Tag Archives: movie

Two For One Reviews: Taken and The Happening

Two movies released in 2008 with plots heavily focused on revenge are the subject of this review. M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and the Morel/Besson collaboration Taken. One was described as “racist” by the UK’s Daily Telegraph, and the other as a “woeful clunker” by The Wall Street Journal. Ouch on both counts. “How could a movie about a suicide-inducing airborne toxin be racist?” you might ask. Read on.

Continue reading

Advertisement

The Bad Kind of Pandemic

My wife and I recently saw Contagion. At times this film was a bit spooky, as any realistic depiction of population-destroying virus should be. Brooding electronic music paired with a montage of empty streets and uncollected garbage gave me a sense of what the world would look like if the fragility of civilization were tested. Each scene is a vignette of the increasingly dire situation each character faces, and the consistent tempo makes the struggle palpable. Nobility wins the day, however, as sacrifices are made and lives are saved.

Continue reading