DVD Voice

This one was both better than I imagined and also a slight letdown. It’s Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood and runs a little longer than it probably should. The story basically revolves around three people who are in different parts of the world and yet meet over the course of the film. I know Eastwood’s movies are more often than not great and so you kind of expect that from this one. I can’t put my finger exactly why I felt let down by this one. It just feels like it could of been have much better! Not that it’s bad, I just see the potential. It is a very touching film.

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.

Oscura Seduccion, or Dark Seduction, is a departure into darker fare (no pun intended). It’s about a Doctor, Laura, and her clinic. She has just hired a new nurse, Gustav, who is studying to be a doctor. She fears that he might be gay – exactly why, well – because when he came into her office while examining a nude woman she noticed that he didn’t look. “Not my type” he tells her. His type, is it turns out, the doctor.

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.

Tonight the better Unstoppable!

This is the Tony Scott movie starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. I have to say that going into this I didn’t know how good it would be. I have this weakness for trains and hoped to see a lot of the inner workings of trains. Sadly, that didn’t really happen. I mean you see trains – A LOT – kinda like know that if you watch Showgirls you’ll see boobs, yes you will see trains!

This makes a remarkable string of movies by Tony or Ridley Scott that I have really liked. They have amazing consistency of putting out great films.

Basically there is a train. Its got lots of nasty chemicals on it. A train engineer puts the train in ‘slow’ and hops out to run ahead and flip a switch by the track. But said train slips into a faster gear and the fat boy can’t get back on the train. Off it goes down the track. Faster and faster she goes!

Denzel, a forced retirement staring him in the face decides to go after the train. Drama and chase and excitement ensue.

Ok, ok, its not the world’s most exciting movie, obviously. Everyone knows where the train is going. You can see the bend in the track. But still a fun ride. Great little popcorn movie.

Oh – and it’s based on a true story. There are some liberties taken, but the story is essentially true. And who knew Denzel drove trains?

Things learned from this movie:

1. Trains are cool.
2. Making people retire isn’t cool.
3. Old people – and young people – both have stuff to bring to the table and can learn from each other.
4. If your breaking up as a couple a disaster is a great thing to bring you to your senses and back together.
5. If a train moving very fast and carrying toxic chemicals is headed towards your city and the police are evacuating. Go down to the railroad track side and take your camera to get good pictures of the disaster.

Rated PG-13. 98 minutes (1 hour 38 minutes). Language. I guess you could say violence.

This selection tonight was Unstoppable, not to be confused with the recently released 2010 Unstoppable with Denzel Washington. Wesley Snipes is a decent actor – but this movie. Um, well, about a Black Ops soldier who was discharged and has been suffering from PTSD because of a mission in Bosnia.

He’s mistaken for a informant and given this “world’s most powerful hallucinogenic drug” that makes him susceptible to suggestions. He’ll do anything asked and answer any questions truthfully. However, in 8 hours it’ll fry his synapses and he’ll die. His would be fiance is there as a police detective Amy Knight (Jacqueline Obradors) and she’s on the case of the crooked government agents that are doing all this.

Is their an antidote? Can they kill Dean Cage (Wesley Snipes)? Can they get the answers? When will Dean stop having flashbacks to his trauma?

The movie is just an action flick. Tons of unexplained government ops. Lots of empty streets for chases and crashes that never seem to have consequences. Just popcorn fun. Don’t take it too seriously.

Things learned from this movie:

1. Dean Cage is definitely dead.
2. Shooting a tanker full of gasoline will explode it.
3. That tanker full of gasoline will teeter over the edge of a overpass with only the cab of the truck on the street and the rest over think air. It will not fall until the hero has time to climb around and listen to tension building music as the tanker rocks.
4. The hero who jumps from the tanker to the safety of the bridge as it is exploding into a giant fireball of gasoline will not be harmed. No singes, he can hear, he’s ok.
5. Drugs always have antidotes.
6. Government ops always wear big black jackets, white shirts, and ties for field work.
7. Police detectives in street clothes with a drawn pistol will not be seen by CIA guys in a van even though their headlights shine directly on her in the darkness.
8. A trained government agent drawing a submachine gun and shooting at two people at point blank range will miss, allowing someone else to draw a pistol and shoot him.
9. A guy in a chopper with a mini gun cannot take down a hallucinating guy with nowhere really to run.
10. Government vans will not crank when they really need to.
11. About to die because your brain is being fried? Getting an antidote makes it all ok. You’ll be fine. No ill effects.
12. Villains trying to buy these drugs will just vanish if the deal goes bad.

Rated R. 96 minutes (1 hour 36 minutes). Language. Lots of violence and explosions but that’s fun – not worth rating an R.

Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler (300′s King Leonidis) are in tonight’s Law Abiding Citizen. Clyde Shelton (Butler) has his wife and daughter killed during a home invasion by two men. They are caught and are in the justice system when Nick Rice (Foxx) cuts them a deal. One of the two guys agrees to cooperate and testify against the other one in exchange for just a prison sentence. The guy who cooperates was actually the one doing the killing. (But, because of the felony murder rule, the other guy was just as guilty as if he had killed them). Shelton is upset that they were not prosecuted and that DNA was tossed on technicalities, etc. So, he quietly waits his time and begins setting up his plan for revenge. He finds and catches the guy who did the actual murder in a very slick way – and proceeds to do a real number on him – they tell you what, but you don’t see much of it, if any. Soon, he’s arrested for the murder and while in prison more people associated with his wife’s death are killed. Who’s doing it? Why? Will Clyde Shelton be found guilty?

This movie asks a lot of interesting questions of you. About justice and whether our justice system is not functioning well. It makes you think about vigilantism, and what really is right. Is it just what meets the letter of the law, is it what lets you sleep at night. It does expose a lot of what is wrong with the justice system and legal field, but how is it that we are to change it to make it better?

This movie was rather good. It kept my interest the entire time very well. And up until nearly the end did it become apparent what was going on. I can’t say that it was entirely satisfying as a film, but good and entertaining. Worth the evening. If you like drama/thrillers, you should enjoy this.

Rated R. 108 minutes (1 hour 48 minutes). Language and violence.

Nothing was scheduled to be at the house from Netflix today so I made a stop at Blockbuster. I like having a Blockbuster handy, it’s nice to be able to go in and browse the movies and make a choice and bring it home right away. I hope they can stay in business, we need them.

Anyway, off the soap box, I looked through the aisles and settled on a fairly new release called Whiteout with Kate Beckinsale, Tom Skerritt, and Gabriel Macht. It’s based on an “acclaimed graphic novel” also not a bad sign. It’s about an outpost in the antarctic where a murderer is loose.

The scenes of ice and snow were great, it did look cold and frozen. The broken cup freezing quickly in -65F was neat! (FYI, this was filmed in Canada in May and June). There are some gruesome parts as well.

Ok. That’s about all the good things I can say about this. It wasn’t very tense. The plot wasn’t so hot (no pun intended) and it just wasn’t very fun. So much for a Friday night. I see the reviews on this on Netflix now, and Rotten Tomatoes, where it only got a 7%! Next time I need to read more reviews…! I almost got Tell Tale, wishing now I maybe did. Tomorrow will be here soon – and it surely has to hold a better one!

PS – It isn’t a horrid movie, it is ok, it just isn’t really memorable enough to have much to say about it or recommend it very highly. You could do worse. At last the guys in the mid-Atlantic tonight could go outside and see their own whiteout…

Rated R. 101 minutes (1 hour 41 minutes). Violence, male nudity and tempting Kate almost nudity – shucks!