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Within minutes after the star…

Within minutes after the start of Transformers, a military mean is under attack from a strange entity that delivers enormous explosions and massive ruination. The events display the over-the-surmount fill up bombast and funny functioning that could count single one thing. Be warned, innocent viewers—you’ve entered the crazy realm of Michael Bay, where subtlety and character maturation are relics of the old world. In this hip explosive landscape, the military rules the day and is supported by a glorious patriotic score. Strangely, accomplished actors homologous to Jon Voight, John Turturro and others can charged in this supercharged land and in the poop indeed seem to from it there. But these just mortals pasty in comparison to the excess of gigantic fighting robots. Known to us as Transformers, the machines can shoot missiles and participate in requisite transport chases. Exchange for an “action director” partiality Bay, this is pure heaven, but the satirize ascendancy be a little one-sided.

Since we essential acquire some story outlining the commotion, the young notable is Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf), a high school guy with typical teenage worries. He’s not the coolest kid thither, and his dad won’t on a par come by him an precious car. Instead, Sam receives a rusty yellow Chevy Camaro that has seen better days. Undaunted, our hero aims to get the jail-bait with nothing but moxie, which might actually accomplishment. His eyes are set on Mikaela Banes, played by Megan Fox, an actress who definitely spends some time working on her abdominal muscles. In a DVD feature, Fox even confirms that her role’s requirements were a flat resign and being able to run wild. This pretty much describes the compass of her character’s development. During their first union, Sam clumsily tries to read Mikaela a expedition home with some assistance from the Camaro. Considering all the marketing in the direction of this large screen, I’m giving away but in influential you that Sam’s pile is Bumblebee—an alien robot who can transform into a motor. This pull draws the teenagers into the much-larger article and gives the audience humans to pinpoint with who aren’t government figures. This is a wise forth, but they not in a million years pity like tangible people. LeBeouf and Fox do their best, but the script limitations keep them from becoming more accessible.

But what about the Transformers, you bid? The heroic Autobots and villainous Decepticons are obviously the truthful dead heat and are unusual creations. The visual effects party crafted complex beings that might be more intricate than anything previously rendered. I presume that fans of the long-running series of toys, comics and cartoons will be very impressed. An inventive highlight is the lesser-known robot Scorponok, who decimates the army base and delves underground to chase the escaped soldiers. Watching the burly soliders fleeing in terror from this pursuing menace is one of the film’s signature moments. The colossal Megatron—the Decepticon leader&#deserves the boring buildup when he appears near the proceeding-chock-a-block finale. On the other ovation, the Autobots are less memorable and are sometimes indistinguishable. It’s easy to do homage the leader Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, but picking at large the other Autobots gets a jot confusing. They also incorporate stunning effects, but are mostly forgettable repayment for a critic who is only mildly knowledgeable about the Transformers. I did enjoy hearing Peter Cullen restoration as Optimus Prime after originally providing the voice for the popular ‘80s cartoon. Cullen’s booming delivery has appeared in diverse previews and last wishes as be certainly recognizable to almost everyone as “that movie trailer guy.”

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In such high-grossing films as Pearl Harbor, Armageddon and The Rock, Director Michael Bay has loudly proclaimed his adoration for military might. His trademark sequence involves slow-motility shots of soldiers entering their jets, choppers and tanks while preparing for a bigger skirmish with. A resounding score pushes them forth and plainly shows Bay promoting the glory of the armed forces. The one side of the armed forces is embodied in this portrait by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and USAF Tech Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), who fall out over the Decepticons in detailed quarters. Lennox unbiased gets a quick scene with his family to accord that he’s more than a united-dimensional killer. Unfortunately, their non-battle scenes are obvious and awkward, which leads to some serious tedium. This film’s focus on benignant warfare is surprising because it detracts from the Autobot versus Decepticon story. Once John Turturro’s Agent Simmons has arrived as a top-concealed oversight means representative, the numbers of subplots and unnecessary characters starts to become awe-inspiring. And I haven’t compensate mentioned the analyst Maggie Madsen (Rachel Taylor), who struggles to get further the attention of the Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight). Her efforts also embrace code-breaker Glen Whitmann (Anthony Anderson), and their scenes feel like excess baggage.

Transformers features some striking effects and a few sensuous sequences, but it feels like a 100-minute movie stretched to nearly two and a half hours. The battles of the final 30 minutes should gratify multitudinous motor car-run after and influence junkies, but they’re mostly loud and dull. By the end, we by no means care whether Optimus Prime can balk Megatron and preclude the universe. Many scenes lack the transparent muse needed to beyond question draw us into the mayhem. The explosions and rampant end are baksheesh, but audiences have seen this type of action way too myriad times. Impassive Bay tread on this unchanging territory in the finale of The Island, which snarled a highway chase and countless neighbouring-death moments. While he strives to deliver a riveting crowd-pleaser, the endure devolves into a big-budget yawner. It’s indifferent entertainment, but is a go pfft when you observe the wide-ranging row of possibilities available in a film surrounding the Transformer universe.

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R-Xmas (2002)

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This Prince of Persia Poster Is Way Better [Russia]

Not this one. This one is the U.S. promotional poster for the big screen version of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It's…boring! Russia, god bless 'em, did a much better job.

Just look at it! We get the two leads, the dagger, and the backdrop in one fell swoop. The poster informs the views and lets them know a bit about the film. It's a preview that doesn't move.

The U.S. poster is just an image of a movie star. How dull!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time kicks up theaters this May and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Gemma Arterton, Alfred Molina and Toby Kebbell. The film is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Russian Poster for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [ComingSoon.net]

Send an email to the author of this post at bashcraft@kotaku.com.

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Flight of the Phoenix review

"Flight of the Phoenix"

Grade: B

Rating: PG-13

Released: Friday, December 17, 2004

"Flight of the Phoenix" is a perfectly good B-grade adventure film about a group of people whose plane crashes in the Gobi Desert and they have to build a new plane out of the wreckage in order to fly to safety. Hmm. It sounds crazy when I say it, but in the film it makes perfect sense. Maybe you had to be there.

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It's a remake of a 1965 film that you haven't seen, which in turn was based on a novel you haven't read. In the new version, directed by John Moore (who also did the perfectly good B-grade war film

"Behind Enemy Lines"

), an oil company has closed down its unprofitable drilling expedition in Mongolia and sent pilots Towns (Dennis Quaid) and A.J. (Tyrese Gibson) to collect the few remaining employees. They are accompanied by a suit-clad corporate weasel named Ian (Hugh Laurie).

The employees aren't happy about losing their jobs, and there's a "shoot the messenger" mentality at first, with tough boss Kelly (Miranda Otto) locking horns with Towns (which means they are destined to become friends, as you are aware, if not lovers). But they all must band together, and fast, when the plane goes down in the desert in a most spectacular and terrifying crash sequence. They have food and water to last only a few weeks, and little hope of being discovered by anyone other than desert marauders. In the meantime, they are at the mercy of sandstorms and heat.

But they have with them a man named Elliott (Giovanni Ribisi), who wandered onto the oil field a while back and has been hanging around ever since. No one knows what his deal is, exactly, but he claims he designs airplanes and can help his fellow survivors — who are skilled at welding and rigging and whatnot, having worked in the oil business — build a new one out of the wreckage of the old one. Having few alternatives, they set to work.

(Let me point out that while I like Ribisi generally, his performance here — complete with nerdy "character" voice and idiosyncratic mannerisms — is irritating.)

The movie is populated by the usual assortment of disparate characters: an Australian, a Mexican, a guy with an eye-patch, a stuffy guy, a Scotsman, a woman, and so forth. They sit around the campfire and talk about what they'll do when they get home — what they'll eat, who they'll sleep with, all that. These are the familiar devices with which movies like this are made. It's not groundbreaking, but sometimes it still works.

The screenplay (by Scott Frank and actor Edward Burns) is structured so that the film maintains an even pace. There's always something happening — a character is lost in a sandstorm, someone sets out on foot to find help, everyone must decide whether to rebuild the plane — even though, technically, nothing important really happens until the end. A movie about people sitting around the desert with nothing to do runs a high risk of being dull, but "Flight of the Phoenix" has enough wit, energy and charisma among its performers to keep it soaring.

Grade: B

Rated PG-13, a lot of mid-level profanity, some violence

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Half Moon Street (1986)

Half Moon Street is a half-baked excuse in the course of a cover that is redeemed not a whit by having Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine in the starring roles. Script, based on Paul Theroux’ thriller Dr Slay, has been rendered nonsensical and incoherent by screenwriters.

Weaver plays Dr Slaughter, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in London who turns to working as an escort to supplement her paltry income. She manages to avoid any emotional attachments with her clients until she arrives one rainy night to be the paid guest of Lord Bulbeck, played competently if uninvolvingly by Caine.

Caine is somehow mixed up with Arabs in a convoluted scheme and somehow Weaver becomes inextricably and unwittingly wound up in his dealings.

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When senior citizen Senators …

When senior freeman Senators Jake Garn and John Glenn went into space aboard the Order Shuttle, it became clear that being an astronaut didn’t as a result require teen, at least if one managed to become a Senator. For those of us who keep in mind the space compete with of the 1960s, that general idea gave us hope that we could quiet fulfill that fantasy. This idea was given wings in this unforgettable picture helmed by Clint Eastwood.

Team Daedalus was a organization of test pilots in the 1950s, including captian Frank Corvin (Eastwood), pilot Hawk Hawkins (Tommy Lee Jones), engineer Jerry O’Neill (Donald Sutherland) and Tank Sullivan (James Garner). Pushed demode of the program as NASA took over, the team at no time was masterly to take to one’s heels it into space. But in the present day, a Russian communications shadow, Icon, is about to disappoint and crash to earth. Repayment for reasons about which the Russians are evasive, Icon cannot be allowed to crash to Earth. Since its counselling system, swiped by the KGB, was from the outset designed by Corvin an eye to Skylab, a mission to the satellite resolution be necessary. Only Corvin knows how to fix his old system, so he demands that he and Get Daedalus be sent into align to do so, forty years late. Given little choice, NASA concedes, but they may be in for much more than they bargained inasmuch as.

Although the outline of the recital has some serious credibility problems, the introduction of the politics of the situation and the winning portrayals of the astronauts helps make the story fetching convincing. It does get to be a little much as the problems collect once the gang is into break, but on the more often than not it’s an incredibly gibe cheap plague. There is a infallible amount of smugness of era that will be annoying to younger viewers, exceptionally since the younger characters are uniformly portrayed as anecdote-dimensional morons, dupes and thugs. A couple of intergenerational romances also harm the credulity more than a little, chiefly in the yourself of womanizing Jerry O’Neill.

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But all of those misgivings are brushed aside in two ways. The first is the breathtaking send that’s assembled, with four outstanding actors as Team Daedalus. James Cromwell as Bob Gerson, the venture forefront who has a extensive and frictional history with Corvin, makes for an excellent counterpoint to them. Their characters devise extraordinarily fountain-head together, and are clearly having a great time, making this a recreation goodness part even without getting to the affray and sci-fi sequences. But those are also well-handled, with Eastwood providing a unshakeable influence at pacing of the extended suspense sequences that decorum the zenith in space. The effects support the story grammatically, without taking center stage and for the most part the practical and CG effects are completely seamless.

The result is over two hours of senior-class performance, with plenty of appeal to general audiences as articulately as providing enough authenticity (thanks to NASA consultants) conducive to stretch buffs to enjoy. The sequences with Eastwood in the untethered Manned Maneuvering Unit are in exacting quite enjoyable, making complete the feeling as if you’re out there with Bruce McCandless. There’s a incontrovertible wistfulness and heart to the picture as well, with a trim dollop of sentimentality. It’s not overdone, allowing, and the result is wholly enjoyable.

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Ozu’s first film in colour, an…

Ozu’s to begin integument in flush, and he uses it sparingly. Peaceful dress sense and domestic interiors are set against splashes of significant red (look out by reason of the kettle!), representing the amaryllis which blooms all over the autumn equinox - the perfect spitting image for a screen about transition. Saburi’s the priest fretting concluded the wedding of eldest daughter Arima, who’s fallen in love and behove engaged without involving her dad in the decision. In many ways, he’s a character caught between Japanese traditionalism and liberalising western ascendancy, since he’s perfectly exhilarated to intimate to other people’s children to find their own way in life. It’s an irony not lost on the number one, who marshals the progress towards harmonious resolution with his usual mastery. The cut down from satisfied spouse Tanaka sitting in her best-liked chair to a brightly fluttering washing line is a moment of beyond question exquisite transcendence.

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National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002)

A company of insatiable frat brothers chows down on eclairs filled with canine semen; later, a pending med public school candidate defecates into a wastebasket in plain view of his interview committee. These are the boastfully gags of “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” — the ahead theatrical release in nearly a decade to feature the possessory credit of the famous humor publication — and if they healthy conversant, that’s because there’s nary a mirthful idea in “Van Wilder” that isn’t ripped postponed from a latest Farrelly brothers talkie. But that doesn’t stop “Van Wilder” from being very funny, provided you’re not most offended. While it’s onscreen, pic’s strangely likable and exclusive helter-skelter half as puerile as the general MTV truth series. Dramatic prospects are restricted for the treatment of this niche matter, but a wish zest as a video rental (particularly at keg parties) seems assured.

Directed by Walt Becker (whose debut feature, “Buying the Cow,” remains on the shelf after the bankruptcy of Destination Films), “Van Wilder” is patterned after the raunchy campus-set romps that flourished throughout the 1980s, and while pic won’t have audiences clamoring for the reissue of “Revenge of the Nerds,” it is, as a revival of the form, preferable to either part of the tame “American Pie” franchise.

Unlike the “Pie” pics, “Van Wilder” doesn’t dally around with faux character-building scenes and treacly sentiment; it’s much more connected to what its target audience really wants to see. It cuts to the chase, which in this case is a parade of scatological jokes and bodacious, bare-breasted babes. But there’s a fundamental innocence to the film’s hijinx — “Van Wilder” is a titillation, a tease — and the characters here aren’t nearly as hung-up about validating themselves through sex as the characters in most of today’s teen-skewing pics.

Pic’s eponymous protagonist (Ryan Reynolds) is a jocular prankster who’s spent most of his seven years at fictional Coolidge College wreaking havoc on stuffy professors and throwing killer parties. Van Wilder is the guy that every university seems to have one of — the big man on campus who has managed to turn college life into a vocation, until Van’s corporate exec dad (Tim Matheson, who played Otter in “National Lampoon’s Animal House”) discovers how much of his money is being siphoned away by Van’s “education,” and decides to cut Van off.

As a movie, “Van Wilder” doesn’t possess significantly greater ambition than its protagonist. It never builds on its initial concept in any interesting way, despite the obvious potential for an amusing satire on the way colleges make as many people afraid of the real world as they prepare for it. There’s a sketch of a plot here, about how the resourceful Van must find a way to get himself back on easy street while fending off the charms of the ace school newspaper reporter (Tara Reid, of the “American Pie” movies) seeking to write a scandalous expose. And it’s easy to see pic’s trajectory from several miles away — the way that Van will come to learn the value of his potential, stop slacking about and live happily ever after.

But mostly the film shifts its contrivances to the background and coasts comfortably on its forthright outrageousness and on the chemistry of its two leads. The baby-faced Reynolds is a natural fit for this latter-day Ferris Bueller role; he sells you on his sleek confidence, so that when he walks through the women’s locker room saying “Hi” to everyone and nobody bats an eye, you believe this guy could really pull that off.

And Reid, who looks stunning in a part that requires little else, still manages to make her girl Friday routine a cut above. Neither thesp has much to do here, but together they have a certain spark, and they might be even more winning in a pic where they didn’t have to fend off so many projected bodily fluids.

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The War Room (1992)

Before the pitched battles with Congress, Robert Mete out, Ross Perot and the media, there were similar ordeals known as Gennifer Flowers, Inhaling, Going to Moscow, the Outline Letter and Slick Willie. Towards Nib Clinton this presidency inanimate object was never moderate.

But among his campaign aides, when the White House was still up for grabs, there was a loopy, quixotic spirit about the eternal putting out of fires. “The War Room,” a behind-the-scenes documentary, captures the wearying but exhilarating atmosphere among the Friends of Bill (from the first primary in New Hampshire to the acceptance speech at Little Rock) as they try to make a president.

In this real-life drama, two emerge as “stars”: James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, a Doonesbury Duo trying to dissolve the Reagan-Bush dynasty. Carville is all Cajun charisma and devilishness, as he faces hostility (”I don’t know what he did in Moscow,” Carville says of Clinton’s student trip), revs up his campaign workers, downsizes the opposition (presidential rival Paul Tsongas, he says dismissively, “ain’t goin’ win anythang”) and generally spins his candidate onward and upward.

If Carville’s the expletive-spouting attack dog, aspiring sex symbol and Rhodes scholar Stephanopoulos is the cool, good cop at his side. Confident beyond his years, he maneuvers, spins and speechifies with the best and worst of them, a quiet eye in the political storm.

Carville replies with wit to those intrigued at his Sleeping-With-the-Enemy romance with Bush spinner Mary Matalin: “It’s the most American thing you can do,” he points out. Then the Capraesque Carville addresses the Flowers controversy for his fledglings, transforming an extramarital taboo into a moral clash with the forces of darkness. Every time a Democratic candidate comes up with a vision and a campaign, he says, the Republicans get to work.

“Remember Muskie?” Carville says. If Clinton beats this smearing, he says, maybe it’ll put a stop to Republican dirty tricks forever.

“War Room” is shot in the nonscripted, cinema-verite style by D. A. Pennebaker (whose follow-around films on President Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Bob Dylan are documentary classics) and Chris Hegedus. Whether Carville and company are play-acting somewhat for the cameras becomes less important as the film progresses. One can only keep up an act for so long — especially in the throes of a campaign. Carville’s tearful farewell speech to his staff as they close up just before the election, Stephanopoulos’s frank talk with a potential blackmailer and a Mickey Kantor comment about the people of Indiana (when it looks as though Clinton’s ahead in Dan Quayle’s state) attest to this.

As with almost every cinema-verite subject, people in everyday action — politics in particular — reveal themselves with such absorbing originality, you don’t need a script. It’s great to watch characters in “The War Room” operating as most of us do — by the seat of their pants.

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Thesis (1996)

Spanish director and scriptwriter Alejandro Amenábar has gotten a fair amount of prominence in the English-speaking domain of late, and well-fit it is. At the moment, he is probably best known throughout directing The Others, as well as directing and article Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos), the outstanding murkiness that spawned a totally unneeded remake in Vanilla Sky. Amenábar’s film Thesis (original title: Tesis) takes us furtively to 1996, where we can undertake that his big name is no windfall: it has been in the cards from the beginning.

Thesis was director/writer Alejandro Amenábar’s first looks film, made when he was only 23 after deciding to dam studying film and start making it. The film Point begins with Ángela (Ana Torrent), a film schoolboy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (as Amenábar was) who is working on a notion on audiovisual violence in the media. Her analyse leads her toward more and more utmost examples of media fierceness, putting her in contact with a fellow apprentice, Chema (Fele Martínez), who has an extensive whip-round of gory videos. But the real horror starts when she stumbles across denote that behind the urban legend of “snuff” films there lies a horrifying fact… and that the murderous filmmakers involved identify that she knows too much.

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Yet it is in fact a identical entertaining, tension-filled thriller, Thesis is more than that; the overlay is self-cogitating and critical, both of the film industry and of viewers themselves, even as they watch the movie. All over the film, Thesis circles around a dark dichotomy in human behavior: we don’t want to look, but we are compelled to anyway; we want to out violence, but it draws us in. The foot in the door scene of the veil encapsulates this gist, hinting at the greater circumstance of it in the video: Ángela is coming home on the Madrid subway when the prepare halts unexpectedly; the conductor informs them that a people has just committed suicide by throwing himself in front of the train. “Don’t look,” he says, but can’t help adding, “he’s been avoid in two.” The faces of the disembarking passengers are filled with horror and revulsion, yet they crowd encompassing trying to get a look at the shocking scene previous to they are herded away.

The character of Ángela is a expert stand-in for the viewer in this course. Unlike the more openly voyeuristic Chema, she claims that her absorbed in destructiveness is strictly academic: for the benefit of her thesis. Yet we can’t help but realize that she is secretly drawn to it as well; realizing this, it disgusts her, but in any event compels her. Both Torrent and Martínez reject us believable characters who also regulate to break stereotyped “thriller” conventions apropos the behavior of virile and female characters; they are, and residue, well-rounded and interesting characters who promote as the record unfolds. Thesis also features a young-looking Eduardo Noriega as Bosco; he appears in the protagonist’s role in Amenábar’s next pellicle, Bounteous Your Eyes.

From beginning to extreme, Contention takes a hard look at “violence as recreation,” pushing the viewer to be more self-cognizant, to recognize the potential for violence that exists within all of us and the viable consequences of comforting some of our darker desires. The glaze asks, is “what the public wants” always instantly? Where should a filmmaker evoke the line? Is there a recondite hypocrisy in the the score that we are both repelled and attracted by scenes of violence?

Very ironically, it appears that the Precinct 1 version of the film has been slight edited: the running time of the master is listed at 125 minutes, but the R1 DVD lists a direction time of 121 minutes. Where are the missing four minutes? I have suspicions about that they were cease to get an R rating. I first saw Point in Spain, and though it was several years ago, I seem to recall that the film showed at least one disturbing clip from a “snuff” film that Ángela finds that does not act in the DVD version. On the other hand, it appears that the Territory 1 disc is less edited than the 119-miniature R2 version.

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