Eye in the Sky (2016) – Review

Recensie Eye in the Sky

Wars are as old as mankind and preservation and/or expansion of territory and ideals often forms the basis for them. Since the second world war the way they are fought has changed dramatically. It used to mean that when a country would be in a war you would lose soldiers, but this isn’t always the case anymore. The introduction of drones is a good example. The pilots are safely on the ground on the other side of the world (something Good Kill showed) and the only loss you can experience is of your equipment and possibly some damage to your public image if a mission does not go as planned. Unfortunately the news shows that it sometimes does go wrong. Although there are rules to war, it is a situation in which emotions run high, parties want to achieve their goals and that sometimes might lead to an attempt to stretch the rules. That is also the case in Eye in the Sky. Lees verder

The Many Faces of… Helen Mirren

For this week’s “The Many Faces of…” I decided to pick Helen Mirren, who has done a lot of roles, so it took me a while to create this one. She started her career in theatre, did a lot of TV shows and through the years has done many movies as well. Although she really wasn’t on my radar before (have only seen her more recent work), the last couple of years she has shown a lot of great performances. Continue reading

Red (2010)

Despite the lakes of adrenaline action stars do get old eventually. This doesn’t prevent them from still making action movies though as we already saw earlier this year with The Expendables. Bruce Willis (55) already played a small part in it, but in action comedy Red he’s the star. The rest of the actors are not known for action movies, but Morgan Freeman (73!), John Malkovich (56) and Helen Mirren (65) show that they know how to handle weapons. Do these older actors still manage to make explosive action scenes or has their time come and should they start looking for retirement homes? Continue reading

State of Play (2009)

Cal McAffrey (Russel Crowe) is working as a journalist for The Washington Globe. He’s been in the business for years. The rise of blogs written by staff of the Globe are a threat to him as they are mostly gossip with no proper investigation done.
When he was still in college he was close with Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), who has managed to become a succesful senator and is leading a public hearing about the privatisation of the army. When Collins’s assistant suddenly dies it becomes very clear that she meant a lot to him. The media swarm him and as he needs to escape all the attention he turns to his old friend McAffrey.
When he convinces McAffrey that the death of his assistant was no accident the journalist decides to investigate the true reason of her death. It’s the start of uncovering a big story in which he has to go to the limits of his friendship in order to discover the truth. Continue reading