Movie Reviews

Mr. Brooks

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  • Title: Mr. Brooks
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Mr. Brooks movie review

Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a successful businessman, a loving husband, and a devoted father.  Mr. Brooks however has a dark side which he hides from the world.

Daily he is forced to deal with a schizophrenic personality disorder and an evil alter-ego called Marshall (William Hurt) who only Earl can see and hear.  It seems Marshall, and therefore Earl as well, enjoys the thrill of stalking and killing random strangers.  This has been going on for many years, and although Earl understands and detests this addiction he can’t seem to stop.

Mr. Brooks has three other problems.  The first occurs when he is caught in the act by a amateur photographer (Dane Cook) who wants only to blackmail him and tag-along on his next killing.  The second is an obsessed millionaire cop (Demi Moore) stuck in a messy divorce who wants to track down the serial killer.  And the third is his loving daughter Jane (Danielle Panabaker) who just may be more like her father than he’s willing to admit.

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Return of the Jedi

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  • Title: Return of the Jedi
  • IMDB: link

Luke Skywalker has returned to his home planet of Tatooine in an attempt to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt.

Little does Luke know that the GALACTIC EMPIRE has secretly begun construction of a new armored space sation even more powerful than the first dreaded Death Star.

When completed, this ultimate weapons will spell certain doom for the small band of rebels struggling to restore freedom to the galaxy….

George Lucas‘s last Star Wars film can be broken down into three acts.

In the first act C-3P0 (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), and later Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), are captured trying to free Han Solo (Harrison Ford) from Jabba the Hutt.  Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) shows up to kill Jabba’s pet beast and then use the pieces he has put in place to defeat Jabba at the Pit of Sarlaac.

The second act to the movie, after a brief interlude of Luke confronting Yoda (Frank Oz) and Obi-Wan (Alec Guinness) about the truth and learning another vital piece of information about his family, is the staging and infiltration of the Moon of Endor which houses the shield generator for the new Death Star.  On the planet the strike team meets a group of cute teddy bear warriors known as Ewoks (who believe C-3P0 is a god), takes part in a high speed speeder bike chase, and, along with the fleet above led by Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), fall into the well laid trap by the Emperor (Ian McDiarmid).

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The Empire Strikes Back

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  • Title: The Empire Strikes Back
  • IMDB: link

It is a dark time for the Rebellion.  Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.

Evading the dreaded Imperial Starfleet a group of freedom fighters led by Luke Skywalker has established a new secret base on the remote ice world of Hoth.

The Evil Darth Vader, obsessed with finding young Skywalker, has dispatched thousands of remote probes into the far reaches of space….

star-wars-empire-strikes-back-posterThe rebels, after their huge victory at Yavin, are once again on the run.  It seems the Emperor is a little miffed about them blowing up the Death Star and has put all the forces of the Imperial Navy in Vader’s hands to hunt down Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

On Hoth Luke recieves a vision of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) who tells him to go to the Degobah system and learn from the legendary Jedi Master Yoda (Frank Oz).  On arriving Luke discovers an odd little creature who turns out to be Yoda and agrees, reluctantly, to instruct Luke on the ways of the Force.

Elsewhere in the galaxy Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) relentlessly pursues the Millenium Falcon through space, an asteroid feild, and to a mining colony owned by an old friend of Han’s, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams).  Han (Harrison Ford) is captured and frozen in carbonite (but not before giving one of the greatest lines in movie romance history!) and turned over to the bounty hunter Boba Fett, and Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) are taken prisoner by the Empire and used as bait to lure Luke to a similar fate as his smuggler friend.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Trainwreck at World’s End

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  • Title: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  • IMDB: link

“There was a time when a pirate was free to make his own way in the world, but our time is coming to an end.  Our enemies are united; they vow to destroy us.  The Pirate Lords from the four corners of the Earth must stand together.”

pirates-at-worlds-end-posterThe film begins, after a bizarre introduction about singing coins and eight pieces of nine (don’t ask) which is never satisfactorily explained, with Will (Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth (Keira Knightley), and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in Singapore.
Their visit has two purposes.  The first is to gain the maps and ship necessary to travel to Davy Jone’s Locker and rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp).  The second involves a poorly thought out, and even worse explained, plotline about a meeting of pirate lords, mysterious artifacts, and a goddess which Barbossa wants to use to fight back against Norrington’s (Jack Davenport) control of the seas.

After making a deal with Captain Sao Fang (Chow Yun-Fat) the group sails to rescue Jack (who doesn’t make his first appearance until more than 20 minutes into the film) who is lost in a bizarre land where he is haunted by mirror images of himself and stones which turn into crabs.

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Y’arr, She Blows

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  • IMDB: link

I stand by my assessment that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was better than The Curse of the Black Pearl, and now I can say it was the best of the three Pirates films.  At World’s End is so clumsily and half-assedly assembled that it loses all of the fun its predecessors had, and fails to come up with a single justifiable excuse for wasting two hours and forty minutes.

Things pick up in this film pretty quickly after the end of Dead Man’s Chest, with the whole gang suddenly in Singapore asking a piratificated Chow Yun-Fat for a ship and a crew so that they might sail to Davy Jones’ Locker to retrieve Johnny Depp‘s Jack Sparrow.  Which got me thinking – how did they get to Singapore without a ship and crew?  That place is pretty far from the Caribbean from what I understand, and starting the movie with a plot hole that big is a pretty awful way to begin a film.

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