Unstoppable (2010)

3/5

Tony Scott's Unstoppable is a simple movie with a simple premise. An unmanned train is careening across Pennsylvania at 70 miles per hour with 8 cars of hazardous cargo. A veteran locomotive engineer (Washington) and a young train operator (Pine) attempt to stop it by latching their own train onto the renegade train's back and gunning it in the opposite direction. And that's about all you need to know plot-wise. The movie is a fairly generic popcorn flick, but it does what it intends to do well. It keeps you excited for its entire length, with excellent pacing and editing. The acting turned out to be much better than I expected (only because I never expect very much from these types of movies), but the script as a whole was quite lacking. The cinematography and directing were also bland, which comes as a welcome departure from what I'm used to from Tony Scott. To sum up, if you're looking for a way to kick back and watch an hour and a half of thrills without having to think, then this is the movie to do it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/

American Gangster (2007)

3/5

American Gangster tells the story of Frank Lucas, the biggest, baddest, blackest gangster in 60's-era America, and Detective Richie Roberts, the honest cop chosen by the Feds to stop the growing drug problem. There were some things I liked and some things I didn't like about this 2.5 hour movie. So let me break it down to you by half hour episodes. In the first 30 minutes, we are introduced to the trite, hackneyed police corruption plot we've seen a million times before combined with the archetypal family man gangster. In the second 30 minutes, we are introduced to superfluous characters and side stories that take up too much time. The third 30 minutes contain periods of ferocity and tension punctuating the rather senselessly boring nothing that takes up the majority of the movie. The fourth 30 minutes we finally see a bit more excitement and character development. It starts to be more than random information being slowly revealed to us. We are actually engaged by the characters and their actions for once. The fifth 30 minutes are incredible. A truly powerful climax and a high-note to end the movie on. It almost makes up for the rest of the movie. Almost.

The movie is more than technically proficient, but less than necessary when it comes to storytelling. Why are we watching any of this? The one word to describe this movie would be excess. It's as if they had a solid story, and then decided to add junk on the sides. Ridley Scott should decide which story he wants to tell and tell it. He goes for the gangster building up his empire and the cop investigating the rising drug problem. They eventually intersect, so why not just start the story there? People keep asking, who is this guy? How does he do what he does? But we don't feel the same sense of wonder and awe that the rest of the characters do because we know who he his and we know how he sells better heroin for less money. The first hour and a half should have been cut, replaced by 15-30 minutes of more revealing storytelling from either Crowe or Washington's perspective. That would make this a much tighter, much better movie. Instead, it's a limp, overlong, unsuccessful attempt at an epic gangster movie in the vein of The Godfather.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0765429/

Fallen (1998)

3/5

This movie has some really good elements. The dialogue is witty, oftentimes laugh-out-loud hilarious, and the twist on the narration at the end is ridiculously clever (and without a doubt my favorite part of the entire movie). There are scenes that stand out, like when the demon chases the woman by touching people nearby, or the first confrontation between the demon and Denzel Washington's character.

The acting, music, and cinematography were acceptable, but not exceptional. The characterization was pitiful if not nonexistent. A lot of the plot was hackneyed and/or easy to predict, so the thriller aspect of this movie lost its impact. I felt it lost a lot of steam near the ending, so it was just tedious waiting for the ending. Many people thought the ending was kind of cheap (I don't have too much of a problem with it). But overall, the cool scenes, the twist on narrative, the witty dialogue; it's just not enough to make this movie interesting enough to recommend.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0119099/

Glory (1989)

3/5

I saw this yesterday on my quest to see the IMDb top 250, which is perhaps my most foolish undertaking (not because of the length, but because of the abundance of terrible movies). It scored very high on IMDb and I was excited because I liked Edward Zwick's most recent directorial effort (The Last Samurai). Unfortunately, I did not find this film particularly commendable. Maybe I just hate Civil War movies (I don't like the parts of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where it uses the Civil War as a backdrop). Something about the acting just didn't feel right to me. I never thought the characters were real; they were just actors playing those roles. And what were we supposed to feel about Matthew Broderick's character? The first half of the movie he treats his men like dirt and the second half they suddenly have an incredible rapport. What changed about him that I missed? Cary Elwes' character was overall pretty worthless (though I liked his acting--I thought it was the best in the movie). I just never felt the emotional impact in this film that I was supposed to feel.

Now don't get me wrong; it's not a bad movie. It's just not anything to talk about. I don't see how it could be anyone's favorite movie. There's nothing atrocious about the directing and cinematography; the action scenes weren't bad. But it's not really an action movie, is it? I was disappointed when I found out that none of the characters were real except Broderick's. I wouldn't recommend seeing this movie unless you are a fan of the Civil War and not a fan of history (although how those two could coexist is perplexing).

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0097441/