United 93 (R)

On September 11, 2001, one of the darkest days in American history, the country suffered the loss of nearly 3,000 people. Three out of the four hi-jacked planes that crashed reached their target. The fourth plane never succeeded in it’s plans to hit the state capital, thanks to a group of complete strangers. The events that took place on board that plane are captured with unbelievable power.

This is United 93.

There was quite a bit of controversy regarding the film United 93, mostly because people weren’t sure if America was ready to revisit that fateful day just six six earlier. It’s hard to say that this film was “entertaining” the same way I would say that something fictional is “entertaining”, but it is an action packed movie. The movie begins quite similar to how that morning began. People getting ready for work, pilots chit chatting about what they would be doing that day. But multiple camera shots of terrorists reciting their prayers to their god reminded me what this film is really about. And so, until the actual hi jacking took place, the butterflies in my stomach were rattling uncontrollably.

I expected the anxiety to stop, but after the hi jacking, it got more intense. The way that the director, Paul Greengrass, shoots the movie, makes you feel like one of the passengers. In fact, all the way until the very end, I felt like I was doing nothing but looking over the shoulders of the various passengers as they try and figure out what to do. It’s powerful stuff. This review is a bit short, but I think I have an excuse: I was floored by the film. Unlike other movies about American tragedies such as Pearl Harbor, this one feels real. It’s cinematography is not beautiful to look at, nor does it provide the distracting faces of celebrities. United 93 provides, for once, a raw experience of those very disasters that are turned into what we often label as “cool movies” instead of powerful experiences that actually give you an honest interpretation of what happened.

There’s not enough I can say about United 93, except for it’s undeniable importance in the recollection of that tragic day, and a sobering testament it is to the bravery of each and every one of the passengers aboard United 93.

I would like to end with a quote from David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer, the leader of the group who tried to re take the plane. “Clearly there are people who aren’t ready to see this,” the elder Beamer said, “I certainly understand that, and that’s their decision to make. But we must not forget.”

10 American heroes out of 10

United 93 is rated R for language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence.

Review by Jason Holland

There Will Be Blood (R)

Daniel Day-Lewis leads a mesmerizing role in a tour de force of American Films that boasts beautiful imagery, a booming score, and one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen.

At the turn of the 20^th century, oil was big. Oil men all across the U.S.A were, as Daniel Plainview said, “scratching in the dirt” looking for an easy way out of their poverty. “There Will Be Blood” not only captures the essence of that time with pinpoint accuracy, but it projects a frightening view of greed and all of its negative attributes.

Daniel Plainview is a talented and wealthy oil man drilling for the liquid gold in California with his son. There are a few subplots to this film, so it’s hard to give an exact story line. The main thing about this movie though is Daniel and his son. The film spans across about twenty years of his life. Throughout the years, Daniel faces various trials, often caused by himself. He also gets more and more greedy and, to be blunt, kind of evil. The entrancingly talented Daniel Day-Lewis plays the oil man perfectly. His performance is one of the best I’ve ever seen. He’s a gritty, raw man. Plainview is a character with so many layers that the film requires a couple views in order to fully understand and dissect it. The great thing about his personality, though, is that Day-Lewis’ talent adds so much more to Plainview than what was there originality. Every little thing he does on screen is perfect. His eyes movement, his gruff southern accent. Nothing makes you not believe what’s happening.

At the beginning of the film, Daniel is an independent and honerable oil man doing the drilling by his own hand. In fact, the first fifteen minutes of the film are in complete silence, and it’s one of the best parts of the movie. It’s only about five or six different shots, all of Plainview and his pickax, searching for oil in his hand made well. As I began to watch it, I realized that the entire movie seemed to rely and rest on Day-Lewis’ shoulders. And he carries it like it was as light as a feather.

As the various plots progress, we see that Plainview might not be all he

s cracked up to be. He turns evil, and makes some very bed choices, including abandonment and murder. As the nearly 3 hour tale came to a gritty end, I found myself looking back on everything I watched, trying to find something wrong with it. Nothing was out of place. I would have liked to watch the movie for another hour or so. Luckily, I got the two-disc set with a lot of bonus features to keep me fixed on the life of this honest oil man a bit longer.

With each eerie, wild violin chord and booming cello, even the slightly slow scenes are usually very interesting. The music was composed by Jonny Greenwood. Greenwood is the lead singer for the ultra popular British rock group Radiohead, though you wouldn’t know it while watching it. The music is top of the line, and I would suggest buying the soundtrack after seeing the film.

Daniel Day-Lewis won the academy award for best actor for his role in this film. By itself, the film got more than four nominations, including best picture and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson, who also wrote the screenplay. This epic tale won the award for Best Cinematography, as well. Just the look of the film breathes fire and brimstone, damnation to hell, and grit.

As oil sprays up from the earth, we get the name of the movie from Plainview. He calls it the “blood of the earth” in various scenes. And so, “There Will Be Blood”. A lot of it.

It’s long, and it’s time consuming, but in the end, There Will Be Blood is a brilliant and moving film about wealth and what it can do to those with the potential to be great, rendering the film downright impossible to miss.

10 bursting oil wells out of 10

There Will Be Blood is rated R for some violence

Review by Jason Holland

Land of the Lost (PG-13)

Will Ferrell leads the cast in this unnecessary adaptation that does nothing but injustice to the campy 70′s TV series.

For the few who haven’t heard of it, The Land of the Lost was an intriguing and inventive Saturday morning TV series created by Sid and Marty Kroft back in 1974.

The Marshall family; father Rick, son Will, and daughter Holly are out on a camping trip when the raft ride they take plunges down a waterfall and into a crevasse following an earthquake (Oh dear heavens no!). In this unknown world they encounter prehistoric animals, the remains of a very old city carved out of stone,a race of humanoid lizards, and mysterious pylons located throughout the jungle. Wonderful stop motion animation was used in this show, a special FX rarely seen on television shows. There was also some terrific matte work depicting this lost land. It was, simply, a kids’ show that aspired to bring spectacle, nifty effects, and quality writing to each episode.

This year, a new comedy came out with the same title. At the head of the cast was none other than the crude Will Ferrell. Basically, it’s the same premise, with a few minor tweaks. Will Ferrell is a washed up scientist named Rick Marshal who has been trying to prove that a parallel universe exists. When he meets an attractive scientist who happens to be a huge fan, he is inspired to pull an all-nighter and build the parallel universe machine he dreams of creating. The two go out to a deserted circus tent to try out the machine that they hope will shoot them into the parallel universe. Danny McBride(The Foot Fist Way, Hot Rod) plays the tour guide of the circus, and is forced to tag along when an unexpected earthquake opens a chasm that swallows the trio and spits them out in an unknown time. In this time, dinosaurs and lizard-people roam the earth.

The fact that this movie has the same title as the campy 70′s show, as I soon found out, is the only thing the two have in common. While the television series was charming and funny, the film adaptation is grosser, weirder, dirtier, and more unnecessary than the series. Will Ferrell is slightly to blame for its womanizing efforts at comedy, but mostly it’s Danny McBride’s edgy and questionable comments that make half the audience go, “Whoa, careful man!”

In fact, at some points in this movie, it seemed almost impossible to me that this was PG-13. Its source material has the potential to make a great movie, but as soon as you cast men like Danny McBride and Will Ferrell to lead the cast, it’s bound to be smutty, crude and, much like the film’s narrative, out of control. The way the plot progresses makes me think that the screenwriters only goal was to either make a lot of girls wince and squirm, or make twelve year old boys laugh their heads off. Either way, neither makes for a good movie. The development and story come off as nothing but shallow and hollow segues to another gross sight gag.

In the end, Land of The Lost doesn’t even permit me to say that it “has its moments”. The only moments that the movie does have are awkward and in bad taste. The only “Land of The Lost” that exists here is inside the minds of the creators of this downright crummy adaptation.

5 Dinosaurs out of 10

Review by Jason Holland

Land of the Lost is Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, and for language including a drug reference.

The Fourth Kind (PG-13)

The Fourth Kind will definitely be a film that will make little kids believe in aliens, mostly because of the insanely realistic depiction of them.

Extra terrestrials have, to be frank, been milked drier than the last cow left on the planet. You’ve got your Signs, your E.T., and your Aliens. Those three movies merely skim the surface of the hundreds of aliens that have made their way onto the silver screen.

In this close encounter, Abigail Tyler is a psychiatrist studying sleep disorders in Nome, Alaska. About a year ago, Abigail’s husband was mysteriously murdered. Soon after the sleep study starts, she sees a coincidence among the patients. An owl. This aspect of the movie is fairly silly, but, yes, an owl is staring at her patients every single night. At some point in the movie, however, nearly every one of the participants in the study says, frightened, “it’s not an owl”. They usually say this under the hypnosis that Abigail puts them in. Most of these hypnoses scenes are to help someone remember what’s been coming into their room every night. Abigail starts, almost right away, to believe that these people are being abducted by alien life forms.
The movie is filmed as if it were real. But the plausibility of this starts to drift in and out, due to the directors interesting style of directions. Usually, dramatizations are only necessary if footage of what they are reenacting doesn’t exist. But here, the screen is split, sometimes into four boxes, showing different versions of what’s happening. One of the boxes is a view from the camera that Abigail uses to record her sessions, while the other is the director’s view. The idea is interesting, but it does it so often that it comes off sometimes a bit sloppy and hard to follow.
The Fourth Kind brings something new to the table. Done in the style of other movies like District 9*, the film goes from “real”, documentary- style footage to normal video. But unlike District 9, The Fourth Kind tries very, very hard to make you believe it’s real. So hard, in fact, that Milla Jovovich, the actress that portrays the woman in most of the “real” footage, comes out at the beginning of the movie and tells us that “all the footage in this film is extremely real.” She also states that all of the parts with her in it are dramatizations of what “actually” happened. The only problem is that if it was real, why would she be telling us? Don’t tell us, show us. Why is it real? Why should it be?
One thing that does give it some credibility is the disturbing behavior of Abigal Tyler’s sleep study patients. It’s pretty  freaky at times, and actually can be quite goose-bump inducing: For example, a man floats over his bed in a somewhat rigormortis-stricken position in one scene.  In another, a woman is actually abducted on tape.

This movie obviously had the potential to be something extravagant and memorable. The only problem was the direction and the way it moves (or doesn’t) from point A to point B. But direction is usually the thing that makes or breaks a movie. So, sorry The Fourth Kind, but I have to knock a few points off. This is unique, there’s no doubt about that. It also contains one of the scariest jump scenes I’ve seen in a while.
I would suggest this movie for someone… who wants to see it. If you don’t want to see it, than you’ll notice the pot holes or lean over and say to the person next to you how stupid and fake it is. But if you want to see it, than you’ll see its point and give in to the premise. That’s usually what you have to do when you watch an Alien movie. Suspending your disbelief is important, and even though this movie might try a bit too hard to do so, it achieves its goal. At least, for me it did.
This film is being panned by the critics, and to be honest, I don’t know why.  While it’s not an incredibly good film, I think the critics are taking it too seriously. It’s still quite scary and entertaining. Other critics are just being mean about it. For instance, Tom Long, of the Detroit News says of the film: “Unintentionally, laughably bad.” And Rob Vaux, from Mania.com says savagely that “As Truth, it’s bull*&#@., and as bull*&#@, it isn’t remotely entertaining.”
Really, you guys? It’s just a movie. If you don’t like it, all you have to do is point out what you don’t like. Anyway, I suppose that’s their opinion. Reader: I would advise you to see it if you want to and don’t be swayed by obviously brutal critics.

7 ½ big white owls out of 10

The Fourth Kind is rated PG-13 for  violent/disturbing images, some terror, thematic elements and brief sexuality

Review by Jason Holland