This was one of my favorite movies of 2007.  The look of new york and the way they show the change of the city is really crazy.  I like how they deliver the pre-story to the  audience.The only downside to the movie was that the “infected” were CGI and not real human actors and extras.  You have a certain feeling about the movie until you start seeing the fake people running around.  Other than that, great movie.  Worth seeing in theatres.

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This movie was really good.  I didn’t see any of it coming until right before it hit.  I guess I am just not as observant as the other writers.  Really good story, cool twists, and even at the slow parts you are interested.Wait and rent.

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I love Rob Zombie movies. After House of 1000 Corpses he has really gotten good. I like his camera work and choice of music for his films.  He doesn’t take anything away from this movie and actually makes it a little more believable.  Michael Myers is no normal 6ft tall normal built bad guy.  Everything he does in this movie you could actually see him doing to these people.  Unlike the original where this normal looking guy can pick ever person up by their throat and you sit back saying “yeah right”.I like how they added more to his childhood and gave a better look at why he was the way he was.  I actually wish they would have shown more of him as a child.See it in theatres if possible, if not OWN IT.  It will go good with the rest of the collection.  If you like horror, this will fit right in.

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I will start out by saying, I hated the ending.Everything about this movie, up until the end, was great. There was plenty of action and many well thought out situations that just kept you on th edge of your seat.The villain of the movie was great, he was one of the craziest looking bad guys I have seen since The Fifth Element. His haircut was probably what made his character. It wouldn’t have been the same without it. His weapon of choice was really creative and his “friendo” phrase was classic.I would consider this a rent, don’t waste the big screen experience on this film.

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To start, it is not my intention to bash this movie. But what is the saying? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”? I think that is it. Anyway, let me not get sidetracked so early. This film flashed a couple of names on the big screen that I was extremely excited to see. Terence Howard shows up as Dr. Jack Harper, a surgeon fallen on hard times. He is very good friends with the son of Lina Olin, playing Lilith Beresford. Following behind these two are Hayden Christenson as Clayton Beresford Jr, and Jessica Alba as Sam Lockwood (the pair are secretly engaged). Conveniently enough, Dr. Harper is also the surgeon that Clay would like to perform his heart surgery.   The first half (that’s right, I said half) of the film centers on the relationship between Clay and Sam, with Clay wrestling with whether to disclose it to his mother. Nearly halfway through, Clay actually ends up on the operating table. Here is where I pose a question. It is the only one that I am going to pose. Please refer back to my very first sentence. Since when does heart transplant surgery consist of only four participants and the patient? Ponder that, Readers. Oh yeah, and he is awake through the whole surgery. He can hear everything and feel everything. I don’t have a medical degree, but I really think the film is stretching it all a little bit thin.   So, final say on Awake: I figured out every single twist. Every one. Some of them I saw from miles away, others only a few feet. But not a single revelation came as a surprise to me. Some were due to a terribly revealing preview and the rest were just plain old predictability. However, I did think that it was an interesting movie. Perhaps because the first half of the movie moved along so leisurely, I had too much time to think and examine. The second half was much quicker and the movie never felt boring. It’s definitely a creepy premise. I say to wait for DVD, and if you can get yourself invited over for a screening at someone else’s house (that way you don’t even have to pay to rent it) then you will break even on entertainment vs. time in your life that you will never recover.Previews I liked:Charlie Wilson’s WarWalk Hard27 Dresses

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I have been looking forward to this movie for a while.  I was relieved that despite Will Smith proclaiming that July 4th was “his weekend” for movie releases that this film came out at a much more respectable time.  Sure, this is still an event movie, but the last thing I wanted was for this to be lumped in with the “summer tent poles.”  And after Pursuit of Happyness, I believe that I am madly in love with Will Smith.  Enough of that, to the movie.  Dr. Robert Neville is the only surviving human in New York City.  He also happens to be the scientist that was working to cure the very virus that wiped out the entire human population.  The shots of him alone in a city that has been reclaimed by nature are just disturbing.  To me it was a mix between Stephen King’s The Stand and Castaway.  He truly carries this movie squarely on his own shoulders, with only a dog named Sam for company.  Dr. Neville continues his research during the day and at night arms himself against blood-hungry mutated humans.  Even when everything is over, he still maintains that he can fix it all. I really liked this movie.  It never dragged or lost my interest.  You watch him begin to unravel and see how that much time alone begins to fray the edges of his sanity.  I enjoyed the way the back-story was revealed and of course I want to know more.  I want to know what happened to the scientist that started it all (played by Emma Thompson, with about 90 seconds of screen time).  I think that I agree with others that the infected should have been played by actual humans and not brought to us through CGI, but ultimately it didn’t make the movie any less enjoyable.  It’s definitely going to get a repeat viewing from me.  You should treat yourself to a screening as well and avoid the empty holiday fare that is so readily available during this time of the year.  Go see Will do some real acting; I don’t think you will regret it. Previews I liked:RamboSemi-ProThe Dark Knight (!!!!!)

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I’m not going to waste any time at all getting to the point on this one. This was without a doubt the best movie I have seen this year. This is the kind of movie that doesn’t end when the credits roll. I took it home with me and I couldn’t shake it for a long while. The story is straightforward enough. Llewelyn Moss is out hunting in the Texas desert and stumbles across the remains of a shootout: several dead bodies, dead trucks, a truck bed full of heroin, and two million dollars. Everyone is dead, so he takes the money. You could say that “still waters run deep” for each of the main male characters of this film. Moss is played by Josh Brolin as a man of few words, determined to keep what he decides is rightfully his. Javier Bardem is Anton Chigurh, the ruthless killer sent to recover the money, who enjoys deciding the fate of victims on the flip of a coin. Then we have Tommy Lee Jones as the town sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, investigating the trail of deaths left by Chigurh and trying to find Moss in the meantime. I love what the Coens do with the film. Immediately you get the parallels between Moss and Chigurh, the elements of good and evil taken and presented out of focus. Bell is just the guy trying to keep up, testing himself to see if he has still got it. He certainly isn’t given anyone to whom he can pass it along. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole film, until they put the brakes on in ways you will never see coming. And the fact that Kelly McDonald, playing Moss’s wife Carla Jean, turns out to be one of the most interesting characters was a complete surprise. Of all the lines spoken in the film, I think Carla Jean’s, in her last scene, were the most compelling. I’m not equipped to explain this movie right now. I have to see it again. You have to see it immediately. And in the meantime, something to consider: what is the most you have ever lost in a coin toss?

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So, the long awaited directorial debut by Ben Affleck (who was waiting?  Some people were. Yes, it’s true) finally arrived.  Based upon a novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) the film arrives suitably gritty, twisty, and right at home in Boston.  The film centers on Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) as partners in business as well as everything else.  While watching news coverage of a young girl’s kidnapping, their private investigation skills (and status as a neighborhood boy) are requested in talking with the locals to try and get information that the police can’t get. And off we go into a tour of the neighborhood (and these bit parts are obviously played by actual people from the area, Affleck’s nod to his hometown) where everyone seems to know something and of course, nothing is what it seems.  This is where we meet Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), head of the task force to stop violence against children, and Detective Remy Brassant (Ed Harris, the watchdog assigned to follow Patrick around. I enjoyed the movie, but it felt a little choppy.  The first half is a frantic search for a little girl that suddenly becomes about something completely different.  Trying to see how it all ties up in the end is a little difficult.  I don’t know whether to attribute this to Affleck’s novice directorial skills or to a story that was so large it couldn’t be contained smoothly within two hours.  Other than the strange flow of the story, the twists were interesting if not entirely realistic. I believe I’ve waited almost long enough to write this for it to be available on DVD by now, so stop and pick it up or catch in theaters while you can.

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Did you all know that I love Steve Carell?  I do.  So, I was very excited to go see this movie that just made him look as cute as a button in the previews.  The set up is this: He is Dan Burns, a widowed advice columnist with three daughters who is beginning to encounter the same problems with which his readers approach him. An annual family tradition, Dan packs his girls into the family station wagon and drives them up to his parent’s house to close it up for the summer.  There he is reunited with his parents (Dad played by John Mahoney from Say Anything!) and his siblings.  The first morning his mother sends him on an errand and while in town he meets Marie (Juliette Binoche).  He helps her pick out books and spends what seems to be several hours sharing a muffin breakfast and talking.  Before they part she lets him know that she is seeing someone but they exchange phone numbers (you know, to be friends). Of course, arriving home, he discovers that Marie is Mitch’s (his brother, played by Dane Cook, very funny in this) new girlfriend.  Very much hair pulling and nail biting ensues as Dan becomes convinced that she is the only one for him and can’t figure out how to betray his brother and be happy at the same time.  As a friend of mine would say, this film is too cute cute.  I felt that there was very little focus on what he does for a living, considering the title of the film comes directly from the title of his column, but the scenes of family activities were so nostalgic and heart warming.  You can understand how he can’t come to terms with risking his family for love.  And did I mention that I love Steve Carell?

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I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this movie. I wanted to spend so little time on it that I’m writing this a full two and a half weeks after seeing it. Unfortunately, I still have the residue of the film on my brain. Ben Stiller and Malin Akerman play Eddie and Lila, who meet right around the time that Eddie really feels the pressure to get married. So they do. And then they honeymoon. Everything goes wrong. And I mean everything. It’s just not good. While on honeymoon, Eddie meets Miranda (Michelle Monaghan) and realizes he has made a terrible mistake. He proceeds to fall in love with Miranda and try to figure out how to tell Lila, who is consistently descending further into madness. I’m not saying this movie doesn’t have its moments. It does. I laughed hysterically at least twice, but the rest of the time I was cringing or hiding behind my hand. The dialogue was lame and the gross-outs (a la There’s Something About Mary) were unamusing. This movie had no charm and I apologize for waiting so long to write this in case you wasted your money.

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