Review: The Fourth Kind

Whoa.

That's the first word that comes to mind after watching this movie.

And when I mean "Whoa" .. I mean WHHHOOOOAAAAAA.....

Let me just state up front and for the record that when it comes to UFO's and aliens and abductions and stuff .. I leave that to Tim. He watches all those documentaries on cable and spends hours looking at YouTube footage.

I let him entertain himself while I watch Project Runway or the Real Housewives and when he gets over-excited by something and JUST. HAS. TO. SHOW. ME .. I nod in the right places and give the right adjectives to appease him.

Ok. After watching this movie, I think I'm going to take him a little more seriously.

This is the true story of Dr. Abigail Tyler of Nome, Alaska.

Dr. Tyler and her husband, Will,  were both psychologists, raising their son and daughter in Nome and treating a variety of patient's that all appear to have a common thread... all were having their sleep disturbed in the middle of the night and all were experiencing an unusual sighting of an owl.

That's all I'm going to tell you because you MUST watch this movie.. and the reason being is that everything that happened in Dr. Tyler's life was already documented on her own video tapes of patients.. police video tapes.. police audio tapes.. and the movie uses this real footage spliced into the very movie itself.

Because of this, the majority of the script was already written.. the rest was filled in using actual journal accounts and reports.

I've never seen anything like this before... ever.. and when I tell you it had me on the edge of my seat and seeing the actual footage had my chin on my knees.. let me tell you, that NEVER happens.. especially a movie  about alien abduction.

Milla Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler and at the beginning of the movie, she addresses the audience as herself and says that what we're going to see is disturbing .. it is. No doubt about it. Disturbing with a capital D.

She also says that we need to draw our own conclusions..

What this movie and tell me what YOU thought about it.. I'm really curious.

Review: Stone

I was looking forward to seeing this movie for a few reasons:

1. Nobody plays a psychotic/sociopath prison like Edward Norton. Just watch Primal Fear if you have any doubts.

2. I've been a fan of Robert DeNiro since 1978's The Deer Hunter

3. Milla Jovovich is definitely under rated as an actress and even though she's been is a slew of movies, she's unfortunately tagged with being the Resident Evil bitch

I was in the mood for a good movie.. one that I could really wrap my head around and mentally invest myself in.

DeNiro plays Jack, a parole officer a few weeks shy of retirement. One of his last cases is Stone, an 8 year inmate played by Edward Norton.

Doing time for setting his grandparent's house on fire after his cousin kills them, Stone is bugging to be paroled and enlists his wife, Jovovich to help by contacting Jack.

The movie starts with a lot of questions and never quite seems to answer them to my satisfaction, at least.

Was Jovovich's actions the initial intent?
Is Stone's new found religion a ploy?

There are a lot of subplots that are never really fully integrated into the story line. The opening scene shows a young Jack threatening to throw his child out a second floor window after his wife says she's leaving him. That scene is never discussed again and gives no insight to psyche.

The film ends with even more questions and while sometimes film that do that, do that well.. I was left feeling like I spent a few hours mixing up puzzle pieces only to lose one in the mix.

Or this may be the kind of film that you have to watch a few times to really get it's meaning.. I'll have to get back to you on that.

If you do see it, let me know what you think. Maybe I missed something. I hope so because it would be a shame to have let all that talent go to waste.