Release Date : Thursday, 22 April 2010
Length : 1hrs 31min

Movie Director : Mark Steven Johnson
Distributor : The Walt Disney Company (australia) Pty Ltd

Main Cast :  Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Anjelica Huston, Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard

The title of this film is not the only idiom you will find. WHEN IN ROME uses pretty much every common element from the romantic comedy vernacular with no apologies. But, honestly, that is what it needed to succeed. Romantic comedies have a hard time meeting every ones theatrical needs. We are all different and like certain things. Although this one is not stellar or mold breaking it has many pieces that make it a decent addition to the genre.In this one, Beth (Kristen Bell) is in Rome for her sisters wedding when she decides to “remove” a few coins from the fountain of love. Little does she know but that in doing so she has cast a spell on those who tossed them in and has become the object of their overzealous affection. Nick (Josh Duhamel) is the best man at the wedding who has caught Beth’s eye. She must now try and get his attention while staving off her love struck pursuers.

This film starts off slow and is almost destroyed by its own clichés. But once it finds its footing it becomes this quirky story filled with hilarious characters and a plot that moves forward with sufficient agility. Each of Beth’s courters is so very different and played to comic heights by Jon Heder, Will Arnett and Dax Shepard. Danny Devito even manages to keep up with these young bucks despite looking out of place and at times lost in his role. Bell needed to bring the same oomph that made Sarah Marshall a success. Though this script has nowhere near the meat, Bell makes her character endearing and strong. You like her and Josh and want to see them find each other. That is vital in a film like this.

Hidden in the quirkiness of this fantasy movie there is a nice underlying message about what it means to be in love and what that should cause us to do for others. I like that everyone plays nice in this one and gone is the protagonist that overturns the love cart. WHEN IN ROME allows its story to play out simply and sure it has the “oh no I wonder what will happen in the end although we all know what will happen” moments the writers at least made an attempt at cleverness that ties up nicely.

WHEN IN ROME is rated PG-13 for some suggestive content. I appreciated the lengths they went to in order to make this as clean as possible. There is nothing crude or offensive to be found. The language is very mild and other than a few moments of suggestive behavior this is safe for the 13 and up film goers. One a mother and daughter could go see without any of those awkward moments. I give it 3.5 out of 5 art galleries. Not ground breaking. Totally geared for the lover of the genre. But a fun cast, doable script and lots of on screen chemistry make this a pleasant outing for the Valentines season. So says Matt Mungle

Matt Mungle (3.5 out of 5)

“I myself found it an refreshing and funny option to see at the theaters. Hadn’t laughed that had or long in the theaters for a while. I must see romantic comedy.” – Nicky Cane (4 out of 5)

Synopsis: Based on best-selling novelist Nicholas Sparks’ (‘A Walk to Remember,’ ‘The Notebook’) latest novel, The Last Song is set in a small Southern beach town where an estranged father (Greg Kinnear) gets a chance to spend the summer with his reluctant teenage daughter (Miley Cyrus), who’d rather be home in New York.

He tries to reconnect with her through the only thing they have in common-music-in a story of family, friendship, secrets and salvation, along with first loves and second chances. The film is directed by Julie Anne Robinson from a screenplay by Sparks & Jeff Van Wie.

Look at that title carefully…The Last Song.

If you think you’re going to escape Nicolas Sparks’ trademark Inevitable Tragedy, well, you don’t know Sparks. The author has become the brand name for sun-soaked Southern melodrama, full of first love longings and, oh yeah, the Inevitable Tragedy. It doesn’t even matter if the story feels like it needs one; you’re going to get one anyway. It’s all part of the formula.The Last Song is not one of Sparks’ stronger efforts — a shaggy, rambling screenplay that doesn’t have a narrative so much as it loosely assembles a series of moments that Miley Cyrus can storm away from while saying, “You never told me about (fill in the blank)!!!” She’s Ronnie Miller, girl with a troubled past, trying to ride out the summer on Georgia’s Tybee Island under the care of her estranged father (the reliably appealing Greg Kinnear). She meets cute blue-blood beach bum Will (Liam Hemsworth), saves sea turtles, and generally sneers at everything and everyone for the first half of the film.

Withering sarcasm is not Cyrus’s strong suit as an actress. Once she kisses Will, she does a complete character turn (for no real reason other than, hey, kissing is fun), and is finally allowed to “just be Miley,” to paraphrase her hit song. You don’t have to be a chameleon-like actor to be a movie star, and Cyrus is definitely at her most appealing when she’s playing a variation of her own personality, rather than posturing as the surly brat. She’s not fooling anybody. Giggling during a mud fight or rolling around in the surf in a belly shirt while making out? That she can do.

This is Cyrus’s bid to grow up a little as an actress, while not alienating her fan base, and for that purpose, The Last Song looks to be a solid choice for the television star. It has echoes of Twilight (disaffected new-girl-in-town falls for someone in a romance that seems doomed) without Twilight’s dour sexuality. Sparks really stacks the deck with life-changing plot twists as well, with bits involving a girl in an abusive relationship (Carly Chaikin), suspected arson, divorce, teenage infidelity, and the dreaded (but not too surprising) Inevitable Tragedy. It’s an entire season’s worth of a teen soap opera crammed into a feature film.

I can’t say I think Cyrus is a fantastic actress, but she’s a unique screen presence. She acts almost entirely with her mouth, letting her lips do all of the thinking, instead of her eyes (which is a very odd thing for a big screen actor to do). It’s like when George Clooney used to emote using only head nods. She does manage to sneak in a few genuine moments through some awfully flat dialogue (by Sparks and Jeff Van Wie) and too-obvious directing by Julie Anne Robinson. Her little brother, played by Bobby Coleman, is a phenomenal child actor, and it’s his easy chemistry with Kinnear that makes the shaky first half of the film so tolerable.

“Tolerable” may sound like faint praise, but for someone who isn’t the intended audience for The Last Song (and, no, I don’t think thirty-something males are the intended audience) that’s not so bad. I’d imagine Cyrus fans (and Sparks fans) will enjoy their large box of tissues as much as their large box of popcorn, surely more than the average movie-goer. It may not have the edge that it needs to kick Miley Cyrus’s career into adult relevancy, but if you’re looking for an inoffensive romantic tearjerker, you’ll get what you pay for.

- by John Gholson – April 1st 2010

Like the largely (and justifiably) forgotten “I Love Trouble,” a thoroughly misbegotten teaming of Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte, “The Bounty Hunter” attempts a bit of a genre mix, tying the romantic sparring with a suspense story line that’s by turns rote and ridiculous. I’ll make it quick: Aniston plays Nicole, an ace Daily News reporter whose devotion to a story gets her served with a bench warrant. Butler is Milo, a hard-drinking (duh) down-on-his-luck ex-cop now reduced to skip-tracing, who’s assigned to track and return Nicole.

Guess what? They’re exes, who supposedly can’t stand each other but of course in fact can’t live without each other. As they bicker their way from Brooklyn to Atlantic City to deepest Queens (locations that the movie seems to posit as all being within five minutes’ driving distance from each other), they find themselves embroiled in a mystery involving a “suicide” that was actually a murder, and some serious police corruption.

Simultaneously, some mooks are after Milo for gambling debts. And a geek (Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live”) is doggedly pursuing (you could actually call it stalking) colleague Nicole, deluded that they’ve got a “thing going on.”

All of this is set up, and stretched out, rather tiresomely in the film’s first half. In increasingly dispiriting Hollywood fashion, this section (the parts of it that aren’t ham-handed exposition, that is) plays less like a genuine story than as a series of “beats” engineered for the cheapest possible audience responses. A scene will build to its crescendo, and then some familiar piece of pop music will either coddle or (presumably) perk up the viewer, and sometimes it seems as if writer Sarah Thorp and director Andy Tennant can keep this up indefinitely.

After another argument, Aniston throws something at Butler as his character departs to lose all his money at the gambling tables; cue Frank Sinatra’s “This Town,” of course. A teenage pedicab driver tells the cash-strapped Aniston that he’ll let her ride for free if she shows him her boobs; cut to Aniston herself driving the pedicab, the scammed teen in not-so-hot pursuit; cue Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Tricky.” And so on. Familiar, welcome character actors (Christine Baranski, Cathy Moriarty of “Raging Bull,” the eerie Peter Greene, the preternatural milquetoast Matt Malloy) show up, are underused, and are dismissed. It’s pretty dismal, not to mention vulgar.

But in the second half of the picture things slow down a little bit, as Nicole and Milo rediscover their tender feelings for each other. Aniston and Butler start showing a very engaging rapport, and fall into a relaxed but snappy rhythm. Where before they had been trying too hard (Butler laying on the slob mannerisms and Noo Yawk accent a bit thick, and Aniston verging on the outright brittle), now they both display a seemingly natural charm. (That these scenes could very well have been shot prior to the earlier scenes in the film is entirely possible, and there, I suppose, might be the magic of editing for you.) While still offering gags that aren’t particularly inventive (although Milo’s method of turning a houseful of strip-club patrons against his mookish creditors winds up being one of the film’s cleverer touches), the movie shifts into a mode that’s tolerably cute, and then genuinely sweet.

I honestly wouldn’t have believed it had I not experienced it myself. Not that the shift inclined this reviewer to completely absolve the film of its former sins. But I imagine that “The Bounty Hunter” will catch a good number of moviegoers, particularly fans of its lead actors, in a more forgiving mood.

Glenn Kenny is a writer living in Brooklyn. He was the chief film critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various publications and websites and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com

• A 2 0ut of 5 Review: The Bounty Hunter Review – Relies on Only: Chemistry

Written by Stephen Whitty/Newark Star-Ledger

The funeral of a loved one ends with a burial. The mourning? That never stops.

It was half a dozen years ago that Tyler’s brother committed suicide. It’s been a decade since Ally’s mother was killed in a subway mugging. Their gravestones are well-weathered.

But it’s their survivors who are really the worst for wear, stumbling around New York, clumsily hurting each other.“Remember Me” brings two of them together, as Tyler meets Ally at college. Yet while their romance is sure to dominate the advertising — the star is “Twilight” phenom Robert Pattinson — it isn’t the whole point.

The real relationships being explored here are between parents and children, the living and the dead.

Fathers, really. Tyler’s father, well played by Pierce Brosnan, has reacted by withdrawing from his family, as if that will keep him from being hurt. Ally’s father, brought to life by the fine Chris Cooper, has turned overprotective, as if that will keep her from being hurt.

“Remember Me” is sensitively directed by Allen Coulter (who last did the underappreciated “Hollywoodland”) but it’s really a Pattinson project. (He also helped produce.) It’s a smart one, too, building on his “Twilight” persona as the sensitive yet dangerous bad boy.

It’s not a new movie character, of course — James Dean certainly did OK with it — but Pattinson smartly tweaks his own persona, dropping the “Twilight” neo-goth in favor of contemporary realism, playing Tyler as both moody and mischievous.

The script, from first-time screenwriter Will Fetters, serves other characters less well. Tyler’s mother needs more fleshing out. His roommate is strictly comic relief. And while Emilie de Ravin is appealing as Ally, we never get a true sense of how loss has affected her, outside of a few carpe-diem quirks. (She always eats her dessert first, just in case.)

Yet Pattinson’s hero is well drawn, emerging as yet another descendant of Holden Caulfield. And Brosnan, who is having a very busy year, is fiercely effective as the withholding dad.

Young “Twilight” fans (and their parents) should be warned that this is a far more realistic and adult romance than the beloved vampire saga. Movie fans should know that the story takes an abrupt third-act twist, and tacks on the sort of arbitrary, “significant” ending that’s better left to first-year creative-writing assignments.

But Pattinson’s young, and older, fans? No need to worry at all. The boy is growing up — and into someone interesting.

Rated: B

Opened March 12th 2010
Running time: 112 minutes.

February 14th, Valentines Day, is not a national holiday, but it is one of those days that must be celebrated. There are “special someones” in your life who expect to receive romantic gifts from their lovers.

Commercialism has put a tremendous amount of pressure on men to give their lovers a romantic day with all the trimmings. Women are under pressure to have a man, or they feel desperate and unloved. Valentines Day follows the lives of several couples during this day. Their stories are told through the interconnections they have with each other.

Some will find romance in their relationship, and others will feel the heartbreak of ending a relationship. In this Russian roulette world of finding love, everyone in the film is asking for advice on how to find and keep true love. – Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

Stars:

Jessica Alba    …     Morley Clarkson
Kathy Bates    …     Susan
Jessica Biel    …     Kara Monahan
Bradley Cooper    …     Holden
Eric Dane    …     Sean Jackson
Patrick Dempsey    …     Dr. Harrison Copeland
Hector Elizondo    …     Edgar
Jamie Foxx    …     Kelvin Moore
Jennifer Garner    …     Julia Fitzpatrick
Topher Grace    …     Jason
Anne Hathaway    …     Liz
Carter Jenkins    …     Alex
Ashton Kutcher    …     Reed Bennett
Queen Latifah    …     Paula Thomas
Taylor Lautner    …     Willy
George Lopez    …     Alphonso
Shirley MacLaine   …     Estelle
Emma Roberts    …     Grace
Julia Roberts    …     Captain Kate Hazeltine
Taylor Swift    …     Felicia

Danielle – Drew Barrymore
Prince Henry – Dougray Scott
Rodmilla – Anjelica Huston
Leonardo – Patrick Godfrey
Auguste – Jeroen Krabbe
Marguerite – Megan Dodds
Jacqueline – Melanie Lynskey
Pierre LePieu – Richard O’Brien

I decided to go with my heart and pick one of my personal favorites. Though not an obsessive Drew Barrymore fan (I love her – but won’t see a movie just because she’s in it), “Ever After” was a must-see for me as soon as I saw the movie’s trailer. Who could resist this Cinderella story complete with Anjelica Huston as the wickedly evil stepmother and Dougray Scott as the handsome prince? A show of hands from paying audiences would reflect that most people passed on this film when it was released in theatres.

The story begins with a distant relative of Danielle’s assuring the Brothers Grimm that their “Cinderella” truly did exist. After offering them proof in the form of a glass slipper, she recounts the life and hard-times endured by Danielle, and of Danielle’s love for her father and the handsome, intelligent prince.

Drew stars as the lowly cinder girl, Danielle, put upon by her wicked stepmother and monstrous stepsister. This movie’s Cinderella isn’t a shrinking violet. Drew’s Danielle comes across as strong, opinionated, and fiercely proud. She stands up for a family servant, risking the wrath of her family and the chance at being discovered masquerading as a woman of wealth. Her longing for love, and her loyalty to her father’s memory and the family’s farm, necessitate other acts of disobedience or deception. Danielle wins over the love of the prince, not by wile or physical beauty, but through her intelligence and charm.

Dreamers and romantics are sure to enjoy passing a few hours with this gorgeous film.

A Warner Bros. release, presented in association with Legendary Pictures, of a Syncopy production. Produced by Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, Christopher Nolan. Based upon characters appearing in comicbooks published by DC Comics, “Batman” created by Bob Kane.

Having memorably explored the Caped Crusader’s origins in “Batman Begins,” director Christopher Nolan puts all of Gotham City under a microscope in “The Dark Knight,” the enthralling second installment of his bold, bracing and altogether heroic reinvention of the iconic franchise. An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some. That should also hold true at the box office, with Heath Ledger’s justly anticipated turn as the Joker adding to the must-see excitement surrounding the Warner Bros. release

With the Bruce Wayne/Batman backstory firmly established, “The Dark Knight” fans out to take a broader perspective on Gotham City — portrayed as a seething cauldron of interlocking power structures and criminal factions in the densely layered but remarkably fleet screenplay by helmer Nolan and brother Jonathan (stepping in for “Batman Begins’” David S. Goyer, who gets a story credit).

Using five strongly developed characters to anchor a drama with life-or-death implications for the entire metropolis, the Nolans have taken Bob Kane’s comicbook template and crafted an anguished, eloquent meditation on ideas of justice and power, corruption and anarchy and, of course, the need for heroes like Batman — a question never in doubt for the viewer, but one posed rather often by the citizens of Gotham.

Indeed, with trusty Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, superbly restrained) and golden-boy District Attorney Harvey Dent (a cocksure Aaron Eckhart) successfully spearheading the city’s crackdown on the mob, even Wayne himself (Christian Bale) figures his nights moonlighting as a leather-clad vigilante are numbered. The young billionaire hopes to hang up the Batsuit for good and renew his relationship with assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, an immediate improvement over Katie Holmes), who has taken up with Dent in the meantime.

But Batman’s stature as a radical symbol of good has invited a more sinister criminal presence to Gotham City — and, as seen in the crackerjack bank-robbery sequence that opens the pic, one who operates in terrifyingly unpredictable ways. Utterly indifferent to simple criminal motivations like greed, Ledger’s maniacally murderous Joker is as pure an embodiment of irrational evil as any in modern movies. He’s a pitiless psychopath who revels in chaos and fears neither pain nor death, a demonic prankster for whom all the world’s a punchline.

After Ledger’s death in January, his penultimate performance (with Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” still to come) will be viewed with both tremendous excitement and unavoidable sadness. It’s a tribute to Ledger’s indelible work that he makes the viewer entirely forget the actor behind the cracked white makeup and blood-red rictus grin, so complete and frightening is his immersion in the role. With all due respect to the enjoyable camp buffoonery of past Jokers like Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Ledger makes them look like — well, clowns.

The pic shrewdly positions the Joker as the superhero-movie equivalent of a modern terrorist (one of several post-9/11 signifiers), who threatens to target Gotham civilians until Batman reveals his identity. Batman, Gordon and Dent uneasily join forces, but the Joker seems to have the upper hand at every step, even from a jail cell; the city, turning against the hero it once looked to for hope, seems more fractious, vulnerable and dangerous than ever.

Though more linear than “Memento” and “The Prestige” (both also co-scripted by the Nolans), “The Dark Knight” pivots with similar ingenuity on a breathless series of twists and turns, culminating in a dramatic shift for Dent. This subplot reps the film’s weakest link, packing too much psychological motivation into too little screen time to be entirely credible. Yet Eckhart vividly inhabits the character’s sad trajectory, underscoring the film’s point that symbols of good can be all too easily tarnished.

From Wayne’s playful debates with faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) about the public perception of Batman to the Joker’s borderline-poetic musings on his own bottomless sadism, the characters almost seem to be carrying on a debate about the complicated realities of good vs. evil, and the heavy burden shouldered by those fighting for good. One of the few action filmmakers who’s capable of satisfying audiences beyond the fanboy set, Nolan honors his serious themes to the end; he bravely closes the story with both Gotham City and the narrative in tatters, making this the rare sequel that genuinely deserves another.

Viewers who found “Batman Begins” too existentially weighty for its own good will be refreshed to know that “The Dark Knight” hits the ground running and rarely lets up over its swift 2½-hour running time. Nolan directs the action more confidently than he did the first time out, orchestrating all manner of vertiginous mid-air escapes and virtuosic highway setpieces (and unleashing Batman’s latest ooh-ah contraption, the monster-truck-tire-equipped Bat-Pod). In a fresh innovation, six sequences were shot using Imax cameras, and will presumably look smashing in the giant-screen format (pic was reviewed from a 35mm print).

Though not as obsessively detailed as “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” shares with that film a robust physicality and a commitment to taking violence seriously; a brief shot of bruises and scrapes on Bale’s torso conveys as much impact as any of the film’s brutal confrontations. Bale himself is less central figure than ensemble player, but the commandingly charismatic thesp continues to put his definitive stamp on the role, and also has devilish fun playing up Wayne’s playboy persona.

Tech work is at the first entry’s high standard, with many artists reprising their contributions here — from Nathan Crowley’s imposing production design, shown to flattering effect in Wally Pfister’s gleaming widescreen compositions, to the propulsively moody score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. Perhaps most impressive is Lee Smith’s editing, confidently handling multiple lines of action and cutting for maximum impact.

Exteriors were lensed in Chicago aside from an early, plot-necessitated detour to Hong Kong, which marks the first time in a Batman film that the title character has left Gotham City.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, July 3, 2008.
Rating: PG-13. Running time: 152 MIN.

James Cameron may have placed this story on a moon called Pandora with alien characters (known as Na’vi) that could have belonged to human race if not being double the size, a longer face, sharper features, blue body, white fluorescent marks on the face and tail at the back.

Still, emotions felt are just the same where Na’vis fight for their land, people, pride and right to live.

In a way, the story is no different from what locals may feel in any part of the world when outsiders make an attempt to make inroads into their land to gain hold of their resources. This is what happens to Na’vis as well when their peaceful existence is challenged with American troops entering their world to gain hold of precious minerals worth billions.

While they send one of their men (Sam Worthington) to Pandora by turning him into a Na’vi avatar so that he can understand the way of the natives and talk them into handing over their land, they also nurture a plan of their own.

With round of talks merely being a cover to understand how Na’vis feel and react, there is a deadly operation brewing in the background that would has a single point agenda of destroying and winning.

“Avatar” is an admirable effort because not even once viewers feel that it’s an ‘alien story’ (pun intended) being told. There is a love story brewing between Sam’s Na’vi avatar with the Pandora princess (Zo Saldana) and soon he discovers an altogether new world. Literally. He wages a battle of his own with support from a handful of friends from ’sky people’ along with tribe members and animals belonging to all shapes and sizes.

The story conveys that Cameron is a big fan of Bollywood films from the 60s and the 70s. Just like his last effort “Titanic” which was as Bollywood as it gets, even “Avatar” has quite a few Hindi film references if one starts plotting them on paper.

After watching “Avatar”, the question of paramount importance is – what does one pick and what is it that should be left behind the experience that goes by the name of “Avatar”?

Does one admire Cameron for the sheer vision that he has put to tremendous use in the making of “Avatar”? Does one pick up each and every frame in the film and start bisecting it for every pixel which has been designed to perfection? Or does one silently nod in approval for the familiar world of love, brotherhood, attachment, greed, misunderstandings and the ultimate reunion where spirit of togetherness is the ultimate winner?

In short, “Avatar” is not a film to be seen and then talked about. It’s one to be experienced.

Joginder Tuteja