21

21, for those of you who haven't seen any commercials yet, is the story of a team of MIT Students who spend their weekends flying to Vegas to count cards at Blackjack with the help of their professor. The movie is loosely based on a real-world team that actually pulled this off back in the 70s, but to keep things modern and interesting they put it in the context of modern-day.

The Story follow Ben Campbell (Jim Sturges), an MIT senior and boy-genius who gets accepted into Harvard medical only to find out he can't afford the $300,000 tab. After being turned down for a full-ride scholarship because his story didn't "jump off the page", he is approached by Professor Rosa (Kevin Spacey) with a proposition to join the underground team of card-counting college kids.

Immediately his life is turned around as he spends his time in high-roller suites in expensive suits, attracting the attention of a struggling Vegas security firm. They monitor the team's movements and start to pick up their strategies, leading to an eventual confrontation that throws the whole operation into Jeopardy. While the movie may not me true to the book, it's an original idea and the acting pretty decent. The story is believable overall well-directed. You really get a feel for Ben Campbell, you relate to his situation and he seems and acts human enough to make the story work. I ended up enjoying the movie, and would definitely recommend it for blackjack fans and newbies alike.

Shutter

Let me start by saying that before I bash this movie, I'm not biased, I actually enjoy these kind of cheesy Japanese ghost flicks (The Ring, The Grudge, ect). While they all follow the same formula and are usually over-the-top and predictable, I have an un-explained fetish for these B-Movie horrors. That being said, I have lost almost all faith in the genre thanks to Shutter.

Not only is shutter predictable and over-the-top, but it's a complete ripoff of the ring, almost scene to scene. In fact, I bet you could play the ring side-by-side with Shutter and watch the same events unfold, just substitute a camera in the place of a videotape. The acting is abysmal and to call the special effects disappointing is an understatement.

The story is about a young couple who moves to Japan (sound familiar yet?) only to realize they are being haunted by the ghost of the guy's ex-girlfriend. He's a photographer, so the ghost messes with his life and starts screwing around with all the pictures he takes. You follow the two as they see more and more signs of the ghostly girlfriend until finally they go to her old house and find her corpse, but of course that wasn't enough to keep her away. I won't spoil the ending, but I will recommend you wait until it's on DVD you absolutely insist on watching it.

Horton Hears a Who

While I may not seem like the typical Dr. Suess fan, I've been stuck in Surfside Beach all week and I was up for just about anything to ease the boredom. While I was extremely disappointed with the previous attempts, I think they finally got one right. For those of you who missed the colossal advertising campaign, they picked up some pretty big names for this latest installment, ranging from Jim Carry to Steve Carell. As a diehard fan of 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, it was pretty great to hear Rogen and Hill voice-acting for a children's animated movie too.

The movie actually stayed pretty true to the book, as far as I can remember. Everyone knows the premise- an elephant finds a colony of Who people living on a flower he found, and can hear them speaking to him because of his gigantic ears. When he tells others about the Who world, they think he's crazy, and so begins the hectic battle between Kangaroo (voiced by a surprisingly menacing Carol Burnett) and Horton regarding the Who's existence. Vlad Vladikoff, the overly soviet vulture nemesis, is hired to ensure the flower is destroyed. Many people believe the original book actually delivered a pro-life, anti-abortion moral ("A person's a person no matter how small"), but the movie itself downplays that element.

The animation is fluid, detailed, and impressive. At one point they stray into traditional animation when Horton bursts intro a psuedo-Dragonball anime cut scene in which he battles hordes of killer monkeys, bringing a little variety to a somewhat-overused medium. While the movie obviously caters to a younger audience, it seems like it defies the trend in that most any age group can be entertained by the brand of humor it adopts.

No Country for Old Men

Looking back at another one of the year's new classics, I'll be reviewing No Country for Old Men. If you've been living under a rock and haven't seen it yet, this is one of the better films of 2007, based on the best-selling Cormac McCarthy novel. The story follows a drug-bust gone bad, a lone manic assassin, a desperate man's attempts to escape, and an elder small-town sheriff caught in the middle of it all.

The movie itself follows the classic McCarthy style- slow but suspenseful, leading up to an eventual coup de gras that interlocks the entire cast together. Havier Bardem gives an oscar-worthy performance as the giant, hulking, crazy assassin-gone-bad who pursues the stolen drug money at any cost. No Country for Old Men has an incredible cast and was filmed in various location all across Texas, making for an anything-but-predictable story of betrayal, insanity, and murder into a cinematic piece we won't soon forget.

Do yourself a favor and see this movie. With the exception of There Will Be Blood, this is probably my favorite movie from the 2007, and was recently awarded several Academy Awards. The legendary Cohen brothers have out-done themselves again, and this one you won't want to miss.