All in graphic detail. For instance, the second killing is of Danny Trejo (of Machete fame – which I sadly never got around to reviewing that fun romp. It started off with a bang, literally when they blow away this really hot nude girl at the beginning. And when you see a girl willing to go naked on screen get killed off so soon.. well… rather sad!). Anyway, I digress, Danny Trejo is the fry cook and gets his head blown off, literally, with a shotgun. You don’t see but a superfast glimpse, but still…

The movie was ok, I guess. I mean I was entertained enough for an already brain dead Saturday night. But, it could of been sooo much better. It is what it is, but you kind of expect to see a better Madsen on the screen. He disappointed slightly. The lead actress, Noreen, was rather cute and a joy to watch (Post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer). But all in all, what do you do if you are faced with a situation like this? Someone goes bonkers in the tiny diner you are at. Are you just royally screwed because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or do you do something about it? And how do you decide what you do, or if you just call the police or what? Makes you think a little about what you’ll do if you ever (god-forbid!) get faced with such a situation!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Diners late at night aren’t the safest of places.
2. If you go somewhere and they don’t run air conditioning, go find somewhere else to eat.
3. Serated steak knives are handy in a pinch.
4. Keep count of gunshots.
5. You can shoot an entire movie in one location.
6. Beware of traveling salesmen. Are they really who they seem?
7. Why do you wear a wedding ring if your wife has been dead two years?
8. Take the money and run.

Rated R. 90 minutes (1 hours 30 minutes). Swearing. Violence. As for sex, well the most is the law officer verbalizing that he’d like to run away with the married waitress – who is at another point called “hot” as an old broad, and retorts that she’s 32. But yes, she’s hot.

Kevin Spacey plays Jack Abramoff and Barry Pepper Michael Scanlon. The movie is well paced, doesn’t overly explain things.

Seeing the things that influential people get to play around with, celebrities, private jets around the world, golfing in exclusive places, fine food, etc, does have its enticements, but at the heart of us all we have to decide what it the price for our ethics.

Things learned from this movie:

1. Kevin Spacey and his film impersonations.
2. Jon Lovitz is on a trip in this one! His pen-stabbed face does make an appearance later on.
3. Barry Pepper’s impersonations don’t go over as well.
4. Casino Cruise Ships rake in boatloads of cash!
5. Don’t send hooker’s panties off with your clothes to be cleaned.
6. Lovitz’s mattress commercial is fun!

Rated R. 108 minutes (1 hours 48 minutes). Swearing. Violence. Nudity, two well-endowed girls lounge about topless for Jon Lovitz. Skimpy outfits on a casino cruise ship.

You have a French girl, Marie (Cecile De France) on vacation and there is a tsunami. She’s almost killed. She returns to France and her news desk but can’t focus on her work so is recommended that she take a sabbatical and work on her book, a history of the second best known French politician of the past fifty years. Exciting stuff? She instead starts writing about near death. At the same time a twin set of boys are being separated from their mother and one of the boys is hit by a car and killed. This sets the other off on a quest to find out what happens when we die. In yet another part of the world there is a factory worker, George Lonegan (Matt Damon) who is a genuine psychic. Only he no longer practices because of the “curse” of his gift. He is laid off and his brother convinces him to reopen his psychic studio, only George has no intention of doing so and flees to London to vacation. And its there where the three meet up.

It does ask some good questions and can get you to think. What happens when we die? Do the dead come back to visit, or warn, or protect us? Is it a better place? How can people come back from near death experiences? Are psychics real? I know that many of these type questions aren’t on your mind ever single day so it is good at some points to think about them and decide how you view those questions and what is the answer for yourself. Are you comfortable with them? Watching Hereafter can help you think about this because it brings these issues up in color.

Things learned from this movie:

1. Delivery truck vs little boy. Truck wins.
2. Tsunamis are way cool. Spectating only. If your there, wow… its something else! And scary.
3. Sooner or later your publisher is going to find out what you are writing about.
4. Charles Dickens can ward off evil spirits.
5. Cooking classes look kinda fun. Just don’t scare off your partner by reminding her that she was abused as a child and you now know about it!

Rated PG-13. 129 minutes (2 hours 9 minutes). Some swearing. Violence. Fears about death. A child dies after being struck by a car. Subway explodes.

Laura is a plastic surgeon and you see several good shots of her raw material – why those girls felt they needed plastic surgery, well…!

Eventually Gustav wears Laura down and on her birthday he takes her to dinner. He doesn’t get in, but gets close and sooner rather than later he is bedding the hot doctor. He then moves in. He shows signs of mental instability and possessiveness. She gets fed up, tells him to leave and he goes beserk and tries to rape her and flees after she bites him.

The rest of the film is a where will he strike next as the jealousy of the seduction leads to danger for both Laura and one of her doctor friends. Will she end up getting cosmetic surgery herself from a medical student who wants to turn her into a spitting image of his grandmother/lover? Only watching this – which I’m not recommending – will give you those answers. Or maybe you can bribe me and I’ll tell you.

One bad thing about watching this “type” of film when it is foreign language is sometimes the words distract from what you want to see and sometimes the words cover what you want to see, say someone’s bottom!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Cosmetic surgery is best done by hot doctors.
2. One boob lower than the other? Even by just a little? Must demonstrate and get that corrected!
3. Having a gun for self-defense means that when your there by yourself you’ll just stuff it in a kitchen drawer.
4. Just because someone stops someone from killing you doesn’t mean that they are your friend.
5. If someone seems a little freaky, trust your gut.
6. Sleepwalkers have issues.
7. Remember DVDs are good for pause and rewind.

Rated Not Rated. 89 minutes (1 hour 29 minutes). Some swearing, but this one mostly contains nudity. Two or three girls have their tops off and perfect bodies on display in the doctors office, the doctor takes a phone call while a perfect bottom sits out on display. And of course, you can’t have a steamy fling without doctor taking it all off. Violence – near death on the operating room tables. Beatings. Gunplay. It’s all good.

Helen Hunt’s father moves in with them, burdening and stressing her out to keep care of him and take him to his doctors. The eldest son (a high schooler) has come out of the closet and declared that he is gay. Their youngest is getting ignored because other things seem more important. The husband and wife don’t really acknowledge each other, they just are there without ever really connecting and offering the support and back-up the other needs.

So… life goes for a few weeks. The trials of picking the kids up from school. The fear that the older one will go off and get hurt in some kinky gay thing or preyed upon. Liev’s job is demanding and a co-worker is tempting him.

How do you step out of what envelopes you in your life enough to see your loved one’s true needs and be supportive? And what’s going to happen to us when we get old if we haven’t been there or been caring for those we love?

Heavy stuff, huh? Well, don’t despair, this film is billed as a comdey! Uh huh, ok — I found it rather sad. Even Eddie Izzard, who you expect to be funny, and he was kinda out there, is kind of depressing. The whole thing, including some scenes in really overcast weather, are depressing…

Things learned from this movie:

1. “You’re not nearly as boring as you pretend to be.”
2. Old people can’t open childproof caps, but elementary school kids can.
3. If you hate where you are then living in a nursing home will not be any different or worse.
4. You can give criticism in ways that hurt or inspire.
5. A human’s cremation remains will fit into a plastic bag.
6. Helen Hunt is thin, but getting old looking.
7. If you are at a co-workers house and she wants to go swimming and brings you her “ex” boyfriends swimsuit – speedo – yeah right, she’s been sizing you up.
8. [This entry intentionally left blank]

Rated R. 93 minutes (1 hour 33 minutes). Rated R … um, there is some swearing but it stuck out so much I can’t exactly remember how much. Liev Schreiber is having a fling with a co-worker and they are naked in a pool but you’d never know. Sucked that teasing. Oh, and now that I’m down this avenue, the job Liev’s character has is writing for a tv show where the boss wants as much weird and crazy sex stuff as possible so that’s discussed rather frequently.

Ok, it wasn’t that bad. Barry Pepper, Mira Sorvino did good jobs. It’s about a family. They have a kid. They have a prosperous and happy life. There’s another family. It has a husband (now an ex-con) and a wife and a kid – only the kid is with the first family. The adoption papers have forged signatures from the con, Barry Pepper. Now they want the kid back. Well, law being the law, they will get the kid back.

So what do you do when you see slow motion heartbreak coming at you. Well, I wanted to turn it off and play video games – but I stuck in here for you guys!

Honestly, it makes you think. What happens when the legal decision is the one that seems so wrong. Taking a kid away from a place where he is loved and well cared for and put back with his birth mother and an abusive father? But like we said earlier, the law is the law.

So the adoptive father tries things. Can he get the courts to see it his way? Can he get political influence? Can he buy the real father off? Will he take the kid and run becoming a fugitive?

You might enjoy this one. Maybe not. Probably not. Only see if you want to be saddened. Monday evenings are good for that! So if your still game, check it out – Like Dandelion Dust!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Sailboats are where its at.
2. Fathers can get lots of points out of building tree houses.
3. Mothers can get into a “no girls allowed” tree house by bringing cookies.
4. Cookies!
5. Church mission trips make a good cover for leaving.
6. Buying fake US passports to leave the country … hmmm…
7. Some people can drink straight whiskey faster than I can drink water.
8. Prison works wonders on your abs.

Rated PG-13. 100 minutes (1 hour 40 minutes). Language. Family Tension.

The boy, it turns out, was the murdered man’s brother.

Fast forward about 30 years. Liam Neeson’s character, Alistair Little, has served 12 years in prison and is out. Joe Griffen, played by James Nesbitt (who you might have seen in Waking Ned Devine) is living his life as well, full of bitterness and rage at this man who killed his brother. He’s been blamed by his mother for “letting it” happen and not trying to stop it. And he lives with that kind of guilt — for something that was not his fault.

A tv station wants to host a program where the two men, who have never met, sit down and talk. But as he’s getting ready for the interview Joe increasingly gets antsy and shows of the rage and anger and agitation as he waits for the “go” to do the interview. Finally he walks out.

Joe’s real intention is for revenge, even though, as the runner tells him “it wouldn’t be good for” Alistair, and also that “it wouldn’t be good for you either”. But he replies, how could it not be good for him, because it would be like five minutes of heaven. He believes the man who killed his brother is living the life of Riley.

But is he? Isn’t it that the image in his head of the little boy witnessing the murder of his own brother haunting him all these years – how do you get rid of that? And why do you chose, when you have a good family that loves you with two darling daughters, do you chose to let yourself be obsessed with taking revenge when your making those around you miserable by doing so? Shouldn’t you love and care for those around you – open your eyes and be grateful for what you have?

All in all, not a great movie, yet also not a waste of time. If you watch this and realize how you may be playing the role of victim in your life. Do you let things happen to you? Do you expect bad things to happen? And if they do – how do you respond? Do you pick up the pieces and go on – or do you fester and get angry and bitter and just wait for the next time to be victimized? Respond correctly.

Things learned from this movie:

1. The Irish riots are hard to figure out.
2. A fillet knife is a good choice to use as a murder weapon.
3. Automatic pistols “jam all the time”.
4. Framed photos of kittens on the wall are liable to be shot between the eyes.
5. Houses where murders have occurred sit vacant.

Rated R. 89 minutes (1 hour 29 minutes). Mostly for language and the one scene of violence. There is some historical footage to start the movie – and set the tone – that has some real violence. Mostly just a profanity tirade from the victim.

Along comes a meeting with Madeline Gray (played by Marley Shelton) who hears Adrian’s concert and realizes that his style would either appeal to her art gallery crowd or help sell the artwork. So she has him play at her new showing and soon enough Adrian and Madeline are having a little fling. Which might trouble Adrian because he knows his brother was attempting to spark an interest with Madeline. Madeline arranges to have one of her art buyers commission Adrian to compose a piece.

Of course we also have Vinnie Jones gracing this movie as an artist who makes eccentric pieces, who reinvents himself daily (if not ten minutes ago), and doesn’t actually do his own artwork but “oversees it”. His exit from the movie was worth a chuckle.

What is this movie about? I’m not so sure that it is about anything. It touches on a number of subjects. The hypocrisy of the art world. The struggle of artists. The triviality of art. The senselessness (at times) of collecting. What is art? Etc.

For me, it was interesting to see how people are who they are and whatever it is that you find in life to enjoy, whether it is the art of a taxidermied animal sticking half-way out the wall, or the lower half of a man with arrows sticking in him going into the wall, or a push-pin stuck in the wall and called art. Whatever it is, if you enjoy it then enjoy it without guilt. If you like a certain kind of music and others call it noise, then enjoy it and ignore their comments.

Why not periodically do some introspection and see if you are the person you want to be and if not work on reinventing yourself. Become better.

It is also about creating. And how the act of creation is fulfilling and how everyone longs to be remembered and leave a mark in history. I know I’m not doing a good job of this one myself!

Things learned from this movie:

1. Some artists are strange.
2. Enjoy yourself whatever you do and whatever you like. Your unique.
3. “Some things are so personal… that’s better to keep them to yourself.”
4. What is a critic and why should anyone listen to them?
5. Kicking a bucket takes a certain movement from the hip to get the carnal tone into the sound – otherwise its just noise.
6. Art shows are a good place to score a glass of wine.
7. What do you have in your back room?

Rated R. 96 minutes (1 hour 36 minutes). There’s some language. And one artist is painting a figure study and we see a slow pan by a nice woman’s ass – maybe 15 seconds or so.

The basic premise of the movie is that there is this cop, Adam, who has a dad in the hospital with a heart murmur. They are babysitting his dad’s dog, Bruno. Eva wants to know how long they will have the dog and we learn that heart murmurs aren’t something you just get over quickly(!). So next day we find his dad has taken a turn for the worse and their is a fight that starts somehow with the dog and dad and fact that the father has never accepted the daughter-in-law. So Adam goes to the hospital to visit his dad by himself. As the fates have it the father dies just after Adam arrives and so Adam leaves and goes back onto patrol. He beats up the first perp he finds and then goes to the local watering hole and opens up a tab and starts to drinking. Lock, his old buddy who just got out of jail is there too and soon enough they are in a fight and Adam is stabbed and dies.

Following all this?

As he lies there and dies God, we presume, tells him that he can have his life back if he makes his killers life better. So Adam proceeds to walk around and look at people, who can’t see him, and the story goes nowhere. Literally. Honestly I’ve wasted enough of your time on this movie already – please don’t go see it. You’ve been warned.

Echelon Studios’ blog is, of course, proud to announce that this film is available on Netflix.

Things learned from this movie:

1. After you die you’ll walk around the planet wearing your last outfit topped with a gray poncho until you make life better for the person who killed you.
2. If you stab someone and they die and then you have blood all over your white t-shirt, you can turn it inside out and it’ll be ok.
3. Owning a house right on the beach means its ok to leave the doors open and unlocked.
4. If you are a police detective you can afford a house on the beach.
5. If your father dies its perfectly alright to go from his deathbed back onto patrol.
6. All family fights seem to originate around a dog.

Rated Not Rated. 86 minutes (1 hour 26 minutes). Some violence. Nothing else stood out, I mean, I’m sure there was some language, but I just didn’t notice and/or remember it.

But, I went ahead and put it in on Sunday to see how it was. First, it was well made and rather captivating and soon I found myself wondering how this girl was going to cope when everything in the world (it seems) is stacked against her and people are not understanding.

As the movie goes along you learn about Temple and some of her background and how he learns to cope. How a squeeze box that she designs and builds helps to calm her down when things feel (to her) like they are out of control.

One of the neater things was the way they showed how Temple saw things in pictures — images of things versus words or ideas or feelings — I guess I should say “see things” because she is still alive. I thought it would be really cool to be able to see images like that and to have that photographic mind to recall things you’ve seen before, such as pages out of a book — man that would have been a cool skill in school!

Temple graduates from school and eventually makes it through graduating with a doctorate. She graduated with a bachelors in Psychology — which is kind of mind boggling given that she would have a tougher time with some of the concepts. She then did her master’s in animal handling and wrote articles and designed systems for the cattle industry. All in all it is amazing what she accomplished and I can’t help but compare that to myself in some ways at how I should have achieved so much more than I actually have (or rather haven’t!).

One profound thing is that as the film goes on she talks about how she realized how precious life if, and that is true … we all need to be aware of how much life means and how we should live it to its fullest. Are you?

Now that I’ve seen this, I’m glad I took the time to watch it. This was better than the other movie this weekend (Sister’s Keeper).

Things I learned from this movie:

1. People are special.
2. Everyone is different, just because someone is different or autistic doesn’t mean they are a lesser human than you — they might actually be better.
3. Being yourself is always ok. Be real.
4. Whatever you want to do or achieve, aim for it, you can do it.

Rated TV. There might be some minor profanity. And bull testicles/balls are tossed about (literally) and discussed. And of course cattle slaughterhouses come into play.