Review: Flightplan (2005)

Another family recommendation for me here. My love of mystery/thriller movies must stem from them, but I do have to take their suggestions with a pinch of...something. They thought San Andreas was the best action movie of the year, and well, they’re still telling me how much they loved After Earth. Bless them. After I told them about Non-Stop (which I shamelessly loved, making me a huge hypocrite I know!) they said it had a very similar plot to Flightplan, and I should get on that. So I did!  I must have watched this the year it came out, it was so long ago i had forgetten the film even existed!

Flightplan (2005) centres on Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster), a bereaved woman who is flying back from from Berlin to America with her young daughter. On board is the coffin carrying Kyle’s husband. Shortly after their flight takes off, Kyle’s daughter goes missing, and after a brief search of the plan, she is nowhere to be found. What’s worse is that the passengers around her claim to not even remember seeing her daughter in the first place.

So, it’s difficult to discuss this movie without spoilers, but I’m going to do my best! Kyle is aided in her search by Air Marshall Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) who honestly, to me, looked stoned the entire time. Is that part of Sarsgaard’s general demeanor? I haven’t seen enough of him to know, but he was instantly dislikeable to me. 

Of better help to Kyle is the plane’s main pilot, Captain Rich (Sean Bean). Now, come on...don’t you want to watch Flightplan now just to see if he lives or dies? I won’t tell you… My memory fails me so you'll have to tell me at the next movie night ;-)

As most movies of this nature do, we have several distractions thrown at us to confuse us about what’s really happening. Only, in this case, they seem to serve no purpose. At one point, Kyle picks out a couple of passengers and says she remembers seeing them outside her house the night before, watching her. The passengers act suspicious instantly and later in the film physically attack Kyle, which no one seems to care about, and unless I fell asleep like Kyle, I don’t remember that plot point being tied up at all.   Turns out I don't remember this film at all, I think I have a combination of this and Panic Room all caught up in knots in my aged brain!

Despite that though, I did enjoy the movie overall. It’s not the best mystery movie I’ve seen, but it did keep me guessing. About a third of the way though I had a brainwave and sat all smug knowing I’d worked out the plot already, but I was proven wrong, and I like that.  So much for me adding to this review, can you please text me a plot summary so I have some idea what this film was actually about haha!

Give me Non-Stop over Flightplan, but it was an enjoyable watch at least. Now to adjust my Sean Bean ‘survived or died’ chart…

Review: Taxi Driver (1976)

So the Blind Spot challenge has been a bit hit and miss for me, time constraints meant I missed the first two movies but I'm trying to keep up now.  Therefore, two weeks ago we arranged the movie night to watch our April movie - Taxi Driver.  As an contender for the Oscars Best Picture, I assumed it would be amazing.

The Blind Spot Series is proving to be a great way for Jenna and I to keep putting film nights in the diaries! This month we’re trying to be healthy so whilst Jenna cooked enough stir-fry to feed a wedding party (thanks for the extra lunch by the way!) I picked up some Weight Watchers dessert and headed to hers, armed with Taxi Driver on DVD. It proudly boasted its new ‘Wide Screen Presentation’, oh boy…

An unstable war veteran, Travis (Robert DeNiro) finds a job as a night time New York taxi driver to kill time after developing insomnia.  His obsession with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and his determination to save pre-adolescent prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster) lead him down a dark and dangerous path.

It was so strange to see Robert DeNiro in this! I've never seen any of his older films so I had to keep reminding myself it was even him.

I feel like is should love this movie because it is so highly praised by so many people.  I have read countless reviews from both professional critics and the bloggerverse and I just don't understand it.  I just found it a bit boring, it was a interesting subject and a creative take on the effects insomnia can have on a person but it felt like it dragged. 

All the synopsis's I have found for this, imply that him being psychotic and his obsessions lead him to extreme violence, however this seems to take forever to get to and feels dragged at the beginning and the middle.  Now I know this won't be a popular opinion so please be kind :-/ but I just didn't enjoy it.  Once it gets to the latter part of the film, it starts to get interesting and I love the shoot out scenes and the hospital scene near the end.

After Pulp Fiction last month, I wanted to mull over this film for a while before I really made a verdict on it. Taxi Driver to me was like the 70's answer to Drive (although I realise that should actually be the other way round) and it took me several viewings to really appreciate Drive for what it was. I hated it the first time round. I wouldn't say I hated Taxi Driver at all, it was an interesting character story and I was never bored, but I wasn't thrilled either.

Maybe, I need to watch it again to get a better feel for the making of the film now that I know what to expect.  The actors were all great, without a doubt, one of the highlights being Harvey Keitel but I don't feel like there was much of a story to it.  The shooting, I guess was great when it was made in the 70's but now comes across a little bit cheesy to me.

I think I need a second viewing, too! Although it's going to take a serious amount of willpower to get round it it...

I hope I don't get too much of a battering for this but that's the point of reviews I guess, multiple opinions :-)

After 3 cracking Blind Spot films, maybe it was about time we had one I didn't love so much.