August Rush
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
August Rush is a sweet, romantic story about a homeless musical prodigy, Evan and his parents. It has a dreamy and almost Dickens-like feel set in modern day New York. Coming to the story, there is a one-night passionate chance encounter between Lyla a gifted cellist played by Keri Russell and Lewis, a rock band member essayed by Jonathan Rhys-Myers. Lyla gets pregnant but her over-protective father keeps her away from Lewis. Some months down the line she meets with an accident and delivers a premature baby. In her interest, the father forges her signaure and puts the baby up for adoption, while telling her that he didn’t survive. (more…)
No Country for Old Men is directed by the hugely talented duo,the Coen brothers and based on the book of the same name by author Cormac McCarthy. It is a chilling and disturbing tale that uses raw performances by its lead actors to bring action and drama to the fore. The story begins with Llewelyn Moss, Josh Brolin finding a pickup truck filled with heroin and cash and twenty dead men around it. 
The first Rush Hour flick was entertaining; I’ll give you that. The second got on your nerves a little, but then again, the first was a hit so there was no avoiding that. But when the third installment of the movie came out, I braced myself before entering the movie hall. You see, I feared that I would be subjected to mindless antics of tired stars who were doing the entire thing on a lark and the whole purpose of the movie is to rake in the moolah on the strength of the popularity of the predecessors. How I wish that I could say I was being simply paranoid and prejudiced and that the film is not quite bad! Sadly, I was right bang on and I could not wait to get out of the theatre. 
Beowulf and Grendel is a touching story of vengeance, mercy and helplessness in the conflict between Norsemen and Christianity. It is based on the poem of the same name written between the seventh and eleventh centuries. The film scores in depicting the dark story against the craggy mountainous backdrop of Iceland. It also includes a chilling portrayal of death as a bone white creature of the sea, with dangerous claw like digits that grab the victim out of the blue. 
Enchanted is a classic fairy tale about a princess Giselle who lands up in New York city due to a spell cast by an evil queen. After her arrival in New York she meets a divorce attorney and starts staying with him as she has nowhere to go. Let us however start at the beginning. Princess Giselle, played by Amy Adams meets and falls in love with Prince Edward essayed by James Marsden and they decided to get married. However, the prince’s stepmother Queen Narissa portrayed by Susan Sarandon is against the marriage as it will deprive her of power and control over the kingdom. So she disguises herself as an old woman and tricks Princess Giselle in to falling in to a wishing well. 
Saw III left Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda dead. He returns in Saw IV as a green shaded murderer. Jigsaw is more visible than in the previous two Saw movies. Two FBI detectives Scott Patterson and his colleague Agent Perez, portrayed by Athena Karkanis set out to investigate the murder of Detective Kerry. They come to help senior detective Hoffman played by Costas Mandylor figure out the puzzle behind a spate of gruesome murders in the city. Unfortunately SWAT commander Rigg, played by Lyriq Bent gets abducted and must use his brainpower to rescue his kidnapped wife and daughter. 
Fred Claus starring Vince Vaughn is meant to be a jolly, good- humored Christmas tale and does succeed to an extent. So we have Fred Claus, the not so famous brother of Santa Claus who has fallen on bad times and seeks his good brother’s help to bail him out of a messy situation. Santa agrees to help his sibling provided Fred comes to the North Pole to help out in the week before Christmas. 
Lions for Lambs is a thought –provoking social commentary on the US government’s policy in Afghanistan. It depicts two soldiers Derek Luke and Michael Pena in Afghanistan, a senator played by Tom Cruise relating a new war strategy in Afghanistan to a journalist, Meryl Streep and an interaction between a professor, Robert Redford and his student Andrew Garfield. The film tries to explore these three situations as the professor tries to inspire his student by relating that the two soldiers are his former students and that he had a role to play in their enlistment. 
American Gangster is reminiscent of many mafia movies like Serpico and The Godfather. It is based on the true story of Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington who was a drug lord in New York during the 1970s. The movie is quite engrossing and well made but somehow stops short of being a great film in spite of excellent performances by Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, as the honest cop out to bust the drug lord and by Denzel Washington. 
Oh yes. I am talking about the film- The Bourne Ultimatum. The third in the Bourne trilogy, I was a little skeptical about it from the start. Right up till the time that the commercials were on and I was munching popcorn in the darkened theatre, I had my doubts about this last one measuring up to the previous two. You see, most successful films have bad sequels and this after all, is the third part. I figured that since you can’t even play around too much with amnesia, how on earth would one make it look fresh for the third time? 
