Dollar movie

Phoebe in Wonderland 8 10 12 Phoebe in Wonderland tells a delightful tale of a girl who dares to dream of everything she wants in life. Phoebe, played by Elle Fanning in her first lead role, is a 9-year-old girl who ultimately decides to seek a role in her school play. (Gee, can you guess what play they’re putting on?) Anyway, challenges are met, which are then overcome, all in a neat and well-packaged hour and a half. Much like Little Miss Sunshine, this movie is very good at making you feel good about life in general. Fun Fact: The first work on the script for this film began one year before Fanning was born.

Taken 8 10 12 Liam Neeson plays the most badass character of 2009 in this thriller about a retired CIA agent who is forced to pick up his gun again and brutally kill hordes of kidnappers, thieves, and foreigners in order to save his abducted 17-year-old daughter who is now being traded as a slave in Paris. This is plainly a high-octane action flick — sporting the tagline “They took his daughter. He’ll take their lives” — and Neeson, in full kick-ass mode, is perfect in every way.

Pink Floyd The Wall 8 10 12 Based on Pink Floyd’s eponymous album, The Wall is a highly entertaining flick that is driven by Pink Floyd’s music... duh. Championed as “one of the great modern musicals” by critic Roger Ebert, the film stars punk musician Bob Geldof as Pink, the protagonist, who is depicted at various points of development in his life. It was well-received initially, and the band itself has expressed satisfaction with the highly metaphorical movie, which also features many political cartoons that intertwine seamlessly within the picture. So, if you are still hung over from the awfulness that was Across the Universe, The Wall is definitely recommended.

Army of Darkness 8 10 12 In the third and final flick of director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, we find our hero, Ash, hilariously and wonderfully played by Bruce Campbell, transported back to the Middle Ages, where he must battle evil spirits in order to return home. I mean, when a movie features one-liners like “That’s just pillow talk, baby” and “Hail to the king, baby,” how can seeing it not be a good idea? This trilogy has indeed gained a large cult following and is a fitting end to one of the most ghastly, yet always hilarious, movie trilogies ever to grace modern cinema.