Passengers is one of those movies that interest you, and it would be better served if you looked at the audience score rather than the critics’ scores. A 30% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes would suggest skipping this one. However, a 70% audience score suggests something more. This was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. Plus, I try to see everything. But even I was skeptical when I saw how it was getting panned by so many different critics. Even my most respected site (Roger Ebert) only gave the movie 1.5 stars. But I talked to a couple of other people who go to the movies a lot, and they said, despite some holes, that they recommended it. The only thing I knew about Passengers going in (I never saw a trailer) was that it starred Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy) and Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, Joy) and that they were lost in space. And while I suppose there were holes in this movie, they didn’t deter my enjoyment of it. The parts that I found more troublesome than anything else were the personal emotions and the relationship between the two leads, and I didn’t even have a problem with that.
Continue reading Passengers (2016)
Category Archives: Suspense
Allied (2016)
While a 65% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes suggests a movie should be checked out, sometimes you wonder why the score isn’t higher. Allied, the Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, The Walk) World War II love story set in Casablanca and London about two intelligence officers from opposite sides of the world says a lot. The movie has been loosely referred to as Mr. and Mrs. Smith (because of Brad Pitt) meets Casablanca. While I understand the reference, this is far from the truth. I was not too fond of either of these other movies. While I did not particularly like either of those movies, I enjoyed Allied.
Cassandra’s Dream (2007)
Not being the biggest Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Match Point) fan, I’ve always felt that his romance and dramas needed more substance than he offered. Cassandra’s Dream is a movie I would never have given a chance when it was released back in 2007. Likewise, Colin Farrell (The Lobster, In Bruges) and Ewan McGregor (The Impossible, Incendiary) are not my biggest fans. Ferrell has grown on me by shedding his bad boy, box office revenue-chasing persona and doing more indies. I am surprised I even watched it. I’m grateful I gave it a chance after it was released. It was a nice, simple film that entertained me the whole time.
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Almost perfect. While it may not even end up in my top five movies of the year, Tom Ford’s (A Single Man) Nocturnal Animals was almost perfect. I liked it so much in this movie, and Ford almost created a masterpiece, but it fell short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie I’ve seen that would classify as an A+. Jake Gyllenhaal (Love and Other Drugs, Everest) is better than ever, and he could end up with an Oscar nomination for this film. In a perfect world, he would, especially since he may have been the odd man out in 2015 (Nightcrawler) and 2016 (Southpaw) for a Best Actor Academy Award. But with four of the five slots pretty much locked up (Tom Hanks – Sully, Denzel Washington – Fences, Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea, Joel Edgerton (Loving), that leaves only one more nomination between Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Warren Beatty (Rules Don’t Apply), and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge). And, honestly, while his performance was excellent, it wasn’t nearly the performance he gave in either Nightcrawler or Southpaw. Ford’s chances for a Best Directing nod look even dimmer, and an impressive performance by Amy Adams (The Fighter, American Hustle) may be overlooked entirely because she will likely receive a nomination (and may even be the frontrunner) for Arrival, a movie that was released just a week before Nocturnal Animals.
Arrival (2016)
Alien, Fire in the Sky, Independence Day, Men in Black, Starship Troopers, Cloverfield, Signs, Prometheus. These are some of the many movies that have successfully explored contact in some form with extraterrestrial beings in some form. And then you have films like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, Solaris, District 9, Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian, which are also movies about either extraterrestrial encounters or innovative space exploration that deal more with human component or relationship building than they do action, adventure, and a post-apocalyptic future. Add Denis Villeneuve’s (Sicario, Prisoners) Arrival as the latest movie to try to get itself on this impressive list. The critics (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (82%) have enjoyed this movie.