Director JJ Abrams took time off from the last season of Lost to bring life to a tired franchise – Star Trek, and Borat’s at it again this time Sacha Baron Cohen is Bruno! Plus Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow’s collaboration, the sequel to Da Vinci Code and a slew of more of everything ever released this year!
New Releases this Week:
Star Trek
Cast: John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Winona Ryder, Zoë Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin
To boldly go where no one has gone before, that’s the catch phrase that begun Gene Roddenberry’s legendary television series Star Trek. After many years and many movies, director JJ Abrams finally came up with a movie that bests them all by starting at the beginning. This is the story of how a young James T Kirk joins Starfleet, meets up with his regulars Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov Uhura and of course Spock, Kirk’s best friend and mentor. The story features a wonderful villain played by an almost unrecognizable Eric Bana and crosses dimensions in time by introducing Leonard Nimoy the original Spock to himself as a young man (Zachary Quinto). The film in my opinion is stolen by Simon Pegg as Scotty, with choice one-liners and a sassy attitude. All the main crew take on the same characteristics of the original actors, Karl Urban’s Bones is perfect and even Chris Pine manages a young William Shatner. Fabulous movie, rent it twice!
Bruno
Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Alice Evans, Trishelle Cannatella, Sandra Seeling, Ben Youcef, Alexander von Roon, Candice Cunningham, Tom Yi
Borat’s at it again! This time Baron Cohen calls upon yet another of his alter egos - Bruno, a gay fashionista/TV reporter from Austria, who after being thrown out of the fashion world and sacked from his TV show Funkyzeit, Austrian media sensation Brüno goes to Los Angeles to reinvent himself and become a big, gay star... This time Cohen pushes discomfort to an often unbearable degree, going way, way further than Borat, with graphic anal sex jokes, and a talking penis to mention just two embarrassing moments. Verdict? I loved it, as they say if you can’t take a joke?
ThirstCast: Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-kyun, Kim Ok-bin, Kim Hae-sook, Park In-hwan, Oh Dal-soo, Song Young-chang, Mercedes Cabral
When priest Sang-hyun (Song) volunteers for a medical experiment, a transfusion turns him into a vampire. Soon he’s drawn to Tae-ju (Kim), the wife of an old friend. The couple kills her husband, and Tae-ju turns into a bloodthirsty creature. The whole world seems to be intent on turning out vampire movies, TV shows and novels at the moment. Yet Park Chan-wook, the Korean director who made Oldboy, has still managed a fresh spin on the subgenre in this tale. Oldboy is one of my favorite movies of all time and this one is going to stay in my collection (I get screeners!) P.S. This movie is in Korean which means it isn’t badly dubbed, but you do have to read subtitles.
Angels and Demons
Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Thure Lindhardt, David Pasquesi, Cosimo Fusco
Ron Howard’s film of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code ranks among the most profitable films of the decade, so naturally he again teamed up with Tom Hank’s to make the next novel. A sort of who dun-it and who’s going to do-it all situated in and around the Vatican. Given that it combines religious, scientific, political, and lunacy in one package, Angels & Demons is more entertaining than the dreary, talky Da Vinci Code (I thought so anyway!) This time out, heroic Harvard academic and devout agnostic Robert Langdon (a trim Hanks) has only an evening to solve a series of puzzles which have thwarted thinkers for centuries, as Se7en-style mangled corpses (cardinals killed by the four elements, great movie Se7en by the way!) are delivered on the hour before the possible destruction of the entire Vatican by anti-matter.
Funny People
Writer: Judd Apatow
Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, RZA, Aubrey Plaza, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow
Judd Apatow has long-since established his credentials in the comedy marketplace ($1.4 billion ago, give or take) Funny People is comfortably his best movie yet. A personal friend of Adam Sandler it was obvious the two of them would collaborate; the movie’s pre-credits footage of a 20 year-old Adam Sandler making prank phone calls ; shot by Apatow when the pair were flatmates, begins one of the best comedies of the year. Oft used buddy Seth Rogen (he slimmed down for this movie) is wonderful; this is a real treat watch it now!
Shorts
Cast: Jimmy Bennett, Kat Dennings, Trevor Gagnon, Rebel Rodriguez, Jake Short, Leslie Mann, James Spader, Jon Cryer, William H. Macy
A young boy discovers a rock which grants wishes. So far, so awesome, however the joy is spoiled when calculating children and trouble-making adults all make a play for the power of the rock. There are a lot of people getting stuck into trash cans and there are a few monsters, some crocodiles get their hands on the wishing rock causing some consequences for the humans. All in all a nice movie for the holidays.
Ben 10 Alien Swarm
One of the top shows on the cartoon network, a game and now a movie sort of. With live and animated action, this is one for the young at heart crowd, (note how I said that!) The stakes are high and the action is intense as Ben fights to protect our planet from the Alien Swarm!
My One and Only
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Rene Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Eric McCormack, Chris Noth, Mark Rendall, Nick Stahl, Steven Weber
My One and Only, starring Renée Zellweger and Kevin Bacon, is reportedly based on actor George Hamilton's memories of his youth. It takes place in the 1950s of memory: a Technicolor world of big Cadillacs, white gloves and pastel dresses. Zellweger plays Anne, a woman of refinement who gets tired of her bandleader husband's philandering and takes off with her two sons on an adventure into America. This got a limited theatrical release, which is a pity because it deserved so much more, try it you’ll like it, I promise.
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