Limitless

Q: What’s the movie about?

A: A loser writer (Bradley Cooper) discovers a drug that gives him heightened brain activity as well as the ability to recall any and all information he has ever been exposed to from his entire life. Unfortunately, once you take the drug, you can't stop taking it or your body will deteriorate and you will die. Oh, and there's an extremely limited amount of it going around.

Q: Who’s in the movie?

A: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth, Tomas Arana, Darren Goldstein, Ned Eisenberg

Q: Is this movie worth the price of admission?

A: Go! Talk about life or death stakes...

Q: Will this movie make me laugh?

A: Cocky people are funny... so long as they aren't the star of your hit sitcom.

Q: Will this movie make me cry?

A: Cocky people are also sad, because what goes up must come down. But I don't like to think about that, because it defies my medication-induced optimism. And medications are too expensive to defy.

Q: Will this movie be up for any awards?

A: This deserves an Academy Award for Directing, but will most certainly be overlooked. Why it will be overlooked? Because it's early in the year and at first glance it seems like standard Hollywood fare. Why it deserves it? Because a director's job is to get you inside the mind of the story, and by the time I walked out of the theater, I felt like I had taken NZT.

Q: How is the Acting?

A: Like the directing, Bradley Cooper's performance seems straight forward enough, but in fact demonstrates incredible nuance, as he seamlessly switches between a dangerous, know-it-all, drug-induced pit bull and a weak, insecure, natural lamb. And it's not just the intensified lighting of his frighteningly blue eyes.

Q: How is the Directing?

A: At first all the special effects felt a little gimmicky, to me. But once I realized that I was completely riveted by a scene where Bradley Cooper cleans up his apartment, I knew that I had been a fool to mistrust this director's instincts. Team Neil Burger, all the way to the Oscars!

Q: How is the story/script?

A: Leslie Dixon presents interesting twists in such a way that you get to feel smart, because you know what's going on without being told. I love feeling smart. Which is why I've gotta get my hands on some of that NZT... And if that's not available, maybe I could get me a dose of that Charlie Sheen. From what I can tell, the effect of either drug is about the same.

Q: Where can I see the trailer?

A: Limitless Trailer

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Star Trek

Q: What’s the movie about?

A: The beginnings of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the USS Enterprise crew from before they had a famous television series, or as is the case with this new cast, an inevitable film franchise. This Star Trek movie is so special, it doesn't even need a number.

Q: Who’s in the movie?

A: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder, Tyler Perry, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Morrison, Rachel Nichols, Faran Tahir

Q: Is this movie worth the price of admission?

A: Go! I have a long history of hating Star Trek. First it was a source of fights with college roommates about what was or was not allowed to be cluttering the air of our living room, via the television airwaves. Then, as luck would have it, my first job out of college was as a director's assistant on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager-- a job that forced me to watch endless episodes of those series, and worse, to have to read boring scripts, geeked out with techno-babble beyond my comprehension-- and that's not to mention the constant dodging of Trekkies who had-- to my misfortune-- asked, "So what do you do?"... Well the years have passed, and this movie has none of the old, stiff tone of the television shows. It's fun, and vivacious, and thrilling, despite the fact that I still only understood about two-thirds of what they were talking about with their trans-thrusters and their parallax beams.

Q: Will this movie make me laugh?

A: Surprisingly, quite a bit. And even more so if you're in the know.

Q: Will this movie make me cry?

A: I almost cried twice, and one of the times was in the first act, so that's unusual, but the reasons James T. Kirk is given, as to why he should join Starfleet Academy, are deeply moving.

Q: Will this movie be up for any awards?

A: Anyone who can reinvigorate this tired old series deserves an award for something.

Q: How is the Acting?

A: Chris Pine is Brad Pitt: The Next Generation (TNG for those on the inside). He's sexy, charismatic, and he even has those little pockmarks on his face. But the whole cast is fantastic and well defined, each building on and amplifying what their predecessors brought to the table in the 1960s. We will look back on this film as the one that launched a lot of young actors into the A-list.

Q: How is the Directing?

A: In a lot of ways, it is the look of this film that sells it to the non-Trekkie audience. It is modern, and big, but still true to the standard angles so often highlighted on the Starship's Bridge, like the whip pan from the Captain's chair to the Flight Engineer, or the side angle, slow pans and push ins of two shots and three shots, as the crew looks dramatically at some disaster on a screen. I'm sure it's deliberate on J.J. Abrams' part, but having been on the bridge of several of those ships, I can tell you that it's also because there are very few places to put a camera on those sets, especially if you want to capture anything that looks dynamic. Oh God, I'm having flashbacks!

Q: How is the story/script?

A: I love time travel! It keeps your mind in a constant state of jumble, so you almost don't notice the wormholes in the plot, or care, for that matter, about how many incredible coincidences it takes for this story to work itself out. And anyway, the characters are so well developed, and the dialogue is so snappy, that I have to assume it all makes sense.

Q: Is there anything else worth mentioning about the movie?

A: The area that requires the biggest suspension of disbelief and has probably not been mentioned by anybody else is this: How many times can Kirk hang off the edge of a cliff by just his fingers and not fall? Do it once, and I'll give you a pass, but in this movie it happens about 4 times. Maybe it's an inside joke I don't know about, but all I kept thinking was, "Not only is it rare to manage to catch yourself mid-flight that way, when gravity is pulling you downward, but it's nearly impossible to lift yourself up from that position using only the strength of your own arms." Try it if you don't believe me. I can't do it, and I was a trained gymnast.

Q: Where can I see the trailer?

A: http://www.moviefone.com/movie/star-trek/29301/trailers

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