Prisoners Movie Review

Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners spends two hours being so good it comes as a bit of a disappointment that the resolution is so utterly conventional. For an investigative thriller it is almost unbelievably contemplative. It’s a movie that is more content to get into the minds of its characters than to dutifully land on action beats at the appropriate moments, although the action does arrive, often ferociously.

Short Cut Movie Review: Oblivion

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Oblivion is a movie that looks almost perfect in terms of production design and visual effect. It deftly recalls and references several science fiction classics, but then fails to live up to the standards set by those that came before.

Tom Cruise is Jack Harper, a technician working to repair battle drones on earth that are in place to defend some big energy-producing machines from attack by Scavs, an alien race that lost a war with humans several decades ago. He explains everything in a narration that precedes the title. If you miss anything, don’t fret because it is all repeated almost verbatim later in the film as dialogue between Jack and Beech (Morgan Freeman), the leader of a band of humans found to still be living on earth.

Olympus Has Fallen Movie Review

A lone vigilante hero in the wrong place at the wrong time is trapped in a building with a large group of well-financed and highly skilled terrorists who are holding several hostages. They’ll do what’s necessary to extract the codes they need from their captives. Our hero is estranged from one of those held hostage and his ability to repair the damage done to that relationship hinges on the outcome of the event. He has regular contact with the bureaucrats on the outside, at least one of whom can’t see what needs to be done.

Flight Movie Review

Most of us remember that remarkable incident of averting an air disaster when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched a commercial airliner in the Hudson River alongside the Manhattan skyline after losing both engines to a flock of geese on takeoff. That man, otherwise ordinary except that he was suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to hero status for saving the lives of all on board, became an overnight media sensation. The talk shows wanted him for five minutes on air. Magazines wanted to delve into his personal history to find something in his past that led to his calm during what appeared to be certain death for everyone. What if it had turned out that he was drunk or high on drugs at the time? Would that negate the good he did in saving lives? What if the hypothetical alcohol in his system actually helped him relax enough to safely land the plane on the water? How does that change our approach to him as a human being and as a pilot?

Conviction Movie Review: The Innocent Goes to Prison and the Righteous Gets a Law Degrees

It is the unfortunate consequence of an imperfect Justice system that the guilty will sometimes go free and occasionally the innocent will be punished. The philosophy behind proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” is that the latter will occur much less frequently. Sadly, it occurs more often than a free society should be comfortable with as the ever-increasing number of exonerations through DNA testing makes clear.

In 1982, Kenneth Waters of Ayer, Massachusetts, was tried and convicted for the brutal murder of a neighbor. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. His sister, Betty-Anne, always believed in his innocence and so she got her GED, a BA and then finally a law degree so she could personally take on the cause of getting her older brother out of prison. In the end, DNA evidence overturned his conviction and set him free.

The Fighter Movie Review: One Fights and the Other Boxes

That David O. Russell’s The Fighter is “based on a true story” is not what makes it so good. After all, everybody’s life is a true story, but the vast majority of them wouldn’t make even watchable movies. Anyway, “based on a true story” is always a misleading entry into a movie. No matter how much truth is in the screenplay (in this case the product of Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson), the writers always end up playing fast and loose with some story elements.

I can’t say how much of the story of brothers Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, professional boxers from Lowell, Massachusetts, is true or not. But looking at Micky’s list of professional fights on Wikipedia, it’s clear that his late-stage successful career has been truncated for dramatic effect. Not that this matters much, but it serves to highlight how even a film as steeped in realism as this one can play with facts to enhance not only the dramatic power of the narrative, but to keep the plot within manageable constraints.