A pre-fame Beatles head for the seedy clubs of Hamburg in search of success. The band meet up with a group of trendy German beatniks, one of whom (Astrid Kircherr) bass guitarist Stuart Sutcliffe falls in love with. Whilst best friend John Lennon can only watch, Sutcliffe has to choose between rock ‘n roll and a new life in Germany… Written by Douglas Baptie

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Do not go into “Bad Santa” thinking you’re about to see the normal ‘Christmas is magical, everyone goes to bed with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, and behind every Scrooge there’s a jolly old elf just waiting to emerge’ movie. First of all, Christmas is only magical for the first 15 minutes of shopping when the reality of overpriced presents and pushy crowds hasn’t yet sunk in. Secondly, I don’t know a single person who ever dreamed of sugarplums. And third, miraculous transformations are more in keeping with fairy tales than real life. Sometimes a Scrooge just is a Scrooge. “Bad Santa” takes those cynical thoughts to the extreme, gleefully lashing out at the holiday season and all those sticky sweet Hollywood movies with ho ho happy endings.

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Jonathan Ecks (Antonio Banderas), an FBI agent, realizes that he must join with his lifelong enemy, Agent Sever (Lucy Liu), a rogue DIA agent with whom he is in mortal combat, in order to defeat a common enemy. That enemy has developed a “micro-device” that can be injected into victims in order to kill them at will. Written by Uber Minion

Tom Hardy, an ex-Army Ranger turned DEA agent, is drawn into an ever-widening mystery surrounding the disappearance of the feared and often hated Sgt. Nathan West, as well as several of his elite Special Forces trainees on what appears, at first, to have been a routine training exercise during a hurricane in the jungles of Panama. Only two survivors are found, Dunbar, and a badly wounded Kendall, the son of a high-profile Joint Chiefs of Staff official. Neither is willing to cooperate with Capt. Julia Osborne’s investigation. So base commander Col. Bill Styles calls in ex-Ranger Hardy, an old friend and a persuasive interrogator. Osborne disapproves of Hardy who is on leave from the D.E.A. after having come under suspicion of accepting bribes from local drug traffickers. She is also uneasy when she learns that Hardy once trained under West and hates him almost as passionately as his current recruits. With time running out, Hardy and Osborne call a temporary, if uneasy, truce. Hardy cajoles a confession out of Dunbar, who claims that Sgt. West and the missing Rangers have been murdered and their bodies blown away by the hurricane. When they later interview Kendall, he confirms that the other Rangers and West are dead. But, in almost every other way, his story contradicts Dunbar’s. What happened to West and his Ranger team? And what were they really doing out there in the jungle? As each layer reveals more lies and greater deceptions, Hardy and Osborne inch towards the horrible truth about the fate of the missing Rangers. Written by Sujit R. Varma

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Trust your instincts. Listen to that little voice inside that whispers this sequel has ‘bad idea’ written all over it. “Basic Instinct” didn’t deserve a sequel immediately following its release back in 1992, and now in 2006 there’s even less of a reason to make a follow-up. The only explanation as to why this thing exists is as a vanity project for Sharon Stone. There simply can’t be any other legitimate excuse for “Basic Instinct 2.”

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Elliot Richardson, suicidal techno geek, is given seven wishes to turn his life around when he meets up with a very seductive Satan. The catch: his soul. Some of his wishes include a 7 foot basketball star, a rock star, and a hamburger. But, as could be expected, the Devil must put her own little twist on each his fantasies. Written by MrGreen

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I bet the filmmakers would love to have a dollar for every time someone compares this movie to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Their coffers would be greatly enriched, as comparisons to Nia Vardalos‘ “Greek Wedding” are inevitable. As I left the screening, the majority of the audience rumblings had to do with renaming the film. I heard “My Big Fat Indian Wedding” and “My Big Fat Soccer Movie” kicked around the most frequently, proving that comparisons to last year’s indie-film-that-could will undoubtedly be made.

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Pick your own tagline for this one. My suggestions: “Beyond Boredom” or “Beyond Belief” or “Why Isn’t There Anything Entertaining About This Movie?” or “Clive Owen is Great But…” or “A Love Story Without Chemistry.” I could go on and on.

What starts out with an interesting premise quickly deteriorates into a cockeyed political statement. If you support the humanitarian work prominently featured in “Beyond Borders,” you’ll be disappointed in how Hollywood has taken an important program and screwed around with its basic mission statement.

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FBI agent Malcolm Turner is known best for being a brilliant, master of disguise. Malcolm’s latest assignment sends him to small-town Georgia, where he’s assigned to trap a brutal bank robber (and a recent prison escapee) who they suspect will be coming down to visit his ex-girlfriend Sherry and her son. Malcolm sets up a stakeout across from the home of a larger-than-life southern matriarch known as Big Momma, who’s about to be visited by Sherry. It’s a simple plan, but there’s one big problem: Unbeknownst to Sherry, Big Momma has unexpectedly left town. So Malcolm, decides to impersonate the cantankerous Southern granny. Using a few tricks of disguise, he completely transforms himself into Big Momma, even taking on the corpulent septuagenarian’s everyday routine-from cooking soul food to delivering babies to “testifying” at the local church. In the mean time, Malcolm starts falling for Sherry, who may or may not be hiding some stolen cash. Now, Malcolm/Big Momma must somehow find a way to nab his criminal and the girl. Written by Anonymous

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