Dan's Papers - October 19, 2007 - Mike Vilenski's Mini-Movie Reviews

30 Days of Night
A pack of scary vampires who are actually apparently humans who have evolved less because they spent too much time in Alaska descends upon Barrow, Alaska at an opportune time: just before the sun sets for thirty days. This eerie small-town horror movie also doubles as a weird sort of anthropological thriller.

Rendition
A CIA analyst witnesses an unorthodox interrogation session at a secret detention facility outside the U.S., causing him to question his assignment. With Alan Arkin and Meryl Streep to back up Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon as well as an Oscar-winning director guiding all of them, this film may manage to transcend tabloid speculation about its stars and the political awkwardness of its thinly-veiled accusations.

Things We Lost in the Fire
A recent widow played by Halle Berry invites her late husband's best friend, played by Benecio Del Toro, to live with her and her children. The makeshift family works together to turn their lives around and cope with their losses, which comes off less cheesy than it sounds in this serious but refreshingly straightforward and sad drama.

Gone Baby Gone
Ben Affleck takes a stab at direction in this film about a pair of detectives looking for a four-year-old girl in one of Boston's grittiest neighborhoods. The dark film takes on a decidedly more complex standpoint as the film continues, and sparks moral discussions as well as Affleck's directorial career.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Cate Blanchett reprises her role as England's Queen Elizabeth, as the poised royal woman struggles with all the forces that can be squeezed into an epic: volatile international politics, domestic conspiracy theories and attempts to overthrow her, and a passionate romance with explorer Sir Walton Raleigh played by Clive Owen. Academy buzz is already brewing on this long-awaited sequel.

We Own The Night
Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Walhberg play brothers who took decidedly different paths in life - one a nightclub owner, the other a police officer. But a dangerous confrontation with mobsters causes the brothers to reunite, and, in between near fatal accidents, shoot-outs, and confusing, complex plotlines, perhaps reconcile.

In the Valley of Elah
Crash director Paul Haggis is back with a politically complex period peace from all the way back to 2004 when, as he was making Oscar-nominated films, a family lost their son, a soldier in Iraq. As both grief and anger set in, another seemingly unrelated cast of characters connect through life's twists and turns as they try and uncover the truth about a soldier's death. Will probably make you cry.

Why Did I Get Married
Tyler Perry asks the question that many a young spouse has posed at some point, as adultery ensues between four couples on a week-long vacation in the mountains. While that sounds like the set-up for a much seedier film than this one, Perry continues his strange current cult status with Janet Jackson as a co-star in this reflective comedy.