The A-Team (2010) (Review & Trailer)

Albion — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:11:05 +0000

Four American soldiers who are in Iraq are sent on a mission to recover plates for printing 100 dollar bills that were used to print a billion dollars. After doing the job and returning to the base their commanding officer is killed in an explosion and the plates are stolen by another operative. They would be court martialed and sent to different prisons. 6 months later, the leader, Hannibal Smith is visited by a CIA spook who tells him he knows where the man who took the plates is and wants him and his men to recover it. So he helps him escape and he breaks out the others and they go after the plates. But after doing it, they discover that the spook might not be ok. And a military intelligence officer who was involved with one of them is pursuing them. Based on the hit T.V. show in the 1980's. During the Vietnam war a 4 man team (known as the A-Team) of Special Forces were (wrongly) convicted of the robbery of the bank of Hanoi and were sent to a prison. But, while they were being transferred to that prison, this team managed to escape and secretly went into hiding in Los Angeles. Now, the A-Team aims to find another team of U.S. soldiers that framed them for the crime back in Vietnam,while they wait however they help other people that have a problem with other underworld dwellers.

The Last Airbender (2010)

Valmir — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:57:17 +0000

“The Last Airbender”? Let’s hope so, though there is a scene at the very end that gestures toward a sequel. After 94 minutes — was that all? I could have sworn it was days — of muddy 3-D imagery and muddled storytelling, the idea that this is just the first “Last Airbender” seems either delusionally optimistic or downright cruel. An astute industry analyst of my acquaintance, who is 9 and an admirer of the Nickelodeon animated series on which the movie is based, offered a two-word diagnosis of its commercial prospects on the way out of the theater: “They’re screwed.” More About This Movie Overview Tickets & Showtimes New York Times Review Cast, Credits & Awards Readers' Reviews Trailers & Clips View Clip... Enlarge This Image Industrial Light & Magic A fight scene from “The Last Airbender.” If nothing else, “The Last Airbender,” written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, can serve as a reminder of how difficult it can be to inaugurate a fantasy-action franchise. The success, nearly a decade old, of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the triumphant decade-long unspooling of the Harry Potter chronicles might look easy in retrospect, but this is a genre that has seen at least as much failure as success. (Remember “Eragon”? Lucky you.) At least for now Mr. Shyamalan’s attempt to conjure a realm of myth and adventure out of special effects and long expository speeches might serve as a textbook chapter on How to Do It Wrong. The story is simple enough. Actually it isn’t, but an elaborate, potentially preposterous premise is almost always both a stumbling block and an opportunity for a fantasy epic. The Fire Nation is trying to conquer everyone else: its war machine has already all but wiped out the Air People, and the Water and Earth Nations suffer under various forms of imperial oppression. But then Katara and Sokka, a waterbender and her protective older brother, happen upon a young boy (Noah Ringer) trapped in a bubble of ice. It turns out that he is not only the last airbender, but also the latest incarnation of the avatar, a quasi-messianic figure in touch with the spirits who govern this somewhat baffling world. Bending, by the way, is an esoteric skill that involves striking a series of martial-arts poses until (depending on your elemental identity) you produce dust storms, fire balls or a barrage of ice cubes. The young avatar, Aang, is expected to master all these things, and his latent power makes him a valuable quarry for two different Fire Nation heavies: the disgraced prince, Zuko (Dev Patel of “Slumdog Millionaire”), and a scheming military officer, Zhao (Aasif Mandvi of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”). It’s all pretty silly, and handled with unrelenting solemnity. But that in itself is neither unusual nor fatal. The problem — the catastrophe — of “The Last Airbender” is not in the conception but the execution. The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever ...

Movies - Reviews & Trailers » Adventure

The A-Team (2010) (Review & Trailer)

The Last Airbender (2010)