Buried out now on DVD

Buried is a film in which Paul Conroy (Reynolds) a US citizen working as a truck driver in Iraq awakens to find himself trapped in a coffin, buried underground with only a mobile phone and a cigarette lighter. It’s a race against time for Conroy to contact help, for the help to find and locate him or the ransom demands to be met. 
 
Buried is a good brave film and one for me in which Reynolds shines and the man trapped underground in what must be a situation any human would fear. In fact I couldn’t find anything really wrong with this movie, its paced really well, Conroy is both short tempered, impatient, pleading and repentant and you can feel the helplessness and claustrophobia of the situation. Reynolds as I said is great as the only character you really see in the whole movie for me shows that he can really act and is more than just eye candy. The only negative for this film is that it’s a hard sell – it’s the story of a man trapped underground, its harrowing and not exactly light viewing – its good, although you also do feel like you’ve put yourself through a bit of an ordeal watching it.
 
Director: Rodrigo Cortés

Cast:
Ryan Reynolds – Paul Conroy

Taken on DVD now

I had previously steered clear of watching this movie after reading some not so glowing reviews but I found myself promising my 20 year old nephew I would watch it before casting judgement (which I was doing), which is why I’m writing this review.
 
Taken is the story of Bryan Mills (Neeson) who travels to France to find his daughter after Eastern European sex traffickers kidnap her. Mills isn’t just an ordinary Joe – oh no he’s a retired CIA agent and he has revenge and blood on his mind. 
 
Hmmm I guess I don’t want to really lay into this film but I found so many things wrong with it I actually got to the point where I started laughing which I’m sure wasn’t the desired effect. Yes there’s fighting which is well done and if you want to watch Neeson strutting his stuff with a gravely voice then this film is probably the one for you, I would on the other hand rather watch a Bourne movie if I wanted close up combat – its better done in Bourne with a much better story holding it together.  I suppose if this film handled itself like the Transporter – a little tongue in cheek it would be more fun but I get the feeling that this film takes itself a little to seriously (like Mills himself) and in that respect it for me fell flat.
 
The air of the whole film is one of paranoia – Mills is paranoid about his daughter travelling in Europe where all manner of dark and shady people lurk and of course his paranoia is fully justified when the ‘evil men’ are lurking to kidnap young women straight off the plane – those dastardly foreigners!  The technology Mill’s uses is laughable – two words are recorded of the kidnapper and that’s enough to get a voice / person match and whole history, it is though handy (no pun intended) that the ‘evil foreigners’ have all decided to get a distinctive tattoo on all of their hands so they can be easily identified.
 
There is also the matter of all the ‘sex trafficked’ women. Why would any prospective kidnapper choose to take women who were not alone and friendless? – Hasn’t anyone else complained that this seems to be going on in Paris – its not exactly the third world is it and there are rather a lot of drugged women scattered throughout the city. The girls are drugged and chained to the bed, I don’t profess to know much about prostitution but I would have thought that a punter would at least want to have his girl looking ‘clean’ and not like she hasn’t had a bath in a month with needle marks all over her arms…. maybe its just me though, and that’s not me even getting started on the weird shipping tanker brothel (so classy) and the peep show auction.  Of course this all boils down to the ‘Jabba the Hutt’ like nasty foreign geezer who wants pure western girls so he can pop their cherries.  I guess as a European woman I didn’t realise thing were quite this lawless here, there again if you can kill 15 people in Paris and have no repercussions its probably quite handy Europe is a wild – a bit like the wild west was but with better architecture.
 
Give this one a miss and put on a Bourne or Casino Royale instead. 
 
Director: Pierre Morel

Cast:

Liam Neeson – Bryan Mills

Maggie Grace – Kim  

 

 

Easy A on DVD now

Easy A charts the story of Olive, a likeable, smart, quick witted and intelligent  American teenager, (yes you did read that correctly) who tells a lie about losing her virginity a lie that soon grows. Olive goes from being non-existent in high school to being the center of attention and she decides to use her newfound notoriety to help out a friend and for financial gain. Soon the rumours circulate and the lie grows and grows and Olive has to find a way to salvage her reputation and to silence the religious fever her ‘promiscuity’ has stirred up.

Emma Stone, soon to be seen in the Amazing Spiderman, is great as Olive – smart, funny and even more surprising she’s likeable and that’s not something I say about American teenage girls often. Her little lie throws her into a dilemma which is paralleled to the book she is studying – The Scarlet Letter, so Olive decides to take it to the extreme and then has difficulty containing the genie once it was out of the bottle. Stone is so important on this movie as most of it rests on her young shoulders –she succeeds in running away with the film and launching herself onto the A List. The script is great and all of the supporting characters are interesting and suitably skewed and distorted which keeps you interested. If you like Mean Girls or Clueless or even if you older Heathers, this would be perfect viewing.

Director: Will Glut

Cast:
Emma Stone                      - Olive
Penn Badgley                    -  Woodchuck Todd
Amanda Bynes                  -  Marianne
Dan Byrd                            - Brandon
Thomas Haden Church    - Mr Griffith