Billy Ray’s first film for directing, “Shattered Glass,” is one that Hayden Christensen plays the role of Stephen Glass seriously. The process of production was a disaster at first, since Ray tried to convince the real-life people to work on “Shattered Glass” with him. Former news editor of the News Republic Michael Kelly (in the film he is portrayed by Hank Azaria) had a hard time being convinced by the director to be part of “Shattered Glass.” The reason for this hard decision is because Kelly felt embarrassed that he worked with a journalist (Stephen Glass) that fabricated articles and published them. Later though, Ray convinced Kelly to help out with the film once Ray said he was approaching the story as a journalist. He informed Kelly that he wanted the script to be factually accurate as can be. Once that task was a success, two colleagues Charles Lane (in the film he is portrayed by Peter Saarsgard) and Hannah Rosin worked as advisers for Billy Ray. The character Caitlin Avey (portrayed by Chloe Sevigny) is loosely based off of Hannah Rosin.

The film’s introduction is the life of Stephen Glass (Christensen): a smart, and devoted journalist, and a student trying to finish his law degree; his colleague Charles Lane (Saarsgard) is short-fused and gets aggravated easily; another colleague Caitlin Avey (Sevigny) who is a close-friend of Glass but thinks that Lane is too hard on everyone; and a caring editor Michael Kelly (Azaria) that lacks dialogue. An organized man but is not good with confrontations.

 Glass writes a story about a company called Jukt Micronics. Which is a big event that consists of a hacker at the age of fifteen and is trying to make a name for himself.  This story is one that never happened, but the rest of the News Republic is not aware of the problem yet. The issue is that Glass just makes situations worse and does not resolve any of the conflicts he is putting himself into. He just keeps on trying to find ways to cheat his way out of getting caught, and he does this by fabricating article after article.

Before the Jukt Micronics issue happens, Glass was assigned to do research and write an article on Drug Abuse Resistance Education. He did go to the conference regarding what he was suppose to write about, but admits he messed up (where he actually lied). Later though, the News Republic gets letters of distortions and lies that they found written by Glass. Glass’s window is closing.

If Paul Walker lived to the sensation of “Brick Mansions” he would have definitely made his mark for another film other than “The Fast and Furious Movies.” “Brick Mansions” shows Walker as a ruthless, yet heartfelt detective. An opinionated, witty, crazy, and risk-taking fighter who can definitely take on a big group of bad guys in a less amount of time.

The film introduces Damien Collier (Walker) an undercover cop that is set to navigate through a dangerous neighborhood which is named “Brick Mansions.” the issue is the neighborhood is surrounded by a containment wall. Along side him he has the help of a powerful, flexible, and kung-fu fighting partner named Lino (played by David Belle).

Both Damien and Lino join together for revenge. Since it is believed that for Damien, his father was killed by the man who runs brick mansions. For Lino, however, it is for kidnapping his girlfriend. Both realize they have that in common and realize they are both skilled with fighting and that together they can destroy take down “Brick Mansions.”

Now here is something that is a twist to this movie. “Brick Mansions” is actually set to explode. Not just to destroy “Brick Mansions” but the entire city of Detroit around it. The film was advertised differently and set in this order. Both Damien and Lino seek revenge, do a bunch of jumps and stunts to survive, get into a few ruthless fights, and that just had me set to think that this movie was just based around revenge, having the city go down was something that I was not expecting at all.

I did enjoy this movie for a moderate amount of time. Non-stop action always keeps my attention. Only issue though is just really it went kind of fast. The film is only ninety-minutes. I figured that maybe it could be longer, but more with a sense of plot development. We can understand the plot but there is not enough background in “Brick Mansions” to make the plot believable of where all the crazy action is coming from.

“Brick Mansions” is violent, fast, and ruthless throughout. In a way I felt like I was watching “The Raid: Redemption.” Since that one was set in a district and this one was too, but honestly only two people taking on this crazy amount of criminals added to the suspense. I think just about two characters is all that is needed for a film of fighting a drug ring. Three solid stars.

With being a fan of Colin Firth’s films, “The Railway Man” is another film that starts out slow but then turns out being incredible. “The Railway Man” is based on the true story of the former British Officer Eric Lomax (Firth) who was forced to work on the construction of the Thai/Burmai railway in World War II. Year later Lomax’s memories start to come back and haunt him. It would definitely be challenging to go back to places where one remembers being tortured. To be left traumatized, to haunt his loved one Patti (played by Nicole Kidman), but above all the biggest fear…discovering the young Japanese officer that was involved in the group that beat him and tortured him. The war was very dramatic for the world and had a bunch of relief when it was over. Today though, there are still many elements that haunt people who have experienced the war.

“The Railway Man” focuses on the life of Eric Lomax. He is well known for building a secret radio to bring information to his colleagues about how the Japanese may plan their attacks in the war. With this secret getting out to the Japanese however, caused them to make Eric their target for information. Years after, he meets the girl Patti on the train and immediately falls in love. She loves him to and they both are married. She is aware of Eric’s harsh memories that he cannot get off his mind. Once Eric experiences the Railway and all of a sudden runs into the Young Japanese Officer years later (his name is Nagase), Eric feels compelled to torture Nagase the way Nagase tortured him years ago.

“The Railway Man” is a well-done film for a director that is still relatively new, which is Jonathan Teplitzky. For a film that is that is an hour and fifty-six minutes in length, he is able to make “The Railway Man” artistic in the sense of timing. Teplitzky uses compressed time to speed up the story of the film. Therefore the events were placed in proper order to not lose the main point of Eric’s perspective of his life. Eric and Patti met in 1980 on a railway train, in real life though, their marriage did not take place until 1983. Eric did not realize that Nagase was not alive in 1993, then he met him in 1995. Teplitzky’s chronological order of events is fast which is the only downside because I would have liked some more background on the characters of this movie.

There were two screenplay writers involved with “Railway Man” and they were Andy Paterson (also the producer of “Railway Man” and produced “The Girl with the Pearl Earring”), the other writer is Frank Cottrell Boyce (writer of the film “Millions” which I love). Both writers are talented with writing where so many scenes are happening at once in a movie. I remember from “Millions” there is a scene where the boys encounter millions of dollars and then it transitions to them doing shopping at a variety of stores and then transitions back to them collecting more money. “The Railway Man” has this artistic style but done for more dramatic effect.

I want to explain more on how the flashback scenes in “Railway Man” hold viewers attention. Eric remembers being locked in a cage and beaten with a stick. As Eric remembers this happening to him he literally has the same setup as how the Japanese Officers did to hurt him, however this time he is feeling the need to torture Nagase but struggles. We see the agony of Eric in his eyes where he feels he wants to kill Nagase but at the same time knows that he is not a person that kills. Years later, Eric and Nagase become friends and stay in touch. 

Firth’s performance is more worthy than Kidman’s to be honest. Kidman was not really in the film that much I feel. Overall though both characters look good together in this drama.

“Railway Man” is one to be seen definitely. Especially since it is a true story. Lacks in the opening and the background of the characters, but thirty minutes into the movie becomes amazing. I will say it deserves at least three stars.