jjb's - Favourites List

"Life" is an intense sci-fi thriller about a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station whose mission of discovery turns into one of primal fear when they find a rapidly evolving life-form that caused extinction on Mars, and now threatens the crew and all life on Earth.

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In the mountain retreat of a gifted internet billionaire, a young man takes partin a strange experiment: testing an artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

But the experiment twists into a dark psychological battle - a love triangle, where loyalties are torn between man and machine.

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Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the completion of his 3-year-long contract with Lunar Industries, mining Earth's primary source of energy on the dark side of the moon. Alone with only the base's vigilant computer Gerty as his sole companion, Bell's extended isolation has taken its toll.

His only link with outside world comes via satellite messages from his wife and young daughter. He longs to return home, but a terrible accident on lunar surfaces leads to disturbing discovery that contributes to his growing sense of paranoia and dislocation so many miles away from home.

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With stunning special effects this gritty realistic film plunges us into a world where aliens have landed...only to be exiled to a slum on the fringes of Johannesburg. Now, one lone human discovers the mysterious secret of the extraterrestrial weapon technology.

Hunted and hounded through the bizarre back alleys of an alien shantytown, he will discover what it means to be the ultimate outsider on your own planet.

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe expands into the cosmos when brash space adventurer Peter Quill steals a coveted orb and becomes the object of a relentless bounty hunt.

To evade his enemies, Quill forges an uneasy truce with Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon; Groot, a tree-like humanoid; the deadly assassin Gamora; and the revenge-driven Drax. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb, he must rally his ragtag band of misfits for a desperate battle that will decide the fate of the galaxy.

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New York, the twenty-third century. The Earth is about to be destroyed by a huge ball of fire racing toward the planet.

Cornelius, an old monk, knows how to stop the burning sphere: the Fifth Element, the Supreme Being, who unites the four basic Elements - air, water, fire and earth - must be summoned for it is the only being who can stop Evil. Cornelius (Ian Holm), an old monk gets a hand from Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) a taxi driver and former secret agent, and from Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) an alien in the shape of a beautiful, carrot-top young woman. Adventures galore await the trio as they set off to save humanity and fight the horrendous Zorg (Gary Oldman) and his allies, the dreadful Mangalores.

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Take a hilarious ride with the Hoovers, one of the most endearingly fractured families in comedy history. Father Richard (Greg Kinnear) is desperately trying to sell his motivational success programme... with no success.

Meanwhile, "pro-honesty" mom Sheryl (Toni Collette) lends support to her eccentric family, including her depressed brother (Steve Carell), fresh out of the hospital after being jilted by his lover. Then there are the younger Hoovers - the seven-year-old, would-be beauty queen Olive (Abigail Breslin) and Dwayne (Paul Dano), a Nietzsche-reading teen who has taken a vow of silence. Topping off the family is the foul-mouthed grandfather (Alan Arkin), whose outrageous behaviour recently got him evicted from his retirement home. When Olive is invited to compete in the "Little Miss Sunshine" pageant in fat-off California, the family piles into their rusted-out VW bus to rally behind her - with riotously funny results.

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Visionary director Guillermo del Toro creates a unique, richly imagined epic with Pan's Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar era of Fanco's Spain.

Pan's Labyrinth unfolds throught the eyes of Ofelia, a young girl uprooted to a remote military outpost commanded by her new stepfather. Powerless and lonely in a place of great danger, Ofelia lives out her own dark fable as she confronts monsters both otherworldly and human after she discovers a neglected labyrith behind the family home. There she meets Pan, a fantastical creature who challenges her with three tasts which he claims will reveal her true identity.

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Daniel Plainview and son are independent oil men, looking for prospects in California at the turn of the 20th century. They are challenged by a young preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), whose own ambition is matched by Plainview's.

Their battle forms the centre of a scary, darkly-comic historical journey into an abyss of madness.

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"The Dark Knight" reunites director Christopher Nolan with star Christian Bale, who returns to continue Batman's war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham for good.

The triumvirate proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a rising criminal mastermind known as the Joker (Heath Ledger), who thrusts Gotham into anarchy and forces the Dark Knight ever closer to crossing the fine line between hero and vigilante.

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Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant engineer on her first shuttle mission with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). On a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes.

The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalski completely alone, tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the darkness. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go farther out into the terrifying expanse of space.

Melissa McCarthy is masterful in the captivating account - based on a true story - of a down-and-out writer who resorts to lies, deceit and outright crime to get back on top.

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A psychopath known only as Buffalo Bill is kidnapping and murdering young women across the midwest. Believing it takes ones to know one, the FBI sends in Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to interview an insane prisoner who may provide psychological insights and clues to the killer's actions.

The prisoner is psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Brilliant yet psychotic, with a taste for cannibalism, Lecter will only help Starling in exchange for details and secrets about her own complicated life. This twisted relationship forces Starling not only to face her own demons, but leads her face-to-face with a demented killer, an incarnation of evil so overwhelming, she may not have the courage or strength to stop him. Horrific, disturbing, spellbinding. This thriller set the standard by which all others are measured.

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Four ordinary men in two canoes navigate a river they only know as a line on a map, taking on a wilderness they only think they understand.

Deliverance, written by James Dickey based on his novel, surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling, like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man's change of character under stress, harrowingly enacted by award winners Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. Director John Boorman sets us on the knife-edge of survival - and draws us in with the irresistible force of a raging current.