The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (PG-13)
Swing Vote (PG-13)
Pineapple Express (R)
Mirrors (R)
Tropic Thunder (R)
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (PG-13)
The House Bunny (PG-13)
Death Race (R)
Movie Reviews (Prior to April 2008) search by keyword
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (PG-13) is the second movie in the series but is based on the fourth book by Anne Brashares, with bits of the second and third thrown in. All of the principal characters are back, with America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel and Blake Lively all reprising their roles. This time around, the four friends are in different colleges and are using the pants to keep in touch. New adventures greet them and old romances come back from the past. As they struggle to keep their own lives together, the girls soon find themselves pushing each other away. Can the magic pants find some way of reuniting them?
This film suffers what a lot of sequels do: being compared to the original and coming up far short. While it is an enjoyable movie, the plot seems a bit more scattered and ardent fans of the book series would probably be quite upset at a few of the changes made in the film. The actresses, however, put in fine performances and it isn’t any wonder that they are achieving success outside of these films. If you’re in the mood for a feel-good movie, you won’t go wrong with this one. The rating is for mature material and sensuality, but nothing too explicit. – Susannah DriverIn The House Bunny (PG-13), Shelley Darlingson (Anna Faris) is the happiest girl in the world: as a Playboy bunny, she spends her days shopping and her nights partying. On the day after her 27th birthday, though, Shelley is kicked out of the mansion. She has no place to go, and when she wanders onto a campus full of "mini Playboy mansions," she finds her new home with the socially outcast girls of Zeta Alpha Zeta. The sorority is tremendously unpopular and will be forced to close if the girls can't scrape up thirty pledges. Enter Shelley, who may not know much, but she definitely knows what makes a good party house. Along the way she teaches the girls how to talk to the opposite sex, and the girls teach her a few tricks in return.
Anna Faris is almost always a blast to watch, and this movie is no exception. Her line deliveries are perfect. Emma Stone (Jules from Superbad), Kat Denning (Catherine Keener's daughter in The 40 Year Old Virgin), and Rumer Willis (Bruce's daughter), along with American Idol contestant Katharine McPhee, are also great in their roles as the outcast sorority girls. Colin Hanks plays Oliver, Shelley's slightly bemused love interest, and Hugh Hefner stars as himself, with the lead singer from All-American Rejects in a supporting role. While this movie definitely won't win any awards, I found it pretty consistently hilarious. Rating is for sex-related humor, partial nudity and brief strong language. – Ashley MerrillDeath Race (R) – I thought this movie would be cheesy, bad cheesy, before I even went in. Lo and behold, it wasn't. It was one of the better movies I've seen in a while.
Death Race stars Jason Statham of Transporter fame as Jensen Ames, a former NASCAR driver, who is framed for the murder of his wife and sent to the worst, toughest for-profit prison in the country, Terminal Island. Needless to say, the warden (Joan Allen) is behind Ames's framing.
The warden runs the Pay-Per-View Death Race. Convicts have to win five races to earn their freedom, and they drive monster cars loaded with machine guns, missiles, napalm, and flamethrowers. Ames must survive a course full of inmates out for his blood if he wants to win and get out of prison.
Tyrese Gibson also stars, and he does pretty good once again. He's taking small steps to becoming a big-name actor.
Mirrors (R) stars Kiefer Sutherland as Ben Carson, former cop with a troubled marriage working night shift guarding a burned out department store. Ben wanders around the dark ruins with his flashlight and notices handprints on the “other side” of the mirrors. He wipes a mirror and things happen. He receives a package from the former (dead) security guard filled with clippings about strange events happening to people connected to the fire and finds out that the guard’s wounds do not agree with the idea of suicide. Unlike Ben, we all know how the guard died and it wasn’t pretty.
As the previews indicate, people walk away from mirrors and their image stays behind. These images seem to make puppets of their look-alikes. And it’s not just mirrors, any reflective surface like water will do. When the mirrors at his home become active the mystery becomes Ben’s to solve and in true “24” fashion, Ben becomes our hero, complete with excited utterances and urgency that truly makes you think you have stumbled into 24 meets horror house.
Let go of deep analysis and you will enjoy this movie (assuming you enjoy horror and jumping in your seat, blood and gore, exorcist effects, etc.). The mystery is solved and the end is not anticipated at all. Also starring are Paula Patton, Amy Smart, Cameron Boyce and Erica Gluck. But it’s almost all Jack, I mean Kiefer, all the time. – Marilyn Merrill
Tropic Thunder (R) starts out with its own set of fake trailers, a la Grindhouse, then opens on a climactic and dramatic war scene, which its prima donna actors proceed to ruin. Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) plays Four Leaf Tayback, the leader of the Vietnam soldiers, and is followed by Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel), and rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson). When the demanding producer orders the director to get the production back in gear, the writer, Tayback (Nick Nolte) comes up with an idea: set up cameras in the jungle, let the actors loose, and film their more realistic reactions. Of course things go awry pretty quickly thanks to an old French land mine, but Tugg is still convinced he's in a movie, while his fellow cast members aren't so sure.
This movie is supposed to be a kind of spoof or homage to war movies like Apocalypse Now, lampooning the lengths to which Method actors will go to to submerge themselves in their roles. A running joke through the movie is Tugg's submersion in his role in Simple Jack, which manages to be offensive to practically everyone who's ever lived. While it did have some brilliant moments, including a surprise cameo I won't give away, the majority of the movie was disgusting, awful, and borderline unwatchable. If you like the Scary Movie and Epic Movie spoof films, this one is a little more highbrow, but not enough to really count. Rating is for pervasive language, drug use, and violence. – Ashley Merrill
In Seth Rogen’s new comedy Pineapple Express (rated R), Rogen plays process server Dale Denton, a stoner who has just witnessed a murder at the home of Ted Jones (Gary Cole) before he was supposed to give Jones a subpoena. Dale panics and goes to the first place he can think of which is the home of his drug dealer, Saul Silver (James Franco). Dale finds out that the marijuana he bought from Saul that day, a rare breed called pineapple express, is so rare that his joint could easily lead Jones to them. They go on the run, followed closely by Jones’ group of assassins (Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, and Rosie Perez), and team up with Red (Danny McBride) in the hopes that they can escape this predicament alive.
I thought that this movie was very good, however it lacked the one memorable comedic scene that the other Judd Apatow-produced comedies feature. There is a lot of action, and there are many funny lines that keep you laughing throughout the movie but it did not have the one great scene that has you howling in laughter. This movie also had fewer Apatow regulars, but Craig Robinson and Danny McBride steal the show whenever they enter. This movie is not appropriate for children due to heavy language and violence, in addition to the drug references throughout the movie. – Kenan Stewart
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (PG-13) starts off by telling the story of Chinese Emperor Han (Jet Li), a ferocious conqueror from 2000 years ago who was cursed by a witch named Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh). The bulk of the action is set just after World War II, in 1946. Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evie (previously played by Rachel Weisz, now recast as Maria Bello) O'Connell have settled into "retired" lives at their English country estate. The government calls them to one last mission, a courier trip to Shanghai with a large diamond that purportedly shows the way to Shangri-La. Their college-age son Alex (Luke Ford), meanwhile, has discovered the tomb of Emperor Han, and in relatively short order and at gunpoint, they end up raising the mummy. With help from Evie's brother Jonathan (John Hannah), they must stop Emperor Han before he can raise his army and take over the world again.
I've enjoyed all the Mummy movies so far, even the hilarious Scorpion King, and while this installment didn't really disappoint, it didn't quite match the thrill of the first or second movies. Maria Bello's performance took a while for me to get used to, in particular. The action sequences are impressive, with lots of (literal) fireworks, although the movie does tend to focus a bit more on Alex's relationship with a mysterious woman named Lin (Isabella Leong). All in all, it's an entertaining way to spend a weekend afternoon. Rating is for action adventure and violence, and just a bit of bad language. – Ashley Merrill
Swing Vote (PG-13) tells the story of Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner), a socially apathetic father, and how his one vote in the presidential election, because of an electronic error, is the deciding vote over who the next President. Republican incumbent Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammer) is opposed by Democrat Donald Greenpeace (Dennis Hopper) and both are vying for this one vote with their campaign managers (Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane) egging them on every step of the way. With the help of his daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) and reporter Kate Madison (Paula Patton), he must become politically adept if he is going to choose the next leader of the free world.
This movie has a great message in one of the most important election years in American history, and that message is get out and vote because your one vote does make a difference. The character of Molly seems to have the firmest grasp of this concept, and she steals the show throughout the movie. The movie takes a very interesting concept and makes it into a very well put-together and well-acted dramady. It is certainly a movie worth watching in this election year just to reinforce the point that no vote is insignificant. Rating is for language. – Kenan Stewart