Apollo 13 came out in 1995 and it is for me, the best movie Ron Howard ever directed. This film is about the failed 1970 3rd mission by NASA to land on the moon and when you see this movie and the amazing luck and genius it took NASA engineers to bring these 3 men back home, you realized for the first time after so many years that the odds were extremely high that all 3 men should have died in space or while burning up while re-entering the atmosphere.

This movie stars Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris in what they all probably consider the favorite roles in their career. The special effects in this movie are spectacular, especially when the Saturn 5 Rocket takes off the beginning of the movie and the scenes of weightlessness throughout the film which was accomplished using something called the “Vomit Comet” which is an aircraft that NASA uses to simulate weightlessness, and as a result you can get very nauseous.

For me, the best part of this movie were the series of miracles that the NASA engineers had to pull off to save the lives of these 3 men. After the spaceship exploded mid-way through the trip to the moon, there were problems with the loss of oxygen, filtering the air of carbon dioxide, power supply​ issues, re-entry issues and using the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) as a lifeboat because all life support and power was lost on the main space capsule. Were it not for some luck and the genius of a group of very smart people at NASA, one of the worst tragedies in NASA history would have occurred and most likely all the astronauts​ would have been floating in space forever.

After this movie came out, Tom Hanks went on to make the great HBO series “From the Earth to the Moon” and he did the same thing after “Saving Private Ryan” with the HBO series “Band of Brothers”. Both of these mini-series for HBO were two of the best the Network ever produced.

If you have not see Apollo 13, it is a must see film about a very important incident in US History.

I thought that when the original movie “Taken” came out in 2008 that it was the first movie of its kind and as far as a believable action movie it was flawless throughout with one of the best endings I have ever seen. The idea behind this film was a great one, the female slave trade that happens in Europe​, where young girls and kidnapped​ at the Airport and then sold to wealthy businessmen. Liam Neeson was outstanding in this movie in by far his best role. His line after his daughter is kidnapped​ which starts with describing his set of skills and ends with him threatening to kill his daughter’s kidnapper over the phone (see video below) is now a movie classic. What is most unfortunate about the original Taken movie is that because of money they decided to make 2 more sequels, the last one was a very bad movie. The problem here is that Taken was a perfect idea that should never be duplicated, but the producers were too afraid to come up with a completely new idea for Taken 2 and Taken 3 and just decided to continue with the same type of story that made the first movie so successful and in the process, completely ruined the entire Taken franchise.

If you have never seen the original Taken movie, you should definitely​ see that film and miss the two sequels.

Historical movies that give a more complete explanation of a famous event in history or inform the audience about some person or event in history that we never knew about are some of the best reasons why movies are made. However, before a movie like this should be considered worth doing, one would think that the subject matter would have to be important enough first before spending the money and taking the huge financial risk to produce it. I wondered during most of the 2 hours why this movie was made because while the story is somewhat interesting it really is not compelling enough to keep your interest for an entire two hours. On top of this, the producers of this movie failed to realize that listening to the screeching and bad singing sounds of Florence Foster Jenkins who was famous for being a very bad singer is that over time the sound of her singing would become unbearable and annoying. This fact became very obvious with this movie because at first her singing caused people in the audience I was in to laugh but over repeated scenes with Jenkins singing the horrible sounds she was making it became almost impossible to listen to. One has to admire Meryl Streep, who can sing in real life, with her ability to sing very badly and for this role there is talk of a 20th Academy Award nomination for her despite the fact that most of this film is rather boring and way too long.

From the Wikipedia article link above, there is mention that Jenkins contracted syphilis some years earlier and that could be the main reason for her inability to realize that she had no singing ability. For me, the most interesting part of this movie was the fact that so many people were able to fool Jenkins into believing that she could actually sing for so long a period of time, until one last performance at Carnegie Hall where critics were allowed to attend. Why did the people in Jenkin’s life pull off this hoax and lie to her for so long is not fully explained in the movie other than perhaps they felt sorry for her during her later years? This movie also reminds all of us if the rare combination of gifts that are required to be able to sing. Singing well involves not only the physical mechanics involved​ but it’s​ also the linkages of the brain and the ability to realize that you are in tune and to adjust your voice through the ​process of singing any song. Singing very well is in fact, a very rare gift because of all the combinations of skills that must come together to give anyone this rare ability.

I thought that all the actors involved in this very average movie did a good job, including Hugh Grant, Meryl Streep and Simon Helberg, but it was not enough for me to recommend this film because it was just too boring and the story was not big enough to care about. If your a huge fan of Meryl Streep than you should probably see this film, otherwise, this movie can be missed.

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