Halloween Marathon: Red Eye (2005)

We’re almost at the end of our highlight series but before we head into the final movie, lets get some other movies done.  This one kind of matches up as it is directed by Wes Craven, the mastermind behind the start of the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  We’re taking a look at Red Eye.  Its funny because for the longest time, I thought that I had seen Red Eye but it turns out that I mixed it up with Flight Plan.  You know, the one with Jodie Foster? Yeah, my bad, right?

Let’s give this a go!

Red Eye (2005)

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Rachel McAdam, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays, Jack Scalia

A woman is kidnapped by a stranger on a routine flight. Threatened by the potential murder of her father, she is pulled into a plot to assist her captor in offing a politician.-IMDB

Red Eye is more of a thriller than a horror.  But if you know me well, thrillers sometimes can create a sort of intense dread or fear that pure horrors aren’t able to achieve quite so well.  Its for the mere fact that it relates to real life more and can just hit those psychological notes.  On that note, Red Eye works for the most part.  The setting of being enclosed in a plane and then just dealing within confined spaces and one that you truly can’t escape is a good.  Then we have Wes Craven as the director who sets the perfect atmosphere along with the characters to give the story a nice push.  It manages to give us a sudden twist around in the situation that catches us off guard.

The cast in Red Eye is pretty great. I’m not a huge fan of Rachel McAdams.  I liked her well enough in The Notebook and then she was rather fun in Mean Girls being the mean popular girl, I never really thought much of her acting skills.  However, as a thriller story protagonist, she works great.  She captured this role with a wonderful performance that managed to keep me on the edge of my seat.  I guess part of that praise goes out to Cillian Murphy who is fantastic as the bad guy here.  He takes on the wolf in a sheep skin role very good.  He goes from this amazing charming guy that Lisa (Rachel McAdam’s character) meets randomly and helps her out of a frustrating situation then turns into a man that sits next to her and threatens to kill her father if she doesn’t comply to his wishes for her to switch the rooms of a politician staying at the hotel that she is a manager of.  With the decision of either choosing to save your father or the life of a politician, what do you choose? Its a tough decision.

At the same time, Red Eye had some interesting side roles.  Of course, we have Brian Cox as the father of Lisa. I’m not entirely familiar with his work but he did look incredibly familiar. But my biggest surprise watching this was that Jayma Mays was in this as a supporting role as Cynthia, the girl working at the hotel desk in communication with Lisa during this event.  Jayma Mays is in Glee as a guidance counselor.  I love Glee and I’m starting to notice parts of her being here and there nowadays which makes me happy.  She’s a fun character who can pull off some cute expressions and she has a very unique voice that gives her some personality as well.

Overall, I don’t have too much to say about Red Eye.  It was a thrilling watch.  I loved it.  It wasn’t exactly unpredictable but it had a lot of pretty intense moments and it all comes down to the great performances and being able to build up the atmosphere for it to feel that way on and off the plane.  Red Eye has a little something going for it.  Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy do an outstanding job at taking on their roles and making us connect with their character.  Red Eye became a thrill ride because of that.  We never knew whether anything would work out or not.  Even if the ending, the plot seemed to unravel a little too much, there were some pretty edgy scenes that worked. For that, its worth a watch 🙂

Have you seen Red Eye? What do you think of it? 

TMI Podcast: David and Kim’s Random Chat about 28 Days Later (2002)

Welcome to this week’s Random Chat over at That Moment In with David! We’re talking about the popular zombie apocalypse movie 28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle.

Hope you enjoy! 🙂

Also, on a side note! For some of the fellow video gamers and readers, That Moment In will be starting to branch out into the video game and book reviews/moments, etc and is calling out to whoever is interested in contributing.  If you are interested, head over  to contact David HERE!  You will find more info at that link.

Happy Saturday!! 🙂

In Time (2011)

On the weekend, my boyfriend’s coworker lent him this flick In Time.  I’m personally not a huge fan of Justin Timberlake.  I’ve had that discussion back when I reviewed Bad Teacher .  Not impressed by him much.  However, I’m okay with Amanda Seyfried.  Plus, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of this movie.

Director: Andrew Niccol

Cast: Justin Timberlake, Amanada Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer

In the future, the population has been imprinted with a digital timer on their arms which activates the moment they turn 25.  They are destined to have eternal youth but when this clock starts, it is set to only countdown for 1 more year.  Everything will be paid and earned by the minutes and hours and rarely years in their life.  Your wealth is equivalent to the amount of time you own remaining in your life.  Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a normal guy who works in a low job and lives literally by the day with his mom who is in the same situation. When he saves a fed up rich guy called Henry Hamilton (Matt Bomer) with over a century on his clock who comes into this local bar, Will spots trouble.  He saves Henry from the bad guys in the area led by Fortis (Alex Pettyfer) who spends his life taking time from other people.  When he wakes up, he realizes that not only did Henry give him all his time but that Henry had timed out himself which causes Will to be tracked down by the Timekeeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) who accuses him of murder.  In the course of events, he meets a rich man who owns the time lending in all the area Weisz and his beautiful daughter Sylvia and eventually takes her as hostage as they run away.

I hold true that the concept of this movie was pretty cool.  Using time as the center of replacing wealth because most of us know the saying time equals money, right? To apply that as the tool for how people survive seems to make sense and to use it in a world that is divided into time zones and in the most richest time zone called New Greenwich, we know that the standards of living are higher as crossing into that zone would be many times higher than the previous one. I bought the premise of the setting that this story was set in.

However, this movie was quite average.  It was enjoyable in the beginning when trying to understand what was going on and in the last bit leading to the ending. The middle gets a bit slow for my taste.  How do I know? Because when a movie doesn’t captivate me, I start walking around the kitchen and opening the cupboards and fridge trying to find something to eat.  Its just a habit I have.  Eventually, it just felt like the movie wasn’t going to end.  I think what happened  is that it became (too) predictable. BUT…let me just add I really enjoyed how it ended.

Our main actor Justin Timberlake really didn’t do too much for me. He definitely was better than in Bad Teacher. At least in this one he has a respectable character. One that wants to change the world he is in so that no one is immortal but to achieve some sort of equality and take down the walls separating everyone from the differences of time in the time zones.  Amanda Seyfried was a bit more interesting because she learned and changed as the situation progresses.  But something didn`t make me connect too much with her. Don’t get me wrong…she has been in many movies that I enjoy and she was alright in this one.  Was it my favorite role from her…probably not though.

As much as the main characters didn’t really connect with the movie itself much, I found that the supporting cast was quite good.  For one, I really liked Olivia Wilde.  She was very beautiful and pretty cool for the time that she had in the movie.  Another actor I’d like to mention is Cillian Murphy.  This guy is a pretty kick ass actor in my book.  He’s done some pretty awesome movies like 28 Days Later and Nolan`s Batman.  In this one, I actually thought he made this movie a lot better.  His character was interesting in its own (and frustrating at times) but then he really brought more action and spark to the flick.  He was probably the favorite part of this for me.

Overall, this is an average movie.  I would actually recommend it based on the interesting premise that it chooses.  Its a pretty good flick to just sit back and watch when there isn’t anything else on or whatnot.  It has some good performances and between some slower parts in the middle, it does also have some fun parts here and there.

Have you seen this? What do you think of the premise of this movie using Time is Money as the concept? How about the actors and actresses here? Anyone of them have any particular roles you enjoy?