A mother moves in with her thirty-something son, Ramzi, and his life-long friend, Tarek. This new situation precipitates a series of events and realizations that lead the two men to … See full summary »
Will Esperanza be able to show Tom the truth about his past, present and future? Will she be able to save all the young people in the world who suffer from depression near Christmas Time? … See full summary »
Director:
Elizabeth Blake-Thomas
Stars:
Isabella Blake-Thomas,
Britt Flatmo,
Julia Parker
When valuable objects begin disappearing throughout Europe, it’s up to a band of brilliant babies to travel overseas and catch the thieves before it’s too late.
An adorable group of talking baby-detectives travel to the deserts of Egypt to track down the naughty baby-criminal mastermind, “Big Baby”, and his partner, the super-villain “Moriarty”.
A group of smart-talking toddlers find themselves at the center of a media mogul’s experiment to crack the code to baby talk. The toddlers must race against time for the sake of babies everywhere.
At the age of 35, Ece is the assistant general manager of a company that produces baby diapers. There is a happy relationship with her lover Alper. Because of Ece, they can not get married…. See full summary »
Director:
Serkan Acar
Stars:
Belçim Bilgin,
Sezai Paracikoglu,
Ata Berk Mutlu
Three talented teens enter a local competition to be the next big Girl Band, thwarted at every turn, by bad luck, bad timing, bad neighbors and bad boyfriends, but aided by a crazy uncle … See full summary »
Director:
Elizabeth Blake-Thomas
Stars:
Isabella Blake-Thomas,
Gabe Eggerling,
Jaime Adler
A horror film for children. A family of archaeologists find the fifth pendant that has been missing for centuries. Unfortunately a spirit has also been searching for this pendant. Once all … See full summary »
Director:
Elizabeth Blake-Thomas
Stars:
Richard Tyson,
Jake Brennan,
Abigail Titmuss
In 1962, Tony “Tony Lip” Vallelonga, a tough bouncer, is looking for work with his nightclub is closed for renovations. The most promising offer turns out to be the driver for the African-American classical pianist Don Shirley for a concert tour into the Deep South states. Although hardly enthused at working for a black man, Tony accepts the job and they begin their trek armed with The Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for safe travel through America’s racial segregation. Together, the snobbishly erudite pianist and the crudely practical bouncer can barely get along with their clashing attitudes to life and ideals. However, as the disparate pair witness and endure America’s appalling injustices on the road, they find a newfound respect for each other’s talents and heart to face them together. In doing so, they would nurture a friendship and understanding that would change both their lives. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
-The music:–It is the pianist Kris Bowers who composes the music of the film. It is also he who plays the pieces of Don Shirley and doubles Mahershala Ali. A musician since he was four, Bowers has already composed film music, but Green Book is the first studio film of this size. Like Shirley, Bowers plays exclusively on Steinway pianos, all made by hand, because “they project the sound like no other instrument”. See more »
Goofs
The film is set in the early 60s. In one scene, Tony and Don eat extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken which wasn’t introduced until 1972. See more »
Quotes
Tony Lip:
You know, when you first hired me, my wife went out and bought one of your records. The one about the orphans?
Dr. Don Shirley:
Orpheus in the Underworld. It’s based on a French opera. And those weren’t children on the cover, those were demons in the bowels of Hell.
Tony Lip:
No shit! They must’ve been naughty kids!
“Larry the Crow” gets a mention. This was an actual crow that Viggo Mortensen found injured near the set, and tried in vain to nurse back to health. He was no doubt named for Viggo’s favorite soccer team, San Lorenzo (Saint Lawrence in Spanish). The team nickname is “The Crows”. See more »
Six years after the events of “Wreck-It Ralph,” Ralph and Vanellope, now friends, discover a wi-fi router in their arcade, leading them into a new adventure.
The Incredibles hero family takes on a new mission, which involves a change in family roles: Bob Parr (Mr Incredible) must manage the house while his wife Helen (Elastigirl) goes out to save the world.
Director:
Brad Bird
Stars:
Craig T. Nelson,
Holly Hunter,
Sarah Vowell
The special bond that develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax, and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.
A Lion cub crown prince is tricked by a treacherous uncle into thinking he caused his father’s death and flees into exile in despair, only to learn in adulthood his identity and his responsibilities.
Directors:
Roger Allers,
Rob Minkoff
Stars:
Matthew Broderick,
Jeremy Irons,
James Earl Jones
During her family’s move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches, and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts.
Miles Morales is a New York teen struggling with school, friends and, on top of that, being the new Spider-Man. When he comes across Peter Parker, the erstwhile saviour of New York, in the multiverse, Miles must train to become the new protector of his city. Written by Tom Daly
Completing the animation for the film required up to 180 animators, the largest crew ever used by Sony Pictures Animation for a film. See more »
Goofs
Miles, strangely, blames himself for ‘being followed’ to Aunt May’s house, when by then it was public knowledge that May’s nephew was Spider-Man. (The memorials placed in front of her house are evidence of this ubiquity; although, as another plot hole, the obviousness of the backyard shed being a brightly glowing, emblem-showing Spider-Cave entry door would have tipped off the neighbors long before Spider-Man’s passing, that May knows Spider-Man). Either way, it makes perfect sense to assume the villains would go to May’s to find the Spider-Men they were pursuing. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Peter Parker:
[narrating]
Alright, let’s do this one last time. My name is Peter Parker. I was bitten by a radioactive spider and for ten years I’ve been the one and only Spider-Man. I’m pretty sure you know the rest. I saved a bunch of people, fell in love, saved the city, and then I saved the city again and again and again… And, uh… I did this.
[shot of Spidey doing the emo dance from “Spider-Man 3”]
Peter Parker:
We don’t really talk about this. Look, I’m a comic book, I’m a cereal, did a Christmas album…
The Columbia Pictures, Marvel, Sony Pictures Animation and Pascal Pictures logos are affected by the Super Collider device, causing them each to shift between various alternate versions. See more »
Old school magic meets the modern world in this epic adventure. Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) thinks he’s just another nobody, until he stumbles upon the mythical sword in the stone, Excalibur. Now, he must unite his friends and enemies into a band of knights and, together with the legendary wizard Merlin (Sir Patrick Stewart), take on the wicked enchantress Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson). With the future at stake, Alex must become the great leader he never dreamed he could be. Written by https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-kid-who-would-be-king
The names of Alex’s friends correspond with Knights of the Round Table: Lance is Sir Lancelot, Kaye is Sir Kay, and Bedders is Sir Bedivere. See more »
Goofs
Throughout the movie they are counting down to an upcoming solar eclipse. Yet the Moon each night gets more and more full with it being completely full the night before the eclipse. A solar eclipse can only happen on a new Moon approximately two weeks away from a full moon. See more »
Quotes
Alex:
[examining Excalibur]
There’s something written on the guard. Put it into Google Translate.
Bedders:
It means “Sword of Arthur”. What if it’s the Sword in the Stone?
On the run in the year of 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken.
Director:
Travis Knight
Stars:
Hailee Steinfeld,
Jorge Lendeborg Jr.,
John Cena
A failed reporter is bonded to an alien entity, one of many entities who have invaded Earth. But the entity takes a liking to Earth and decides to protect it.
The Avengers and their allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.
Directors:
Anthony Russo,
Joe Russo
Stars:
Robert Downey Jr.,
Chris Hemsworth,
Mark Ruffalo
A war-hardened Crusader and his Moorish commander mount an audacious revolt against the corrupt English crown in a thrilling action-adventure packed with gritty battlefield exploits, mind-blowing fight choreography, and a timeless romance.
T’Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country’s past.
Director:
Ryan Coogler
Stars:
Chadwick Boseman,
Michael B. Jordan,
Lupita Nyong’o
Foul-mouthed mutant mercenary Wade Wilson (AKA. Deadpool), brings together a team of fellow mutant rogues to protect a young boy with supernatural abilities from the brutal, time-traveling cyborg, Cable.
Director:
David Leitch
Stars:
Ryan Reynolds,
Josh Brolin,
Morena Baccarin
Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy.
Thor is imprisoned on the planet Sakaar, and must race against time to return to Asgard and stop Ragnarök, the destruction of his world, at the hands of the powerful and ruthless villain Hela.
Director:
Taika Waititi
Stars:
Chris Hemsworth,
Tom Hiddleston,
Cate Blanchett
When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, Diana, an Amazonian warrior in training, leaves home to fight a war, discovering her full powers and true destiny.
Peter Parker balances his life as an ordinary high school student in Queens with his superhero alter-ego Spider-Man, and finds himself on the trail of a new menace prowling the skies of New York City.
Director:
Jon Watts
Stars:
Tom Holland,
Michael Keaton,
Robert Downey Jr.
As Scott Lang balances being both a Super Hero and a father, Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym present an urgent new mission that finds the Ant-Man fighting alongside The Wasp to uncover secrets from their past.
Arthur Curry, half human half from Atlantis, goes on a trip of a lifetime. Not only does this adventure compel him to come to terms with his real identity, but it also forces him to discover whether he is entirely worthy of fulfilling his own destiny: becoming a king. Written by Domingo Alvarez
When Arthur and Mera find their sea craft, the Annabelle doll from director James Wan‘s “Conjuring” horror films can be seen on the floor. See more »
Goofs
The hijacked Russian submarine appears to be an Akula class. This class has 8 torpedo tubes but fires at least 9. Reloading torpedoes takes several minutes. See more »
Quotes
Thomas Curry:
[to Arthur]
Your mother always knew you were special.
Two ten year-old boys are detained by police under suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler. A true story based on interview transcripts and records from the James Bulger case which shocked the world in 1993.
The world at an end, a dying mother sends her young son on a journey to the place that grants wishes. The Last Boy is a Sci-Fi, Fantasy drama inspired by the works of the 13th Century Sufi Mystic and Poet Rumi.
In this humanistic comedy, set against the backdrop of economic crises and bad news, an extravagant international cast of characters meet, fight, and fall in love, while hiding from the end… See full summary »
Director:
Vladan Nikolic
Stars:
William Leroy,
Katerina Misichroni,
Robert Rees
A group of six teenagers find themselves haunted and terrorized by a Kuntilanak when they try to find their missing friend inside Lawang Sewu, a supposedly haunted building in Semarang.
A mentally ill woman with a severe personalty disorder develops a strange relationship with her dolls. She becomes victim to insomnia and even self-mutilation leaving her son to unfold the strange truth about Anne’s illness.
Director:
Joseph Mazzaferro
Stars:
Melissa Daddio,
Michael Kenneth Fahr,
John Kyle
Three students went missing in October 2018. Sarah McCormick, Kyle Miller, Joseph Moore. Authorities have now come forward with the information that video surveillance was found inside of … See full summary »
Directors:
Joseph Mazzaferro,
Jospeh D. Thomas
Stars:
Lisa Arcaro,
Mara Darrow,
Michael Kenneth Fahr
“Back Roads” centers on a young man stuck in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters after the shooting death of his abusive father and the arrest of his mother. … See full summary »
Director:
Alex Pettyfer
Stars:
Jennifer Morrison,
Juliette Lewis,
Nicola Peltz
Two paranormal investigators are unexpectedly thrown together in the hope of solving a 100 year mystery. Locked for three nights in a house with a dark and unsettling past, the two … See full summary »
Director:
David Ryan Keith
Stars:
Michael Koltes,
Paul Flannery,
Steve Weston
Philip is a disabled white billionaire, who feels that life is not worth living. To help him in his day to day routine, he hires Del, an African American parolee, trying to reconnect with his estranged wife. What begins as a professional relationship develops into a friendship as Del shows his grouchy charge that life is worth living. Written by Tom Daly
Nicole Kidman earned a rare feat when two of her films landed first and second place at the box office in the same weekend for The Upside and Aquaman. The second time this occurred was in 2013 with Jessica Chastain for Mama and Zero Dark Thirty. See more »
Mass in B Minor, BWV 232: Domine Deus (Soprano I, Tenor)
Written by Johann Sebastian Bach
Performed by Markus Brutscher, Veronika Winter, Stephan Schreckenberger, Kai Wessel, Hans-Georg Wimmer, Rheinische Kantorei, Das Kleine Konzert, Hermann Max & Johanna Koslowsky
Courtesy of Naxos in America, Inc. See more »
Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities. They must try to escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.
Director:
M. Night Shyamalan
Stars:
James McAvoy,
Anya Taylor-Joy,
Haley Lu Richardson
On the run in the year of 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken.
Director:
Travis Knight
Stars:
Hailee Steinfeld,
Jorge Lendeborg Jr.,
John Cena
Director M. Night Shyamalan said that the original cut of the film had a run time of nearly three and a half hours. He “trimmed it up a bit” by cutting three of Kevin Crumb’s twenty-three personalties out of the film. See more »
Goofs
Ending scene, when the 3 “remaining” characters are awaiting for the people’s reaction in the train station, Mrs. Price starts to hold the hands of her 2 fellow survivors, and the coffee cup she was just given by Joseph seconds before has totally disappeared. See more »
Teen Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man of his reality, crossing his path with five counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.
Six years after the events of “Wreck-It Ralph,” Ralph and Vanellope, now friends, discover a wi-fi router in their arcade, leading them into a new adventure.
The Incredibles hero family takes on a new mission, which involves a change in family roles: Bob Parr (Mr Incredible) must manage the house while his wife Helen (Elastigirl) goes out to save the world.
Director:
Brad Bird
Stars:
Craig T. Nelson,
Holly Hunter,
Sarah Vowell
An apprentice witch, three kids and a cynical magician conman search for the missing component to a magic spell to be used in the defense of Britain in WWII.
Director:
Robert Stevenson
Stars:
Angela Lansbury,
David Tomlinson,
Roddy McDowall
A Lion cub crown prince is tricked by a treacherous uncle into thinking he caused his father’s death and flees into exile in despair, only to learn in adulthood his identity and his responsibilities.
Directors:
Roger Allers,
Rob Minkoff
Stars:
Matthew Broderick,
Jeremy Irons,
James Earl Jones
A selfish prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life, unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman he keeps prisoner.
The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school.
Director:
David Yates
Stars:
Eddie Redmayne,
Katherine Waterston,
Alison Sudol
In Depression-era London, a now-grown Jane and Michael Banks, along with Michael’s three children, are visited by the enigmatic Mary Poppins following a personal loss. Through her unique magical skills, and with the aid of her friend Jack, she helps the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing in their lives. Written by Disney
In the Banks children’s nursery, there are pictures of people and dandelions just above the fireplace. This is likely an homage to the fourth book in the Mary Poppins series called Mary Poppins in the Park, where the flying nanny and the Banks children have a tea party with people who live beneath the dandelions. See more »
Goofs
When Cousin Topsy performs a handstand during her dancing routine, her earrings do not dangle down to the ground. This shows the scene was filmed with her putting her hands on a surface above her head and subsequently being rotated 180 degrees in post-production. See more »
Quotes
Mary Poppins:
When you change the view from where you stood, the things you view will change for good.
In a reprisal of the credits gag from the original, Dick Van Dyke is at first credited as “Nackvid Keyd”, only for the credits to unscramble themselves again. See more »
There’s a reason they call it “Development Hell.” It can’t be pleasant working on a game for four, five, even six years before release, constantly trying to hit a moving target that keeps getting further and further away. And if there’s any game that embodies development hell in 2019, it’s Crackdown 3. Well, maybe that Final Fantasy VII remake as well, and maybe Shenmue 3, and maybe Dead Island 2, and probably Star Citizen.
But I’m here to talk about Crackdown 3, which believe it or not I hadn’t touched until a hands-on demo session last week here in San Francisco. I’m not going to say I had high hopes going into the demo. I didn’t. Even so, what I played is so bare-bones, such a shadow of everything Microsoft ever made it out to be, I’m just not sure what happened here.
Back to 2007, the year “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” released
First off, I want to say: I’m not convinced Crackdown 3 will be terrible. It wouldn’t surprise me, per se, but I’m honestly not sure. It won’t be a fantastic game—of that fact, I’m almost positive—but nor does it seem like it’ll go down in history along with the likes of Aliens: Colonial Marines or Mighty No. 9, these infamous disappointments.
Crackdown 3
Crackdown 3 can even border on fun at rare times. There’s still something addictive about the movement in particular. I remember collecting Agility Orbs was my favorite part of the original Crackdown, and that aspect returns here. Starting as a super-cop able to jump two stories, then ending up an even-more-super-cop able to leap over entire buildings is a particularly thrilling feedback loop and I spent a lot of my hour and a half campaign demo just tracking down Agility Orbs again. It felt like I was right back in 2007, playing the Crackdown demo I snagged off Xbox Live—and then replaying it, and replaying it, and replaying it.
I loved that demo.
But it felt like I was back in 2007, full stop. We’ve seen the rise and fall of entire open-world frameworks in the years since Crackdown’s release. The “Ubisoft Formula” of radio towers and infinite map icons dominated for a while, then survival games and Dark Souls-style open worlds, then the less artificial (or at least less intrusive and/or more reactive) model we’ve seen in The Witcher 3, God of War, Far Cry 5, and so on. This last one’s harder to pin down, in part because it means changing how the open world works depending on the game you’re trying to make, as opposed to applying one singular “formula” to every title.
Crackdown 3
Crackdown 3 feels very old. It feels like, well, a game that started development in 2012 or 2013 when a lot of the old open-world ideas were still in vogue. The map is split up into zones, each with a number of icons that feel somewhat meaningless. In one area, you blow up quarry equipment. In another you attack subway robots gone rogue. Do each activity a certain number of times and you’ll unlock a boss fight for the pertinent faction. Take out the boss and you’ll weaken the final endgame boss a bit.
It’s the same setup employed by the original Crackdown more than a decade ago, and to its credit nobody’s really duplicated the exact particulars. Crackdown 3 is entirely open from the get-go. We were told multiple times that you could start the game and immediately head for the end-boss. You probably won’t get far if you do, but you could, and that separates Crackdown from the actual done-to-death Ubisoft framework circa 2007 to 2016.
But that freedom doesn’t change the particulars of the game itself, which is made up of extremely rote tasks repeated ad nauseam. Destroying quarry equipment, for instance, was made up of eight different objectives, at least half of which involved shooting the same weak-points on four copies of the same generic drilling machine. Occasionally the sheer chaos of it all is interesting, but often it’s just tedious.
There are footraces. There are vehicle races. There are outpost takedown-type missions. Crackdown 3 lacks any identity of its own, outside of the fact you’re doing these generic open-world tasks as a superpowered police officer. And even that, the game now shares in common with the also-coming-up-on-a-decade-old Saints Row IV. That’s how damn long it’s been since we’ve had a Crackdown game.
Risks, reneged on
What makes it all more baffling is going back and looking at how Microsoft’s teased Crackdown 3 over the years. It’s easy to look at Crackdown 3 in 2019, see a game stuck in development hell, see a lot of old ideas stretched over an old framework (but with slightly better graphics) and think it’s always been that way.
But Crackdown 3 was Microsoft’s big cloud push, yeah? This was going to be the game that unshackled Microsoft from the limitations of the Xbox One, that used the power of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing to simulate destruction physics on a scale never seen (or even attempted) before. Go back and read this Kotaku article from 2014, titled “The New Crackdown Will Use The Cloud A Lot.” Alternately, here’s the most pertinent part, a quote from Phil Spencer:
“A couple of things happen when, say, a building gets destroyed in a game. You’ve got the physics calculation of all the pieces that something’s going to break into and all of what happens to those pieces as they collide with one another…What we’ve been working on is this capability of actually computing [in the cloud] the physics calculation of millions and millions of particles that would fall and then just having the local box [the player’s console] get the positional data and the render.”
By next year that dream was dead. Only Crackdown 3’s multiplayer mode will have this cloud-based destruction tech. We played a bit of the multiplayer. It feels functional, albeit not much different to what I played of Red Faction: Guerrilla a decade ago. And it’s much smaller-scale than the city-spanning destruction Microsoft teased in 2015. Maps feel like decently sized arenas. They are absolutely not entire chunks of city for you to run wild in.
Regardless I’m not much interested in a tacked-on multiplayer mode, and I doubt most of Crackdown 3’s players are, technologically impressive or no. The campaign? No cloud-based destruction of any kind. The city is the city. You’re not knocking down buildings, or even chipping walls apart with your powers. It feels rigid, lifeless. There aren’t even many civilians walking around, or traffic to contend with. Compare it to Assassin’s Creed: Origins for instance and Crackdown 3 feels borderline empty.
One of my favorite things about first-party games is they get to take risks. They get to iterate on a concept, spend years perfecting the tiniest details, because the publisher (be it Microsoft or Sony or even Nintendo) expects the games to sell hardware, not just software. Crackdown 3 should be that game! It should be this incredible cloud computing tech demo!
But it’s not, and without that component the reasons for Crackdown 3’s existence feel tenuous at best. Terry Crews puts in a solid over-the-top performance, from the 5 minute cutscene I saw at the start of our demo. There might be a decently silly story in here, or a few memorable setpieces left to see. It’s fun to jump around in, sure.
Bottom line
Microsoft needs more than that, though. It needs more than “An Okay Game.” It needs a God of War, or a Bloodborne, or a Spider-Man. It needs a game that comes up in Game of the Year proceedings, that Microsoft can point to and say “This is why you need an Xbox.” Or even, at the very least, “This is why you should use the Windows 10 store.” It’s doubtful Crackdown 3 meets those criteria, and I just don’t know why.
There’s certainly been enough time and money dumped into it, and the question I guess is whether too much time and money were dumped into it. Microsoft cut ties with both Platinum’s Scalebound and Obsidian’s Stormlands this generation. Why did those get the ax but Crackdown 3 kept drawing resources?
Until someone writes a tell-all about Microsoft’s behind-the-scenes decisions, I guess we might never know. In any case, Crackdown 3 releases February 15—the same day as both Far Cry: New Dawn and Metro Exodus, as well as Anthem’s “Origin Access Premier” release tier. Tough competition for even the best of games, that’s for sure.
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On the run in the year of 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken.
Director:
Travis Knight
Stars:
Hailee Steinfeld,
Jorge Lendeborg Jr.,
John Cena
The true story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her struggles for equal rights, and the early cases of a historic career that lead to her nomination and confirmation as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.
Six strangers are given mysterious black boxes with tickets to an immersive escape room for a chance to win tons of money. Being locked in several rooms with extreme conditions, they discover the secrets behind the escape room and must fight to survive and to find a way out.
After the death of five Polish teenagers, killed by fire in a real life tragedy which occurred within an Escape Room in Poland, the release date of this movie was pushed back a few months in a number of countries, out of respect for the girls who were killed. See more »
Downtown
Written by Tony Hatch
Performed by Petula Clark
Courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment France SAS
By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment See more »