Release Date: 20 January 2012

Because we only review G, PG, and PG-13 movies at Parent Previews we did not review this title. For your convenience, we have provided some brief information about the film’s synopsis and content.

Synopsis:

Kate Beckinsale is back, wielding weapons and threatening the human race, as she reprises her role of Selene, the vampire warrior.

Underworld: Awakening is rated R: for strong violence and gore, and for some language.

Director: Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy, India Eisley
Studio: 2012 Sony Screen Gems

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Release Date: November 16, 2012
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Director: Bill Condon
Screenwriter: Melissa Rosenberg
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Rami Malek, Maggie Grace, Mackenzie Foy, Tracey Heggins, Judi Shekoni, Omar Metwally, Andrea Gabriel, Rami Malek, Angela Sarafyan, Marlane Barnes, Lisa Howard, Patrick Brennan, Noel Fisher, Guri Weinberg, Lee Pace, Toni Trucks, Bill Tangradi, Erik Odom, Valorie Curry, Joe Anderson, Olga Fonda, Janelle Froehlich, Masami Kosaka, Sebastiao Lemos, Amadou Ly, Ty Olsson, Wendell Pierce, Carolina Virguez
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Official Website: BreakingDawn-themovie.com
Review: Not Available
DVD Review: Not Available
DVD: Not Available
Movie Poster: Not Available
Production Stills: View here

Plot Summary: ”The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” will be released as two separate films. The project, based on the fourth novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.

source form: comingsoon

Release Date: June 22, 2012
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Screenwriter: Seth Grahame-Smith
Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jimmi Simpson, Robin McLeavy, Alan Tudyk, Rufus Sewell
Genre: Horror, Supernatural Thriller
MPAA Rating: Not Available
Official Website: Not Available
Review: Not Available
DVD Review: Not Available
DVD: Not Available

Plot Summary: Tim Burton, Timur Bekmambetov and Jim Lemley are teaming to produce a big screen adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s new book “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” The following is how publisher Grand Central Publishing describes the book:

“Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother’s bedside. She’s been stricken with something the old-timers call “Milk Sickness.”

“My baby boy…” she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother’s fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, “henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose…” Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.”

source form: comingsoon

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

In this dramatization of the life of Margaret Thatcher, such is the position in which the former Prime Minister of Great Britain finds herself. Retired from shaping economic reform and commanding armies and navies, the woman who was once dubbed “The Iron Lady” by some frustrated Russian politicians, is now a little soft in the head. No longer in charge of running a nation, she struggles to independently manage her life. Shifting between the past and the present, the once steely stateswoman (played by Meryl Streep) tries to sort out the meaning of her contribution to society.

If you are expecting parliamentary debates and/or depictions of the varied reactions to this controversial leader, The Iron Lady may be a bit of a surprise. Because these things are not the focus of the film, the production summarizes these aspects of her life using actual newsreel footage. Thanks to this inclusion, viewers will witness (or re-witness) many graphic scenes captured during her tenure. While some re-enactments are mixed in, most of what is shown is real, and therefore more disturbing. Expect to see battles between the police and angry strikers/rioters, IRA bombings that result in fires, property damage, injuries and loss of life, as well as bloodied and dead soldiers shown during the Falkland Islands conflict. There is also a brief shot of some topless females celebrating the end of the war.

Instead of following a chronology of these events, the script delves into the reminiscing of a wandering mind that finally has time to ask about spent or misspent opportunities, the proper or improper placement of priorities and whether or not achievements should be celebrated or regretted. Her husband Dennis (Jim Broadbent) and twin children (one played by Olivia Colman) are featured largely in her thoughts.

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“Every parent’s nightmare” would be the evening news boilerplate description of “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Lynne Ramsay’s disturbing movie about the mother of a child who goes on a killing spree at his high school. That trite phrase is accurate in an almost technical sense: Ms. Ramsay (who adapted Lionel Shriver’s novel with Rory Stewart Kinnear) follows a kind of dream logic in telling a chronologically splintered story, weaving patterns of associated images and sensations into an intense and claustrophobic web of fear.

One expects every mother loves their son even when they’re downright evil people–mass murderers, terrorists and the like–an idea Lynne Ramsay’s third film explores through the eyes of Tilda Swinton’s Eva Katchatourian, who when we meet her is living alone in a rundown house that’s been splattered with blood red paint. She wakes up to this after a dream of being carried across the arms of students cavorting in tomato sauce, and the relevance of both these things may not seem very clear until much later in the film.

From this opening sequence, you know you’re in for something quite different, and anything conventional about Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel is tempered by scenes that grab you by the throat and forces you to watch, knowing full well that nothing good can come from any of it. For the most part, it takes a non-linear approach to the narrative as it bounces between Eva’s current life living alone after something horrible happened to her, then goes back in time to when Eva first met her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) leading up to them having their son Kevin.

Kevin cries constantly, driving Eva’s post-natal depression to new heights as it evolves into full-on hatred for this little boy whose only joy seems to derive from his desire to torture her. Needless to say, Kevin is a bad kid, rotten to the core, and he’s always angry, something that wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating to Eva if her son didn’t get along so well with her husband. The only time Kevin shows any sort of love or affection towards his mother is when she reads him “Robin Hood” and his affinity for archery adds to the sense of foreboding surrounding Kevin when the couple have a young daughter and like Eva, you can only expect the worst. Things get worse though as he starts playing his parents against one another and things become much clearer once it’s revealed what happened to put Eva in her current state.

Other movies have told stories based around young men who lash out at society, but Ramsay blends the reality of that sort of situation with the type of bad kid horror subgenre seen in films such as “The Bad Seed,” “The Omen” or “Orphan,” only basing it in reality rather than doing it as a sensationalist genre film. Due to the non-linear nature, some of the film’s biggest shocks are telegraphed and somewhat tempered, since we expect what Kevin did must be fairly horrifying compared to all that he does to Eva over the course of his 16 years.

The film features another breathtaking performance by Tilda Swinton, one that runs the gamut of emotions, as she’s put through all sorts of unthinkable things, not just by Kevin but by those she encounters after the pivotal incident. Her behavior in the present day scenes is so erratic, it’s hard to fully empathize with her, but her scenes with Ezra Miller, the talented young star of comedies like “City Island,” are absolutely riveting. Miller gives such a dark and disturbing performance as he turns off his proclivity for bringing humor to any situation to prove himself to be more than Swinton’s equal, especially in their later scenes. The younger actor who plays Kevin is also quite effective at bringing the right balance of grimace and smirk as he finds the perfect way of grating on his mother’s every nerve. John C. Reilly is decent but doesn’t bring nearly as much to the table as Kevin’s father, a role that could have been played by dozens of other actors.

The film is very dark and it gets darker still as Ramsay explores the idea of who’s to blame when your kid goes bad, but she takes a far more artistic approach, allowing for plenty of visual symbolism, but also offering a soundtrack filled with choices that gives the film a dark sense of humor. There are many ways to read certain scenes, which certainly bodes well for repeat viewings, but either you’ll readily accept Ramsay’s artistic expressionism or it’s something that will bother you. Either way, it’s doubtful you’ll forget the experience watching her film.

source form: nytimes

For only his fourth movie in eleven years, director Stephen Daldry (“The Hours”) tackles the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer (“Everything Is Illuminated”) about a young boy trying to cope with the death of his father during the World Trade Center attacks. “Jeopardy” contestant Thomas Horn won the role of Oskar, who we meet as he talks about his father and the challenges he gives the young boy to find the “6th Borough” of New York City. After his father’s death, Oskar finds a new challenge when he discovers a key in a vase with the name “Black” written on it, and he goes on a quest to meet and talk to every New Yorker with that surname in hopes of finding the lock in which the key fits.

As someone who was deeply affected by the events of 9/11 and having recently lost my own father, I should be the perfect candidate for a film like this one to have some sort of effect on me; the fact that it doesn’t is clear proof how badly it fails as the whole thing seems more than slightly manipulative in its attempts to move viewers. The screenplay by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) uses many of the same storytelling tricks he’s used before, and you can almost tell which lines of narration come directly from the novel, because the words sound good, but don’t really mean much if you spend more than a few seconds thinking about them.

Oskar is a neurotic young man who suffers from every phobia under the sun, from crossing bridges to riding subways, making his quest that takes him all across the city that much more difficult. It’s not exactly easy on us, because Horn is easily one of the most annoying young actors we’ve seen on screen. He’s able to easily pull off the doe-eyed looks of a young Freddie Highmore that will make viewers tear up, but the character is so obnoxious, one of those too smart for their age brats who always seems to be one step ahead of the adults. Because Oskar never feels like a real kid, his situation seems just seems that much more implausible, so spending two hours with him on this journey is trying, especially so soon after watching a similar quest in “Hugo.”

Far stronger performances are delivered by Sandra Bullock and Max von Sydow as his mother and a man living in his grandmother’s building, whose silent nature would make him a great fit for “The Artist.” Their scenes with Horn are significantly better than anything else in the film, especially Von Sydow’s moments, which are the first time the film finally starts to warm up, but after half an hour, he’s gone and things start to lag again. Viola Davis is also quite good, but she’s underused, only appearing briefly early on and then again later. Despite getting top billing in the credits, Tom Hanks has very little time on screen, mainly goofing around with the kid and not doing anything particularly special.

Trying to make up for the weak story, the entire film is over-directed by Daldry, who creates a stylish film that uses lots of interesting techniques to keep it visually interesting, something that’s necessary to make up for the somewhat lackluster story. It also features another perfectly fine score by Alexander Desplat, but it seems weak compared to some of his other offerings this year, maybe because it has to work harder to keep things interesting. The results end up come closer to something like “The Soloist” than Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones.”

It’s plainly obvious that the film’s biggest problems come directly from the novel and the decision to make 9/11 a primary catalyst for the story. Oskar’s father could have been killed any number of ways, and the use of 9/11 seems pointless. Since we know from the beginning he lost his father in the World Trade Center, something we’re reminded of constantly – the big third act reveal when Oskar learns the truth about the key and makes a confession of his own fails to deliver any sort of emotional impact. There have already been at least two far better movies about grief and loss this year, both with far better child actors, too, and Daldry’s movie never earns its tears or its few attempted laughs.

In hindsight, it’s not surprising Warner Bros. have been deliberately hiding this movie from New York film critics, probably because they knew that anyone who lived in the city during 9/11 would be outraged by the decision to try and make money based on the very real suffering of people affected. “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” has some nice moments but overall is a failure in its exploration of the subject matter and it feels more exploitative than entertaining.

source form: comingsoon

Cast:
Matt Damon as Benjamin Mee
Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Rosie Mee
Colin Ford as Dylan Mee
Thomas Haden Church as Duncan Mee
Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Foster
Elle Fanning as Lily Miska
Patrick Fugit as Robin Jones
Angus Macfadyen as Peter MacCready
John Michael Higgins as Walter Ferris
Carla Gallo as Rhonda
Stephanie Szostak as Katherine Mee
Desi Lydic as Shea Seger
J.B. Smoove
Peter Riegert as Delbert McGinty
Nicole Andrews as Joyce Jamison

When Cameron Crowe directs a movie, it may be inspired (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire) or it may be lousy (Elizabethtown, Vanilla Sky), but it tends to be recognizably his. That isn’t true, though, of Crowe’s latest, We Bought a Zoo. From the high-concept title to the family-friendly story line, it’s basically a Tim Allen movie, only made with taste and feeling. Matt Damon plays Benjamin, a lonely widower with two kids — his wife died six months before — who revives his lust for life by purchasing a ramshackle country house with a dilapidated zoo attached.

The zoo has been closed down for two years, and Benjamin, quitting his newspaper job, tries to get it back into shape. This means interfacing with the animals (water buffalo, porcupines, an army of snakes, a grizzly bear on antidepressants). It also means getting to know the human wildlife who staff the place. Scarlett Johansson is the comely zookeeper, and everyone else is part of a kind of boho commune (the token Crowe touch). Benjamin is supposed to be embracing the daffy-irrational, and Damon is among the most rational of actors. Yet he gives a gradually winning performance as a depressed dad coming to life. The movie is like Doctor Dolittle remade as a therapeutic sudser. By the end, it got to me.

source form: ew

Cast:
Jeremy Irvine as Albert Narracott
Peter Mullan as Ted Narracott
Emily Watson as Rose Narracott
Niels Arestrup as Grandfather
David Thewlis as Lyons
Tom Hiddleston as Captain Nicholls
Benedict Cumberbatch as Maj. Jamie Stewart
Celine Buckens as Emilie
Toby Kebbell as Geordie Soldier
Patrick Kennedy as Lt. Charlier Waverly
Leonhard Carow as Michael
David Kross as Gunther
Matt Milne as Andrew Easton
Robert Emms as David Lyons
Eddie Marsan as Sgt. Fry
Nicolas Bro as Friedrich
Rainer Bock as Brandt
Hinnerk Schönemann as German Soldier in No Man’s Land
Gary Lydon as Si Easton
Geoff Bell as Sgt. Sam Perkins
Liam Cunningham as Army Doctor
Gerard McSorley as Market Auctioneer
Tony Pitts as Sgt. Martin
Irfan Hussein as Sgt. Maj. Singh
Pip Torrens as Maj. Tompkins

War Horse follows the adventures of Joey, a horse born and bred in Devon, who is the lone equine owned by Albert (Jeremy Irvine); his father, Ted (Peter Mullan); and his mother, Rose (Emily Watson). When the landowner (David Thewlis) threatens to foreclose on the farm unless the rent is paid, Ted sells Joey to army major Stewart (Benedict Cumberbatch), who rides the horse into the early battles of World War I. After Stewart is killed in action, Joey is taken by the Germans. Over the next few years, he ends up pulling ambulances and gun wagons, and being the pet of a lonely French peasant girl (Celine Buckens) and her grandfather (Niels Arestrup). Once Albert becomes old enough to join the British army, he never ceases scouring the front lines for Joey, even though the odds of him finding his beloved horse are worse than those of finding a needle in a haystack.

The principle difficulty faced by Spielberg and screenwriters Richard Curtis and Lee Hall is related to structure. Michael Morpurgo’s novel was written from the horse’s perspective – something difficult to achieve on screen without resulting to Mr. Ed tactics, which would have cheapened the production, reducing it to self-parody. Only in animated movies can animals talk without appearing foolish. So, although the primary character in the movie is Joey, War Horsefocuses on the human characters during scenes in which the horse is present. This results in a large number of supporting individuals with whom we develop little emotional attachment. To the extent that we have an investment in the movie, it’s related to Joey, but developing deep feelings for a screen horse, even one that has been anthropomorphized, is difficult. Since many of War Horse‘s big emotional moments relate to animals, Spielberg’s celebrated ability to manipulate audiences is not as effective here as in some of his past endeavors.

Compounding the problem is the performance by Jeremy Irvine, the actor with the most significant screen time. Irvine, making his film debut, presents a flat Albert who is difficult to identify or sympathize with. The performance is frequently either too broad or too subdued; maybe that’s a drawback of being forced to co-star with a horse. The rest of the cast, which includes well-respected character actors Peter Mullan, David Thewlis, and Emily Watson, as well as the veteran French thespian Niels Arestrup, is solid in what is decidedly not an actors’ production.

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Joseph Crone (Timothy Gibbs), a famous American author, travels to Barcelona after the death of his wife and child to reunite with his brother Samuel and dying father, Richard. However, Joseph’s fate is turned upside down as his life becomes flooded with spine-chilling events and the frequent sightings of the number 11. His curiosity soon changes into obsession and he soon discovers that the number holds a terrifying meaning to not only him but all religions. Isolated in an unknown country with only his companion, Sadie by his side, Joseph soon realises that 11-11-11 is a warning for all mankind.

source from: yahoo