Movies to Check Out

So I'm on break for this week and all I have to do is write a paper, so I'll be spending much of my break catching up on movies and TV that I have not been able to watch. Yesterday I watched the Oscar nominated Michael Clayton and today I watched Gone Baby Gone. Both in my opinion were very good movies. Michael Clayton was more of a law firm/political thriller starring George Clooney, Michael Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton (who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role) and Sydney Pollack. Gone Baby Gone is about two private detectives who are hired to try and find a missing five year old girl starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman (Amy Ryan won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for this role).

Gone Baby Gone is a much more depressing film than Michael Clayton in that the movie forces us to choose between what is right and what is the law. There is one twist which I didn't see coming but than after that I was able to guess the rest of the movie, which didn't take away from it, it just made it more predictable. Casey Affleck has really garnered some attention with this role (deservedly so) and with his role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (another movie I aim to check out this break).

With Michael Clayton we get an excellent opening fifteen minutes and an explosion. Then the movie takes us to four days earlier to give us all the events leading up to the explosion and then we go from there to conclude the movie. Not so much a guessing game as throughout the movie we have a clear idea who is on what side (whether it's good or bad is up to you I guess), but the movie aims more to thrill you than to stump you. Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton all give remarkable performances which is what really makes this movie work.

If you have a chance check out these two movies, they're two of the better ones from 2007.