Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

My Rating : 3/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “The SFX is three times the first part, but the story fell low, real flat. There is too much action, and we lose control of the story/plot.”

The interstellar war between the Autobots and Decepticons shifts into overdrive following the discovery of Sentinel Prime (voice of Leonard Nimoy) in this sequel from director Michael Bay.

Only a precious handful of officials in the government and military realize that the 1969 moon mission was the result of an event that threatened profound repercussions for the entire human race. When the Apollo 11 astronauts discover the wrecked remains of Sentinel Prime on the surface of our natural satellite, they bring him back to planet Earth.

But Sentinel Prime wasn’t the only alien object on the moon, and when a malevolent new enemy makes its presence known, only the Autobots can save humankind from certain destruction.

Secretariat (2010)

My Rating : 4/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “Inspiring, emotional and a breath-taking celebration of a movie.”

Based on the Novel “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion” By William Nack, Secretariat chronicles the spectacular journey of the 1973 Triple Crown winner.

Housewife and mother Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) agrees to take over her ailing father’s Virginia-based Meadow Stables, despite her lack of horse-racing knowledge.

Against all odds, Chenery-with the help of veteran trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich)-manages to navigate the male-dominated business, ultimately fostering the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and what may be the greatest racehorse of all time.

Jonah Hex (2010)

My Rating : 2/5 STAR
MovieStudio Quote >> “The comic book was a lot better, Josh Brolin didn’t suit Jonah Hex and Megan was just for the glamor part of it. Lame!”

Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort, a tough and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone…and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the other side. His only human connection is with Lila (Megan Fox), whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own.

Jonah’s past is about to catch up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: in exchange for his freedom from the warrants on his head, he must track down and stop the dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich).

But Turnbull, who is gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead. Based on the legendary character from the graphic novels, Jonah Hex is an epic adventure thriller about one man’s personal quest for redemption against the vast canvas of the battle between good and evil.

The Great Buck Howard (2009)

My Rating: 4.5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “A star performance by the master of ‘strict acting’!”

Prior to THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD, writer-director Sean McGinly helmed TWO DAYS, a film that deals with themes of show-business failure. McGinly treads similar territory here, but whereas DAYS mixed dark comedy and tense drama in the internal struggle of a man who merely thinks he’s a failed entertainer, BUCK is a gentle charmer about a bona-fide washed-up star. When sensible but jaded law student Troy Gabel (Colin Hanks) decides that school isn’t for him, he takes off without telling his father (Tom Hanks, whose presence underscores how many mannerisms he and his real-life son have in common) and looks for the job that will get him a proverbial foot in the door of the entertainment industry. In the blink of an eye, Troy finds himself as road manager for the Great Buck Howard (John Malkovich), an aging mentalist in the tradition of the Amazing Kreskin.

He may be a corny relic with an act full of piano interludes and lo-fi theatrics, but he’s also pretty entertaining and genuinely impressive, especially his signature bit in which he locates his own hidden payment. He’s prone to throwing prima-donna fits and blathering on about his 61 appearances on THE TONIGHT SHOW while he regularly performs to half-full rooms; but every time he screams “I love this town!” to the audiences of Wausau, Wisconsin, and Bakersfield, California, it becomes increasingly apparent that he means it. Buck is the best showcase for Malkovich’s hilarious eccentricities since BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. But seen through the eyes of McGinly’s semi-autobiographical Troy and a perceptive publicist named Valerie (Emily Blunt), he’s more than just a caricature: his brief, hipster-irony-propelled resurgence as a national celebrity and the movie’s lighthearted satirization of Hollywood suggest he’s the kitschy, infantile heart of every entertainer.

Disgrace (2009)

My Rating: 5/5 STARS
MovieStudio Quote >> “A provocative, painful and literature filled drama!”

In this stunning adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, John Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a 52-year-old professor of Romantic Literature who takes a beautiful young… In this stunning adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee, John Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a 52-year-old professor of Romantic Literature who takes a beautiful young student under his wing and into his bed. To David, the affair is just a harmless fling, but because this is post-Apartheid South Africa, and because the student in question is of mixed race, a scandal erupts that forces David to abandon his lifelong profession and a lifetime’s worth of assumptions about himself and the world he lives in.

Disgraced, he leaves the city for the remote farm where his free-spirit daughter, Lucy, lives a seemingly uncomplicated rustic life. However, neither David nor Lucy can escape the realities of contemporary society. When they fall prey to a particularly brutal attack by three black men, the very fabric of their lives unravels and they find that the definitions of victim and victimizer, of oppressed and oppressor, have forever changed. Winner of Britain’s distinguished Booker Prize in 1999 (making Coetzee its first-ever two-time recipient), “Disgrace” was voted “the greatest novel of the last 25 years” in a 2006 poll of literary luminaries conducted by The Observer.

Directed by Steve Jacobs and written and produced by Anna-Maria Monticelli, the film has already garnered extraordinary praise in its native Australia, where it has been hailed as “a model of narrative distillation married to vivid images…that unerringly preserves the tension of the book” and a work that “should be seen by anyone who cares about film or literature” (The Australian.) Boasting brilliant performances by Malkovich and newcomer Jessica Haines, and a striking visual style that perfectly matches the beauty and precision of the novel’s prose, DISGRACE brings Coetzee’s universe to thrilling cinematic life.

Burn After Reading (2008)

My Rating : ****

MovieStudio Quote >> “Confusing, Funny and Confidential!”

With their overtly comedic follow-up BURN AFTER READING, the Coen Brothers return–about a third of the way–from the dark, dank recesses of the human psyche they traversed in their Oscar-winning NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. For those unfamiliar with the landscape of modern movie psychoanalysis, this puts the fraternal filmmakers square in the cruel, misanthropic, and farcical realm of their 1990s-era body of work, somewhere between the tragicomic crime thriller of FARGO and the disconnected noir-homage anti-storytelling of THE BIG LEBOWSKI, with 2007′s NO COUNTRY retroactively adding new nihilism-tinged dimensions of smart skepticism to the proceedings.

Burn After Reading

In a more linear trajectory, BURN AFTER READING also stands as the third entry, after BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO, in what could be an unofficial Tragedy of Human Idiocy trilogy, wherein characters make the most outlandishly moronic moves to devastating consequences simply by adhering to true human behavior. Indeed, Carter Burwell’s emotionally weighty score, which washes over biting scenes of explosive, anesthetizing belly laughs, is very reminiscent of his FARGO work. BURN is ostensibly structured and propelled by a spy-thriller plotline involving a classified CD lost by a disgraced CIA spook and found by two simple gym employees. But, in actuality, it’s simply–amazingly–a collection of brilliant caricature studies interwoven by veracious, if Coenesque, social interactions, as epitomized by the pathos of the Frances McDormand character’s precipitous quest for cosmetic surgery.

Burn After Reading

The CIA superior who learns of the film’s events (always second-hand and sometimes along with the viewer) doesn’t know what to make of it, and why would he? This is the first Coen film in almost 20 years not shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins, yet the “new” guy, Emmanuel Lubezki (CHILDREN OF MEN), has created as visceral and emotionally fraught a high-definition cartoon as any since BARTON FINK.