Will The All-Star Cast Ensemble Continue To Work Wonders?

Do you think a star studded cast is still one of the most important ingredients to create a major blockbuster nowadays? In reality, there were good number of box office flops despite how stellar and lustrous was the cast those films have. Certain, while the lineup alone should attract moviegoers to go watch a given film, but not all these ensemble cast movies are created the same. At times some of those just don’t live up to the impressive list of performers it’s made up of, no matter how notable it is. So, what will happen to these upcoming movies that possibly still consider their huge stars are one of the main keys of success?

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Summer Reviews: August Movie Recaps

Rise of the Planet of the Apes



When Fox decided to bring back the franchise about ape revolutions made famous by “Planet of the Apes” released in 1968 and its four sequels, it was Tim Burton’s revamped movie with the same name that did make a boatload of money but critically was far from success. So, the studio thought it’s best to shelve the apes once again and freeing them a decade later with a new concept that reboot the entire franchise in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”. Sure the title they’ve chosen sound quite silly but

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Summer Reviews: Super 8, Ladda Land, Hangover 2

Super 8
Score: 8/10

With “Super 8”, J.J. Abrams has captured the spirit of growing up and flawlessly unified it with a gripping, action-packed, science-fiction excitement that pays homage to the early works of Steven Spielberg and films like “Stand By Me” and “The Goonies” without ever losing its spark of originality. As the movie is dated back to 1979, Abrams has just presented it perfectly with the set up and costumes, all reflecting the 1970’s. Besides, mystery, action and coming of age drama there is also a perfect sense of humor in the movie. And while there are exciting action sequences and perfectly crafted special effects to complement them, there is also a rather sweet and sad side story that stays just on the

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Keep the Wheels Rollin’, It's Cars 2 Drive Time!

The animated autos of Disney/Pixar's "Cars" will be racing back into cinemas via its sequel after the original made impact in box office circuit five years ago. However, while earning more than $460 million at the worldwide box office -- and more impressively, over $5 billion in merchandising, "Cars" always remembered as the weakest link of Pixar films. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film sticks out like a sore thumb, scoring 74% positive reaction and a 6.9/10 average rating while every other feature they've ever produced scores at least 91% and 7.9/10 respectively. Yet “Cars 2” is the project they chose to do their first non-"Toy Story" sequel for, instead of any other film in their wagon that are more deserving or fitting. The decision to continuing the story of Lightning McQueen and its fellow vehicles possibly initiated by Pixar head honcho John Lasseter who always so protective of "Cars" cause it's his personal baby, and he wants it to succeed as well as anything they've ever done. In addition,

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Review Mix: Rio, Detective K, The Yellow Sea

Rio
Score: 8,5/10

Set in the magnificent city of Rio de Janeiro and the lush rainforest of Brazil, the comedy-adventure centers on Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), a rare macaw who thinks he is the last of his kind. When Blu discovers there's another - and that the other kind is a she - Blu then leaves the comforts of his cage in a small town in Minnesota and heads towards Rio. But it's far from love at first sight between the domesticated and flight challenged Blu and the fiercely independent, high-flying female, Jewel (Anne Hathaway). Unexpectedly thrown together, they embark on an adventure of a lifetime, where they learn about friendship, love, courage, and being open to life's many wonders.
You won’t believe how incredibly fun it is when the crew of “Ice Age” finally decided to take a vacation from the freezing territory into the ‘much warmer’ tropical city of Rio de Janeiro. This latest 3D animation effort from

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Review Mix: Sucker Punch, Let The Bullets Fly, Space Battleship Yamato

Sucker Punch
Score: 5,5/10

Zack Snyder is a filmmaker who never goes low-priced when it comes to the visualization of a film. I’ll even come clean to giving him a pass on story because he gets premium marks for a great looking work, but there aren’t adequate bonus points in the universe to excuse all of the malfunctions, of which there are scores of, in this particular picture. The film indeed doesn’t start off badly. It shows the main character, Babydoll, driven from her home to a house for the insane in a brilliantly revealed title on the rain-splashed window of the 1960s car that’s transporting her to her new nightmare. Later, as its 109 minutes tick away, the film plunging us into Babydoll’s imagination as it echoes the idea popularized by “Inception” that dreams exist within dreams, showcases with Snyder’s evident love of digitally enhanced, over-the-top ultra-violence in super slo-mo style. Yes, there’s arresting imagination and visuals sprinkled throughout this one, like a video

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Prepare for the Return of Kung Fu Pandamonium

Very much in the vein of “Kung Fu Hustle” and other humorous martial arts film of its ilk, “Kung Fu Panda” is a success story for DreamWorks that took an appropriate break from the venerable Shrek franchise to bring us yet another adventure featuring a plus-sized character. A film about panda named Po, whose fandom of everything Kung Fu comes in handy one day when he's unexpectedly chosen to fulfill an ancient Kung Fu prophecy by studying alongside his idols, surprisingly gobbled up the most business and became one of the biggest June openings ever, and the second best animated opening in June ever (it's just a smidge behind 2006's “Cars”). Reviews also were really strong with early solid word-of-mouth helping fattened up

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The Fountain Will Test the Pirates On Stranger Tides

Fourth “Pirates of Caribbean” movie, “On Stranger Tides”, raises the qualm if it will live up to the wild triumph of the original film, or the dramatic action from the second and third installments. Unpromisingly based on a theme park ride, the first effort was a swashbuckling film which returned pirates to the big screen, also have been lauded as classic Disney tales, blending comedy, adventure, and the imagination. This is evident as "The Curse of the Black Pearl" earned over $305 million, "Dead Man’s Chest" earned over $423 million, and "At World’s End" earned over $309 million. While critically,

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Getting Up To Speed: I Am Number Four, Finding Mr. Destiny, Unknown

So many movies, so little time. I think I need to speed up with a few quick reviews on some movies I've seen since the last update. And here’s my opinion on three new films opening this weekend at the cinema. Roll it!

I Am Number Four
Director D.J. Caruso and mega-producer Michael Bay focus on teenage aliens and their assassin pursuants (sound familiar?) in the teen-friendly, sci-fi adventure “I Am Number Four”. If fighting an alien enemy isn't adequate, Caruso also surrounds his lead character, played by British actor Alex Pettyfer, with every imaginable teenage drama. The premise of the movie is that John Smith (Pettyfer) is one of nine alien kids from a planet called Lorien, which was destroyed by malicious enemy called the Mogadorians. They followed these nine alien kids to Earth and

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Romantic Movies You May Have Never Heard Of

Valentine's Day falls on a Monday this year, probably the least romantic day of the week. But whenever it's, Valentine always the most special time to expressing your love for your someone special, and there can be no better romantic idea than to spend quality time with your partner watching good valentine movies. You can easily find

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This Lunar New Year, Catch Some Fat Choi Spirits

With Lunar New Year directly around the corner, the Asian film industry is once again bracing for its busiest time of year. Keeping up with the tradition with its own genre called "he sui pian," meaning "New Year celebration movies," Asian cinema, especially

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Café’s 2010 Best of Western Cinema

Although the year has delivered quite a disappointing summer and pretty indifferent mainstream prospects at movie centre Hollywood, but we were able to pull together a list of our favorite movies of the year. From the mind-bending “Inception” to the movie that may have defined our generation, “The Social Network,” following below in no particular order are the 10 of Movie Cafe's 2010 Best of Western Cinemas. And since tonight we all will celebrate the New Year 2011, above we have prepared our sparkly Singapore Happy New Year card specially to you, all our lovely and awesome readers. We hope 2011 will be a much better future for all of us and for movie industry of course.

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Green Hornet Blasts Its Way to the New Decade

When the earliest promo trailer for the updated version of classic television show “The Green Hornet” invaded the web, the mainly feedback it got was dissatisfaction. The brief look at Seth Rogen’s performance also didn’t instantly motivate optimism as the masked superhero character created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, which first appeared in the

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It All Started When The Tourist Met A Woman

Made up of 117 islands with 409 bridges connecting them, Venice is a city like no other and offers completely unique sights and attractions. Most famous for its fascinating art, stunning architecture, a lurid history, and of course the Grand Canal (the city's main street, which is technically a river), Venice is not

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RED: these Retirees are Extremely Dynamics

Much similar to the Sylvester Stallone-directed "The Expendables" this recent summer, "RED" brings together an ensemble of veterans, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as retired C.I.A. operatives who bring a fresh take on the espionage adventure and punctually topple the showbiz myth that

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The Social Network: The Connection is Enjoyable, Witty and Smart

Mark Zuckerberg revealed his opinion of “The Social Network” movie and the book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich on which the film was based by saying, "The reason why we didn't participate is because it was very clear that it was fiction from the beginning. We

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Somewhere Beyond Your Imagination is a Tangled Fairy Tale

Walt Disney is still the king of animation, while Pixar and the Dreamworks 3D animations are fantastic but they definitely owe a debt to the wonderful classic cartoons of Disney. In 1937, the studio released its first fully animated feature film,

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Still Armed, Still Dangerous, Still Got the Red

Comics are really the new spec-scripts, and Hollywood is very amenable to a script with big pictures. Around the time of Comic-Con only, there will be a rapid excess of comic book adaptations coupled with the release of a brand new graphic novel. Though some of them sound

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Ultimate Geek Mash-Up

Based upon the acclaimed Japanese inspired cult comic book by Brian O'Malley, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” bursts to life with the help of the ultimate British fanboy filmmaker Edgar Wright. The “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead” director continues to bring his bold direction and visual storytelling that here

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Don’t Forget to Update Your Status at The Social Network

Facebook's growth as an Internet social networking site is remarkable, since the site was launched in February 2004, it’s now had more than 500 million active users from all over the world. It’s really a virtual state—and not a small one, either. Even Facebook fanatics spend (or perhaps waste) 500 billion minutes per month on the site. Well, who wouldn’t want to spend time on Facebook? People can

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