Movie Reviews

DRAG ME TO HELL

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Reviewer) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:34:00 +0000

Sam Raimi has officially returned to the horror genre with vigor and spark in the year's best horror film so far.What's so special about "Drag Me to Hell" is that it knows its roots. It takes us back to the days when it was a true "experience" to see a horror/terror movie. When you went into a movie theater and the audience jumped, yelled at the screen and quivered in shock and disgust. At the conclusion it brought them to their feet with a standing ovation and all along with the mindset of, "Okay, we're all in this together, let's make it out in one piece." "Drag Me to Hell" is what a good experience at the movies is all about. There will be those who hate it, loath it even, but for the handful of us that were transformed into obsessed fans of this niche market by a master director, it will validate our love for the genre and will forever stand as a true testament of the best it has to offer.

Michael Jackson: The Greatest of All Time Dead at 50

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Reviewer) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:07:00 +0000

As word spread that Jackson had been pronounced dead, several people burst into tears. Others simply stood in disbelief. Still others whipped out cell phones and began calling or texting friends.

It still has not hit me. It feels so strange. Michael Jackson is dead. He was only 50 years old, a milestone age. He just celebrated the 25^th anniversary of "Thriller," the best-selling album of all time, and re-released it in February.

Jackson died at UCLA Medical Centerafter being stricken at his rented home in Holmby Hills.Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital, where doctors continued to work on him.

"However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known," his brother Jermaine said. Police said they were investigating, standard procedure in high-profile cases.

At the time of his death, Jackson was rehearsing hard for what was to be his greatest come back: He was scheduled to start his show run in London in a few weeks.

Michael Jackson is one of the few artists in the history of the art form to be able to take one song, like "Billie Jean," and reach people of all age groups, races, and nationalities.

The Hangover

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Reviewer) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:36:00 +0000

Todd Phillips new movie, The Hangover, is as aptly titled as anything else released this year: it's about a Vegas bachelor party gone horribly awry, in which the groom inexplicably disappears, no one can remember a damned thing, and Mike Tyson wants his tiger back.
From a live tiger in the bathroom to an abandoned baby in the closet, this movie has everything. Seriously, everything (confirmed by the credit sequence).The cast never forgets that they are actors here and not on an episode of "Jackass" as Apatow's comedies often feel. There's tight control on the dialog and they have touched all types of jokes.
HOWEVER, everyone I talked with after the movie will be seeing it again. This is one movie that is as funny as advertised.

Angels and Demons

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Zain) — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:20:00 +0000

Plucking the same violent, occult strings as "Da Vinci" while avoiding its leadenness, "Angels" keeps the action coming for the best part of 139 minutes. Scripters David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman have taken a firmer hand with Brown's material.

Although this attack of realism might disappoint the book's die-hard fans, it pays off in depicting the Vatican as a fairly "normal" nation-state, and not as some all-powerful SMERSH-like nemesis. And in the end, most of those who attacked the film before seeing it on grounds of its being anti-Catholic will have to eat their words, as the warm-hearted ending casts a rosy glow around the College of Cardinals, the papacy and the faithful throngs in St. Peter's Square.

The story line is brilliantly simplified into Langdon's search for the four cardinals, with Vetra and Olivetti as his sidekicks. His job is to find angel sculptures inside churches, which point to other churches. Black police cars race dangerously through the crowded Roman streets, always arriving five minutes too late to prevent the grisly death of an aged cardinal who has been branded with the words Earth, Air, Fire or Water. Hanks does a likable job of glossing over every implausibility, allowing the action to climax in gut-churning shots borrowed from cheap horror films.

Moon

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Zain) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:01:00 +0000

Duncan Jones’s sci-fi film Moon is low budget film. The movie star Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who is assigned to work on the moon base by himself for three years on the surface of the moon for the past three years monitoring the tractors that harvest the moon’s surface for helium energy, with only an intelligent computer to keep in touch with his company. When strange things start happening around him, he is forced to question whether or not he is going crazy or if someone else is up there with him. Rockwell acting gorgeous especially after the moment when found himself on the moon.

Knowing - 2009

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Zain) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Alex Proyas (director) / Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White, Stuart Hazeldine, Alex Proyas (screenplay)
CAST: Nicolas Cage … John Koestler
Chandler Canterbury … Caleb Koestler
Rose Byrne … Diana Wayland
D.G. Maloney … The Stranger
Lara Robinson … Lucinda Embry / Abby Wayland
Nadia Townsend … Grace Koestler
Alan Hopgood … Rev. Koestler

In a lot of ways, “Knowing” exceeded my expectations. I went into it expecting a CGI-filled disaster movie with explosions every few second, but instead got a terrifically paced suspense-thriller with well-drawn characters. Proyas continues to impress with his visual acumen, and certainly the airplane crash and its raw, immediate aftermath is one of “Knowing’s” highlights. The film is a bit of a slow-mover at the beginning, but it does pick up steam and builds toward an unpredictable Third Act, before settling into a curiously muted conclusion. You expect a movie about the end of the world to go out with a bang, but “Knowing” and Alex Proyas have other ideas.

Watchmen

ansarizulqarnain@gmail.com (Zain) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:45:00 +0000

View watchmen trailer from Watchmen Official Trailer

Watchmen is set in an America in which Richard Nixon is serving an unprecedented third term as president after winning Vietnam with the help of Dr Manhattan, the comic book's only true superhero, and the Comedian, a nihilistic, heartless bully and would-be rapist who represents everything wrong with the bad ol' US of A. The pair are the only remaining "costumed adventurers" permitted to operate after the activity was made illegal five years earlier. But the sudden murder of the Comedian starts off a chain of events which will pull many of the surviving former heroes back into the fray, for better or worse.

The background to all this is imminent nuclear apocalypse, with the famed Doomsday Clock fixed at five minutes to midnight. Billions of people wait to see whether Manhattan will intervene to halt the standoff between Nixon and the Soviets. And where might be the cerulean superman? Well, he's in self-imposed exile on Mars.