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Earth’s population has been decimated by a virus, related to the mad cow disease, that turns everyone into flesh-craving zombies. Only a handful of humans remain, including Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a student at the University of Texas trying to make his way to his home town of Columbus, OH, where he hopes his parents are still alive. Columbus has long been an outsider and somewhat phobic, which he uses to his advantage in avoiding zombies. In fact, zombies are not his greatest fear: clowns are.

While walking down the highway, he encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), driving an Escalade. He is trying to get to Florida and kill as many zombies as he can on the way. Tallahassee agrees to give Columbus a ride as far as Texarkana. When they stop at a grocery store in hopes of finding Tallahassee’s coveted Twinkies, they fight off three zombies then find two teenage girls, Wichita (Emma Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) in the store room. Little Rock is apparently bitten and asks them to kill her. Columbus gives Wichita his shotgun, which she then uses to rob Tallahassee and Columbus of their remaining weapons and the Escalade. Little Rock is fine, and she drives away with Wichita. Wichita and Little Rock have been on their own since before the zombie holocaust, using Wichita’s good looks to swindle money so they could travel to Los Angeles.

Columbus and Tallahassee find a Hummer with a duffel bag full of guns, including Uzis. They drive west because Tallahassee wants to get revenge on Wichita and Little Rock. They eventually find the Escalade broken down but Wichita and Little Rock get the drop on them. After a standoff, they agree to travel together. Wichita and Little Rock hope to make it to an amusement park near Los Angeles that is rumored to be zombie-free. Wichita confides to Columbus that she knows the rumor is bogus but she will do anything for Little Rock. Columbus, who is a virgin and a geek, begins to fall in love with the tough yet tender Wichita.

When they arrive in Hollywood, they dodge zombies and use a map of stars’ homes to find Bill Murray’s residence. Aghast that Little Rock has no idea who Bill Murray is, Columbus takes her to Murray’s private screening room to watch Ghostbusters, and also to inquire if Wichita has a boyfriend. Tallahassee and Wichita continue to look around and come upon a very much alive Bill Murray. He has managed to survive by disguising himself as a zombie, which allows him to to roam the city freely because zombies won’t attack their own kind. After play acting scenes from Ghostbusters, they decide to scare Columbus as a joke. Caught off-guard, Columbus shoots and kills Murray.

During a game of Monopoly, Tallahassee breaks down and reveals that he lost his young son, Buck, to the zombies. While he and Little Rock take out their pain by shooting fine art, Columbus and Wichita get drunk. They almost kiss but are interrupted by Tallahassee. The next morning, Wichita and Little Rock leave, afraid that any further bonds will break their sisterly bond. They go the amusement park. Believing it is deserted, they turn on the electrical power and enjoy the rides. However, the noise and lights attracts zombies from the surrounding area. The girls manage to get to temporary safety atop one of the rides

Columbus announces he is going after Wichita and Little Rock. Tallahassee plans to go to Mexico but when he sees how pathetic Columbus is but impressed by his dedication, agrees to help him. They get to the amusement park and see that zombies have begun trapped Wichita and Little Rock atop the ride. While Tallahassee runs throughout the park to distract and kill as many zombies as he can, Columbus faces and dispatches the ultimate fear: a zombie clown. He then helps Wichita and Little Rock down off the tower. Wichita embraces Columbus and tells him her real name.

The four of them realize they have made a new family and drive off looking for a new home.

This movie is a fun ride from begining to end. A comedic romp with zombies. And, these zombies are like all of them – they can only grunt and growl. It does seem like they would evolve and occasionally be able to carry on a conversation.

Rating: 4.6 out of %

In the near future, humans live in isolation and only interact through robotic bodies that serve as surrogates. When several humans are murdered when their surrogates are destroyed, a cop (Bruce Willis) investigates the crimes through his own surrogate. After a near fatal encounter, the cop’s surrogate is destroyed and forces him to bring his human form out of isolation and unravel a conspiracy behind the crimes.

Bruce Willis gets beat up early on and carries the scars throughout the movie, much like in the Die Hard series. Extremely watchable. Interesting premise. Fast moving. Somewhat surprising ending.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Two crew members are stranded on a spacecraft and quickly – and horrifically – realize they are not alone. Two astronauts awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. It’s pitch black, they are disoriented, and the only sound is a low rumble and creak from the belly of the ship. They can’t remember anything: Who are they? What is their mission? With Lt. Payton staying behind to guide him via radio transmitter, Cpl. Bower ventures deep into the ship and begins to uncover a terrifying reality. Slowly the spacecraft’s shocking, deadly secrets are revealed…and the astronauts find their own survival is more important than they could ever have imagined.

Sort of an Alien takeoff. Extremely boring, although the ending is your reward for sitting through this boring production.

Rating: 1 out of 5

For U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko, things are about to get even more dangerous. The only law enforcement in this unforgiving territory, she has just been sent to investigate a body on the ice. Antarctica’s first homicide. A shocking discovery in itself, it will plunge her into an even more bizarre mystery and the revelation of secrets long-buried under the endless ice–secrets that someone believes are still worth killing for. As Stetko races to find the killer before he finds her, winter is already closing in. In the deadly Antarctic whiteout, she won’t see him till he’s a breath away.

Not a bad story line. You are gussing til revealed exactly what the cache is that is the focus of all the chaos. One would guess drugs, radioactive material, or even perhaps biological weapons and that ain’t it. That at least is suspenseful til the end. Also, the various killers involved in the plot.

It is an interesting locale, Antarctica, with a “perfect storm” scenario hastening the plot. Watchable, relatively fast paced, and sufficient gore to make it interesting.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Synopsis from imdb.com

“College juniors CASSIDY (Briana Evigan), JESSICA (Leah Pipes), CLAIRE (Jamie Chung), ELLIE (Rumer Willis) and MEGAN (Audrina Patridge) are sorority sisters sworn to trust, secrecy and solidarity, no matter what. But their loyalty is tested when a prank at a raucous house party goes terribly wrong and Megan ends up brutally murdered. Rather than confess to the crime and risk destroying their bright futures, the girls agree to hide the bloody corpse and keep their secret forever. Fast forward one year to graduation. As they prepare to say goodbye to the house and each other, the girls plan one last alcohol-fueled bash on Sorority Row, confident their dark secret remains buried. But does it? As the party rages in the front yard, the bedrooms and the hot tub, the girls receive cell phone videos taken the night of Megan’s murder from an anonymous sender who threatens to forward the videos to the police. Then, one by one, the sisters and their unsuspecting boyfriends are stalked by an unseen killer. Has Megan returned from the dead to exact her revenge? Or was their secret discovered by someone else someone now determined to make them pay? Trapped, the girls race to figure out which of them let their secret slip, who wants them dead, and how to fight back as the bodies pile up and their beloved sorority house explodes into flames. A heart-stopping climax reveals the killer’s shocking identity in this suspenseful, hip and sexy remake of the 1983 classic horror thriller.”

Well this is a predictable teen slasher movie of the “I know what you did last Summer” genre. Same basic plot, just a slight variation. The climax is anything but heart stopping because the killer really has no reason to be so. Pretty stupid. A good way to waste an hour and 40 minutes if you have nothing better to do. It at least saves some of your own air conditioning. Typical overacting and this version has more nudity. If you ask me, the housemother should have used her shotgun on the “mean girl” bunch of bimbos.

Rating: 1 out of 5 ( I am actually surprised Entertainment Weekly gave it a D )

The main theme of the film is revenge. The film is set in an alternate history of the Second World War in which the entire top leadership of Nazi Germany, namely Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and Bormann attend a film premiere in Paris celebrating the exploits of a German sniper who had managed to kill 300 American soldiers in Italy. Most of the film’s timeframe is set in early June 1944, after the D-Day landings but before the liberation of Paris.

The film tracks the separate attempts to kill Hitler by two disparate forces, one being the “Basterds”, a motley crew of Jewish American soldiers out for revenge against the Nazis. The Basterds have a modus operandi whereby each man must cut off the scalp of a dead Nazi soldier, with orders to get 100 scalps each. The Basterds allow one German soldier to survive each incident so as to spread the news of the terror of their attacks. However, the Basterds carve a swastika into the forehead of that German. The other force concerns Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), the only survivor of a Jewish family killed by the Jew Hunter, who plots her own revenge on the Nazis. The Basterds and Shosanna remain unaware of each other throughout the film.

The film opens in 1941 with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) of the Waffen-SS, proudly known as the “Jew Hunter”, interrogating Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), a French dairy farmer, over rumours that he had been hiding a Jewish family. Landa manages to break down LaPadite and locates the hiding place of the Jews underneath the floorboards. He orders his soldiers to fire into the floorboards, killing all but the teenage Shosanna.

Four years later, by 1944, Shosanna has assumed the identity of “Emmanuelle Mimieux”. How she manages to do so is not revealed. She has also become the proprietress of a cinema, which is chosen by Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a spotlight-hungry sniper-turned-actor whose exploits are celebrated in the Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation (A Nation’s Pride), as the setting for the film premiere. He is attracted to Shosanna and convinces Goebbels to hold the premiere in her cinema. Shosanna does not reciprocate Zoller’s feelings.

Shosanna realizes that the presence of so many high ranking Nazi officials and officers provides an excellent opportunity for revenge. She resolves to burn down her cinema using the massive quantities of flammable nitrate film in her storage rooms during the premiere and makes a fourth reel in which she tells the Nazis present of her Jewish identity and revenge.

In the meantime, the British have also learned of the Nazi leadership’s plan to attend the premiere and dispatch a British officer, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), to Paris to lead an attack on the cinema with the aid of the “Basterds” and a German double agent, an actress by the name of Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

Hammersmark arranges to meet Hicox and the Basterds in the basement of a French tavern. Unbeknown to her, however, the night of the rendezvous is also the occasion of a German staff sergeant (Alexander Fehling) celebrating the birth of his son with his soldier comrades. One of the German soldiers present strikes up a conversation with Hicox and notices that his accent is “odd”. An SS officer (August Diehl) who is in the tavern as well also notices that odd accent. When Hicox gives the wrong three fingered order for whiskies (without using his thumb, a traditional German gesture), the SS officer realizes their deception. A firefight breaks out in which the British officer and two of the “Basterds” are killed as is everyone in the tavern except Hammersmark, who is wounded in her left leg.

Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a U.S. Army second lieutenant in the First Special Service Force [7] and the commanding officer of the Basterds, interrogates Hammersmark and decides to continue the operation against the cinema under the guise of Italians as suicide bombers. Colonel Landa, now an SD officer, is able to retrieve one of Hammersmark’s shoes from the scene of the firefight at the tavern and also an autographed napkin which Hammersmark had signed for the staff sergeant’s son. He approaches Hammersmark and Raine in the cinema lobby and is able to easily see through their disguises, as none, even Raine, can speak any Italian or German. He questions Hammersmark alone and makes her try on the shoe he had retrieved from the tavern. It is a perfect fit. He violently strangles her to death as a traitor, and orders the arrest of Raine.

In the closing stages of the film Quentin Tarantino sets the quirks which show that the film is in an alternative universe. Landa reveals himself to be a turncoat. While speaking with Raine and Utivich, he tells them that four major Nazi leaders must all be killed to end the war immediately. They are all attending Nation’s Pride, and he is prepared to let the assassination continue– for a price. He has no intention of helping end the war only to be tried by a Jewish tribunal for war crimes and end up facing the gallows. In order to help end the war, he wants to make a deal, one Raine cannot authorize, but his commanding officer (Harvey Keitel) can. Landa has his radio operator help Raine reach his general, where Landa states the terms of his deal– he wants full military pension and benefits under his current rank, a medal of honor for everyone involved in the operation, American citizenship and a home on Nantucket Island. He also reveals that he had planted Raine’s stick of dynamite in Hitler’s box at the cinema, meaning that there are now three attempts against Hitler’s life. Raine is placed on the radio and his general tells him that Landa and his radio operator will drive him and Utivich in a truck to American lines, then surrender to them, whereupon Raine will drive the truck to base and bring Landa and the operator to him for debriefing.

Meanwhile, during the showing of Stolz der Nation, Shosanna and her assistant (and lover) Marcel (Jacky Ido) are manning the projection booth when he tells her it is time. He needs to lock the auditorium and go behind the screen. As Marcel makes his way toward the auditorium, two of the Basterds, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) and Pvt. Omar Ulmer (Omar Doom), leave their seats and exit the auditorium heading upstairs to the balcony level. Donowitz carefully spies on the guards watching the entrance to Hitler’s opera box from the nearest bathroom.

Shosanna loads the doctored fourth reel of Stolz der Nation onto the projector camera as Marcel locks the auditorium doors, sliding the safety locks at the tops and bottoms of the doors into place, and then slides a heavy iron crowbar through the door handles, further barring them. He steps behind the screen where Shosanna had placed her entire stack of nitrate film. Shosanna pulls a lever to switch the projector to the doctored reel. Watching from behind the screen, Marcel lights up a smoke and waits.

Meanwhile, Zoller, uncomfortable with the way he is portrayed killing Americans in Stolz der Nation, leaves the cinema auditorium and makes his way to the projectionist’s room to hit on Shosanna. She is deeply concerned at his intrusion and tries to get rid of Zoller, but he pushes his way into the room and angrily confronts Shosanna about her treatment of him, warning her that she’s no longer in a position to disrespect him. Needing to get Zoller out of the way, she asks him to lock the door, dropping a subtle hint, ‘we don’t have much time.’ Soon as Zoller’s back is turned to her, she pulls her gun from her purse and shoots him in the back, mortally wounding him. Quickly she glances into the auditorium to make sure she wasn’t heard. Suddenly, she hears Zoller groan and realizes he’s still alive. In an apparent moment of pity, she turns him over, and he shoots her dead.

We see Donowitz and Ulmer preparing their ambush to take out the opera box guards. Donowitz is dressed as a waiter delivering a glass of champagne. The ambush goes off without a hitch and they kill both guards, taking their machine guns.

Meanwhile, we see Hitler greatly enjoying the battle scene in the movie, where Zoller is taking out numerous American soldiers by himself. But his joy comes to a quick end when Zoller’s challenge (in Stolz der Nation) is answered with the changes Shosanna made to the fourth reel. She tells the audience that they’re all going to die, and she is a Jew ready to take revenge. On her cue, Marcel flicks his cigarette into the pile of nitrate film, igniting it. The fire bursts through the screen, causing a pandemonium in the auditorium. Just then, Donowitz and Ulmer burst into Hitler’s box and gun down Hitler, Goebbels and the other Nazi leaders. As the cinema is engulfed in flames, they fire randomly into the crowd, who are attempting to flee, but escape is impossible, as the auditorium doors are now locked and barred. Finally, the dynamite that Landa had planted in Hitler’s box, as well as the dynamite strapped to the Basterds’ legs, now goes off. The cinema is destroyed in the subsequent inferno, killing all inside.

In the final scene, Landa and his radio operator set off with Raine and Utivich towards the American lines in Normandy, as part of the deal he had made with Raine’s commanding officer. At the American lines, he surrenders to Raine and hands over his gun and sword. Raine orders Utivich to handcuff Landa, and shoots the driver dead, ordering Utivich to scalp him over Landa’s outraged protest. Raine reveals that while he appreciates Landa’s underhanded deal and all the perks he’s secured for himself, he is incensed that on arriving in America, Landa intended to take off his SS uniform and blend in to the American populace, with nobody remembering all the heinous deeds he committed as a Nazi officer. Raine plans to remedy that. The film ends with Raine carving a swastika into Landa’s forehead and declaring that it may just be his greatest ‘masterpiece.’

This movie is classic Tarantino. It is absolutely fabulous. A bit less gory than most but quite exciting. Five chapters …. The occasional sound track reminiscent of  of an Eastwood sphagetti western makes this a great time.

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

The film opens with a documentary-style series of interviews that introduce the situation. Twenty years before, an alien ship is seen coming towards Earth and arrives above Johannesburg, South Africa. It hovers above the city for three months without any contact; eventually humans take the initiative and cut into the ship. They discover a large group of aliens who are malnourished and sick. The aliens are later assessed as apparently being all “workers”, with their leadership mysteriously missing (it is hypothesized that a plague may have wiped out all of the leadership-caste). Grainy footage shows part of the ship (supposed to be a command module) falling to Earth, but nobody has been able to find it, leaving the ship inoperable.

The creatures, called “prawns” as a derogatory reference to the sea creature which they resemble, are housed in a government camp. The alien race’s true name is never learned they are primarily referred to as “prawns” or, more rarely, “non-humans”. Overcrowding and militarization eventually turn the area into a slum known as District 9. A massive black market is set up between the aliens and a group of Nigerians primarily led by Mumbo, a paralyzed warlord. In addition to inter-species prostitution, the Nigerians exchange canned cat food for alien weapons, of which the cat food has a similar effect to catnip on the aliens.

The movie takes place in 2010. Patience over the alien situation has run out and control over them has been contracted to Multi-National United (MNU), a private company that shows little regard for the aliens’ welfare. MNU is interested in using the aliens’ advanced weaponry, but its integration with alien biology makes it useless for humans.

An MNU field operative named Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), is set with a task to move 1.8 million aliens to a new District 10 camp located 240 km from Johannesburg, with help from private security forces working for MNU. While inspecting a suspicious alien residence, Wikus handles an alien device which squirts a dark liquid into his face. He becomes very sick and collects the device as evidence.

A rapid transformation begins to occur, and shortly after exposure to the liquid, Wikus’s left arm mutates into a claw exactly like that of a prawn. After collapsing at a surprise party in his house, and a doctor at a local hospital discovers his alien left arm, Wikus is taken into custody and a series of tests and experiments are performed on him; these reveal that his alien DNA allows him to operate alien weapons. The scientists discover that his DNA is currently “in balance” with the alien DNA, which is gradually taking over. They decide to harvest his body for biological material at this critical point, to have the greatest chance of replicating his ability to use alien technology in other humans later. To reduce any side-effects, no anesthetic was used. However, during the attempted vivisection Wikus escapes after overpowering his captors, and flees from MNU.

Wikus seeks refuge in the run-down shack of an alien called Christopher Johnson, the same alien who Wikus attempted to evict earlier, who created the alien device that infected Wikus. The device contains fuel that Christopher scavenged from various alien parts scattered around District 9. It is hinted that Christopher might be a surviving member of the prawn leadership caste, as he shows much more knowledge of how alien technology works, possesses or at least found the command module, and interacts with MNU officials more articulately than other aliens. Although initially hostile towards Wikus, Christopher eventually agrees to help him reverse the transformation if Wikus will retrieve the fuel from MNU labs. Christopher promises to undo the mutation by getting Wikus aboard the mother ship hovering over Johannesburg, and shows Wikus the ship’s command module, which has been hidden under his shack.

Wikus steals some alien weaponry from Mumbo and his gang, with Mumbo vowing to capture Wikus and eat his mutated arm (his witch doctor believes this will give him the power to operate the alien weaponry). With Christopher’s help they launch an assault on MNU and successfully retrieve the fuel sample. While there, Christopher discovers that MNU has been experimenting on his people. Wikus and Christopher fight their way back to District 9 and Christopher begins preparations to leave. He tells Wikus that he must first return to his home world to seek help for his people before he can cure Wikus. Furious, Wikus knocks Christopher unconscious and powers up the ship himself. The MNU mercenaries target Wikus and destroy one of the command module’s engines, causing it to crash land inside District 9.

After Wikus is captured by MNU, a battle between the MNU mercenaries and Mumbo’s gang breaks out. After a protracted firefight, the Nigerians capture Wikus. Just before Wikus’ arm is chopped off, Christopher’s son activates several systems in the mothership, including the autopilot routine of a mechanized battle suit; it slaughters Mumbo and his men after they fire on it. Wikus enters the alien walker battle suit, and after initially attempting to flee, returns and rescues Christopher. Armed with a lightning cannon, tracking missiles, and a high-powered machine gun, Wikus begins to fight the MNU men. After being knocked over by a anti-tank sniper round, he convinces Christopher to return to the shuttle without him, over Christopher’s objections. Christopher promises Wikus that he will return in three years to repair his body. Christopher then boards the shuttle and activates a tractor beam which returns the command module to the mother ship.

Wikus is shot in the back and the walker suit ejects him. Wikus, heavily wounded, begins dragging himself away from the leader (and sole survivor) of an MNU squad, but is quickly caught. As Wikus prepares to die, aliens burst out of the surrounding slums and dismember the mercenary.

The film concludes with another series of interviews and news broadcasts, providing human opinions on the events that unfolded. The aliens are successfully moved to District 10, which now has a population of 2.5 million and is growing. One of Wikus’ coworkers hacks MNU’s database and publicly exposes their illegal genetic experiments. There are many differing theories on Wikus’ fate. Some people believe that he either left on the mother ship, is in hiding, was captured by MNU or a government agency. Some interviewees hypothesize that the aliens are planning to return with a full army and declare war on humanity. An interview with Wikus’ wife reveals a small metal rose was left on her doorstep (Wikus has earlier demonstrated his affection with handmade gifts). Her friends have told her that it could not have possibly been Wikus, but she appears unsure. In the final scene, an alien with a bandaged left arm is shown in a junk yard fashioning a rose out of scrap metal.

While the story line is intriguing. The cinematography was way tooooo low-budget documentary-esque. A better geographic region of the country would have made a better movie. The “characters” were way too amateurish. The alien effects were good. To be honest, I almost walked out within the first 15 minutes. There was opportunity here to make a very dramatic and potentially realistic movie but it appeared that they were maybe trying to make a comedy-drama. It took too long to get the plot running.

Rating: 1.5 our of 5.

Cliff and Cydney (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich) are an adventurous young couple celebrating their honeymoon by backpacking to one of the most beautiful, and remote, beaches in Hawaii. Hiking the wild, secluded trails, they believe theyve found paradise. But when the pair comes across a group of frightened hikers discussing the horrifying murder of another newlywed couple on the islands, they begin to question whether they should turn back.

Unsure whether to stay or flee, Cliff and Cydney join up with another couple, and things begin to go terrifyingly wrong. Far from civilization or rescue, everyone begins to look like a threat and nobody knows whom to trust. Paradise becomes hell on earth as a brutal battle for survival begins.

This movie shows the versatile acting skills of both Steve Zahn and Timothy Olyphant. Milla Jojovich is still her bland self and always comes across like a brainless bimbo with goo goo eyes and stupid facial expressions.

Entertainment Weekly gave this movie a B+ which I was unaware of until after I saw it. I have to give the movie credit for a few twists and turns and some pretty fast paced dramatic action in the last 12 minutes; however, beyond that it was a typical mindless, poorly acted an directed movie. The director had an opportunity to do some striking cinematography but gave that up for the relatively stupid development of a plot. At best this movie should have been about 45 minutes. Amazingly enough, the location was Hawaii but the movie was filmed in Puerto Rico. There certainly were scenes resembling the filming locations of Lost on Oahu.

Rating: 1.3 out of 5

On the morning of a new Congressional hearing led by popular congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) the lead Research Assistant falls in front of a train on her way to the hearings. Old style news reporter for the Washington Globe Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe), investigating a shooting of a petty thief thinks there may be a connection because his seasoned hunches as a reporter just tell him so. His old college roommate Congressman Collins is taking a high-profile position as a champion against a private corporation called PointCorp which will have taps on the entire workings of American phones, e-mails, and all private information. As the story breaks of the death of the Research Assistant so does the congressman break in public, shedding tears and generating rumors that he was having an affair with the young thing from Minnesota. When the Washington Globe’s blogger newbie college grad Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) approaches McAffrey for an opinion about his former dorm buddy Collins, she is immediately told to get lost by the old-school reporter, but after looking over the coincidences, McAffrey pulls Frye into his investigation and reporting of how murder and PointCorp may be threatening Collins. As the two get deeper into the facts they realize that there is a structured network of former soldiers that have been trained into a mercenary group-for-hire and now are employed by a division of the corporation Collins is questioning in Congress. As Della learns how to get a story from the inside from the old pro McAffrey the story develops and exposes corruption on a much deeper level than was initially seen. What is more shocking is that a murderer is attempting to keep the story from breaking and McAffrey and Frye are in his sights. -spelvini

A thief is fleeing through Washington DC at night and is killed with a silenced gun by a man carrying a briefcase. The killer shoots a pizza delivery man who sees the incident and is left in a coma. The next day, a young woman is killed by a subway train in an apparent suicide. Congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck) is distraught to hear the news, as the woman was Sonia, a lead researcher on his staff. Collins, who has military experience, is leading an investigation into PointCorp, a private defense contractor with controversial operations involving mercenaries. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) was a college roommate of Collins, and the two discuss Sonia’s death. Collins reveals that he had been having an affair with Sonia, and that Sonia had sent him a cheerful video message on the morning of her death, which he believes is inconsistent behavior for someone about to commit suicide. Della Frye (McAdams), a colleague of Cal, discovers that Sonia’s death occurred in one of only three CCTV blind spots on the metro platform. Cal believes the shootings are related to Sonia’s death and finds a link between the thief and a homeless girl who sought out Cal. She gives him photographs that the thief, a friend of hers, stole from the killer’s briefcase. The photos show surveillance images of Sonia talking to a well-dressed man. Della visits the hospital where the pizza delivery man is regaining consciousness. She bumps into a man while exiting an elevator. She sees the pizza man in his hospital bed shot dead by an unseen sniper. Distraught, she returns to her newspaper’s office and reviews CCTV footage; she recognises the man she bumped into at the hospital on the footage from the metro platform and at the elevator in the hospital. Cal asks a connection he has inside PointCorp to find information regarding the man. He reveals that PointCorp stands to gain $40 billion annually from its mercenary activities in the Middle East and domestically. Cal speaks with Collins, who shares his research findingsPointCorp is cooperating with other defense contractors to create a monopoly and purchase Government surveillance and defense contracts, essentially privatizing United States security. Cal’s PointCorp insider returns with the address of someone linked to the suspected assassin. Cal visits the address to find the assassin living there. Terrified, Cal makes an excuse and tries to leave. Stalked by the man, Cal calls the police who arrive and force the man to disappear after he shoots at Cal. Della, following a lead, finds the identity of the well-dressed man speaking to Sonia in the photographsa PR executive working for a subsidiary of PointCorp. Cal blackmails him into talking about his activities with Sonia, and secretly tapes their conversation. He reveals that Sonia was paid to spy on Collins for PointCorp, but that she loved Collins and was pregnant with his baby when she was killed. Before Cal’s newspaper goes to press, Collins goes on record to present his research into PointCorp. Cal notices Collins’ wife knows more about Sonia than he thought, and rushes to Collins’ office to speak with him. Collins reveals that he had been suspicious of Sonia, and that he hired the assassin to watch her. The assassin is Corporal Bingham, a former military colleague of Collins’, whose life Collins had once saved. Collins says that Bingham didn’t trust Sonia and killed her with no authorization from him. Cal goes to his car where he is confronted by Bingham, who says he will kill for a friend. Cal ducks, and federal officers shoot Bingham before he opens fire. At the office, Cal and Della type up their story and depart together. The film credits roll with footage of the newspaper being printed.

One of Afleck’s better moments.

Rating: 4.3 out of 5

The film opens in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1959, where a competition is held among the students of a new elementary school to celebrate its opening. The winning plan, from student Lucinda Embry, a seemingly mental disorder/mentally disturbed girl, is to bury a time capsule containing the students’ drawings of the future to be opened 50 years later in 2009. She is prevented from finishing her image, which is actually a series of seemingly random numbers, and goes missing during the ceremony. Her teacher later finds her in a gym closet, frantically scratching the remaining numbers into the door.

Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened and the pictures are handed down to the new generation of students. Caleb, the son of MIT professor and astrophysics|astrophysicist John Koestler, receives Lucinda’s envelope. Initially dismissing them as random numbers, John notices a single random number sequence, 911012996, which contains the date of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks|World Trade Center attacks as well as the death toll of the attack. Further research leads John to realise the numbers are a list contain the dates and death tolls of every major disaster, natural and man made, that has happened over the past 50 years, with three that have not occurred yet.

When a commercial plane crash kills 81, the legitimacy of the list of numbers is confirmed and leading John to believe that Lucinda had an ability to prognosticate since childhood until she died. It is also revealed through this incident that the numbers contain the coordinates for every event listed. As his wife died in one of the past events, John starts to believe his son was chosen to get Lucinda’s prophecies. After Caleb receives a vision of future global catastrophe from a silent man, John tries to contact the late Lucinda’s daughter, Diana, to gain more information, but is rebuffed. But when John also predicts the second event, a subway train crash, Diana and her daughter, Abby, visit John and Caleb, and Diana reveals that her mother foretold of the date of her death would be on October 19th, which is also within the list. They investigate Lucinda’s old mobile home in the woods, discovering walls of news clippings of the events and a drawing of Merkabah|Ezekiel’s Wheel. During their investigation, the group encounters the silent man and three others, who vanish in a flash of light protruded from the man’s mouth when John confronts them. Later Caleb is found writing numbers very similar to the ones that Lucinda wrote without realizing what he is doing. This may suggest that those numbers are predictions for future events. As a result of the confrontation, Abby is revealed to have been contacted by the “whisper people”.

Initially believing that the last event will kill only 33, John eventually re-examines the numbers after Diana’s mention on how her mother used to write numbers and letters backward. He discovers that the final digits are not “33”, but actually “EE” written backwards; the final event is a massive solar flare that will kill “Everyone Else.” As Diana prepares to travel to a system of caves she believes will save them, John breaks into the school to steal the door Lucinda scratched the numbers on. At his house, he begins to scrape the paint off the door, but Diana refuses to wait for him, and leaves with the kids. As the solar flare approaches, it begins to disrupt cell phone signals, preventing John from contacting Diana. She is finally able to contact John through a gas station pay phone, and he tells her that the final numbers are the coordinates of her mother’s house, which he believes is safe, while the caves won’t protect them from the solar flare’s radiation. When panic erupts at the gas station following the government’s activation of the national Emergency Alert System and announcement of the solar flare, two of the whisper people hijack Diana’s car with the two children. Giving chase in another car, Diana is hit by a truck trying to run a red light, dying exactly at midnight, on the very day her mother predicted.

Arriving back at Lucinda’s mobile home, John discovers the children are safe and comfortable in the presence of the whisper people. The whisper people are revealed to be celestial angel-like beings who invite the children to escape the destruction “to help everyone start over”. At first, Caleb is very reluctant to go when his father is not invited to come along; John successfully persuades him to go, saying that they will be together again eventually. The whisper people leave Earth on their ship, a massive structure resembling Ezekiel’s Wheel, as other ships also depart Earth. As anarchy reigns in New York City and Boston John arrives to be with his parents and sister just as the solar flare strikes Earth and incinerates all life on the planet. Caleb and Abby are dropped off on an Earth-like planet with at least two moons as the other ships drop off their passengers. The movie ends as the two children, dressed in white, run toward a large white tree, possibly being the fabled Tree of Life.

Rating: 3.7 out of 5 (plotline is good, movie is good, ending sucks)