Yes/No Films

Guide to the SAG Awards, this Sunday at 8pm EST

2012-01-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

The 18th annual SAG Awards will be aired this Sunday at 8pm EST, on both TNT and TBS, live from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center. Here are the nominees for the major film categories, with my picks in italics:

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture:

The Artist

Bridesmaids

The Descendants

The Help

Midnight in Paris

~This is a tough call. I'm hoping that either The Help or Bridesmaids wins, but really any of these movies could win, as they all have great ensemble casts.

Read the rest of the article and my SAG Awards picks at Examiner.com.

Pina

2012-01-27T00:01:00.032-05:00

The documentary Pina is about the life works of choreographer Pina Bausch, who died suddenly in 2009, five days after being diagnosed with cancer. A documentary was supposed to be made about her, but she passed away during the preparations for it; production was canceled, although the dancers involved still wanted to make the film. It focuses on modern dance, which is a little hard to understand for some, and the film was strange but many of the dance sequences were very beautiful.

The movie has four separate sequences: Le sacre du printemps, Café Mueller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond (Wikipedia). In Le sacre du printemps, we see men with rakes cleaning the stage, as it is covered in what looks like sand, but which is actually peat. It's a strange way to start the film, but it does catch the audience's attention. In Café Mueller, we see a cafe with various chairs strewn about, and different people doing repetitive actions in each of the corners and in the middle. Kontakthof, which was my favorite, features a ballroom of sorts; at first, you see younger dancers in a line, but as the camera shifts, all of a sudden older dancers, wearing the same dresses and suits, are in their places. The last, Vollmond, features a flooded stage, as Pina was a fan of using the elements in her work, and the dancers are splashing about and moving through the water.Read more »

Man on a Ledge

2012-01-27T00:01:00.031-05:00

Man on a Ledge does something that no movie in recent memory has done: it combines two different types of movies, the "desperate man hanging off of a ledge" movie with a heist film, because the "man on the ledge" is covering up the bigger picture, a robbery happening at a nearby building. When you combine these two "genres" with an all-star cast, you get an interesting, crazy ride that never fails to hold the audience's attention throughout its 102 minute runtime.

Former police officer Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington, The Debt) was sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit - stealing the 40 carat diamond of one of New York's "movers and shakers," David Englander (Ed Harris, Salvation Boulevard) - and when he is released for a day for his father's funeral, he disarms the guards that were assigned to him and escapes. A year or so later, he finds himself perched on the ledge of the Roosevelt Hotel building, threatening to jump and saying that he will only talk to Detective Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks, Our Idiot Brother). Once Mercer is retrieved, she tries to talk him down from the ledge, but she soon finds out that there is a lot more going on here than just a desperate man trying to commit suicide: Cassidy's brother, Joey (Jamie Bell, Jane Eyre) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez, TV's Entourage), are breaking into Englander's safe to prove that he still, in fact, has the diamond, and the "show" that Nick is doing out on the ledge is simply a cover-up for this.Read more »

Albert Nobbs

2012-01-27T00:01:00.028-05:00

Early on in Albert Nobbs, Mia Wasikowska's character calls the title character "a weird little man," and the same can be said about this movie: it's a little strange, but somehow it works, and either way you'll be thinking about it long after you leave the theater. As a testament to the acting in the film, Glenn Close has been nominated for an Oscar for playing Albert.

Our title character Albert (Glenn Close, TV's Damages) lives in a hotel in Dublin, where he works as a butler. "He" is actually a she, but nobody else knows, because if Albert was to reveal his true identity, he would not be able to support herself and probably would be working as a maid instead and making lower pay.

(I will refer to her as "him" in this review, however, to avoid confusion)

A Mr. Page (Janet McTeer, Tideland) comes to paint the hotel one day and the hotel owner says he can sleep with Albert in his bed; when Albert is undressing, Mr. Page finds out that he is a woman, and Albert, in the only scene where he is very emotional (like a woman), begs him not to reveal his identity to anyone. Mr. Page has a secret of his own, however, and is more like Albert than Albert would have guessed.Read more »

The Grey

2012-01-27T00:01:00.016-05:00

The Grey could be used as an anti-tourism ad for Alaska: your plane will crash in the snowy wilderness somewhere and you will get eaten by wolves ... welcome! However, the film was better than I expected - even if it's grisly and bloody in parts - and Liam Neeson gives a great performance, as does his supporting co-stars.

Ottway (Liam Neeson, Unknown) is preparing to fly back to Anchorage with his coworkers. He is a hunter of sorts for the company; he kills wolves when he sees them get too close to where the men are working outside. Ottway just wants to be left alone so he can sleep, he tells the man who sits next to him (Joe Anderson, The Crazies), whom quickly switches seats when he encounters the grouchy Ottway. The plane hits some turbulence mid-flight, and a digital map shows they are somewhere over Alaska.

What follows is most intense plane crash I have seen in any movie, even including some 9/11 films. When Neeson wakes up, he is shivering and his face is half-covered with snow; he appears to be alone, but when he walks over the snowbank, he sees the wreckage of the plane and bodies and suitcases strewn everywhere. He quickly finds himself a hat and a heavier coat out of one of the suitcases, and then looks for survivors - there are no more than ten. They huddle in the plane and try to decide what to do, and Ottway quickly establishes himself as the leader of the group, because of his survival skills. This is a good thing because on their first night they encounter an unpleasant surprise: there is a pack of wolves in the area who are angry at them for disturbing their hunting space. Ottway and the others decide to head for the trees in an effort to avoid the wolves, but the survivors soon begin to be picked off one by one.Read more »

INTERVIEW: Chandler Massey, 16-Love and Days of Our Lives

2012-01-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

Chandler Massey is currently starring in the feature film 16-Love, where he plays Farrell Gambles, a tennis amateur and the love interest of Ally, Lindsey Shaw's character. I got the opportunity to interview him via phone about the movie, playing tennis, and his character on Days of Our Lives; here's what he had to say.

How long did it take you to learn how to play tennis like you do in the movie?

Actually – fortunately – I grew up playing tennis with my family, so I didn’t have to completely learn.

Did you take tennis lessons when you were a kid?

Yes, I did. I took lessons. I lived in Georgia, and they had these young ALTA and young USTA tennis teams and I was always involved with those.

Read the rest of the interview at Examiner.com.

INTERVIEW: Lindsey Shaw, from 16-Love, Pretty Little Liars, and 10 Things I Hate About You

2012-01-22T12:43:00.002-05:00

Lindsey Shaw is currently starring in the film 16-Love (click here for review), which is playing in limited release across the country and on On-Demand. She is also a recurring guest star on the TV show Pretty Little Liars, and from 2009-2010 she played one of the leads, Kat Stratford, in the TV series version of 10 Things I Hate About You. I recently got the chance to chat with Lindsay via phone about the movie and her other roles.

I watched 16-Love and it was really cute. I was wondering how long it took you to learn how to play tennis like that.

Thanks for watching it. When I first booked the role, they hooked me up with a tennis coach right away and I did three-hour practices with him every day. That was for about a week and a half. Then we went down to San Diego for a week of rehearsals first and they matched me with a tennis coach down there as well, for the same thing – every day practices, for two hours a day. It was only for about two and a half or three weeks that I really got to have intensive practice - and then, of course, during filming. It wasn’t long, but it was very intensive.

Read the rest of the interview at Examiner.com.

16-Love

2012-01-21T11:38:00.001-05:00

16-Love is an indie film that opened yesterday (January 20th) in limited theaters and also on video-on-demand, and is from the same writer/producer as A Cinderella Story. When I first heard about it, I knew I wanted to see it, mostly because the trailer looked very good but also because Lindsey Shaw, an actress I like from TV's 10 Things I Hate About You and Pretty Little Liars, is in it. The movie focuses around her character being the #1 tennis player, and what happens to her when she twists her ankle and can't play for a few weeks. Some of her co-stars, too, are no strangers to the big (and little) screen, and they make for a fun group of teens to watch.

Ally Mash (Lindsay Shaw), aka "Smash Mash," the 16-year-old tennis veteran, is playing against one of her rivals, Katina Upranova (Susie Abromeit, Battle Los Angeles), when she lands awkwardly and twists one of her ankles. Her father, Dave (Keith Coulouris, Shadow People), a former tennis pro and U.S. Open winner, orders her to default (lose the game), and he hires a bevy of professionals that will help Ally repair her ankle, both physically (a yoga instructor) and mentally (a sports psychologist). What he doesn't count on, however, is Ally being distracted, as she's just met an amateur tennis player named Farrell Gambles (Chandler Massey, TV's Days of Our Lives), and is starting to fall for him. Ally helps Farrell improve his tennis game, and in the process, he shows her what life can be like for a normal teenager. Ally must still train once her ankle heals, however, because the championship game is fast approaching, in which she will be facing Upranova again to try to reclaim her #1 spot.Read more »

Red Tails

2012-01-20T00:03:00.004-05:00

Red Tails tells the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, an all African-American Air Force unit that served as pilots in World War II in Italy at a time when many Americans believed that African-Americans were not "mentally and physically able" to serve in the military. The Airmen, who fought in Italy during World War II, not only proved that they were able, but in fact quite adept members of the armed forces, and their story is one that has never been told on the big screen until now.

The pilots and their commanders include Major Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr., The Hit List), Colonel Bullard (Terrance Howard, The Ledge), "Easy" (Nate Parker, The Secret Life of Bees), "Junior" (Tristan Wilds, TV's 90210), "Joker" (Elijah Kelley, Hairspray), "Smoky" (singer Ne-Yo), Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo, The Help), and others. Some of the boys had their own side plots as well; Joe Little was dating a local Italian woman (Daniela Ruah, TV's NCIS: Los Angeles), even though he couldn't speak Italian, and Major Stance was fighting for the Airmen's right to serve in the war, as there were still a lot of racists around who didn't like the idea of African-American pilots. Because of Stance and their natural talents, the Red Tails soon get a major opportunity - escorting bomber planes into Berlin - and they take advantage of it to show their flying abilities.Read more »

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

2012-01-20T00:01:00.008-05:00

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was released in limited markets on Christmas Day 2011, to qualify for Oscar season, but is just now being released nationwide. It's based on the acclaimed novel by Jonathan Saffran Foer, whose novel Everything is Illuminated was also made into a movie. EL&IC is one of the more realistic 9/11 movies I have seen, and the fact that it is told from a child's point of view, for the most part, makes it all the more powerful.

Oskar Schell (newcomer Thomas Horn) lives in New York City with his mom (Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side), and his father (Tom Hanks, Larry Crowne), a man of science who owns his own jewelry store. Oskar is definitely precocious, and was tested for Asperger's Syndrome but "the results were inconclusive," he explains early in the film. Indeed, it appears he does have Asperger's, as he has a hard time talking to people, he carries around a tambourine that helps him through his fears, and he obsesses over anything and everything. His father assigns Oskar clever assignments, masquerading as "challenges," that involve him having to interact more with people and the world around him, and this seems to be helping his condition. Oskar's world is turned upside down on 9/11, however, as his father is in the Twin Towers for a meeting, and cannot escape. Oskar's world already revolved more around his father than his mother, and is changed irrevocably. After finding a key of his father's that he thinks was meant for himself, Oskar embarks on a "challenge" to find the lock in which it fits, convinced that it is a message of sorts from his father.Read more »

Haywire

2012-01-20T00:01:00.003-05:00

Michael Douglas! Channing Tatum! Michael Fassbender! Antonio Banderas! Ewan McGregor! These men plus a newcomer, MMA fighter Gina Carano, make up the A-list cast of Haywire. Its trailer makes the movie seem like it will be a fast-paced secret-agent movie, but instead it's rather slow and reflective in parts; however, the fight scenes, mostly due to Carano, are great, and that is where this movie excels.

Mallory (Gina Carano, Blood and Bone) is an agent who works for a private company that is contracted by the government. She's just returned from her last job in Barcelona when her handler, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor, Beginners), asks her to take a "cake job" in Dublin, where her cover will be that she's married to Paul (Michael Fassbender, Shame). Mallory and Paul will need to extract a journalist to get him home safely. She and Paul attend a party at a castle-like home in Dublin, and when they get back to their hotel room, things go awry; she soon realizes that she's been set up, and she needs to get out of Ireland ASAP. She can't trust her handler anymore so she calls Coblenz (Michael Douglas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), the government agent who hired her company, and explains the situation to him. Mallory must find her way back to the U.S. safely on her own since she is now being labeled as a "rogue agent," and Kenneth will stop at nothing to find her.Read more »

Golden Globes to air this Sunday, 8pm on NBC

2012-01-14T11:30:00.000-05:00

Ricky Gervais will host for his second year

The 69th Annual Golden Globes awards will air tomorrow (Sunday, 1/15/12) from 8pm-11pm EST on NBC. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has chosen Ricky Gervais to host again, even after some of his more acidic barbs towards the stars last year, so it should be an interesting night.

Check out my picks of the winners at Examiner.com.

DVD review: Answer This!

2012-01-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

Film: A- (4 stars out of 5)
Special features: B-

Chris Gorham and I at the
Ann Arbor premiere, Oct. 2010

By now you should all be familiar with Answer This!, an indie film I have written a few articles about. It has recently been released on DVD by Lionsgate, and it held its world premiere in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater in October 2010, where I was able to interview Chris Gorham (TV's Covert Affairs) and Arielle Kebbel (TV's The Vampire Diaries, and John Tucker Must Die). It also had a smaller premiere in Royal Oak this past October as well. I loved the film, although I'm definitely biased because it was filmed at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, and in fact is the first movie EVER in which the university allowed its specific name to be used. I also wrote a fun article about the places I recognized in the film and detailing a few which have had "location changes" for the movie, so to speak.

Read the rest of the article at Examiner.com.

Contraband

2012-01-13T00:03:00.001-05:00

Contraband looked like it could either be an awesome heist film or a vessel for cliches, but luckily it ended up being more of the former. Much of the movie was over the top and unbelievable, but overall it was a fun film that anyone who is a fan of heist or gangster movies will enjoy.

Reformed criminal Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter) got out of "the life" when he married his wife and had kids, but now his brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones, X-Men: First Class), owes some bad guys a lot of money because he didn't fulfill his end of their bargain. Chris must do one more job in Panama in order to pay the guys (including Giovanni Ribisi, The Rum Diary) what Andy owes them; if he's unable to cough up the money, they will kill Andy and then come after Chris and his family.Read more »

Beauty and the Beast 3D (2012)

2012-01-13T00:02:00.003-05:00

It's a tale as old as time (or as old as 1991, anyway): Beauty and the Beast, now back on the big screen in Disney Digital 3D. I used to own the film on VHS (and here's where I lose the young ones ...), but I hadn't seen Beauty and the Beast in quite some time. It was nice to see it back in theaters, although I'm not sure if the 3D added much; it was good in some scenes, but a little shaky in others.

The plot, for those of you that don't know it: Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara) lives a "provincial life" with her inventor father, Maurice (Rex Everhart), and is an avid reader. However, the most handsome man in town, Gaston (Richard White), wants her as his wife, and he will stop at nothing to have her. On the way to an inventor's fair, Belle's father gets lost in the woods, and he ends up at the Beast's castle. The enchanted fixtures there welcome him in, but the Beast (Robby Benson) is not as hospitable; he throws him in the tower, not caring about his well-being. When Belle goes to find her father, she offers herself to the Beast as a trade, so that Maurice may go free. The Beast agrees and Belle must be his prisoner, and live in the enchanted castle, for the rest of her life.

Although the Beast is harsh on the outside, Belle soon finds that he has a softer side too. What she doesn't know, however, is that he used to be a prince, before a spell was cast on him that made him look the way he does now; he must break the spell by his 21st birthday by finding someone to love him, or else he will look like a beast forever. His former servants now are the fixtures in the house, as well - there is Mrs. Potts (Angela Lansbury), the teakettle, and her son Chip (Bradley Pierce); Cogsworth (David Ogden Stiers) the clock; Lumiere (Jerry Orbach) the candelabra; and the Wardrobe (Jo Ann Worley), among others.Read more »

Joyful Noise

2012-01-13T00:01:00.004-05:00

I saw the trailer for Joyful Noise a few days before seeing the film, and I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the movie. I'm not a huge fan of gospel music, but I do like Queen Latifah, and it seemed that she and Dolly Parton would make a good pair. The movie, armed with a hilarious script, ended up exceeding my expectations, and it is a film that anyone - gospel fan or not - will enjoy.

Vi Rose (Queen Latifah, Just Wright) lives in the small town of Pacashau, Georgia, with her 16-year-old daughter Olivia (Keke Palmer, Red Hook Summer) and her son, Walter (Dexter Darden, Standing Ovation), who has Asperger's syndrome. Vi Rose and Olivia are very active in their church's choir, and they are heading to the regional finals for the Joyful Noise competition for the second year in a row. The choir director (Kris Kristofferson, Dolphin Tale), however, passes away shortly before the regional finals, and his wife, G.G. (singer Dolly Parton), hopes to be named the new director, but is disappointed when the honor is given to Vi Rose instead.

At the same time, G.G.'s grandson Randy (newcomer Jeremy Jordan) arrives from New York, where he's run away from a bad home situation. He becomes interested in Olivia, and realizes that to get closer to her, he will have to join the church choir; luckily, he has an amazing voice. He develops some new versions of classic songs for the group to sing, but Pastor Dale (Courtney B. Vance, Final Destination 5) is not having any of it, and says that if the choir doesn't do the older songs, the church will not sponsor them in the competition.Read more »

Angelina Jolie Live Q&A and GIVEAWAY: Limited edition In the Land of Blood and Honey poster

2012-01-11T12:14:00.000-05:00

Angelina Jolie will be doing a live Q&A about her new movie In the Land of Blood and Honey on January 12th, and you can see it here. In addition, I have a promo "limited edition" poster from the movie to give away.

To read more and to enter the contest, check out my Examiner.com article. Contest ends on Sunday, January 15 at 5pm EST.

Catch a Tangled short before Beauty and the Beast 3D

2012-01-06T19:36:00.000-05:00

The short film Tangled Ever After will be shown before Beauty and the Beast 3D - I'm seeing a screening of it tomorrow, actually - and Disney has a preview clip to share with its Tangled fans. Check out the clip below, which seems to be of the wedding between Rapunzel and Flynn:

And don't forget to check out Beauty and the Beast in Disney Digital 3D in theaters on the 13th.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has an impressive cast list including Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, and Tom Hardy, among others, which is impressive. It also has the dubious distinction of being one of the only movies of recent memory that completely confused me and also almost put me to sleep, as it was very, very slow. At the screening I attended, we were given a "dossier" of sorts that explained the plot and the characters in the film, and it appears that I should have read this more closely, because the plot explains nothing and leaves it up to the audience to decipher its various components.

Only three parts of the plot were clear: one, there was a mole in the "Circus" (what they call their intelligence agency); two, they were trying to find out who that was; and three, Strong's character gets shot in the very beginning, although the particulars of this change later on in the movie. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is based on the novel by John le Carré, who writes decent spy novels - I've read a few - and to further understand the film, I looked at the Wikipedia page for the book. I also asked a friend who also saw it to explain it to me, and his explanation is much shorter. To paraphrase: "Oldman was the boss and they wanted him out."Read more »

Worst and Most Surprising Films of 2011

2011-12-28T19:40:00.000-05:00

"Why am I doing this movie, again?"

2012 is upon us, and I originally wanted to do a "Best of" list for 2011; however, that's not very original, and if you've been reading my reviews, you can most likely tell what my favorites were for the year.

Instead, we have something much more fun: a "Worst of 2011" list and also, for variation, a "Most Surprising Films" list.

Click here to read the rest of the article at my Examiner.com page.

The Darkest Hour

2011-12-25T00:01:00.002-05:00

Oh, Max Mingella. What are you doing in a movie like Darkest Hour? Emile Hirsch, you're in it for the paycheck, I get that - you haven't done a ton of movies recently - but Mingella is fresh off such hits as The Ides of March and The Social Network. Mingella and Hirsch are two actors I like a lot, so I was happy to see that they were in this movie ... until, of course, I actually viewed it.

American friends Sean (Emile Hirsch, Taking Woodstock) and Ben (Max Minghella, The Ides of March) have traveled to Moscow to present an idea for a new social network, which they are hoping to expand to Russia. It turns out, however, that a Swede named Skyler (Joel Kinnaman, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has stolen their idea and is ready to present it to the Moscow company. Ben is in despair over this, and he and Sean go for a few drinks at a club, where they meet fellow Americans Natalie (Olivia Thirlby, No Strings Attached) and Ann (Rachael Taylor, TV's Charlie's Angels). They have fun together until the power goes out, and the clubgoers are forced out to the streets, where they see something weird: a orange electrical force of sorts, that soon kills a policeman and many others.

This induces mass panic, of course, and the four of them end up cowering in a storage room at the club, along with Skyler, who has somehow weaseled his way in there with them. After three or four days, they decide it's safe to come out, and they want to find their way to the U.S. Embassy (even though the streets are deserted, there will be people at the Embassy! Right?). They find a map to help them, and they soon figure out that the alien forces, whatever they are, activate electricity, so they learn to only venture out at night, when they are able to sense the aliens before they are in danger. Eventually they meet up with a few other survivors, and they find out that there's a submarine ready to depart Moscow the next day, to meet up with survivors around the world. They must get themselves to the sub, although it means going through alien-infested areas, before it leaves Russia.Read more »

The Artist

2011-12-23T00:02:00.006-05:00

With the focus on big-budget special effects, 3D movies, and Blu-Ray movies, it's somewhat anachronistic to see a silent movie in 2011. Nonetheless, The Artist tells a story about the film industry in the 1920s, as "talkies" first arrived on the scene. Although there are a few modern actors in it that you may recognize, the two main actors are foreign (French and Argentinian, respectively), so most Americans probably won't know them by sight.

The year is 1927, and silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, A View of Love) is enjoying a lucrative and successful career. By chance, he meets Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo, Prey), and pictures of the two of them are splashed on the front page of Variety the next day, to the chagrin of Valentin's wife. He later has a run-in with Peppy again, as she has auditioned for and been cast as a dancer in his new movie. Two years later, however, in 1929, the "talkies" start production, and studio exec Al Zimmer (John Goodman, Red State) wants a fresh cast of characters; he fires Valentin and brings in Peppy and some younger actors to start this new era in filmmaking.

Valentin decides to become a director and make his own film, since the big studios are no longer doing silent films, but it flops. Meanwhile, Peppy's star is rising, and she has become one of the more sought-after actresses in the business. However, she still remembers that it was Valentin that gave her her start in the business, and, in fact, even advised her to add a mole of sorts to her face, to make her stand out from the other actresses; indeed, her mole is now her signature "look." She tries to help Valentin but unfortunately he sinks deeper into depression and despair, since he is no longer the star that he was just a few short years ago.Read more »

War Horse

2011-12-23T00:01:00.003-05:00

War Horse is directed by Steven Spielberg, and distributed by Disney/DreamWorks effort, which gives you one reason right there to see it. From the trailer the film looked a little sappy, and it was, but overall it was an interesting film, if a little long.

After his father (Peter Mullan, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1) overpays for a horse at auction, Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) gets to train the horse. Albert names it Joey, and he must train him to till their fields, since his family is now in debt to their landlord since they spent so much on the horse. Joey will not be tamed easily, but Albert gives him love and respect, and soon the fields are ready for planting. After an ugly storm, however, their crops are ruined; in addition, World War I is upon England. Albert's father sells the horse to the English army, amidst Albert's protests, so that they will not be homeless, and the officer who will take Albert as his own horse (Tom Hiddleston, Thor) promises to take good care of him.

As these things usually go, Joey ends up with a myriad of different owners throughout "his time" in the war, including a little girl and her grandfather, the Germans, and many other armies. When Albert is old enough, though, he joins the army, and he hopes to maybe find Joey again some day.Read more »

The Adventures of Tintin

2011-12-21T00:01:00.009-05:00

The Adventures of Tintin is based on a European comic book series written by an author who uses the pen name Hergé, and at the beginning of the movie we see a poster of one of the book's covers on the wall of an apartment. Just like the books, the film follows Tintin, a reporter, and his dog, Snowy, as they uncover wrongdoings and have many adventures. There are no cell phones or internet searches here, just "old fashioned" sleuthing; in a way, Tintin reminded me of Nancy Drew, but with a male protagonist.

Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell, Jane Eyre) and Snowy are browsing at a market one day when he comes across a miniature ship model that he has to have. Immediately upon buying it, a shady-looking man approaching him and offers to pay him twice what he paid, but Tintin refuses. Another man, too, comes up to him and offers to buy it, but Tintin takes the ship and brings it home. Later, Snowy gets into a fight with a cat in Tintin's apartment, and the ship's masthead breaks, with a secret part inside of it falling to the floor; this later turns out to be fortuitous because Tintin's apartment is broken into, and the ship is stolen. Tintin eventually finds the secret part on the floor of his apartment, and he begins to piece together why it is so important.

A side plot involves the Inspectors Thompson and Thomson (voiced by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) trying to find a wallet thief, who has stolen Tintin's wallet as well. They devise a plan to catch him, which works, but the two are not the brightest, and they don't figure out that the man is indeed the wallet thief until later.Read more »

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2011-12-16T00:02:00.002-05:00

A Game of Shadows is the sequel to the 2009 Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Although the new film features a lot of action sequences and intrigue, I still prefer the first Sherlock Holmes movie, and you must watch the first film before the second in order to understand the characters and motivations in A Game of Shadows.

Dr. Watson (Jude Law, Contagion) is about to get married, and he is counting on his friend and comrade Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man 2) to throw him a "stag" (bachelor) party. However, Holmes needs Watson's help on an unfinished case. It turns out that Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris, TV's Fringe) has been stockpiling weapons and bandages and has become involved with specific events that he hopes will turn France and Germany against each other, thus resulting in a war for which Moriarty will be able to meet the demand for supplies. Moriarty sends assassins to kill Watson and his new bride (Kelly Reilly, Sherlock Holmes) on the train which they are taking to their honeymoon destination, but luckily Holmes has anticipated this and is on the train as well. From there, Holmes and Watson must join forces once again to take down the Professor, who is planning on causing an incident at a Peace Summit in Switzerland. In addition, they receive some help from the gypsy fortune teller Madam Simza (Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), whose brother may be involved in the Professor's plan.Read more »