The Girl on the Train will often be confused with and frequently compared to Gone Girl, 2014’s box office success that also registered well with the critics. Both were highly anticipated adaptations of successful novels by two more popular present-day writers. Both movies revolve around complex female characters who may not be mentally stable. It’s easy to see how some people might say that The Girl on the Train could be considered a rip-off of Gone Girl, but it’s not. The book had already been written, and the movie had already been in the works. The movies are actually quite different from one another. And, with that said, it’s easy for me to see how The Girl on the Train might achieve the same financial success, but how its 43% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes is slightly less than half that of Gone Girl‘s 88%. In addition, the movie was far less captivating and much less memorable. Nonetheless, The Girl on the Train is an okay movie. It is much better than the book. And while it doesn’t offer the same intriguing storyline as Gone Girl, it’s worth checking out.
Category Archives: Logan Lerman
Fury (2014)
David Ayer’s (Harsh Times, End of Watch) Fury is a mix of bits and pieces from about every war movie you’ve ever seen. It’s Saving Private Ryan meets Apocalypse Now meets Black Hawk Down meets Platoon sprinkled in with a little bit of The Perfect Storm. It unsuccessfully tries to tug on your emotions while telling fragments of stories about each of the five main characters. If you read spoilers for this movie, you might think this movie is fantastic. The trailer makes the film look incredible.
The potential was there for this movie to be a classic. It had the correct script. It had the right cast. The direction was not excellent. If the goal was to feel for these characters as you do for the movies I mentioned in the first couple of sentences of this review, it ultimately failed. If the goal was to leave you with a story that you’d remember for years and years, it died there, too. If the goal was to provide a two-hour escape from life, I’m not sure it did that. At times, it was far too slow, and you weren’t exactly sitting on the edge of your seat during the action scenes. But, on the other hand, I never felt like I wasn’t watching a movie. That’s never a good thing.