SHERLOCK HOLMES - A GAME OF SHADOWS

Warner Bros. Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 129 Minutes




Click below to watch the Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows trailer.



In Warner Bros. Pictures Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows, which is based on the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the world's greatest detective Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Jr., plays a deadly game of chess against a new arch nemesis by the name of Professor James Moriarty, Jared Harris, just before World War I.

In this sequel to Sherlock Holmes, Downey brings his reluctant partner Dr. Watson, Jude Law, back into Holmes adventurous investigations - this time against Harris. Law is reluctant to get involved with Downey again because Law is getting married to Kelly Reilly. Although she does not get much screen time, charming Reilly appears to be a worthy wife to Law - especially in Downey's investigative world. The cameos by Rachel McAdams adds a sense of continuity to the first Sherlock Holmes movie.

A series of deadly events around the world has Downey somehow conclude that mastermind Harris is at the center of these events. Downey's investigations of Harris lead Downey and Law all across Europe with Harris one step ahead of them. Gypsy Noomi Rapace is the sister of a man who is integral to Harris's plans and joins Downey and Law in their pursuit of her brother and Harris amongst the rich and powerful.

I liked that fact that they had Sherlock Holmes smarter brother Mycroft Holmes, Stephen Fry, in the film. Although he was not portrayed as exceptionally smarter than Sherlock, Fry was more of an influential government official. Too bad that Fry did not have much more screen time, just slightly more than Reilly. The relationships between all the characters was very good, and you felt that Harris was an intellectual equal to Downey as an opponent. And both Downey's and Law's observations and deductive reasoning of forensic scenes were incredible. Law makes a very good partner for Downey. Downey's disguises were very good, especially his urban camouflage. I am not sure if the urban camouflage was special effects or really good camouflage as I could not tell where he was until he revealed himself. Director Guy Ritchie's slow-motion montages of various action scenes adds a sense of drama to otherwise typical action scenes. The credits were portrayed as if you were reading a book, as well as having the camera panning over excerpts of Doyle's books as Law writes about Downey's exploits. The film itself is full of excerpts of Doyle's books and leaves itself open to a sequel.

Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual situations, and drug use. Running time: 129 Minutes.

Pancho
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Pancho's Movie Reviews

WAR HORSE

Touchstone Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running Time: 146 Minutes



Click below to watch the War Horse trailer.



In Touchstone Pictures War Horse directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the children's book and stage production War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, Jeremy Irvine's horse Joey, whom Irvine has raised since Joey was a foal at their poor farm, is sold by his war veteran father Peter Mullan to the British cavalry at the start of World War I.

A combination of Black Beauty and Saving Private Ryan - the film is more about the horse Joey, than it is about the war as the film follows Joey and the various horse tending people Joey encounters on his various adventures. Due to the fortunes of war, Joey goes back and forth between both sides of the war. As a result of which, I cared about the various characters Joey encounters during the war - no matter which side you are on. Having the Germans speaking English throughout the movie was a little disconcerting to me and made it difficult for me to tell which side of the war Joey was on - as under battle conditions, everyone looks almost alike. I would have preferred to have read subtitles when the Germans were speaking, but from a commercial point of view it made sense as most of the audience would not like to read subtitles throughout half of the movie. Since the movie was mostly filmed in England, there were no American soldiers integrated into the British units throughout the war.

The uses of horse-ridden calvary was initially a surprise for me as I generally think of WWI as the beginning of mechanised warfare which was used by Great Briton and France with tanks. However WWI was a combination of using both 20th century technology and 19th century tactics. Thus, a calvary charge with swords - while a sound tactic in the 19th century, and effective with thousand pound horses bearing down on lightly armed men - is hopefully outclassed against a defensive line of machine guns. The use of horses hauling artillery was much more relatable to me as the German Army was ahead in the war in fielding heavy artillery.

The trench warfare of No Man's Land, while scary with the machine guns, is not as intense as the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan - probably because there is a distance in No Man's Land between the audience and the British troops as they go over-the-top of the protective trenches into the heavily machine gunned barbed-wire battlefield, as compared to the up close and personal battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan. One reason for why the distancing might be, may be due to the post-traumatic stress reaction war veterans had to watching the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Certainly, you saw no real graphic consequences of the battle - even with the use of poison gas in the trenches. Although with gas masks, chemical warfare was of limited use in the war anyway despite the stigma of the use of poison gas during the war.

The horses were definitely the stars in this movie as you definitely got acting and emotion out of these beautiful horses, even if they are animals. The horses, especially Joey, care for each other and they make for nice tear-jerker characters for the film.

At the end of the film, the audience applauded. A rare thing indeed, which makes me think War Horse will be a contender for an Oscar.

Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Running Time: 146 Minutes.

Pancho
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 Pancho's Movie Reviews

HUGO

Paramount Pictures

Rated PG

Running time: 127 Minutes



In Paramount Pictures Hugo, Hugo Cabret, Asa Butterfield, is an orphan trying to survive as he makes his home amongst the tower clocks of a busy 1930's Parisian train station. While trying to survive in the train station community by stealing food from the station's dining establishments, as well as maintaining the complicated tower clocks that his drunken uncle had intrusted him to, Butterfield tries to repair an automaton that he has inherited from his dead father to find meaning in Butterfield's life.

Based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, this is a wonderful family movie about an orphaned boy whose life is intertwined with a magician toy booth owner at the train station, Ben Kingsley - who just happens to be filmmaker Georges Méliès.

With Butterfield being from a family of clock-makers, Butterfield steals intricate mechanism parts from Kingsley in order to fix the automaton Butterfield and his dad Jude Law discovered in a museum. Convinced the automaton contains a secret message from his late father Law, Butterfield is determined to fix the writing/drawing automaton to discover the message his father might have put in it. When Kingsley catches Butterfield stealing a mechanical mouse from him, Kingsley takes Butterfield's father's notebook from him. Determined to get the notebook back, Butterfield convinces Kingsley's goddaughter Chloë Grace Moretz - who loves a secret and is looking to have an adventure - to get Law's notebook back for him. Butterfield then realizes that Moretz's necklace key is the key that unlocks Butterfield's automaton.

This film is basically two movies, one of the children-oriented movie with orphan Butterfield living amongst the clock towers of the busy train station in the city of Paris - while he searches for parts to fix his drawing automaton. Butterfield also tries to keep out of the clutches of the orphaned lamed Station inspector Sacha Baron Cohen, who was wounded during World War 1, as well as keeping away from Cohen's dog. The other movie about Hugo is one of filmmaker Méliès as the children discover who Moretz's godfather really is. In fact the film very easily could have been called Georges, as the film spends such a great amount of time on Méliès life. What is great about a movie about Méliès is that Producer/Director Martin Scorsese actually had footage of Méliès films, especially of Méliès most famous film A Trip to the Moon.

I saw A Trip to the Moon years ago - but in black and white. Hugo actually used the hand-colored footage that was recently found in a barn in France in 2002, which makes those film clips of A Trip to the Moon even more magical with the film clips being hand-colored like that. Since Méliès was a stage magician, he pioneered the use of the practical stage special effects to use for his short films - as compared to the heavily detailed computer graphic effects of today. The opening shot was of a computer graphic zoom/dolly, which made me think that the movie was going to be a computer graphics movie instead of a live-action movie - until the shot stopped at a closeup of Butterfield. I especially felt the movie was going to be a computer graphics film after I had just seen the trailer for The Adventures of Tintin just before the movie Hugo began. When you compare a computer graphics shot like that opening shot of the movie - to the primitive effects Méliès used to do in his short films, it is awe-inspiring to see what kind of film magic Méliès used to do at the movie industry's infancy. Méliès was such a pioneer of the movie industry in his time, that he is regarded as "The Father of Special Effects."

Scorsese usually makes hard-core period piece ethnic New York films, so although a child fantasy-like film is more a style for Steven Spielberg rather than a Scorsese film, this being a period Parisian film in a crowded train station was up his alley as Scorsese deals with the period and the crowded train station. You can see Scorsese's idolism for film pioneer Georges Méliès.

This film was also shot in 3D and should be seen in 3D. As it was shot in 3D, the 3D effects are much more believable and impressive than a 2D film converted to 3D. There was a closeup of Kingsley at the end of the movie that I noticed that, instead of being a flat closeup shot with a telephoto lens usually done with a 2D film, the closeup was a 3D closeup of Kingsley's face. I normally do not notice closeups in 3D as they are usually flat. It makes me wish I paid more attention to the closeups in the rest of the movie to see if they were also in 3D. This is what a 3D film should look like, especially when shot by a filmmaker like Scorsese. Considering that this is Scorsese's first 3D film, the film is amazing. The various clockworks mechanisms shown throughout the film are especially graphic in 3D.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 127 Minutes.



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J. Edgar

Warner Bros.

Rated R

Running time: 137 Minutes



In the true story of Warner Bros. J. Edgar, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation - J. Edgar Hoover, Leonardo DiCaprio, dictates his life's story to varous Federal agents.

Based on the true story of Hoover's life, and Directed and with Music by Clint Eastwood, this film is a very dramatic history of both J. Edgar and the FBI. It is amazing how much forensic proceedures J. Edgar developed in both library research and criminal science. These proceedures were very critical in the solving of the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping case. The film makes references to various criminal related cases the FBI was involved with, such as the notorious gangsters as well as the Charles Lindberg baby kidnapping. Throughout the 20th century, these cases of the FBI helped make J. Edgar a national hero. The private files J. Edgar supposedly kept of various political figures, including Presidents also made J. Edgar notorious and a person you did not want to make a political enemy of.

When a bomb explodes at the home of his boss, J. Edgar (DiCaprio) becomes driven throughout the rest of his life in dealing both with radical groups, as well as the subversives against America, and also in dealing in criminal science - such as having criminal's fingerprints being registered and centralized at the FBI. J. Edgar is soon made Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and has a career that lasts half a century and eight Presidents. The film goes back and forth between the mature characters of the present, and their younger selves. J. Edgar struggles in gaining respect for the Bureau, in that he has strict standards for his agents, getting proper jurisdiction and funding for the Bureau during Congressional Hearings - as well as getting loyalty and respect for himself. As a result, J. Edgar's biography "The Untitled FBI Story" is rather embellished with stories about J. Edgar.

The film also deals with J. Edgar's relationship with his mother Judi Dench, and his "daffodil" relationship with agent Clyde Tolson, Armie Hammer. While I knew of this relationship from various studies, the relationship was subtly played in the movie. Although it is interesting J. Edgar originally wanted a relationship with his new secretary Helen Gandy, Naomi Watts. However Watts only wanted a business relationship with J. Edgar. As a result, J. Edgar becomes uncomfortable with girls, and has a different relationship - although the FBI continues to deny any such portrayals of J. Edgar. It is ironic of having Armie Hammer in the movie when Armie Hammer's great-grandfather, tycoon Armand Hammer, was suspected by J. Edgar Hoover of having Soviet ties.

There was definitely an older crowd for this movie in the theaters. I am not sure if that is because of Clint Eastwood, or that the older crowd is more familiar with J. Edgar Hoover. Most probably it is because of the relationship the older crowd has with J. Edgar despite the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio. J. Edgar was the reason I saw the movie. I would not be surprised if DiCaprio is nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this movie.

Rated R for langauge, violence, and sexual situations. Running time: 137 Minutes.

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TOWER HEIST

Universal Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 104 Minutes



In Universal Pictures Tower Heist, Ben Stiller is the building manager of a large hotel tower when he realizes that the tower's richest tenant Alan Alda, who Stiller has investing the employee's pension, has not only defrauded his clients money - but has defrauded their own employee pension as well. Feeling guilty for what he did in trusting Alda, Stiller wants to make things right - by stealing $20 million dollars from Alda.

In a cross between Die Hard, Horrible Bosses, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, this is a cute action comedy of a tower heist, of which the tower was really Trump Tower in the movie. In the ultimate Upstairs, Downstairs situation, Stiller recruits his fellow staff members - concierge Casey Affleck, elevator operator Michael Peña, housekeeper Gabourey Sidibe and evicted tenant Matthew Broderick to make the heist of Alda's safe up in the penthouse suite. Realizing they do not know how to steal, Stiller then bails out his neighborhood thief Eddie Murphy to teach them all how to steal. Planning the heist soon becomes difficult as Stiller develops a relationship with FBI agent Téa Leoni, who is in charge of Alda's incarceration.

I liked the fact that Stiller and the others timed the heist with the Macy's Day Parade. It was great to see a cameo of Matt Lauer as part of the Parade. While having what is supposedly Steve McQueen's car in the movie was cool - what was even better was what they did with McQueen's car. A cameo by Victoria's Secret supermodel Kate Upton as Mr. Hightower's mistress is also cool. I would have liked to have seen more of the residents in the tower, as well as more of the security arrangements in the movie - given that they are about to pull off a heist, how are they going to get past those? What I do not like about the film is that you do not know what happened to Eddie Murphy at the very end of the movie. I was expecting the last shot to be of Murphy since they did not resolve his character like they did all of the other characters in the movie.

Rated PG-13 for language and violence. Running time: 104 minutes.

Pancho
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IN TIME

20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Rated PG-13

Running time: 109 Minutes



20th Century Fox Film Corporation's In Time, is set in the near future where time is literally money - and if you run out of time, you run out of life.

Time poor Justin Timberlake, not meeting his quota of making time scanners, saves the life of Matt Bomer - who has a century of life on his clock. In gratitude, and because he is tired of living forever, Bomer transfers most of the time on his clock to Timberlake while Timberlake is asleep. Timberlake wakes up - just in time to see Bomer's time run out. Timberlake then must go on the run before the ghetto Minute Men and the Time Keepers discover Timberlake has more time than he should.

At first Timberlake decides to get out of the ghetto time zone that is his home - and live it up in the rich time zone. Traveling across the different time zones requires more and more time for payment, which surprises ghetto-raised Timberlake. While in the rich time zone, time-rich Timberlake meets Amanda Seyfried and gambles with her rich father Vincent Kartheiser at their mansion party. When Time Keeper investigator Cillian Murphy crashes the party to arrest Timberlake for the death of Bomer and take Timberlake's extra time - Timberlake takes Seyfried hostage and they go on the run.

While the beginning may start out similar to Blade Runner, the movie soon turns into Bonnie and Clyde. While kidnaped, rich Seyfried soon has her clock drained by the leader of the gang of Minutemen in the ghetto. Soon, Seyfried is living minute by minute, just as Timberlake has been living minute by minute all of his life. In order to change life in the ghetto - Seyfried and Timberlake soon begin to rob Kartheiser's time banks and disseminate the time scanners to the people.

While this supposedly takes place in the near future, it seems that the technology to produce this culture must have taken place over a long period of time - especially if you engineer everyone to be of the age of 25. The culture is too near to the our present for such a radical cultural change. Also it is somehow implied that everyone's clock just suddenly appeared, which would require a major scientific breakthrough to effect the entire world all at once. Other than that, the moral of using time as money and that when you run out of time - you die. This is a rather graphic portrayal of being broke, as shown with Timberlake's mother Olivia Wilde. A much more interesting portrayal than people just running out of money and being broke. This idea makes you appreciate being much more frugal with your money.

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PUSS IN BOOTS

Paramount Pictures/ DreamWorks Animation

Rated PG

Running time: 90 Minutes





















Click below to watch the Puss In Boots trailer.



In Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks Animation film Puss in Boots, orphan Puss in Boots Antonio Banderas tries to regain his honor and retrieve some magic beans with his fellow orphaned brother Humpty Dumpty Zach Galifianakis from the bad guys Jack and Jill Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris.

While this is supposedly a prequel to the movie Shrek, in that these are Puss in Boots adventures before he met Shrek, this movie definitely stands on it's own and you do not have to see the Shrek movies in order to enjoy this film. Just as in the Shrek movies, Mother Goose characters populate the land, so it is in the same world - but the film is in the style of the Zorro movies with an Hispanic Old California type of feeling. This was quite an appropriate style given Banderas background as Zorro. There is the sword slash of a P which I wish happened at least once in the movie itself instead of being done as a logo for the beginning of the film. The DreamWorks Animation logo also had the same style/feeling that was appropriate for the movie. This is a swashbuckling film with lots of action and story - so much action and story, that I was surprised the movie was only 90 minutes long.

When Puss in Boots's caper of acquiring magic beans, beans that he has been searching for all of his life, from bad guys Jack and Jill is horned in on by the equally mysterious roguish rival Kitty Softpaws Salma Hayek - the upset Puss soon falls for Kitty and eventually tells her his story to woo her. Going from a kitten orphan to a disgraced hero, Puss struggles to regain his honor - especially after meeting his estranged orphaned brother Humpty Dumpty. As a baby kitten, Puss was very cute. His eyes were very expressive - especially when he was pleading, making him irresistible. I saw the movie in 2-D - but even in 2-D, the movie looked like it was in 3-D, that is how advanced the computer graphics have become. The use of old-style filmic techniques like split-screen and film wipes give a nice contrast to the high-technology of the 3-D style computer graphics. My favorite scene is the Dance Fight, which has a strong Latin musical arrangement. The character of the Old Man in the dungeon reminds me very much of my old friend UFO Bob, that I almost thought it was him.

While there are Mother Goose characters in the movie, they have a superficial resemblance to the characters that we grew up with. I always thought of Jack and Jill as brother and sister - but in the movie they were husband and wife, with desires for making a little Jack and Jill of their own once the magic beans lead them to the legendary Golden Goose. Jack and Jill's underhanded schemes make them worthy opponents to the dashing Puss in Boots. And several of the orphanage characters were not as nice as their original Mother Goose rhymes made them out to be. Executive Produced by Guillermo del Toro, his Commandante is determined to get Puss for the Commandante's belief of Puss's betrayal of Puss's heroic ideals from his hometown. It is rather sad to see what leads up to Humpty's story on the bridge, that his story has became so famous, especially after what you see of Humpty's childhood plans and dreams.

This is a wonderful family movie and I am so glad it had a theatrical release instead of going direct to DVD as was originally intended. It is a much more interesting story than the typical direct to DVD release. From the initial box-office, Paramount Pictures made a wise decision in releasing it theatrically. I think Puss in Boots is a better movie than Shrek, and I loved Shrek, although Shrek was more into turning the traditional fairy tale story upside-down. Puss in Boots is more of a traditional fairy tale story = that turns the Mother Goose characters upside-down.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 90 Minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews