Searching

I'm a little sheepish to be admit this but last year I saw a movie that I really liked and forgot to post about it in my comprehensive and super professional movie review blog until now. Searching is a movie about a young girl who suddenly goes missing and her father's frantic efforts to find her using her social media and contacts on her laptop. I liked this movie for the following reasons:

1) It was very suspenseful and felt like a modern day Hitchcock (but drowned in social media.) I was captivated and entertained the entire movie.

2) There are not a ton of characters but the performances were good. There were even several touching and emotional scenes. The introductory videos that told the story of the family reminded me of the beginning of Up.

3) Any millennial should be able to relate to this movie since it is about a young person and the whole story and every camera angle is shown through the filter of social media websites, laptop, security cameras, texts, etc. The movie stays true to this format to the end and that added a sense of realism to the film.

4) The format for this movie was unique and original. It could have backfired or gotten old, but it worked on me and even threw in some interesting social commentary at the same time.

I really liked Searching and would suggest it to anyone who enjoys the mystery/suspense genre. I give it 7.8 stars.

Glass

Glass is the follow up movie to Unbreakable and Split.

One thing I liked about this movie (as well as prequels) was how subtle it was for a superhero movie. The director does a good job of not pushing a bunch of super powers on you. Shyamalan does not go crazy with CG and special effects. Nobody flies, runs through buildings, shoots lasers from their eyes, etc. so you find yourself questioning if these guys really do have super powers.

Some might look at Glass and see it as a poor man's Marvel movie but I actually appreciate occasionally scaling back on the special effects. I really like Shyamalan's attention to detail especially his work with color schemes like we've seen in many of his other films. I thought the performances from the big 3 stars were good, especially the range McAvoy showed with all of his split personalities. I had a hard time taking Sarah Paulson's character seriously and saw through her pretty quick. Aside from that I liked this movie, especially the plot twists at the end.

I thought Glass was a nice end to the trilogy. I give it 7.3 stars.