21 (2008)

Columbia Pictures' action/adventure 21 is inspired by the true story of the very brightest young minds in the country -- and how they took Vegas for millions.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a shy, brilliant M.I.T. student who -- needing to pay school tuition -- finds the answers in the cards. He is recruited to join a group of the school's most gifted students that heads to Vegas every weekend armed with fake identities and the know-how to turn the odds at blackjack in their favor. With unorthodox math professor and stats genius Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) leading the way, they've cracked the code. By counting cards and employing an intricate system of signals, the team can beat the casinos big time. Seduced by the money, the Vegas lifestyle, and by his smart and sexy teammate, Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), Ben begins to push the limits. Though counting cards isn't illegal, the stakes are high, and the challenge becomes not only keeping the numbers straight, but staying one step ahead of the casinos' menacing enforcer: Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne).

Overview

Director : Robert Luketic

Writers (WGA) : Peter Steinfeld (screenplay) and Allan Loeb (screenplay)

Release Date : 28 March 2008 (USA)

Genre : Drama

Tagline:

Inspired by the true story of five students who changed the game forever.

Plot Outline:

"21" is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.

Doomsday (2008)

Three decades after a major country is quarantined in hopes of containing a lethal and highly contagious virus nicknamed "Reaper," signs that the super-bug has resurfaced in a major city prompt desperate specialists to race back into the infected zone to find a cure in director Neal Marshall's (The Descent) miasmic speculative sci-fi thriller. Few could have foreseen the terror that the microorganism known as "Reaper" would unleash upon the unsuspecting population, and when terrified authorities quarantined the entire country in hopes of saving the human race, the streets immediately descended into chaos. Thirty years later, the inhabitants of planet Earth think that they've seen the last of the merciless killer disease, but they couldn't be more wrong. When "Reaper" reappears more powerful than ever in a major city, an elite group of professionals led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) are forced to travel back into the sealed-off country where the virus first broke out in order to create a cure and save humankind from certain doom. Now, as the rest of the world anxiously awaits word of their ultimate fate, Eden and her brave team are about to find out that there is indeed a hell, and they are about to journey directly into its black, envenomed heart.

Overview

Director : Neil Marshall

Writer : Neil Marshall (writer)

Release Date : 14 March 2008 (USA)

Genre : Action / Drama / Sci-Fi / Thriller

Tagline:

The End Is Nigh.

Plot Outline:

A futuristic action thriller where a team of people work to prevent a disaster threatening the future of the human race.

The Bank Job (2008)

Inspired by the infamous 1971 robbery that took place at the Lloyds Bank in Marylebone London, Lionsgate's ® 'The Bank Job' stars Jason Statham ('Transporter,' 'Snatch,' 'Crank,' 'The Italian Job') and Saffron Burrows ('Klimt,' 'Enigma'). The highly-charged heist thriller tautly interweaves high-level corruption, murder and sexual scandal in 1970s England.

A car dealer with a dodgy past and new family, Terry (Statham) has always avoided major-league scams. But when Martine (Burrows), a beautiful model from his old neighborhood, offers him a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street, Terry recognizes the opportunity of a lifetime. Martine targets a roomful of safe deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets - secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal that spans London's criminal underworld, the highest echelons of the British government, and the Royal Family itself...the true story of a heist gone wrong...in all the right ways.

Overview

Director : Roger Donaldson

Writers (WGA) : Dick Clement (written by) & Ian La Frenais (written by)

Release Date : 7 March 2008 (USA)

Genre : Chrime / Thriller

Tagline:

The true story of a heist gone wrong... in all the right ways.

Plot Outline:

Martine offers Terry a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street. She targets a roomful of safe deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets - secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal.

No Country For Old Men (2007)

The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law -- in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) - can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers -- in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (Javier Bardem) - the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning?s headlines.

Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy.

Overview

Directors : Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Writers (WGA) : Joel Coen (screenplay) & Ethan Coen (screenplay)

Release Date : 21 November 2007 (USA)

Genre : Chrime / Drama / Thriller

Tagline:

There Are No Clean Getaways

Plot Outline:

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande.

Horton Hears A Who! (2008)

A new CG animated feature film from 20th Century Fox Animation, the makers of the 'Ice Age' films, based on the beloved book, first published in 1954, by Ted Geisel, who wrote under the pen name Dr. Seuss. Seuss books are among the defining works of family literature, have sold over 200 million copies, and have been translated into fifteen languages. The 'Horton' series ('Horton Hears a Who,' 'Horton Hatches the Egg') are consistently among the top-selling of all Seuss titles – generation after generation. 'Horton Hears a Who' is about an imaginative elephant who hears a cry for help coming from a tiny speck of dust floating through the air. Suspecting there may be life on that speck and despite a surrounding community which thinks he has lost his mind, Horton is determined to help.

Overview

Directors : Jimmy Hayward, Steve Martino

Writers : Ken Daurio (screenplay), Cinco Paul (screenplay)

Release Date : 14 March 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre : Animation / Adventure / Family

Tagline:

One Elephant One World One Story

Plot Outline:

Horton the Elephant struggles to protect a microscopic community from his neighbors who refuse to believe it exists.

10,000 BC (2008)

In a remote mountain tribe, the young hunter D'Leh (Steven Strait) has found his heart's passion -- the beautiful Evolet (Camilla Belle). But when a band of mysterious warlords raid his village and kidnap Evolet, D'Leh leads a small group of hunters to pursue the warlords to the end of the world to save her. As they venture into unknown lands for the first time, the group discovers there are civilizations beyond their own and that mankind's reach is far greater than they ever knew. At each encounter the group is joined by other tribes who have been attacked by the slave raiders, turning D'Leh’s once-small band into an army.

Driven by destiny, the unlikely warriors must battle prehistoric predators while braving the harshest elements. At their heroic journey's end, they uncover a lost civilization and learn their ultimate fate lies in an empire beyond imagination, where great pyramids reach into the skies.

Here they will take their stand against a tyrannical god who has brutally enslaved their own. And it is here that D'Leh finally comes to understand that he has been called to save not only Evolet but all of civilization.

Overview

Director : Roland Emmerich

Writers (WGA) : Roland Emmerich (written by) & Harald Kloser (written by)

Release Date : 6 March 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre : Adventure / Drama

Tagline:

It takes a hero to change the world.

Plot Outline:

A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter's journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe.

Vantage Point (2008)

President Ashton (William Hurt) is attending a global war on terror summit in Spain. Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) are two of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect him. This is the first action that Agent Barnes has been in since he took a bullet for President Ashton six-month earlier. We really dont know if Agent Barnes is up to the challenge of protecting the President. Shortly after President Ashton is escorted to the stage in the plaza by the Secret Service, he is immediately shot twice by a rifle from a window and falls to the floor. The crowd is in shock and chaos breaks out all over, especially, when bombs begin to explode. Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) is an American video-taping the event to show to his children that he was actually there at this historic event. He believes that he has the picture of the man who shot the President. Agent Barnes sees the tape and has a clue to that person. Several different people witness the event, and only through their eyes do we see the truth behind the assassination attempt.

Overview

Director : Pete Travis

Writer (WGA) : Barry Levy (written by)

Release Date : 12 March 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre : Drama / Thriller

Tagline:

8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth.

Plot Outline:

With a Rashomon narrative style, the attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives.