When Memphis (Hugh Jackman) drops the egg of his baby penguin during the long, cold, Antarctic winter, he is afraid that he may have literally dropped the ball. But luckily – for him – the baby does hatch, albeit a bit later than the other penguins, and Norma Jean (Nicole Kidman) won’t be upset when she returns from the feeding grounds.

But when young Mumble (Elijah Wood) can’t seem to find his heart song, Memphis blames himself. In this Disney-fied tale (which is actually by Fox), the penguins grow up, and sing their heart song in order to find their mate. Without such a song, Mumble is not only doomed to live out his life on his own, he is just about a disgrace. To make matters worse, he does this thing… with his feet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Raymond Avilla (Andy Garcia) is the newest officer to join the Internal Affairs Department, and he and partner Amy Wallace (Laurie Metcalf) are investigating Van Stretch (William Baldwin), who they suspect of using drugs, among other things. It appears that his spending habits don’t match up with his income levels, and they want to know why.

Along the way they encounter Van’s partner, Dennis Peck (Richard Gere), and it seems that Van isn’t the only one with something to hide – but Peck may be a whole lot better at it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) returns in this sequal to the 1985 smash Back to the Future.

Though four years have elapsed since the original, little has changed in the movie, and in fact it starts right where the first one left off – in the driveway of Marty’s house, right after Doc (Christopher Lloyd) has dropped him off after their adventures in time.

The only major difference is that Jennifer, Marty’s girlfriend, is no longer played by Claudia Wells – instead, Elisabeth Shue takes over.

Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual – except that Doc has returned from the future, and he’s got some bad news. It seems that Marty’s kids (and Jennifer’s – they are married in the future) are getting into trouble, and they need to make sure that they can save them. Thus begins the second episode of the trilogy. What happens when they get there sets the stage not only for this installment, but the next one as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know how likely it is that a high school kid (Elijah Wood) may actually discover a comet in this day and age, but it’s a movie, so I can make a leap of faith. Get past that and there are actually relatively few of them to make here.

That a cub reporter (Téa Leoni) should stumble on the story prior to it breaking isn’t that bad, and Morgan Freeman is quite good as the president (he’s always quite good, so that’s no real surprise).

In any case, young Leo Beiderman (that’s Wood) spots something in his telescope, and sends it to his friend Dr. Marcus Wolf to confirm – but before Dr. Wolf can deliver the results of his findings to anyone, he is involved in a horrific crash and presumed dead. Moreover, when it is determined that he was correct, and the comet spotted in the telescope is on a collision course for the Earth, it’s decided that the best thing to do is to keep it a secret to keep panic to a minimum.

Read the rest of this entry »

While this is probably classified as a family film, it really has some fairly dark moments. One of them comes in the very early moments as Flipper and another dolphin are swimming merrily through the ocean and the Bad Guy shoots Flipper’s friend not once, but over and over. You don’t see blood in the water or anything, but there’s no question that he’s hurt. Then he shoots again and again and there should be no question that the other dolphin is dead.

There are certainly some lighter moments in the movie, but there’s also plenty more darkness, like dead fish floating around the toxic waste, and a near-dead Flipper who returns after eating some of the infected fish to boot. So it’s not all fun and games, but there are some of those as well. Just probably not really for the younger set.

Read the rest of this entry »