Race to Witch Mountain - Movie Review and Synopsis
When a cab driver (Johnson) picks up an unusual fare — a brother and sister duo with paranormal powers, who are being pursued by a nefarious organization — he teams up with a discredited astrophysicist (Gugino) to protect the kids and, ultimately, the rest of humankind.
Original Witch Mountain stars Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann are on board for Disney’s redo of enduring and still-kinda-scary 1975 family movie, but how far will Disney in their attempt to preserve the story’s integrity? Rather far, it seems, if the footage we saw at Comic-Con is any indication. Director Andy Fickman is looking to make his first break from his more-cushy films (She’s the Man, The Game Plan) by picking up the mythology 30 years after the first film was set. Will it be PG or PG-13, people are asking, but when you have AnnaSophia Robb aboard, co-star of the “Hard PG” Bridge to Terabithia, I think Fickman and Disney are up to something special here.
Rated PG for sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and some thematic elements.
Director: Andy Fickman
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, AnnaSophia Robb
Studio: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release Date: 13 March 2009 (USA)
Genre: Adventure | Comedy | Sci-Fi | Thriller
A loose remake of 12 Angry Men (1957), set in a Russian school. 12 jurors are struggling to decide the fate of a Chechen teenager who allegedly killed his Russian stepfather. Stepfather took teenager to live with him to Moscow, during Chechnya war, in which teenager lost his parents. The jurors: a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others represent the fragmented society of modern day Russia.A stray bird (a touch of New Age cinema) is flying above the jurors’ heads, alluding to tolerance.
PHOEBE is the fantastical tale of a little girl (Elle Fanning) who won’t, or can’t, follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher (Clarkson), even as her brilliant but anguished mother (Huffman) looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration.
Aidan Breslin is a bitter detective emotionally distanced from his two young sons following the untimely death of his devoted wife. While investigating a series of murders of rare violence, he discovers a terrifying link between himself and the suspects in a chain of murders that seem to be based on the Biblical prophecies concerning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death.
“Watchmen” is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity… but who is watching the Watchmen?”
