Eye in the Sky was a movie I literally knew nothing about going in. I never saw a trailer, and based on what I knew on nothing more than the title. I thought this would be a science fiction movie. It was by no means a science fiction movie. The best way to describe it is a war on terror movie that really focuses on how mission objectives and moral decisions are sometimes. In terms of movie comparisons, I would say it is American Sniper meets Lone Survivor meets Platoon meets Lions for Lambs meets 2015’s little known Good Kill (as a quick aside, I would suggest seeing this movie before seeing Eye in the Sky. You’ll learn more about drone missions. Eye in the Sky sort of expects you to know a little about these without really explaining them). That is certainly a lot to compare. Ironically, American Sniper meets Lone Survivor were my favorite movies of the year (2014 and 2013, respectively), while Platoon was my third favorite movie of 1986. I mention this because I was not the biggest fan of Eye in the Sky. I know that the movie has done really well with the critics (92% on Rotten Tomatoes), but I felt it was a little loose and not drawn to the story as well as I could of. This and the combination of a really clunky beginning while also being a movie shot mostly in real-time, and you have a movie that felt like it failed in more avenues than it succeeded in. With that said, this wasn’t a bad movie, and it got much better the further you got into it.
Continue reading Eye in the Sky (2016)
Category Archives: Alan Rickman
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler was a well-made movie that many thought would receive multiple Academy Award nominations. It was a good movie, but certainly not one of the ten best of the year. There were fine performances given by the leads Forest Whitaker – (The Last King of Scotland, The Crying Game) and Oprah Winfrey (The Color Purple, Beloved). Still, neither gave one of the top five performances of the year in their category. In addition, director Lee Daniels (Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, The Paperboy) told a story that keeps you interested and involved, but this did not match the direction of Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave) or Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity). In short, this was a good movie worth seeing, but one that most likely would not have been nominated for an Academy Awards, regardless of the year of release. Continue reading Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)