With Robert Pattinson quickly gaining stardom with the Twilight Saga and having a massive teenage girl following, he and Summit Entertainment have decided to show he can be more than just a heartthrob. In Remember Me, which arrived on DVD and Blu-ray Tuesday, Pattinson tries to extend his acting range in this romantic drama on which he was also an executive producer.
Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, you say? So another Bourne movie? Although those names combined with the trailer combined with Damon’s character Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller going rogue combined with mention of a code name person/project that Damon’s character wants answers about might indiscreetly imply the fast-paced action of renegade assassin Jason Bourne, Green Zone is entirely different — I swear. Arriving on DVD and Blu-ray today, It’s a politically-fueled historical fiction thriller that blends Operation Iraqi Freedom facts with a conventional but effective conspiracy plot.
Based on the long-running DC Comic, Jonah Hex is about a gunslinger in the old west who becomes a bounty hunter after his family is killed. His face is scarred in such a way he is scary to look at to his enemies. However, this movie is not what anyone is hoping for. The production team behind the film got about 60 percent of the character wrong.
What is it that has always made Disney/Pixar films so special, even the rare misses (I’m looking at you, Ratatouille)? Is it the incredibly tongue-in-cheek humor or the scripts’ brilliant plot twists? Nope and think again. It’s the heart of the characters. Just to name a few, there’s the uptight Marlin and the carefree Dory in Finding Nemo. You also have the grumpy Carl, the inquisitive Russell, and the absent-minded Dug in Up. You laugh with them, you cry with them, and over the course of less than two hours, you really do come to love these characters. Then, you have the gang from the Toy Story series. This is perhaps the group of Disney/Pixar characters that resonates the most. We have definitely seen them more than other Disney/Pixar characters, and they have captured the hearts of millions worldwide.
Post-apocalyptic fiction has been a mainstay of the literacy scene since Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and this has lead onto other novels such as The Stand, Ridley Walker, Children of Men and The Road and films like the Mad Max Trilogy, Wall-E and 28 Days Later. Now the Hughes Brothers have attempted the genre after a nine-year hiatus from directing.
The always soft-spoken and awkwardly verbose Cera plays yet another character that fits his mold in Twisp, a teenager with divorced parents who loves Fellini films and vintage vinyl and really, really wants to get laid. It’s a semi-romantic aspiration as well, but the depths to which he’ll let his hormones take him is at times even implausibly absurd.
When it comes to adaptations, sometimes you pity the fool who knows the source material too well. I knew nothing about The A-Team outside of premise and having been thoroughly entertained by it, I applaud my own ignorance as it may well have been the difference-maker. Joe Carnahan’s movie version of the ’80s television classic aims to not merely challenge the bar for inventive sequences that end in kaboom, but to rocket launch it off its post. Those like myself who have the privilege of not being able measure this 21st Century “A-Team” against the spirit of its source material will have a much easier time enjoying it as the recklessly fun overkill that it is.
The original Karate Kid film is one of the most iconic films of the 1980s. Even though this remake has its moments, some inconsistencies will prevent it from becoming a classic for the next generation.
Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) is a young boy who moves from Detroit to China because of his mother’s (Taraji P. Henson) job. There he meets a girl he likes named Meiying (Wenwen Han) who plays the violin. However, Dre starts getting bullied by some boys in the school. That’s when Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) steps into the picture. Even though he’s a maintenance man, he has a vast knowledge of kung fu and decides to teach Dre the fighting style. He also puts Dre into a fighting tournament so he can face his fears.
Many people questioned acclaimed director Martin Scorsese’s choice to helm a pure genre film in the psychological thriller Shutter Island, but the marriage of one of the masters of crime drama and a Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”) novel is as close to an ideal match as it sounds. Although Scorsese is capable of applying his skills to more meaningful work than a mystery, he’s able to play around a lot more with technique, style, light and color to turn a somewhat predictable mystery into a captivating thriller.
In 1941, Lon Chaney Jr. gave us the greatest werewolf story ever with The Wolfman. It was silver screen horror brought to life in a way we had never seen before. Over the years other werewolf films have tried to live up, but none were as spooky and gothic as the original. In the last decade, we have had to suffer through bad remakes of great horror movies with over-acting that were more about appeasing a teen audience that could not appreciate the original. In particular, it always seemed as though the werewolf got the silver bullet. Underworld and Twilight incoporated them, but were more about vampires. At last we have one that holds up to its counterpart.
