Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Six Degrees of Separation (1993) R - 4 Stars

This one gets my recommendation as one of those movies that messes with your mind. Starring Will Smith and Donald Sutherland, Smith is great playing a well educated, con man. The "six-degrees-of-separation paradigm" says that if you find the right string of friends, relatives, colleagues and lovers, you can move in six steps to connect them. Everyone in the world is touched somehow by this 6th person's connection therefore everyone out there somewhere/anywhere is connected to you in 6 steps.

Flan (Donald Sutherland) and Ouisa Kittredge (Stockard Channing) are married, living in Manhattan and art dealers to the higher ups. They are throwing a party one night to sell some art when Paul (Will Smith) knocks on the door. He tells them he is a friend of their children whom he went to school with. Seems he's been mugged and he just needs a place for the night till he can get himself together in the morning.

Paul is extremely proper and elegant in appearance and he offers to help fix dinner for them for payment. He claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier and tells them about his life in the upper class white area of New York. They Kittredge's are mesmerized with this young man who cooks like a chef and tells them magnificent stories. He helps close an art deal that night. Everything is grand until they find Paul in bed with another man in their home and immediately ask him to leave. Once gone, they realize how much he has touched them.

When the couple gets together with some of their friends, they find out that Paul has been conning all of them with his fascinating stories. Paul has touched them all in a way they'll re-evaluate their lives.

MGM Distribution
Director: Fred Schepisi
Writer: John Guare
Producers: Arnon Milchan, Fred Schepisi

Sunday, January 25, 2015

The Reef (2010) R - 3½ Stars

The suspense in this movie is pretty good. I could feel my blood pressure raise more than a few times. Based on a true story, the movie offers you a good thrill ride. Though I would have liked to have gotten more acquainted with the characters before they were thrown out to sea, you really begin to feel their fear yelling to yourself, "Swim, you fools swim!"

A brother and sister, plus their significant others, Luke (Damian Walshe-Howling), Kate (Zoe Naylor), Suzie (Adrienne Pickering), Matt (Gyton Grantley) and Warren (Kieran Darcy-Smith) head off to explore Australia's Great Barrier Reef. When the boat tears a hole in the bottom of its haul, it capsizes leaving it's five travelers in the water. Now,the group has to decide if  they stay with the boat hoping to be rescued or put themselves in shark infested waters,  to swim to a shore more than 12 miles away they can't even see?


Lightning Entertainment, Screen Australia, Image Entertainment
Director: Andrew Traucki
Writer: Andrew Traucki
Producers: Andrew Traucki, Michael Robertson
I viewed 7/12