Starring:Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Jane Krakowski, Jack Black
Directed by: Chris Wedge
Screenplay by: Michael Wilson
MPAA Rating: PG Mild Peril 20th Century Fox (USA)
Genre(s): animation, animal, children's, comedy
Release date: 15 March 2002
MPAA Rating: PG Mild Peril
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| Directed by: Mark Neveldine,Brian Taylor Produced by : Michael Paseornek,Tom Rosenberg,Gary Lucchesi,Skip Williamson,Richard Wright,David Rubin Written by: Mark Neveldine,Brian Taylor Starring Jason Statham,Amy Smart Music by: Mike Patton Cinematography: Brandon Trost Distributed by: International:Lakeshore Entertainment, North America:Lionsgate Films Release date(s): April 17, 2009 Running time: 96 min. Country: United States Language: English Budget: $12,500,000 USD |
For those of you who've seen "Crank", the so called "action packed thriller" and enjoyed it, good for you and I'm sorry. I'm glad that you enjoyed it, but sorry that you didn't watch a better one because in my opinion, "Crank" made much sense in terms of having a storyline then a babies Pampers having the sense of staying dry 24 hours after being used on a newborn. "Crank" is an action packed movie all right and it does have the thrills and chills of an action movie, but I couldn't find the storyline/plot anywhere because nothing made sense (in fact I'm still looking for it even after having read the 20 or so words on the back of the DVD box). Apparently "Crank" is about a man who is dying and is trying to find the culprits who were trying to do him in. He buys some crack from the black market and sniffs it until he feels better (sure, when you gotta go, you might as well live it up I guess). He even goes into the drug store and swipes several boxes of nose spray because a customer tells him it has some kind of chemical that'll make him feel better (I didn't and I had to go run to the toilet to make myself feel better after sitting hrough another piece of "cinematic brilliance--NOT!"). The acting suffice as to say was pretty good despite what the cast of "Crank" had to deal with it. The direction was pathetic because all the twists and turns were hard to swallow and follow and they were harder to swallow then a pretzel with a Molson Canadian (ouch, now that's pretty hard). The cinematography was okay and the pace was pretty consistent (faster then Speedy Gonzales and "Angulay! Angulay!). If you like action packed movies that doesn't have much of a plot (Those Die Hard movies at least had somewhat of a plot to it) then by all means see this movie, but let me try and save you some time when I say, hey, the weather's getting warmer; so why don't you go outside and enjoy it rather then watch this disappointment. "Crank" left me feeling "cranky" after viewing it and rightly so (pun intended). Also don't get the soundtrack because the consistency with the music was apalling (like mixing opera with heavy metal--PEW!!).
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Directed by: John Hamburg |
In I Love You, Man, which is by far the best Judd Apatow comedy that Judd Apatow had nothing at all to do with, Paul Rudd gives a startlingly funny and original performance as a nice guy with serious dweebish tendencies, and the delight of what Rudd does here comes down to how exquisitely embarrassing he is to watch. He makes you wince in hilarity. Rudd, in films like Role Models and Wet Hot American Summer, has been a wiseass par excellence, and maybe it took a wiseass to play a dork with this much merciless understanding. His Peter Klaven is an L.A. real estate agent (he's selling Lou Ferrigno's mansion) who has just gotten engaged, an event that forces him to confront the fact that he has no male friends. Who will be his groomsmen? His best man? That sounds like a fairly mild predicament to hang a movie on, but the resonant joke of I Love You, Man is that the reason Peter has no pals is that he's too sweetly sincere, too in touch with his sensitive side, to indulge in the gloriously insensitive modes of male bonding: the reckless sex chatter and sports talk, the need to be a guy, a dude. Peter meets Sydney (Jason Segel), who seems like natural buddy material, and the two begin to hang out. But the more Peter tries to get down with his masculine self, the more our jaws drop at how bad he is at it. He does agonizingly out-of-date SNL routines as if they signified he was ''in the know,'' he says things like ''me slappa da bass'' in a ''reggae'' accent, and when his new friend nicknames him Pistol, he names him back — and sounds like a complete idiot jackass. Rudd shows us the awful eagerness to please that drives Peter's strenuous attempt to fit in. He's as mesmerizingly pathetic as Austin Powers, only Peter is a dork you can believe in. The more your face turns red for him, the more you root for him. That's what makes Paul Rudd a star. I Love You, Man is a guy-meets-guy ''romantic'' comedy, and it's part of the film's merry topical wink at how men have been changed by girl-power culture that Peter has no trouble relating to women, but to relate to men he must first figure out how to be one. And he does: by jamming with Sydney to songs by Rush (who they think is the best band in history—talk about masculine delusions!). I Love You, Man is on the side of all things rude, raunchy, and guyish, but only because it recognizes that the freedom to be a lout is a pillar of our civilization. And that more than ever, it's a freedom you have to earn |
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| Directed by: Wayne Kramer Produced by : Kathleen Kennedy,Frank Marshall Written by: Wayne Kramer Starring Harrison Ford,Jim Sturgess,Ray Liotta,Tammin Sursok,Ashley Judd,Alice Eve,Summer Bishil,Cliff Curtis,Merik Tadros Music by: Brian Ross Cinematography: James Whitaker Distributed by: The Weinstein Company Release date(s): February 13, 2009 Running time: February 27, 2009 (limited) Country: United States Language: English |
The best we can say is that writer-director Wayne Kramer means well with "Crossing Over" — he means to put a human face on the unwieldy and divisive topic of illegal immigration. Trouble is, he puts a lot of faces on it. Too many, actually; we rarely get a feeling for who Kramer's many characters really are. And the way he weaves their stories together is so heavy-handed, absurdly contrived and, sometimes, unintentionally hilarious that he repeatedly undermines his intentions. His tone shifts uncomfortably from earnest to didactic to incendiary and back again as he tells the tales of various immigrants trying to forge new lives in Los Angeles, as well as the federal employees who may determine their fates. Comparisons to "Crash" are inevitable, especially given Kramer's fondness for overhead shots of the city's sprawling freeways. (Ooh, we're all so different and disconnected, yet we share the same space!) There's also a literal car crash that sets off one of the movie's subplots. But while some critics may have viewed that best-picture winner as overrated, "Crossing Over" plays like a watered-down copycat. Among the ensemble cast, Harrison Ford stars as veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Max Brogan. The main thing we know about him is that he's burned out, which Ford conveys with his typical curmudgeonly understatement. He also has a 27-year-old daughter from whom he's estranged, which is mentioned once and then dropped. Max and his Iranian-born partner, Hamid (Cliff Curtis), are raiding a sweat shop at the film's start, where they arrest Mexican worker Mireya (Alice Braga), who's here illegally with her young son. Hamid's father, a wealthy businessman who fled Iran in the 1979 revolution, is about to become a naturalized citizen himself. There's also British musician Gavin (Jim Sturgess), who pretends to observe his long-neglected Jewish faith for admission to the country, which leads to an amusing scene in which he stumbles his way through a Hebrew prayer in front of a rabbi. Gavin's Australian girlfriend, Claire (Alice Eve), has her own dreams of stardom: She wants to be the next Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts and will do whatever it takes to get there. This brings us the freakiest story line, in which Claire agrees to have sex in seedy motels with paunchy bureaucrat Cole (Ray Liotta), who will arrange a green card for her in return. Oddly compelling, but it feels like it belongs in a different movie. A subplot involving Bangladeshi teenager Taslima (Summer Bishil), who writes an essay about trying to understand the mind-set of the 9/11 attackers, probably aimed to offer thoughtful discourse on an emotional subject but instead comes out as noise. Bishil, the poised young star of "Towelhead," has some strong moments here, too, though. But then Ashley Judd barely gets anything to do as the immigration attorney who defends Taslima (she also happens to be Cole's wife), and a subplot about a Korean teenager (Justin Chon) who's forced into crime as a gang initiation feels like an inferior version of "Gran Torino." Oh, and his dad happens to be Max's dry cleaner. What are the odds? "Crossing Over," a Weinstein Co. release, is rated R for pervasive language, some strong violence and sexuality/nudity. Running time: 113 minutes. One and a half stars out of four. |
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| Directed by:Will Gluck Produced by :Will Gluck, Matthew Gross, Paddy Cullen Written by : Freedom Jones Starring Sarah Roemer, Nicholas D'Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, David Walton Cinematography: Thomas E. Ackerman Editing by: Tracey Wadmore-Smith Distributed by: Screen Gems Release date(s): February 20, 2009 Country: United States Language: English Budget: $23 million |
Fired Up is an upcoming 2009 comedy film. The main plot follows two high school football players who decide to become cheerleaders in order to be around female cheerleaders. Shawn (Nicholas D'Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) are the star players on their high school's football team. They decide to go to cheerleading camp instead of football camp so they can be surrounded by women. Their school's cheer team happens to be the worst team at camp so they let the boys join in hopes of improving, despite the head cheerleader, Carly's (Sarah Roemer), protest. The guys are having a great time at camp until Shawn falls for Carly, who already has a boyfriend, Rick (David Walton). To win her over, the boys must prove their intentions before the end of camp. |
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| Directed by: Marcus Nispel Produced by : Michael Bay,Andrew Form,Brad Fuller Written by Story: Damian Shannon Mark Swift Mark Wheaton Starring Jared Padalecki,Danielle Panabaker,Aaron Yoo,Amanda Righetti,Travis Van Winkle,Derek Mears Music by: Steve Jablonsky Cinematography: Daniel Pearl Editing by: Ken Blackwell Distributed by: North America: New Line Cinema Foreign: Paramount Pictures Release date(s): February 13, 2009 Running time: 93 min. Country: United States Language: English |
I realize it's not easy to get anyone to feel sorry for movie critics. We work from home in our pajamas, see all the movies early and for free, and spend most of our free time bitching to you about what terrible taste you have in cinema. But keep in mind we often get stuck seeing movies we would never, ever see on our own-- and I don't just mean bad stuff like Confessions of a Shopaholic, or tawdry genre stuff like Underworld. I mean stuff like Friday the 13th, a movie I hated, moment for moment, more than any I've seen this year. I scare easily, and have no fond childhood memories of Freddy or Jason or any supernatural killer targeting teens. I have no idea what appeal anyone can find in this tired formula, especially when it's used so poorly here, 13 years after Scream parodied it so brilliantly. But the people in the theater with me screamed at all the right moments, and even got in a few unintended laughs, so Friday the 13th seems to have a few things going for it. Even so, there are enough needless musical cues, fake scares, and suspense-free moments for even gigantic horror wimps like me to see through it for the trash it is. Whether or not it's good, entertaining trash probably depends on how much you grew up fearing Jason's hockey mask, but fans looking for that same horror jolt they got from the first film 19 years ago will probably find themselves too old for this shit. It's not much that the movie traffics gleefully in the genre cliches-- hot dumb teenagers trapped by a killer in the woods-- but that it doles it all out so haphazardly. The movie opens powerfully by recreating the end of the first movie, the final surviving camp counselor (attractive female, of course) chopping off Mrs. Vorhees' head. Then there's a second prologue that theoretically distills everything you're looking for into 10 minutes, but drags on even longer than you'd think possible for something so content-free. There's sex and drugs, but when it comes time for the gore, director Marcus Nispel has no idea how to pace things to create any kind of suspense. By the time they bite it you're ready, not so much for entertainment but just to finally move on to the real story. When we do, we're "rewarded" with the most obnoxious group of teens this side of The Hills, a handful of bleached blond dudes complemented by some girls in tight T-shirts and the token minorities, an Asian guy (Aaron Yoo) and a black guy (Arlen Escarpeta) who obviously aren't allowed their own love interests. The gang has piled into the summer home belonging to Trent (Travis Van Winkle) and his parents, and we learn that we're supposed to hate Trent both because he's a jerk to his girlfriend and to kindly strangers, and because he's obsessed with keeping the house clean. Meanwhile his pretty, virginal girlfriend Jenna (Danielle Panabaker) is sympathetic when they run into Clay (Jared Padalecki), a soulful guy looking for his missing sister Whitney (Amanda Righetti), who just happens to be one of the victims we saw Jason slice and dice at the beginning of the film. Or did we? As soon as we meet Clay it's pretty obvious that Whitney is alive somewhere, just as it's obvious in which order the stupid teens will die, and how. Jason shows up to dispatch them all in various creative ways, including a truly surprising arrow to the head in one scene and later, a disappointingly generic tire-gauge-to-the-throat. Since this is a franchise reboot, rather than a sequel, Jason doesn't feel the pressure to top his previous antics, and the screenplay follows suit by failing, at every turn, to add anything new to the formula. The flawless production values and rock and roll songs are great, sure, but a reason to care about the characters or even a hint of wit could have gone a long way toward validating this movie's reason to exist. But as I said at the beginning, I'm an automatic hater-- it takes a lot for me to enjoy any slasher movie, which I admit makes me a less-than-objective critic. Whatever you loved about the original movies, be it the blood and guts or the blatantly obvious sound cues that SOMETHING SCARY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!, you'll find it here in full force. But mostly Friday the 13th is proof that horror movies haven't progressed at all since Jason first emerged from Crystal Lake, and bothering with the new stuff is mostly going to be exercise in gruesome disappointment. |
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| Directed by: Pierre Morel Produced by : Luc Besson Written by :Luc Besson,Robert Mark Kamen Starring :Liam Neeson,Famke Janssen,Maggie Grace, Xander Berkeley,Holly Valance,Katie Cassidy Music by: Nathaniel Mechaly Cinematography: Michel Abramowicz Editing by: Frédéric Thoraval Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Europa Corp. Release date(s): France:February 27, 2008,Australia:August 14, 2008,United Kingdom:September 26, 2008, United States:January 30, 2009 Running time: 93 min. Country: France Language:English,French,Albanian Budget: $45,000,000 Gross revenue: $61,144,470 |
The film follows an ex-CIA agent faced with recovering his daughter after she is kidnapped by sex-traffickers in Paris, France. Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is a divorced, former paramilitary officer from the CIA's famed Special Activities Division. His 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) lives with his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and her new wealthy husband Stuart (Xander Berkeley). The nature and dispositions of the major characters are established early in the film: Kim is a happy, affectionate girl who loves horses and has aspirations of being a singer, while her mother maintains a frosty, somewhat antagonistic demeanour towards her ex-husband. Bryan’s skill and quick-thinking are demonstrated when he agrees to escort pop diva Sheerah (Holly Valance); the diva is attacked, but Bryan efficiently disables a knife-wielding assailant and gets her safely out of danger. Thankful, Sheerah expresses some interest in Bryan’s daughter and furnishes him with some contacts to get Kim’s career started. The next day we discover that Kim wants to take a vacation in Europe with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) to follow U2’s European tour. Kim’s mother has no objections, but Kim also needs permission from her father. Fearing that the over-protective Bryan will not consent, Kim pretends (with her mother’s implicit agreement) that they will only stay in Paris to visit museums. Reluctantly, Bryan agrees, and only discovers their real itinerary at the airport. Arriving in Paris, a seemingly friendly young man named Peter (Nicolas Giraud) proposes to share a taxi with Kim and Amanda to the house where they are staying; the girls agree gladly. However, the man works for an Albanian criminal organization to which he reports the address out of earshot. In the house, Kim receives a phone call from her father, which she answers in the bathroom. From the bathroom window she sees men entering the main room and abducting Amanda. Bryan is able to gain critical information about the kidnappers in the final moments after Kim is kidnapped by telling her to shout out everything about them that she notices. Briefly, Bryan talks to one of the kidnappers, warning him that unless Kim is released, he will pursue him and kill him; the kidnapper wishes him "good luck" before smashing the daughter’s phone. Exploiting his contacts in the CIA and the business connections of his ex-wife’s husband, Bryan travels to Paris to find her, informed that the kidnappers are sex-slavers and that he has only 96 hours to recover his daughter before she will disappear forever. The particular kidnapper he talked to is revealed to be an Albanian named Marco. Under the eye of Jean-Claude, himself a former operative and now deputy director of the French intelligence agency, Bryan pursues the kidnappers. He uses digital photos from the smashed remains of Kim’s phone to locate Peter, who is hit by a truck while trying to escape. By hassling prostitutes, Bryan gets himself threatened by an Albanian mobster, and is able to plant a covert listening device on him. With the help of a translator he discovers that the kidnappers have a brothel in a nearby construction site; before leaving, Bryan obtains an Albanian–English dictionary from the translator. On arrival, Bryan acts like a customer; once inside he begins to search for Kim. Unfortunately, he finds only her jacket next to another woman. He is then discovered, and escapes under fire with the semi-conscious woman. Nursing the girl back to health from an involuntary drug addiction, Bryan finds out where the kidnappers took her after she was abducted. Bryan heads to the address and poses as an official negotiating a new "rate" (i.e. a bribe) to overlook the illegal activities going on within. Before leaving he asks the apparent leader to translate from Albanian the words "good luck," which confirms his identity as Marco; he quickly subdues Marco and kills most of the kidnappers. He searches for Kim, but instead finds Amanda, handcuffed to a bed and dead of a drug overdose. Later, through torturing Marco, Bryan ascertains that Kim was sold to a man named Patrice Saint-Clair. Bryan visits Jean-Claude’s home and chats amicably with his wife while she prepares dinner. Jean-Claude, however, failing to have Bryan arrested for the mess he has caused at Paris, brings his gun to the dinner table. Jean-Claude angrily points the gun at Bryan when accused of complicity in Kim’s abduction, but to no avail: Bryan unloaded it earlier. To demonstrate that he is serious, Bryan shoots Jean-Claude’s wife, who apparently did not know of Jean-Claude's involvement in the abduction of Kim, in her arm and, by holding Jean-Claude’s family hostage, extracts Saint-Clair’s location from Jean-Claude. By impersonating a police officer, Bryan gains entry to the building where new girls are being sold, and secures entry to one of the buyers’ viewing booths. When he sees his daughter being sold, he forces the client to bid for her, but is captured and knocked unconscious moments later. Saint-Clair then questions Bryan, who is hanging from the ceiling, about his identity before leaving his security guards to execute him. Bryan escapes and kills the guards before finding Saint-Clair, whom he kills after learning that his daughter is being taken by Arab clients. Bryan manages to follow the car his daughter is being taken in to see her being taken away on a large motorboat. He jumps on to the ship from a bridge and eliminates all the people inside, finally killing the client and freeing his daughter. Back in the US, Kim is reunited with her mother. Bryan introduces Kim to the diva he saved at the beginning of the film, having arranged an audition with her vocal coach. |
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