Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) has a magic show in Las Vegas, where he bills himself as Frank Cadillac, a combination of two of his favorite things – Frankenstein and Cadillacs. But what his audience doesn't know is that Johnson has a special talent; he can see two minutes into the future. But, only his own future, and only two minutes of it. He uses his talent in his magic show, and around the Las Vegas casinos.
And then, one day he crosses paths with Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel), and for some reason he can see at least twenty-four hours into their future together. Johnson doesn't understand why, and while he's trying to figure it out, he becomes the target of an FBI investigation. Special Agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) has a big problem; a Russian ten kiloton nuclear device has been stolen, and Homeland Security suspects that it's in Los Angeles. Ferris has recognized Johnson's special talent and believes he can help her locate the bomb before it is detonated and kills eight million people.
Despite some plot holes and a screenplay that sputters in the third act, this film is quite a thrill ride, featuring understated, believable performances by all three leads, genuine romantic chemistry between Cage and Biel, and excellent special effects and cinematography. If you're a Nicolas Cage fan, or if you enjoyed The Illusionist, also starring Jessica Biel, you may enjoy Next. [Blogger's rating: 4 stars out of 5]
Labels: action, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, space-time, thriller
IMDb 62/100
MetaCritic (critics=42, viewers=61)
RottenTomatoes (critics=28, viewers=53)
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James Berardinelli's review (2.5 out of 4 stars)
Trivia: In an opening scene, Frank Cadillac (Cage) is doing his magic act, and correctly identifies a man in the audience as being from Seoul, Korea. He invites the man's wife onstage to be his assistant for his next illusion. In real-life, she's Alice Kim Cage, Nicolas Cage's wife.
Peter Falk has a supporting role as Cage's father, Irv.
Enchanted is a modern-day retelling of Sleeping Beauty, done in animation (in fairy-tale Andalasia) and live-action (in New York City), filled with song, dance, music, bright costumes and sunshine – think Disney meets Bollywood. It has all the characters; lovely Princess Giselle (Amy Adams), handsome Prince Edward (James Marsden) and evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon).
On the day Giselle is to marry Edward in Andalasia, Narissa pushes her down a magic well, and she emerges from underground onto a New York City street, where she's rescued by Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) a divorce attorney, and Robert's young daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey).
Morgan, like every young girl, would love to be a princess. She's fascinated by Giselle, whose goal is to be rescued by her prince, receive true love's kiss and then live happily ever after. The subject of sex is handled in delicate, PG-rated fashion, so we have dialog like this: Morgan: Boys only want one thing. Giselle: What's that? Morgan: I don't know. Nobody will tell me. The romance that develops between Robert and Giselle, as she waits for Edward to rescue her, is sweet and innocent, but there are moments when we wonder if Robert should be adopting Giselle rather than falling in love with her. Enchanted pays homage to several motion pictures, including Pretty Woman, Lady and the Tramp, King Kong and Ever After: A Cinderella Story, and it's fun to watch for the references. If you enjoy light-hearted entertainment, then you will really enjoy Enchanted. But, if you're mainly interested in watching the lovely and talented Amy Adams, then I highly recommend The Wedding Date and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
Labels: adventure, comedy, family, fantasy, musical, romance, satire
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 75/100
Tomatometer (critics=93, viewers=80)
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In present-day Scotland, in a village at the shore of Loch Ness, an aged Angus MacMorrow (Brian Cox) tells a wondrous story to two young strangers he's just met in a pub. It's the story of how, in the spring of 1942, ten-year-old Angus (Alex Etel) finds a magic egg in a tide pool of the Loch, and how out of the egg hatches an animal that grows over time to become the Water Horse of Scottish legend, a sea creature the size of a humpback whale. 1942 is the middle of World War II, and a military detachment is garrisoned on the grounds of the MacMorrow estate, guarding Loch Ness against incursions by German submarines.
As the Water Horse grows, it becomes harder for Angus and his sister Kirstie (Priyanka Xi) to hide the creature from their mother (Emily Watson), the household staff and the soldiers, and finally Angus and handyman Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin) have to load him onto a lorry for transport to the Loch. But the drama is only beginning as the gunnery crews guarding the Loch mistake the Water Horse for a German submarine.
Part fantasy, part drama, part comedy, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep feels a bit like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial meets Free Willy, with young Angus playing a role similar to Henry Thomas' role as Elliot in E.T.. Although the Water Horse takes Angus for a thrilling ride on his back, the relationship between boy and sea creature doesn't have the richness and opportunities for communication and growth found in E.T. and the film's moments of drama and peril mostly relate to the gunnery crews firing into the Loch at the Water Horse. Production values are excellent and the supporting cast is very good, especially Ben Chaplin. Although rated PG, this film is probably a bit too intense for your pre-teen children.
Labels: adventure, family, fantasy
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 71/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=67, viewers=70)
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Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) are physicists at the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena, CA. Besides being colleagues, they are roommates and best friends, although their friendship is continually tested by Sheldon's inflexible and eccentric approach to life, his unwillingness to adapt to change, his lack of social skills, and his inability to appreciate sarcasm, all the result of his being mildly afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome. Leonard and Sheldon have two other friends and Cal Tech colleagues: astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) and mechanical engineer Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg).
When this foursome is not working, eating in the Cal Tech cafeteria or visiting their local comic book store, they hang out in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment eating take-out food, watching science fiction movies and playing video games. All four are complete nerds, meaning they are awkward and uncomfortable in social situations involving the opposite sex. In fact, Rajesh exhibits selective mutism - he cannot talk to women unless he is drunk. Howard, on the other hand, will hit on any woman on the off-chance he might get lucky. Sheldon has no interest at all in the opposite sex, while Leonard yearns for a fulfilling relationship. So, when Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a lovely young blonde, moves into the apartment across the hall, Leonard falls for her immediately. Penny is an aspiring actress who recently moved to Pasadena from Omaha, but who is soon forced to take a job as a waitress at the local Cheesecake Factory, where the four scientists naturally begin to eat.
In addition to the five main characters there are a number of supporting characters who provide tension as well as comic relief. The major supporting characters are: Mayim Bialik as Sheldon's platonic female friend Amy Farrah Fowler; Melissa Rauch as Howard's girlfriend and later fiancée Bernadette; Kevin Sussman as comic bookstore owner Stuart; Aarti Mann as Rajesh's exotic sister Priya; and Sara Gilbert as Cal Tech physicist Leslie Winkle.
The series is frankly hilarious, and the writing by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady (creators of Two and a Half Men) is fresh and innovative. Now in its fifth season, The Big Bang Theory has been nominated for several awards including Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards. New episodes air Thursday evenings on CBS, and previous episodes are available on TBS, for rent on DVD and by streaming video from other sources.
Label: comedy, rom-com-faves, romance
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 57/100
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A film review by Roger Ebert.
Now I have fans who say, We are so sorry, Michael Bay, you still suck but we love you. That's what the director of Transformers told Simon Ang during an interview in Seoul. He could have been speaking for me. I think Michael Bay sometimes sucks (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Bad Boys II) but I find it possible to love him for a movie like Transformers. It's goofy fun with a lot of stuff that blows up real good, and it has the grace not only to realize how preposterous it is, but to make that into an asset.
The movie is inspired by the Transformer toys that twist and fold and double in upon themselves, like a Rubik's Cube crossed with a contortionist. A yellow Camaro unfolds into a hulking robot, helicopters become walking death monsters, and an enemy named Megatron rumbles onto the screen and, in a voice that resembles the sound effects in Earthquake, introduces himself: I--AM--MEGATRON!!!
I think that's the first time I've used three exclamation points. But Megatron is a three-exclamation-point kinda robot. He is the most fearsome warrior of the evil Decepticons, enemies of the benevolent Transformers. Both races (or maybe they're brands) of robots fled the doomed planet Cybertron and have been drawn to Earth because Megatron crash-landed near the North Pole a century ago and possesses the Allspark, which is the key to something, I'm not sure what, but since it's basically an alien MacGuffin it doesn't much matter. (Note to fanboys about to send me an e-mail explaining the Allspark: Look up MacGuffin in Wikipedia.)
The movie opens like one of those teen comedies where the likable hero is picked on by bullies at school, partly because he didn't make the football team, and mostly because he doesn't have a keen car. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) talks his dad into buying him one, and he ends up with an old beater, a yellow Camaro that is actually the Transformer named Bumblebee and gets so mad when his paint job is insulted that it transforms itself into a shiny new Camaro.
This is more than a hot car. It plays the soundtrack to Sam's life. It helps Sam become visible to his sexy classmate Mikaela (Megan Fox), who says, Do I know you? Sam mentions casually that they take four classes together and have been in the same school since first grade. The high school stuff, which could be a teenage comedy on its own, segues into the battling robot stuff, and there is some low-key political satire in which the secretary of defense (Jon Voight) runs the country, while the president (not even credited) limits himself to a request for a Ding-Dong.
Voight sends the armed services into action, and we see a lot of Sgt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Tech Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson). They and their men labor during much of the movie under the optimistic impression that a metal robot the size of a 10-story building can be defeated by, or even brought to notice, automatic weapons fire. Sam and Bumblebee are crucial to the struggle, although a secret ops guy (John Turturro) asks the defense secretary, You gonna lay the fate of the world on a kid's Camaro?
Everything comes down to an epic battle between the Transformers and the Decepticons, and that's when my attention began to wander, and the movie lost a potential fourth star. First let me say that the robots, created by Industrial Light and Magic, are indeed delightful creatures; you can look hard and see the truck windshields, hubcaps and junkyard stuff they're made of. And their movements are ingenious, especially a scorpion-like robot in the desert. (Little spider robots owe something to the similar creatures in Spielberg's Minority Report, and we note he is a producer of this movie.) How can a pickup truck contain enough mass to unfold into a towering machine? I say if Ringling Brothers can get 15 clowns into a Volkswagen, anything is possible.
All the same, the mechanical battle goes on and on and on and on, with robots banging into each other and crashing into buildings, and buildings falling into the street, and the military firing, and jets sweeping overhead, and Megatron and the good hero, Optimus Prime, duking it out, and the soundtrack sawing away at thrilling music, and enough is enough. Just because CGI makes such endless sequences possible doesn't make them necessary. They should be choreographed to reflect a strategy and not simply reflect shapeless, random violence. Here the robots are like TV wrestlers who are down but usually not out.
I saw the movie on the largest screen in our nearest multiplex. It was standing room only, and hundreds were turned away. Even the name of Hasbro, maker of the Transformers toys, was cheered during the titles, and the audience laughed and applauded and loved all the human parts and the opening comedy. But when the battle of the titans began, a curious thing happened. The theater fell dead silent. No cheers. No reaction whether Optimus Prime or Megatron was on top. No nothing. I looked around and saw only passive faces looking at the screen.
My guess is we're getting to the point where CGI should be used as a topping and not the whole pizza. The movie runs 144 minutes. You could bring it in at two hours by cutting CGI shots, and have a better movie.
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=58, viewers=82)
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Brett Eisenberg (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is a 24-year-old associate editor at a small NYC book publisher. She's caught the eye of Archie Knox (Alec Baldwin), the wealthy, 50-year-old celebrity editor-in-chief of a much larger book publisher. Archie is an alcoholic and a diabetic, with two failed marriages, a daughter who won't speak to him, and a twenty-year history of dating progressively younger women.
In Suburban Girl we get beautiful people with lots of money, witty, sophisticated dialogue, believable on-screen romantic chemistry between Gellar and Baldwin, gorgeous costumes, makeup and sets, glossy production values, and a peek into the book publishing business. Ultimately, though, we're cynical about the relationship between Brett and Archie. Brett needs a mentor in the publishing world, and Archie's trying to recapture his lost youth. We understand Brett, when she says to Archie: When I look at you, I see a teacher; when you look at me, you see a student. And we understand how much Brett has grown, when she explains to Archie why she won't marry him: Because a girl can't grow up until she loses a father and leaves an Archie.
Suburban Girl was screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, but was never given a theatrical release and was released on DVD in early 2008. Critics panned the film as a pseudo-sophisticated romantic comedy-drama that could be described as a blend of Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada. Regardless, if you enjoy romantic comedy-drama set in New York City, in which there's a daughter-father age difference between the leads, films like Love Affair (1994) with Annette Bening and Warren Beatty, Sabrina (1995) with Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford, Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, and Autumn in New York with Winona Ryder and Richard Gere, then you will very likely enjoy Suburban Girl.
Labels: Cinderella-story, comedy, drama, rom-drama-faves, romance
Internet Movie Database 54/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=61, viewers=56)
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In a life imitates art moment in June, 2012, 54-year-old Alec Baldwin married his 28-year-old yoga-instructor girlfriend, Hilaria Thomas. One can only assume that Hilaria had not watched Suburban Girl before accepting Baldwin's proposal, or that she simply ignored Gellar's advice... a girl can't grow up until she loses a father and leaves an Archie.
One can also assume that when Hilaria's father was watching The Hunt for Red October in 1990, starring 32-year-old Alec Baldwin, he had no idea that his six-year-old daughter Hilaria would, 22 years later, marry the actor.
This film takes its name from the concept that seemingly random, chaotic events contain hidden patterns of orderliness. Frank Allen (Ryan Reynolds) is an efficiency expert who gives lectures on creating structure and orderliness in our lives through making lists of actions to be performed, and not allowing whim or spontaneity to sidetrack us.
Then, one morning as he's leaving home for his latest speaking engagement, Frank discovers that his wife Susan (Emily Mortimer) has accidentally set the kitchen clock backward ten minutes (she intended to set it forward to give him a time cushion). As a result Frank misses the 8 o'clock ferry into the city and is late for his speaking engagement. Even worse, his lateness sets in motion a chain of events that Frank is helpless to control, and which results in Susan mistakenly believing he's having an affair with another woman with whom he's fathered a child. However, this is just the beginning, and things get much, much worse... or better, depending upon your point of view.
Finally, Frank is forced to reevaluate the principles upon which he's built his entire life, his marriage to Susan, his long-term friendship with Buddy (Stuart Townsend), as well as his profession and his reliance on orderliness through list-making. As we watch, we cannot help but wonder what we would do if we were in Frank's place, and then we realize that our own life might be only a step or a moment away from tumbling into chaos.
The casting for this film is excellent with great chemistry among all three leads - Reynolds, Mortimer and Townsend. The screenplay is cleverly written, with drama and comedy well balanced, and only occasional forays into over-the-top humor. If you enjoyed Definitely, Maybe also starring Ryan Reynolds, or Bed of Roses or I'm With Lucy, I predict you'll enjoy Chaos Theory.
Labels: comedy, drama, romance
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 44/100
Tomatometer (critics=30, viewers=60)
