Annie:

Recipient of the “Razzie” award for the worst remake of the year, this update of the classic Broadway play and the original 1982 movie didn’t work for critics and it didn’t work for most who loved the first movie. However, the target audience, which is young girls eight years old and up loved it, because they didn’t have the baggage of the disappointment wrought by the casting of Jamie Foxx as a character not even named Daddy Warbucks, and updating of the award-winning musical score to eliminate some favorites and add some new songs that really didn’t work. This one did not work at all for me – the changes and updated hurt, didn’t help … but I’m not an eight year-old girl, so there! Rated PG.

Penguins of Madagascar:

Wes Bentley (The Hunger Games) and Jonathan LaPaglia (The Slap) star in a nail-biting thriller set in the Norwegian Sea in the 1980s when oil exploration in that region was just getting going. Understanding the potential of the enormous oil deposits under the seabed requires some very brave divers and some very brave underwater operatives … but where there is big money, there is also bug trouble. Conspiracies abound, there is danger at every turn, and there may be no way out. Rated 18A.

Exodus: Gods and Kings:

This is essentially a remake of The 10 Commandments, sort of, with Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as his “brother’ Ramses. I found the movie a disappointing mish-mash of Biblical and non-Biblical history, casting that really didn’t fit in places, and a pivotal scene, the acquiring by Moses of the Ten Commandments, a sort of add-on. Burning bush was in the background here, as God himself appears in the form of a young boy, challenging Moses with riddles. The climactic scene with the parting of the Red Sea is dramatic using new CGI technology, but all in all, I really prefer the original, and found this one wanting at almost every level. Rated 14A.

Goodfellas (1990):  

Still one of the very best mob movies ever made with Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino, Lorraine Bracco, and Joe Pesci, all playing consummate Wise-Guy characters that set the standard for many movies and TV series to follow, including The Sopranos.  Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Liotta) and his gangster friends Tommy and Jimmy.  They pull a bank job, and decide to eliminate the other members of their gang.  This helps their reputations as tough guys, and they begin to move their way up slowly but surely through the mob, looking to become made men.  Excellent film.  Rated 18A.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003):

A dozen years after the previous Terminator movie, we now see John Connor (Nick Stahl) living off the grid to keep several steps ahead of Skynet and those from the future who are tracking him, and need to kill him before he becomes the leader of the resistance, which prevents the machines from ruling the world.  A new, sophisticated Terminator arrives on the scene from the future, far more powerful than the previous film's T-1000.  Another CSM-101 is also sent back to help protect John Connor, and this one looks exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Rated 18A.