A Jacksonville resident has been reviewing movies for friends for several years and has offered to share his thoughts with Daily Progress readers. His reviews come in personal letters to his nicknamed friend, Spud Nut. Our reviewer is Tater Tot, so consequently, the movies get ratings based on potatoes.

Spud Nut, The Lovely Bones (rated PG-13, 135 minutes) is a somber, sober drama about a 14 year-old girl who was murdered on Dec. 6, 1973, and the crime’s effects upon the living and the dead. Saorise Ronan plays Suzy Salmon, who exists in between worlds because her ties with her grieving family keep her from entering heaven.

Her parents, Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, must learn to cope with their tragic loss. Her tipsy grandmother, Susan Sarandon, deals with the crisis in her own way. Stanley Tucci plays the serial killer so well that he ought to be arrested just for being able to enter such a deranged mindset.

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Writer Director Philipp Stölzl took home the 2009 German Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay along with co-writers Christoph Silber, Rupert Henning and Johannes Naber for this riveting adventure thriller. The setting is the deadly north face of the Eiger, still unconquered at the story’s setting in 1936.

Nazi propaganda urges young climbers to take on the nearly vertical ice covered rock massif in the name of the Aryan warrior spirit. Other Aryans watch from telescopes from the deck of the nearby hotel as the naïve gladiators battle the face and end up falling, freezing to death or hanging by their ropes until suffocated within view of the spectators.

Andreas and Toni are young volunteer soldiers in Hitler’s developing mountain strike force. They are supposed to spend their time learning how to fight and kill enemies in mountainous terrain. Instead they spend their time cleaning latrines because they are, well, goof offs. Of course as any good climber knows most of the best are goof offs. How else would they have time for the climbing?

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Believe the hype - 'Ishqiya' is a bold, imaginative Bollywood entry and audiences everywhere will appreciate the naughty, clever film that Vishal Bharadwaj and his protégé Abhishek Chaubey have created. 'Ishqiya' is vibrantly original and marks the arrival of a talent to watch.

As outrageous as it sounds, the film succeeds in emphasizing the distance between the characters on the screen and the people watching them in the theater.

Throughout its runtime 'Ishqiya' has a raw energy and sense of fun that's infectious.

And lets not forget that this is a black comedy, an absolute hoot from start to finish. Chaubey has a real knack for fleshing out the foibles of contemporary sexual mores.

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Surprise, surprise, both Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell can actually sing! And they are pretty good at it. That was the most remarkable thing about this nostalgic look at Country Western music in today’s Southwestern United States.

The story centers on the Jeff Bridges character of Bad Blake, an aging, alcoholic Country Western singer-song writing legend in the twilight of his career. He spends most of his time driving from one gig to another across the beautiful desert country of what was once known as the Wild West.

He is almost sixty, unkempt, appears not to have washed his long hair in at least a month or more, is constantly drinking, and spends most of his time talking to himself during the long hours on the road.

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Webster's Dictionary defines legion as "a great number of persons or things." However, it should read, "Don't see this movie, it is pure crap!"
 Stop me if you heard this one before: "The last time God lost faith in man, he sent a flood, this time, He sent Angels."

Basically, the world is in peril and most of humanity gets destroyed. "Legion" is the feature directorial debut of Scott Stewart who is no stranger to special effects. He has worked on numerous big-budget, edge-of-your-seat thrillers such as "Jurassic Park," "Superman Returns" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," to name a few.

"Legion" is visually dark, beautiful and saturated with talent. But all that is wasted on a script that leaves the audience scratching their heads and the movie quickly just goes to hell. Dennis Quaid may very well be the most underrated actor of this generation. He has been in so many films, but it seems he never really springs to mind when you think of great thespians.

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Denzel Washington has stepped where few A-listers dare tread – religion.  He stars in and produced this hard hitting morality tale, a seriously devout story about he protection of the only Bible that exists in a post- apocalyptic future.  Salvation is possible only through the word of God – that’s the theme and it is embraced not just by the good guy but also by the bad guy.

That’s a radical recipe for a big budget film 2010, light years away from the usual Hollywood thinking that religion is an anathema to movie house audiences.  Someone besides Mel Gibson thinks it matters.  There’s a lot on the line here including the A-list star, A-list producer Joel Silver and a nice budget.

A disaster has taken place 30 years before we meet Eli, which burned off most of the earth’s vegetation, water, and life forms.  He is living on cat but mostly starves like the rest of the population.  Despite the absence of the basics of human existence – water and food - the human species has rebounded, and a new generation of people – who never saw a television, is forging a life out of dust and nothingness.  We don’t learn what the disaster was but it looks like a big ass nuclear bomb hit, if I know my movies. 

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The high point of Michael Hoffman’s engaging period film “Last Station” is the wonderful Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild nominated performances by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. In playing immortal author Leo Tolstoy Plummer has much bigger shoes to fill than in his previous role of Dr. Parnassus in Terry Gilliam’s “Imaginarium” romp. Indeed, fill them he does in the blustery, cantankerous witticisms of the genius storyteller in the last several months of his life.

Helen Mirren’s role is even better. She gets to play the role of the dutiful wife Sofya Tolstoy combined with the suicide-prone hysterical performance of ex-wife Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” After fifty years of devoted marriage and the bearing of an unbelievable thirteen children to the legendary writer Tolstoy is seriously considering granting all of the royalties from his books to “the people” of Russia. She is even better in this film than in her three previous Oscar nominated performances including her Oscar winner in “The Queen.”

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If you are reading this review I would suggest you go see this movie. If you have the slightest interest in dance movies or Shahid's abs you already know how ridiculously unnecessary the world 'storyline' is. 'Chance pe Dance' is the equivalent to pornography - it is just a series of boring scenes slapped in between what you really came to see... the dancing.

From that perspective, 'Chance pe Dance' is majah paisa vasool with big beats, saucy dance sequences, a nice cast and dare I say a non-existent plot. Of course the big beats don't make any sense considering the music by Pritam Singh, Adnan Sami, Ken Ghosh & Sandeep Shirodkar is as interesting as counting hair.

And the dance sequences are few and too far apart. And the cast tries too hard to make things interesting. Sizzling on the dance floor and miserably fizzling when the dancing stops, 'Chance pe Dance' is a cliche-ridden movie by people to whom formula is clearly mother's milk. There is no chance for the flick to dance at the box office.

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Whether the new Sherlock Holmes movie is any good is a mystery that may be impossible for even the famous detective himself to solve. The truth is, director Guy Ritchie’s film is rather schizophrenic; at times fun and exciting and at others dreadfully tedious and boring. The plot or central mystery is all but incomprehensible, yet watching Robert Downey Jr. as the veteran sleuth solve said mystery is quite pleasurable indeed.

This new Sherlock Holmes is very much the intelligent master of deduction that he has always been but now he is also a straight up action hero, who does as much thinking with his fists as with his brilliant mind. It’s kind of like Sherlock Holmes mixed with Lethal Weapon with a dash of Indiana Jones thrown in for good measure. The fact is the film is more concerned with being a buddy movie than creating a satisfying mystery that the audience can participate in.

As always, Holmes is partnered with the more sophisticated Dr. Watson (Jude Law) but this time around they act more like Felix and Oscar from The Odd Couple or Riggs and Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon series, constantly nit picking at one another while also having major bromantic feelings for one another. The pair have plenty of ongoing jokes between them, but as an audience member it’s a bit boring because you don’t know exactly what they are referring to.

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This Friday, January 22, 2010 prepare yourself for the advent of rupture, where God will cleanse the world of evil. And join the LEGION, the most awaited movie for 2010 is here, Get to watch the movie online Legion, We are circling this event in a group of people trapped in a diner and in that time, God sent angels instead of flood to wipe the world of the human race.

This is going to be one cool movie. For those who are looking for the Legion movie review, then you are in luck, i will be updating it right below with the chance to watch the legion movie online. See the Summary for the movie Legion right below, with theatrical Trailer that will surely make you awe.

In the supernatural action thriller “Legion”, an out-of-the-way diner becomes the unlikely battleground for the survival of the human race. When God loses faith in Mankind, he sends his legion of angels to bring on the Apocalypse. Humanity’s only hope lies in a group of strangers trapped in a desert diner and the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany).

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