Cinematic Sara

Weekly Movie #5

2012-02-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

Hugo
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley Chloe Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee
Released: November 23, 2011
Viewed in theaters: February 1, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture
Best Director - Martin Scorsese
Best Adapted Screenplay - John Logan
Best Art Direction
Best Cinematography
Best Editing
Best Costume Design
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing
Best Visual Effects

Despite having a bad viewing experience (at least for the first hour) and despite it being in 3-D (which I loathe) and despite the self-importance with all the "movies are great!" mantra embedded in this film, I actually did enjoy Hugo for the most part.

Let me explain each of these points.

Since this movie had been out for a good two months I wasn't at all surprised when I was the only one in the theater...until these two guys came in and sat in the back (I was seated in the middle) and proceeded to talk in Spanish throughout the movie. During the loud parts I couldn't hear them (and maybe they weren't talking during those parts), but I could hear them talking (in a regular speaking voice) when there were two characters onscreen talking to each other. It was highly distracting and really irritating. Thank God, though, they left one hour into the movie (I know because I checked my phone) and I could enjoy the movie in silence! I don't know why they would pay ten and a quarter to watch a movie they (presumably) couldn't understand only to walk out an hour later, but I was glad when they left. A quick public announcement: SHUT YOUR MOUTHS DURING MOVIES!!!

As for the 3-D, yes it was impressive, but I think the movie would have been just as fine in 2-D. I really hate wearing those glasses because your peripheral vision is blocked and it's really weird when you take off the glasses and see Ben Kingsley with four pair of eyes. Yes, I realize I shouldn't take off the glasses in the middle of viewing a 3-D movie, but it is a bad habit I have. I think 3-D is a passing gimmick and it doesn't add anything to the movie and I will try at all costs to avoid it, but sometimes you can't like with this film and the upcoming re-release of Titanic (which I will see hell or high water!) But I will admit the 3-D was top notch.

Being that Hugo is a love letter to the very first movies in cinema, it does get a little heavy-handed in its "movies are the best thing ever!"It reminds me when singers (mostly rappers) sing, er, rap about how awesome and rich they are. It's just so self-indulgent. I love watching movies, but when movies have to tell me how great movies are, it makes me roll my eyes. Show don't tell!

So despite those three things, I did like this movie. It's a beautiful movie to look at, even more beautiful than War Horse. It's about a boy named Hugo (Butterfield), as you may have guessed, an orphan who lives in a train station in Paris where he winds the big clock. Since he has no money he's always stealing food and other little knick knacks and a toy shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley) catches him and makes him empty his pockets and give all his possessions to him. This includes a notebook that is very dear to Hugo's heart because before his dad (Jude Law in one scene) died, they were working on a project together and the notebook has all the notes and sketches for the project. Hugo follows the toykeeper home after he threatens to burn the notebook and asks his granddaughter (Moretz) to make sure her grandfather doesn't burn the notebook and she promises she will look after it.

They get into a discussion about movies and the girl tells Hugo that her grandfather doesn't allow her to watch movies. We later find out that her grandfather is Georges Melies, a French magician who became one of cinema's first and famous directors. He had a love for movies and made many of them but once the war started he had to give up his dream because nobody had time for fantasy anymore. Hugo and his granddaughter find out about his past and persuade him not to hide who he is and be proud of all his accomplishments. A very nice tribute to the Golden Age of cinema even if it does become a little heavy-handed at times.

Weekly Movie #4

2012-01-28T00:20:00.002-06:00

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bulluck, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis
Released: December 25, 2011
Viewed in theaters: January 26, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor - Max von Sydow

This movie's title is extremely long and incredibly confusing. The movie itself is extremely depressing and incredibly sad. Okay, I'll stop. If you are huge fans of Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock and are thinking of seeing this movie only for them, they are both supporting characters as the young boy's parents and are really only in a few scenes. The film is centered around nine-year-old Oskar Schell (played by Thomas Horn in his first movie role; apparently he was on kids' Jeopardy! and that was how he was discovered) an odd kid who has a different way of how he looks at the world and is extremely smart, but can also be incredibly annoying. (Whoops! I did it again!)

Oskar's world comes tumbling down when his father, who was in the World Trade Center for a meeting, is killed on 9/11. It's clear that he was closer to his father, who encouraged him to learn new experiences and talk to new people, the latter Oskar had a difficult time with. In a heartbreaking scene, he even tells his mother he wished that she had been the one who had died and instead of being angry with him, she agrees with him.

Oskar finds a key in his dad's closet in an envelop with the name "Black" written on it and is convinced that they key opens something where a message from his father is waiting and whoever this Black person is can help them. Of course there are many Blacks listed in the phone book and he estimates it will take three years to go through all of them. The kid is very precise. He's mapped out all the addresses and how much time he plans to spend with each person. He's joined by the old man who's known as the renter (Von Sydrow) his grandmother is renting a room to. Due to a traumatic event in his life, he doesn't speak, just writes on paper and has "yes" written on one palm and "no" on the other to answer simple questions. We discover something about him that's pretty obvious from the beginning.

Poor Oskar has been living with a secret for over a year about how he was home when his dad called from the World Trade Center on that day, but he never picked up the phone and he was too ashamed to admit this to anyone. Bring your tissues for this one, folks!

Weekly Movie #3

2012-01-23T08:00:00.002-06:00

War Horse
Director: Steven Speilberg
Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Wastson, David Thewlis
Released: December 25. 2011
Viewed in theaters: January 17, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture
Best Score - John Williams
Best Art Direction
Best Cinematography
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing

I don't see War Horse galloping (haha) in the direction of the likes of Jaws, E.T., or Jurassic Park where it will become one of Speilberg's classic blockbusters. More likely it will trot (haha) along the lines of Catch Me If You Can or The Terminal, you know those movies where when somebody brings them up, you're like, "Oh, yeah, that was a good movie. Speilberg directed that? I forgot about that!" However, unlike those two movies, War Horse is the kind of movie that benefits from being seen on the big screen. With its lush cinematography, swelling music, and gorgeous camerawork, this is one beautiful movie. It's just pretty to look at.

The plot is pretty straightforward: a teen boy named Albert trains the horse his father bought (I wasn't really clear why he bought the horse in the first place because the family wasn't exactly rich), names him Joey, and trains him. Even though he teaches Joey to plow his family's farm land, they're still not getting enough money and his father ends up selling Joey into World War I. Albert is too young to enlist in the war and has to wait another four years before he can. We really don't see much of him after Joey is taken away from him.

We do see what happens to Joey on his journey and he ends up in many places and meets many people along the way. I would be lying if I said I didn't cry while watching this.

Weekly Movie #2

2012-01-18T18:03:00.003-06:00

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright, Joely Richardson
Released: December 20, 2011
Viewed in theaters: January 10, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Actress - Rooney Mara
Best Cinematography
Best Editing
Best Sound Editing
Best Sound Mixing

This movie is a far cry from my first weekly movie (New Year's Eve). You don't have to see either movie to know what I'm talking about! I was a little reluctant to see this because I wasn't a huge fan of the book which I read last spring. I still haven't been enthused to read "The Girl Who Played with Fire" which I have in my possession. If I look to my left, I can see it in my bookshelf between "Watership Down" and "The Help" (both books I loved). My problem with the book is that it is SO SLOW for the first 100 pages. Nothing happens. At all. Once we find out about the mystery of the young girl who went missing back in the sixties, it gets much more interesting. I still found the book to be extremely overratted when I was done reading it, though.

So I wasn't terribly excited for the movie, but I was curious to see what Fincher was going to do with it, being the stylish kind of director he is. I read all the boring stuff that deals with Blomkvist's magazine is dealt with in just a matter of minutes and doesn't consume the entire movie the way it felt like it did in the book.

You've probably already guessed I've never seen the original Swedish movie so I have no idea if it's better or just different than the American version. When I heard that an American adaptation was going to be made, my first though was they were going to set it in the U.S. in a cold climate like Alaska, but I'm glad they kept the setting of Sweden. Everyone has a slight hint of a Swedish accent, but none of them are that strong to be distracting.

As much as I didn't care for the book, I am glad I read it before I saw the movie. Not because I would've been lost - the movie is quite straghtfoward: Blomkvist is hired by the young girl's great uncle to find out what happened to her and he is aided with the help of computer hacker Lisbeth Salandar (the girl who indeed has a dragon tattoo). Not to brag or anything, (and slight spoilers here), but I totally knew who was sending the old man those pressed flowers, especially when he tells Blomkvist, "Nobody knows about these! Except Harriet, the police, and the killer!" I mean, duh. It's kind of obvious who's sending them. But the main reason I'm glad I read the book beforehand was that I knew what was coming so I could be prepared for it. This is a really dark movie and a lot of bad things happen to people....and a poor cat. As the owner of the sweetest cat in the world, I really hated that part in the book and was dreading it in the movie and had to cover my eyes when they showed it. Rape scene? Although uncomfortable and brutal, I could handle it better because I knew Lisbeth was going to get her revenge Oh, and she does. "I've never done this before and there will be blood!"

I'd like to thank this movie for reminding me that "Orinoco Flow" by Enya still exits. I had kind of forgotten about that song and I love it. It was an odd choice of song to play while the bad guy was torturing Blomkvist, though. Speaking of songs, I do love "The Immigration Song" by Karen O and Trent Renzor that is played during the amazing beginning credits. The first time I ever became aware of that song was when Jack Black sang it in School of Rock!

The movie follows the book pretty faithfully (and takes out all the boring parts!), but the ending dealing with what happened to Harriet is tweaked just a little. I actually preferred the movie's ending. The literal final scene is anti-climatic but you know that there will be two more movies so it wasn't really the final ending of the story.

I hardly say this, but I believe in this case the movie was better than the book.

Weekly Movie #1

2012-01-04T23:54:00.001-06:00

For my (extremely lame) New Year's resolution, I decided to see at least one movie a week in the theaters. Who knows how long this will last as none of my resolutions never do. But for now, every time I see my weekly theater movie I will post a review on it, whether it be short and sweet or long and convoluted. It might be a written or video review. So we'll start with the first one, which I saw on the first day of 2012...

New Year's Eve
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Everyone in Hollywood
Released: December 9, 2011
Viewed in theaters: January 1, 2012

This is the type of movie I would rent than see in the theaters, but I saw it with my friend Cameron after we had a delicious dinner of sushi and I ate some hot pepper that nearly set my mouth on fire! We saw New Year's Eve on New Year's Day, heh. This is from the same director as Valentine's Day and is the same idea as that movie and even features two actors who were in that movie (Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel), but it is not a sequel to that movie. I liked this movie a tad better, probably because I like the holiday better, even though I could care less about the New Year.

Basically if you've seen Valentine's Day, you know how this movie works. Just change the actors and the day. Hilary Swank is in charge of the ball dropping in Times Square, but it gets stuck and she has to call on Marshall's requisite actor Hector Elizondo to fix it. Halle Berry is a nurse caring for a dying Robert De Niro whose last wish is to see the ball drop at midnight. Michelle Pfeiffer is a dowdy woman who wants to cross everything off her resolution list she made for 2011 before midnight and gets help from Zac Efron. I seriously thought we were going to get a Mrs. Robinson romance going on there...but don't count on it. Sarah Jessica Parker has her doubts about letting her daughter, Abigail Breslin, go to Times Square by herself. We also find out that she and Zac are siblings. Zac and SJP, that is. There is no way in hell that could happen - she is old enough to be his mother! Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele find themselves stuck in an elevator...and of course fall in love! Jessica Biel and Seth Meyers play a couple about to have a baby and they find out from another pregnant couple that the first woman to give birth in 2012 wins $25 grand. Josh Duhamel is out to meet a woman he met last New Year's Eve and there a lot of fakeouts about who it might be. I won't say it is because I don't want to spoil it. ;-) At one point, Cameron said to me, "I bet it's Fergie!" LOL, it was not Fergie. There's some stupid storyline between Katherine Heigl and Bon Jovi (who plays a rock star!) that nobody cares about. The best thing about her storyline was Sofia Vergara who is hilarious. And looks good even when wearing a chef's coat.

I think I covered all the storylines. It's a cute movie, but forgettable. The funniest scene in the movie is John Lithgow playing Angry Birds. I would say wait to rent it.

Accept this Mission

2012-01-03T20:18:00.000-06:00

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Director: Brad Bird
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg
Released: December 21, 2011
Viewed in theaters: December 25, 2011

I have seen all four of the Mission: Impossible movies and I must say the last one is always better than the previous one. I don't really remember anything about the first one, which is directed by Brian De Palma came out in 1996 and is the only one I didn't see in the theaters, except that I was bored out of my mind while watching it. I saw the second one on May 29, 2000 (thank you movie journal I've had since 1999!) Being directed by John Woo, there was more action. Wasn't this the movie where Tom Cruise and the bad guy both have motorcycles and crash them into each other mid-air? I definitely remember that it took him FOR-EV-ER to kill the bad guy. I saw the third movie, directed by J.J. Abrams on May 18, 2006. I wasn't huge fans of the first two M:I movies and I only saw this one because of who directed it. I figured since I love Alias so much, who better than to direct a spy movie? And I was right. The third movie is so much better than the first two. In fact, I would tell people to skip the first two and watch the last two.

I saw the latest M:I movie on IMAX - my first feature film I've seen on IMAX. It's a good movie on whatever kind of screen you watch it on, but it definitely made it that much better...and louder. The sound was so loud it was literally vibrating through my body.

If you like movies with prison breaks, climbing the tallest building in the world, lots and lots of explosions, and a wicked sandstorm, this is your movie! The action is nonstop. I've never seen one man run so fast from falling objects without getting hit, being thrown around every which way without getting any bruises, and dodging from bullets shot at him. Hey, I never said this movie is realistic! But it is a fun one.

Game Night

2011-12-30T22:16:00.000-06:00

Jumanji
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt, Bradley Pierce
Released: December 15, 1995

Zathura
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins
Released: November 11, 2005

Zathura is not a sequel or prequel to Jumanji, but both films are connected as they are both based on books written by Chris Van Allsburg (who also wrote The Polar Express) and both are about board games that come to life. However, besides that, the two movies are not connected.

Jumanji's journey begins all the way back in the 1860s where we see two adolescent boys looking scared and burying a wooden box that is emitting a steady banging sound. Fast forward one hundred years later where we see young Alan, who will grow up to be Robin Williams, but is now played by Little Man Tate. He's about twelve years old and gets beat up by the bullies at his school because he's been hanging out with one of the bullies girlfriend, Sarah, who will grow up to be Bonnie Hunt, but is now played by the girl who will go on to play the lead in Legally Blonde on Broadway. His dad is really strict with him and wants him to attend an all-boy's private school. Fun fact: his mom is played by Patricia Clarkson.

Alan hears the drumming sound when he's walking home from school one day and finds the wooden board game. (Evidently, those two boys from the 1860s didn't bury it so well as it only takes him a couple of minutes to dig it up). He brings it home and just as he's about to start playing, Sarah stops by to apologize for her boyfriend for beating him up. He invites her to play, but she says she hasn't played board games since she was a little girl, but is intrigued by it, so she stays and plays with him.

The game has wooden pieces that move themselves after the player has rolled the dice. When they have landed on a square, they receive a card that has a rhyme on it and literally does what it says. Because of this, Alan is sucked into the game and will stay there until another player rolls a five or an eight. This of course traumatizes Sarah and she runs screaming out.

Fast forward to the present. Or, at least, to 1995.

Before she was T-T-T-Torrance, Kirsten Dunst was the young blonde girl with braids named Judy. She and her younger brother, Peter (Bradley Pierce who is probably most well known for voicing Chip in Beauty and the Beast) move in with their aunt (Bebe Neuwirth) in Alan's big and creepy old house. Before they are about to leave for school, they both hear a loud drumming sound coming from the attic. Their aunt doesn't seem to hear it and they both tell her they can wait for the bus without her and when she leaves, they both race upstairs and find the game and start playing. Neither of them are too freaked out when they find monkeys terrorizing the kitchen or when a lion suddenly appears in the same room as them. Judy thinks it's part of the game, that what they're seeing is just a special effect.

Speaking of special effects, I remember being amazed at them when I first saw this movie in the theaters, but they haven't aged very well. They're impressive for their time, but now they look pretty antiquated.

Peter rolls a five and Alan (now Robin Williams as it's been awhile) appears with a beard and ragged clothes. He's been living in the jungle and is elated when he finds out he's home. He seems to think he's still a kid as he runs around the house trying to look for his parents. He finally understand what's going on and tells Judy and Peter the only way to make all of this stop is to finish the game, but they need Sarah to do this. They find her and have to force her to play with them. She's become sort of a recluse as everyone thinks she's crazy since she told the police what really happened to Alan.

The four of them continue to play the game throughout the movie and have to endure a stampede of wild animals (probably one of the most iconic scenes from the film); vines growing all over the house; quicksand; a monsoon (indoors, nonetheless); and a hunter named Van Pelt who is trying to kill Alan. I didn't realize this until now, but the same actor plays both Van Pelt and Alan's father.

Of course Alan wins in the end, just after Van Pelt has taken a shot at him and he and his gun and bullet get sucked back into the game along with all the wild animals and natural disasters that has occurred. There's a bit of time travel because Alan and Sarah are suddenly there younger selfs and are back at his house the night they started the game. They remember everything that has happened and when we return to 1995 again, they are married and meet Judy and Peter and their parents who have not yet died in the car crash yet and they convince them not to go to Canada which is where the accident occurred.

While Jumanji had a jungle theme, Zathura had a space theme. The movie is confined to one location while the characters in Jumanji were all over the town. We meet Walter and Danny (Hutcherson and Bobo (that poor kid with a last name like that!)) brothers who don't exactly get along. Their dad (Robbins) has a meeting to go to and gets their older sister (a pre-zombie, oops, I mean Twilight, Kristen Steward) to watch them. She says she will, but goes back to sleep.

Danny, the younger one, finds a big rectangular box in the basement and brings it up to reveal the game of Zathura. While Jumanji was made out of wood, Zathura is made out of plastic. He asks Walter if he wants to play, but his older brother is more interested in watching TV, so Danny decides to play by himself. Instead of dice, the player has to crank a dial and the arrow points to a number which is how many spaces the spaceship game piece passes. A card shoots out and like Jumanji, it has a little rhyme and whatever it says on the card literally happens.

Their house becomes a spaceship, so thus the reason for the confined space. They have to fight an evil robot and other space monsters and meet an astronaut (Shepard). They go through some pretty periling things, and like Jumanji, there's also a bit of time-traveling in this one, but it's more complicated and doesn't make any sense. It turns out that the astronaut is actually Walter as an adult. Back when he played the game with his brother, he got a Shooting Star card which meant he could wish for anything he wanted and he wished for his brother to never be born. If that's the case, then how is younger Walter playing the game with his brother. It didn't make any sense.

You know what game-come-to-life movie they should make next? FIREBALL ISLAND! Now I know Jumanji and Zathura weren't based on actual games (duh), but I know they made a game into Jumanji after the movie (how disappointed do you think the kids who received that were?!), but Fireball Island would make an awesome movie if it were done in the same vein as Jumanji or Zathura.

For those of you not familiar with Fireball Island, the point was pretty much to get your guy from start to finish without being knocked over by a fireball (i.e. a red marble). I forgot what triggered the fireballs, I think it was if you stepped on a certain colored stone or picked a certain card. But that was always my favorite part : to see the fireball knock someone down. It was also great when someone was standing on one of the bridges and the marble would knock them into the water, haha. I just know it would make a really exciting movie! Hmm, maybe I should start writing the screenplay!

FIREBALL ISLAND!!

Breaking Dawn book review

2011-12-16T21:14:00.002-06:00

I've finished reading "Breaking Dawn" which means I've finished reading the entire series of "Twilight!" Please help me celebrate by viewing my videos! I even brought the champagne and Aqua music!

Okay, at 1:07, I say that Edwards thinks Jacob will listen to Bella. Well, I meant that Edward thinks Bella will listen to Jacob. I probably had too much champagne at that point!

Childhood Christmas Classic

2011-12-15T17:53:00.001-06:00

Home Alone
Director: Chris Columbus
Cast: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, John Candy
Released: November 16, 1990

Oscar nominations: (I had no idea this movie was nominated for any Oscars; probably because I didn't start watching the Oscars until 1995-ish).
Best Score - John Williams (lost to John Barry for Dances with Wolves)
Best Song - "Somewhere in My Memory" by John Williams (lost to "Sooner or Later I Always Get My Man" by Stephen Sondheim from Dick Tracy)

I'm going to try to make it a tradition to review at least one holiday movie around this time of year. Two years ago I reviewed Elf, last year I reviewed Love, Actually and this year I opted for a favorite of mine from my childhood. I remember seeing Home Alone in the theaters and just thinking it was the funniest thing ever. I still think it's pretty funny (the whole gag with the statue outside the house always falling down when it's hit by the airpot shuttle or pizza delivery car never fails to make me giggle and I love the scene with the pizza delivery boy and the video. "Well, sir, you have to pay for your pizza!") I have to wonder, though, if I would still like this movie if it came out in this day and age. It came out when I was in fourth grade, so of course I was the target audience for it. Obviously the entire cast would be changed as they would all be too old and there would be little changes made to make it more current. It's funny because I was watching the commentary with Chris Columbus and Macaulay Culkin (which they recorded about five years ago) and they sort of joked that if the movie were made today, it would be over right before the family gets to the airport because with all the security measurements they would never make it on the plane, especially if they just had minutes to spare. Not to mention that they would all have cell phones to contact Kevin. Macaulay also joked that he wouldn't be in it because he was 26, unless he was living in his parents' basement and they forgot him on their trip to Paris. Who knew Macaulay Culkin was so funny?

How bad of a mother is Catherine O'Hara in this? I mean, who forgets their own child when leaving for a trip? I do think the movie does a good job of making it as realistic as possible. Yes, most mothers would not forget their own child, but for the sake of the movie, they do set it up as you can see why they just forget about him. First, there was fifteen people in that house (which looked like it could hold about 100 - that is a really nice house). Then we have it set up where Kevin gets in trouble (and I can totally empathize with him for having an older provoking brother) and has to sleep upstairs in the attic alone. Then there's a storm and the power goes out and everyone wakes up late and is in a mad dash to the airport. And of course we have Kevin's neighbor friend come over and he is accidentally counted as Kevin. (I loved that kid - "Does this van get good gas mileage? Does it have four-wheel drive? Does it have automatic transmission? How much horse power does it have?") So I can see how it's possible they would forget about him. The one thing that didn't really make any sense was after Kevin's mom lands in Paris and gets in touch with the police back home and they send an officer over to check on him. It didn't make any sense that he didn't say he was the police and didn't go in and check to see if the kid was hurt or something. But I guess if that had happened, the movie would be over.

I mentioned earlier how funny I thought this movie was when I was a kid and it still makes me laugh but it's only now watching it as someone older and wiser do I realize what a warped little kid Kevin was. (Maybe it was watching Angels with Filthy Souls). Some of the things Harry and Marv have to endure when they attempt to rob Kevin's house are almost things Jack Bauer would think of to torture terrorists! The blowtorch to the head, the hand touching the hot knob, the hot iron in the face, the bare foot on the nail (oh, that scene always makes me cringe), and the bare feet stepping on those glass ornaments. Not to mention both of them falling down the icy steps.

I don't know how Kevin cleaned up the house because his mother (and the rest of the family) arrived home the next morning. He must have been up all night - or maybe he called a cleaning service! I always get a little teary-eyed when Kevin is reunited with his mother and well as when he sees his scary neighbor reunited with his family and when he's walking outside and sees a happy family together at Christmas and he's all alone. It's so sad!

I think Chris Columbus is a little clueless. Here is a funny exchange between him and Macaulay during the commentary. (And remember, the commentary was filmed around 2006-07).
Columbus: I think he went on to be in a popular kids' show (referring to Kevin's red-headed brother, Jeff).
Culkin: Yeah, The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
Columbus: Is that still on the air?
Culkin: Uh.....no.

Is Pete and Pete still on the air? Is he serious? Dude, Michelle Trachtenberg was on that show before she was on Buffy and she first joined that cast in 2001! Trust me, it's been awhile since Pete and Pete has been on the air. (It ran from '93-'96 according to IMDb). That just made me laugh.

To go back and answer my own question about whether I would like this movie if it came out in this day and age? Probably not. It wouldn't have the nostalgic factor!

It's Time To Meet the Muppets

2011-12-01T01:33:00.000-06:00

The Muppets
Director: James Bobin
Cast: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones, Jack Black, The Muppets
Released: November 23, 2011
Viewed in theaters: November 28, 2011

This is my history with the Muppets. When The Muppet Show was on air, I wasn't even born when it premiered and way too young to watch it when it ended. I have seen episodes either from re-runs or videos, but even then it's been awhile. I am very familiar (and love) the theme song because I have it on my iPod. It's a very catch song (and they do play it in the movie). How can you not love it?

I remember watching the animated series Muppet Babies, which thinking back now, doesn't make any sense because the Muppets are puppets and puppets can't be cartoons. But I digress. And of course I'm sure I've seen many movies the Muppets have starred in, but the only one I can remember seeing is A Muppet Christmas Carol which I saw in the theater nineteen (!!!!) years ago. Oh, and of course I watched Sesame Street when I was a kid and Kermit was on that show often if I remember correctly. I go back and forth on who my favorite Muppet is, but I have a soft spot for Rowlf. He's really adorable AND he's a piano playing dog! You guys, I totally want a piano playing dog. But I do love Kermit. And Gonzo. And Beaker. And Animal! ANIMAL!

At the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to brothers Gary and Walter. Gary is played by Jason Segel, who also co-wrote the movie. Walter is played...by a muppet. Don't ask me how they're brothers. We never meet the parents, but it did make me wonder how that would work. It's like when I read Harry Potter and wondered how Hagrid's father could be a human and his mother a giant. And these are for kids! I didn't know why they didn't make Gary and Walter best friends, but it was funny when they did a montage of them growing older, Gary would keep getting taller and taller and Walter would stay the same height.

"Maniacal laugh! Maniacal laugh!"

Being that Walter is a muppet, he is a fan of the Muppets. He's ecstatic when Gary invites him along to the trip to Los Angeles he's planned with his longtime girlfriend, Mary (Amy Adams, who doesn't have much to do besides be adorable). They go on a tour of the Muppet Studio but find it's abandoned and dusty and while hiding, Walter overhears an evil oil tycoon (aptly named Tex Richman (played by Chris Cooper)) telling his cronies his plans for tearing the entire studio down because there's oil underneath. If you've ever wanted to hear Chris Cooper rap, this is the movie for you! Yes, you read that right!

Walter relays the news to Gary and Mary and they find Kermit and convince him to get the Muppets together to try to save their studio. The entire gang (Fozzie! Miss Piggy! Gonzo! Rowlf! Animal! Scooter! Beaker! Dr. Bunsen! Swedish Chef! The two old dudes from the balcony! And the others!) reunite and put on a telethon to help raise money. The show is reminiscent of The Muppet Show, only it's called The Muppet Telethon. My favorite moment of the telethon was when the chickens squawked Cee Lo's F--- You (Cluck You?) Now I will never be able to listen to that song without hearing a bunch of chickens clucking.

It's a sweet movie, but not overly saccharine. There's plenty of laugh out loud moments that don't resort to stupid and juvenile jokes, but not all the jokes work all the time, especially the meta jokes. The only meta joke that did make me laugh was when they were going across the country finding all the Muppets and after they had picked up three or four of them, one of them suggested to Gary that they do a montage to make it go faster. There's also an ongoing gag with Kermit's butler, '80s Robot. I loved how everyone calls Kermit "Mr. The Frog."

I really didn't care about our human leads that much, but since they were there they had to have a plot. It's just Mary thinks Gary is finally going to propose to her, but he becomes so busy with helping the Muppets with their Telethon that he forgets that it's their anniversary and blah, blah, blah. Their story coincides with Kermit and Miss Piggy who have been separated for awhile (Miss Piggy was found in Paris as the editor of a fashion magazine where she became like the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada, in fact Emily Blunt plays her assistant), but they reconcile in the end.

There's plenty of celebrity cameos, but not as many as I thought there would be. There's your Whoopi Goldberg for the older folks and Selena Gomez for the youn'uns. I don't think Jack Black would be counted as a cameo. Even though he plays himself he has a big role in the movie as the Muppets kidnap him because they need a celebrity host for their show.

I forgot to mention this is a musical, but you probably already knew that. Of course a movie about the Muppets wouldn't be complete if "The Rainbow Connection" and "Mah Na Mah Na" weren't sung. I may have been too young to watch The Muppet Show, but even I'm familiar with those songs. The main song of the movie is called "Life's a Happy Song" and it's just as cute and jovial as you would think it is. I also loved Amy Adams rocking out to "Me Party". ("I'm having a me party! A party by myself! Me party! I don't need no body else!) Kermit singing "Pictures in My Head" almost got me choked up. Okay, I'll admit it: even though I didn't cry, I did get a little choked up a few times during the movie.

Obviously if you're a fan of the Muppets or grew up with them, I definitely recommend this movie. It is really cute and brought back memories of my childhood. I kind of want to see it again!

My preciouuuussssss!

2011-11-20T17:26:00.001-06:00

Ahoy there! I know it's been awhile since I posted an actual review. Admittedly, it's been because I've been a bit lazy, but also because I've been busy and distracted with something called life. And because in my downtime I haven't been watching many movies, but rather catching up on TV and reading what has to be the worst book ever published in the history of the world, Breaking Dawn, the final (thank god!) book in the Twilight series.

So what better to come back with a triumphant return with not only one, but THREE movies (although you could argue they're just one really long movie put together). Not only are these movies very popular but the ten year anniversary of the first movie is coming up. I'm talking, of course, about The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, John Rhys-Davies, Hugo Weaving, Ian Holm
Released: December 19, 2001
Viewed in theaters: February 2, 2002

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to A Beautiful Mind)
Best Director - Peter Jackson (lost to Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind)
Best Supporting Actor - Ian McKellen (lost to Jim Broadbent for Iris)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens (lost to Akiva Goldsman for A Beautiful Mind)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Art Direction (lost to Moulin Rouge!)
Best Costume Design (lost to Moulin Rouge!)
Best Sound (lost to Black Hawk Down)
Best Film Editing (lost to Black Hawk Down)
Best Visual Effects (won)
Best Makeup (won)
Best Song - "May It Be" by Enya (lost to "If I Didn't Have You" by Randy Newman for Monsters, Inc.)
Best Original Score - Howard Shore (won)

I haven't watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy since early 2007 and with the upcoming 10th anniversary of the first movie coming up, I thought what better time to watch them again. It's almost funny that I'm a fan of LotR (well, the movies anyway), because I almost never saw the first movie. I remembered way back in the summer of 2001 when I knew there would be two movies coming out later that year based on very popular book series that I had not yet read. One, as you may have already guessed, was Harry Potter, and the other, of course was LotR. Because I wanted to be with the times, I bought both first books of those series, so when I saw the movies I would know what was going on. Reading Sorcerer's Stone was no problem. I read it in a day and soon devoured the following three books. However, Fellowship of the Ring was a different story as I just could not get into it. The writing was too heavy and tedious for me and there were so many characters to keep track of and this whole Middle Earth place was so confusing to me. So I flung the book aside and never picked it back up...for awhile, anyway. December came and I didn't see the movie. Towards the end of January I was becoming more curious, hearing everyone talking about it and all, but didn't think I would understand it, not having read the book, not to mention I wasn't sure I could sit though a three hour movie that I might find dull. My brother, a Tolkien geek, assured me that I didn't need to read the book to understand what was going on, so finally, on 2/2/02 I decided to see it. I was living in a small town at the time which only had one old movie theater with two screens and the seats weren't very comfortable, so I knew I would be in for a long, painful and excruciating experience if I didn't like it. I was really expecting to hate this movie and usually this IS the kind of movie I hate; however, it turned out I loved it and was dying to see the second one as soon as it ended! (And, hey, I only had to wait ten months while everyone else had to wait a whole year!) And I finally picked up the book and read it and actually understood what was going on having seen the movie.

The first movie obviously sets up the story and introduces us to the nine members of the Fellowship as well as some other characters. For me, the movie doesn't really start until Frodo and Sam embark upon their journey and after the Fellowship is introduced, then that's when the movie starts to get really exciting. Even if you have never seen the movie (gasp!), everyone knows the plot. Basically Frodo is in possession of an evil ring and has to travel to Mordor to get rid of it and there are A LOT of obstacles along the way.

I have to give Peter Jackson and all the other people who worked on these films a lot of credit. Think about all the costumes, makeup, set designs, set locations, music, visual and special effects they had to work on! And let's not forget the daunting task of adapting all three of the books into screenplays! Ten years later and the effects still hold up pretty well although some of the computer graphics are a bit obvious. But just watching the movie makes me exhausted thinking of all the long hours and hard work that was put into it.

Just one small nitpick: at the beginning of the movie we learn the date is September 2, 1400 (Bilbo Baggin's 111th birthday!) I really never paid attention to this before, but this time while watching I struck it as odd when Frodo and Sam are sleeping on the ground and Sam is complaining about how uncomfortable he is and Frodo tells him to imagine he's sleeping on a soft mattress. Uh...did they even have mattresses (did the word even exist?) back then? Didn't people use to sleep on stone slabs?!?! I mean, I'm no history expert, but I always thought the mattress was more of a modern invention.

He's so pretty - it isn' fair!

With so many characters, it's hard to choose just one favorite. I love the humor and mischievousness from Merry and Pippin and how they're always hungry. "What about second breakfast?" I've seen FotR probably about five times now and I ALWAYS laugh after Merry and Pippin announce they're going to join Frodo on his quest and Pippin asks, "Where are we going?" Gandalf is awesome (as is his cane which I've dubbed the Staff of Awesomeness) and he has Shadowfax, the most beautiful horse in the world, and the best lines. ("Keep it secret, keep it safe!"; "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"; "Fly, you fools!"; "Fool of a Took!") The elves were my favorite among the different races of Middle Earth. Arwen is so gorgeous with her dark hair and alabaster skin. She even CRIES beautifully and gracefully. Liv Tyler sounds so different in this movie than how she normally does. And great casting there. She is so amazingly stunning; she really does kind of have these elfish qualities. And Legolas! He's just so damn pretty! Look at that face! That hair! Those ears! Whenever he's on screen, I'm like, "Ooh...pretty...pretty...so, so pretty!" I'm just so mesmerized by him. Not only is he pretty but he has amazing archery skills and is quite agile.

As much as I love those characters, I have to say my two favorites are Sam and Aragorn. Sam is such a sweet hobbit! There were several times during the trilogy when I wanted to give him a big hug and a big bowl of stew. I think Sam was a little gay, I mean, c'mon, it was so obvious he was in love with Frodo! I always think of that joke on The O.C. when Summer asks Marissa, "Remember that movie the guys showed up? About the gay guys on the mountain?" and Marissa immediately responds matter-of-factly, "The Lord of the Rings." Oh, that was great. That will never not be funny. But in all seriousness, Sam was the heart of the movie and he was the one who stuck with Frodo through thick and thin even when Frodo was being a jerk and needed to be slapped over the head with a frying pan. (I know, I know, it was the damn ring...) Then there's Aragorn who is so smoldering that I nicknamed him HRH (His Royal Hotness). Haha, I remember when my theater had this huge poster of him hanging up and I'd just stare at it. Best poster EVER in the history of cinema! It's no wonder both Arwen and Eowyn (and I think Legolas just a tad!) were in love with him. He looks damn good for 87! But just the way he looks isn't the only reason why I love him (well, it's a big reason, though!), but he's definitely an important part of the trilogy and he has mad sword skills.

Top row: Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir
Bottom row: Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Gimli

My favorite scene is when the nine members of the Fellowship are crossing the Bridge of Khazad Dum (had to look that up; I'm not that much of a geek!) I always tense up when they're running across the narrow path over the deep chasm and come across the gap in the steep steps and have to jump even though I know they're going to be okay...well, most of them. There's some nice foreshadowing when Gimli warns the others that he doesn't need any help and how, "Nobody tosses a dwarf!"

Part one ends with Gandalf falling to his assumed death, Boromir getting killed, Merry and Pippin being taken by the orcs, Sam following Frodo to join him on his continued quest to Mordor to destroy the ring, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli off to save their little friends. To be continued...

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Same people from the first movie, Miranda Otto, Bernard Hill, David Wenham, Brad Dourif, Andy Serkis, Karl Urban
Released: December 18, 2002
Viewed in theaters: December 25, 2002

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to Chicago)
Best Art Direction (lost to Chicago)
Best Sound (lost to Chicago)
Best Film Editing (lost to Chicago)
Best Sound Editing (won)
Best Visual Effects (won)

The Two Towers is my favorite movie in the trilogy. I may or may not have seen it more than once (um, or twice ::::coughcoughorthreetimescoughcough::::) in the theaters in two weeks. I like this one the best for several reasons: we are introduced to new and intriguing characters such as Eowyn, King Theoden, Faramir, Wormtongue, Treebeard, and, of course, Gollum/Smeagol. I hadn't quoted a character as much as Gollum since 2000 when I went around shouting "TIMMY!" all the time. I like how the movie is divided into three different stories so the pacing is a little quicker and you get a change of scenery with each storyline. Here's a fun fact if you've never read the book: Tolkien divides the book into three sections and you read about Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli first, then you read about Merry and Pippin meeting Treebeard, then you read about Sam and Frodo meeting Gollum. That might not be the right order because I don't have the book on hand, but the point I'm trying to make is that Tolkien didn't intersect the different storylines. Peter Jackson was smart to do that!

This one is also my favorite because the Battle of Helms Deep was my favorite scene in any of the movies (and this is coming from someone who usually hates battle scenes in movies, but this one was pretty cool and epic). I love the friendly rivalry between Legolas and Gimli when they're counting how many orcs they've killed and the callback to the first movie when Gimli allows Aragorn to toss him onto the bridge and tells him, "Don't tell the elf!" This film also features three of my favorite (albeit very short) clips. One is the scene where Aragorn is opening those huge double doors in slow motion when he has returned to Helms Deep. Let's not kid ourselves: that was pretty hot. I have not yet met another female who doesn't love that scene. Whoever edited in slow motion is a genius. And the other two are Legolas scenes, you probably already know which ones I'm talking about: When he slides down the steps on his shield during the battle and the one-handed vault onto his horse. Let's not kid ourselves: that was pretty freaking awesome! Haha, I remember when I saw it in the theaters and there was this guy sitting in the same row as me and he went, "WOW!" Wow, indeed, buddy, wow, indeed.

Right after the movie's release, I conducted a "scientific poll" on a message board I frequented back in the day. It was titled "Who's Hotter: Aragorn or Legolas?" Legolas won. Damn teeny-boppers ;-) I remember this one girl said she debated for two hours trying to decide who indeed was the hotter one and finally settled with Aragorn. Haha, I love it. Here are some of the other answers people wrote down: (I voted for Aragorn, btw).

LEGOLAS!!!!!!!! ooooohhh could eat him up he's so pretty. I don't really go for the always dirty, can't make up his mind about which freaking woman to marry sort of guy.

Oh, don't make me choose! :-\
Um... hm... uh... *whimpers* I...can't...decide!
Aragorn's smoldering and HOTT.
Legolas is sexy in this poetic, beautiful way.
Oh jeeze. *bites lip*
I'm gonna go with...
Legolas.
I like his ears and he has pretty hair.

I'd say Aragorn has it going for him.

Legolas. I am a boy. Is my vote counted?

Legolas is pretty like a wintergreen mint but Aragorn is a cinnamint! I choose Aragorn! (but I also like Legolas!) ARAGORN!!!

LEGOLAS!!!! HIS HAIR IS SO......SO.....PRETTY!!

ARAGORN HANDS DOWN! OF COURSE HE'S THE HOTTER ONE!

LEGOLAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he's my husband, he just doesn't know it yet, lol.

Obviously Legolas won the poll, but clearly Aragorn is the real winner as he had two ladies (and I still maintain Legolas was in love with him too!) after him. There's a lot of Aragorn/Legolas fanvids on YouTube and this one has to be my favorite:

Leggy consoles Aragorn.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the creepy Gollum/Smeagol conversation. It was disturbing, funny, and heartbreaking all at the same time. Gollum was a revolutionary character; you really had seen nothing like him on the screen before. I also loved Sam's speech at the end - so sweet. Almost reminded me of another speech Sean Astin gives during one of his movies. "Down here it's our time! It's our time down here!" If you weren't a child of the '80s, I'm talking about The Goonies.

Part two ends with Gollum leading Frodo and Sam onward towards Mordor with malicious intentions. To be continued...

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Same people from the first two movies, John Noble
Released: December 17, 2003
Viewed in theaters: December 25, 2003

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (won)
Best Director - Peter Jackson (won)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens (won)
Best Art Direction (won)
Best Costume Design (won)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Score - Howard Shore (won)
Best Song - "Into the West" by Annie Lennox (won)
Best Makeup (won)
Best Sound Mixing (won)
Best Visual Effects (won)
(Yes, it won EVERYTHING!)

Let me tell you a true (and stupid) story: right after The Two Towers had just been released, I was all giddy and excited for Return of the King, so myself and another online friend who also frequented the same message board as me decided we would do a countdown to RotK....starting in January 2003. I've found the original message, which you'll notice was written on January 9, 2003!

Countdown to ROTK
Author: *********
Date: 01-09-03 13:48

LOL, this will be the first of MANY MANY posts to come. Sara and I will take the time each day to post how many more days until December 17, or when ROTK comes out! To me, this is very good time to pass the many days of waiting! And so, the first official "Countdown to ROTK" post -

342 days to go! *throws confetti*

Welcome all, to the longest year ever!

When we got to 299 we were excited we finally reached the 200s. I think we quit after four months!

I once wrote a post about how Return of the King was one of my most memorable movie experiences. If you haven't read it, you can find it here at #9.

Pretty, but should not be
credited third!

I still think this movie has way too many endings and I think it should have ended after Frodo does the voiceover of how they returned home after being away for 13 months. There. The end. We don't need the other ten millions endings you tacked on, Peter Jackson! I do love the credits and how instead of getting a black screen like the previous two movies it's a white background and you see sketches of the actors as the characters they played when they show their names. It's a very cool curtain call. It also helps that "Into the West" is my favorite song of the three original songs. I don't know why Liv Tyler is credited third though! She's right behind Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen, but she should at least be behind Viggo Mortensen and Sean Astin too.

The scene that always gets me is when Frodo and Sam are almost to their destination and Frodo has grown tired and weary and Sam declares, "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you!" and he picks up Frodo with a determined look on his face. That should make even the cruelest of people shed a small tear, because seriously, if that scene does not get to you, you obviously have no heart or soul!

My other favorite moment is when the Witch King tells Eowyn that no man an kill him and she takes off her helmet and declares, "I am no man!" before killing him. That got a huge cheer from my audience when I saw it in the theaters.

I've mentioned before that the effects are amazing, but I'm beginning to think they ran out of money by this movie because there's a shot of Eowyn and Merry on a horse and when they show a close up of the actors you can tell they're using green screen, it's that obvious and bad!

While I liked Gollum in the second movie and felt sorry for him at times, I really hated him in this one and was glad when he got his comeuppance. I thought it was strange he didn't scream when he landed in the lava as I would imagine most people would scream if they were covered with hot, boiling lava. When Frodo and Sam are escaping from Mount Doom, it totally reminded me of the (very old school, circa 1992) PC game, "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" (the greatest game ever) when Indy and Sophia are escaping from Atlantis. In both scenarios, there's lava everywhere and things are crumbling down around them.

These are amazing movies and by the time you finish them you are exhausted, but you feel strangely satisfied. They really let you escape and take you into another world. I highly recommend them and this is coming from somebody who's not really a fantasy fan. Sure, I've read and seen all the Harry Potter books and movies, but other than that and being a fan of the LotR films, I could care less about the fantasy genre. If you've never seen these movies, you must give them a chance because they are amazing. I would daresay that they are among the best movies of the aughties!

Video Review

2011-10-28T23:41:00.003-05:00

I haven't done a video review in awhile, so I thought I would do one on an amazing movie I recently watched:

I apologize for saying "like" so many times - that's a huge pet peeve of mine when people do that and I didn't even realize I was doing it until I watched the video. Also, that huge crash you heard in the second video was my cat - he banged my door or something.

X-tra Ordinary

2011-09-30T14:36:00.000-05:00

X-Men: First Class

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence

Released: June 3, 2011

Warning: spoilers

When it comes to the X-Men, my only knowledge is the first three movies which I've only seen once. (I've also seen Wolverine - big mistake, but I like Hugh Jackman!) I've never read the comics or watched the animated series. I've enjoyed all the movies (well, except for Wolverine, obviously) and this one was no exception (or should I say X-ception? Haha!)

It takes place in the early '60s and we meet Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) before he became Professor X (played by Patrick Stewart in the previous films) and Erik Whoever (Michael Fassbender) before he became Magneto (who Ian McKellen played in the other films). Before they were enemies, Charles and Erik had to work together to stop the bad mutants from starting World War III. As far as super powers go, Charles definitely has Erik beat. Erik can move objects with his mind, which, okay, that's cool and it did come in handy a few times in the movie. However, Charles can read minds (and he can control at will whose mind to read), have conversations with people inside their minds, freeze people in time, and who knows what else. Team Charlie!

I can understand why Erik becomes evil because his mother was killed right in front of him as a young boy, so it's understandable why he has a bunch of pented-up rage. I don't understand why both young mutant girls decided to go to the dark side. First, when Kevin Bacon leads the bad guys to the government building where the young mutants are being guarded, Angel doesn't put up a fight and just decides to join them and it was like, "Really?! Really?" Like I said, I've seen the X-Men movies, so I knew Mystique was a bad "guy", but how she got there makes no sense to me. She and Charles are quite close and have a brother/sister relationship, but at the end of the movie, after Erik nearly kills thousands of innocent people (but Charles manages to stop him), he asks who wants to join him, and Mystique decides to go with him and Charles is like, "Okay, that's cool. I know that's what you want to do." Um, hello, Charlie? But you're letting one of your closest friends join the bad side!

Mystique has one of the coolest powers of all the X-men (or women, in her case). She's a shift shaper and can turn into anybody she wants. At first I was a little confused that 1960s Mystique was played by 20 year old Jennifer Lawrence and Mystique in 2000 was played by late 20s Rebecca Romijn, but it's explained to us that she has genetic make up that makes her age quite slowly. We also find out that Mystique was the one who suggested the nicknames Professor X and Magneto for Charles and Erik.

There's a few fun cameos: Rebecca Romijn and the best is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. It was unexpected and really funny; they made nice use of their one F word in the PG-13 movie.

How about that death scene with Kevin Bacon? If anyone had to be killed in that manner, than he certainly deserved it - he was the one who killed little Erik's mother right in front of him, after all. I have to give the movie credit; I've never seen anyone killed like that. That made me cringe! I will never look at a coin the same way again.

I was really entertained by this movie and the special effects were amazing, though in ten years they'll probably look awful!

It's all Gwyneth's fault

2011-09-22T22:51:00.002-05:00

Contagion
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow
Released: September 9, 2011
Viewed in theaters: September 22, 2011

Warning: some spoilers

If you already hate Gwyeth Paltrow, like I do, then you will hate her even more after watching Contagion! Not only do we find out that she's cheating on her husband (Matt Damon) in the first ten seconds of the movie, but she's the reason this fast-killing virus spread to the United States after returning from a trip from Hong Kong where the virus originated. She infected thousands of people who died, including her own six year old son! Good job, Gwynnie, good job!

Luckily, her husband is immune to the disease and even luckier, his daughter was with his ex-wife. There is widespread panic as many people fall sick and entire cities and towns become ghosts towns with stores being unable to operate without people to run them and those who are still healthy start rioting and breaking into stores to steal food and other equipment. Matt just wants to leave the city with his daughter before she gets infected, but they are quarantined.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, at the first sign of the outbreak, a doctor (Laurence Fishbourne) sends an expert in viruses and epidemics (Kate Winslet) to Minneapolis, one of the first cities to get infected (Gwyneth's hometown). Let's just say, she should have worn a mask more than she did. (I always thought those masks looked like they couldn't keep germs away).

We also have Jude Law who plays an obnoxious blogger who thinks the government is lying to everyone and that they are keeping vital information from the public about how they can be helped. On a shallow sidenote, you can definitely tell Jude is British because he has some messed up teeth! I guess some stereotypes are true.

Marion Cotillard, who is so very, very, very pretty, plays a doctor with the World Heath Organization who travels to China to see how the disease originated. I was worried about her because she is also shown not wearing masks at times and they did a lot of close ups of her touching item after item after item after item. I don't want to spoil her storyline, so I'll just say I was a little confused with how they wrapped it up.

This was a decent movie, but it was a tad bit on the boring side at times. Reviewers kept saying that this movie will scare the daylights out of you because everyone gets sick and germs are everywhere!!! Eh, whatever. I was fine. I even used the restroom at my theater after the movie ended!

Where's Al when you need him?

2011-09-15T19:21:00.003-05:00

Source Code
Director: Duncan Jones
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Released: April 1, 2011

In order to talk about this movie and discuss things that I find interesting (and confusing!), I have to spoil this movie, so if you have not seen it yet, you have been warned. There are going to be some huge spoilers revealed. I repeat, you have been warned! (By the way, it is a movie worth checking out, so go see it first and then come back and read this, because I would hat to have ruined it for you!)

Okay, so have you seen the movie? Good. If you haven't, I'll explain what it's about and maybe that will get you interested in seeing it before I really start spoiling things (which I need to do to really go in depth about this movie). Jake Gyllenhaal is sleeping on a train and wakes up quite disorientated. It's clear he doesn't know where he is or why he's there. He's looking around wildly and the woman sitting across from him (Michelle Monaghan) asks him if he's all right. It's clear that she knows him, but he doesn't know who she is. She keeps calling him "Sean" and he tells her his real name is Captian Colter Stevens and she just sort of laughs him off. He goes into a bathroom and when he looks in the reflection, it is not his, but a stranger's. The train ends up being blown up and he wakes up in a pod. On a TV screen Vera Farmiga is asking him if he found the bomb. Colter is very confused and soon learns that there has been a terrorist attack on the train and he's been sent to relive the last eight minutes as one of the passengers on the train (who was picked because he has the same body shape and was about the same age as Colter) to find who was responsible so he could stop a more massive attack on the entire city of Chicago. (Please don't ask me to explain the logistics of the situation...)

He keeps going back to this man's last eight minutes and with each one you get a different scenario, so it was kind of like a serious Groundhog Day. With each scenario, you got a clue to who wasn't involved and you learned something new each time...like that fact that Colter was actually dead, but they were keeping a part of his brain alive so he could go on these missions. Don't ask me how that works.

Eventually Colter does find the bomber and he relays this information and the police and FBI are able to stop the suspect before he blows up an entire city. His mission was to stop this, but he wants to go back one more time and save everyone on the train because after going back so many times, he has fallen for Christina, his pretty companion. He does end up saving her and everyone else and he suspects that after the eight minutes this time, he'll die and the real Sean will be saved too, but no, Colter is still alive, but he's still inside Sean's body, so everyone thinks it's this Sean guy, but really it's Colter who's controlling him. Well, what about poor Sean? Everyone else on the train got to live, but that poor schmuck is the only one who had to give his life that day and not only that, but some stranger has inhabited his body and will have his girlfriend and his family confused...(and even more confused when they notice that "Sean" is acting differently), they'll never know that the REAL Sean is dead. Doesn't seem very fair to me! Now as an audience member, I know we're not supposed to care about Sean since we never met him and only see what he looks like for a split second.

There were many elements of this film that reminded me of Quantum Leap and while watching the commentary, the director said the same thing and he got Scott Bakula to voice Colter's father, so I thought that was cool.

I did like the movie, but it kind of gave me a headache and I felt bad for Sean!

Bowler Hats Needed

2011-09-11T23:44:00.000-05:00

The Adjustment Bureau
Director: George Nolfi
Cast: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie
Released: March 4, 2011

The Adjustment Bureau is part romance, part sci-fi with a dash of politics. Matt Damon plays David Norris, a young New York politician who's running for the state Senate. Before a big speech he has to give, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt), a ballet dancer, and immediately feels a connection with her, but is unable to get any contact info because she has to leave before security catches her because she had been crashing a wedding in the same building he's to give his speech. He had been down in the polls, but meeting Elise inspired him and he changes his entire speech so it's more him speaking and not the correspondents who help him with what he should say and should wear to appease the voting public.

It just so happens the next day he runs into Elise on a bus and is thrilled. They start up a conversation and she gives him her number. (Personally, I don't know what he saw in her - I thought it was extremely immature when she took his phone when someone was calling and answered by saying, "He's not here", and even more immature when she dropped his phone in her coffee. Like that's totally charming.)

Men With Hats

One morning David walks into his office building and notices that everyone is frozen and sees a group of men he doesn't know dressed in suits and bowler hats. Like anyone in his situation, he gets freaked out and starts running and calling for help, but the group of men sedate him and he wakes up to find himself in a huge abandoned warehouse. The leader of the group tells him they are part of the Adjustment Bureau and that they "are the people who make sure things happen according to plan". He tells David that he wasn't supposed to see them just now; that he should have spilled his coffee, gone back to his apartment to change, and had been ten minutes late. He tells him that if he tells anybody about them, that he will erase his entire mind and he will not remember anything at all or even know who he is. On top of all that, he tells David that he was never supposed to run into Elise on the bus and that he is never to see her again and burns the paper with her number on it.

Even though he only has Elise's (first!) name to go on, David doesn't give up trying to find her and three years later sees her walking down the street while on the bus and runs out to talk to her. She thinks that he had just blown her off all that time ago and doesn't believe him when he tells her he lost her number. She agrees to have lunch with them and the Bureau is alerted and quickly tries to come up with ways to separate them. They succeed, but David is determined and still manages to get to her with all these roadblocks in his way.

Why is the Adjustment Bureau so adamant about keeping David and Elise apart? Because separately they would have turned into extraordinary people. David is destined to be President, but could never be if he stayed with Elise because she is too much of a free spirit. Elise is destined to be one of the world's most famous dancers, but if she stays with David, she'll only be a ballet teacher for young kids. David is fine with giving up that dream to be with the woman he loves, but when he learns that her dream will never be fulfilled, he walks out on her while she's in the hospital after she sprains her ankle (something the A.B. made happen). I didn't understand why he couldn't just talk to her and say, "Look, I'm worried that if we stay together, I'll hold you back from being a great dancer and I think we should split up." She would have either agreed or not cared if that happened. Seriously, who cares if she never became one of the world's most famous dancers. There's nothing wrong with teaching ballet. She could always choreograph awesome dance movies like Center Stage! Can anyone even name a famous ballet dancer because I sure can't.

Eleven months pass and he finds out that Elise is getting married to her ex-boyfriend and decides that he does want to be with her (make up your mind!) and with the help of one of the members of the Bureau played by Anthony Mackie, he finds a short cut to get to the courthouse where she is to be married. The members of the Bureau have the cool ability to walk into one door and appear at a totally different location when they cross the threshold. Anyone who is wearing a bowler hat can do this. I loved the scene where he's running through doors and trying to dodge any of the members; I thought that was really well done.

Good movie, I really did like it despite some of my complaints. Personally if I were given all these signs that I shouldn't be with someone, I would take them all into account and be like, F it! They must not be worth it. That power with the hats is pretty cool though; that walking through a door and being closer to your location would come in rather handy, especially during the winter so I wouldn't have to drive in snow!

July 15th

2011-09-07T22:51:00.001-05:00

One Day
Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess
Released: August 19, 2011
Viewed in theaters: September 1, 2011

I saw this movie with my mom and we had both read the book by David Nicholls. We both agreed that if we had not read the book, we would have been a little lost. (Not as lost as, say, if I hadn't read any of the Harry Potter books and seeing the last movie).

Before I go into my review, let me tell you about our audience. My mom and I were the first ones in the theater and more people came in right before the film started. Four older ladies sat right in front of us, a couple sat in the same row as us, and two people sat right behind us. The theater wasn't that small - there was plenty of room to spread out! Not only that, but the four ladies sitting in front of us TALKED THROUGH THE ENTIRE MOVIE! Ugh, it was really irritating. I kept hearing one of them ask the other something and felt like saying "Well, if you just watch the movie and STOP TALKING then maybe you'll know what's going on!" Of course they probably hadn't read the book.

The movie is about Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) who start a relationship of sorts the last day of their college graduation, which is July 15, 1988. They're only friends at first, but there's the hint that they could be something more. We see their relationship evolve each year on July 15 for the next twenty years. Well, it's supposed to be twenty years. In the book, the first chapter starts in 1988 and the last one starts in 2007. The tag line on the poster reads "Two people, twenty years, one day". Well, the only thing thing is that while the movie starts in 1988, it ends in 2011! I can understand that they want to be current, but that drove me a little crazy because they're LYING on the poster! 1988 - 2011 does NOT equal twenty years! They should have have re-worded the tag to "Two people, twenty-plus years, one day".

Each time they want to establish it's a new year in the movie, they do a clever way of placing the year on the screen. I remember one was written on a wall and another is written on a computer screen. It kind of reminded me of the clever ways Heroes used to show its titles. (Loved season 1 of that show, but it just wasn't the same after that!) Some of the years go by pretty fast. While you may get a good twenty pages for each year in the book, in the film, you might only get five (or less!) minutes. Obviously in the book, Emma and Dexter are more fleshed out.

One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Dexter is having dinner with his girlfriend's (not Emma) family and they're very rich and snooty and she has younger twin brothers who are being little snots. They play a parlor game called "Are You There, Moriarty?" and if I had seen the movie without reading the book, I would have been very confused. The book explains the parlor game and it's a lot funnier when he accidently injures his girlfriend. Her twin brothers are also a lot funnier (and snottier!) in the book.

It was fun to see the fashion and technology and hear the music for each year. That was one of the things that the book couldn't really show.

Word of advice: you might want to bring tissues with you to the theater. I won't say that you'll cry happy tears or sad tears because I don't want to spoil anything.

It was a nice movie, but the book is better. I would advise to read the book first, then rent the movie when it's on DVD.

The Wind Beneath My Wings

2011-08-31T00:54:00.003-05:00

Beaches
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey
Released: December 21,1988

Oscar nominations:
Best Art Direction (lost to Dangerous Liaisons)

Is Beaches a chick flick? One might say unequivocally so. Is Beaches a schmaltzy film? You could say one of the schmaltziest ever. Are there problems with the script? Most definitely yes. Did I cry my eyes out while watching it? I am not ashamed to say that yes, yes, I did. Do I know every word to Wind Beneath My Wings? Who doesn't?

In a one sentence summary, Beaches is a film about the friendship between two women that spans over thirty years. Cece Bloom and Hilary Whitney meet on the beach in Coney Island one summer as eleven year olds and strike up a lifelong friendship. The two girls couldn't be more different. Cece is from the Bronx, a rough and tumble kinda New York girl with an attitude and wants to be a STAH! She sings, tap dances, acts. Her mother is the typical stage mother and Cece calls her Leona. Leona's played by Lainie Kazan whos' probably best known for playing the mother in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but she also played Andrea's grandma in Beverly Hills, 90210. I should also note that young Cece is played by Mayim Bialik. If you don't know that name, shame on you! She only played the titular character on Blossom that was on 8:30/7:30 central time Monday nights on NBC right after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the early nineties. Is it weird that I can remember what was on Monday nights on NBC twenty years ago, but I couldn't tell you what's on Mondays on NBC presently? And if you still have no idea what Blossom was, maybe this will refresh your memory:

Hilary is from San Francisco and comes from a rich family. Her mom died when she was young and her extracurricular actives include horse back riding and ballet, activities that young, proper girls do.

Hilary and Cece exchange addresses and keep a correspondence, writing letters to each other often. We see them grow up and graduate college and they're still writing each other. Now this is the first problem with the script I have. There is no way that two eleven year old girls that live on opposite sides of the country are going to write each other for that long after they've just spent, what, half a day together? Maybe they would write to each for a few months after meeting, but it would eventually stop.

Fast forward to Bette Midler as older Cece who is a struggling performer and Barbara Hershey as older Hilary who is a lawyer and has decided to defy her father and move to New York to visit Cece. Apparently they never sent pictures of themselves to each other because Cece doesn't even know it's Hilary when she approaches her at a nighclub Cece sings at.

After that, the rest of the movie revolves around this cycle: they fight, they cry, they make up, they cry again. I swear, that must happen four or five times in the movie! The first time is when Cece likes a guy (Macaulay Culkin's dad from Home Alone), but he likes Hilary in return. Hilary ends up marrying a lawyer when she goes back to San Francisco for awhile (more letter writing!) to take care of her sick dad and Cece marries Mr. McCallister. By the time Hilary returns to New York with her new husband, Cece has become more famous and she and her husband are now living in a lavish penthouse. The two haven't seen each other in awhile and another fight breaks out. Hilary says it's because they've fallen apart, but Cece accuses Hilary, saying that she's broken apart. Eventually they make up down the line. (More crying! And hugging!)

I watched the commentary with Garry Marshall and he mentioned that he wanted to make this movie because most people didn't want to make a movie about the friendship between two women and how he was interested in that aspect. He then went on to say that he finds women friendships fascinating because, according to him, when men fight, they won't speak to each other for years, but when women fight, they've made up in a couple of hours and are shopping! Not only is this extremely sexist, but I find it quite untrue. I'm no expert, so I'll just pretend to be: when guys fight, they just need to hit something (like each other (see, I can be sexist too!)), but I think females hold grudges way longer than guys do. If you piss me off, I will not talk to you from anywhere as long as a week to eternity. To be fair to the movie, when Cece and Hilary had their biggest fight, they didn't talk to each other for months and Hilary ignored all of Cece's letters, so it wasn't like they were BFFs again after a couple of hours and SHOPPING! Shopping makes everything better!

Both of their marriages fall apart. Hilary catches her husband with another woman (eating breakfast) and Cece's husband feels like he comes second to her career. This bonds the two lifelong friends together again and Cece finds out that Hilary is pregnant. She is beyond ecstatic as both women have mentioned how much they would love to have kids. Hilary has a girl...who grows up to be a psychotic ballet dancer. Sorry, couldn't resist a Black Swan joke! Actually, Darren Aronofsky or whoever cast that movie is a genius because during Beaches, I was struck by how much Barbara Hershey looked like Natalie Portman, especially after she got sick. (Hmm, did I just inadvertently diss Natalie Portman?)

That's right, bring on the terminal illness that befalls one of the friends. Hilary has some heart problem and after spending the last moments of her life (minus in the hospital) with her daughter, now six or seven, and Cece on the beach, she eventually dies.

This is where I lost it. Between the montage with Bette Midler singing "Wind Beneath My Wings" Hilary's daughter, Victoria, sitting forlornly at her mom's funeral, and Victoria's tear-stained face while petting her cat for comfort, I was a sobbing mess. Sooo glad I was watching this alone!

Cece tells Victoria that her mother said she wanted her daughter to live with Cece in her will. Wait, what? What about her dad? Even Cece asks Victoria if she wants to live with her father and Victoria says she's never met him! They didn't really explain it well, but either Hilary never told her ex that she was pregnant or he knew about it and didn't want anything to do with his child. In either case, it makes ones of the parents look like a jerk. So Cece adopts Victoria and that's the end. Cue "Wind Beneath My Wings" again.

Rain Man

2011-08-27T22:49:00.003-05:00

Rain Man
Director: Barry Levinson
Cast: Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman
Released: December 16, 1988

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (won)
Best Director - Barry Levinson (won)
Best Actor - Dustin Hoffman (won)
Best Original Screenplay - Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow (won)
Best Cinematography (lost to Mississippi Burning)
Best Art Direction (lost to Dangerous Liaisons)
Best Editing (lost to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)
Best Score - Hans Zimmer (lost to Dave Grushin for The Milagro Beanfield War)

Rain Man is about a relationship between two brothers who have just met and couldn't be more different. Charlie is the younger, success-driven, cocky a-hole brother. He's played by Tom Cruise who pretty much plays this type of character in all of his movies. After his father dies, he finds out he has an older brother name Raymond (played by Dustin Hoffman) who has been in an institution since Charlie was a young kid. He's autistic and needs to have a routine to feel secure. Before he finds out about his brother, Charlie tells his girlfriend that when he was younger he had an imaginary friend called the Rain Man who used to sing to him. Of course we learn later that it was Raymond who used to sing to him.

Charlie, who didn't have a good relationship with his father, is irate when he finds out that his father didn't leave him any money in his will. He thought he was supposed to get three million dollars, but it ended up going to Raymond. This is when Charlie discovers he has an older brother. He is furious that the money went to someone who can't even conceive of the idea of three million dollars. He plans to kidnap Raymond and only bring him back when he's given his share of the wealth.

Charlie learns very soon that taking Raymond out of his environment was, as Raymond would say, "bad, very, very bad." Raymond has to go to bed right at eleven. He has to eat certain foods on certain days. (In one scene where he has to have six fish sticks for lunch, Charlie brings him three and when Raymond starts crying, Charlie takes a knife and cuts them all in half). He has to watch The People's Court every week day at four. If he doesn't, he throws a huge fit. His life is one big routine and Charlie has to adjust to this routine and, as he is of the selfish sort, it doesn't make him happy.

Charlie think he'll just fly back to Los Angeles from Cincinnati where Raymond lives, but Raymond refuses to go on a plane because all major airlines except Quantas have had major aviation disasters. When Charlie tries to reason with him and tell him it's safe, Raymond makes a big scene and the movie becomes a road trip bonding experience. Charlie's angry with his brother because he needs to get back to his job as a car dealer which is sinking and instead of returning to L.A. that afternoon, it's going to take him three days to get back.

Charlie finds Raymond frustrating because he can't have a conversation with him and he doesn't know what's going on inside Raymond's head. He is amazed when Raymond drops a box of toothpicks and immediately says there are 246 toothpicks on the ground. There are 250 toothpicks that come in the box and there are four left in the box after Raymond drops it. Charlie is also amazed when Raymond can multiply five digit numbers together and claims he should work for NASA. He changes his mind, however, when Raymond can't add together two and two.

Charlie, who is in debt, gets a brilliant idea when he realizes Raymond can count cars and they make a pitstop at Vegas along the way. The most famous scene from the movie is when they're wearing matching suits and riding down the escalator side by side. It's been parodied in many other movies.

Throughout the film you see their relationship develop and the two brothers share a special bond even though Raymond has a difficult time showing feeling. Charlie wants Raymond to live with him, but in the end realizes it's better if there are professional taking care of Charlie and he's in a place he's familiar with. There's a nice moment at the end when the two brothers show affection for each other by sitting at a table and leaning together, their foreheads touching, as Raymond does not like to be hugged.

Gun Control

2011-08-25T11:30:00.000-05:00

Bowling for Columbine
Director: Michael Moore
Released: October 11, 2002

Oscar nominations:
Best Documentary (won)

Here's a little fun (not really) fact about me: Bowling for Columbine is the first documentary I ever saw. I'm not just talking in the theater (because I've never seen a doc in the theater), but the first documentary I ever saw anywhere. Kinda sad considering it only came out nine years ago.

Michael Moore is a blowhard. I know it, you know it, we all know it. However, the guy knows how to make an entertaining movie (although I do question his "facts" at times). Obviously gun control is a very serious issue, but the movie is pretty funny at times. I especially love the scene at the beginning where he tries to score a free gun by signing up for a bank account and asks the teller, "Should you really be giving out free guns at a bank?" Hahaha...I have a feeling that most banks aren't giving away free guns and that particular bank is a very rare minority. At least, I hope so!

Before I saw the movie, I thought the title referred to people raising money for the victims of the Columbine school shooting by having a bowl-a-thon or something. Which seemed both stupid and kinda insensitive. But Moore explains that the killers had bowling class in the morning and attended it before they went on their rampage. However, if you've read the Dave Cullen book, you would know that's not true. Duh. So the title is stupid, confusing and untrue. But it's got panache.

The movie is about gun control (specifically in the U.S.) and that is a very B-R-O-A-D topic and Moore goes all over the place in his film. There's so much about the topic that it's very easy to get lost in the shuffle and I feel like he's trying to cover so much in a two hour movie. It would have been more interesting if he had focused his documentary on a specific subject, like school shootings. Columbine may be mentioned in the (stupid, confusing, and untrue) title, but it's a very small fraction of the film. It seemed like the late '90s had a surge of middle and high school shootings (I would know because I was in high school at the time and remember all of them) and I feel like Moore missed a huge opportunity by not interviewing (or at least attempting to) any of the students who shot up their school.

There are plenty of interviews, most of them with well-known people. He interviews Terry Nichol's brother (who is clearly not stable) who tells him he knew Timothy McVeigh and how he had an obsession with guns. He interviews Matt Stone of South Park fame who grew up in Littleton and they make it sound like he attended Columbine, but he didn't because I looked it up. He interviews Marilyn Manson because he was always (and sometimes falsely) listed as one of the artists school shooters from the late '90s listened to. The holy grail of his interviewees is Mr. NRA himself, Charleton Heston who famously held a convention in Denver, like two days after Columbine happened, which was pretty insensitive. However, I thought Moore was a little unfair on him and never seemed to give him a chance to answer his question. I don't think everyone who owns guns are evil. I'm sure for every dumb____ who decides to go on a shooting rampage, there's probably hundreds of people who own guns and are responsible.

One of the dumbest moments in the film is when he tries to get an interview with Dick Clark and let's see if I can remember how this goes: Back in 2000, a first grader brought a gun to school and shot and killed a little girl (whether intentional or not, I'm not sure). He got the gun from his uncle's house because he and his single mom were living with him and his mom was working overtime at a restaurant chain owned by Dick Clark (or something to that effect) so he was trying to reach Clark to ask him about the murder. Now, c'mon, Dick Clark had nothing to do with why the boy brought a gun to school. Maybe his stupid uncle shouldn't have left a gun lying around in the house or maybe his mother should have told him that it's not a toy. DUH!!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite moments in the film is when Moore takes a few of the students who were injured in the Columbine massacre to the K-Mart headquarters and tells them that they wanted them to stop selling bullets because the kids he's with were injured/paralyzed by their bullets. I hate K-Mart so much so that scene made me cackle with glee because I'm evil. Of course they had to discontinue selling bullets because they're on camera and would look like the greedy and cold-hearted corporation they are if they didn't.

Entertaining movie, but only take it at face-value.

A 'Help'ing Hand

2011-08-24T09:38:00.000-05:00

The Help
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek
Released: August 10, 2011
Viewed in theaters: August 17, 2011

The Help is the name of the latest movie I saw in the theater starring Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as Abilene and Minnie, two black maids working for white families in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. It's also the name of the novel by Katherine Stockett which it's adapted from. It's also the name of the book within the novel and the movie which aspiring writer Skeeter (Emma Stone) writes anonymously with the help of Abilene, Minnie, and other maids about what it's really like for these maids to work for white families.

Abilene works for Skeeter's friend, Elizabeth Leefolt. She cooks, cleans, and is basically the mother for the Leefolt's two year old daughter. Minnie used to work for the uppity Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her senile mother (Sissy Spacek), but was fired and now works for Celia Foote who lives way out of town and is shunned by Hilly and the rest of her friends because Celia married the man Hilly had deep feelings for. Skeeter gets a job writing a column for her town's newspaper where she has to answer questions about cleaning. She asks Abilene to help her with the articles until Skeeter decides she wants to write something of importance and after Hilly makes a big fuss about building separate bathrooms for the help, Skeeter sees her friend's true colors start to show and gets the idea for her book. At first Abilene is hesitant because if either of them get caught, it would be very serious, but decides it's important to get her story out there and agrees as long as Skeeter is very careful about the whole thing and doesn't use her real name. Minnie shares her stories too, but Skeeter is told that her book can only be published if she gets a dozen more maids to tell their stories. After the murder of Medgar Evers, more maids volunteer to speak to Skeeter about their experience as a maid.

The movie does a pretty good job of following the book, but there are some things that are left out. If you haven't read the book, the following might be slight spoilers:

The relationship between Minnie and Celia has been edited quite heavily in the film. While they do have THAT scene between them (if you've read the book, you know which one I'm talking about), it builds up in the book and you find out why Cecelia has been hiding in the bathroom and never leaves the house. In the movie, it's the first time Cecelia was crying in the bathroom and Minnie barges in on her. They also sort of skimmed over Cecelia being worried that her husband was going to find out about Minnie. She kept her a secret from him in the movie too, but didn't seem concerned if he found out about her.

They keep the relationship between Skeeter and Stuart, but it's very downplayed in the movie where he's a jerk to her, then apologizes and they date, then he breaks up with her when she tells him about the book she wrote. This is also the arc of their relationship in the book, but of course there are more scenes between them making their relationship more developed.

Skeeter's mother (Allison Janney) has cancer but while you learn of it the same time as Skeeter in the book, she already has it when we first meet her in the film.

See the movie, but also make sure you read the book. And have tissues handy for both!

You say, "Stay"

2011-08-19T17:00:00.002-05:00

Reality Bites
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo
Released: February 18, 1994

I knew Ben Still was in this movie and that he had directed movies (like Tropic Thunder) before, but I didn't know he had directed this one. Of course, this was pre-There's Something About Mary, so nobody knew who he was back then.

The movie follows Lelaina (Ryder) and her friends, recent college grads trying to find their place in the "real world" (otherwise known as Houston). Boy, am I'm glad I wasn't in my early twenties in the nineties! What a bunch of self-centered emo whiners! Oh, wait, I think I just described every early twenty-something throughout the course of history.

Lelaina, who was the valedictorian at her college, has scored a job as a producer for a TV show hosted by Frasier and Nile's dad, but gets fired and has to lower herself to a more pedestrian job. She's living in an apartment with her best friend Vickie (Garafalo) who is a bit of a slut (well, it's true!) and is worried she might have AIDS (oh, remember how popular AIDS were in the nineties - they even had an entire episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 dedicated to it!) Lelaina's other friend, Troy, also lives with them and he gets jealous after Lelaina goes on a date with Michael (Stiller), a video executive because, you see, Troy has feelings for her, but won't admit that he does. Lelaina also has feelings for him, but won't admit that she does and keeps dating Michael to make Troy jealous and Troy dates other women to make Lelaina jealous. Oh, the complications of love triangles!

Lelaina wants to make a documentary about her and her friends' life and always has a camera with her capturing moments of their everyday life. Michael tells her that he's found somebody in New York who's interested in buying the documentary, but when she sees an advanced screening of her footage, they've changed everything around and made it into a bit of a joke. This is where the movie gets its title because the documentary was called "Reality Bites".

This movie is probably most famous for introducing "Stay" by Lisa Loeb to the world. Who doesn't love that song? I never hear it on the radio anymore, but everytime I hear it on my iPod, I always have to sing along. I kept waiting to hear it in the movie, but they don't play it until the end credits...and it's the second song they play during the credits!

A Case of Mistaken Identity

2011-08-18T17:30:00.000-05:00

Dave
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley, Ving Rhames, Charles Grodin
Released: May 7, 1993

Oscar nominations:
Best Original Screenplay - Gary Ross (lost to Jane Campion for The Piano)

When Bill Mitchell, the President of the United States (played by Kevin Kline) suffers a stroke while having an affair with one of his interns, a normal guy named Dave Kovic (also played by Kline) is called in to "pose" as Mitchell as he could be his twin. It's the idea of the Chief of Staff, Bob Alexander, (Langella) because his plan is to feed Dave everything he wants Dave to do as POTUS, but Bob is the one making all the calls.

It turns out that Dave looks so much like the President, he has everyone fooled, including the First Lady (Weaver). The President and First Lady have been having marital problems lately and haven't been spending much time together except for press conferences, but she knows something is amiss when her husband all of a sudden starts caring about things and wanting to help people because the real President was known for being kind of a prick.

There lots of cameos in this film, most of them being politicians who I didn't know at the time and didn't know now. One of the cameos I did know but shouldn't have was John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group. If you're under fifty, you probably have no idea what The McLaughlin Group is. It's a boring show that was on Friday nights on PBS and it had the host, who was, like, 100 years old and other old geezers on it talking about really boring political issues. I only know this show because my brother (who was high school aged around the time) wanted to watch it because he was into politics. I always wanted to watch my TGIF shows like Boy Meets World or Step by Step, but noooooo! We had to watch the stupid McLaughlin Group! Ugh!

There's a funny cameo with Oliver Stone being interviewed by Larry King because he thinks there's a conspiracy behind President acting differently all of a sudden. If I hadn't seen JFK recently, I probably wouldn't have gotten the joke. Arnold Schwarzenegger even has a cameo and this was way before he became the Govenator.

Fun movie, but not believable in the least.

Wonder Drug

2011-08-13T21:37:00.003-05:00

Limitless
Director: Neil Burger
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Abbie Cornish
Released: March 18, 2011

Imagine you could take a pill and it would let you use one hundred percent of your brain instead of the supposed twenty percent we can only access. That is exactly what happens when Eddie (Cooper), a struggling writer, takes the pill which is offered to him by his ex girl friend's brother. Before he took the pill, he looked like a homeless person, his apartment was a mess, and he hadn't written one word of his story. When he takes the pill, his mind suddenly become clear, he seems to remember everything he ever learned in his entire life, and he finishes his book in four days. He also gets a sleek and clean makeover.

When the effect wears off, he knows he has to get more pills, but his ex's brother has been killed, but Eddie manages to find them in his oven. Taking one pill a day makes him smart and powerful. He can suddenly become fluent in a foreign language, do difficult math problems in his head, and know the answer to everything at anytime. He even states he has a four-digit IQ which is just ridiculous. If you had a four-digit IQ, then you would be the smartest person in the world and everyone else around you would seem quite stupid in comparison. You would be bored by everything too if you had an IQ that high! At one point in the movie, his girlfriend takes a pill because she's carrying a stash of them around for Eddie and is being chased by one of the bad guys who wants to kill her, so she takes a pill so she'll know what to do. At that point I was thinking that she was going to start taking them too and they were going to become the most self-important and pretentious couple in the world. Luckily she didn't like that she didn't feel like herself, so that's the only time she takes it.

This movie has an interesting premise, but it doesn't quite deliver in the end. There are too many holes that aren't mended by the end. During one scene when he's on the drugs, Eddie goes through an entire evening only remembering snippets of it. He finds out a girl he remembers being with was killed and apparently somebody saw him leave the hotel room where her body was found. He hires people to remove any of his fingerprints from the room, but we never found out if he murdered her or if it was someone else. Also, it sounded like the drug wasn't going to be made anymore, so I don't know how he was going to keep this charade going of being smart and powerful if he didn't have the thing that was making him rich and powerful anymore.

Interesting premise, but falls flat. I will give the film props for being the first time I've ever seen a child being used as a weapon (well technically, the ice skaters were the weapon, but a kid was in the ice skates when they were being used!)

The President Who Got Caught

2011-08-02T22:59:00.001-05:00

Frost/Nixon
Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
Released: December 5, 2008

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Director - Ron Howard (lost to Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Actor - Frank Langella (lost to Sean Penn for Milk)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Morgan (lost to Simon Beaufoy for Slumdog Millionaire)
Best Editing (lost to Slumdog Millionaire)

This film is based on a theater play of the same name that came out a couple years before. Both are based on the 1977 interviews the 37th President of the United States (that Lyndon Johnson sure was sandwiched between two of the most well-known Presidents of the 20th century, wasn't he?) gives to British journalist David Frost who's more known for hosting variety-type shows than being a hard-hitting journalist. I didn't even know these interviews existed until the movie was making its promotional rounds. Obviously I never saw them because I wasn't born yet, but I was familiar with Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.

Because of that, it would be a huge deal to score an interview with Nixon and Frost and his producer end up paying big bucks for it. There's many terms and agreements they must abide to, such as only using 25% of their interview to discuss Watergate. Months before the interview Frost and two assassinates he hires for research dig up any and all information they can find about Watergate so they're fully prepared.

Langella (Nixon) and Sheen (Frost) reprise their theater roles in the film. Because the first time I saw the actual David Frost was from a clip they show of the interviews in the special features, I thought Sheen did a good job of portraying him, but because I was so familiar with Nixon as a public figure, the first scene I saw with him played by Langella, I just didn't buy him as Nixon, but as the movie went on, I was able to let myself believe he was Nixon.

During the first couple of interviews, Frost has a difficult time getting certain questions asked because Nixon keeps it focused on his more positive achievements during his time in the White House and doesn't let Frost get a word in. The final interview is when the real questions are finally answered and Nixon has no choice but to answer them.

I've never seen the actual interviews, but if you were to watch them, then watch the movie, you would see that they are verbatim.

I avoided this movie for awhile because I thought it would be boring, but it was actually pretty good and kept me interested.

The President Who Got Shot

2011-08-01T21:38:00.004-05:00

JFK
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci
Released: December 20, 1991

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Director - Oliver Stone (lost to Jonathan Demme for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones (lost to Jack Palance for City Slickers)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar (lost to Ted Tally for The Silence of the Lambs)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Sound (lost to Termination 2)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Score - John Williams (lost to Alan Menken for Beauty and the Beast)

I've only seen a few Oliver Stone movies. They range from ones I really liked (Platoon) to the God-awful (Alexander - which, by the way, I had to see in the theater because other members of my family wanted to see it and my choice for seeing Night at the Museum was overruled). I would say his heyday for great movie-making was the late '80s/early '90s which JFK falls nicely into.

I watched the special edition of the DVD which is about three hours and twenty minutes, so I treated it like a miniseries and watched it over a span of about three or four days. Whether or not you believe there's a huge conspiracy behind the assassination of the 35th President of the United States (which the entire movie is based around), you can't deny this is a fascinating film.

First of all, the star power is pretty amazing. I already listed the actors with the most screen time, but the film also includes Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Kevin Bacon, John Larroquette, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, Laurie Metcalf, and Wayne Knight.

The film begins with a little montage of Kennedy's life in office and soon begins after his death on November 22, 1963 in Dallas and goes all the way to 1969. It's based on a book written by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (played by Costner) who becomes obsessed with proving that there was a huge cover-up behind Kennedy's death. He becomes so obsessed that he ignores death threats and puts his family second to the case - he reminded me of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac and how he was obsessed with finding the identify of the killer.

The movie does make a pretty good case of there being a conspiracy linked to JFK's death, but then again, it's what the movie/Stone wants you to think. Garrison and his team interview witnesses who saw Kennedy's assassination first hand and their recounts don't match up with what's documented by the government/police; the doctor who performed JFK's autopsy testifies that government officials kept a close eye on him as he looked at the body and wasn't allowed to examine the gunshot wound; one of Kennedy's bodyguards tells Garrison he just happened to be sent to an assignment in Antarctica when the assassination occurred and that security was very lax (even if Kennedy had never been killed, I cannot ever imagine the POTUS being allowed to ride in a frickin' convertible - that just seems really stupid); it's determined that there's no way Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Oldman) could have shot Kennedy from the angle of the window he was supposedly at and there must have been two other assassins involved as well.

The CIA, FBI, Mafia, Secret Service, and even Vice-President Lyndon Johnson are all considered to be part of the cover-up. They wanted Kennedy dead because of his involvement in the Bay of Pigs and he wanted to pull troops from the Vietnam War. They also weren't happy with the changes he had in store for America. I guess Kennedy was a little too ahead of his time back then as the sixties weren't the most noble times for the U.S. Garrison also thinks they had something to do with the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.

There's some gruesome footage of Kennedy's murder shown at a trial. For some reason, Stone feels the need to show a clip of part of Kennedy's head being blown off not once, but about six times. Yeah, didn't need to see that, Ollie. Luckily it's not a close-up, but you can still tell it's very graphic. He also shows a close-up photo of the deceased Kennedy presumably taken during his autopsy. It's very jarring because his eyes are open. Ever heard the term "dead eyes"? Yeah, it's ever creepier when the person in question is actually, you know, dead.

I was flipping through an almanac from 2000 and it has the Kennedy assassination listed as number 6 of the top 100 news stories of the century. Honestly, I think that's kinda low - I would rank it as at least one of the top three!

If you're fascinated by history, have three plus hours to kill, and even have an inkling that there was some shady business involved with Kennedy's murder, then give JFK a whirl.

A Dozen Mad Men

2011-07-28T12:57:00.004-05:00

12 Angry Men
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, John Fiendler, Lee J. Cobb, E.J. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber
Released: April 13, 1957

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The Bridge on the River Kwai)
Best Director - Sidney Lumet (lost to David Lean for The Bridge on the River Kwai)
Best Adapted Screenplay - Reginald Rose (lost to Pierre Boulle for The Bridge on the River Kwai)

I have a confession to make: I've only seen a handful of movies made before the '70s (and not that many movies from the '70s if I'm being completely honest!) However, if there are more old movies like 12 Angry Men out there, I can't wait to see them. There's a good reason why this is considered a classic.

The only names from the cast I was familiar with were Henry Fonda and Jack Klugman - who's the only surviving cast member - and I've heard of Ed Begley's son!

Except very briefly at the beginning and very briefly at the end, the whole movie takes place in one room where the twelve men, as jurors, are isolated to reach a verdict for an eighteen year old with sad brown puppy dog eyes who has been accused of stabbing his father to death. There is an adjoining bathroom, but for the most part these guys are stuck in this cramped and hot room on what is mentioned as "the hottest day of the year".

The fan isn't working and they all want to get out of there as soon as they can, especially Juror 7 (Jack Warden - the one wearing the hat) who has tickets to a ballgame. They can only leave if they all have the same verdict. When they take a vote, 11 vote guilty and only Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) votes not guilty. He admits he's not sure if the young man is innocent or not, but thinks they should give him the consideration of discussing his case as they will be sending him to face the death penalty if he is found guilty. (Man, they sure were harsh back then!)

Throughout the film they stop discussing the case to conduct another vote. For the first one, Juror 8 tells them he was abstain from voting and if everyone votes guilty, he will also vote the same and that will be that, but another juror votes not guilty and soon the verdict becomes tied as they are persuaded by Juror 8's arguments that the young man is not one hundred percent guilty. Soon it's 11-1, not guilty with Juror 3 as the one who won't budge. He's a cranky old man who think kids "these days" don't have any respect for their elders. (Oh, what would he think of today's youth!)

You never learn the names of the men until the very end when Juror 9 and Juror 8 have a small dialogue and tell each other their names. (Which I've already forgotten - ha!)

I've heard the movie is in real-time, but it seemed like they were deliberating for several hours instead of the hour and a half movie runtime, though I guess an hour and a half can seem like a long time when you're in a hot, cramped room.

Very good film and now I want to check out the made-for-TV movie they did in 1997 with Jack Lemmon, Tony Danza, and James Gandolfini among others.

Ranking the Potter films

2011-07-27T00:13:00.002-05:00

Now that all the Harry Potter films have been made and I've seen them all, I've decided to rank them from my favorite to not so favorite. I've seen the last three in the last month and the rest I've seen in the last year, so they're all fairly fresh in my mind. I've decided to mesh Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Part 2 as one movie since they both are adapted from the same book. My ranking may surprise you - or not!

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 7th movie (Part 1 - 2010, Part 2 - 2011)

Since the last book got the advantage of getting two movies out of it, it's probably the most faithful to the book. Sure, they did leave out the Dumbledore backstory, but for the most part, I believe every scene in the book is in the film. I ranked this as my favorite because by now you've really gotten to know the characters and have become quite attached to them. It also helps immensely that Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint have grown immensely as actors since the first film. There's something extremely satisfying seeing all these character arcs come to a conclusion, Snape's being a good example of this. I'll admit I like Part 2 a little more than Part 1 and if I were ranking them individually, I'd place Part 2 as #1 and Part 1 as #4. I do think of them as one big film (obviously) because if somebody started watched Part 2 without ever seeing Part 1, they'd probably be confused. Come to think of it, if they started watching Deathly Hallows without even watching the previous six movies, they'd probably be confused too! I really love the ending, which at first I was ambivalent to, but now that I've had to think about it, I really love how the camera closes in on Harry, Hermione, and Ron on the train station watching their kids (the next generation!) head to Hogwarts on the Hogwarts Express. They could have skipped the epilogue and just ended with 17-year-old Harry, Hermione, and Ron outside the torn-down castle. You would've known that Voldemort was defeated, but with the added epilogue you know that Hogwarts is still up and running. (Of course it is - they're wizards! All they have to do is point their wands at the rubble and say "Reparo!") And the scenes that made me cry both in the book and film is when we find out that Harry named his son Albus Severus (unfortunate name, but it's sweet they named him after Dumbledore and Snape) and how his son was worried about being sorted into Slytherin and Harry tells him he was named after a Slytherin who was one of the bravest men he knew, and oh m goodness, that gets me every time!

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 4th movie (2005)

I realize this is a hugely unpopular opinion placing this movie so high when it seems like so many people don't like it, although of the eight movies it's the third highest ranked at Rotten Tomatoes. I really enjoy this movie, though. Of all the films, I think it's the most cinematically-friendly (thought Part 2 is probably tied with it in that aspect). This was the first movie where I liked the ending and I've had problems with Ron and Hermione's characters in the previous three films, but they feel more faithful to the book in this one. It's true that Robert "Sparkling Vampire" Pattinson as Cedric has tainted the film a little for me, but hey, now we can watch Voldermort kill Edward Cullen! Kidding aside, it was a sad scene when Harry brings him back and his dad breaks down. This movie certainly has its dark moments as we get to see Voldemort for the first time, but there's also some nice light scenes and comedic moments such as McGonagall teaching the students how to dance for the upcoming Yule Ball and asking Ron to be her partner, Snape slamming Harry and Ron's face into their desks, and I love the way Fred asks Angelina to the dance. And even though I don't think it's in the book and it's a little out of character for him, I always laugh when Harry is being cocky after he's mastered the First Task and is egging (PUN!!!!) the Gryffindor students on whether he should open the egg or not. Hell, I'll even admit that the long hair is kinda cute on him, though I don't know why Ron, Fred, and George have the same hair cut as well - must have been all the rage back then! (It worked better on Harry than on Ron, though). Also liked all the tasks, the Yule Ball, Mad-Eye Moody, Harry and Ron trying (unsuccessfully) to find dates to the Yule Ball, and probably the most unintentionally hilarious conversation in all the Potter films when Harry tells Ron, "Look, I don't know what happened last night and I don't know why, it just did." I had the most fun watching this one when I saw it in the theaters.

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 6th movie (2009)

I probably like this movie a little more than others because I am a H/G and R/Hr shipper, so of course I would like this one! I thought the Harry and Ginny moments were really cute even though none of them were from the book and I did enjoy Ron being jealous of Cormac and Hermione being jealous of Lavender, though I felt bad for Hermione when she saw Ron and Lavender snogging, as they say in Britain. Of course, Hermione ended up with Ron and Lavender ended up....dead. Poor Lavender :-( I really enjoyed Jim Broadbent as Slughorn - he

was just so gosh darn cute! I believe this was the first movie since GoF where we didn't see Voldemort, we just learned about Tom Riddle's backstory and his quest to learn about Horcruxes which I found very interesting.

Bit of a gap here...

4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2nd movie (2002)

I wasn't sure which one to rank next, but I decided to go with this one, because even though it doesn't hold up as well as other Potter films after the first (or second, or third) viewing, I gotta give the casting people props for casting Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy. I only knew him as Colonel Tavington from The Patriot and I knew he would make a great Mr. Malfoy because, damn, he is EVIL in The Patriot. I mean, anybody who locks a bunch of people in a church and sets it on fire is one big bastard. I admit that I silently cheered whenever he hit Dobby with his cane because Dobby was so annoying in this! (I liked him much better in the 7th movie - too bad they killed him when I was just starting to warm up to him!) The movie is pretty dark with the whole Tom Riddle's diary trying to possess Ginny and I thought it was cute that Harry saved her from the chamber when we all know she's become his girlfriend a few years down the road. Also thought it was cute when Hermione hugged Harry after she was released from the hospital from being petrified, but she and Ron just shook hands. However, this movie probably has the worst ending of all the Potter films. It's so stupid - why is everyone gathered around Hagrid and cheering for him?

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 5th movie (2007)

The main reason I have this so low down on my ranking is because I can barely remember anything about the movie even though I've seen it about three times. I remember certain things like Umbridge (portrayed grandly by Imelda Staunton) and Harry giving encouraging words to his peers in Dumbledore's Army and Fred and George's final goodbye as well as thinking how it was weird that Cho was kissing Harry in front of a photo of her dead boyfriend. Who died just last year. Who was murdered by Voldemort. Nice, Cho. I guess I remember more than I thought, but the rest I barely remember. I hardly remember seeing it in the theater, though I looked back at my LiveJoural and wrote that I wasn't very fond of it. I didn't like that Cho was the snitch and that the whole class received the same punishment that only Harry got in the book. I don't even remember how this one ends. (I know Sirius died, but that's only because I remember it from the book!)

6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 3rd movie (2004)

I know this is a very unpopular opinion because it seems this is the most loved of all the Potter films. I know most film geeks rank this as their number Potter movie because it was directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Now I love Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men, but I can't say that I love this movie. There are certain things I like about it such as the time turner storyline and the subtle touches of magic in the background. However, I hated the characterizations of Ron and especially Hermione. I thought they were both out of character. Go back and read my review of this movie and you'll see why it drives me crazy. Sorry, Cuaron fanboys, but just because he directed this does not make it the Best! Potter! Film! Ever! (Though I blame Steve Kloves for all the things I really hate about this one). But I really hated that shrunken head on the bus which I assume was Cauron's idea.

7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1st movie (2001)

Being this is the first movie, it doesn't hold up as well as the later ones and everytime I watch it, it seems to lose its magic just a little. As cute and adorable Daniel, Emma, and Rupert are as Harry, Hermione, and Ron (I just want to scoop them up and put them in my pocket!), my God, they are just awful in this! Now I understand they were quite young and this was their first really big acting gig for all of them, so I can forgive them, but yeah, I think even they knew they were bad in this. I will give Chris Columbus credit for the casting and setting up the world for Harry Potter. I may rank this as my least favorite Potter film, but I certainly don't hate it - I don't hate any of them; I just like some more than others!

Should've called Triple A!

2011-07-21T23:48:00.001-05:00

Breakdown
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Cast: Kurt Russell, J.T. Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan
Released: May 2, 1997

This is one of those films that keeps getting more ridiculous with each passing scene. Jeff and Amy Taylor (Russell and Quinlan) are a married couple who are moving from Massachusetts to California. (The moving van is either already there or is going to meet them later). They're somewhere in the Southwest when their car breaks down after just coming from a gas station. Jeff tried to use his (hilariously outdated) cell phone, but he gets no service. They wave down a semi truck and the driver (Walsh) offers to give them a ride into town, but Jeff doesn't want to leave the car alone and thinks they just need to let if cool down. Amy thinks they should go into town since they're given the opportunity and they agree that she'll ride with the trucker, find somebody to come out and fix the car, and they'll meet later at a diner in the next town. I don't know why they didn't have Amy ride back with the service guy, but it's a moot point anyway.

Time elapses and nobody shows up to the car, so Jeff decides to see if it will start and when it does he drives to the diner where he's supposed to meet his wife. She's not there and the cook tells him he hasn't seen her. He decides there's been a mix up in communication and drives to the next town. As he's driving there, he sees the semi that his wife rode in. (Now if that were me, I wouldn't have even noticed because all semis look the same to me). He stops the trucker who plays dumb and tells him he's never seen him before in his life and has no idea what he's talking about when Jeff demands where his wife is. He stops a police officer who looks like Dr. Phil, but when he inspects the truck, he doesn't find any evidence that his wife was ever there.

So we find out that his wife has been kidnapped and the trucker is working with these other guys who tell Jeff to take $90,000 out of his bank account, but of course he doesn't have that much money. He kills the guy who is supposed to bring him back to the trucker, who is in charge of this whole operation and sneaks onto the trucker's semi while running after it while it's driving away, and hanging onto the bottom of it while it's driving down a highway probably at 75 mph and climbing up into the truck.

The trucker takes him to his home and it turns out he's been hiding Amy in the storage area of the truck and she's wrapped in a white sheet. Now, it's been several hours since she's been missing, so it's a miracle that she's still alive and hasn't been suffocated to death. He watches the bad guys place her in a locked cellar then they disappear back to the house. Jeff grabs a gun from the truck and I'm thinking, Oh, he's going to shoot the lock off the - oh, wait, why is he going into the house? He holds the bad guys up and tells them to open the cellar. Now why didn't he just shoot the lock off the cellar? Now I've only shot a gun once (good ol' Girlscout camp) so I don't know if that would work, but it would be better than having all these bad guys chasing you and your wife and trying to kill you which is exactly what happens when he and Amy manage to escape.

The ending is extremely over the top and ridiculous. Jeff and Amy have been rammed off this really high bridge by the trucker and are pretty much dangling by a thread. Amy is stuck, but Jeff climbs out of his car and into the semi and he and the trucker have a brawl right then and there outside on the semi, which is also dangling over the bridge. The trucker falls splat onto the rocks below him and Jeff climbs back to safety and gets his wife out of the car. They look down and lo and behold the guy freaking moves! That huge fall down to the rocks didn't even kill him! Yeah, okay. So they somehow release the truck and it falls on him. Now I know that guy tried to kill them and all, but that just seems a little cruel. It's not like he was going to get up and start chasing them again.

Entertaining movie, but so ridiculous and over the top. I admitted I laughed several times at scenes that weren't ever supposed to be funny. (That last one is a good example).

"I have a wife! And a cat!"

2011-07-19T23:52:00.002-05:00

Horrible Bosses
Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx
Released: July 8, 2011
Viewed in theaters: July 14, 2011

If you have not seen Horrible Bosses and plan to, do not, under any circumstance, let anybody spoil it for you. The movie will be all the sweeter if you go in without knowing the outcome. I made a prediction about what I thought would happen and let's just say I was both right and wrong. If you have no interest in seeing this movie, let me just say I highly recommend it and would dare say it's the best comedy of the summer. In fact, it's probably the funniest movie I've seen this year. I swear, I was laughing during every scene.

It seems inconceivable that a movie with such a dark and twisted plot can be hilarious, but that's exactly what it is. Three hapless guys bitch about their bosses one night while out drinking and one of them hypothesis what their jobs, and more importantly, their lives would be without them. Much better, they all agree.

Nick (Jason Bateman) works in an office where his philosophy is if he takes s**t from those higher up, he'll eventually get a promotion. This doesn't happen as his boss (Kevin Spacey) is definitely the boss from Hell. He's not just a jerk at work, but he's a jerk to everyone outside of work, including his wife, who he accuses of cheating on him. (Which he's right about). He offers Nick a drink of whiskey at eight in the morning and Nick only accepts to be polite, but then his boss chastises him for drinking at such an early time and makes Nick drink this full shot glass of whiskey because he doesn't want to pour it back in the bottle. Of the three bosses, I would say he was the worst in terms of nastiness.

Dale (Charlie Day) works as a dental assistant for his boss (Jennifer Aniston) who sexually harasses him to no end. He's engaged to be married and his boss threatens him that if he doesn't sleep with her, then she'll tell his fiance that he did sleep with her. If the gender roles had been reversed and it was a male dentist harassing his female assistant, I doubt they could have gotten away without making it really uncomfortable and funny. This is still uncomfortable, but there are funny moments. Of the three bosses, I found her to be the most unbelievable. There's no way she could do the things she does in this and still have a job. This is a very un-Rachel Green role for Aniston - you should hear the things she says!

Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) works at a chemical plant and he loves his father figure of a boss played by Donald Sutherland. That is until he suffers a fatal heart attack and his son (Colin Farrell) becomes his new boss. While the old boss took care in how and where they dumped their chemicals, his son doesn't and only wants to make lots of money. He gives Kurt an ultimatum: fire the fat woman and "Professor Xavier" (the guy in the wheelchair) because he's discriminate to fat people and disabled people or he fires all three of them.

When the guys are discussing their bosses that night, they're only half-serious when they say they want to kill them, but then something snaps and they decide to do it. The only one who still has reservations about it is Nick. They decide to hire a hitman so a professional can do it. This is when Jamie Foxx comes in and he has some of the funniest moments in the film. First of all, his name is Mother_____ Jones (I'll let you fill in the blank) and when they sit down to discuss the process with him, Nick calls him by his name as if he were calling him "Bob" or "Steve". Funny stuff. There's a great reveal about Foxx's character towards the end. However, he tells them he's not actually going to do the hit, the five grand they paid him is for him to give them advice on how to do it. This leads the three guys sneaking into their bosses homes, spying on them, and learning anything that will be helpful to killing them (such as Kurt's boss being a cokehead and Nick's boss being allergic to peanuts).

Two of the bosses cross paths and it makes me wish that they could have somehow gotten the third one involved as well to tie the story together, but it never happened.

Yes, a sadistic plot, but hilarious, nonetheless. Highly recommended.

The Epic Conclusion

2011-07-16T00:10:00.003-05:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Maggie Smith
Released: July 15, 2011
Viewed in theaters: Opening day, of course!

Fireball!

I thought about waiting to see this when the crowds died down a little...yeah, that didn't happen. How could I wait any longer to watch the final movie in the Harry Potter series? I just possibly couldn't! I was SO, SO, SO, excited! This review is going to be filled with exclamation marks!

Right when I walk into the theater I see people wearing their Harry Potter t-shirts. (Nobody dressed as HP characters, though, I guess that only happens at the midnight showings). Moaning Myrtle is in the bathroom hanging from the ceiling with a black floaty dress and, well, moaning (with the help of a recording). The Hogwarts school song is written on the wall as well as a list of the members of Dumbledore's Army and quotes from the film. There are posters of the characters with a quote from each one from previous films written next to them. Dobby's is "Dobby did not mean to main or kill! Dobby only meant to injure!" Snape's is (rightfully) "Ten points from Gryffindor!" Ron's is "Why is it always 'Follow the spiders?' Why can't it be 'Follow the butterflies'?" Harry's is something about trouble always finding him, but I don't remember which movie that's from or him ever saying it, and Hermione's is my least favorite Hermione line ever uttered by her because it's so un-Hermione: "Is that what my hair looks like from the back?" UGH! Go back and read my Prisoner of Azkaban review and you'll know why I hate that line so much. Any other line they would have chosen would have been so much better! I personally would have gone with "I'm going to bed before either one of you gets us killed. Or worse, expelled!" Alright, I know I sound like a complete nerd. I have to laugh when I imagine anyone who has never read/doesn't care about Harry Potter coming into the theater and seeing all this.

Luckily my audience behaved and
Voldemort didn't have to AK them.

The film picks up right where we left during Part 1. The scenes leading up to when we're back at Hogwarts do seem a litttle rushed, at least compared to the book. We see Hermione becoming Bellatrix to enter her vault at Gringotts to get another Horcrux, we see the Trio escaping from Gringotts on the dragon (hmm...I don't they they ever taught a class training dragons at Hogwarts!), and we see them meeting and talking to Dumbledore's brother. A lot of backstory is cut out of that scene, but I didn't think it was pivotal to the movie, so I was fine with that.

This movie is pretty dark, both tonally and lighting-wise. During the scene with Harry and Dumbledore when the screen became totally white, I had to shield my eyes because it was like walking out into the sunlight. Perhaps it's unfair because he was in more of the films than Richard Harris, but I definitely prefer Michael Gambon as Dumbledore than Harris.

One of my favorite scenes - and a scene I've been waiting for since 2007 when I read it in the book -

the kiss between Ron and Hermione. I read someone point out that the reaction after the kiss where they awkwardly giggle seemed more like Emma and Rupert's than Ron and Hermione's, and yeah, that is a good point and probably true, but it was very cute, nonetheless. Everyone laughed when they were in the Room of Requirements and one of Draco's friends tried to kill Hermione (er, they didn't laugh at that part) and Ron starts to charge at them and says, "That's my girlfriend, you (inaudible here)". That's when they laughed.

When McGonagall steps in front of Harry to protect him from a spell thrown by Snape and starts dueling with him, this young boy in my row whispered really loudly, "McGonagall!" The way he said it was really funny too. His mother told him to "Shhhhh!"

While I overall really enjoyed the movie, there were a few things that I didn't like/care for. Fred's death didn't have the emotional weight it had in the book. They show a quick scene of him and George talking, then later in the movie Harry walks into the Great Hall and the Weasleys are surrounding his body and crying. If you hadn't even read the book, you wouldn't know which twin had died! And he was killed off screen too! The scene between Molly and Bellatrix was sadly anticlimactic and didn't even get a reaction out of my audience. Lame. I was worried for a moment that Neville wasn't going to kill the snake after Harry attempted to kill it, but failed. But once they showed Ron and Hermione trying to kill it and failing each time, I knew it was going to be Neville, as it should be. I liked that he saved Ron and Hermione's lives at the same time, too.

The battle was quite epic and they didn't shy away from showing how brutal it was with all the dead bodies lying around the castle and when Harry, Ron, and Hermione were running right through the middle of it, I was sure one of them was going to get killed. (Well, not really since I've read the book and knows who it ends).

The epilogue was a little cheesy, but sweet. I'm glad they cut out all that unnecessary dialogue that's in the book. Was it me or did it look like Hermione hadn't even aged? I did like that the last shot was of Harry, Ron, and Hermione and not of their kids on the train because that would have been SO LAME!

Overall, a very satisfying conclusion to the series. I can't wait till they re-make the whole series in 50 years! (Hey, maybe Daniel Radcliffe can play Dumbledore then!)

Hogwarts, Class of '98

2011-07-13T00:28:00.000-05:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy
Released: November 19, 2010
Viewed in theaters: November 19, 2010

Oscar nominations:
Best Art Direction (lost to Alice in Wonderland)
Best Visual Effects (lost to Inception)
(This movie is waaaay better than both of those!)

The final installment of the Harry Potter films, as everyone knows, was divided into two films. This was probably a smart idea because I don't think they could have crammed all the events that happen in the novel into a nearly three hour movie. They would have had to cut a lot of things. I remember there being talk of splitting Goblet of Fire into two movies as it was the first film where the book was considerably longer than the previous three. Of course, in the end, it was only one film, but a few storylines (like SPEW) were cut. They had the luxury to cut the subplots from GoF as they weren't that important in the grand scheme of themes, but to cut anything from Deathly Hallows would be doing it a major disservice.

Before I get into the review of the movie, I had to share this with you. Check this out: the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Austin is having a Harry Potter-a-thon this Thursday. Notice the running time of 680 minutes. That's 14.3 hours. I know because I converted the minutes. FOURTEEN HOURS SITTING IN A THEATER, PEOPLE! I may love Harry Potter, but that just sounds absolutely atrocious to me. They're even starting at 4:30 in the morning. It looks like when you've seen the first seven movies, then it will be midnight and time to see Deathly Hallows Part 2. Personally, I'd be so sick of watching Harry Potter and so sore from sitting for so long, that I wouldn't want to stay for that one! I imagine there's an intermission between each film, but still! No, thank you! However, if a film a day was offered at a theater for a week, then I would consider that.

This is the first time where Harry and his trusty sidekicks and most loyal friends, Ron and Hermione, don't attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for what would be their seventh and final year. Instead the film turns into a bit of a road movie as they search for the Horcruxes that were explained to us in the previous film. (Of course they're explained in much more detail in the movies!) Basically a Horcrux is bad and they gotta destroy them! They're the only way to defeat Voldemort, pretty much.

Ministry Mayhem

Things aren't looking too good in the wizarding world. (Hmm, should that be capitalized?) To make a simple analogy, Voldemort = Hitler, Death Eaters = Nazis, and Muggles and Muggle-born wizards and witches = Jews. As you may have guessed, Voldemort's goal is to extinguish all Muggles. Only Harry and his friends can stop him (well, really only Harry, but Ron and Hermione do help along the way).

There is much tension on their journey due to it being tedious finding the Horcruxes and due to Ron being worried about his family. (Hermione cast a spell on her parents so that they would forget about her - in the novel she sends them to Australia where they'll be safe, but they don't mention if they go there in the film and Harry, as Ron so nicely pointed out, doesn't have any parents because they're dead). But don't be too hard on Ron for saying such a sh***y thing. He was wearing a locket, one of the Horcruxes, when he said this, and the Horcruxes make anyone who is in possession of them become filled with hate and rage. Nevertheless, he decides to leave, feeling that their mission is a lost cause and having become quite jealous of Harry and Hermione's relationship. But we all know who Hermione will end up with.

Awwww. (They're sad because Dobby just died).

One of my favorite scenes was when Hermione read the "Tale of the Three Brothers". I thought the animation was quite gorgeous. A scene that made me giggle when I saw it in the theater, but nobody else laughed at was when Harry was in Umbridge's office in the Ministry (disguised as an employee) and he opens a drawers and sees a book titled, "When Muggles Attack." I mean, c'mon, how can you not find that funny? It was a complete rip-off of those stupid FOX shows.

They learn from the story about the Deathly Hallows, which are the following three items: a wand that gives you all the power you need, an invisibility cloak, and a stone that brings back the dead. Harry already has the invisibility cloak and Voldemort is looking for the Elder Wand

E-e-vil woman!

The climatic scene has our heroes being captured and sent to Malfoy Manor where Hermione is tortured by Bellatrix and Harry and Ron are locked in the basement along with Luna, a wandmaker, and a goblin. They managed to escape safely with the help of Dobby, but unfortunately Dobby had to sacrifice his life to safe them. Well, on second thought, no he didn't. If he didn't talk so dang much and just, you know, got the Trio out of there, then Bellatrix probably wouldn't have had time to throw her dagger at him. But I digress.

The movie ends with Voldemort finding the Elder Wand. Uh-oh! What will happen? Guess you'll have to stay tuned for Part 2. Unless, of course, you've already read the book. Then you already know what happens!

Wily Wizards and Witches

2011-07-08T18:45:00.003-05:00

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter
Released: July 15, 2009
Viewed in theaters: July 15, 2009

Oscar nominations:
Best Cinematography (lost to Avatar)

Since the last chapter in the Harry Potter film franchise will wrap up a week from Friday, I've decided to watch the last two movies so I'm caught up for the final one. First up is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment in the franchise.

Harry and his friends are sixteen and their hormones have caught up with them. Harry has a crush on Ginny, Ron's younger sister, but she's dating Dean Thomas. Lavendar Brown starts dating Ron (or "Won-Won" as she calls him) and Hermione is jealous. Cormac McLaggen is interested in knowing Hermione on a "first-name basis" and Ron is jealous. Not to mention love potions play a very large part in this role. Unfortunately, for the people who only watch the films and don't read the books (those crazy people!), it doesn't make any sense to them why Harry is suddenly so hung up over Ron's sister because there has been absolutely no build up of a budding romance between the two in the movies. In fact, the only time they ever interacted was way back in movie 2 when Harry saves her from the Chamber of Secrets. While it's true that their relationship didn't start until the sixth book, there was an arc to their relationship in the previous books, so unless you were really blind, you could see it coming. It wasn't as obvious as Ron and Hermione (their imminent relationship was as obvious as an anvil!), but there were clues. But in the context of the movies, it seems to come out of nowhere. It doesn't help either that Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny, is not a very good actress. Pretty girl, terrible actress. What I can't stand about her acting is that she says all her lines in the exact same tone. No matter if she's trying to convey happiness, fear, sadness, sarcasm, whatever it is, she says it in the same tone. Ugh! So frustrating!

But being this is a Harry Potter film, there is an element of darkness. We learn more about Voldemort's upbringing and when he was a student at Hogwarts, back when he was Tom Riddle. The kid was creepy as young Tom Riddle, but the teenaged Tom Riddle really sent chills down my spine. Am I the only one who finds Tom Riddle creepier than Voldemort? (Yes, I know they're the same person...) Yes, Voldemort is creepy-looking and evil, but there's just something creepier about him when he's still a human (a TEENAGER) and is plotting all this sinister stuff and planning to murder all these people. I find Tom Riddle more fascinating than when he becomes Voldie.

Jim Broadbent plays Professor Slughorn, the newest Professor to teach at Hogwarts (and possible one of my favorite favorites). Dumbledore recruits him because he know he has information that will help Harry hunt down Voldemort. We find that Slughorn, who was one of Tom's professors, told him about how Horcruxes work. Big no-no!

Harry takes Slughorn's Potion class and comes across an old Potions book where the previous owner had written down helpful hints on brewing potions. The back of the books says "Property of the Half-Blood Prince" and it isn't until the end of the film when we learn the true identity of the Half-Blood Prince. (Hint: it's not Tom Riddle).

Gee, do you think they could have given Ron a couple of lines at the end? I understand why he's not standing next to Harry and Hermione on the balcony so he can't hear what Hermione says to Harry about Ron being fine with Harry dating Ginny, but they (the writers) could have given him some dialogue! When I saw the movie in the theater, this young guy in front of me said really loudly, something to the effect of "God-awful ending!" I was snickering as I walked out of the theater and all the way to my car. I don't know if he was a Ron fan and was mad he didn't get any lines or just thought the ending was lame in general, but it certainly made me laugh!

One really trivial things that always bugs me about the movies is how the bathrooms at Hogwarts look like any bathroom you'd find at a regular school. I will say the bathroom since the first movie has certainly become larger, but they still have the white porcelain sinks attached to the wall. Shouldn't they be floating or something? (If the library has floating books, the bathroom should have floating sinks!) Shouldn't there be House Elves with towels over their arms, ready to dry hands? Maybe they only give all that fancy stuff to the Prefects' bathrooms.

The movie ends with the death of a major character and I teared up at his funeral even though said character was 150 years old.

9021-OMG it's 1990!

2011-07-07T17:25:00.000-05:00

I have watched the first two seasons of Beverly Hills, 90210 and have decided to share my viewing experience with you. (Aren't you lucky?)

When this showed first aired, I was still in elementary school, so I never watched it as I was obviously too young and also I wasn't aware of it. Of course as I got older, I was aware of the show, but didn't watch it because I had no interest in it. And now that the new version is out, I'm too old to watch it (though I still do, haha). Even though the old one was still on when I was in high school, all the characters had moved on to college...or wherever. Basically I've never been the same as as a West Beverly Hills High alum.

It took me a few episodes to really get into the show, and I'll admit it: at first I thought the new version was better (after all, the clothes and electronics and themes were more updated), but I like the original show much more. The problem with the new version is that the characters aren't very likable and have too much freedom (like Naomi, the seventeen year old who lives alone in this huge mansion - what the hell?) The original was a lot more realistic. Sure, these kids were rich too, but they acted like normal kids for the most part and seemed to be a lot more grounded. They also seem more likable - at least for now. The problems and issues in the first season seem pretty lame compared to those that were in the first season of the new show, but I'm sure the series will get more dramatic as it continues on.

The show is mostly centered around twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh who move to Beverly Hills from Minneapolis with their parents. (Their friends call them the Minnesota Twins - get it?) I joke about it with my brother and his wife because they live in Minneapolis and told them how Brenda proclaimed, "Ever since we moved to Beverly Hills, our life has been so much more complicated than it ever was in Minnesota!" They got a kick out of that.

I'll give a little synopsis of all the main characters. I should mention they're all sophomores except for David Silver who's a freshman.
Brandon's storylines mostly centered around his crush of the week including one of the most popular girls at school (who we never saw again after the first episode), the niece of his housekeeper (well it wasn't really her niece, but it's a long story), this senior who has a -GASP- baby, and a bitchy actress from Brenda's favorite TV show who was only trying to make her ex jealous. His other storylines deal with him getting a job at the Peach Pit, throwing a party with his sister when their parents go out of town and getting pissed drunk and thrown into jail when he's driving and hits another car.

Brenda is your typical teenage girl. She whines about everything and is dramatic over everything, but for the most part she's pretty likeable. (In fact, shockingly, there weren't any characters that I flat out hated). She begins to date Dylan McKay who's the bad boy of the school and also one of Brandon's close friends. They do it on prom night and she tells him that she's "late". To be continued...

Like I mentioned, Dylan is the bad boy and he's "bad news". But it's okay because he's super cool and sooo dreamy! He lives in a hotel that his parents own, but he never sees them because they're always out of the country. His dad is a drunk and he's had his own problems with alcohol in the past. The best Dylan moment of the first season was when he smashed a flower pot on the ground. My brother and sister-in-law were watching that episode with me and we all just started cracking up. Now if I ever see someone smashing a flower pot, I'll call it "pulling a Dylan McKay". Luke Perry was 25 when the show first started, but he wasn't the oldest of the group!

Kelly Taylor is the most popular girl in school. She's not quite there yet, but she's almost bordering on bitch territory. There was still a sweetness to her (for the most part) in the first season. Her mom is a CRAZY alcoholic. We're talking crazy. She used to date Steve Sanders, but now she's single. David Silver is in love with her, but she has a small crush on Brandon. They went to the prom together, but he told her her wasn't interested in her that way.

Steve is the cool guy, who acts like a fool most of the time. Ian Ziering was 26 during the first season. My brother joked about it and there was this episode where he tries to pick up a guest speaker and pretends to be a teacher, she says, "I can't believe you've been teaching for five years!", my brother says, "I can!" Yeah...he really doesn't look like a 17/18 year old. At the end of the season he finds out he's adopted.

I thought I would hate Donna, who's played by Tori Spelling, who's only on the show because of nepotism, but surprisingly I found Donna, albeit a little dumb, very likable and felt sorry for her sometimes because we find out she has a "learning disability". She's a very minor character and hardly got her own storyline if ever.

The actress who played Andrea, the smart and nerdy girl who's the editor-in-chief of the school paper was 29 years old when she first started! A 29 playing a 17 year old! I mean, sure, she looks young...but not that young. Andrea is mostly friends with Brandon because they work on the Blaze together, but does hang out with Brenda and Kelly sometimes, but she's not that close with them. She has a crush on Brandon and when she found out that his family was moving back to Minnesota, proposed that he sleep with her. AWKWARD. They didn't go through with it though, because the Walsh family stayed in BH. (Duh).

And then we have David Silver who's played by Brian Austin Green aka Mr. Megan Fox. His wife was only four years old when the show started! David has a nerdy sidekick, but we don't see much of him (more about him later!) At 17, he was the youngest when he started the show, so he's the closest to his character's age. David has a huge crush on Kelly and wants to hang out with the cool guys like Steve. He didn't really have any major storylines this season besides getting to be the school DJ and trying to call MC Hammer to see if he could sing at their prom. Oh, the '90s!

The first season dealt with such issues as rape, teen moms, alcoholism, AIDS, sex, gun control (an episode Matthew Perry guest starred!), fitting in, cheating on tests, and shoplifting.

The fashion was hilariously bad, especially the prom dresses. Andrea wore this awful white dress with puffy sleeves. It seemed like all the jeans the females wore made them look fat even though they weren't. There were a lot of teased bangs and Luke Perry had a pompadour. The technology is hilariously out-dated. Nobody carries around a cell phone - it's all pay phones for these rich kids! Though when we do see a cell phone, it's one of those huge ones. The PCs are a thing of the past. Oh, and Pretty Woman was the big movie of that year because there were tons of references to it. Donna tells Brenda and Kelly, "Sometimes I wish I could be a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard just so I can meet Richard Gere!" Oh, Donna.

Now here's what happened to the characters during their sophomore season when they became juniors:

Brenda: When we last left off, Brenda thought she was pregnant because she was "late". The premier episode has her buying a home pregnancy test. I guess it must have been only a scare because they never bring it up again. She and Dylan decide they're gong too fast and break up, but they get back together in the middle of the season, but then her dad forbids her to see him anymore after she goes to Mexico with Dylan for a day and a half after she's been told she can't go. She gets caught when they're crossing the border and are one of the cars who are pulled over. Brenda doesn't have any form if ID (even though she is clearly an American citizen) and they have to call one of her parents to come vouch for her.

One night while she's at the Peach Pitt after it's closed and waiting for Dylan and Brandon to take out the trash, some guy comes in with a gun and robs the place and she keeps having nightmares about it and has to confront her fears and identify him in a police lineup.
Brandon: - This season ran a little long because they had a special summer series of episode. During this time, Brandon quits his job at the Peach Pit and gets a job as a cabana boy at the Beverly Hills Beach Club because it pays more and he needs the money to buy a car. His boss is Chief Weber from Grey's Anatomy. During the summer he becomes a Big Brother for a young boy who's getting beaten by his mother. His mother gets help and we never hear from either of them again. Brandon also makes friends with a new boy who's hired to take photographs for their paper and his sister who goes to school in her old neighborhood. When one of their other neighbors was telling Mrs. Walsh about these new neighbors with a snooty look on her face I knew they were black, and sure enough they were. The girl's boyfriend is assaulted by the police when he comes by to talk her and this inspires Brandon to write a piece about racial issues in The Blaze. We never see this family again even though the son is the school's photographer and the school goes back to being lilly white. Fun fact: Vivica A. Fox played the daughter.

The biggest storyline for Brandon was his relationship with Emily Valentine. She is one psycho bitch and one bad actress. When she first arrives, the girls label her a slut because she goes on a date with Dylan and Brandon. (Separately, of course). Even though this is during their time off period, Brenda is very jealous. Emily ends up dating Brandon and at first everything is all good, but then she slips E4EA (that's euphoria in case you were wondering) into Brandon's drink at an underground party they all attend and they get a ride from one of their friends leaving Brandon's new car which gets stripped of all its parts. This righty infuriates Brandon that Emily slipped him drugs when he specifically told her he didn't want them and tells her he's breaking up with her, but Emily begins to stalk him by calling his home numerous times and hanging up and leaving a cake on his front step and stealing his clothes and sneaking into his room. She even almost burns down a float the gang is building but is stopped by Brenda just after she's poured the gasoline all over it. Finally, she knows she needs help and goes to a mental hospital. Except for a time when Brandon visits her during Christmas, we never see her again.

Brandon has a near-death experience when he and the gang go camping to Yosemite and after spending a miserable rainy night in their cabin, the next morning he and Dylan go hiking and because Brenda forgot to pack his hiking boots (I forget why it was her responsibility), Brandon's not wearing the best shoes for hiking and because it had rained the night before, the trails are a little slick, and because he's an idiot, Brandon is walking on the edge of a cliff and slips off and is hanging onto a rock with one arm until Dylan comes and saves him from falling thousands of feet. Now I've never been to Yosemite, but I would image they would have signs warning people not to go near the edges of cliffs or be careful if the trail is slippery...just a thought.

Brandon does return working at the Peach Pit once summer is over and he finds out that the company his dad is working for wants to tear the Pit down so they can build a mall and he gets mad at his dad for ruining Nat's life. But the deal falls through and the Pit is saved. It's a good thing too because it's a historical landmark! Did you know that Steve McQueen and Marilyn Monroe used to eat there? It's true!

Kelly: Kelly's mother, who was a drunk floozy in the last season has gotten her shit together and is now dating, to Kelly's dismay, David Silver's father. She ends up pregnant (which will end up being Erin Silver who's now in 90210: The New Class) and marries Mr. Silver in the season finale. (Kelly likes him by then).

Kelly wears a revealing witch dress at the Halloween party and nearly gets raped by some perv but is rescued when Donna and Brenda walk in on them and Brenda tells her, "Kelly, I told you something like this would happen." Geeze, Brenda, you don't have to be such a bitch about it.

Kelly goes out with a guy named Kyle and when the date is a disater he confesses to her that he's gay. She keeps his secret, but I imagine it will come out next season...
Dylan: I already mentioned Dylan's and Brenda's nauseating on again/off again relationship, but I haven't mentioned where Dylan took Brenda for their Valentine's date: to the hospital to donate blood. Really, McKay, really? Like, that's not totally creepy at all and sooo romantic.

We meet Dylan's mom and she is a flaky new-agey type who Dylan can't stand. After that one appearance, we never see her again for the rest of the season.

Even though he had a few bouts with alcoholism, he has managed to stay sober for the rest of the season, but after getting an argument with Brenda's dad about not being able to see Brenda anymore, I fear that he is going to turn for the worst. He's been going to AA meetings and he meets a girl named Sarah that he saved from nearly drowning in the ocean from the first season. Like Emily Valentine, Sarah is also an awful actress and gets mad at him when he turns down her advances.

Last season Dylan threw a flower pot in a fit of angry rage. This season he smashed a bottle of wine in a fit of angry rage. I laughed both times.
Andrea: Technically Andrea shouldn't go to West Beverly Hills High School because she doesn't live in the school district, so she has to use her grandma's address and pretend she lives there. Something happens where she gets an award for the paper and the press is going to come by her house to interview her, but of course they think she lives with her grandma and so she has to pretend she does, but her grandma doesn't want to lie, but in the end, she does lie so Andrea won't get kicked out of the school.

During the summer Andrea takes a drama class with Brenda, Donna, and David and she and Brenda have a crush on their teacher, 24-year-old Mr. Suitor (This was during the time Brenda and Dylan weren't together) and Brenda gets jealous when Mr. Suitor "chooses" Andrea, but when Andrea learns that he's moving to L.A. from Chicago and bringing his girlfriend with him, she kicks him out of her house.

David: David starts dating Donna even though he's a sophomore and the rest of the gang are juniors. What a huge age difference! His big thing is that he's slowly starting to go down the path of being a full-fledged alcoholic.

Now that he's dating Donna and he and Kelly are stepsiblings, David became a part of the gang. He realizes he has nothing in common anymore with his friend, Scott, who spent the summer in Oklahoma. The show must have realized that Scott wasn't an integral part of the show anymore so they killed him off when he's twirling his dad's gun around his finger and tells David to "watch this" and accidently shoots himself in the stomach. Did I mention this happened on his 16th birthday? Ouch. They could have at least given his death a little more weight by making it a suicide instead of having him die in such a stupid and pathetic manner. Scott didn't have many friends, was considered a "loser", and was even having arguments with David in the last days of his life, so the potential for a suicide for this character was definitely there. My favorite part of the episode was after Scott had died and everyone kept coming up to David and asking how he was. When he and Brandon are talking in the room where he does the morning announcements, the mike was on so everyone heard what he said. He said he was sick of people asking him how he was doing and how they felt bad that that they had ignored Scott or how they should've been nicer to him, etc. David says something to the effect of, "It's not how you treat someone after they die; it's how you should treat them when they're alive." Now the writing on this show may not be the strongest, but I will admit, that kind of got to me. Scott is never mentioned again after the episode.
Donna: Like I mentioned, Donna is now dating David and her friends give her grief because she's dating a "younger man". :::rolls eyes:::

Donna's big story doesn't come up until the near the end of the season. When she, David, Kelly, and Brenda sneak into a hotel, she sees her mom there kissing another man who clearly isn't her dad when her mom had told her she would be at a conference. They get into a huge fight, but make up by the end of the show and now Donna's parents are getting a divorce.

Now you may be asking yourself, why were Donna, David, Kelly, and Brenda sneaking into a hotel? Even if you don't care, I'm going to tell you because it's too good not to. They find out that Color Me Badd - yes, you heard me right - Color Me Badd is staying there while on tour. Now you young'uns might be asking, "Who or what is Color Me Badd?" Well, I will answer that to the best of my knowledge. Color Me Badd was a popular group (circa 1991-92) consisting of four really fugly dudes in their early twenties (even though they looked older). There was a white guy, a black guy, a Hispanic guy, and I'm guessing the fourth one was a Jewish guy cuz he had a Jew-fro going on. None of them were even the slightest big attractive. They were skeevy-looking guys who sang skeevy songs like I Wanna Sex You Up, their only song I know.

Fun fact: Donna's birthday is on Christmas.
Steve: I found it absolutely hilarious that Steve had these storylines where he was "too young" to acquire something he wanted/needed when Ian Ziering looked more the 27 years he was (if not older) than the 17 year old character he was supposed to be playing. There were a couple episodes where he tried to buy beer, but was refused because he looked "too young". (Yeah, right).

Last season Steve discovered he was adopted. (That seems a little late to tell your kid he's adopted when he's 26 16 and when he tries to get information about his birth mother from the hospital where he was born in New Mexico, the nurse can't give it to him because he's not old enough. :::snort::: He does eventually learn that his birth mother died in a car accident a few years back, but he does get to meet his biological grandfather. (Who knows if he'll ever come back again).

A few of Steve's storylines include dating a girl who's only using him for his money, getting pressured to use steroids by the other jocks, and having a rivalry with "Chuckie", the guy who used to play his mom's son on her TV show.

Okay, stay tuned for seasons 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. I'm just as excited as you are!

Cryptic Killer

2011-07-06T20:35:00.000-05:00

Zodiac
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards
Released: March 2, 2007

When most people think of the films of David Fincher, the ones that probably first cross their minds are Fight Club or The Social Network. However, I listen to quite a few movie podcasts and whether the hosts are Fincher fans or not, they all seem to agree that Zodiac is his best movie. It's certainly not a bad movie - far from it, but I think my expectations were so high from hearing all these movie nerds rave about it, that they didn't have anywhere else to go but down. (Personally my favorite Fincher movie remains Panic Room, Kristin Stewart be damned!)

The film is about the Zodiac killer, a serial killer who taunted the police and newspapers in San Francisco with his cryptic messages. To tell you the truth, I was not very familiar with the Zodiac killer who committed his murders in the late '60s and early '70s. The film spans from '69-'79 with a quick time jump to '84, then another one to '91. (And amazingly Gyllenhaal does not age at all from '69 - '84!) After the Zodiac killed his victim or victims, he would send a letter written in a code for the police to decipher.

Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who becomes obsessed with finding who the Zodiac really is. Downey Jr. plays a reporter who loses interest in the case after he alcohol starts consuming his life, so Robert tries to get all his information and help from Ruffalo's police officer who's also on the case with his partner, played by Edwards, who I did not recognize at all because he has a full head of hair. I must have missed his name in the credits, because I would have recognized it. Whenever he would appear in a scene, I kept thinking how familiar he looked and sounded and I knew I had seen somewhere on TV, but I couldn't place it, so I had to pause the DVD to find out who it was. Once I realized it was Dr. Mark Green, it seemed pretty obvious that I should have placed him a lot sooner. However, I did recognize Minkus from Boys Meets the World the second he appeared on my screen.

Robert becomes so obsessed that his girlfriend (maybe wife by this time) takes their children to her parents' house because since Robert has made it public knowledge that he's trying to catch and identify the Zodiac killer, so she fears for her and the kids' lives and basically tells him that he has to choose between them or his obsession.

They show a few of the Zodiac's killings and because we never learn his true identity until the end of the film (and even then it's iffy), we never fully see him. While not overly graphic, the murders are pretty chilling. One of the worse ones was a woman who thankfully managed to get away. I could not believe how stupid she was - she AND HER BABY were really lucky to make it out alive. (Yes, she had a baby with her!) She was driving at night down a nearly deserted road (tell me if this doesn't already sound like a really bad horror movie) and a car starts honking at her, so like a dolt, she pulls over and the guy tells her that her back tire is loose and he can screw it back in for her, so she agrees and he tinkers with the car, then when she starts driving again, her tire falls off. Imagine that! So the guy comes back and offers to drive her to a service station and she begins to get nervous when they pass one. WHAT A MORON! Who lets some strange, creepy guy work on their car, much less drive them somewhere? Now I know this was before the time of cell phones, but the woman should have ignored his honking or just sped past him when he stopped car and walked towards her car.

If I didn't know David Fincher had directed this movie, I probably wouldn't have guessed because compared to his other movies, this one is more subdued. It definitely takes you back to the '70s with that gritty feel of that decade.

Those Crazy Redheads!

2011-07-03T08:34:00.001-05:00

Thelma and Louise
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Brad Pitt
Released: May 24, 1991

Oscar nominations:

Best Director - Ridley Scott (lost to Jonathan Demme for Silence of the Lambs)
Best Actress - Susan Sarandon
Best Actress - Gena Davis (lost to Jodie Foster for Silence of the Lambs)
Best Original Screenplay - Callie Khouri (won)
Best Editing (lost to JFK)
Best Cinematography (lost to JFK)

WARNING: I AM GOING TO GIVE AWAY KEY PLOT POINTS INCLUDING THE ENDING SO IF YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS FILM, MAKE SURE YOU SEE IT BEFORE YOU READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And if you haven't seen it (dude, it has been out for twenty years!), you really need to because it's a great movie!)

There's a song called "Friends Forever" on the Center Stage soundtrack and the chorus is as follows:

We'll be, you'll see, friends forever.

We'll be, you'll see, like Thelma and Louise.

I want to ask them, "Uh, you do know what happens to Thelma and Louise, right?" Yes, they were very close friends, but you probably wouldn't want to emulate them!

I was really shocked when I found out that Ridley Scott had directed this. I probably knew this in the back of my mind, but I must have forgotten. For one thing, this is such a female-driven (no pun intended!) flick that I assumed a female had directed it, and also Scott is known for more "epic" movies like Alien and Gladiator, though Ripley is one of the strongest females in cinematic history, so it kind of makes sense he would direct Thelma and Louise.

Thelma (Davis) is a subservient housewife married to a misogynist slob and Louise (Sarandon) is a waitress. Both live in a small town in Arkansas and decide to take a weekend road trip to get away from their miserable lives and just have some fun. Thelma doesn't even tell her husband because she knows he'll forbade her to go, so she just leaves him a note while he's at work. The women stop at a bar and have a few drinks. Thelma dances with a guy who hits on them and he later tries to rape her in the parking lot. Louise threatens him with a gun that Thelma brought along for protection and he lets her go, but when he keeps taunting them, Louise shoots and kills them. Realizing that they're now fugitives, they have to figure out what to do.

Kietel plays the officer who's trying to find them and Pitt in one of his first memorable roles play a young hitchhiker whom they give a ride to Oklahoma City. He has a fling with Thelma and if you are female or a gay guy you will appreciate any of the scenes where he appears shirtless! One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Thelma is acting all giddy the next morning and confesses to Louise what she did. I couldn't remember if Brad was a good guy or a bad guy and I guess he was a little bit of both because even though he was much more likable (and prettier) than the guy who tried to rape Thelma, he did rob them when Thelma left him alone in her room with the envelop of money Louise had her boyfriend wire to them.

Knowing they need money, Thelma ends up robbing a store and they keep getting in deeper and deeper sh*%. After they're pulled over by a cop for speeding, Thelma holds him at gunpoint and Louise takes his gun. They lock him in the trunk until a bicyclists finds him. They blow up a trucker's semi after he refuses to apologize to them for continually harassing them and making crude gestures to them whenever they drove by.

Their plan is to make it to Mexico, but Louise wants to avoid driving through Texas because something bad happened to her there and she refuses to go through the state even though it's the most obvious and quickest route south of the border. Even though these two women have done some terrible things, you're kind of rooting for them to make it. (After all, that guy did kind of deserve to get shot...even the waitress at the bar said she knew he was going to get it one of these days!) Now I was way too young to see this movie when it first came out in the theaters and by the time I saw it, I already knew what the ending was because I remember seeing a parody of this on The Simpsons. Of course, not having seen the movie at the time, I didn't know it was, until probably my mom mentioned that it was "just like the ending to Thelma and Louise." Thanks, Mom. No, I was still able to enjoy the movie even though I knew the grand finale. You certainly don't want them to commit a suicide pact, but at the same time you'd rather see them, er, ride off into the sunset for a lack of better words than spend the rest of their lives in jail. Even if they could cut a deal with Kietel's cop who really did want to help them, they would still be looking at quite a long time. After all, they committed murder, armed robbery, assaulted a police officer (who potentially could have died if someone hadn't found him), and destroyed public property. That's what? Twenty-five years at least right there? Honestly, I have no idea how much prison time that would accumulate for someone. The point is, these gals knew they didn't have a chance at ever living a normal life again and decided to end it right there right then. You almost have to admire them for doing that.

One thing I really like about this movie is that it's a rare breed of film where females are the lead and they're not planning a wedding, having babies, going shopping, talking about fashion, bitching about men (well, they might do that!) or any of that other"chick flick" crap the women in those movies always do. It was kind of refreshing to see two female characters not be reduced to such whiny and superficial female stereotypes. You also don't see that many female-buddy movies (and a road trip female-buddy one at that!)

A great movie and a must see for everyone!

Sister Act

2011-06-30T18:30:00.000-05:00

Big Business
Director: Jim Abrahams
Cast: Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin
Released: June 10, 1988

This '80s comedy has a plot that's a little inconceivable, but it's more believable, than, say, Armageddon. We start out with a rich couple who are being chauffeured through a really small town when the woman goes into labor (after complaining to her husband that she didn't want to go on this trip because she's "40 months pregnant") and the closest hospital is a small one three miles away. At the same time, another woman from Jupiter Hollows, the small town closest to the country hospital, is also giving birth at the same hospital.

Both women give birth to twin girls. The country man overhears the rich man he wants to call their daughters Rose and Sadie and he suggests the same name to his wife. Because there were so many babies being born at the same time, the nurse gets confused and accidently mismatches the twins so the rich parents go home with one of their own daughters and one of the daughters of the country folk and vice versa.

Flashforward about 40 years later in the '80s where we meet both set of twins. The rich twins live in New York and own a large company they inherited from their father. Sadie (Midler) is the biological daughter and she has no problem with being rich and ordering people around and feels more n her element while Rose (Tomlin) is always flustered and confesses that she hates shopping and New York in June.

The Ratliffs, the country twins who grew up in Jupiter Hollows are a reverse of the other twins with Rose being the more confident one, as she is their biological daughter and Sadie feeling like a fish out of water in this small town she grew up in.

It turns out that the corporation the rich twins work for is trying to tear down Jupiter Hollows, so the Ratliff twins travel to New York to try to stop them. Many hijinx ensue including the rich twins' chauffeur picking up the country twins at the airport in the limo (the twins he knew were also there to pick up somebody) and he's confused when they both act like they've never been in a limo before (because, of course, they hadn't!) Both sets of twins are staying at the Plaza Hotel and the concierge is flabbergasted when Sadie is acting nice to him one minute, then being a total bitch the next.

Country Rose's boyfriend comes out to New York to propose to her, but of course he ends up proposing to city Rose and country Rose ends up with city Rose's boyfriend.

Here's a fun fact: Seth Green plays city Sadie's son. I saw his name in the credits, but even if I hadn't seen it, I would have easily recognized him.

There's an amusing scene where both Sadies are in the bathroom and think they're looking into a mirror at first, then realize there's no mirror and both of them freak out.

So yeah, this movie is kinda stupid, but both Milder and Tomlin yuk it up and there are a few laughs for a good time.

Mississippi Burning

2011-06-22T00:31:00.001-05:00

A Time To Kill
Director: Joel Schumacher
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Ashley Judd
Released: July 24, 1996

Between watching this movie and reading The Help (can't wait for that movie!), I'm kinda glad I'm not a Mississippi native because that state isn't getting a very good rap in those two mediums. I haven't read the John Grisham novel this film is based on, but now I want to. The film is very intense and I can only imagine the novel is the same, if not more.

After Carl Lee's (Jackson) ten-year-old daughter is raped, beaten, and left to die by two rednecks, he takes matters in his own hands and charges at them with a rifle when they are being brought to the courthouse for their trial and kills both of them because he knows it's most likely they will be locked away for only ten years, then will be free again. A young lawyer named Jake (McConaughey) takes his case with the help of a law student from Boston (Bullock) while Kevin Spacey plays the prosecution attorney.

In a role more Ace Merrill than Jack Bauer, Keifer Sutherland plays the brother of one of the racists Carl Lee murders. He vows revenge and with the help of the other white supremacists in the small Mississippi town where they live, he brings back the KKK and sends a message to Jake to stop representing Carl Lee by placing burning crosses in his yard or beating up his secretary's husband. Jake refuses to quit and sends his wife (a blonde Ashley Judd) and daughter away which is a good thing he does because his house is burned down. They Klan captures Bullock and does some nasty stuff to her, but Jake still refuses to leave the case.

I was a little put off when Jake was giving his closing argument to the (all white) jury and after he had explained the horrible things that had happened to Carl Lee's young daughter, he ended it with saying, "Imagine if that had been a white girl." Spoiler Warning ahead!!!!! The jury voted not guilty for Carl Lee and I hope they still would have had the same verdict even if Jake hadn't said that.

I don't blame him for killing those two sick bastards, but he probably should have at least been charged with using a loaded weapon in a public place. He's lucky he didn't kill any innocent bystanders! (Though he did shoot the leg of a cop played by Chris Cooper who becomes paralyzed as a result).

I'm off to the library to check out the novel!

Nostalgia Redux

2011-06-17T00:54:00.000-05:00

Super 8
Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning
Released: June 10, 2011
Viewed in theaters: June 14, 2011

In a summer full of sequels and comic-book adaptations, Super 8 is a small gem to be found among those blockbusters and will most likely get lost in the shuffle, but if you want a fun and suspenseful summer flick reminiscent of Speilberg-esque supernatural movies such as E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind and coming-to-age films like Stand By Me with a little bit of The Goonies thrown in for good measure, then I can't recommend Super 8 enough.

The movie takes place in the summer of 1979 and is centered around a group of middle school-aged kids from a small town in Ohio who are making a zombie movie to enter in their town's film festival. What I like about the cast is that they are actually the age one would be in middle school and they act like normal kids, none of that precocious, cutesy kid stuff you see from so many annoying child actors. I also like the fact that the dialogue doesn't seem to be written by a Kevin Willimason or Diablo Cody-type and there are no lines that are trying to be clever or witty. They're just normal kids who are friends and that's why you believe. Even though they're all really cute kids, I also like that they're not all perfect-looking like they just came from the Disney channel.

Goonies 2011!

Joe (newcomer Joel Courtney) is the main character who's Dad (Chandler) is the local sheriff. He lost his mother in a horrible accident only four months ago and is trying to cope with the loss. He works on the lights and the make-up for the film and has a crush on Alice (Elle Fanning) who agrees to play the leading lady in their film. This was the first time I've seen Dakota's little sister in a film and it was weird to hear her speak because I was expecting this high-pitched, girly voice to come out of her, but her voice was lower than I was expecting. Alice's dad is an alcoholic and he and Joe's dad don't get along because he was somewhat responsible for Joe's mother's death. Neither Joe's or Alice's dad allow them to be friends so they have to sneak around to hang out with each other. Charles is the requisite fat kid who directs the movie and also has a crush on Alice. Cary is the kid with the straggly blond hair and in need of braces with an affinity for fireworks and explosions who plays the lead zombie. Martin is the tall, awkward kid with glasses who plays the lead character and Preston is the wimpy kid who's always saying his heart is beating too fast and refuses to go with the gang when they decide to do something risky.

One night, while shooting a scene near the train tracks, they witness a horrific train crash, which, believe me, even if you don't like the movie, you will get your money's worth just for that scene alone. It is one intense scene. After that, some crazy stuff starts to go down. There's a monster that we don't see fully until the end of the movie, but we do see glimpses of it and when it's rustling in the trees, it reminded me of Jurassic Park and the smoke monster from Lost. Even though it was an integral part of the movie, I much preferred the coming-of-age angle rather than the monster angle. I didn't quite understand the whole story with the monster, but I had a "medium" Wild Cherry Pepsi (really, it looked more like a large!) and had to use the bathroom. I went after the kids get caught sneaking in the school, so maybe I missed some important plot points while I was gone. Oh, I also had Twizzlers and the kids eat Twizzlers during the beginning of the film. Shoutout!

Even though I wasn't around in '79, this movie has a very nostalgic feel to it. I am familiar with movies and TV shows and have seen family photos from around that time, so I was familiar with the "look" of that era. The soundtrack is great! Kids back then listened to way better music than kids do today. Granted, the only songs I remember in the movie are "Don't Bring Me Down" and "My Sharona". One of the podcasts I listen to (Extra Hot Great - I highly recommend it) talked about Super 8 and someone pointed out that the mentioned Rubik's Cube and the shown Walkman didn't actually appear on the market until the early months of the early '80s, but according to the Wiki, the Walkman was first available in the summer of '79.

Now how could have I gone this long in this review without mentioning the lens flare? I've seen/heard several people bitch about the lens flare, but honestly I only noticed it in that one scene where the kids are getting ready to film by the train tracks. It was blue and it was very distracting and noticeable and I kept asking myself, "What the hell is that? What are those blue lights? What does it mean?" Then when I kept hearing about the lens flare, I knew exactly what they were talking about. If it was in any other part of the movie, I didn't notice it, though.

The end of the movie made me choke up and there's a scene that reminded me of Titanic. If you've seen the movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about! (And if you've seen Titanic, of course, which I'm sure you have.) They show the kids' homemade movies during the end credits (about two minutes in so don't get up and leave right when the credits start) and let's just say they are much better filmmakers than that idiot in Cloverfield with his damn shaky camera who was twice their age!

Somewhere Out There...

2011-06-15T08:15:00.000-05:00

An American Tail
Director: Don Bluth
Voice Talent: Phillip Glasser, Christopher Plummer, Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise
Released: November 21, 1986

Oscar nominations:
Best Song - "Somewhere Out There" (lost to "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun)

This animated non-Disney film is a childhood classic for me. I had seen it numerous times as a kid and it's possible I saw it in the theaters, but if I did, I don't remember. I hadn't seen it in a very, very, very long time, though and it still holds up even though the animation isn't as good as the animated movies you see today or even as good as Beauty and the Beast which came out five years later. However, there is something about the grainy animation that adds to the nostalgia of the film.

The film starts out in Russia where the Mousekewitz family live. The Mousekewitzes are a family of - you guessed it - mice. There's Mama, Daddy, Fievel, Tanya, and a baby mouse that we inexplicably never see again after a couple of scenes. They are immigrating to America with other mice from foreign lands because "there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese!"

On the boat, there's a huge storm and Fievel gets swept off and separated from his family who thinks he's now dead. Only his sister believes that he might still be alive and of course he is because this is a children's film, after all! Fievel ends up in a glass bottle that floats him to a nearly finished Statue of Liberty (this takes place in 1885) where he meets a pigeon who advises him "never say never!" when Fievel forlornly tells him he's never going to find his family.

Poor Fievel. He can't find his family and he finds out that there are indeed cats in America.

On his search for his family, Fievel meets other characters including Tony, a mouse a bit older than him who tells him to stick close because he knows how to get around in the city, Bridget, a girl mouse who fights for mice rights against cats and who Tony has a crush on, Gussie Mausheimer, a rich mouse advocate who wants to have a "ra-wee" concerning the cat problem. (That would be rally). He also meets a shady fellow named Warren T. Rat, a cat disguised as a rat who is trying to take all the mice's money. He becomes friends with Tiger, a cat who is a vegetarian and would like to be friends with mice.

I didn't remember anything at all from this movie, but the one thing I did remember is when Fievel and his sister are singing "Somewhere Out There" from different locations at the same time. Of course these were little kids singing, so their voices weren't that great, but it was really cute and heart-wrenching - I teared up a little! I love the radio version of the song and believe it should have won the Oscar over "Take My Breath Away".

The Negotiator

2011-06-10T13:38:00.000-05:00

The Negotiator
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Ron Rifkin, David Morse, J.T. Walsh, Paul Giamatti, John Spencer
Released: July 29, 1998

I had seen The Negotiator about twelve years ago, but hadn't seen it since, so while I remembered the general plot, I didn't remember who was revealed as the bad guy in the end. Danny Roman (Jackson) deals with hostage situations and the film begins with one where he's trying to talk a crazy man from shooting his daughter. You see that he is very skilled at his job and knows how to talk to people to get them to do certain things and the tables are soon turned when he finds his partner has been murdered. Roman is framed for his partner's murder (unfortunately he just so happened to be at the scene when the police arrived because his partner had asked to meet him at this location). Roman knows that someone on the inside had his partner murdered because his partner had information that would implicate this certain someone.

Roman decides to take matters into his own hand and ends up taking the Internal Affairs office of a government building hostage because he knows that's where he'll find something that will disprove his guilt. For some reason I thought he had taken many people hostage, but the only people he's holding is Niebaum (Walsh), the man who he believes knows the truth about who murdered his partner, Neibaum's secretary, a shady fellow played by a pre-famous Giamatti who provides the comic relief, and a cop (Rifkin) who works with Roman. He also takes two more police officers when they come in through the window.

Because Roman is a negotiator, he knows all the tricks his team has planned to get him out of the building and tells them he will only talk to Chris Sabian, another skilled negotiator who works with another police department in Chicago. He believes Sabian is the only one who will be able to understand and help him and he knows Sabian has had a great record as a negotiator with no deaths. Sabian is played by Spacey and he doesn't show up until forty-five minutes into the movie which seems like quite a long time for your second lead to appear in a movie!

As one might expect, there's plenty of finger-biting moments, especially during one scene when Roman is talking to a fumbling police officer while they're waiting for Sabian to appear on the scene. The police officer keeps saying the wrong things to Roman who points this out to him and threatens to kill someone the next time the officer says "no" and Roman keeps baiting him and asking him questions where it's impossible to say "no". (Such as "Have you ever cheated on your wife?)

We know one of the cops on the scene is the one who had Roman's partner killed and is framing Roman. The obvious one would be the one played by Morse because it was established early in the film that he wasn't particularly fond of the way Roman handled the hostage situation and he demands that they take a shot at him every time they have a way to take down Roman. He just seemed too obvious to be the one who was the mole so I knew it wasn't him.

It's kind of funny because when I first saw this movie the only actors I knew were Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey and I was familiar with some of David Morse's work, but that was about it. Now when I watched it a second time, I recognized a lot more people: Paul Giamatti, of course, along with a bunch of actors I recognized from TV: Arvin Sloan from Alias, Leo McGarry from The West Wing, Walter White's brother-in-law from Breaking Bad, Detective Jim Brass (he played the murdered partner) and the coroner guy from CSI. They're all in this movie.

While I think this movie is great and highly recommend it, there is something that bothers me: I understand that Roman wanted to clear his name and see who was really behind all of this, but he had to know that holding people hostage at gunpoint (and not to mention causing some major property damage) wasn't going to be taken lightly and most likely he would have been sent to jail for that, but the movie just ends with him finding out who the bad guy is and going to the hospital for his injuries. I guess he got immunity since he was framed...I don't know...well, it's a good movie nonetheless!

It's On Like Donkey Kong

2011-06-09T15:22:00.000-05:00

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Director: Seth Gordon
Released: August 17, 2007

If you ever fear you have no life, just pop this movie in your DVD player and you will see a whole bunch of people who truly have no life. Now even though I just insulted pretty much everybody in this movie, I will say I did find it hellava entertaining and fascinating. This documentary follows two people: Billy Mitchell who is the Donkey Kong champion (of the world!) and got the first highest score for it back in 1982. He's since scored over a million points. There's also Steve Wiebe, a middle school science teacher who, during a time when he was unemployed, decided he was going to try to beat Mitchell's score and did achieve this in 1999.

Wiebe videotaped his gameplay and sent it to some place in Iowa (of all places!) that apparently records scores for video game play. There, one of the workers had to watch the hours of Donkey Kong gameplay to make sure Wiebe didn't use any cheat codes and can verify his score is legit. The same guy also mentioned he had over two hundred video tapes to watch of other games. Wow, if I had a job like that, I would kill myself. No, I really would. I can't think of anything more boring and monotonous. Just imagine having to watch hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours...(okay, you get the idea) of footage of video games and having to pay attention to every little detail. Ugh... And I mean, does anyone really give a crap about who holds the highest score for a certain game? I certainly have never heard of Billy Mitchell before I saw this, but I digress...

When it's verified that Wiebe did beat Mitchell's score, he gets lots of press for it in Seattle. (And if there was any national press about it, I certainly don't remember it.) However, his score is revoked when people (you could say they're Team Billy) cried foul and said there was something amiss about Steve's arcade machine. This was a part of the movie I really didn't understand and it seemed a little fishy that fanboys of Billy were trying to get Steve's score disqualified... Seriously, get a life...

So Steve's score doesn't count and Billy returns as the Donkey Kong champ, but Steve goes to some video game convention and beats Billy's score live, but Billy sends in a videotape of him reaching over a million points and it goes on and on. In fact, I believe the movie ended with Steve having the highest Donkey Kong score at the time the movie was wrapped, but one of the special features on the DVD continues with Billy and Steve alternating the highest score. I think Billy has the highest score now and I could look it up, but I honestly don't really care.

As for Donkey Kong, I don't think I've ever played it. It's possible I played it when I was really young and don't remember. The only games I remember playing in the arcade were Super Mario Bros. (the old school one!) and Pac-Man. I do remember playing Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat a couple times, but I would get my ass kicked in five seconds.

If you're a Donkey Kong/ arcade game aficionado, you will really enjoy this movie and even if you aren't, you'll still get a kick out of it.

I hate Twilight...

2011-06-08T01:21:00.000-05:00

Here's to the Hair

2011-06-02T20:15:00.000-05:00

Tangled
Directors: Nathan Greno and Bryan Howard
Voice Talent: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy
Released: November 24, 2010

Oscar nominations:
Best Song - "I See the Light" by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater (lost to "We Belong Together" by Randy Newman from Toy Story 3)

I remember seeing a trailer for this movie the summer before it came out (probably one of the trailers I saw before Toy Story 3) and I couldn't help thinking how awful the film looked. Not the animation (that's gorgeous), but the actual movie. All the trailer showed was the main guy character getting beat up and whipped by the long, blonde hair that belongs to the main female character. I immediately thought it was going to be one of those slapstick animated comedies that only cater to kids who have a five-second attention span and thought it would fail at the box office.

Well that goes to show you should never judge a movie by its trailer because after hearing positive reviews and people recommending the movie, I decided to watch it and see it if was good as everyone was saying, and what do you know? It was actually really good and quite an enjoyable movie. In fact, that dumb extended scene they showed as a trailer was cut down in the movie.

Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi (the guy from Chuck - yeah, I don't watch that show either) voice the two leads, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider. I'm not really familiar with the fairy tale of Rapunzel. All I know is that she has really long hair and lives in a tower, so I have no idea how close this movie stayed true to the original material.

Rapunzel is a seventeen year old girl who has lived in a tall tower for mostly her entire life with a woman (voice by Donna Murphy) who has raised her as her daughter, but she is not actually Rapunzel's real mother. She kidnapped Rapunzel as a baby because the girl's hair has a magical power that made the woman appear youthful. Rapunzel has never been allowed to leave the tower and no one has ever been able to get in. For her eighteenth birthday, Rapunzel begs her mother to let her out on her birthday because she wants to explore the world and so she can inspect the "stars" she sees every year on her birthday (which are really Chinese lanterns that her real parents light every year in hope that their daughter will find them and return home). Her mother refuses and Rapunzel comes up with a plan that will make her mother have to go to the village and will be gone for three days.

Meanwhile, Rapunzel meets Flynn Rider and has information that he needs. She strikes a deal with him: if he takes her to the lights, she'll give him the information he needs, so they set out on their adventure. Of course Rapunzel's mother finds out that her daughter has escaped and tries everything she can to make sure Rapunzel never makes it to her real parents and finds out the truth.

One of my favorite scenes was a montage right after Rapunzel has escaped from her home and the scenes keep alternating from her being really happy and enjoying being free to her feeling really guilty about disobeying her mother and telling Flynn that she should go back home.

The animation is beautiful, the story is a lot of fun, and the ending even made me tear up a little. Not at all a bad movie. It should have been nominated for Best Animated Picture along with Toy Story 3 and How To Train Your Dragon.

Maid of Dishonor

2011-06-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

Bridesmaids
Director: Paul Feig
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy
Released: May 13, 2011
Viewed in theaters: May 19, 2011

Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, Rose Byrne, Wendi
McLendon-Covey, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig

This movie has been referred to as "the female Hangover" which I guess I can understand because, much like The Hangover, Bridesmaids is a R-rated raunchy comedy that takes place before a wedding but stars all women instead of men. Of course, there is more to this movie than just laughs and dirty jokes.

Annie (Wiig) is at a point in her life where nothing seems to be going right for her. Her bakery has gone out of business and she now (unsuccessfully) sells jewelry, she's seeing a guy who's only using her for sex, and when her best friend Lillian (Rudolph) tells her she's getting married she starts to compete with Lillian's new friend from work, Helen (Byrne) for the attention of the bride.

There are plenty of funny moments, but they still remind us of just how insecure Annie is and how she wants to be known as Lillian's closest friend. When a party is thrown for the newly engaged couple, Annie gives a little toast to Lillian, then Helen steps in and overshadows her toast with a much better one and Annie steps up to the mike again to "say a few more words." This goes on for quite a while with each woman trying to one up the other until they're both singing to Lillian.

Moments before disaster...

The one scene that makes it extremely raunchy and had everyone in my audience laughing was when they went to a very chic bridal gown shop where you need a reservation to get in and the dresses that are eight hundred dollars are the ones on sale. Right before Annie had taken everyone to a Brazilian restaurant and everyone except Helen became sick because they ate the meat. They all get food poisoning as they're wearing their expensive gowns and have to race for the one-toilet elegant bathroom. I'll let your imagination take it from there. It is a gross scene, but it's not as graphic as it could have been, thank goodness!

As the movie goes on, Annie continues to resent Lillian's and Helen's friendship more and more and ruins all of Lillian's big pre-wedding events. They don't even make it to Vegas for a bachelorette party due to her acting up on the plane after taking some pills Helen gave her that would calm her down. (I loved it when she called the flight attendant "Stove" (his name was obviously Steve) and declared she could do anything she wanted because, "this is the '90s!")

Her biggest rock-bottom moment was when she exploded at Lillian after Helen told her them was taking Lillian to Paris to get her wedding dress and Annie started going ballistic and vandalizing all the decorations. Because of this and her behavior, she was not allowed to take home a puppy as a party favor. (Yes, a puppy!)

Interwoven in the movie is a subplot where Annie meets an Irish cop who encourages her to go back to baking her cupcakes because he had been to her bakery before it closed. There's also a few funny scenes with Annie and her two roommates, siblings from England. There was really no need for them, but I did laugh when Annie found out the sister had been reading her diary and she replied, "I didn't know it was your diary! I thought it was a really depressing handwritten book!" Oh, I'm going to have to use that excuse if I ever get caught reading someone's diary... It was also funny when the brother told Annie they they were kicking her out because they thought it was weird that "two siblings were living together with a flatmate."

The film is a little on the long side (a little over two hours, they probably could have easily trimmed it), and it's not necessary to see on the big screen, but I would recommend renting it or putting it on your Netflix queue when it's available on DVD. Oh, and if you love the Wilson Phillips song, "Hold On", you will get a kick out of the wedding!

Class of '99

2011-05-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

10 Things I Hate About You
Director: Gil Junger
Cast: Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, Larry Miller, Allison Janney
Released: March 31, 1999
Viewed in theaters: April 17, 1999

This is my tenth and final teen movie that came out when I was a teen. And I decided to save the best for last. Or, at least, my favorite. Have I seen this movie as many times as the number in the title? Definitely, if not more. Can I recite the lines verbatim? Pretty close, pretty close.

I love this movie so much, I think, because I have such fond memories of it. This is the movie that introduced millions of teenaged girls to Heath Ledger and I can attest that any female who was in high school/college when this movie was released has definitely seen this movie. I mean, who didn't swoon when he serenaded Julia Stiles on the bleachers? I remember when I was in college and this was one of the movies we watched for movie night in our dorm's lobby. There were, like, 25 girls and only 3 guys and of course all the girls had already seen the movie. Hilarious. I remember all the girls were being all fan-girlish when Heath walked into Club Skunk wearing leather pants and of course, when he sang Can't Take My Eyes Off of You.

Did Dylan ever sing for Brenda?
I don't think so!

Here's a quick plot synopsis: Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the new kid at school and he wants to go out with Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik - I have no idea how to say her last name; I've always pronounced it "oily neck" but I don't think that's right! ) who isn't allowed to date because of her father's strict rules, but he tells her she can date when her older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) does. Only problem is nobody likes Kat because she's a "heinous bitch" who hates everybody at her school. Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) is the school's part-time model and full-time douche bag who also wants to date Bianca so he can "score" with her. Cameron and his friend Michael try to recruit somebody who will be brave enough to take Kat out and they enlist the mysterious Patrick Verona (Ledger) who has a questionable reputation. They then get Joey to pay Patrick to take Kat out so he can go out with Bianca, then tell Patrick that they are doing this for Cameron and not for Joey because he's only a pawn. So while Joey's paying Patrick a hundred bucks a date, Cameron and Michael are gathering intel from Bianca about her sister which they in turn give to Patrick so he can get on her good side and she'll want to go out with him. It makes more sense when you watch the movie, trust me.

Tommy Solomon and Alex Mack:
Cutest Couple

I don't think Kat and Patrick would have ever made it as a couple in real life. She was insulted when he didn't kiss her back in the car, but I have to side with him because he didn't want to take advantage of her being so drunk, then after he sang to her and everything was looking good again, they got into a fight about going to prom and he said that she needed therapy. I sided with her because that's just not cool. Then Kat decides to forgive him and they go to prom and that's when the big secret was revealed and she finds out that he was being paid to take her to prom. Of course all if forgiven at the end of the film and they kiss and make up. But they don't discuss the fact that she's going to college in New York while he'll most likely stay in Seattle. Yeah, we can kiss that relationship goodbye...

In case you didn't know, I should mention the film is based on the Shakespeare play, The Taming of the Shrew (which I've never read, but really, why do I need to?) and the title of the film refers to a poem Kat reads at the end of the movie.

Is there a party scene? Affirmative.
Is there a prom scene? Affirmative.
Is there a football scene? Negative.
Is there a make over scene? Negative.
Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown? Affirmative.
Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Affirmative. The main guy sang "Janie's Got a Gun" because the main girl's name was Janie and everyone freaked out because they thought Janie had a gun. They also spoofed the poem.

Do I own the soundtrack/favorite song - Yes, I like "The Weakness in Me" by Joan Armatrading and "Even Angels Fall" by Jessica Riddle. The best song that's not on the soundtrack is "Just Be Good To Me" by SOS Band. (I also have a rare cover that Mariah Carey performed live in Japan - that was back in the good old days of Napster.)

Darkest scene - I would say when Bianca punches Joey twice in the face and then knees him in the groin, but that was more hilarious than anything, so I'll say when Kat finds out she was being used as a bet. (Hmm, we've come full circle to She's All That!)

Favorite line - "There's a difference between like and love: I like my Sketchers, but I love my Prada backpack." - Bianca. I also get a good chuckle everytime the guidance council (played by a pre-West Wing Allison Janney) asks, "Judith, what's another word for engorged?" when she's writing her steamy romance novel.

Favorite character - Ms. Perky is great. Allison Janney is only in about three scenes, but she's hilarious in all of them and you wish she had more screen time.

Favorite scene - Duh, I like the scene where Heath Ledger sings to Julia Stiles!

Hey, it's the '90s! - Bianca watches The Real World, there are mentions of Dawson's Creek, Marilyn Manson, and the Spice Girls. Also, fliers are used to announce a party. Yes, FLIERS! No Facebook or texting for these freaks who went to high school in 1999!

And now you've waited for it. The #1 reason why the class of 1999 is the best graduating class of all time. I won't rehash the other nine reasons why it's such an awesome year because you can just go back and read them in my other reviews (and most of them were pretty lame, I will admit).

So 1999 is the best graduating year of ALL TIME because not only are we the last graduating class of the nineties, but we are also the last graduating class of the century and millennium. Now before you nitpick and whine that technically 2000 was the last year of the century and millennium, I know that, but to me the clock starts over when you reach 999 and flips to 000, so therefore I count 1999 as the end. Everybody celebrated 2000 as the millennium anyway, except for, like, supernerds. SO IT TOTALLY COUNTS!!!! Besides, class of 2000, you can brag that you're the first graduating class of the century and millennium. (Sorry, class of 2001).

Are you ready to go back to high school?

2011-05-20T15:11:00.002-05:00

Never Been Kissed
Director: Raja Gosnell
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Michael Vartan, David Arquette, Mollly Shannon, John C. Reilly, Leelee Sobieski
Released: April 9, 1999

This is the only teen movie I've reviewed where the main character isn't a teenager (notice I said character and not actor). Drew Barrymore plays Josie Gellar, a mousy editor at one of the large newspapers in Chicago (I forget which one) who is assigned to go undercover as a student and check out what high school kids are up to and what they think is relevant. So 25-year-old newspaper editor Josie transforms into 17-year-old high school senior Josie and enrolls at a nearby public school where Jessica Alba and James Franco are students.

Her boss (played by Reilly before he became well-known) wants her to befriend the popular kids because he thinks they're where the stories are. The one problem with this is that Josie isn't sure how to do this because back in her high school days, she wasn't just painfully unpopular, but was also unaware of how nobody liked her and it just made me cringe because I've known people like this in my lifetime. She was called "Josie Grossie" by the other students and was subjected to a very cruel joke when the boy she had a crush on asked her to the prom. Of course any person could see he was going to play a horrible prank on her, except for her (and her equally dorky friend) and he ends up throwing eggs at her when he drives by her house in the limo with his real date. Ouch.

Mean girls

At first Josie befriends a nerdy girl played by Sobieski who invites her to be part of the school's math club, the Denominators, but has to ditch her when her boss tells her to befriend the popular girls.

Michael Vartan (who is also very familiar with playing people going undercover) plays the English teacher, Mr. Coulson who becomes very smitten with his "student", Josie. It becomes a tad creepy because, remember, he thinks she's 17! Since Josie is always wearing a hidden camera, everyone at the newspaper is always watching what's gong on and her boss wants her to do a story about student-teacher relationships. I don't understand why Coulson was so mad when he found out the truth about Josie. Okay, so he probably wasn't happy that she was planning on writing a story about his inappropriate relationship with a student, but she wasn't going to do that in the first place, and she's 25, not 17! He should be happy that he wasn't flirting with a 17 year old!

He doesn't stay mad at her very long and realizes that he's in love with her and she gets her first real kiss and finds her first true love. Awww.

Is there a party scene? Affirmative.
Is there a prom scene? Affirmative. Their prom was really weird, though. They were going to go with the theme "The Millennium", but once they found out another school was also going to have the same theme (gasp! "The Millennium" as a prom theme in 1999???), they decide to change it to "Famous couples in history" and people come to the prom dressed as couples such as Romeo and Juliet, Mary and Joesph, the hare and the turtle...but that's not all. Josie's brother (David Arquette, who is also posing as a student) dresses up as Tom Cruise from Risky Business, so he's wearing no pants; a group of guys come dressed as the Village People, so they're wearing no shirts, Jessica Alba and her clique come dressed as Barbie and one of them is Malibu Barbie so she's only wearing a bikini. Leelee Sobieski and her nerd group come dressed as strands of DNA. WTF? This is the prom, not a Halloween dance! You wear formal crap to prom, not costumes!
Is there a football scene? Negative, but baseball is an important plot point to the film.
Is there a make over scene? Affirmative, but it's shown off-screen. Josie makes herself over when she enters high school (again).
Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown? Negative, the only two main cliques there were shown were the popular kids and the nerdy kids.
Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Affirmative. They have this woman who is obviously in her 50s pose as a high school student.

Do I own the soundtrack/favorite song - Yes, the soundtrack is really good and the best part is I got it for free because my friend burned it for me, yay! I like all the songs, but my favorites include "Candy in the Sun" by Swirl 360, "Erase and Rewind" by the Cardigans, "Lucky Denver Mint" by Jimmy Eat World, and "Watching the Wheels" by John Lennon.

Darkest scene - Definitely the cruel joke that was played on Josie when she was in high school. Even though they tried to play it for laughs, it was pretty brutal. Most disturbing scenes were Mr. Coulson hitting on his student.

Favorite line - When Leelee Sobieski tells Josie that she wants to go to Northwestern, Josie says, "I went there! Uh, I mean, I went there to use the bathroom once."

Favorite character - I enjoyed Molly Shannon's character who worked with Josie.

Favorite scene - It was totally a cliche, but I did laugh when Molly Shannon's character comes by the school to visit Josie and it just so happens that a guest speaker is supposed to talk to the students about sex-ed during English class (why English class, I don't know) and Mr. Coulson sees her and mistakes her for the guest speaker. It was much, much funnier than the time Gwynnie the Pooh was on Glee and was teaching the kids about sex through freaking singing. Ughhhh.

Hey, it's the '90s! - Cell phones look ridiculously outdated, soundtrack is very '90s, several shoutouts to the class of '99 :-)

And speaking of shoutouts to the class of '99...

1. Many teen/high school movies came out in 1999.
2. The song that told people to "party like it's 1999."
3. Buffy Summers is an alum from the class of '99.
4. Bella Swan is not a graduate from the class of '99.
5. "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals was released when the class of '99 were seniors.
6. "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C may have been released for the class of 2000, but it was recorded and probably written in 1999, so I like to think that she got inspiration from the class of '99 for that song.
7. At my school, our class was the last who could leave campus for lunch as freshman.
8. Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" was released in the spring of '99 and has advice for graduating students.

9. While there were many teen movies that came out in '99, it was also a great year for movies in general.

Okay, I know I'm reaching with some of these reasons, but I'm saving the best for last!

Two-Eleven-Double O

2011-05-17T23:33:00.000-05:00

Bring It On
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union
Released: August 25, 2000

I'll admit it: before I saw this movie I thought all cheerleaders did were wave their pom-poms, jump around a bit, and yell "Go, team go!" at football games, and wear cutesy matching outfits. I would not count cheerleading as a sport, but more of a recreational sport like golf or bowling. Let's be honest: cheerleading is pretty lame.

But then I saw this movie and I had a new respect for cheerleaders. Like Eliza Dushu's (or, "The Dushku" as my brother likes to call her) character, Missy, I didn't know there were cheerleading competitions where cheerleading squads compete against each other and make up their own routines with insane gymnastic moves and with precise coordination. Now that's what I call a real sport!

This movie has a cult following with cheerleaders. Or at least, I'm pretty sure it does. There's a really funny scene in Fired Up (that really stupid movie where two boys pretend to be cheerleaders so they can spend the summer at a cheerleading camp) where all the cheerleaders are watching Bring It On and they're reciting every line. It's so funny. I love the gay kid who says, "I love that Jesse Bradford kid! No, really, I love him!" I found a clip of it on YouTube (the actual clip begins at :35)

Hey, it's Glory!

The Toro cheerleaders at Rancho Carne High School in San Diego are the best squad in the country and have won the nationals for several years now. Their captain has graduated from high school and now the torch has been passed to senior Torrance Shipman (played by Kirsten Dunst) who now must make sure their squad continues their winning streak.

You know how in Glee it seems like the only class they have is glee class and all the other subjects are ignored? That's exactly like Bring It On, but replace cheerleading with singing. I think you only see Torrance in one class.

When one of their teammates is taken out due to an injury they hold auditions for a new member and end up choosing Missy, the new girl from L.A. When she sees the girls perform a cheer, she gets all haughty and drives Torrance all the way to L.A. (102 miles!) and when they get to a school in Compton (and they just HAPPEN to arrive right at the moment to see the Clover cheerleading squad performing), they're doing the exact same cheer the Toros were and Torrance suddenly realizes that her predecessor had been stealing the Compton Clover's cheers all this time and they've been winning the competitions with stolen cheers and moves.

Game on!

Suffice to say, they are pretty screwed and must come up with a whole new routine and cheer in order to qualify for the nationals which takes place in Daytona Beach, Florida, on February 11, 2000. (The meaning of my title in case you were wondering). And let me just say, the routines are the best part of the movie and are excellent and fun to watch.

Meanwhile, Torrance begins to have a romance with Missy's brother, Cliff (Jesse Bradford) who makes her a mixed tape (tape?! Now by 2000 I'm pretty sure we had evolved to CDs!) even though she's already dating this goober of a guy who's now in college and cheating on her with women in their 40s. Hmm, guess who she will end up with?

This movie is a lot of fun to watch, but even more surprisingly, it's actually really good for a teen movie. I've seen it at least six or seven times and I never get bored with it. Soon I'll be able to recite it verbatim like those cheerleaders in Fired Up!

Is there a party scene? Of course not! These girls are too busy cheerleading to party!
Is there a prom scene? Of course not! These girls are too busy cheerleading to attend dances!
Is there a football scene? Of course. The joke is that the football team is awful while people come to see the cheerleaders.
Is there a make over scene? No, unless you count Missy's off-screen makeover from L.A. tough girl to cheerleader.
Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown? No
Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Yes, "It's already been brought-tan" is one of the most memorable lines from that film.

Do I own the soundtrack/favorite song - I own the soundtrack and my favorite songs are "Anywhere USA" by PYT, "See Ya" by Atomic Kitten, "Jump Up" by Da Beat Bros, "Freakin' You" by Jungle Brothers, and even though it's not on the soundtrack, it is featured on the trailer, so I'm gonna count "Happy Boys and Girls" by Aqua because that song is a-we-s-o-m-e. (I mean, anything by Aqua is awesome...)

Darkest scene - Cliff tells two boys in his class the last school he went to the kids brought guns and homemade bombs. What, did he transfer from Columbine?! This does take place during the '99/'00 school year....oh, wait, he's from L.A.

Favorite line - It's hard to choose a single one, but I do love "Cheerleaders are dancers....who have gone retarded!"

Favorite character - I like Missy and Cliff - Missy because she tells it how like it is, and Cliff because he's cute and cool. For a minor character, Torrance's little brother is really funny, although he kinda reminds me of my brother (even though mine is older). Like Justin, my brother also likes to provoke (I've still never gotten over the time he kept throwing this blue Nerf football at my friend and me) and do gross things like fart right in front of you.

Favorite scene - The Toro's and Clover's routines at the end and I also love the cheer at the beginning.

Hey, it's the '90s! - Yes, this movie came out in 2000, but the first half of it takes place during the latter months of '99. I already mentioned the mixed tape (which is more '80s...), there's also Torrance's felt '99, '98, and '97 numbers she has on her walls (presumably cheer-related). In the scene where Torrance is riding in her boyfriend's car, her hair is done up in little barrettes. I remember wearing my hair like that in the '90s! It wasn't often because it took forever to do, but it sure brought back memories...

Torrance may have been a graduate of the class of 2000, (a very respectable graduating year) but I'm going to give you another reason why the class of '99 is still the best ever:

1. Many teen/high school movies came out in 1999.
2. The song that told people to "party like it's 1999."
3. Buffy Summers is an alum from the class of '99.
4. Bella Swan is not a graduate from the class of '99.
5. "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals was released when the class of '99 were seniors.
6. "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C may have been released for the class of 2000, but it was recorded and probably written in 1999, so I like to think that she got inspiration from the class of '99 for that song.
7. At my school, our class was the last who could leave campus for lunch as freshman.
8. Baz Luhrmann's "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" was released in the spring of '99 and has advice for graduating students.

Pie-oh-my

2011-05-10T21:31:00.003-05:00

American Pie
Director: Paul Weitz
Cast: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Eugene Levy, Seann William Scott, Chris Klein, Mena Suvari, Tara Reid
Released: July 9, 1999
Viewed in theaters: July 31, 1999

If you like immature and raunchy movies, this one is for you! As far as my rankings for the teen movies I've reviewed thus far, I would only put it ahead of She's All That and Drive Me Crazy (both of which I didn't care for), but below everything else. There are some genuinely funny moments, but the gross-out scenes outrank the funny.

The movie's premise is pretty simple: four senior guys make a pact to "get laid by graduation". Kevin is the only one of the four who has a girlfriend, so the other three have to make their move. Finch goes around spreading rumors about himself that gets girls interested in him, Oz joins the school choir because he learned from a college girl he dated that he should look and appear sensitive at all times, and Jim, the main character, goes after Nadia, the foreign exchange student who is way out of his league, so instead he has to settle for going to prom with Michelle, the band geek.

As you can guess there's plenty of embarrassing scenes Jim finds himself involved in and his dad walks in on every single one! You think he would learn to lock his door! Or not assault a pie in the kitchen in the middle of the day! At least find some privacy in a bathroom or your bedroom!

Most people who've seen this movie when it came out twelve years ago, only remember three scenes: the disturbing pie scene, Finch and Stifler's mom, and the band camp joke. Oh, and maybe the Sherminator. Everything else is pretty forgettable. For instance, I had totally forgotten about the odd porno style music that is used throughout this movie during the more risque scenes.

Is there a party scene? Yes

Is there a prom scene? Yes, and they hired the most tacky band ever!

Is there a football scene? No

Is there a make over scene? No

Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown? No

Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Yes, the opening scene where he's watching a porn-o and his parents walk in is spoofed and I'm sure there were other scenes spoofed.

Do I own the soundtrack/favorite song - No, and the only song I remember from the film is "One Week" by BareNaked Ladies, a song I do like.

Darkest scene - There are no dark scenes, but I think we can all agree on which the most disturbing is!

Favorite line - "This one time, at band camp -"

Favorite character - the Sherminator! I felt kid of bad for him when the girl humiliated him in front of the whole school!

Favorite scene - The one where Jim's dad is showing Jim those porno mags is pretty funny.

Hey, it's the '90s - Jim's computer and webcam look like prehistoric artifacts!

And to continue my list of why '99 is the best graduating class:

1. Many teen/high school movies came out in 1999.

2. The song that told people to "party like it's 1999."

3. Buffy Summers is an alum from the class of '99.

4. Bella Swan is not a graduate from the class of '99.

5. "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals was released when the class of '99 were seniors.

6. "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C may have been released for the class of 2000, but it was recorded and probably written in 1999, so I like to think that she got inspiration from the class of '99 for that song.

7. At my school, our class was the last who could leave campus for lunch as freshman. The following year freshman were no longer allowed to do this! (Sidenote: this is probably more because we caused too much trouble and not because we're special just because we're the class of '99, but hey, I'm gonna count it!)

We don't need no education

2011-05-05T00:13:00.002-05:00

The Faculty
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Cast: Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea Duvall, Jordana Brewster, Robert Patrick
Released: December 25, 1998
Viewed in theaters: January 6, 1999

This teen high-school set movie is a little different from the five past teen movies I've reviewed because it's also a horror/sci-fi movie that just happens to be set in a high school with teens as main characters. Of course the title implies that the faculty of this high school in Ohio is also very relevant to the plot. An impressive array of well-known names make up the school's faculty: Robert Patrick is the football coach, Bebe Neuwirth is the principal, Famke Janssen is the English teacher, Piper Laurie is the drama teacher, Jon Stewart is the science teacher, and Salma Hayek is the school nurse.

The faculty of "The Faculty"

Something strange has happened to the teachers and most of the students at the school. They're acting unusual and the only students who haven't seemed to be affected by it are geeky newspaper writer Casey (Elijah Wood), gothic outcast Stokely (Clea Duvall), vain cheerleader Delilah (Jordana Brewster), captain of the football team Stan (Shawn Hatosy), Marybeth, the new girl (Laura Harris), and Zeke (Josh Hartnett) the cool loner kid who sells drugs and other contraband from the trunk of his car. All these characters are important to the story in one way or another, but it's Wood and Hartnett who are the lead characters.

When Casey finds some unusual slug-like creature on the football field they discover that it can multiply it's somehow infesting itself in the bodies of the faculty and students that brainwashes them into infesting even more people until world domination by this species is inevitable. You know, just another typical day at high school!

They find out that the aliens are susceptible to Zeke's homemade scat so the only way one can prove they're not an alien is to snort the drug. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say they find out that one of them isn't exactly who they say they are.

They figure the only way to stop the whole thing is to kill the queen and once they get her, then everyone will turn back to normal. Their first thought is that it must be their principal, so they head back to the school where everybody in town is there for a Friday night football game.

Now I had no idea who the queen was when I first watched this, but after seeing it a few more times, it just seems so obvious because they do you clues about who it is. I even caught a new clue when this person says something to another character that indicates that they are, in fact, really an alien and not a human.

This movie has its flaws, but it is a lot of fun. It's not supposed to be taken seriously and it knows that. The only thing I hate is the ending. It always irritates me that Zeke is now a football player (it just goes against his character) and while I'm glad Stokely scrubbed all that crap off her face, it's as though she went from shopping at Hot Topic to the Gap. She has a boyfriend now, and all of a sudden she has to wear pastel colors? WTF? But the change that irks me the most was Casey. He went from the endearing nerd to the smug douche bag that you want to punch in the face! He was the one who defeated the queen alien and became famous because of it and apparently got a big head. Ironically, the one character that would benefit from a change the most was the one who didn't change at all: Delilah. She started the movie as a conceited bitch and ended the movie as a conceited bitch. I love the movie, but the ending! URGH! Always pisses me off!

Is there a party scene? No...unless you count them getting high as a party scene...but I wouldn't.

Is there a prom scene? No

Is there a football scene? Yes and they have fireworks! Fireworks! At a small Ohio town high school!

Is there a make over scene? No, unless you count the makeover of Casey becoming a douche and Stokely's wardrobe 180.

Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown? Each character represents a different clique, so yes.

Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? IMDb says it is, but I can't remember which scene(s) is/are spoofed.

Do I own the soundtrack/favorite song - Yes, my favorite songs include the cover of "Another Brick in the Wall" (which I didn't know was a cover at the time because I'm an idiot), "The Kids Are Alright" by the Offspring, and "Stay Young" by Oasis. All the songs are pretty good, actually.

Darkest scene - Oh, where do I even begin? I could choose the the scene when the coach impales the principal's hand with a pencil or when she's stabbed with a pair of scissors multiple times by another teacher or when she's shot in the head by Zeke (man, that principal sure got a lot of abuse!) Hmm, I'll have to go with her getting shot in the head only because when they kill her they're not sure if she was really an alien and may have just committed murder...but of course she was an alien. Whew!

Favorite line - Kevin Williamson wrote the script so there's plenty of good one liners to choose from including Robert Patrick's campy "Please report to the principal's office" line, but I always laugh when Delilah says, "Casey, when did you become Sigourney Weaver?"

Favorite character - Zeke. Zeke is just the epitome of cool. Pre-ending Casey is a close second.

Favorite scene - Football scene is cool with the fireworks and "Not Another Brick in the Wall" playing. I also like the scene when they're in Zeke's basement and have to prove to one another they haven't turned into aliens.

Hey, it's the '90s! - Tommy Hilfigure wardrobe, reference to Independence Day, students shooting their teachers (well, there was a lot of that when I was in high school!), nobody has a cell phone.

Another reason why the class of '99 is the most awesome class of all time:

1. Many teen/high school movies came out in 1999.

2. The song that told people to "party like it's 1999."

3. Buffy Summers is an alum from the class of '99.

4. Bella Swan is not a graduate from the class of '99.

5. "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals was released when the class of '99 were seniors.

6. The ultimate graduation song, the aptly-named "Graduation Song" by Vitamin C may have been released in time for the class of 2000, but it was recorded and probably written in 1999, so I like to think that she got inspiration from the class of '99 for that song :-) You know, because we are so, so, so awesome.