Movie Reviews - 9/3/07

Here's my wrap-up of this weekend's Netflix rentals:

The Quiet
I don't even know how this one made my queue, other than it has Elisha Cuthbert in it. It's a drama or something, but it was a solid all-around movie. The underlying theme is that Elisha is doing it with her dad. No joke. That's not giving away much, since we become aware of it about 15 minutes in. There's also a deaf girl who lives with the family because her parents are dead, which of course becomes integral to the story. Finally, I have to give some credit to the casting decision of new-to-the-scene Katy Mixon. Her DOB isn't given in IMDB, so until I know she's not underage I'll leave my comments at that.

Crank
I'm not much of a fan of Jason Statham and his movies, since that style of editing hurts my head to watch. However, if there was ever a movie to do it, it's this one since it worked perfectly with the story line. The movie is based on a great concept, and everyone did a good job pulling it off. Basically, he is a hitman who has to keep his adrenaline pumping to stay alive. Besides the action, there are interesting ways he does this, from pounding Red Bull to having sex with Amy Smart in Chinatown on the sidewalk in front of 50 people to stealing epinephrine from Dennis Reynolds. Overall it was good if you like action movies.

May 6th
This movie may require some explanation: On May 6, 2002, Pim Fortuyn (a candidate for Prime Minister of the Netherlands) was killed by an environmentalist nut-job. Fortuyn's party would have likely gotten a plurality in the upcoming election. It can't be overstated how his election would have shaken up Dutch politics. He was the first major political figure to speak out against the massive immigration of Muslims into the country, and this drove the Left there absolutely batty. He was regularly compared to Hitler and such. This movie is a historical fiction thriller (I guess) about the people who may have been behind the assassination. It's an interesting look into Dutch political society, but it shouldn't be taken as a documentary by any means. This movie is also the last by Theo van Gogh, a descendant of the painter. Because he also was vocally against massive Muslim immigration, he was killed on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim.

The movie was decent enough, but I hate subtitles. Don't moviemakers know how lazy I am? If you can handle subtitles, it's OK as a look into Dutch politics. The conspiracy stuff was pretty stupid (Occam's Razor and all). I would have preferred a documentary about the whole thing, but I shouldn't dislike a movie for what it's not, rather than what it is.