TAKEN

Maggie Grace as teenager Kim Mills is not a natural worrier. She is ready and set to follow the rock group U2 all over Europe as they gig, presumably with little plans for the daily travelling movements. Her dad wastes a great amount of time thinking about what could happen - pleading with her to terminate her plans and stay safe in America. What does he know that we do not know? Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) loves his daughter and seems to have taken a congratulatory early retirement from the CIA for family needs. He wants to be close to his daughter even though his relationship with his wife (Famke Janssen) is broken. 'I know the world' Bryan tells them and sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. His career job has forced him to contemplate the intentions of those around him. Since many bad things often can't help but rear their heads when he is about, it is a good thing the man is skilled at playing invisible.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE

Lake View, Terrace, Los Angeles, California. Say it aloud, for it is the exact suburb made infamous by the precursor to the 1992 LA Riots - the damning assault on Rodney King by the police department. King was a black man, who came away from the beating wishing for a day when we all can get along. 'Let's try to work it out' he said. 'Let's try to beat it'. Now, in Neil LaBute's "Lakeview Terrace" the situation is reversed approximately. Samuel L. Jackson is the cop who lives in that neighbourhood and knows the whole King saga. A new couple are moving in to the home next to Jackson's; the layout of the homes is such that the driveways slant beside each other in an angular fashion. This lends itself to easy viewing of your neighbour's activities. Jackson has a problem with the interracial lovers - he sugarcoats it in frivolous nitpicks like naked jacuzzi sessions and discarded cigarette butts, but the bottom line is, he ain't a fan of a white man planning to impregnate a fellow black.

LIVE

If you have ever read Stephen King's The Running Man or viewed the Arnold Schwarznegger flick of the same title, it will surprise you little to note the rise and rise of reality-based television hugging prime time slots on the biggest of networks. Most of them are chalk and cheese, and that is what the heroine of this would-be satire understands. She deduces correctly that doom fatigue is a natural cancer in the life of such television unless they continue to expand and evolve. This is the brassy Katy (Eva Mendes) as she works consistently in her role as head of programming for the American Broadcast Network, and at the start of "Live!" we are beyond any reasonable doubt that Katy's new reality show of games will be a groundbreaking piece of history, easily sitting alongside the invention of the Apple computer or the Apollo mission to the moon. Nobody has ever tuned into a television show anticipating a suicidal act, because no company would ever greenlight such a venture. Until now that is, and, say what you will about it only being a movie, but it is where we are headed, given that television is losing the battle against the internet.

BURN AFTER READING

"Burn After Reading" improves, I suspect, on perennial returns. Having first seen it last September in theatres my feelings were decidedly mixed and, now, that the chance to catch up with it again has arisen, those feelings still stand five months later. The answer may be the definition of this mixed connotation - has there ever been a Coen picture that required one viewing and one alone to settle the anticipation? One feels restless after watching a movie by these Jewish brothers, and their latest has a little of that Woody Allen nervous energy circulating about. These characters may not be of that religion, but do you understand where I am writing from? People like this exist in real life, granted, yet we never see them act quite this way until we see a movie by great filmmakers. They are silly and stupid I announce, with no disrespect intended. However, "Burn After Reading" is not the dumb comedy assigned for countless other on-the-nose thick creations. The filmmakers care about their characters too much; the actors invest too much into making them appear unusual. Basically, my impressions remain mixed.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Cinema is the only art form that allows us to transcend the inevitable progression of time. Photography permits us to freeze images in a trapped temporal position, but since its earliest days cinema has shown how the world might appear if we could shuffle the order of calendar selections. In "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" the genius of the story is contained within pure science fiction material. A child is born as a withered old man with one foot in the grave and ages over the course of a healthy lifespan to become younger with each passing year. Millions of possibilities exist as to how this man could lead his mysterious existence, and the grandest gesture in David Fincher's old-fashioned fantasy is that the man is treated not as a freak, but observed by others, and ourselves, from a different perspective. As a commentary on the goodwill of fellow man, this is a movie to clasp.

Read the full reviews of these flicks and others at my personal website: --

http://www.sightforallseasons.co.nr