Jan
24
Archive
Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
Jan
11
Description:
During the Chipmunks’ “Save the Music” benefit concert, sponsored by VH1, in Paris, where they perform “You Really Got Me”, David Seville (Jason Lee) tells Alvin (voiced by Justin Long) to take it easy, but Alvin has a difficult time listening. Then, Alvin jumps on top of a scaffolding and accidentally causes a billboard to fall. Alvin warns Dave, but the billboard sends Dave flying across the stage and crash into electric devices. After the accident, he is rushed to the hospital. Although he survives, he must stay for a few days to recuperate. The nurse gives him a sedative that will make him fall asleep in a minute, so he tells his boys that he’s leaving his Aunt Jackie (Kathryn Joosten) in charge of the Chipmunks until he returns. Also, he tells Alvin, Simon (voiced by Matthew Gray Gubler), and Theodore (voiced by Jesse McCartney) that while he’s away, he wants them to have a normal childhood, and that he has also made arrangements for them to go to school. They head to the airport, where the Chipmunks meet up with Aunt Jackie, who introduces her grandson Toby (Zachary Levi), a former high school dropout. He is playing on a Nintendo DS, paying no attention to them. Toby then accidentally knocks Jackie’s wheelchair down some stairs while getting the boys’ luggage, and an airport luggage trolley crashes into her. She is also sent to the hospital, so Toby is left in charge.
Cast:Jason Lee, Zachary Levi, David Cross, Wendie Malick, Justin Long
Watch It Now – Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Dec
22
Description:
Charlie (John Travolta) and Dan (Robin Williams) are best friends and co-workers. Seven years prior to the present time of the movie, Dan was once married and when he divorced he was very depressed. In order to cheer Dan up, Charlie takes him on a wild vacation where Dan meets a woman named Vicki (Kelly Preston) who he thinks is his soul mate. Along with Vicki is her equally beautiful but weird best friend Jenna (Rita Wilson) who is overly obsessed with her hands because she is a hand model. Dan and Vicki marry the same night they meet but their love affair is short lived. Seven years later, Vicki arrives back in town and announces to Dan that they have twins: Zach (Connor Rayburn) and Emily (Ella Bleu Travolta) together.
Dan offers to take care of the children the same day he meets them after Vicki has to go to jail for two weeks due to an activist crime. Originally, the kids were going to stay with Jenna but Dan severely injures her by mistake so she ends up in the hospital, nearly immobile and unable to watch the kids. Because Dan’s condo does not allow children, he has to board with Charlie. Whilst this is happening, Charlie and Dan are about to score their greatest gig in the history of their careers with a Japanese corporation.
Cast:John Travolta, Robin Williams, Kelly Preston, Seth Green
Watch It Now – Old Dogs
Dec
21
Description:
While raiding a chicken farm, Mr. Fox (George Clooney) and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) trigger a fox trap and become caged. Felicity reveals to Fox that she is pregnant and pleads with him to find a safer job should they escape.
Two years later, the Foxes and their sullen son. Ash (Jason Schwartzman), are living in a hole. Fox, now a newspaper columnist, decides to move the family into a better home and buys one in the base of a tree, ignoring the warnings of his lawyer Badger (Bill Murray). The tree is located very close to the enormous facilities run by farmers Walter Boggis, Nathan Bunce, and Franklin Bean (Michael Gambon). Soon after the Foxes move in, Felicity’s nephew Kristofferson (Eric Chase Anderson) comes to live with them, as his father has become very ill. Ash finds this situation intolerable considering his soft-spoken cousin is apparently superior to him in every possible aspect and seemingly everyone, including his own father, is charmed by him at his expense.
Cast:George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray
Watch It Now – Fantastic Mr. Fox
Dec
20
Description:
The movie opens in New Orleans, Louisiana. Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) is a hard working waitress, who has let go of having fun in favor of her dream of having her own restaurant, which is a shared dream with her father (Terrence Howard), who promised with Tiana to open a restaurant called “Tiana’s place”. She plans to turn an old building into her restaurant (”Almost There”). However her mother (Oprah Winfrey) insists that she needs to look at other parts of her life.
Meanwhile, Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) of a country called Maldonia, arrives in New Orleans with his butler Lawrence (Peter Bartlett). The prince has been cut off by his parents for his play-boy and jazzy lifestyle and either has to marry or get a job to support himself. Naveen plans to wed Charlotte (Jennifer Cody), who is a daughter of rich, bumbling yet kind sugar mill owner, Eli ‘Big Daddy’ La Bouff (John Goodman) to gain a fortune. The prince and Lawrence meet up with Doctor Facilier (Keith David), aka, “The Shadow Man”. He turns Naveen into a frog, and use Naveen’s blood to make Lawrence look like Naveen and marry Charlotte (”Friends on the Other Side”). The Shadowman then plans to kill LeBouff, seize the fortune for himself, and turn the city over to the evil Voodoo gods, who will feed on the souls of the citizens.
Cast:Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Michael-Leon Wooley
Watch It Now – The Princess and the Frog
Dec
20
Description:
The film begins in a bar on a December night in Milwaukee, where the viewer is introduced to Willie Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton), a bitter, lonely alcoholic. Willie works the holiday seasons as a mall Santa along with his dwarf friend, Marcus (Tony Cox), who works as Santa’s elf. Every Christmas Eve, the two of them disable the security alarm after the mall closes and rob the mall safe; afterwards, Marcus returns to living with his wife (who Willie finds very ugly and annoying), Lois (Lauren Tom), while Willie goes to Miami and spends all his money on booze.
At the new mall they plan to steal from, Willie’s alcoholic rants arouse the suspicion of mall manager Bob Chipeska (John Ritter), who asks security chief Gin (Bernie Mac) to investigate. Meanwhile, Willie meets bartender Sue (Lauren Graham), and they begin a relationship. He also meets a pudgy, preteen boy, whom he nicknames the Kid (Brett Kelly), during their visit in the mall. When he leaves the bar and is confronted by a hostile man (Ajay Naidu), the Kid stops the man from beating up Willie after the guy falsely accuses Willie of being gay. A lonely, unpopular boy, the Kid lives with his senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman); his mother is dead and his father is in prison for embezzlement. After taking the Kid home to the Kid’s father’s mansion, Willie breaks into the house safe, takes all the money, “borrows” his father’s BMW, and winds up spending the money on more booze.
Cast:Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly, Lauren Graham
Watch It Now – Bad Santa
Dec
17
Description:
On Christmas Eve in Victorian England, Ebenezer Scrooge, a bitter and miserly old moneylender, holds everything that embodies the joys and spirit of Christmas in contempt, refusing to visit his cheerful nephew Fred’s Christmas dinner party with his family, and forcing his underpaid employee Bob Cratchit to beg to take the day off for his own family. That night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, who had died seven years prior on Christmas Eve and is now forced to spend his afterlife carrying heavy chains forged from his own greedy ways. Marley warns Scrooge that he will suffer an even worse fate if he doesn’t repent, and foretells that he will be haunted by three spirits that will help guide him.
Cast:Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Cary Elwes, Colin Firth
Watch It Now – A Christmas Carol
Dec
17
Description:
Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a workaholic mattress salesman, who has a hard time finding time for his wife, Liz (Rita Wilson) and his young son, Jamie (Jake Lloyd) – especially when compared to next door superdad divorcé, Ted Maltin (Phil Hartman). After breaking his word again by missing Jamie’s karate grading (from yellow to purple), Howard resolves to redeem himself and his marriage by fulfilling Jamie’s ultimate Christmas wish, an action figure of Turbo-Man, a popular children TV superhero.Unfortunately, as is the habit with him, Howard had promised to buy that figure earlier that year and then promptly forgotten about it. To make things even harder, Turbo-Man toys are the must-have gifts of the season, and stocks of Turbo-Man toys are quickly drying up all over the country. Desperate not to disappoint his family again, Howard embarks on an epic quest through Minneapolis on Christmas Eve to find the toy everyone’s looking for
Cast:Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Robert Conrad
Watch It Now – Jingle All the Way
Dec
17
Description:
The film starts with a man (later known to be Lau Xing) (Jackie Chan), robbing and escaping from the Bank of England. To evade the police, he hides in Phileas Fogg’s house. From a window he observes police officers searching for him, asking foreign-looking men in the street for identification; so when Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan) asks him for his name he responds “Passport…too”. Phileas takes his name to be “Passepartout” (pronounced Pass-port-too), and takes him on as a valet. Phileas Fogg is trying to break the 50-mph speed barrier, and after succeeding with the help of Passepartout and managing to avoid the police, they head to the Royal Academy of Science.There Fogg is insulted by the other ‘brilliant minds’, in particular the bombastic William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (Jim Broadbent), who believes that everything worth discovering has already been discovered and there is no need for further progress. The bank robbery is also discussed. In his blind rage, Phileas says that he is glad the bank was robbed, because it is outdated and says that the thief could be in China in little over a month, which interests Passepartout. Phileas Fogg is pressured into a bet to see whether it would be possible, as his calculations say, to travel around the world in 80 days. If he wins, he would become Minister of Science in Lord Kelvin’s place; if not, he would have to tear down his lab and never invent anything again.
Cast:Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cecille de France, Jim Broadbent
