Now I know why Spider-Man didn’t follow, the oft abused, convention of putting titles after the movie name. They didn’t need to. 1, 2 and 3 are all part of the story of Peter Parker, Mary Jane and Harry Osborn. Spider-Man 3 brings to end a story arc that began with Spider-Man. It is still about people, relationships and love - not so thinly disguised as an action movie.

The story begins where everything is going perfect for Peter. He is doing well in College, his relationship with MJ is progressing and everyone loves Spider-Man. That lasted for all of 10 or 15 minutes into the movie; then things begin to happen, new friends and foes are introduced and the relationship with MJ begings to unravel.

We are rapidly - for lack of a better word - introduced to Gwen Stacy, Captain Stacy, Eddie Brock and Flint Marko. Of course we are not forgetting the Symbiote either.

Things kick off with a bang when the New Goblin attacks Spidy and what a fight it was - and Spidy ended up being clobbered most of the time by an even more powerful New Goblin. The fight scenes dizzying and most of the time too fast to follow as a lot of things are happening visually. This is true of most of the action scenes in the movie.

Then Peter “discovers” the black suit and things begin to change for him. It is really cool when Peter is in the black suit, he moves around menacingly, he is more powerful and much more aggressive. As the suit amplifies the aggressiveness in Peter, he begins to make mistakes - in his relationship with MJ, in his work and in seeking revenge for the death of Uncle Ben.

In someways this movie is as much about Harry Osborn as much as it it about Peter Parker and Mary Jane. While the New Goblin costume looks somewhat hokey, James Franco played the role really well and at certain points, you cannot help but like him. There is a powerful story here about the conflict between two best friends, however it was overshadowed by the addition of Sandman and to some extent Venom (although that was pretty cool).

The rest of the movie is to show the relationship with MJ going down the tubes, his best-friend is trying to kill him and two of his enemies getting together to get “rid,” of the spider, and we wait to see how Peter figures his way out of it all.

The action scenes are great - Spidy Vs. New Goblin, Spidy Vs. Sandman, Spidy (now in black) Vs. Sandman, Peter (also in black) Vs. Harry and the finale four way showdown. We also got to see Stan Lee, now in a speaking capacity, Bruce Campbell as a French Maître d’ and of course some really hilarious scenes with JJ.

Then there is the long awaited Gwen Stacy. I was a bit concerned that she would just be “tacked on,” but somehow she fits in quite well to both Spidy’s and Peter’s lives. Early in the movie, she gets to kiss Spider-Man in the same way that MJ got to kiss him in Spider-Man, which of course leads to all kinds of trouble for Peter.

There are few quibbles, one is why we need Sandman at all, the story could have worked fine without the character, the other is that the screen time of the awesome black spidy suit is really short, the Venom scenes are equally short as well. What happened was too many new characters, story-lines were introduced and took away the focus from the story.

The ending was a bit unexpected, but made sense in the context. In someways Spider-Man 3 feels like a middle act, I mean Spider-Man is a standalone, but Spider-Man 2 & 3 are almost continuations.

Overall I liked the movie and it is definitely recommended. With the story-arc wrapped up nicely, I hope that Raimi and the studios quit while they are ahead. However a few threads are left dangling (not many, but important ones) so most likely they will proceed with 4.

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This is one of the better hard Sci-fi films I have seen recently. I was immediately reminded of 2001 and it sequel 2010 after seeing the trailer, and seeing the movie I wasn’t far off in that. With just one disappointment I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

Introduction to the crew and their backgrounds and personalities are kept to a minimum, yet sufficient enough to understand their characters. Set 50 years into the future, where our Sun is dying, the crew of eight are on a mission to reignite the Sun with a stellar bomb. Directed by none other than Danny Boyle of 28 Days Later fame, the setting is somewhat stale, but just like he did in 28 Days Later, he manages to tell the story from a different point of view.

Where Armageddon was loud and brash and big and awesome , this movie is subtle and introspective. There is no loud Aerosmith in the background, there is a quietness of a crew that has settled into a routine. There are no cowboy’s here but serious professionals out to do their jobs.

Not burdened by A list actors, an ensemble cast of Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh along with others manage to portray their characters well. However initially seeing Chris Evans (who played Johnny Storm so well in Fantastic Four) I almost expected him to say “Flame On!” In that I was happy to be disappointed, because he played his role well and was in character throughout.

After the brief introduction to the crew and what is going on, the crew are immediately faced by a quandary . It seems that 8 years ago, Earth launched a first attempt to reignite the sun with Icarus 1 mission, but inexplicably it failed. Now it seems that they have come across the Icarus 1. Since Icarus 1 also carried it’s own Stellar Bomb, and assuming that two Stellar Bombs are better than one Stellar Bomb, Icarus 2 changes course to rendezvous with Icarus 1.

In the course correction, things go wrong as they often do and they lose a critical team member, from there on, with mounting odds against them, the crew try to reach the point where they can launch the Stellar Bomb. Along the way they continue to lose crew members and the final outcome of the mission is in doubt.

Overall the movie is well made - good script, good direction, good acting. It would have for a better movie but for the introduction of a character who turned the latter part of the movie into a semi-slasher movie. Fortunately the movie was able to get over the silliness of the introduction of this character and ends in an expected, yet satisfying way.

One thing worth mentioning is the visual effects - you have never seen the sun like you will in Sunshine. It is beautiful yet deadly and the special effects are grand and totally believable. One of the memorable scenes is when the Icarus 2 is shown against the boiling cauldron flames on the surface of the sun, it is nothing but a speck, yet as we get closer we see that it is a massive spaceship in it’s own right. On the big movie screen, it was awe inspiring.

If you are one of the people who came out of 2001, not entirely sure of what happened, and that bothered you a great deal, you are sure to find the same here, skip it. But somehow if you found some meaning - even though you are not quite sure what, at the end of 2001, then this movie may be for you.

Personally when it comes out in DVD, Sunshine will be placed alongside my 2001, 2010 and ST : Wrath of Kahn DVDs.

Somehow, going in to see Hannibal Rising, I kept thinking, now I will finally get to see how someone become really really evil - kinda like what I expected from Star Wars prequels. The good news is that you do get a more compelling story than the Star Wars prequels, but the bad news is that the Star Wars prequels did not set that high a cinematic standard.

I was never a fan of the Hannibal movies or even the books. I mildly enjoyed Silence of the Lambs, but it never gave me the “chills,” that some wellknown movie critics supposedly got. And the only reason I saw Red Dragon was thanks to my HBO subscription.

But somehow I did expected a decently entertaining movie.

It tells the story of how Hannibal became what he is in Silence of the Lambs. At least in that movie Hannibal was compelling, intriguing and diabolical. Unfortunately all this movie managed to do was to strip away whatever mystique that surrounded that character.

We get to see how his mistreatment in WWII turns him into a revenge seeking Nazi killer. That is all you need to know going in. Yeah, there are details of how he takes revenge by killing off his tormentors, but even the more gruesome ones are not compelling. Gong Li adds some needed color to this otherwise drab movie, but just like her being cast in Miami Vice, she is simply miscast. She plays Lady Murasaki, who was bought in for no other reason than to bring some unnecessary oriental mystical stuff about Samurais - don’t ask.

While Hannibal wasn’t as badly portrayed as say Anakin was, a new comer Gaspard Ulliel performance wasn’t great either. But it is hard to feel any sense of drama when the worse thing this Hannibal does is chew off people’s cheeks - but that may not be his fault but because of a script bereft of any drama or suspense.

Seeing Hannibal Rising, I come to the conclusion that prequels are a bad idea when the original characters like Vader and Hannibal were so compelling portrayed. After squirming through the movie for two hours, I only got scared at the very end when I realized that there could potentially be a sequel.

I would gladly have missed this movie knowing what I do now. Save two hours of your time and go see a more entertaining movie like - TMNT, which I will review separately.

If you believe everything you have heard of this movie, then don’t go see it, because what you have heard and believed second-hand will be confirmed. Don’t wast your $ 12 or whatever you pay for movies in your area. Go see Lake House or an art house movie, you will probably enjoy it more.

But if you are interested in seeing a movie that makes no bones about what it is all about, then maybe, maybe this movie is for you. From the laughable simplistic and honest title, you already know what there is to know about the movie.

You don’t need to know any other character than Samuel L Jackson’s FBI agent Nelville Flynn, you don’t need to know about the guy who witnessed a crime implicating a dangerous criminal, you don’t need to know about the “your booty goes twang,” rapper and his two bodyguards, the two honeymooners, the obnoxious business traveller or the two little kids travelling on their own. You don’t need to know about anyone, OK maybe Julianna Margulies because, she is Julianna Margulies.

And you definitely don’t have to know about the plot.

But what you will see are lots and lots of snakes, and how these lots and lots of snakes will gruesomely kill these passengers. There are big snakes, black snakes, black and red snakes, small snakes, snakes that fight with each other, snakes that kill a cat, snakes that bite the breasts, snakes that bite the heavily made up fat women, snakes that bite a guys dick, snakes that spit venom, snakes that bite the lips of a women, snakes that come out of the toilet, snakes that come out of the oxygen mask containers, snakes that fall down from the light fixtures, snakes that come out of a hand bag, snakes that jump out of an airsickness bag, snakes that bite a little boy, snakes that bite the fat ass of a man, snakes that eat the ugly little dog, snakes that eat the fat obnoxious business man - well I hope I am not giving too much away, but you get the idea. Naming the movie, anything other than Snakes on a plane would have been a mistake.

As for the oft repeated line about mofo snakes and mofo planes, I expected the movie to be laced with swear words, but there was only one other instance of the F word. For a movie that is totally unrestrained, it was almost shocking in it’s lack of swear words. Anyone remember David Fincher’s Alien 3?

I have not had the creeps in a movie since I last watched “Nightmare on Elms Street,” but this movie made me cringe and gave me goosebumps during the extended, extremely graphic sequence that you could call the Snake Attack. For that, it was worth it and I was extremely entertained in a sick sort of way.

You walk into Taco Bell and order a $ 2.99 Burrito, you know what you gonna get. Same here, go see the movie, knowing full well what you gonna get, and you just might be entertained. Oh and by the way, don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.

Now here is an honest look at the movie. Samuel Jackson on the Daily Show.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZijbpxNXII]