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Jane Campion; Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish. Rating: * * * * *

Bright Star (2009) – Free Video Streaming, featuring Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, is an exquisite piece of film-making by Jane Campion.

Director Jane Campion has a knack for portraying female characters so intimately that she seems to get beneath their skin. She does it again in Bright Star, an exquisite piece of film-making about the doomed romance between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne.

The story of their slow-burning affair, which was halted by Keats’ succumbing to tuberculosis, is told largely from Fanny’s viewpoint in this British-Australian co-production – a period film and a biopic that thankfully never feels a typical example of either genre.

The result is a welcome return to form for New Zealander Campion, who remains the only female director to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, an honour she achieved with The Piano in 1993. For me, she never regained the individualistic spark and verve of that work in subsequent films – Portrait of A Lady, Holy Smoke and In The Cut.

But she certainly has now.

Australian actress Abbie Cornish, in a career-defining role, shoulders the story’s dramatic burden. Her Fanny Brawne, grounded and forthright, is initially more interested in sewing than poetry – by Keats or anyone else. But gradually she becomes enthralled by him.

As Keats, Ben Whishaw certainly looks the part: pale, intense and faintly wasted. Yet with a generous wit and affable disposition, he makes the poet more rounded than a one-dimensional Romantic stereotype.

The film tracks their relationship from start to finish: from 1818, when they were neighbours near Hampstead Heath, to his final departure from Britain to convalesce in Italy’s warm climes more than two years later.

Campion jettisons most period trappings – costumes, elaborate furniture, beautiful houses – to concentrate on the feelings in the story. She somehow evokes the aching, giddy intoxication of an impossible love affair, and employs audacious devices to do it.

Having Cornish and Whishaw recite stretches of Keats’ poetry in the course of conversation is a risky strategy that could easily misfire, but never does.

Together with her gifted cinematographer Greig Fraser, Campion also sets the mood through silent visual imagery. His camera remains largely static; every shot is lit and framed with a care and precision that does justice to, and even correlates to Keats’s poetry.

Some of these images – narrow, cramped doorways, a butterfly flapping its wings in a glass jar, a breeze blowing through a curtain to Fanny lying on her bed – create an overwhelming sense of emotion, as does the recitation of Keats’s imploring, yearning love letters to Fanny.

It is not premature to predict that Bright Star it will match any film entered for the Palme d’Or this year for sheer beauty. It looks a strong bet for honours in a week’s time.

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In the year in which we’re celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, it’s a pity that no one has mounted a season of movies touching on his life and work. The centrepiece would be Jon Amiel’s admirable if somewhat mistitled Creation (2009)- Free Movies Online, adapted by the novelist, doctor and former Observer medical correspondent John Collee from Randal Keynes’s book Annie’s Box.

It could begin in a lighthearted vein with the Marx Brothers’ movie Horse Feathers (1932), which starts with Groucho being appointed president of Huxley College and ends with him playing in a survival-of-the-fittest football match with the rival Darwin College. Then there would be the simple but ambitious British movie The Darwin Adventure (1972) that in a breathtaking 90 minutes takes in Darwin’s career-shaping, five-year voyage on the Beagle to South America and the Galapagos Islands, the seminal discoveries that lead to his theory of evolution, his conflict with Captain Fitzroy, the Beagle’s God-fearing skipper, his marriage to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, his problems in producing his classic book and the epoch-making debate it provoked.

This could be followed by the excellent film version of AS Byatt’s novella Angels & Insects (1995), about the effect of the industrial revolution and the ideas of Darwin on the inhabitants of a grand Victorian country household. The next film would be Inherit the Wind (1960), Stanley Kramer’s earnest, heavy film of the Broadway play currently being revived at the Old Vic, centring on the Dayton Monkey Trial in backwoods Tennessee in 1925. In this courtroom where a schoolmaster is on trial for teaching evolution, the agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow confronts the fundamentalist politician and one-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, virtually replaying the Oxford debate between Darwin’s chief 1860 advocate TH Huxley and the Church of England’s stalwart Bishop Wilberforce.

After Inherit the Wind, a little intelligent levity might be introduced by a screening of Peter Weir’s nautical adventure Master and Commander (2003) featuring Paul Bettany as the naturalist and cerebral surgeon of the HMS Surprise, Stephen Maturin, who managed while fighting the French in 1805 to put into the Galapagos, the film’s only landfall, and conduct research that wittily and cheekily foreshadows Darwin’s discoveries there some 30 years later. This would bring us to Creation, a quiet, subtle chamber work starring a persuasively inward-looking Bettany as Darwin and largely set in Darwin’s fine country home in Kent in the late 1850s.

He’s not the archetypal, heavily bearded Victorian sage he became in his later years. He’s a clean-shaven man in his late 40s, neurotic, melancholic, guilt-ridden, troubled in mind and body as so many intelligent, sensitive, middle-class professional people were in a time supposedly devoted to the idea of robust, muscular Christianity preached by Dr Arnold of Rugby.

He feels guilty over what the propagation of his ideas may do to conventional beliefs and organised society, over the rift they’re creating with his protective, deeply Christian wife (Jennifer Connelly) and what he sees, absurdly, as his responsibility for the death seven years earlier of their bright 10-year-old daughter Annie (a sparkling performance of intellectual eagerness and filial devotion by Martha West).

Annie is a central figure in the process by which Darwin comes to terms with his ideas, their delivery to the world and their likely consequences. She’s untainted by social conventions and received beliefs and closer to him than to her mother. In flashbacks, he turns his work during the Beagle expedition and with the orang-utan Jenny into bedtime stories for her and later for her brothers and sisters. Annie understands his revolutionary interpretation of existence, because she looks clearly at the world around her. When she returns to him as a ghost, this is not that traditionally consoling Hollywood figure, the heavenly visitor, but the embodiment of the humanistic notion of the dead remaining alive in the minds of the living.

There is a lively intervention from the outside world when his allies, the aggressive Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones) and the diplomatic Joseph Hooker (Benedict Cumberbatch), drop in on Darwin to stir him into publishing his book. Apart from the moment when the family cook knocks on the great man’s study door saying: “Come along, Mr Darwin, your dinner’s getting cold”, this is the closest the film comes to a 1930s Warner Brothers type of conventional biopic.

Otherwise, it’s a complex, truthful work that does justice to Darwin’s theories and their implications. Particular attention is given to books and learned papers at a time when scientific advance came from individual research conducted privately, rather than, as now, done by teams working for institutions.

Seeing Darwin writing with pen and ink and his loving wife eventually sending off his manuscript to the publisher, we think of the power of the word and the individual mind, an activity examined by Stanley Edgar Hyman in his neglected classic The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as Imaginative Writers. It was ultimately through the power of their prose that those great thinkers impressed their ideas upon a larger public.

But the battle of ideas goes on. We entered the 21st century with a British prime minister who came to countenance creationism and he was joined by a US president who endorsed it. Creation, a carefully reasoned movie that places close to its centre an intelligent, reasoning child, struggled to find an American distributor.

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Writer/director Kurt Wimmer reaffirms his position as the worst motion picture director not named Uwe Boll working in the movie industry with Ultraviolet. Wimmer gained a little undeserved cult fame with the theatrically ignored movie Equilibrium, but despite some really odd pockets of geek love, the film was a disaster. Ultraviolet is no better, in fact it’s a lot worse.

It’s all style over substance in the story of Violet (Milla Jovovich), a self-described hemophage. Hemophage is a fancy way of saying genetically engineered vampire. Except there’s no neck biting for these blood lusters, that doesn’t seem to be in their genetic coding. Having been modified by a contagious disease in a nearish future, they’re vampires only in name, and it’s odd that Wimmer bothered writing them as vamps in the first place since it serves no real purpose in his script. But then most of the stuff that was written down in whatever served as this movie’s script serves no purpose, so why should that be any different.

Violet bursts onto the screen running and gunning and shooting. She’s soon intertwined in a plot to destroy all of her hemophage brethren, or the human race or something. Along for the ride is a kid, whom everyone seems to want though no one seems to know exactly why. Having lost a kid of her own once, Violet gets massively maternal and decides to protect him, though I personally suspect she was just looking for an excuse to do some killing. Or rather it was the creatively brain dead Mister Wimmer who was looking for the excuse.

Yet even the killing isn’t very awe inspiring. With a terminally retarded script, you’d at least hope for some good action in a movie like this. There’s plenty of shooting and stabbing, but even that feels cold and empty. The violence is presented in such a childish fashion, that it has all the impact of a Pokemon battle. There’s no blood, and not much visible death, though a great many gas-masked figures fall lifeless to the ground. If not for the sheer number of vaguely humanoid figures rendered motionless in Violet’s wake, Ultraviolet could have easily been a soft, plush, PG instead of PG-13.

To peg Ultraviolet (2006) as cartoony is an understatement, and probably a disservice to some of the better animated films we’ve seen in recent years. Wimmer’s movie is simply terminally shallow, with Wimmer lacking the ability or the wit needed to create or write anything beyond a third grade reading level.

To give the pic a little credit, it does at least have a unique production design and a few slightly cool, ultimately pointless gadgets. Kurt does have some skill for capturing a certain look, a skill that would perhaps be better put to use designing matte paintings or at best directing thirty-second Scion commercials.

The real shame in all of this is that Milla Jovovich truly is a talented, physical presence. It’s a pity that she’s never found the right action niche, but there’s nothing in Ultraviolet for her or the audience to latch on to. It’s as lifeless and wasted as it sounds; let’s hope this is the last we see of Kurt Wimmer.

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A Tale As Old As Time With Graphics Slightly Ahead Of Our Time.

Like most of the movie going populace I was intrigued by James Cameron’s latest offering. It not only marked his first major release since the monumental award winning and box office smashing flick, Titanic, (yeah, I know he did those undersea documentaries but I’m not counting those so “nyah”) but also his return to the kingdom of sci-fantasy. This is the man that brought us The Terminator, T2: Judgment Day and Aliens. When Cameron announces he’s doing a science fiction picture it raises a whole lot of hackles on the back of a whole lot of necks.

But remember when George Lucas came back from his “retirement” to resurrect the Star Wars film series? Remember how flawless and exquisite those prequels were? Remember Jar Jar Binks? Mr. Lucas tried to get back on his glory horse and many would argue that he was sitting in the saddle backwards. Would Mr. Cameron meet a different fate or also stumble off his “geek god” pedestal?

Before I give my verdict let me tell you about Avatar. I know, that suspense stuff is a pain in the butt but amazingly it still works for American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. But anyway…..

The skinny is that the planet, Pandora, is rich with a valuable ore called “unobtanium”. It fetches a hefty price back on Earth so the demand is high for the stuff. The trouble is that an indigenous race called the Na’vi won’t let the humans mine the unobtanium.

So, the corporation has partnered with science to create Na’vi avatars that will allow humans to control an artificially engineered Na’vi clone through a neural interface. Think the robot doubles in Surrogates except the Na’vi avatars are totally organic. The “driver” experiences everything through his avatar. Every sight, smell, kiss and punch that the avatar feels so too does the human counterpart. The avatars are used to help establish a positive relationship with the rightfully suspicious Na’vi. While the scientists are thrilled with this new culture the suits are growing restless and impatient. When science lags the military is called in to pick up the slack and get the natives to give in to the corporation’s demands or get out of the way of the bulldozers.

When Jake Sully’s (Sam Worthington) twin brother is killed the Marines turn to him as a second choice to pilot a Na’vi avatar. Jake acts as a double agent helping the science team gather more factoids about Na’vi culture and gathering intel for the military brass so they can thoroughly defeat the natives. As Jake grows closer to the people he starts to have pangs of guilt about his mission. Will the paraplegic soldier actually sell out a whole race of intelligent beings in exchange for his restored legs?

Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. At least, not outright. Let me put it this way; if you saw films like The Last Samurai or Dances With Wolves then you’re going to predict a lot of what happens in Avatar because the concept is very similar. The agent goes in, wins the trust of the “enemy” as per his mission but spends way too much quality time with the locals and ends up becoming an honorary member of the pack. Ah, but though the story is similar there are some pleasant surprises for the one that dares to accept the shuttle ticket to Pandora.

Watch Avatar (2009) For Free Online is full of conflict. Man vs Na’vi. Technology vs Organics. Military strong-arming vs diplomatic negotiations. What stuck out most to me was the battle between the profit driven corporation and the sacredness of the environment. Avatar was released at a most fitting time. Watching company man, Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), do whatever it takes to make the bean-counters happy at the expense of a planet’s ecosystem reminded me of the arguments about coal energy during the recent 2009 environmental conference in Copenhagen.

Coal is a great energy source and it has been for many years. It’s kept whole towns thriving and whole nations lit up. But what has been the cost? As the bosses make their profits the workers are subjected to hazardous work sites and constant exposure to toxic substances that affect the miners and the families they come home to. And let’s not forgot about the destruction to the landscape and local water sources. While watching Avatar I was imagining that maybe Parker would go back to his superiors and try to convince them to find another energy substance that would bring power to the people without having to devastate the planet of another people. Because we’re having such a breeze of a time telling those coal companies that they need to clean up their acts or switch to another business venture. Yeah, those fatcats are really going to give up their cash cow so the grass can grow green again.

So, yeah, you can apply Avatar to a plethora of debates and disagreements enviromental, political or otherwise, going on at the moment along with the ugly reminder that the Na’vi aren’t the first group of people to be terrorized for their natural resources. I love that Cheerokee born Wes Studi plays the chief of the Na’vi’s Omaticaya clan. It just gives that genocidal aspect of Avatar a big ol’ exclamation point.

Y’know, there might be some that feel the military get a very unflattering rap in Avatar. It seems that except for Pilot Trudy Chacon (Michelle Rodriguez) and Jake the rest of the military seem to have no qualms about eradicating Pandora of all Na’vi to accomplish their mission. Even the soldiers from ethnic groups that have experienced similar acts of hostility are all smiley and eager when Colonel Quaritch gives them to go ahead to unleash hell on the blue people. Like the story says, in this period in Earth history the soldiers on Pandora are kind of sadistic rejects to begin with so I’d like to think these are the guys and gals who were booted from the real Armed Forces because they were just too trigger-happy for the room.

Next up are the visual effects. There’s a whole lot of CG going in Avatar from the military aircraft to the sophisticated computer systems in the science labs to the flora and fauna of Pandora and of course the completely computer generated Na’vi inhabitants. Imagine the live action / blue screen combos (300, the Star Wars prequels, Cast Away) coupled with meticulously animated CG characters (Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy or Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe).

I have to admit that I thought the graphics were very pretty to look at. Yet, it looked liked the stuff I’ve seen Lucas, Spielberg and Peter Jackson do already so I wasn’t totally blown away. The colors were pretty and the CG creatures were beautifully designed but it was kind of ho-hum for me.

Then the third act (or should I say third hour?) came along when something devastating happens to the Na’vi and the Na’vi became real in my eyes and mind. I mean, when this thing happened and I saw the reactions of the blue people I was hit square in the gut with this solid fist of emotional power. I didn’t cry but I was very moved and awestruck by what I was seeing. I think a lot of directors have been trying to dig up emotions from their CG creations and some have succeeded. But I’ve never seen it done to this scale before. It was incredible how after that turning point all the Na’vi became living and breathing to me.

The performances are a blast to watch and I love how the cast roster reads like a comic-con guest list. Sigourney Weaver plays Dr.Grace Augustine with the compassion and curiosity of Jane Goodall and the steel balls of Ellen Ripley. Sam Worthington won over many with his cybernetic turn in Terminator Salvation and is a fine leading man in Avatar. I would expect to see more of him in 2010’s film schedule. Zoe Saldana takes a break from the Starship Enterprise to give the Omaticaya tribal “princess”, Neytiri, a voice while veteran actress CCH Pounder lends her majestic pipes to the tribe’s queen / high priestess, Mo’at. Michelle Rodriguez adds ace pilot to her impressive resume (boxer, zombie killer, vampire hunter, truck hijacker) while Dileep Rao joins the science team after being nearly dragged to hell (hint, hint) last summer.

Oh right, about that final verdict, um, the basic truth is that I liked Avatar. It feels really routine at first but something happens that shakes all the pieces on the board and then things get really interesting and exciting and emotionally stirring after that. Though the plot is familiar and terribly predictable at times there are still a lot of quality moments that make the trip worthwhile. I think my only gripe is that the ending is dragged out a little too long because we just had to have that final confrontation between Jake and Colonel Quaritch. Oh, and James Horner tries to make lightning strike again with the closing ballad, “I See You”, performed by Leona Lewis. It might be a hit at the next string of wedding ceremonies but it ain’t “My Heart Will Go On”. Sorry.

I don’t know if Avatar will follow Titanic’s footsteps as the next box office monster hit but this is an artistically significant piece of work though it’s hard to deny that Avatar is kind of like Ferngully overdosing on performance enhancement drugs.

And if you can see Avatar in 3-D please do. The extra $5 makes a difference because the already impressive visuals look drop dead gorgeous in the third dimension. This has to be the grandest environmental commercial ever made.

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In the last shot of Avatar, someone’s closed eyes snap open. That’s the climax and the message of James Cameron’s first fiction feature since 1997’s Titanic: Look around! Embrace the movie — surely the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures — as a total sensory, sensuous, sensual experience. The planet Pandora that Cameron and his army of artist-technicians have created — at a budget believed to be in excess of $300 million — is a wonder world of flora and fauna: a rain forest (where it hardly ever rains) of gigantic trees and phosphorescent plants, of six-legged flying horses, panther dogs and hammerhead dinosaurs. Living among these creatures is Pandora’s humanish tribe, the Na’vi, a lean, 10-ft.-tall, blue-striped people with yellow eyes, or what mankind might have been if it had evolved in harmony with, and not in opposition to, the Edenic environment that gave rise to its birth.

It’s the year 2154, and Pandora, a moon of the Alpha Centauri star, is the reluctant host to an expedition of Americans seeking to mine an incredibly valuable rock called unobtainium — a joke term that was coined in the 1950s and refers to any kind of material that’s unavailable or impractical to use, which Cameron employs to locate his movie among science-fiction adventures of the period. The expedition, headed by sleazy entrepreneur Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), includes scientists working for Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and a Blackwater-type security force led by the malevolently macho Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). The scientists have hatched avatars (known as “dreamwalkers”) that look like Na’vi but blend their DNA with that of humans, who will steer them by remote control. Augustine is entranced by the Na’vi’s aristocratic gentility, but to Selfridge and Quaritch they are “blue monkeys,” “savages,” “an aboriginal horde.” Or for want of a better word: disposable.

The new guy in this program is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington, last seen going up against machinery in Terminator Salvation), a paraplegic ex-Marine whose dead identical twin brother had been in the project. Since Sully has the same DNA, he’s chosen to man his late brother’s avatar. Augustine wants Sully to befriend the Na’vi and help her unearth precious biological samples; Quaritch orders him to become a secret spy, as part of the company’s plan to drive the tribe away from a sacred tree, under which can be found vast reserves of unobtainium. In this double role, Sully meets Neyfiri (Zoe Saldana), daughter of the tribal chief. At first suspicious of his motives and contemptuous of his clumsiness — “Ignorant, like a child,” is the way she puts it — Neyfiri is nevertheless impressed by Sully’s adaptability. Somehow he has an affinity for this place, for the Na’vi and for her. Someday he will be their savior.

For me to say that Avatar is better than Titanic is not the highest possible praise. I was no ardent fan of Cameron’s grafting of a poor-boy/rich-girl love story onto the true saga of that doomed ship, which set sail from Southampton in 1912. But it was a night to remember for enough moviegoers, becoming the all-time top-grossing film, with a take of just over $1.8 billion (though it ranks sixth in real dollars, after Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments). What Cameron earned from Titanic’s enormous success was the cachet (11 Oscars, tying the record with Ben-Hur and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) and cash to make Avatar, which has been called the most expensive picture ever made (though, again in real dollars, that record is probably held by 1963’s Cleopatra). That shouldn’t matter to viewers. The democratizing principle of the box office is that moviegoers pay the same amount to see Avatar, in its 2-D form, as they do for Paranormal Activity, with its $11,000 budget. The only question they need have is: Is the movie worth it?

I say yes, for Watch for free Avatar (2009) is a state-of-the-art experience that for years to come will define what movies can achieve, not in duplicating our existence but in confecting new ones. The story may be familiar from countless old movies, from those made out of Hollywood like Dances With Wolves (an American grows sympathetic to the tribes he was meant to annihilate) and Apocalypse Now (and any number of anti-imperialist war epics) to those made abroad, like this year’s District 9 (set in South Africa, where a human becomes part-alien and is hunted down by his old own kind). Some of the dialogue in Avatar’s opening sequences may be on the starchy side — Cameron has never been a great director of actors nor sympathetic to their sensitive needs — but objections shrink to quibbles and then simply disappear in the face of the picture’s unprecedented visual flourishes.

Cameron has devised a romance similar to Titanic’s — a grunt falls in love with a princess — but this time with far more emotive power. Instead of embracing on a ship’s prow, Sully and Neyfiri ride their banshee steeds in ecstatic communion across the Pandoran sky. Think of them as the prince and princess of the world. Worthington — an Australian actor who had the second lead in the recent Terminator movie — has little of Titanic lead Leonardo DiCaprio’s star power, but the resolve and good nature he radiates make Sully one of those ordinary heroes who rise to extraordinary heights. Saldana, though encased in CGI blue throughout the movie, manages to be the driving force: yet again in a Cameron film, we find a strong woman seeking a man whose strength she can tap. But unlike the tryst between DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, this love affair has consequences. It is not a footnote to history; it makes history, as two species merge to save a planet.

And by a planet, Cameron clearly means our planet. Among his activities in the dozen years since Titanic, the director made two underwater documentaries (Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep) that marked him as both an explorer and a conservationist. Avatar brings his social concerns to the surface. This is not only the most elaborate public-service commercial for those of the tree-hugger persuasion; it’s also a call to save what we’ve got, environmentally, and leave indigenous people as they are — an argument applicable to the attempt of any nation (say, the U.S.) to colonize another land (say, Iraq or Afghanistan). The rooting interest in Avatar is for the Na’vi and against the American ex-soldiers whose job it is to police the planet. When some of them die in the battle that consumes the final third of this 2-hr. 42-min. extravaganza, you’re meant to cheer. And you will.

That climactic face-off is stage-managed for maximum thrills, as the creatures we met in the first part of the film join the Na’vi in opposing the rotten humans. But the supreme joy of Avatar is in its long central portion: a safari through the luscious landscape of Pandora. After all those years on the water (with Titanic) and underwater (with The Abyss and his two documentaries), Cameron has surfaced to put his vision of Pandora on screen. It’s an impossible but completely plausible and seductive world that invites your total immersion. Don’t resist it; sink in and fly with it. All Cameron asks is that you open your eyes.

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Gerard Butler’s latest, “Gamer” is essentially a rehash of the Arnold Schwarzenegger 1987 sci-fi actioner “The Running Man”, minus the groan-inducing quips and overall sense of cheesy fun. Sure, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor have more to work with, including a more expressive leading man in Gerard Butler (though he doesn’t necessarily show it off here), better CG-assisted mayhem, and of course, more advanced squib effects to wow the audience with.

Unfortunately the 2009 edition doesn’t have nearly the personality of its predecessor, and for all his thespian chops, Butler is reduced to little more than an anonymous shooting, grunting, and punching stuntman throughout the movie. Mind you, not that that’s a bad thing. Here, a stuntman who can shoot and run and survive outrageous explosions is really all you need.

“watch Gamer online” takes place in one of those “sometime in the future” future, where death row inmates are given the option of participating in a game called Slayers for the chance at freedom. Slayers is a bloody game where the con’s every action is controlled by a player, usually a kid standing inside a high-tech version of a desktop computer, except, well, it’s an entire room. The game was created by eccentric billionaire Ken Castle (Dexter’s Michael C. Hall), who has struck a deal with the federal government to take the cons off their burdened hands, and created an instant, global hit from it. The game’s greatest superstar is Kable (Butler), who as the film opens, is just four games shy of getting his grimy, blood-splattered hands on that elusive ticket to freedom. For you see, in exchange for participation in the game, the prisoners/players will be set free if they can survive 30 rounds of Slayers. No one has ever gotten as far as Kable, and if Castle has his way, Kable’s streak will never reach 30.

Anyone who has played their share of online multiplayer FPS (First-Person Shooters
, like the “Call of Duty” games) will think they’ve just been beamed into an honest to goodness multiplayer game, complete with grenade-lobbing players and those loathsome campers. Written and directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (the boys behind the “Crank” films), “Gamer” feels so in tuned with the online multiplayer gaming world that it’s not hard to be sucked in if you’ve ever created a custom class and jumped into a quick online game of “Call of Duty” with players from around the world. It’s only when the film’s proper “plot” kicks in that things get bogged down. Yeah, yeah, what Castle is doing is wrong, I agree – now can we get back to the badass free-for-all action already?

The film’s “real world” plot has a small group of hackers (led by rapper Ludacris, if that wasn’t ludicrous enough, ahem, and including “Drag me to Hell’s” Alison Lohman and “Friday the 13th’s” Aaron Yoo) trying to break Castle’s growing control of society’s entertainment needs. Kyra Sedgwick plays a reporter who questions Castle’s motives; her amusing interview with the eccentric Castle early in the film also acts as the script’s introduction to “Gamer’s” world. The hackers figure prominently into helping Kable escape the game, though I could never really figure out if Neveldine and Taylor knew what they wanted to do with the characters once Kable was freed. Logan Lerman plays Simon, the teenager who “plays” Kable. He’s another character that the writers/directors seem unsure what to do with once Kable is set loose.

If you’ve seen “Crank” or its sequel, then you know what to expect from Neveldine and Taylor, and they certainly don’t hold back here. The film’s real draw is its intense Slayer action, featuring some harrowing action sequences that need to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately the film’s biggest strength also reminds us how lacking the rest of the film is. Once Kable escapes, the intensity of the action drops noticeably. The film tries to soldier on by following Kable’s quest to reunite his family, which includes a young child and his wife, Angie (Amber Valletta), who is forced to make a living as an avatar for players in Castle’s other hit game, Society — basically a twisted, perverted, and real-life version of the popular SIMs game.

The parts of “Gamer” that excels are its “in-game” worlds – the entirely unrealistic but brutal world of Slayers, and the queasy, twisted, and oh-so-possible hedonism of Society, where people are literally controlled by players who forces them to do anything and everything for their enjoyment. Compared to Society, the world of Slayers is so over the top that it’s hard to take too seriously (would anyone really condone “playing” people who essentially kill other for our enjoyment, even death row convicts?), whereas Society’s world feels like it’s right around the corner, and is something that might be more readily acceptable to the masses. Yes, there are people who will pay to take control of strangers and use them to live out their fantasies, and there are people who are desperate enough that they would willingly subject themselves to be “played” for money. “Gamer’s” method of control, through nanite machines implanted in people’s brains may be farfetched, but let’s face it, a more low-tech version of Society is very much possible now.

Gorehounds and action junkies will certainly find a lot to like about “Gamer”. The film may be rated R, but I’m surprised it wasn’t slapped with something harder. The Slayers sequences feature an insane amount of graphic deaths, while the Society sequences are just wrong in so many ways. Neveldine and Taylor have clearly done their homework when it came to making sure their movie’s “games” are as real as possible, but alas, the rest of “Gamer” is stuff rehashed from “The Running Man”, right down to the eccentric and nutty villain. The only difference is that instead of just trying to make some cash, “Gamer’s” Richard Dawson has global domination ambitions. I guess you can say the bad guy here is more James Bond villain than heartless ratings-obsessed game show host.

Being familiar with Neveldine and Taylor’s filmmaking style, I wasn’t at all surprised by the level of crazy (some would say, refreshingly creative) that makes up much of “Gamer”. It’s such a “Neveldine and Taylor movie” that I would be disappointed if the film was any less out of control and this close to being downright offensive. The plot with the hackers is hackneyed (no pun intended) and filler material, and the film’s closing act is a big letdown after the film’s (literally) explosive start. Really? A fistfight on a basketball court? I guess. That aside, the film is a lean, mean 90 minutes, and boredom won’t be much of an issue. Gamers will no doubt get more out of it than your average moviegoer, but everyone else should still have fun with it.

Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor (director) / Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor (screenplay)
CAST: Gerard Butler … Kable
Amber Valletta … Angie
Michael C. Hall … Ken Castle
Kyra Sedgwick … Gina Parker Smith
Logan Lerman … Simon
Alison Lohman … Trace
Ludacris … Humanz Brother
Aaron Yoo … Humanz Dude
Milo Ventimiglia … Rick Rape
Zoe Bell … Sandra
John Leguizamo … Freek

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Sam (Tobey Maguire) is the good brother. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the Marines. He married Grace (Natalie Portman) and has two young daughters. Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the bad brother. He just got out of jail and enjoys a good drink (or six) at the local bar. Jim Sheridan’s Brothers, a remake of Susanne Bier’s 2004 film, uses the differences between the two siblings to establish a setting for a devastating domestic melodrama highly proficient in telling its story, but it will send you home in a heap.

Using the war in Afghanistan as the catalyst to tell this bleak and depressing story we are entrenched as Sam is presumably killed and lay witness to the resulting depression his death causes at home. Predictably, Tommy helps Grace around the home and the two form something of an ambiguous relationship. It’s at this opportune time when news comes telling us Sam didn’t die after all and he is heading home.

Now don’t worry, I’m not telling you anything the trailers don’t already tell you. However, Lionsgate is doing its best to hide the fact this film has anything to do with war. Fortunately, while war is the stimulus for the story, it isn’t the end-all focal point. Then again, it’s not the horror film the trailer makes it out to be either. Confused?

What Brothers (2009) is, is a conundrum. How important is it for you to see actors performing at their best in a film that will emotionally wreck you with no exceptions? And I don’t mean this lightly. Portman, Maguire and Gyllenhaal are all at the top of their games, but at what cost? What is the reason to see this movie? There are plenty of downer films that are worth watching, but many are entertaining over the course of their duration, or at least thought provoking. Brothers brings nothing new to the table and isn’t entertaining in the general sense of the word.

The film runs into trouble in its efforts to build up dramatic tension during Sam’s Afghan imprisonment and torture sessions as well as at home when we meet the brothers’ father played by Sam Shepard.

While captured by Taliban, Sam undergoes a series of horrors culminating in a horrific moment that stays with him throughout the rest of the film, but the fact it’s gimmicky and unnecessary destroys it’s overall impact. It was at this moment I checked out of this film emotionally and was merely sitting back and watching the performances.

As for Sam Shepard, his performance as the boys’ father isn’t the problem as much as the hackneyed dialogue he’s given makes every time he opens his mouth increasingly silly. Much of this can be laid at the feet of his drinking problem, but to that extent what kind of story is Sheridan trying to tell? Brothers gets lost in all of its tangents and none of them ever seem to come together to tell a 100-percent cohesive story.

All while watching I kept reminding myself the title of the film was Brothers and trying to put together a consistent thru-line that would justify the title, but I couldn’t. While not a war film per se, there is certainly an emphasis on the effects of war on both the soldier and his/her family. This film is also about forgiveness, which could extend to the father’s drinking problem among several other transgressions on display here, but at some point you have to stop forgiving and begin taking responsibility, something only one character in this film ever truly does.

I rarely like giving film’s positive reviews simply for having excellent performances while the film itself didn’t necessarily work for me, but I find myself straddling that line with this one. Like I said the three leads are spectacular. Tobey Maguire is a hard person for me to take seriously when his characters go to dark places, but with this one he really nails it, particularly in the film’s final moments. Portman too, hits all the right notes and Gyllenhaal’s performance and character are the most fleshed out and perfect parts of the film. A final exchange between Maguire and Gyllenhaal is certain to hit many moviegoers quite hard. It was the stand out moment for me.

While I have my doubts about the film itself I applaud the efforts of those involved. That’s the best I can do.

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Do you want to see a scary, thrilling movie that will leave you in thought? The Fourth Kind is one of the best horror movies of the year and I can promise that this movie will not only scare but it will amaze you! This movie has a great, intense feeling to you and I can promise that you’ll love it! I sure did. I loved how the movie was made. I liked all the footage tapes and the recordings and the interview between Dr. Abigail Tyler and the guy troughout the movie. If you want to get a good scare and have an awesome time at the movies, then I definatly recommend you to see THE FOURTH KIND.

PLOT:

BASED ON ACTUAL CASE STUDIES.

Taking place in NOME, ALASKA, DR. ABIGAIL TYLER disovers a terrible encounter going on in the town from what started from a sleeping disorder. She goes on a incredible journey to finding out the truth behind if alien abduction is real or if its just hallutinations. Sorry if I spelt that wrong.

I loved the plot! I was entertained troughout. The movies sound effects will scare you as well as the “Real” footage. I can promise that the plot will not bother you. It will amaze you as it did me.

ACTING:

Mila Jovovinch has had quite the carrer. She’s been the succesful RESIDENT EVIL series and this summers PERFECT GETAWAY. Now, she stars as Dr. Abigail Tyler and she does a great job in her performence. I can see a bright, long carrer for her to come. She does a great job. I don’t really know any of the other actors in this movie except for Dr. Abel, I’ve seen him before but I don’t know his name. But, as for all the other performences, they were perfect!

DIRECTION:

This movie has great direction. I loved the direction of this movie. It looks awesome. I loved how everything looks in this movie. I like how it splits from the movie to the footage and all. The direction was an amazing point to this movie.

VISUALS:

I loved the visuals. They were awesome. Towards the end, some of the visuals will amaze you like the poster scene. The visals were great from this movie.

THE GOOD:

The good is just about everything from this movie. There was no bad from my point-of veiw.

THE BAD:

…none.

OVERALL:

OVERALL, an epic scare that may not only be the best horror of the year but one of the best movies of the year. It’s scary and thrilling. The direction is amazing and its got a chill to it. See THE FOURTH KIND. I recommend it!

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In the second episode of Stephenie Meyer’s phenomenally successful “watch new moon online” series, the love story between mortal and vampire soars to a new level as Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) delves deeper into the mysteries of the supernatural world she yearns to become part of-only to find herself in greater peril than ever before.

Following Bella’s ill-fated 18th birthday party, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and his family leave the town of Forks, Washington, in an effort to protect her from the dangers inherent in their world. As the heartbroken Bella sleepwalks through her senior year of high school, numb and alone, she discovers Edward’s image comes to her whenever she lays herself in jeopardy. Her desire to be with him at all cost leads her to take greater and greater risks.

With the assist of her childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), Bella refurbishes an old motorbike to carry her on her adventures. Bella’s frozen heart is gradually thawed by her budding relationship with Jacob, a member of the mysterious Quileute tribe, who has a supernatural secret of his own.

When a opportunity encounter brings Bella face to face with a former nemesis, only the intervention of a pack of supernaturally large wolves saves her from a grisly fate, and the encounter makes it frighteningly clear that Bella is still in grave danger. In a race against time, Bella learns the secret of the Quileutes and Edward’s true reason for leaving her. She also faces the prospect of a possibly deadly reunion with her beloved that is a far cry from the one she’d hoped for.

Meantime, a serial of miscommunications heads Edward to trust that Bella has defeated herself. Overwrought over her suppositional suicide, Edward takes flight to Italy to arouse the Volturi, vampire royalty who are able of defeating him. Alice and Bella hurry to Italy to keep Edward, coming just in time to barricade him. Before departing Italy, the Volturi state Edward that Bella, a human being who recognises that vampires exist, must either be wiped out or changed into a vampire. While they go back to Forks, Edward states Bella that he’s always loved her and simply left alone Forks to protect her. She forgives him, and the Cullens vote in favor of Bella being changed into a vampire, to Edward’s horrify. Nevertheless, Edward gives Bella an option: either she allows Carlisle switch her after her commencement, or, if Bella agrees to marry him, he will alternate her himself.

With more of the passion, action and suspense that made “the twilight saga new moon videos” a worldwide phenomenon, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is a spellbinding follow-up to the box office hit.

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The watch movies net 2012 beginnings on scenes of the old Mayan Great Pyramid in Central America and a scene of the solar system of rules.
Abruptly, there’s a solar overshadow… Moving all hell to loose.

Tales feature reportage of a large-scale self-annihilation at the site of Mayan lunar calendar.

Next British capital is figured bordered by wild rioters – angered crowds together breaking in fury later the 2012 Olympics are abruptly froze.

The Metropolitan police force are seen struggling to control the wild crowds as the high-profile, billion pound games are abruptly pulled up.
Catastrophe begins to broadcast across the world at a fast tempo with Brazil’s attractive Rio de Janeiro drowned below the sea.

The city’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue is assured collapsing into sprinkle as it is circumvented by fish and stingrays.

The process then goes north to the traffic crowded streets of Los Angeles. suddenly the superhighways are ripped off the solid ground in a huge seism with automobiles fast-flying in all way.
Aside on a less agitated desert road, Cusack’s character Jackson Curtis is taking a camper-van with his two childs, Noah (Liam James) and Lilly (Morgan Lily).

As a scientific discipline fiction author, Jackson achieves light of old prognostications forecasting apocalypse on December 21 2012, joking to his children: ‘What are the odds?’

Seconds after, his phrases get back to haunt him as hundreds of titan shooting star fireballs rain down on the planet.

Jackson speeds up as quick as he could, but his driving skills can not beat the amazing mightiness of nature.

Thousands of folks in prayer at The Vatican City’s Saint Peter Basilica are begging for redemption… but it’s too late.

Michelangelo’s masterpiece Creation of Adam on the roof of the Sistine chapel service is captured to rip aside as St Peter’s crumbles onto the the priests, nuns and congregating.

Handling to survive his campervan fire, Jackson and his children have detected a rumor that the United States government were readying for this day and have made unvanquishable transports.
Miraculously, Jackson tracks down his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and the pair harmonize to fighting in collaboration for their interest of their children.

Also for demonstrating Jackson’s plight, the process takes us indoors the White House, where President Wilson (Danny Glover) and his girl Laura (Thandie Newton) have many hard decisions to make for the forthcoming of the humanity.
President Wilson’s scientific advisor Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is assured contending with a military adviser who lays claim without emotion: ‘Our charge is to ascertain the persistence of our species.’

Adrian strikes back: ‘Isn’t it as well decided that folks have the right to fighting for these lives?’

The last scene of the watch 2012 doomsday free is ironical – because a titan naval ship USS John F Kennedy is dampened in to Washington D.C. and lands on the White House – where he lived 49 years antecedently.

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