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Twilight opens with the introduction of our heroine, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). She is in sunny Arizona with her mom and new stepfather, and as they prepare for a long road trip she decides that she’d rather go up to Washington state to stay with her estranged father, Charlie (Billy Burke). He lives in the small town of Forks (population 3,000) and is the local sheriff.She arrives in the middle of the school year so although it should be hard to make friends (and it’s implied), she manages to connect with a group of kids who are far more welcoming than she is ready to be welcomed. They give her the scoop on who’s who and they soon point out the Cullens, an odd assortment of very pale-skinned guys and gals. To make things weirder, they are apparently foster brothers/sisters yet they are “couples.” They’ve been taken in by the local Dr. Cullen and his wife.One of the group is of course, Edward (Robert Pattinson). His story is that “no girl is good enough for him.” Of course Bella is immediately fixated on him, although the feeling is apparently very much not mutual. As a matter of fact when she is assigned to be his lab partner, he seems to be repulsed by her.Edward leaves for a few days, and when he returns his mood towards Bella has changed considerably. He’s now polite and at least feigns interest. She (mostly) gets over being offended and tries to get to know him although he still doesn’t want to get close to her. Almost immediately he saves her from being killed in a car accident in a scene that’s been shown in the trailer. She’s no dummy and doesn’t miss the fact that he was across the parking lot, got over to her in a flash and was able to keep a van from smashing into her (to the point that he left a dent in the door with his hand). [Note slight sarcasm there, folks]Anyway, we soon meet Dr. Cullen (Peter Facinelli) at the hospital, whose makeup job is so incredibly white that he looks like the Cesar Romero version of the Joker. He is none to pleased about Edward (I guess I can’t call him “Ed,” huh?) possibly exposing who he really is to save Bella’s life.One thing leads to another and the burgeoning romance is on its way, with a side trip to a confrontation with the “bad” vampires who actually kill humans to feed (go figure). You see the Cullens only drink the blood of animals. The bad guys have been responsible for a number of gruesome murders in town recently. One of them decides to target Bella and thus we get the final confrontation which finally brings us some decent action.So what’s good?I thought that the stars and supporting cast actually did a really great job. Bella’s friends were engaging, funny and they played their roles very naturally. Billy Burke was low key and very good as Bella’s father, Kristen Stewart did a decent job, and I have to say that despite his severely sculpted eyebrows and uber-funky hair that I liked Rob Pattinson’s portrayal of Edward Cullen. I don’t know how closely the way he played the character matched the version in the book, but I thought that his uncertainty and awkwardness in light of how powerful he really was made him quite charming.
Family plus Christmas equals nightmare. That seems to be the calculation guiding this festive frolic, in which Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon tell their respective folks they’re doing charity work so that they can avoid the usual get-together. Alas, their ruse is uncovered, so they end up visiting all four post-divorce enclaves in one fateful Christmas Day.Playing out a seasonal riff on the same comedy of embarrassment as ‘Meet the Parents’, Vaughn’s mean old coot of a pater Robert Duvall and wrestling-freak sibling Jon Favreau, along with Mary Steenburgen as Witherspoon’s lubricious yet church-happy mom, supply plentiful warning of the dangers of procreation. As we grind through the gears of consecutive drop-ins, however, behind the strained knockabout lurks a none-too-subtle conformist agenda, assuring the unmarried, childless couple that their only chance for genuine happiness is to get with the family programme.‘Humbug!’, we say. Dismaying, indeed, that a movie purportedly selling itself on refreshing nay-saying scepticism should so cravenly succumb to the same old schmaltz, without the craft even to make the process seem anything other than a series of empty would-be ‘feelgood’ platitudes. Still, there are occasional felicities en route, with some ably delivered ‘trailer moment’ slapstick – watch out for that baby vomit! – and the cast do their best with the uneven material, even if Vaughn in particular makes the patter a tad too effortful. Nostalgic for some to have him and Favreau reunited here, yet seeing the ‘Swingers’ duo desperately mugging away in such mainstream mulch, their catchphrase ‘You’re so money’ takes on an awful new resonance.
Etta James blasts her way through a sad song, but it's not good enough. Leonard Chess taunts her and claims she's not "woman enough" for such a song. Didn't anyone ever walk out on her and leave her heartbroken? Take that and put it in the song, he suggests. She steps up for another take, and -- although she has tears in her eyes now -- it sounds pretty much the same. The main trouble with Cadillac Records is that no one took aside writer/director Darnell Martin with the same advice. Scene after scene, Cadillac Records is thin, flat and rote. Like all biopics, the new film skims over years and years of history in a brief fling. All the moments are historical; they describe what happened, but not who they happened to. Sometime in the 1940s -- the movie is rarely very clear as to what year it is -- Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) runs a junkyard and decides to get into "race music." He moves from a club to a record label and signs Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), a blues guitarist straight off the plantation.
There are a few nice, early scenes showing these two men touring together, sharing meals and getting the stink-eye from local rednecks, but the movie shies away from developing this friendship. Muddy brings aboard the volatile harmonica player Little Walter (Columbus Short) and eventually gives him his first taste of liquor, which leads to a full-blown bout of alcoholism (this rock biopic cliché was ridiculed and should have been buried forever in last year's spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story). Chess then signs the giant, monster-like Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), and Muddy takes an instant dislike to him. Once again, this rivalry is never fleshed out.
(I would like to have seen an entire movie about this Wolf; he's mesmerizing and positively terrifying!) Then comes Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles), and though Chess has apparently remained faithful to his wife, he clearly nurses something more than a crush on Etta. Etta remains hard and standoffish, most of the time, though Chess claims he can "see her." Good thing he can, because we can't.
Moreover, the poor wife (Emmanuelle Chriqui) barely registers a blip; in one scene she looks worriedly at a magazine with Etta on the cover; what's she thinking? Does she know what's going on? Poor Gabrielle Union fares only slightly better as Muddy's long-suffering significant other. She at least has an interesting scene in which she explains how she doesn't have any dreams because "someone has to keep their feet planted on the ground."
Written and directed by Frank Miller, adapted from the famous comic strip by Will Eisner (who’s been labeled the “Orson Welles of comics”). Miller, in his first solo outing as writer/director, brings The Spirit to the screen in the same manner as his Sin City and 300 adaptations – using digital background technology to meld live action performances with graphical elements. This is in post-production and not due til 2009.
Packing drama, thrills and romance, this is the story of a former rookie cop who returns from the dead as The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) to fight crime from the shadows of the gothic Central City. His arch-enemy is the Octopus (Samuel L Jackson)who pursues his own version of immortality. The Spirit tracks this cold-hearted killer from Central City's rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront... all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love, or kill our masked crusader. Scarlett Johansson’s the girl next door, Paz Vega’s the secretary vixen, Eva Mendes is Sand Saref – jewel thief and the love of Spirit’s life turned bad.
Miller describes the tale; “The character has a terrifying side to him. This is a man who’s died and came back to life. So it twists into fantasy. And of course there are tons of women in it. There have to be — it’s The Spirit. They’re all in love with him, and he’s in love with all of them. You might say he’s a bit of a slut.”
The third installment in the Transporter series returns Jason Statham to his best screen role to date, driver extraordinaire Frank Martin. A sort of downscale James Bond, Martin specializes in missions involving car chases, martial-arts fights, sadistic villains and leggy models, plots that inevitably reveal the romantic core to his gruff exterior. Transporter 3 goes even further, giving Martin a love interest among all the mayhem. Unfortunately, love scenes—especially those filtered through producer and co-screenwriter Luc Besson's sensibilities—are the last thing you want in a Transporter film.
After some excruciating comic relief involving hangdog sidekick Tarconi (François Berléand), Martin finds himself in a jam. Kidnapped by thugs, he is ordered by assassin Johnson (Robert Knepper) to drive Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a Ukrainian party girl, from Marseille to Budapest. Johnson's equipped both of them with explosive bracelets that will detonate if they stray too far from their car. What's worse, Russian agents have been sent to intercept and kill Martin before he can make his delivery.
Tracked by GPS, Martin finds himself surrounded by Johnson's underlings whenever he veers off course. (Frankly, the film could have used a few more of these diversions, as the fistfights are easily the most entertaining of the action elements.) Valentina may pose a greater threat than bodybuilding goons. Convinced that she will be killed anyway, during one lull she orders Martin to perform an erotic striptease so she can enjoy "the sex" one more time.
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