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The Manzoni family, a notorious mafia clan, is relocated to Normandy, France under the witness protection program, where fitting in soon becomes challenging as their old habits die hard.A mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. Despite the best efforts of CIA Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) can't help but revert to old habits and blow their cover by handling their problems the "family" way, enabling their former mafia cronies to track them down. Chaos ensues as old scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings in this darkly funny film by Luc Besson (Taken, Transporter).

Review:

"Like Al Capone said, asking polite with a gun in your hand is better than asking polite with nothing." Giovanni Family values in The Family are not your father's values unless, like me, your grandfather ran a numbers business in the basement of his barbershop. All of Kodak Park enjoyed that true color. The Giovanni Manzoni/Fred Blake (Robert De Niro) family has a paterfamilias who is a notorious Mafia don in the FBI witness protection plan. (De Niro as a mobster is the fall's most unimaginative casting but he's funny.) His values are ratting on his fellow Mafiosi to save his legal hide, forcing him to hide with a $20 million reward dogging him. The family's love for each other is unconditional and treats challenges with a baseball bat rather than diplomacy. If a Frenchman disrespects Americans, he might find his supermarket in flames. If this sounds like a story to turn the nuns' heads completely around, don't worry; it's ultra "black comedy," equal parts Italian-American gangster satire and laughable domestic shenanigans. That midway in the film Fred gets to speak on the merits of GoodFellas before a French crowd in Normandy is one of the nice meta-critical-comedic turns followed by carnage we've come to expect from Mob films. It's pretty much territory owned by Scorsese and De Niro. Additionally, the use of the "f" word has never been so deftly played in a comedy. Besides the joy of seeing De Niro have a good time with the many tough characters he has played in his career, you get to see Tommy Lee Jones play a gruff FBI agent, Robert Stansfield, who can trade barbs with his charge, Fred, who has such a propensity for violence (he beats up the only plumber within 20 miles of town) that Fred is a full time job for Robert. If Jones's face can't scare Fred into being a good boy, then the threat of losing witness protection does the trick. Directed with wicked tongue in cheek by La Femme Nikita's stylish Luc Besson, The Family sports an accomplished supporting cast: Michelle Pfeiffer as mom Maggie is gritty Brooklyn with her famous beauty well preserved. The two kids played by Diana Argon and John D'Leo are spot on sweetly dangerous as you might expect. It's all in GoodFellas fun, a mildly amusing and unusual story that beats many mainstream comedies this year.

Left for dead on a sun-scorched planet, Riddick finds himself up against an alien race of predators. Activating an emergency beacon alerts two ships: one carrying a new breed of mercenary, the other captained by a man from Riddick's past. Betrayed by his own kind and left for dead on a desolate planet, Riddick fights for survival against alien predators and becomes more powerful and dangerous than ever before. Soon bounty hunters from throughout the galaxy descend on Riddick only to find themselves pawns in his greater scheme for revenge. With his enemies right where he wants them, Riddick unleashes a vicious attack of vengeance before returning to his home planet of Furya to save it from destruction. Written by Shock Till You Drop The infamous Riddick has been left for dead on a sun-scorched planet that appears to be lifeless. Soon, however, he finds himself fighting for survival against alien predators more lethal than any human he's encountered. The only way off is for Riddick to activate an emergency beacon and alert mercenaries who rapidly descend to the planet in search of their bounty. The first ship to arrive carries a new breed of merc, more lethal and violent, while the second is captained by a man whose pursuit of Riddick is more personal. With time running out and a storm on the horizon that no one could survive, his hunters won't leave the planet without Riddick's head as their trophy. Written by Universal Pictures Betrayed by the Necromongers and left for dead on a remote planet, Riddick learns to adapt to the harsh environment and rediscover his predatory instincts. When a more deadly threat appears on the horizon, he is forced to activate an emergency beacon attracting two ships: one filled with mercenaries, and another captained by a man with a personal vendetta against Riddick.

Review:

This is a genuinely good movie, it follows on from the previous Riddick movies and doesn't leave anything to be desired. Richard B Riddick is up to his old tricks again, and if you're a fan, you won't be disappointed, definitely a must see. Vin Diesel is great as always, playing a character that never ceases to enthral me, and the rest of the cast is great too. You know a movie is good when it makes you watch the previous movies when you get home from seeing it. The music is also exceptional I found too, fitting in very well with the action scenes. I've always found Riddick to be a movie that is very rich in its universe, it pulls you in without really telling you much, and this movie does exactly the same, worth a watch even if you're not a fan.

As Cecil Gaines serves eight presidents during his tenure as a butler at the White House, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other major events affect this man's life, family, and American society.Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with her addictions and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.

Review:

The Butler starts off as an intriguing personal biopic about a man many people have never heard of, but it soon finds itself lost among a steadily growing political agenda with nothing interesting going on as far as story is concerned. It plays out like a lame TV movie, and probably would have been a lot more interesting as a miniseries. Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) was a butler in the White House who served under eight Presidents of the United States. The film sheds light on his story, his family issues and his involvement in the Civil Rights Act. The most important flaw of this film is that its main character is really not all that interesting. It's cool that he worked for so many presidents, in such an important time in our country's history, but there's really not a lot to him other than that. His family members are far more interesting, with his wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) being a lazy alcoholic who turned her life around as she grew older, and his son Louis (David Oyelowo) who helped fight in the Civil Rights Movement. They make a point early on that Cecil is not a political person, and tried to distance himself as much as he could so as not to cause any problems. This means that he spends pretty much the entire film just watching other people argue politics. What worried me the most about this film before seeing it ended up being everything I enjoyed the most about it. Oprah Winfrey's performance, I hate to admit, is really great. People have been talking Oscar nomination and she honestly deserves it. I was also surprised at how well each of the presidents were played, despite some of the most bizarre miscasting I've ever seen. Robin Williams as Eisenhower? Alan freaking Rickman as Ronald freaking Reagan? Why would you EVER think that's a good idea? Well, it worked. They each did a very decent job with what they were needed to do. The problem with this, and the reason they each might have been deceptively competent, is that none of them get more than five minutes of screen time each in the film's run. I also should point out that, while John Cusack did a really good job playing Richard Nixon, every single time he was on screen the audience busted out laughing. It was a testament to how poorly miscast everyone was, because we all know John Cusack and he just isn't right for Nixon. The only president that was anything close to well-cast was James Marsden as Kennedy, who also happened to be one of the major highlights of the film. But then you have to look at the politics of the film, which are blatant, unnecessary and frankly inaccurate. Every Democratic president is portrayed as a god among men, whose heart is bigger than the average racist white man, which is every non-black extra in the film. Lyndon Johnson (Liev Schreiber) is shown as a flawed but empathetic man who really cared about the Civil Rights Movement, despite being one of the biggest racists ever to sit in the Oval Office; a man who allegedly but infamously stated on signing the Civil Rights Act that, "I'll have these n****rs voting Democrat for the next two-hundred years." Yep, let's promote him as deeply caring about the movement. Meanwhile, the Republicans are each shown as stupid, angry white people who only care about the political ramifications of the movement. The only real scene Ronald Reagan is given is him telling Cecil that he thinks he's on the wrong side of Civil Rights because he cut off sanctions to Africa. I won't even get into why that's misleading and deceptive because what matters is the politics of the situation. The end of the film shows Cecil in 2008, promoting Barack Obama for president. The whole last five minutes or so are devoted to how great it was that Barack Obama was going to be president. Not just that it was a black man, but that it was Barack Obama specifically. The very last thing you hear in the film is Obama's 2008 campaign slogan, "Yes We Can," completely out of context. I get it, okay? I understand exactly how incredible and important it was that a black man became president. But that's not what's going on in this movie and that's my biggest point about the whole film. If you want to tell this story, it needs to be from the human rights perspective, not a bias, liberal agenda, Progressive political perspective. And I'd say that doing it this way takes away from the interesting story at hand, but there wasn't really that interesting of a story in the first place. What you end up with is a simple, shallow, hollow film with nothing to actually say other than, "How great is it that we've come from segregation to putting Barack Obama (not just any black man, but THAT one) in the White House?" EDIT: I've been reading a lot of interesting fact about the real "Cecil Gaines," whose real name was Eugene Allen. The more and more I read, the more infuriated I am about this film. In short, the movie intentionally fabricates facts to make white people seem more racist than they actually were, and to make Eugene Allen's life very different. It's offensive to Allen's family. It's offensive to the White House. But most importantly, it's offensive to the Civil Rights Movement itself. You can read more about the facts here: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/the-butler.php I have also changed my rating to reflect my new feelings on the film. Ever since I wrote this review I've been feeling as if I wasn't hard enough on the film, so this isn't a new decision.

A veteran pot dealer creates a fake family as part of his plan to move a huge shipment of weed into the U.S. from Mexico.After being robbed of a week's take, small-time pot dealer David is forced by his boss to go to Mexico to pick up a load of marijuana. In order to improve his odds of making it past the border, David asks the broke stripper Rose and two local teenagers to join him and pretend they're on a family holiday.

Review:

There's nothing to it, if all you're looking for witty/clever/subtle/deep humor, and you hate sexual/stupid/slapsticky type humor...you will probably still like We're The Millers. It's not a gold mine of comedy by any means, but it did the job it told us it would do: Make us laugh and give us a fun ride. They really brought together a dysfunctional family and did it in a way that allowed for some suspension of disbelief. A lot of comedies nowadays have those hit or miss scenes where you either laugh, or you just can't suspend your disbelief and you're sitting there like "Really? Really? She's gonna poop in the sink?" (guess the reference). We're The Millers is pretty much a compilation of those kinds of scenes that hit just the right tone to pull it off as funny, clever and it just kinda grows on you. The "family" we see on screen for most of the surprisingly high 109 minute runtime is in a lot of ways funny, in some ways disgusting, and in a few ways charming. The film just works with the pairing of Sudeikis and Aniston, as we saw for a tiny bit in Horrible Bosses, which to me is one of the funniest movies in a long while. If you liked Wedding Crashers, or Hot Tub Time Machine, chances are you'll like this one, which was written by the 4 screenwriters who worked on those films. The 2 pairs of writers who have a history with comedy throw some subtle humor in the dialog which you probably won't get if you're not paying enough attention, which allows for every comedy lovers dream: To be laughing out loud, then hearing an ever so subtle joke causing you to laugh harder, then hearing another one and another and another. The film was consistently funny in a sense that when it got me, it REEALLLY got me. Overall, the film is just a slight bit lovable, with characters you actually kinda like...not too common for a modern comedy. More so than the story, the laughs came interspersed well enough to where I can't complain because I did way more laughing than I expected. It wasn't "rolling on the floor" funny, but I did have some hearty laughs out loud.

A man who has made a new life for himself and the daughter left on his doorstep 6 years ago finds his family threatened when the birth mother resurfaces. Valentin is Acapulco's resident playboy, until a former fling leaves a baby on his doorstep and takes off without a trace. Leaving Mexico for Los Angeles to find the baby's mother, Valentin ends up finding a new home for himself and his newfound daughter, Maggie. An unlikely father figure, Valentin raises Maggie for six years, while also establishing himself as one of Hollywood's top stuntmen to pay the bills, with Maggie acting as his on-set coach. As Valentin raises Maggie, she forces him to grow up too. But their unique and offbeat family is threatened when Maggie's birth mom shows up out of the blue, and Valentin realizes he's in danger of losing his daughter - and his best friend.

Review:

I'll be honest, I was dragged in to see this movie but was quickly enthused and charmed by the undeniable chemistry between father and daughter(Eugenio Derbez, Loreta Peralta). The very first minutes weren't exactly my cup of tea but it it gets to the point eagerly and you get the whole message of the title along with it. Don't confuse it for just another meager Disney squall of becoming a family film. No where throughout the movie did I remember the pacifier or the Game Plan those were particularly distasteful movies I could hope to forget. Instructions Not Included finds heart and answers many questions all of us have asked about life. All the troubles and dismay we go through are for not, the very essence of where we have placed our hopes lie within the children we take care of and honestly there aren't any instructions included through the sobs, the laughs, and the peace we come to while they teach us how to grow. Watch this movie and I promise you won't forget it and bring a box of Kleenex for your tears.