Movie Review Flatliners

Flatlines (2017) 

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

Written by Ben Ripley 

Starring Elliot Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Release Date September 29th, 207 

Flatliners is a remarkably bad movie. I love Elliot Page; he is a very compelling and charismatic actor. Why has he been marginalized so much that he felt she needed to make this bizarrely dumb movie? What compelled him and the very talented director Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, to think this movie was a good idea? Why did anyone think that remaking a movie as bad as the original Flatliners was a good idea? The Joel Schumaker directed 1990 Flatliners is a terrible movie and somehow this version manages to be worse than that. I’m baffled.

Flatliners stars Eliot Page as Courtney, a medical student who is plagued by the memory of the death of her younger sister in an accident that was her fault. Nine years after the accident Courtney has become consumed by the idea of knowing whether or not there is an afterlife where she might atone for her sin. Wanting to know about the afterlife she conceives of an experiment where she will have fellow med students stop her heart and let her die for a few minutes before bringing her back with the secrets of death.

Joining Courtney for the experiment is Sophia (Kiersey Clemons) and Jamie (James Norton) a trust fund kid who Courtney assumes is just reckless enough to go along with the plan. Dragged into the experiment are Ray (Diego Luna) and Marlo (Nina Dobrev) who jump in when Sophia and Jamie struggle to bring Courtney back to life. If you bought into the idea that Courtney might not come back after her first Flatline you might just be the audience for this movie. The complete lack of suspense in this scene doesn’t prevent lots of heavy breathing and forced tension.

Of course, Courtney must come back to life because her subsequent hallucinations are the source of most of the film’s jump scares. Courtney decides to keep the jump-scare-itis she contracted from flatlining to herself and when Jamie sees her thriving, answering difficult questions, relearning how to play the piano, as if her brain has been rewired by flatlining, he decides he must do it next. The film again must give us the forced fake tension of whether he’s going to come back or not. He does and then it’s party montage time because the last thing this movie needs is to do anything we can’t predict.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal

Movie Review Source Code

Source Code (2011) 

Directed by Duncan Jones

Written by Ben Ripley

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright, Vera Farmiga

Release Date April 20th, 2011

Published April 19th, 2011

The less you know going into "Source Code," the more you will enjoy it. "Source Code" is an ingenious sci-fi thriller that delivers surprises that seem nearly impossible in the age of the spoiler alert. Directed by Duncan Jones and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan, "Source Code" is an early candidate for year end best of lists.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up on a Chicago commuter train disoriented and very confused. The woman in the seat across from him, Christina (Michele Monaghan) looks at him as if she knows who he is but she calls him by a different name. None of the other passengers seem familiar. Finally, when he gets to the mirror in the bathroom he finds a face he does not recognize.

Then, the train explodes and Colter is fired to another reality. Now, he is strapped to a seat inside some kind of pod. Over an unseen intercom a woman's voice begins quizzing him about what he had seen on the train. Slowly, Colter begins to recognize the commands he is being given.

There has been a terrorist attack on a Chicago commuter train and 100 people on board are dead. It is Colter's mission to go back to that train before the bomb goes off and find and identify the bomber and report back to the voice on the intercom, Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) and her boss Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright.)

To tell you more than that, the very basic description of the opening minutes of "Source Code" threatens to rob you of the joys of this terrifically crafted sci-fi thriller. "Source Code" is about plot, it's about confusion and it's about shocking clarifications. Director Duncan Jones and writer Ben Ripley unfold the plot of "Source Code" with the clever twistiness of a young M.Night Shyamalan.

Source Code is a time travel movie and the time travel aspect is a lot of fun. Duncan Jones and his team create their own time travel rules and employ those rules to create nail biting suspense. We and Jake Gyllenhaal's Colter know what the rules are but most of the other characters don't and that creates a terrific tension as the everyday people Colter is trying to rescue become his accidental antagonists. 

Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright commit completely to the notions of "Source Code" and their investment in the plot and in their individual characters sells all of the pseudo science as a believable plot. Either you buy what these actors are selling or you don't. I bought it and I loved "Source Code."

The crafty plotting and terrific cast of "Source Code" create a thrilling and fun movie going experience. Do not let anyone spoil the plot for you and you may love "Source Code" even more than I did and I had far too many clues going in and still was blown away. "Source Code" is an excellent movie.