A very enjoyable political thriller. What I was most impressed with was the concept and their execution of it (forgive the pun). Revolving around a terrorist attack on the US President in Spain, the story is patched together from (roughly) 6 different perspectives, shown one at a time with rewind montages at the end of each until we tie everything together at the end. They did a really good job taking care of continuity – although with anything of this magnitude, little bits and pieces will always slip by, but it’s very negligible in the long run. The main set piece they filmed in was an old square in Spain where the President is arriving to make a speech and is subsequently assassinated. What really incredible about this portion of the film is that it’s almost hard to imagine the number of cameras they had set up to tell the … Continue reading →

Take the opening of X-Men 2 (where Nightcrawler attacks the White House) and expand it to a 2 hour movie and you have some notion of the glee I experienced watching this movie. And it was a decent story too! Really enjoyable background…and they don’t even explain the science of the jumpers! They also did a really good job casting…Hayden Christianson is the star of the show, but the movie starts 8 years before him and the kid they used (he was Seth in The Pacifier) looked A LOT like Hayden….the girl (Because of Winn-Dixie / AnnaSophia Robb when she’s young, Rachel Bilson older) didn’t look as close so I was a little disappointed, but whatever. 57 stunt players. Filmed mostly on location (which is pretty awe inspiring considering they teleported from Egypt to Bali to Rome without thinking twice about it) except for Mexico standing in for Egypt (guessing) … Continue reading →

Oliver Twist with a dash of Beethoven. This movie is incredibly sweet – a love story about music and the connections we make to people and the universe through it. Freddie Highmore is absolutely brilliant! Although with his recent success, I reflect briefly on the problems that child actors find in their futures: Bobby Driscoll (child Disney star/voice of Peter Pan overdosed on drugs), Macaulay Culkin seems to have adjusted but what has he done since Saved!, and where is Haley Joel Osmont? The music is absolutely gorgeous…brilliant combinations of classical and rock inflections. AND! Keri Russel (mother), Jonathon Rhys Mayer (father) and Freddie Highmore (prodigal son) all play their own instruments (the credits list their tutors and they are credited on the soundtrack). It makes me so happy to see a movie that is so much about the music is organically created/represented by the actors…(clarification – the tutors taught … Continue reading →

Wonderfully, powerful, enjoyable romantic drama about a couple torn about by the lie of the younger sister who struggles with her sin for the rest of her life. Set in the mid-late 1930’s in England, the film stars a plethora of talented actors and actresses from previous Focus Feature films as well as Kiera Knightley and James McAvoy as the young couple. Cecilia (Knightly) is the daughter of a wealthy woman and Robbie (McAvoy) is the hired hand’s son who went to Cambridge with her, where she avoided him because of his stature. But one night, they can avoid each other no longer, and are caught in an awkward position in the library by Cecilia’s younger sister Briony. When a ghastly crime is committed, young Briony (as children do) latches on to the idea that Robbie did it, leading to Robbie’s arrest and later conscription into World War 2, his … Continue reading →

What?  An inspirational sports movie that Jerry Bruckheimer DIDN’T produce?  What is the world coming to?  What’s next, a really crappy video game adaptation that doesn’t have Uwe Boll’s fingerprints all over it?  This is a really great film and the directorial debut of Denzel Washington which makes it all the more memorable.  Starring Denzel and Forrest Whittaker, the movie combines inspirational sports movies like Glory Road and Remember the Titans with inspirational teacher movies like Dead Poets Society and tells the fascinating story of the Wiley College debate team – the first African American debate team to compete with Harvard – the best in the league in 1935.  Not the same Marshall as We Are Marshall (that was Marshall University in West Virginia).