TURBO..!!



Box Office : 'Turbo'

Dreamworks

The 3D kids pic -- earning a coveted A CinemaScore -- is the latest entry in the summer 2013 animation wars.

Facing an overcrowded marketplace for family fare, DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox's Turbo opened to $5.6 million on Wednesday, enough to edge out Universal's blockbuster Despicable Me 2 and top the North American box office.

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FILM REVIEW: Turbo

Turbo, an original title that hopes to launch a new franchise, is on course for a subdued five-day opening in the $35 million range. Instead of a huge launch, DWA and Fox are counting on the 3D animated pic to have strong legs and play throughout the rest of summer.

Aiding that goal, Turbo received a glowing A CinemaScore and an A+ from moviegoers under age 18.

Costing $135 million to produce and directed by David Soren, Turbo is about an ordinary garden snail whose dream of racing in the Indianapolis 500 comes true. Ryan Reynolds voices the title role; Paul Giamatti, Snoop Dogg, Michael Pena, Maya Rudolph, Michelle Rodriguez and Samuel L. Jackson also lend their voices. DWA is playing up the fact that Turbo is an original story.

Despicable 2 grossed an estimated $5.2 million Wednesday, coming in a close No. 2. The toon has grossed just north of $246 million domestically and will cross the $250 million mark sometime Thursday or Friday. Worldwide, the film's cume is nearly $500 million.

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Box-office observers believe Turbo could suffer from animation fatigue, considering it opens only two weeks after Despicable 2 and four weeks after Disney and Pixar's Monsters University, both of which have the advantage of being sequels.

Despicable 2, which rolled during the Fourth of July holiday stretch, grossed a mammoth $143.1 million in its first five days, while Monsters University debuted to just north of $82 million.

Wall Street analysts are paying close attention to Turbo's performance. As of midday Thursday, DWA's stock was up 2 percent at $24.83.

Hollywood studios never have released so many summer animation tentpoles, and the unprecedented animation race gets a new player in two weeks when Sony's The Smurfs 2 hits theaters, followed two weeks after that by Disney's Planes.

CLOSED CIRCUIT..!!

FILM REVIEWS : THE CLOSED CIRCULT:...!

Focus Features

 

Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall star in the crime thriller directed by John Crowley and written by Steven Knight.

A new movie from Steven Knight, the writer of Dirty Pretty Things, and John Crowley, the director of Boy A, sounds tantalizing on paper. Those were two of the best British movies of the last decade, so the collaboration of these two filmmakers on Closed Circuit raises high hopes. The late August release date and the lack of advance buzz tend to undermine those expectations, and unfortunately, nothing about the finished film lives up to the promise of their earlier efforts. (Knight also wrote David Cronenberg’s excellent film, Eastern Promises.) It’s unlikely that this competent but lackluster thriller will be in theaters for very long.

The movie opens, quite literally, with a bang. A terrorist bomb goes off in a bustling London market. Almost immediately, police zero in on a suspect: Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto), a Muslim man with a shady past and links to a terrorist cell operating in London. As the authorities prepare for a trial which is intended to reassure a jittery public, they hire two people to defend Erdogan: a reluctant barrister, Martin Rose (Eric Bana), and a Special Advocate, Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Hall), the only person who will have access to the highly classified evidence against him.

The peek inside the British legal system is intriguing; the film seems to have made with considerable accuracy. Perhaps inevitably, a romantic element has been added as a sidebar. Martin and Claudia had a love affair several years ago that ended badly, so they go into the case wary of each other as well as of the government bigwigs who are trying to manipulate them in order to insure a guilty verdict. As the two attorneys meet the prisoner and begin to pursue the case for the defense, they become convinced that the government is hiding something. Martin’s predecessor on the case ended up dead, reportedly a suicide but perhaps a victim of foul play. Soon their own lives are in jeopardy as they uncover a conspiracy in high places.

The plot is knotty and often convoluted, though its contours eventually become clear as other bodies pile up. A persistent problem is that all the legal rigmarole, though interesting up to a point, becomes fairly dry and hermetic. The basic message seems to be not to trust anyone in the highest intelligence circles, but after dozens of spy thrillers, that isn’t exactly startling news. Many of the plot twists are predictable, and even when they aren’t, they are too rarefied to generate bare-knuckle tension. For example, there’s an elaborate set-up for a meeting at a crowded soccer stadium but no real payoff in terms of life-and-death action.

This means the movie depends on the actors to supply some of the urgent drama missing from a rather bloodless script. They do what they can to raise the stakes. Bana gives a competent though not inspired performance; he’s best in scenes of seething anger. Hall demonstrates again that she is one of the best actresses working; her courtroom arguments bring urgency to scenes that might have been awfully dry. Some acting lions -- Jim Broadbent as the Attorney General, Ciaran Hinds as a colleague of Martin’s and Kenneth Cranham as a grizzled judge -- give the proceedings a sense of gravity and authority, even if their roles are disappointingly thin. Riz Ahmed, who starred in Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, brings a note of silky menace to his role as a mysterious MI5 operative.

The film is handsomely made, with a nice mix of settings, from the Old Bailey to crowded immigrant neighborhoods. A couple of scenes toward the end do generate the suspense that the whole movie needed. But the impact is too muted, and an air of tired familiarity ultimately curdles the entire enterprise.



World War Z :

Story: A zombie pandemic strikes the globe. Former UN investigator Gerry Lane attempts to find the virus' origin. Can he survive the catastrophe, protect his family and save the world from the zombie apocalypse?

Review: Hollywood has always been obsessed with pandemics and zombies. Marc Forster takes the obsession a notch higher as he merges the two to give you an epic-scaled, fast-paced zombie invasion movie that is extremely gripping and thoroughly entertaining. It has everything you could possibly expect from a zombie blockbuster.

On the flipside, the film's not just about the outbreak of the virus but its origin, after-effects, destruction caused, investigation involved to curtail the global crisis and measures taken to prevent further damage. At some point, you do feel Forster's biting off more than he can chew. The climax which was re-shot, though brilliantly executed, falls a tad flat and seems incoherent.

The filmmaker's attempt at blending reality and philosophy with science fiction is not smooth either as the segments look disjointed. The family track in the film seems futile. Also, how can a former UN crime investigator know everything about medicines and scientific research! Nevertheless, flaws in construction and certain loose ends of the plot do not affect the tension-filled, anxiety-inducing impact of this spectacularly shot zombie thriller.

Brad Pitt (as a former UN investigator) is understated, yet convincing in a film that revolves around 'zombies'! The film has fantastic special effects, especially in scenes involving aerial views of zombies flooding the roads, crawling on top of each other to climb walls or attack helicopters and chase down Gerry and his family. The suspenseful opening sequence will send shivers down your spine.

The film moves at breakneck speed throughout, keeping you on the edge of your seat. The 3D barely makes any difference to a horror film but it works here. Cinematography is brilliant.

The film stays conventional in terms of concept. It even deviates from the novel (by Max Brooks) it's adapted from. However, if you are a fan of the genre and extreme destruction and survival get your adrenaline flowing, this one's highly engaging. Be prepared to play hide-and-seek with the terrifying undead creatures for there's no place to run, no place to hide...

Note: You may not like the film if 'zombie-action' fails to thrill you.

THE CONJURING....!!



Review: 'The Conjuring' is intensely malevolent:

A scene from "The Conjuring"

This movie is set in 1971, when Roger and Carolyn Perron and their five daughters move into a rundown country house in an isolated area in Rhode Island. Almost immediately, strange events begin to happen to them.
The ghostly manifestations started benignly, with creaky opening doors to unexplained bruising. But as days passed, the attacks become increasingly violent and physical.
Carolyn desperately seeks the help of noted supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. What they discovered in the Perron home is a dark spirit more hateful than anything they have encountered before. They need to work against time in order to prevent deadly events that happened to the previous occupants of this cursed house. In this extraordinary case, the Warrens had to resort to the most extreme measures they know in order to save the tormented family
Unlike other films boasting about being based on a true story, this one actually convinces you that the horrific events shown in it happened in real life. A lot of this was due to the very authentic production design bringing us back to the early 1970s. The musical choices were atmospherically apt and unsettling.
There was also the topnotch acting from the cast, which is unusual for a horror movie. The expertise and compassion of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who played the Warrens, were very realistic. The chemistry between them was palpably sincere.
Ron Livingston, Lili Palmer and the five young actresses who play the Perron daughters all played naturally well as the victimized family. I would not be surprised if Farmiga and Palmer pick up acting nominations for their performances.
Director James Wan (who had also brought us "Saw" and "Insidious" before) throws every horror gimmick and cliche at us here, but somehow still makes everything felt remarkably fresh and original. There was some welcome humor to lighten some of the intense dread and tension that builds up within the film. The deliberately slow pace felt interminably long in some eerie scenes which will make you squirm in your seats There are scenes which can make you jump. The editing of the film was very effective in this regard.
As good as this film was, there were some minor things that did not feel right. The creepy poster and even the pre-credits scene will make you expect something, but the rest of the movie was totally about something else.
There was a subplot about Ed and Lorraine's daughter which was very well-executed with some of the film's scariest scenes, but this ultimately led nowhere, except maybe a possible sequel, which is something I would look forward to.
Overall, watching this film will really immerse you into the intense malevolence that terrorized the Perron family. Many creepy images you see will stick with you for a long time. All the hype was accurate this time. This IS one of the best horror films in recent years. 8/10

Chennai Express

Chennai Express review: A typical sambar-and-sandalwood creation

 Film: Chennai Express
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone
Director: Rohit Shetty
Rating: ***

A scene from Chennai Express.

1. There was a boy, with a dusky complexion and average looks who taught us in the nineties that if you love with the right intensions, you are bound to succeed. He created a belief in true love. He gave an altogether new definition to romance. Shah Rukh, seems to relive those moments of his youth through Chennai Express in which we get fleeting glimpses of his earlier films.

Chennai Express begins with the famous train sequence of DDLJ and this time it is Deepika who needs the hero's hand. Chennai Express can also be called the 'best of SRK' as its storyline has assimilated the best shots from several of his films.

2. There is another boy, Rohit Shetty. His father was a famous action director of Bollywood. Carrying the same genes, Rohit's inclination towards action was evident in his first film, Zameen. But the film fell flat on the box office and Rohit realized that action alone cannot sell, unless it is tempered with the spice of comedy and drama. This realization led to the making of several chartbusters like Golmaal series, Bol Bachchan and Singham. Chennai Express picks the best of all these films along with Shah Rukh. So there hardly was any loophole left that might have toppled the film.

3. Chennai Express is the story of Rahul who has been entrusted with the task of taking the ashes of his grandfather to Rameshwaram, by his grandmother-his sole surviving family member. Unwilling but not willing to hurt her either, Rahul decideds to go and in the journey meets the runaway Meena Amma who is fleeing to escape an unwanted wedding formalized by her don father meets Rahul in the train and then begins a  saga of running, fighting, running and again fighting and then finally, in Shah Rukh's own words, everything gets all right.

4. Chennai Express uses South Indian words and anecdotes to entertain the north Indian audience for whom it is all Greek and quite funny too. Sometimes the ille-ille becomes boring, but since Rohit always makes an honest and unabashed attempt in making things funny, it does not matter so much.

A scene from Chennai Express.

5. This film has yet again included some timeless music into SRK's list. Piyamani looks ravishing in One-two-three-four and Deepika steals the show in Titli. But the songs are quite a disturbance in the storyline and they look more or less out of place. But then these are the ways of a typical Bollywood masala film!

6. Till now Rohit had confined his locations to just Mumbai and Goa, but in Chennai Express, pristine new locations of South India are presented beautifully.  The rural South India is at its best on camera.

7. Rohit has used everything to add comedy to the film. There is Southern tadka, there is north Indian masala, there are dwarfs and fatsos and there is SRK doing drunken comedy. Rohit knows two things for sure, that he cannot compete with the czars of serious cinema and that the audience spends money on ticket to go home fully entertained and he had taken care of these in Chennai Express.

Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika in a scene from Chennai Express.

8. SRK is at his best in romantic scenes. But he gets this opportunity only at the end of the film. He is slightly week in comedy and quite unconvincing in action sequences. But Deepika has mastered the role of Meena. Her chemistry with SRK however is less than perfect.

9. This film has nothing sort of promoted national integration as was earlier shown in promos. Except for SRK's speech to Deepika's father in which he says love knows no boundary, religion or region. But we all know this, isn't it? 

10. If you love mindless comedy, action, drama and romance and if you are willing to remove 'bakwas' word from your dictionary, you must watch this film. Your children are going to love it. Rohit Shetty has made a complete family entertainer.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/chennai-express-review-a-typical-sambar-and-sandalwood-creation/1/298716.html