Celluloid Heroes

A seemingly never-ending line of dirt-encrusted men, women and at least one child prepare to be hanged in the gallows, all to appease Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his war on the pirates. As they march endlessly towards their doom, a cryer announces that item after item is suspended. No longer can people gather, demonstrate or even have lawyers. Instead, they can just die.

Then, a young lad, clutching a piece of eight, begins to softly sing. The song is gradually picked up by each of the others in line behind him, until it seems that everyone is singing the haunting song. This seems to do nothing more than infuriate Beckett.

Read All of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 26, 2007 in Adventure

Hapless Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is in danger of losing his son, Nick (Jake Cherry). He's not really concerned about his ex-wife, but Nick? That worries him. Especially when Nick mentions that he's ready to hang up his hockey skates and start practicing to be a stockbroker, like his new dad, Don (Paul Rudd).

Spurred on by the thought of losing his son's hockey career to the over-achieving Don - or at least to his utility belt of cell phones, Larry decides that he needs to get on with his life and do something. So begging for a job at the unemployment office, he begs for just about anything. What he gets is something that no one would have expected.

You see, Larry gets a job as a night watchman and the Museum of Natural History. And as they say, history has a way of coming to life. It's never been more true than it is at this place after they lock the doors for the night.

Read All of "Night at the Museum (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 13, 2007 in Adventure

Just as Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) comes home to visit his wife, he is met by a few less-than-upstanding citizens who want to cause trouble. Unfortunately for them, Poe is an Army Ranger, which means that they probably aren't in the best position when it comes to a fight.

So when they decide to ambush him outside the bar, Poe gets the best of them. But when all is said and done, and one of them ends up dead on the ground, it is Poe who gets the short end of the stick. All he was doing was protecting his wife, but since he is trained as a deadly weapon, he ends up in prison.

Read All of "Con Air (1997) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 6, 2007 in Action

The small African nation of Sierra Leone is situated next to Liberia, and while Liberia produces billions of dollars of diamonds annually, Sierra Leone produces virtually none. The reason for this, at least according to this movie, is that the diamonds within Sierra Leone are taken by rebel forces and then sold to fund their rebellion.

In the process, countless families are broken up, with the lucky ones killed off immediately, but many others left maimed, physically or emotionally (or in many cases both). The healthy men are used for mining these diamonds, while the youth can be taken to replenish the forces that are killed in the process of doing so. It's not a pretty sight.

Read All of "Blood Diamond (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 22, 2007 in Drama

The rumor says that if Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is going to kill you, she will whisper in your ear before you even know that she is there.

As the movie opens, we see that Elektra can indeed defeat an entire army of people who have been assigned the task of defending a single person. Naturally she gets past them without so much as breaking a sweat or even making it seem like a difficult task. But that is what she does.

Read All of "Elektra (2005) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 22, 2007 in Action

At the site of a lavish celebratory party, thrown by a Japanese company wanting to celebrate their purchase of a US company, the mood turns decidedly unhappy when someone turns up dead on the boardroom table. The fact that it's a young woman, who is most assuredly not Japanese, is probably not a good sign.

Detective Webster Smith (Wesley Snipes) is called in to investigate, and quickly teamed up with Captain John Connor (Sean Connery). This partner arrangement, where a younger. more inexperienced investigator, would be paired with a wiser, more seasoned man, is quite common for the Japanese. Apparently.

Unfortunately, Webb isn't too happy about either his new partner or the fact that the Japanese don't want their party to be disturbed. But life is about to get a lot more interesting for him.

Read All of "Rising Sun (1993) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 14, 2007 in Action

On the morning of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), an American Terrorist sets off a bomb in an SUV aboard a ferry, killing more than five hundred people aboard, as the fireball sets off another explosion in the boiler, and eventually the remains sink to the bottom of the river.

ATF Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is assigned the grisly task of figuring out exactly what happened, and as such, he's one of the first on the scene collecting evidence. His partner, who had just taken off for vacation, is nowhere to be found, not even answering his cell phone.

Before long, Carlin is assigned to a special task force researching the event, and finds himself drawn into a special new technology that allows the investigators to look back into the past four-and-a-half days (technically, four days and six hours, but no one seems to notice this, so I'll pretend not to do so either) to see what's happening. The only catch is that this time window is open only for that exact period, and once that time window is gone, it can't be recovered.

Read All of "Deja Vu (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 9, 2007 in Action

Edward Norton stars in this film, where he is billed only as The Narrator. We don't actually ever get to hear his name, which is interesting, but strangely, you don't find yourself missing out on that fact (or at least, I didn't).

When we meet him, he is simply a body in motion, moving through airports, living a life that most of us can associate with, finding some measure of satisfaction through filling out his apartment with items in the IKEA catalog, slowly making where he lives into a reflection of what you see on each page.

And then on one of these trips, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). That's when everything changes.

Read All of "Fight Club (1999) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 30, 2007 in Drama

Doctor Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) has turned up dead, and it seems that the most likely suspect is the one being who can't be a suspect at all. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that the law clearly states that murder has happened when one human kills another human, which leads directly to the second reason. The suspect isn't human. It's a robot. And according to the Three Laws, a robot should not be able to kill a human, which means that there shouldn't be anything to investigate - even if the law were to apply here (which it doesn't).

Read All of "I, Robot (2004) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 21, 2007 in Science Fiction

Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is determined to fight in the three-day Kumite to honor his teacher. Unfortunately, the military has determined that they would rather not risk their investment in Dux and send two somewhat bumbling military policemen after him (one of these is Forest Whitaker).

While the story is based on the events of the life of Frank Dux, there is some disagreement if these events actually took place or not in the first place. Nonetheless, the age-old story of a man beating the odds is one that most people can get behind, and when he takes on "the man" in the process, it's generally fun to watch. This movie is no exception. Just because there is no evidence of an actual event called the Kumite doesn't mean that there can't be one in the movies. So let's move on.

Read All of "Bloodsport (1988) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 14, 2007 in Action

Officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) foils the plot of a bomber, and the next day as he gets a coffee, he witnesses a city bus blown to smithereens. Then he receives a call that another city bus has a bomb on it, and when it accelerates to fifty miles per hour, the bomb is armed. If it goes below fifty, the bomb will detonate. Suddenly he has to try to help the people on this other bus. Can he make it in time?

The first task is to find the bomb, and the bomber has determined that this game has certain rules. Of course one of those rules is finding the bus, and in a city the size of Los Angeles, being able to find a lone bus is a difficult task at best, so Jack has a bus number and is told where the bus is. Now he just needs to get to it. This he does.

Since he can't get to the bus stop on time, he has to catch a lift by taking over a car and driving alongside like a maniac, and eventually jumping into the bus itself, but by then it's too late. The bus has already hit fifty miles per hour and the bomb is armed. The game is on.

Read All of "Speed (1994) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on February 18, 2007 in Action

When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) receives the hundred-year-old telegram from Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) at the end of Back to the Future Part 2, telling him that he's alive and well in the Old West, it also has another tidbit of information - that he's hidden the time machine in an old cave outside of town. But Marty needs some help getting it running.

So he returns to town just in time to see himself leave to go back to the future for the first time, and he surprises the original Doc (the 1955 Doc), and tells him all about what's happening. Or at least, enough so that he doesn't know anything about his future, because Marty doesn't know that Doc has read the note that he gave him, telling him about the terrorists in the original Back to the Future.

With Doc on board, he gets some help getting the DeLorean back up and running, and using the Mr. Fusion to generate the power, Marty heads back to 1885 to see if he can rescue Doc and head back to 1985 - which will hopefully be the same as they left it!

Read All of "Back to the Future Part 3 (1990) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on January 28, 2007 in Adventure

A seemingly never-ending line of dirt-encrusted men, women and at least one child prepare to be hanged in the gallows, all to appease Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander) and his war on the pirates. As they march endlessly towards their doom, a cryer announces that item after item is suspended. No longer can people gather, demonstrate or even have lawyers. Instead, they can just die.

Then, a young lad, clutching a piece of eight, begins to softly sing. The song is gradually picked up by each of the others in line behind him, until it seems that everyone is singing the haunting song. This seems to do nothing more than infuriate Beckett.

Read All of "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 26, 2007 in Adventure

Hapless Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is in danger of losing his son, Nick (Jake Cherry). He's not really concerned about his ex-wife, but Nick? That worries him. Especially when Nick mentions that he's ready to hang up his hockey skates and start practicing to be a stockbroker, like his new dad, Don (Paul Rudd).

Spurred on by the thought of losing his son's hockey career to the over-achieving Don - or at least to his utility belt of cell phones, Larry decides that he needs to get on with his life and do something. So begging for a job at the unemployment office, he begs for just about anything. What he gets is something that no one would have expected.

You see, Larry gets a job as a night watchman and the Museum of Natural History. And as they say, history has a way of coming to life. It's never been more true than it is at this place after they lock the doors for the night.

Read All of "Night at the Museum (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 13, 2007 in Adventure

Just as Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) comes home to visit his wife, he is met by a few less-than-upstanding citizens who want to cause trouble. Unfortunately for them, Poe is an Army Ranger, which means that they probably aren't in the best position when it comes to a fight.

So when they decide to ambush him outside the bar, Poe gets the best of them. But when all is said and done, and one of them ends up dead on the ground, it is Poe who gets the short end of the stick. All he was doing was protecting his wife, but since he is trained as a deadly weapon, he ends up in prison.

Read All of "Con Air (1997) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on May 6, 2007 in Action

The small African nation of Sierra Leone is situated next to Liberia, and while Liberia produces billions of dollars of diamonds annually, Sierra Leone produces virtually none. The reason for this, at least according to this movie, is that the diamonds within Sierra Leone are taken by rebel forces and then sold to fund their rebellion.

In the process, countless families are broken up, with the lucky ones killed off immediately, but many others left maimed, physically or emotionally (or in many cases both). The healthy men are used for mining these diamonds, while the youth can be taken to replenish the forces that are killed in the process of doing so. It's not a pretty sight.

Read All of "Blood Diamond (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 22, 2007 in Drama

The rumor says that if Elektra (Jennifer Garner) is going to kill you, she will whisper in your ear before you even know that she is there.

As the movie opens, we see that Elektra can indeed defeat an entire army of people who have been assigned the task of defending a single person. Naturally she gets past them without so much as breaking a sweat or even making it seem like a difficult task. But that is what she does.

Read All of "Elektra (2005) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 22, 2007 in Action

At the site of a lavish celebratory party, thrown by a Japanese company wanting to celebrate their purchase of a US company, the mood turns decidedly unhappy when someone turns up dead on the boardroom table. The fact that it's a young woman, who is most assuredly not Japanese, is probably not a good sign.

Detective Webster Smith (Wesley Snipes) is called in to investigate, and quickly teamed up with Captain John Connor (Sean Connery). This partner arrangement, where a younger. more inexperienced investigator, would be paired with a wiser, more seasoned man, is quite common for the Japanese. Apparently.

Unfortunately, Webb isn't too happy about either his new partner or the fact that the Japanese don't want their party to be disturbed. But life is about to get a lot more interesting for him.

Read All of "Rising Sun (1993) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 14, 2007 in Action

On the morning of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), an American Terrorist sets off a bomb in an SUV aboard a ferry, killing more than five hundred people aboard, as the fireball sets off another explosion in the boiler, and eventually the remains sink to the bottom of the river.

ATF Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is assigned the grisly task of figuring out exactly what happened, and as such, he's one of the first on the scene collecting evidence. His partner, who had just taken off for vacation, is nowhere to be found, not even answering his cell phone.

Before long, Carlin is assigned to a special task force researching the event, and finds himself drawn into a special new technology that allows the investigators to look back into the past four-and-a-half days (technically, four days and six hours, but no one seems to notice this, so I'll pretend not to do so either) to see what's happening. The only catch is that this time window is open only for that exact period, and once that time window is gone, it can't be recovered.

Read All of "Deja Vu (2006) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on April 9, 2007 in Action

Edward Norton stars in this film, where he is billed only as The Narrator. We don't actually ever get to hear his name, which is interesting, but strangely, you don't find yourself missing out on that fact (or at least, I didn't).

When we meet him, he is simply a body in motion, moving through airports, living a life that most of us can associate with, finding some measure of satisfaction through filling out his apartment with items in the IKEA catalog, slowly making where he lives into a reflection of what you see on each page.

And then on one of these trips, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). That's when everything changes.

Read All of "Fight Club (1999) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 30, 2007 in Drama

Doctor Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) has turned up dead, and it seems that the most likely suspect is the one being who can't be a suspect at all. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that the law clearly states that murder has happened when one human kills another human, which leads directly to the second reason. The suspect isn't human. It's a robot. And according to the Three Laws, a robot should not be able to kill a human, which means that there shouldn't be anything to investigate - even if the law were to apply here (which it doesn't).

Read All of "I, Robot (2004) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 21, 2007 in Science Fiction

Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is determined to fight in the three-day Kumite to honor his teacher. Unfortunately, the military has determined that they would rather not risk their investment in Dux and send two somewhat bumbling military policemen after him (one of these is Forest Whitaker).

While the story is based on the events of the life of Frank Dux, there is some disagreement if these events actually took place or not in the first place. Nonetheless, the age-old story of a man beating the odds is one that most people can get behind, and when he takes on "the man" in the process, it's generally fun to watch. This movie is no exception. Just because there is no evidence of an actual event called the Kumite doesn't mean that there can't be one in the movies. So let's move on.

Read All of "Bloodsport (1988) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on March 14, 2007 in Action

Officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) foils the plot of a bomber, and the next day as he gets a coffee, he witnesses a city bus blown to smithereens. Then he receives a call that another city bus has a bomb on it, and when it accelerates to fifty miles per hour, the bomb is armed. If it goes below fifty, the bomb will detonate. Suddenly he has to try to help the people on this other bus. Can he make it in time?

The first task is to find the bomb, and the bomber has determined that this game has certain rules. Of course one of those rules is finding the bus, and in a city the size of Los Angeles, being able to find a lone bus is a difficult task at best, so Jack has a bus number and is told where the bus is. Now he just needs to get to it. This he does.

Since he can't get to the bus stop on time, he has to catch a lift by taking over a car and driving alongside like a maniac, and eventually jumping into the bus itself, but by then it's too late. The bus has already hit fifty miles per hour and the bomb is armed. The game is on.

Read All of "Speed (1994) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on February 18, 2007 in Action

When Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) receives the hundred-year-old telegram from Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) at the end of Back to the Future Part 2, telling him that he's alive and well in the Old West, it also has another tidbit of information - that he's hidden the time machine in an old cave outside of town. But Marty needs some help getting it running.

So he returns to town just in time to see himself leave to go back to the future for the first time, and he surprises the original Doc (the 1955 Doc), and tells him all about what's happening. Or at least, enough so that he doesn't know anything about his future, because Marty doesn't know that Doc has read the note that he gave him, telling him about the terrorists in the original Back to the Future.

With Doc on board, he gets some help getting the DeLorean back up and running, and using the Mr. Fusion to generate the power, Marty heads back to 1885 to see if he can rescue Doc and head back to 1985 - which will hopefully be the same as they left it!

Read All of "Back to the Future Part 3 (1990) Review" »
Posted by Chad Everett on January 28, 2007 in Adventure