Vanilla Sky (2001)

After Tom Cruise separated from Nicole Kidman I feel he started a different path that allowed him to explore more of his acting. Where he did not have to rely so heavily on his good looks and winning personality. In all honesty I actually like his films and the characters he portrays. I had tried to watch Vanilla Sky years ago and could not see where it was going and gave up about 15 minutes in. Anyway on the second watch I actually knew what was happening and was able to follow it pretty well.

Tom Cruise plays David Aames a rich publishing heir who is a playboy around town, he starts with a weird dream and then wakes up next to Cameron Diaz, this could be many people’s dream. At his birthday party his best friend brings Penelope Cruz and there is a spark. He leaves her in the morning and makes a mistake by getting in the car with Cameron Diaz who feels jilted and she causes an accident that leaves Tom disfigured. You then follow him as he tries to regain his life and recover from the accident.

This film was captivating and kept me enthralled to the end and I have to say that I was not exactly sure where it was going but the ending really worked for me and I have to say that they way it all worked out in the end ticked all the right boxes for me. Overall this comes under the strong three star recommend catagory for me and I think most of you will actually enjoy it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

I loved the first of this series, I suffered the second and the third was absolutely dire so I went to see this with quite low expectations. Johnny Depp is back as captain Jack Sparrow with a couple of the original cast including Geoffrey Rush as Barbosa and Kevin McNally as Smith. You have new characters with Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane, I felt there was a lot of character development that did not seem to go anywhere with them and what happened at the end was actually pretty obvious. But back to my thoughts and my low expectations, I was not overly impressed with it, the idea was very simple but was really hard for them to get to, the fountain of youth get there and become young.

They seemed to want to take for ever getting there and I was actually quite bored with it, there is only so much of Captain Jack going 'savvy' that is entertaining. It was not truly terrible the performances and cameo role are entertaining and some of the action scenes were interesting but there were 4 or 5 other bit players that had quite large parts but not enough time to fully explain who they were or develop them so you really didn't care that much about them, overall it could have done with being trimmed down by about 30 minutes and 3 or 4 of the characters either cut out or slimmed down so you were not left wondering about them.

Overall I am going to say 2 stars, mostly they are for the performances and the production values which as always were excellent but it is no masterpiece and really not worth seeing.