DVD Collectors Online

The Contract, a review by Silence_of_Lambs

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 its 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)

(From Michael's random reviews on January 5th, 2011)

The Orphanage, a review by addicted2dvd

Title: The Orphanage
Year: 2007
Director: J. A. Bayona
Rating: R
Length: 106 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1
Audio: Spanish: Dolby Digital Surround EX, Spanish: DTS ES (Discrete), Spanish: Dolby Digital Surround
Subtitles: English, Spanish

Stars:Plot:Extras:
Scene Access
Trailers
Featurettes
Gallery
Closed Captioned

My Thoughts:
This is a really good story that I enjoyed a lot. Though I must admit that I did have problems keeping up with the subtitles. People were just talking too fast and being a slow reader I had to keep pausing or rewinding through-out the whole movie. And that did take some of the enjoyment away for me. Which is the reason I mostly stick with movie made in English. But even so this is an enjoyable movie. I liked the whole idea of the orphanage for a setting and also liked the link to the Peter Pan story for the kids. Definitely worth checking out if you never did. And if you don't mind subtitles (if you don't speak Spanish).



(From Addicted2DVD's November Alphabet Marathon on November 10th, 2009)

Tom's Buffy and Angel Marathon, a review by Tom

19. I Only Have Eyes For You (1998-04-28)
Writer: Joss Whedon (Created By), Marti Noxon (Writer)
Director: James Whitmore Jr.
Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy Summers), Nicholas Brendon (Xander Harris), Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg), Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase), David Boreanaz (Angel), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles), Meredith Salinger (Grace Newman), Christopher Gorham (James Stanley), John Hawkes (George), Miriam Flynn (Ms. Frank), Brian Reddy (Police Chief Bob), James Marsters (Spike), Juliet Landau (Drusilla), Armin Shimerman (Principal Snyder), Brian Poth (Fighting Boy), Sarah Bibb (Fighting Girl), James Lurie (Mr. Miller), Ryan Taszreak (Ben), Anna Coman-Hidy (50's Girl #1), Vanessa Bednar (50's Girl #2)

A good episode. I especially like the fact, that Angel and Buffy switch the (gender) role at the re-enactment at the end.

Rating:

(From Tom's Buffy and Angel Marathon on February 15th, 2009)