Prisoners Review - Don't take Wolverines children

                                           

How far would you go to save someone you loved? Prisoners, a movie about two girls who are kidnapped from their home and a father, Hugh Jackman, who will do anything to get them back, asks that very question. Although, for a movie that is two hours long, the writer/director never really explores the question. 

With strong performances all around, Jake Gyllenhaal's character, a police detective trying to solve the case, steals the show in my opinion. He plays a quiet tattooed detective, who is impeded every step of the way by Jackman's character who is driven by vengeance. 

Without spoiling too much, Paul Dano plays a suspect in the film who has the mental capacity of a 10 year old. So, being a suspect, Jackman takes Dano and tortures him trying to learn the location of the girls. Dano gives an interesting performance playing the menatlly challenged suspect who just gets beat up the whole time. 

This movie is purposefully dry and pondering, trying it's hardest to let the emotions from the actors speak for themselves, but when you have two hours of what most cop shows on television do in 42 minutes it is hard to stay entertained. With the main focus being on the emotional consequences of torturing someone, they never fully delve into it, they merely keep torturing the person and asking the audience, "Do you feel anything yet?". 

This seems like a negative review, however I actually enjoyed it as a whole. I think, however it would have been much more enjoyable at an hour and a half and it would have been better to show the emotional stress Jackman's character should have been going through and the effects it had on him.  

Restuarant Week and Tommy Bahamas

Today is the start of one of my favorite weeks of the year, restaurant week. Each year in partnership with Three Square Food Bank several restaurants around the Vegas valley offer specialty priced meals and a portion of the meal will be donated to Three Square.

Each year my husband Jon and I try to pick a new restaurant from the list to try out. Typically these are all restaurants that we can’t normally afford so we really enjoy partaking each year. Last year we opted to try out one of the newest Gordon Ramsey restaurants to hit the strip, BurGR. This year we decided to try Tommy Bahamas located at the Town Square shopping center.

Neither one of us had been to this restaurant before and felt it had one of the best selections with a sticker price of $20.14 per person. Overall the food was really good, the atmosphere was very relaxing, and the service was ok at best. This particular meal offered 3 courses and a few different selections in each course. For the first course the selections included Chicken Tortilla Soup, Coconut Shrimp, or Macadamia Nut Encrusted Goat Cheese. The second course offerings included a choice of Blackened Fish Tacos, Grilled Chicken & Mango Salad, or The All American Burger. Last but not least was the dessert course which offered a choice of Key Lime Pie, Triple Chocolate Cake, or Pina Colada Cake.

For the first course we both decided on the coconut shrimp which offered papaya-mango chutney along with an Asian coleslaw. The Asian coleslaw was the real surprise on this plate. It had cabbage, cilantro, lime juice, red onion, and some fried crispies similar to what you receive at Chinese restaurants.

For the second course I chose the Chicken & Mango salad while Jon chose the Blackened Fish Tacos. The Tacos offered a tomato relish, chipotle aioli, lime sour cream and was finished off with the same Asian coleslaw offered with the appetizer. I tried one of the tacos and they were really good. Picky eater Jon even liked them and surprisingly enjoyed the lime sour cream as well. He doesn’t like sour cream so when the tacos came out he was a little upset until he tried it. At first he didn’t even realize it was sour cream, but knew he liked it. The salad came with toasted almonds and macadamia nuts, dried blueberries, feta, pumpkin seeds, along with lemon vinaigrette. In my opinion the best part was the combination of the blueberries with the feta. I was really surprised by this combination. The blueberries offered just enough sweetness to offset the bite of the feta.

Last but not least was dessert. We both played it safe and selected our personal favorites. I enjoyed the key lime pie and Jon chose the triple chocolate cake. The key lime pie was your standard key lime pie and the chocolate cake was a very dense, rich, and large piece of cake. In the end Jon was unable to finish the piece he had. At the end of the meal the general manager came around and invited us to visit again offering us a free appetizer on our next visit. I am not sure when the next time we will be visiting but it was a very generous offer to end the meal.

Restaurant week will be running through Friday March 14^th and later this week the ladies of Very Awesome Girls will be checking out Culinary Drop Out at the Hard Rock Hotel. For more information and a listing of restaurants participating in restaurant week please visit www.helpoutdineoutlv.org.

Las Vegas Restaurant Week                                                Tommy Bahama TownSquare

Benefiting Three Square Food Bank                                   6635 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Suite 125

March 7th  – 14th                                                                 Las Vegas, NV 89119

www.helpoutdineoutlv.org                                                   (702) 948-8006                                                                                                www.tommybahama.com

Call

Send SMS

Add to Skype

You'll need Skype CreditFree via Skype

Gravity Review - Falls on its Face in Space

How much does hype affect movie experiences? I watched this movie on video after it was in theaters and had heard from several people who saw it in the theater that this movie was great. After seeing it, I think I know why they thought it was great and I didn't. 

Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, is a movie about a team of astronauts working on a satellite when disaster strikes after the Russian government shoots down one of their own satellites and accidentally sends a lot of debris toward the American team. 

When the poop hits the fan this movie shines. All the scenes where things are blowing up, flying around, and there are a lot of little pieces on the screen is when I was most entertained. After all, this movie is darn pretty to look at. This movie is a technical achievement, however I think that is all it is. 

So, here is my problem. There is a point in this movie in which the director asks you to suspend your disbelief. This particular scene asks the viewer to completely forget about the rules of "Gravity" or lack there of and just go along with it. That was particularly hard for me. I don't want to spoil anything, but it was a pretty important scene. After that, I began to question every scene and it's logic. I kept saying to myself, "That wouldn't happen in space." or "That's not how Gravity works stupid!". I feel, that if you name your movie "Gravity" you should probably know how the properties of gravity work. This I feel is just another example of how American cinema is tailored to the lowest common denominator. It asks the audience to not think and just "believe what we tell you". There are some movies that can get away with that, like comedies, because its not supposed to make sense, it is just being funny. Gravity, however is trying to be accurate and realistic and fails. 

If you enjoyed this movie, that's great I'm not trying to call you dumb, you were just better at enjoying the action and Sandra Bullocks amazing performance better than me. I have to admit, if I had seen this in an Imax theater, I probably would have liked it more than I did.