Mr. Popcorn (mrpopcorn)

"They won't stop until you are dead. Go now."

A young ninja turns his back on orphanage that raised him, leading to a confrontation with a fellow ninja from the clan.

REVIEW SOON

"Donuts don't wear alligator shoes."

This is the story of 1970s African-American action legend Black Dynamite. The Man killed his brother, pumped heroin into local orphanages, and flooded the ghetto with adulterated malt liquor. Black Dynamite was the one hero willing to fight The Man all the way from the blood-soaked city streets to the hallowed halls of the Honky House..

REVIEW
Black Dynamite is an absolutely perfect movie. It somehow manages to be a parody and the thing that it is parodying at the same time. You are watching this alternate universe (a fantasy of the 70s, filtered through the lens of Blaxploitation) and the characters are real and they believe in the fantasy. But you are also constantly reminded that you are watching a film, an intentionally bad one at that. All the things professional filmmakers try to avoid, they do on purpose: Boom mike hitting actor's head, obvious continuity errors, reusing the same shot to save money (exploding car flying off cliff), replacing a stunt actor in mid-sequence. The effect is delightful and hilarious.

Black Dynamite had me belly-laughing more than once. This movie brings back all that was best (and worst) of those slightly grainy, scratched, funk and wow-wow pedal laden classics of 70's cinema. The deliberate continuity errors and goofs are hilarious. Kudos to the crew and actors for really "getting it" and going for it. (I think the only movie I've seen recently where the actors were having so much fun was Tropic Thunder.)

"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency. REVIEW It is very hard to think of something bad about this film.The direction is incredible, bringing about highly memorable performances, and a beautifully shot film. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are sensational, carrying this film on their shoulders as if it were the easiest job in the world - a tribute to them as this film must have been an incredibly demanding shoot - it is a long and emotional film. The development of their friendship is wonderful to watch, as is Andy's gradual assimilation into the prison society - however sad it may well be. Frank Darabont it seems was the ideal man to take the helm of this movie. Many films in this sort of genre can feel like they are missing something, as if there were sections left on the editing room floor - not this film, everything fits perfectly in to place. This leads to a very long film, (which could perhaps be its only criticism - be warned it is long - though the longer the better for me) but one which sucks you right into the prison world, and keeps you right there until the utterly stunning last shot of the film! Viewers should be warned that some scenes are of a disturbing nature, dealing with issues that may offend some people. However, this should not put you off seeing this film. It deals with the realities of prison, and in no way glorifies the goings on. What we must realise however, is that this film is not necessarily about the brutality of prison and the way prison society operates, it is about human connection and interaction, and the indomitable nature of the human spirit. By the last scene we should feel uplifted at what has been achieved - not only by the characters in the story however, but by the film makers!

"Where's Olive?" A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus. REVIEW Much of "Little Miss Sunshine" shouldn't work, yet almost all of it does. One of the best ensemble casts in recent memory delivers this outrageous material with a tremendous amount of heart and conviction and, as a result, a screenplay that threatens to stretch the bounds of credibility comes across as believable and achingly poignant. The characters are given such strong motivations for their actions that everything they do and say feels utterly plausible, even when the film itself threatens to teeter into Faulknerian Southern Gothic crossed with National Lampoon's "Vacation." The writers, director and cast stubbornly refuse to allow us any tidy character assessments. Therefore, we see the brittle and harsh side of Toni Collette's otherwise loving mom; the warm, charming and please-like-me vulnerability of Greg Kinnear's otherwise smarmy and nearly intolerable dad; the intellectual pompousness and snobbery that peeks its head through Steve Carell's otherwise emotionally wounded suicide case; and the affectionate patriarch lurking behind the otherwise gruff and offensive exterior of Alan Arkin's grandfather, whose greatest crime may be that he's too honest. "Little Miss Sunshine" hands over this motley cast of characters and lets us glory in their imperfections, and through doing so helps us feel better about our own. As the movie points out, perfection isn't possible, and the aggressive pressure in American culture to achieve it is only making people miserable about failing at something they never had a chance of succeeding at in the first place. The movie is so warm hearted though, that its ultimate lesson isn't a downer. At the end, this close-knit family realizes that they're proud to be ordinary, and dammit, so am I.