Jan Blenkin Movies
- 2009
The year is 1943, and as the Nazi war machine rises to the absolute height of its aggression, a hand-picked squadron of Royal Air Force pilots is selected to take part in one of the most daring, highly classified, and potentially deadly assignments in wartime history. As the training for "Operation Chastise" gets underway, a highly skilled collection of Allied aviators from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States known as the 617 Squadron are trained for a top secret mission by Wing Commander Guy Gibson. With only seven weeks to prepare to execute a mission, the details of which were never fully revealed to the pilots, the race gets underway to strike a crippling blow against the Nazi steel industry. The mission won't be an easy one, though, because in order to accomplish their goal, the pilots will have to skim the tree tops in specially modified Lancaster aircraft as they fly deep into the heart of heavily fortified Germany in order to drop a revolutionary "bouncing" bomb designed to skim across the surface of the water and topple the dam with astonishing force. Developed by visionary scientist Barnes Wallis, these powerful new bombs must be dropped from a frighteningly low altitude and at a potentially deadly close range. Inspired by actual events and based on author Paul Brickhill's popular book The Dam Busters, Dambusters marks the directorial debut of longtime Peter Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers, and features special-effects work by Weta Digital, Ltd. and Weta Workshop, Ltd. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
One of the greatest adventure stories in Hollywood history gets a new interpretation in this action drama from Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson. In the early 1930's, Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a daring filmmaker and adventurer who has gained a reputation for his pictures documenting wildlife in remote and dangerous jungle lands; despite the objections of his backers, Denham plans to film his next project aboard an ocean vessel en route to Skull Island, an uncharted island he discovered on a rare map. Correctly assuming his cast and crew would be wary of such a journey, Denham has told them they're traveling to Singapore, but before they set sail, his leading lady drops out of the project. Needing a beautiful actress willing to take a risk, Denham finds Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a beautiful but down-on-her-luck vaudeville performer and offers her the role; cautious but eager to work, Darrow takes the role, and onboard the ship she strikes up a romance with Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), a respected playwright hired by Denham to write the script for his latest epic. When Denham and Company arrive on Skull Island, the natives react with savage violence, but they happen to be the least of their worries. Skull Island is a sanctuary for prehistoric life, and lording it over the dinosaurs and other giant beasts is Kong, a twenty-five-foot-tall gorilla who can outfight any creature on Earth. The natives kidnap Darrow, giving her to Kong as an offering to appease the giant beast; Denham and his men set out to find her, with Driscoll bravely determined to save the woman he loves. Eventually, Driscoll finds Darrow and Denham outwits Kong, intending to take the giant ape back to New York for display. But Kong has bonded with Darrow, and his attraction to her proves to be his undoing. Andy Sirkis, who provided the body movements for Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings pictures, performed similar duties on King Kong, studying gorillas so he could mimic their actions, which were then used as the basis for the special effects crew's digital animation of the great ape. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Naomi Watts, Jack Black, (more)
Charlatan Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) has genuine psychic powers, but he doesn't use them to help people. Rather, he generates cases for his supernatural private-eye firm by harassing a group of hapless ghosts (including a dearly departed Wild West outlaw and an undead judge played by John Astin) into staging hauntings and poltergeists in the homes of likely marks. Bannister's world turns on its head when he starts noticing real hauntings around town -- ghostly assassinations that seem to be tied to the execution 20 years earlier of a brutal serial killer. Lucy Lunskey (Trini Alvarado), the wife of one unlucky victim, teams up with Bannister to get to the bottom of the killings and find out what shut-in Patricia Bradley (Dee Wallace Stone) and her witchy mother (Julia McCarthy) have to do with the sinister spree. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, (more)
