Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daveigh Chase & Patrick Swayze.

Donnie Darko is a disturbed high school student who is in therapy for his severe depression and fears. One night he is awoken from sleep by a voice and drawn outside his house. Here he is confronted with a purple rabbit talking to him, telling him that the Earth is going to end in 28 days. A few moments later a jet engine lands in his bedroom, completely destroying it. Had he not followed the rabbit outside he would be dead.

The rabbit keeps appearing to Donnie throughout the film, reminding him of the impending end and having him commit crimes. His parents are worried and step up the therapy and his therapist knows he is deeply disturbed.

Donnie thinks the rabbit saved his life so he follows him and listens to whatever he tells him. He starts to investigate time travel as he thinks he is seeing things from the future and past. He’s also drawn to a book written by a now very old woman from his neighborhood who appears to have went senile and stands in the road all day long and checking her mailbox.

Donnie starts rebelling at school and questioning everything around him. As the world is impending doom, he is determined to get answers about his new friend, the rabbit, before the world ends.

Rating:

Moviepeeker scores Donnie Darko an 8.5 out of 10
Movie Released by Pandora Cinema

I enjoyed the first one so much the other day that I had to go out and rent this one to see how it compared to the first.

Part 2 of this series stars Eric Lively, Erica Durance, Dustin Milligan & Gina Holden.

Nick Larson (Lively) is the next to be affected with the ability, or curse, to be able to change the past and future through his dreams. Him and his friends are out enjoying his girlfriend Julie’s birthday (Durance) on the lake when he gets called back into work. They are involved in a terrible accident on the highway on the way back and he is the sole survivor.

One year passes since the accident before Nick starts being able to go back to his past when he falls into his dreams while looking at old pictures. He is thrilled at first that he is able to fix what hurt him the most but soon realizes that one fix only breaks another part of his life.

This is another struggle of life, and the ability to change past events in hopes of a better future. But neither the past or the future like to be controlled and sometimes you have to give up the most important things in order to give others what you want.

While this was a fantastic movie, I thought the first was slightly better, but that could be just because the idea was new to me.

Rating:

Moviepeeker scores The Butterfly Effect 2 a 6.5 out of 10
Movie Released by New Line Cinema

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Melora Walters, Amy Smart, Elden Henson & William Lee Scott.

Evan Treborn (Kutcher) has been having blackouts ever since he was a young boy. Whenever he got into sticky situations, he would blackout and completely forget everything that happened around him. His father had similar issues and ultimately died in a psychiatric facility, so his mother fears he has taken on the same “disease”.

Evan is out with his friends one day when they decide to pull a prank. They put a “blockbuster” explosive in someone’s mailbox to blow it up. Evan blacks out though and wakes a few minutes later in the woods, his friends in a frenzy, and his best friend in shock. Something terrible happened but Evan has no idea what.

All of their lives are changed, but Evan goes forward and his blackouts come to a halt. At least until he is in college and they start returning when he starts reading the journals he wrote during his experiences. He mistakenly remembers a terrible time in his life, lives through it again via memory, but when he awakens he finds that life has actually changed as a result. His memory has allowed him to go back in time and change circumstances.

What follows is a young mans journey into his own memory to try and fix all the wrongs of his life, and the fight to save others.

Rating:

Moviepeeker scores The Butterfly Effect a 7.0 out of 10
Movie Released by BenderSpink

Starring Lizzy Caplan, Lily Ford, T.J. Miller & Michael Stahl-David.

The movie starts out innocently enough as friends are preparing for a going away party. Rob Hawkins (Stahl-David) is moving with his job to Japan and his friends are throwing a surprise going away party. Hud (Miller) is in charge of handling the camcorder to record the events and get the party goers to say a little something to Rob. The rest of the film is recorded via this camcorder.

A few of the friends move out to the balcony and are having a discussion. All of a sudden they hear a huge explosion and the streets shake, which is quite scary in NYC. They all run back into the apartment, then to the roof to see what took place. At first it was being reported as an earthquake but they soon find out they are under attack.

They all run to the streets and are going to try and go over the bridge to Brooklyn to safer ground, but it’s not an easy task when the entire City is under siege from an unknown creature.

A lot of people complained about the “shaky camera” in this film but I thought that was one of the better qualities of the movie as it’s added realism to it. You truly got the feeling that you were one of them, or you were seeing the events through their eyes. The special effects in this flick were outstanding and it was awesome to see NYC as a war zone. It’s a terrifying story of a bunch of friends trying to survive something this world has never seen as it unleashes chaos and huge amounts of damage.

Rating:

Moviepeeker scores Cloverfield an 8.0 out of 10
Movie Released by Bad Robot

Denzel Washington stars in Deja Vu, a film that centers around a terrorist explosion aboard a ferry boat that has well over 500 casualties. Also starring Paula Patton, Val Kilmer, James Caviezel & Adam Goldberg.

Doug Carlin (Washington) is assigned to the task force to lead the investigation into the ferry attack. Right off the bat he is suspicious of what is going on as they find a body of a woman who appears to have the same explosive material on her body, but the corpse was found 1 hour prior to the attack.

The film takes a scientific turn when he learns and joins a team of investigators that can not only view the entire area via satellites, but these satellites are capable of viewing up to 4 days prior, in live time viewing. Doug uses this to monitor varying aspects of the case, including footage of the attack and the events leading up to them.

The movie cuts back to the dead woman that was found and he uses these satellites to monitor her movements prior to the attack hoping it will shed light on the crime. Oddly enough, agent Carlin falls in love with the woman he has never met before which makes him take the case even more personally and go to spectacular lengths to unravel the mystery.

Rating:

Moviepeeker scores Deja Vu an 7.0 out of 10
Movie Released by Touchstone Pictures