Reviews and More

I was flipping through all my cable channels earlier today when I came across Cellular, that 2004 film starring Kim Basinger. I only vaguely remembered the movie because I’ve only seen it once, so I started watching it again.

The premise of the movie is so outlandish that I just have to laugh at it. Basinger plays a science teacher who was kidnapped for some reason. Her attackers lock her in an attic, where there just happens to be a phone. Of course, instead of removing the phone altogether, the kidnappers smash it and leave it in the room. Bad move.

The Basinger character is able to get it to work, and her call reaches a random guy named Ryan. She explains what happened, and Ryan agrees to help her, which leads to more improbable scenes and situations.

Besides making viewers want the newest Nokia unlocked phone, I don’t understand the point of the movie. It was boring, predictable, and totally outlandish — and yet it actually got some decent reviews from respected critics.

I seriously can’t figure out how movies like this get made!

I completely forgot that Lost is airing new episodes, but fortunately I decided to give it a Season Pass on my TiVo since I’m not really recording anything else at the moment. So I was able to catch episode 4×02, called “Confirmed Dead”, last night.

In this episode, we were introduced to four new characters on the island. They are Miles, Daniel, Charlotte, and Frank, and they’re the ones who came out with Naomi on the helicopter. Most of the episode was devoted to flashbacks of these new characters so viewers would get some sense of who they are, and then at the very end there was a small reveal that (I guess) moved the main story arc forward a little bit.

It turns out that the new crew is after Ben for some reason. Don’t ask me why, because in typical Lost fashion, I’m completely, well, lost about this whole thing. I mean, wasn’t Naomi carrying around a picture of Desmond when she landed? What was that all about if the main target has always been Ben?

Anyway, here are some more random thoughts about the ep:

– How lucky that Charlotte decided to wear a bullet proof vest to go parachuting onto the island. Just think what would have happened if she dressed like goofy Dan.

– I seriously do not understand all the Locke love that I read about on various Lost forums. I cannot stand that character, and he was extremely grating once again last night.

– Hmm, Charlotte’s name is Charlotte Staples Lewis? As in Clive Staples Lewis, the famous Christian writer? Now we have blatant shout-outs to John Locke, David Hume, and C.S. Lewis. The Lost writers are really taking this philosophy thing pretty far, aren’t they?

– Miles the ghostbuster is creepy, but funny. I think I like him the best out of the newcomers — especially after he snarked to Sayeed about being all in awe of the Flight 815 survivors.

– I wonder who set up that fake crash scene? I know Ben ordered his people to do that a couple seasons ago, but surely the Others didn’t really have the necessary resources, did they? And besides, the fake scene was near Indonesia, whereas the castaways are stranded somewhere completely different, right? Wasn’t there one episode where they tried to figure out where they were by the pilot’s last words or something? I forget now.

– As soon as I saw Vincent with Hurley, I knew that he’d come up again. Then when they showed Charlotte’s transponder moving “fast”, I guessed right away that it was the dog, not her.

– Ben really knows how to get to Locke, doesn’t he? Locke wants answers about the island, so as long as Ben pretends to have special knowledge, Locke won’t ever kill him. Of course, it sucks that Ben doesn’t know what the hell the Black Smoke is, but whatever.

– For the most part, these castaways are the most uninquisitive group of people I’ve ever seen. You’d think they’d be asking WHY a lot more than they actually do. “We’re here for Ben.” “Why?” “The world thinks there are no survivors from Oceanic 815.” “Why?” “I need to use that phone.” “Why?” See how that works?

Well, Lost is still very frustrating to watch, but it’s better than having no new scripted shows on at all!