Tag: cinema

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone review

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” is a film that has a lot of comedic heavy hitters and yet it all goes wrong so fast.

The film follows the story of the title character played by Steve Carell. Burt Wonderstone is a Las Vegas magician who puts on a show with his friend Anton Marvelton, played by Steve Buscemi, and finds a great deal of success. For a good number of years, things go well for Burt, however as time goes on people grow tired of the show and the theater becomes more and more empty.

Meanwhile, a new magician named Steve Gray, played by Jim Carrey, comes onto the scene and does more extreme tricks and daring stunts. The film sets its plot around Wonderstone having to get his career back on track and outdo Steve Gray.

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Jack the Giant Slayer review

Director:
Bryan Singer
Cast:
Nicholas Hoult
Eleanor Tomlinson
Ewan McGregor
Stanley Tucci
Ian McShane
Rated: PG-13

“Jack the Giant Slayer” is another retelling of classic fairytales, a genre which has picked up steam the last few years.

In this adaption, Jack (Hoult) ends up getting some beans through a series of events.

What’s different in this version is that an evil aid to the King, Roderick (Tucci), wants the beans because they lead to the beanstalk which has access to the giant’s kingdom in the sky. Roderick has a plan to use the giants to take over the kingdom, however, before he can thrust his plan in to motion, Jack gets a hold of the beans.

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A Good Day to Die Hard review

Director:
John Moore
Cast:
Bruce Willis
Jai Courtney
Sebastian Koch
Yuliya Snigir
Radivoje Bukvic
Rated: R

I don’t know if I want to hear Yippee Kay Ye any more.

“A Good Day to Die Hard” takes place some unknown amount of time after the fourth film. In this one, John McClane (Willis) finds out that his son Jack (Courtney) is in trouble in Russia. John decides to travel over to find out if he can somehow help his son in any way. What he finds out is that his son is actually a CIA agent working a major case.

Through a wild course of events, John becomes involved with the operation his son is working on and the two have to work together to bring down a large organization of terrorists.

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January 2013 Mini-Reviews

Texas Chainsaw 3D – 1 out of 5
This movie to me, basically ruins the lore of the original film from 1974. They give the Sawyer family, the psychopaths all of this backstory and history that just doesn’t blend with what the original film did. The only reason I didn’t give this a 0.5 is because at the very least they tried something a little different, the problem is that what they tried was just bad.

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Warm Bodies review

Director:
Jonathan Levine
Cast:
Nicholas Hoult
Teresa Palmer
Analeigh Tipton
Rob Corddry
Rated: PG-13

“Warm Bodies” is your basic modern day re-telling of “Romeo and Juliet,” except in this case, Romeo happens to be a zombie.

The film follows the character “R,” played by Nicholas Hoult who starred in the 2011 film “X-Men First Class.” R is a zombie who knows his name started with the letter “r” but can’t remember anything after that. On the outside, R is just an average zombie slumping around an airport in an post-apocalyptic future. However, on the inside R is able to give a monologue of what’s going on and provides the movie a narration.

Eventually, through a chance encounter, R meets a survivalist named Julie, played by Teresa Palmer. She is with a group looking for supplies. This meeting happens to be love at first sight for R as the encounter restarts his heart. Because of this, R saves Julie and Julie begins to learn that R is slowly coming back to life.

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Top 10 Best Movies of 2012

1. Argo
It was difficult putting this above “Lincoln,” however I think that “Argo” really was ahead in a few ways. It’s intense, it’s funny, it’s interesting and it is very well put together by director Ben Affleck. “Argo” was a really nice follow up to “The Town” and shows that Affleck can take on different sorts of films and pull them off. I was really impressed with the acting, the portrayal of Hollywood and especially the exciting climax.

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Zero Dark Thirty review

“Zero Dark Thirty” is based on the true story of the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, starting with the attacks on 9/11. It takes an in-depth look at the tracking of Al Qaeda during a 10-year period through the eyes of a CIA operative who is part of the task force to find its leader and the No. 1 target of the United States.

The CIA operative, Maya, is played by Jessica Chastain. Maya travels much of the Middle East in the movie, interrogating a number of different detainees and using the extent of U.S. technology to try and put the puzzle pieces together. Through the film, she sticks to the hunt and becomes obsessed with Bin Laden.

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Les Miserables review

Adapted from the 1862 novel written by Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables” follows the story of an ex-convict named Jean Valjean, played by Hugh Jackman, whom upon leaving prison tries changing his life and becoming a better man than he was before. He breaks parole though and because of this, the law-obsessed inspector Javert, played by Russell Crowe, goes to no ends throughout the movie to try and capture Valjean.

After getting his life back on track and avoiding Javert, Valjean meets a woman named Fantine, played by Anne Hathaway who has had to sell her body to support her young daughter, Cosette. Upon her death, Valjean makes a promise to protect Cosette and raise her as his own. The rest of the film is about his struggles of raising Cosette and an envisionment of France in the early 1800s.

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey review

Director:
Peter Jackson
Cast:
Ian McKellen
Martin Freeman
Richard Armitage
Hugo Weaving
Rated: PG-13

The return of the franchise was like re-visiting an old friend.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is a prequel story to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy that came out a few years ago, all based on the books written by J.R.R. Tolkien. In this film, the story surrounds Bilbo Baggins (Freeman), the uncle of the LOTR protagonist Frodo, who gets a visit from the wizard Gandalf the Grey (McKellen). Gandalf informs Bilbo about an adventure he and a group of dwarves are going to attempt and asks him to be a member of the company.

Bilbo is at first reluctant to join in however the call of adventure brings him out of there and he joins with the dwarves and Gandalf. The leader of the group is Thorin (Armitage), a dwarf king who is trying to retake his home and reclaim his birth right. Through the adventure, Bilbo begins to earn more trust from the group.

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Playing for Keeps review

Director:
Gabriele Muccino
Cast:
Gerard Butler
Jessica Biel
Dennis Quaid
Uma Thurman
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Rated: PG-13

Gerard Butler can’t seem to escape the romcom void.

“Playing for Keeps” is the story of a retired soccer player named George (Butler), George has fallen on hard times, struggling financially and is trying to connect with his son even through being divorced from his wife Stacie (Biel). Eventually, George is sucked into becoming the new soccer coach for his son’s soccer team and through doing so he meets a few characters who make his attempts to reconnect with his family more difficult.

One of the problems with “Playing for Keeps” is that they tried to take a bunch of different plots that seemed to come from different movies, and smash them together into a sloppy mess. Not only do they bring in a bunch of different plots, they cut them off after a certain amount of time or make them significantly underdeveloped. They have a romantic comedy subplot; a divorce drama subplot and a father son bonding subplot, and each one of them don’t really go anywhere or mean anything.

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