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Archive for the ‘Movie Reviews’ Category

An action-thriller about a writer who takes an experimental drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his mind. As one man evolves into the perfect version of himself, forces more corrupt than he can imagine mark him for assassination. Out-of-work writer Eddie Morra’s (Cooper) rejection by girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) confirms his belief that he has zero future. That all vanishes the day an old friend introduces Eddie to NZT, a designer pharmaceutical that makes him laser focused and more confident than any man alive. Now on an NZT-fueled odyssey, everything Eddie’s read, heard or seen is instantly organized and available to him. As the former nobody rises to the top of the financial world, he draws the attention of business mogul Carl Van Loon (De Niro), who sees this enhanced version of Eddie as the tool to make billions. But brutal side effects jeopardize his meteoric ascent. With a dwindling stash and hit men who will eliminate him to get the NZT, Eddie must stay wired long enough to elude capture and fulfill his destiny. If he can’t, he will become just another victim who thought he’d found invincibility in a bottle.

OK plot. Cinematography and editing made me dizzy. Not as big a box office hit as they figured even with Bradley Cooper having scenes with his shirt off. The ending was good and it is ok to sleep through the first hour.

Rating: 1.8 out of 5

Valerie (Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon, Valerie begins to suspect that the werewolf could be someone she loves. As panic grips the town, Valerie discovers that she has a unique connection to the beast–one that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect…and bait.

An interesting take on an old Fairy Tale. Just when you think you have it figured out and say the movie is too predictable, it takes a turn and wakes you up again. If you like this genre, you should like this movie. I cannot stand Amanda Seyfried and her exophthalmosis, but she was appropriately cast in this move (what big eyes you have).

Rating: 3.8 out of 5

A couple of married guys are always looking at other women, treating their own wives like trash. Their wives are fed up with their behavior, and grant them a ‘hall pass’: a week off their marriage allowing them to do anything. But the guys take their time and their week is almost up. What they don’t realize is that at the same time their wives make connections of their own.

In keeping with the genre of The Hangover, a little rude, crude, and sometimes socially inept. Still it had is funny moments.

Rating: 2.3 out of 5

Interesting movie with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Colter Stevens an American Army helicopter pilot whose last memory is flying in Afghanistan, wakes up on a commuter train. But he discovers he has assumed the identity of another man. 8 minutes later the train explodes and Stevens finds himself in some kind of pod. He then talks to someone named Goodwin who tells him he has to go back and find who the bomber is. He is sent back and is going through the whole thing again and tries to find who the bomber is but fails and the bomb goes off and he is back in the pod. He is sent back again and still can’t find out anything. When he comes back he asks what is going on, Goodwin and Rutledge, the scientist in charge tells him he is part of a project that can put someone in another person’s consciousness during the last 8 minutes of their life. Stevens says why doesn’t he just stop the bomb, he is then told that he is not going back in time but placed in the moment so he can find out who the bomber is and if there are any other targets. But Stevens finds himself falling for the woman traveling with the man who’s consciousness he is in.

You don’t quite figure out what is going on at first, but when you begin to see it evolve, it becomes even more interesting. It is one of those movies that leaves you feeling perplexed at the end, such as Shutter Island and Inception. This movie previewed over a year ago and I don’t know what held up production and release unless it was these other similar movies opening at the same time. Smart marketing as it would have been lost among them. Not a bad movie and watchable.

Rating: 3.9 out of 5

Another movie that had a great plot and used Matthew McConaughey to increase its box office take. Based on a book by the same name. Pretty good movie and worth the watch.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5

A great movie that got what it deserved with the Oscars. How anyone could call Black Swan a good movie is beyond me.

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

Typical Sci-Fi destructo thriller apparently filmed with hand-cam with jerky pictures and editing much like The Green Zone. Watchable, nothing extraordinary. You may want to wait to see it on network TV.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

First the hosts. James Franco, although a talented actor was a bit too stiff. My guess, he is just isn’t used to being in front of a live audience on a live show. Anne Hathaway’s performance gave the impression that she was a ditsy child. A bit more maturity would have been much better. While all the video clips were pretty good, it wasn’t an Oscar with the Broadway production numbers and really good on stage performances.

Now the awards. Everyone has their opinion, but for me going to the movies is for entertainment, not for watching deep psycho drama or some really social thought provoking movie. For the most part, they were pretty predictable. It was truly a shame that everyone fawned over The Social Network and Black Swan, which were by far the worst two movies since the 1984 remake of Orwell’s 1984.

To save you doing a search on the winners in case you didn’t watch the 6 hours of On the Red Carpet and the Oscars themselves, here is the list of nominees and winners:

BEST PICTURE
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
WINNER: The King’s Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
BEST ACTOR
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
WINNER: Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone
WINNER: Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

BEST DIRECTOR
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit
David Fincher, The Social Network
WINNER: Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
David O. Russell, The Fighter

BEST SONG
“Coming Home,” Country Strong, Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
“I See the Light,” Tangled, Alan Menken, Glenn Slater
“If I Rise,” 127 Hours, A.R. Rahman, Dido, Rollo Armstrong
WINNER: “We Belong Together,” Toy Story 3, Randy Newman

BEST EDITING
127 Hours, Jon Harris
Black Swan, Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter, Pamela Martin
The King’s Speech, Tariq Anwar
WINNER: The Social Network, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Alice in Wonderland, Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1, Tim Burke, John Richardson, Christian Manz and Nicolas Aithadi
Hereafter, Michael Owens, Bryan Grill, Stephan Trojanski and Joe Farrell
WINNER: Inception, Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb
Iron Man 2, Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright and Daniel Sudick

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Exit Through the Gift Shop, Banksy and Jaimie D’Cruz
Gasland, Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
WINNER: Inside Job, Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
Restrepo, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
Waste Land, Lucy Walker and Angus Aynley

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT
The Confession, Tanel Toom
The Crush, Michael Creagh
WINNER: God of Love, Luke Matheny
Na Wewe, Ivan Goldschmidt
Wish 143, Ian Barnes and Samantha Waite

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Killing in the Name (Nominees TBD)
Poster Girl (Nominees (TBD)
WINNER: Strangers No More, Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
Sun Come Up, Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
The Warriors of Qiugang, Ruby Yang and Thomas Lenno

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
WINNER: Alice in Wonderland, Colleen Atwood
I Am Love, Antonella Cannarozzi
The King’s Speech, Jenny Beaven
The Tempest, Sandy Powell
True Grit, Mary Zophres

BEST MAKEUP
Barney’s Version, Adrien Morot
The Way Back, Eduoard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk, Yolanda Toussieng
WINNER: The Wolfman, Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

BEST SOUND EDITING
WINNER: Inception, Richard King
Toy Story 3, Tom Myers and Michael Silvers
TRON: Legacy, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague
True Grit, Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
Unstoppable, Mark P. Stoeckinger

BEST SOUND MIXING
WINNER: Inception, Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo, and Ed Novick
The King’s Speech, Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen, and John Midgley
Salt, Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan, and William Sarokin
The Social Network, Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, and Mark Weingarten
True Grit, Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff, and Peter F. Kurland

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
127 Hours, A.R. Rahman
How to Train Your Dragon, John Powell
Inception, Hans Zimmer
The King’s Speech, Alexandre Desplat
WINNER: The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
WINNER: Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Hors la Loi (Outside the Law) (Algeria)
Incendies (Canada)
WINNER: In a Better World (Denmark)
Dogtooth (Greece)
Biutiful (Mexico)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Another Year, written by Mike Leigh
The Fighter, Screenplay by Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson; 
Story by Keith Dorrington & Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson
Inception, written by Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right, written by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg
WINNER: The King’s Speech, Screenplay by David Seidler

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
127 Hours, Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
WINNER: The Social Network, Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3, Screenplay by Michael Arndt; Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich
True Grit, written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Winter’s Bone, adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

BEST ANIMATED FILM
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
WINNER: Toy Story 3

BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Day & Night, Teddy Newton
The Gruffalo, Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
Let’s Pollute, Geefwee Boedoe
WINNER: The Lost Thing, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary), Bastien Dubois

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech
WINNER: Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Black Swan, Matthew Libatique
WINNER: Inception, Wally Pfister
The King’s Speech, Danny Cohen
The Social Network, Jeff Cronenweth
True Grit, Roger Deakins

BEST ART DIRECTION
WINNER: Alice in Wonderland, Robert Stromberg, Karen O’Hara
Happy Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 1, Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
Inception, Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias, Doug Mowat
The King’s Speech, Eve Stewart, Judy Farr
True Grit, Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh

Martin is in a coma for four days. When he revives, his memory is shaky. When he sees a television news report about the biotechnology conference, he remembers that he is supposed to be there. He checks himself out of the hospital and goes to the hotel. He sees Liz at a reception and goes to embrace her. But she claims not to know him and introduces everyone to her husband, who claims to be Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn).

Martin wanders the streets of Berlin. He tracks down Gina, an illegal immigrant working several jobs. She doesn’t want to help him because she risks deportation. Martin goes to meet Professor Bressler (Sebastian Koch), a German bioscientist with whom he had had phone calls about their plans to revolutionize food production. But when he arrives, Martin B is already there. After an argument, Martin is escorted out by police. He checks himself back into the hospital for more tests. One of the nurses gives him the name of a private detective. After one of the tests, a hit man kills the nurse and tries to abscond with Martin, but Martin disappears into the crowded emergency room and escapes.

Martin goes to see the private detective, Ernst Jurgen (Bruno Ganz), a former Stasi officer. Jurgen believes Martin’s story, and tells him to track down Gina again. He finds her and asks for a place to stay for the night, giving her a watch that Liz gave him on their anniversary. As he takes a shower, the hit man bursts in. Gina kills him with his own poison. As they escape in a borrowed cab, they are pursued by a second hit man. They elude him by hiding in a discotheque.

Martin and Gina meet with Jurgen. He has a friend at the airport searching security camera footage for Martin, and has contacted Martin’s colleague, Rodney Cole, who Martin is certain can help. Martin follows Liz to a photography exhibition. At first she pretends not to know him but pulls him aside to tell him that she is being forced to betray him and that she still loves him and will wait for him at the airport. When Martin B and the second hit man appear, Martin is barely able to escape with Gina.

Rodney Cole (Frank Langella) arrives at Jurgen’s office. Realizing who Cole really is, Jurgen takes cyanide rather than reveal what he knows. Martin and Gina retrieve the briefcase with the passports and thousands of euro in cash. Gina leaves Martin to wait at the airport. Cole arrives and takes Martin to a black van where he is tasered by the second hit man. Gina sees this and follows the black van in a stolen cab. Cole and the hit man take Martin to the top level of a deserted parking garage. Cole explains to Martin that he is really a government assassin using “Martin Harris” as a cover. When Martin woke up from the post-accident coma, he believed his cover story was the truth, so Martin B was called in to finish the mission. Before the second hit man can kill Martin, Gina crushes him between the van and cab; the impact sends the van, with Cole in it, crashing to the ground below.

Martin now remembers everything. Several months earlier he and Liz had gone to the hotel to plant a bomb. It would be used to kill Bressler in a manner that could be blamed on Muslim extremists opposed to the liberalizing plans of Prince Shada (Miro Hamada), who is also sponsoring the biotechnology conference. He and Gina race to the hotel. There, at a reception for Bressler, Liz copies the files containing information about a new, easily grown form of corn, and arms the bomb. Martin arrives in time and persuades hotel security that a bomb is about to go off. When security evacuates the hotel, Liz goes to disarm the bomb while Martin B follows Bressler in order to kill him. Liz fails and is obliterated in the explosion. Martin and Martin B fight amidst the debris as Gina watches. Martin kills Martin B.

The next day, Bressler and Prince Shada freely give their new corn to the world, in their mutual effort to end world hunger. Using additional fake passports found in his briefcase, Martin and Gina leave Berlin together, as Henry and Claudia Taylor.

Rating: 4.2 out of 5 Stars

A teenage fugitive with an incredible secret races to stay one step ahead of the mysterious forces seeking to track and destroy him in this sci-fi action thriller from director D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye). With three dead and one on the run, the race to find the elusive Number Four begins. Outwardly… normal teen John Smith (Alex Pettyfer) never gets too comfortable in the same identity, and along with his guardian, Henri (Timothy Olyphant), he is constantly moving from town to town — the perpetual new kid in a series of strangely familiar schools. Despite the fact that his nomadic lifestyle has made it difficult to form meaningful connections, John experiences the joy of first love with a beautiful young woman (Dianna Agron) and begins to unlock his full potential after arriving with Henri in a small Ohio town. With each passing day, John gains a stronger grasp on his extraordinary new powers, and his bond to the beings that share his fantastic fate grows stronger.

This is formularic Sci-Fi from a Science Fiction series and hopefully it will gross enough to have an equally entertaining sequel. There is an subtle sub-plot of another character in all this, who happens to be Number 6 who helps John defeat the hoard of aliens chasing him and the others. With the opener we see the fate of Number 3, so we then surmise there are 6 left. Hopefully we will see all or part of them join forces on a future big screen and again save the world.

In watching this movie, you don’t have to twist your brain to figure out what is going on and it does have a bit of entertainment value for those who like this genre of movie. Definitely worth matinee price and considering the other movie options playing this week, not too shabby.

Rating: 3.8 out of 5 Stars.