Bolt
96 min  -  Animation | Adventure | Comedy   -  21 November 2008 (USA)

The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real.

Directors: Byron Howard, Chris Williams
Writers: Dan Fogelman (screenplay), Chris Williams (screenplay), and 2 more credits »
Stars: John Travolta, Miley Cyrus and Susie Essman

Plot: A girl named Penny and a dog named Bolt star on a hit television series called Bolt in which the titular character has various superpowers and must constantly thwart the evil plans of the nefarious Doctor Calico. To gain a more realistic performance, the TV show's producers have deceived Bolt his entire life, arranging the filming in such a way that Bolt believes the television show is real and he really has superpowers. After filming completes for the latest episode, Bolt escapes from his on-set trailer mistakenly believing Penny has been kidnapped by the television villain. He attempts to break through a window, knocking himself unconscious as he falls into a box of foam peanuts. With no one aware Bolt is in the box, it is shipped from Hollywood to New York City. In New York, he meets Mittens, a female alley cat who bullies pigeons out of their food. Bolt, convinced this is another adventure, forces Mittens to help him get back to Hollywood, and the two start their journey westward on a truck after Bolt knocks Mittens unconscious. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Penny is deeply saddened over Bolt's disappearance but is convinced by the studio to continue filming with a Bolt look alike. As their adventure proceeds, Bolt starts to notice that his superpowers aren't working, and rationalizes this is the effect that styrofoam has on his body.

Surprised at his first feelings of both pain and hunger, Bolt is shown by Mittens how to act like a cute, but needy dog, and is rewarded by food. They meet Rhino, a fearless, TV-obsessed hamster and huge Bolt fan who joins their team. Mittens tries to convince Bolt that his superpowers aren't real, but their discussion is cut short by the arrival of Animal Control, who captures them both and transports them to an animal shelter. After being freed en route by Rhino, Bolt finally realizes that he is just a normal dog, but regains his confidence after Rhino (oblivious to this revelation) gives him a pep talk. They rescue Mittens from the shelter and escape, allowing them to continue their journey. Along the way, Bolt learns to enjoy typical dog activities (such as hanging his head out the window), but Mittens refuses to go farther than Las Vegas. She tells Bolt that his Hollywood life is fake and there is no real love for him there. Her emotional rant reveals that she was once a house cat, but was abandoned by her previous owner and left to brave the harsh streets alone and declawed. Bolt refuses to believe that Penny doesn't love him, and continues on alone, wishing Mittens the best. Rhino, learning of Bolt's departure, convinces Mittens that they must help him, and the two set off to find Bolt once again.

Bolt reaches the studio, finding Penny embracing his lookalike. Unaware that Penny still misses him and that her affection for the lookalike was only a part of a rehearsal for the show, he leaves, brokenhearted. Mittens, on a gantry in the studio, sees what Bolt does not: Penny telling her mother how much she misses Bolt. Realizing that Penny truly does love Bolt, Mittens follows Bolt and explains. At the same time, the Bolt-lookalike panics during filming and accidentally knocks over some torches, setting the sound stage on fire and trapping Penny. Bolt arrives and reunites with Penny inside the burning studio, but cannot get her out. In desperation, and unwilling to abandon Penny, Bolt tries using his super bark. The firefighters hear Bolt's barking through the building's vents and manage to pinpoint his location, rescuing him and Penny before they succumb to smoke inhalation.

Penny's mother subsequently quits the show when their agent attempts to exploit the incident for publicity purposes. Penny herself adopts Mittens and Rhino, and moves to a rural home to enjoy a simpler, happy lifestyle with Bolt and her new pets. The show continues, but with a replacement "Bolt" and "Penny" – "Penny's" new appearance being explained in the show as being serious injuries necessitating her undergoing facial reconstruction surgery, and adopting an alien abduction storyline (one that even Rhino finds unrealistic, and Bolt finds "ridonculous"). The epilogue scenes during the credits show Bolt, Penny, her mother, Mittens, and Rhino enjoying their new life together.

Freerunner(2011)

 Action

With a ticking bomb locked to his neck, a young freerunner races against the clock and all types of baddies to get from one end of the city to the other to save himself and his girlfriend.

Director: Lawrence Silverstein

Writers: Matthew Chadwick, Jeremy Sklar (story), and 3 more credits »

Stars: Sean Faris, Amanda Fuller and Danny Dyer 

Plot: Freerunner is a based on a conceptual where chosen freerunners have to race against time scanning their collar belt on every check point within a given time limit. Their collar is fitted with a bomb which will blow off if they get out of green zone (area allowed to race), or it can be detonated manually too by the owner. At every checkpoint the last one to arrive gets eliminated. Winner of the race gets a prize of million dollars.

The runners are chosen according to their performance in the local races. Ryan, Kid Elvis, Mitch, Decks, Turk, West, Freebo and Finch are the eight such runners chosen against their will to participate. Bets are placed on their heads as race begins. Their race activity is monitored by the camera's present all over the city and also their collar cam. Their objective is to make till the city bridge within sixty minutes or they all are dead.

Armageddon (I) (1998)
151 min  -  Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi - 1 July 1998 (USA)


When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.

Director: Michael Bay
Writers: Jonathan Hensleigh (screenplay), J.J. Abrams (screenplay), and 4 more credits »
Stars: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck

Plot: When a meteor shower destroys the Space Shuttle Atlantis and bombards parts of New York City, NASA discovers a Texas-sized asteroid will collide with Earth in 18 days, creating another extinction event. With the military, NASA scientists, led by Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) plan to embed a nuclear device 800 feet within the asteroid that, when ignited, will split the asteroid in two parts that will both safely fly past the Earth. NASA contacts Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), considered the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, for assistance and advice. Harry returns to NASA along with his daughter Grace (Liv Tyler) to keep her away from one of his young and more rambunctious drillers, A. J. Frost (Ben Affleck), who has fallen in love with her much to Harry's dismay. Harry and Grace learn of the critical issues of the asteroid, and Harry explains he will need his team members, including A. J., to help advise NASA. Once they have been rounded up, Harry's team offers to help but only after being assured of being rewarded from an esoteric list of demands.

Harry and his team reoutfit the mobile drillers, named the 'Armadillos', that NASA plans to use on the asteroid, and Harry comes to realize that his crew must participate in the mission to ensure success. NASA puts Harry's crew through a shortened rigorous training schedule. When fragments from the asteroid wipe out Shanghai and Paris, NASA is forced to reveal its plans to the world. NASA launches two military space shuttles, Freedom and Independence. Once in orbit, the shuttles dock with a Russian space station manned by Lev Andropov (Peter Stormare) to refuel. A. J. encounters a problem while trying to stop the fuel pumps, and the station is evacuated before it explodes, with Lev and A. J. safely aboard the Independence. The shuttles continue the plan, slingshotting around the Moon in order to land on the backside of the asteroid. However, while traveling through the debris field behind the asteroid, Independence is punctured by debris and appears to crash onto the asteroid. Grace, watching from NASA headquarters, becomes distraught over A. J.'s apparent death.

Freedom lands safely, but the occupants realize they overshot their target area, and must now drill through hard iron plate. They lose a significant amount of time and spare equipment in their attempt. Harry's team learn that the military has initiated a backup plan to remotely ignite the bomb on the surface of the asteroid. The crew is deemed expendable in this contingency. Harry and Dan work to disable this option, knowing it will have no effect on the asteroid's path. When they lose their entire driller and another crew member when they strike a gas pocket, they report their failure to NASA, but they soon discover that A. J., Lev, and "Bear" (Michael Clarke Duncan), another of Harry's crew, survived the crash of Independence and have come to help them with the Independence's driller. The survivors drive the other driller to the drilling site, and Harry puts his trust in A. J., who is able to drill to the required depth for the charge.

As the asteroid moves dangerously close to the earth, it begins to heat up and makes surface conditions extremely dangerous. When they try to plant the bomb in the deep hole, a sudden rock storm damages the triggering mechanism. One person must now stay behind to trigger it manually. The crew decides to draw straws, and A. J. draws the short one, but as he and Harry descend to the air lock, Harry rips the air hose from A. J.'s suit and shoves him back into the airlock, telling him that he's the son he never had, and he'd be proud to have him marry Grace. Harry assumes responsibility for detonating the bomb (and tells A. J. that his job is "taking care of my little girl"), and contacts Grace to say his last goodbyes. After the Freedom moves to a safe distance, Harry detonates the bomb at the last minute (and after some difficulty), and his life passes before his eyes as the bomb rips through the asteroid. The asteroid, as predicted, breaks into two, and both halves miss the Earth. Freedom lands, and the surviving crew are treated as heroes. At A. J. and Grace's wedding, photos of Harry and the other lost crew members are present in memoriam.

American History X (1998)
119 min  -  Crime | Drama   -  30 October 1998 (USA)

A former neo-nazi skinhead tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same wrong path that he did.

Director:
Tony Kaye
Writer:
David McKenna
Stars:
Edward Norton, Edward Furlong and Beverly D'Angelo

Plot:

Flashbacks throughout the film show Derek's transformation into a vengeful white supremacist in Venice Beach. Having already been influenced by his bigoted firefighter father's latent racism, Derek is driven to action when his father is shot and killed while fighting a fire in a suspected Compton drug den. Eventually Derek becomes second-in-command of a neo-Nazi street gang, The D.O.C., and entices young whites to join. The gang commits acts of intimidation, such as damaging a store owned by a Korean and challenging black players to basketball games to win the court as turf. These incidents go unnoticed by the family until Derek has an argument (involving Rodney King) with his mother's new boyfriend Murray (Elliot Gould) who is Jewish. Later that night while Derek is having sex with his equally-white supremacist girlfriend Stacey (Fairuza Balk), Danny informs Derek that three Crips members are attempting to steal their father's truck. Derek runs outside and shoots at two of the men with a pistol, killing the first one instantly. He shoots and wounds the second man, one of the black basketball players, and vows to "teach him a lesson" for trying to steal the truck his father gave him. He forces him to put his mouth on the curb, then brutally kills him with a curb-stomp. Danny watches in horror as this unfolds. The police arrest Derek as he smiles at a shocked Danny.

After being convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Derek is sentenced to three years at the California Institution for Men in Chino.[2] There he joins the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. After about a year, he becomes disillusioned with the gang, especially over the group's friendly dealings with a Mexican prison gang member, and their trafficking in narcotics. When he voices these opinions, he is first ignored and then reprimanded by the other white supremacists. Derek also develops a friendly rapport with black prison inmate, Lamont (Guy Torry), who works with him in the prison laundry. His fellow neo-Nazis take notice of this and savagely beat and rape him in the shower.

While still recovering from the attack, Derek is visited by his black, former English teacher Dr. Bob Sweeney (Avery Brooks), whom he asks for help to be paroled. Although Derek later became an anti-semitic neo-nazi, he had always maintained a level of respect for his black teacher. Sweeney informs him of Danny's aspiration to become a neo-Nazi like Derek. Sweeney confides in Derek that he used to hate white people as a youth, and he realized that racism is pointless. Sweeney asserts that Derek has spent his life pursuing answers, and then asks: "Has anything you've done made your life better?" This proves a turning point for Derek, who further distances himself from the Aryan Brotherhood and changes his outlook on life. Lamont emerges as Derek's only true friend in prison, and is part of the reason Derek stays alive as he uses what influence he has to persuade a contingent of black prisoners to protect Derek from his former Aryan Brotherhood associates.

The morning Derek is due to be released from prison, Danny's history teacher, Murray, reports Danny to the now principal Dr. Sweeney on account of Danny's history paper on Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography. Dr. Sweeney convinces Murray to give him another chance. He tells Danny that he will no longer attend Murray's class, and every day Dr. Sweeney will teach Danny history, a class they will call American History X. For their first lesson Dr. Sweeney asks Danny to write a new paper on the events leading up to Derek's incarceration. Danny reluctantly agrees after Sweeney threatens expulsion. In the evening when Derek returns home, he finds that Danny has become a white power skinhead and then tries and fails to convince him to leave the gang. Later that night at a neo-Nazi party which Derek and Danny are both attending (despite the fact that Derek made Danny promise he wouldn't go), Derek confronts and tells the leader, Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach), that he will no longer associate with him and the gang and tells him to "Stay away from him and Danny" at which point Cameron provokes and insults Derek who beats him up and knocks him unconscious before leaving his office. During an ensuing confrontation, Derek's neo-Nazi friend Seth Ryan (Ethan Suplee) runs after Derek and aims a pistol at him, which Derek wrestles from him, and points it at the angry crowd before running away from the party. Danny angrily confronts Derek, who tells him about his time and transformation in prison. The confession seems to prompt a change in Danny.

The following morning Danny finishes his paper, and Derek gets ready for a meeting with his parole officer. Derek walks Danny to school before his meeting, and on their way they stop at a café where they are met by Dr. Sweeney and a police officer. They tell Derek that Cameron and Seth were attacked the previous night and have been hospitalized. Derek claims no knowledge of the incidents, yet they ask him for help. Derek reluctantly agrees.

At school, after Danny uses the urinal in the bathroom, he is confronted by a young black student with whom he had a confrontation the previous day. The student shoots and kills Danny. When Derek arrives, he runs into the bathroom and tearfully cradles his dead brother in his arms. The film ends with Danny narrating part of his paper, in which he quotes the conclusion of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

 169 min  -  Action | Drama | History   -  24 July 1998 (USA)

Following the Normandy Landings, a group of US soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

Director:

Steven Spielberg

Writer:

Robert Rodat

Stars:

Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Tom Sizemore 

Plot:

The film opens as an elderly World War II veteran and his family visit the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial at Colleville-sur-mer; Normandy, France. The scene cuts to the morning of June 6, 1944, the beginning of the Normandy invasion, as American soldiers prepare to land on Omaha Beach. They struggle against dug-in German infantry, machine gun nests, and artillery fire, which cut down many of the men. Captain John H. Miller, the company commander of Charlie Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, survives the initial landing and assembles a group of soldiers to penetrate the German defenses, leading to a breakout from the beach.

The scene then shifts to the United States where General George Marshall is informed that three of four brothers in the Ryan family have all died within days of each other and that their mother will receive all three notices on the same day. He learns that the fourth son, Private First Class James Francis Ryan of Baker Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division is missing in action somewhere in Normandy. After reading to his staff Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby, Marshall orders that Ryan be found and sent home immediately because of the Sole Survivor Policy.

Back in France, three days after D-Day, Miller receives orders to find Ryan. He assembles six men from his company (Horvath, Mellish, Reiben, Jackson, Wade and Caparzo), plus one detailed from the 29th Infantry Division (Upham), who speaks fluent French and German, to accomplish the task. With no information about Ryan's whereabouts, Miller and his men move out to Neuville. On the outskirts of Neuville they meet a platoon from the 101st. After entering the town, Caparzo is wounded by a sniper in the chest, and slowly bleeds to death, since nobody can go out into the open without getting hit. Jackson is able to pick off the sniper after Caparzo dies. They locate a Private James Frederick Ryan from Minnesota, but soon realize that he's not their man. They find a member of Charlie Company, 506th, who informs them that his drop zone was at Vierville and that Baker and Charlie companies had the same rally point. Once they reach it, Miller locates a friend of Ryan's, who reveals that Ryan is defending a strategically important bridge over the Merderet River in the fictional town of Ramelle.

On the way to Ramelle, Miller decides to take the opportunity to neutralize a small German machine gun position close to an abandoned radar station, despite the misgivings of his men. Wade, their medic, is fatally wounded in the ensuing skirmish. The last surviving German, known only as "Steamboat Willie", incurs the wrath of all the squad members except Upham, who protests to Miller about letting the squad shoot the German soldier. The German pleads for his life and Miller decides to let him walk away, blindfolded, and surrender himself to the next Allied patrol. Viewing Miller's decision as letting the enemy go free, and no longer confident in Miller's leadership, Reiben declares his intention to desert the squad and the mission, prompting a confrontation with Horvath. The argument heats up, until Miller defuses the situation by revealing his pre-war occupation as an English teacher, a question upon which the squad had set up a betting pool. Reiben then reluctantly decides to stay.

The squad finally arrives on the outskirts of Ramelle, where they come upon three paratroopers ambushing a German half-track. Among the paratroopers is Ryan. After entering Ramelle, Ryan is told of his brothers' deaths, and their mission to bring him home, and that two lives had been lost in the quest to find him. He is distressed at the loss of his brothers, but does not feel it is fair to go home, asking Miller to tell his mother "when you found me I was here, and I was with the only brothers I have left," looking at the small band whose duty it was to defend a bridge and destroy an approaching German mechanized unit. Miller decides to take command and defend the bridge with what little manpower and resources are available.

The Germans arrive in force with more than 50 men supported by armor. In spite of inflicting heavy German casualties, most of the men—including Jackson, Mellish and Horvath—are killed. While attempting to blow the bridge, Miller is shot and mortally wounded. Just before a Tiger I reaches the bridge, an American P-51 Mustang flies over and destroys it, followed by more Mustangs and advancing American infantry and M4 Sherman tanks who rout the remaining Germans. Upham, who was cut off from the Americans and hid in a ditch positioned next to German soldiers, executes "Steamboat Willie" upon finding him with a group of surrendering Germans and after witnessing him being the one who shot Miller. Ryan, Reiben, and Upham are the only survivors of the battle. Ryan is with Miller as he dies and says his last words, "James... earn this. Earn it."

Back in the present, the elderly veteran is revealed to be Ryan at Miller's grave. He asks his wife to confirm that he has led a good life and that he is a "good man" and thus worthy of the sacrifice of Miller and the others. He then salutes Miller's grave as the camera pans down the gravestones to a placid American flag.