MOVIE - London Has Fallen

R (1:40)

Wide release 3/5/16

Viewed 3/18/16 at Roadhouse - a Friday night after a report card week!

RT Critic: 25   Audience: 62
Critic's Consensus:   London Has Fallen traps a talented cast -- and all who dare to see it -- in a mid-1990s basic-cable nightmare of a film loaded with xenophobia and threadbare action-thriller clichés. (THIS IS PROBABLY TRUE!  cag)
Cag:  3.5 Liked it - very entertaining

Directed by Babak Najafi

Focus Features
wikepedia has a great blow-by-blow description.....

Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman

My comments:  This follows the 2013 film OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN with the same premise only at the White House. (And you absolutely don't have to have seen the first one.  This is a total standalone.) Yes, it's hogwash and ridiculous (shooting, shooting, shooting at people whether they're unknown to be good or bad) but it's entertaining and you care about the characters.  I hated the violence, but watched knowing it was all "made up" and "unreal."  Sure, that's a naive way to look at it, and deep down I hate that I enjoyed it......

RogerEbert.com review here.  1/2 stars

Fandango Summary:  In this sequel to the 2013 action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, a terrorist plot unfolds in London as a number of politicians gather for the funeral of the British prime minister. A Secret Service agent (Gerald Butler), the U.S. president (Aaron Eckhardt), and an MI-6 operative (Charlotte Riley) must work together to stop the terrorists from assassinating the world's leaders and destroying the city's landmarks.

MOVIE - Gone Girl

R (2:25)

Wide release 10/3/2014

Viewed 10/6/2014 at ElCon with Sheila, Connie, & Gwen

RT Critic:  87  Audience:  91

Cag:  5/It was a really well-done movie

Directed by David Fincher

20th Century Fox

Based on the book by Gillian Flynn.  My review here.

Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, 

My comments: I liked the movie more than I liked the book (a bit unusual....). I considered Nick Dunne a jerk-of-an-idiot in the book, and I considered Amy Dunne a psychopath.  I felt a little better...though not much....of Nick in the movie, and considered Amy even crazier than in the book.  You had to like Nick, because no matter how sleezy a character Ben Affleckk could ever play I'd HAVE to root for him.  So I wonder how I would have felt with another actor portraying Nick?  Both Affleck and Pike (as well as Perry, Harris, and Carrie Coon, who plays Nick's twin sister Margo) were terrific.

RT Summary:  GONE GIRL - directed by David Fincher and based upon the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn - unearths the secrets at the heart of a modern marriage. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

30. Saint - Ted Dekker

Read by Kevin King (he was the only thing that kept me reading all the way to the end)

2006, Brilliance Audio

9 cds/ 10 hours

$36.95

For: adults

One of the worst books I’ve ever read

Setting:  Hungary, New York City, Colorado, present day

Carl has been programmed to be a human robot.  Using drugs, isolation, mind-control, he is one of the best assassins that the world has ever seen. He no longer knows who he is or where he came from.  He’s manipulated and told a different story constantly.  His handler, Kelly, becomes the person he loves, and apparently she comes to love him too.  Love?  The most unbelievable love I’ve ever known.  And repetition is not used effectively here, it’s just monotonous, boring.  Then the story passes believability and surges into an ominous faith…in God?...it’s hard to tell….and weird happenings that are not believable even in this partially fantasy world.  Mind control, the space between atoms and molecules, I love sci fi and fantasy, spy thrillers and murder mysteries, but this book was none of those.  Just ridiculous spoutings.  Jumping around and throwing something out of the blue with absolutely no foreshadowing defies believability.  I could have –and should have – loved what the PREMISE of this book is, but I didn’t.  I hated it.  I can’t believe I plugged on…and on…and on (those last two cds were ENDLESS)…but it was read so well I stuck it out.  YUCK!

MOVIE - Hanna

I expected something more, but I'm not sure what....
Wide release 4/8/11
on DVD 9/6/11
Viewed 4/23/11
PG-13 (1:51)
RT 72% cag 68%
Director:  Joe Wright
Focus Features

MOVIE - The Town

Love the Boston/Charlestown setting - and the accents!
Realeased 0-17-2010
R (2:05)
10-7-10 at El Con with Ronnie
RT: 95 cag:87
Directed by Ben Affleck
Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm

This was a very entertaining movie. Throughout the whole thing you had no idea how it would end. The protagonist is also the bad guy...who wants to be a good guy. Apparently Charlestown, Mass. (site of Bunker Hill Monument, home of the U. S. S. Constitution) has a high number of bank robberies. Well, this movie is about a gang-of-four clever bank robbers, headed up by Ben Affleck and his trigger-happy-best-friend-since-childhood, played by Jeremy Renner.

Affleck becomes involved with the manager of the bank that he just held up. She was traumatized by the event, and of course you wonder what will happen when she discovers who he is - because you know that, of course, she will. And you watch his trigger-happy best friend easily kill and beat and maim. You see the hurt that Affleck has lived with since he was sick and his mother walked out on him, and sympathize when he visits his father (Chris Cooper) in Walpole State Prison. Edge of your seat suspense. Well woven together. Great casting. Fantastic (real) setting. Go Fenway Park! ! !

MOVIE - The Girl Who Played With Fire

Mesmerizing - but not as good as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Released 7-9-10
R (2:09)
Sunday 8/22/10 with Shane at the Loft
RT: 66 cag: 88
Director: Daniel Alfredson
in Swedish with subtitles
from the book by Stieg Larsson
Noomi Rapace & Michael Nyqvist

Lisbeth Salander is implicated in three murders. She tries to figure out what's going on without any help, but slowly her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, puts clues together as well. She's such a loner....and for good reason. This story is entirely linked to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I can't imagine you'd know what was going on if you hadn't seen that first installment. It's exciting, interesting, and easy to follow. However, it didn't grab me up quite as much as the first one did. Still good, though.

There were several places that the subtitles were in white on such a light background that they couldn't be read. This was frustrating, and made you come out of your own mind to realize that you were reading along while watching a movie....you weren't part of it. Disconcerting.

46. Sworn to Silence - Linda Castillo

Minotaur Bks, St. Martin's Press, June, 2009
$24.95
322 pgs.
Rating: 4
For ADULTS

I saw this reviewed in People magazine a couple of weeks ago. It sounded really intriguing....and ex-Amish woman who has returned to her hometown in Ohio to become Chief of Police. My favorite genre, too. It's been a long time since I spent one day and evening just reading a book from start to finish. That's how this one got read.

I always say I like the gritty mysteries, not the cozies. Well, this one was perhaps one of the very grittiest I've ever read. Grizzly, actually....horrible murders take place, to not one, but three different vulnerable young women. They are described in great detail. They are awful. They are disturbing. But that didn't stop me from reading, and it didn't stop Chief Kate Burkholder from doing her job.

There's a pretty decent cast of characters to get to know, and good descriptions of the setting. Farmland, middle of winter, frigid cold, constantly snowing. You can see the police station, Kate's home, the Amish farms.

Not only has a serial killer seemingly returned to Painters Mill after a sixteen year absence, Kate cannot believe it could be the same killer. She has first-hand information about that killer from when she was fourteen. Information that she's never told anyone. Information that makes her wonder if it will change the way she investigates. She's a first rate cop; spunky, caring, smart. Of course she figures it out.

There are not a lot of surprises here, most is pretty predictable, though still exciting. For example, as soon as John Tomasetti is introduced, you know what's going to happen with him. (What a delicious name.) The outcome to the mystery is really no surprise either. But (other than the gruesomeness of the murders), it's a good piece of storytelling.

Psychopaths are usually born, not created. How can this be?

MOVIE: Transsiberian

Rating: Hey, this was good!
Viewed: Thurs., Oct. 16, 2008
Crossroads Cheapie
Rotten Tomato Rating: 92%
Mine: Not quite that high, 80??
EW: B- cag: B+
Genre: Suspense Thriller
Released: July 18, 2008
R (1 hr. 51 min.)
Directed by: Brad Anderson

Woody Harrelson was cutely innocent and fun to watch. Eduardo Noriega, a 35-year-old Spanish hottie, was gorgeous, Kate Mara was intriguing. It's always fun to watch good old Ben Kingsley, too. I enjoyed the acting choices, other than Emily Mortimer. I think you were supposed to really "feel" for her, but I didn't. Since I didn't sympathize with her, I was ambivalent about her outcome, which made the storyline less suspensful for me, not a bad thing -- I just sat back and enjoyed all the plot twists without the nail-biting.

A youngish couple (Harrelson and Mortimer) are traveling from China to Moscow, across Siberia, on a six-day train ride. They are joined in their tiny sleeper by another couple (Oriega and Mara). Drug runners, good cops/bad cops, dour Russians, drunken Russians, a bit of intrigue, and lots of snowy miles later, an interesting story unfolds. What I liked best is that it's not so convoluted that you have to think and scratch your head and try to figure out how all the loose ends fit together. It works. And it was very, very entertaining.