Non-Stop

This was exciting!

An US air marshal with a whole list of personal issues is getting texts from an unknown fellow passenger requesting a money transfer or every 20 min. someone will get killed. And that is what happens, because everything is made out to frame the air marshal, here played by Liam Neeson (finally not the "I will find you and I will kill you!" guy).

What follows is a guy trying to save himself and the passengers while everyone around him suspects that he is responsible for all of this. His only loyal aid is the woman that sits next to him on the plane, while everyone else is eyeing him suspiciously.

Of course, passengers start taking things into their own hands, trying to overwhelm the air marshal. One person on board is law enforcement himself, working for NYPD, and rallying the troops around him.

In the end, of course, the Liam Neeson character will be redeemed and become the celebrated hero that saved all but a few lives (the ones killed in 20 min. intervals).

Pure entertainment.

7/10

Carrie

Um.

Okay, so from the beginning. Margaret White is giving birth. Apparently, she does not know what is happening to her. She thinks she may be dying of something, cancer maybe. Ridiculous! She knows how she got pregnant ("Your father took me," as she later yells at her daughter) so she would know what is going on.

The Carrie as portrayed by Chloe Grace Moretz is just a little too pretty to be a realistic outcast in the context of the high school she is in. The other kids - good or bad - are just bland. Sue is the ultimate goody-two-shoes, as is her boyfriend Tommy (he is such a lovely boy). The girl playing Chris cannot hold a candle to the one from the original.

And what about the big scene?

So the car crashing into nothing was kind of awesome, but everything else about Carrie going total mayhem on all her high school colleagues is ridiculous in so many ways. The telekinesis massacre from the original film (and, indeed, the novel) was just slightly outside of reality. Here, it goes way overboard. Not only does Carrie move her hands in weird ways whenever she moves something but...SHE FLIES!

Never mind that it was totally unnecessary to remake the near perfect 1976 version of the Stephen King story, but why did it have to feature that much slo-mo? Why did the blood have to spill down (in slo-mo, of course) four fucking times from four different angles? We've been through all the hand moving as opposed to Sissy Spacek's scary wide eyed stare of doom. And why, oh why, did there have to be a musical interlude? I am not kidding, there is a musical bit, when everyone is getting ready for prom.

And, well, yes, Chloe Grace Moretz is just no Sissy Spacek. Not even close.

3/10

Game Change

Game Change had a good night at yesterday's Emmys. I watched it the day before, only very marginally aware of the nominations it received (well deserved every one).

A lot has been said and written about Julianne Moores impeccable portrayal of Sarah Palin. From what we have all seen of the on-screen persona of Mrs. Palin it seems pretty obvious that she was nothing short of brilliant.

Woody Harrelson, as the male lead, is equally great, as is - in true HBO manner - the entire cast of this play-by-play of John McCain's presidential campaign. Ed Harris is the unsung hero as a merely supporting John McCain, whose makeup is just as great as Julianne Moore's. 

The really disturbing part - if true - is the staff's decision to have Palin 'act' in her interviews and the debate, because it is easier to have her learn a couple of pages of script than make her understand the basics of the political issues. It is truely scary to think that someone this incapable got within a few electoral votes of the White House.

8/10