Carrie-anne Moss

Like an ancient Roman version of 2012, this disaster epic is a pure guilty pleasure, sparking plenty of laughter along with the massive effects-based carnage. It also helps that the screen is packed with muscle men in skimpy skirts. The actors dive in with gusto, adding plenty of personality to the ridiculous dialogue, while director Paul W.S. Anderson shamelessly ramps up the action mayhem.

It begins in AD 79 Britain, where Roman Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland) is on the rampage, slaughtering the entire Celtic community of young Milo (Kit Harington), who is taken to Londinium to become a gladiator. When he rises to fame, he's transferred to Pompeii, where he immediately catches the eye of young noblewoman Cassia (Emily Browning), much to the scowly disapproval of her politically active parents (Carrie-Anne Moss and Jared Harris). An outsider among the local slaves, Milo is befriended by tough guy fellow gladiator Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). And when Corvus comes to town to claim Cassia as his bride, Milo decides to take a dangerous stand for both revenge and the girl. Meanwhile, Mount Vesuvius is rumbling, getting ready to unleash plenty of movie-style havoc.

It's impossible to watch this without thinking of the cheesy, similarly styled TV series Rome or Spartacus, with their corny melodramas, excessive violence and bare flesh. Even though this is on a much bigger scale with seriously enormous 3D special effects, it's just as cheesy. And equally entertaining as well. Harington is terrific as the hunky hero, building much stronger chemistry with the honourable Akinnuoye-Agbaje than the distressed Browning. And seasoned veterans like Harris, Moss and Sutherland clearly have a great time chomping madly on the scenery as Pompeii burns.

Continue reading: Pompeii Review

Vivienne Freeman (Emily Hampshire), a young hitchhiker with more spirit than fear, enters a restaurant, scans it, and picks a man sitting alone to delight with her company. Alex Hughes (Alan Rickman), a laconic Englishman, barely tolerates the intrusion on his quiet privacy with a gabby adolescent and, after displaying what is, for him, considerable patience, rejects her suggestion to ride with him. He leaves, as alone as when he came in, and drives off.

Continue reading: Snow Cake Review

The film's beginning will not allay your fears. Kale (LaBeouf) and his dad (Matt Craven) are fishing. Knee-deep in a lake and surrounded by mountains, they share a particularly cheesy father-son moment. We see that he's not just Kale's father, he is his friend. The relationship is so clichéd and the setting so cloyingly idyllic, that one wants to run for the (admittedly beautiful-looking) hills. However, before you go to switch off the Hallmark channel, Caruso offs the dad in a car accident just brutal enough to forgive what came before and dissolve some preconceptions. It's a pretty good move (although not quite Janet Leigh in the Bates Motel shower) and sets us up for a film that effectively handles and plays its audience.

Continue reading: Disturbia Review

Book-ended by a infuriatingly obvious graduation speech, the film kicks off with Mini (Nikki Reed) explaining how she needs to be a hooker, because modern, rich life is too damn easy. Her trick this evening just happens to be Martin (Alec Baldwin), her stepfather, who somehow doesn't notice the voice of his stepdaughter and agrees to turn off the lights for the entirety of the night. When confronted, Martin is apprehensive, but Mini sees opportunity in this equation. She quickly makes Martin a sex slave and devises a plan to get Diane (Carrie-Anne Moss), her mom sent to the looney bin, allowing for her and Martin to not have to hide their affair. Well, things go bad: Diane dies from an overdose, their neighbor (Jeff Goldblum) gets suspicious, and Detective Garson (Luke Wilson, for some reason) starts snooping around. Soon, Martin and Mini start questioning each other's motives.

Continue reading: Mini's First Time Review

The mouse in this stock cat and mouse game is disgraced FBI agent Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart), a dedicated G-man with a high-profile blemish on his service record. His grievous error on a previous case earned him a demotion to the Bureau's dead-end Albuquerque office, though it's not long before Mackelway's hot on the trail of another cold-blooded killer. This wandering murderer (Ben Kingsley) exhibits no motive and establishes no pattern to his killings, but enjoys faxing Mackelway clues to drag the investigator deeper into a series of perplexing mind games.

Continue reading: Suspect Zero Review