The ReeL

By: Juwan Lee

Furious 7 is fastest film to take $1 billion worldwide Unfriended Effective

Skype Horror

The latest film in the Fast and

Furious franchise took just 17 days to
break the $1bn barrier, compared to
19 for Avengers and the final Harry
Potter.
The blockbuster, starring Vin Diesel
and the late Paul Walker, has also
topped the US box office for a third
week with $29.1m (19.5m).
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, starring
Kevin James, was second with $24m
(16.1m).
The film, which moved the shopping
centre policemans segway adventures
to Las Vegas, was savaged by critics
giving it a 0% score on aggregate
reviews site Rotten Tomatoes.
Low-budget, social media-themed
thriller Unfriended took third
place over the weekend with $16m
(10.7m) - 16 times the films modest
production budget.
It marks another success story for
production company Blumfeld, which
has already made the highly profitable
but low budget films The Purge, Ouija
and The Boy Next Door.
At the other end of the scale, Tom
Hardys Soviet thriller Child 44 took
just $600,000 across 510 cinemas.

With a budget of $50m (33.5m)

it means the film could be one of the
years biggest flops.
Rounding out the weekends top five
were Home with $10.3m (6.9m) and
The Longest Ride with $6.9m (4.6m).
According to box office tracker
Rentrak and studio estimates, top film
Furious 7 has already taken almost
$300m in the US and Canada alone.
Rentraks Paul Dergarabedian said
the film set a new standard for
this time of year, adding: These are
summer-style numbers in April.
He said Furious 7 had truly become
part of movie folklore with its record
setting numbers, strong reviews,
spectacular word-of-mouth and of
course the outpouring of support for
late star Paul Walker.
A song from the Furious 7
soundtrack - Wiz Khalifas See You
Again, featuring Charlie Puth - has
also been breaking records.
It got more Spotify streams in 24
hours than any other track in the US,
and also topped the UK singles chart
on Sunday as the fastest-selling single
of 2015 so far.

According to IB Times, Universal

Pictures have already given the
green light to produce Unfriended
2. The entire movie was made with
only $1 million but has earned a
whopping $25 million. Because of
this, Unfriended has been compared
with The Blair Witch Project (1999)
which raked in $250 million with a
$22,500 budget.
Unfriended currently has a 61%
fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes.
It has yet to be decided on what the
storyline for Unfriended 2 will be
as the movie is still in the early stages
of pre-production. Nelson Greaves,
who wrote the first film, will also be
penning the sequel.
In case you have yet to see the
film, Unfriended tells the story of
six high school friends who receive
a Skype message at the anniversary
of their classmates death. The six
kids previously posted a humiliating
video of the girl which caused her to
commit suicide. They soon find out
that their classmates ghost is out to
take revenge. As mentioned, all the
action takes place on the computer
screen.

12 Angry Men (1957): A

Review of Time

A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for

murder, accused of knifing his father to death.
The twelve jurors retire to the jury room,
having been admonished that the defendant
is innocent until proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction,
each for reasons of his own. The sole holdout
is Juror #8, played by Henry Fonda. As Fonda
persuades the weary jurors to re-examine
the evidence, we learn the backstory of
each man. Juror #3 (Lee J. Cobb), a bullying
self-mademan, has estranged himself from
his own son. Juror #7 (Jack Warden) has
an ingrained mistrust of foreigners; so, to a
lesser extent, does Juror #6 (Edward Binns).
Jurors #10 (Ed Begley) and #11 (George
Voskovec), so certain of the infallibility of
the Law, assume that if the boy was arrested,
he must be guilty. Juror #4 (E.G. Marshall)
is an advocate of dispassionate deductive
reasoning. Juror #5 (Jack Klugman), like the
defendant a product of the streets, hopes
that his guilty vote will distance himself
from his past. Juror #12 (Robert Webber), an
advertising man, doesnt understand anything
that he cant package and market. And Jurors
#1 (Martin Balsam), #2 (John Fiedler) and #9
(Joseph Sweeney), anxious not to make waves,
go with the flow.
The excruciatingly hot day drags into an
even hotter night; still, Fonda chips away at
the guilty verdict, insisting that his fellow
jurors bear in mind those words reasonable
doubt. A pet project of Henry Fondas,
Twelve Angry Men was his only foray into
film production; the actors partner in this
venture was Reginald Rose, who wrote the
1954 television play on which the film was
based. Carried over from the TV version
was director Sidney Lumet, here making his
feature-film debut. A flop when it first came
out (surprisingly, since it cost almost nothing
to make), Twelve Angry Men holds up
beautifully when seen today.

Marvel Studios presents Avengers: Age

of Ultron, the epic follow-up to the biggest
Super Hero movie of all time. When Tony
Stark tries to jumpstart a dormant
peacekeeping program, things go
awry and Earths Mightiest Heroes,
including Iron Man, Captain
America, Thor, The Incredible
Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye,
are put to the ultimate test as the
fate of the planet hangs in the
balance. As the villainous Ultron
emerges, it is up to The Avengers
to stop him from enacting his
terrible plans, and soon uneasy
alliances and unexpected action
pave the way for an epic and
unique global adventure.
Marvels Avengers: Age of Ultron stars
Robert Downey Jr., who returns as Iron
Man, along with Chris Hemsworth as Thor,
Mark Ruffalo as Hulk and Chris Evans as
Captain America. Together with Scarlett
Johansson as Black Widow and Jeremy
Renner as Hawkeye, and with the additional
support of Don Cheadle as James Rhodes/
War Machine, Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria

Hill, Stellan Skarsgrd as Erik Selvig and

Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the team
must reassemble to defeat James Spader as
Ultron, a terrifying technological
villain hell-bent on human
extinction. Along the way, they
confront two mysterious and
powerful newcomers, Pietro
Maximoff, played by Aaron
Taylor-Johnson, and Wanda
Maximoff, played by Elizabeth
Olsen and meet an old friend in
a new form when Paul Bettany
becomes Vision.
Written and directed by Joss
Whedon and produced by Kevin
Feige, Marvels Avengers: Age
of Ultron is based on the everpopular Marvel comic book series The
Avengers, first published in 1963. Louis
DEsposito, Alan Fine, Victoria Alonso,
Jeremy Latcham, Patricia Whitcher, Stan
Lee and Jon Favreau serve as executive
producers. Get set for an action-packed
thrill ride when The Avengers return in
Marvels Avengers: Age of Ultron on May
1, 2015.

The sequel to Divergent improves on the original but not

by much

Yikes. Dont want spoilers for those not

among the 32 million who bought the
novels. It seems odd that a movie
that celebrates divergence would
conform so rigidly to formula.
Theres a new director, Robert
Schwentke, in for Neil Burger, and
a whole new army of screenwriters,
but everyones still connecting the
dots. The film peaks with a series of
tests for Tris that play like a gamers
fantasy of virtual reality. Surprise is
lacking. Ditto humor, though Miles
Teller (Whiplash), as a thorn in
Fours side, gets in a few fun licks
by not staying on the films draggy tempo.
Otherwise, Insurgent stubbornly fails.to surge.

Improvement, however slight, can

be detected as Divergent morphs into
Insurgent onscreen.
As Insurgent begins, Tris foments
rebellion in the company of Tobias
Eaton (Theo James), a fellow divergent
who goes by the name of Four because
he fears only four things, sequels not
among them. James, a solid actor,
mostly glowered in the first movie.
Here he busts loose, shows his
vulnerability and runs afoul of a new enemy,
Evelyn (Naomi Watts), the mother who
abandoned him as a child.