Game on. Battleship had the unusual box office strategy of opening in most corners of the globe before hitting its home market in the U.S., and do far has performed respectably with over $200 million in the bank preceding its North American debut. It may be good business for Universal to squeeze every last buck from the action-friendly overseas market before word of mouth and killer summer competition sinks this ship. A hyper-loud, non-stop assault on the senses, this two hour-plus CGI aliens vs. the military concoction is a half-baked conceit based on the Hasbro board game. Consider it Transformers meets Independence Day meets Pearl Harbor meets Top Gun.
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What to expect from What to Expect When You're Expecting: laughs, heart and a terrific ensemble of actors doing what they do best. After the recent surprise success of Steve Harvey's self-help-book-turned-movie, Think Like A Man, yet another unlikely screen adaptation from the advice section has been turned into a conventional comedy detailing five separate stories centered around pregnancy. With 35 million copies sold, the must (and most) read book for prospective parents totally delivers a nice platform for an entertaining, if disposable movie experience. The crowd of attractive and talented actors means audiences should have fun at this early summer counter-programming entry, though despite a sizable male cast, expect Expecting to chiefly appeal to women.
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The angriest treatise on kindness and decency around, Bobcat Goldthwait's dark comedy God Bless America at first looks too violent to be distributed, even if it doesn't spill as much blood as Transformers, or as many pixels as The Matrix. What God Bless creates is a world of utter douche bags, children included, that its protagonist Frank (Joel Murray) dispenses to save the country. In the process of dispatching a lot of humans, God Bless creates a surplus of humane sentiment. It deserves a hard "R" and careful marketing, and Magnet Releasing, the edgy genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, looks like just the right company to do it.
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Eva Mendes may be ever-charming, but her harried single mother takes a backseat to daughter Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez), a maturity obsessed teen. Produced and distributed as part of the Pantelion collaboration between Lionsgate and Televisia (recently responsible for Casa de Mi Padre) this archly self-aware coming-of-age tale fizzles, as the targeted Latino audience is upstaged by a culture more firmly rooted in the film's soggy Seattle setting. Box office won't be a wet blanket, but it won't signal blue skies either.
Mendes may have top billing, but she isn't the lead; Ansiedad (which means anxiety) drives the plot and much of the action. She's is itching to "come of age" so, inspired by her high school English class, she devises her own rite-of-passage ritual.
Middle East megalomania, antisemitism, sexism, racism and war-mongering are given side-splitting censure in The Dictator, a superb vehicle for Sacha Baron Cohen's over-the-top socio-political outrageousness. A worthy successor to his prior mockumentaries Borat and Bruno despite its more scripted construction, Cohen and director Larry Charles' latest finds the comedian assuming the larger-than-life guise of Admiral General Aladeen, the despot of the fictional North African Republic of Wadiya. While on a trip to the U.N. to protest forthcoming NATO strikes predicate...
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A cult favorite gothic soap opera that ran daily on ABC for over 1200 episodes in the late '60s, Dark Shadows has been decidedly Tim Burton-ized in its first big screen incarnation. Fans of the original will be happy it's back, but be warned: suddenly, this very dark saga is a comedy. Nevertheless, it's a great time at the movies and a wickedly clever cinematic treat. With a terrific Johnny Depp in the lead role of the creepy Barnabas Collins, a vampire transplanted 200 years into the future of 1972 and caught up in the antics of his descendents and the witch (Eva Green) who's stalked him for two centuries, this version is a far cry from the TV version. But it's faithful enough and makes for sensational sinister fun for those willing to succumb to its, uh, spell.
Read moreFree Samples opens with Jesse Eisenberg wearing a cowboy hat in a dive bar, even though he wears it more like a fedora. This image immediately raises any number of questions, but as to why he's drinking there is very little mystery: Jillian (Jess Weixler), the messy blonde in the gin next to him, may be the most unpleasant person currently living. A recent law school dropout, Jillian is pouty, petulant and, worst of all, she's the protagonist. The brunt of the film involves Jillian manning a friend's ice cream truck as a sudden favor, offering free samples (hey!) of ice cream to a parade of strangers who essentially exist to personify her quarter-life crisis.
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