agneepath Bollywood has started 2012 with a vengeance, literally, with Agneepath, a remake of a 1990 film. It includes everything you would expect from Indian cinema; romance, action, elaborate dance sequences, and lush colors, only this film has so much more violence and heartache.

As a child, Vijay’s father tries to talk the townsfolk of a small island off the coast of Mumbai out of loaning their land to Kancha, who wants to grow coke in their salt fields. Kancha will stop at nothing to get the land, so he has a little girl raped and murdered and sets Vijay’s father up, leading to mob justice and the father’s death. Vijay and his mother move to Mumbai where he comes across Rauf Lala, Mumbai’s top drugs dealer and human trafficker and becomes a member Continue reading »

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the-grey What would you do, if you survived a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness during a blizzard? Would you have the know how and basic primal instincts on building fires and seeking shelter? Now throw into the mix a pack of vicious Timberwolves who know you and your party are injured, and are just waiting to pick you off one by one. Would you survive? The answer to these questions is answered very blatantly in Joe Carnahan’s new film, The Grew, starring Liam Neeson.

Ottway (Neeson) is a wolf hunter for an oil company who oversees the workers while they’re drilling in the Alaskan terrain. He makes sure they don’t get attacked, and is very good at his job. Upon returning home from an expedition, the crews plane goes down leaving a handful of survivors with Ottway taking charge and Continue reading »

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mission-impossible-ghost-protocol-poster Five years ago, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) saved the world from certain destruction, but lost his wife in the process. Now, mourning the loss of her, Hunt has chosen to accept a new mission, one that again would mean certain world destruction and the start of possibly World War III in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

While on a mission in Russia infiltrating the Kremlin to obtain nuclear codes, Hunt’s mission is aborted due to another spy in the premises also seeking the codes Hunt escapes just in time before a bomb explodes, leaving high tensions between the US and Russia, since all evidence points towards him on detonating the bomb. The US President declares Ghost Protocol, or the shut down of IMF, leaving Continue reading »

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territories Following a weekend at a wedding in Canada, a bunch mates get pulled over when they drive their minivan across the border to America. Two customs officers ask to see Jalil’s (Michael Mando) driving license and move back to their car to check him out. When they point out that the youngsters are driving with a bust front light, Jalil tells them that they hit a deer a while back, which triggers the officers

Despite constant claims of “only trying to do our job” the custom officers become increasingly agitated and act more and more threatening towards the group of youngsters. When one of the youths, Tom (Alex Weiner) starts Continue reading »

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immortals After a five-year hiatus, Tarsem Singh (The Cell) is back in the director’s chair to deliver us yet another visually stimulating journey in his third feature film. Immortals. Singh takes the wonderfully crafted script from the up and coming writing team of the Parlapanides brothers, Charley and Vlas, and takes us back to Ancient Greece, to a time of Western mythology when the Gods were in charge.

King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) is scouring Greece to find the Epirus Bow, a weapon that could be used to unleash the Titans back onto the Earth from their prison deep within Mount Tartaros. After overtaking a Monastery and capturing Phaedra (Freida Pinto), an oracle who sees visions and can aid in finding the bow Continue reading »

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shaolin A darkness falls upon China when warlords and their armies clash in bloody combat and the noble Shaolin temple’s warrior monks find themselves caught in the middle. Intent on remaining separate from the violence of the outside world, yet willing to offer a helping hand to all those in need, their way of life is put to the test when a fallen general seeks medical help, and eventually enlightenment, from the very same monks he offended.

To those who doubt the Hong Kong film industry’s ability to continue Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

Imagine a world where money doesn’t exist, only time does. Everyday you work to earn enough money to live another day, to eat and try to enjoy life. In the ghetto’s there are gangs of time thieves who’ll rob you of the time you have left, leaving you to die in the gutter. The Time Keepers roam about keeping track of time and making sure that not too much is being spread out. On the other side of the spectrum, the rich have centuries to live and have lavish parties where they play poker with the excess time they have left. And all the while, you never grow older than twenty-five years old.

Sounds pretty cool, I know how excited I was when I saw the trailer a few months back and thought to myself what a great social commentary on Continue reading »

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DVD Artwork

Filming H.P Lovecraft has never been easy, adapting that particular brand of cosmic horror does not tend to come out well on screen and the only movies that has had some success are the ones that have taken liberties with the original story it is based on. Cthulhu is another one of those and does it quite well.

This is basically an adaption of The Shadow over Innsmouth, the same short story that gave us Stuart Gordon’s entertaining Dagon. In this case however, Dagon is the one that sticks the closest to the source material where Cthulhu tells an entirely different story set in a town that very well could be Innsmouth though not as dingy. The main character, Russ, receives a message that his mother has passed away and is forced to return to the place of his birth, a small coastal town Continue reading »

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After many years in anticipation, Johnny Depp reprises his role as a Hunter S. Thompson alter ego in the new film The Rum Diary, and sadly, I think he took it one film too far.

It follows a young writer, Kemp, as he travels to Puerto Rico to join a failing newspaper and begin his writing career as an astrology writer. Along the way, he drinks a lot of rum with the paper’s photographer and roommate, nearly goes to jail, meets a beautiful young blond (Amber Heard), is invited to help a shady business scheme put on by a gentleman named Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), and tries to discover his own “voice” to write his own novel.

That is all I took away as being the story from the seemingly endless two-hour marathon that is the film. Yes, it looks like there’s a lot involved, but it’s so sprawled out and Continue reading »

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Beat Takeshi goes back to his roots, eh? Outrage is truly a “classic” Yakuza tale, featuring several groups of gangsters being played out against each other by the top dog, and sadly, that is about it. The first 30-40 minutes of this movie aren’t exactly what I would describe as entertaining, it is just a collection of scenes featuring Yakuza screaming, beating each other up and so forth. Not that heavy violence is a bad thing, but when Outrage has no characters whatsoever it gets kind of… dull actually. They can shout how much they want but, beat up innocent people just for the fun of it but when there really isn’t anything separating the characters other than the fact that one of them is played by Takeshi Kitano and the others aren’t, it doesn’t make great viewing. The actors are all good, except for the fact that Kitano himself does one of those roles that he can Continue reading »

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There’s no real reason to waste space and time trying to sell this movie on you with fancy writing and descriptive amateur journalism. The Skin I Live In is a modern masterpiece, Pedro Almodóvar a genius and if you miss this movie, then you have no reason to ever call yourself a genre fan ever again.

Horror has always been at the core of Pedro Almodóvar movies. In one-way or another, it’s been an important part of the universe his movies work in. Be it the rape victim taking violent revenge, the lunatic kidnapping the woman of his obsession, or the sexual predator being caught up in his own game. If you know your Almodóvar, you know that I’m talking about Kika, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and Matador – which starts with a scene of Diego Montes [Nacho Martínez] having a good old wank to the death scenes of Mario Bava’s Blod & Black Continue reading »

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Theatrical Poster

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame brings something to Hong Kong cinema that really has been missing for as long as I can remember; a mystery crime solver film. Yes, there are instances where hidden identities need to be discovered in previous films, but Detective Dee is one hundred percent a mystery crime solver set in the Tang Dynasty.

A monument is being built in honor of Empress Wu Zetian (Carina Lau), and one day two of the supervisors burst into flames for no reason. No one is sure exactly what the cause is, so the Empress free Detective Dee from prison to solve the mystery. Empress Wu sends her right hand swordswoman, Jing’er (Bingbing Li) to not only watch Dee, but to help him in his quest to find not only what Continue reading »

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