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.

The Ghost and the Darkness (released in 1996) - starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer

How often do you find a movie getting awards both from the Academy awards and also a Razzie award? Well, "The Ghost and the Darkness" is a movie that got both these awards, an Academy award for Sound Editing, as well as a Razzie award (for Val Kilmer for Best Supporting Actor). The movie got critical praise and was well received, although there were some differences between the book (The Man-Eaters Of Tsavo, by J. H. Patterson) and the movie, especially around the character of the hunter, Charles Remington (played by Michael Douglas). The concept is that since Douglas also stepped in to part-produce the movie, he decided to enhance the role of Remington from the original role that was supposed to be much more mysterious. In the process, this also reduced the scope of the character of Col. John Henry Patterson (the hunter who is brought into the project to bring it back to schedule, played by Val Kilmer), given that it was Patterson who killed 3 lions, including the 2 monster ones who killed a large number of workers at the site.




There is some dispute over the number of workers killed by the lions, with Patterson claiming that there were 135 workers killed, while new research claimed that there were around 35 workers killed. The actual lions who were killed by Patterson can now be seen on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, and these are magnificent specimens, worthy of scaring workers.
The movie centers around a railroad project in Tsavo, Africa, where the project is running behind schedule. Col. Patterson is sent to take command of things and reaches the site. There he starts on his mission, killing a lion quickly, but then unable to prevent the lions from killing off the workers one by one. To everybody's surprise, 2 lions attack the camp, and lions never attack in a group, but are single hunters. This is seen as a bad sign. Then a famous hunter Remington is sent in to help, and in the meantime, the workers are not willing to stay. The lions are a tough hunt, especially when they don't fall for a ruse and attack a new hospital, killing all the inmates and the camp doctor. Patterson finally manages to kill one lion, but the other one manages to kill Remington. In a final stand-off, Patterson finally manages to kill the remaining lion, and the bridge gets built.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

It has happened many times that a movie was a box-office disaster when it was released, panned by critics, and having a negative effect on the careers of people involved; and then, over a period of time, the movie was re-evaluated and got more fame over a period of time. One of the movies that is a prominent member of this category is called 'Bringing up Baby', released in 1938. The movie, set as a screwball comedy (at a time when not too many people knew this term) involving a scientist needing a final item to complete his dinosaur skeleton (and needing a donation of 1 million dollars from a wealthy lady) gets involved into a series of mis-steps involving a jaguar called 'Baby' being shepherded by the lovely heiress Katherine Hepburn (also the niece of the rich lady).



The movie was based on a story by Hagar Wilde (and adopted into a screenplay by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde), directed by Howard Hawks. At that time, the effect of the disaster was such that Hawks was fired from the next movie that he was supposed to direct; similarly Katherine Hepburn was also affected by this disaster. Now, of course, the movie is considered a classic, generating money, and earmarked among several of the top 100 movie lists.
The movie is about this paleontologist called David Huxley (Cary Grant). He is other mind-mannered with one passion, he has been trying to assemble the skeleton of a Brontosaurus, and is now just one bone short. He is also supposed to get married to another boring colleague; and most of all, he is expecting a donation of 1 million dollars for his museum from a rich lady called Mrs. Random. And then he meets Susan (played by Katherine Hepburn) one day before his wedding. Katherine is free, vivacious, spirited, who also happens to be the niece of the rich Mrs. Random (although David does not know this).
Katherine has been sent a pet jaguar called Baby by her brother for passing onto her aunt. Susan has the belief that David is actually a zoologist and can help her in the matter of Baby. When David is there with her, she starts loving him, and trying to get ways to keep him there in order to avoid him leaving to marry his colleague. In addition to this situation, there are more complications in the shape of a dog who steals the last bone and buries it, Mrs. Random arrives, Baby runs off (and they mistakenly release another jaguar from the nearby circus, who is certainly not tame). These 2 must now resolve all these issues, while ensuring that the million dollar donation is still on track, Baby is retrieved; a major complication is that the local bumbling policeman has put them in the local jail.
This is a must watch movie for the fast dialog delivery, the utter comedy, the situations that seem totally improbable, and the excellent timing.