The Three Musketeers (2011)

My Rating : 2.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “The animations and special effects were not up to the mark, but Christopher Waltz rocks as always!”

The hot-headed young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) joins forces with three rogue Musketeers (Matthew MacFadyen, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson) in this reboot of Alexandre Dumas’ story.

They must stop the evil Richlieu (Christoph Waltz) and face off with Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) and the treacherous Milady (Milla Jovovich). The action adventure is given a state of the art update in 3-D.

Real Steel (2011)

My Rating : 3/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “Real Steel isn’t so real after all. The animatronics rocks, but the story is full on predictable!”

A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near-future where the sport of boxing has gone high-tech, Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring.

Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next.

When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

My Rating : 2.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “Jon Favreau must focus on his hits – Iron Man. This one is a crappy old style alien flick, a lot like Indiana Jones!”

1875. New Mexico Territory. A stranger (Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don’t welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford).

It’s a town that lives in fear. But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he’s been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force.

Water for Elephants (2011)

My Rating : 3.5/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “A Bollywood style movie with a twist and happy ending. Well written script. A clean love story!”

Based on the acclaimed bestseller, Water for Elephants presents an unexpected romance in a uniquely compelling setting. Veterinary school student Jacob meets and falls in love with Marlena, a star performer in a circus of a bygone era.

They discover beauty amidst the world of the Big Top, and come together through their compassion for a special elephant. Against all odds — including the wrath of Marlena’s charismatic but dangerous husband, August — Jacob and Marlena find lifelong love.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011)

My Rating : 2/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “An unbelievable animal story and I have no clue why Jim is in it, the laughs are boring!”

In this family comedy, Jim Carrey is Mr. Popper, a driven businessman who is clueless when it comes to the important things in life – until he inherits six penguins.

Popper’s penguins turn his swank New York apartment into a snowy winter wonderland – and the rest of his life upside-down. Filmed on a refrigerated soundstage with real Emperor Penguins, Mr. Popper’s Penguins is a contemporary adaptation of the classic book.

Incendies (2011)

My Rating : 5/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “A RIPPING performance by Lubna Azabal with a story which will haunt you all night. I loved the cinematography, screenplay and the emotionally devastating climax – splendid!”

“Incendies,” the powerful, and powerfully uneven, French-Canadian Oscar nominee for last year’s best foreign film, is an intimate epic. Set largely in a fictionalized Middle Eastern country, it’s about momentous issues – retribution and reconciliation in the wake of war – but plays out as a detective story framed through the eyes of a single family. It begins in present-day Montreal as twin adult siblings Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) are notified by a notary of two unusual requests in their mother’s will.

A sealed envelope is presented to Jeanne with instructions to deliver it to the children’s father, even though they were raised by their mother, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal), to believe he had died a heroic death many years before. Simon is also presented with a sealed envelope, to be delivered to a brother they never knew existed. Simon at first angrily rejects the whole thing, but Jeanne, a mathematician with a meticulous curiosity, travels to her mother’s Middle Eastern homeland and attempts to unravel the mystery. The real mystery, as Jeanne soon discovers, is her mother’s past life before she immigrated to Canada, about which the children knew nothing. The director, Denis Villeneuve, has based “Incendies” on the play “Scorched,” by Wajdi Mouawad, that was constructed as a series of long, lyrical monologues.

For the most part he’s done a strong job of paring away the poeticisms; the film rarely betrays its theatrical roots. Alternating between the present and flashbacks to Nawal’s harrowing past, Villeneuve sets up a deliberately disorienting structure that mimics the children’s confusions (and ours). Nawal’s homeland is clearly meant to be Lebanon, and her time there parallels the 15-year civil war between Christians and Muslims that began in the 1970s.

As a Christian, she fought in that conflict, and the scenes of her torture and imprisonment are chilling and also, in some ways, eerily transcendent. Nicknamed by her guards “the woman who sings,” Nawal seals herself off from madness by crooning soothingly to herself. Azabal, a Belgian actress, has a feral, mesmerizing power. On her sullen, aghast face can be read war’s true transcript. Without her performance, “Incendies,” overlong at 130 minutes, might most often resemble a pastiche of allegorical overreaching and high-caliber melodrama, although Villeneuve stages an attack on a Muslim bus by a Christian militia that brings home the terror of warfare in a way few films ever have.

Such outbursts of power undercut the film’s too neat resolutions. By the end, it’s as if a Greek tragedy had degenerated into a neater, tidier universe. The film’s moral lesson – that violence begets violence – isn’t exactly a showstopper, and the balm that is laid on Nawal and her riven family can’t quite compensate for the poison that preceded it.