller about a serial killer who targets entire families and a federal investigator with a knack for getting inside the heads of such monsters. Misses an extra star both for its tired conceit that hunter and hunted are essentially the same (which leads to some confusion as to how, exactly, we are supposed to respond to the murderer) and an ending that is as deflating as it is unbelievable. Introduces Hannibal Lecter (though he isn't the killer). Filmed twice, first as the excellent Manhunter (1986), directed by Michael Mann, then as Red Dragon (2002), directed by Brett Ratner. Followed by The Silence of the Lambs. ** World War starts in 1940 and is still raging 20 years later when a new government run by scientists and engineers finally forces peace on the people of Earth. Not to stop all the killing, not to provide a better life for the common man, but simply so that the privileged can work in peace and quiet. Elitist horror dressed up as science fiction, written by none other than H. G. Wells, based on his book The Shape of Things to Come. Wells' vapid characters and stilted dialogue don't help. With, however, some nice special effects and visual design, and a dark-haired woman (Sophie Stewart) who comes on the screen dressed half like a dominatrix and half like a harem girl, who says, "I don't suppose any man has ever understood any woman since the beginning of things." Well, hell, girl, you're a walking contradiction; what do you expect? * Girls might indeed have reason to oppose boys if all of them were as flaccid as this film. It's a barely written story of two young women (Danielle Panabaker and Nicole LaLiberte) who, after one of them is raped, begin killing any man who looks at them crossways. Sensing perhaps the deficiencies in his own script, Austin Chick directs as though he can tease significance from a scene if he just keeps the camera rolling long enough -- nearly convincing us during one interminable following seqence that Ms. Panabaker's blonde hair must somehow provide a major plot point later in the film. (It doesn't.) This movie has no plot points, just one killing after another, each one just as dull as Panabaker's affectless performance. But if that's the point -- the degree to which we have all become desensitized to violence -- its only confirmation is in the fact that this film's assault on our senses is more likely to induce ennui than vigorous defense. ** The author's second Burke novel pits the private investigator against a pedophile ring that snaps Polaroids of its young victims for collectors. The title character, Burke's client, is a sexy but strange woman whose background we've figured out long before Burke (blithely, conveniently ignorant) has it spelled out for him at the end. Too tough for its own good and claustrophobically insular, with one-dimensional villains that exist more to promote the author's mission against pedophiles than to entertain. Hardboiled community service masquerading as fiction. ***** Though it eventually degenerates into rather dull roboto-a-roboto action, the humor- and character-driven first half of this science fiction film is so blazingly fun that it is one of the most enjoyable movies ever made. Shia LeBeouf plays manic teenager Sam Witwicky who unwittingly holds the key to a war between robot-like alien beings, but would much rather unlock the mysteries of Megan Fox. Witty and exciting, with an unparalleled opening in the deserts of Qatar, the site of mankind's first battle with the evil Decepticons. Sam, meanwhile, meets one of the good guys -- in a used car lot. Based on the Transformers toy line and succeeded by several inferior sequels. Turn That Frown Upside Down Funny quotations from negative reviews. "...most of the Autobots take the shape of GM vehicles, including Ratchet (a Hummer H2) and Ironhide (a TopKick pickup truck). The only Autobot that doesn’t wear that troubled automaker’s logo is the leader, Optimus Prime (a generic 18-wheeler tractor). Maybe that’s because the company didn’t want to be represented by a character that promises to blow itself up for the greater good, as Optimus does..." - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times “'Transformers' knows its demographic. A computer hacker being sweated by the FBI protests, 'I'm a virgin!' The actor who says these words is 36. At another point, a guy shopping for a car with his dad protests that he doesn't want a beater because it says '40-year-old virgin' to him. That one over there? It says '50-year-old virgin.' Members of the audience will titter nervously, thinking about their large collections of factory-sealed action figures. But no matter. Perhaps their Jedi mastery of 'Grand Theft Auto' will make Natalie Portman show up at their door?" - Kyle Smith, New York Post "(BTW, if you were known as a Decepticon, wouldn't it be kind of hard for you to...deceive anybody?)" - Richard Corliss, Time "A filmmaker who has profitably plundered his own arrested adolescence in movies like 'Bad Boys,' 'The Rock' and 'Armageddon,' director Michael Bay got his fingers burned two years ago with the relatively sophisticated sci-fi flop 'The Island.' It's obvious he's not going to be caught overestimating his audience twice." - Tom Charity, CNN "Now these delightful objets d’art have a movie to themselves. We should not be surprised. Long ago, when the impact of 'Star Wars' was beefed up by a line of merchandise, some of us noticed that the five-inch Lukes and Leias possessed a depth and mobility that was denied to their onscreen counterparts, and, decades later, we have reached the reductio ad absurdum of that rivalry: rather than spin the toys off from the movie, why not build the movie from the toys? 'Transformers' is not the first effort in this direction; I distinctly remember finding a couchful of children enraptured by a DVD of 'Barbie of Swan Lake' and realizing that Ingmar Bergman’s 'Persona' had not, after all, signalled the final disintegration of human personality." - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker **** Mae West is ultimate bad girl Lady Lou, the singer in a Gay Nineties saloon that stands next door to a church mission run by a very young Cary Grant. He wants to save Lou's soul; she wants to corrupt his. Meanwhile, a girl tries to commit suicide, a counterfeiting ring kicks into operation, a criminal escapes, and a woman is stabbed to death. All in just 66 minutes. Given all that happens, you might think the movie is fast-paced, but it isn't really until the very end. On the other hand, it doesn't need to be: West is racy enough on her own. She's intelligent, witty, poised, and buiguilingly self-confident, and the film is as bawdy as it is delightful. The shortest movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture. ** Vaguely anti-war novel about Colonel Hudson Kane, who comes to a California mansion as a famous psychologist tasked with "curing" its nutty Air Force inmates, among whom is the astronaut who flaked out prior to America's first mission to the moon. Kane, however, doesn't much act like a psychologist and Cutshaw, the astronaut, doesn't appear to be entirely batty. The last of three comic novels Blatty wrote before The Exorcist, and a particularly lazy one at that, relying for its humor on the antics of a group of people who are either insane or pretending to be. Interesting nevertheless if read as an absurd blueprint for The Exorcist: all the obsessions that led Blatty to write his most famous novel are present here -- from the simple love of movies to the coexistence of evil and a benevolent God; everything, in fact, including a discussion of possession and exorcism. Readers of The Exorcist will note that Blatty even uses an astronaut in both. ** Writer-director Christopher Smith puts a modern spin on the Greek myth of Sisyphus (misidentified as Aeolus, who was Sisyphus’ father), the mortal condemned for eternity to roll a huge stone up a hill only to have it roll back down again, forever forcing him to start over. Here, a single mom named Jess (Melissa George), frantic to get back home to her autistic son, finds herself on a ghost ship with four other adults, who are being hunted down one by one by a mask-wearing psycho. The problem is, Jess is sure she’s taken this nightmare cruise before. George, surprisingly good as Jess, holds the movie together, but it would have been better if Smith had broken free from the depressing fatalism of his source material. |
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