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? 

Valentine’s Marathon: The Notebook (2004)

Its been almost 10 years that this has been out and exactly that same amount of time that I’ve seen it.  The Notebook is one of those adaptations which was great when I saw it but over the years, something has stopped me every time I want to do a repeat viewing.  Finally, because of this marathon, I picked up the dread this weekend and checked it out again.  Lets see how it was, shall we?

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Gena Rowlands, James Garner, Kevin Connolly, James Marsden

Duke is telling another senior woman the story of young love many years ago.  Its the story of a young man who knew exactly what he wanted called Noah (Ryan Gosling) who saw the girl he was attracted to called Allie (Rachel McAdams) who had just gone there for the summer.  Soon after, they became lovestruck but as the summer drawn to a close, Allie’s parents pointed out their social differences and they had to separate from each other.  After Noah went to war, he learned that Allie was already engaged to Lon Hammond (James Marsden) while he was still hoping to win her back with preserving what they had memories of.

I have no idea how to write a synopsis for this story.  Either way, Nicholas Sparks story all have this little funky twist ending of sorts and this one has a sad but beautiful one.  I remember seeing this in the theatres with two of my friends.  I had, of course, already read the book so I knew where this was going but at the same time, it had been a while and I remember having foggy details.  Who am I kidding, right? We chose this movie solely because it was the only one that matched the time when we went, you know, a spontaneous movie hang out with friends.  Whatever the reason, the theatre was packed with people older than us in our late teens and we pretty much had a feeling that we wouldn’t like it.  Turns out, as silly and corny as some of the sequences are, they had sweet moments and at the very end, I shed some tears.

I still can’t pinpoint why I didn’t want to see this movie again maybe its because the last 30 minutes touched me more than the first part did and honestly, this time around, I was cooking for the most of the beginning sequence and just listening and glimpsing at the screen.  My boyfriend downright sat down for a few minutes and then just walked away to play computer games instead and then when I told him which were the good parts, he’d come back down to watch it. The movie irritated him for the most part I think except for the ending.  I think he thought that was alright.  So far it doesn’t really seem like a review, right?

Its really because I don’t know how to say how I feel.  Its really mixed in my mind.  For one, the ending blows this thing way into awesome territory but then to get to the end, I do need to watch the beginning and as much as I love watching a very shaggy rugged Ryan Gosling, love struck and handsome, who I realized has evolved so much over the last ten years as well, the movie does hit a bit of meh for me.  However, taking into the parallel with Duke telling the story and you all know the actual ending of it, it really does tug on those heartstrings.  That part was just out of the world touching.

What was really cool was that, I never realized that James Marsden was in it until this time watching it and hey, I love that guy.  Its a really good actor, so it was a nice little bonus find that boosted this movie a little too 🙂

Before I start running in circles, The Notebook shows a great, long-lasting romance.  One that believes in miracles and that pulls each other together regardless of the consequences.  If you enjoy an epic romance tied with some sappy and some heartwarming and some cute scenes, this is a good one.  Make it through the whole thing and I promise the ending is one of the best I’ve seen.   However, I’d tell you to go ahead and read the novel because it does a better job.

Have you seen The Notebook? Have you read the book?