THE REVIEW CORNER

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Hailee Steinfeld Screenplay written and directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen      "Punishment comes one way or another".  Finally, a western, one of my favorite types of movie.  There haven't been many (if any) westerns in 2010, but what a way to end the year with an awesome film, "True Grit".      Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is only fourteen years old when her father is killed by a man named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin).  She wants to avenge her father's murder by bringing Chaney to justice, but the best way to get him is with the help of U.S. Marshal Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges).  Soon after they set off to find Chaney, a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) joins them to bring Chaney to justice in Texas for murdering a state senator.  Will their mutual benefit to catching Chaney help them or hurt them in finding him?  Will he be brought to justice for what he'...

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, and Olivia Wilde Directed by: Joseph Kosinski Written by: Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz "The Grid. A digital frontier.  I tried to picture clusters of information as they move through the computer.  What did they look like?  Ships? Motorcycles?  Were the circuits like freeways?  I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see.  And then, one day, I got in." -Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).  This visual stunner and action drama, and sequel to the 1982 Tron is sure to thrill almost anybody who sees it.     When Kevin Flynn, CEO of ENCOM, gets trapped inside his computer creation and nobody knows what happened to him, it takes 20 years for anyone to see him again, when his son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) goes inside the grid to find him.  Inside, he finds a digital world created by Flynn's program designed to create this world, Clu (also Jeff Bridges).  Sam is treated like a program once in...

Starring: Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, and Donald Faison Directed by: Colin and Greg Strause Written by: Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell My Rating: 1 star      Don't look up.  Because if you do, you will probably want to turn away from the screen at the sight of this film.  In short, it's not too good.      As strange lights are descending on Los Angeles, much of the city's population is drawn outside to observe thes lights when they are sucked up into the ships of an extra terrestrial civilization pursuing war against the human race.      There are a few problems I have with this film.  There is only one emotion the directors manage to evoke in the viewers, awe at the sight of the effects.  While I think the effects are great, the directors fail to take a decent storyline and make it into an emotional roller coaster; they don't bring out emotions such as fear for the characters involved in the si...

Starring: Matt Damon, Cecile De France, Bryce Dallas Howard Directed by: Clint Eastwood Written by: Peter Morgan      What happens to us when we die?  It's a question we all have asked at one point or another in our lives.  We ask it because we are afraid of facing death although we know it is inevitable.  Clint Eastwood and Peter Morgan have come up with an interesting take on this difficult question with "Hereafter".      Marie LeLay (Cecile De France) plays a talking head for a French news network caught in a tsunami that she barely survives at the opening of the film.  Marcus (Frankie McLaren) plays a London schoolboy who's brother is killed.  George Lonegan is a blue collar worker in San Francisco who used to be a psychic.  So what do these three people have to do with one another?  They have all been touched by death in one shape or form.      This is a film that probably won't be ...

Starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren Directed by: Robert Schwentke Written by: John Hoeber and Erich Hoeber           Who would have ever thought that this cast would ever play roles as retired CIA agents called back into action?  Who would have ever thought that Helen Mirren would be in an action comedy?  I certainly wouldn't have but I was certainly entertained by this film.       This is an exciting film based on a graphic novel from DC comics called RED: Retired Extremely Dangerous.  When I first heard about this, I questioned how something like this would work because the actors they chose for these roles are not actually old.  The cool thing is that this cast works well together considering that they are all really big names.  We are seeing the rise of movies with "all-star" casts these days and this is no exception.  Great actors like Willis and M...

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake Directed by David Fincher Written by Aaron Sorkin    "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."  This film is an interesting take on the historical genre.  Normally we would think of something that happened long ago, whether or not it happened in our lifetime.  "The Social Network" is interesting because it's about the violent founding of something that seemingly everyone around us uses, Facebook.    It is fantastically written and the acting was excellent, especially Jesse Eisenberg.  He plays the role of Mark Zuckerberg, an undergraduate student at Harvard University who is breaking up with his girlfriend in the very first scene of the movie.  The dialogue that Sorkin uses makes Zuckerberg sound like a pretty big jerk, especially for this first scene.  I enjoy when actors really get into their character and it's clear that Eisenberg enjoyed ...

"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" Peter 5:8 Starring Chris Messina and Logan Marshall-Green, "Devil" is a new horror/thriller from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan that takes place in modern day Philadelphia. A group of seemingly random people gets trapped in an elevator in a tall building.  Detective Bowden is called to a scene at the same building but for a suicide, and when he is informed of the elevator getting stuck and strange events taking place, he drops the case to help the stranded elevator passengers.  As all the workers and security people in the building are freaking out, they begin to realize that the devil is among them, but the question, who is it?  I thought the story line is a little weird.  According to a story the narrator tells at the very beginning of the movie, the devil may arise on earth to take some people before they meet him in hell and that the first s...

Starring Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter, and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson Resident Evil: Afterlife is a somewhat scary action thriller about a zombie dominated planet during present times. It's the fourth movie in the franchise. Alice (Jovovich) is the former head of security at the Umbrella Corporation, the company that created the T-Virus that accidentally escaped and turned everybody into zombies. She travels to Alaska to what she thinks is a small town called Arcadia, where there is supposedly a colony of survivors that are infection free. She is drawn by transmissions saying that they offer safety and security, food and shelter. When she arrives, nothing is there, but she picks up Claire Redfield (Larter) and travels to what once was Los Angeles where there is another colony of four survivors living atop a prison rooftop and surrounded by zombies. They find that the Arcadia is actually a ship just offshore. Can they make it to the ship? Milla Jovovich plays a very act...

Starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, and Eva Mendes, "The Other Guys" is a comedy about two police officers trying to solve a case to get to the top of the NYPD. The movie opens up with a scene of two police officers, P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne Johnson) involved in a high speed chase. They are the top officers in the department and recognized by everybody. Allen Gamble (Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Wahlberg) are just two officers in the background and are disrespected by everybody. So to gain respect they take on a seemingly small case in the first place but ends up being a very high profile case in the end. Can they take on this case without losing respect for each other and the respect from the rest of the department? I find the acting in this film to be surprisingly good. Will Ferrell is actually trying to be serious for once and he executed his role extremely well. Although it calls for being seri...

Starring Michael Cera, Alison Pill, Mark Webber, Ellen Wong, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" is a trippy, action packed popcorn flick with a heroic and comic aspect. It takes place during the present day in one of my favorite cities, Toronto, Canada. Initially, Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is a 22 year old unemployed guy from Toronto living with his friend because he doesn't have enough money for a place of his own. He's dating a 17 year old high schooler named Knives Chau (Wong). Nobody is really sure how to react to this so his band mates all say he's got a fake girlfriend. While at a party one night, he sees Ramona Flowers (Winstead), a girl who just moved to Toronto from New York and works for Amazon.ca and tries to say something to her but his nervousness gets the best of him. He orders a package from Amazon and she delivers it to him and it's at his doorstep that he gets the idea to ask her out. Scott's band is playing ...

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, and Marion Cotillard, “Inception” is an action thriller about thieves planting an idea in the mind of the son of a huge energy corporation in order to change his mind about the future of the company through a method called inception. The movie starts out when Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach in a dream and is taken in to do business with Saito (Ken Watanabe), the head of another major corporation. Cobb wants to train Saito how to avoid people who steal secrets from people’s dreams, known as extractors. However they are only in a dream at this point. It takes multiple people to perform inception, a few architects to construct the dream and thieves to perform the task. Everyone is involved in creating the dream and planting ideas in the mind of one who is sharing the dream. So when one of the architects is taken and killed in reality, it’s time for Cobb to find a new architect. He finds Ariadne (Ellen Page), a student of...