The Bourne Ultimatum Images



Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) lost all his got in life. His memory, his love and his freedom. He's hunted down by the people who made him what he is today and they only want one thing: his death. He must stay alive to find what he's lost no matter what.

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) sudah kehilangan semuanya. Ia kehilangan ingatannya, perempuan yang dicintainya dan kebebasannya. Jason Bourne diburu oleh orang-orang yang telah menciptakan dirinya dan misi mereka hanya satu: mati. Maka Jason harus tetap berusaha hidup dan mencari kembali dirinya yang hilang. Apapun yang terjadi.



Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Actor: Matt Damon
Actress: Julia Stiles, Joan Allen
Homepage: www.thebourneultimatum.com
Bourne Ultimatum

There are actually three screenwriters credited for The Bourne Ultimatum, though it's hard to imagine what exactly they all did to earn their paycheck. "You don't remember anything, do you?" "It's Bourne." "It ends here." [insert car chase] That doesn't mean that this third installment of the popular shaky-cam travelogue spy thriller series doesn't deliver all that it's intended to, and occasionally more, it just means that you're more likely to hear barked-out commands or the sound of squealing tires and shattering glass than two or more actors exchanging full sentences as part of a conversation. This is a film that asks exactly how much traditional storytelling structure can you cleave away and still have a coherent and engaging piece of work? The answer: Nearly all of it.

Coming off last year's abysmally underrated United 93, director Paul Greengrass thankfully returns for his second film in the series about the titular amnesiac CIA-trained assassin (Matt Damon) with identity issues. Although the resulting film is not nearly up to the hard-to-match bar set by the preceding film, The Bourne Supremacy, it's hard to imagine any other director currently working who would be able to keep the relentless pace delivered by Ultimatum. Unfortunately, it's also all too easy to see that the filmmakers and Damon are coasting when they could be soaring.

The stripped-down storyline that powers the film with motorized intensity concerns Bourne's identity. Having lost his girlfriend in the previous film, and spent a few years now running from various rogue CIA elements who want to eliminate an embarrassment before it can cause them any political damage, at film's start Bourne is now hot on the trail of his missing identity. It's clear that somebody inside the Agency is talking, as Bourne is reading stories about himself in The Guardian by an investigative journalist (Paddy Considine, nicely twitchy) who must have a highly placed source. Those previously mentioned rogue Agency elements are pretty hot to keep Bourne away from the secret program that created brainwashed killing machines like himself, and so the assassins -- a number of whom seem as relentlessly lethal and mindless as Bourne himself, an interesting twist -- come out of the wordwork to give chase in a variety of locations, from Tangiers to midtown Manhattan to an extended and exceptionally taut chase and surveillance sequence set in London's cavernous, clamoring Waterloo Station. Needless to say, by brains and brawn, Bourne burrows ever closer to discovering the true secret of his identity that's been eluding him as he races from one exotic European locale to another.

It would be ludicrous to say that The Bourne Ultimatum is not a thriller worth notice. Greengrass's hyperfluid direction and Oliver Wood's documentary-style cinematography make for an addictive mix, a pared-down action series for the post-9/11 era, where it's more about speed, lethality, and moral grey zones and less about cartoonish villains and sarcastic quips. But there's a limit to how far you can push this style, and this film flirts with that limit quite seriously. There are long stretches where little to no dialogue is provided beyond shouted directions to the thankless drones monitoring surveillance footage for the CIA as they track Bourne around the globe. Once Bourne gets closer to his target (the occasional pained flashback cutting in, giving glimpses of the training program that turned him into the killer he currently is), it's difficult to feel the necessary emotional impact for him, since the series has worked so hard at turning him into such a robotic entity.

It's much easier to impress an audience with masterfully assembled chases or killer martial arts moves -- and there's a couple of extraordinarily bruising fight scenes here that are unlike anything Hollywood has produced in quite a while -- than it is to get that audience to feel a human empathy for the man negotiating all that lethal territory. The audience may clap for Bourne when he executes a particularly smart maneuver (has there ever been a screen spy who has so flawlessly mixed graceful cunning with predatory nerve?) but will they feel for him when he's confronted by a woman he loved from the past but whom the amnesia has erased from his mind? Does it even matter? Probably not; a fourth film is most likely on the way, but it would be nice if, in the future, the filmmakers remembered that Bourne was human, and treated him as such.


INFAMOUS Images

What starts out as the irreverent journey of the openly gay writer Truman Capote (Toby Joness) to the middle-class world of 1950's Kansas, where he goes--with his childhood friend Harper Lee--to research the murder of the Clutter family, turns to something altogether darker when Capote forms an intense and complex relationship with one of the murderers. In doing so, he produced his greatest work, "In Cold Blood," but at a devastating personal cost.

Berawal dari perjalanan seorang penulis gay, Truman Capote (Toby Joness) ke dunia kelas-menengah di Kansas tahun 1950, dimana ia pergi bersama teman masa kecilnya, Harper Lee -- untuk meneliti pembunuhan keluarga Clutter. Ia mulai melakukan hal-hal yang tak terduga saat Capote menjalin hubungan lebih jauh dengan salah seorang pembunuh. Dalam hubungannya tersebut, ia menghasilkan buku yang luar biasa, "In Cold Blood," namun akhirnya menghancurkan hidupnya pula.


Directed by: DOUGLAS McGRATH
Written by: DOUGLAS McGRATH / GEORGE PLIMPTON
Production Company:WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES
Homepage: http://wip.warnerbros.com/infamous/
Trailer: http://wip.warnerbros.com/infamous/
Infamous
If the cogs of the movie-making machine are going to keep turning out the exact same movie, why do I have to write up a whole new review?

It's hard to keep an open mind when the synopsis – celebrated author Truman Capote heads to Kansas after a quadruple homicide rocks a rural town, where he becomes obsessed with one of the killers as he pens his book In Cold Blood – perfectly describes not only the new release Infamous. In a vacuum is disingenuous at best; no one who will see this movie has not at least heard of the other.

And unfortunately for Infamous, that means it's doomed to be Capote's forgotten sibling: This one is a year later, several Oscar nominations (and one win) shy, and nowhere near as good. On its own, it may not be so bad, but in the scheme of things, it's wholly redundant.

Writer-director Douglas McGrath's version of the story is based on the book Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career and as such features a variety of talking head interviews of his contemporaries -- Gore Vidal, Diana Vreeland, Babe Paley -- attempting to explain the character that was Truman Capote. The device works quite well, but is sadly only used for about 10 minutes or so (it pops up again at the end, but by then it has been downgraded to voice-over treacle).

Infamous starts out quite amusingly, painting a charmingly superficial picture of the high flying New York society scene of which Truman was queen bee. Toby Jones plays Truman as a swishy little troll, a preposterous muppet in human form, and he's entertaining as hell in the role. When Truman heads to Kansas to write about how the town is affected by the murders, it's a pure fish-out-of-water comedy. If it's not enough that Truman is five feet tall with a cartoon voice and an urban sensibility, he shows up with a trousseau and a full-length fur.

But from there on out, McGrath tells not only the exact same story, but in the exact same way as Capote: Truman slowly wins over the town, begins interviewing the two killers, and his obsession with one, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig), leads virtually to his own ruin. And it's not merely that we've seen these characters, this context, this story before; it's that Infamous lays them out in the most straightforward, uncomplicated and uninteresting manner. Perry opening up and talking about his past is not an unveiling, it's a flashback; Truman's obsession is shown, but never explained; all of the story's complexities are ironed out as pat as possible.

And sadly, the salvation is not to be found in the acting. Craig is entirely too…rugged for the part of Perry. His inescapable manliness might be good news to those worried about the fate of the Bond franchise, but it’s all wrong here. He displays none of the tenderness that supposedly draws Capote to him. And so much feels like stunt casting – Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee performs as though in a community theatre production of Our Town, and Gwyneth Paltrow has three very long minutes singing on screen as Peggy Lee in a pointless cameo.

It's not all bad – Jones won't get as much credit as Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but he's wonderful as Truman. Hope Davis and Sigourney Weaver are similarly entertaining as socialite swans (Weaver's casting, playing the wife of legendary CBS president William S. Paley, is a charming little in-joke, as Weaver is the real-life daughter of legendary NBC president Pat Weaver).

It's also, clearly, a great story. McGrath may have very much wanted to tell it, but he was beaten to the punch, which should have killed Infamous as extraneous. Because even if the story itself is very intriguing, go rent Capote. Or even better yet, read In Cold Blood. Nothing beats an original.


PRICELESS (HORS DE PRIX) Images

Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a shy waiter at a luxury hotel, pretends to be a millionaire and awakens the interest of Irène (Audrey Tautou), an adventurer who makes wealthy men pay for her bills. When Irène discovers who Jean really is, she escapes. However, Jean is in love and goes after her, finding her at Côte d'Azur. In his pursuit, he adopts the lifestyle of whom he loves. Step by step they get eventually closer.


Players: AUDREY TAUTOU, GAD ELMALEH, MARIE-CHRISTINE ADAM
Directed by: PIERRE SALVADORI
Written by: BENOIT GRAFFIN/PIERRE SALVADORI
Producer: PHILLIPE MARTIN
Production Company: CANAL+


RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION Images

Alice (Milla Jovovich), now in hiding in the Nevada desert, once again joins forces with Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps), along with new survivors Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti) to try to eliminate the deadly virus that threatens to make every human being undead... and to seek justice. Since being captured by the Umbrella Corporation, Alice has been subjected to biogenic experimentation and becomes genetically altered, with super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. These skills, and more, will be needed if anyone is to remain alive.

Alice (Milla Jovovich), saat ini bersembunyi di gurun Nevada, masih bergabung bersama Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) dan L.J. (Mike Epps), dan anggota-anggota baru Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke) dan Suster Betty (Ashanti) mencoba menaklukkan virus yang membuat kehidupan abadi bagi manusia.. serta mencari keadilan. Sejak tertangkap oleh Umbrella Corporation, Alice telah menjadi sasaran eksperimental biogenik dan menjadi berubah secara genetik, dengan kekuatan, indera dan keterampilan manusia super. Keahlian ini, dan lainnya, akan dibutuhkan seseorang jika ia hidup selamanya.


Players: MILLA JOVOVICH, ODED FEHR, MIKE EPPS, ASHANTI, IAIN GLEN
Directed by: RUSSELL MULCAHY
Written by: PAUL W.S. ANDERSON
Producer: PAUL W.S. ANDERSON, JEREMY BOLT, ROBERT KULZER
Production Company: SCREEN GEMS/CONSTANTIN FILMS
Homepage: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/residentevilextinction/
Trailer: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/residentevilextinction/
I can't say I remember what exactly happened in the first two Resident Evil movies, other than I watched them and didn't dislike them enough to take a pass on Resident Evil: Extinction, a potential trilogy capper or, more likely, part three of five or eight. This series, based on a popular videogame, is one of those second-tier franchises that, in a sneaky and undemanding way, can be more enjoyable than its classier counterparts. It's also the kind of franchise lacking the faux dignity to pretend that three is a magic number.

Russell Mulcahy, the newest director in the fold, knows from exhaustible cult franchises, having made the original Highlander. Mulcahy is probably the best director to ever attempt a Resident Evil movie, and he gives the film a more polished look than its predecessors. Mulcahy isn't exactly an original stylist, but the action is coherent and sometimes even striking: the film opens with an eerie, near-wordless sequence capped by an image that can only be described as a pile of Milla Jovoviches. Luckily, continuity is maintained by original Evil filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson, screenwriter here and provider of much exposition and laughable dialogue to match its predecessors.

Still, the story itself has its dirty charms. Since the events of the second film, Earth has been overrun by zombies and the United States is mainly desert. The newly genetically modified Alice (Milla Jovovich) rides her motorcycle around the wasteland, lying low to avoid her sinister creators, the Umbrella Corporation. Her former cohort Carlos (former Mummy Oded Fehr) has joined a convoy of desperate survivors led by Claire (Ali Larter) and including Ashanti and Mike Epps. Respect is due to an apocalyptic sci-fi horror series that actually follows through on that apocalypse business; Extinction furthers its bleak cred by imagining a future so dystopic that Ashanti is one of the last humans left alive on the planet.

As the survivors traverse the desert, Umbrella's science guru Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) continues his experiments in hope of reversing, or at least controlling, the zombie plague his company unleashed back in the good old days of Resident Evil part one. Because he is a scientist, he is able to perform miraculous feats of cloning and behavior modification; because he is a mad scientist, he expresses his boredom and impatience with these feats when they only go slightly, not disastrously, awry.

As these stories converge, Milla Jovovich, as both Alice and her various ill-fated counterparts, spends a lot of time in what has become her signature pose for the series: waking up on her side, naked and wet, hands placed demurely over her breasts. Another popular move, the (clothed) flying kick to the face (of a zombie and/or zombie dog), makes a return appearance, and to her repertoire she adds some fearsome knife-twirling. This is not a performance of emotions or hidden interiors, but of collectible action figures. But in a minimal and sometimes near-robotic way, Jovovich owns the screen when she's playing Alice; after three films, both the character and the actress just seem so damned resolute. She's not Ripley or Trinity or even a Charlie's Angel, but for 90 minutes every few years, she's our B-movie hero.

Extinction accommodates this unique star power by surrounding her with lightweights who make Jovovich's wooden minimalism seem world-weary and humane. Fehr has a couple of wry moments towards the end, but the buses carrying the convoy members might as well be labeled "corpses" -- they're only interesting insofar as when and how quickly they die. The convoy subplot brings in human concerns that the series has long since abandoned; after you become a jump-kicking, zombie-stabbing dynamo who may be developing telekinesis, apparently you can't go home again.

Indeed, the human-heavy sections contain some of Anderson's hoariest nonsense, augmented by a persistent thudding sound that turns out to be Ali Larter and Ashanti reading their lines (Larter somehow makes the possibility of survival in Alaska sound hilarious rather than, say, hopeful). A leaner, sparer version would sacrifice some of the goofiness in order to deliver on the promise of the darker impulses of series. As is, it's a pretty silly B-picture.

Still, it's a better, more entertaining B-picture than its predecessors. The scope expands, not just in its variety of production design -- the first film seemed to take place mostly in a series of hallways while here we see a sand-sunk Las Vegas and grim bunker boardrooms -- but in the other movies it knocks off. Extinction still steals liberally from other zombie pictures, and the deserted future necessitates some grand theft Mad Max. But while the filmmakers are at it, they throw in sources as varied as The Birds, The Matrix, X-Men, and even Alien: Resurrection. Mulcahy and Anderson don't synthesize them into something distinctive and new, but they do smash and grab with panache.

As with every entry so far, the newest installment primes the audience for a sequel; at this rate, maybe it'll continue up the stairway to "actually good" (the hook will certainly entice Jovovich fans for its potential in the crucial areas of fighting and nudity). It's hard to recommend a Resident Evil movie, but even harder to say I wouldn't see part four.


MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER 3 Images


When Aryong, the daughter of a triad boss from Hong Kong is accused of killing the boss of a competing triad, she is goes into hiding in Korea. Upon arriving, she is guided by a nimble but loyal Gi-chul and his motley crew, who are assigned to protect her until he return.


Players: SHU QI, LEE BOEM-SOO, HYOEN YEONG, OH JI-HO
Directed by: JO JIN-KYU
Written by: KIM YOUNG-CHAN
Producer: LEE SOON-YEOUL
Production Company: SHOW BOX
Homepage: http://www.showbox.co.kr/movie/gangsterwife3/
Trailer: http://www.showbox.co.kr/movie/gangsterwife3/
My Wife Is a Gangster 3


LARI DARI BLORA Images

Cyntia, an American woman works in a foreign NGO, visit to the territory between Pati – Blora (Central Java), does research about the Samin community. At the same time, two amateur criminals bolted from the Blora prison and choose the village as the hiding place.

Ramadhian, a teacher who tries to send the Samin children to go to school but it is opposed by the Village Chief who wanting to continue Samin as the nature preserve. Relations between Ramadian and Cyntia, make Hasanah, the Village Chief’s daughter jealous. Conflicts emerge the Samin community. It is spread that Samin village became the criminal's hideaway and potential to become the terrorist's place. A large scale security action is then held.


Players : WS RENDRA, ARDINA RASTI, ANNIKA KUYPER, TINA ASTARI, SOULTAN SALADIN, ISWAR KELANA.
Directed by: AKHLIS SURYAPATI
Written by: AKHLIS SURYAPATI
Producer: EGY MASSAIDAH
Production Company: IBAR PICTURES

LAWANG SEWU (DENDAM KUNTILANAK) Images

A group of teenagers leave to Semarang to celebrate their graduation. The trip full of happiness and pleasure in the beginning must ended with much tension and mysteries that never been expected.

All scared terrors happened in a place called Lawang Sewu (Sewu Gate). Secrets that they are trying to hide along the trip to Lawang Sewu evidently bring them into misfortune. One by one must pay with their lives and the secret of Lawang Sewu begin dispersed.

Revenge has not gone out from Lawang Sewu. Things they never understood before. Gave valuable lesson and experience for them who remained.

Sekelompok remaja yang tengah menikmati masa-masa akhir mereka di SMU dengan berlibur ke Semarang. Perjalanan yang penuh dengan emosi suka cita dan kegembiraan ternyata berbuntut panjang dan berubah menjadi ketegangan dan penuh dengan misteri yang tidak pernah diduga
Semua emosi berbaur di sebuah tempat bernama Lawang Sewu. Rahasia yang mereka tutupi sepanjang perjalanan menuju Lawang Sewu ternyata membawa pada petaka. Satu per satu harus membayarnya dengan nyawa mereka dan rahasia Lawang Sewu pun mulai terkuak.

Bahwa dendam belum juga padam di Lawang Sewu. Hal yang tidak pernah mereka mengerti sebelumnya. Memberi pelajaran dan pengalaman berharga bagi mereka yang tersisa.

Pemain: THALITA LATIEF, SALVINA, BUNGA JELITA, TSANIA MARWA, MARCELL DARWIN, RONALD GUSTAV
Sutradara: ARIE AZIS
Penulis: AVIV ELHAM
Produser: DHAMOO PUNJABI, MANOJ PUNJABI
Produksi: MD PICTURES
Homepage: http://www.lawangsewu-dendamkuntilanak.com/
Trailer: http://www.lawangsewu-dendamkuntilanak.com/
Lawang Sewu Dendam Kuntilanak


ROGUE ASSASSIN Images

Setelah rekan, Tom Wynne (Terry Chen) dan keluarganya dibunuh oleh pembunuh keji Rogue (Jet Li), agen FBI Jack Crawford (Jason Statham) terobsesi untuk membalas dendam di dunianya yang penuh penghianatan. Rogue sebenanrnya muncul kembali untuk menjalankan misinya sendiri, perang antara mafia Asia Chang (John Lone) dan boss Yakuza, Shiro. Saat Jack dan Rogue bertemu, kebenaran di masa lalu akan terungkap.

Pemain: JET LI, JASON STATHAM, DEVON AOKI, JOHN LONE, RYO ISHIBASHI, TERRY CHEN
Sutradara: PHILLIP G. ATWELL
Penulis: LEE ANTHONY SMITH / GREGORY J. BRADLEY
Produser: STEVEN CHASMAN, JIM THOMPSON, CHRISTOPHER PETZEL
Produksi: LIONSGATE FILMS
Homepage: http://www.warthefilm.com/
Trailer: http://www.warthefilm.com/
Rogue Assassin

Alur cerita diawali pembunuhan keji yang menimpa keluarga salah satu agen FBI Tom Wynne (Terry Chen) oleh pembunuh Rogue (Jet Li). Agen FBI lainnya Jack Crawford (Jason Statham) yang teman kerja Tom terobsesi untuk membalas dendam.

Rogue juga memiliki misi lain. Akhirnya terjadi perang kriminal pertumpahan darah antara gerombolan triad asia pimpinan Chang (John Lone) dan kelompok Yakuza Shiro (Ryo Ishibashi).

Di sinilah akhirnya Jack dan Rogue bertemu. Mereka pun bertarung untuk mencari dan menjelaskan kebenaran sejati masa lalunya mereka.


El Cantante Images

Film ini diangkat dari kisah nyata Hector Lavoe seorang penyanyi lation terkenal di tahun 1970 an yang diperankan oleh Marc Anthony. Dia juga dikenal sebagai The King of Salsa. Dibalik glamournya dunia Hector Lavoe dia adalah salah satu legend yang kecanduan terhadap heroin dan obat terlarang lainnya. Jennifer Lopez disini berperan sebagai kekasih Hector yang menemani Hector saat dia kehilangan semua hartanya dan kesakitan menghadapi penyakit Aids yang diderita Hector.

Directed by: Leon Ichaso
Actor: Marc Anthony, Tony Devon
Actress: Jennifer Lopez
El Cantante

Leon Ichaso's El Cantante, a frenzied and paper-thin attempt to lionize beloved salsa singer Hector Lavoe (played by Marc Anthony), convinced me it's time to put the musical-biopic genre on the shelf for a few years.javascript:void(0)
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Cantante draws inspiration from a revealing 2002 television interview given by Lavoe's wife, Puchi (Jennifer Lopez, Anthony’s wife in real life), during which the furious and confrontational spouse of the late Latin singer recounts the couple's highs and lows. Signed to burgeoning Fania Records, Lavoe sold out Madison Square Garden in his prime. But decadence's usual suspects march through Lavoe's life, and the talented crooner contends with drug addiction, failed affairs with loose women, a broken family life, and an HIV-positive diagnosis.

Chalk Anthony and Lopez up as the next off-screen couple unable to bring a modicum of chemistry to an on-screen pairing. Perhaps the problem lies with Lopez, who was infamously linked to Ben Affleck when the two worked on back-to-back disasters Gigli and Jersey Girl. Though she is capably antagonistic as the oft-scorned Puchi, Lopez's mate makes the same face in every scene and can not find the tragedy in his character's doomed fate. Anthony missed his calling as a Miami Vice villain. Such a diminished and one-note role suits him much better than the multi-tiered part of Lavoe.

These two could be Bogart and Bacall, and still the movie would falter under the hackneyed direction of Ichaso. His erratic visual style turns me off -- a flurry of blurs, fades, and chops that the director mistakenly believes are artistic.

The musical biopic isn’t dead, just tired. Thanks to Jamie Foxx, it was possible for novice Ray Charles listeners to enjoy Ray. And you didn't have to love the music of Johnny Cash to connect with the improbable romance at the heart of Walk the Line. But without the driving beat of Lavoe's salsa music, El Cantante would bring nothing new to the table. Fans of Lavoe's upbeat music should spend their money on one of the artist's records, and let this ill-conceived movie fade from memory as quickly as possible.


Masked Rider 555 Images

In the near future, the Smart Brain Corporation is breeding creatures known as Orphnochs to replace humans. Three sympathetic Orphnochs team up with freedom fighters who are waging a guerrilla war while awairting the return of their hero Masked Rider 555.

Directed by: Ryuta Tazaki
Actor: Yuria Haga, Mitsuru Karahashi
Actress: Masayuki Izumi
Masked Rider 555


Ghost Train Images

Nana dan kawannya, Kanae menyaksikan kecelakaan kereta api di perjalanan mereka menuju ke sekolah. Setelah itu, Nana dan Kanae mulai mengalami hal-hal aneh. Seperti munculnya sidik jari merah dan arwah wanita yang tinggal di stasiun. Suatu hari, adik Nana tiba-tiba hilang. Kemungkinan besar ia diculik oleh arwah-arwah di stasiun. Tambahan lagi ada seorang wanita misterius yang meramalkan adakan ada yang hilang.


Directed by: Takeshi Furusawa
Actor: Chinatsu Wakatsuki, Shun Oguri
Actress: Erika Sawajiri
Ghost Train


The Brave One Images

Erica (Jodie Foster) adalah seorang wanita biasa yang baru saja diserang secara brutal oleh segerombolan pria. Daripada melapor ke polisi, Erica berusaha membalaskan dendam dengan caranya sendiri. Ia bertekad untuk tidak hanya membalas dendam kepada para penyerangnya, tetapi juga mereka yang menindas yang lemah di kota New York dengan tindak kejahatan yang tidak biasa.

New York radio host Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) has a life that she loves and a fiancé she adores. All of it is taken from her when a brutal attack leaves Erica badly wounded and her fiancé dead. Unable to move past the tragedy, Erica begins prowling the city streets at night to track down the men she holds responsible. Her dark pursuit of justice catches the public's attention, and the city is riveted by her anonymous exploits

But with the NYPD desperate to find the culprit and a dogged police detective (Terrence Howard) hot on her trail, she must decide whether her quest for revenge is truly the right path, or if she is becoming the very thing she is trying to stop.


Directed by: Neil Jordan
Actor: Terrence Howard
Actress: Jodie Foster
The Brave One


Violence is inherent. Brought on by fear, anger, despair or ignorance, it's a side of humanity we'd rather forget -- until it rips into our lives and forces us to change. It comes without warning and violates our way of life, our hope. And still, our culture is obsessed with it. Violence moves merchandise and sells movie tickets. Instead of exploring this dichotomy, The Brave One sensationalizes and embraces the violence that should drive its themes rather than its box office appeal.

The story is oddly familiar. Erica (Jodie Foster) and David (Naveen Andrews) are a young, engaged couple looking forward to their wedding. As the epitome of happiness, the two are a borderline self-parody right off the bat. Of course, the motiveless thugs who brutally beat them are every inch their thematic foils -- hard-drinking, foul-mouthed ingrates who revel in and even videotape the trashing. Three weeks later, Erica awakes in a hospital bed to find out that her fiancée is dead, and she fights her emotional losses by dealing out her own brand of justice. All she is missing is Batman's cape and cool gadgets.

While David Cronenberg explored the nature of violence and crafted a compelling thriller with 2005's A History of Violence, director Neil Jordon is incapable of capitalizing on any thematic material that is obvious enough to slap him in the face. Within the first 20 minutes, Jordon sets himself up with two contrasting archetypes and just after that juxtaposes the ER doctors working on the broken Erica and David with the couple making love. But don't read too much into these cinematic innuendoes, because they don't add up to anything. They are quickly traded for cinematic clichés such as skewed camera angles to represent Erika's fears and the crescendoing sound of following footsteps to point out her paranoia.

By the time Erika buys an unregistered handgun for her own peace of mind, any thoughts about actually exploring the catharsis of violence are thrown out the window. Apparently, buying a gun quickly cures any fears because Erika is no longer afraid to leave her apartment in the middle of the night to go down the street to the barred-windowed convenience store and pick up a midnight snack. There, as chance would have it, an angry man with a gun comes in, and she gets her first taste of vigilante violence. It's amazing how Erika can go a lifetime without encountering any violence and within a month, come across four or five random acts of it.

Instead of showing the affect of violence, Jordon fills the gaps between Erika's gun fire with a detective (Terrence Howard) that is hot on the trail of the vigilante. Paying no attention to the more obvious, albeit safer, theme of feminism, as the androgynous Foster kills man after man, the film talks about justice for five minutes while a radio talk show takes calls from listeners about the vigilante. But it's a half-hearted attempt when Erika is justified in the end. With all the thematic false starts and missed opportunity, The Brave One boils down to violence begets violence, and says it cures all the pain of loss.


Underdog Images

Seekor anjing jenis hound bernama Shoeshine tanpa sengaja menjadi objek percobaan lab seorang ilmuwan. Kecelakaan ini menyebabkan Shoeshine memiliki berbagai kekuatan yang ajaib. Ia bisa menembus tembok, mengangkat benda-benda yang berat, bisa berpikir lebih cepat dari pada manusia dan bisa berbicara (suara oleh Jason Lee).

A laboratory accident gives an ordinary beagle named Shoeshine (voiced by Jason Lee) unparalleled superpowers, including the ability to speak with a human voice. He is soon befriended and adopted by a lonely 12-year-old boy named Jack (Alex Neuberger). The two develop an even greater bond when the boy learns of the dog’s incredible powers and they develop for the dog a secret identity as the crime-fighting pooch Underdog.

Dressed in his very own superhero outfit, Underdog flies over Capitol City, protecting its citizens from unforeseen tragedies and keeping a close eye in particular on a beautiful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named “Sweet” Polly Purebred (voiced by Amy Adams). When the dastardly, mad scientist named Simon Barsinister (Peter Dinklage) and his overgrown henchman Cad (Patrick Warburton) threaten to destroy the city, Underdog, truly “man’s best friend,” may be the citizens’ only hope.


Directed by: Frederik Du Chau
Actor: Jason Lee, Dan Aykroyd
Actress: Amy Adams
Underdog

"Underdog" was a delightful low-budget 1960s television cartoon series, created by Total Television, a major contender in the Jay Ward "Rocky & Bullwinkle" school of animated TV satire. The crudely-drawn characters, brought to life by voice talent superstars such as Wally Cox and Alan Freed, were simplistic, even pathetic, and wholly lovable. So cheap and threadbare was the production, its very existence was a metaphor, an "underdog" of the TV cartoon genre.

What Disney has done with this abominable remake is to take every single element that made the original series endearing and toss it out the window, superimposing the absolute worst in current cinema to create a bloated, ugly, unrecognizable mongrel.

The original Underdog was a strangely-drawn dog, most likely a beagle. In a vapid attempt to make it more realistic, the remake "improves" this charming conceit by substituting a boring, real beagle. To add insult to injury, the beagle's mouth is animated via those horrible CGI tricks that have cursed "talking animal" movies since BABE.

A huge part of the original Underdog's charm was his pathetic, fey, nerdy voice, with Wally Cox's efforts embodying the lovable geek outcast persona which was essential to the character's sympathetic nature. The remake Underdog talks like a teenage airhead, with a raspy, arrogant, smart-ass vocal character that makes you immediately hate him.

Thanks to more second-rate CGI rubbish, Underdog can fly. Wow. Underdog's arch-rival, Simon Bar-Sinister was one bizarre dude, easily likable and loathsome at once; Peter Dinklage's redux is just another lame action-hero stereotype, and as homo-erotic as Topher Grace in SPIDERMAN 3.

This is arguably the most ill-conceived remake project since LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and FLIPPER, although Hollywood remakes of TV series have, with remarkably few exceptions, been bad ideas from start to finish. Updating vintage pop culture to mirror the bland, soulless modern day cultural environment is a concept doomed from the start, and only Hollywood would dare something so blind and self-destructive. Image someone in the fine art world taking a Van Gogh painting and pretending to "improve" it by Photoshopping all the crude spots out! They would be tarred and feathered and run out of town! Yet Hollywood gleefully takes beloved cultural icons and gruesomely dismembers them until they are little more than familiar corpses (think THE HONEYMOONERS, WILD WILD WEST, DRAGNET, etc.) One of the few remake series to escape this violent fate was the Brady Bunch movies, which fiercely maintained the vintage look and feel of the original TV series, and merely superimposed some tawdry sexual content, to brilliant effect.

UNDERDOG, the remake, should have been a cartoon, indeed, a BAD cartoon, with goofy drawings, weird voices, and a boss soundtrack, a lovingly retro experience and not the soul-dead live-action mutation that it is. The question is, if the goal is to take everything out which made the original lovable, why bother remaking it? Is the name value alone sufficient to warrant such a crass, cynical move? Of course, for every person who mourns the death of cinema with every new flop like this, there will be another goon who grunts, "This movie looks freaking awesome!" But surely, this witless piffle merely confirms what many movie-lovers already know, and drastically dwindling box office receipts confirm: Corporate Hollywood is terminally ill, and poisoning our culture to death. It is high time to put it down. Don't go to the theater, don't rent the video, don't buy the DVD, don't even mention that a movie like this exists. Ignore it completely. Watch old movies. Make a stand.


The Bourne Ultimatum Images

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) sudah kehilangan semuanya. Ia kehilangan ingatannya, perempuan yang dicintainya dan kebebasannya. Jason Bourne diburu oleh orang-orang yang telah menciptakan dirinya dan misi mereka hanya satu: mati. Maka Jason harus tetap berusaha hidup dan mencari kembali dirinya yang hilang. Apapun yang terjadi.

All he wanted was to disappear. Instead, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is now hunted by the people who made him what he is. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.

Now, in the new chapter of this espionage series, Bourne will hunt down his past in order to find a future. He must travel from Moscow, Paris, Madrid and London to Tangier and New York City as he continues his quest to find the real Jason Bourne--all the while trying to outmaneuver the scores of cops, federal officers and Interpol agents with him in their crosshairs.

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Robert Ludlum.


Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Actor: Matt Damon
Actress: Julia Stiles, Joan Allen
The Bourne Ultimatum


There are actually three screenwriters credited for The Bourne Ultimatum, though it's hard to imagine what exactly they all did to earn their paycheck. "You don't remember anything, do you?" "It's Bourne." "It ends here." [insert car chase] That doesn't mean that this third installment of the popular shaky-cam travelogue spy thriller series doesn't deliver all that it's intended to, and occasionally more, it just means that you're more likely to hear barked-out commands or the sound of squealing tires and shattering glass than two or more actors exchanging full sentences as part of a conversation. This is a film that asks exactly how much traditional storytelling structure can you cleave away and still have a coherent and engaging piece of work? The answer: Nearly all of it.
Coming off last year's abysmally underrated United 93, director Paul Greengrass thankfully returns for his second film in the series about the titular amnesiac CIA-trained assassin (Matt Damon) with identity issues. Although the resulting film is not nearly up to the hard-to-match bar set by the preceding film, The Bourne Supremacy, it's hard to imagine any other director currently working who would be able to keep the relentless pace delivered by Ultimatum. Unfortunately, it's also all too easy to see that the filmmakers and Damon are coasting when they could be soaring.
he stripped-down storyline that powers the film with motorized intensity concerns Bourne's identity. Having lost his girlfriend in the previous film, and spent a few years now running from various rogue CIA elements who want to eliminate an embarrassment before it can cause them any political damage, at film's start Bourne is now hot on the trail of his missing identity. It's clear that somebody inside the Agency is talking, as Bourne is reading stories about himself in The Guardian by an investigative journalist (Paddy Considine, nicely twitchy) who must have a highly placed source. Those previously mentioned rogue Agency elements are pretty hot to keep Bourne away from the secret program that created brainwashed killing machines like himself, and so the assassins -- a number of whom seem as relentlessly lethal and mindless as Bourne himself, an interesting twist -- come out of the wordwork to give chase in a variety of locations, from Tangiers to midtown Manhattan to an extended and exceptionally taut chase and surveillance sequence set in London's cavernous, clamoring Waterloo Station. Needless to say, by brains and brawn, Bourne burrows ever closer to discovering the true secret of his identity that's been eluding him as he races from one exotic European locale to another.
It would be ludicrous to say that The Bourne Ultimatum is not a thriller worth notice. Greengrass's hyperfluid direction and Oliver Wood's documentary-style cinematography make for an addictive mix, a pared-down action series for the post-9/11 era, where it's more about speed, lethality, and moral grey zones and less about cartoonish villains and sarcastic quips. But there's a limit to how far you can push this style, and this film flirts with that limit quite seriously. There are long stretches where little to no dialogue is provided beyond shouted directions to the thankless drones monitoring surveillance footage for the CIA as they track Bourne around the globe. Once Bourne gets closer to his target (the occasional pained flashback cutting in, giving glimpses of the training program that turned him into the killer he currently is), it's difficult to feel the necessary emotional impact for him, since the series has worked so hard at turning him into such a robotic entity.
It's much easier to impress an audience with masterfully assembled chases or killer martial arts moves -- and there's a couple of extraordinarily bruising fight scenes here that are unlike anything Hollywood has produced in quite a while -- than it is to get that audience to feel a human empathy for the man negotiating all that lethal territory. The audience may clap for Bourne when he executes a particularly smart maneuver (has there ever been a screen spy who has so flawlessly mixed graceful cunning with predatory nerve?) but will they feel for him when he's confronted by a woman he loved from the past but whom the amnesia has erased from his mind? Does it even matter? Probably not; a fourth film is most likely on the way, but it would be nice if, in the future, the filmmakers remembered that Bourne was human, and treated him as such.


The Invasion Images

Dunia terjangkit wabah penyakit misterius. Tetapi teka-teki asal-usul wabah ini berhasil diungkap oleh seorang psikiater asal Washington D.C., Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman) yang menemukan bahwa sumber dari wabah misterius tersebut bukan berasal dari bumi ini. Anaknya pun terjangkit dan ini memaksanya untuk bekerja sama dengan koleganya, Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) untuk menemukan obat sesegera mungkin sebelum seluruh dunia hilang musnah.

The mysterious crash of the space shuttle leads to the terrifying discovery that there is something alien within the wreckage. Those who come in contact with it are changing in ominous and inexplicable ways. Soon Washington, DC psychiatrist Carol Bennell and her friend Dr. Ben Driscoll, learn the shocking truth about the growing extraterrestrial epidemic: it attacks its victims while they sleep, leaving them psychically unchanged but strangely unfeeling and inhuman.

As the infection spreads, more and more people are altered and it becomes impossible to know who can be trusted. Now Carol’s only hope is to stay awake long enough to find her young son, who may hold the key to stopping the devastating invasion.


Directed by: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Actor: Daniel Craig
Actress: Nicole Kidman
The Invasion

Many will look at Oliver Hirschbiegel's The Invasion, the fourth film treatment of the '50s novel The Body Snatchers, with an eye towards what came from the director of Downfall and what was added later by a series of studio-mandated reshoots, supervised by the Wachowski Brothers and their V for Vendetta surrogate James McTeague. They'll have to look hard, and then hopefully write detailed analyses on the internet. If McTeague and the Wachowskis ran major interference for the studio, they did so with mafia-level efficiency and brutality; hardly a trace of European art-movie evidence remains.

The finished product doesn't even particularly resemble V for Vendetta, which at least gave plenty of screen time over to stylish allegory; frankly, I'm not sure if there was much left to ruin here. McTeague and company may have called a redo on over half the film, as some reports claim, but that figure doesn't match with my own informal statistical data: well over 80 percent of The Invasion is pure (if slick) boilerplate. If Hirschbiegel was up to something smart or thought-provoking, Warner Brothers should have a whole other movie on its cutting-room floor.

Whatever its origins, this version tosses in some background audio meant to invoke current events (pandemics, terrorism, the Iraq war), but mentioning politics isn't the same thing as addressing them. Ideas (mainly about the self-destructiveness of human nature) are verbalized, briefly, but never visualized, deepened, explored, or tied together in a way that could resonate for more than a second or two after the lights go up; pod-like smooth surfaces reign.

This is not to say that The Invasion comes through as a dumb thriller, either. At the outset, the filmmakers fail to find tension in the body-snatching so central to the story. When normal humans are taken over by an alien virus that renders them emotionless and hive-minded, it doesn't take an intimate familiarity with the previous incarnations of Body Snatchers to know that something is wrong, both within the world of the movie (these things obviously aren't human) and outside it, in the audience (these things are so obvious, they're not scary).

There are some quiet, tense bits based around the opposite concept: that once the invasion hits, humans must pass for emotionless pod-people in order to escape capture and/or transformation. For a few minutes at a time, the film finds some chills: Nicole Kidman, playing a psychiatrist traversing DC and Baltimore to fetch her imperiled son, creeps along sidewalks and subway cars, trying not to cry or shriek or even sweat, attempting to put up an impenetrable shield of conformity.

Kidman is the movie's lead, and as wonderful as she can be, she's not made to play the everywoman that audiences identify with in this story. Her character's nervous imitation of an icy pod person is more convincing than the actress's nervous imitation of Jodie Foster as a loving/avenging mother. The casting in general seems designed to bore the actors into submission; why else would anyone enlist the gifted character actor Jeffrey Wright to play a B-movie-style scientist who speaks entirely in exposition?

More egregiously, the film has Daniel Craig, noted badass, playing a dull, even fumbling doctor engaged in a not-quite-relationship with Kidman. Craig is one of the best actors to ever play James Bond, but this film (partially filmed before Casino Royale) helps him recall his Bond predecessors in the worst way, giving him a nothing part perfectly suited to Timothy Dalton in 1988 or Pierce Brosnan in 1994.

With Kidman, Craig, and Wright given more room for eccentricity, this could've at least been a snappy, perverse B-movie -- maybe even, dare to dream, a thought-provoking take on old material. But while The Invasion moves along with a certain low-level efficiency, over and out in 90 minutes, in the end it's not even a fascinating, Frankensteinian failure -- just a TV movie with talented actors, a zombie movie without blood, a dead-eyed body with human beings trapped inside.

Invasion


Disturbia Images

Kale (Shia LeBeouf) berubah menjadi seorang anak yang pemurung, tertutup dan bermasalah setelah ayahnya meninggal dunia. Kale tinggal bersama ibunya, Julie (Carrie-Ann Moss)yang terpaksa bekerja siang malam untuk menghidupi mereka berdua. Tapi kesibukannya justru membuat jarak yang semakin jauh dengan Kale. Apalagi Kale terkena tuduhan pidana dan dijadikan tahanan rumah oleh pihak kepolisian. Sejak jadi tahanan rumah, Kale yang bosan menemukan aktifitas baru: menjadi pengintai. Dengan binokularnya ia mulai mengintai tetangganya yang dia duga adalah seorang pembunuh berantai. Apakah ini hanya imaginasi Kale?

After his father's death, Kale (Shia LeBeouf) becomes withdrawn, introverted and troublesome. He finds himself under a court ordered sentence of house arrest. His mother Julie (Carrie-Ann Moss), works night and day to support both of them only to find further gap in their relationship. Inside the walls of his house, Kale's boredom turned him into some kind of a voyeur. His interest now turns to his neighbor whom in his mind is a serial killer. With his binocular, Kale is spying on him. Is his neighbor really a serial killer?


Directed by: D.J. Caruso
Actor: Shia LeBeouf, David Morse
Actress: Carrie-Ann Moss
Disturbia


Disturbia is a critically vulnerable film at the outset. Its task is an audacious one: "YouTubing" Hitchcock. Who isn't disturbed by the prospect of D.J. Caruso (Taking Lives!) helming a Rear Window rip-off for the MySpace generation? In the role of Jimmy Stewart: The talented if somewhat untested Shia LeBeouf. Grace Kelly: Sarah Roemer, a bit player in the woeful The Grudge 2. Gulp. Instead of a telescope, we get about four sets of binoculars, video cameras, mobile phones, and some outrageously sophisticated computer surveillance equipment. Instead of the poignantly crafted Miss Lonelyheart and the frustrated composer of Hitchcock's film, the neighbourhood offers for our voyeuristic pleasures the bikini-clad girl next door and a group of prepubescents with a penchant for porn. There is so much wrong before the film has even begun.
The film's beginning will not allay your fears. Kale (LeBeouf) and his dad (Matt Craven) are fishing. Knee-deep in a lake and surrounded by mountains, they share a particularly cheesy father-son moment. We see that he's not just Kale's father, he is his friend. The relationship is so clichéd and the setting so cloyingly idyllic, that one wants to run for the (admittedly beautiful-looking) hills. However, before you go to switch off the Hallmark channel, Caruso offs the dad in a car accident just brutal enough to forgive what came before and dissolve some preconceptions. It's a pretty good move (although not quite Janet Leigh in the Bates Motel shower) and sets us up for a film that effectively handles and plays its audience.
One year later, a now sullen Kale hits his cartoonishly inappropriate Spanish teacher in the face and earns himself a stint in house arrest. He is forced to wear a tracking device around his ankle to keep him within the confines of his home and yard. Step out of bounds, and the little green light turns red. His mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) is distraught, coping with the death of her husband, the derailment of her son, and the financial strains of single parenthood. Stuck in his house, Kale, joined by his best friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo), begins to spy on the neighbors. He is first struck by the girl next-door, sultry afternoon swimmer Ashley (Roemer), but when she joins the boys for the suburban peepshow, it is the man across the road, Mr. Turner (an icy David Morse), who commands the spotlight. Turner, like Rear Window's Thorvald, has a rather suspicious habit of behaving like a murderer.
The group's investigation of Turner is the drive of the film, and Caruso and writers Christopher B. Landon and Carl Ellsworth get a lot of mileage from it. The capabilities of modern technology actually bring something novel to the Rear Window formula. Like Hitchcock's conceit of filming predominantly from within the one room of his Rear Window set, the various technologies here enhance the tension. A scene in which Ronnie sends to Kale's laptop a live feed of his break-in to Turner's garage is a brilliant set piece, managing to ratchet up almost unbearable suspense (just which corner of the shaky screen is Turner going to leap from) while paying triple homage to Hitchcock, The Blair Witch Project, and YouTube.
Screenwriter Ellsworth worked in similarly claustrophobic territory for Wes Craven's Red Eye. That film, also a wildly implausible but ultimately satisfying thriller, was marked by an attention to comic detail in the supporting cast. Disturbia is similarly marked by a hip wit and well-drawn support. I particularly liked Yoo as Ronnie, who enlivens some already sharp dialogue with a manic breakout performance. Yoo's elastic face and energy bring hilarity to even the most nail-biting sequences. LeBeouf fares well too, managing to be heroic, petulant, and romantic with the ease befitting a leading man.
Disturbia ultimately transcends the doubts one might have going in and gets done what it sets out to do. It's no Rear Window; it was never going to be. But as a slick update, and perhaps an introduction for younger audiences to that classic film, it succeeds.
The DVD is packed with a commentary track, deleted scenes, outtakes, a pop-up trivia track, and a making-of featurette.


The Simpsons Movie Images

Serial televisi kartun "The Simpsons" sudah mengudara selama 18 tahun. Akhirnya, kita bisa juga menyaksikan Homer sekeluarga dan rakyat kota Springfield beraksi di layar lebar. Pihak produser tidak bersedia memberikan bocoran plot film kartun ini demi menjaga unsur surprise yang ingin mereka berikan kepada penonton. Namun, dilihat dari trailer yang sudah beredar, sedikit banyak menceritakan adanya kekacauan yang dilakukan oleh Homer yang berakibat fatal.

After 18 years on the air, The Simpsons, Springfield's favorite family finally makes it to the big screen. Producer refused to release a plot to keep the surprise intact and fresh. Yet, judging from the trailer that has been released and aired, it seems that Homer is involved in a big mess that he himself created.


Directed by: David Silverman
Actor: Dan Castellaneta
Actress: Julie Kavner
The Simpsons Movie

Not quite, Comic Book Guy, but the long-gestating and highly anticipated The Simpsons Movie does deliver a raucous feature-length venture that should satisfy faithful fans while still entertaining audience members who don't know Homer J. Simpson from a hole in the wall. By stretching a formula normally applied to a 22-minute episode, Simpsons lobs comically sacrilegious spitballs at an environmentally sensitive storyline that justifies its big-screen treatment. The humor stays irreverent without making the still-running sitcom irrelevant.
Flash back, momentarily, to "Lisa the Vegetarian," the fifth episode of the show's seventh season. Upon learning that his socially conscious daughter Lisa (Yeardley Smith) plans to give up meat, shocked parent Homer (Dan Castellaneta) tries his best to understand her sacrifice.
Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No
Homer: Pork chops
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
Homer's ignorance is equally pathetic and prophetic, as his "magical animal" ends up being the final nail in the festering coffin that is Springfield, the fictional town the Simpsons call home.
Trouble ensues when Homer adopts an orphaned pig, which isn't a major issue until he needs a place to dispose of the animal’s waste. Small problems often balloon to epic proportions in the Simpsons world, and before long, the family has fled a contaminated -- and federally barricaded -- Springfield to seek refuge in the wilds of Alaska.
It's difficult to write fresh material for an army of characters who have existed in another medium for 18 seasons, and The Simpsons Movie recycles small elements that rabid followers recognize. Problem child Bart (Nancy Cartwright) once again considers joining the Flanders family, while Lisa finds love in fellow adolescent activist Colin (Maile Flanagan). It's all been done, but we don't mind doing it again.
A team of veteran Simpsons writers returned for the film project and their enthusiasm blankets the first act. The finest and fastest jokes gush in a furious torrent of supporting-character cameos, each bearing a stinging laugh line. Simpsons slows down as the plot advances, making room for Albert Brooks, voicing the maniacal head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Tom Hanks as himself. Inevitably, favorite characters are either relegated to quick sound bites (Dr. Nick) or erased completely (Sideshow Bob). Let's hope they're more prominently featured in a sequel that doesn’t take another 18 years to produce.


The Last Mimzy Images

Dua orang kakak beradik menemukan sebuah kotak misterius yang berisi benda-benda aneh yang mereka kira mainan. Salah satu dari mainan yang berada di dalam kotak adalah sebuah boneka kelinci yang bernama Mimzy yang "mengajarkan" mereka banyak hal. Semakin mereka bermain dengan "mainan-mainan" ini, mereka berubah menjadi anak-anak jenius yang membuat takjub dan ngeri guru-guru dan orang tua mereka. Apalagi setelah Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) mengatakan bahwa Mimzy membawa pesan penting dari masa depan.

Two children discover a mysterious box that contains some strange devices they think are toys. They begin to display higher and higher intelligence levels. Their teacher tells their parents that they seem to have grown beyond genius.

Their parents, too, realize something extraordinary is happening. Emma, the younger of the two, tells her confused mother that one of the toys, a beat-up stuffed toy rabbit, is named Mimzy and that "she teaches me things."

Things quickly spin wildly out of their control. The children are focused on these strange objects, Mimzy, and the important mission on which they seem to have been sent. Everyone realizes they are involved in something incredible but exactly what?

Based on the acclaimed sci-fi short story by Lewis Padgett.


Directed by: Robert Shaye
Actor: Chris O'Neil, Timothy Hutton
Actress: Rhiannon Leigh Wryn
The Last Mimzy

A mimzy -- to answer your burning question -- is a tattered, plush bunny stuffed with cotton and an alien nervous system that gives the doll artificial intelligence. Scientists from a dying future need a sample of good DNA, so they teleport the last of these rabbits to a Seattle beach in our present day, where precocious siblings Noah (Chris O’Neil) and Emma Wilder (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) scoop the toy up and bring it home.
So begins Robert Shaye's pleasant adventure The Last Mimzy, inspired by Lewis Padgett's short story Mimsy Were the Borogoves, which should do for sci-fi exploration what Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids franchise did for family espionage. The adults in Noah's life -- from his parents (Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton) to his science teacher (Rainn Wilson) -- are too caught up in their daily routine to notice that the boy is changing. It isn't until Mimzy causes a citywide blackout that the military -- personified by Michael Clarke Duncan -- comes snooping around. The movie, at this point, begins to mimic E.T. without actually becoming its emotional equivalent.
Shaye's day job is co-CEO for New Line Studios -- he helped greenlight the Lord of the Rings franchise (hooray!) and continues to impede Peter Jackson from attempting to film The Hobbit (boo!).
Behind the camera for the first time since 1990's Book of Love, Shaye nails some important themes that keep Mimzy relevant and accessible. The film establishes a comforting family dynamic in the Wilders, despite the omnipresence of technology. One of my favorite scenes in the film finds dad David (Hutton) trying to connect with Noah after a hard day's work. He has to repeatedly ask the boy to turn off a blaring video game system so the two can have an actual face-to-face.
Too many parents in the audience will identify. They'll also enjoy the antics of Wilson, who tones down his dominant Dwight persona from NBC's The Office to find the hippie Pacific Northwest vibe of a Mister Wizard professor who's too cool for school. And most moms and dads will rush home from the theater to download Roger Waters' trippy original tune "Hello (I Love You)", which plays over the movie's end credits. It easily could be a lost track from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album.
The rest of Mimzy appeals directly to pre-teens, primarily boys primed for fantastic adventures. Newcomers O'Neil and Wryn are finds. As Noah and Emma play with their space toys, they grow infinitely more intelligent, but the child actors never lose the important sense of innocence that powers these precious voyages.
The DVD includes many deleted scenes and copious making-of featurettes, interactive games, and New Line's Infinifilm features, which integrates even more featurettes and trivia into the film.


RUSH HOUR 3 Images

Detektif James Carter (Chris Tucker) dan Ketua Inspektur Lee (Jackie Chan) menuju Perancis, dimana mereka menghadapi komplotan mafia dari Cina.

Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) and Chief Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) travel to France, where they get mixed up with the Chinese Triad crew.

Directed by: Brett Ratner
Actor: Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker
Actress: Noemie Lenoir

For all the talk of his beguiling cameo as a police chief, Roman Polanski shows up in Rush Hour 3 for exactly two scenes for about two minutes. In fact, the French police have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the third Rush Hour installment. Polanski simply acts as a diacritic; a punctuation mark to let us know we're entering and exiting the French portion of the program. And although they are given more screen time, Ingmar Bergman-regular Max Von Sydow and French actor/director Yvan Attal serve similar purposes: They're garnish on a liver sandwich made with moldy bread and mayonnaise that started going green around the time of the Bay of Pigs.
Rush Hour 3 plunks our questionable partners, the loose-mouthed Carter (Chris Tucker) and elastic Lee (Jackie Chan), into an international scandal involving the Chinese Triad election that takes them from sunny Los Angeles to gay Paris. Lee's friend and employer Consul Hu (Tzi Ma) is about to blow the lid off the Triads when a sniper snags him a few centimeters north of his heart. Hu's friend Vernard (Von Sydow) OKs Lee and Carter's trip to his hometown of Paris, where, for one reason or another, the Chinese Triad have decided to have an election.
The gears of this machine grind hard and they blare out of the speakers during almost every second of Rush Hour 3, exempting the few blissful minutes of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot's "Bonnie and Clyde" that is played during a burlesque scene. The most surprising aspect of this unneeded and unwanted third chapter is how effectively director Brett Ratner breaks what he'd actually fixed. Originally, Rush Hour was a structure piece: a half-assed Lethal Weapon with less chemistry and more acrobatics. Then, seeing the infantilism of rigid structure, Ratner let it all hang out in Rush Hour 2. Hour 2 was one of those rare moments where the inherent fun of something outweighed the stupidity of it, allowing Chan and Tucker to riff with a loose vitality. It was a pleasure; no guilt about it.
The rigidness of Ratner's first film has nothing on the stupendous banality of this latest incarnation. Instead of the playful banter that infested the second film, Chan's stiff delivery is punctuated by meaningless and exhaustive one-liners that pour out of Tucker like an oil tanker that just got the business-end of a torpedo. These meaningless ramblings are show ponies in a parade of cluttered storylines and absurd half-notes. The triad is represented by Lee's "brother" Kenji (Hiroyuki Sanada), who shows up when the action needs some sort of meaning. Sanada, a brooding presence in this summer's Sunshine, deserves better than this.
As if knowledgeable of its own instability, Hour 3 rushes to end itself in a manic hobgob of shoot-outs, double-crosses, and absurd one-note jokes. Ratner's film now has sloppy sense of story and pacing while losing the spontaneity that had originally given the film its wild-eyed cheer. In one scene, Lee and Carter's driver (Attal) attempts to shoot someone for no reason, "like an American." Rush Hour 3 then gives him a reason and takes away all the fun of it.


NO RESERVATIONS Images

Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) adalah seorang koki handal. Akan tetapi ia terlalu terobsesi dengan pekerjaannya sehingga sang bos yang merasa kasihan karena menganggap Kate tidak mempunyai kehidupan lain ingin mengirimnya ke seorang psikiater. Rencana si bos tidak berhasil mulus hingga pada suatu ketika, bosnya mempekerjakan seorang koki baru, Nick (Aaron Eckhart) untuk memperbantukan Kate di dapur. Tapi Kate yang merasa kedudukannya terancam tidak menyukai hal ini. Di saat yang bersamaan, kakaknya mengalami kecelakaan yang parah sehingga anak perempuannya (Abigail Breslin) harus tinggal bersama Kate.

A top notch female chef’s life is turned upside-down when she must care of her niece after her sister is killed. She now has to adapt to a different lifestyle and uses food as a means to express her roller-coaster life.


Directed by: Scott Hicks
Actor: Aaron Eckhart
Actress: Catherine Zeta-Jones
No Reservations


Amidst the action-adventure blockbusters and schlocky teen horror of summer, we always get, for better or worse, the requisite Hollywood warm-weather date movie. No Reservations may live up to its ancestry, and while that isn't saying a whole lot, it's still a relatively sweet, if predictable and overly slick, romance.
Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Kate, a control-freak chef so tightly wound it's a wonder she doesn't pop in the steam of her kitchen. Despite her position as reigning queen of the Manhattan foodie set, her killer West Village apartment, and the fact that she looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kate is a sad sack; she does not really exist outside of her job and her employer-ordered therapy (Kate also has a temper, see, when anyone, customers included, question her perfection).
Charming romantic comedy conventions intervene for Kate, however, when her sister dies suddenly, leaving Kate to care for her wide-eyed, mini-bohemian 10-year-old niece Zoe (Abigail Breslin) at the same time that a larger-than-life sous chef, who impossibly seems to be able to cook well and enjoy life, gets a job in Kate's kitchen. Nick (Aaron Eckhart, doing what almost seems to be a Gerard Depardieu impression for some unknown, albeit charming, reason) pushes all of Kate's buttons and instantly hits it off with Zoe, and thus begins Kate's transition from uptight headcase to romantic comedy lead.
There is clearly nothing here to tax any acting muscles, and while Eckhart, for one, has proven himself capable of more, he still plays the sweetly endearing Mr. Perfect with visible ease. Zeta-Jones is looking a bit tired here, but is still just fine as a very sad and restrained woman. It's nice to have a strong support cast, too, even if their talents are all completely unnecessary. Folks like Patricia Clarkson and Bob Balaban, as the restaurant owner and psychiatrist, respectively, really have no reason to be here save the paycheck, but they are welcome nonetheless.
For all the times that No Reservations is utterly conventional and predictable, it is kind enough to sidestep the contrived complications that often litter the genre -- Zoe is a little girl in mourning, but she isn't acting like a devil child out to destroy Aunt Kate. (Plus, it helps that Breslin is the most adorable, realistic child actor out there. She would take Dakota Fanning in an act-off cage match any day.) Even the cookie cutter romance isn't plagued by wacky, trite misunderstandings to veer it off course.
This is not to say the movie doesn't take advantage of convenient plot devices -- a controlling star chef working at a restaurant with a hands-on and bossy owner all up in her business defies logic. And while there are numerous problems a single woman working an executive chef's hours in Manhattan would face by suddenly becoming a parent to a tween girl, finding adequate, accommodating childcare when she has the money to shell out for it? Is not one of them. Perhaps it comes from changing the locale -- Reservations is based on a German comedy, Mostly Martha, and the finer points may have been more palatable in the original setting.
But even as Reservations kept in may of Martha's finer points, it's missing the inherent charm of the original. It is a sweet enough genre piece, but what prevents it from being more is a lack of wonder or magic to make it truly likeable. Even this summer's earlier foodfest Ratatouille showed more passion for the gourmet, by a cartoon rat no less, than Kate ever does -- she seems to cook out of drive, never out of true love. It's funny enough, but not particularly endearing, and it takes more than sappy montages set to music and a jaunty scene involving a bicycle built for three to build up any real feeling for the characters.

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