Posts tagged Shea Whigham
“Non-Stop” The Name Says It All
Mar 5th
“Name Says It All”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
NON-STOP stars Liam Neeson as Bill Marks, a U.S. Federal air marshal assigned to an overnight flight from New York to London.
I know what you’re thinking. What could possibly happen on an airline flight that could keep the audience’s attention for a whole movie, right?
Well, how about a threat that someone on the airplane is going to die every 20 minutes unless a ransom is paid, people do start dying, and then finally a bomb is discovered. Does that get your attention?
The movie begins with Marks waiting at the curb of JFK Airport before boarding his flight to have a cigarette, and a man approaches him to ask for a light.
Without being asked anything, the man says, “I’m headed to Amsterdam.”
Once he is on the airplane, Marks is constantly looking around, checking out all the passengers, and evaluating them for any possible trouble they might cause.
He comforts a little girl on the airplane who is flying by herself for the first time and is a little bit frightened. Then he calls someone on his cellphone and says that he can’t stay in London for three days and whoever he is talking to has to get him back to New York on the first plane available.
A woman named Jen, played by Julianne Moore, gets the man sitting next to Marks in the window seat to trade seats with her, and Jen and Marks start talking to one another.
Even though Marks flies all the time for his job, he hates flying and especially has trouble during takeoffs.
Then Marks gets a text message on his cellphone over the secure line on the airplane, and the message says that in exactly 20 minutes someone on the plane is going to die unless $150 million is transferred into a particular bank account, and if it isn’t confirmed, someone dies again in the next 20 minutes.
Sure enough, someone does die from unnatural circumstances, and now Marks has to find whoever is sending him the messages, prevent the next death, and use the help of only two people on the plane he can trust, Jen and a flight attendant he knows from previous flights, Nancy, played by Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary in the “Downton Abbey” TV series.
NON-STOP lives up to its name.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Non-Stop – Movie Trailer
Mar 4th
Global action star Liam Neeson stars in NON-STOP, a suspense thriller played out at 40,000 feet in the air. During a transatlantic flight from New York City to London, U.S. Air Marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) receives a series of cryptic text messages demanding that he instruct the government to transfer $150 million into an off-shore account. Until he secures the money, a passenger on his flight will be killed every 20 minutes. NON-STOP, which reunites Neeson with UNKNOWN director Jaume Collet-Serra and producer Joel Silver, co-stars Golden Globe Award winner Julianne Moore and will be released by Universal Pictures on February 28, 2014. The StudioCanal production is also produced by Andrew Rona and Steve Richards.
“The Wolf of Wall Street” an Exercise in Excessive Excess
Jan 13th
“Exercise in Excessive Excess”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Wolf of Wall Street was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio based on a 2007 memoir of the same name written by Jordan Belfort.
DiCaprio plays Belfort himself.
Right at the beginning of the movie Jordan says, “I always wanted to be rich,” and we see him at the start of his career as a licensed stockbroker for a big firm on Wall Street.
Matthew McConaughey plays his mentor at the firm, and he tells Jordan, “The name of the game is to move the money from your clients’ pockets into your pocket.”
Unfortunately, Jordan’s first day as a broker was October 19, 1987, the biggest plummet of the stock market since the 1929 crash, and Jordan was out of a job before he even got started.
Jordan believes that Wall Street swallowed him up, but he finds a job with a tiny firm that sells penny stocks and is surprised to learn that he receives a 50% commission on his sales whereas his previous job would have paid him only 1%.
So, Jordan is selling garbage to garbagemen, as he puts it, and he begins making money hand over fist, so much so that one day in a restaurant he attracts the attention of Donnie Azoff, played by Jonah Hill, and Donnie tells Jordan that if Jordan can prove how much money he is making, Donnie will quit his job right there over the phone and come work for Jordan.
Donnie does, they start their own company with some misfit salesmen, and Jordan teaches them how to sell penny stocks to rich people.
The firm becomes highly successful from practices that are not always entirely legal, Jordan meets and marries a beautiful woman named Naomi, and drugs, wild parties, prostitutes, and naked women become a large part of everyone’s lives in and away from the firm.
And, of course, they attract the attention of the FBI, which starts investigating Jordan, Donnie, and their brokerage firm.
So, the merry band of brokers go through the intricate and illegal process of moving their money into Swiss bank accounts, but of course everything doesn’t go according to plan.
Nothing ever does in the movies, does it?
The Wolf of Wall Street might be too rough for many people’s taste and is just an exercise in excessive excess.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
