"21"--based on the book "Bringing Down the House" it's the story of a group of brilliant M.I.T students who developed a card counting scheme and ended up taking casinos in Las Vegas for millions. The movie version has Jim Sturgess playing the lead character Ben Campbell, a student trying to come up with a way to pay for medical school. He's recruited by his math professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) and seduced by a fellow student Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) to join the "team."
The real life story of Jeff Ma and the other M.I.T. students is so compelling in and of itself it's amazing to me that director Robert Luketic decided to fictionalize the script beyond any sense of reality. It's probably because gambling movies, even good ones like "The Cooler" don't typically make the studios money. So why not cast a hot young actor in Sturgess and make it a hip fast paces thriller? My answer to that would be because it could fail miserably and that's what happens here. Total disaster. 2 out of 5
"Stop Loss"--It's hard to believe that's it's been nearly ten years since director Kim Pierce made her brilliant debut with "Boys Don't Cry" the movie that vaulted Hillary Swank into stardom and won her an Oscar to boot.
Pierce chooses the Iraq war as the backdrop for his first feature work since "Boys". Ryan Phillippe stars as Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated Iraqi war hero who upon returning to his small Texas town after his tour of duty discovers he's been "stop lossed"---a provision that gives the President the ability to send enlisted men back for another tour during a time of war even though they're supposed to be discharged.
Not as overtly preachy as some of the other Iraqi war movies from last year, "Stop Loss" focuses more on the psychological and physical scars left by armed conflict. This is by far the best work of Phillipe's career and I loved the documentary style photography during the opening sequence of the film set during a tense gun battle in Takrit. The movies falls flat and predictable during the second half, which is too bad because it starts out with a lot of promise and the cast is solid. Particularly strong work again from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who most people know for his role when he was a kid on "Third Rock", but last year did a great job in "The Lookout". 3 out of 5
"21"--based on the book "Bringing Down the House" it's the story of a group of brilliant M.I.T students who developed a card counting scheme and ended up taking casinos in Las Vegas for millions. The movie version has Jim Sturgess playing the lead character Ben Campbell, a student trying to come up with a way to pay for medical school. He's recruited by his math professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) and seduced by a fellow student Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) to join the "team." 
"Stop Loss"--It's hard to believe that's it's been nearly ten years since director Kim Pierce made her brilliant debut with "Boys Don't Cry" the movie that vaulted Hillary Swank into stardom and won her an Oscar to boot.