Movie: The Kingdom (R)
Released: September 28th, 2007
Runtime: 1 hr. 50 min.
Ticket Price: $7.50 Matinee
Refreshments: None
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman & Jeremy Piven
Director: Peter Berg

Rating: Worth a Full Price Ticket

Synopsis: Terrorists bomb a Western housing area in Saudi Arabia. An FBI incedent response team gets special permission to go to the bombsite. They have five days to complete their mission. The locals hold them back from doing their jobs. Not getting any help, they find one local who is willing to work with them and find the people responsible. While investigating, one of the team is taken hostage and this leads to a bloody confrontation with the planner of the attacks and his men.

Review: The Kingdom is not your average action movie. It is part political drama and part action drama. The latter bookends the flick, while the former makes up the bulk of the story.

Peter Berg has become a very good storyteller. He has developed and interesting style. If you are one of the few fans of the NBC TV show Friday Night Lights, which he created and directed the “Pilot,” then you will recognize it. It is most noticed in the transition from scene to scene and works well to propel the story along.

The Kingdom starts out with an opening sequence that highlights historical dealings between the U.S. and the Saudi governments. This is the basis for this fictional story that starts off with a gruesome terrorist attack on a Western compound during a picnic and softball game.

Once the true magnitude of the attack is learned, the FBI wants to get their boots on the ground to investigate. But, they are blocked at every turn. Special Agent Fleury, played by Jamie Foxx (Dreamgirls, Miami Vice), uses a press contact to get a message to a Saudi official, leading to a deal to get his team over there.

The rest of the team consists of Special Agent Sykes, played by Chris Cooper (Breach, Syriana), Special Agent Mayes, played by Jennifer Garner (Catch and Release, TV’s Alias), and Special Agent Leavitt, played by Jason Bateman (Fast Track, TV’s Arrested Development). They all give solid performances, even though their characters are less developed than Foxx’s Fleury. Garner is the standout of the group, mostly for her performance in the final scenes, as they search the building for their captured agent.

The standout performance of the movie is by Ashraf Barhom, he plays the local police Colonel that ends up helping the FBI team gain access to buildings and information they would not be able to acquire themselves. He is a family man that doesn’t understand the people who plan these attacks that take the lives of children.

After the explosive opening to The Kingdom, things slowdown as they are continually blocked from actually participating in the investigation. Whether at home trying to get there, or once they are there, by the locals in charge. When finally given access to the bombsite, they start to piece together what took place.

This leads to the closing of the movie, where a full-blown action movie breaks out. Yet, the gunfights seem more realistic than your average actioner. It is more Black Hawk Down than say, Bad Boys II or something like it.

The final scene is an attempt to make you think about how this continues to happen. Not sure how well it works, but it is an interesting juxtaposition to close the movie.

The Kingdom is worth visiting, even with full price admission. Will you be checking it out? If you do, let us know what you think.

This week, at a theater near you, there are seven new movies being released. Three open wide and another four are in limited release.

Opening Nationwide on Friday, September 28th:

Movie: Feast of Love (R)
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell, Jane Alexander & Alexa Davalos
Genre: Romance Drama
Synopsis: Modernized version of Midsummer Night’s Dream set in Oregon with a college professor seeing what love is doing among the residents of the town.
First Thoughts: It is from Academy Award winning director Robert Benton of movies like Kramer vs. Kramer and Places in the Heart.

Movie: The Game Plan (PG)
Starring: The Rock, Madison Pettis, Kyra Sedgwick, Roselyn Sanchez & Morris Chestnut
Genre: Sports Comedy
Synopsis: One of the toughest players to ever step foot on the gridiron finds out that he has a daughter. She gets dropped off at his doorstep and life, as he knew it, changes forever.
First Thoughts: Looks like it might be a fun movie to take your kids to.

Movie: The Kingdom (R) (Read Review)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman & Jeremy Piven
Genre: Action Drama
Synopsis: Terrorists bomb a Western housing area in Saudi Arabia. The FBI sends a special investigative team to help investigate the incident that are to work in secret and have five days to complete their mission. Not getting any help from the locals, they find one local who is willing to work with them to find the people responsible. While investigating one of the team is taken hostage and this may lead to a confrontation at the front door of the killer.
First Thoughts: This movie looks really good and has a great cast, will be sitting in the theater for the first showing on Friday. Have been looking forward to this one for a few weeks now.

Movies in Limited Release:

• The Darjeeling Limited – Comedy road movie with Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody who set out to find themselves while taking a train ride across India. Opens Saturday.
• I’ll Believe You – Sci-fi comedy about a radio talk show host where he takes call from the usual assortment of wacky conspiracy theorists and then a call comes in, in an indecipherable language.
• Lust, Caution – Romantic period spy drama set in occupied Shanghai during World War II.
• Trade – Docudrama with Kevin Kline that revolves around child slavery and a man investigating the possibility that is what happened to his daughter.

Expanding to more theaters this week is In the Valley of Elah.

For New Movie Friday there are three new movies at a theater near me this week. They are Feast of Love, The Game Plan and The Kingdom. What new movie will you be heading out to see this week?

Movie: Good Luck Chuck (R)
Released: September 21st, 2007
Runtime: 1 hr. 36 min.
Ticket Price: $7.50 Matinee
Refreshments: Starburst
Starring: Jessica Alba & Dane Cook
Director: Mark Helfrich

Rating: Don’t Even Bother

Synopsis: A young boy at a birthday party gets a hex put on him by a goth girl when during their seven minutes in heaven he tries to rebuff her ravenous advances. Years later and now a successful dentist, he can’t seem to find love. But, every woman he has been with turns out to find their true love in the very next man they meet. At the urging of his best friend, he decides to go about helping as many of these women out as he can. Yet, he finds it all very unsatisfying. He meets a woman at a wedding of one of his former girlfriends that just might be the one. He doesn’t want to take things to far because then she will fall for the next guy. Thinking he has broken the curse with some help from his friend, he takes things to the next level, only to find out that it hasn’t been. Now worried that he will lose her forever to another man, he goes off the deep end trying to keep her, which only pushes her away. But, we all know that is not how it is going to end. He finally takes one last shot and wins her back.

Review: Good Luck Chuck is not your run of the mill romantic comedy. If you saw the trailer or the ads for this movie and thought, this looks like a fun little slapstick filled romantic comedy, well you’d be wrong. They did a poor job of telling you what you are in for once the movie starts, mainly boobs, boners and very little to laugh at.

It tries to be a raucous sex comedy, but this is no There’s Something About Mary or The 40-Year-Old Virgin. This is closer to something you would find late night on Cinemax, but with a slightly better plot. Good Luck Chuck is swirling around the bottom of the comedy barrel with the likes of Norbit from earlier this year.

Dane Cook (Mr. Brooks, Employee of the Month) plays Chuck, the warm up act of love. I must be too far removed from his core demographic, the college crowd. Cause of the little I’ve seen of him and his stand-up, he has never seemed all that funny. That streak continues here with Good Luck Chuck. Maybe for movie purposes he should go the dramatic route, as he was actually pretty good in Mr. Brooks.

His sidekick Stu, played by Dan Fogler (Balls of Fury, School for Scoundrels), is supposed to be the lewd but funny guy who can’t get any women himself, so he has become a plastic surgeon specializing in breast augmentation and lives vicariously through Chuck. The reaction to his character and the lines he delivers was mostly groans, if there was any response at all. This was the case with most of the movie, as the sounds of laughter were few and far between.

If a montage sequence of weird and wacky sexual positions with Cook and a bevy of beauties is your idea of comedy gold, then you might actually like this movie. For everyone else, there isn’t much here to like, well except Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four, TV’s Dark Angel) as Cam, the hapless walking version of Murphy’s Law.

Alba does the slapstick thing quite well, but not well enough to make this worth seeing. Plus, if you’ve seen the ads, then you’ve seen all of these moments already. Maybe she lost a bet or had to fulfill some old contract obligation, cause this just seems below her.

Only because of Alba was there any thought of giving Good Luck Chuck the rough equivalent of a ½ star, with a rating of “It Might Be on TV One Day,” but lets face it, this vile pile of bile is never going to be on TV. So, that leaves us with a “Don’t Even Bother” and you can “rock quote” me on that.

What did you think of Good Luck Chuck?

This week, at a theater near you, there are eight new movies being released. Three open wide and another five are in limited release. Plus, Transformers hits your local IMAX screen.

Opening Nationwide on Friday, September 21st:

Movie: Good Luck Chuck (R) (Read Review)
Starring: Jessica Alba & Dane Cook
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Synopsis: A guy refused to kiss a weird Goth girl during a game of spin-the-bottle when he was ten. She puts a curse on him. Years later, now a successful dentist, he still has trouble with women. Until he finds out that every girl he has been with goes on to find true happiness and the love of their life in the very next man they date after him. This gets out and now every woman wants a go, so they can get on with finding their special someone after him. Will this satisfy him, or will he be just as lonely as ever? Then one day he meets this accident-prone woman that he just can’t figure out, but she may be just the one.
First Thoughts: The trailer looks good and Jessica Alba is in it, so it looks like this weekends winner, even though I don’t find Dane Cook as funny as many seem to. He was good earlier this year, taking a dramatic turn, in Mr. Brooks.

Movie: Resident Evil: Extinction (R)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Ashanti & Mike Epps
Genre: Sci-Fi Action Horror
Synopsis: Alice, now having been biogenically altered by the Umbrella Corporation, is hiding in the desert. She has joined up with other survivors and once again they set out to stop the deadly virus from turning everyone into the walking dead. Her new skills maybe just what is needed to make that happen.
First Thoughts: The first one wasn’t all that good, so I was surprised when they made a second one. Now a third film in the franchise; who would of thought?

Movie: Sydney White (PG-13)
Starring: Amanda Bynes, Sara Paxton & Matt Long
Genre: Comedy
Synopsis: A freshman college student attends Southern Atlantic University and has decided to pledge the sorority of her late mother. Once there, she learns that things aren’t the same as when her mother was in college. The head of the sorority kicks her out and banishes her from the sisterhood. She takes up with seven losers and decides they should use the student government as a path to evening things out for everyone on campus.
First Thoughts: A new spin on the story of Snow White.

Movies in Limited Release:

• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – A western starring just about everybody: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell & Garret Dillahunt. Based on the Ron Hansen book.
• The Jane Austen Book Club – Romantic drama with another big cast: Kathy Baker, Maria Bello, Emily Blunt, Amy Brenneman, Hugh Dancy, Jimmy Smits & Lynn Redgrave. A group starts a book club to distract one friend from her impeding divorce. Based on the Karen Joy Fowler book.
• Into the Wild – Drama about a rich kid that graduates college at the top of his class and is also a top athlete. He then decides to give all his money to charity and get rid of all his possessions and heads for the Alaskan wilderness. Stars Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone & Catherine Keener.
• The Last Winter – A supernatural thriller that opens Wednesday, September 19th and stars Ron Perlman, James LeGros, Connie Britton, Zach Gilford & Kevin Corrigan.
• Sea of Change – Fantasy drama about a woman who thinks she has ties to the sea and shows the roller coaster that a lot of relationships can be.

Expanding to more theaters this week are Across the Universe, Dedication, Eastern Promises, In the Shadow of the Moon and In the Valley of Elah. Also, Transformers: The IMAX Experience begins showing.

For New Movie Friday there are four new movies at a theater near me this week. They are Good Luck Chuck, Resident Evil: Extinction and Sydney White. What new movie will you be heading out to see this week?