Movie Reviews: Gravity 3D, Runner Runner

- - - - -

• Run Time: 90min.
• Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt , Scarlett Johansson , Julianne Moore , Tony Danza , Brie Larson
• Director(s): Joseph Gordon-Levitt
• Trailer

• Run Time: 95min.
• Starring: Andy Samberg , Bill Hader , Anna Faris , Neil Patrick Harris , James Caan
• Director(s): Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
• Trailer

Prisoners

• Run Time: 146 mins.
• Starring: Hugh Jackman , Jake Gyllenhaal , Paul Dano , Melissa Leo , Maria Bello
• Director(s): Denis Villeneuve
• Trailer

Reviews

The New Yorker - Prisoners, despite its gathering anxiety, has some of the pleasures of ordinary thrillers. But Villeneuve, who previously directed “Incendies,” does volatile scenes without exaggeration; parts of the movie are exceedingly violent, though the violence isn’t “fun”— it makes you wince. Full Review

The Guardian - In his first English language film, Quebeçois director Denis Villeneuve has produced a masterful thriller that is also an engrossing study of a smalltown America battered by recession, fear and the unrelenting elements. Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

Battle of the Year (also in 3D)

• Run Time: 109 mins.
• Starring: Josh Holloway , Laz Alonso , Josh Peck , Caity Lotz , Chris Brown
• Director(s): Benson Lee
• Trailer

Reviews

The New York Daily News: B-boys become B-men under the tutelage of Josh Holloway — known to TV viewers as Sawyer from “Lost” — in the latest 3-D dance competition movie, “Battle of the Year.” Full Review.

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

The Family

• Run Time: 110 Mins.

• Starring: Robert De Niro , Michelle Pfeiffer , Tommy Lee Jones , Dianna Agron , John D'Leo

• Director:  Luc Besson

Reviews:

Robert De Niro – wait for it – in the role of a mobster. Now there's an original idea. In The Family, not to be confused with De Niro's roles in GoodFellas, The Godfather: Part II, The Untouchables, Casino, Once Upon a Time in America, Analyze This, Analyze That (go on, make your list), De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, a mob snitch. For ratting out his own wiseguys back in Brooklyn, Giovanni is put in the witness protection program, dragging along his real family, wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron) and son Warren (John D'Leo). After working their way through the States, then Paris and now remote Normandy, the Manzonis are pretty fed up with their lot in life, which means living in fear that the mob will catch up with them at any time.-Rolling Stone Read more

The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.

The bad pacing, humorless scenarios and repetitive gags (** out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide) undercut the few inspired moments, most of which hinge on the chemistry between Robert De Niro's Mob boss and Tommy Lee Jones' FBI agent. USA Today. Read More

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

Insidious Chapter 2

• Run Time: 105 Mins.
• Starring: Patrick Wilson , Rose Byrne , Lin Shaye , Ty Simpkins , Jocelin Donahue
• Director: James Wan
• Trailer

Reviews

Can we just say this about director James Wan? If you like horror films and you notice he’s directed a horror film, make the investment and see it.

Wan helmed 2010′s “Insidious,” a movie that cost $1.5 million to make and went on to earn over $97 million — and it wasn’t just because of a clever marketing campaign. The guy knows how to manipulate a horror audience. And so, here we are with “Insidious: Chapter 2.” - ABCNews Full Review

With his last helping of old-fashioned ooga booga, “The Conjuring,” still scaring up business in a few hundred theaters, James Wanreturns with two more hours of seat-clenching scares in “Insidious: Chapter 2,” a modestly scaled and highly pleasurable sequel to Wan’s low-budget ($1.5 million) 2011 smash that should have genre fans begging for thirds. Indeed, with a clever coda that suggests how this franchise might easily continue even without. - Variety.com See Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

Riddick

• Run Time: 119 mins.

• Starring: Vin Diesel , Karl Urban , Jordi Mollà , Matt Nable , Katee Sackhoff

• Director: David N. Twohy 

• Trailer

Having been left for dead in more ways than one after the critical and commercial failure of 2004’s “The Chronicles of Riddick,” Vin Diesel’s futuristic fugitive Richard B. Riddick gets his lean, mean, R-rated mojo back for “Riddick,” an improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter “Pitch Black.”  ~ Scott Foundas, Variety See Full Review

If only audiences, like the title character in Riddick (* out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide), were equipped with luminescent extra-vision eyeballs. Then it might be possible to muddle through the dark and incoherent action scenes. But to the ordinary naked eye, characters and landscape look bathed in dusty milk chocolate. See Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

The Getaway

• Run Time: 90 mins.

Thanks to the improbable success of the "Fast & Furious" franchise, car chase movies are apparently back in vogue. That's still no explanation for "Getaway," a laughably terrible grindhouse thriller masquerading as a "major" motion picture. This is a film that goes to the trouble of staging a certifiably insane amount of car crashes, wrecks, stunts and tricks and then buries them under a hyperactive visual style that ensures audiences can't see a damn thing. It's destruction porn run amok -- not so much a movie as a 90-minute headache. ~ Hitfix (Read Full Review)

Easily one of the dopiest major studio releases since Elie Samaha got out of the business, “Getaway” marks the not-very-anticipated return to the director’s chair of low-budget horror producer Courtney Solomon, whose prior helming credits include the risible 2000 adaptation of “Dungeons & Dragons” and 2005’s wan historical ghost story “An American Hunting” (where the scariest special effect was the squandering of stars Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland). Here, Solomon tries for his best Kathryn Bigelow or George Romero, thrusting us straight into the action, in medias res, with Hawke and the aforementioned Shelby careening wildly through a crowded Sofia park and adjacent pedestrian mall crowded with Christmas shoppers.  ~ Scott Foundas, Variety (See Full Review)

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

One Direction: This is US 3D

Run Time: 92 mins.

Starring: One Direction: Harry Styles , Niall Horan , Zayn Malik , Louis Tomlinson , Liam Payne

Director: Morgan Spurlock

Trailer

Reviews

What’s the opposite of warts-n-all? ‘No warts’ doesn’t even begin to describe Morgan Spurlock’s fly-on-the-wall film about One Direction. No warts, no acne – there’s not even a pimple on the butt of this on-tour portrait of the reality-bred boy popsters. Full Review

The director is known for visually quirky choices and offbeat interviews and asides. These techniques can be a mixed bag; sometimes they help lighten up a deadly serious segment, other times they seems silly. But it’s distinctive, and “This Is Us” could have used more of it. Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

The Butler

Run Time: 126mins.

Starring: Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, John Cusack 

Director: Lee Daniels

Trailer

"Make no mistake, Daniels is gunning for awards here; the movie has that sheen, that Big Important Feel. But the performances keep it grounded. Let someone else decide winners and losers. Just enjoy “The Butler” for the sometimes-moving experience it is." Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic. Full Review"Crudely powerful. You can object to the thuggish direction and the script that’s a series of signposts, but not the central idea, which is genuinely illuminating." David Edelstein, New York Magazine. Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

We're The Millers

Run Time: 110 mins.

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, Emma Roberts

Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber

Trailer

"Though the cast partially eschews the family-friendly timidity that the film defers to in the end, this would-be wild thing remains little more than a rowdy endorsement of the status quo." Chris Cabin, Slant Magazine. Full Review"Get past the comedy and there's something almost weird at the movie's core - a deep cynicism about family and a longing for family, both at the same time." Mike LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle. Full Review

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

Mortal Instruments: City of Bone

Run Time: 130 mins.

Starring: Lily Collins, Robert Maillet, Kevin Durand, Lena Headey, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

Director:  Harald Zwart

Trailer

Though imaginatively directed by Harald Zwart, Mortal Instruments, which is adapted from Cassandra Clare's YA novels, is marred by significant flaws. Full Review ~ David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia InquirerThe storyline is at times muddled and incoherent. This won't bother readers much since they have the "inside track" on what's happening. Then again, the narrative is so predictable that maybe it doesn't matter. Full Review James Berardinelli, ReelViewsEverything chugs along briskly and reasonably entertainingly until running off the rails a bit with a wildly overcomplicated finale. Full Review Bruce Ingram, Chicago Sun-Times

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - - 

World's End

Run Time: 109 mins.

Starring: Simon Pegg , Nick Frost , Rosamund Pike , Martin Freeman , Paddy Considine

Director: Edgar Wright

Trailer

Despite a too-long third act, dragging action sequences and an epilogue that would have been better left on the cutting room floor, the wordy wit and ingenuity of The World’s End is a sloppy triumph over this summer’s other alien/robot hybrid flick, "Pacific Rim." Full Review ~ New York Observer

A mix of comedy, science fiction, nostalgia, adolescent wish-fulfillment and beer, beer, beer, its parts shouldn’t fit together as neatly as they do. But somehow Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have again managed to make a movie that is knowing, touching and hilarious. Full Review Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

Despicable Me 2

Run Time: 98 mins.

Starring: Voices of Steve Carell , Russell Brand , Miranda Cosgrove , Steve Coogan

Director: Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin

Trailer

"The minions give good mayhem and the twig-armed animation’s lovely. Despite the coolest submarine-car since Bond’s Lotus Esprit, though, Despicable Me 2 is light on gadgets – and surprises, too." Total Film. Full Review"It falters in the middle and hesitates unnecessarily in setting up the love story, but Gru still has charm and kids will adore the Minions." Helen O'Hara, Empire. Full ReviewDo you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -

Planes

Run Time: 92 Mins.

Director: Klay Hall

Starring: Jon Cryer , Stacy Keach , Dane Cook , Carlos Alazraqui , Val Kilmer

Trailer:

PropWash Junction

Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!

- - - - -