Flightplan (2005)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Warning: I’m going to give away some spoilers. I’m not giving away the ending and I’m certainly not giving away that much. However, if you’re not into hearing too many details, don’t read this review just yet.


I remember seeing the coming attractions for flight plan. Mother and daughter are traveling on a plane. The mother, played by Jodie Foster, falls asleep and awakens to find the daughter missing. Since they’re on a plane and no parachutes are missing, the mother is left to assume that the daughter is still on the plane. That’s about all the trailers revealed.

After seeing the trailers, I had to wonder how they could fill almost two hours of film based on just that. Part of the movie deals with why Kyle (the mother) and Julia (the daughter) are on the plane. It turns out that the father died, apparently having killed himself by jumping off of the roof of an apartment building. The bulk of it has to do with what exactly happened.

This is why I’m warning you about the spoilers. I can’t really write an honest review without giving away at least some of the details. For starters, the insanity card is played way too early to be what really happened. Even though you know she’s not crazy, you have to wonder just a little bit. After Kyle discovers Julia missing, she finds (the hard way) out who the air marshal is. The air marshal later informs Kyle that she’s actually transporting two coffins, one of which is for her daughter. There’s no record of Julia having been on board. He even provides evidence that she picked up two bodies from the coroner before leaving.

Kyle starts seeing conspiracies everywhere. There are two passengers who are of Middle-Eastern origin who Kyle swears were looking at her from an apartment across the street. Also, she makes a point to tell the captain that two members of the flight crew weren’t exactly trying that hard when everyone was supposed to be looking for Julia.

You do eventually realize that something major is going on. It actually takes a while to figure out what, though. The writers did a good job of stretching out the story. When I first walked out of the theater, I thought to myself that I had just wasted $6.50 of my hard-earned money, but I began to think and I realized that there really was more to it than that. (Which is why I’m withholding a lot of the details.)

There were two major problems that I had with the story. First, I found it very convenient that no one saw Julia get on. Given that we’re talking about a plane with two floors of seats and a good-sized crew, not one person could corroborate that Kyle had gotten on with someone. The second point was that the whole thing with the Middle-Eastern passengers didn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t really mean anything that they happened to be across the street. Plus, they had an alibi for that night, which was never fully checked out.

The entire story seemed to be one of convenience. Things just happened the way that they needed to happen in order for there to be a two-hour movie. What would have happened if someone had been able to definitively say that they saw Julia? I’m going to give the movie four stars. Despite the complaints, the movie was at least entertaining. I’m going to have to see this movie again, just to be able to pick up on things that I didn’t see before. 

IMDb page

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Note:  This review contains spoilers.  If you’re not into that, you might want to skip the review until after you’ve seen the movie.


I remember seeing the coming attraction s for Jupiter Ascending.  It looked like something that was epic.  A woman finds out that she’s an important figure and is thrust into a position of power.  It turns out that I was sort of right.  I was mostly wrong, but I was sort of right.  The movie was visually epic, but wasn’t much on the story.

Jupiter Jones is the woman in question.  Her father died before she was born.  She was born in the middle of the ocean and finds herself without a nation.  Fast forward a few decades.  Jupiter is cleaning houses with her aunt.  She hates her life, and rightfully so.  She’s always wanting money for something that she doesn’t want.  She wants and advance, but can’t get it.  Her solution?  She lets her cousin talk her in to selling her eggs.  At the last minute, she’s attacked and subsequently rescued by Caine.

Caine explains that Jupiter is genetically identical to the deceased matriarch of the Abrasax family.  Said matriarch left her title and certain possessions to any human that matches her genetic code or something, meaning that Jupiter now owns Earth and that she’s some sort of queen.  One of the kids wants to marry Jupiter, which she agrees to.  It sounds kind of incestuous, since she’s an exact genetic match to his dead mother.  But, it’s ok since he plans to kill her and claim Earth as his own.  Yes, the kids each got planets of their own, but Earth is the mother lode.  It will make its owner rich beyond their wildest dreams.

It turns out that instead of this grand epic I was expecting, it was mostly Caine fighting to save Jupiter.  Yes, we got some nice visuals and stuff, but it wasn’t as strong on the story as I expected.  Jupiter Jones ends up being more of a McGuffin than a hero.  At first, I though that might be a bit harsh, bit it’s not.  She’s only there to move the story along.  She’s something pretty for the antagonists to fight over.

On that note, why would you leave something to someone who happens to end up with your genetic makeup?  Even though there are a lot of planets with humans, it seems hard to believe that we’d end up with that kind of convergence, and that quickly to boot.  Stuff like that always gets my attention.  It seems very improbable.  This isn’t even getting in to the fact that Jupiter has no idea what’s going on.  (Jupiter was supposed to be the reincarnation of the Matriarch.)

This is one of those movies that I ended up finding major flaws with.  As I said, Jupiter is a genetic match to the matriarch.  Ok.  I’ll admit that long shots come through.  It’s not impossible.  Still, why is she not freaked out at marrying her doppelganger’s son?  She seems taken in by the whole thing rather easily?

For that matter, she seems rather at ease selling her eggs during the beginning of the movie.  Yes, it’s a really nice telescope she wants, but this is her chance at having kids.  She’ll be getting $15,000.  Her cousin will be keeping $10,000, which is even more offensive.  When she calls him on it, he offers up a lame excuse, which she accepts.

If you like action films and don’t like thinking much about the plot, this might be your movie.  If you’re expecting something with a story or a reason to think about it afterwards, keep moving.  There’s nothing for you to see here.