Films featuring
Sean Bean
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006
★★★★★
It’s not very funny, but at 30,000 feet you can’t just get up and walk out of the theater.
It’s not so unusual to find that Jodie Foster is the smartest thing about one of her own movies. Even when she’s slumming for a paycheck like she is in this potboiler, she projects a level of intelligence that often makes the film seem better than it really is.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Ms. Foster is the smartest thing about Flightplan. Sadly, that’s really no accomplishment, since the seat cushions on the airplane set are smarter than this simple, linear but mind-blowingly illogical rift on Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. If a person had the same level of brain activity found in this script, he or she would be harvested for organs before the doctors pulled the plug. (more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Jodie Foster, Marlene Lawston, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
★★★★★
It involves lifting, driving, and all sorts of other things a woman shouldn’t be doing, if you ask me.
The opening credits for North Country claim that the movie is “inspired on a true story.” That puts in near the lower end of the Hollywood food chain for “true” stories. At the top would be the actual true stories, which are understandably rare. Even the “truest” films tend to employ some level of creative license, compositing characters and compressing events to make the story more “cinematic.” The next level down would be “based on a true story,” which roughly translates to, “We made up some shit to tailor the story to the A-List actor that we busted our ass to sign.”
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Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Jeremy Renner, Michelle Monaghan, Sean Bean, Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson, Xander Berkley | Comments Off
Thursday, December 29th, 2005
★★★★★
You know when you really want something, you close your eyes and wish for it really hard? God is the guy that ignores you.
Take several parts Logan’s Run, add a few teaspoons of THX-1138 and shake it all together with a atypically restrained helping of Michael Bay, and you come up with The Island. This is a not-altogether original science fiction action movie that manages not to egregiously insult the intelligence of its audience. In other words, it’s not Armageddon, which is the minimum that I ask from a movie.
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Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Glenn Morshower, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean | 3 Comments »
Monday, December 19th, 2005
★★★★★
Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope.
It has forsaken these lands.
The middle entry in a trilogy often has the hardest job, picking up where the first story left off and leaving enough for the final part to build on. In other words, it has to hit the ground running, assuming you remember what you saw a year ago and then leave you hanging two or three hours later. I don’t count faux trilogies like the Indiana Jones movies, which are only called a “trilogy” because there just happened to be three movies. There was, however, no common narrative thread tying the films together, like there is for Lord of the Rings.
Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers successfully avoids the “middle movie” trap. (more…)
Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Andy Serkis, Bernard Hill, Billy Boyd, Brad Dourif, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, David Wenham, Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellan, John Noble, John Rhys-Davies, Karl Urban, Liv Tyler, Miranda Otto, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen | Comments Off
Monday, December 19th, 2005
★★★★★
I do not know what strength is in my blood, but I swear to you I will not let the White City fall, nor our people fail.
The first film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy had a tall order to fill. It had to establish the complex fantasy universe of Middle Earth and the peoples who inhabit it, while putting the story of the Ring into motion and accomplish this in the amount of time you could reasonably expect an audience to sit still for a movie. It probably would have been no problem to make a ten-hour film out of the first book alone.
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Posted by Paul McElligott in Movie Reviews | On Screen: Billy Boyd, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Dominic Monaghan, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm, Ian McKellan, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Viggo Mortensen | Comments Off
