Juno
Monday, December 31st, 2007
The movie opens in the fall where after three pregnancy tests in Rollo’s (Rainn Wilson) store, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) discovers she is twelve weeks pregnant by her close friend Paulie (Michael Cera). She calls her best friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby), and decides to schedule an abortion. In front of the clinic, Juno encounters a pro-life classmate protesting, but she enters the clinic nonetheless only to leave after being unnerved by the other patients’ nervous fingers. She returns home intent on carrying the pregnancy to term and to give the infant up for adoption. Juno and Leah look through the penny-saver magazine looking for couples seeking to adopt children and find an ad from a yuppie-couple, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner). She breaks the news of her pregnancy to her father Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons) and her stepmother, Bren MacGuff (Allison Janney) who both support her decision. Juno and Mac visit the affluent Lorings in their hygienic suburban home where the high-strung and maternalistic Vanessa is put off by Juno’s diffidence and sarcasm but Juno and Mark form a bond over their shared musical interests. Mark reveals that he was once in a punk band but now writes commercial jingles; Juno teases him because Vanessa has restricted all his hobbies – Les Paul guitars, song writing, and comic books – to a single room in the house.
Just after the end of the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth and another man enter a bar and approach Thomas Gates (Ben Gates’ great-great grandfather). They produce a diary containing an encrypted message, and entice Thomas, a well-known puzzle solver, to decode it. Thomas recognizes the message as using the Playfair cipher and begins to translate it. While he does so, Booth leaves for the theater to assassinate President Lincoln. Thomas Gates solves the puzzle, a clue to a treasure map, and realizes the men are still loyal to the Confederate cause and have a sinister motive for finding the treasure. The Confederate man pulls a gun on him, threatening to shoot him if he doesn’t hand over the diary, however he is distracted from Gates by the chaos errupting in the bar over news of Lincoln’s assassination. Thomas rips several pages from the diary and throws them in the fireplace. The second man shoots him and attempts to retrieve the pages, only succeeding in saving a small piece. The dying Gates gasps, “The war is over,” but the man disagrees, stating, “You’re wrong about that, the war has only just begun,” and rushes from the bar. With his dying breath, Thomas Gates tells his young son Charles, “The debt that all men pay.”
The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is a 2007 fantasy film directed by Jay Russell. The screenplay was written by Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on the novel The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith. The film stars Alex Etel as the juvenile lead, and Emily Watson and David Morrissey as the principal adult characters. The film was released in the United States on December 25, 2007 and will be released in the United Kingdom on February 1, 2008.
Benjamin Barker is a barber unfairly sentenced to a life of hard labor by Judge Turpin, who lusted for the man’s beautiful and virtuous wife Lucy and daughter Johanna. Assuming the name Sweeney Todd, he escapes from prison and returns to London, assisted by sailor Anthony Hope. There he is told his wife has poisoned herself and his daughter has become the ward of the villainous judge. The home he once shared with his wife and daughter has now been transformed into the worst pie-shop in London by his departed wife’s former friend, Nellie Lovett, and she takes him in and becomes his sole confidante and co-conspirator in revenge. Not distracted by Mrs. Lovett’s bourgeois ambitions or attempts at seduction, Todd spirals deeper into despair, nihilism, violence and insanity, slitting the throat of most customers who enter his shop. Due to the high price of meat, the bodies of his victims go into Mrs. Lovett’s pies, allowing her shop to finally prosper. The first to fall is Adolfo Pirelli, a rival barber who threatens to expose Todd’s past; his young assistant Toby, who knows nothing of this murder, goes to work for Mrs. Lovett.
Irishman Gerry Kennedy (Gerard Butler) and Holly (Hilary Swank), are a happily married couple living in Manhattan. When Gerry dies of a brain tumor, Holly is devastated. The grieving young widow and her friends begin to periodically receive letters written by Gerry, each with a task intended to ease Holly out of grief and transition her into a new life.
The film picks up immediately after the events of Alien vs. Predator. The Predator (”Scar”), who was impregnated by a face hugger before being killed by an Alien Queen at the end of the first film, gives birth to a Predalien on board his clan’s ship, which then sneaks aboard a scout craft headed for Earth and runs amok. As the Predalien rampages through the ship, a Predator attempts to kill it with his plasma caster and inadvertently shoots a hole through the ship’s hull, causing it to crash in the forests outside of Gunnison, Colorado. The ship’s crew dies either upon the crash or by the Predalien, which escapes. A boy and his father who are deer hunting see the crash and go to check it out. Both of them come across the wreckage of the ship-on board, and several face huggers escape from the damaged containment tubes and quickly impregnate them both.
Fictional musician Dewey Cox skyrockets from humble beginnings in Springberry, Alabama and eventually gets caught up in the fame of rock and roll. He begins to hang out with the big time people such as Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Jenna Fischer plays his backup singer and second wife, Darlene. His was first married to his first wife Edith with whom he had many kids, but the marriage was over when she found Dewey about to have sex with Darlene. One of the pervasive themes of the movie is the fact that he accidentally cut his brother in half at the waist when he was a child (a reference to Johnny Cash’s older brother Jack, who was almost cut in half by a table saw and died from his injuries).
The movie begins long ago in a land far, far away with Mother Claus giving birth to a baby, with her husband and son in the background. As the baby is born, the midwife comments on how its the biggest baby shes ever seen. Within a few minutes of his birth, the baby starts giggling and saying, Ho, ho, ho! Mother Claus calls her other son, Fred, over to meet his new brother, who she has decided to name Nick. Mother Claus refers to the new baby as her little Saint Nick, while Fred promises to be the best big brother ever.
This year, Christmas with the whitfields ppromises to be one they will never forget. All the siblings have come home for the first time in years and they’ve bought plenty of baggage with them. As the christmast tree is trimmed and the lights are hung, secrets are revealed and family bonds are tested. As their lives converge, they join together anf help each other discover the true meaning of family
Nancy is a divorced mother of three who is so busy raising her children that she’s forgotten to take care of herself as well. With Christmas fast approaching, she decides to take her kids to the mall to meet Santa Claus, not knowing that her youngest daughter Emily has sensed her mother’s sadness and is determined to use her time with Santa to make her mom happy again. Just a few days prior, Emily heard her mom say that all she wanted for Christmas was a compliment from a man, so that’s exactly what she tells Santa. Ironically, Santa, as it turns out, is an office supply salesman and struggling songwriter Benjamin, who ends up giving Nancy just what she wants for Christmas, and much, much more