Out of the ruins of North America rises Panem with the glimmering Capitol and its 12 districts. Years ago the rebellion ended  with 12 districts defeated and the thirteenth destroyed. The Capitol created the Hunger Games, in which a boy and a girl from each district is chosen to fight to the death, as a reminder that no one can over throw the Capitol.

 This year is no different until District 12 has an unexpected volunteer. Katniss Everdeen, “the girl on fire”(Jennifer Lawrence), takes the place of her sister, Primrose Everdeen, (Willow Shields), to help save her from the brutality of the games. Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) is the only child in a family of bakers and is also chosen to compete for District 12. They are whisked to the Capitol to compete with 22 other tributes in a fight to the death, showing how almost anything, even death sport, could end up on reality TV.

The action in this movie almost never slows down. Numerous scenes utilize a shaky camera effect that could cause motion sickness. The CGI looks amazing and so real that it is hard to tell if the effects are green screen or real. Every actor seemed to be made for his or her part in the movie.

“The Hunger Games” is an almost perfect adaptation of the book and currently holds the title of number one movie in the world. Raising $153 million in its first weekend, the movie beat out all of the Twilight series as well as Harry Potter in opening weekend revenue.

The movie is rated PG-13 for intense violence and disturbing material involving teens.

The film is well-rounded with plenty of excitement, puzzles and good laughs. Music creates a suspenseful mood that keeps you on the edge of your seat, while the special effects add breath-taking scenes. The characters are well-developed and all different from one another. The hero who works from the desk, Benji (Simon Pegg) the intelligence analyst, brings comical relief.  William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is the classic right-hand man to their leader, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton) plays the female hero.  

Ethan and his friends are on a mission to infiltrate the Kremlin in Russia for nuclear launch codes. Before they are able to accomplish the mission, they are detered by an explosion. Ethan is not the only one after the codes. The bombing is blamed on Ethan’s team and his organization IMF. Their job now is to retrieve the launch codes and stop nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia.

Will Ethan get the codes in time? It’s your mission to find out. If you miss your window of opportunity to see the film in theatres, plan B is to rent or purchase it upon release.

“Ghost Protocol” is rated PG-13. Visit the official site for trailer and features.

In the town of Whoville, Christmas is the most important time of the year, and when it rolls around, everyone goes crazy with Christmas cheer.  Well, everyone except for the Grinch, a hairy green Who that lives on Mt. Crumpet with his dog, Max. Cindy Lou Who, a young Who that isn’t quite feeling the Christmas spirit, does some investigation and discovers that the Grinch was humiliated as a child, which spurred his hatred of Christmas and the Whos. Cindy Lou befriends the Grinch and soon nominates him for Christmas Cheer Meister, which reunites the Grinch with many of his childhood friends and enemies.  As a final attempt to show his hatred for Christmas, the Grinch decides to steal all of the presents in Whoville and ruin everyone’s Christmas.

Jim Carry does a very good job portraying the sarcastic and misunderstood Grinch, while adding comedic relief through the side comments from the Grinch. A very young Taylor Momsen, who plays Cindy Lou Who, captures the innocence and childhood charm that Dr. Seuss intended for the character. The other cast members, including Jeffrey Tambor, who plays Mayor Maywho, and Christine Baranski, who plays Marth May Whovie, did a good job bringing the town of Whoville to life with enthusiasm and excitement.

 The costume design and set design of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is impressive.  While the costumes are very ostentatious, they portray the cartoon essence from the original book. The set design, complete with a giant Christmas tree and lots of fake snow, creates a sort of Winter Wonderland that is full of holiday spirit. The storyline is very easy to follow, and the viewer doesn’t have to think about multiple plot lines going on at the same time. 

If given the choice, I would choose the animated version over the live version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. While the amount of holiday spirit can be overwhelming at times, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is a must see every holiday season. With a heartwarming ending and an amusing plot, this movie keeps the viewers attention.  This movie is perfect for young children and people who want to reminisce over a childhood favorite.

The live action “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is rated PG for crude humor.

The new movie “The Muppets” uses clever humor and catchy songs to awaken the inner child inside adult viewers. It is the most sophisticated Muppet movie yet.

The movie follows brothers Gary (Jason Segel) and Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), who are the biggest Muppet fans ever. Along with Gary’s girlfriend, Mary (Amy Adams), they travel to Los Angeles to tour the Muppet Studios. When they arrive, they see that the place is abandoned and in jeopardy of being torn down by an evil oil driller (Chris Cooper). With the help of Kermit the Frog (voiced by Steve Whitmire), they travel around the world, reuniting the iconic gang again in efforts to save their studio.

This movie is full of guest stars, spanning from the NBC hit “The Office” to CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory.” Mary and Gary were perfect for their roles. 

“The Muppets” creates a modern spin on Muppet humor. This movie made me literally laugh out loud. The puns were so cleverly hidden that I sometimes had to analyze what I  heard to find the humor.

The music in the Muppets was cheesy at times but also had hilarious moments.  Classics like “We Built This City” by Starship were Muppet-ized. The songs movie will have you dancing your way out of the theater.

The Muppets is rated PG for some mild rude humor.

This remake has taken the classic Three Musketeers and  ‘modernized’ it using  humor it’s best to roll your eyes at and walk away. This would-be action movie  had moments where I was glad I came, but a few seconds later I was determining whether I would rather go home and sleep or be lazy and deal with the movie seat.

In the movie the young and cocky D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) joins forces with the three legendary Musketeers (Matther MacFadyen, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson) in the recreation of Alexandre Dumas’s story. They must stop the evil  Richlieu (Christoph Waltz), face the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) and backstabbing double agent Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) for the sake of France and its king, King Louis XII (Freddie Fox).

The purpose of the remaking of this movie seemed to be  money–not a new perspective on the original. It slows down at unimportant scenes and speeds up the moments you want to last forever. The one redeeming point of the film was the progression of the characters. They did not care for anything with meaning but in the end saw what they were truly fighting for, whether literal fighting or fighting a battle within themselves.

I would not recommend you spend your money and Friday night on this movie.  I give it a generous one star out of five. Wait until it’s out on rental and there isn’t a better movie you could watch instead. You’ll be glad with your choice.

This movie is rated PG-13.

  In a nut shell, “Sucker Punch” is about a girl, Baby Doll, locked away in an insane asylum by her abusive stepfather after her mother and little sister die. She and four other female inmates (Rocket, Sweet Pea, Amber, and Blondie) escape into imaginary worlds that parallel with their plan to escape the asylum. The lines between reality and imagination are skewed as the women fight against everything from robots to dragons to giant samurai made out of rock. However, the story is not all fighting and combat. Each of the inmates is fleshed out and given a nick name that reflects their personalities, and each go through their share of horrors

 Not only is the plot of “Sucker Punch” immersive, but the soundtrack and special effects are breathtaking. Zack Snyder creates visually stunning worlds and directs his cast into heart-stopping fights, filled with his signature slow motion shots. The costume designs and lighting in each of the worlds are also amazing, quickly setting the moods for each one. The soundtrack is a fast barrage of classic rock remixes and original songs that beat down on the audience from all sides, providing smooth transitions from one dream to another dream and finally to reality. Among the songs remixed are “Army of Me,” “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “White Rabbit,” and a mash up of “I Want It All” and “We Will Rock You.”

 The most impressive thing about the film is just how tough and heart-wrenching each actress makes her character. Emily Browning, who plays Baby Doll, plays wide-eyed innocence and naivety, and also vengeance and cruel persistence, amazingly well. Vanessa Hudgens, who plays Blondie and is mostly known for her role in teen romance flicks, does a complete turn in the role and proves herself to be a formidable action heroine. The close relationship between sisters Rocket and Sweet Pea is also believable and incredibly moving because of the acting skills of Jena Malone and Abbie Cornish. 

Overall, “Sucker Punch” was a thoroughly enjoyable not only for the spectacular special effects and fight scenes, but also its soundtrack, performances, and twisting plot. I highly recommend it for adventuresome movie goers and those who enjoy visually appealing films. 

“Sucker Punch” is rated PG-13 for thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and for language.

Released on Dec. 17, the plot of the movie is fairly simple. After regaining control of his video game company, ENCOM, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) mysteriously disappears. 20 years later, his son, Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), begins to look into his father’s disappearance and is pulled into the Grid, a digital world that his father created. Once there, he has to compete against ruthless digital beings in order to bring his father back to the real world.

There are both 2D and 3D scenes in TRON: Legacy. For example, all of the scenes taking place in the real world are 2D, while everything that takes place in the Grid is 3D. It adds to the strange sci-fi feel of the Grid and helps the viewer distinguish between reality and the digital world. So don’t go into the movie expecting it to be nothing but 3D gimmicks, since the special effects blend in instead of taking the audience by surprise.

The soundtrack, composed by French techno duo Daft Punk, is absolutely amazing. Not only does it have the distinctive techno feel of their other albums, it also has orchestral songs mixed in with synthesizers and beat machines. Daft Punk has created an entirely new sound and a standalone soundtrack for the movie. Be sure to stick through the end credits, because the song playing then is by far the best in the movie.

The most impressive thing about the movie is how effortlessly it translates the original 1982 designs into the sleek digital world of the Grid. The light cycles and suits do get upgrades, but they still have that classic TRON feel to them that’s sure to make fans of the original film happy.

So, if you’re looking for a movie with spectacular visual effects, good acting, and enough technology to make any nerd happy, I highly recommend TRON: Legacy.

TRON: Legacy is rated PG for sci-fi violence and brief mild language.

When the four Pevensie children are forced to leave their home country due to airplane bombings in London, they are unsure of what is to come.  However, soon they discover another land, one just beyond the wardrobe. 

During a game of hide and seek, the youngest sister Lucy, who is played by Georgie Henley, discovers a wardrobe filled with old coats and mothballs.  The extraordinary wardrobe takes her to a mysterious land called Narnia. 

Narnia is full of extravagant and odd creatures.  Lucy quickly makes friends and shares tea with a faun named Mr. Tumnus, played by James McAvoy.  Mr. Tumnus is a slave to the corrupt White Witch, played by Tilda Swinton, who makes Narnia “always winter but never Christmas”.

Lucy leaves Narnia, only to find that her brothers and sisters, Peter (William Moseley), Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Susan (Anna Popplewell) are still playing the same game of hide and seek.  Lucy shares her adventure with her siblings, who doubt its authenticity.   

All four children travel back to Narnia and share many extraordinary undertakings there, come against the many problems the inhabitants face, and meet Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson), the lion who guides them throughout their journey.

Narnia takes you on an adventure that is sure to fascinate you. It will capture you with its deeper meaning and excitement, and it is a suitable film for the whole family.

This film was an adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” and it brought Alice back to the magical world of Wonderland. While there, Alice is set with a great duty to kill the Jabberwocky, a monster that has been terrorizing all of the victims of the Red Queen. She quickly makes friends with the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and the White Queen. The cast of this movie did a spectacular job of creating dramatic effect in this film. Alice was played by Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp played the Mad Hatter, and the Red and White Queens were played by Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway, respectively.

Tim Burton’s recreation of this honored tale is also available in eye-popping 3D. If you enjoy watching 3D movies, this would be the one to see. The film was rated PG, and for good reason. With crazy imaginary creatures brought to life, the battle scenes are not for young children. However, overall, this movie was breathtaking and incredible, and it is completely worth your time and money.

The movie was an emotional rollercoaster for the avid fan, and from the very beginning, I was victim to the strange sensation of laughing and crying at the same time. While the seventh installment of the Harry Potter series is the darkest book, and now, movie, by far, the movie manages to keep a quirky sense of humor that beautifully reflects the attitude of the former films and the writing style of author J.K. Rowling herself.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” focuses on friends Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliff), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ronald Weasley’s (Rupert Grint) hunt for Voldemort’s Horcruxes, objects, which once destroyed, will aid Harry in confronting Voldemort for the last time. This movie is different from all of the others in that Harry, Ron, and Hermione never return to Hogwarts. They instead spend all of their time travelling in what could be assumed to be the English countryside, searching out for Horcruxes and avoiding attacks from Voldemort’s followers.

This movie combines the brilliant filming of director David Yates with the exceptional scoring of Alexandre Desplat to make for one of the best films of the series thus far. Newcomers to the books or movies may have trouble following some of the plot, but overall, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” is a wonderful movie that everybody can enjoy during the holiday season.