Halfway through Gone Girl, I thought I was watching this year’s movie to beat. It had everything I wanted in a terse murder mystery/thriller. First, it had the small town file (which I love). We know who the main potential suspect may be from the film’s opening minutes. But this likely suspect may also be the film’s protagonist. And we are left guessing about his guilt or innocence throughout most of the film. We like him. We don’t like him. We hate him. We love him. We go through the gamut of emotions, leaving us exhausted as we sit on the edge of our seats. But the movie unravels in the last 45 minutes with more absurdities than a Jim Carrey movie. Suddenly this well-thought-out thriller becomes a bit of a mockery of itself in an attempt to separate it from other whodunit movies.
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Category Archives: 2014
The Maze Runner (2014)
Lord of the Rings meets The Hunger Games. That was what many people were using as a comparison to Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner. I figured the movie would be a surefire hit if that was the comparison. Its reviews on Rotten Tomatoes have been mixed, but there have certainly been more positive than negative ones. As I write this review, remember that I read the book. I read the book this summer when I saw that this movie was coming out in September. I did not realize at the time that this was a book about young adult literature. I should have done my research, but I was hooked by both the title and the book’s premise. While the book was well written, I kept asking myself why I read it as a 38-year-old man. I had the same conversation with myself as I sat watching the movie on opening weekend. This is a cool movie…if you are a teenager. But never did I feel like it was a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games. Continue reading The Maze Runner (2014)
The Drop (2014)
In my review of Enough Said, I write that the performance of Albert by James Gandolfini was the perfect role for his final movie. Albert was such a likable character in that movie. There were no hidden agendas. The man had some flaws, but those flaws weren’t any worse than the flaws you or I have. I wrote that review when I believed Enough Said was Gandolfini’s final movie before he passed away. I still love his role in this movie, but I’m so glad there was still a movie in post-production that I did not know about. The Drop was a fantastic final film for him, and it could earn him a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. In this film, Gandolfini returns to what he is most known for as an actor. He’s a little shady, and there always seems to be more about him than meets the eye. With that sly smile of his eyes, his under-the-breath chuckle, and his ability to say something to one person that is so very endearing one minute, but something to another character that is so brutally honest that it makes the person who is speaking feel stupid the next, Gandolfini is a master of disguising his characters and their intentions. He may have turned in the best big screen performance of his career with his final one.
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The Lunchbox (2014)
“Sometimes, the wrong train will get you to the right station.” These yearning words of wisdom spoken so matter-of-factly by Ila (Nimrat Kaur – One Night With the King), a lonely yet hopeful housewife in Ritesh Batra’s directorial debut, The Lunchbox, quite simply the best movie through the first eight months of 2014. I am uncertain if this movie will be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Academy Award. I hope it will be so that more people will know about it. If it is not, I am not sure I would have ever known about it, let alone see it, if not recommended by my friend David. It further reinforces my appreciation for movie recommendations.
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Non-Stop (2014)
Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Taken) continues his one great movie, one terrible movie, one great movie, one terrible movie streak with the intense Non-Stop, perhaps the second most exciting airplane movie ever made (and no, I’m not ranking it behind Snakes on a Plane). I think Air Force One set the standard back in 1997, but Non-Stop is precisely that…nonstop. It’ll keep you glued to the screen for its 1 hour 47 minute running time. Is this movie plausible? Absolutely not. Does that deter from the experience? Only if you’ll let it. Are the coincidences totally out of control? Of course, they are. But if you want to be entertained with an action-oriented whodunit, you could do much worse. I wish I had seen this movie on the big screen. So far, 2014 has been terrible for film, but Non-Stop is the best movie of the year’s first half.
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