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The world of politically charged films has certainly grown in the past few years. Films like Farhenheit 911 have seen big success, while other films like Rupert Murdoch’s OutFoxed have seen more of a critical success. Both of these films had extreme media attention, one obviously more than the other, prior and after their releases. Both asked questions and demanded answers to topics and issues we, as people, wondered about but never really asked about as a simple person can’t really enact a high success...rate in terms of results. However, if you have a name like Michael Moore or Rupert Murdoch attached to the bill, people will probably pay attention. A similar note is given to the recent political thriller Syriana starring George Clooney. Even though Syriana had actors like Matt Damon and George Clooney attached to the bill, would this be enough to make the film’s questions seem important enough to make an impact?

Syriana, to sum up the film in three words, is about oil and money. The film begins with one of the Gulf States agreeing to supply the up and coming China with some of its oil. Texas based company Connex, views this deal as a huge defeat. At the exact same time as this deal is happening with Connex, another company, Killen, has signed a deal to drill for oil in Kazakhstan. Connex, obviously, announces an immediate merger with Killen, thus giving them the oil. Wait one second. This sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? Naturally the Justice Department intervenes and the movie starts to accelerate.

For Director Peter Berg, the film The Rundown was an interesting note for him. Before his ultimately better film Friday Night Lights, The Rundown marked the first time Berg directed a film that went on to become a big success. Before The Rundown, Berg had films like Very Bad Things which was just that and The Last Seduction which was excellent. The Rundown also marked the first main feature film (main staring role) for wrestler turned actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. N...w Universal has decided to re-release the film in the new HD-DVD format. What lies ahead? Join me on the journey to find out.

Beck (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is the type of man who one calls on to do something someone else wouldn’t do. Beck is more of a retrieval expert. An early scene, where he retrieves a ring off of an NFL quarterback’s finger, gives us a little bit of insight into the type of man Beck is. His boss, after this successful mission, decides to send Beck off to the Amazon forest to retrieve his son Travis (Seann William Scott). Instead of using the a-typical locales like LA, Maimi, etc, Berg decided to opt for the Amazon jungle which helps make the film into something slightly new. Once in the Amazon forest, Beck is taken to the town of El Dorado, which is run by Hatcher (Christopher Walken). Travis, we learn, is a fearless fortune hunter looking for the ultimate treasure that Hatcher happens to be looking for at the same time.

Director Jonathan Mostow is an interesting director to say the least. He directed Kurt Russell is the great Breakdown where a man must fight to save his wife. He director Arnold Schwarzenegger in the third Terminator film where a machine must fight another machine to help save the human race; but before he made Terminator 3, he directed Matthew McConaughey and Bill Paxton in a film where men must fight against their wits to save themselves. Two of the three films are great and are a joy to watch,...while one is enjoyable to watch, but that is about it.

In U-571, Lt. Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) stars as a young man who wants nothing better than to jump into the command line. His commander, Lt. Commander Dahlgren (Bill Paxton) doesn’t see this though. Tyler isn’t experienced enough and isn’t ready to sacrifice the lives of his men for the lives of others or, more importantly, the safety of the mission at hand. This creates some heat between the two, but all that is quickly put aside when they’re called back to the boat. We soon learn that a German U-boat has become disabled in the middle of the Atlantic. On board this U-boat is a secret Enigma machine, which can be used to cipher messages. This exact Enigma machine was used by the Nazi’s to control all of their shipping lanes.

The Chronicles of Riddick takes place about five years after the events of Pitch Black. Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) continues to fight for his life on Crematoria (what a name), a planet whose sun, apparently, is so blazingly hot that every 15 minutes it blankets everything beneath it basically vaporizing it. But that doesn’t really matter all that much now does it. For Riddick, who is one of the few surviving members of the Furions, has been captured by the Necromongers and now must find a way to po...er his way out like only Vin Diesel can. Apparently these Necromongers want every person to become a Necromonger. They line up behind their Lord Marshal who has visited a planet called Underverse and returned half alive and half something else. Then we meet a character named a character named Aereon (Judi Dench) who can materialize out of thin air and then disappear. This is the perfect idea for a majority of characters in this film. They appear, spend a few minutes of the screen, and then disappear for us to never see them again.

That is the first main problem with this film. We meet countless other characters including a little girl named Ziza who wants Riddick to fight these monsters for her. We hope that sometime during the film a big battle will occur where Riddick must defeat these aforementioned monsters and save the little girl, but such a scene never arrives. Why on earth would you hint at the scene then? I suppose this is because, as we can basically figure out from a few key scenes in the film, that a sequel is inevitable (maybe the sequel is the cartoon that recently came out).

The 2005 Version of Assault on Precinct 13 is an obvious remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 classic. Precinct, for Carpenter, was one of his first films made before his ultra famous Halloween. But if anyone has seen the 1976 version, you can easily know what will come from the 2005 version. Instead of making a possible change to the 2005 version, Director Jean-Francois Richet decided to use the similar theme of a police station being abandoned that Carpenter did. Instead though, Richet focuses on the corru...t possibilities of the police. What Richet brings to the table is a few impressive action scenes, a lot of gorgeous snow (especially so in HD), and a few great actors. All this is very impressive considering the low $20 million dollar budget the film had.

In this version of Precinct, the jail is scheduled to close forever at midnight. Burnt-out desk sergeant Jake Fornick (Training Day’s Ethan Hawke) still traumatized by the death of two partners, is on the graveyard shift with old-timer Jasper O'Shea (TV’s The West Wing) announces he will soon retire. Jake just tends to sit around popping bottles of pills trying to overcome his this pain in his life. That is until some terror arrives. Bishop (The Matrix Trilogy’s Laurence Fishburne) has been arrested and is being transported along with Beck (Empire’s John Leguizamo) and a few others including a character played by rapper Ja Rule. Everything seems to be going fine until a big accident blocks the highway to the jail. So, to get these criminals off their backs, the guards decide to dump Bishop and the select others off at Precinct 13. Unfortunately, the guards didn’t know that Bishop’s men are determined to set him free.

The basic plot to The Bourne Supremacy is very similar to The Bourne Identity in that Jason Bourne is still trying to evade any and all forces that seemingly will stop at nothing to kill this man. Naturally though, Bourne can’t just evade these forces in a normal manner, but he has to evade these forces using his explosive martial arts and wit. As we learned in Identity, Bourne had his memory wiped. To escape people, Bourne has traveled halfway across the world living on the beach of Goa in south...rn India. Everything is going fine for Bourne and his new girlfriend Marie until Bourne, who seems to notice every little detail, recognizes something he has never seen before driving a car he has never seen before turning up in all the wrong places at the wrong times. This prompts Bourne to realize that someone is after him again, which turns out to be definitely true.

As the movie continues onward, Bourne discovers that he is being pursued by new people named Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) and her boss Ward Abbott (Brian Cox). Both found Bourne’s fingerprints at the scene of a murder in Berlin involving a CIA agent and his high-level criminal contact. The only issue with this is that Bourne was in Goa at the time sitting on the beach. So the big question here who is trying to frame Bourne and, more importantly, why is someone trying to frame Bourne. This simple question leads Bourne through many locales while he tries to figure every little clue out.

One of the things that Ron Howard ( Beautiful Mind) mentioned during various little interviews and press junkets for Apollo 13 was that he was surprised that up until this film everyone seemed to forget about story. He could not have picked a better cast to boot, with recognizable names as Tom Hanks (who was coming off his back to back Oscar wins with Forrest Gump and Philadelphia), Bill Paxton (Twister) and Kevin Bacon (Where The Truth Lies), along with Oscar nominees Kathleen Quinlan (A Civil Action) and Ed Harris (A History of Violence).

Based on the book by Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell (played by Hanks) and adapted to film by William Broyles (Unfaithful), the film chronicles the story of the dramatic flight. To sum it up for those of you who haven;t contributed to it;s $350 million worldwide box office take, allow me to do so now; Lovell, Fred Haise (Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise, Ransom) are due to take off in Apollo 13. Unfortunately a member of the backup crew had the measles, and Mattingly was scrubbed and replaced by Jack Swigert (Bacon). The relatively young crew tests and retests for the big flight, and it goes off without a hitch.

Are we that jaded a country when a movie like Cinderella Man can be somewhat ignored during its theatrical run, and yet when it still garners the occasional award nomination as it did last winter, people snort, "Well, it's just your usual manipulative dramatic crap". Yeah? So what? For god's sake, take a look at what plays during the summer. Did we honestly need a remake of When a Stranger Calls?

Written by Akiva Goldsman and directed by Ron Howard (both from A Beautiful Mind), Cinderella Man tells the story of James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe, also from A Beautiful Mind, heavyweight champion in the '20s and '30s. He was on top of the world, married to a beautiful wife (Renee Zellweger, Chicago), and had two kids, and lived in a nice house in New Jersey. Then the Depression hit, and it hit everyone hard. Braddock and his family were forced out of their home and lived in poverty. Braddock still fought occasionally through the years, but began to break down physically, and it got to a point where his skills had deteriorated so much, that his boxing license was taken away. He was left without the basic means to support his family, so he went to the docks to look for work. A proud man, he never asked for money or for public assistance. When he did, it's viscerally heartbreaking to see such a stoic man break down and ask for a hand.

Training Day stars Academy Award Winning Actor Denzel Washington in the role of Alonzo Harris. Harris, who is one of the meanest, baddest cops in the city of LA, is a person who cruises the streets in his customized Caddy. Harris, in one of the film's opening scenes, meets Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke), a young cop whose dream is to be promoted to the elite narc squad. Naturally, this is Jake's first day of training and he is thrown into the arms of Harris. Alonzo tries to show him the streets so he can understand e...erything. He has Jake smoke pot just because he can. In one interesting scene, possibly Alonzo being a tough ass to Jake, doesn't arrest two rapists like Jake wants to, but, instead, proceeds to beat the living crap out of them.

For Alonzo, acting the way he does is simply because this is the way Alonzo feels he should act. As he tells Jake in one scene "If you turn down gifts on the street, you'll be dead." Jake, who has just learned his pot has been laced with PCP, has just awoken to find out that he is now involved with a raid on a drug dealer's house. Alonzo continues to take Jake on these various trips, which all seem to be teaching Jake more and more about the type of cop Alonzo truly is. It makes me wonder if all LA cops are truly this evil, not necessarily as a poke at LA and the crime, but possibly a look into the corruption of the cop field in itself.

Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Narc’s Ray Liotta), an Irish-Italian kid whose only ambition, it seems, is to be a type of wise-guy kid. In one of the first scenes with Hill we learn that “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be gangster.” This line here tends to set the emotion and mood for the whole film. Hill, as a kid at least, is your typical child who defies his parents, struggles to do well in school and wants to hang out with the older looking tough guys down the street. F...r Hill, gangsters were his Superman type hero; they could get anything they wanted including the best seats at the show, the best cars and they actually belonged to something.

As Hill becomes immersed in the Mob world, he starts to do little jobs. It isn’t until he meets Jimmy Conway (15 Minutes’ Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (JFK’s Joe Pesci) that his life starts to change. We learn that Conway and DeVito are two of the most feared hit men in the entire Organization. If someone needed something done, odds are they approached one of these two men. Conway and DeVito teach Hill the basics of the mob world included a few life lessons all while they make it so evidently clear to Hill that they have no problem killing any man and neither should Hill.