To the Summary!
Peter Bishop, undergrad at Yale gets invited to join the uber elite club, The Skulls. There he meets Lance Harbor, whose dad is Hayden Fox. Oh, and a fellow member is Dr. Gil Grissom.
These may not be the actual character names. Can you figure out where the above characters are from?
To the Cast!
Joshua Jackson - Lucas McNamara
Paul Walker - Caleb Mandrake
Hill Harper - Will Beckford
Leslie Bibb - Chloe Whitfield
Christopher McDonald - Martin Lombard
William Petersen - Ames Levritt
Craig T. Nelson - Litten Mandrake
To the Deeper Thoughts!
So, you've got this Yale student, we will call him Lucas. Lucas wants to go to law school but its very expensive, and he is not a rich boy. So, as any normal college student, Lucas aspires to get selected to join an elite secret society. Perfectly normal, right?
Lucas gets paired up with Caleb as soul mates. You know, you Skulls buddy for life. Then Caleb kills a reporter friend of Lucas'. Lucas finds out, and is now torn between justice and his new awesome life as a Skull.
He chooses justice of course. There's a good old fashioned duel at an elite private island, and the matter is closed.
Not a terrible movie. Nothing to special, although the cast is fairly impressive. If you have a couple hours to kill, good to have on as background noise.
I give it 19/23 secret societies.
-the reporter
-the artsy one
Cyclops: Well, what would you prefer? Yellow spandex?
Going into this movie, oh, 11 or so years ago, I knew very little about X-Men other than names of the characters and their powers. So, I went into this movie with no expectations other than to be entertained. And I was not disappointed. This is a great super hero movie. One of my favorites.
Plot here is simple. Magneto wants to take over the world, and Professor X is going to stop him. In the process of this occurring, we are introduced to some of the bigger X-Men and villains. Cyclops. Wolverine. Rouge. Mystique. Storm. Toad.
One of the things I forgot about this movie was how well it set up for X2. One of the cleanest endings to any movie with a predictable sequel. Not much to review here, just a simple super hero action movie.
I give it 8/13 X-Men
Chief Klough: You're the skipper now. And the skipper always knows what to do whether he does or not.
Ok, I would like to put a few things at the beginning of this review.
1. I know that it was the British who found the original Enigma coding machine. Cause, ya know, of the credit that the film makers gave at the end of the movie.
2. When doing research on this movie, I discovered I have a bone to pick with the director, Jonathan Mostow. Apparently, in April of 2000 Mostow is quoted as saying that the movie 'Das Boot' is based on a lie. Errrr......Clearly Mostow does not realize that the movie 'Das Boot' is based on the book 'Das Boot' which was written by a German war correspondent who spent time on a U-Boat. *Sigh* Really?
Moving on...
This is not meant to be a movie telling a specific story or piece of history. Its meant to be exactly what it is. A taut, well paced action movie. With a heck of a cast (Paxton! Jovi! Keitel! Mcconaughey!), it delivers.
Basically, you've got a US sub that is disguised as a German re-supply boat so they can take over a damaged U-Boat to crack the German Enigma code. Needless to say, all does not go according to plan. The US sub is torpedoed by the real German resupply boat, and the survivors gather on the U-571. The remainder of the movie is taken up by the survivors trying to evade a German destroyer that has come to investigate. Through some inventive planning, the crew is able to escape the destroyer,but the U-571 is lost.
I give it 4/5 depth charges.
