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Archive for February, 2012

The film opens with Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) in his office during his later years. He asks that a writer (Ed Westwick) be let in, so that he may tell the story of the origin of the FBI for the sake of the public. Hoover explains that the story begins in 1919, when A. Mitchell Palmer was Attorney General and Hoover’s boss at the Justice Department. Palmer suffers an assassination attempt, but is unharmed when the bomb explodes earlier than intended. Hoover recalls that the police handling of the crime scene was primitive, and that it was that night that he recognized the importance of criminal science. Later, Hoover visits his mother (Judi Dench), and tells her that Palmer has put him in charge of a new anti-radical division, and that he has already begun compiling a list of suspected radicals. He leaves to meet Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), who has just started as a secretary at the Justice Department. Hoover takes Gandy to the Library of Congress, and shows her the card catalog system he devised. He muses about how easy it would be to solve crimes if every citizen were as easily identifiable as the books in the library. When Hoover attempts to kiss her, she recoils. Hoover gets down on his knees and asks her to marry him citing her organization and education, but is once again denied. However, Gandy agrees to become his personal secretary.
Despite his close monitoring of suspected foreign radicals, Hoover finds that the the Department of Labor refuses to deport anyone without clear evidence of a crime; however, Anthony Caminetti the commissioner general of immigration dislikes the prominent anarchist Emma Goldman. Hoover arranges to discredit her marriage and make her eligible for deportation, setting a precedent of deportation for radical conspiracy. After several Justice Department raids of suspected radical groups, many leading to deportation, Palmer loses his job as Attorney General. Under a subsequent Attorney General, Harlan F. Stone, Hoover is made director of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation. He is introduced to Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), a recently graduated lawyer, and takes his business card. Later, while reviewing job applications with Helen Gandy, Hoover asks if Clyde had applied. Gandy says he had, and Hoover interviews and hires Clyde.
The Bureau pursues a string of gangster and bank robbery crimes across the Midwest, including the high profile John Dillinger, with general sucess. When the Lindbergh kidnapping captures national attention, President Roosevelt asks the Bureau to investigate. Hoover employs several novel techniques, including the monitoring of registration numbers on ransom bills, and expert analysis of the kidnapper’s handwriting. The birth of the FBI Crime Lab is seen as a product of Hoover’s determination to analyze the homemade wooden ladder left at the crime scene. When the monitored bills begin showing up in New York City, the investigators find a filling station attendant who wrote down the license plate number of the man who gave him the bill. This leads to the arrest, and eventual conviction, of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh child.
After going to a Shirley Temple movie with Hoover’s mother, Hoover and Clyde decide to go out to a club. When a girl asks Hoover if he ever wishes he had someone to keep him warm at night, he responds that he has dedicated his life to the bureau. Another girl asks Hoover to dance and he becomes agitated, saying that he and Clyde must leave, as they have a lot of work to do in the morning. When he gets home he shares his dislike of dancing with girls with his mother, and she tells him she would rather have a dead son than a “daffodil” for a son. She then insists on teaching him to dance, and they dance in her bedroom. Soon after, Hoover and Clyde go on a vacation to the racetrack. That evening Hoover claims to be considering marriage to a girl he has been seeing in New York City, this provokes outrage from Clyde, and the two fight on the floor, culminating in a kiss. Hoover demands that it must never happen again.
Years later, Hoover feels his strength begin to decline. He requires daily visits by a doctor, and Clyde suffers a stroke which leaves him in a severely weakened state. An attempt by Hoover to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. into declining his Nobel Peace Prize proves ineffective, and Martin Luther King, Jr. accepts the prize. When Clyde appeals to Hoover to retire, Hoover refuses, claiming that Richard Nixon is going to destroy the bureau he has created. Clyde then accuses Hoover of exaggerating his involvement in many of the bureau’s actions. Upon Hoover’s death, Helen Gandy is seen destroying stacks of files, assumed to be Hoover’s rumored “personal and confidential” files.

This movie give you good and pretty accurate insight into a true American icon. Whether you liked him, hated him, or were indifferent, the movie is well done. DiCaprio should win the Oscar for his performance and once again, Clint Eastwood has demonstrated his great ability as a director.

Rating: 4.9 out of 5.

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet. Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up. When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish. The Thing serves as a prelude to John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film of the same name.

I was curious that this 2011 movie was the “prelude” to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic of the same name. This 2011 entry certainly held true to the genre Carpenter created in the 1982 classic, except this one does show the origin of the transformation virus and getting the see the CGI creatures made this even more frightful. Of course the extreme frightful nature of the 1982 classic was in the fact that you never really knew where the virus came from and not seeing the “creature” was even more foreboding. Similar to the Alien series, you just didn’t get a good enough look of the creature in the first one, but it was way scary.

If you like this genre of move, it is definitely worth takinga look. I only wish I had seen it ont he big screen rather than the having to wait for the DVD.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.

The invitations are sent out. Jacob turns and runs to Canada after he gets his invitation. Bella is nervous about the wedding and has a bad dream that she and Edward kill all of their guests.
Bella’s mom comes out for the wedding and Bella gets to see her one last time. Alice arranges the whole event and they have the wedding at the Cullen house. Bella is clearly nervous and doesn’t appear to want to go through with the wedding, but after she locks eyes with Edward, she becomes more confident and assured. Jacob shows up at the reception to wish Bella well and see her one last time before she is a vampire. Bella explains that they are waiting until after the honeymoon to turn her. Jacob gets upset, knowing that sex human to vampire could kill Bella. Edward rushes over to tell Jacob to mind his own business and the wolves appear as well to pull him away from the reception.
Edward whisks Bella off and they have a romantic honeymoon at a secret location off the coast of Brazil. They make love the first night but Edweard refuses to touch Bella again after leaving her full of bruises the first time. The native Brazilian maid freaks out when she sees human Bella in Edward’s arms. They spend most of their honeymoon playing chess while Bella tries to convince Edward to make love to her again.
Two weeks after losing her virginity to Edward, Bella gets morning sickness and throws up. She then realizes after seeing her box of unopened tampons, that her period is late. Bella runs to the mirror and sees a bump as if she is already a few months pregnant. Then she feels a twitch inside her womb. Alice calls Edward concerned about Bella because she can no longer see Bella’s future. The Brazilian maid tells Edward the baby will kill Bella. Edward packs their bags and takes Bella home, intending on having Carlisle abort the baby. Meanwhile, Bella has called Rosalie and enlisted her help to prevent the abortion.
Bella tells Charlie that she has gotten ill and is extending her honeymoon until she feels better. Jacob, Sam and the rest of the wolf pack find out Bella is pregnant with Edward’s baby. Sam says they have to protect their people and prevent this monster from being born. Using his alpha-wolf voice that the pack must obey, Sam declares that the wolf pack must kill Bella and the rest of the Cullens. Still in love with Bella, Jacob uses his birth right as the true alpha to resist Sam’s order. In doing this, Jacob creates a second wolf pack. Leah and Seth leave Sam’s pack and follow Jacob. Jacob tells them to go back, but they don’t listen and Jacob refuses to use his alpha voice. Jacob’s pack warns the Cullens and takes up guard duty outside the Cullen house.
Bella gets weaker and weaker as her baby grows alarmingly fast inside her. Desperate, Edward tries to get Jacob to convince Bella to abort the baby. Edward gives Jacob permission to kill him if Bella dies. Bella insists on keeping this baby. Worried, Jacob suggests that the baby might want blood. The Cullens fix Bella some O- human blood to drink that Dr. Carlisle got from a blood bank. It works and Bella gets a little stronger. Her belly is fully pregnant but the rest of her body is frail and thin. The babies weight starts to break her rib cage. Edward is still convinced that they should abort the fetus.
Suddenly, Edward hears the baby’s thoughts. He knows that the baby is innocent and not a blood thirsty monster as he had feared. Everyone but Jacob now wants to keep the baby. Bending over to clean up the blood she spilled, Bella hears a loud crack as her back breaks. As she falls to the ground her knee breaks as well. Edwards rushes to catch her head. Carlisle is out hunting with Esme and Emmett as none of them have fed for weeks trying to protect Bella from the wolves. Edward performs an emergency C section to save the baby and then uses a metal syringe to inject his vampire venom directly into his wife’s heart, hoping to save her from death.
Meanwhile, Jacob is sure Bella will die. Bella sees her new baby girl, named Renesme, and then her heart stops. Edwards tries to pump the venom through her heart and bites her multiple times trying to save her. Jacob tells him he will not kill Edwards so he will have to live with the guilt. Furious at the baby for killing Bella, Jacob goes to kill the baby. However, as soon as he sees Baby Renesme, Jacob imprints on her. Jacob sees her life and how she grows up to be a beautiful woman. He knows he will do anything and be anyone for her.
The wulf pack decends and the Cullens are out numbered. Luckily Carlisle, Esme and Emmett come back just in time. Seth and Leah fight their own brothers to protect the baby. Then Jacob comes out. Seeing that he has imprinted on the baby, the wolves can no longer harm her. Edwards explains that it is their oldest and most sacred rule.
Edward cleans and dresses Bella. Hoping that the venom will soon kick in and she will come back to life. Slowly her body begins to fill with regular body fat again, her bones repair themselves, her bite marks disappear and the movie ends with her eyes opening, showing a blood red color instead of her usual brown eyes.
After the credits, we return to Italy where The Volturi; Marcus, Caius and Aro find out about Bella becoming the newest vampire to their coven. Marcus and Caius assume their fued with the Cullens is over, but Aro assures them that it’s just getting started because they have something that he wants.

This next “episode” of the Twilight saga is a transparent continuation of the previous released. It is somewhat darker, as expected, with this cliff-hanger of Bella giving birth to a half-human/half-vampire child, it effecting her death, and the attempt to “save” Bella by transforming her. The gasp from death to vampire life ends this next to the last episode. Hopefully it will be fast-paced, dark, and full of gratuitous violence to compensate for the previous hours we have been forced to watch her fawn over Edward.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Three high school friends gain superpowers after making an incredible discovery. Soon, though, they find their lives spinning out of control and their bond tested as they embrace their darker sides.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The movie starts as a self-filmed documentary and the cinematography persists throughout the movie. I am not a fan of this type of cinematography but perhaps added a touch of realism and poignancy sought for the characters.

Clocking in at 1 hr 24 minutes, any longer and it could have gotten boring. Another example of how the down-trodden, bullied student cannot control or cope with new found power and popularity. It becomes predictable that nothing good is going to come of the gift of the new power.

This movie received an A- from Entertainment Weekly which is why I was interested in seeing it. Movies of this type are not usually rated that high. I am still not sure what they actually saw in this other than it certainly was a movie that focused on the frailty of the human condition.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Matt Weston (‘Ryan Reynolds’ ) is a CIA rookie who is manning a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, when Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) the CIA’s most wanted rogue agent is captured and taken to the safe house. During Frost’s interrogation, the safe house is overtaken by mercenaries who want Frost. Weston and Frost escape and must stay out of the gunmen’s sight until they can get to another safe house.

Two excellent actors in a fast paced, action-packed Jason Bourne-esque movie. Ryan Reynolds does a great job in this serious role. Denzel Washington, as expected, is in his element. The two characters have a synergistic relationship and keep the pace of the movie going.

A lot of gratuitous violence and collateral damage.

Rating: 4.3 out of 5

A feel-good movie for Christmas Day. While Spielberg continues to be ablet to take the mundane story and turn it into a movie spectacle, how many different ways can you analogize “Lassie Come Home.” The book was a better presentation of the story as it was strictly “coming from the horse’s mouth.” In this screen version you get the impression that the story is told by the human hero, not the equine one.

Boy sees horse being born in field of neighboring farm. Boy watches horse grow up. Owner sells horse. Boy’s father buys horse. Boy trains horse and it becomes his companion. Father has to sell horse to save farm. Horse sold to military. Horse goes to war. Boy pines over horse. Boy goes to war. Both have harrowing experiences. At the end of the war boy unites with horse and they go home and ride into the sunset.

Probably a great story for children. A bit boring for adults.

Rating: 1 out of 5.