Paula Wagner Movies

Academy Award-winning director Brad Bird (Ratatouille) makes his live-action feature directorial debut with the fourth installment of the massively successful Mission Impossible series. The Kremlin has been bombed, and the blame has fallen on the IMF. As a result, the president initiates Ghost Protocol, and accuses Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team of placing the bomb in an attempt to incite a global nuclear war. Now, in order to clear the IMF of terrorism charges, Ethan assembles a new team to uncover the truth by using every high-tech trick in the book. But this time they're on their own, and should they be caught, the entire world could be plunged into a nightmare from which there is no waking up. Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, and Simon Pegg co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Luke Goss, Ving Rhames, Sean Bean, and Danny Trejo headline director Roel Reiné's thrill-ride sequel to Paul W.S. Anderson's hyper-violent remake exploring the origins of the most notorious Death Race competitor ever to take the wheel. Featuring a screenplay by Tony Giglio (Chaos), Death Race 2 follows convicted cop-killer Carl Lucas (Goss) as he vies for freedom by competing in the most deadly reality show ever conceived. The U.S. economy has completely collapsed, and as lawlessness spreads, private prisons crop up all across the country. Corruption reigns in these for-profit penitentiaries, and Terminal Island is home to some of the most violent offenders in the world. Lucas has just been handed a life sentence for killing a cop. Just when it looks like he'll be spending the rest of his days behind bars, unscrupulous television producer September Jones shows up seeking contestants for a brutal new game show where prisoners battle it out in high-performance death machines equipped with lethal weapons. The reward for surviving this psychotic demolition derby: freedom. Before long Lucas is fastening his seat belt, and preparing for the ride of his life. By the time this race is over, an apocalyptic legend will be born. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) has been given the gift of sight, but it comes with a horrifying price in the English-language remake of Danny and Oxide Pang's The Eye. The double corneal transplant was to open up a new world for Sydney, a concert violinist whose blindness has plagued her since childhood. With the help of Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola) and sister Helen (Parker Posey), Sydney's operation and recovery seemed to be on the road to success -- until horrific images start to tear their way into her newfound vision. What's worse is that these episodes appear to foreshadow future deadly events, leading Sydney on a mission to track down the person whose eyes she has inherited and discover what kind of mystery from beyond the grave lies before her. The film is directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, the duo behind the acclaimed 2006 French terror flick Them, and is produced by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner under their Cruise/Wagner production banner. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Adapted from a novel by John Fante, Robert Towne's Ask the Dust stars Colin Farrell as Arturo Bandini, a young writer who comes to Los Angeles during the Great Depression in order to write a novel. As the film opens, he is down to his last nickel and decides to spend it on coffee in a diner. He is served by Camilla (Salma Hayek), a Mexican beauty he is instantly attracted to even though he treats her horribly during their first interaction. Soon the pair is involved in a relationship that finds them sparring with each other at first, but slowly learning to trust each other. Bandini meets the acquaintance of a desperate woman who sees him as the most desirable man in the world. Eventually Arturo and Camilla get away from the city and their love deepens as he attempts to finish his novel. Donald Sutherland co-stars as a seedy but helpful and loyal neighbor. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

A young man in need of a fresh start gets one under highly unexpected circumstances in this emotionally resonant comedy drama from writer and director Cameron Crowe. Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is considered the big success story in his family, having moved away from the small Kentucky town where he was born to California, where he works as a designer for Mercury, the nation's biggest athletic shoe company. But success has begun to elude Drew -- his most recent design was a resounding flop that has cost him his job, and his girlfriend, Ellen (Jessica Biel), has given him his walking papers. Drew is contemplating suicide when he gets word that his father has died, and that he's needed back home in Elizabethtown, KY, to help organize the funeral. With his mother, Hollie (Susan Sarandon), deep in denial about her husband's passing, Drew comes home to discover no one knows about his recent poor fortune, and he's greeted like a conquering hero. As Drew reconnects with his family and helps his sister, Heather (Judy Greer), look after Hollie, Drew gets a new lease on life and is reminded about what's really important to him. Helping him learn these valuable lessons is Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), a pretty and optimistic flight attendant Drew meets on his flight home who has her own philosophies about positive thinking and the curative powers of travel. Elizabethtown also stars Alec Baldwin, Paul Schneider, Bruce McGill, Loudon Wainwright III, and Paula Deen. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Before Jayson Blair made headlines for his plagiarized New York Times reporting, Stephen Glass defamed the weekly current events magazine The New Republic with a series of eye-catching, entertaining, and completely fabricated stories. Now Glass' trail of lies gets the big-screen treatment in writer/director Billy Ray's Shattered Glass, featuring Hayden Christensen in the title role. The film chronicles Glass' time at the magazine in the late '90s, when his colorful coverage of a hedonistic Young Republican convention, superstar web hackers, and the circus surrounding the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal made him the toast of the publishing world, garnering attention from such national publications as George and Rolling Stone. Barely out of college, the eager Glass ingratiates himself with the office staff, including his mentor, managing editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria). But when Kelly is unceremoniously fired and replaced with editor Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), Glass' pieces come under a greater degree of scrutiny, until one in particular threatens to expose his tall tales to the rest of the world. Based in part on a Vanity Fair article by journalist Buzz Bissinger, Shattered Glass premiered at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals before its limited fall theatrical release. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar's first English-language production is a creepy period ghost story that continues in the vein of his earlier art house hit Open Your Eyes (1997). Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a devoutly religious mother of two ailing children who has moved with her family to a mansion on the English coast while awaiting her husband's return from World War II, though he has been declared missing. Their children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley), both suffer from a rare photosensitivity disease that renders them extremely vulnerable to sunlight, prompting Grace's rule of having only one door open in the house at a time. When Anne begins claiming to see ghosts, Grace at first believes her newly arrived family of eccentric servants to be responsible, but chilling events and visions soon lead her to believe that something supernatural is indeed going on. The Others was released only a few months prior to Vanilla Sky (2001), the American remake of Alejandro's Open Your Eyes (1997), ironically starring Kidman's then-estranged husband Tom Cruise. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Director John Woo brings Hong Kong-style martial arts action to this comic book-flavored sequel that eschews the complicated plot and political maneuverings of its predecessor in favor of pure, adrenaline-charged thrills. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, an operative for the top-secret government agency IMF (Impossible Missions Force). Fellow agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) has gone rogue, stealing a sample of a deadly synthetic virus named Chimera that could rapidly wipe out the world's population. Ambrose's plan is to sell Chimera to the highest bidder in exchange for shares of stock in the winner's company. Summoned by the new IMF chief (Anthony Hopkins in an uncredited cameo role), Ethan is assigned to recruit the help of Ambrose's former lover Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandie Newton), a gorgeous woman who left Ambrose broken-hearted and who may be able to quickly regain his confidence. Once he meets and spends a night with Nyah, however, Ethan is smitten, and now must both capture Ambrose and keep Nyah alive as she infiltrates a nest of vipers. Sophisticated disguises, gun battles, and high-speed chases are the order of the day, very much in the James Bond mold. Mission: Impossible 2 is based on a story by Star Trek: The Next Generation writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, with a script polish by Robert Towne. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma's big-budget adaptation shares little more with the original show than the occasional self-destructing message and the name of team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The film focuses not on Phelps but his protégé, Ethan Hunt (a reserved Tom Cruise), who becomes a fugitive after taking the blame for a botched operation. He responds by banding together with a group of fellow renegades, and he is soon maneuvering his way through a twisted series of double crosses that mainly serve as excuses for spectacular high-tech action sequences. Much of the activity revolves around a missing computer disk, with the film's most famous scene depicting Hunt's delicate efforts to retrieve the disk from a secure, well-alarmed room in CIA headquarters. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide