Film Review: Armored (2009)
Armored starts off as a somewhat promising deviation from the standard heist movie and then quickly degenerates into formulaic action fare. The plot revolves around a team of armored truck guards led by Matt Dillion. They decide that, on a day when they're transporting an unusually large amount of money, they're going to stage a hijacking and take the money for themselves. Things don't go according to plan, because if they did, it would make for a really boring movie. Unfortunately, it's still a predictable, boring movie.
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Film Review: Planet 51 (2009)
Some of the promotional material would have you believe that Planet 51 is about a human astronaut that lands on an alien world and is hunted out of fear and ignorance. In reality, Planet 51 is about Lem, a teenage alien (we're never given a name for the species) whose life gets turned upside down when a visitor from another planet lands in his backyard.
Read the full review over at Movie Vault.
Film Review: Pirate Radio (2009)
Pirate Radio is about several things, but swashbuckling is unfortunately not one of them. It's about Radio Rock, a rock n' roll radio station illegally broadcasting to the United Kingdom out of the North Sea in the 1960s. It's about the men (and woman, but a lesbian, so it's ok) running the ship and the rebellious, unorthodox lives that they lead. It's about young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who's sent to live on the ship with his godfather Quentin (Bill Nighy), the ship's Captain, to get his life on the right track. Oops. Finally, it's about select members of the British government who have made it their mission in life to destroy pirate radio. They don't want to simply fine or punish, they want to wipe it from the face of the Earth.
Read the full review at Movie Vault.
Film Review: Surrogates (2009)
Despite the mixed reviews, I went into Surrogates with high hopes given that it featured three things I love: robots, Bruce Willis, and comic books. The film was adapted from a comic book and stars Bruce Willis as FBI Agent Tom Greer in a world where most of humanity lives out their lives through robotic surrogates. They sit at home, fat, lazy, and unshaven, while plugged into much better-looking robotic dopplegangers.
Read the whole review at Movie Vault.
