Cars 2

Cars 2 picks up pretty much where the 2006 hit left off, with Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) at the top of the racing circuit while his best friend Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) stays back in Radiator Springs thinking up ways for them to have fun together when the race season is over. A challenge to take part in a global rally designed to prove that a new fuel alternative is just as good as gasoline puts their plans on the back burner and Lightning and Mater head off on an adventure that soon has them joining a British spy car (voiced by Michael Caine) to stop a mysterious bad guy from taking over the world. If you strip away the fact that the story is being told by animated cars with eyes where their windshield should be talking though their bumpers, the plot to Cars 2 is a reheated rehash of spy movie clichés dumbed down for kids. So to keep the audience interested enough to ignore the obvious plot points of the story, co-directors John Lasseter and Brad Lewis fill the screen with eye-popping images, from the neon lights of Tokyo to a photo-realistic re-imagining of London.

Tabloid

When was the last time you watched a movie and the story — not the acting, not the special effects, not the usual bells and whistles Hollywood uses to fill the gaping void of their stories — but the actual story made your jaw drop in astonishment? If you can’t remember when, or worse can’t remember it ever happening, the prepare to be astonished. Directed by Errol Morris, Tabloid is a documentary about a former beauty queen who rescues her fiancé from a dangerous religious cult. It’s also the story of a Mormon missionary who is kidnapped by a deranged woman and forced into being her sex slave. It’s the story of a virginal girl who gave up everything in her life for her one true love. It’s also the story of a prostitute who specialized in playing bondage and discipline games with any man who could afford her price. And just when you think you have a handle on what the story is all about, it quickly turns into the tale of a determined (or is that demented?) dog owner who pays a South Korean scientist a lot of money to clone her dog.

Justice

On the surface, this BBC series feels like any one of a dozen other courtroom dramas about a new law enforcement agent coming to a tough town and trying to make things right. Most series, though, don’t have somebody like Robert Pugh playing the guy bringing the tough justice to town. In the show, Pugh plays Judge Patrick Coburn, a local lad who went away, made good and is now returning home to Liverpool to run an experimental courthouse designed to give offenders a better chance of making a new life for themselves. Just when his work in the courtroom starts having an effect, a newspaper reporter starts digging up facts about the judge, particularly about his life in Liverpool before he left, that could bring his career crashing down. Well paced and extremely well acted, the series doesn’t worry about giving every episode a cliffhanger ending because it knows, with characters like this, you’ll come back for more no matter what.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

When they think of spy movie’s most people think of James Bond battling Blofeld or, if they’re in a silly mood, Austin Powers going up against Dr. Evil. They don’t think of a bunch of pipe-smoking middle aged British guys sitting in a conference room deciding the fate of the world oh-so-politely. That’s what they get in this BBC series, and if they give it a chance they’ll see it’s just as exciting, and far more satisfying, than anything 007 ever did in a movie. Alec Guinness stars as George Smiley, a retired secret agent who is called back to duty to investigate charges that there’s a mole in the secret service, a mole placed at a very high level. The conversations that follow, so thick with spy speak that the DVD set comes with a glossary of terms so you can understand what everybody is talking about, are fascinating. The performance of Guinness is spellbinding.

Thankskilling

One look at the cover will tell you if this is the movie for you: It truly is the “ultimate low-budget experience.” And that’s a good thing. Director Jordan Downey couldn’t have made a better movie if he had 10 times the budget. It’s the story of five teenagers who fall victim to an ancient Indian course that causes a deranged turkey/puppet to rise from its grave to seek bloody revenge. The special effects are laughable, but they’re meant to be. The script is a lot smarter than it pretends to be, especially to fans of horror movies that will recognize every cliché that Downey is gleefully exploiting. And the actors seem to be having as much fun in it as you will have watching it. Give it a chance.

Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story

Poppy Montgomery stars in this stylish soap opera about the struggles that JK Rowling went through before becoming a global sensation as the creator of Harry Potter and his wizard friends. The facts may be correct – Rowling was living on the ‘dole’ as a single mom before she started writing the books that would make her one of the wealthiest women in the world – but a lot of the movie feels overdramatized for television, particularly the scenes of Rowling’s first marriage to an abusive man she hardly knew. And the scene where a young JK tells a red-headed friend that he’s too ‘weasley’ to be a character in her book will make you groan out loud (even if it really did happen). Montgomery is delightful to watch, however, and does a great job of making you feel at the end of the film that you really know JK.

Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy

It’s been almost 20 years since Steven Spielberg made his first big dinosaur movie, the original Jurassic Park (1993), and it’s nice to report that time has basically stood still for the effects in the first film, as well as its two sequels: The dinosaurs still look great. Revisiting the films gives audiences a chance to look beyond the wow factor and remember that as cool as the T Rex and Raptors look, it’s the performances from the actors that really sell the reality of the big lizards. Just watch Laura Dern’s face when she is cornered by the raptors and you can feel her fear. The first film set the gold standard for the series by combining the effects and the acting with a great, well-paced story. The first sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, throws the idea of story and acting out the window, despite some strong talent like Juliane Moore, to be a full-throttled action film. Jurassic Park III just doesn’t have the energy to make it even a close contender to the first two films.