DISCONNECT: Maybe One Of The Most Important Films You'll See This Year.

Hello, WORLD!! Smokkee Singleton here. Yep, It's been a long time. I got TONS of reviews for you but I'm trying to play catch up here so I'll try to stick to the movies that's out now and movies that you may have missed but I've been too busy on The Simpsons: Tapped Out (Yes, I've become addicted to that freaking game!) to write. I'm gonna kick my return to movie reviewing off with what I feel is one of the most important movies I've seen this year.


DISCONNECT stars ensemble cast in various stories about socializing in this age of technology we're in. One narrative features Jason Bateman acting as what is fast becoming his type of character as Rich, a family man that doesn't spend nearly as much time with his wife Lydia (Hope Davis) or their kids (Haley Ramm and Jonah Bobo) as he does on a computer until a tragedy hits. How this tragedy comes about also causes a crisis between a father and son (Frank Grillo and Colin Ford). In another story Andrea Risebough plays an up-and-coming TV reporter who happens visits a mail escort site and lands a story with one such escort under the condition that he remains anonymous, that leads to a bigger opportunity....if she'll reveal her source. Lastly, in what to me is the center piece of this movie, Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton play the Hulls, a married couple who become victims of identity theft due to one or maybe more of their online activities, including online gambling and chatroom conversations. Their relationship is strained by their actions and because of Facebook and Twitter, their story is probably the most accessible and the most relative to our society.

Alexander Skarsgard and Paula Patton as the Hulls in DISCONNECT

The first thing that strikes you about this movie is how much it will remind you of CRASH. To put it mildly, this feels like a continuation of the tone of that earlier Oscar winning movie, with the racial issues replaced with modern day socializing issues. That said, director Henry Alex Rubin does a great job showing the connected world as we know it as well as highlighting the dangers of it as well. My only complaint is that this movie gets wrapped up nice and neat with no issue truly resolved or ended on bad terms. We all know life usually doesn't work that way. How many truly happy endings have there been? Still, because of the issues this movie addresses, I feel that this is a must see for anybody that uses a smart phone or a computer. Log off and check this movie out. B-