It’s hard to figure out if The Back-Up Plan is respectable because so many romantic comedies are terrible in comparison, or because it holds up on its own. It’s certainly better than other romantic comedies Jennifer Lopez has starred in. Lopez is a tip-off to a film’s quality (or usual lack of quality), and audiences have, over the years put with The Wedding Planner, Monster-In-Law, and Maid in Manhattan, so putting up with something that is noticeably better shouldn’t be difficult. Lopez is the lone movie veteran in the movie’s main cast and crew. Director Alan Poul has made his name by directing episodes of must-see TV shows like Six Feet Under, Rome, and Big Love. Writer Kate Angelo wrote episodes of Will and Grace and The Bernie Mac Show, while lead actor Alex O’Loughlin starred in shows like The Shield and Moonlight. Despite being clichéd, The Back-Up Plan is satisfactory mostly because of its alluring characters and surprisingly good performances.

Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) is a single New Yorker who longs for a child, even though the right guy hasn’t come along yet. Against her friends’ advice she decides to get artificially inseminated. Life, inevitably, plays a twisted joke on Zoe and almost immediately after the procedure she meets Stan (Alex O’Loughlin) in a taxi. Of course, they’re polar opposites. She lives in the city, he lives upstate. She wants children, he has never even thought about it. She owns a pet store, he makes goat cheese (nobody is ever a corporate drone in these comedies). Ignoring her better judgement she starts dating him. In the meantime she joins a single parent support group and discovers that she’s pregnant. When she reveals this to Stan, neither is sure if he will choose to stick around or leave.

Most of The Back-Up Plan’s charm comes from the characters. Jennifer Lopez brings her usual sass and focused determined, but most of the neediness of some of her past characters is toned down. The role isn’t a stretch for her by any means, but Zoe is less harsh than some of Lopez’s previous heroines. What was once shrill is now more playful – almost as if her slightly manic heroines have been written down into actual human beings. Zoe isn’t written as a character giving up who she is for a boyfriend or husband. A lot of female leads in romantic comedies have to stop being so career-oriented to land a man. Zoe, on the other hand, is self-made woman and doesn’t expect to give that up. She goes after what she wants – man or no man. Artificial insemination isn’t a popular choice for a single person to make, but she does it anyway.

The Back-Up Plan’s real stand-out is Australian actor Alex O’Loughlin. Aside from the obvious ease with which he handles Stan’s required American accent, O’Loughlin does more with the role than the movie requires. He could have been perfect, but there are moments when Stan is hesitant about Zoe’s pregnancy, and O’Loughlin’s performance has remarkably, some depth. You can feel Stan’s apprehension, his uncertainty about doing the right thing – he’s not even sure what the right thing is. What might have been written as momentary indecisiveness, O’Loughlin actually plays for what it is – a monumental choice – one nearly as huge as the choice Zoe has made.

The chemistry between Lopez and O’Loughlin is natural, but there’s never anything other than their fights and makeups and the comedy is inconsistent. Some of it is general comedy about pregnancy and looming motherhood. The funniest moments are usually the most painful and awkward ones. Poor Zoe is trying to get herself – pregnant belly and all – into a car, for example. Or her nauseous mood swings, which are bewildering than funny. Most of the comedy though, has at its heart characters forced into uncomfortable situations. The worst of the humour lies with the women in Zoe’s single parent support group. Each basket case is an even bigger freak than the last, which Zoe learns almost instantly when one woman tells her about giving birth right in the chair Zoe sits in. All this goes even more awry when one member forces them all – Zoe and Stan included – to witness her natural home water birth. It is a totally horrifying look at birth – some will find it funny, and others won’t. The movie also gives a grim reflection of the parents who grumble about parenthood. If it isn’t Zoe’s best friend and mother-of-three, Mona (Michaela Watkins) drunkenly grumbling about her kids, it’s a dad (Anthony Anderson) Stan talks to, who describes fatherhood as being most awful, momentarily amazing, and then awful again.

The good news about The Back-Up Plan is that the movie isn’t as terrible as its marketing suggests. It is actually one of Jennifer Lopez’s better films. The problem with actors who churn out the same old formula is that when that formula is slightly above-average, it’s hard to get the masses to care anymore.

Buy The Back-Up Plan @Amazon – DVD | Blu-Ray

Two years after the first Iron Man, some things remain the same, while others have changed. The things that haven’t changed are the things that matter most – Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Palthrow), Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr’s) business associate, Stark’s best friend, Lieutenant Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes, the Iron Man suit, and of course, Stark Industries. What has changed is that Tony Stark must deal with not one, but two villains in the form of Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) and Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). The aforementioned Rhodey is still by his side, but he’s now played by Don Cheadle. Tony also has a mysterious new assistant, Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson), and where Tony once worked alone and never took orders, he now sometimes answers to Nicky Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the chief of SHIELD. The other change is the sequel’s quality – it isn’t as good as the first Iron Man, and though the original was an entertaining piece of pop culture, Iron Man 2 is a less fun, berserk ride.

Iron Man 2 begins six months after the first movie and Tony Stark is even more famous. His Iron Man identity is public knowledge and he singled-handedly privatized world peace with his Iron Man suit. But, the American government doesn’t want the suit getting into the wrong hands and in an effort spearheaded by Senator Stern (Garry Shandling), Congress commands that Tony Stark hand over the weapon to the Defence Department. Stark is convinced that his competition (including Justin Hammer) is years off from copying the Iron Man technology. At the same time Tony’s arc reactor which has kept him alive since his capture in Afghanistan is now killing him. In his vulnerable state he is ambushed by Russian physicist Ivan Vanko – a man hell-bent on getting revenge on Tony Stark for the perceived misdeeds of Tony’s deceased father, Howard Stark (John Slattery).

Like many superhero sequels, there are almost too many characters crowding Iron Man 2. The most powerful and memorable of all is Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko. Vanko’s hulking body is covered in prison tattoos, his mouth full of gold teeth, and Rourke snarls about half of his lines in Russian, and his accent in English works. While Vanko is terrifying and even more, in his violent Whiplash alter ego, he never feels like a real threat. In their first encounter Iron Man dispatches Whiplash, who is then promptly tossed into jail. Whiplash says he attacks Iron Man to make “God bleed” so people can “cease to believe in Him”. But what Whiplash forgets is that he bleeds too in this fight. If Iron Man can defeat Whiplash he’s dying and unprepared, Whiplash is no longer an unbeatable threat.

Where Mickey Rourke nearly outshines Downey Jr., Sam Rockwell may well be his doppelganger, personality-wise. Rockwell was once considered to play Tony Stark, and here you get a chance to ser what Rockwell would have done with the role. Rockwell’s Justin Hammer is a lot younger than the comic book defence contractor, but here he could almost be Stark if Hammer wasn’t such a greedy hotshot. Rockwell plays him with the same twitchy strangeness he’s done so brilliantly a few times before, but his faux elegance (you’ll get distracted by the self-tanner on his hands in one scene) turns it up a notch, and Rockwell is always fun to watch.
Scarlett Johansson is nothing more than eye candy in the movie’s first act, but by the end Natalie Rushman (or Black Widow in the comic books) has genuine kick-ass fierceness. Naturally, she wears a sexy catsuit, but her fight scenes aren’t for lusty fanboys. She doesn’t simply kick ass – she annihilates.

Iron Man 2 rests on where it goes and where it doesn’t go. Tony Stark, like in the first movie, doesn’t do teenage angst. He embraces his power. The Iron Man franchise might be for kids, but its heroes and villains are most certainly not for children. What the movie agonizes over is the big picture stuff: should the Iron Man weapon be kept in private and increasingly reckless hands, or should be handed over to a military industrialized government? You know where Stark stands, but both sides of the debate are brought up, and Iron Man 2 plays with politics. Not surprising in the Iron Man universe, but surprising for a tent-pole picture.

While Iron man 2 is both politically relevant and breezy as the first – everything with what is wrong with blockbusters, especially their sequels, is heightened. The movie is louder and bigger than ever and not in a good way. Iron Man 2 is a hulking, clumsy picture. The villains have larger weapons and flashier powers, but for all their flash, they are not substantially threatening enough. The endless metallic melees between the Iron Man suit and Stark’s enemies are shrieking, fiery and confusing. The other half of the fight scenes are Rhodey in another weaponised suit battling Stark, after Stark has too much to drink – the intentions of this illogical battle are never really clear and neither is the ease with which Rhodey handles the new suit. What was once ultracool necessity is now just plain ultraviolence. The suits are bigger, shinier, more destructive – and for what? The villains aren’t much of a threat, so why beef up the armour?

Tony Stark is a likeable as ever, and Pepper is ever-faithful. But the background noise around them, rather than immediate danger is what puts the film not only out of the original’s reach, but out of the reach of other superhero sequels like Spider Man 2 and The Dark Knight.

Get It Iron Man 2 on DVD

When Ryan Bingham isn’t sacking people, he’s giving motivational speeches extolling the virtues of his misanthropic life philosophy. According to Bingham, letting go of what ties people down (other people, places, things), is to truly be free. He lives to fly (“The slower we move the faster we die…moving is living.”) and on his travels he meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman almost exactly like him. They start an informal relationship of sorts – nothing serious, nothing permanent. For Bingham, life couldn’t be better until new young co-worker Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) proposes that their company keep its career transition consultants at home base to fire people over the internet. This sends Bingham’s life into a tailspin. His boss (Jason Bateman), forces him to take Natalie on the road – or up in the air – with him to show how the job is done. Soon Bingham’s life is shaken up by Alex and Natalie, his two new life passengers.

Bingham is a man who has been fired from his own life because he’s been downsized by the people around him (“You are an escape…you’re a parenthesis”). He has no friends, he’s a stranger to his family. He barely comes home to his apartment, and even the neighbor he was sleeping with has moved on to a new boyfriend. There are no connecting flights in Ryan Bingham’s life – he simply flies direct, from person to person, employee to employee, airport to airport.

The film rises with its lead actors, and each one is smart, witty, if a little world-weary. George Clooney has been criticized for not completely disappearing into his roles often enough, but Clooney is a movie star, and it’s impossible for movie stars – who become more personalities than actors – to always be totally immersed in their roles. In one scene Bingham proclaims to Keener that he doesn’t want marriage or children and it becomes hard to see where Ryan Bingham ends, and where George Clooney begins. Bingham is a man you’d ordinarily loathe, but because it is Clooney playing him with his usual charm, you’re drawn in. The two female leads are brilliant actresses for Clooney to bounce off. Vera Farmiga plays Alex as jaded as Clooney plays Bingham, and she’s captivating, funny, tough. She’s a balance of strong and sexy. Farmiga is always so good that audiences and filmmakers tend to take her for granted. She makes it look easy, as if she’s, well, at cruising altitude. Anna Kendrick is the real revelation of Up in the Air. She isn’t a household name yet, but as Natalie, she’s professional, steely, and scarily efficient.

Shot on location at the height of the financial panic, the film reads like an ad for every corporation in America – like American Airlines, Apple, Hertz Corporations have taken over people’s lives. They employ them, transport them, fire them, and hold them hostage to their whims. The film’s characters are particularly obsessed with technology. Ryan Bingham can’t live without it, and through director Jason Reitman’s eyes, neither can we. After their first night together, Bingham and Alex set up another date, all while clicking away on their shiny silver laptops, typing each other into their stuffed schedules. They flirt long-distance not with phone calls, but with a series of short, clever text messages. Relationships become clicks and tweets. Letters, and really, all forms of communication reduced to emoticons and acronyms. No wonder Natalie thinks firing people over the internet is acceptable – corporations have become as slick and cold as their machinery. It’s easy for CEOs to ignore the havoc unemployment wreaks on people’s souls. An employee Bingham fires compares unemployment to death – his own.

America itself is really the film’s lead character. Jason Reitman (Juno) gives aerial shots of the great American landscape. The concrete and steel cities of America’s Midwest are an interconnected maze of superhighways. Each city (Las Vegas, Miami, Detroit, St. Louis, Omaha) has its own mood, but most of them are the glory of America’s once-industrial rustbelt. Most of these cities, with their staggering unemployment rates were built by industries and companies that have since packed up and left or crumbled entirely. Up in the Air is a uniquely American film with universal themes.

The film’s soundtrack adds to the mood of the film. Sad Brad Smith’s song, Help Yourself, was one of the most emotional and truly hopeful songs of 2009. It was ineligible for the Oscars, but it’s a song that captures our era as perfectly as the film does. Up in the Air is bittersweet, uncertain about the future, and nothing is neatly tied up. There are no real endings. Not in life, not in love, not in employment. There are always delays, cancellations, departures, but there is always a flight everyday, from anywhere to anywhere.

Buy the Up In The Air DVD now @Amazon

Review by S.I.

Young audiences will be enthralled by the secret world of Pixie Hollow, where Tinker Bell and her magical friends, Iridessa, Fawn, Rosetta and Silvermist turn winter into spring and, with the power of faith, trust and a little bit of pixie dust, learn the importance of being true to yourself. As with all Walt Disney offerings, Tinker Bell boasts beautiful computer-generated animation, and a host of special features.

The DVD includes Pixie Hollow: Tinker Trainer – an all-new game, Magical Guide To Pixie Hollow, Ever Wonder – discover how fairies put the ‘wonder’ in natural wonders, and The Mainland: Creating Pixie Hollow – see how the filmmakers created this magical realm, music video performed by Selena Gomez, and deleted scenes.

Overflowing with fun and imagination, and introducing characters that children can readily identify with, like Clank and Bobbie, the tinker fairies, Tinker Bell is bound t0 delight the whole family. Get the Tinker Bell DVD @ Amazon.

Cast: Voices of Mae Whitman, Lucy Lui, Anjelica Huston, Jane Horrocks, America Ferrara, Jesse McCartney
Director: Bradley Raymond
Studio: Disney
Certificate: G
Release Date: Available now
Run Time: 78 minutes

Ryan Phillippe (Flags of Our Fathers, Crash), Channing Tatum (Step up 2: The Streets) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Lookout, TV’s 3rd Rock from the Sun) play three soldier friends returning to their Texas hometown after service in Iraq. All are finding the return to civilian life difficult, in different ways. Decorated war hero Sgt. Brandon King (Phillippe), who was the squad leader, is the most eager to put the military behind him and settle down. But when, on what should be his last day in the service, he is ordered back to Iraq, his world is turned upside down, and the conflict tests everything he believes in: the bond of family, the loyalty of friendship, the limits of love and the value of honor. Brandon cannot face another tour of duty. Haunted by the death and destruction, he decides to try to enlist the help of his local senator.

Extras on the DVD include deleted scenes, a commentary by director Kimberly Pierce and co-writer Mark Richard, and features: The Making of Stop-Loss, and A Day in Boot Camp. Get the Stop-Loss DVD @ Amazon.

Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Timothy Oliphant, Abbie
Cornish
Director: Kimberly Pierce
Studio: Paramount
Certificate: R
Run Time: 122 minutes

Prince Caspian, played by the dashing Ben Barnes (Stardust) is the rightful heir to the throne, but his position is threatened by his power-hungry uncle, King Miraz (Sergio Castlellitto). There are epic battles as the Pevensies and Prince Caspian lead the Narnians on a remarkable journey to restore peace and glory to their enchanted land. There are also some scene-stealing creatures, notably the swashbuckling mouse, Reepicheep (enthusiastically voiced by Eddie Izzard), and the grumpy dwarf, Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage – Underdog).

Such is the success of these first two Narnia films that many of the characters are set to return in ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’, some time in 2010. Prince Caspian is a breathtaking 2 ½ hour long adventure, filled with imagination, courage, joy and humour that the whole family will want to watch again and again. The DVD also features an audio commentary with director Andrew Adamson and actors. Get the The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian DVD @ Amazon.

Cast: Ben Barnes, William Mosley, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keyes, Anna Popplewell
Director: Andrew Adamson
Studio: Disney
Certificate: PG
Run Time: 149 minutes

Submitted by: Admin

The figures for The Dark Knight speak for themselves. It is one of the most successful films ever made, with worldwide box office takings only just shy of U.S. $1B, a figure only bettered by Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. This was the most anticipated release of the year in cinemas, and it didn’t disappoint. Quite simply, it’s one of the best films that you will see. The Dark Knight will have you glued to the screen for the full 152 minutes, with the tension maintained throughout.

The acting is superlative, with the late Heath Ledger (I’m Not There, Brokeback Mountain, The Patriot) outstanding and credible as the psychotic Joker, made even more moving by his tragic death earlier last year. Gary Oldman (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, True Romance) returns as Lieutenant Jim Gordon who, with the help of District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart – No Reservations) sets out to dismantle the remaining crime organizations that plague the streets. When they find themselves unequal to the task of controlling the reign of chaos unleashed by The Joker, they need some help from Batman (Christian Bale – I’m Not There, The Prestige). Maggie Gyllenhaal (Mona Lisa Smile, Stranger than Fiction) is Bruce Wayne’s love interest, Rachel Dawes; Michael Caine his trusty valet, Alfred, and Morgan Freeman (The Bucket List, Lucky Number Slevin) his right-hand man at Wayne Enterprises. In addition to The Joker, who is always several steps ahead of the heroes (and the audience); Batman has to deal with Dr. Jonathan Crane (The Scarecrow) (Cillian Murphy – 28 Days Later, Sunshine).

The Dark Knight is a DVD that you will want to watch over and over again. Get the Dark Knight DVD @ Amazon.

Cast: Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Heath Ledger, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Studio: Warner Brothers
Certificate: PG-13
Release Date: Available now
Run Time: 152 minutes

Submitted by: Admin

After hundreds of lonely years doing what he was built for, WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. When EVE realizes that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled on the key to the planet’s future, and races back to report her findings to the humans, WALL-E chases after her and unwittingly sets in motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventure ever seen on the big screen.

Join WALL-E on his fantastic journey across a universe of visions of the future, with a hilarious cast of malfunctioning misfit robots, and a pet cockroach. Filled with imagination, humor and heart, WALL-E is a film that children and adults alike will enjoy time and time again. If you get the DVD, it is loaded with bonus features too, included BURN-E, a hilarious, all-new animated short, Presto – an amazing animated theatrical short film, deleted scenes, WALL-E’s Tour Of The Universe – WALL-E takes you on a real ride through space, Building Worlds From The Sound Up – legendary sound designer Ben Burtt shares secrets of creating the sounds of WALL-E, and an audio commentary with director Andre Stanton. Get the WALL-E DVD @ Amazon.

Cast: Voices of Ben Burtt, John Ratzenberger, Jeff Garlin, Elissa Knight
Director: Andrew Stanton
Studio: Disney
Certificate: G
Release Date: Available now
Run Time: 98 minutes

Submitted by: Admin

Peyton Reed (previously directed ‘The Break-Up’ and ‘Down with Love’) directs Jim Carrey (previously starred in ‘External Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, ‘Bruce Almighty’ and others) as Carl Allen in Yes Man.

Carl, a “just say no” man, is persuaded to attend a Yes Man seminar by an acquaintance who has already embraced the positive philosophy. Unleashing the power of “YES” begins to transform Carl’s life in amazing and unexpected ways, getting him promoted at work and opening the door to a new romance. But his willingness to embrace every opportunity might just become too much of a good thing.

Terrence Stamp (previously starred in ‘Get Smart’ and ‘Valkyrie’) is the philosophy guru behind the Yes Man concept, the lovely Zooey Deschanel (previously starred in ‘The Happening’ and ‘Failure to Launch’) plays Allen’s love interest and Bradley Cooper (previously starred in ‘Wedding Crashers’ and ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’) is his best friend, Peter, but Yes Man is ultimately a film all about Jim Carrey. Grossing almost U.S. $229 million in worldwide box office takings since its December opening in theatres, Yes Man is in the top 30 films of 2008.

Cast: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, John Michael Higgins, Bradley Cooper
Director: Peyton Reed
Studio: Warner Bros.
Certificate: PG-13
Run Time: 104 minutes

Submitted by: Admin

The four friends are played by Blake Lively (TV’s Gossip Girl), America Ferrera (TV’s Ugly Betty), Alexis Bledel (TV’s Gilmore Girls) and Amber Tamblyn (The Ring). Traveling Pants 2 is focused on their first summer after freshman year of college, when they face difficult and very different challenges, as the characters cope with jealously, family conflicts, heartbreak and a pregnancy scare.

The chemistry between the four leads convinces you that these are friends for life and the sensitive direction of Sanaa Hamri (Something New) demonstrates that not only is sisterhood powerful, it can also be awfully entertaining. No matter how serious the subject matter this film is pure, escapist fun that to tweens and teens alike. Just like the jeans themselves, the story suits the needs of vastly different girls. Whether they’re looking for romance, struggling through family issues or simply trying on different identities, they’ll find their own experiences reflected onscreen.

The conclusion of the film is set against a backdrop of the spectacular physical scenery of the geek island of Santorini, which is filmed so beautifully, it could double for a travel feature.

Extras on the DVD include a wonderfully fluid gag reel, deleted scenes that are introduced by the director (Sanaa Hamri) herself, and a short feature ‘Go Jump off a Cliff’. Get this DVD @ Aamazon.

Submitted by Carrie C., Sacramento, CA.