Monday, January 28, 2008

Eagle vs Shark (2007)

Eagle vs Shark is a New Zealand-made romantic comedy directed by Academy Award nominee Taika Waititi and financed by the New Zealand Film Commission. The screenplay was also written by Waititi, based on the character of Lily created by Loren Horsley.

The film had its world premiere at Sundance in the World Cinema Dramatic section of the festival and opened in the US on June 15th, 2007 in New York and Los Angeles.

Lily is a shy, wistful girl, a songwriter when no one is listening, and an unpopular cashier at a fast food restaurant who has a crush from afar on Jarrod, a self-assured eccentric geek who works in a video game store. She waits patiently for him each day at lunchtime, hoping he will pick her queue. Jarrod, though, is interested in Jenny, a more traditionally attractive cashier, and always chooses her line.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

King of California (2007)

King of California is a 2007 film directed by Mike Cahill, his debut as a screenwriter and director. The film premiered January 24, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and opened in limited release in North American on September 14, 2007. The film stars Evan Rachel Wood and Michael Douglas.

At the age of sixteen, Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) has already had to live with her share of disappointments. Abandoned by her mother, she's dropped out of school and has been supporting herself as an employee at McDonald's while her father Charlie (Michael Douglas) resides in a mental institution.

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Gone Baby Gone is a crime drama adapted and directed by Ben Affleck. The movie is set in Boston, and based on the novel of the same title by Dennis Lehane. It stars Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, as Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, two private investigators hunting for an abducted four-year-old girl in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.

Gone Baby Gone begins in Bosaton, with a search for Amanda, a missing child. Patrick Kenzie, (Casey Affleck) a private investigator, is hired by the child's aunt to help the police, under Capt. Doyle (Morgan Freeman), talk to "the neighborhood people" who are reluctant to talk to the police. Kenzie and his girlfriend/partner Angie (Michelle Monaghan) discover that the child's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), and her boyfriend, "Skinny Ray" have stolen $130,000 from a local drug lord.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Real Genius (1985)

Real Genius is a 1985 comedy film starring Val Kilmer and Gabriel Jarret. The movie is set on the campus of "Pacific Tech," a fictitious technical university in the US. Chris Knight (Kilmer), is a genius in his senior year working on a chemical laser. He came to the university as a somber, assiduous student but mellowed over time after deciding that there is more to life than just work. Mitch Taylor (Jarret) is a new student on campus who is paired up with Knight to work on the laser. Mitch is much like Knight used to be, and has trouble settling in. Eventually, Knight teaches Mitch how to enjoy himself and live on campus without "burning out".

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Fever Pitch (1997)

Fever Pitch is a 1997 film starring Colin Firth based loosely on the book Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby.

Hornby adapted the book for the screen and fictionalized the story, concentrating on Arsenal's First Division championship-winning season in 1988-89 and its effect on the protagonist's romantic relationship. Firth plays Paul Ashworth, the character based on Hornby, a teacher at a school in North London, and his burgeoning romance with Sarah Hughes (Ruth Gemmell), a new teacher who joins Ashworth's school.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Death Sentence (2007)

Death Sentence is a 2007 film loosely based on the 1975 novel by Brian Garfield. The film is directed by Saw director James Wan, and stars Kevin Bacon as Nick Hume, a man who becomes a vengeful vigilante killer after his son is murdered by a gang as an initiation ritual. It was filmed at and it took place in Columbia, South Carolina.

The film begins with home videos of the Hume family – Nick (Kevin Bacon), Helen (Kelly Preston), Brendan (Stuart Lafferty), and their youngest son Lucas (Jordan Garrett). Nick gives Brendan a hockey stick for Christmas, and then teaches him how to hit a puck (along with his hockey skills progressively getting better, including being awarded MVP for his team). Lucas is more like his mother, and likes to paint. Nick works as a risk assessment executive for a big firm.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner is a 1982 American neo-noir science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, was based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The film stars Harrison Ford and features Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, M. Emmet Walsh, William Sanderson, Joe Turkel, Brion James and Joanna Cassidy.

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically manufactured beings called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are used for dangerous and degrading work in Earth's "off-world colonies". Following a small replicant uprising, replicants become illegal on Earth; and specialist police units called "blade runners" are trained to hunt down and "retire" (kill) escaped replicants on Earth. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of replicants hiding in Los Angeles and a semi-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard (Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment.