The delicate planning scenario (The Great Train Robbery, Rififi), the humorous spin (Small Time Crooks, Quick Change), the hidden master plan (Inside Man, The Lookout), the crew of hardened professionals (Ronin, Heat), the sexy, over-the-top robbery (Oceans 12, The Italian Job), and the aftermath (Reservoir Dogs); these are the six core orbits almost all heist films fall into. If one were to draw a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between the six circles, Nimrod Antal's Armored would land almost exclusively in the aftermath category. There's no planning involved, no comic relief, no last minute twist, no grandiose kidnapping, no inkling of men with enough skill to count how many exits there are from any room they're in.

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Bang or whimper? Fire or ice? Happily, holiday moviegoers interested in pondering the end of the world can select scenarios far more elaborate than those simple, traditional choices.

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G-rated films are rare enough these days, but a G-rated film not meant strictly for kids? Intriguing. It was the one aspect of Mr. Bean's Holiday that caught my attention. The movie is obviously meant to appeal to a wide audience -- an international audience, in fact. Unfortunately the humor is uneven and generally tended to annoy me more than it entertained. However, fans of Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean character, from the TV show or the other movie, might feel very different about the film.

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Patton Oswalt has already proven his chops as a voice actor in Ratatouille, but few would have pegged him as a flat out great actor. He proves his chops in Big Fan, delivering a deep and nuanced performance as the world’s most deeply committed… and perhaps deeply disturbed super fan.


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Upon recently re-viewing Rob Zombie's 2007 take on the classic Halloween, I felt a little bit less harsh about it. Don't get me wrong: it's still mighty tedious and nowhere near scary, but at least I got the impression this time around that the rocker-turned-auteur was trying to fashion more of a character study around boogeyman Michael Myers -- who he was, why he was -- and while diluting the mystique of our killer effectively diluted the suspense, the film still delivered on the basest level of having someone get visibly, viscerally dispatched every so often. If all you had to ask of that film was a body count, Halloween slowly but surely delivered.

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The first rule of filmmaking is to live within your means. If all you have is a man, a bike and a road, make a movie about a man on the road with his bike, not a gang battling mutants on a post-apocalyptic world, no matter how much more appealing the second option may be to your sensibilities. Mutant Chronicles suffers from this exact problem. While it's hard to fault director Simon Hunter for his ambition, the harsh truth is that his pockets weren’t deep enough to pull off the story he wanted to tell. That the movie has languished on a shelf for two years before being released indicates many people involved in the project must have realized this too.


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Many, many people grew up reading Beverly Cleary's kid-lit books about Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby and their adventures on Klickitat Street. It should be no surprise that a film adaptation has been created; the only surprise is that it didn't happen earlier. Fans will note there was a Canadian TV show based on the characters in the 1980's, but until now Ramona and her pals have stayed off the big screen.

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What does one say about a movie like Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus? The name alone really spells out what kind of B grade horror movie this really is. Add to that the film stars Debbie "Electric Youth" Gibson and Lorenzo "Renegade" Lamas and you begin to understand that expecting anything from this movie except good time awfulness is setting yourself up for disappointment.



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"Just when they thought I was out...They pull me back in."

Well, they can try anyway, and try is what they do in Ash Adams' 2010 crime drama Once Fallen now available on DVD. This is the complicated story of Chance (Brian Presley), a drug pusher released after five years in prison and now wanting to turn his life around. His father, Liam, played by Ed Harris, is also in prison, for a killing he committed when Chance was a young boy, and now he has become leader of an Aryan Brotherhood gang.

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El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is recruited by CIA agent Sheldon Sands (Johnny Depp) to kill General Emiliano Marquez (Gerardo Vigil), leader of a guerilla force who has been hired by Mexican drug lord Armando Barillo (Willem Dafoe) to assassinate the President of Mexico (Pedro Armendáriz Jr.) and overthrow the government. Many years ago, El Mariachi and his wife Carolina (Salma Hayek) confronted Marquez in a shootout and wounded the general; in retaliation, Marquez took the lives of Carolina and their daughter in an ambush. In addition to El Mariachi, Sands convinces former FBI agent Jorge Ramírez (Rubén Blades) to come out of retirement and kill Barillo, who had murdered his partner Archuleta in the past. Furthermore, AFN operative Ajedrez (Eva Mendes) is assigned by Sands to tail Barillo.


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Chris Vaughn (Dwayne Johnson), a former U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant, returns to his small home town in Washington State to find some work at the cedar mill, but he finds that it closed down three years ago. Now, there is a new casino in town, owned by his old school friend, Jay Hamilton (Neal McDonough), who is taking liberties because of the chaotic economic situation. With the mill closed down, the casino is the main source of income for the town. Vaughn decides to check out the casino, and sees the craps dealer use loaded dice. When Vaughn gets violent, the security guards subdue him, then carve his abdomen and leave him for dead, but he is found and hospitalized, and eventually recovers. Vaughn goes to the Sheriff (Michael Bowen) to place charges on the guards, but the Sheriff refuses to allow Vaughn to press charges because the casino is viewed as too important to the town's economy. After Vaughn also finds out that his nephew, Pete (Khleo Thomas), experimented with crystal meth, which was sold to his friends by a casino security guard. Vaughn goes to the casino, and using a piece of lumber as a club, he beats the security guards, and makes his point to Jay Hamilton that he will not tolerate the crime in his town anymore. Vaughn is eventually caught by the Sheriff and his deputies when he is trying to drive home.



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A Chinese man robs the Bank of England. To evade the police, he becomes the valet for Phileas Fogg, an inventor. Phileas is trying to break the 50-mph speed barrier, and after succeeding with the help of Passepartout, they head to the Royal Academy of Science. There, Fogg is insulted by the other "brilliant minds", in particular William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who believes that everything worth discovering has already been discovered and there is no need for further progress. Phileas is pressured into a bet to see whether he can travel around the world in 80 days. If he wins he will become Minister of Science in Lord Kelvin's place, if not he will destroy his lab and never invent anything again. Phileas and Passpartout start their journey around the world, taking a carriage and leaving London after a confrontation with Inspector Fix, a corrupt officer hired by the Royal Academy of Science to stop them.



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A scientist, Dr Holander, takes his niece Miranda to Mexico in an attempt to reverse the effects of the alien DNA he used to create her. However the treatment goes horribly wrong, and sets Miranda on a killing spree as she sets out to find a mate.

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