Gil Mansergh's Cinema Toast

New Releases 5/15/09

Angels and Demons (PG-13)
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgaard
Director: Ron Howard
In a season that has movies returning back to their roots, this one has the people from "The DaVinci Code" back to tell the first of Dan Brown's tales of symbol expert Robert Langdon's Indiana-Jones-like adventures. What I find amusing, is how Tom Hanks keeps the sleeves of his professor's jacket free running and sanitary despite travels through catacombs, sewers, abandoned buildings and other dirty dusty places in and around The Vatican. The story "it's "24" in a holy place as four Cardinals who may be the next Pope, are kidnapped to be murdered one-by-one in those aforementioned historical places documented by Galileo. One side note, The Vatican refused access to Ron Howard and his cameras, so the shorts of Rome are real while those in Vatican City are fake.
3 pieces of probably blasphemous toast


Management (R)
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn, Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward, James Haroyuki Liao
Director: Stephen Belber
After a one night stand at an Arizona hotel, the guy shows up on the girl's office back in Baltimore. This could be creepy (well, it is creepy) but in the Indy feeling of "Garden State" it's just quirky and kind of sweet. Woody Harrelson plays plays the role of the girl's skinhead fiancé as though he were in a different movie, but he's so outlandish, he's funny too.
3 pieces of Indy toast



Rudo and Cursi (R)
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Jessica Mas, Guillermo Francella
Director: Carlos Cuaron
Sibling rivalry rules when two soccer-playing brothers are recruited from their sleepy Mexican village by and Argentibe tyalent scout who wants to take one of them back to play in Mexico City. One goes and dates beautiful women and discovers Cup-O-Noodles, the other stays home to run the family's banana business "except-----. The surprise here is the recruiter "an unstoppable opportunist ready and willing to let his run of good fortune go on for a long, long ride.
3 pieces of Mexican toast



NEW ON DVD

Taken (PG-13)
Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkeley
Director: Pierre Morel
LucBesson wrote and produced this film where the daughter of a retired CIA operative is kidnapped (By Albanian sex traffickers no less) and he has to hunt down the bad guys so he can slam them into every vertical or horizontal surface he happens to come across. Oh, did I mention that the father and daughter were on the phone to each other as the kidnapping occurs ""Lock the door" he coldly tells her "as if she wouldn't think of that clever little trick all by herself.
2 and 1/2 pieces of my dad can whoop your butt toast