GRAVITY, A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive.

A medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after an accident leaves them adrift in space. GRAVITY, directed by Oscar nominee Alfonso Cuaron, stars Oscar winners Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in a heart-pounding thriller that pulls you into the infinite and unforgiving realm of deep space. Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (Clooney). But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone.

Cuarón wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás and attempted to develop the project at Universal Studios. After the rights to the project were sold, the project found traction at Warner Bros. instead. The studio approached multiple actresses before casting Bullock in the female lead role. Robert Downey Jr. was also involved as the male lead before leaving the project and being replaced by Clooney. David Heyman, who previously worked with Cuarón on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, produced the film with him. London-based VFX company Framestore spent over 3 years creating most of the visual effects for the entire movie encompassing over 80 minutes of screen time.

Gravity opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival in August 2013. Its North American premiere was three days later at theTelluride Film Festival. It received a wide release in the United States and Canada on October 4, 2013. The film was met with universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike; both groups giving praise for Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, Steven Price's musical score, Cuarón's direction, Bullock's performance and visual effects.

In 2014, the film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón) and Best Actress(Sandra Bullock). The film also scored big at the 2014 Critics Choice Awards winning seven awards and a Golden Globe Award for Best Director.

GRAVITY gives you everything: thrilling action, awesome visuals, incomparable cinematic spectacle, a terrifying scenario, an exciting adventure, and a masterpiece of minimalist characterization. They all combine in one pedal-to-the-metal slam-bam technically perfect movie that gives you equal shots of hope and hopelessness from the first frame to the very last.

It is as electrifying a film as I have ever seen, with scarcely a down moment in it, hardly a misused frame. I won't spend time telling you anything about the plot; if the trailers haven't told you enough about why this film is a must see, then I can give you two words that should do it...

Sandra Bullock.

She is not only in practically every frame of the movie, but she exposes herself emotionally here in more ways than I could count: she is equal parts victim and heroine, emotional and calculating, frightened and bold, wounded and powerful. She is a tortured soul who reveals herself in dribs and drabs, revealing her emotional torment when it will have the most effect. The movie is as much about what HAS happened to her as what IS happening to her. She is able to make herself as interesting and captivating as the events that occur during the film, and this is important: rather than simply being a movie about a series of cascading terrors, it is equally about the human spirit, the "stuff" that lies inside us that drives us to go on when going on seems impossible.

GRAVITY is amazing. See it in IMAX 3D if you can; it is worth the money. The technology depicted in the movie is stunning--but I imagine I will be as amazed when I finally get the DVD and find out HOW these truly amazing scenes were shot. Alfonso Cuaron does remarkable job as director, co-writer and co-editor of this absolutely wonderful accomplishment. His technically perfect movie never loses track of the actor within it--I won't be surprised if this achieves Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Acting nominations this year, notwithstanding a half-dozen other technically-related ones.

There have been some critics who have found fault with the movie's accuracy when it comes to the positioning of the space stations, the likelihood of a debris field causing a "Kesslar Syndrome" this devastating, and some other technical flaws, but I will leave these people to their respective perturbations. To me it doesn't matter if GRAVITY is science fiction or simply fiction about science. What it definitely IS is a tour de force balls-to-the-wall spectacle that will leave you gasping. Don't miss it.

FROZEN,The Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey.

Frozen is a 2013 American 3D computer-animated musical fantasy-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Fearless optimist Anna teams up with Kristoff in an epic journey, encountering Everest-like conditions, and a hilarious snowman named Olaf in a race to find Anna's sister Elsa, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.

It is the 53rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Loosely based onHans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, and featuring the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana, the film tells the story of a fearless princess who sets off on an epic journey alongside a rugged, thrill-seeking mountain man, his loyal pet reindeer, and a hapless snowman to find her estranged sister, whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom in eternal winter.

The film underwent several story treatments for several years, before being commissioned in 2011, with a screenplay written byJennifer Lee, and both Chris Buck and Lee serving as directors. Christophe Beck, who had worked on Disney's award-winning short Paperman, was hired to compose the film's orchestral score, while husband-and-wife songwriting team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez penned the songs.

Frozen premiered at the El Capitan Theatre on November 19, 2013, and went into general theatrical release on November 27. The film has so far grossed $763 million in worldwide box office revenue, $336 million of which has been earned in the United States and Canada; it was met with widespread critical acclaim, with several film critics considering it to be the best Disney animated musical since the studio's renaissance era. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and two Critics' Choice Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for "Let It Go", and has received Academy Award, BAFTA, Annie Award, and Satellite Award nominations. 

A sweet, magical film filled with great music, likable characters, and striking effects, Frozen is a fairy tale about overcoming obstacles and the power of true love. Princesses Anna and Elsa are sisters and the closest friends until one day Elsa discovers that she can no longer control her power to create ice and snow. Terrified for the safety of her sister and everyone around her, Elsa isolates herself and vows to never feel any sort of passionate emotion again in hopes of suppressing her powers. But when Elsa comes of age and is set to be crowned queen, she must open the gates of the palace and let in the public, not to mention her sister Anna. Things go horribly wrong and Anna pursues her sister into the mountains in an attempt to save Elsa and reverse the deep freeze that Elsa has inadvertently released on the kingdom of Arendelle. Along the way, Anna joins forces with Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), an ice seller with a strangely close relationship with his reindeer Sven, and Olaf (Josh Gad), a goofy snowman whom she suddenly remembers from early childhood. In the end, Anna and Elsa discover that only by embracing their deepest feelings do they have a chance of saving themselves and the kingdom. Inspired by "The Snow Queen" story by Hans Christian Andersen, the film has plenty of quirky, lovable characters along with a nice blend of corny humor, serious sentiment, suspense, and peril. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel deliver rousing performances of great music that includes original songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez and an original score by Christophe Beck, and the visual effects are simply stunning. Frozen definitely succeeds in captivating audiences young, old, and every age in between. --Tami Horiuchi

Riddick finds himself up against an alien race of predators.

                                     

Richard B. Riddick, more commonly known as Riddick, is a fictional character and the antihero of four films in the Riddick series(Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, the animated movie The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, and Riddick), as well as the two video games The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Actor Vin Diesel has played the title role in all of the Riddick-based films and video games so far. Within the canon of the series, Riddick is shown to be a highly skilled predator—he is extremely mobile and stealthy, especially for someone of his size, has a vast knowledge of how to kill almost any humanoid in a variety of ways, is an extreme survivalist, and is notoriously hard to contain. He is also, self-admittedly, a dangerous convict and murderer—yet despite this, he is sometimes shown to perform moral or even atypically heroic actions, usually against his own better judgment and survivalist nature. Riddick is a Furyan, a member of a warrior race obliterated by a military campaign that left Furya desolate, and is one of the last of his kind. One of his most defining features are his eyes, a characteristic inherent in a certain caste of his species (The Alpha-Furyans), although he implies in Pitch Black that they were "shined" by a back-alley surgical operation. This allows him to see in the dark with no difficulty at all, but also renders his eyes incredibly sensitive to concentrated light, therefore he wears tintedwelding goggles for protection. 

If you're a diehard Vin Diesel fan, then you probably remember him even for his lesser known roles in films that include Saving Private Ryan, Boiler Room, and Knockaround Guys. But, the rest of us have come to know Diesel in basically two roles and two roles only: Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious franchise and Richard B. Riddick in the Riddick franchise. Depending on how you feel about these two particular franchises - odds are that's how you judge whether you like or dislike his acting choices, which have largely included the role of the thug or tough guy. Regardless, The Fast and the Furious franchise quickly lost its flavor without Diesel involved, eventually leading him to disappointing and lackluster roles in films, such as The Pacifier and Man Apart. Eventually, Diesel reclaimed his role in the Fast franchise over the course of three more sequels - not to mention his fame. And, much like Sylvester Stallone with Rocky and Rambo, Diesel hasn't forgotten the character that put him on the map. It's been nearly 10 years since Diesel played the role of Riddick, but after a lengthy wait - the saga of the shiny-eyed convict finally continues in the second sequel (unless you count Dark Fury, then it would be the third sequel), simply titled - Riddick.

David Twohy (Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick) is back to direct Riddick, starring Vin Diesel as Richard B. Riddick - a convict, last seen in The Chronicles of Riddick, had just conquered the Necromonger Empire. However, it was only a matter of time before Riddick was betrayed by his underling, Vaako (Karl Urban). Riddick attempts to return home, but is instead marooned on a desolate planet by the Necromongers - and must once again ward off not one, but two groups of mercenaries looking to collect the bounty on his head. At the same time, a storm is approaching that will once again allow a massive race of predators to unleash maximum carnage. Jordi Mollà, Matt Nable, Dave Bautista, and Katee Sackhoff also star in supporting roles. 

Personally, nothing pleases me more than when a franchise has the same director for all of its films. As a devoted fan of these flicks, I believe it's of the utmost importance to establish and maintain a rock-solid continuity. It appeases the fans that have stuck with the franchise and makes the entirety of the story flow in ways that most franchises just don't care enough to sustain. More often than not, it's brutally (but not always) obvious when a film is shot by one director, and then said director hands off the reigns to someone else. A recent example would be Jon Favreau leaving his directing duties on Iron Man 1 & 2, giving way to Shane Black in Iron Man 3 - who obviously has a completely different style of directing than Favreau. In any event, director David Twohy is back in the director's chair for Riddick - his third stint (out of a possible three) in the Riddick saga. His imagination and fingerprints are all over this franchise, from the development stages to the plot direction - all of which have contributed to this pure, high-octane series of action sci-fi films. 

It seems relatively easy to say any given role is the best for an actor. Since I already used the Iron Man reference, a perfect example would be me saying Iron Man 3 is Robert Downy Jr.'s best performance to date. Some people might agree with that assessment, but it's the same character being portrayed by the same person over the course of several films, so why does it really matter? That's the rule of thumb I'm applying to Vin Diesel in the Riddick films. Without a shadow of a doubt, Riddick is Vin Diesel's best work. In this case, that's not a very large stretch to say since Diesel has only had a handful of characters in his tenure as an actor. Riddick could be comparable to Dominic Toretto, but Riddick is much more a savage character - active, deadly, and a character that says what he means and means what he says. I suppose that's a completely backwards way of saying he's a total badass. If you've seen the first two flicks, then Riddick is more of the same - meaning immensely enjoyable in terms of overall entertainment quality. 

While Diesel thrives in his role, there are still some bothersome issues about this film. First and foremost, Riddick reflects Pitch Black too much for its own good - visually and plot-wise. Don't get me wrong, Pitch Black was a quality flick with a pleasing plot and plenty of action, but there's still a moderate amount of disappointment surrounding the fact that after waiting nearly 10 years for more Riddick, the film is a rough rearrangement of the first film. Speaking of disappointment - it's also a major disappointment that Karl Urban only shows up for a matter of seconds. You heard it - he has nothing more than a brief cameo. There's an endless amount of potential lost with writing a script that didn't include Urban, especially since he's established himself as a top name in Hollywood. Since his role in The Chronicles of Riddick, he has ballooned into a near household name - but I suppose a brief appearance is better than no appearance at all. Hopefully, Riddick will accumulate worldwide success and before long, Riddick will be knocking on Vaako's door in a not-so-distant sequel. 

Overall, Riddick is chock-full of memorable moments that will have Riddick fans screaming to the rafters with joy (present company included). Recent news reports have cited the difficulties Diesel endured financially to make this sequel, so he should be commended for making a film for his fans - especially since there are plenty of actors out there that would have passed on such a gamble. In my opinion, Riddick pays off with dividends in terms of action, CGI visuals, acting, characters, and complete quality of the end product. Even more impressive is the fact this movie was filmed on a reduced budget of $38 million, compared to its predecessor, which cost more than $100 million. Obviously, this film warrants a view, but there are strings attached - and this is where Riddick might hit a snag in the "success" department. The major drawback is that it's been 13 years since Pitch Black was released, and 9 years since its sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick, was released. Naturally, that means if you haven't seen these two films, you'll need to watch them before watching Riddick - as there are heavy details from both films that tie into Riddick. But, if you're caught up on these flicks already, you're good to go.