Watchmen - Movie Review and Synopsis
“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?”
With this movie and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, comic-book superheroes will continue to dominate the box office in 2009, a year after the genre truly broke as a bankable entity. And in Watchmen’s case, never has a storyline been so intricate, with arcs that span from the Cuban Missle Crisis to the Reagan Era, and out to Mars and back again. Is it fit for mass consumption? Surely, especially now that audiences are connecting with anti-heroes (or, in this case, ex-superheroes), and let’s not forget how in the 1980s are, too. Already people are talking about director Zack Snyder’s page-to-screen take on the graphic novel by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore (the latter of whom is not on board with the project, thank you very much) — has he copied the look of it too much? Not enough? Or are you, like thousands of other people, reading the book for the first time?
Rated R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language.
Director: Zack Snyder
Stars: Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: 6 March 2009 (Indonesia)
Genre: Action | Drama | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller
A young girl (Fanning) walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life – only much better. But when her adventure turns dangerous, and her counterfeit parents (including Other Mother [Hatcher]) try to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home – and save her family.
Mo Folchart (Fraiser) drags his daughter Meggie (Bennet) all around the world completing his skilled work as a ‘Book Doctor’, otherwise known as a bookbinder. At their most recent home, an old enigmatic acquaintance of Mo’s, named Dustfinger (Bettany), shows up and, in a very rare moment in their relationship, Mo talks to Dustfinger in private. All of a sudden, the next morning, Mo packs up and leaves with Meggie without telling her what is going on, a very strange thing in their relationship. They travel to Meggie’s Great Aunt Eleanor’s (Mirren) house to stay and Meggie finds herself, once again, surrounded by books (Eleanor is rich, and collects rare books. She calls them her children, and she has thousands of books in her library).
An origins story which reveals the cause of the centuries-old blood feud between the Death Dealers and the Lycans. Lucian (Sheen), a powerful and influential Lycan, rallies his race in an uprising against the vampire king Viktor (Nighy). Joining Lucian is his secret lover, Sonja (Mitra), a vampire who empathizes with the Lycans and looks to help free them from slavery.
“I was born under unusual circumstances.” And so begins ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918 to the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, Benjamin Button is a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
