RealScience

I loved this movie. It's not going to win any Oscars for Best Screenplay, but the characters (and actors) were fun and very likable and you cared what happened to them. The effects were extraordinarily well done. This was everything I wanted in a summer movie. Nothing challenging intellectually, but spectacular visuals, well-thought-out predicaments and sexy performers. I won't give away the ending, but it was much more satisfying than the original.

Richard Dreyfuss' performance stays with you more than you would imaging it would. He may be a better actor than this simple action movie material deserves, but he brings himself fully to the role and he comes off great.

Even with the entirely unconvincing 3D animated timber wolves, the special

effects here are superb. The water effects are MUCH better than Titanic, and the weather effects have come a long way since Twister, and the ones in Twister were very good.

A lot of the dialog was eliciting laughs in the audience i saw it with. I couldn't tell if the director was winking or not, but a lot of the "courageous" moments were eliciting a lot of reaction.

Whatever its "artistic flaws", it was really fun. And I left the theater feeling good, rather than queasy, the way I did after Armageddon.

I'd see it twice.

I'm not really big on this kind of film, but this one won me over in a big way. Jim Sheridan has such a sure hand as a director that even as the story meanders along, and you're not quite sure where things are going, you know HE knows and you end up trusting him and going along for whatever ride he wants to take you on. The characters and the actors portraying them are so winning, you don't want the movie to end. You just want to stay with them forever.

Every role, right down to the two border guards and the hospital administrator are perfectly cast and performed. The two sisters playing the daughters are amazing. But the acting in the film really belongs to Samantha Morton. It really is a high wire act. In lesser hands this character might have been completely unbelievable. But her love for her husband and children is so palpable, you completely buy everything she has to go through with them.

There were so many chances for cheap sentiment here, but the movie never went there. Really beautiful.