Frank Martin is the best in the business. The ex-Special Forces operative hires himself out as a mercenary “transporter” who moves goods–human or otherwise. Very simple, he delivers, no questions asked. Frank has relocated from the French Mediterranean to Miami, Florida, where as a favor to a friend, Frank is driving for the wealthy Billings family. There’s very little that can surprise The Transporter, but young Jack Billings has done just that; Frank has unexpectedly bonded with Jack, age 6, who he drives to and from school. But when Jack is kidnapped, Frank must use his battle-tested combat skills to retrieve the boy and thwart the kidnappers’ master plan to release a virus that will kill anyone with whom it comes in contact. Written by Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com}

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Nicole Kidman as a Russian? At first consideration that may seem an unlikely bit of casting, but it’s no more unlikely than Nicole Kidman winning accolades singing and dancing in a rousing romantic musical. In “Birthday Girl,” Kidman dons sleazy costumes, darkens her hair, chain smokes, and speaks with a Russian accent that seems a mixture of Natasha from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and true Russian. What’s amazing is that despite the fact that you never forget it’s Kidman playing a Russian, she manages to pull off this part without missing a step.

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French vs. American social customs and behaviors are observed in a story about an American visiting her Frenchman-wed sister in Paris.

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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I walked out of “House of Sand and Fog” with two distinct thoughts pinging around in my brain. One, the acting in “House of Sand and Fog” was some of the best of the year. And two, I was thinking in amazement about the way director/screenwriter Vadim Perelman was able to make me alternately despise and cheer for each of the central characters in a balanced fashion over the entire course of the movie. Normally you get to pick one bad guy and wish evil thoughts on him or her over the course of the film. That’s not so easy with “House of Sand and Fog.” The characters were so well developed and human, with all the foibles that implies, it was difficult to find a hero or a villain and label them with that designation for longer than a scene or two.

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New York cop John McClane, who has been a cop for 11 years, has just arrived in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. For the past six months, John’s wife Holly and their two kids Lucy McClane and John McClane Jr have been living in Los Angeles without John. In New York, Holly had a good job that turned into a career, and Holly was promoted to a powerful position in the Nakatomi Corporation. The promotion called for Holly to move to Los Angeles to work in the Nakatomi Plaza, a 40 story building. John stayed in New York because he didn’t think Holly would make it out in Los Angeles, and that she would come crawling back to him in New York, so John figured that there was no reason to pack his things for the move to Los Angeles. A limo driver named Argyle drives John to the Nakatomi Plaza, and John heads to the 30th floor, where a Christmas party is going on. John gets into an argument with Holly in the office of her drug-snorting co-worker Harry Ellis because Holly uses her maiden name Gennero instead of the name McClane on her nameplate in her office. Holly leaves the room to give a speech. While John is by himself in the office, John is wishing that the argument hadn’t happened. A few minutes later, a group of German terrorists led by Hans Gruber and his right hand man Karl enter the building and take everyone hostage on the 30th floor. John is able to avoid being taken hostage because Hans and his men don’t even know that John is in the building. John heads to the upper floors, which are still under construction. Hans takes Holly’s boss Joseph Yashinobo Takagi to an office, where Hans demands that Takagi give him the computer code key that will allow Hans and his men to start opening the building’s safe so they can steal the $640,000,000 in negotiable bearer bonds that are in the safe. Takagi refuses to cooperate with Hans, so Hans kills Takagi, and John witnesses it. Hans tells his technology expert Theo to start working on getting the safe opened, and Theo thinks it’ll take a couple of hours to do it. John frantically tries to find a way to alert the LAPD, realizing that the main phone lines in the building have been cut. Once the police do arrive, they prove to be incompetent under the command of arrogant deputy chief Dwayne T. Robinson, so it’s up to John to rescue the hostages. Written by Todd Baldridge

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When a man dressed as a clown enters a bank and trys to rob it, no one takes him seriously at start. But as this New Yorker pulls this daring robbery with the help of his friends, it looks like leaving the bank with all the stolen money is the easy part! All they have to do now is make it out of the city and to the airport. They have plenty of time, but its not that easy as they seem to get out of one problem only to fall into another. Will they make before the cops catch up with them? Written by Sami Al-Taher {staher2000@yahoo.com}

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[A Totally Spoiler Free Review] Is “Spider-Man 2” the best movie ever made based on a comic book, as some early reviews have proclaimed? I don’t know, that’s a pretty grand statement and one I don’t feel qualified to assess being a non-comic book type of person. I do know the original “Spider-Man” was incredibly fun, a genuine rollercoaster ride of a movie that set the bar tremendously high, much too high for most movies of this subgenre to live up to. I believe this sequel is a better film, though I didn’t find myself feeling as exhilarated during it as I did while watching the original. But that’s not to say this one has a been-there, done-that quality to it. It doesn’t. This sequel stands on its own and in no way feels like recycled material. And judged on its own, I feel safe in declaring it’s one of the best movies we’ll see in theaters this year.

“Spider-Man 2” is darker, more emotionally intense, and features a more serious storyline than the first movie. While the first film had to spend a good portion of its running time introducing the characters and explaining how Spider-Man came to be, this second film of the series doesn’t carry that burden. We know Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) was bitten by a radioactive spider, we know Peter loves MJ (Kirsten Dunst) but will not allow himself to be with her, and we know Peter’s best friend, Harry (James Franco) is out to kill Spider-Man because he believes the webslinger murdered his father. All of this was laid out for us by the end of the first “Spider-Man” movie.

In the second film, we’re allowed more of an opportunity to get to know Peter as a person. We feel his torment as he tries to hide his emotions from MJ. We care about him as he’s pulled between doing the responsible thing as Spider-Man and living a normal life free from the pressure of being a hero. ”Spider-Man 2” lets us look further into the psyche of the boy/man who wears the blue and red suit. And while we’re taken on this emotional journey with Peter, we’re also treated to more time with the central figures of the first “Spider-Man” movie and to a few new characters from world of the “Spider-Man” comic books, foremost of which is this film’s villain, Dr. Otto Octavius (Doc Ock for short). This ultra-cool bad guy is the star of the show when it comes to effects - and acting. Very few movie villains can rival Alfred Molina in character as the man with tentacles (special kudos to Raimi for making sure Doc Ock was played by such a first-rate actor). Doc Ock could have been a campy character, but with Molina in charge, he remains a man tormented by the evil he’s unleashed and overwhelmed by tragic circumstances, rather than a two-dimensional antagonist of the film’s hero.

“Spider-Man 2” has a gentler sense of humor, quirky like the original, yet quieter. Sam Raimi throws in a few recognizable faces in cameo roles who generate a fair share of laughs, and even inserts a scene in which Maguire as Spider-Man injures his back (a nod at Maguire’s real-life back problems, which almost kept him out of this sequel). One of my personal favorite scenes featured Hal Sparks in an elevator with the in-costume Spider-Man. Classic.

We got used to watching Spider-Man fly between buildings and leap from incredible heights in the first movie. The effects which worked so well in “Spider-Man” have been tweaked to such a degree in “Spider-Man 2” it’s nearly impossible to distinguish pure computer-generated graphics from scenes involving actors or stuntmen in front of blue screens. Because all of the effects – from speeding trains to giant fiery orbs – are simply incredible, there’s nothing that jolts you out of the movie, no point in the film where you are jarred from believing your eyes. As far as effects-heavy movies go, “Spider-Man 2” is at the head of the pack.

Comparing the two “Spider-Man” movies is like comparing apples and oranges. They are totally different creations. One’s an exuberant burst of energy contained on film and the other’s a toned down, coming-of-age tale set in the world of superheroes and monstrous villains. Though both movies relied heavily on the CGI effects, Raimi did a terrific job in both films of never forgetting the audience needs to connect with the flesh and blood actors. The reason “Spider-Man” and “Spider-Man 2” work is that both keep that focus in the forefront, with the special effects filling in around the actors and not overwhelming them.

Rebecca Murray
Hollywood Movies Guide

King Roland of the planet Druidia is trying to marry his daughter Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) to Prince Valium, but Vespa is kidnapped by the evil race of the Spaceballs. The Spaceballs ask Roland a tremendous ransom: all the air of Druidia (you see, the air of Spaceball had serious pollution problems…). The King decides to offer a generous amount of money to a space rogue, Lone Starr, to persuade him to save Vespa. What follows is the parody of a _LOT_ of famous SF movies. Written by Flavio Rizzardi {spillo@maya.dei.unpid.it}

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Seth Gecko and his younger brother Richard are on the lam after a bloody bank robbery in Texas. They escape across the border into Mexico and will be home-free the next morning, when they pay off the local kingpin. They just have to survive ‘from dusk till dawn’ at the rendezvous point, which turns out to be a Hell of a strip joint. Written by Tad Dibbern {DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu}

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