Ninja Assassin (2009) Review

SYNOPSIS:

Raizo is one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Taken from the streets as a child, he was transformed into a trained killer by the Ozunu Clan, a secret society whose very existence is considered a myth. But haunted by the merciless execution of his friend by the Clan, Raizo breaks free from them... and vanishes. Now he waits, preparing to exact his revenge. In Berlin, Europol agent Mika Coretti has stumbled upon a money trail linking several political murders to an underground network of untraceable assassins from the Far East. Defying the orders of her superior, Ryan Maslow, Mika digs into top secret agency files to learn the truth behind the murders. Her investigation makes her a target, and the Ozunu Clan sends a team of killers, led by the lethal Takeshi, to silence her forever. Raizo saves Mika from her attackers, but he knows that the Clan will not rest until they are both eliminated. Now, entangled in a deadly game of cat and mouse through the streets of Europe, Raizo and Mika must trust one another if they hope to survive... and finally bring down the elusive Ozunu Clan.

To imagine James McTeigue could make something so intelligent and entertaining as V for Vendetta and then devolve into the pile of garbage that is Ninja Assassin is staggering. Vendetta is one of my favorite comic book/graphic novel adaptations and yet McTeigue's sophomore effort makes it seem like he learned nothing as he delivers this dark and mindless so-called ninja revenge feature.




The story follows the Ozunu Ninja Clan and how one of their own, Raizo (played by Korean pop star Rain), has gone AWOL and instead of going into hiding he is setting out to exterminate them for killing his ninja girlfriend. Mika (Naomie Harris), a crack Europol agent in Berlin, is along for the ride as the overtly Hollywood portion of the story. She stumbles onto a money trail leading her to suspect underground ninjas have been behind several recent political assassinations. I mean, of course it's ninjas right?



Once word of Mika's investigation gets out she becomes a target, is saved by Raizo and the two get in a series of madcap stupidity from there on out ending in ninja stars that fly through the air like bullets and Europol agents that blow up hidden temples with actual bullets. For what is supposed to be a ninja film this felt more like every other shoot 'em up out there. Except with this one the lights were turned out and the battles were fought in the shadows.



The acting isn't even worth mentioning outside of saying Rain hardly speaks in anything more than one-syllable words and Naomie Harris stumbles through each and every scene with the dexterity of a four-year-old with her shoelaces tied together. It's just as good these two don't bring anything to the film considering McTeigue isn't interested in them in the slightest. What's more interesting is turning out the lights, suggesting stealth movement and raining down dark red droplets of CGI blood. Sound good to you? Good, because that's really all you're getting.



Ninja stars whiz through the darkness tearing apart their enemies as if shot out of a Gatling gun. Oftentimes the ninjas are reduced to smoke and only seen when Raizo is slicing them to bits. When the lights do come up, it's for battle sequences amongst burning flames as CG weaponry makes its way around the room adding very little appeal to a film that really has nothing to say or do with itself.



Ninja Assassin gets caught up in the present while the stories of the past would have been far more entertaining. Once Europol entered the picture and our ninjas were relegated to shadows in the darkness bettling agents with guns the film loses any and all appeal. This one is merely a means to put excessive gore on the screen and while there are a couple of decent fight sequences, the rest is just a blurry mess of noise and darkness hardly worth your time.

NINJA ASSASSIN (2009)

Starring: Rain, Rick Yune, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles

Director: James McTeigue

Studio: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action

Rating: R (For strong bloody stylized violence throughout, and language.)

Release Date: November 25, 2009

Official Site: http://www.ninja-assassin-movie.com

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) Review

SYNOPSIS:

In the second installment of Stephenie Meyer's phenomenally successful Twilight series, the romance between mortal and vampire soars to a new level as Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) delves deeper into the mysteries of the supernatural world she yearns to become part of-only to find herself in greater peril than ever before.

Following Bella's ill-fated 18th birthday party, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and his family abandon the town of Forks, Washington, in an effort to protect her from the dangers inherent in their world. As the heartbroken Bella sleepwalks through her senior year of high school, numb and alone, she discovers Edward’s image comes to her whenever she puts herself in jeopardy. Her desire to be with him at any cost leads her to take greater and greater risks.

With the help of her childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), Bella refurbishes an old motorbike to carry her on her adventures. Bella’s frozen heart is gradually thawed by her budding relationship with Jacob, a member of the mysterious Quileute tribe, who has a supernatural secret of his own.

When a chance encounter brings Bella face to face with a former nemesis, only the intervention of a pack of supernaturally large wolves saves her from a grisly fate, and the encounter makes it frighteningly clear that Bella is still in grave danger. In a race against the clock, Bella learns the secret of the Quileutes and Edward's true motivation for leaving her. She also faces the prospect of a potentially deadly reunion with her beloved that is a far cry from the one she’d hoped for. With more of the passion, action and suspense that made Twilight a worldwide phenomenon, The Twilight Saga: New Moon is a spellbinding follow-up to the box office hit.

Assuming the audience has nothing better to do, The Twilight Saga: New Moon struggles to tell its tiny tale over the course of two hours and ten minutes as a world inhabited by vampires, werewolves and who knows what else is pushed to the side in an effort to watch as a girl is prepared to throw her life away following her vampire lover's departure. To think they could get this film this wrong after the halfhearted first installment is something of an achievement.

Kristen Stewart returns as Bella as she pines for her golden-eye, ice cold vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Unfortunately the Cullen clan has to leave town as their immortal aging process has become something of an alarm to the small town folk of Forks, Washington and Edward won't be sticking around. You know, for Bella's sake.

The decision results in Bella turning her attention toward Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), the mysterious Native American boy with the overnight buff physique and habit of stripping down to his jean shorts and running off into the forest with his boys. This, of course, is due to the fact he's a vampire-hating werewolf, but these are just minor details in the life of Bella and passed off as everyday occurrences. She's cool with weird stuff as one of the other werewolves says.

These two previous paragraphs take up approximately the first 90 minutes of New Moon -- along with briefly reintroducing a couple of loose ends from the first film to add to the running time -- before things can shift to Italy, and finally get interesting for 15 minutes or so. No joke.

I'm sorry to say this, but New Moon is a bore. The characters don't seem interested in what's going on and director Chris Weitz seems intent on making sure the audience feels the same way. When Bella isn't screaming in her sleep (over and over again, night after night) we are privileged enough to stare as she sits in a chair and does nothing as the months pass by. Months! And it feels like it.

If looked at as an exercise in patience, New Moon is a gem, but otherwise you are going to be nodding off fairly early. The presumed "love story" gets so bogged down in redundancy and storytelling miscues we never once care for any part of it, especially considering it is all so telegraphed there is hardly a mystery as to how it will all come to an end.

This isn't to say New Moon hasn't improved at all where Twilight failed. The action is a vast improvement. There's an impressive forest chase sequence that brings back Rachelle Lefevre as the vampire Victoria, and the moments in Italy where we are introduced to the vampire coven known as the Volturi are easily the film's stand out sequences. However, if you noticed the likes of Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen as part of the cast don't expect too much as Fanning gets about five words in and Sheen, while impressive as Volturi leader Aro, isn't given nearly enough time to shine.

The effects are improved, but the same stunted performances by the disinterested Stewart, the waxy bore that is Pattinson and the amateurish turn by Lautner are all still present. Even Billy Burke playing Bella's father, the lone standout from the first film, is turned into a stiff. The life was sucked out of New Moon either by the lack of story or by the inability of Weitz to tap into any kind of real energy. However, to be fair, the story is so weak it didn't stand much of a chance and certainly not for more than two hours.

Fans of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling teen-vampire franchise were tolerant of the first film, and some may have legitimately enjoyed it, but I can't help but wonder how long they can remain interested if the filmed adaptations continue to disappoint.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON (2009)

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Jackson Rathbone, Dakota Fanning, Chaske Spencer, Bronson Pelletier, Alex Meraz, Kiowa Gordon, Tyson Houseman, Jamie Campbell-Bower, Michael Sheen, Cameron Bright, Graham Greene, Daniel Cudmore, Kellan Lutz, Ashley Greene, Billy Burke

Director: Chris Weitz

Studio: Summit Entertainment

Genre: Drama / Fantasy / Romance

Rating: PG-13 (For some violence and action.)

Release Date: November 20, 2009

Official Site: http://www.newmoonthemovie.com

2012 (2009) Review

SYNOPSIS:

Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.

Roland Emmerich brought in aliens to destroy the world in 1996 with Independence Day. In 1998 he gave the keys to a giant mutant lizard trying to destroy New York City in Godzilla. Weather was to blame in 2004 when he directed The Day After Tomorrow and now, in 2009, the sun is the culprit as the Earth's core is heating up and 2012 will no longer be known as just another a year as much as it will be the year the Mayans predicted the world will end and Roland Emmerich gladly obliged for no less than two hours and 38 minutes.

2012 is a victim of its own ability to entertain. For 90 minutes of its running time it is a wild and insanely entertaining thrill park where limousines can outrun eroding fault lines and drive straight through crumbling skyscrapers just in time to make it to a twin engine prop-plane that will take off just in the nick of time. Don't worry, it's not a spoiler, the outlandish spectacle is the story here and once it's gone 2012 stops being fully aware of its own silliness, and attempts to make sense of it all. It goes from being a film where we are willing to follow its leaps in logic to one where we are given enough time to begin questioning them. In this sense, Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has a leg up when it comes to effects-driven behemoths. Bay heard the fan's cries for robots fighting one another and delivered, while Emmerich still felt it was necessary to get the destruction of the world over with midway through, and rely on technological gimmickry and character-driven mumbo jumbo for the final hour. Buh-oring and unearned is the only way to describe that decision.

In discussing the film with a few fellow film reviewers, one argued the opening 30 minutes (of which I enjoyed) contained just as much exposition as the final 30 minutes so how could I really complain about the ending? I argued, we are willing to endure the opening setup, which is expected in an effort to establish some semblance of a story, but we still expect enough glorious mayhem in return to make up for what we have put in. For what it's worth, I think Emmerich did a decent job setting up the film with the skill of a simpleton, which is fine, but it's when he forgets his characters are nothing more than paper thin devices necessary to set up outlandish A-to-B action pieces that he begins to lose me. Then again, even his action scenes become redundant as the limo scene I referenced earlier is the film's high point, but it's mirrored over and over again as a jumbo jet must outlast a collapsing runway and a Winnebago must dodge and evade volcanic fireballs before the Earth once again attempts to swallow our protagonists' lowly prop-plane attempting to avoid an ash cloud of death.

Emmerich's unwillingness to let the film evolve causes it to fall apart. He is so determined you care about his characters to the point 2012 stops becoming an effects-driven monolith of cornball action and becomes a schmaltzy drama dedicated to characters you don't care a lick for. Sure, I cheered the little dog on as it performed it's highwire act with the dexterity of Philippe Petit, but at the same time I didn't care about the brainless owner calling for it. And why should I? It's not like it will get me anywhere as the final moments become a knock-off of Wolfgang Petersen's 2006 remake Poseidon dispelling any chance of redemption.



No one is to blame for 2012's eventual self-destruction other than Emmerich and his 2012 co-writer/composer Harald Kloser as they created a disaster epic with a story that can't pull itself out from beneath the rubble. John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton and Danny Glover serve no real purpose other than to read lines and not get in the way of Emmerich's not-so-magic wand. 2012 is likely to enjoy a healthy opening weekend at the box-office and perhaps even prove to be a financial success, but overall it's just another Emmerich disaster film that can't pull itself together.



Perhaps one of these times Emmerich will take himself completely out of the writing process and hand off his admittedly fascinating ideas of world destruction to a more capable screenwriter. And hopefully one of these days the perfect storm of destructive directorial and capable screenwriting talent will come together for a film we can all get behind. For now we are stuck with a mildly satisfying film whose appeal wears off long before it's all over.

2012 (2009)

Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson

Director: Roland Emmerich

Studio: Columbia PicturesGenre: Action / Adventure / Drama

Rating: PG-13 (For intense disaster sequences and some language.)

Release Date: November 13, 2009

Official Site: http://www.whowillsurvive2012

Pandorum (2009) Review

SYNOPSIS:

Two crewmen awaken from hyper-sleep aboard a spacecraft. None of their equipment is working, and their memories are incomplete. What was their mission? How much time has passed? Where are they? Who are they? As they try to piece things together, they discover they are not alone, and the ship's new inhabitants - tribal warriors carrying crudely made weapons - are moving among them, intent on killing all aboard. As the space travelers unravel the frightening and deadly secrets the ship harbors, they realize the survival of mankind hinges on their actions. They must regain control of the ship before PANDORUM takes over.

Pandorum starts out with a few good ideas. In its brightest moments, it gives us a tiny glimpse into the future, one where mankind is forced to take an extended trip across the stars for its very survival, in a beast of a machine as ominous as it is hopeful. But those glimpses are far and few in between, as the movie spreads its ideas thin over a completely unreasonable runtime. Pandorum wears out its welcome pretty quickly.


The movie takes place on the Elysium, a space faring vehicle carrying thousands of colonists from Earth, hoping to reach the only other habitable planet known to man. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from suspended animation to find the ship powered down and missing its crew. An hour later, Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) emerges from stasis as well. Both are suffering some acute memory loss due to the effects of their extended sleep. The two are resolved to figure out what went wrong, Bower heading deep into the bowels of the ship to reset the damaged reactor. He quickly finds that he and Payton are not quite alone, and the truth behind their predicament is far more sinister than they could have ever imagined.

Pandorum begins pretty strongly, but quickly loses steam as it stretches its simple premise to ridiculous proportions. The movie’s runtime of one hour and fifty minutes is excessive to say the least. The story has a couple of twists to it that aren’t very difficult to figure out, but the movie spends a lot of time dropping little hints anyway, inching towards an answer that most audiences will probably see from a mile away. And when you consider that much of the film’s plot is cribbed wholesale from several other superior science fiction movies, the lengthy runtime is just inexcusable.

One of the things the movie does have going for it is its setting. The ship that the movie takes place in is a marvelous piece of production design, teeming with pipes and tubes and tight spaces that don’t all make sense, but add some visual flair anyway. Unfortunately, we don’t get see a lot of it between the movie’s general darkness, the shaky camerawork, and the seriously attention deficient editing. The movie has some horror aspirations, but most of the film’s scares come from jumpy editing and the ridiculously overbearing sound design rather than creating atmosphere.

Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid are mostly too good for the film’s material. The movie’s main premise allows them to stretch a little bit, but the story keeps their characters frustratingly flat, leaving the two with barely anything to do but snarl. Cam Gigandet provides a few enjoyable moments, but the rest of the supporting cast really falls short. Antje Traue speaks in a pretty annoying accent in what appears to be an attempt to hide her inability to express emotion. Eddie Rouse hams it up to disappointing effect.

Pandorum could really have been something. The movie starts out promisingly enough, and the two strong leads give the film a lot of promise. But that promise is spread out over too much movie, the story and its revelations spread thin over sequence after sequence of dimly-lit, poorly shot chases featuring a mostly uninteresting foe. This kind of all-hell-has-broken-loose-in-a-confined-setting has been done better by other films as well, particularly Neil Marshall’s amazingly taut The Descent, and of course, Ridley Scott’s Alien. In the face of those films, Pandorum is loud, bloated and ugly.

PANDORUM (2009)

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet

Director: Christian Alvart

Studio: Overture Films

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action / Adventure

Rating: R (For strong horror violence and language.)

Release Date: September 25, 2009

Official Site: http://www.pandorummovie.com

Dell XPS M1530

Dell XPS M1530

Dell’s XPS series has brought serious multimedia and computing power to both desktops and laptops for a few years now. The XPS lineup of laptops manages to keep on top of the latest advancements in hardware technology by updating configuration options every two or three months. Remarkably, they manage to keep them pretty affordable too. Dell’s current 15.4-inch XPS M1530 brings a solid set of performance oriented hardware at a midrange price.

Standout Features

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 processor
• 4GB of RAM
• 500GB hard drive
• GeForce 8600M GT video card
• High connectivity

Features

From a strictly aesthetic point of view, the Dell XPS M1530 is about as pretty as one could hope for. The Dell XPS M1530 manages to pack a Swiss Army knife’s worth of gadgets while still preserving a minimalist professionalism. Add the color options Dell gives you (pink, black and blue), and you’re looking at an elegant, yet still personalized laptop.

With a comparably strong graphics controller, the GeForce 8600M GT, powering video, HD movies will look stellar on the Dell XPS M1530’s 1440 x 900 resolution screen. No stuttering either, thanks to Intel dual-core processing. Feel like running some apps in the background while you enjoy the Quantum of Solace? Go right ahead, 4GB of RAM equate to smooth sailing when running multiple applications simultaneously.

The Dell XPS M1530 is going to delight the multimedia user more than anyone else. The Dell XPS M1530 has a remote control that tucks comfortably into the chassis of the notebook itself. The remote control in conjunction with the HDMI output on the Dell XPS M1530 allows it to link up with your HDTV for home theater quality audio and video.

Users looking to stay connected at work, home, and everywhere in between will be happy to learn that the Dell XPS M1530 ranks highly in terms of connectivity. In addition to standard wi-fi and Ethernet, you’ll find the option to include Bluetooth.

The only real complaint we have about the Dell XPS M1530 is the underwhelming video card. We’d love to be able to buy the Dell XPS M1530 with a 512MB video card. Unfortunately, the GeForce 8600M GT only has 256MB of dedicated memory.

Summary of Reviews from Across the Internet

Users are pleased with the thin and light build. The Dell XPS M1530 weighs about 6 pounds.

The Dell XPS M1530’s onboard speakers produce mediocre sound. Headphones are a must.

Summary

Ultimately, the Dell XPS M1530 is a jack-of-all-trades in the laptop arena. The Dell XPS M1530 will handle multimedia, wi-fi networking, internet, resource-intensive applications, and even manage some casual gaming on the side. For the user with a very specific set of needs, likeDVD authoring, the Dell XPS M1530 might not be the best laptop out there. But, for the civilian user with a love of multimedia and a need for versatility, the Dell XPS M1530 is a great candidate—especially at the price.

Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) Review

SYNOPSIS:

This is It will offer Jackson fans and music lovers worldwide a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the performer, his career, and the stage spectacular that would have been. The film will provide moviegoers with an unforgettable front row experience compiled from extensive footage that shows Jackson's meticulous preparation for his 2009 London shows.

In Michael Jackson's This is It we watch as the late King of Pop "sizzles" on stage. He lets musical moments "simmer" and his only concern is to ensure the audience is "nourished." Jackson sounds as good as he ever has, but it's impossible to ignore his thin and frail frame as well as moments of deep breathing and not think about the circumstances involved in bringing this footage to the big screen.

What is being shown in theaters was never intended to be seen by anyone other than Michael Jackson for his own private reference material, and yet mere hours after his death the promoter of what was to be Jackson's comeback/farewell concert, AEG Live, snatched up over 100 hours of footage and began shopping it around in order to recoup over $30 million in concert production costs and the $85 million in ticket sales that would now have to be refunded. Can these facts simply be ignored while watching this movie?

Is it right? Is it too soon? Is it macabre? While watching Jackson as he preps for what was to be a 50-night run of concerts at London's O2 Arena these are the things that started to go through my mind.

Starting with "Wanna Be Starting Something" and ending with "Man in the Mirror" before the credits role and the newly released title track begins to play, this is something of a musical retrospective of Jackson's career. I will give credit to director Kenny Ortega, who is also represented in the film itself as creative director in charge of the concert series (and Jackson's "yes" man), for remaining as faithful as he could to the idea this was a concert film and not a behind-the-scenes film interviewing dancers telling us how much Michael meant to them (something that's gotten out of the way early and only revisited one other time).

Rehearsal performances of "Human Nature," "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" stand out as the most moving and complete portions of the film as Jackson would often reign things in, not wanting to strain his voice, but would rarely slack off when it came to his moves.

Very little about what is shown on screen indicates the fate that would soon befall Jackson, and as a result many fans, such as those at This-Is-Not-It.com, may look at this as some sort of a cover-up. In actuality, had that become the subject matter of this feature we would have ventured out of the realm of the macabre and squarely into the world of the morbid. Hard to tell if one or the other is more appropriate, but it's easy to decide which one is the more family friendly business decision.

While I enjoyed moments when Jackson would take time to work out musical choices with his band or encourage one of his guitarists telling her, "This is your time to shine," I found myself increasingly bored with the musical performances themselves. I've seen every music video and as many of Jackson's televised performances I could, and I wasn't getting anything all that new here. However, the in-between moments were extremely fascinating and led me to believe had we been watching the finished project this would have been a concert to behold with pyrotechnics galore, film tributes including Gilda, In a Lonely Place and His Girl Friday serving as the backdrop for "Smooth Criminal" and even a 3-D film that was to play in the background during "Thriller." This would have been a concert to bring the house down, but it ultimately became a prelude to the death of Michael Jackson and headline fodder for a $60 million business deal between AEG and Columbia Pictures.



Make no mistake about it, this is not a tribute to Michael Jackson as many are making it out to be. This is merely a cash grab and as such it tainted my entire experience. I don't know about you, but quotes from AEG CEO Randy Phillips saying, "He was our partner in life and now he's our partner in death," are quotes I simply I can't get over. I let my opinion of Michael Jackson be known the day after his death and suffice to say he was easily one of my favorite musical performers of all-time. To watch his final moments on screen as companies seek to make a profit and to know behind-the-scenes an irresponsible doctor would soon be the cause of his death it seems there will be no end to the attempts to bleed Jackson dry, and I have a hard time finding enjoyment under such circumstances.

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT (2009)

Starring: Michael Jackson

Director: Kenny Ortega

Studio: Sony Pictures Entertainment

Genre: Music

Rating: PG (For some suggestive choreography and scary images.)

Release Date: October 28, 2009

Official Site: http://www.thisisit-movie.com