Ant Bully (Released in 2006) - Animation film - Voices by Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Paul Giamatti

Released in 2006, the Ant Bully is a computer animated movie produced by Tom Hanks. It is based on a children’s book of the same name. The movie has some big names who have lent their voice for the characters in the movie. These names include Julia Roberts, Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Paul Giamatti.
The movie is about a 10 year old kid named Lukas Nickle (voice of Zach Tyler), who gets beaten up by his neighborhood bullies all the time. To get his frustration out, he then goes about attacking an anthill in his backyard with a squirt gun. There then follows a close up of the colony of ants. Amongst them is the ant wizard, Zoc (voice given by Nicholas Cage), and his girlfriend Hova who is an ant nurse (voice given by Julia Roberts). The ants along with Zoc and Hova try to fight back, but Hova almost gets killed in the process. Finally, a very unhappy Zoc decides it’s time to teach the ant bully-Lucas a lesson.
He creates a potion which will reduce Lucas’s size to that of an ant’s. Meanwhile, Lukas’s parents head out of town, leaving him with his older sister and a crazy grandmother. Left on his own, Lukas gets convinced into doing a pest control job by Stan Beals (voice of Paul Giamatti), who makes Lukas sign a contract for the same.
Once the potion is made, Zoc and the other ants pour the potion into Lukas’s ear while he is asleep. Lukas wakes up to find that he has shrunk down to size and is inside the ant colony facing the Ant Queen (voice of Meryl Streep). Instead of killing him, she sentences him to hard labour. Much to Zoc’s surprise and mortification, Hova volunteers to help train Lukas. Lukas and Hova both learn a lot from each other.




Lukas grows to like the ants and their way of living. He then remembers that the Pest control guy would come to exterminate the ant hill soon. He tries to help the ants by calling the exterminator to cancel the contract. However, when his plan doesn’t work out and Zoc finds out that Lukas had taken Hova to help him, thereby placing her in danger, he accuses Lukas of treachery and tells him that he would never help him with a potion to get him back to human size.
A dejected Lukas goes away from the ant hill only to be eaten by a frog. Zoc realizes that Lukas wasn’t bad after all and that he misses the little kid. He sets out to help free Lukas and together with all the other ants, Lukas and Zoc manage to stop the attempts of Stan Beals, thus saving the Ant hill. Zoc returns Lukas to normal size, that too just in time, because Lukas’s parents have returned from their trip.
Lukas manages to defeat his neighborhood bully and get all the other guys to become his friends. The movie is an enjoyable watch and is clean family entertainment. An important aspect, in which this animation varies from the other animated movies about ants, is the fact that it places strong emphasis on helping one another in order for the entire society to grow. It focuses on doing things for the greater good rather than for one’s own personal motives.
The movie will seem derivative and lacking imagination to an adult audience. But as far as kids are concerned, it sends across an important message of working together towards collective progress and development.

Ocean's Eleven (Released in 2001) - Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Andy García, and Julia Roberts

A remake of a 1960’s movie with the same name which starred Frank Sinatra and his Rat pack, Ocean’s Eleven is an American comedy about a group of guys who are brought together by Danny Ocean to plan a heist. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, the movie is fun, entertaining and slick. It is a fine example of what happens when a serious accomplished director decides to venture into some “over the top” quirkiness.
The movie has an impressive star cast, with Danny Ocean being played by Mr. Smooth and Sauvé – George Clooney, and his better half Tess Ocean is played by one of the few actresses who can hold her own next to Clooney – Julia Roberts. Not to be left out, Ocean’s eleven include superstars like Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Casey Affleck, Elliott Gould and Turk Malloy.
The movie opens with Danny, who is fresh out of prison, and eager for a job. He gets in touch with his trusted sidekick, Rusty, played by Brad Pitt. Together they chalk up a plan to steal $ 160 million from not one but three casinos in Las Vegas, namely The Bellagio, The Mirage and The MGM Grand. They get together a team to help them with this job. The team comprises of a talented acrobat, con artists, a techie, a pick pocket, gifted mechanic and an electronics and surveillance expert.




Rubin, a senior con artist, played by Elliot Gould, is initially reluctant to help because he knows how tight casino security usually is. However, with a chance to get back at Terry Benedict, the Casino owner, played by Andy Garcia he jumps on board to finance the whole operation. While some of the members recon the casinos, the others get into making exact life size replicas of the casino vault floors.
On one of the recon missions, Rusty finds Tess Ocean walking with Terry Benedict, the guy they are about to rob. He confronts Danny and asks him whether this entire heist is about her. Danny replies that it is of course about her. It is about stealing from his ex- wife’s new boyfriend and trying to get her back in the process. However, George Clooney and Brad Pitt pull off, even a confrontation, with style.
When the plan is set and everything is in motion, as a viewer you feel like rooting for the con men. Not for any other reason but the sheer panache and flair with which they pull of a very detailed and intricate plan. In the end, Danny gets Tess back, by proving to her that Terry prizes his money more than he does her. Mind you, nothing is done simplistically in this movie. Every scene and every dialogue has a certain smooth talker style and élan which could only have been accomplished by Ted Griffin’s style of dialogues and screenplay.
As far as the heist goes, there have been movies with more fastidiously planned con jobs. But in Ocean’s Eleven, one does not go for the heist. They go for the super smooth dialogue delivery and an end which doesn’t involve a shootout, but a rather exquisitely planned heist which goes off exactly as Danny and his boys had planned – with finesse.
The movie is nothing like the usual Soderbergh movies, but it is an entertaining enjoyable watch never the less.

The Specialist (Released in 1994) - Fight between 2 specialists - Starring Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods

Captain Ray Quick (Sylvester Stallone) and Colonel Ned Trent (James Woods) are explosive experts working for the CIA. Once partners, they worked for the CIA, but soon fell out over Trent’s lack of sensitive work ethics. In 1984, they are asked to take out a drug dealer in a heist; Ray was upset that Ned made an executive decision which resulted in the loss of life of a young child, even though it also killed a drug dealer. The Captain is of the opinion that children’s lives cannot be the collateral damage in policing. Colonel Trent and Ray come to blows over this and their partnership fall out.
After some years, Ray settles in Miami and is now working as a hit man. He is known as The Specialist as the explosives he plants do not harm innocent bystanders. His services are in great demand, yet he is extremely picky about the cases he takes. Most of the demands are made over the Internet, and one such person who contacts him is May Munro (Sharon Stone), he becomes her confidante and she discloses to him that her parents were killed by three men who work for Tomas Leon (Eric Roberts), incidentally, Trent heads security for Joe, his father. May persuades Ray to help her infiltrate Leon’s circle, he refuses and tries to talk her out of it - but she insists that she will go ahead irrespective of whether or not he helps her. May uses the alias Adrian Hastings.
The lower rung of the ladder in Leone’s organization is hit by police, which is when Trent uses his influence to get onto the bomb squad. Tomas on the other hand is attracted to May alias Adrian, who takes advantage of this new angle to their relationship to get closer to him. Ray kills two of the men May identified as her parents murderers - however, Ned gets suspicious and forces Adrian to side up with him, so that Ray’s cover is blown and he can also get even with his enemy from the past - he has sworn vengeance as the CIA asked Trent to quit.




Ray sets up a trap for Tomas, he is killed and since Adrian was with him at that time - everyone believes that she is dead, too. Joe Leon is livid, and spares Trent his life only so that he can sniff out his son’s murderer before the funeral. Ray and Ned are both under the impression that Adrian has also perished in the bomb blast - however, when he gets a message on the Internet and replies thinking its May - it turns out to be a hoax, for which Trent is responsible. A crestfallen Ray goes to attend May’s funeral, only to be pleasantly surprised that she is alive and well. Trent, also expecting this to be Adrian’s last rites, is in for a rude shock, when he sees that the body in the casket is someone else’s. Furious, Trent meets Adrian and she makes a feeble protest, lamely excusing herself - not one to be conned twice, Trent asks his sidekick to escort her out to his car - on the way out she goes to the restroom and calls Ray up to warn him.
The Captain wires the entire hotel room, and detonates it when Trent’s men enter. A persistent Ned is relieved that he can still have his revenge when the two are led into a much booby trapped building - however, he walks into one himself and is killed. The Specialist was the third highest grossing box office hit for Stallone in the ‘90s, and although audiences were disappointed with the lack of romance between two of the most desirable onscreen pairings - Stone and Stallone - yet, worldwide audiences also welcomed the new look sported by Ray aka Sly - clean and cool, not sporty or jungle maverick!

Rocky Balboa (released in 2006) - Starring Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver, Milo Ventimiglia

A picture of Adrian (Talia Shire) rests on the side table, as boxing legend Rocky Balboa (Stallone) gets out of bed, and goes through the rituals of daybreak - feeding the turtles, refurbishing the seed tray, pull ups at the chin up bar; sixteen years since his retirement, and he is now a lonely, middle aged boxer, his wife dead from cancer. He is seated by Adrian’s grave, his brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young) has stood the test of time, and the two have an exchange about how slowly time moves past. Paulie is upset that Rocky’s son Robert (Milo Ventimiglia) hasn’t come for his mother’s death anniversary. But Rocky tells him he understands why Rob isn’t here; he has loads to do, as a corporate employee, whose boss is constantly hounding him.
Rocky walks in on an exchange between Robert and his boss William Tomilson, who tells him he doesn’t care how famous his father was - Balboa watches from a distance, sensing his son’s resistance to his presence. As he walks up to greet Robert, Tomilson also joins them and tells the legend he’s always wanted to meet him, but Rob has said on every occasion that his father’s a busy man. He asks Rob to click a picture of the two ‘old war horses’ together.
After setting up a date for the father and son later that evening, Balboa goes back to his restaurant - “Adrian’s”, where he gets busy organizing a special meal for Rob, and hosting guests, entertaining them with tales of his past victories. Unfortunately, Rob doesn’t make it to dinner. On his way home, he walks down memory lane to the time when he and Adrian had met, the dreams they shared and the home they built, their lives circling around Robert in his growing years. As Paulie and Rocky reminisce outside the birdhouse where Adrian worked and the gym that Micky had left for him, Paulie tells him that their world is falling apart, even as Balboa admonishes him not to talk crazy.




Rocky decides to have a drink at the bar one night, at Lucky Seven, a tavern where Little Marie (Geraldine Hughes) works as a bartender. Balboa used to frequent the tavern as a youngster, and had met Marie, then ‘Little’. She is now mother to a son – Stephenson (James Francis Kelly III) fondly called ‘Steps’. Rocky rescues Marie from an unpleasant situation and offers her a lift home. She introduces Rocky to her son, he seems surprised the child is not Irish looking, Marie tells him that the father was Jamaican. He meets the boy, leaving his card on the steps, inviting the duo to visit him for dinner sometime.
But where Rocky Balboa is, boxing will follow shortly after; Mason Dixon ‘The Line’ ( Antonio Tarver) is the reigning champion, whose popularity has taken a slump. ESPN  broadcasts a simulated version of a fight between Rocky and Dixon, Rob and his friends are having a drink in an Irish Pub, as his friends rally for his father, the video shows Balboa win the fight. Elsewhere an irked Dixon watches on.
Directed and written by Stallone, Rocky Balboa or Rocky VI as it is also known as, is a cult favorite of Stallone’s fans the world over; it is as if the actor is defined by the role. Rocky Balboa takes off on the similar theme of the prequels - a man pitted against circumstance and opponents bigger than himself; when he was younger - it was someone richer, better trained, and stronger. As he got older, his opponents got younger, he fought his own physical limitations, battling injuries, financial crises, emotional upheavals, always the underdog who comes out a winner by a surprise KO, just like in the ring! Worth a watch, Adrian is sorely missed though!