Taken 3

Taken 3

Rating 5.5 out of 10

I liked the first Taken movie back in 2009.  Hard not to like Liam Neeson. Hard to believe he is now 65 years old and can still strike fear into the hearts of bad guys.  Did not care for Taken 2 one bit. There are just some plot holes and bits of reality my DNA will not let me overlook.  I'm happy to say Taken 3 is better than Taken 2.  Sadly not by a whole lot.

We find Bryan Mills (Neeson) living the modest city life trying to get along in regular life and still making an attempt to have a relationship with his cutie daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).  His beautiful ex-wife is having marital problems and turns to Mills for advice and let him know she is still interested.  When he rushes home to meet her after a distressed text he finds her dead in his bedroom. The police show up seconds late.  He quickly figures out he has been framed and instead of explaining to the police what happened and showing he clearly has an alibi he gives the police some karate movies and goes on the run to clear his name.

There are several other "oh please" moments that I won't go into.  I'll admit I can be a little on the picky side and many of these things won't bother the average movie watcher.  The action was good for the most part and Neeson is always good.  If you liked Taken 2, you will like this one.  I was mildly entertained.

Wild

Wild

Rating 7.5 out of 10

I have become a fan of Reece Witherspoon.  Didn't really care much for her earlier roles, but think she has become a very good actress.  She spreads her wings here and plays someone who at times is not very nice.

Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) enjoys an interesting childhood with her younger brother and flower child (kinda nutty) mother.  Mom is a little on the crazy side yet always upbeat and fun.  When mom gets cancer and dies at an early age Cheryl goes off the deep end.  Gets heavy into drugs, drinking and multiple partners even while married to a good man.

When she finally looks at herself in the mirror and realizes what a mess she has become she decides to do something about it.  She feels if she walks the Pacific Crest Trail alone she can prove to herself what she can do and the peaceful time alone will help her find herself again.

The scenery is incredible.  Witherspoon will probably get an deserved Oscar nomination for her performance. It is an amazing walk.  As she goes along she has flashbacks of her life.  Good things and things that went wrong.  I would say too many flashbacks. Some are redundant and not needed.

Overall this is an entertaining movie with amazing scenery and good acting.  It slows down at times but overall well worth watching.

Unbroken

Unbroken 

Rating 5 out of 10

There are a thousand hero stories from survivors and non-survivors of wars past.  MANY movies have been made on these folks.  Call this one a thousand and one.  I'm not taking anything away from Louis Zamperini.  He was the real life WWII survivor for whom on Veterans Day I'll take my hat off and salute in memory of all those brave souls that did battle so I can sit at my laptop and bang out a review on this movie.  Unbroken is not a bad movie.  It's just very depressing and I'm not sure it was a story that needed to be told.

Zamperini was a troubled child in California in trouble most of the time.  When his older brother shows faith in his running abilities he trains extra hard and becomes the fastest high schooler to ever run the mile and makes the Olympics.  He does amazingly well at the Olympics and becomes famous.  Fast forward a few years and he is working on a bomber plane in the war.  When his plane goes down he and a couple others are stranded in a raft for 47 days.  Unfortunately when he is rescued it's by the evil Japanese.  He is put into a POW camp and is beaten and horribly treated for years.

The treatment is brutal and often hard to watch.  The main thing Zamperini does is survive.  I'm glad he did.  Not sure I'm glad I paid money to see it on the big screen.

Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies

Rating 8 out of 10

I was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings movies.  Loved all three.  The Hobbit of course is the prequel to those LOR movies by director Peter Jackson.  The Battle of the Five Armies is the climax of the Hobbit trilogy with the epic battle.  I didn't read the books and have to admit even after seeing all three movies I can't say I understand it all.  I thought the Hobbit series dragged a bit yet this finale is definitely worth seeing.  I gathered six other manly men like myself and after a manly meal at my favorite watering hole we were off to the NCG theater to watch this on IMAX.

In the first two movies we have learned the evil dragon Smaug has taken control of the castle in the mountain that has everyone's gold and riches.  When the dragon is killed as it destroys a nearby town in flames the Dwarves regain control of the castle and all it's gold.  As what often happens the money corrupts and the king of the dwarves goes a little nuts.  When the humans and the elves show up at his doorstep to claim their share of the riches the king says not over their dead bodies and a terrible war is likely.  As they are about to do battle they learn there is a huge army of nasty Orcs heading their way.  The humans, elves and dwarves can join together and fight or die.

This is a show you go to for the visuals and the Battle does not disappoint.  If you liked either of the first two Hobbit movies you will love this one.  It is by far the best of the three.  Even if you have not seen the first movies this one stands well alone.  I was entertained.  We had a good time.

The Homesman

The Homesman

Rating 2 out of 10


I am a fan on western and cowboy movies.  John Wayne was the best.  I would easily put Lonesome Dove in the top ten things I have ever watched.  Maybe top five.  Tommy Lee Jones is perfection as Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call. So maybe I set the bar a little high walking in the theater.  Sadly I was greatly disappointed.  I'm guessing this movie came from a great book and was the love child of one of the actors.  It did not transfer over well to film.

This movie is based in the frontier 1800s where people are trying to make it in the new country by farming and or cows or sheep.  Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank) is a tough woman.  Rough on the inside and out.  She successfully runs her farm and desperately wants a husband.

One of the many side effects of living on the frontier is the wives go insane at an alarming rate.  I'm guessing loneliness or the sound of the wind constantly blowing.  We see an example when one of the frustrated wives tosses her baby into the port-potty.  Someone needs to take three of the crazy women to the city where they can hopefully get help.  None of the men will go so Mary Bee volunteers for the 6-8 week one way trip through dangerous lands.  She is hoping in the city she can find a man to agree to be her husband.  Along the way she picks up a straggler old man George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) who is being hung for squatting another mans land and eating his sheep.  Mary gives him the choice of being hanged or go with her.  He should have taken the noose.

The cast is nothing short of amazing.  Meryl Streep and her daughter Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, John Lithgow, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld, Barry Corbin, ect.  They stand no chance of helping this slow moving, boring film.  It has a run time of just over two hours and seems much longer.

In case you haven't figured it out by this point I didn't care for this film at all.  I wouldn't even rent this one folks.

The Hunger Games: MockingJay- Part 1

The Hunger Games: MockingJay- Part 1

Rating 6 out of 10

I read the first two Hunger Games books by Susanne Collins.   I enjoyed both books.  I started book III MockingJay and lost interest about half way.  Intended to finish it but never did.  I kinda had the same feeling with the movies.  I didn't think this was a bad movie.  Just very slow.  There may be alot of action in the rebels led by Katness Everdeen overtaking the evil empire.  It's not in this movie.  A movie pet peeve of mine is when previews for the film portray it in a manner that you find to be incorrect.  That is the case here.  When you watch the trailer it looks like an action packed movie.  It absolutely is not.  There is a five second scene in the trailer that shows Katness shooting down an airplane with her bow and arrow.  That is basically all the action you will see in this two hour movie.

Lions Gate Films did with MockingJay as they did with the Twilight films in splitting the finale into two movies to get more information in and more money out.  MockingJay Part I is the buildup to the big show down.  You get a good bit of information and the acting is good.  If you have invested your time into the first two Hunger Game movies you pretty much have to see this one.

I was mildly entertained with this movie even though I saw it when I was very tired and nearly fell asleep in the slowest part.  It's not the best movie of the series so far.  Just necessary to get to the end of the story.

The Way-rental

The Way

Rating 7.5 out of 10

Was talking with a friend of mine saying how there was a movie opening next week with Reese Witherspoon called Wild that looks interesting to me.  She plays a woman who has a good deal of bad things in her life (many caused by herself) and decides the way to heal hear soul is to take a 1000 mile walk in the mountains.  My friend said this reminded her of a movie she saw the trailer to but never got around to watching.  I decided to give it a try and was glad I did.

The Way stars Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez whom also wrote and directed the film.  They play father and son.  The son decides to drop out of graduate school and begin living his life.  Dad is a wealthy doctor with a healthy work ethic who scoffs at his reckless son's plan to walk a famous trail in Spain called the Camino de Santiago or The Way of Saint James.  Thousands in Spain each year walk this trail to find spiritual enlightenment or to find their way.  Some just do it for the exercise to loose weight.

When a freak storm hits early in the sons trip and kills him Dad flies over to gather his remains and worldly goods.  After hearing the story behind the Walk and figuring it would honor his sons memory and help him cope with is grief he decides to make the walk himself and spread his sons ashes along the way.

As he makes his way along the trail he meets many different people.  Some of whom begin to tag along with him when all he really wants is to be left along and deal with his grief.  There are quaint cities along the way for them to stop, eat and sleep at allowing them to absorb some of the local cultures.

The movie drifts off into la-la land a few times but over all this movie is well worth the rental.  I found it on Amazon Prime but believe it's available on Netflix also.  The scenery is fantastic and Sheen's acting is first rate.  The movie almost made me want to give the trail a try.  Only I think I'd want to do it on my four wheeler which would most likely be frowned upon.

This is a good rainy day movie.  I liked it .