The Ray Pletcher Blog

Is their one pivotal event in the past in your lifetime that you wish you could alter significantly that would forever change the course of your life? Well, that’s what Gregory Hobbit’s directorial effort, the 2000 film Frequency starring Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid seeks to answer in its storyline. The undeniably irresistible proposition to change events in time for the gain of oneself is explored in this adventure between the two main characters John (Jim Caviezel) and Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid). As it so happens the two are father and son as back in the year 1969 Frank Sullivan was a baseball enthusiast happy go lucky firefighter father married to his wife Julia that raised his six-year-old son John that aspired to follow in his father's footsteps. The interesting matter of fact is that the action also takes place thirty years later in 1999 following a thirty-six-year-old Detective John Sullivan brooding over his failed relationship and dead father. John at this p

       Tarzan is a classic hero in the staple of fiction, and various times the story has been told about the boy who got left behind in the jungle and lived with the animals to become the grown man Tarzan who was capable of great feats in the jungle that no ordinary man could envision. However, in The Legend of Tarzan directed by David Yates that story is flipped on its head. We are presented with the idea of a “Tarzan in retirement”. We meet a Tarzan who has adjusted to “civilized” life in London and is reluctant to return to his old ways. David Yates tells the story of a man named John Clayton (Alexander Skarsgard) who has left behind his life as Tarzan and has been asked by Belgian King Leopold to return to Africa to see what he has done to improve Africa. Of course, reluctant Clayton doesn’t want to, not till George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) asks Clayton to reconsider as he wishes to go and make sure Leopold isn’t setting up a goal of slavery in the nation. Th

Do you remember that time when those museum statues came to life? Well their back and with many more adversaries and friends than ever before in the sequel to Night at the Museum, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ben Stiller. For a lot of families the first Night at the Museum movie really captured the magic of seeing lifeless figures that families often visit in museums come to life and partake in a rip-roaring adventure with a supporting cast including comedic talent like Owen Wilson as Jedediah the funny miniature cowboy. The sequel on the other hand more or less does the same thing but infuses more of a blockbuster esque punch into it then the first one did. This film is bigger and grander in scale as some time has passed since the first adventure and Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) has quit his night guard job from the first film and started a technology company Larry Devices and found great success; however he is not truly con

If there is a series that turns out sequels so wildly different from its predecessor in terms of style it has to be the Mission Impossible franchise. This sequel to Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible 2 was released four years after the first one with Tom Cruise returning as the lead star and helmed by a new director John Woo. This film is so different in tone and pacing from the first one which creates some mixed results. The original film was primarily an espionage film, however, the sequel is a straight up action-packed spy film with slow-motion sequences weaved in. The film follows Ethan Hunt as he is tasked with the mission of recruiting the lovely Nyah, a thief to join his team in order to seduce her ex-boyfriend Rouge IMF agent Sean Ambrose and stop his deadly plan. Sean Ambrose’s deadly plan is to sell Chimera, a nightmarish virus to the highest bidder. There are many positive elements to the storytelling here.     Since this is a majorly different story