SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard in "Public Enemies"

In 1933 as John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is brought to a penitentiary by his partner John “Red” Hamilton (Jason Clarke) but they are actually there to help their gang members to break out of prison before heading to Chicago to rob banks.

Meanwhile, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and several other FBI agents manage to gun down another criminal, Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum) and J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) recruited Purvis to lead the hunt for Dillinger.

At a party, Alvin Karpis offers Dillinger a role in a kidnapping plot but he declines politely stating that the public doesn’t like kidnappings. There, Dillinger meets Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), whom he takes to dinner. But when Dillinger begins talking to associates of Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s right hand man, Billie leaves and takes a taxi. Later, Dillinger manages to locate her and beats up a drunker who is verbally abusing her. Impressed, Billie leaves with Dillinger to a motel.

After getting a tip up, Melvin Purvis and his men ambush the motel where he believes Dillinger is staying but they only find an ordinary husband and wife. As Purvis is suspicious of the “husband”, he leaves one of his men to stay behind and watch the door. But, the agent is distracted by someone approaching the door and is killed by the “husband” who turns out to be Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham).

While Purvis has mistaken Baby Face Nelson to be Dillinger, Dillinger and his men manage to conduct another robbery and Purvis admits it’s his mistake and demands from Hoover to bring in professionals to help him to catch Dillinger.

When Dillinger and his girl are enjoying their vacation together, the police manages to locate and arrest Dillinger. In the court, Dillinger’s lawyer is able to convince the judge to keep him in the county jail instead of transferring him to the state prison. With the help of a few inmates, Dillinger manages to escape using a fake gun but is unable to meet Billie due to tight surveillance by the FBI.

Later on, Billie manages to escape and meets Dillinger as they spend a night together. The next morning, Billie is recaptured by the FBI and is severely beaten by an interrogator. Purvis and his men come later on and stop the interrogator from his abusive ways.

With the help of Anna Sage, a prostitute who is also Dillinger’s acquaintance by threatening to deport her back to Romania, Purvis manages to track down Dillinger. But, it is another agent, Charles Winstead who shoots Dillinger. Purvis quits the FBI a year later and committed suicide in 1960 while Billie lived the rest of her life in Wisconsin after her release in 1936.

Public Enemies has slight reassemblance like the movie “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” where actor Johnny Depp’s character, John Dillinger is the Al Capone version of Brad Pitt’s Jesse James. Asides from Johnny Depp’s incredible performance as Dillinger, Public Enemies is brilliantly filmed in high definition and it has a great cinematography and is beautifully set up.

My ratings: 8 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Harrison Ford and Alice Braga in "Crossing Over"

Harrison Ford plays Max Brogan who leads immigration officers into routine busts in Los Angeles to collect illegal immigrants working factories and depot them back to their own countries. Along with his partner, Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis) and the other officers, Max Brogan’s job involves little humanity.

During one of the crackdowns, Brogan finds Mireya Sanchez (Alice Braga) hiding behind a rack of clothes. He initially decides to let her get away but fellow officer sees her and voila, there is nothing he can do about it. Even when Mireya begs Brogan to find her son and brings him back to Mexico, Brogan cruelly rejects her. Behind the scenes however, Brogan is a man with conscience as he comes back to collect the piece of paper he garbles earlier containing the address of Mireya Sanchez’s son. Throughout the movie, Brogan never cease finding the status of Mireya as she didn’t return home to Mexico.

Everyone struggles to achieve legal status in the film. While some like Aussie actress Claire Shepard (Alice Eve) attempts to get her document illegally by having sex with an immigrant officer, Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta), others like Gavin Kossef, an atheist Jewish musician has it easier as he pretends to be an Orthodox to get his green card.

Ashley Judd plays Denise Frankel, wife of Cole Frankel and works in the children welfare department. Contrary to Cole, her job is to take care of the children whether they are immigrants or citizens of the United States.

Overall, the movie touches on sensitives issues such as religion and race but it evens it out by playing a melancholy tone as some manage to get green cards while others have to be deported and some even ends up dead.

My ratings: 6 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jackie Chan in "Shinjuku Incident"

Jackie plays a tractor mechanic nicknamed Steelhead and enters Japan illegally like many others in the 1990’s. There he meets Jie (Daniel Wu), his friend and they do laboring jobs to make a living. Most of the time, Steelhead, Jie and the Chinese immigrants spend their time running away from cops. At one time, Steelhead even manages to save Inspector Kitano (Naoto Takenaka) from drowning in the sewer.

When Lily (Fan Bingbing), a beautiful young lady, also from Mainland China sees Steelhead doing the dishes, she generously offers him some money. Steelhead inadvertently saves Lily’s customer from some gangsters and thus become closer with Lily.

Before long, Steelhead finds out that Xiu Xiu has married a Japanese Yakuza boss called Eguchi (Kato Masaya), therefore he decides to remain in Japan and obtain citizenship. When life gets tougher, Steelhead decides to earn a living by doing illegal activities, including selling phony phone cards and cheating at slot machines by tampering with the microchips. As Jie is too cowardly to continue doing illegal work, Steelhead and the rest pull together some money to buy Jie a chestnut cart.

However, one unfortunate day, Jie temporarily replaces his housemate in a slot machine game when the Taiwanese mafia already suspects tampering of the microchips. Jie becomes a victim and the Taiwanese gangsters beat him up and violently chop off his left hand using his chestnut wok and steel turner.

After saving Jie from the Taiwanese gangster, Steelhead seeks retaliation and secretly walk into the Taiwanese establishment. By chance, Steelhead finds out that one of the Japanese Yakuzas plans to lure Eguchi to the establishment and have him assassinated. When the Taiwanese mob leader attempts to thrust a knife into Eguchi, Steelhead appears from underneath a table and slices the mob leader’s hand. They manage to escape and Eguchi even brings Steelhead to his house and greets his wife, Yuko Eguchi where her real name is Xiu Xiu. Initially Steelhead refuses to work with Eguchi but when the both of them meet again together with Lily, Steelhead accepts Eguchi’s offer of assassinating two Japanese Yakuza leaders in exchange with legal documents and the territory where the Taiwanese is currently occupying.

Soon, Steelhead has made a name for himself by becoming the largest foreign gangster in Japan as his cronies are controlling most parts of Shinjuku. As Inspector Kitano owes Steelhead his life, he has many times let Steelhead off with a warning instead of arresting him. While Steelhead makes money the legal way, he has little idea that his other members are selling drugs and the likes. Steelhead confesses his wrongdoings to Inspector Kitano and brings him to his establishment to arrest Eguchi. At the same time, the elders of the Yakuza has decided it’s time to wipe out the Chinese immigrants as their power has become too dominant. Nakajima (Kenya Sawada) and the Taiwanese mafia all march towards Steelhead’s establishment with their samurai swords.

Brutality and gang fights take place. Many of the Chinese immigrants whom are now legal residence of Japan are killed in the battle. Even Eguchi is shot to death. Steelhead manages to escape but in the end, he bleeds to death and he returns the inspector a favor by giving him the flash drive belonging to Eguichi, which contains vital information about the Yakuza’s dealing.

Overall, the movie is brutal, dramatic and is full of action. Jackie Chan shows a different side of himself besides being a comedian and a kung fu expert. A must-watch film of 2009!

My ratings: 8 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Dev Patel in "Slumdog Millionaire"

Jamal Malik is interrogated by the police for cheating as he has made it through to the final question in the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? because he is just an 18-year-old "Chaiwalah" (tea boy) who is neither knowledgeable or lucky.

As Jamal tells the inspector of how he answered each of the question, there are constantly flashbacks of his childhood in the slums of Mumbai, Dharavi. Jamal and his brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal) were orphans after their mother has died during the Hindu-Muslim riots, they befriended an orphan girl Latika (Freida Pinto). While living in the trash, Maman the gangster offers them two bottles of Coke, but little did they know he collects street children to train them as beggars with Salim being groomed to become part of Maman’s operation.

When Salim realizes how Maman blinded the children who know how to sing and that his brother is a talented singer, he pours acid into one of Maman’s men and the three children try to escape, but only Jamal and Salim manage to escape with Latika purposely left behind by Salim.

The brothers earn a living by selling goods, pretending to be tour guides at Taj Mahal, stealing and pickpocketing. Jamal insists to go back to Mumbai in order to locate Latika. When they find her, she is working as a dancer in a brothel. The brothers attempts to rescue Latika but Maman and his men intrude causing Salim to draw a gun and kill Maman.

As Salim joins a rival gang, Javed, Jamal works in a call centre as an assistant. Jamal enters the popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as he knows Latika will be watching. In the final question, Jamal uses his phone-a-friend lifeline to call Salim, but Latika answers his phone since Salim has earlier given his phone to Latika. Latika does not know the answer but Jamal manages to guess the answer (Aramis) correctly while Salim’s deed is discovered by Javed’s men and is shot to death by Javed’s men after Salim has shot Javed.

Overall, the movie is magnificent and it creates a whole new perspective in the movie arena. Slumdog Millionaire is definitely breathless and simply breathtaking. I think that it can win an Oscar for the Best Picture. It is written.

My ratings: 9 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston in "Marley & Me"

John Grogan (Owen Wilson) and Jenny Grogan (Jennifer Aniston) are a happily married couple whom escape the cold Michigan to southern Florida where both of them are hired as reporters for two different newspapers. While John works as a news reporter covering mundane stories in South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Jenny works as a columnist at The Palm Beach Post.

When Jenny is hinting John that she wants to have a baby, John’s friend and colleague, Sebastien Tunney (Eric Dane) suggests to John to adopt a dog in order to take Jenny’s focus away from thinking to have a baby. John then surprises Jenny by bringing her to buy a yellow Labrador retriever and John names him Marley.

Marley is the world’s worse ever dog as he grows up — he eats furniture, answering machine, floor. When John and Jenny realizes they are able to cope with Marley, they attempt to get a baby. When Jenny becomes pregnant, she loses her baby in her first trimester and John suggests that they both go for a belated honeymoon in Ireland leaving Marley to a caretaker. When they return, Jenny discovers she is pregnant again and this time around, she delivers a healthy baby boy named Patrick. Before long, Jenny has a second child, Connor and she chooses to become a full-time mother while John gets a promotion at work earning double of what he earned previously as a full-time columnist. They also move to a larger house in a safer neighborhood called Boca Raton.

The couple welcomes a daughter, Colleen to their family when Jenny suddenly shows signs of postpartum depression even though she denies it. She even wants Marley and John out of the house. When she realizes how important Marley and John is to the family, she agrees they can stay.

When John turns 40, he realizes how mundane his job has become and accepts a job offer from The Philadephia Inquirer instead and they move into a rural farm house. Marley grows old and starts to slow down until the day John and his family has to live without Marley.

Overall, Marley & Me is a movie about the life of John Grogan and his beloved dog, Marley. Nothing’s too special about the movie except that it shows life can be mundane, dogs can be irritating, and it’s not easy raising a family. However, if we can embrace ourselves and learn to live better without giving ourselves too much expectations, life can be a lot easier.

My ratings: 7 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Brad Pitt and Taraji P. Henson in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tells a story of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), a man who is born as an 86-year-old baby and grows younger each day. Taraji P. Henson plays Queenie, the "mother" who found Benjamin and decides to keep him despite his deformed look. As the people who surrounds Benjamin grows old and dies, Benjamin is left to deal with sadness which comes and goes so often. After spending 16 years at the nursing home, Benjamin leaves Queenie and everyone else behind to travel the world after meeting Captain Mike (Jared Harris). Even though, Benjamin does reconcile with Queenie and then falls in love with Daisy (Cate Blanchett), the end part is simply touching and heart-warming.

While Brad Pitt leads the movie with an ever awe-inspiring performance, actress Cate Blanchett has an equal strong performance as Daisy Fuller, the woman whom Benjamin loves all his life. Taraji P. Henson’s performance as Benjamin’s surrogate mother is simply outstanding.

Overall, even though the movie is 166 minutes long, time moves really quick, just like how Benjamin grows younger. The film is meaningful and affecting while the special effects are seamless, and the actors are just incredible. This is a masterpiece.

My ratings: 9 out of 10.