Before life is taken you have elegy

Here's todays review:

Taken

This movie by Luc Besson ( Banlieue 13, Transporter 3, Revolver, Nikita, The Fifth Element, Léon ) features Liam Neeson ( Schindler's List, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Batman Begins ) Maggie Grace and Famke Janssen ( Turn the River, X-Men: The Last Stand, GoldenEye ) in an action drama about kidnapping and trafficking. If you do not know what trafficking means in this context then I suggest you look it up here (english) or here (danish) before you continue reading.

I get sick just thinking of trafficking. It really makes me physically sick to think of the pain, loss, greve, anger and every other horrible feeling you can imagine that is involved in this. Especially when young children are involved.

Anyway, this is a review and not my personal view on the subject of the movie. So let's get on with it.

Taken has some similarities to Man on Fire in light that it also features the rage and vendetta of one person trying to rescue another. The kidnapping is also present. And even partly the trafficking.

Luc Besson has succeded in getting the viewer to feel the loss the father ( Bryan Mills/Liam Neeson ) experiences in the movie. Luckily the Bryan character in this movie is a retired CIA agent and he does have the means and skills to hunt down the scum who does the trafficking.

The story is that Liam and Famke are divorced, their daughter Maggie Grace wishes to go to Europe and stay with a girlfriends family in Paris / France. Liam is concerned about two 17 year olds "alone" in Paris, but he agrees.
It turns out that the daughter has other plans, and wishes to tour with a rockband all over Europe. This piece of information is shared with the mother and she agrees to that. But it never comes this far.
In Paris they are hijacked by a young guy whom seems to want to help. The young guy ( Peter ) is involved with trafficking people and he tells the lowlifes where the girls are located. It doesn't make things better that the daughters girlfriend has lied about the remote family, because it turns out that they are on vaccation. Both girls are kidnapped and the daughter is kidnapped while she is on the phone with Liam. He hears everything. (This is the first 5 minutes of the movie).

I will not say anymore, but this is a faaaaaaaaaaarking good movie. Wohoo!. It no mistake that this movies is rated just below the top 250 movies of all times. Normally I watch a movie quietly, but with this one I went "Yeah!", "Fark me!", "Shiiit" and I even thing i shed a tear at one point. Excellent work Luc Besson.

Go see this movie it is a masterpiece.

PS: In powerful impact this movies ranges among titans like Hotel Rwanda, Tsotsi, Blood Diamond, City of God.

Pineapple Express

Inhale - hold it - exhale. Yeaaaaah!. Here we have a weed comedy featurering Seth Rogen ( Knocked Up ). This movie has similarities to movies like Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke" (1978) and other hilarious movies where smoking weed is the center of attention.

So, does this have a good story, well...No is the answer. It's just as crazy as Army of Darkness (almost). But it doesn't really matter. Seth Rogen and James Franco ( Harry Osborn/New Goblin in Spider-Man 2 ) play two very convincing roles as weed high dudes. They surely have some good "references".

This is a saturday movie, one you can watch to relax or one you'd watch before hitting the clubs.

I won't bother you with the story, but just tell you that the movie is hilarious and I almost lost my breath laughing - which I consider as an excellent recommendation. But you have to like and possibly relate to people which are sky high at times, to fully enjoy the movie. Thumbs up from me. Go see this one.

Elegy

I wonder if a review could be started with the quietness of soft rain falling against my window. Because this is what this romantic drama deserves - a quiet introduction and a pause of softness. This movie is based on the short novel "The Dying Animal" by Philip Roth. It is quite hard to describe the poetic softness the love relationship between David (Ben Kingsley) and Consuela (Penelope Cruz), but it is like silk falling slowly over your skin, but with a aged red wine full with the flavours of life filling the room.

The love relationship portrayed in this movies in not spring love, dansing in the corn fields with the sun shining and it is not hot sexual passion with steaming windows, moist sheets, cocktails and ravishing hard sex.

This is love with devotion, fear for being too little a man, age and decay. When a male Lion reaches a certain age he leaves the flock and wanders into the savannah to, eventually, die. And this movies makes a beatiful portrait of how a titan, in his youth, re-lives alot of the things which eventually made up his life.

A beautiful movie, and probably the best one this year. Get the DVD on Amazon. It is absolutely worth it.

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New co-author review:

Poetisk film med fantastisk flot, stemningsskabende og til filmen støttende musik. Det er filmen, der smukt fortæller os, at det er vigtigt at leve livet og hvert minut fuldt ud og ikke bare tage livet for givet, for ingen ved, hvornår livet tages fra os.

To mennesker med stor aldersforskel mødes og oplever en stor og dybdegående kærlighed til hinanden. Rammerne er det klassiske lærer/elev-forhold, der her udvider sig langsomt til fascination af hinanden, en fælles interesse for en intellektuel tilgang til kunstens verden over i et forhold på tværs af aldersgrænser. Det er læreren, der aldrig har formået at have et langvarigt forhold og nu er blevet aldrende og med udsigt til at livets ende er nær, der følges fra et udgangspunkt i hans angst for ikke at slå til over for en yngre kvinde samt hans erkendelse af, at livet snart ebber ud. Det er lærerens møde med en smuk ung kvinde, der ved mødet med kærligheden i en sen alder intenst oplever livets melankoli.

Swing Vote

Here you have Kevin Costener in a comedy with a central "discussion" of the U.S. president election.

Now I like Kevin Costener, his acting is rather good and he is quite convinsing in his different roles, but he has had little luck with scripts since Waterworld.

And as with Waterworld and the majority of his latest movies this one is no different. Brilliant acting - rotten script.

I almost laughed when the movie, just beyound it's peak tries to get all serious and actually paint a picture of the little man making a difference - it was soo bad. Sorry.

This movie is a waiste of time, unless you have a crush on Kevin Costener.

Ghost Town

Here you have Tea Leoni ( You Kill Me, The Family Man ) and Ricky Gervais ( known for stand-up comedy and The Office ) in a romantic comedy about a dentish (Dr. Pincus) who dies for 7 minutes during an operation and then suddenly has to ability to see ghosts.

Now, Dr. Pincus is anti-social and, generally speaking, hate people - all people. Ghosts can be rather persistant in their struggle to get redemption. And this is what makes up the funny part of this movie.

On the romantic side, we find Gwen (Tea) who lost her husband about 1 year ago. And the husband happends to be one of the ghosts who is on Dr. Pincus' back. Furthermore we find that Gwen and Dr. Pincus lives in the same building in Manhattan.

You can almost guess the plot when Dr. Pincus is "forced" to help the ghost of Gwen's husband for his redemption and love he has has for Gwen. I cannot tell you more - but it doesn't have the all traditionally turn, which is refreshing, and on a scale of 1 to 10, this one gets a solid 6 for it's alternate way of making Ghost movies.

Thumbs up from me.

Just Buried

Here you have a comedy with some drama featurering Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder, Knocked Up) and Rose Byrne (Sunshine). The story is about Oliver (Jay) whom inhirets an buriel shop and tries to get it running again.

Roberta (Rose) is the young re-incarnation of Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Not only in character profession but also by looks (see pictures below).

Anyhow, the movie is quite cute and it does not get all vomitting like other movies in this genre. And the best thing of it all is that it is a movie with a twist. Kind twists you see in the TV series "Twillight Zone". So this is refreshing.

Good one, not brilliant - but absolutely okay.