THE REVIEW CORNER

Starring: Robert Redford Directed by: J.C. Chandor Screenplay by: J.C. Chandor Robert Redford is lost at sea.  Please somebody rescue him!  He's a terrific actor!!      Imagine Life of Pi without the tiger in the boat.  It's just a man and his thoughts while he is lost at sea.   All Is Lost is pretty much exactly that.  Robert Redford's character, known only as "the man", is sailing by himself when his boat is struck by a floating cargo container, ripping a massive hole in the side of the boat and causing lots of water to rush in, but not fully sinking the boat.  After suffering this blow and going through a massive storm, the boat eventually sinks, leaving the man stranded at sea in his life raft, waiting to be rescued.  Will he survive?      I'm a big fan of a simple story.  I don't like to think too much about a movie's story unless the story calls for audiences to think.   All Is Lost is perhaps the sim...

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, and Brad Pitt Directed by: Steve McQueen Screenplay by: John Ridley, based on Solomon Northup's autobiography 12 Years a Slave     And here we have another film about a dark period in United States history.     Solomon Northup is a free man, born and raised as such.  He lives in New York with his family in the 1840s and is a successful violinist.  One day, two men from a carnival company notice his talents and want to hire him.  They deceive him and kidnap him, and in turn, sell him into slavery in the South, where he is given an entirely new identity.  From this point forward, he is known to the slave owners as Platt.     He is first sold to a plantation owner, Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch).  Ford is not a tremendously nice slave owner, but certainly more benevolent than the plantation owner to whom Ford sells Platt (Solomon Nort...

Starring: Tom Hanks,  Barkhad Abdi, and   Barkhad Abdirahman   Directed by: Paul Greengrass Screenplay by: Billy Ray Based upon the book "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea" by Richard Phillips      Yay!!!  Another pirate movie!!  Oh wait...it's not that kind of pirate movie.  My bad...      So this might not be your average pirates with the eye patches and the wooden legs, but this is the true story of Somali pirates who, in 2009, went out to sea and took over the cargo ship Maersk Alabama.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the story, the captain, Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), was abducted for a ransom by the Somali pirates and ultimately (spoiler alert) it took SEAL team six to rescue him from the hijackers.        For many of us who remember watching this story play out on the news, it's in pretty recent memory because it only happened four years...

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney Directed by:  Alfonso Cuarón Screenplay by:  Alfonso Cuarón and  Jonás Cuarón      Disaster movie fans, aspiring astronauts, and people who just like space in general, this is the film for you!      Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are on a space walk fixing the Hubble space telescope.  A satellite that's been shot down by a missile has created a debris field, causing a chain reaction and hitting other satellites and debris at their altitude which flies straight toward them.  Much of the equipment and much of the ship gets destroyed and the mission must be aborted.  But with the ship destroyed too, it's up to Stone and Kowalski to figure out how they're going to get back to Earth.        One of the things I love about this film is that there are only two actors in the entire film.  Every other person listed in the cast is on...