The Game Plan

Gridiron Gang star The Rock picks up the pigskin once again for this sports-themed family comedy concerning a football superstar who abandons the gridiron to answer the call of fatherhood after learning that he has a daughter he never knew. Kyra Sedgwick stars as the professional athlete's ruthless agent who would rather see her client scoring touchdowns than cementing familial bonds, and Nichole Millard teams with Kathryn Price to pen the screenplay.

Starring: The Rock, Kyra Sedgwick, Roselyn Sanchez, Morris Chestnut, more cast
Directed By: Andy Fickman
Released By: Buena Vista
Run Time: 110 min.
Genre: Comedy, Coming Soon
Rating: PG

RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION (2007)

The third and final installment of the $100 million
RESIDENT EVIL hits, RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION is again based on the wildly popular video game series and picks up where the last film left off. Alice (MILLA JOVOVICH), now in hiding in the Nevada desert, once again joins forces with Carlos Olivera (ODED FEHR) and L.J. (Mike Epps), along with new survivors Claire (Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke ) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti) to try to eliminate the deadly virus that threatens to make every human being undead...and to seek justice. Since being captured by the Umbrella Corporation, Alice has been subjected to biogenic experimentation and becomes genetically altered, with super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. These skills, and more, will be needed if anyone is to remain alive.

Evil has a Destiny...Rob Zombie's "HALLOWEEN"

As a DVD-owning fan of John Carpenter’s 1978 original — the story of how a young Mikey Myers grew up to be a mute mass murderer — it’s hard not to be of two minds about Rob Zombie’s similarly-plotted remake of that horror movie classic. Though this revamp does expand what was an elegantly simple story while keeping the original’s frightening tone intact, not everything new is necessary. Explaining why Michael is a silent killer not only takes away from his mystique, for example, but those reasons aren’t that interesting or original. Still, to Zombie’s credit, his Halloween is genuinely scary. Like his other movies — House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects — Halloween is a real, classic-style horror movie, not an exercise in gross special effects. Oh, and for those who’ve missed Carpenter’s classic, this will scare the candy corn out of you, but the original is still champion.
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Rock-star turned splat-brat-auteur Rob Zombie doesn't so much remake John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN as use the 1978 horror classic as a framework on which to hang his own ideas about serial slaughterer Michael Myers. And he brings in three elements that were famously absent from the original: blood, backstory and a very high body count.

Haddonfield, Illinois: Ten-year-old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) is the psychotic by-product of his stripper mother's (Sheri Moon Zombie) imperfect love, which left him exposed to the very worst that childhood has to offer, including a slutty sister (Hanna Hall) and Mom's sadistic boyfriend (William Forsythe); the only person moonfaced Michael really seems to care about is his infant sister. And school isn't much better. The school bully (Daryl Sabara) routinely picks on Michael, and the principal (Richard Lynch) calls in psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) after discovering a dead cat and photos of tortured animals in Michael's backpack. On Halloween night, Michael snaps, bludgeoning his tormentor to death in the woods behind school and returning home to slaughter everyone in the Myers household, except his mother — who luckily was pole-dancing to "Love Hurts" at the time — and the baby. The following year, Mrs. Myers puts a bullet in her head after Michael murders a nurse at the psychiatric facility where he was remanded to Dr. Loomis' care. Fifteen years later, Michael is a hulking pituitary case who hasn't spoken since his mother's death and hides his face behind papier-mache masks. On the night Michael is to be transferred to another facility — Halloween night — he escapes and returns to Haddonfield just as high-school senior Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is preparing for a night of babysitting while her friends Annie (Danielle Harris) and Lynda (Kristina Klebe) sneak off to have sex with their boyfriends and... well, you know the rest.
John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978) was the $300,000 indie that launched a thousand imitators, each gorier and more ludicrous than the last, its own sequels being among the worst offenders. Zombie's challenge was to return the character of Michael Myers to his roots as "The Shape," an evil force that, while no longer as abstract, could terrify jaded, post-torture-porn audiences. He succeeds admirably, mostly by bringing his own style — rooted not in Carpenter's elegant restraint but in the savage, greasy-haired '70s cinematics of Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper — to bear on the now-familiar material. Zombie includes some nods to the original — Michael's mother dances at the Rabbit in Red lounge, "Don't Fear the Reaper" is on the soundtrack, and the kids are watching Howard Hawks' THE THING on Halloween night — and tweaks a few of the more famous set pieces while using a plot twist from HALLOWEEN II to fuel the second half. But he pointedly skips any references to Carpenter's style, including the famous opening four-minute tracking shot and its already copied-to-death behind-the-mask POV. In the end, Zombie delivers a scary horror movie immediately recognizable as his own — something that will come as a welcome relief to fans who've diligently sat through seven HALLOWEEN sequels in hopes of one day reliving the original's.

RUSH HOUR 3.. UK chart's number 1

It’s hard to summarize the events of Rush Hour 3, as they are presented so superficially that it’s difficult to recall them more than a few minutes after leaving the theater. The plot, what there is, revolves around another pairing of China’s Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and Los Angeles detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) as they track a Chinese Triad assassin to Paris and try to protect the one person who is in possession of a list of the heads of the secret crime organization.



It’s been six years since the last Rush Hour installment and one can’t help but ask one’s self if the story on screen here is the best that the creative folks behind the camera could come up with. The plot is a thin retread of numerous other buddy-cop films, without any apparent attempts to dress it up in a new way. There is not a plot point or story beat that this movie hits that is unexpected in any way.



The jokes that make up the comedy portion of this alleged action-comedy are as threadworm as well. Bits like a riff on the classic “Who’s On First?” but with Chinese names or an overheard fight between Chan and a female assassin is mistaken for sex land with clunky thuds. Equally cringe-worthy is a sequence where Chan and Tucker break into a song and dance routine while protecting someone in a Parisian nightclub. Other jokes, including a cameo by Roman Polanski as a cavity search loving Paris police official, are not only unfunny but in bad taste as well.

Director Brett Ratner claims to be an enthusiast of Asian action films, even appearing on several DVD commentary tracks for movies he was not involved in the making of. However, it doesn’t appear that he has really learned anything from this adoration, as his direction of action scenes leaves something to be desired. Picture composition is frequently cramped and the editing moves too fast to really get a feel or appreciate what the martial artists are doing. And when you’re dealing with a talent like Chan, such neglect seriously hurts the film.



It may be hard to imagine, but the usually irritating Tucker is even more shrill and grating here. Tucker once again tries to prove his seeming philosophy that the louder one delivers a line, the funnier it will be. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make a very convincing argument. Instead of inciting laughter, Tucker just leaves one reaching for aspirin. This is a performance definitely not worth the $25 million that was paid out to the actor. It should also be noted that Tucker has not appeared in any other films outside of the Rush Hour franchise in a decade. I think that fact speaks volumes that are even louder than his performance.