Whether it’s Mulholland Drive, Funny Games or 21 Grams, we remain endlessly amazed at the emotional depths that actress Naomi Watts will reach for in portraying a character. Not once do we ever see her fake an emotion and audiences cannot help but to wonder what places she goes to in order to display such raw emotion.
Zero Dark Thirty reunites filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who collaborated on the Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker. This time around, the duo chronicles the decade-long manhunt to find Osama Bin Laden, a manhunt which came to an end with the terrorist’s death on May 2nd, 2011. Though it begins its theatrical release this Friday, the movie has already won several prestigious awards including Best Film from Boston Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review.
Deadfall is an intense thriller from director Stefan Ruzowitzky. It stars Eric Bana as a vicious bank robber named Addison who is on the run with his sister Liza (Olivia Wilde) after their car crashes in the snow. They are forced to split up in order to avoid detection from the authorities and Addison is quick to eliminate those who are unfortunate enough to get in his way. Liza almost freezes to death until Jay (Charlie Hunnam), an ex-con with his own reasons to stay clear of the police, rescues her and soon after falls for her. But with all these characters desperate to avoid jail time, not everyone is going to get away clean.
Austrian filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky is best known for his movies Anatomy and Anatomy 2, and he won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for The Counterfeiters. His latest directorial effort is Deadfall, a crime drama which stars Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde as brother and sister who have robbed a casino and are now on the run. The movie has earned high marks for its beautiful cinematography, courtesy of Shane Hurlbut which captures the snowy landscapes of Canada like few others have before, and Bana delivers a terrifying performance as a man determined to make it across the border at any cost.
Ultimately, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning comes off feeling like the Alien 3 of the Universal Soldier franchise, as it becomes, at times, far too nihilistic to be enjoyed.
Excitement for the latest James Bond film Skyfall is running sky high thanks to its enormous box office success in the United Kingdom and a plethora of reviews calling it one of the very best movies in the fifty year old series. It is the first 007 movie to be directed by an Oscar winning director (Sam Mendes), and it makes clear that actor Daniel Craig is as good a James Bond as Sean Connery ever was. Audiences who have seen Skyfall so far have described it as exhilarating, and it is one where 007’s mission becomes a very personal one.
Playing the role of a Bond girl is no easy task but with Skyfall, the newest film in the series, Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe step up to the plate and hit a home run. Each actress excels in their respective roles, crafting two memorable characters that will certainly go down in Bond history.
RZA’s directorial debut, The Man With The Iron Fists, shows a lot of love for the kung fu classics and martial arts movies which inspired it, but it doesn’t quite have that feel of exhilaration that they have.
