angelapillsbury

Peter Berg is fast becoming the master of action sequences involving the military and The Kingdom is another high octane film of such kind. The Kingdom is a hard film to pigeonhole because it crosses genres so freely. The pacing is also a little unwieldy. Those who are there for the higher octane elements may distracted during the lengthy investigative section. And those who are hoping for something with the heft and complexity of Syriana may find the all-action conclusion to be a little too loud (not to mention that the resolution hinges on couple of minor contrivances). Overall, however, the film is smart and engaging, and if it plays a little on our fears of the next big terrorist attack, it does so without feeling exploitative. The strength of the picture is its intensity. Even during its slower parts, we can feel tension creeping in around the edges.

The premise of Airheads sounds promising. Three musicians of limited intelligence (Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler) break into a radio station and hold the DJ (Joe Mantegna) and manager (Michael McKean) at gunpoint to get their demo played. Things go wrong, however, and when the police show up, the "Lone Rangers" have to take hostages. One problem, though- their real-looking weapons are water pistols. Despite a chuckle here and there, most of Airheads isn't worth the film it was processed on. It requires an effort to avoid gritting one's teeth as obvious comic opportunities are allowed to pass by untouched. Final consensus: Considering the poor quality of the production in general, and the screenplay in particular, Airheads appears to be an apt title.

Whenever a book is adapted into a movie, there are sacrifices and interpretations that must be made because the totality of the written work cannot possibly be translated to the screen. These choices can become exceptionally difficult when the work is one as widely-read and well-beloved as Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For this latest filmed version, Stephen Sommers' script is faithful in spirit -- if not in all the details -- to the original. Much of Twain's keen insight into human nature, as well as his finely-tuned sense-of-humor, is kept intact in Disney's 1993 The Adventures of Huck Finn. It should be noted, however, that significant chunks of the novel are missing, including the bulk of the ending, and the character of Tom Sawyer doesn't make an appearance. While it's easy to debate the merits of what was cut, the final result manages to convey a good sense of the book's scope.