Posted August 31st 2010

‘Takers’ took over  the #1 position at the box office last weekend taking in $20.5. million while ‘The Last Exorcism’ ran a close race as it possessed the #2 spot with $20.4 million in box office sales. ‘The Expendables’ moved to the #3 position with an additional $9.5 million  for a cumulative total of $82 million  in sales at the box office last weekend!

TAKER’S MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: Taker’s

Cinematical.com

By Eric Snyder

Posted August 31st 2010

Takers is the kind of movie where tough guys walk away from an explosion, in slow-motion, without looking behind them. But don’t worry! It is also the kind of movie where a man leaps sideways, in slow-motion, while firing two guns at the same time! And the kind of movie where that man is Hayden Christensen!

If you’re not hooked already, I don’t know what else I can tell you. Directed generically by John Luessenhop from a screenplay written blandly by him and three others, Takers is a buffet of Gritty Crime Drama clichés that offers no surprises but nothing egregiously stupid, either. Basically, you shouldn’t see it on purpose, but if you are abducted and required to see it, don’t feel like you need to struggle too hard to get away.

Our heroes (I think) are a group of suave, handsome bank robbers. Always dressed to the nines and prone to lounging in the finest nightclubs after a job, these are fancy thieves! And a good-looking bunch they are, too. Christensen plays A.J., who is a street-wise Ivy Leaguer, which means he has tattoos AND a stupid hat. Idris Elba is Gordon, a British cat with a drug-addled aunt (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) causing him problems. Michael Ealy and noted Rihanna-puncher Chris Brown play brothers Jake and Jesse, and Paul Walker is their leader, John.

What’s that you say? Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen in the same movie? That’s like having a movie with a plank of wood in it, and then also, in that same movie, having an identical plank of wood!

These guys, the takers, are the ones we’re supposed to sympathize with, of course, what with the natty clothing and general smoothness. But pursuing them are a couple of cops, Jack (Matt Dillon) and Eddie (Jay Hernandez). One is a loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules, while the other is a family man with a sick kid.

The takers have just finished a job when their old associate, Ghost (Tip “T.I.” Harris), gets out of prison with info on a new heist they could pull. Ghost got caught during a robbery back in ‘04, and the crew isn’t sure whether they can trust him or if he’s bitter about doing time. They’re also on edge because Jake is now dating Ghost’s ex-girlfriend (Zoe Saldana).

You see all these elements and you think: These spare parts could be fashioned into something reasonably entertaining. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for a movie to be formulaic. You do wish for just a hint of originality, though. Just a trace? Just one thing that we haven’t seen in every other Gritty Crime Drama? Alas, no, it’s the usual Internal Affairs breathing down a cop’s neck, and a squirrelly informant saying, “I don’t know nothin’ about that!,” and detectives using a hand gesture caught on a surveillance camera to determine who a masked bandit is.

Luessenhop (whose only other film, 2000’s Lockdown, was a violent prison drama) directs the action scenes chaotically, as is the style of the day, so that even a sequence where Chris Brown does parkour (!) is rendered less exciting than it should have been. Thematically, the story itself is just as jumbled: Whose side are we on? The question of who’s “right” and who’s “wrong” seems to have been decided randomly, or perhaps based on the relative fame of the cast members. You can’t take the movie as seriously as it wants to be taken, but it will not bore you when it shows up in heavy rotation on HBO in a few months.

WEEKEND STARTING  AUGUST 27TH 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. TAKERS
2. THE LAST EXORCISM
3. THE EXPENDABLES
4. EAT LOVE PRAY
5. THE OTHER GUYS

DVD’S

1. DATE NIGHT
2. DEATH AT A FUNERAL
3. DIARY OF A WHIMPY KID
4. KICK ASS
5. CLASH OF THE TITANS
6. COP OUT
7. THE LOSERS
8. REPO MEN
9. BOUNTY HUNTER
10. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
11. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS

Posted August 24th 2010

‘The Expendables’ held down the #1 position taking in an additional $17. million for a cumulative total of  $65.4 million at the box office. ‘Vampires Suck’  gorged it’s way into the number #2 spot grossing $18.6 million while ‘Eat Love Pray’ traveled to the  #3 position with an additional $12.1  for a cumulative total of $47.8 million  in sales at the box office this weekend!

LOTTERY TICKET MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: Lottery Ticket

NYTIMES.com

By Andy Webster

Posted August 24th 2010

BOW WOW HITS IT BIG!

The comedy “Lottery Ticket” may be the video director Erik White’s first feature, but the prevailing presence in this crowd-pleaser is Ice Cube, whose evolution from hip-hop threat to screen paterfamilias is now complete. (Was he really once one of gangsta rap’s founding fathers in N.W.A.? I guess he’s been busy masterminding the “Friday,” “Barbershop” and “Are We There Yet?” franchises — and being an executive producer here.)

WEEKEND STARTING  AUGUST 20TH 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. THE EXPENDABLES
2. VAMPIRES SUCK
3. EAT LOVE PRAY
4. LOTTERY TICKET
5. THE OTHER GUYS

DVD’S

1. DEATH AT A FUNERAL
2. DIARY OF A WHIMPY KID
3. KICK ASS
4. CLASH OF THE TITANS
5. COP OUT
6. THE GHOST WRITER
7. REPO MEN
8. BOUNTY HUNTER
9. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
10. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS

Posted August 16th 2010

It’s a whole new line this week at the box office as ‘The Expendables’ did some old school kick butt to the #1 position with $34.8 million in receipts. Eat Love Pray based on the best seller starring Julia Roberts became expendable….for the #1 spot but the sabatical scored the #2 position with $23.1 million while   ‘The Other Guys’  slipped to the #3 spot but tacked on another $17.4 million for a cumulative total of $70 million  in sales at the box office this weekend!

THE EXPENDABLE MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: The Expendables

Beyond Hollywood.com

By Nix

“The Expendables”? More like “The Super Unkillables”. Ahem.

Leave it to a former ‘80s action movie star like Sylvester Stallone to make a movie in 2010 that perfectly resembles something out of the bygone days when Hollywood blow’em ups ruled the world. Except in this case, instead of the usual one unstoppable killing machine wreaking havoc on the bad guys, there are five. Or six. Or eight, if you really want to get technical about it, though two of them, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (both making uncredited cameos) don’t actually join in on the bodycount fun.

The mostly all-male cast of “The Expendables” is led by star/writer/director Stallone as Barney Ross, the leader of a motley crew of super badasses who do super badass things like kill Somali pirates while cracking jokes and other super badass stuff. The crew includes Barney’s right-hand man, Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Ying Yang (Jet Li), Toll Road (Randy Couture), and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews). (These are not, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, their real names.) Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren) was a member of the gang, until the nose candy made him, ahem, expendable. There is a sixth pseudo member of the group, Barney’s old buddy Tool (Mickey Rourke), who has since retired and spends his time doing tattoos and acting as a go-between for Ross and future employers.

“The Expendables” is essentially a movie about Barney and Lee, where a bunch of other guys show up every now and then when people need killing. The gang’s latest job takes them to a small South American island currently under the despotic iron fist of General Garza (“Dexter’s” David Zayas), a cartoonish bad guy who is himself under the cruel thumb of ex-CIA scumbag James Munroe (Eric Roberts). Ol Munroe has strong-armed the General and his country on the strength of greed and able assists from his own two muscle-bound meatheads, Paine (Steve Austin) and The Brit (Gary Daniels). And if you’re wondering how Munroe and his two henchmen have managed to keep the entire country in line, keep in mind that Barney and his four guys have just been hired to kill the whole regime. So yeah, we’re not exactly dealing with the Iraqi Republican Guard here.

Predictably, things go awry for Barney and Lee almost immediately after they arrive on the island and meet their contact, the saucy and feisty local (are there any other kind?) Sandra (Giselle Itie), who harbors a secret from the boys. Sandra also acts as a love interest and moral compass for the directionless Barney. (Lee’s own love life is fulfilled by “Angel’s” angelic Charisma Carpenter.) The stage is set for Barney and company to return to the island in the film’s Third Act to, as the kids say, blow shit up and take names. If by “names” you mean rack up an impressive, if incredibly ridiculous bodycount, then that’s exactly what they do. Hey, did you really expect more than this? Sucks to be you, then.

It’s not hard to like “The Expendables”. If you ever watched any of Stallone’s ‘80s or ‘90s action films, then this movie was made specifically for you. The only person who stands out in the cast is Jet Li, who isn’t exactly known for shooting people in his movies. The only film that I recall of Li’s where he even uses a gun was one of his earlier titles, the “Bodyguard” rip-off “Bodyguard from Beijing”. So while casting Li as one of the mercenaries is an intriguing concept, it does feel incongruous with the bulging biceps and macho tough guy talk from the rest of the Western cast. Then again, casting Li and giving him third billing is a shrewd business move on Stallone’s part, since it will ensure some major box office returns for the production when “The Expendables” opens in Asia.

As for the movie itself, it’s probably ironic that “The Expendables” is exactly just that – a pretty expendable action movie. Take away the cast and budget, replace them with some other muscle-bound meatheads, and the film would go straight to DVD. It’s not as if Stallone and co-writer Dave Callaham actually gives anyone besides Barney and Lee anything to do that doesn’t involve shooting or stabbing people, though there are a couple of really amusing scenes with Jet Li’s Ying Yang, who may or may not have a kid, and who wants more money because, well, he’s shorter than everyone else. Crews and Couture both get their heroic moments, and Couture, like Li, gets an amusing moment where he whines about his ear. Crews, meanwhile, gets to brag about the power of his shotgun, and later, probably has the film’s signature action moment when he literally obliterates an entire squad of goons with that same shotgun.

Alas, there is one big problem with “The Expendables” that I hadn’t anticipated: the editing is horrific from start to finish. There’s no coherent flow to any of the fight scenes thanks to rapid-fire editing that takes the logic out of every kick, punch, and shot. As a result, there are multiple sequences where the bad guys have the good guys surrounded one moment, cut to a series of gunshots and stabbings and voila, it’s over and all the bad guys are dead. You have absolutely no idea how that happened or how it got to that point, but you just know that there was a lot of gunshots and inserts of knives stabbing flesh and then it was all over. I wish I could tell you that the fight between Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren was one of the highlights, or that the fight between Jet Li and Gary Daniels bordered on awesome, but honestly, I couldn’t even tell you with a straight face if it were actually the actors doing the fighting or some stuntmen.

On the other hand, “The Expendables” does pretty much everything it sets out to do – get a bunch of well-known action movie guys together and blow shit up like there’s no tomorrow. The script is reminiscent of all those ‘80s and ‘90s direct-to-DVD action movies where Predictable Plot A leads to Predictable Plot B culminating in Predictable Ending C. And let me just make it clear: that’s not a knock on “The Expendables”. The fact is, I didn’t expect a whole lot more than that, and I was pleasantly surprised by, well, not being surprised. The film progresses exactly as you would expect, and never really deviates from the formula. Heck, towards the end of the film, bad guy Eric Roberts even keeps dragging the feisty damsel-in-distress around even as the entire world is exploding around him. You’d think he could get away faster without having to haul her everywhere fighting and screaming, but then you wouldn’t get the dramatic scene where Stallone faces off against the bad guy with the girl standing between them at gunpoint.

Predictably and shitty editing are downsides to “The Expendables”. The upside? It’s the movie that gave us a great scene involving three of the biggest legends of Hollywood action movies of all time. If just for those brief few minutes, “The Expendables” is a must-see. The rest is still worth watching for fans of the genre. And if you ever find yourself thinking something along the lines of, “Wait, so they slap all those C4 bombs all over the mansion, and not a single bad guy ever runs across a single C4 pack during the entire night?”, just remember, it’s an ‘80s action movie that somehow got made in 2010. That will solve pretty much any problems you might have with “The Expendables”. And if it doesn’t? Well, “Eat Pray Love” is probably playing next door…

Sylvester Stallone (director) / Sylvester Stallone, Dave Callaham (screenplay)
CAST: Sylvester Stallone … Barney Ross
Jason Statham … Lee Christmas
Jet Li … Ying Yang
Dolph Lundgren … Gunner Jensen
Eric Roberts … James Munroe
Randy Couture … Toll Road
Steve Austin … Paine
David Zayas … General Garza
Giselle Itié … Sandra
Charisma Carpenter … Lacy
Gary Daniels … The Brit
Terry Crews … Hale Caesar
Mickey Rourke … Tool

WEEKEND STARTING  AUGUST 13TH 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. THE EXPENDABLES
2. EAT LOVE PRAY
3. THE OTHER GUYS
4. INCEPTION
5. SCOTT PILGRIM

DVD’S

1. DIARY OF A WHIMPY KID
2. KICK ASS
3. CLASH OF THE TITANS
4. COP OUT
5. THE GHOST WRITER
6. REPO MEN
7. BOUNTY HUNTER
8. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
9. BROOKLYN’S FINEST
10. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS

Posted August 9th 2010

It took ‘The Other Guys’  to knock  ‘Inception’ out of the  #1 spot at the box office this weekend grossing $35.5  million in box office sales.  ‘Inception’ got bumped to the #2 position taking in additional $18.5 million and approaching the $230million in total box office receipts while ‘Step Up 3-D’ surprised everybody as it danced into the  #3 position  with  $15.8 million in sales at the box office this weekend!

MIDDLE MEN MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: Middle Men

Screencrave.com

By Krystal Clark

Posted August 9th 2010

Middle Men forces the most conservative viewer to take a walk on the wild side. The film centers on the world of internet porn and how it came to be. Apparently two druggies (one who’s a genius), a clean cut business man, a mafia boss, and an underhanded lawyer all played a part in one of the biggest and most lucrative industries in the world. This film attempts to tell their story, and give star Luke Wilson a few legitimate dramatic scenes in the process.

Check out our review…

The Players:

• Director: George Gallo
• Writer: George Gallo, Andy Weiss
• Actors: Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, Gabriel Macht, James Caan, Jacinda Barrett, Rade Serbedzija, Laura Ramsey, Kevin Pollack
• Cinematography: Lukas Ettlin
• Original Music By: Brian Tyler

The Plot:

Middle Men takes place in 1995 when the internet was still in its infancy stage. At the time, it didn’t have much to offer in terms of content but two men named Wayne Beering (Ribisi) and Buck Dolby (Macht) changed all that. They came up with a way to get adult entertainment on the web and a business man named Jack Harris (Wilson) helped them make money off it. At the time they had no idea how big the internet would become or how much money they could earn.

The Good:

• James Caan: Caan’s performance as a sleazy, out for himself lawyer was one of the most impressive things to watch in this film. He wasn’t doing his usual mobster shtick, which he’s become known for. He stepped outside the box and played a character completely engulfed with greed and white collar crime. His character is stuck up, not afraid to get his hands dirty, and has the slimy voice to match.
• The Story: The overall premise is pretty intriguing. Two simpleminded coke-heads changed the face of the most powerful tool in the world by accident and while high.

The Kind of Bad:

• Ribisi and Macht: These two guys are at the center of the story yet their characters are hard to watch. Every scene Ribisi’s in he steals the spotlight but after a while his loud and obnoxious antics grow tiresome. Both characters are drug addicts and their always going 100 miles an hour. They have no range, their always amped up, and it becomes repetitive and annoying after a while.

The Bad

• The Narration: This is a prime example of a movie that takes the art of the voice over to the extreme. Wilson narrates scenes that don’t need to be narrated. There’s literally a shot of him saying he’s going to knock on a door and then he knocks on a door! That’s self explanatory. No voice over needed.
• The Timeline: The timeline set up for the film is all over the place. Within the first 10 minutes you hop from 2004 to 1997, then the late eighties and then the mid-nineties. It’s hard to keep track.

Overall:

Middle Men is a decent film, Wilson delivers a solid performance but Caan walks away with some of the best scenes. It’s entertaining but nothing to write home about.

Rating 6/10

Middle Men opened in theaters on August 6, 2010.

WEEKEND STARTING  AUGUST 6TH 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. THE OTHER GUYS
2. INCEPTION
3. STEP UP 3-D
4. DINNER WITH SMUCKS
5. SALT

DVD’S

1. BOUNTY HUNTER
2. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
3. BROOKLYN’S FINEST
4. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
5. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS
6. GREEN ZONE
7. THE CRAZIES
8. BOOK OF ELI
9. SHUTTER ISLAND
10. GREENBERG

CATS AND DOGS REVENGE OF KITTY GALORE MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: Cat’s And Dogs” The Revenge of Kitty Galore

EW.com

By Adam Markovitz

Posted August 3rd 2010

No movie — whether aimed at adults or kids or canines themselves — has the right to be as tiresome and unoriginal as this action-comedy mutt. The plot of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore concerns cat and dog spies who team up to fight a feline terrorist. Is it too much to hope that, by exhausting the English language’s supply of bad animal puns, the filmmakers may have spared us any more sequels? D

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 30TH 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. INCEPTION
2. DINNER WITH SMUCKS
3. SALT
4. DESPICABLE ME
5. CHARLIE ST CLOUD

DVD’S

1. BOUNTY HUNTER
2. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
3. BROOKLYN’S FINEST
4. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
5. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS
6. GREEN ZONE
7. THE CRAZIES
8. BOOK OF ELI
9. SHUTTER ISLAND
10. GREENBERG

Posted July 26th 2010

‘Inception” is no deception holding down the  #1 spot at the box office this weekend with an additional $43.5 million is in box office sales for a cumulative total of $144 million.  Angelina Jolie is the action star of the summer to date  in ‘Salt’  as she kicks butt all the way to the  #2 position  with $36.5 million in sales receipts while ‘Despicable Me’ tacked on another $24.1 million with a cumulative total of $162million while sliding into the #3 position at the box office this weekend!

SALT MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: ‘Salt

TheHollowoodReporter.com

By Kirk Honeycutt

Posted July 26th 2010

Bottom Line: A spy thriller more than worth its salt.

She never quite says: “The name is Salt. Evelyn Salt.” But Angelina Jolie, for all intents and purposes, is James Bond in her new film “Salt,” and it’s really no surprise that Jolie, the only female action star in Hollywood, more than measures up to Daniel Craig.

Donning several guises while on the run in Columbia’s spy thriller, she even — with the help of considerable facial latex, mind you — turns up as a guy in one scene. She makes a pretty ugly one, but it makes an amusing gag, a kind of acknowledgment that kick-ass action heroes now come in both genders. In Jolie’s case, it’s more convincing than ever because in those Lara Croft movies, she looked like an animated creature that popped out of a video game.

While preposterous at every turn, “Salt” is a better Bond movie than most recent Bond movies, as its makers keep the stunts real and severely limit CGI gimmickry. This is a slick, light summer entertainment that should throw considerable coin into Sony’s coffers while re-establishing (if it needs re-establishing) Jolie’s bona fides as an action star. The film certainly didn’t need the assist, but recent news events have erased any objection from critics, tied to laws of plausibility, over the film’s key concept that Russian sleeper spies still exist in the U.S. long after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Another talking point here is the similarity between this film, reportedly first developed for Tom Cruise, and the action-spy thriller he chose to do, the lamentable “Knight and Day.” There are astonishing similarities: An American spy believed to be a rogue agent gets chased by the CIA, with the protagonist escaping by, among other tricks, leaping from one fast-moving vehicle to another on a major thoroughfare. These similarities only point up how smart “Salt” is in crafting its escapist fare.

Director Phillip Noyce and stunt guru Simon Crane, working from a clever though shallow screenplay by Kurt Wimmer, make sure the stunts in “Salt” look like a dangerous and demanding day at the office. In “Knight and Day,” the movie’s absurd physicality is played as effortless clowning replete with repartee that is supposed to remind you of 007 but in fact is embarrassingly flat and banal.

There’s no joking around here. Jolie’s Evelyn Salt is made of sterner stuff, the kind that can survive a North Korean prison without giving up the name of her employer, the CIA. Back in D.C. and married to a nice though naive German arachnologist (August Diehl) — yes, he studies spiders and, yes, there is a payoff to that — she is assigned to CIA desk duties when a supposed Russian defector (Daniel Olbrychski) walks in one day.

Nobody is particularly buying his act, especially Salt’s superior, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), but she accedes to his plea to interrogate the man briefly before she heads home to an anniversary dinner. The Russian talks nonsense about sleeper cells and a plot to assassinate the Russian president on American soil. Then he happens to drop the name of the Russian sleeper spy: Evelyn Salt.

This apparently is enough to turn the Agency’s counterintelligence officer, Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), into her instant foe. Nothing that happens after this deserves any serious scrutiny, but it’s fun to watch Jolie’s Salt seemingly transforms into the Russian sleeper agent she is reputed to be — escaping from a virtual lockdown, dodging cars and bullets, making her way to New York and through subway tunnels to confront the Russian president, then take on, seemingly, every Russian and CIA op in her way.

All those “seemingly” qualifiers are meant to indicate that no studio is going to cast Jolie as a villain or even an anti-hero. What do you think this is, the ’70s? But there’s just enough doubt for the ad copy to read: Who is Salt?

You can’t say the movie keeps you guessing about this for long since most attentive viewers will figure out the true villain(s) well before the climax. But the chase is the whole point.

Here Noyce and his team excel. Propelled by James Newton Howard’s nerve-teasing music and enhanced by Robert Elswit’s clear-eyed, smartly positioned cameras, “Salt” moves ever forward — pushing, pushing, pushing its heroine to greater feats every minute. It doesn’t stop for martinis, either shaken or stirred, or any other detours. The movie is lean and muscular, looking for action even in situations where a little sleight of hand might have done the trick. You do wish that maybe it did slow down to consider the human factor. Salt is married; let’s dig into that. A marriage between an agent and a civilian is never explored. In making the husband a problem that needs solving, here — not to give anything away — the movie stumbles badly. At the end of the day, “who is Salt” is less a tagline than a criticism. Eventually, you know what Salt is. But who she is isn’t satisfactorily resolved. In story terms, that is. In Hollywood terms, there’s never any doubt: Salt is Angelina Jolie.

Opened: Friday, July 23 (Columbia) Production: Columbia Pictures presents in association with Relativity Media a di Bonaventura Pictures production

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski, Andre Braugher, August Diehl

Director: Philip Noyce

Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer

Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Sunil Perkash

Executive producers: Ric Kidney, Mark Vahradian, Ryan Kavanaugh

Director of photography: Robert Elswit Production designer: Scott Chambliss Music: James Newton Howard

Costume designer: Sarah Edwards

Editors: Stuart Baird, John Gilroy

Rated PG-13, 100 minutes

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 23RD 2010 BOX OFFICE

1. INCEPTION
2. SALT
3. DESPICABLE ME
4. SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
5. TOY STORY

DVD’S

1. BOUNTY HUNTER
2. OUR FAMILY WEDDING
3. BROOKLYN’S FINEST
4. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
5. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS
6. GREEN ZONE
7. THE CRAZIES
8. BOOK OF ELI
9. SHUTTER ISLAND
10. GREENBERG

Posted July 18th 2010

The mind blowing thriller ‘Inception” blows right into the #1 spot at the box office this weekend with $60. 4 million is receipts. ‘Despicable Me’ landed in the #2 position  with an additional  $32.7 million over the weekend approaching a cumulative total o over $118 million!  ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ cast a spell on the #3 spot with just over $17.4 million  at the box office this weekend!

INCEPTION MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: ‘Inception’

Cinemablend.com

By Katey Rich

Posted July 11th 2010

Inception is a movie about ideas, quite literally– stealing them, creating them, their power and their ability to linger. But this is a Christopher Nolan movie, so of course it’s about Big Ideas, about reality and heartbreak and choosing how to best live our too-brief lives. The fact that Inception is also fun and emotional and thrilling, even with all those eggheady concepts wrapped inside it, makes the movie a true marvel. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s uncommonly ambitious and courageous, which is close enough.

Don’t worry too much about spoilers for this film, as the central concepts of Inception are too complicated and frankly ridiculous sounding to be clear from the mouth of anyone but Nolan and his characters. At its core Inception is a heist movie, about a team of operatives led by haunted soul Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to venture into peoples’ minds and extract the darkest secrets from their subconscious. In this particular mission, which will be Dom’s last, the goal is a little different. Japanese business mogul Saito (Ken Watanabe) has assigned them to the perilous task of Inception, planting an idea so deep in the subconscious of rival CEO Fischer (Cillian Murphy) that he believes he thought of it himself.

Like any good thief, Dom must assemble a team, and he sticks with the best– his young stuffed shirt second-in-command Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), budding architectural prodigy Ariadne (Ellen Page), slippery thief Eames (Tom Hardy), chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Saito himself, who tags along despite Eames’s condescending “There’s no room for tourists on these jobs.” Dom and his team don’t just enter Fischer’s dream, they define it, guiding him toward his darkest secrets and so far through several layers of consciousness that the risks are compounded even further than usual. It’s a tough job under the best of circumstances, but when immersed in dreams– his own or someone else’s– Dom is haunted by a particularly persuasive projection of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), who shows up to ruin his missions for reasons Dom isn’t willing to explain.

The layers of the heist fall in place like the familiar Nolan clockwork, so that the images that seem so foreign in the trailers– zero-gravity fights in hallways, stony cliffs collapsing into oceans– make perfect sense within the airtight dream logic of the movie. It’s not just that Inception whips between beautiful foreign locations and tweaked dream realities, but that each of those created worlds seem fully realized to the tiniest surreal detail; Nolan uses his penchant for polished, elegant visuals to create dream worlds that are unsettling in their perfectness. The warm ochre lights in a dining room, the glistening fruit at a market in Paris– all are beautiful, all are fake, and all represent our subconscious as it reveals our deepest secrets.

Nolan’s screenplay, which he worked on for nearly a decade, keeps the audience on a leash that is expertly loosened and tightened throughout, allowing us sometimes to predict what’s coming and other times ramping up the suspense so that we can’t imagine how the team will make it out alive. The greatest accomplishment is providing stakes for the dream worlds– yes, dying in a dream means you just wake up, but there are plenty of exceptions to that rule that Dom tweaks willingly. And while Inception is primarily a narrow heist film set within a brand-new universe in which dreams can be shared, Nolan deftly explore other possible ramifications of such a collective unconscious, namely what it can mean to share someone else’s dreams, and how two people can meet in a dream and in reality with different results.

Inception constantly invites you to marvel in expertise, both that of the characters and the filmmakers themselves– Wally Pfister’s camera work, Hans Zimmer’s score, Chris Corbould’s visual effects are all unparalleled and utilized beautifully. But for all its cleverness Inception lets down its characters from time to time, denying nearly every character save Dom a meaningful character arc, and revealing much of Dom’s mysterious back story– which whispers its way provocatively through the film’s first half– in a chunky expositional monologue. His story has tremendous emotional payoff near the end, and there is great satisfaction in merely watching the team come together as equals, but it’s hard not to wish for something more from the smaller characters. Gordon-Levitt, Page and particularly Hardy make strong impacts in their limited roles, as does Michael Caine in what amounts to a glorified cameo, but for the large part they are merely eloquent pieces of a particularly impressive machinery. Cotillard is an exception, her beauty and fragile voice adding an ethereal, unforgettable quality to her every scene.

And while the many wows of Inception come almost entirely from visual splendor, big ideas or impressive fight sequences, DiCaprio provides added dazzle with yet another well-calibrated, weight-of-the-world performance. The third act of the film is almost nonstop action culminating in visual effects-aided heartbreak, but in the denouement a single shot of DiCaprio, his face both a mask and a soul laid bare, has just as much impact. Inception can feel cold at times, more interested in the stunning mechanics of its plot and its philosophies than the characters who guide us through it, but in its best moments it has the power to swiftly, almost subconsciously, devastate you. On that level it surpasses The Dark Knight, not allowing its flawed heroes to hide behind masks and scars, but literally laying open their minds for us to explore.

Possibly the most important thing of all about Inception is that it is easily the most original film of the summer and likely to be the most successful as well, a clear reminder that big budgets can be spent on new ideas and risky filmmaking, and that with true imagination, the limitless resources of Hollywood can accomplish real magic. Nolan has done this with all of his studio films, but Inception ups the ante in nearly every way, reminding us, as Eames tells Arthur, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger.” Inception doesn’t just dream bigger than most movies even dare, but it leaves the audience feeling inspired to do the same.

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 16TH 2010

BOX OFFICE

1. INCEPTION
2. DESPICABLE ME
3. SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
4. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
5. TOY STORY

DVD’S

1. BROOKLYN’S FINEST
2. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
3. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTENING THIEFS
4. SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
5. GREEN ZONE
6. THE CRAZIES
7. BOOK OF ELI
8. FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
9. SHUTTER ISLAND
10. THE WOLFMAN

Posted July 11th 2010

‘Despicable Me’ stole the #1 spot at the box office this weekend laughing all the way to the bank with $60 million is receipts. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse slipped to the #2 position  scoring an additional  $33.4 million over the weekend approaching a cumulative total of nearly $237 million!  ‘The Predator’ ripped into  in the #3 spot with just over $25 million   at the box office this weekend!

INCEPTION MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: ‘Inception’

Cinemablend.com

By Katey Rich

Posted July 11th 2010

Inception is a movie about ideas, quite literally– stealing them, creating them, their power and their ability to linger. But this is a Christopher Nolan movie, so of course it’s about Big Ideas, about reality and heartbreak and choosing how to best live our too-brief lives. The fact that Inception is also fun and emotional and thrilling, even with all those eggheady concepts wrapped inside it, makes the movie a true marvel. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s uncommonly ambitious and courageous, which is close enough.

Don’t worry too much about spoilers for this film, as the central concepts of Inception are too complicated and frankly ridiculous sounding to be clear from the mouth of anyone but Nolan and his characters. At its core Inception is a heist movie, about a team of operatives led by haunted soul Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to venture into peoples’ minds and extract the darkest secrets from their subconscious. In this particular mission, which will be Dom’s last, the goal is a little different. Japanese business mogul Saito (Ken Watanabe) has assigned them to the perilous task of Inception, planting an idea so deep in the subconscious of rival CEO Fischer (Cillian Murphy) that he believes he thought of it himself.

Like any good thief, Dom must assemble a team, and he sticks with the best– his young stuffed shirt second-in-command Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), budding architectural prodigy Ariadne (Ellen Page), slippery thief Eames (Tom Hardy), chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Saito himself, who tags along despite Eames’s condescending “There’s no room for tourists on these jobs.” Dom and his team don’t just enter Fischer’s dream, they define it, guiding him toward his darkest secrets and so far through several layers of consciousness that the risks are compounded even further than usual. It’s a tough job under the best of circumstances, but when immersed in dreams– his own or someone else’s– Dom is haunted by a particularly persuasive projection of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), who shows up to ruin his missions for reasons Dom isn’t willing to explain.

The layers of the heist fall in place like the familiar Nolan clockwork, so that the images that seem so foreign in the trailers– zero-gravity fights in hallways, stony cliffs collapsing into oceans– make perfect sense within the airtight dream logic of the movie. It’s not just that Inception whips between beautiful foreign locations and tweaked dream realities, but that each of those created worlds seem fully realized to the tiniest surreal detail; Nolan uses his penchant for polished, elegant visuals to create dream worlds that are unsettling in their perfectness. The warm ochre lights in a dining room, the glistening fruit at a market in Paris– all are beautiful, all are fake, and all represent our subconscious as it reveals our deepest secrets.

Nolan’s screenplay, which he worked on for nearly a decade, keeps the audience on a leash that is expertly loosened and tightened throughout, allowing us sometimes to predict what’s coming and other times ramping up the suspense so that we can’t imagine how the team will make it out alive. The greatest accomplishment is providing stakes for the dream worlds– yes, dying in a dream means you just wake up, but there are plenty of exceptions to that rule that Dom tweaks willingly. And while Inception is primarily a narrow heist film set within a brand-new universe in which dreams can be shared, Nolan deftly explore other possible ramifications of such a collective unconscious, namely what it can mean to share someone else’s dreams, and how two people can meet in a dream and in reality with different results.

Inception constantly invites you to marvel in expertise, both that of the characters and the filmmakers themselves– Wally Pfister’s camera work, Hans Zimmer’s score, Chris Corbould’s visual effects are all unparalleled and utilized beautifully. But for all its cleverness Inception lets down its characters from time to time, denying nearly every character save Dom a meaningful character arc, and revealing much of Dom’s mysterious back story– which whispers its way provocatively through the film’s first half– in a chunky expositional monologue. His story has tremendous emotional payoff near the end, and there is great satisfaction in merely watching the team come together as equals, but it’s hard not to wish for something more from the smaller characters. Gordon-Levitt, Page and particularly Hardy make strong impacts in their limited roles, as does Michael Caine in what amounts to a glorified cameo, but for the large part they are merely eloquent pieces of a particularly impressive machinery. Cotillard is an exception, her beauty and fragile voice adding an ethereal, unforgettable quality to her every scene.

And while the many wows of Inception come almost entirely from visual splendor, big ideas or impressive fight sequences, DiCaprio provides added dazzle with yet another well-calibrated, weight-of-the-world performance. The third act of the film is almost nonstop action culminating in visual effects-aided heartbreak, but in the denouement a single shot of DiCaprio, his face both a mask and a soul laid bare, has just as much impact. Inception can feel cold at times, more interested in the stunning mechanics of its plot and its philosophies than the characters who guide us through it, but in its best moments it has the power to swiftly, almost subconsciously, devastate you. On that level it surpasses The Dark Knight, not allowing its flawed heroes to hide behind masks and scars, but literally laying open their minds for us to explore.

Possibly the most important thing of all about Inception is that it is easily the most original film of the summer and likely to be the most successful as well, a clear reminder that big budgets can be spent on new ideas and risky filmmaking, and that with true imagination, the limitless resources of Hollywood can accomplish real magic. Nolan has done this with all of his studio films, but Inception ups the ante in nearly every way, reminding us, as Eames tells Arthur, “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger.” Inception doesn’t just dream bigger than most movies even dare, but it leaves the audience feeling inspired to do the same.

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 9TH 2010

BOX OFFICE

1. DESPICABLE ME
2. THE TWLIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
3. THE PREDATOR
4. TOY STORY
5. THE LAST AIRBENDER

DVD’S

1. BOOK OF ELI
2. WHEN IN ROME
3. FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
4. SHUTTER ISLAND
5. THE WOLFMAN
6. UNTHINKABLE
7. PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEFS
8. DAYBREAKERS
9. EDGE OF DARKNESS
10. INVICTUS

Posted July 4th 2010

Beauty and The Beast…Beauty and The Vampire? Got me…..and got everybody else this weekend also as the ‘The Twilight Saga:Eclipse howled and bit it’s way to the #1 spot taking in $64 million over the weekend with a cumulative total of nearly $162 million for it premiered on Wednesday, June 30th.   ‘ThE Last Airbender’ landed in the #2 position with $70.5million and  ‘Toy Story 3′ is still in there taking in an additional $30 million for a cumulative total of $289 million in the    #3 position at the box office this weekend!

THE LOVE RANCH MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: The Love Ranch

TheWashingtonPost.com

By Stephen Holden

No matter how unstrung her characters become, Helen Mirren holds something in reserve. An awareness of the weaknesses of the flesh and the pleasures of surrendering to those weaknesses flickers in her eyes and in the faint half-smile that plays around her lips. She knows.

That bone-deep sensuality lends her portrayal of Grace, the hard-bitten madam of a Reno, Nev., brothel in “Love Ranch,” an empathy and toughness that have little connection to Mark Jacobson’s prosaic screenplay. In Ms. Mirren’s first film to be directed by her husband, Taylor Hackford, since “White Nights” in 1985, her formidable dramatic resources can’t camouflage flat writing that eventually veers into gloppy sentimentality. At times even Ms. Mirren, who adopts a regionless American accent, seems uncomfortable.

Love Ranch is the name of the brothel — a tacky configuration of pink trailers behind a chain fence, with a guard tower — inspired by the real-life Mustang Ranch, which in the early 1970s became Nevada’s first licensed whorehouse. Joe Pesci and Ms. Mirren play Charlie and Grace Bontempo, fictionalized screen versions of Joe and Sally Conforte, who were the proprietors of the Mustang Ranch.

Charlie and Grace’s marriage is primarily a business arrangement in which it is understood that Charlie can have free sex with the prostitutes whom Grace, the house den mother, keeps on a very short leash. She is not happy about the arrangement; the screenplay unconvincingly portrays her as still in love with the rat she married.

Mr. Pesci’s Charlie is a slightly softened variation of the monstrous thugs he portrayed in “Casino” and “Goodfellas.” A little guy with a big ego, he likes to smoke cigars with hundred-dollar bills wrapped around them. He has the local sheriff in his pocket and goons to do his dirty work. Charlie’s soulless rat-a-tat-tat delivery acquires a semblance of feeling only when he is wheedling Grace to follow his wishes. But as the movie drags along, any sympathy you might have had for him melts away as he gives in to his worst instincts.

Grace, who keeps the books and manages “25 psychotic whores” (her words), knows the territory, being the daughter of a prostitute. At a young age, she realized that she could have a better life as a madam. And a scene in which Grace uses her cane to discipline her flock is among the film’s liveliest.

When religious protesters picket the ranch, Charlie trots out Grace to defend the prostitutes. But “Love Ranch” gives you only a superficial, clichéd picture of brothel life. The HBO series “Cathouse” offered a truer, much more complex portrait.

The heart of the story is inspired by the Confortes’ relationship with Oscar Bonavena, an Argentine heavyweight boxer brought to the United States by Mr. Conforte. In the movie the prizefighter is renamed Armando Bruza and played by Sergio Peris-Mencheta as a dumb, doglike lug who Charlie fantasizes is his ticket to becoming a Las Vegas big shot by matching him with Muhammad Ali.

Charlie, because of his criminal record, appoints Grace as Armando’s manager. After they begin training, Armando conceives a fantasy of wooing Grace and taking over the ranch. It is only after she sees through his crude overtures and calls his bluff that she and Armando unexpectedly fall in love.

“Love Ranch” aspires to give a tragic dimension to the triangle by portraying the affair as the last and deepest connection of two doomed lovers. Early in the film Grace’s doctor tells her she has cancer and has six months to live, a fact she keeps from Charlie.

Armando, who has his own secret medical history, isn’t quite the invincible “wild bull of the pampas” that his hype proclaims. Each is living on borrowed time. The moment they run away together, the already flaccid film deteriorates into sudsy hokum that not even Ms. Mirren, with all her wiles, can redeem.

LOVE RANCH

Opens on Wednesday nationwide.

Directed by Taylor Hackford; written by Mark Jacobson; director of photography, Kieran McGuigan; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by Chris Bacon; production designer, Bruno Rubeo; costumes by Melissa Bruning; produced by Mr. Hackford, Lou DiBella and Marty Katz; released by E1 Entertainment and Aramid Entertainment Fund Limited. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Helen Mirren (Grace Bontempo), Joe Pesci (Charlie Bontempo), Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Armando Bruza), Gina Gershon (Irene), Taryn Manning (Mallory), Scout Taylor-Compton (Christina), Bai Ling (Samantha), Elise Neal (Alana), Melora Walters (Janelle), Emily Rios (Muneca), M. C. Gainey (Warren Stamp), Bryan Cranston (James Pettis), Raoul Trujillo (Hernan Prado) and Gil Birmingham (Johnny Cortez).

Attraction and Possibility When Sex Is Just Business

WEEKEND STARTING  JULY 2ND 2010

BOX OFFICE

1. THE TWLIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
2. THE LAST AIRBENDER
3. TOY STORY 3
4. GROWN UPS
5. KNIGHT AND DAY

DVD’S

1. BOOK OF ELI
2. WHEN IN ROME
3. FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
4. SHUTTER ISLAND
5. THE WOLFMAN
6. UNTHINKABLE
7. PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEFS
8. DAYBREAKERS
9. EDGE OF DARKNESS
10. INVICTUS

Posted June 29th 2010

‘Toy Story 3′  smashed it again this weekend taking in nearly an additional $60 million for a cumulative total of $236 million for the  #1 position at the box office this weekend! ‘Grown Ups’ with Adam Sandler scored  the #2 spot at $40.5 million while the much anticipated  ‘Knight and Day’ with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz placed in the   #3 position with just over $20 million  at the box office this weekend! ‘

GROWN UPS MOVIE TRAILER

Movie Review: ‘Grown Ups’

Cinemblend.com

By Katie Rich

Posted June 29th 2010

I’ll take a little bit of the blame for Grown Ups, as someone who was juvenile enough at the time to not just laugh uproariously at Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, but take Rob Schneider and David Spade seriously as comedic actors and revere that era of SNL. On behalf of myself and everyone else who was 12 at some point in the 90s, I’m sorry: we empowered these guys enough that they thought they could take a vacation by the lake, crack jokes at each others expense, and slap it together into a movie called Grown Ups.

The movie isn’t just unbearably smug, casting Adam Sandler as a Hollywood type struggling with first-world problems and making vicious fun of anyone old, fat, or not as beautiful as Salma Hayek. It’s also incredibly lazy, dispensing entirely with plot and assuming that the five lead actors riffing off one another will be enough for 90 minutes of entertainment. That would have been a tough sell even back in the 90s, but now– with Spade and Schneider as dead weight, Chris Rock looking vaguely embarrassed to be there, and Kevin James flailing mightily to make up the difference– it’s basically intolerable. Whatever jokes aren’t utterly predictable or unfunny to begin with are ruined by Dennis Dugan’s flatfooted direction, and the film’s hard right turn into plot and emotional lessons in the last 10 minutes merely highlights what a waste of time everything that came before it has been.

The flimsy frame for the story is that the five lead buddies all played on a middle school basketball team together in the 70s, and 30 years later have gathered for their coach’s funeral and a Fourth of July weekend on the lake with their families. Hotshot Sandler is joined by improbably gorgeous fashion designer wife Hayek and their two snotty kids; James is also married to a hottie (Maria Bello) and comes with one chubby daughter and one four-year-old who still breastfeeds; Rock is roundly mocked early on for being a house-husband and comes with his pregnant wife (Maya Rudolph) and young kids; Schneider is now a vaguely defined New Age vegan type with an Elvis toupee and an older girlfriend (Joyce Van Patten) who is subject to some of the film’s cruelest jokes; Spade is a still-single horndog who’s mainly there as a catchall for every joke that isn’t about fat or old people.

No one is spared from the movie’s idiocy, from Schneider’s three daughters (two hot, one goofy looking– hilarious!) to the dog with his vocal cords removed to the farting and trash-talking grandma to Steve Buscemi, who shows up for the length of two or three pratfalls near the end. At least you’ll know what you’re in for from the movie’s first minutes, when James’s character is introduced while falling out of an above-ground pool and we’re expected to laugh when Rock’s character expresses an interest–ha!– in cooking and caring for his children. You may still be astonished at how much dumber the movie can get, or how many times it repeats the same fat joke expecting another laugh, but Grown Ups at least does the kindness of telling you from minute one how low to set the bar.

If Grown Ups were a bad movie starring just one of these guys, we might be able to throw it in with each actor’s substantial list of clunkers and move on quickly. But presented as this landmark reunion of comedic talents, and deployed into theaters near the Fourth of July holiday as some kind of family outing, all the shoddy and lazy elements of Grown Ups metastasize into unforgivable offenses. It’s hard to know what’s worse– that they thought they could get away with something this bad, or that given how loud the audience laughed at my screening, they probably will.

WEEKEND STARTING  JUNE 25th 2010

BOX OFFICE

1. TOY STORY 3
2. GROWN UPS
3. KNIGHT AND DAY
4. THE KARATE KID
5. THE A-TEAM

DVD’S

1. BOOK OF ELI
2. WHEN IN ROME
3. FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
4. SHUTTER ISLAND
5. THE WOLFMAN
6. UNTHINKABLE
7. ALICE IN WONDERLAND
8. VALENTINE’S DAY
9. EDGE OF DARKNESS
10. INVICTUS