Tagged: movies
I watched a movie titled: Unthinkable over the holiday weekend. Which I will say, did have some disturbing imagery. So, for those that can't stomach the likes of the saw movies... don't watch it. However, I did enjoy the movie and the situation that was trying to be portrayed. If you are watching it, and find yourself siding with "all the other assholes" or siding with Samuel L's "H" character, or do you find yourself siding with Carrie-Anne Moss's "Agent Brody" character? Personally... I think I was always in the position of Agent Brody, it seemed at times she might have questioned her own resolve to what she thought was right... but she maintained that stance.
If your wondering what the movie is about and aren't going to watch it... SPOILER ALERT....
The movie is about an (white... if that really matters...) American Islamic citizen, who's made a video of and planted "3" nuclear bombs in "3" American cities, and that those bombs will detonate in 6 days if his demands are not met. He then purposefully gets himself caught, which is when they bring in FBI Agent Brody and H. The character H's history, skill set and purpose is somewhat of a mystery at first... all you know is he's protected by the highest levels within our government. It turns out that he's an interrogator. The type that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Which is where Agent Brody figures out what is going to go on... The terrorist is then revealed to be captured, and already in the process of being interrogated. If I remember correctly... he's being given the equivalent of water boarded... without the board. Something that's not learned about until at least a third of the way into the movie... is this terrorist, is not only an American citizen... he's special forces trained, in nuclear bombs. Has worked as a contractor for the Russians, Iranians, and probably more that I missing... either way... He knows what he's doing, had access and the ability to do what he said he's done. (There was a line in there that had the Iranians saying they lost 18lbs of plutonium and that our terrorist was the one that had to have had it. Which surprised H that they were so forth coming, and the reply was that if things went south, they didn't want us to think they had anything to do with it, and have us bomb the shit out of them.) Anyway, H begins with the torture, in order to get the information about where the bombs were planted. They work on him for 3 days? and the most they get out of him at one point is a location of "one" of the bombs... which, from the video "should" have been there... what ended up happening was that they went to the roof where a simple trigger was setup on a power breaker box, that triggered a small bomb of C4 to blow up in a shopping mall, killing 53 people. This is where Agent Brody seems to start questioning her own conviction of what is really right and wrong. And is where she allows H to go a bit further... and by further... he brings in the terrorist Ex-wife.... where he was going to make the terrorist watch as he tortured his wife.... The "others" (ie: all the other characters that have been around this... that have been objectionable, some overruled, but wavered quite a bit over what they would allow) all objected to this method H was about to use... which is where H swings his arm, hand holding a knife just as the ex-wife was going to be taken away... in which she is killed... This... in the end still does not break him, and is still not giving any more information. Which is where the "Unthinkable" portion comes into play... H wants the terrorists kids brought to him. Yeah... unthinkable right? With lots of objections from everyone, and H even promising to not "touch" the kids... just wants to make the terrorist think he will.... H is running out of time... locks himself in the room with the kids and preps them... while the terrorist is sitting outside now, watching.... This causes him to give up the three locations of the bombs, which in the story line they had found one on their own without him... and one of the locations matched with the one they knew about. Problem was... the bombs had only 4.5lbs of plutonium.... meaning they were still 4.5lbs shy of the full 18lbs that the Iranians said they lost. And this what the information H was trying to get out of him.
This is where the story was leading up to.... the terrorist had been playing them the whole time as H states in the movie.... he never told them about the C4 bomb... and he told them about "3" bombs. Meaning that if they were able to break him (the terrorist), he would still only have to tell them about "3" bombs... not the 4th that he had enough plutonium for. H was stopped before he was able to do anything to the kids, and Agent Brody essentially said to the possibility of a 4th, "Let it go off then". As the terrorist was able to grab a gun and kill himself, she took the kids and left the building. Which is where the movie ends. You never know if there was an actual 4th bomb... but it stands to reason that there would be.
The question I believe the movie is posing... is How far do you go? With as far as H went, they still never knew really if there was a 4th for sure? It took a couple days for the terrorist to say what his demands were... but when he did... two things... stop supporting fake regimes in Islamic countries, and pull all military forces out of Islamic countries.... yeah... that's it. Which is what I believe it would take to get them to leave us alone... So... again... How far do you go? Is torture ever ok? The research is in... and Agent Brody stated it several times... Torture rarely reveals anything useful.... because they get to a point where they'll say anything they think will get you to stop, regardless of how much they actually know.
November 4, 2010 Posted by mitch |
movies |
I went and saw The Social Network yesterday, and I have to say I liked it... So much so... that if I was a movie critic rating movies out of a possible 4 stars... I'd easily give it 3.5 or possibly even the full 4. Since I'm not a movie critic, I don't feel the need to describe the movie to you. I do however want to say that I'm not sure I understand where people were coming from when they said that it didn't highlight Zuckerberg as being a really great guy. Which I left with a different opinion of him.
While the movie didn't really say if he did rat on his friend about the chicken, which I'm thinking no one really is sure... and only Mark himself could answer that question. Everyone was saying that he was a womanize and such... which... again... I didn't see... the people he was around definitely were... He seems more socially inadequate to do such things on his own to me. Honestly... I left the movie relating him more to me than anything. Granted I'm not nearly as brilliant as he, but could easily make the argument that we're both socially inept. The level of tech speak in the movie was also impressive, shows that the writers actually did some research and talked to some real geeks to get the script right in some of those scenes... and admittedly... I have also performed such wget trickery among other various things... which is all I'll say about that.
I love watching Survivor simply because of that human element, I revel in the deceit people on the show perform for each other... how fake they are to each others faces, with the individual camera time, having it all come out. Even tho, that part of their persona can be complete bullshit as well. I have to imagine I wouldn't last long on that show...
That is the extent of "Reality TV" I watch. The rest, I can't stand. The Social Network, I loved, and will buy it so I can watch it again... and again.
April 19, 2010 Posted by mitch |
movies |
I'm not one to read comics or anything, so, I loved the movie. I've read complaints that some of the movies coming out based on comic books suck because they deviate so much from the comic book.. (or books for that matter... aka Harry Potter, Twilight ect... ) I just don't care. Yes they're "based" on them, but honestly... things that work well in a book don't work well on the big screen.... and vice versa actually... a book written about a unique movie... would suck equally. As for the movie Kick-Ass, I liked it.
December 18, 2006 Posted by mitch |
movies |
I rented this movie over the weekend. Its a documentary that won some awards in the Sundance Film Festival, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested. I just wanted to make a couple notes and thoughts about it here, as the movie stuck to the issue and truely was bipartisan with regard to how it treated either of our two dominant parties currently in office. In case your wondering the synopsis of the movie off imdb reads:
He may have been the ultimate icon of 1950s conformity and postwar complacency, but Dwight D. Eisenhower was an iconoclast, visionary, and the Cassandra of the New World Order. Upon departing his presidency, Eisenhower issued a stern, cogent warning about the burgeoning "military industrial complex," foretelling with ominous clarity the state of the world in 2004 with its incestuous entanglement of political, corporate, and Defense Department interests.
Or in my own words, it talks about why we fight, what have all of our major military excursions been about since the end of World War II. What I got out of the movie was that there is alot of money in war. I also heard a first hand account of the plan to go to war with Iraq months before 9/11 happened. Yeah, thats right, they wanted to go to war with Iraq, not because of the were harboring terrorists, as we've now finally had Bush admit to, but because it was predetermined to. The movie makes allegations of a think tank idea that there is some kind of world domination plan which was the reason for the push to get into Iraq and oust our "former friend" Saddam. Which, I don't find to unbelievable actually... I'm also kind of a cynic.
To however, the most upsetting parts of all of this, is our current administrations alienation of our *inalienable* rights. (namely, liberty, political and due process) Which were sternly warned against by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. Why is it that people can't seem to remember history? I'm wondering why we have military bases all over the world actually... whats the point of them? If were not trying to rule the world like the ancient romans did, why do we act like it? Why do we constantly dabble in foreign affairs, onces that we don't have any business in meddling in?
9/11 was a horrible time, and those responsible deserve to be punished, which is why I've never heard anyone argue that going into Afghanistan was the wrong thing to do. We *knew* they were there. Iraq on the other hand was a different story. Saddam was doing horrible things to his people definitely. Making claims (read: lies) that there was an immanent threat posed by Iraq unless we take action, without a shred of proof to back it up? How dare you. People need to wake up and look at what the leaders of this country are doing. If you continue to live in denial/ignorance, the day their policies effect you on your front door step will be too late.
December 4, 2004 Posted by mitch |
movies |
My wife and I were shopping at the best buy, and guess what movie we found? Flight of the Navigator! I used to watch this movie over and over when I was a kid. I loved it. It was one of my favorite movies as a child and last time I looked it up, it wasn't out on DVD yet. But we were just browsing the Disney section and we were about to leave, and I saw it on the bottom shelf! We were so excited and bought it and Spiderman 2. My wife's been so excited and shes just starting it up again for the second time today. Any way, I'm pretty excited myself, and I think I'm going to go watch... and hopefully talk my wife into letting me watch Spider-man 2 sometime tonight :)
July 24, 2004 Posted by mitch |
movies |
I saw it yesterday, I got off work a bit early because I had to stay up last night upgrading an internal DNS server. So I went over to the theater in the mall and watched it. All in all I liked it. I had read a couple reviews before I saw it, and some were saying it lacked in the plot so you knew where it was going. Which, to some degree I agree with. There was only one real plot twist, if you could call it that. However, I still liked the movie. It brings back childhood fantasies of wanting to be a secret agent(you know how kids are)... I've always enjoyed a good spy movie. They're always my favorites. I think I just might go out and buy the third book The Bourne Ultimatum. It looks interesting and I probably will enjoy it. My delema is, I'm not sure exactly what the movies left out. So I'd probably be better off to read all three.
June 26, 2004 Posted by mitch |
movies |
Got The Last Samurai from netflix the other day, and I got a chance to watch it last night. I liked it. Not sure why I didn't really want to see it before. Guess it was because I had heard everyone say they didn't like it. I don't recall however, what it was they were saying they didn't like about it. I'm not a huge fan of Tom Cruise, because I think he tries to hard. With that aside however, I liked it.
June 13, 2004 Posted by mitch |
movies |
I went and saw this movie on saturday. I liked it, regardless of what the people on imdb are saying. I agree they didn't explore or explain much in the "Ridick Universe" as much as I would have liked. But it wasn't cheezy like alot of movies have been. The ending could have used a little bit more depth as well, and still could have left it open for another sequal like they did. Anway, I'm not saying it was a great movie, I'm saying it was good enough I don't regret seeing it. And because of the nature of it, I liked it better than "The Day after Tomarrow", but thats personal opion. My wife would disagree with me.
