Scary Movie V(2013)

Synopsis

Happily-married couple Dan and Jody begin to notice some bizarre activity once they bring their newborn baby Aiden home from the hospital. But when the chaos expands into Jody's job as a ballet dancer and Dan's career as an Ape researcher, they realize their family is being stalked by a nefarious demon. Together, with the advice of certified experts and the aid of numerous cameras, they must figure out how to get rid of it before it's too late.

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Comedy, Horror,

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Oblivion

Synopsis

2077: Jack Harper (Cruise) serves as a security repairmen stationed on an evacuated Earth. Part of a massive operation to extract vital resources after decades of war with a terrifying alien threat who still scavenges what's left of our planet, Jack's mission is almost complete. In a matter of two weeks, he will join the remaining survivors on a lunar colony far from the war-torn world he has long called home.

Living in and patrolling the breathtaking skies from thousands of feet above, Jack's soaring existence is brought crashing down after he rescues a beautiful stranger from a downed spacecraft. Drawn to Jack through a connection that transcends logic, her arrival triggers a chain of events that forces him to question everything he thought he knew. With a reality that is shattered as he discovers shocking truths that connect him to Earth of the past, Jack will be pushed to a heroism he didn't know he contained within. The fate of humanity now rests solely in the hands of a man who believed our world was soon to be lost forever.

In Theaters         April 19, 2013

MPAA Rating      PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity)

Genres               Action/Adventure, Adaptation, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Filming Locations   

• New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Iceland
• New York, New York, USA
• Mammoth, California, USA
• Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

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Action, Adaptation, Adventure, Box office, Sci-Fi/Fantasy,

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Spiderman 3

The Spiderman movies have definitely changed the story from the comic book. Watching the first of the film , I wasn't happy with the depiction of Peter Parker as more self-centred and vain, which is unusually in the context of the comic books. At this moment, Peter Park goes through so much crap that it's a wonder he doesn't commit suicide (it's kind of like Jack Bauer in 24).

Some factual points that were changed, which I'll agree was necessary to make a decent movie, are as follows: The Venom costume is an alien being acquired during the Secret Wars battle with the Beyonder (which was one of the best "cosmic" series Marvel has put out). Spiderman doesn't want to kill villains; even when he is beaten and pulverised, he holds back from taking the ultimate step (in fact, it is rare to show people dying in the comic books). Harry Osborn is more like the depiction of Normie Osborn (the son of Harry and Liz Allan) who is friends with the daughter of Spiderman (Spidergirl). Gwen Stacy is killed by the first Green Goblin (Norman Osborn). The people of New York have rarely been on the side of Spiderman. J. Jonah Jameson has always had a point in saying that it is people like Spiderman who create the villains. And so on.

It's difficult for me to reconcile what I know of Spiderman's history with a movie story that does its best and I admire that. A problem with the movies is that they can't intersect with the other characters from the Marvel Universe. It would be great to have movies like the Secret Wars or the Infinity Gauntlet, War, and Crusade series where a bunch of the Marvel superheroes get together and the stories make more sense (for example, explaining the origin of the Venom symbiote), but I guess that would be a logistic and budgetary nightmare.

Halfway through the movie, the story gets in line with what you'd expect from the book. The rejected symbiote bonds with a humiliated Eddie Brock to become Venom, one of the coolest villains to be introduced in the later years. The Sandman is a villain who is ambiguous. And Spiderman has a run of bad luck and is pummeled constantly but triumphs in the end against all odds.

I once wrote a review of the Batman series where I connected them to a lot of the comic books (I own a huge number of Spiderman comic books) and some other reviewer criticised my review. The perspective I offer is fairly unique: it is based on an experience I can't ignore or negative, and I think it helps place the movie in context of a long history of the books. So if you're interested in the saga of Spiderman beyond what you see in the three movies, I recommend buying some of the great story arcs of Spiderman just to see how complicated and mythological the creations are.

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Action, Box office,

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The Taking of Pelham 123 : movie review

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 Is a New thriller starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta directed by Tony Scott shot in the subways of New York City. The story starts as a man who calls himself "Ryder," (John Travolta) leads a band of thugs as they highjack a subway train and MTA dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) who is Reluctantly forced to be the Lead negotiator.

movie review The Taking of Pelham 123

This Film is a remake of a 1974 movie of the same name and reworked to meet a new audience. With modern dialog and cell phones, laptop computers and of course the fact that 911 effects the city still, this film was a really fast pace based roughly on the old plot. There are some wild scenes in this movie of New York City as the Mayor, (James Gandolfini) agrees to pay a $10 million ransom and they try to get the money across the city to the subway station. If nothing else is worth the price of admission to see James Gandolfini, Tony Soprano as mayor of New York it’s so cool. Denzel Washington and John Travolta work wel together and their voices are what id cool to have to big name actors in a dialog driven story about two characters that interact over a radio on the subway car. This film was made for a younger audience and I think that those are ones that do go to the movies regularly.

I think my fellow Critics just didn’t get that part of the puzzle, that this film was made with the 17-27ish age group in mind, so it’s fast cuts and rough, realistic dialog. What would a career family man with a Wife and kids and an ex-con straight out of prison talk like, what would the banter be? I think the writers nailed it dead on and the two main actors and Gandolfini included deliver the lines flawlessly. Also, the fact that this film has scenes filmed on the streets of New York to would in my opinion must have been a logistical nightmare and an undertaking that is in itself a commendable feat. This film also has some great editing and that’s often overlooked, editor Chris Lebenzon stitches together a compelling series of images that suck you in, and work well with the Music by Harry Gregson-Williams. This is a good film, not a great film and it overcomes a story that is antiquated, and turns it into a new and improved version that is engaging to watch.

Directed by Tony Scott
Produced by Tony Scott, Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Steve Tisch
Written by Screenplay: Brian Helgeland, David Koepp (uncredited),
Novel: Morton Freedgood
Starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Luis Guzman, John Turturro, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Frank Wood
Music by Harry Gregson-Williams
Cinematography Tobias A. Schliessler
Editing by Chris Lebenzon
Studio Relativity Media, Scott Free Productions,Escape Artists
Distributed by Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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Action, Box office,

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

There's definite value to making a series of films at the same time: the quality and the "look and feel" is consistent, and the passion of the people involved, if present in the first film, is present in all of them. Most important of all (unlike in The Matrix or even the Star Wars series), it shows that the creators have thought through the implications of their story arc, rather than just generating sequels due to public pressure. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it probably didn't hurt that the plot was based on a famous well-established book.

And this is how it ends. In The Return of the King, the filmmakers tell a fairly simple story: how the two Hobbits, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) finally return the powerful ring to the fires of Mount Doom. They take a well-paced 200 minutes to do so and every minute is worth watching.

The best character throughout the whole series of films for me was Smeagol (voiced Andy Serkis) whose history as he becomes the Gollum is showcased here, as is the corrupting nature of power. This is how the movie starts, and as everyone knows, it ends with his death. Perhaps the best lesson from this film is that Frodo is a potential Gollum, and Gollum is a potential Frodo.

The graphics were absolutely perfect. The final epic battle is a visual spectacle. And as has been the trademark in this movie series, the are interspersed with poignant scenes that are irrelevant to time and place, when viewed from an anthropomorphic perspective. Further, the visual scenes themselves a great mix of live action with computer-generated images which blend together seamlessly. The most anticlimactic moment had to do with the defeat of Sauron, which in the end I thought happened a little too easily. I would've liked to see him go head to head a little more with Frodo's friends.

No set of words in a review can do justice to The Lord of the Rings movies, save to say that it's best watched on a large screen with great surround sound so you can see for yourself why.

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Action, Box office, Hot movie,

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Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000)

The first Urban Legend film ended with the death of the serial killer shrouded in mystery clearly pointing at a sequel. Urban Legends: Final Cut completely ignores that scenario (except until the very end) and comes up with a new one that is a rehash of the original film, but arguably executed slightly better.

In this film, Amy Mayfield (Jennifer Morrison) is a film student at Alpine University trying to come up with a thesis project. Given that her father is a famous director, there are heavy expectations placed on her. She finally decides on a project featuring a serial killer whose modus operandi is based on urban legends, myths where young college students are killed in hideous and gruesome ways.

Needless to say, this idea takes on a life of its own as people around Amy start dying. As in the Scream films, there are a lot of red herrings as to the identity of the real killer. In this film, the ending was one of the more surprising ones for me (though not completely a shock).

The suspense level in the film is fairly high (thanks in part of the surreal visual effects) and perhaps the cleverest aspect of the movie is that it dismisses the events in the first one as an urban legend (also the multiple choice involving guns at the end is amusing). The acting is passable. Urban Legends: Final Cut is a decent time killer and worth the matinee fare on the big screen. I don't recommend renting it though, unless you're a fan of the self-referential slash/gore horror genre.

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Action, Box office, Hot movie,

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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The second Harry Potter film is better than the first, not because it is true to the book's story, but because it is true to the book's atmosphere.

The first Harry Potter movie was very good, but it stayed so close to the book that it spread itself too thin trying to get at every single detail. This adaptation of Joanne Rowling's second book (which I think is the weakest among the entire series) does indeed have all the good parts but focuses primarily on the main storyline. The film skips a lot of the background details, which makes for effective pacing, while taking liberties with the story to fit the big screen.

Here Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliff) and his friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) once again encounter Voldemort (Christian Coulson) as a memory that has the power to become real. Voldemort opens the Chamber of Secrets freeing a fearsome Basilisk, an Alien-like snake that can kill with a glance. The snake's attacks threaten to close down Hogwarts School and Harry must stop them or be sent home to live with his foster parents (you can understand his motivation when you meet them at the introduction of every book/film).

The film is darker than the first, with scenes that are definitely creepy: Harry's encounter with a strange hand in Diagon Alley, Ron and Harry getting stuck in a willow tree that attacks them with its branches, Harry and Ron escaping from the giant spiders, and Harry's final battle with the Basilisk. There are also some Orwellian themes touched upon here, including Dobby the Elf's masochism and slavery, the ideal of some of the "Purebloods" to cleanse Hogwarts of the "Mudbloods".

The familiar high-profile cast do a fine job, with the newcomers, Kenneth Branagh as the pompous (and hilarious) new Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart, and Jason Isaacs as an evil-oozing Lucius Malfoy, particularly standing out. While the child actors carry their roles well, some of them do tend to overact. The score does a great highlighting the suspense, which there exists a lot of.

The set design and accompanying cinematography and production deserves a paragraph of its own. The integration of computer generated images and the actors is very seamless. The Hogwarts school, the surrounding countryside, and the brief Quidditch match are all rendered with amazing reality.

If the first film was the setup, this one's definitely the payoff. Even though I know what happens next, I can't wait to see it.

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Action, Box office,

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