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It’s almost as if 15 years haven’t passed since last we saw Agent J (Will Smith). It’s almost unbelievable, that his face remains so unlined, his physique so toned, and his attitude so... er, juvenile. There’s something to be said for consistency, but, as J himself might put it, “Damn!”
Mostly, Battleship is explosions. In between explosions, and sometimes in the middle of them, it features aliens that look like robots, some super-special-outfitted Naval destroyers, a few shots of beautiful Hawaiian mountains, a brief appearance by Liam Neeson, and an old-fashioned battleship. It also includes some poignant appearances by real-life WWII US Navy veterans. And oh yes, Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker.
“I don’t get a suit of armor,” says Bruce Banner. “I’m exposed.” It’s a joke, sort of, when the nerdish scientist describes himself like this, because everyone knows that when he transforms into the Hulk, he basically is a walking suit of armor, unstoppable and not a little impressive. (He’s also survived a series of re-castings, from Eric Bana to Edward Norton and now to Ruffalo, since 2003.) But still, when Banner says it — near the beginning of The Avengers, surrounded by other superheroes aboard the super-tech-outfitted S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier — you…
“What’s the best bit about being a pirate?” The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) walks in on a lively debate among his crewmembers, and proceeds to instruct: it’s not the looting or the cutlasses, as much as these may be, and it’s not scurvy or even “scantily clad mermaids.” It is, declares the Pirate Captain, “Ham Night” — at which point he moonwalks a little and then offers up a big-fat-pink slab of meat and has at it with his sword, so the slices fly up in the air and land perfectly on everyone’s plates, as they all ooh and aah.
Oscar the chimp is adorable. When first you see him in Chimpanzee, he’s just three months old, tiny and clinging to his mother, Isha. Even as a baby, his face is remarkably animated, and thanks to the very precise long-lens cameras in Disneynature’s newest film, you can see most every change as he responds to every event before him in the rain forest where he lives, with 35 other chimps. And if you have any doubt about how to read his looks in a given moment — whether he’s feeling playful or frustrated or afraid — not to worry! Narrator Tim Allen describes the little guy’s every…
You’ve heard Snow White’s story before. But you may not have heard the Wicked Queen’s. As Clementianna (Julia Roberts) tells her version at the beginning of Mirror Mirror, animated figures act out an increasingly dark tale, wherein Snow White’s mother dies in childbirth and her father disappears into the woods one night — after he takes a moment to marry Clementianna, who is left behind to care for her stepdaughter. Afraid the child will grow up to become “the fairest of them all,” the evil queen keeps her locked inside the castle, while she visits regularly with the source…
In the mornings, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) heads out to hunt. She makes her way out of the cottage she shares with her mother (Paula Malcomson) and little sister Primrose (Willow Shields), past the fence marking the “District Boundary,” into the woods where she shoots squirrels and birds. A determined provider for her family, she still finds time to imagine another sort of future with Gale (Liam Hemsworth), where they might live somewhere else and not feel so burdened day by day.
“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.” So says the Lorax (voiced by Danny DeVito) at the start of the animated movie named for him. As he speaks, the trees are only a memory in Thneed-Ville, a town where everything is artificial, from cars and flowers to houses and trees. Even fresh air is packaged and sold in plastic bottles, as O’Hare Air.
Arriving at his grandmother’s home, Shawn (voiced in this US translation by David Henrie) looks tired. He’s been sick, and what’s more, his parents are divorcing, which can only mean life at home has been difficult. At his grandmother’s place in the country, he’s supposed to rest and prepare himself for an upcoming heart surgery.
Some four years after his last journey, Sean (Josh Hutcherson) is now a full-fledged movie teenager, complete with an attitude. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island explains this in cursory (hackneyed) fashion: as you learned in 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, his father has disappeared and now in the new film, his uncle (Brendan Fraser) is gone too. This means Sean’s in need of a father figure.
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