In “Hanna” a young girl, oddly enough named Hanna, lives a simple existence in a cabin in the woods with her doting father. That sounds nice and picturesque, right? Not exactly. The title character (Saoirse Ronan) is a pale, and I mean looks-like-a-ghost pale, 16 year old that lives a life similar to that of an arctic ninja. She hunts with a homemade bow and arrow, chases down wounded animals, and her father, Erik Heller (former stand up comedian Eric Bana), randomly sneaks up and attacks her just to test her reflexes and preparedness. She may be gutting a dead deer, or sound asleep in the middle of the night, it doesn’t matter. He’s likely to spring when least expected, to keep her on her toes, even when unconscious.
Over the years movies have taught many important lessons, chief among these are don’t retire, never retire, nothing good will come of it. Everyone knows that the moment you announce you’re about to retire is the moment when the universe starts trying to kill you with gusto. Danny Glover learned this the hard way many times over in the “Lethal Weapon” franchise. Aaron Eckhart should have learned from Danny Glover, for the Glover is wise, but alas, he did not, and when he tries to retire aliens invade the earth and wreck up the joint in the badass new sci-fi actioner “Battle: Los Angeles”. He should have known better.
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Spooky little dudes in fedoras secretly run the world. Didn’t know that, did you? At least if George Nolfi’s “The Adjustment Bureau”, and adaptation of a short story by Philip K. Dick, is to be believed. They may be angels; they’ve apparently been called a lot of things. But whatever else they may be, they are little more than mid-level bureaucrats, middle management suck ups who operate behind the scenes, subtly tweaking the destinies of the unsuspecting populous to make sure everything happens according to “the plan” written by “the Chairman”.
Comparisons to “Taken” and “The Bourne Identity” appear to be inevitable when talking about Jaume Collet-Serra’s new action thriller “Unknown”, starring Liam Neeson, but I’ll try to keep that talk to a minimum. The “Taken” reference feels lazy, or at least too easy, and the only real connection between the two films is that both prominently feature Liam Neeson kicking the crap out of people. The “Bourne” comparison is a little more appropriate as both revolve around memory loss, a shadowy past, and a helpful, not to mention beautiful, stranger, as well kicking the crap out of people. “Unknown” isn’t a great movie, nor is it terribly original, and it wants to be much more important and deep than it is. What it is, is a decent suspense film that morphs into an action vehicle along the way.
“Sanctum”, the newest 3D extravaganza produced by James Cameron, will make you never go into a cave ever again. Not that “The Descent” didn’t already do that, but this time the only monsters lurking in the darkness are the human kind, not to mention one seriously pissed off Mother Nature. During the exploration of a series of unexplored, mostly underwater caves in Papua New Guinea, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A diver drowns, a typhoon overtakes the camp before the team can escape the catacombs, and the torrential rains begin to fill caves with a handful of survivors trapped inside.
Here is the biggest problem with “The Rite”. It’s about exorcisms, and every exorcism movie from now until the end of time is going to be measured against “The Exorcist”, an unfair comparison because as you all know, “The Exorcist” is the scariest movie of all time (at least in this hack’s humble opinion, and I am right and you are wrong, unless you agree with me, then you’re right, too). That said, Mikael Håfström’s new horror film handles itself pretty well, for most of the movie at least.
With a cast that includes names like Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, and Milla Jovovich, it would be natural for you to expect a certain level of quality from a film (okay, maybe Milla Jovovich doesn’t automatically equal lofty expectations). But “Stone”, in which these three actors form the core, underperforms at every turn. It’s a little bit like watching the Seattle Mariners this past season. On paper they looked poised to make cause a ruckus and challenge for their division crown, but during the year every player on the roster had career lows, seeming statistical anomalies. “Stone” has pretentions towards being a film of great import, but watching it, you understand why it was never in more than 125 theaters at a single time. It simply isn’t very good.
How has it taken me so long to watch “2012”? It’s like Roland Emmerich made a movie out of what constantly plays in my head when I close my eyes. This is the most amazing movie I’ve ever seen, and that statement is only partial hyperbole.
The first thing you see in writer/director Marcos Efron’s new thriller, “And Soon the Darkness”, a remake of a 1970 British film of the same name, is a young, scantly clad woman, chained to a wall, get electrocuted by some unseen villain. This gives you the immediate impression that the film is going to be another torture porn. So it is a pleasant surprise when “And Soon the Darkness” instead turns out to be a tight, well-executed suspense film. It isn’t exploring any new territory, but for what it is, it is well done.
The plot of “The Disappearance of Alice Creed” is simple. Two ex-cons, Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston), kidnap a young woman named Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton), the estranged daughter of a wealthy man. They hold her in a nondescript apartment that they soundproofed and set up to serve as a makeshift prison cell while they wait for their ransom. They have an airtight plan, and are meticulous down to every last detail, even devising a set of hand signals so Alice can tell them when her bladder is full.
