Summary:
Three stories told simultaneous in ninety minutes of real time: a Republican Senator (Tom Cruise) gives an hour-long interview to a skeptical television reporter (Meryl Streep), detailing a strategy for victory in Afghanistan; two special forces (Michael Peña and Derek Luke) ambushed on an Afghani ridge await rescue as Taliban forces close in; a political-sciences professor (Robert Redford) at a California college invites a promising student (Andrew Garfield) to re-engage. Decisions press upon the reporter, the student, and the soldiers.

My Thoughts:
This is a movie about decisions and their consequences. From the small everyday decisions of individuals to the "big" decisions of whole nations.

Redford did a great job with this movie which sadly isn't as well known as it would have deserved.
The great combination of three (seemingly) independent plot strings works extremely well. The Cast is doing a hell of a job.

It's a slow movie that tells it's story in the pace needed and it makes it's point clear. It is a movie with a mission, but not with an agenda, which is good.
It leaves a bunch of lose ends, but it wouldn't work if they were all solved.
This is one of those very rare movies that need (and easily get) your full attention, and since it's a movie about decisions it leaves the decision to you what you want to take out of this movie.

I simply love it.

My Rating: (out of possible 5)

Summary:
Ray Keene (John Cusack), a father who wants to redeem himself in the eyes of his son (Jamie Anderson), is trying to bring Carden (Morgan Freeman), a world-class assassin to justice. All the while, he must protect his son and evade the assassin's team who are methodically hunting them down in the wilderness.

My Thoughts:
Now here we have a movie with a world-class start, that sadly can't keep up with it's extremely promising beginning.
Very soon it's obvious that Cusack and Freeman are taking this as a routine-job. These two alone could make a movie sparkle, but both lack the necessary esprit for this here, so we learn that these two alone could pull a movie down to an average mass-production.
It's an entertaining movie, but it's only another variation of the old "Run & Hide"-genre.
The several implied subjects (father-/son conflict, or "the assassin as a tool of politics"), remain strangely flat and are miraculously solved at the end of the movie.
This movie is a "Must" for fans of either Cusack, Freeman or the genre. All others don't miss much if they never saw it. Most of it looks awfully familiar anyway.

My Rating: (out of possible 5)

Summary:
Based on true childhood experiences The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys (Owen Kline and Jesse Eisenberg) dealing with their parents' (Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels) divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.

My Thoughts:
Got this film as part of a boxset that was less expensive than the other movie would have been if bought seperately.

It is, as I learned a highly praised movie and the winner of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
It too is a film that tries to capture life as it is and it turns out that "life" is mostly dull, boring and banal.
The acting of all participants is great, sadly the plot cannot compete with the capabilities of the cast. It took all my mental powers to get through this movie and I was extremely annoyed in the end.
But Jeff Daniels is giving us a pseudo-intellectual college teacher that would rescue the whole film if this role wouldn't be so dislikeable that you'd wish for brass-knuckles should you ever meet this guy in real life.
Two very annoying plausibility-leaks (out of many more):
1) The younger brother (about 10 years old!) gets caught twice with a beer can in his hands (once by his older brother, once by his father) and this results in ... nothing.
2) In 1986 the attempt to say that the Pink Floyd song "Hey You" (from the quite unknown album "The Wall") was written by yourself, is so obviously doomed to fail that noone with a working brain would have tried this. Walt (the older brother) does this, and even wins a poetry contest (until he gets caught some time later)

So my rating is 5 stars for the acting 0 stars for the plot. In total this is

My Rating: (out of possible 5)

No worries Jon, I can take it.  And it's a nice shortcut of recommending a movie to me: Either refer to RGM or call it pretentious. 

I haven't seen any of Noah Baumbach's films yet. Both The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding sounded kinda interesting, but I never got that must-see vibe from any of the reviews. And Greenberg has Ben Stiller, so I'm excused.

Almost agreed, it's not the movie that is brilliant, it's the acting, which is so intense that you don't even realize the acting anymore.
Sadly this performance was (for me) completely wasted on this film.
There may be people who actually like this, I'm just not sure if I would like them.

You sympathise with a pseudo-intellectual, socially challenged asshole that tries to rape a student?

Wow. Wouldn't have expected that. 

That seemed surprising to me... IMDb credits Randy newman. Did Eastwood make some additional music or is it just a typo...?

Only just saw this! All I can say is, at least he was honest...