Genre

Synopsis

I’ve gotta say that when the first Die Hard was released, I was in a position where I hated, absolutely despised Bruce Willis. In my opinion, the world honestly didn’t need another loudmouthed movie star who was from New Jersey and didn’t hesitate to say so, and that whole schtick about him and the Bruno persona would allow him to release music albums reeking of self-promotion and another money grab. And when he hooked up with Demi Moore, my initial reaction was “good, they’ll have mongoloid...babies and divorce after a couple years”. And since 1985 or so, there’s only one part of my opinion that held true for the most part.

Synopsis

It’s no big secret that I enjoy Extras, and found my way to it through the first episode of the second season, which included a guest appearance by Orlando Bloom (of Pirates of the Caribbean lore). And now that I’ve seen the first season, and rabidly followed the second season on HBO, while it’s a bummer to see Extras fade away after a dozen episodes, and just like The Office, it’s not going to soon forgotten.

Synopsis

Try to wrap your mind around this one. Take the guy who was the center of attention and played the role in Being John Malkovich, and have him play a role as a guy who impersonates the film auteur Stanley Kubrick, of 2001 fame in a story that may or may not be true.

Synopsis

The Watcher is a groundbreaking piece of cinema. It takes the crime thriller film genre, employs a few recognizable stars, and proceeds to waste them by boring the absolute beejeezus out of me with performances and a story that is so holistically unoriginal that I didn’t feel good about myself after watching the film.

Although romantic comedies aren’t my forte, I have admitted to liking a few in the past, and surprisingly a good number of the ones I have found tolerable or even likeable star Hugh Grant. So I go into watching this film with an open mind and hopefully we’ll see some results out of Music and Lyrics.

Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant, Nine Months) is a founding member of the hit 80’s pop group appropriately named PoP! And although he surmounted to a considerable amount of fame during his prime, he is no... contempt as being a has-been. Still Alex gets the opportunity of a career revival when current chart toping diva Cora Corman (Haley Bennett) offers to perform with him in a duet, which he must compose in a short period of time. Having not written anything in quite some time, Alex decides to enlist the help of a lyricist to get the ball rolling. After some convincing Alex convinces the unsure Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore, Charlie’s Angles) collaborate with him, and while getting places with their music there is obvious signs of an attraction from both parties. But things get more complicated as the two submit their song to Cora Corman. Although initially loving it she changes some things around pitting Alex and Sophie in awkward positions, at the same time the two try to deal with the feelings for each other.

Synopsis

Stephen King wrote, in Danse Macabre, back in 1981, something to the effect that horror on TV ranged in quality from the ridiculous to the workmanlike. This was, of course, before he became rather too involved with the medium himself. Things have improved since the, of course, but horror has yet to achieve the truly sublime on television, and this series certainly wasn’t that. It was, however, on the upmarket end of workmanlike, and some of these 15 episodes are pretty neat little eff...rts. The standout is, arguably, “You, Murderer.” Directed by Robert Zemeckis, its opening intro is a parody of the director’s Forrest Gump, and it then has the gall to cast Humphrey Bogart in the lead of a humorous murder tale. The whole thing is done in first-person perspective, à la Lady in the Lake, and co-stars John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini and Sherilynn Fenn. Everybody has fun with the piece, including the audience, and, from beyond the grave, Bogart himself.

Synopsis

Whoah. MGM if really digging into the vaults to bring us these. Xaviera Hollander is not much more than the answer to a trivia question today, but for a while in the 70s, she had enough profile to warrant three films based first on her book, then more generally on her persona. Lynn Redgrave (!) plays her in The Happy Hooker (1975), which follows her arrival in the States and cheerful discovery of the life she was born, it seems, to lead. Mysteriously rated R, this is a film that could...have played without cuts on prime time TV twenty years ago. A film all about sex with no sex in it. Makes you long for Joe D’Amato and Laura Gemser to arrive and save the day.

It’s no secret that horror films these days severely lack originality and overuse violence and gore instead of actually scaring the audience. Sometimes this works and when coinciding with an actual story can make for a good movie. The Hills Have Eyes remake from 2006 wasn’t half bad because there was a tiny amount of depth in the story, combined with the violence that audiences have come to love. But ultimately for me, it didn’t hit the mark, it was just another typical horror movie. I really don’t think the s...quel will offer anything beyond it, but here’s hoping it will.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 takes place two years after the 2006 film, and offers no closure on the events left open at the end of the original. There is now military presence in the area, and I can only assume that means the surviving family members of the first film informed the government of the mutants. Regardless, in the opening scenes of the film some research scientists are brutally murdered and it’s obvious that the mutants are still around and still pissed off. Meanwhile a group of soldiers is dispatched to the location of the scientists to deliver equipment, but upon arriving it’s discovered that the camp is abandoned. It now becomes a search and rescue mission, where the cannibalistic mutants begin picking off the soldiers one by one, hoping to capture the females for breading purposes. The group must now band together to overcome the threat of the mutants and ensure their very survival.

Synopsis

Robin of Locksley returns to England from the Crusades to find the home he had left behind has taken a drastic turn for the worse under the tyrannical Sheriff of Nottingham. He is forced to take up an outlaw life, fighting for justice for the common man. Marian, fending off the advances of Guy of Gisborne, is his mole in the houses of power.

Disaster films are nothing new in Hollywood. While most disaster films tend to focus too much on destroying random objects, there’re are a film good disaster films that come around every so often that actual try to explain the film instead of giving us two hours of random explosions. One such film is 1997’s Dante’s Peak.

Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) works for the US Geology Survey Team. Four years after experiencing a volcano eruption, Harry and a few other scientists are called to a town named Da...te’s Peak to research into the town’s dormant volcano. Harry immediately piques the interest of Mayor Wando (Linda Hamilton), quite possible for his looks not for his scientific merit. Most of the town and its members aren’t concerned about the volcano, simply because nothing has occurred for many years now. Obviously this doesn’t sit well with Harry. When two dead teenagers are discovered near the top of the mountain in a hot spring, Harry begins to think that this mountain is ready to explode. However, as per the typical natural disaster film, no one believes Harry (including his boss), despite numerous instances of proof (acidity levels increasing, dying animals, etc). Now Harry must race against time to prove this volcano is a ticking time bomb.