Representing a slightly skewed take on 2004’s Cellular crossed with a lobotomized Silence of the Lambs, Brad Anderson’s high-concept thriller The Call would be an unremarkable bit of women-in-peril dreck were it not for two distinguishing factors — the sexualized sadism inflicted upon the half-dressed 16-year-old Abigail Breslin, and the equally sadistic Sideshow Bob coiffure affixed to the otherwise lovely Halle Berry. These indignities aside, there’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish Law and Order rerun, and it might be tough for such a film to dial in sizable auds to theaters. more »
As is often the peril with movies of giant ambition, Cloud Atlas walks a crooked line between the glorious and the ridiculous, its reach unencumbered by sensible decisions or restraint. Adapted with reasonable faithfulness from a novel of equally epic sweep by British author David Mitchell, the film spans eras and genres, intertwining tales of men at sea in the 1850s with a 1970s conspiracy-based mystery with a dystopian future Seoul. Through these settings and the characters that populate them, the movie highlights themes of reincarnation and of the warring nature of mankind as empathetic and self-sacrificing versus competitive and brutal.
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After breathless reports that the actress was "rushed to the hospital" with a head injury sustained on the set of her upcoming film The Hive, Halle Berry's publicist has confirmed that not only will her Oscar-winning client live, but that Berry was released and expects to return to work as planned. Now you know! Glad to hear it. We now return to our regular scheduled Bat-programming.
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Also in Thursday afternoon's round up of news briefs, the folks at the Academy announced some new rules in various categories governing the Oscars. A comedy and a thriller head to U.S. theaters and a Halle Berry thriller gets some legs.
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That's not a metaphor -- in the sea-bound thriller Dark Tide, Halle Berry makes her return to the spotlight as a diving expert convinced to come face to face once again with the kinds of Jaws-esque sharks that traumatized her years ago. This means the one-time Bond girl's back in a bikini, if you care about that kind of thing. Watch the trailer after the jump and decide if this is going to re-energize Berry's career.
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All this fuss over the first look at Anne Hathaway's maybe-official Catwoman garb in The Dark Knight Rises brings to mind Selina Kyle's sartorial choices over the years, since her 1940 debut in Bob Kane and Bill Finger's Batman #1 comic. Much has changed through the decades, from Catwoman's sultry swingin' '60s shimmer to, well, Halle Berry's unfortunate bra 'n' leather pants getup. Will Hathaway's be-goggled Selina Kyle fare any better than her predecessors?
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