Warm Bodies - 2013

Warm Bodies

Warm Bodies is a 2013 American paranormal romantic zombie comedy film based on Isaac Marion's novel of the same name. Directed and written by Jonathan Levine,[6] the film stars Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer and Analeigh Tipton.

The film focuses on the development of the relationship between Julie, a young woman, and "R", a zombie, and how their eventual romance develops throughout. The film is noted for displaying human characteristics in zombie characters, and for being told from a zombie's perspective.

After a zombie apocalypse, R, a zombie, spends his days wandering around an airport which is now filled with hordes of his fellow undead, including his best friend M. R and M achieve rudimentary communication with grunts and moans and occasional near-words. As a zombie, R constantly craves human flesh, especially brains, as he is able to "feel alive" through the victims' memories he experiences when he eats them. While R and a pack of zombies are out hunting for food, they encounter Julie Grigio and a group of her friends, who were sent out by Julie's father from a heavily-fortified, walled-off human enclave in a nearby city to recover medical supplies from abandoned buildings. R sees Julie and is drawn to her. After being shot in the chest by Julie's boyfriend, Perry, R kills him while Julie is distracted, and eats his brain, giving R his thoughts and memories, making his attraction to Julie even stronger. He rescues Julie from the rest of the pack and takes her back to an airplane he lives in at the airport to keep her safe. The two bond, causing R to slowly begin to come to life.[9] After a few days, Julie gets restless, and tries multiple times to return home, yet attracts swarms of zombies every time, requiring R to rescue her. After fending off a group of zombies, including M, who is confused by R's actions, R decides it is time to return her to the human enclave.

On the way, R reveals to Julie that he was the one that killed Perry, which prompts her to abandon him and return alone to the human enclave. R begins to make his way back to the airport, heartbroken. He then sees that M and other zombies are also beginning to show signs of life, making all of them targets for the Boneys, skeletal zombies who having lost all traces of their humanity have shed their flesh, and prey on anything with a heartbeat. R and M lead a group to the human enclave, where R sneaks inside the wall. There he finds Julie and meets her friend Nora, who is initially shocked. When R reveals that the other corpses have also been coming back to life, the three of them attempt to tell Colonel Grigio, Julie's father and leader of the survivors. Colonel Grigio, however, refuses to believe corpses can change and threatens to kill R, stopping only when Nora pulls a gun on him. Julie and R escape to a baseball stadium where the rest of R's group is waiting, but find themselves under attack by a horde of Boneys.

While M and his gang of zombies square off against the Boneys, Julie and R run, but find themselves trapped. Taking the only escape route, R jumps with Julie into a pool far below, shielding her from the impact. After Julie pulls R from the bottom of the pool, they kiss passionately - causing R to become fully revived. Colonel Grigio finds them soon after, shooting R in the shoulder without warning, and when R bleeds, is finally convinced that he has returned to life. The humans and zombies combine forces and kill most of the Boneys while the rest die off, and the zombies slowly assimilate into human society. The film ends with a now fully alive R and Julie watching a wall surrounding the city being demolished, signifying the end of the apocalypse.

     

Cast

Nicholas Hoult as R

Teresa Palmer as Julie Grigio

Rob Corddry as M / Marcus, a friend of R

Dave Franco as Perry Kelvin, Julie's boyfriend

Analeigh Tipton as Nora, a friend of Julie

Cory Hardrict as Kevin

John Malkovich as Colonel Grigio, Julie's father and leader of the human survivors

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The Smurfs 2 (2013)

As a pop culture enterprise, the Smurfs don’t get much respect nowadays, but they have noble roots. Created by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo, they originated in the fifties as supporting characters in one of the adventures of the Medieval page Johan (a story later retitled The Smurfs and the Magic Flute). Though not quite as popular or as long-lived as Asterix or Tintin, Johan and his sidekick Pewit (or Pirlout) were the heroes of a well-known, fairly literate swashbuckling comic series that was popular for generations across Europe. The reason I mention this is because growing up in Turkey I was a pretty big fan of the Johan books, and when we moved to the U.S., I was shocked to discover that most of these stories hadn’t been translated into English. But the Smurfs — those weird little blue dudes from the Magic Flute story — were everywhere! Imagine living in a world where the only thing people knew of Star Wars were the Ewoks.

Not unlike their aforementioned Belgian and French comic counterparts, the Johan and Pewit books had a pleasantly offbeat sensibility to go along with their playful, pastichelike stories; they were like self-aware fairy tales for older kids. The Smurfs, however — especially the eighties cartoons — were aimed toward a broader audience that included smaller children, and so eventually it did away with some of the stories’ darker overtones. That’s essentially the version we’re getting with these new CGI Smurfs movies. Or rather, that was the version we got with the first Smurfs movie in 2011, which brought the little blue medieval mushroom-dwellers and their nemesis Gargamel (Hank Azaria) into present-day New York City via a giant magic vortex, for some typical fish-out-of-water high jinks. In the sequel, Smurfs 2, director Raja Gosnell (Scooby-Doo, Beverly Hills Chihuahua) and his team peddle a lot of the same type of stuff in all the usual, uninspired ways. But they also manage to infuse their story with some unexpected darkness and welcome humanity, for which we should be somewhat grateful.

This time, the main stage is Paris. Ever since he got trapped in the modern day in the earlier film, the evil wizard Gargamel has become a celebrity magician, delighting crowds the world over with his sorcery, and he’s now settled in for an extended run at the Paris Opera. Unfortunately, he needs to harvest more Smurf-essence, which is the source of his powers. To help him, he’s created two new Smurf-like creatures, called Naughties — Vexy (Christina Ricci) and Hackus (J.B. Smoove) — who are small and gray, instead of blue, and who treat him as their own father. Gargamel then concocts a plan to kidnap Smurfette (Katy Perry) and force her to reveal a secret formula that will allow him to turn the Naughties into Smurfs. (Smurfette, as an introductory scene informs us, started off as Gargamel’s creation but was transformed into a real Smurf by the aforementioned formula.)

Anyway, soon enough, Smurfette, the Naughties, Papa Smurf (the late Jonathan Winters), and a small group of Smurfs are running and swooping around Paris and Smurfland causing all sorts of havoc. Joining them in the fun are modern couple Patrick and Grace Winslow (Neil Patrick Harris and Glee’s Jayma Mays), who were also in the earlier film, as well as Patrick’s estranged stepfather Victor (Brendan Gleeson). Along the way, we get some unoriginal but cute nods to contemporary culture: Gargamel’s cat Azreal has his own Facebook page; for their son’s birthday party, Patrick and Grace get “an organic, gluten and dairy-free, antioxidant-rich, acai-berry cake made by a local baker who swears he’s never even seen a peanut.” And there are bright spots among the performances, too: Azaria seems to enjoy himself hamming it up as Gargamel, and the always-reliable Gleeson musters up some genuine enthusiasm playing a likably boorish corndog baron constantly at odds with his touchy stepson. It all adds up to a bland, broad, lifelessly directed but not-entirely-terrible piece of family entertainment.

Except, not quite. In fact, Smurfs 2 goes into some surprisingly dark corners. The desperation of unwanted children, the fear of the stepparent … these are scary elements, and the sort of thing that many of our great fairy tales are based around. There’s a certain conceptual elegance, even poignancy, to the way that Patrick’s disdain for his stepfather is echoed in Vexy and Hackus’s fevered, almost neurotic attempts to curry favor with their uncaring, neglectful (sooort of biological) father Gargamel, who in turn just wants to harvest his own children to make himself more powerful. There’s also some touching stuff (don’t laugh) about Smurfette’s own identity crisis; haunted by her past as Gargamel’s evil creation, she feels she doesn’t belong among the Smurfs. It’s all rather unexpectedly melancholy and creepy and grim. (Or should that be Grimm?)

The film, to its credit, doesn’t shy away from following through on these dark elements, and through it all I was briefly convinced that it did some justice to the origins of Peyo’s creation. But unfortunately, the film does so with all the flat visuals, flaccid pacing, and (with the aforementioned exceptions of Gleeson and Azaria) by-the-numbers acting we’ve come to expect from un film de Raja Gosnell. It would be too much to say that there’s a good movie somewhere inside Smurfs 2 looking to get out. But it wouldn’t be too much to say that sometimes, the movie we do have tries harder than we might expect.

Percy Jackson : Sea of Monsters (2013)

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters Cast

Percy Jackson :- Logan Lerman


Annabeth Chase :- Alexandra Daddario


Grover Underwood :- Brandon T. Jackson


Luke Castellan :- Jake Abel

There's a rampaging bull in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters" that looks like something an 11-year-old boy might draw on the back of his math homework, when he should be paying attention to his teacher instead.

The villainous beast is gold, has steam punk innards and opens up its mouth to reveal a giant flame thrower. This bad guy is boss, rad, hella sweet, or whatever the sixth grader slang is for cool in 2013.

The same can be said for much of the second "Percy Jackson" movie, which is outgunned by summer movies with larger budgets and bigger names in the cast. Pierce Brosnan doesn't return, leaving Stanley Tucci as the biggest star. But the sequel effectively executes its simple vision — to provide clever PG entertainment for preteens whose parents are too strict to let them watch "The Wolverine."

Logan Lerman returns as Percy, the son of Poseidon, who hangs in Camp Half-Blood with other teen-age God-spawn and fantastic creatures. The tree-deity that protects this little retreat of raging hormones is threatened, so Percy and his friends go on a journey to seek the healing powers of a Golden Fleece.

"Sea of Monsters," based on the Rick Riordan young adult novel, weaves Greek mythology with modern updates. Tucci as Dionysus is the camp director. God of commerce and speed Hermes — a nice cameo by Nathan Fillion — runs the overnight delivery company Olympic Postal Service. When our heroes must storm a boat, it's a luxury yacht. They reach their destination on the back of a hippocampi, which looks like the result of an amorous relationship between a racehorse and a rainbow trout.

The special effects occasionally fall closer to "Sharknado" than "Pacific Rim," but director Thor Freudenthal does a good job of stretching the budget. A flashback scene is animated with a stained glass technique. A giant obstacle course play structure, reminiscent of TV's "Wipeout," is an effective practical effect.

Early scenes take the orphan fantasies of Harry Potter and the X-Men, and up the ante. Most of these kids have a God for a dad and a mother who is completely out of the picture. (We didn't even see any care packages filled with cookies and fresh underwear sent to Camp Half-Blood.) A notorious hard-partying wine drinker runs the camp. What 12-year-old in the audience wouldn't sign up for that?

"Percy Jackson" lacks a central bad guy, and the quest starts to develop the dopey procedural feel of a Scooby Doo episode — amplified by the addition of a shaggy Cyclops boy (Douglas Smith), who creates new obstacles for the protagonists with his cluelessness. Cynical moviegoers will note that many Half-Blood campers look as if they're in their late 20s. Big parts of the book are missing, replaced by awkward edits.

Finally, discriminating adults may find the dialogue a bit groan-worthy. ("It's not cool to Bogart someone else's quest!") Middle school English teachers and librarians, who see the parallels to Greek mythology may be more forgiving. Anything to get the kids interested in the classics ...

It's an easy film to pick apart, but the end result is positive -- especially if you're a child or sitting next to one. There are plenty of bad films to get riled up about in the summer. "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters" isn't one of them. This is harmless tween-centric fun.

Oblivion (2013)

If nothing else, "Oblivion" will go down in film history as the movie where Tom Cruise pilots a white, sperm-shaped craft into a giant space uterus. The scene is more interesting to describe than it is to watch. Cruise's sperm-ship enters through an airlock that resembles a geometrized vulva. He arrives inside a massive chamber lined with egg-like glass bubbles. At the center of the chamber is a pulsating, sentient triangle that is also supposed to be some kind of mother figure. Cruise must destroy the mother triangle and her space

uterus in order to save the Earth.

Like director Joseph Kosinski's debut, "Tron: Legacy" (2010), "Oblivion" is a special effects extravaganza with a lot of blatant symbolism and very little meaning. It starts slow, turns dull and then becomes tedious — which makes it a marginal improvement over the earlier film. It features shiny surfaces, clicky machinery and no recognizable human behavior. It's equally ambitious and gormless.

"Oblivion" is set in the year 2077, 60 years after an alien invasion rendered the Earth largely uninhabitable. Cruise stars as Jack Harper, one of a handful of people left on the planet. The other survivors have long since relocated to Titan. Harper and colleagues remain as technicians, servicing robot drones that defend resource-gathering stations from alien stragglers.

Harper lives in a penthouse-like tower with his communications officer, Vica (Andrea Riseborough). Vica's eyes are permanently dilated. Like Olivia Wilde's Quorra in "Tron: Legacy," she often resembles a marionette.

Harper and Vica spend their days fixing drones, eating candelit dinners, and swimming in a glass-bottomed pool. Their boss, the creepily cheerful Sally (Melissa Leo), supervises them from an orbiting control center. In order to maintain the integrity of the mission, Harper and Vica's memories have been wiped; nonetheless, Harper is haunted by extremely cheesy black-and-white dreams of a beautiful woman meeting him in pre-invasion New York.

One day, Harper spots an antique spacecraft crashing into the countryside. He manages to rescue one survivor, a Russian astronaut (Olga Kurylenko) who looks exactly like the woman in his dreams. Harper brings her back to his tower. This incites jealousy and suspicion from Vica, who is both Harper's partner and his lover.

The astronaut has been in cryogenic sleep for the past six decades but refuses to disclose the nature of her mission to Harper and Vica until they recover her flight recorder. It goes without saying that the flight recorder unearths all kinds of secrets about Harper, Vica, and the alien invasion. It also creates one of the movie's more glaring logical errors, but that's a different story altogether.

The film's opening stretch is its one strong point —  a gradual, immersive build-up of details. It's a smart technique for science-fiction storytelling; it eases the viewer into the world of the film. The problem is that the world "Oblivion" introduces — an abandoned, depopulated Earth — is more interesting than the story it tells. Or, more accurately, the stories it tells, because "Oblivion," derivative to a fault, tries to be several science-fiction movies at once. It tries and it fails.

"Oblivion" is a political allegory about a lowly "technician" sending unmanned drones to hunt and kill a demonized, alien Other — until it forgets that it ever was. It's a wannabe mindbender that raises questions about its lead character's identity — except that the lead character is too sketchy to make these questions compelling. It's a story about humans struggling for survival in an environment controlled by technology — except it appears to be much more interested in the technology than in the humans. It's a rah-rah action flick — except its action scenes aren't very good.

The only thread "Oblivion" follows to the end is its "creation myth." Harper is an idealized man; he's good with a gun, good with his hands, good in bed, loves football and rides a motorcycle. Though most of the movie's characters are women, not one of them is able to do anything without Harper's help — not even the mother triangle that lives in the space uterus. Only his rugged-but-sensitive masculinity holds the key to humanity's survival. The movie reaches for profundity, but all it grasps is misogyny.

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Despicable Me 2

A somewhat unlikely animated megahit in 2010, the first Despicable Me took a great concept and watered it down just enough to make it family-friendly. The supervillain protagonist, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell), looked the part, with his Blofeld-like bald head, circular torso, and spidery legs, but the villainy itself was mostly abstract, almost poetic — Gru wanted to steal the moon, not rule the world or enslave millions or anything truly monstrous. The sequel doesn’t even try to replicate that earlier, defanged concept: Since Gru seemed to give up evil (or “evil”) at the end of the first film, when he became the adoring parent to three headstrong young foster girls, now he just makes jam and throws birthday parties, his dark, once-creepy lair outfitted with balloons and decorations. And when an organization called the Anti-Villain League recruits him

to help catch a mysterious new criminal, Gru turns into a fully fledged good guy. There’s nothing despicable about him anymore, if there ever was. They should have just called the movie Me 2.

Actually, the action-movie/espionage high jinks are secondary to the new film’s chief concern, which has to do with Gru’s mostly nonexistent love life and his fondness for the perky, leggy, lipstick-taser-wielding AVL agent Lucy Wilde (Kristen Wiig). Unfortunately, Gru is terrified of women and incapable of asking her out. Meanwhile, a neighbor sets him up on dates with other, clearly undeserving females. The film spends a rather surprising amount of time on Gru’s romantic woes. Perhaps directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud just want to throw grown-up viewers a bone or two. More likely, they’ve realized that the young girls who embraced their first film in 2010 are now several years older. (The oldest of Gru’s adopted daughters even has a romantic infatuation of her own this time around.) Ironically, that latter demographic reality makes it hard not to feel a little discomfort at some of this stuff — especially one particularly bad date that ends with Gru drugging his date unconscious.

All that said, Despicable Me 2 does have plenty of what made the first film so entertaining — its wedding of James Bond–like gadgetry and visual invention with goofy slapstick, and the dizzying fun had with shrink rays, piranha guns, elaborate evil spaceships, and the like. Also back in full force are the Minions, Gru’s

army of adorably barrel-shaped yellow henchmen, who have in intervening years starred in their own popular series of video shorts. (At one point, the Minions are transformed by the film’s villain into purple, fanged, vicious monsters, and they pile on top of each other to create little mountains, like the zombies in World War Z — a perfect example of how context is everything.) But the new film can’t quite match the sheer ingenuity of the original, so it has to make do with scale. The gags are often bigger and faster than those from the earlier film, though not always funnier.

Let’s spare a word, too, for the voice acting. Star-studded voice casts are so common nowadays that it’s rare for a vocal performance to truly stand out — think of Robin Williams’s Genie in Aladdin, or Patrick Warburton’s Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove. But the half-jaded, half-bemused, slightly guttural, nondescript Eastern-European accent Carell gave Gru was a comic marvel in the first film, working overtime to lend even the most throwaway gag a unique energy all its own. It’s pretty much irresistible here, too — just one more reason why Me 2, even at its weakest, is still a charmer.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS doesn't waste any time picking up right where J.J Abrams' STAR TREK reboot left off four years ago. When we last left the Enterprise, Kirk (Chris Pine) had just been given command, with Mr. Spock as his erstwhile first officer. When this picks up, we find Kirk, Spock and the irascible as always Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) on a mission to save a planet outside the federation from a destructive volcano. In an absolutely mammoth action set-piece that sets the pace for what's to follow, Abrams absolutely dazzles us with 3D eye-candy, as Spock finds himself trapped in a live volcano, while Kirk and McCoy are chased by the planet's inhabitants in a bit highly reminiscent of the opening chase in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Like the first film's bravura U.S.S Kelvin opening (a scene which introduced audiences to a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth), it sets the bar high for the rest of the movie.

Again, just like the last film, it's not the action and eye candy that really makes STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS work. Rather, it's the interplay between characters, with the Kirk/Spock storyline once again being particularly strong. While some of the players, like John Cho and Anton Yelchin find themselves with pretty small roles in this instalment, Abrams uses a good chunk of the 130 minute running time to further beef up the Kirk/Spock relationship, which always has been the heart of the franchise.

Just like in the last film, Chris Pine's Kirk doesn't feel like he's grown into the guy Shatner played, with him being hotheaded and egotistical, but even more than last time, you can feel his Kirk growing into the man he needs to be. Other than Spock, his most important relationship is with the fatherly Admiral Pike, once again played by Bruce Greenwood. The material between these two gets the film off to a great start, and plants the seeds for what's to come, not only in the rest of the movie, but also for the rest of the franchise. We see Pine evolve more and more into the character over the course of the movie, and once again, he's excellent.

By contrast, Zachary Quinto already feels like he's perfectly assumed the mantle of Spock from Leonard Nimoy, and the Spock we see in INTO DARKNESS is perfectly in line with the way Nimoy played him on the original series. In some ways, INTO DARKNESS is even more Quinto's movie than it is Pine's and while I liked Quinto in the first film, I was absolutely floored by him here, especially in the no-holds-barred, audience pleasing finale, which I won't spoil here. His relationship with Zoe Saldana's Uhura is also further explored, and it's interesting how the new franchise has really made the character prominent, thanks in no small part to Saldana's spunk (and obvious sex appeal).

Simon Pegg's Scotty also emerges as a particularly important player. While Pegg played it mostly for laughs last time, here he's really the soul of the Enterprise, and really puts his own stamp on the character. Karl Urban's McCoy gets a bit short-changed in terms of screen-time, which is a shame, but he gets a couple of funny, enjoyably hammy McCoy lines (“dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a...!”). Urban looks and acts uncannily like DeForest Kelly, and I hope we get more of him in the sequel.

Leading the newcomers is Benedict Cumberbatch as the mysterious Harrison. This is a part of the movie I'm really not going to go that into, as it's hard to discuss without spoiling things. Suffice to say, Cumberbatch, with his impeccably sinister diction and physicality makes for a memorable villain. The original (and best) ROBOCOP, Peter Weller, gets a nice comeback part as the head of Starfleet- Admiral Marcus, with the ultra sexy Alice Eve on-board as his rebellious daughter Carol, who hardcore Trekkers know becomes an integral part of Kirk's storyline further down the line. I love watching Eve, and if she becomes a big part of the franchise, I'll be very happy indeed.

 I should acknowledge that STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS has been surprisingly controversial with a lot of the hardcore fans, and having watched the film, I can understand why some might have problems with it. The last half hour of the film does indeed owe a lot to another integral instalment in the franchise, but there's an intriguing reversal that I think really makes it work. For the general audience or just casual fans, this will probably be a non-issue, but I also think that if the ultra-Trekkies can keep an open mind, they'll enjoy it too (for the record, I grew up worshipping The Original Series and films).

If I have any problems with STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS it's that maybe there's too much action. Abrams is so relentless with the huge action beats that they become a little exhausting at a point, and you can't help but wish here and there that the film would slow down just a tad. Still, the action is always strong, and even in the midst of all the carnage they manage to keep the story going, and never skimp on character development. There's also a tacked-on, fan service cameo that- while cool- is a bit unnecessary and could have easily been worked into the film in a more fluid way.

On the whole though, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is a pretty damn thrilling entry into the Summer blockbuster movie season, and if you liked the last one, I'm pretty confident that you'll enjoy this one too. Once again, I'm anxious to see more of the crew of the U.S.S Enterprise.

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The Wolverine (2013)

The common thread linking this year's summer blockbusters has been the cheery nonchalance with which they've obliterated cities and the innocent civilians who live in them, so it's refreshing to see The Wolverine, a relatively small-scale superhero film which prefers not to kill anyone except the bad guys – and they don't count.

Very loosely based on a beloved mini-series scripted by Chris Claremont and drawn by Frank Miller, it starts in the Canadian Rockies, where Logan (Hugh Jackman, more muscly than ever) is living rough, far away from his fellow X-Men, but haunted by dreams of his lost love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). He's then summoned to Japan by a man he last met at the end of the Second World War. Logan never ages, you see, but his Japanese acquaintance, now the decrepit boss of an Apple-rivalling corporation, claims that he can switch off Logan's immortality and let him live a normal, finite life. Alas, our hero doesn't have long to mull over the proposition before he has to defend the old man's granddaughter against an army of Yakuza gangsters.

For much of its running time, The Wolverine is less like a standard superhero movie than a Bond film of the early Connery period or the late Craig period: a stylish, soulful, sci-fi-tinged mystery with a wry tough guy, three femmes fatale, an exotic setting, and a fight on a train. It has no colourful costumes, but lots of people standing around, brooding over the past – two bold decisions which could well have younger viewers shuffling as they wait for the action to get under way.

Maybe it was the thought of those younger viewers that led to the film's disastrous final half-hour, a messy pile-up of supervillains and robots plus forehead-slappingly stupid twists. Like Man Of Steel, The Wolverine is at its most interesting when Jackman is a beardy drifter, and least interesting when he is battling demigods from a Flash Gordon serial. The last half-hour seems to be the director's way of apologising for doing something different with the superhero genre. Disappointingly, normal service is very much resumed.

One other flaw is that it's in 3D, but doesn't do anything with the third dimension to compensate for the weight of the chunky plastic specs on your nose. In fact, you can see better 3D in the first few seconds of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 105 mins, PG *****), which has been restored to take advantage of current stereoscopic technology, and released in time for its ... errr ... 59th anniversary. At the beginning, the titles float above the heads of the people sitting in front of you, and there are some splendid moments when fingers jab right out of the screen. But even these bits are more of a distraction than an enhancement, which doesn't bode well for the whole 3D industry. If Hitch can't make us fall in love with it, then who can?

Otherwise, Dial M For Murder is one of his most streamlined and slyly entertaining thrillers. Shot almost entirely on one set representing a London flat, it stars Grace Kelly as the angelic wife who doesn't suspect her husband, Ray Milland, of plotting to kill her. Milland may be phenomenally unconvincing as a recently retired tennis pro, but as a homicidal maniac he's so debonair, and so meticulous, that you catch yourself hoping that his diabolical plan will succeed.

White House Down (2013)

Film:	White House Down
Cast:	Channing Tatum,Jamie Foxx,Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke Joey King,James WoodRichard Jenk Lance Reddick
Director:	Roland Emmerich

What it's about: 

John Cale (Channing Tatum) is a capitol police officer with a dream of making it to the secret service protecting the most important man on the planet- the President of the United States.  An average Joe, he’s also dealing with a divorce situation where his 11-year-old daughter Emily (Joey King) has that indifferent phase going on. A trip to the White House changes everything when anti-American hostile forces take over the Headquarters turning it into a battlefield. Cale who happens to be around decides to jump in and take matters into his hands. Jamie Foxx plays the President while Maggie Gyllenhaal is the Secret Service Supervisor who looks constantly on the edge. Like every other Emmerich film, this one too has its ‘money making’ scenes and the CGI lit White House does look real!

What's good: 

You can’t take what’s happening on screen seriously, so if you watch it with a tub full of popcorn and do a ‘high-five’ each time a new President is sworn in, you are in for a good time! The build up to the actual climax is interesting. Throw in a bunch of goofy characters and some corny lines and you have that perfect no-brainer Sunday afternoon action film. Tatum is a good looking man, dress him up in a suit or have him wear a vest with grenades strapped to his waist, there’s no denying his star power.  There are moments where you can tell he’s doing this for the sheer thrill of being part of a Roland Emmerich adventure. Those Wikipedia fanatics who obsesses over facts and figures will be in for a cheap thrill with a tour guide spilling the beans on some not so publicly known details about the White House (an underground passage that JFK used to sneak Marilyn Monroe in). James Woods in the role of the Service Chief is remarkably brilliant.

What's not: 

We don’t know if Emmerich set out to make a thriller or a slapstick comedy with Tatum and Foxx.  Being black isn’t enough for the latter to play a convincing President. You know the end right from the beginning, the mandatory ode to the American flag, that brooding sense of patriotism veiled under some funny lines, all of this  gives you a sense of déjàvu (because Olympus Has Fallen already blew up the White House early this year). While his earlier works (Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012) dealt with end of the world scenario, here Emmerich constantly uses the White House as a metaphor and symbol for everything that stands in favour of the good. Tatum’s side track with his wife and daughter has no relevance whatsoever in the actual storyline.