More than 10 years after ‘Terminator 2′, John Connor now exists only as a drifter - living ‘off the grid’, so no more Terminators from the future can hunt him down. Unfortunately, SkyNet does send another one back - and this one is called the T-X, even more powerful & advanced than the dreaded T-1000. However, another CSM-101 Terminator is also sent back to protect John against the T-X. Now, Skynet is patiently assuming control of civilian computer systems, under the guise of a computer virus. John has also met his future wife, Kate Brewster, whose father - a U.S. Air Force General - is in charge of the military computer systems & is leery of up linking SkyNet. However, when the SkyNet virus infects the U.S military computers & leaves the country open to attack, the machines begin their horrific takeover. Soon a nuclear war will result - and the war against the machines will begin. Can the outdated CSM-101 Terminator eliminate the highly advanced T-X - or will a darker future await man following the nuclear attack? Written by Derek O’Cain

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Ashley Judd gives it her best in this “Stand By Your Man”-themed military film. Judd stars with her “Kiss the Girls” co-star Morgan Freeman and “Count of Monte Cristo’s” Jim Caviezel in “High Crimes,” a thriller that exposes the hidden side of a loving spousal relationship.

Judd is Claire Kubik, a high-powered defense attorney living an affluent, happy life with her husband, Tom (cue the “Jaws” music, it’s about to get dramatic). Everything she believes about her husband is tossed out the window as he is arrested at gunpoint by the FBI and charged with the deaths of innocent civilians during a military action in El Salvador. As the wife of a man who is accused of atrocious crimes during a covert military operation, Judd’s torn between her love for her husband and the ugliness of the charges mixed with the possibility that the military’s version of events is true. Deciding to be the supportive wife - and cutthroat defense attorney - she enlists the help of Charlie Grimes (Morgan Freeman), a wild card attorney with many bones to pick with the military.

The premise has been used before, many of the twists are predictably mapped out thus robbing them of their impact, and the writers throw in too many military clichés. It probably sounds as if I didn’t like this film but that’s not entirely true. The acting was first-rate and there were parts of the film that were downright riveting. It’s just that where the story could have cut a fresh path, it chose to rely too heavily on tried and true plot points. I personally had a problem with a few of the scenes not being consistent with the film’s ending, but to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, they are constricted by time restraints. Perhaps to answer those dangling storylines would have added another half an hour to the film - and we all know how well audiences hold up during long films.

Rebecca Murray
Hollywood Movies Guide

“Houses don’t kill people. People kill people.” That’s as deep as this 2005 version of “The Amityville Horror” gets. But then again, I don’t know a single person who goes to an American horror movie and expects deep, philosophical entertainment. Studios understand that and anything that’s even slightly intellectual is yanked out of the horror genre and labeled a thriller. And this isn’t a thriller by any stretch of the imagination. This new, reworked, revamped “Amityville Horror” is a full-on horror flick with character development taking a back seat to ghosts and other things that go bump in the night (at 3:15am to be exact).

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Mort Rainey (Depp), a writer just coming off of a troublesome divorce with his ex-wife, Amy (Bello), finds himself stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger (Turturro) who claims Mort stole his best story idea (changing just the ending)… (Hutton plays Bello’s new boyfriend; Dutton plays a private investigator hired to make Turturro’s character leave Mort alone.)

Elmo McElroy (Jackson) is a streetwise American master chemist who heads to England to sell his special new formula - a powerful, blue concoction guaranteed to take you to ‘the 51st state.’ McElroy’s new product delivers a feeling 51 times more powerful than any thrill, any pleasure, any high in history. But his plans for a quick, profitable score go comically awry when he gets stuck in Liverpool with an unlikely escort (Carlyle) and his ex-girlfriend (Mortimer) and becomes entangled in a bizarre web of double-dealing and double-crosses. Written by Anonymous

Marcus Burnett is a hen-pecked family man. Mike Lowry is a foot-loose and fancy free ladies’ man. Both are Miami policemen, and both have 72 hours to reclaim a consignment of drugs stolen from under their station’s nose. To complicate matters, in order to get the assistance of the sole witness to a murder, they have to pretend to be each other. Written by James Hastie {jdh1000@cus.cam.ac.uk}

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Sam and Molly are a very happy couple and deeply in love. Walking back to their new apartment after a night out at the theatre, they encounter a thief in a dark alley, and Sam is murdered. He finds himself trapped as a ghost and realises that his death was no accident. He must warn Molly about the danger that she is in. But as a ghost he can not be seen or heard by the living, and so he tries to communicate with Molly through Oda Mae Brown, a psychic who didn’t even realise that her powers were real. Written by Sami Al-Taher {staher2000@yahoo.com}

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Any less of a charismatic leading actor and this film would have been dead within the first 15 minutes. However Hollywood’s current bad boy, Colin Farrell, uses that animal magnetism of his to full advantage as a man pinned down in a phone booth by an unseen sniper. Watching a man trapped in a phone booth for 90 minutes could get old extremely fast, but Farrell sinks his teeth into this character, compelling the audience to join him in that crowded space for the hour and a half it takes for the film to unfold.

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When Eastern European criminals Oleg and Emil come to New York City to pick up their share of a heist score, Oleg steals a video camera and starts filming their activities, both legal and illegal. When they learn how the American media circus can make a remorseless killer look like the victim and make them rich, they target media-savvy NYPD Homicide Detective Eddie Flemming and media-naive FDNY Fire Marshal Jordy Warsaw, the cops investigating their murder and torching of their former criminal partner, filming everything to sell to the local tabloid TV show “Top Story.” Written by Jeff Cross {blackjac_1998@yahoo.com}

In the midst of an elaborate conspiracy, an expert negotiator is driven to the edge when he’s framed for the murder of his partner, as well as embezzling money from his department’s pension fund. His only chance to prove his innocence is to take hostages himself, acquire the services of another expert negotiator, and find out who’s running the conspiracy before it’s too late. Written by Ted Walters

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