Mekhi Phifer

A sharp improvement on the original, this second entry in The Divergent Series has a much stronger sense of its premise and characters, which makes it much more exciting to watch. Where Divergent felt gimmicky and a bit shallow, this chapter pushes the characters much deeper, giving the actors a chance to bring them more engagingly to life, which makes the odd set-up more involving as well.

It picks up immediately where the first film ended, with Tris (Shailene Woodley) escaping from post-apocalyptic, segmented-society Chicago with her boyfriend Four (Theo James), her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) and their shifty cohort Peter (Miles Teller). Hiding out in the Amity agricultural community, they know that Erudite leader Janine (Kate Winslet) has sent her goons (Jai Courtney and Mekhi Phifer) to find them. Actually, she needs a divergent to open an artefact from the pre-war days so she can rid Chicago of pesky divergents forever. When their location is discovered, Tris and pals head back into the city, teaming up with factionless leader Joanna (Naomi Watts) and getting help from the head of Candor (Daniel Dae Kim) before going to Erudite to face Janine.

The story has a strong push to it, driving these rebels ever closer to a confrontation with their nasty nemesis, and their journey is fraught with surprise wrinkles, vicious battles and some mind-bending imagery. In fact, there are so many dreams, flashbacks and computer simulations that it's not always clear if what's on screen is actually happening or not. But it all looks so cool that we hang on to discover where it'll go next, so the two hours passes briskly, and sometimes breathlessly. The film looks terrific, as director Robert Schwentke keeps the focus on the characters while creating some amazing effects around them, especially in the simulation sequences.

Continue reading: Insurgent Review

Teens tackle yet another dystopian future in this well-made but derivative franchise-launcher. Filmmaker Neil Burger is more interested in whizzy visuals and a thorny plot to pay much attention to the characters or larger underlying themes, which leaves the film feeling eerily superficial. So while the film is relatively entertaining, it ultimately feels rather pointless.

The story's set after a war has reduced Chicago to a walled-in enclave of people divided into five stabilising factions: charitable Abnegation, peaceful Amity, honest Candor, defending Dauntless and brainy Erudite. Tris (Shailene Woodley) was born to parents (Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn) who are leaders in Abnegation, but when time comes for her to select her own path she discovers that she's Divergent, a cross-faction state that threatens those in power. So she chooses to join Dauntless, entering intense physical training under the tutelage of sexy hunk Four (Theo James) and harsh hunk Eric (Jai Courtney). then Dauntless' soldiers get caught up in a power struggle as Erudite leader Jeanine (Kate Winslet) plots to take governmental responsibilities from Abnegation.

All of this scene-setting takes about half of the film's running time, and it's frankly not very exciting. Burger makes sure it looks fantastic, with seamless visual effects, impressive stunt work and flashy action sequences, but the character drama takes longer to kick off. And there's also the problem that it essentially feels like a cross between The Hunger Games and Harry Potter as an unusually gifted teen takes on a controlling society.

Continue reading: Divergent Review

The movie stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Julie James, the teenager who was stalked last summer by the person who she and her friends ran over the summer before that. Shouldn't the movie be called I Still Know What You Did 2 Summers Ago? Anyway, Julie and her roommate Karla (Brandy) win a trip to the Bahamas, even though Julie is still haunted by what happened last summer..

Continue reading: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Review

This is what happens when you produce a vanity project for someone who hasn't quite graduated to B-movie star yet. Nothing against Jessica Alba; she's cute, she can dance okay, and she was pretty good on that FOX sci-fi show a few years ago. (No, not MANTIS. Or Strange Luck. Or VR-5. Or Millennium. Or even Tru Calling.) But her performance in Honey reminded me of a singer trying to act -- and Alba, as far as I know, isn't a singer.

Continue reading: Honey Review

Somehow the people at Universal Pictures got it into their heads that easy-on-the-eyes, thin-on-talent Jessica Alba (star of Fox's short-lived "Dark Angel") should be a movie star.

So apparently a room full of monkeys was recruited to write "Honey," a laughable follow-your-dreams disaster in which the actress plays a sprightly, adorably indomitable, J.Lo-inspired babe from the Bronx who becomes a music-video dance choreographer, turns down a director's demand for sex, gets black-listed, then realizes what's really important in life is opening a neighborhood dance studio for street kids.

Trite and graceless, it's supposed to be the story of the girl's struggle to make it in showbiz, but no sooner does she point at a TV and say, "Check it. That's what I'm talkin' about. I should be dancing in videos like this!" than a video director (David Moscow) sees her shaking her stuff in a club and offers her a job.

Continue reading: Honey Review

The familiar story told in "Paid In Full," the story of a good ghetto kid seduced into the drug trade with tragic results, covers no new territory. But it's a story told so well -- with veracity, raw compassion, well-drawn characters and strong performances -- that its common cautionary tale feels as compelling as it might have been in the 1980s, when the film takes place and before this type of movie became its own genre.

"Paid" plays as if it were made by people who lived it. People like Ace (Wood Harris), a reticent clerk at a neighborhood dry cleaners who has always been happy to blend into the woodwork and just be a survivor, even as he sees his closest friends becoming flush with cash, clothes and cool cars."That ain't my flow, man," Ace says when his best friend Mitch (Mekhi Phifer) tries to lure him into his small-time drug empire.

But as temptations mount (a local Colombian cartel middleman leaves him a cocaine "tip" in a jacket pocket at the cleaners), power becomes attractive (he'd like to get his sister away from her pimp-dealer boyfriend) and opportunities present themselves (Mitch gets arrested, leaving his street business up for grabs). Ace succumbs, in small increments, to the enticements of what seems like an effortless road to living well.

Continue reading: Paid In Full Review