United States President Ashton (William Hurt, Mr. Brooks) is attending an anti-terror summit in Salamanca, Spain when he is shot by unknown enemies. Well, actually his double is. We see the event through about 6 different perspectives. One is of the real president himself. Another is through the eyes of Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid, The Rookie) and his partner Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox, ABC's LOST). Barnes is back in service after saving the president from an assassination attempt about a year ago. The first we see is that of Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver, Holes), a TV producer who witness the whole thing from a TV trailer. Also witnessing the shooting is Howard Louis (Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland), an American visiting Salamanca for leisure with a video camera that is glued to his hands at all times and fails to run out of tape and/or battery. Other witnesses whose timelines are included are Enrique (Eduardo Noreiga, Transsiberian), a Salamanca police officer, and Suarez (Said Taghmaoui), the leader of the terrorist plot to kill the President. Through a series of twisted events we finally get to the exciting conclusion.

I really enjoy this movie. It comes off as a modern day mystery action thriller with twists you would never expect. Great performances come from Quaid and Whitaker especially. Fox was not in the role I usually see him in, no longer a doctor on a desert island with powers of its own but a Secret Service agent. Quaid showed that, while he is aging, he still can act. Whitaker brings an Academy Award to this cast from The Last King of Scotland and impressed me. Noriega was very good. He's acted in a bunch of Spanish films and I had never heard of him or seen him until now, but he was very good. Hurt and Weaver bring average performances in small amounts of screen time. The directing was good, the script was alright, but it was more a screenplay than a script, with most of the action being shown. Also good was Alicia Jaziz Zapien in the role of 8-year old Anna, a girl who loses her mother and is taken care of by Louis.

The film is a great idea and I like the fact that they show the same time frame in six diffferent perspectives. Pete Travis does a good job in Vantage Point.

Grade: B+

If the basic plot of finding love and/or a sense of belonging seems all too familiar to us (everything from The Little Mermaid to E.T. to Lilo and Stitch come to mind), what does seem  different is the overt politics that spring up mid-'toon that are only resolved when the love quandary of our faithful 'bot is happily settled.  Pixar isn't dealing with complex emotions and character relationships as it has in the past; in Wall•E, writer and director Andrew Stanton has discarded those notable trademarks for a strangely simplistic statement concerning the environment and how our ignorance and laziness will most assuredly lead to the absolute destruction of the planet.  That is, of course, until we remember that what the world needs now, is love, sweet love, and then we realize that all will be righted soon enough.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on what many would defend as just a "kids movie," and what others would call an amazing technological feat (as always, the details are delightful and the artistry in animation stunning).  The problem with that argument is that Pixar's films are always awe-inspiring to look at, and the company doesn't create just "kids movies," it never has.  Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles all subtly produce rich characters and situations and the emotions always run high and deep in those films.  Wall•E never reaches those heights because no matter how many times our protagonist (and he is A-dorable)  induces "awwws" from me and the rest of the audience, he never accomplishes anything more.  The adorable android dutifully collects garbage, carefully crunching the junk into easily disposable cubes, but he doesn't do it because he cares about having a clean Earth.  Just like the blobby humans the film depicts as unthinkingly wittling away their days as a planet goes to ruin, Wall•E simply zooms along, carelessly cleaning out of routine -- until a girl comes around, and then he finally cares about saving the Earth, but only because she does, and only because she has been given the "directive" to.  

Where Wall•E fails in creating complex characters and subtle plot, however, it makes up for in clever sequences involving the 'bot's daily musings (a favorite:  his grudgingly awakening and, groggy, unable to put on his "shoes") and his dedicated fawning over the laser-happy female 'bot, Eva. The flick also boasts a typically hilarious Pixar short involving a short-tempered magician and his hungry and rather industrious rabbit.  In the end, I was glad to have met Wall•E; I only wish I had gotten to know him better.    

surgeon from a myriad of deadly diseases, donned under just the right circumstances, a mask is unnerving at best, terrifying at worst.  Actually, 

it's creepy any time, and The Strangers takes full and frisky advantage of this haunting horror flick staple.  

James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) are meant to have a romantic weekend away, but after a bit of a tiff that takes up too much - unnecessary - expository time, they find themselves unhappily stuck together in the family summer home that is conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, aka in a dark, scary wood.  

And then, a knock at the door.  

What ensues is an unexplained and brutally bloody harassment of the couple by three eerily masked individuals - "inspired by true events," no less - as the estranged couple pluckily attempts to survive the night.  Bryan Bertino's script (and direction) gamely accounts for any possible viewer skepticism of how the couple mismanaged to contact help and get away (land line?  cut.  cell phone?  burned, baby, burned in the cozy cabin fire), but the film fails to fully immerse the audience in the horrors portrayed onscreen.  The couple's inessential backstory gives us little to grasp onto, and we never have an inkling as to why these carnival killers are, well, killing.  Is a complex and clever plot necessary for the average, jump-out-of-your-skin horror flick?  Absolutely not, and there are more than a handful of cowering, face-behind-hands (albeit, fairly predictable) frights accompanied by spooky, old-school recordplayer music that make The Strangers solid, good Friday night fun.  The question remains, however, that if that suited, strangely wheezing figure wasn't capped with a ghastly burlap sack of a face, would his freakish image, or the movie he infiltrated, haunt and startle us so?

Then again...does it matter?  

I do not think this one needs much explaining at all.

Martin Scorsese. The Rolling Stones. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will anyway. It is a brand new documentary that was shot back in October and November over two nights last year at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The film attempts to immortalize the Stone's performances on those nights, tied together with back stage footage and historical clips. Scorsese assembled a crew of seven of the world's best cinematographers, Ellen Kuras, Mitchell Amundsen, Stuart Dryburgh, Robert Elswit, Andrew Lesnie, Emmanuel Lubezki, Robert Richardson in "Shine A Light," I have no doubt that the spirit of the Stones will be captured better than ever before. The documentary came about when Mick Jagger thought it would be great to make a film that would capture the greatness of the Stone's biggest how ever, and by combining their talents with Scorsese’s, something unique and great may very well result. I must say that I believe him. Paramount Vantage is releasing the film in the US on April 4th (instead of the original date of 21 September 2007) and in SA on the 18th of April. I get to see it on the 4th of April, at a free screening, so I am glad about that. This is the #1 documentary/concert film of 2008 in my opinion, as of today anyway, I have no clue as to which other documentaries will be good in 2008, but I know this one will.

Performances:  

• 1. Jumpin' Jack Flash
• 2. Shattered
• 3. She Was Hot
• 4. All Down the Line
• 5. Loving Cup - with Jack White
• 6. As Tears Go By (Jagger/Richards/Oldham)
• 7. Some Girls
• 8. Just My Imagination (Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong)
• 9. Far Away Eyes
• 10. Champagne & Reefer (Muddy Waters) - with Buddy Guy
• 11. Tumbling Dice & Band introductions
• 12. You Got the Silver - lead vocal by Keith Richards
• 13. Connection (incomplete) - lead vocal by Keith Richards
• 14. Sympathy for the Devil
• 15. Live With Me - with Christina Aguilera
• 16. Start Me Up
• 17. Brown Sugar
• 18. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
• 19. Shine a Light (incomplete)

Click here to visit the official website: Shine A Light Movie

Three Best Films I've seen since the start of the year 2008. All of them are not newly released pictures, but, they sure are new to me. They are the kind of movies that seem new every time even if watched over and over again.

Top of the list is the "when you call. call" Once (2006) directed by John Carney. Its a nostalgic movie that articulates love at its most intense moment when one has finally found the right one through wonderful lyrics and melody.

Second is Stardust (2007) screenplay by Neil Gaiman with the best performance from Claire Danes. Yes, its a magical movie with a Gaiman twist and imagery. The protagonists do not drag people into their problems. And the cinematography's was wonderful.

Last is My Summer of love (2004), the sick and scheme of Emily Blunt. Its sexy and disillusion intense at the same time. The camera just lingers into a scene and then suddenly cuts to another as if there is something very unfaithfully divine about it which is of course the theme of the film revealed in the end.