I have always enjoyed watching films based on true events, as it automatically makes films appear more authentic and gripping, since you know the characters you’re watching and the events on the screen once really happened, albeit probably with less impressive cinematic dialogue and popcorn pleasing action. Films based on true stories often make people aware of events and people from history, that they may otherwise never of heard of. Defiance certainly brought an unfamilar story from World War Two to my attention.
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The last time audiences seen ‘Jason’, the nearly unstoppable killer in a hockey mask, he was butting knives with Freddy from A Nightmare On Elm Street in Freddy Vs. Jason. We will never know the clear winner of that horror smack down, because Michael Bay’s production company, Platinum Dunes, has saw fit to remake Friday The 13th and reinvent Jason (and they’ll get to Freddy very soon) and I will confess that it is, by far, hands down, the best Friday The 13th movie made to date.

Don’t get your hopes up.
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Two of our reviewers (Denise and Mariken) watched this film and had some interestingly juxtaposed opinions. So, despite being something we never really do, I’ve decided to present both reviews together. [-Ed.]

DENISE:
Thicker Than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 (2008) is one of those movies that is so bad it is almost good. There is certainly a preexisting demographic this movie will appeal to. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into it, and instead I found myself searching the room for a sharp object to stick in my eye to alleviate the pain of sitting through this entire film. While the movie’s website claims its status as an “award winning film”, the only award I find it worthy of is a Rotten Tomato. Now, depending on your personal taste, that might not be a bad thing.
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Let’s get a few things out of the way first. I’m a single guy, I like all kinds of movies. I am open to all kinds of mainstream genres. Nobody will twist my arm to even see a ‘chick flick’. But maybe it’s because I never been married, or maybe it’s just because I’m a dude, that I never will understand a film like Bride Wars. I know I despised last year’s films Made Of Honor (oddly, that film’s overall premise briefly crops up in this movie too as a throwaway side joke that doesn’t really work) and that Sex and City movie as well. But I did enjoy, even though I “wasn’t supposed to”, 27 Dresses. Maybe I was in a good mood that day. I know today I was put in a foul one watching Bride Wars.

And yes, it is foul.

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Clive Owen is one of my favorite actors from recent years, and he lands many lead roles in films that many seem to admire and like, but for some reason those very same pictures not only fail at the box office but also fail to make him stand out. I don’t know what it is, really. It’s like, ‘Clive Owen’, yeah, we like him, we just skip his movies’. Sure enough, The International is no different, having an odd see-saw of having Owen’s character a burned out Interpol agent in one part of the film, super spy in the other.
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Thanks in part to some test screening audiences who did not like some of the plot that remained true to the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name, Killshot had sat on the Wienstien Company shelf for nearly two years. Since that time, Johnny Knoxville’s scenes were cut from the film (and not to be seen as DVD extras), and one of the three leads in the film, Mickey Rourke, has had a major comeback with 2008′s The Wrestler. Earlier this year, Killshot was eventually theatrically released briefly with little fanfare, but probably done so to capitalize on Rourke’s recent career boost. The DVD cover also boasts of Leonard previous adapted work, 3:10 To Yuma.
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