Quick Reviews

Hey folks, I am starting a quick review section. This is a single paragraph review of movies that I don't want to write a full review for. Not that they are good/bad in a specific way or that I cannot write. If you want me to write a full review, make a request and I shall do that. These quick reviews are not meant to be of a prescriptive nature.

The Many Cameos of Date Night (2010)
Starring two of television's funniest people, Date Night is dangerously poised as it creates expectations that are tough to match. Tina Fey and Steve Carell, pull it off surprisingly well. We all know that 30Rock creator/star Tina Fey knows to get big stars in her show all the time. The movie reminds us of that with the uncountable cameos. However, the similarity ends there. The story happens in one night. A boring couple with a tough and ordinary life go to the "city" from their Jersey home for a special date. Chaos. This is how the one-liner of the movie looked. There are a lot of genres overlapping in this movie, and it is entertaining overall. Some may find the comedy a little weak, given the heavyweights; but the movie smartly avoids that road of following a comic-spot with another. It sticks to the script and gives glimpses of many interesting characters who create a moment and leave you wanting for more. The ending, however, is a let-down from the rest of the movie. A special mention must be made to the cameos. Be it Wahlberg, Liotta, James Franco or Mila Kunis; they just steal the show. I give this film a regular comedy rating of 6.2 while it takes home a poor 4.4 rating on the Woody comedy scale due to its ending.

Timeline (2003)
This is not a new movie, based on the novel by Micheal Crichton that I watched the other day on TV. It had really young and unestablished Paul Walker, Michael Sheen and Gerard Butler in leading roles of a movie that deals with time as a fluid entity and history is something that we can participate in. Despite the over-simplification, the movie was entertaining in its re-narration of the 100 years war. The acting was good but the overall quality of the production was wanting. After Jurassic Park, maybe a more daring producer or a director with a greater vision could have helped the film. You can watch it once if you can really bite your teeth for the first twenty-five boring minutes where nothing happens, much like Jurassic Park. The movie gets an action/adventure rating of 6.4 for good story-telling and Gerard Butler and Michael Sheen but it cannot garner more than 4.4 points in my conception of Total-Cinema.

Mad City (1997)
I am always a big fan of hostage movies. Starting from the entire Bruce Willis series of hostage situations, to the more complex Misery style of hostage situations. But in this dangerously real hostage drama starring John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman, the human element was powerful but not overdone while the ironic reality was played at pace with the hostage storyline itself. Poignant moments make this movie a memorable affair; like when a network bigwig asks Hoffman's character to convince Travolta to surrender in the evening if possible, for their ratings need a boost. The movie really drives it home at the last moment when Hoffman really feels it, by saying, We killed him. The big leading cast of Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta and the basic hostage situation makes us expect much. At one point, inside the forty-minute mark, it threatens to fizzle out into a romantic tale of an overnight hero. But that is only a taste of things to come. This dark commentary about media and society in general shows how easy it is for us to bare our fangs when a person becomes an icon on television. We are like little children, that want to play with and kill the things that amuse us; not considering for a moment that the "thing" has life in it. At times over-dramatic, and definitely not the best movies of the respective main actors, this movie still has something to say and makes an impact for that reason. I give this movie a drama/thriller rating of 6.6 for excellent acting and a very-grounded in reality plot. It also gains on the Total-Cinema scale to take back a respectable 5.2.