Ladder 49 - Thirteen

Ladder 49 is a true homage to firefighters. No bad guys at all, just the good guys doing their job.

Joaquin Phoenix stars with John Travolta and Robert Patrick, all pretty strong performances, as the movie stars with a big fire when an accident leaves Phoenix's Jack Morrison hurt and trapped in the building on fire. Travolta's Captain Mike Kennedy arrives to take command of Patrick's firefighter Lenny Richter and the others including Morris Chestnut and Jay Hernandez, to go in the fire and Jack out of there.

While the guys try to make their way in there, the movie flashbacks showing Jack's first days in the firehouse, his first fires and rescues, as well as him falling and love, marrying and having kids with Jacinda Barrett's Linda.
We see all the good times, like the parties, the rescues, awards they get; but also the bad times, like losing friends in a fire, and Linda's terror of that red car arriving at the wife's door when their husbands are late from work to inform them the worst.

The entire cast pulls very strong performances in this drama that shows the real stuff firefighters go through, and for that we must applaud.



Thirteen is a movie that can totally freak parents out: young teenage girls gone wild, taking (and selling) drugs, drinking alcohol, stealing stuff, piercing their bodies, and having sex.
Nobody wants to believe it, but it's true, and this original story written by Director Catherine Hardwicke and star Nikki Reid is no lie. After all, Reid was 14 when she wrote it, and from own experiences.
She also co-stars the movie as Evie, the wild one, who transforms Evan Rachel Wood's Tracy good girl into a sexed and drugged up girl that mom Holly Hunter can't control.

All the girls, Hunter included, but specially Evan Rachel Wood, make for excellent performances, and the direction, though sometimes kind of shaky, shows us all the wildness as closer as possible, and it makes for a very good movie about something that's very scary to think of, but true.