Phew!

And so The Twilight Saga - Breaking Dawn II - brings the series to a close - mercifully. While I do not even profess to understand what the series was all about, it seemed to me that the whole point of this movie was a confrontation between vampires and - you guessed it - more vampires - on a frozen lake. As to what the confrontation is all about - Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) are protecting their child - Renesmee Cullen (Mackenzie Foy) - from the Volturi. Outnumbered but in a tightly knit unit, the remarkable powers of the small resistance are put to a reasonably arduous test. But - nothing extreme. This, you see, is a patchwork romance and beyond a stunningly handsome/ beautiful cast, I suppose the rest is peripheral

9/20

Lost and Found

A movie that is easy to explain! Here comes retired CIA Agent Brian Mills (Liam Neeson) with wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). In come the mafia – and after some accelerated sightseeing of the bazaars of Istanbul – take the wife and daughter hostage. Needless to say, the CIA will trump Albanian rouges no matter how well-trained the latter might be. It is only interesting that the same could possibly include grenades merrily thrown across rooftops in densely populated areas. I recall being mildly entertained while Taken 2 was on, but not much else.

 

10.5/20

To Err (repeatedly) is Human

Newly out of work Travis (Adrien Brody) finds himself volunteering for a paid experiment, with the promise of $ 1000/ day of compensation, for a period of 14 days. The study – to play the role of one of the prisoners as part of an experiment, wherein other volunteers, notably Barris (Forest Whittaker) act as the guards. In an experiment where the only restrictions on prisoners include never speaking to guards unless spoken to, and finishing all of their food, simple transgressions take an ugly turn as the prisoners led by Travis grapple with one diabetic in their midst, the uncertain food, et al, while the guards led by Barris take increasingly violent and regressive steps to address what they see as a growing challenge to their authority. In an experiment that would ostensibly terminate on the first hint of violence, much blood is shed before the same comes to an abrupt halt, and the movie trails off with a call to justice. With overtones of America’s reality of Guantanomo Bay, and movies such as Blindness, The Experiment shows just how degenerate a regular group of humans can become in a setting that has the slightest hint of an imbalance of power. A good movie that makes for some really heavy viewing

13.5/20