Moonrise Kingdom

In the immaculately designed, emotionally charged bubble filmmaker Wes Anderson builds around the 1965 New England summer, first love blooms. Sam (Jared Gilman) is an orphan at the mercy of foster parents and his Scout troop. Suzy (Kara Hayward) lives in a lighthouse with three younger brothers, two lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and an urge to bust free. Sam, she decides, is her man. No one understands their attraction. Hell, they're both 12. He's a string bean in thick glasses, and she's cool enough to wear eyeliner. But Anderson, who wrote the resonant script with Roman Coppola, knows their secret hearts. So when the kids run away to an island they call Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson is right there with them. And thanks to this enchanted ride of a movie, so are we.

Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson's seventh feature, is unlikely to convert those who believe the Texas-born filmmaker is merely a skilled miniaturist. If mannerism is all you see in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited and the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, go lap up the latest big-studio drool. To my mind, Anderson is oxygen in a Hollywood choking from chasing its own greed-driven tail.

Moonrise Kingdom shows a director growing in confidence and maturity. Take the remarkable scene, set on a daylight beach, in which Sam and Suzy first kiss – using tongues and groping awkwardly. Given the underage actors, the moment could have been borderline kiddie porn. But Anderson handles it with a sensitivity and an unembarrassed openness that evoke the style of François Truffaut, in classics such as The 400 Blows and Small Change. Anderson is also expert at using humor as a gateway to deeper feelings. When Suzy mentions love, Sam is pleased but exasperated ("You don't know what you're talking about"). Newcomers Gilman and Hayward stay allergic to sweet and cute, catching the exhilaration and cartwheeling confusion of being young and in thrall to each other.

Adults soon intrude on their paradise. There's a hurricane coming, announces the film's narrator (a delightful Bob Bala­ban). The scoutmaster (an engagingly wacked-out Edward Norton) organizes a search party with the help of his chief (Harvey Keitel) and cousin Ben, a scam artist in scout's clothing played by a stellar Jason Schwartzman, evoking his iconic role as Max Fischer in Rushmore. The police captain (a becomingly non-macho Bruce Willis) is also on the case, pressured by Suzy's mom, with whom he's having an affair.

The top-tier cast, including Tilda Swinton as a character called Social Services, may be star overload, but each actor performs small miracles. Murray and McDormand excel at showing a faltering marriage in microcosm. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself," she tells her husband, each in a separate bed. "Why?" says he, instilling one word with a lifetime of meaning. On children, they're agreed: "We're all they have, and it's not enough."

As the hurricane whips up a perhaps too busy climax, Anderson links the everyday and the extraordinary with virtuoso artistry. Shot with a poet's eye by Robert Yeoman and lifted by an Alexandre Desplat score that samples Mozart, Hank Williams and Benjamin Britten, the hilarious and heartfelt Moonrise Kingdom is a consistent pleasure. By evoking the joys and terrors of childhood, it reminds us how to be alive.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/moonrise-kingdom-20120524

Battleship

Liam Neeson, Rihanna, Taylor Kitsch
Directed by Peter Berg

Confession: I'm usually in Peter Berg's corner. Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom and Hancock all show a director with a wild streak Hollywood can't totally tame. But Battleship, based on Hasbro's naval-combat game, shows Berg trying to transform into demon box-office machine Michael Bay. Can you aim lower? Battleship is all noise and crashing metal, sinking to the shallows of Bay's Armageddon and then digging to the brain-extinction level of the Transformers trilogy.

No wonder the cast gives up on acting. It's not that screenwriting brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber (Red) don't put words in their mouths. The problem is, they do. "I've got a bad feeling about this," says Alex Hooper (Taylor Kitsch), a Navy lieutenant stationed in Oahu, Hawaii, who gets caught up in an alien invasion at sea. Alex is a screw-up. He's dating Sam (Brooklyn Decker), the hottie daughter of the admiral (Liam Neeson) who hates him. And he knows his captain brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), is a way-better hardass. So while Sam stays on land with paraplegic Army veteran Mick (real-life Iraq hero Gregory D. Gadson) to make sure these E.T.s don't phone home, Alex and his weapons specialist (Rihanna, of all people) take aim at the muthafuckers. Actually it's just "muthas," thanks to a PG-13 rating. Berg panders shamelessly for the big finish, enlisting the real WWII battleship USS Missouri, and its old-school crew. Way to go, Battleship: Take the crassest of cynical junk, slather it in jingoism and sell it as rah-rah fun for right-wingers.

source: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/battleship-20120517

The Avengers

Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Tom Hiddleston
Directed by Joss Whedon

Let me sprint right to the point: The Avengers has it all. And then some. Six superheroes for the price of one ticket: Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow and the Hulk. It's also the blockbuster I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one shiny, stupendously exciting package. It's Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor. Suck on that, Michael Bay.
All hail the warrior king of this dizzying, dazzling 3D action epic. That would be writer-director Joss Whedon, enjoying the afterglow of stellar reviews for deconstructing horror in The Cabin in the Woods. Here, in his second directing feature (after Serenity), Whedon stages the most exultantly good-humored, head-on, rousing series of traps and escapes since Spielberg was a pup. It's Citizen Kane for Citizen Geek.
The plot is merely functional. The world will end if Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the banished demigod, has his way. Loki hates his brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and lusts to destroy Earth with help from an alien army. As head of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has one recourse: Bring in the Avengers, a group of paragons with a rep for not playing well with others.
That's the conflict, and the signal to unleash the FX. But Whedon is exploring richer ground. He sees the Avengers as the ultimate dysfunctional family. Their powers have estranged them from the normal world. As a result, they're lonely, cranky, emotional fuck-ups, which the actors have a ball playing. Robert Downey Jr. still seems blissfully right as Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (there's a disarming tickle in his portrayal). He mocks the costume of Captain America (a canny Chris Evans) and calls the World War II hero an "old man." The captain wonders what's under that iron suit, sparking a priceless Downey deadpan: "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."
There's no doubt that the two Iron Man hits overshadowed Thor, Captain America and two Hulk movies at the box office. But Downey doesn't hog the spotlight. Hemsworth's giant-size Thor gets big laughs dismissing his comrades in arms ("You're all so tiny"). And everyone gets to show their skill sets, including Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), the expert arch­er, and Natasha, a.k.a. the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), a killer in gymnastics and martial arts. Johansson has a terrific bit dispatching some Russian goons with her hands literally tied behind her back. And wait till you see the funny and touching stuff the sly Clark Gregg does as Agent Phil Coulson.
Mark Ruffalo is the newcomer to the team, replacing Edward Norton and Eric Bana as Bruce Banner, the nuclear physicist with anger issues that turn him into a hulking green rage machine. Ruffalo brings a scruffy warmth and humor to the role that's revelatory. His verbal sparring with Downey – two pros at the top of their games – is a pleasure to watch. And, wonder of wonders, the tech­ies finally get the scale of the Hulk right. The computerized unjolly green giant is a jumbo scene-stealer. And it's hard not to cheer when Hulk wipes up the floor with Loki.
Speaking of Loki, and it's hard not to, bring on a shower of praise for Hiddleston. A superhero movie is only as good as its villain, and Hiddleston is dynamite. The role of Loki demands intuition, wit and crazy daring, and Hiddleston brings it. The British actor (War Horse, The Deep Blue Sea) is a force to reckon with.
Loki claims early in the film that his heart "burns with glorious purpose." He's got nothing on Whedon, a filmmaker who knows that even the roaringest action sequences won't resonate without audience investment in the characters. Whedon is not afraid to slow down to let feelings sink in. Fanboy heresy, perhaps, but the key to the film's super­smart, supercool triumph. In the final third, when Whedon lets it rip and turns the battle intensity up to 11, all your senses will be blown. I have one word for The Avengers: Wowza!

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/the-avengers-20120430

Prometheus

Ridley Scott has only two science fiction films on his resume, but both were massively influential. With Alien in 1979, Scott gave us clean white walls and dark, densely patterned bio-structures, plus a showdown between the kill-or-be-killed ethos of big business and its literal evolutionary equivalent. For Blade Runner three years later, Scott created a crowded, cold, multicultural urban tomorrow that was like today but tripled. Just try to imagine a science fiction film from the last 30 years since that doesn't reference one or both of his looks and themes. Hence the excitement to see Scott refresh his own visions in his return to science fiction with Prometheus. Beneath the hype and promises, however, it's almost a letdown that the actual film is merely very good: a better-than-average 3D big-budget space tale. Seen as such, it's sure to bring in summer audiences eager for smarter-than-usual spectacle, even if it won't inspire the next 30 years of science fiction flicks.

Prometheus starts as academics Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) link a series of ancient paintings from disparate cultures that all share a common link: a giant pointing at the same constellation. And so, Weyland Industries, headed by patriarch/CEO Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), packs Shaw, Holloway and a rag-tag mix of scientists and crew on the ship Prometheus and rockets them off an Earth-like moon orbiting one of the constellation's planet. By 2093, they land. And that's when they finally think to ask if the map was an invitation or a warning.

Soon, the crew are exploring the planet's vast and colossal wreckage, which looks like a Pottery Barn version of a Mayan death temple-rustic and spooky with lots of giant carved heads-that also holds a spaceship and petrified alien life forms. As Shaw and Holloway work, other crew members like corporate overseer Vickers (Charlize Theron), rough-and-tumble captain Janek (Idris Elba) and cold, calm helper-droid David (Michael Fassbender, whose sly work is the best thing here) pursue their own agendas.

Any similarities to Alien and Aliens are purely deliberate. You have, in fact, seen all of what's in John Spaihts and Damon Lindelof's script before, but at least you're in the hands of a master, not a studio gun-for-hire like in Fox's last trip to the Alien universe (which involved the depressing modifier vs. Predator). Prometheus is no lame cash-grab fanboy nonsense that plays like the daydreams of a violent 12-year-old, and it's nice to have Sir Ridley classing the neighborhood back up. Scott's more of a visual stylist than a visual storyteller—his Robin Hood failed because you can't shoot rollicking medieval adventure from a helicopter—and the addition of 3D to his tool chest is both welcome and nicely under-done. Still, cynics will argue that filming people in bluish-black outfits against blackish-blue backgrounds hardly screams for the effort and expense of 3D. The special effects are top-notch, even if we're left pondering why the ship Prometheus is more high-tech than Alien's Nostromo, built for 2122.

The interesting thematic questions are all about creation: do we owe our creators obeisance, or defiance? How do we move forward in our present when our past is built on the temples of fallen gods and men? In fact, when we slam into the final act of shouting, shooting and stomach-stretching monster effects, their familiarity is both comforting and confounding. I found myself wishing that the scary stuff had started earlier (so as to not feel rushed) or not at all (so as to not feel tacked-on). But these are idle and subjective complaints, and even if Prometheus just repeats the haunted-house-in-space visceral horrors of Alien, that still puts it ahead of the pack. We live in a dim and dark era when Michael Bay's idiot fantasies of moralistic robot trucks or the simple metaphors of Battle: Los Angeles are considered "science fiction." Let Prometheus be a reminds that a real science-fiction film this superbly-made, smart and satisfying throws off the light and heat of a fire stolen from heaven.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Cast: Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce, Patrick Wilson, Benedict Wong, Sean Harris, Idris Elba, Kate Dickie, Rafe Spall, Logan Marshall-Green, Emun Elliott

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenwriter: David Giler

Producers: Ridley Scott, Damon Lindelof, John Spaihts

Genre: Action/Science Fiction

Rating: R for sci-fi violence including some intense images, and brief language

Running time: 124 min.

Release date: June 8, 2012

source : http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/reviews/2012-06-prometheus

Men in Black 3

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

The alien-busters are back, baby. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones still rock that Reservoir Dogs look as two secret agents in the extraterrestrial waste-disposal business. But, jeez, we haven't seen these dudes in 10 years. My memory is that the first Men in Black, in 1997, hit all its marks as creature-feature farce. Five years later, though, the sequel was a giant yawn. The good news is that director Barry Sonnenfeld has reassembled the troops to mostly gangbusters effect. Yeah, Men in Black 3 (in 3D, yet) suffered production delays, a budget that ballooned to $215 million, and 215 million script revisions (I'm kidding, barely). It was Smith himself who had the idea to send his character, Agent J, back in time to 1969 to stop Boris the Monster (The Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement) from assassinating Jones' Agent K. Don't panic, I've seen the movie and I still don't get it. What works, like comic hellfire, is the casting of Josh Brolin as the young Agent K. Brolin's take on Jones' deadpan delivery (they co-starred in No Country for Old Men) is spot-on and spectacularly funny. Better yet, Brolin brings in a true actor's grace, adding humor and heart that help explain the origins of Agent K's moody blues. Jones disappears for most of the second half, but not before he and Smith trade barbs and slaughter E.T. scum. The effects are cheese-whizzy fun, but it's the unexpected spark between Smith and Brolin that makes MiB3 primo summer fun. Way cool.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/men-in-black-3-20120524

Movie Riview: The Skin I Live In

The Skin I Live In

Antonio Banderas

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Anything for Halloween? I'd vouch for The Skin I Live In, a scary, sexy and terrifically twisted horror film from the artist known as Pedro Almodóvar, Spain's stylish maestro of kink and flamboyant emotion. Skin reunites Almodóvar with Antonio Banderas for the first time since 1990's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Director and star still bring out the wicked, badass best in each other.


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Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard, a widower plastic surgeon who uses his isolated mansion to hide a suicidal patient whom we see only in a head bandage and a body stocking. She's called Vera (Elena Anaya), and when Robert is not experimenting on her withsynthetic skin grafts, he's observing her behind glass with a voyeuristic perversity that evokes Hitchcock's 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo. Banderas is magnetic with a vengeance, the fire in his eyes a constant threat to the surgical precision of the scientist he plays. He's a new-century Dr. Frankenstein and twice as bone-chilling for that. Vera has no memories; she's a blank canvas on which Robert (and by extension the audience) does all the painting.

You can tell Vera badly wants out; she even tries to seduce Robert, who looks guilty but tempted. Robert's housekeeper, Marilia (the excellent Marisa Paredes), is a fierce guard. That is, until her hood son Zeca (Roberto Álamo) breaks in (wearing a tiger mask) and decides to take carnal advantage of this beautiful bird in a gilded cage.

There's a teasing allure in the way Almodóvar uncovers the secrets Robert hides. Adapting Thierry Jonquet's novel Mygale, director and co-writer Almodóvar never lets the creeping terror obliterate the bruised humanity of the characters. Few directors have Almodóvar's skill at swerving from outrageous camp to unspeakable terror without tipping into absurdity. Even when the film's frigid elegance, perfectly captured by cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, becomes off-puttingly clinical, Almodóvar's passion burns through. The skin he lives in is alive to challenge no matter what warped form it takes.

Movie Riview : The Thing

The Thing

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton

Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen

Did we need a prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing? Probably not, what with Carpenter replaced by Dutch commercial director Matthijs van Heijningen. But Thingcultists won't care. Carpenter's version hinted at a Norwegian research team that found something alien buried in the ice in Antarctica. Here they are. Mary Elizabeth Winsteadplays a Columbia prof who joins up. Joel Edgerton is a chopper pilot who becomes her ally as the Thing invades bodies and pretends to be human until it breaks out in gory splendor. That's it. One gut-busting death after another, terror giving way to tedium. Your call.

Movie Riview :Footloose

Footloose

Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid

Directed by Craig Brewer

There are cellphones and iPads and a more integrated cast in this reboot of 1984's Footloose. Otherwise, it's hard to tell the difference, so misguidedly beholding is director Craig Brewerto the original. The old Footloose is best remembered as a breakthrough for Kevin Bacon (I'd pick Diner, which came two years before) as a smartass Chicago kid who brings dirty dancing to a Christian small town that's outlawed rock & roll as the devil's music.

Newcomer Kenny Wormald, who's danced backup for Justin Timberlake, steps into the Bacon role as Ren McCormack, now a Boston homey relocated to a Tennessee backwater where the local Rev. (Dennis Quaid, on rectitude overdrive) has banned dancing after four students died in a postprom car crash. Ren just has to rebel, which he does with the help of the Rev's maverick daughter Ariel (Dancing With the Stars hottie Julianne Hough) and flat-footed buddy Willard (scene-stealer Miles Teller). This High School Musical stuff de-balls the from-the-crotch heat you expect from Brewer, who unleashed Hustle and Flow. And the updates on the original's soundtrack hits – Blake Shelton in for Kenny Loggins on the title song, karaoke kids taking on Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It for the Boy" – barely register.

Unlike Bacon, who had a double, Wormald does Ren's angry dance himself in an abandoned warehouse. But Wormald is not the actor Bacon is. This crimps his chemistry with Hough, who has the indefinable spark that indicates star potential. Footloose 2011 is harmless as far as it goes, but on the dance floor and off it never goes nearly far enough.

Moneyball

Moneyball

Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill

Directed by Bennett Miller

For me, the only thing duller than watching baseball is listening to fantasy-baseball freaks drone on about stats. So I yawned at the idea of Hollywood taking on Moneyball, Michael Lewis' exhaustive 2003 bestseller about how the Oakland Athletics learned to stop worrying about star salaries and love the bottom line.

My bad. Moneyball is one of the best and most viscerally exciting films of the year. Yes, director Bennett Miller dials down the on-field action and goes stats to the max. But he laces his investigative fervor with emotional punch. Moneyball is a baseball movie like The Social Network is a Facebook movie, meaning it isn't. Both are about how we play the game of our lives, and the excuses we make in the name of winning.

First up is Brad Pitt, at the top of his live-wire game as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's. Beane takes a major step in 2001 when the A's lose first baseman Jason Giambi because they can't compete with the cash-rich Yankees. Instead of wallowing in low-rent despair, Beane gets his geek on and tries being cost-effective.

As Beane's geek of choice, enter comedy wonderboy Jonah Hill, who scores a no-joke knockout as numbers cruncher Peter Brand. Don't look up Brand on Wiki. He's not there. Brand is a composite character, a young disciple of Bill James, a pioneer of sabermetrics. SABR, for Society for American Baseball Research, attracts rebels who think outside the box, measuring a player's performance beyond batting average and popularity, putting value on solid performance and getting on base.

Timeout here for a movie-geek analogy: Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig cash in withCowboys & Aliens while the movie strikes out. Less well-known actors topline The Helpand steal home. That's some delicious irony, seeing $20 million man Pitt (reportedly working cheaper here) repping a movie about dumping overpaid stars.

Pitt more than earns his keep. He stuck by Moneyball through two directors before Miller, who hadn't worked since 2005's acclaimed Capote (what's up with that?). David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) dropped out. And Steven Soderbergh – Pitt's director in the Ocean's trilogy – had the plug pulled by Sony just before shooting. Ouch! No doubt Moneyball's sabermetrics lack the tear-jerking pow of Lewis' page-to-screen crowd-­pleaser, The Blind Side, but Pitt felt Moneyball was a story that needed telling. Despite narrative bumps, the finished film impressively bears him out.

The dynamite script is credited to Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List) and Social Network Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin, whose sharply witty touch is everywhere. Pitt's golden-boy luster fits Beane, but the actor goes deeper by revealing a man haunted by his early decision to turn down a Stanford athletic scholarship to sign as an outfielder with the Mets and see his promising career crash, though it prepped him well as a GM. Pitt nails every nuance, including Beane's complex relationship with the two people who care about him the most: his ex-wife (Robin Wright) and their daughter (Kerris Dorsey).

Still, Moneyball scores highest with the catches it makes on the fly. Beane won't even sit still for a game – he'd rather hear about it on his car radio. So we watch him go, go, go: Beane inviting Brand to his first meeting with hardened scouts who look like they'd happily bludgeon the kid and his laptop; Beane on the phone negotiating a life-or-death trade with a fake cool only Brand gets to see crumble; Beane nurturing Scott Hatteberg (the excellent Chris Pratt), an injured catcher he reinvents as a first baseman; Beane presiding over a 2002 season that includes a 20-game win streak. Best of all, Beane mixing it up with manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hoffman, an Oscar victor for Miller's Capote, is a joy to watch, a study in stoic resistance as Beane tries to run rings around him.

Props to Miller for making us feel the heat in finding value in things others miss. Late in the film, Beane gets seduced (like he did with the Mets) with a job offer from the Red Sox. Miller lays Boston's Fenway Park before him like a green blanket of temptation. The gifted cinematographer Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight) makes the atmosphere inviting enough to inhale. Is Beane a coward for sticking with the A's? The GM still has no World Series victory to his credit, and sabermetrics are now so prevalent that Beane can't claim an edge. But Moneyball left me ready to cheer. Here's a major-studio movie fired up with rebel spirit. Working a tight budget to make every minute count sounds like a plan – for baseball, Hollywood and beyond.

Glee: The 3D Concert Movie

Chris Colfer, Lea Michele

Directed by Kevin Tancharoen

Confession: I'm losing my religion when it comes to Glee. Ryan Murphy's hit TV series produces so many highs, like Rachel and Kurt's to-die-for duet on the Broadway set ofWicked, that the frequent lows can be forgiven even by non-Gleeks. Still, I'm calling bullshit on this 3D concert movie. In June, most of the cast began a summer tour that would allow the fans to genuflect. You heard me. The movie plays like an evangelical prayer meeting, though I'd hold the hallelujahs. The characters we came to admire as vulnerable misfits hit the stage like visiting royalty and with a nonstop perkiness that makes the Von Trapps look like manic-depressives. Lea Michele (Rachel), Amber Riley (Mercedes) and Darren Criss (Blaine) do the heavy vocal lifting. Others climb aboard the Auto-Tune express while the caffeinated camera zigzags madly across the stage, avoiding any singer whose lips don't match the words. The audience cheers wildly, no matter what. Even more problematic are the offstage interviews with fans whose lives have been changed by Glee. They include a gay teen, a dwarf cheerleader and a girl with Asperger's. Praiseworthy, indeed. What grates is the hard sell, the see-me, touch-me, buy-me vibe that suggest we're taking the holy waters. Thank the gods of sass that hottie Heather Morris (Brittany) is around to opine that the (otherwise useless) 3D makes her boobs look awesome. Chris Colfer (gay, bullied but unbowed Kurt) is haunting singing "I Want to Hold Your Hand." He's the best actor on the show, with the exception of Emmy winner Jane Lynch (Coach Sue Sylvester), who only appears in the trailer. Crazy, huh? "Please, save your money," snipes Sue, "this thing sucks." It's meant as a joke. But what I hear is the cold snap of truth.

Final Destination 5

Tony Todd, Nicholas D'Agosto

Directed by Steven Quale

It's the dog days of summer, the best time to kick back at your ice-station multiplex and get the living crap scared out of you. Damn you, Hollywood, for scamming us with the same tired tricks. Final Destination 5 starts with an R-rated 3D bang as wanna-be chef Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) has a vision that a collapsing bridge will kill his peeps. Then it all happens in blood-splattering detail, just like in every FD flick. Sam and seven pals, including girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell), cheat death, so the Grim Reaper's BFF (series regular Tony Todd) comes calling to even the score. Kudos for evisceration by acupuncture and Lasik eye surgery. But the cheap thrills wear off way fast, and we're left with atrocious acting, feeble writing and clueless directing (from first-timer Steven Quale). The horror! The horror!

Warrior

Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton

Directed by Gavin O'Connor

Director Gavin O'Connor comes out swinging in this flawed but fiercely moving family drama about two feuding brothers competing in a martial-arts tournament. The script, co-written by O'Connor, isn't always steady on its feet, but the actors score knockouts. Tom Hardy, the fireball star of Bronson, brings animal force to Tommy Conlon, an Iraq War veteran returned home to Philadelphia after 14 years. He has no use for his troubled father, Paddy (an exceptionally fine Nick Nolte), who abused his late wife. But Tommy wants Daddy dearest, a wrestling coach, to prep him for an MMA competition that could earn him $5 million. Tommy's married older brother, Brendan (a very fine Joel Edgerton), also wants the prize, to save his home from foreclosure. The brutal MMA action is skillfully staged. ButWarrior aspires to myth. It's Cain and Abel battling it out in the face of a decidedly ungodly father before humanity goes down for the count. Strong stuff.