DVD: The Kingdom

When a baseball game is being played full of men, woman and children in Saudi Arabia gets attacked by terrorists in broad daylight, the FBI wants to come in and investigate. When they get there they are basically told that they can only walk around the crime scene and not touch anything. Realizing that no one here will help them. They talk to the prince himself to have them investigate to catch these killer. All awhile the attackers are planning there next targets, the FBI agents. Everything leads to a 30 minutes of nothing but intense non-stop action for any action fan.

From right off the bat The Kingdom grabbed my attention. Right away I was on the edge of my seat and throughout I never sat back. The whole story had me going. I thought Jamie Foxx had a solid performance as Ronald Fleury, after his friend dies he tries everything to get him and his other co-workers over to Saudi Arabia to investigate. The One who also stood out for me was Jason Bateman he had the most funniest moments throughout the movie as well as Jeremy Piven, in his very brief moments on the screen. Mind you Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and the rest of the cast do great jobs also.

Peter Berg does a great job for me, I thought the hand-held camera was the way to go mostly during the last 30 minutes when its nothing but action. The camera makes us feel that we are right there in the middle of all the stuff that going on where its when the characters are searching around for clue or if its during a gun battle or car chase through the streets of Saudi Arabia.

I was never bored waiting for something big to happen. During The Kingdom I was constantly on the edge of my seat with the story. This is a very good movie and that is why I recommend The Kingdom.

DVD

The Kingdom DVD is presented in 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen with English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound along with both Spanish and French 5.1 Dolby. With English, Spanish and French subtitles. The Feature include:

• Deleted Scenes.
• Character by Character: The Apartment Shootout.
• Constructing the Freeway Sequence.
• Creating the Kingdom.
• History Of The Kingdom: An Interactive Timeline.
• Commentary With Director Peter Berg.

The Kingdom DVD is pretty well packed with special features. Everything fits together nicely and it goes along with a very good entertaining movie. Some of the features are about the action sequences from the making of the car/freeway sequence are good and funny to watch. Overall everything is a great addition. I would recommend The Kingdom DVD as a Buy.

MOVIE: Juno

Juno (Ellen Page) is at the local store check a pregnancy test and then out pops the plus sign. Juno;s having a child. And she is still in high school. When she decides that she can't have an abortion, her friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) suggests looking through the penny savers, that they have couples seeking spawn. When she finally picks the one perfect couple, the couple is played by Jennifer Garner who is Vanessa Loring and Jason Bateman who plays Mark Loring, she decided to give the baby to them. First she has to tell her parents, Mac MacGuff who is played by J.K. Simmons and Bren MacGuff who is played by Allison Janney. The parents are totally shock to find out that their daughter is pregnant they start to try to help her through this process. Juno's father and herself go to meet the family that Juno is going to give the baby too they seem like a perfect happy family.

Over the couple of the trimesters we start to see (of course) Juno getting bigger, but also that that is happy family might not seem so perfect and more. Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) tries help out with Juno towards the end. Everything comes down to the delivery of the baby.

For about the first quarter of the movie I was really hating this movie. With the use of trying to be too clever with the dialogue (trying to be too funny, i thought).

Soon after they got all that stuff out of the way and bring in some of the supporting characters is when the movie goes over and gets better. Juno works when it not trying to be clever.

Around there is a lot of buzz about Ellen Page getting nominated but, for me I thought she was just OK while the supporting cast like J.K Simmons, Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner etc. did a great job on screen. Once when we got into the movie it got really better. I was getting more and more interested with the plot and that is why I like this movie. Its funny has good characters, and a great story.

Another part of the movie that really got me was the soundtrack, I thought that the soundtrack for Juno it had great music throughout the movie, it had a sort of the feel like what Wes Anderson puts in his movies, really good stuff. One thing that I was fond of was the opening sequence which is an animation of Juno (Ellen Page) walking to the store, it was really cool. Overall After the first part of the movie I didn't like but after that I really enjoyed this, I Strongly Recommend the movie Juno.

MOVIE: Smokin' Aces

Smokin' Aces is a loud hard-hitting film that has the best action scenes of the year.

With the Mob putting a 1 million dollar bounty on Buddy "Aces" Israel, a Las Vegas performer. The wildest, crazy and unwilling hit men and women come to collect on that bounty. On that note all is fair game.

Let me start off say many of the actors in Smokin' Aces has some of the best, from Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven and many more this is truly a great cast. With even in her debut to film I thought Alicia Keys did an OK job. The characters that these people play are very original from a group of brothers "The Tremors" from a weird kid that seriously needs some Ritalin. That is what set some of the characters in Smokin' Aces apart from some of the generic characters we would see from other Crime stories that use a group of different types of hit men. Out of all the actors only two stood out for me, one is Jeremy Pivien as Buddy Israel he is really convincing from begin coked up and on the brink of destruction. The other was Jason Bateman who played Rip Reed a lawyer Jason didn't have that much screen time but on the part he was in and the dialogue was hilarious.

With that said the story was a good well rounded one they did a good job at drawing out each character and gave each one a good amount of screen time. Most other stories like this while its gets towards the climax of the story the parts become clear and you can figure out what going to happen and take away the reward, this film doesn't do that it has many twists and turns that will have you on the edge of your seat. The one thing I had an issues with during the viewing was with e editing (or maybe not?) was that I'm not sure if they cut out a lot of the action sequences. For example one of the Tremor brothers had at the beginning had an axe on the back of him and has they cut between other shots the axe is gone, while I don't know if he used it or anything. Personally that is a issue that I spot, but to other I know that won't bother them and I can probably get over it after a couple more viewings.

If someone were to watch just the trailer, and not read the plot outline or the synopsis you could expect to see a lot of action in this picture. That's one thing I was disappointed about, was that it did have great action but very little of it but yet that give you more room to enjoy the story. Overall that movie is fun to watch its not going to win any awards but to sit back and enjoy this one is it. I recommend that you should go and see this film.

Here is the Smokin' Aces Trailer: