PoochyB’s Flick Reviews

Vantage Point wasn’t really what I expected, and it was better than I expected. Of course, now, for you to judge how good this movie is going to be by reading this review, you’ll have to know what I was expecting. Alright, I’m confusing myself.

Spoiler here: The president is attending a summit addressing terrorism in some foreign country (I can’t remember the country), and gets assassinated. But does he…???

Surprisingly, this was one of the better action/thrillers I’ve seen so far this year. It’s told in Rashomon-style, replaying the same story with several different perspectives. William Hurt is the president, Matthew Fox (from Lost) and Dennis Quaid (from In Good Company, Traffic, and Far From Heaven) are his bodyguards. Forest Whitaker from The Last King of Scotland (which was amazing, by the way) is this tourist with a video camera. Sigourney Weaver had a small role as a newscast director. This film actually had a pretty all-star cast.

It won’t keep you guessing until the end, but there are some decent chase scenes and plenty of suspense.

I’m going to get right into it. I saw the preview for Lars and the Real Girl a while back and didn’t think much of it. Honestly, how good can a movie about a guy and a plastic doll be? Ok, it can be pretty good. But the previews didn’t sell me.

Two weeks ago, a friend recommended it over dinner. So I thought I’d give it a shot. Ryan Gosling had a string of movies that I really enjoyed: Fracture, Half Nelson, The Notebook, The United States of Leland, Murder by Numbers, and Remember the Titans. And Emily Mortimer, who I loved in Dear Frankie, and Patricia Clarkson, who I loved in The Station Agent, both costarred.

Spoiler here. Gosling is Lars. He’s a loner. He hates it when people touch him. And he’s delusional, which is why he went and got himself a plastic girlfriend. Midway through the movie I remember thinking to myself, “There had better be a killer ending…” There wasn’t. The meat of the story is how the town embraced this fake girlfriend of his and plays along. I guess it was touching in that sense.

No knock on Gosling’s performance, nor those of the rest of the cast, but I thought the story was pretty lame. It had its moments. There were definitely some funny parts. But funny in the sense that what was happening was so ridiculous, not actually funny.

The only other film on director Craig Gillespie’s resume is Mr. Woodcock. I haven’t seen that one yet, but will consider it since I’m a big Billy Bob Thornton fan. It’s dry humor, that’s for sure. Maybe a bit too dry for me.