Paradise Now



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Paradise Now follows two Palestinian childhood friends, who have been recruited as suicide bombers for a strike on Tel Aviv and focuses on their last days together. When they are intercepted at the Israeli border, a young woman, who discovers their plan, causes them to reconsider their actions. Khaled and Said (Ali Suliman, Kais Nashef) believe fervently in the Palestinian cause, but having a bomb strapped to your waist would raise doubts in anyone and once doubts have arisen, they respond in very different ways. Paradise Now is quite gripping, while the men are preparing for their mission, but when the setup goes awry and they're separated from their handlers, it becomes excruciatingly tense. The film passes no judgment on them; impassioned arguments are made for both sides. A work of remarkable insight by writer-director Hany Abu-Assad.


Pearl Harbor



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Director Michael Bay's take on the bombing that brought the United States into World War II hijacks every war movie cliché you've ever seen and gives them a shiny, glossy spin, until the whole movie practically gleams. Planes glisten, water sparkles, trees beckon and the re-creation of the bombing sets the action movie bar up quite a few notches. The love triangle is this time between two pilots (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) and a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) who find themselves stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, during what they thought would be a nice, sunny tour of duty. Then history intervened, of course. Affleck and Beckinsale find a nice, appealing chemistry, but their romance is truncated at the point when he has to leave her to go to England. The action sequences and pyrotechnics keep Pearl Harbor in fairly constant motion and when that action takes hold, it is quite a thrilling ride.


Planet of the Apes Collection



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This legendary science fiction masterpiece collection consists of 5 movies: Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist (Roddy McDowall). An Honorary Academy Award winner and nominated for 2 Oscars, this saga is grand entertainment from its visually arresting beginning to the chilling last moment and at the same time critical of today's society. In the second movie mankind is driven underground, in the third you'll experience a visit from future man, then a revolution in the fourth and a final confrontation in the fifth.