Starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Leland Orser, Anjul Nigam, Jon Gries

by Karel Murray

A quick recap without giving away the conclusion, Liam Neeson portrays Bryan Mills who has “retired” from being a government operative in order to build a better relationship with his daughter.  You can’t help but empathize immediately with Liam’s character and start rooting for him emotionally at the very start of movie.  Holding him back from really establishing a parental bond is his ex wife and his uncompromising view of how the world’s harsh reality can destroy a life.  Even as Liam’s character is cajoled into allowing his daughter to go unescorted to Paris, we, the audience members, want to shout at the kid to listen to her father.

But of course, we don’t.

My husband and I couldn’t help but become emotionally invested in his frantic search to locate his kidnapped daughter within the critical 96 hour window before she would be  sold off as a sex slave.  The father’s intensity, desperation and extreme focus continues to mount and we are exuberant when the next lead provides a vital clue.

It has been a long time since I’ve been so  totally engaged in a movie that I was disappointed when it ended.  Where is a guy like Liam Neeson when you need him?

Maybe right around the corner.  Awesome.

EO      Entertainment Only

Starring:  Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti

by Karel Murray

How often have you wondered what old men look like in a fist fight?  Watching two corporate CEOs (Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti) hammering it out on an airport tarmac was worth the price of admission - especially when it is filmed in slow motion.  I never felt more like a baby boomer than I did during these scenes.  Each clumsy move and tight grimace made me appreciate how skillfully this was filmed.  Immediately, the premise is set regarding the absolutely hatred between the corporate giants and their intense desire to outdo each other in terms of growing and protecting their empires, making this a situation ripe for exploitation by two seasoned white collar spies.

Julia Roberts, ex CIA and Clive Owen, ex MI6, collaborate with each other in developing a long term scam so they can profit from the theft of company product secrets.  Through the use of flash backs, the film builds on their relationship and we understand it in context with current events.  This type of film editing helped keep the audience wondering who they can actually trust… which essentially defines the relationship between everyone in this film.

I never really appreciated the term “being played” until I saw this movie.  The art of skillful lying, expert emotional control to build a trustworthy persona to others, and acting out predetermined dialog made me feel a bit queasy.  No wonder individuals who have a lot to lose through corporate espionage find it difficult to really trust anyone.

Cleverly scripted, it was a fun, intriguing romp.

EO     Entertainment Only

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Lara Robinson, Rose Byrn, and Chandler Canterbury

by Karel Murray

This movie had me at “hello”.   The movie “Knowing”  starts with us watching a small girl (Lucinda Embry) being tormented by whispering voices that only she can hear and a flashback to the innocence of the 1950’s.  Completely focused on transcribing what she is hearing, this child sets to paper a list of what appears to be random numbers.   Sealed in a time capsule for fifty years, the message is finally opened by another child, Caleb, who begins to be plagued by the same whispering voices.

Enter  John Koestler (played by Nicolas Cage), a loving father who just happens to be an astrophysicist.  To the normal person, this list would only be a jumble of symbols.  But because of the date of his wife’s death, which is seared into John’s mind, he discovers a pattern in the message… dates of major disasters, the number of people killed, and the location of each event …startling accurate over the past fifty years.

This movie takes us from one incredibly intense accident scene to another.  There were several times I actually winced and recoiled instinctively, thinking that the airplane or bus were actually going to careen into my theater seat.  Thankfully my husband is used to the bodily reaction to sudden digital violence.

Interesting concept and good acting makes this a movie worth seeing for a fun night out.

EO     Entertainment Only

By Karel Murray

Staring:  Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Courtney Cox Arquette

Pulling on my coat, I remember thinking that “Bedtime Stories” had better be worth going out in 15 degree weather and trudging through freezing slush.  I mean, if our car had stalled out, we could have been a movie of the week ourselves…

“Midwest couple perish in subzero wind chill…when all they wanted to do is see a movie.”

Prepared for slapstick comedy and cute kids, I wasn’t disappointed.

The premise is simple… a hotel handyman (Adam Sandler as Skeeter) experiences huge life changes due to events magically created by his niece and nephew’s whimsical additions to the nightly story telling sessions.    Skeeter’s life, until this point, has been put on hold as he waited for others to honor a promise made to his father.

Guy Pearce makes a great sour faced adversary and gives us, the audience members, someone to dislike immensely.  We all know someone with this type of conniving personality.  Skeeter appears to be a simpleton, but in reality, he is just a nice guy.

The storyline is simple, yet well needed as we face an uncertain 2009 economy.

Get creative, stay the course, keep your promises, have fun, and get the girl.
How refreshing.

Rating:  EO

My rating system:
OQ     Oscar Quality
EO    Entertainment Only
HV    Home Viewing on DVD for a night when you have absolutely nothing else to do
SI    Skip it

By Karel Murray

Within the first few moments, I knew this movie was going to be a visual joy ride.  The true treasure came in the form of an unexpected emotional hit in the last few moments of this almost three hour movie.

Our first sighting of Benjamin Button (played by Brad Pitt) is of a horrendously gnarled infant screeching loudly for attention.  Instead of a flood of paternal joy, horror and revulsion destroyed the relationship before it had even begun.  Born in 1918 in New Orleans, this baby’s life was deemed to be over before it had even started.  That’s when we are introduced to a couple who take this child under their care and deal with all the issues related to old age.

Except…Benjamin is a kid who just looks like an 80 year man….just smaller.  I’m still wondering how did they put Brad Pitt’s head on a child’s body?  Amazing.

As the story plays out, Benjamin Button becomes infatuated with a young girl named Daisy (Cate Blanchette) and this love endures until Benjamin eventually passes away.
Cate Blanchette’s performance is outstanding… almost mesmerizing.  Watching her age from a teenager to an extremely old woman is worth the ticket admission.

This love story, intertwined with personal insights about relationships, will endear this film to audiences.  The creative storytelling and plot will hopefully elevate it to Golden Globe and Oscar nominations.

Good Reasons Cate Blanchette Rating:  OQ
Overall Rating:  OQ
Best Actress Nomination:  Cate Blanchette

My rating system:
OQ     Oscar Quality
EO    Entertainment Only
HV    Home Viewing on DVD for a night when you have absolutely nothing else to do
SI    Skip It

Review by Karel Murray

Starring:
Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates

Listen to the Audio version of this review:

I’ve waited for months for this movie to come to Waterloo, Iowa.  It had everything I want in a film; action, beautiful actors, a cute kid, aliens and special effects that would make my head spin.  My anticipation proved to be more fun than the actual movie.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

This movie is a re-adaptation of the original 1951 thriller where alien beings come to the earth with the plan of wiping out human life before humanity destroys the earth itself.  The human form alien must make the decision as to whether he feels that mankind deserves to live on the precious biological planet.
Within 15 minutes, I knew mankind would fail the test.  How often have we been told in movies… never, ever, let your leader in the same room with an alien?  All sorts of nasty things can happen.  But, here we go… within a few hours of capture and analysis, Kathy Bates as Secretary of State strides confidently into the alien holding area and begins to demand answers.  How did she know he could just blow her up with a simple flick of the eye?

I waited for it, but it didn’t happen.  Darn.

Or when Jennifer Connelly, our heroine, disobeys a martial law order, when she first arrives to a federally secure location by stuffing a cell phone in her front coat pocket.  This, I suppose is a small way to prepare us for Jennifer doing nothing that anyone tells her to do.

Keanu Reeves had the perfect part for his acting style cast as an alien being that doesn’t blink, moves like a robot, and still appears to be sympathetic to human beings.  I totally understand that an alien would act differently than us, but did the alien being have to walk through the movie as if he overdid his Botox injections to his face?

Personally, I felt the huge “protector” robot had a more interesting role.  At least it could burst into millions of flying metal bugs…. a personal nightmare of mine.  Watching the swarm eat up everything in its path reminds me again why I use Orkin on a regular basis.

The coolest special effects were the pulsating light globes that parked in locations around our globe, waiting for orders and gathering specimens.  But after you have seen one globe, then two, then three, the magic wears off.

I don’t ask for much… just a few scary moments, true human panic, and a real lesson other than “Take care of the earth or we will take care of you”.

Rating:  HV

My rating system:

OQ     Oscar Quality
EO    Entertainment Only
HV    Home Viewing on DVD for a night when you have absolutely nothing else to do
SI    Skip it

I’ve been an avid movie watcher since I was a small child.  I distinctly remember my first movie in a local Iowa theater on a cold winter night.  During “The Battle of the Bulge”, I huddled in the large adult theatre seat beside my father who had served in World War II.  His eyes, glued to the screen accompanied by affirming head nods reinforced that what I was watching on the big screen really did happen… even if the shooting and diving behind protective barriers was performed by professional actors.

Hooked by age five, the passion to be entertained by the big screen has never left me.  In fact, it was an important qualifying criterion for my future spouse.  I didn’t need much on a date, just my tub of popped corn, a diet soda, a bag of M&M peanuts, and a hand to hold.

Perfection.

The criteria for my movie reviews are simple:
1.    The movie has to at least entertain me… I don’t want to check to see what time it is half way through.
2.    I need to feel emotionally connected in some way to the characters – that I care about what happens to them.
3.    The actors actually “act”.

My expectations that a move will be a bad one are triggered by the following:
1.    The director resorts to nudity or extreme violence during the opening credits
2.    If within the first five minutes I see some sort of prop defect (a boom microphone in the upper left corner) or special effects that are just plain cheesy.
3.    If the actors look apologetic for the bad dialog

My rating system:
OQ     Oscar Quality
EO    Entertainment Only
HV    Home Viewing on DVD for a night when you have absolutely nothing else to do
SI    Skip it

NOTE from Admin: Karel will be providing audio movie reviews as well as written reviews so be sure to listen to the audio reviews when posted.