Eye in the Sky was a movie I knew nothing about before I viewed it. Based on the promotional poster, 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 focuses on how mission objectives and moral decisions are sometimes. Regarding 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 expects you to know a little about these without explaining them). That is certainly a lot to compare. Ironically, American Sniper and 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 the movie has done well with the critics (92% on Rotten Tomatoes), but it was a little loose and not drawn to the story as well as I could have. This and the combination of a 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.
Category Archives: Drama
Midnight Special (2016)
Midnight Special. First, the good. The tone was incredible. It was seductive. It was menacing. It was creepy. It was engaging. It kept you on the edge of your seat. Finally, it had the right director. Jeff Nichols (Mud, Shotgun Stories) is still pretty new to the game. This is just his fourth directorial effort, and, once again, Nichols teams up with Michael Shannon as his leading man (99 Homes, Revolutionary Road) for the first time since the incredible Take Shelter, a movie that was nothing short of a thing of genius. In addition to the amazing Take Shelter, Mud, and Shotgun Stories were both fantastic movies. Midnight Special was supposed to be the next great chapter in the Nichols/Shannon book of greatness. Unfortunately, this was the furthest thing from the truth.
Miss You Already (2015)
Beaches 2 or something more? Maybe somewhere in between. Miss You Already tells the story of two lifelong best friends who have been there for each other at every instance of their lives. Jess (Drew Barrymore – Charlie’s Angels, The Wedding Singer) and Milly (Toni Collette – The Sixth Sense, Little Miss Sunshine) have been nearly inseparable since Jess transferred into Milly’s first-grade class in London after moving from the United States. As the pair approaches her 40th birthday, they are infused with a situation that no one can ever prepare for. Yes, this is both a friendship movie and a cancer movie. Yes, it will try to try to guilt you into tears. But, while the acting is not great and the story predictable, something about the movie keeps you interested when a lesser movie would have lost you completely 45 minutes in.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Perhaps one of the most unconventional sequels of all time, 10 Cloverfield Lane assembles almost no resemblance to 2008’s cult classic Cloverfield other than maybe its name. The movie takes place in rural Louisiana, while Cloverfield takes place in New York City. We never truly know how much 10 Cloverfield Lane will be in the future, but we can assume it’s as soon as a couple of days and as long as a couple of weeks. Cloverfield was a shaky camera-found footage film about aliens invading the city. 10 Cloverfield Lane is not that. It’s more like a spin-off than it is a sequel. An alien invasion is a possibility for how these characters find themselves. Still, it is just one of the possibilities described by Howard (John Goodman – Flight, Barton Fink), the film’s antagonist. Goodman might be better than he ever has been before. It certainly is his darker role and the first movie in many years (King Ralph, anyone) in which he has played a starring role.
Man on the Moon (1999)
Though we primarily know him for his slapstick comedy (The Cable Guy, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Venture: Pet Detective), Jim Carrey has proved on numerous occasions that he can do very well what many other people in his genre cannot do. He can give riveting and believable performances in both light-hearted and heavy dramas. He’s done it with The Truman Show (where he was spectacular and deserving of an Oscar nomination) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He does it with 1999’s Man on the Moon, which, with all due respect to The Truman Show, is his finest performance as an actor in any genre. Carrey’s biopic of Andy Kaufman is a movie I’ve had on my watchlist to see for years, but one that I never felt “in the mood” for. It’s not that I expected to be disappointed by it (with just a 63% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew this movie would be hit or miss for me).