Movie Review What is America English

What is America? A great nation to some and to others an apostle of democracy, equality and liberty. Brad Pitt, in the last dialogue of "Killing Them Softly" says, "America is not a country. It's a business."

It is this notion of the US that the film, succinctly, tacitly and humorously peels up by looking at one of its 'greatest' homegrown 'business' - organized crime.

Aware that Markie (Ray Liotta), the owner of a gambling den had organized a successful robbery on his own den, a crook hires two small time cons to rob it again knowing that the blame will go to Markie. With the town's economy which depended on gambling, in ruins after this second hit, its crime lords call upon Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to clean up the mess.

What follows is not just a simple 'clean-up' but a complete overhaul and perception management of the 'business' in town.

"Killing Them Softly" is both a thriller and a comedy. It weaves in the best elements of both to give you a film that delights at many levels despite its unconventional treatment.

Instead of focusing on physical action, the film trains its lenses on seemingly inane meetings and conversations. It is thus filled with beautifully written and spectacularly enacted dialogues that may seem pointless to the average audience, but serves to take the story, 'action' and the violence forward in subtle but menacing ways.

Viewers who enjoy a freshly brewed, deep and rich drink will savour this tiny masterpiece like they have very few modern thrillers or comedies.

Yet, the masterstroke of the film is its brilliant metaphor, its parallel running and tagging up of the American financial situation with President George W. Bush trying to fight an economic downturn and incumbent senator Barack Obama talking of 'change'.

what the film insinuates with Bush and Obama talking economics on TV is something very provocative. It's well known now that the financial collapse of the American economy beginning 2008 was an inside job (just like in the film). In a below-the-belt metaphor to American capitalism, the film suggests that the assault on the economy was Bush's doing like Markie robbing his own gambling den.

And the 'change' required to restore order in the nation, comes from an enforcer, Barack Obama whose parallel is Jackie Cogan in the film.

The only change, however, that a business or a nation as a business will permit, is the change in profit. And finally when all is done and there's nothing left to be said, it all boils down to that one world 'profit' as Jackie Cogan and America talk business and minimizing losses.

Adapted from a 1974 novel named "Cogan's Trade", by George V. Higgins, this film by auteur Andrew Dominik (of "The Assassination of Jesse James" fame) is one of the most deceptively simple film you would have seen in a long time.

No matter what people say of America, one thing no one can doubt or deny is that it is a nation of the best politically critical cinema ever made in the world. And "Killing Them Softly", because of its deceptive demeanour, would stand way up at the top of this list.

Movie Review Looper English 2012

Science fiction and time travel have been literary and cinematic bosom buddies forever. Difficult it is then to find a new 'loop' into the marriage of the two. Yet at times some intrepid filmmakers do find a new tale to the old twist.

"Looper" takes past ideas on time travel but makes a package interesting enough to reinvigorate science fiction cinema. And time travel.

In 2074, time travel has been invented but outlawed. It is used in the black market by those who find it hard to kill people and dispose bodies due to advanced tagging technology. They send victims back in 2044 where assassins called Loopers kill people. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one such hit-man in 2044.

One day Joe gets his own future, older self (Bruce Wills) to kill. A moment's hesitation leads the older Joe to escape thus creating a change in the present and thus the future. In trying to close the loop, with his employers chasing both him and his older self, he discovers something bigger than himself.

"Looper" is an extremely nuanced film that has multiple things working for it.

First is the element of science fiction. The loops in the story tangle your mind only for the film to very deftly and logically - that is, if you are watching closely - untangle all the elements.

It takes elements from many science fiction films, be it the classic "Terminator" series - essentially the story of an assassin from the future killing/protecting a child in the past - or the 2007 French film "Time Crimes", which is again about the loop of crime created because of accidental time travel.

You can watch the film multiple times and unravel something new each time.

Secondly, it is an extremely well shot action thriller riding on a brilliantly written script by director Rian Johnson himself.

At another level, "Looper" is a musing about lost childhood, about kids who grow up without parents or grow up extremely poor and what and where it leads them to. It is a poignant meditation on cause and effect, of what the poet W.H. Auden said: "Those to whom evil is done do evil in return."

The film also excels technically. Be it the minimalist scenes of a near-future world that blend in with the story instead of crying out for attention like in badly made sci-fi films, or the background score of Nathan Johnson and cinematography of Steve Yedlin.

Bruce Wills does what he does best. Yet, it is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who is a revelation. Levitt has grown as an actor over the years, migrating from TV to indie films to playing second fiddle in films like "Inception" and "The Dark Knight Rises". Here he shines as a man on the run in fight with his own older self. Of particular delight is his 'attempted' impersonation of Bruce Wills, which is both accurate and hilarious for fans of the ageing actor.

It won't be tough if the producers and directors want to make a sequel set in the 'Looper' universe. Another 'cause and effect' story can easily be created, that could tackle other problems, and time 'loops'.

Movie Review Take 2 English 2012

Frech cinema director - and now Hollywood writer and producer - Luc Besson has been a consistent master of the stylized action genre. With clockwork-like precision he has written and produced some of the most famous action series of the last decade, be it the "Transporter", "Taxi" or now the "Taken" series.

Liam Neeson, who was 56 in 2008 when the original "Taken" came out, was the last guy one would have thought to have turned an action star, a la Steven Seagal. Yet the film surprised everyone with the raw energy of Neeson and its immense emotional pull.

If there is any saving grace in "Taken 2", which is mostly more of the same elements in the first, it is once again Neeson -- at 60 he packs in a punch even Rocky Balboa aka Sylvester Stallone would supremely envy.

On a trip to Istanbul, former CIA spy and now security consultant Bryan Mills (Neeson) and his wife and daughter on a holiday with him, are hunted by the relatives of the men he has killed earlier. He and his wife are captured.

With time running out, his skills are put to the test as he tries to do three things at the same time -- free himself, find his wife and keep his daughter from getting captured. This time he has an ally in his daughter who, wizened by her earlier experiences, does exactly as her father tells her to.

There was a raw neatness and edginess to the first part. Besson and his new director Olivier Megaton ("Transporter 3") try to maintain the same elements here. Though they succeed to a large extent, the surprise is no longer there.

"Taken 2" thus walks a now familiar path. Without much room to either build characters or leave room for sub-plots, it is no surprise that the film goes downhill. Yet, it has enough elements to delight those who loved the first and new ones who inadvertently walk into this one.

Always the dependable actor, Liam Neeson becomes the glue that holds this extremely predictable film together. He excels once again as the calculating ex-spy who does not lose his composure no matter what the trouble is. He is proof of how a good actor is always good physically and can rise up to the demands of an action film no matter at what age he is called in to perform.

"Taken" appealed because unlike "Taken 2", it wasn't confined to one corner of one city. The film moved at a break-neck speed through different cities and different locations across Europe. Located almost entirely in Istanbul, "Taken 2" fails in that respect.

The "Taken" series is the story of a one-man killing machine out on a rampage. But unlike the rampage of other characters, Bryan's is one of necessity. He is at once reminiscent of a Jason Bourne, James Bond and Luc Besson's own "Transporter" character from the film of the same name.

Like his other series, the third instalment of the film has already been announced. "Taken 3", will perhaps not 'take' you to unchartered territories, but like this version will delight you enough to ignore problems with it.

Movie Review Argo 2012 English Film

With each outing in his evolving filmmaking career, actor-turned-director Ben Affleck has amped up the scope. Gone Baby Gone was a character drama woven into a hard-boiled mystery. The Town saw Affleck dabble in action, pulling off bank heists many compared to the expertise of Heat. In Argo, the director pulls off his most daring effort, melding one part caper comedy and two parts edge-of-your-seat political thriller into an exhilarating theatrical experience.

At the height of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, anti-Shah militants stormed the U.S. embassy and captured 52 American hostages. Six managed to escape the raid, finding refuge in the Canadian ambassador's home. Within hours the militants began a search for the missing Americans, sifting through shredded paperwork for even the smallest bit of evidence. Under pressure by the ticking clock, the CIA worked quickly to formulate a plan to covertly rescue the six embassy workers. Despite a lengthy list of possibilities, only Tony Mendez (Affleck) had a plan just enticing enough to unsuspecting Iranian officials to work: the CIA would fake a Hollywood movie shoot.

There's nothing in Argo or Affleck's portrayal of Mendez that would tell you the technical operations officer has the imagination to conjure his master plan — Affleck, perhaps to differentiate himself from the past, plays his character with so much restraint he looks dead in the eyes — but when the Hollywood hijinks swing into full motion, so does Argo. Mendez hooks up with Planet of the Apes makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to convince all of Hollywood that their sci-fi blockbuster, "Argo," is readying for production. With enough promotional material, concept art, and press coverage, Mendez and his team can convince the Iranian government they're a legit operation. A location scout in Tehran will be their method of extracting the bunkered down escapees.

Without an interesting lead to draw us in, Affleck lets his eclectic ensemble do the heavy lifting. For the most part, it works. Argo is basically two movies — Goodman and Arkin lead the Ocean's 11-esque half and Affleck takes the reigns when its time to get the six — another who's who of character actors including Tate Donovan, Clea Duvall, Scoot McNairy, and Rory Cochrane — through the terrifying security of the Iranian airport. Arkin steals the show as a fast talking Hollywood type, complete with year-winning catchphrase ("ArGo f**k yourself!), while McNairy adds a little more humanity to the spy mission when his character butts heads with Mendez. The split lessens the impact of each section, but the tension in the escape is so high, so taut, that there's never a moment to check out.

Reality is on Affleck's side, his camera floating through crowds of protestors and the streets of Tehran — a warscape where anything can happen. Each angle he chooses heightens the terror, which starts to close in on the covert escape as they drift further and further from their homebase. Argo is a complete package, with the '70s production design knowing when to play goofy (the fake movie's wild sci-fi designs) and when to remind us that problems took eight more steps to fix then they do today. Alexandre Desplat's score finds balance in haunting melodies and energetic pulses.

Part of Argo's charm is just how unreal the entire operation really was. To see the men and women involved go through with a plan they know could result in death. It's a suspenseful adventure, and while there's not much in the way of character to cling to, the visceral experience tends to be enough.

Movie Review Resident Evil Retribution 3D

The rise of globalization has truly made the world into a global village. And like in every village, it isn't too tough for a powerful entity, be it a nation or a corporation, to establish dominance. What if this domination and the strength of this corporation, came at the cost of the world as we know it?

This is the basic premise of the "Resident Evil" film franchisee and a very pertinent point for our time of global corporation. It is hence pitiable to see each newer film in the franchisee getting progressively worse than the previous ones.

What is worse is that each new version ends up making more money than the previous version, making it the most successful film franchise based on a video game.

Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up to find that she is now a prisoner of the Umbrella corporation that she has been fighting against and had sworn to destroy. However, she manages to escape only to realize that she is not really in the outside world, but a world of live simulations.

Even as a team sent to rescue her makes its way towards her, Alice is confounded with the gravity of the strength of Umbrella corporation and that of the computer 'Red Queen'.

Like you'd expect from any franchisee that has run for this long, this fifth instalment of the franchisee has got almost everything thrown in. Thus you have Alice as a young, innocent mother being attacked by zombies, you have Alice the confused, half-naked prisoner and Alice the street fighter who punches and kicks zombies to pulp among others.

Yet, in trying to create these situations, it forgets its very soul which is a criticism of corny capitalism. Thus, while it's well conceived action sequences works, overall the film is a huge disappointment becoming nothing but a collection of mutated zombie monsters, many gunfights and few hand-to-hand combat.

For kids these days addicted to violent video games with excellent effects, this is staple diet. Indeed, the construct of the film's universe, is that of a video game where our protagonists have to go through different environments, with each section having its own ferocious monsters, before emerging victorious.

For a discerning viewer, watching a beautiful woman pack a mean zombie punch isn't worth it. Not with the innumerable plot inconsistencies, corny dialogues and some extremely lazy and at times insipid writing.

If you thought this was reason enough to sound the death knell of the series, you're wrong. For like the zombies in the film that are shot but refuse to die, the series will rise again, in another film, in less than two years.

Money, no matter where it came from, is too hard to resist, be it for the Umbrella corporation or the producers of this franchisee and its director.

Movie Review Won't Back Down 2012

Won't Back Down is as strident and willfully heart-plucking as you'd expect from a movie about two mothers from different socio-economic backgrounds who want to change the broken school system.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is as charming as ever as Jamie Fitzpatrick, a single mom working two jobs who has a punky, plucky look about her. (We should note her visible tattoos, lack of a college education, and financial struggles as a marker of a wild and free past that she now regrets, or even worse, doesn't regret at all.) Her equally adorable daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lind) is dyslexic, and the public school she's at, Adams, is full of zombie-fied teachers who fail upwards or just plain phone it in. Jamie can't afford sending Malia to the private school that was starting to help her, and all the teachers at her new school are like, "Whatever, my shift ends at 3 PM, see ya!" because of unions. Their only hope is a charter school with a few precious slots open. wont back down review(The charter school's headmaster is played by Ving Rhames so you know he gets s**t done.) Of course, Malia doesn't snag a spot there, despite her mom's aforementioned pluck and cute prayers to "foxy lady luck."

When Jamie sees Nona Roberts (Viola Davis), one of the teachers from her daughter's school, at a lottery for a charter school, Jamie corners her. She tries to get Malia transferred to Nona's class, but that doesn't work. Why she does this isn't clear since we saw Nona's class at the beginning, and Nona was one of those teachers phoning it in; none of her students are paying attention to her as she drones on, and who could blame them? They don't care that she's actually a highly educated woman who was once fired up about education and changing lives and all that, inspired by her late mom's work as a teacher and her students' lifelong love. But, whatever, that doesn't work either, and with her can-do attitude, Jamie stumbles upon the "Pennsylvania Fail-Safe Act."

Won't Back Down relies on the Fail-Safe Act as its hook, which is problematic because, while it is based on "parent trigger laws," it's also sort of made up. This makes things especially confusing since "Won't Back Down" is basically a call to arms for parents to take charge of their children's schooling, and the movie oversimplifies a complicated matter. As someone who isn't a parent, isn't involved in any sort of labor movement and is barely privy to the trials and tribulations of my friends who are teachers (even one who used to work at a charter school), even I know that this movie is a big flashing neon sign of a message about how great charter schools are. Although it touches on how it's more complex than that through the character of the hot hippie teacher love interest Michael (Oscar Isaac), the characters who are in support of or belong to the teachers' union are generally vilified. It is perhaps worth mentioning that production company Walden Media was also involved in the documentary Waiting for Superman, which highlighted the struggles of a few families hoping to get their kids into charter schools. We can assume that whatever "actual events" this movie is based on didn't include a cute single mom with a can-do attitude and a teacher who suddenly finds her joie de vivre once again by osmosis.

Everything is as on the nose as the theme song by Tom Petty. This is to say nothing of the uninspired direction, which relies heavily on dark grays and blue tones at the beginning to denote how depressing and hopeless everything is, and eventually turns to rosier tones as things begin to come together. The music is equally overbearing. As if we didn't get it, "Norma Rae" is even invoked.

Won't Back Down wastes a very talented cast on a story that has no real arc, as any possible question the viewer might have about the story is answered by the very title. They won't back down. Maggie Gyllenhaal won't back down. Viola Davis won't back down. Oscar Isaac wants to back down but is way too smitten to stick to his pro-labor stance. Even Holly Hunter, an executive-type teachers' union person who waxes philosophical about how much unions meant to her family, eventually backs down. And Rosie Perez, as a fellow frustrated teacher? You guessed it. While it's clear that the filmmaking team behind Won't Back Down care a great deal about a crucial issue facing America today, dumbing down something so complex for mass consumption is not the way to fix anything. And it's certainly not a way to make a good movie.

Movie Review Looper 2012 English

Hollywood has a difficult relationship with science fiction. Whether they're translating classic sci-fi stories into brainless action movies, or too caught up in the otherworldly details, there's always something they can't seem to get right about the imaginative genre.

Looper defies the odds by fleshing out a unique future world, while honing in on a specific story with real people at the center — a balance that defined works by greats like Bradbury, Asimov, and Dick. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper, an assassin for the mob bosses of the future, who use illegal time travel to send back their targets for disposal. It's an easy, lucrative life — one that affords him a party lifestyle of fancy cars and drops (drugs taken through the eye), albeit with the added knowledge of a definite, grisly end. looper reviewEventually, the mob "closes the loop" on its employees, finding the Looper in the future and sending them back to be offed by… themselves. When it's Joe's turn to end his own life, he's outsmarted, his future self (Bruce Willis) escaping Joe's grasp. Driven to fulfill his duties as a Looper, Joe goes on the hunt to kill himself.

Director Rian Johnson's Kansas City of 2044 feels appropriately lived in and extended from present day. When Joe's not blasting people away, shrouded by the stalks of a cornfield, he's dining on steak and eggs at a local diner. It's only the casual presence of hovercycles, mutant telekinetics, and the occasional visitor from the future that would give away the action of Looper isn't happening today. The realism gives Joe and the metropolis around him a necessary grit — there is danger and violence and pain in this world, and when Johnson rouses up an action sequence, there's something on the line.

Looper's greatest flaw is that it steps away from the confrontation between Young and Old Joe, sending the two in different directions as they pursue answers to the film's spoilerific MacGuffin. On a farm away from the city, Young Joe crosses paths with single mother Sara (Emily Blunt), who may hold the key to what Old Joe needs to survive. After being introduced to an ensemble of delightfully wicked characters — including Looper coordinator Abe (Jeff Daniels), Young Joe's sleazy coworker Seth (Paul Dano), and hotshot marksman Kid Blue (Noah Sagan) — plus, Young Joe's stripper with a heart of gold confidant, Suzie (Piper Perabo), Looper takes a sharp left turn, leaving most of the cast in the dust. The interesting sci-fi mosaic slows down and enters a new chapter, and it's rarely as engrossing as the first half.

When Willis and Gordon-Levitt are at odds, Looper is simply magic. Nathan Johnson's industrial score pounds away as the two fight to stay alive, all while grappling with the implications that come with glimpsing into your own future. One riveting sequence follows the timeline that played out before Old Joe tinkered with the space-time continuum, a roller coaster through the years after the events of the film that see Gordon-Levitt evolve into Willis. The montage is a playground for Johnson's visual style. He never misses a beat.

For sci-fi nuts, Looper corrects the past with an understanding of what makes the genre more than just an array of tropes and iconography. There are shaded characters duking it out in Looper's chaotic web of time travel logic, and while their arcs fizzle out without much pay off, they're a joy to watch.

Movie Review Hotel Transylvania 2012

Hotel Transylvania is studded with big names — Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Jon Lovitz, the list goes on — but no amount of star power and 3D effects can rescue this monster movie from its one dimensional cast of ghouls and derivative overprotective father plot-line. In creating a hotel for monsters, someone hit upon a clever idea. However, the freshness stops there, as neither the storyline nor characters are remotely fleshed out.

Count Dracula (voiced by Sandler) has opened up a hotel, deep in the heart of the haunted forest, where monsters can check in for a little R&R without fearing human contact. But while Dracula guards his hotel with his life, he guards his adolescent daughter, Mavis (Gomez), even closer. Hotel TransylvaniaShe has lived a sheltered life, confined to the hotel, since her mother's death a century earlier. That is, until human manchild Johnny (Samberg) unexpectedly arrives at the hotel on Mavis' 118th birthday and shakes things up. What ensues is a disjointed catapult of a movie, one which more closely resembles an advertisement for the latest virtual reality amusement park ride than the story-driven animated films we love.

Our first glimpse of Johnny, snapping photos incessantly on his smart phone as he backpacks across the world, is enough to illicit a few laughs — we've all seen that wide-eyed, technology-obsessed kid before. But soon the 21-year-old is riding his Razor scooter and dropping Dave Matthews Band and Slipknot references, and you realize just how out of touch this film is. The clinging father storyline — filled with daughterly exclamations of, "I just want to see the world!" – and love at first sight trope (referred to as a "zing") are equally stale.

In the movie's final act, our monsters — which include a mummy, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and a family of werewolves — leave the confines of the hotel and venture into the human world. As our gang stumbles across a Monster Convention, full of costume-wearing monster-obsessed nerds, the film hits a high point. The self-referential humor that arises from the absurdity of the situation is a welcome relief from the fart jokes and sight gags that fill the film's first two thirds. However, it's too little too late.

Ultimately, Hotel Transylvania is a great choice for distracting the kids, who will likely respond well to the toilet humor and break-neck pace. Unfortunately, there's not much in this film for theatergoers over the age of seven to hold on to.

Movie Review Fire In Babylon 2012

You believe that for Indians, cricket is a religion. But reality, where players make millions just for a few games and are 'owned' and 'sold' by the rich and famous, is different.

In such times, it is impossible to imagine that cricket could be a metaphor against racism and a clarion call for rebellion against injustice in the world. It indeed was, for the West Indies team in the late 1970s that inspired the black world with a call for unity against apartheid.

"Fire In Babylon" is the documented true story of those most inspiring times for world cricket and of the greatest cricket team in history.

It's 1975 and the West Indies cricket team comprising of players from small countries like Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica etc., are on a Test cricket tour of Australia. They are not only defeated by the Australian team, but are physically ravaged by the tremendous bouncers of Dennis Lillie and Jeff Thomson.

To add insult to injury, the team, belonging to countries that have only recently been free of their white colonial masters, are heaped abuses like "black bastards".

The quiet, reticent captain Clive Lloyd decides he has had enough and sets out in search of players who could bowl as fast as the Australians. His discovery of four pacers, and the pride that it instilled among the West Indians, not only changed the game of cricket forever and ensured that the West Indian team remained undefeated for 15 years, but also unified the islands of the West Indies into one cohesive whole while sending out an anti-apartheid message to the world.

As black people were being beaten on the streets of a white world, a black cricket team was beating the whites on the cricket field, in a game that was invented by the whites. If you liked the Oscar nominated film "Lagaan", here's a real life replaying of the film.

Like one cricketer in the film says, "For the first time in the world, blacks were champions at something".

It is a folly to look at "Fire In Babylon" only as a cricket film. It is a film about a group of nation full of black people in a world where racism was still alive and kicking evident in the apartheid of South Africa, race riots in England and civil unrest in the Carribbean, who staked claim to being the best in the world and stayed the best for a long time.

It is the story of an era, and a game, that, in its own right, set the stage for making the world a place with much more equality and honesty than it was before.

"You fight, I'm gonna fight. We had a mission and a mission that we believed in ourselves and we believed that we were just as good as anyone. Equal for that matter," says Viv Richards, one of the greatest cricketers of all times, philosophically at the beginning of the film. This sets the stage for a film that is as riveting as it is awe-inspiring.

It is the perfect film for the times where the game of cricket has become a means of money for the players, and entertainment for viewers. Cricket was more, and indeed, in a nation like India, even today, can be more than just a dumb game played by a bunch of rich, selfish players.

Movie Review Resident Evil Retribution 2012

The rise of globalization has truly made the world into a global village. And like in every village, it isn't too tough for a powerful entity, be it a nation or a corporation, to establish dominance. What if this domination and the strength of this corporation, came at the cost of the world as we know it?

This is the basic premise of the "Resident Evil" film franchisee and a very pertinent point for our time of global corporation. It is hence pitiable to see each newer film in the franchisee getting progressively worse than the previous ones.

What is worse is that each new version ends up making more money than the previous version, making it the most successful film franchise based on a video game.

Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up to find that she is now a prisoner of the Umbrella corporation that she has been fighting against and had sworn to destroy. However, she manages to escape only to realize that she is not really in the outside world, but a world of live simulations.

Even as a team sent to rescue her makes its way towards her, Alice is confounded with the gravity of the strength of Umbrella corporation and that of the computer 'Red Queen'.

Like you'd expect from any franchisee that has run for this long, this fifth instalment of the franchisee has got almost everything thrown in. Thus you have Alice as a young, innocent mother being attacked by zombies, you have Alice the confused, half-naked prisoner and Alice the street fighter who punches and kicks zombies to pulp among others.

Yet, in trying to create these situations, it forgets its very soul which is a criticism of corny capitalism. Thus, while it's well conceived action sequences works, overall the film is a huge disappointment becoming nothing but a collection of mutated zombie monsters, many gunfights and few hand-to-hand combat.

For kids these days addicted to violent video games with excellent effects, this is staple diet. Indeed, the construct of the film's universe, is that of a video game where our protagonists have to go through different environments, with each section having its own ferocious monsters, before emerging victorious.

For a discerning viewer, watching a beautiful woman pack a mean zombie punch isn't worth it. Not with the innumerable plot inconsistencies, corny dialogues and some extremely lazy and at times insipid writing.

If you thought this was reason enough to sound the death knell of the series, you're wrong. For like the zombies in the film that are shot but refuse to die, the series will rise again, in another film, in less than two years.

Money, no matter where it came from, is too hard to resist, be it for the Umbrella corporation or the producers of this franchisee and its director.

Movie Review The Perks of Being a Wallflower

When you're in high school, it feels like the whole world is against you. In writer/director Stephen Chbosky's high school-set The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the whole world may actually be against Charlie (Logan Lerman), whose freshman year of high school should be listed in the dictionary under "Murphy's Law." Plagued by memories of two significant deaths as well as general social anxiety, Charlie takes a passive approach to ninth grade. perks of being a wallflower reviewA few days of general bullying later, he falls into a friendship with two misfit seniors, Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson), who teach him how to live life without fear. Perks starts off with a disadvantage: introverts aren't terribly engaging, but Chbosky surrounds Charlie with a vivid cast of characters who help him blossom and inject the coming-of-age tale with a necessary energy.

Set in a timeless version of the '90s, Charlie's world is full of handwritten journals, mixtapes, and a just-tolerable amount of tweed. He writes letters to a nameless recipient as a way of venting, a preventative measure to keep the teen from repeating a vague incident that previously left him hospitalized. The drab background of Pittsburgh fits perfectly with Charlie's blank existence. And when he finally comes to life as part of Patrick and Sam's off-beat clique, so does the city. Like the archaic vinyl records Sam lusters over (The Smiths, of course!), Chbosky visualizes Charlie's journey through the underbelly of suburban Pennsylvania with a raw emotion, blooming lights and film grit at every turn. Michael Brook's score and an adeptly curated soundtrack accompanies the episodic affair, which centers on Charlie's search for a song he hears during the most important moment of his life.

The charm that keeps The Perks of Being a Wallflower from collapsing under its own super seriousness come from Chbosky's perfectly cast ensemble. Lerman has a thankless job playing Charlie; often constrained to a half-smile and shy shrug, Lerman is never allowed to grapple with Charlie's greatest fears and problems until (too) late in the film. Watson nails the spunky object-of-everyone's-affection, but she's outshined by Mae Whitman as Mary Elizabeth, another rebellious friend in the pack who takes a liking to Charlie. The real star turn is Miller, riding high from We Need to Talk About Kevin and taking a complete 180 with Patrick, a rambunctious wiseass who struggles to have an openly gay relationship with the football captain, but covers his pain with humor. A scene of confrontation — at where else, the cafeteria — is one of the best scenes of the year.

Chbosky adapted Perks of Being a Wallflower from his own book, and the movie feels stifled by a looming structure. But it nails the emotional beats — there is no obvious path to surviving high school. It's messy, shocking, and occasionally beautiful. That about sums up Perks.

Movie Review Dredd 3D English 2012

A re-imagining of the 2000 AD label comic book that inspired Judge Dredd, the 1994 Sylvester Stallone action flick that took sci-fi wackiness to new heights, Dredd scales back on the futuristic elements and puts an emphasis on the brutality in store for the Judge's criminal victims. In this not-so-distant world, a Judge has the power to decide your fate right upon capture — and usually, the sentence involves some type of ammunition being fired into the offender's skull. Dredd is a grimy, smoldering, relentless 90 minutes that manages to inject its in-your-face fight scenes with an unexpected bit of humanity. Shocking, considering the buckets of blood spilled during Judge Dredd's warpath, which begins from his very first appearance.

This time around, Dredd is played by Karl Urban, a chiseled beast of a dude who balances the machismo with a healthy dose of one-liner comedy. A great central hero. To investigate a series of murders connected to one of Mega City 1's most notorious crime figureheads, Dredd is partnered with an exact opposite: Cassandra (Olivia Thirlby), a new recruit who makes up for her lack of killer instinct with a mutant psychic power. dredd actionShe may not have the throat-ripping capabilities of Dredd, but once this girl gets in a baddie's head, it's over. Dredd is wary of his new sidekick potential — even more so when the challenge they face reveals itself. Cooped up at the top of a 120+ story building is Ma-Ma (Lena Hedley), whose operation will soon put a new drug — dubbed "Slo-Mo" — in the hands of every Mega City 1 citizen. To stop her, Dredd and Cassandra must slay her goons as they ascend the skyscraper. Simple premise, lots of bloodshed.

Unlike this year's The Raid, which took a similar approach to the non-stop antics of a martial arts film, Dredd opts for the slow burn approach. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point) wants us to take a big whiff of every musky apartment in Ma-Ma's "Peach Trees" tower; he wants us to feel every drip of sweat that trickles down Dredd's stubble, while the law enforcer waits patiently to attack; he wants us to feel the complete stop of time when the Slo-Mo drug kicks in and even droplets of suddy bath water hang in the air from a splash; and he wants us to feel like we're in the front seat of a Gallagher show when Dredd fires an explosive bullet into the mouth of a henchman and watches the head explode into bits (all in clear and crisp 3D). Dredd is near-fetishistic in its approach to gore – I found myself mouth agape making audible "EEEEEEEEAAAAH" sounds throughout the film — but plays well to the lead character's ferocious nature.

The hyper-style doesn't end with Dredd's unique array of finishing moves either; Cassandra's telepathy is a weapon of the senses that Travis mines for every flashy montage sequence he can squeeze out of it. In one sequence, Cassandra uncovers an important clue by subjecting one of Ma-Ma's assailants to mental torture, a terrifying whirlwind of imagery of saturated nightmares (if you've ever watched Saw after scarfing down an undercooked burrito, you know what I mean). Travis amps "MTV editing" in these sequences, an assault to the senses that's just as purposefully grating as the gritty fight sequences.

What makes the whole thing worth watching are the film's two leads. Urban has the thankless task of playing Dredd under the Judge's signature mask — someone obviously forgot to tell the police force of the future that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Urban makes up for it with a spectrum of snarls and a voice that sends chills down the spine. He also knows his way around comedy timing (as evidenced by his equally-impressive performance as Bones in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek), delivering kitschy zingers that click with Dredd's rough and tough world. The yin to his yang, Cassandra could have been another helpless female costar who steps in with magical powers when the time is right, but Thirlby is the real heart and soul of Dredd, breathing compassion into a dimly lit situation and reflecting the grey morality of the entire Judge program. Why are people cool with cops coming in and blowing them away when they see fit? Why is that the new definition of heroism? The script by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go) is smart to ask those questions, and Cassandra is the perfect proxy. Thirlby, as adorable as she is, plays the gal fierce, a sensible kind of Judge that can live side by side with Dredd.

There are a lot of people who won't be able to stomach Dredd, partly for the level of violence, partly for the consistency and pace of how that violence is unleashed. The small scale and singular location of the action don't allow Dredd to keep the surprises coming. After awhile, watching human heads splatter like water balloons becomes taxing and unenjoyable (which some psychologists may say should have been the case in the first place). Hedley does a decent job of making her psychotic Ma-Ma into a wicked villain who deserves her due, but without a fleshed out cause and bigger picture implications, it's hard to care. Her squad of faceless men are more like punching bags then characters. But over-the-top mayhem has its place, and when accompanied by a badass like Dredd and a pumping electronica score, it's hard not to cheer when the Judge lays down the gruesome law. Dredd isn't a great film, but it's a great Comic-Con film — one worth catching at midnight and screaming your lungs out all in good, absurd fun.

Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 Theatrical Trailer Official Promo 2012

Movie Review The Words English 2012

The Words is the cinematic equivalent of a sentimental airport novel. It's someone's baby, a work forged of sweat and blood as all creative ventures are, but just as our protagonist Rory discovers, that's not always enough. Although the movie would like to stir up conversation about fact and fiction, creativity and ownership, it's full of flimsy contrivances and sappiness that makes a movie (or a novel) thin and forgettable.

The Words tries to be clever by wrapping a story within a story within a story, but it's ultimately undermined by underdeveloped characters and sentimental trifles. Dennis Quaid plays a successful author, Clay Hammond, who kicks the movie off by reading from his new book, The Words, to a packed house of enthusiastic fans and colleagues. He's being pursued by a gorgeous MFA student named Danielle (Olivia Wilde) who's interested in Clay's attention, but almost as if she could absorb some of his supposed brilliance through osmosis (or, you know, sex). The book he's reading from is about Rory Jensen, a floundering writer played by Bradley Cooper with every ounce of emotional depth the Hangover star can muster. Despite his lovely and eternally supportive wife Dora (Zoe Saldana), Rory can't help but feel ripped off by life. He's paying his dues writing all night and working at a publishing house in the mail room all day, but he can't get anywhere with his work. It's just not marketable, it's too internal, people wouldn't get it.

Rory is so misunderstood, and his life sucks. That is, until he finds a lost manuscript in a leather briefcase that he and Dora bought on their Paris honeymoon. It's genius, everyone loves it, and he's living large. When an old man, who is simply referred to as "The Old Man" (played by Jeremy Irons in some sort of aging make-up that makes him look like his face is slowing melting like candle wax) appears to claim his book, Rory (and the audience) is forced to listen to another story. We're sucked into post-war Paris and The Old Man's tragic life.

Most of The Words is told through various narrators, which further undercuts the already underdeveloped characters. We're not given much to go on when it comes to Rory and why he writes, or even why Dora is so crazy about him that she jumps his bones when he's trying to work on his epic novel. There's little indication what she does other than be supportive of Rory's work, even when he's being a giant putz and telling her that nothing in his life is right. He is what one might imagine most petulant, overly intelligent, successful male writers are like in real life, but without any of the actual meat and blood to make him worthy of Dora's or our interest. While The Old Man's story is interesting, it is fairly vacuous. Irons shows a little bite here and there, but he's your stock Sad Old Lonely Man character, who chain smokes and feeds the birds in the park and coughs with a certain ominous foreshadowing. Last but not least, Clay is supposed to be the mastermind behind all this, bringing up questions of fact versus fiction and what we give up to become artists and creators and how that affects our relationships with everyone around us. While these are all ultimately unanswerable questions, Clay and his fictional doppelgangers aren't deep enough to really hazard a guess. The women they talk to are ciphers, muses, or pushovers.

This is the directorial debut of Lee Sternthal and Brian Klugman, who also wrote the script together. (They're previous credits include TRON: Legacy.) The cinematography isn't particularly a stand out, although giving the scenes set in the '40s a sort of sepia tint works well, if a little too on the nose. The score is too intrusive and self-important; it tries entirely too hard to make the audience feel things that aren't in the movie itself. The Words is the sort of movie you'd watch on an airplane or on cable some Sunday afternoon. The characters' moral quandaries, in the end, don't say anything at all.

Release Date: 09/07/2012
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, Dennis Quaid

Movie Review The Apparition English

The Apparition is your typical, ultimately forgettable horror film that serves up more unintentional laughs than scares. Tom Felton of the Harry Potter series appears as Patrick, a sort of paranormal-obsessed Encyclopedia Brown, whose jerry-rigged college experiment ends with one of the participants being sucked up into -- somewhere, the wall? The maw of the Apparition? Who knows. She's gone, and the apparition is on the loose.

Fast forward a few years, and Patrick's paranormal accomplice Ben (Sebastian Stan, of Captain America and Gone) is attempting to make a life for himself with his girlfriend Kelly (Ashley Greene). They've just moved into a house in a mostly empty land development in Palmdale, CA, where their only neighbors seem to be a guy and his daughter and their dog. Kelly's parents bought the house as an investment, like the Bluths from Arrested Development, minus any personality and plus a ghost.

Immediately, something otherwordly begins screwing with their absolutely normal, Costco-going, everyday lives. Things move, doors open, nasty-looking "mold" begins growing on things, and once Kelly discovers Ben's ghost-hunting past (and the fact that the girl who disappeared was his ex, sob!), their relationship begins unraveling as the ghost ramps up its reign of terror. This gives Patrick the chance to re-enter his friend's life so they can bust out their ghost-hunting (and ideally ghost-trapping) gear and get to work.

Sometimes, a movie gives you the feeling that something's been left on the cutting room floor. Somewhere along the line, scenes were snipped or added, toned down or ramped up, and what you're left with is a messy, confusing final product. One might be generous and think this is the case with The Apparition. Was there supposed to be more of a commentary on suburban life? If not, why does Costco keep popping up? Did someone with greater clout persuade the writer or director to inject an appearance of the ghost that's so ludicrous it made me think someone had swapped out a reel from Scary Movie? Was it supposed to be purposefully funny in places, and someone higher up demanded they tone it down?

It's not really our job as viewers to try and figure out what went wrong, only that it did go wrong. The Apparition is a DVD rental at best, unless you enjoy paying money to tell characters onscreen how dumb they are. The best thing one can say about The Apparition is at least it's not another "found footage" movie. That's not saying much.

Movie Review Premium Rush English

Writer/director David Koepp's previous efforts as a screenwriter have helped define modern blockbuster movies. Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man — films that put the "big" in big screen. As a director, he's taken the same sensibilities and applied them to narrower fields of vision, with intimate spins on horror and comedy in movies like Secret Window and Ghost Town. His latest, Premium Rush, fits the same bill; an immersive chase thriller set in the off-beat world of biker culture, the movie has its simple goals and executes them with a wink-wink attitude. It's a summer action movie through and through, but with sensibilities that make it fresh and quirky. In the doldrums of August, it's exactly the rush one needs.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Wilee, a law-student-turned-bike-messenger who lives for the thrills of a speedy ride. During one run-of-the-mill pick-up at Columbia University, Wilee finds himself in the crosshairs of corrupt cop Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon). Inside the envelope Wilee's been hired to delver to Chinatown is something Detective Monday needs, and he's willing to do anything to get it. No skin off Wilee's nose — he has an address and a delivery time, and like a good messenger, he's equally driven to make the drop.

Premium Rush quickly kicks off its extended action set piece and never lets up, Koepp only occasionally stepping back in time to unravel backstory and up the stakes. Wilee's girlfriend Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), also a bike messenger, is the roommate of Nima (Jamie Chung), a Chinese student who is shipping the sealed MacGuffin downtown. For her, it's life or death, and Koepp wisely underplays the motivations ,both to downplay its over-the-top nature and keep the stunts in focus. Monday has his own issues to contend with, and it gives Shannon the perfect material to chew up. Before chasing Wilee, Monday suffers from a gambling and violence problem, and while it drives the character to pursue the package, it's really just a great excuse for Shannon to go absolutely bonkers. Somewhere beyond Nic Cage and Al Pacino exists Shannon's turn and it's a hoot.

Gordon-Levitt balances him out as an engaging presence, even while zipping through gridlocks and shifting his eyes for "Bike-O-Vision" (Wilee's accident-avoiding, stylized Spidey sense). He spends most of his time interchanged with professional bike riders who make the two-wheeled maneuvers work, but it's seamless. After an hour and a half of bikes pop-a-wheeling over taxis, skidding under semi-trailer trucks, and pulling off cycle parkour in a multileveled NYPD impound, the action tends to get a bit repetitive — how much can you do on a bike? — but Koepp's kinetic directing keeps the movie zippy and the tone loose. Wilee's entire adventure feels like one big trick. Thankfully, it avoids the crash and burn.


Release Date: 08/24/2012
Rating: 4/5
Runtime: Not Yet Available
Genre: Drama
Director: David Koepp
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung

Movie Review Cosmopolis 2012

The director David Cronenberg has climbed back into an automobile. In “Crash,” his collision saturnalia of 1996, adapted from a morbidly sexual novel by J. G. Ballard, Cronenberg staged violent and erotic happenings in a kind of vehicular theatre of the imagination. He has now adapted the work of an even more talented apocalyptic fantasist, Don DeLillo, whose novel “Cosmopolis” (2003) has furnished him with a superbly written text set mostly in a stretch limo. Cronenberg has made an eccentric and beautiful-looking movie—a languid, deadpan, conceptualist joke. The hero is one of those young capitalist predators who have been haunting American fiction (in, say, “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “American Psycho”). His name is Eric Michael Packer, and he’s played by the hesitant, long-jawed Robert Pattinson, the gallant and fastidious vampire of the “Twilight” series. Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old asset manager whose life is at once completely protected and utterly vulnerable. He steps into his limo in the morning in a Gucci suit and dark glasses, and announces his intention to cross Manhattan for a haircut. But his progress through the city is impeded by the traffic-snarling appearance of the President.

In “Crash,” speed and recklessness behind the wheel kept the movie going, but this time life in a car has literally slowed to a crawl. Various people visit Eric, including two twerpy geniuses, barely shaving, who stare at handheld devices and give investment counsel; an old lover (Juliette Binoche), who has sex with him among the black leather couchettes while offering to find a Rothko for his collection (Eric wants the Rothko Chapel—the entire chapel); and a doctor who gives him his daily prostate exam. Outside the limousine, the tawdry and electric city slowly passes, as if in a moving diorama. Eventually, the car is engulfed by a ferocious and madcap anti-capitalist rally. Vague threats materialize—someone unknown may be trying to kill Eric. All the while, he is watching millions of dollars vanish: he has placed an enormous, heavily leveraged bet on the fall of the yuan, which, stubbornly, improbably, continues to rise.

An erudite but vacant young man, Eric lives mainly within the pulsing circuits of electronic information. We can feel DeLillo’s loathing for the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg cast the right man for a living cyborg. Pattinson has large eyes, heavy eyebrows, a soft voice. He’s sombre and quiet, a minimalist actor, but he has just enough tension to keep us interested in this intelligent creep. For Eric, the past doesn’t exist, the present is simply money zipping around the globe, the future is his to inhabit. Inside his car, he lives at a still point, but the market economy creates hysterical activity all around him. Though DeLillo wrote the novel a few years after the tech collapse of 2000, it now seems prescient about the much greater collapse of 2008. “We’re speculating in a void,” as one of the twerps says, but that remark no longer sounds extravagant—not after billions of dollars bet on derivatives and “synthetic credit products” have disappeared into the air. And the book’s anti-capitalist theatrics in the streets seem a very accurate anticipation of the Occupy Wall Street movement. DeLillo even understood the ambivalence of the protest: did these people hate capitalism or were they afraid that they had been left behind by it?

Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillo’s dialogue, which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studded—a kind of postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillo’s curt and cool equipoise—a style of filmmaking that is classically measured and calm, without an extra shot or cut. The interior of the car is designed in shades of black and dark gray, with chrome trim and blue, glowing screens. Despite the constrictions, Cronenberg keeps the space handsome and active. For long stretches, “Cosmopolis” is dreamy and funny, in an off-centered way. At one point, the limo pulls alongside a taxi, and Eric steps into the cab and sits next to a pretty young woman (Sarah Gadon), who turns out to be his wife of twenty-two days. They have a polite conversation; they agree to meet for sex. But as the violence outside grows more frantic, and the money disappears, the tone of the movie darkens. Eric uncoils, slowly losing his will to dominate. He becomes masochistic and virtually indifferent to everything but the most extreme body sensations. When John Updike reviewed the novel in these pages, he asked why we should care about the possible death of this arrogant cipher. A good question, but I’m not sure that emotional involvement is the goal of either the novel or the movie. A certain ghastly possibility—a glimpse of a stone-dead future temperament—has been made potent for us. But it doesn’t go unchallenged. At the end, Eric meets the world he has left behind, in the person of a former employee, the dishevelled, rasping Paul Giamatti. The future may have overtaken the present, but the clay beneath Eric’s feet is still capable of active revolt.

When “Compliance” was shown at the Sundance Festival, last January, some people in the audience got so upset that they started shouting during the screening; others simply walked out. Watching “Compliance” recently, I also began to squirm and talk back, but not because I disliked the movie, which I think is brilliant. American movies are saturated in physical violence; this one is devoted to spiritual violence. “Compliance,” an independent film written and directed by Craig Zobel, is about something serious—our all too human habit of obedience when we are faced with authority. The movie is driven by an urgent moral inquiry, yet it has the mesmerizing detail and humor of a very idiosyncratic fiction. Zobel’s setting is a fast-service chicken franchise in Ohio. The sixtyish Sandra (Ann Dowd), the manager, has a lot on her hands—a heavy Friday-night crowd, not enough bacon in the larder, and a few young employees who slack off when they can. The phone rings: a man identifying himself as a police officer (Pat Healy) says that one of the girls working the front counter, Becky (Dreama Walker), a pretty teen-age blonde, has stolen some money from a customer’s purse. He has the victim sitting next to him, he says, and also surveillance footage of the crime. Sandra, a good-natured sort but eager to stay in control, then does what he instructs her to do—confronts the baffled Becky in a back room, searches her things, and, finally, strip-searches her. (The cop says it’s easier than hauling Becky down to the station and booking her.) The customers come and go, the fries sizzle in fat, the bacon runs out. Sandra, as she deals with the police, keeps the restaurant working, while the other employees, fond of Becky but hapless, take part in her detention and humiliation, doing what the man on the phone orders. Zobel works close to his characters, catching them at moments of doubt before they press ahead. The actors, inspired by the attempt to do something daring, display a perfect balance of casualness and intensity. For this fable to work at all, you have to believe everything in it, and experience the girl’s plight as a genuine violation. I didn’t detect a false note: the rhythm of the movie is workaday and unforced, the restaurant details so oddly right that you feel sure you understand everyone who works there.

Rating : 3 / 5 - courtesy : newyorker.com

Movie Review Sparkle 2012 English

"Sparkle" is a full-bodied musical melodrama that acquires a melancholy undertone because it features the last performance by Whitney Houston. She exhibits a serene middle-age beauty here, and there are no hints that she would die shortly after the film was finished. But the script gives her one chilling line, which she uses in a lecture to her three daughters: "Was my life not enough of a cautionary tale for you?"

She plays Emma, a conservative Detroit middle-class church lady, whose apparent prosperity is hard to explain in light of her daughter's memories of finding her passed out in her own vomit. The family lives in a comfy home where all three grown-up girls are relentlessly ruled by Emma's curfews, her compulsory church attendance, and her stern warnings to any man who drifts too near her treasures.

The most fragrant flower in the bouquet is slinky, sexy Sister (Carmen Ejogo). The most serious is college student Dee (Tika Sumpter), apparently the first woman they've ever seen who wears an Afro. The shy sweetheart is Sparkle, played by the perfectly named American Idol winner Jordin Sparks. She lives and breathes music and fills notebooks with her songs but doesn't have the courage to face the spotlight; as the movie opens she's backstage urging Sister to solo, which Sister, after a show of reluctance, does -- sensationally. Carmen Ejogo, who you may recall as Thomas Jefferson's lover in the TV series "Sally Hemmings," steals the film not only in her sultry singing numbers but in her violent marriage to a snaky, evil comedian named Satin (Mike Epps).

That comes after the three girls have taken the first steps in a musical career masterminded by a nice guy named Stix (Derek Luke), who meets Sparkle at church, falls in love, and produces their first shows. We are meant to believe these early steps in their career were made possible when they sneaked out of their bedroom windows at night; apparently Emma had no hint of their subterfuge.

The screenplay by Mara Brock Akil, inspired by Joel Schumacher's original for the (lesser) 1976 movie "Sparkle," follows well-worn showbiz patterns as the girls go from rags to riches to tragedy to comeback. The most electrifying scenes involve the destructive comedian Satin, a local celebrity, who finds Sister in love with the sincere young man Levi (Omari Hardwick), humiliates him, sweeps her up, gives her a diamond and in what seems like days is knocking her around and has her addicted to cocaine. His role model could be Ike Turner.

I won't say more about Satin, except that the character inspires a prison sentence that is treated by the film with curious superficiality. But never mind. The basic purpose of the film is to fit the story into wall-to-wall music, and it does that with style and energy. "Sister and Her Sisters," the original trio, come across as a gifted American Idol version of Diana Ross and the Supremes, which I think is the idea. And Sparkle as a solo act (with backup singers, a gospel choir and a full pit orchestra) brings down the house.

Whitney Houston has a solo showcase in a church scene, singing "His Eye is on the Sparrow," and if her voice doesn't match her glory days her presence certainly does. Director Salim Akil and musical consultant R. Kelly don't let her, or any of the singers, down. "Sparkle" isn't blindingly original but it delivers solid entertainment, and despite the clichés I was never for a moment bored. I do feel, however, that it might have been a kindness to leave out the dialog about Houston's character waking in her own vomit. How did that make her feel while she was filming the scene. How does it make us feel now?

Rating : 4/5 - courtesy : http://www.rogerebert.com

Movie Review Paranorman 2012 English

ParaNorman dares to play to all audiences. Unraveling with a purposefully imperfect stop-motion technique, the zombie adventure utilizes striking filmmaking styles, sharp wit, and scares that will give young ones the willies while tickling the nostalgia bone of any adult who used to stay up past his or her bedtime watching horror movies. The film isn't overtly for anyone; it's simply on a mission to tell a great story. ParaNorman succeeds: embracing a world where bullying is hitting an epidemic level and the social "outcasts" are lashing out, the animated movie balances emotional messages with a wild visual ride. Quite out of the ordinary — the living dead being just the beginning.

Norman (The Road's Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a middle schooler living on the fringes. He sits alone at lunch with his only real friend, the chubby nerd Neil; he's routinely beat up by schoolyard bully Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse); and the kicker: he sees ghosts — and no one believes him. Norman passes the time by watching old horror movies with the spirit of his Grandma (Elaine Stritch), much to the chagrin of his mother (Leslie Mann) and father (Jeff Garlin). Norman's dad is fed up with Norman's "disturbed" behavior, but before he can ship his son off to psychiatric help, all hell breaks loose in their hometown of Blithe Hollow. Failing to put together the cryptic words of town crazy Mr. Prenderghast and keep zombies at rest, Norman goes on the run from the living dead, who take to the streets of Blithe Hollow. Why? The mystery is revealed as Norman embarks on a Goonies-style race around Blithe Hollow.

ParaNorman only loses footing when it's in explanation mode, setting up the pieces of the puzzle that will play out in the movie's second half (not unlike most movies of the genre it's riffing on). But the introductions to the colorful cast and horror-inspired adventure, brought to life with stunning animation and a muted color palette unlike most kid-friendly cartoons, are an absolute treat. Norman is a three-dimensional character both in puppetry and human terms; Smit-McPhee's timid vocals realize the fear of the scary moments, and work as perfect deadpan to ParaNorman's comedic asides. The movie advances its risk-taking to a whole other level in the finale, offering an explosive crescendo that wows the senses and is sure to bring tears to the eyes. It's a marvel on a technical level — intricate landscapes shot with shallow focus all set to Jon Brion's rousing score — but in the end, the film works because it's a great, bold story. For a movie grounded in fear, ParaNorman stands out as a movie for audiences young and old that's truly fearless.


Release Date: 08/17/2012
Rating:3/5
Runtime: 1 hr 31 mins
Genre: Children's/family
Director: Sam Fell
Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Casey Affleck, Anna Kendrick

Movie Review Expendables 2 English

It's rare that a sequel trumps the original, but The Expendables 2 manages to do just that, with a steady stream of one-liners and welcome, weathered faces, as well as a few new ingredients. E2 seems even more self-aware of its own silliness, especially with Jean-Claude Van Damme as the villain (named Vilain, of course), and Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger popping up in smaller roles alongside previous Expendables Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Terry Crews, and Randy Couture.

Then again, The Expendables wasn't any sort of action classic; it was like writer/director/star Stallone threw a whole bunch of ideas at the wall to see which would stick, then added massive amounts of weapons and the occasional hand-to-hand combat. It was popular, but it definitely not the kind of awesome actioner that the stars were able to make 10 or 20 years ago. There's the rub, actually; like women actors who have written or directed their own projects because nothing else was available or satisfactory, Stallone created The Expendables because Hollywood didn't seem to know what to do with him and his fellow action stars as they got older. It's easy to criticize Stallone et al for not doing the same amount of stunt work or hand-to-hand fighting that, for example, Statham is capable of, but the whole thrust of the movie is that they're expendable -- to themselves, to the world, and, until Stallone kickstarted these movies, to Hollywood.

E2 is still clumsy, but it's a little more adventurous and a little more introspective. Two new additions to the crew seem to throw everyone for a loop in one way or another. Liam Hemsworth shows up as Bill the Kid, a sniper who left the military after a raid in Afghanistan went horribly wrong; his age and hopefulness, not to mention physical prowess, is a foil the Sylvester Stallone's Barney Ross, and one that Barney is well aware of. Nan Yu joins the team as Maggie, who is apparently the only person who can disarm the safe that holds whatever secret thing Church (Willis) has sent them to retrieve. And if the Expendables don't get her back alive, Church will make them pay, because even though Maggie is some sort of multilingual computer genius with a vicious roundhouse, she's a lady. On one hand, perhaps we're supposed to gather that this group of old dogs is learning new tricks by having to deal with a smart, capable woman in their midst; the attempts Gunner (Lundgren) makes to flirt with her are clunky and goofy, and she's obviously way too smart for fall for that claptrap. On the other, when she whips out some instruments of torture, Barney cracks, "What are you going to do, give them a pedicure?" And, of course, her role also devolves into an incredibly stilted and unbelievable romantic interest for Barney. One point for trying, but two points deducted for falling into the romantic interest trap.

At times it's hard to tell whether or not we're laughing with the crew or at them. Plus, because of how jam-packed the cast is, some actors get the short end of the stick. Statham is the most charismatic of the bunch, and he also has the most impressive hand-to-hand fight scenes, but the emphasis in E2 is sheer firepower, so he doesn't get nearly enough screen time. Couture is fairly forgettable while Lundgren plays the lunkiest of lunkheads; the running joke is that he has a chemical engineering degree from MIT and was a Fulbright Scholar, which is supposed to be funny... except it's also true. (We're to assume he's mended his evil ways between the first Expendables and the second.) Is Lundgren agreeably poking fun at himself the same way Schwarzenegger hams it up at every turn? Or does E2 have shades of JCVD, which stars Van Damme was a washed-up action star? Are the emotional moments supposed to fall so hilariously flat on purpose? For some reason, it seems important to tease out which parts of these movies are earnest and which are tongue-in-cheek.

There's a weird melancholy about watching this group of aging action stars that has the same tang as watching someone you love grow older, especially as they try so very hard to fight the ravages of time. If you dig a little deeper, maybe deeper than E2 warrants, you could find a well of sadness below the back-slapping antics. The world has changed, and even though Stallone and his crew have muscles so hard and juicy they could pop out of their skin like grapes, they can't compete with Bill the Kid and Maggie and others like them. They know it, and we know it, and while it's good fun to see old friends or onscreen enemies kill scores of bad guys (led by JCVD sporting a truly horrible fake Baphomet-style neck tattoo), there are better, smarter, more exciting and more interesting action films on the horizon.


Release Date: 08/17/2012
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Action
Director: Simon West
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren


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