Culture

Even kids love old timey. Is stealing ever okay? How about if it's from a rich banker in order to save the home of an out-of-work family, or committed by those suffering in hunger and despair, as in the Great Depression? In the new film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, based on the American Girl book series, Kit and her pals delve into that and other tricky moral quandaries, as they exit the safety of their tree-fort to embark upon various feats beyond their years. It turns out that Kit learns the most about survival, ingenuity, honesty and grace just by looking around her hometown.
 
Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is the perfect choice for the role of Kit. She is confident, poised and assertive, with an earnest innocence. As Kit, Breslin also illustrates that she knows well how to register a look of shock or surprise, keeping a young audience enthralled with the film's exploits and misadventure.
The 30's-era tale chronicles the adventures of an aspiring young journalist who helps solve a mystery that threatens her family's home, as well as her entire Cincinnati neighborhood. When all signs of guilt point to the "hobo jungle" on the city's fringe-where Kit's new friends Will and Countee live alongside other jobless, hungry victims of the Depression-Kit convinces her friends to ferret out the truth.

nothing to see here. Just keep raking. It's been quite the summer for super heroes-Iron Man, Hulk, and now Hancock, who comes in the form of a drunken lout of a super hero.
 
The premise is clever: a super hero with a drinking problem doesn't know who he is or where he comes from. Carrying a truckload of problems, he doesn't really enjoy saving people's lives. He just does it because either he can and/or he's the only one who can. He makes a sloppy exercise out of saving the day, chucking a beached whale out to sea only to hit a sailboat….skewering a car of bad guys on the Capitol Records building… you get the point. Hancock is pretty much despised for all the chaos he causes - the exception being Ray Embry (Jason Bateman), a PR exec that Hancock saves from getting pulverized by a train. In return, Ray befriends the hero and attempts a marketing strategy makeover. Ray brings Hancock home for counseling and to meet his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who is busy with her own life and doesn't approve.
Will Smith is a charismatic actor, bringing life to what would normally be a spoof-oriented role. He also plays a believable drunk with some genuine talent. With Theron, though, I wondered for the longest time why she was even in this movie, but she does manage to prove her worth. Bateman is an entertaining guy in a smarmy and witty kind of way, although fairly one-dimensional.

Jolie in a shot from the new Whitesnake videoYou are going to have to set aside common sense to enjoy this movie. It'll be no fun if you question the logistics of Wanted, with its dopey dialogue and ridiculous plot. Better to sit back and enjoy the ride while this flick delivers a ton of exhilarating, jaw-dropping action scenes.
The plot unfolds with a quick voice-over narrative biography explaining the lame existence of one Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), a stressed out accountant, stagnating in his measly meek life. People abuse and take advantage of him on a daily basis. Oh, if only he could grow a pair… Enter Fox (a tattooed ultra sleek Angelina Jolie) who literally whisks Gibson away to employ his unknown talents for an underground assassin club called the Fraternity. Sound farfetched so far? You betcha. But who cares? Right when you think the film will get long and uninteresting, Wanted pumps in the adrenaline-beginning with some Matrix-effect flying bullets.

The wrath of KhanAs Kazakstan's first entry into the Academy Awards (2008 nominee for Best Foreign Language Film), the epic historical drama, Mongol, will enthrall horse devotees, history aficionados (who can argue afterwards about its authenticity), or anyone else interested in a visually incredible depiction of life on the steppes of 12th century Central Asia.