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Arlington Road

Arlington Road

List Price: $9.95
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not bad, but...
Review: The film is decent, the ending a bit of a shocker (I had no idea it was coming, rather like "the Sixth Sense"); my only problem is that everyone realizes from the start of the film who the bad guys and good guys are. Why waste so much time trying to convince us it's all Jeff Bridge's imagination?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Masochistic, horrible movie. Unfortunately, well done
Review: Insecurity for the sake of it coupled with the message that humans are deeply evil. If you evocate the best qualities in a human been you get his best behaviour, while making leverage on his weaknesses you pull his worst parts out of him. It's like biting your own testicles

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Harsh ride, start to Finish
Review: This movie collapses on itself and alternates from cerebral thriller to 70's style action rehash. definitely worth watching, it is much better than your average action movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great movie
Review: This was quite a movie. Terrifying as a parent. It was very involved, every detail was important and the ending quite a twist. I was resistant to watching this movie after watching the ads for it, but was talked into it by someone that had already seen it. It did not seem my type of movie. However, once I got into it, it was riveting and frightening to see how events could take such a twisted path. It is frightening to think that our lives could be so manipulated. In my opinion, this is a sleeper hit.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best thrillers I have ever seen!
Review: The movie begins very suspensefull rightaway. The openingsscene is very disturbing and the strongest scene of the movie.

After that, the movie takes some time to show the characters lives and explain everything. If you don't really pay attention this could be a bit boring but it is needed to make this movie so good and suspensefull. But this also makes this a movie wich is very thrilling and good when you see it for the first time, but not to watch it for a second time.

But the best thing of the movie is, like a lot people are saying, the ending. It is very disturbing but logic. I won't say more about it than that it is the best ending I have seen in a movie for quite a long time.

The performances of Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins are very good but especialy Joan Cusack is very good though it is a bit strange to see her in this kind of movie. But she is very believable as Cheryl Lang.

So if you like good and a bit scary thrillers, you deffinitly have to see "Arlington Road". But don't buy it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I'm so biased!
Review: In all fairness I have to tell you that I am VERY biased about this film. It was shot on my campus at the University of Houston which is, remarkably enough, in Houston, Texas. Most of the exterior campus shots were shot at the university. Part of the car chase scene near the end of the film was shot on Allen Parkway near downtown. In the middle of the chase, the setting would change to something that was very noticeable as being Washington, DC. Anyway, on that basis alone, I though this film was very cool. Now for the stuff I am really supposed to be raving about in this movie. If you want a happy ending, then this is probably not the movie for you to go see. The plot is incredible. The acting is intense. Jeff Bridges brings strength into every role I've ever seen him in. I was sure to note his performance in The Fisher King when I crashed his trailer and spoke with him. He is a very incredible actor and a family man as well. He had pictures of his brother and his father all over the trailer. You'll recall that his father died while this film was in production.

One actor who could have used more screen time was Joan Cusack. We got to see entirely too little of her throughout the film. Seems like a waste actually. Tim Robbins was great as a psychopath. I'm not giving nearly as much away as the trailer is, but at the very least you should know that he plays a bad guy.

Plot Twist Factor: (10 of 10)

Definitely one of the greatest plots twists in a suspense movie. I can't even tell you what I want to tell you or you will have figured out the whole movie.

Real Life Parallel (but still fake) Factor: (6 of 10)

Why is it that people who write screenplays talk about government building bombings and even depict such on the screen, but do not even acknowledge the bombing in Oklahoma City. The draw every parallel to that particular bombing, but they place it in St. Louis for some particular reason. Now, I'm not an idiot. I know that they didn't want to bring up bad feelings in Oklahoma, but they should probably not treat the audience like idiots either.

It was a good movie. That's the bottom line. Very exciting and well worth a viewing if you get a chance.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent movie!
Review: I don't understand why so many critics did not like Arlington Road. While I do admit, Jeff Bridges was a little bit too intense at times, the overall quality was excellent. In addition to the believable performances, the script was quite amazing.

I believe the cause for the lame box office earnings and subpar reviews was for an intelligent and well thought out ending. These days, a predicatble and happy ending is necessary in order for a movie to become well liked. With a movie like Arlington Road, you don't get a sense of a real "resolution" to the characters. I believe that this ending was perfect to the way that the beginning was built up.

In other words, this movie would have cheated itself and its viewers had it concluded with a happy ending and the bad guys being sent to jail. The beauty of this movie, and why I think it stands out above the pack of many other movies in the same genre (i.e. "The Siege"), is the fact that we realize, sometimes the good guys don't win.

I give the actors, and director a bow of respect for this fine movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Original storyline, but terribly done.
Review: Positive: Cinematography was decent. Negative: Very unbelievable plot and dialogue. I kept thinking what a great movie this COULD be with some competent directing and writing. I hate to see good movies wasted and this is a perfect example. If this movie was so suspensefull, why was I fforwarding through most of the final 30 minutes? I started to get annoyed early at the corny coincedences that you see in bad suspense movies. Then it got worse when I was able to easily guess what would always happen next, until the end, which I will concede would have been great with a half way decent lead up. Finally, the movie became unbearable when certain simple scenes were made excrutiatingly long. Just add alot of suspense music and some car chases and you have most of the last 15 minutes. This movie trys so hard to anger and unnerve me. Well I guess it succeeded. I was angry I wasted 99 cents renting this thing from the bargain rack. And guess what? all copies were in stock.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: an excellent movie !
Review: This is certainly not your stereotype, run-of-the-mill action film. Rather, it makes you think about issues involved and tends to leave you a little paranoid. The ending was really good, avoiding the cliche of "hero saves the day, helped by all-powerful FBI/police." Instead you get an ending which, without revealing it, I will say is deeply disturbing. It left me severely rattled for a long time after watching it. Not a scary ending, just a chilling one.

The only real problem I had with this film was Tim Robbins. He is just not an actor I believed as a villain. He didn't exude evil the way some movie bad guys do; and this was too much of a stretch from his previous work. More believeable was Joan Cusack as Robbins' wife, because the person her character is presenting to the world is more in line with what you expect from her.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not bad but not great
Review: One of the cons of this movie is its running time. Though at just under 2 hours it is not excessively long, the dramatic and over-the-top atmosphere makes viewing a somewhat heavy and tiresome experience. Jeff Bridges is good and Tim Robbins is brilliant. The plot is interesting and the climax somewhat disturbing. On the whole this is not a bad film, but it is a little slow, overly theatrical and lacks the spunk of an out-an-out thriller.


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