Reviews of 2012 Best Picture nominees

I haven't seen all nine of them, but here are reviews of the movies up for Best Picture this year that I have seen.

Life of Pi (viewed in theaters December 10, 2012)

Director - Ang Lee

This review does contain spoilers.

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Director - Ang Lee

Best Adapted Screenplay - David Magee

Best Cinematography 

Best Editing

Best Score - Mychael Danna

Best Song - "Pi's Lullaby"

Best Visual Effects 

Best Sound Editing

Best Sound Mixing

Best Production Design

This is one of my favorite books (I read it in 2006) and Ang Lee is one of my favorite directors - I really love Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and now you can add Life of Pi! I really loved this movie - it's my second favorite movie of the year at the moment. It's about an Indian family who own a zoo and move to Canada for a better life. They take a ship to, ahem, ship all the animals. There's a horrible storm and Pi, the sixteen year old protagonist finds himself alone on a life raft after he's lost his entire family and everyone else who was on the ship. He's not exactly alone, though. A zebra, hyena, and orangutang are also on the boat. And, unbeknownst to Pi for quite a while, the full-grown Siberian tiger named Richard Parker (the tiger's name got confused with the name of the guy who sold it to them) is under the half of the boat that is covered by a tarp. I would have been scared you-know-what-less if I had been in Pi's position. There's a scene where the hyena starts attacking the zebra (who was wounded in the storm) and Pi starts hitting it with an oar. I wouldn't want the zebra to be killed by the hyena (which it was and amazingly the carcass was dumped into the ocean pretty early (not shown) - you think Pi would keep it around so the tiger could eat it instead of thinking about going after him!), but I also would have felt bad if I had to toss the hyena into the ocean (if I could). But let's be honest: if I was in this situation (or anyone, probably), I would be dead within five minutes. It's not long before all the animals are killed by another animal and the tiger and Pi are the only ones left. Pi makes a smaller liferaft that he attaches to the boat and steals the cans of food under the tarp whenever Richard Parker is sleeping and he has the chance. It's been awhile since I've read the book, but I thought the movie did a good job of following the book and I remembered certain things, the island for one. As the movie progresses, Pi is able to get into the boat with Richard Parker. The tiger (not a real one for obvious reasons, but looks very real) becomes an emotional part of the story and you start to root for him to have a happy ending as well as Pi. The movie ends with an interesting question when Pi tells what happened when he is rescued. He tells the authorities what happened and they don't believe he was in a boat with a tiger and the other animals, so he tells them that he was instead with his mother and two other people who we meet on the ship, so it's up to the audience to interpret what really happened. I saw this movie in 2-D because I hate 3-D, but now I kinda wish I had seen it in 3-D. The movie was atheistically stunning and pleasing to the eye. It is by far the most gorgeous movie of this year; it is truly a work of art! 

Les Miserables  (viewed in theaters December 29, 2012)

Director  - Tom Hooper

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Actor - Hugh Jackman

Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway

Best Costume Design

Best Make -Up

Best Original Song - "Suddenly"

Best Production Design

Best Sound Mixing

You know when you see a movie that totally moves you, mesmerizes you, and just captures you in awe and it becomes one of your favorite movies for the rest of your life and when it comes up in conversations, you tell everyone how much you love that movie and they need to see it and when they do, they thank you for suggesting that they watch it because it moved and mesmerized them and captured their heart as well? You know what I'm talking about, right? We all have a few movies that do this to us. Les Mis....is not one of those movies! Sorry to get your hopes up if you did like this movie! I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I had never read the book or seen the musical and knew nothing about the story (besides it was obviously depressing), but I was so bored throughout most of it. Everyone did a great job with the singing and the cinematography was gorgeous - I loved when Notre Dame was in the background. The only scenes I really liked were Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen singing "Master of the House" - that was definitely the most liveliest song!; any scene with the little kid - I thought he was a hoot (to bad he died...) and Anne Hathaway singing "I Dreamed a Dream" Dreadfully boring song, but I gotta give her props..she was singing and acting at the same time and she is amazing. She has snot running down her nose, her face is blotched, and she has this hideous short cropped hair, and she brings it! If she wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, I would not be disappointed. If Les Mis won the Best Picture Oscar, I would be very disappointed. With an exception of a couple songs, I found most of the songs to be not that memorable. I knew this was a musical going in (duh), but I thought it was the kind of musical where they talk, sing a song, talk, sing a song - you know, like Chicago. But not in this movie! No, they sing every single line. EVERY SINGLE LINE! EVERY. SINGLE. DAMN. LINE. And this movie is two and a half hours. And this movie moves at a S-L-OOOOO-W pace. It was excruciating for me to watch. I haven't seen Lincoln, Amour, or Beasts of the Southern Wild yet (I'll check those out on DVD), but I'm pretty confident when I do see them, Les Mis will be my least favorite Best Picture nominee! 

Django Unchained (viewed in theaters January 14, 2013)

Director - Quentin Tarantino

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz

Best Original Screenplay - Quentin Tarantino

Best Cinematography 

Best Sound Editing

Very slight spoilers! 

If I were to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie without knowing it was a Quentin Tarantino movie, I'm pretty confident I would be able to tell it was directed by him because he has such a distinct way of directing his films. I think that's what makes his films so much fun to watch - they give a little nod and wink to the audience. The way he uses different camera shots, the way he pays homage to other movies, and even the way his credits are - it's all very Tarantino-esque. Oh, and you can always tell by the language and amount of violence! This movie is pretty heavy in both aspects. There is A LOT of blood in this movie. By people getting shot, by people beating the crap out of each other, and one guy gets mauled by dogs, but mostly by people getting shot. It seems Tarantino has lately been interested in playing around with world history. His last movie, Inglorious Basterds, was set during World War II and he sort of changed the way Hitler died - just a tad! This movie is set during pre-Civil War when slavery was abound in the South. Jamie Foxx plays Django (the D is silent!), a slave who is given his freedom with the help of a German dentist/bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (played by Austrian actor, Christoph Waltz). They set out to rescue Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) who knows German, so it's easy to track her down since she's the only slave woman who knows German. She works for Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the villain of the film. Samuel L. Jackson rounds out the cast as Calvin Candie's best confident and he plays an older man and he is absolutely great. He provides a lot of humor and yet he's very sinister. Even though I haven't seen all the Best Picture nominees, this movie is most definitely the most violent out of all of them...and probably the funniest! I laughed quite a bit at some scenes. The KKK scene was hilarious. Only Tarantino could make a scene involving the KKK hilarious. I loved the scene where Django and King visit Don Johnson's character, Big Daddy (they call him "Big Daddy" because he's big!) and after he learns that Djanog is a free man, he tells one of his female servants, "Make you you don't treat Django like a slave now!" and she says,"Should I treat him like a white man!" and he goes, "No!" and she says, "Well, how am I suppose to treat him, then?" It was just really funny how it was done and I found myself laughing quite a few times during the film. It's a very gorgeous film as well and I can see why it's nominated for Best Cinematography. The use of the landscape is beautiful, especially when they were on a plantation in Tennessee. I'm not a tree expert, so I don't know what they were, but there were these huge trees with hanging foliage (not weeping willows) that were really pretty. Christoph Waltz steals this movie (and is the best part along with Sam Jackson) and although he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, he was more co-leads with Foxx. He is not in the last third of the movie and I noticed that once he was gone the movie dragged on a bit. Of course, the movie, which is about 2 hours and 40 minutes, could have easily been trimmed down by 30 minutes. There's a scene with Quentin Tarantino and it was just really random. It almost felt like he was filling in for another actor who was suppose to play that part that didn't show up on the set that day - it was just so out of place! Plus he has an Australian accent which makes it even more weird. Quentin Tarantino asked Will Smith to be Django, but he declined and I wish he hadn't because I think he would have made a way better Django than Jamie Foxx, who is fine, but I think Will would have been very dynamic...I would have loved to see what he would do with the role. 

Silver Linings Playbook (viewed in theaters January 21, 2013)

Director - David O. Russell

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture

Best Director -  David O. Russell

Best Actor - Bradley Cooper

Best Actress - Jennifer Lawrence

Best Supporting Actor - Robert De Niro

Best Supporting Actress - Jackie Weaver

Best Adapted Screenplay - David O. Russell

Best Editing

This is an unconventional romantic comedy. Bradley Coooper (who would have ever thought that  good ol' Will Tippin would ever be nominated for an Oscar?) is Pat, a guy who has just been released from being in a mental institution for almost a year after he caught his high-school teacher wife with another teacher in the shower and beat him up. His wife divorced him and has put a restraining order on him and has moved and Pat is working to get her back because he wants to prove to her that he's changed. Jennifer Lawrence plays Tiffany, the sister-in-law of one of Pat's friends. Her husband was killed in an accident and she got fired from her job. Pat and Tiffany meet when they both have dinner at Pat's friend's house and from there they begin an interesting relationship. Since Tiffany's sister knows Pat's ex-wife, she tells him that if she writes a letter, she could find a way to give it to her, but says if she does this, she wants something in return and wants Pat to join a dance competition with her, something she's always wanted to do with her husband. It's a very charming movie and Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver are great as Pat's parents. (And I just realized that this is the second time Cooper and De Niro have worked together - they were also in Limitless). 

Zero Dark Thirty (viewed in theaters January 28, 2013)
Director - Kathryn Bigelow

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture
Best Actress - Jessica Chastain
Best Original Screenplay - Mark Boal
Best Editing
Best Sound Editing

This is about the search and capture of Osama Bin Laden. The movie starts in 2003 (after a little prologue of 9/11) and ends at his capture which I'm sure we all remember that Sunday night in May of 2011 when Obama came on our TVs for a special report. Jessica Chastain plays Maya, the CIA agent who had a big hand in finding the compound Bin Laden was hiding at in Pakistan. As she told the CIA director (played by James Gandolfini) who asked her who she was, she replied with, "I'm the mother****er who found that place." She's very bad-ass, but not in a Sarah Connor/Lara Croft kind of way. She's badass in a realistic way and I would love to see Chastain win the Oscar. Bigelow was definitely snubbed of a directing Oscar - I liked this movie more than The Hurt Locker, which she won for. It's interesting that this is up for an Original Screenplay when it's based on true events. I guess they didn't use a book to write this, but used other sources? I really liked the guy who played Dan, Maya's partner during the first half of the film. I had never seen him in anything before and it turns out he's Australian in real life. There are a few torture scenes in the movie (being an avid fan of 24, I'm used to watching them - the things they did on 24 were worse than what they do in this movie!) At first Maya is very uncomfortable watching them, but then as the years pass, she is not shy to use it as a tactic to get information. Jennifer Ehle plays another CIA agent who works with Maya and she has found a huge lead with someone she thinks can lead them to Bin Laden. She and some others are supposed to meet him and you just know things are not going to end well. I kept gripping my seat waiting for a bomb to explode. Even though I knew what happens in the end and that they get the bad guy, I still felt a little jumpy when the Seal Team 6 invaded the compound they had reason to believe Bin Laden was at. They had no visual confirmation that he was there, but they strongly believed it could be him because there was a male that never left the compound at all. They had no way to see if it was him because they didn't want to spook him in running to a new location. Chris Pratt plays one of the Seal Team 6 members and it was a bit humorous to think of Andy from Parks and Rec going to kill Osama Bin Laden. The movie is two and a half hours - it's exactly the same length as Les Miserables, 157 minutes. But while Les Mis was excruciatingly long - it felt like it would never end!, Zero Dark Thirty did not feel like that at all - it went by pretty quickly. If you can make a two and a half hour movie and make it not feel long, then more power to you! It does a good job of keeping you interested and has a nice flow.

And here is my review of Argo.

Beware of bears!

The Edge
Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson, Harold Perrineau, Bart the Bear
Released: September 26, 1997

I've recently realized how much I love survival stories. I don't care if they're based on a true story or fictional (though being based on a true story makes them more interesting). I recently finished reading "Lost in Shangri-La" by Mitchell Zuckoff, a true story about three people who survived a plane crash in the jungles of Papua New Guinea in 1945. One of my favorite books is "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer about an expedition to Mount Everest gone wrong. I both saw the movie and listened to the audio book of 127 Hours. The Grey was one of my favorite movies of this past year. I also am obsessed with the reality show Survivor! Okay, it's not exactly the same thing as those people are never in any real peril, but I still love it. Survival stories, I do love!

Charles Morse (Hopkins) is a billionaire bibliophile who's married to a model half his age (Macpherson). She has invited him to join her on location in Alaska for a photo shoot. Charles suspects there is something going on between her and the photographer, Bob (Baldwin) because he is always flirting with her and she doesn't seem to mind it. Bob is determined to photograph some real natives and when the owner of the lodge they're staying at tells him about a friend and where to find him, he takes the opportunity to go there. Along with his assistant and the pilot, Charles also joins them after Bob invites him. While in the tiny plane (and those things are never good - whenever you hear about a crash, it's always a tiny plane!), a flock of birds fly right into them and into the windshield causing the plane to go down and crash in a large lake in the middle of the wilderness. The pilot is dead, but the other three manage to get out. There's a shot of a rifle laying on the seat as they are escaping from the plane and I thought this was important, but no, we never see it again. I guess they were just showing us that they would not have a rifle with them.

Bob's assistant is played by Harold Perrineau who is best known for playing Michael (father of Walt, owner of Vincent) on Lost. So Lost is not the first time he played a character who crashed in the middle of nowhere and had to survive in the wilderness! Unlike Michael (he survived in Lost, right?), Perrineau's character in The Edge is not so lucky. First, he stabs himself in the leg and hits an artery when he's making a spear for them to catch fish. Then he gets mauled by a bear! (Because some idiot left his bloody pants hanging out and the bear could smell the scent of the blood.) The shot of the bear ripping him apart is a bit humorous because it's pretty obvious the bear is throwing a dummy around. They probably had fried chicken pieces on the dummy!

That wasn't the first time they had contact with the bear. While hiking in one big circle to see if they could find a way out, the three of them heard the bear and it started chasing them. In a scene similar to The Grey, they're trying to get across a gorge and lift a heavy tree that had already fallen to act as a bridge. Charles is the last to cross the shaky bridge (there's rocks and a rushing waterfall below them) and while on the middle of the "bridge" (and they were walking really slowly to get across - I would have gotten on my butt and scooted across!), the bear starts shaking the tree and Charles falls off, but the strap of his knapsack catches a branch and he's holding on to his bag. Um, I'm sorry, but there's no way that bag could have held his weight...that would have snapped in a second! But he manages to hold on for quite awhile. The other two are trying to help him, but he does fall into the water. From one angle, he looks pretty high up, but when we see him falling into the water, it only looks like he's fallen two feet!

I don't know if this was in the script or if it was something Alec Baldwin did to ad-lib, but everytime he talks to Anthony Hopkin's character, he always says his name in the sentence. Like: "What do you think we should do, Charles?" "What are you doing, Charles?" "Charles, are you okay?" "Charles! Where are you going?" It was so annoying! But at least I didn't forget his name!

After the bear shows up for the third time, Charles realizes it's a man-eater and is stalking them. He and Bob create a ring of fire around them to keep the bear out and are discussing how they can kill it. This is where I thought the gun was going to come in...I thought one of them would remember there was a gun in the plane and have to dive down to get it, but nope. They set up a trap to lure the bear and Charles has created a spear out of a long branch which he kills the bear with. The bear has a ferocious roar, but when Charles has the stick in front of him, the bear is just sorta lazily following him around, like he's supposed to do. I'm guessing a non-actor bear would charge at him and rip him to shreds.

The bear is played by Bart the Bear and I love how in the end credits and on the movie's IMDb page, he is listed fourth or fifth. I've never seen an animal credited among the actors (and given his own title card to boot). Bart the Bear must have had one heck of a manager! (He died in 2000 at the age of 23). Of course, he was a big Hollywood (animal) star. He was also in The Bear (I'm assuming he played the titular character!), Legends of the Fall, and The Great Outdoors. The Edge was one of his last starring roles. I guess even bears have to retire! On his IMDb page (yes, he even has his own IMDb page), there are some hilarious message board posts like how he was always typecast. (A bear being typecast?!?! I laughed so hard when I saw that!)

Once the bear is dead, that doesn't mean Charles and Bob are "out of the woods yet", no pun intended (okay, maybe a little!). While in the plane, right before the crash, Charles asks Bob how he plans to kill him. The conversation is brought up again while hiking in the woods and Charles confesses he thinks Bob is having an affair with his wife. Bob laughs it off, but later, after they've killed the bear, they find an abandoned house and Charles, who recently received an engraved watch from his wife, finds out that Bob also received an engraved watch with a message alluding to an affair from his wife. Bob knows that Charles is on to him and with a rifle found in the house, he is about to shoot Charles, but ends up falling in a bear trap. Charles could have easily killed him at this point, but instead helps him out and takes care of his wounds. With a canoe outside the house they row down the river for awhile until Charles sees a helicopter and successfully gets its attention. By this time Bob has died from his injuries. Back at the lodge there are many reporters wanting to know what happened while he was out there and what happened to the other two men which Charles replies with, "They died saving my life." Fade to black.

Even though I had a few minor complaints about how fake things sometimes looked, it was a good movie and I would recommend it. (But then again, I do love my survival stories!) What shocked me the most was that David Mamet wrote the script. It just seems so different from somebody who wrote State and Main and Wag the Dog. It's like when I found out that Ian McEwan, author of "Atonement" wrote the script for The Good Son. 

Bart the Bear should be proud of his final performance!

The Circle of Life

The Lion King
Directors: Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff
Voice Talent: Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Moira Kelly, Robert Guillaume, Cheech Marin, Rowan Atkinson
Released: June 24, 1994

Oscar nominations:
Best Score - Hans Zimmer (won)
Best Song - "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" by Elton John and Tim Rice (won)
Best Song - "The Circle of Love" by Elton John and Tim Rice
Best Song - "Hakuna Matata" by Elton John an Tim Rice

I don't remember what movie it was, but I was at the movie theaters (with my mom probably), about a year before The Lion King was released and one of the previews they showed was for it. It wasn't a trailer in the traditional sense, but the opening "Circle of Life" scene where they play that song and all the animals are coming out for Simba's first appearance after being born and bowing to him as Rifiki holds him up. (Have you ever noticed there are no other wild cats besides lions there? I guess the leopards and cheetahs were jealous the lions were getting all the attention!) Then the song ends with a big boom as the screen goes dark and the title shows up in red letters. One of the coolest title cards ever. My mom and I were like, "Whoa, that was cool!" That had definitely got our attention and apparently everybody else's as it is the highest grossing animated Disney movie. I saw it twice in the theaters: the first time with a friend and her brother and the second time with my mom.

Scar

Mufasa! 

The Lion King is a simple story. It starts out happy, becomes sad, and ends triumphant. Young Simba (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas who was at the height of his popularity with Home Improvement) is destined to become the next King of Pride Rock. His father, Mufasa (voiced by none other than James Earl Jones) is the current King and teaches his son valuable life lessons. His brother, Simba's Uncle Scar (voiced by Jeremy Irons, who shares a birthday with me!) is not fond of Simba because he is jealous he is going to become King. For two lions who are brothers, Mufasa and Scar do not look alike at all. Mufasa has a solid bulk to him and has a healthy and beautiful mane of red hair and golden fur while Scar looks like skin and bones and has a mangy black mane. Maybe they are half-brothers? Well, you know Disney, they have to make the villain as obvious as possible! Simba wants desperately to be brave like his father and grow a mane and roar and almost gets himself and his friend, Nala, killed when they go somewhere they shouldn't.

:*-(

Scar tells Simba he has a surprise for him, a surprise "to die for". The surprise turns out to be a trap when Simba is in a gorge and a herd of wildebeest are about to trample him. He is saved by his father, but Mufasa is killed by Scar, who tells Simba, who didn't witness Scar pushing his father off the cliff, that it's his fault that Mufasa is dead. Simba, ashamed of what he has done, runs away where he meets Timon, the meerkat (voiced by Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa, the warthog with gas problems (voiced by Ernie Sabella). Simba grows up with them until he and Nala are reunited and she tells him how Scar has taken over Pride Rock and how awful everything is. Simba refuses to go back and help and acts like a selfish brat (kinda like he was when he was a cub and disobeyed his father about not going to the elephant graveyard). Eventually he gets some sense knocked into him - literally - by the baboon, Rifiki (voiced by Robert Guillaume - Benson!) He defeats Scar and Pride Rock becomes his kingdom.

I think this movie did very well because it appealed to both boys and girls. Usually Disney movies seem like they're more targeted toward girls like Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, with their main characters being a female. That said, The Lion King is not my favorite animated Disney movie. That honor would go to Beauty and the  Beast. It's not even my second favorite. That goes to another movie I have not reviewed yet, so I will reveal what it is when I do! It's probably my third favorite - I keep going back and forth on whether The Lion King or The Little Mermaid should get that spot.

The music is very solid. Usually in Disney movies, there might be one - maybe two -  songs that I don't particularly care for and they're just like, meh, but all five songs in The Lion King - "The Circle of Life", "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", "I Just Can't Wait To Be King", "Hakuna Matata", and "Be Prepared" are all really good, solid songs. Elton John did his own renditions of the first three songs. Usually only one song from a Disney movie is covered by a famous artist, but The Lion King had three, two of which were on the radio.  "Be Prepared" is my favorite villain song from any Disney movie. I also really like the villain song from Anastasia, but that's not a Disney movie! "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" is a really cute song and I like the African-style music in the background. My favorite part is when Simba sings, "Everybody look left, everybody look right. Everywhere you look, I'm standing in the spotlight!"

And with the success of the movie, which turned into a successful Broadway play he really is!

Even my own cat has a connection to The Lion King! 

Last blog of 2012!

Escape From Alcatraz
Director: Don Siegel
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Larry Hankin
Released: June 22, 1979

If you're like me and love the movie, The Shawshank Redemption; the book, Watership Down; and the TV show, Prison Break (well, at least the first season), chances are, you will like this movie as well. It's based on the true story of Frank Morris, one of three men to have escaped from Alcatraz, probably the most famous prison in America and one of San Francisco's most well-known sites. I had an amusing conversation with my mom about this movie:

Me: Have you ever seen Escape from Alcatraz?
My mom: Is that the one with Nicolas Cage?
Me: No, you're thinking of The Rock.

Well, I thought it was amusing! Come to think of it, The Rock was my first introduction of Alcatraz. And probably my first introduction to Michael Bay, heh! I wasn't familiar with the story of Frank Morris (played by a younger-looking but still older Clint Eastwood), an inmate sent to Alcatraz because he had escaped from several other prisons. He was serving time for breaking and entering and robbery. He was said to have an IQ of 133, which is probably the reason for all his escapes...including this one. One of the first things he is told by the warden (Patrick McGoohan) is that Alcatraz can not be broken out of and even if he did manage to escape, he would die trying to swim to the mainland from the cold.

Morris sizes up everyone at the prison. He becomes friendly with a few inmates including Old Man Marley from Home Alone (hmm, maybe Buzz was right and he did kill his entire family!). No, actually his name is Doc and he's played by Robert Blossom and his voice sounded so familiar and then I placed that he was the old scary neighbor in Home Alone who was actually a nice guy, just lonely. Let's just say in this movie he doesn't get a happy ending like he does in Home Alone when he's reunited with his family. Remember that scene in Misery that involves feet? There's a scene like that in this movie, only it involves fingers and Kathy Bates isn't in the scene!

Morris also befriends John and and Clarence Anglin who are brothers and Charlie Butts, his cell neighbor. Morris knew the brothers from another prison where they first met and together the four of them come up with an elaborate plan to escape. Over several months, they chip away at the grille in their rooms with spoons which they sneaked from the kitchen. From the arts and craft department, they get material to make paper-mache heads of themselves so the guards will think they are in bed when they are actually working on their escape plan. On the night of June 11, 1962, they are ready to escape. It doesn't quite go according to plan when one of them loses the nerve to escape and sits on his bed, contemplating whether or not he should join the others who wait for him for a few minutes, but leave once it's clear he's not coming. He does finally escape from his room, but by that time it's too late because the others are long gone and he needs help to reach the window on the roof that is too high for one person to reach without help. He goes back to his room and waits for the massive outburst that will erupt in the morning when the guards will find there are three men missing. Now I was curious about the guy who didn't escape, so I went to my ever faithful source: Wikipedia. It says that the reason he didn't escape was because he couldn't remove the grille in time, but in the movie it makes it seems he doesn't escape because he's having second thoughts.

Of course everyone is searching the island and water for any sign of the three men who escaped. They found personal belongings that belonged to one of the men but didn't know if this meant that they had drowned or he left them there so that people would think they drowned. They never found any bodies, but there's no evidence to indicate that they were ever found alive, so it's believed that the men probably drowned. You think if they were still alive, they would have come out by now and bragged that they escaped from Alcatraz! Frank Morris would be 86 today if he were still alive, so if he did make it out alive, it's possible he could still be alive today. And, really, would they throw an 86 year old man back in jail if he came forward and confessed that he was Frank Morris? But he most likely died that June night fifty and a half years ago.

But Above All This, I Wish You Love

The Bodyguard
Director: Mick Jackson
Cast: Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston
Released: November 25, 1992

Oscar nominations:
Best Original Song - "I Have Nothing"
Best Original Song - "Run To You" (lost to "A Whole New World" from Aladdin)

Movie confession time: this was my first (and likely only) time seeing The Bodyguard. However, it was my 300 millionth time hearing Whitney Houston belt out the epic love song, "I Will Always Love You" which is so associated with the chanteuse. So much so that I had no idea that Whitney's version was a cover of a song Dolly Pardon had written and recorded in 1974! 1974! That was 18 years before Whitney's cover was released! I have both versions on my iPod and obviously they're both very different as Whitney, the pop singer, sings it as a power ballad, and Dolly, the country crooner, almost sings it in a melancholy style, as a very sad love song. Whitney's version is much "bigger" (and longer) while Dolly's is more low-key which might explain why the cover version is the more popular of the two.

Let's quickly get one thing straight here: The Bodyguard is not a very good movie. It's pretty bad at times. But it's the kind of movie that's still enjoyable to watch because it's not so bad that it's unwatchable. It's still very watchable and that makes it the good kind of a bad movie.

Kevin Costner plays Frank Farmer, a bodyguard (duh) who used to work for Ronald Reagan and still blames himself for the time Reagan was almost assassinated because he wasn't there that day to protect him...even though Reagan didn't die! (Wasn't this a similar plot point for Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire?) He wants to retire, but he's been asked to be the bodyguard for actress/pop singer Rachel Marron (is it me or is that the most vanilla name ever?) played by Whitney Houston. Whitney playing a pop star? Of course I can buy that. She's playing herself. Whitney playing an actress? Sure, I can see it. Whitney playing a Oscar-nominated actress who (spoiler alert!) wins the Oscar? Laughably absurd. I'm sorry, but in what world would Whitney Houston be considered an Oscar-winning actress? The woman could sing flawlessly (well, at least in her heyday) but she was a mediocre actress at best.

Frank Farmer was hired because he's the best in the (bodyguard) business and because Rachel (unbeknownst to her) has been receiving threatening letters from a creepy stalker that only her manager and sister and now Frank know about. They don't want Rachel to know because they don't want to her to worry. Of course she finds out because the stalker makes his way into her dressing room before she's to perform and she sees a menacing letter addressed to her. She is very concerned, not only for her safety, but for that of her young son. Extreme safety measures are put up around the house and Frank Farmer accompanies Ms. Marron wherever she goes. Since Frank always has to be around, Rachel suggests they go out on a date. After they sleep together, Frank tells her it's too dangerous for them to be together because he can't be distracted from protecting her and she gets really angry at him, but of course true love can't tear them apart.

I thought the love aspect of the film, which is the biggest part and main drawl of the movie, was very lacking. I was expecting to see this amazing chemistry bursting on screen, but there is barely anything. I can tell that they care about each other, but I never got the sense they were passionately in love with each other. I only get that when Whitney/Rachel sings "I Will Always Love You." I would have loved to see more of an epic love story, like Jack and Rose...or Jack and Ennis!

One of the nicest moments between the two of them is when they're at a small bar and dance to the original "I Will Always Love You" which is the reason that is "their" song. Speaking of songs, like I mentioned before, I didn't know at first that "I Will Always Love You" was originally recorded by Dolly Parton, but I also didn't know "I Have Nothing" and "Run To You" were written especially for this movie, so technically they're Rachel Marron songs, not Whitney Houston songs. I found out the truth about "I Will Always Love You" a couple years after it was released. I didn't know about these other songs until I just watched the movie. I'm not very familiar with "Run To You," but I love "I Have Nothing" and have it on my iPod. She gets a hilarious (okay, maybe hilarious isn't the right word, but I found it amusing) note from her stalker that says, "I HAVE Nothing, YOU have everything, bitch!" I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that.

Another song I like that Whitney/Rachel sings is "Queen of the Night" even though it sounds exactly like En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" which came out the same year this movie was released. I don't think that's a coincidence!

At the Oscars, Rachel's big night where she's nominated for (and wins!) an Oscar, she is nearly killed when her stalker shows up and aims at gun at her, but Frank Farmer, the best bodyguard in the history of the world, jumps in front of her and takes a bullet for her. His only injury is an arm in a sling. The whole scene at the Oscars made me think of The Naked Gun 33 1/3 and that whole scene at the Oscars where Frank Drebin is trying to stop a terrorist attack at the ceremony and I realized that movie came out two years after The Bodyguard, so I just realized they spoofed it! I probably would have appreciated it more if I watched The Bodyguard before Naked Gun 3!

Do Frank and Rachel end up together? No. Lame!

Christmas with the Griswolds

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Cast: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Galecki, Juliet-Louis Dryfus, Doris Roberts
Released: December 1, 1989

It isn't a real Christmas without the Griswolds! This is just one of my favorite Christmas movies and the one I chose to review for my annual holiday film. I hadn't seen it in awhile, but I remembered everything that happened since I had seen it so many times. (Thank you, NBC). I have seen all the National Lampoon movies and this one is probably my favorite, although I do love the first one, Family Vacation. I remember being disappointed the first time I saw this movie because I was expecting a cartoon. But if you were a kid and you saw opening credits like these, you would expect a cartoon too!:

Love that song. But of course the real movie is much better than any (crappily animated) cartoon could ever be and I soon came to love it. Even though it's a (at times) raunchy comedy with plenty of gross jokes (mostly thanks to Cousin Eddie) and an electrocution of a cat, there is a sweetness to it and almost has an It's a Wonderful Life vibe. Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) wants to have a nice family Christmas at their home outside of Chicago and wants to make it the best Christmas ever. It's a good thing the Griswolds have a large house because joining him and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) and their two children, Audrey (Juliette Lewis) and Rusty (Johnny Galecki), are his parents and Ellen's parents - her mother is played by a pre-Everybody Loves Raymond Doris Roberts. Of course it wouldn't be a National Lampoon movie without Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) who visits without warning in his RV with his wife, Katherine; their two children, Rocky and Ruby Sue; and their aptly-named dog, Snot. Throw in Great Aunt Bethany and Great Uncle Lewis and you have one big, happy (at times) family!

Can you guess which house belongs to the Griswolds? :-p

One of my favorite scenes and probably one of the movie's most memorable is the whole lighting of the house. Clark has covered every square inch of his home with a grand total of 25,000 twinkling white lights and when he invites the entire family outside to see the lighting of the house for the first time, nothing happens when he plugs in the cords. His family, being supportive, tells him it's still lovely even if the lights aren't turned on. The next night, after Clark has checked all the bulbs again, he attempts to try again, but still nothing happens. It's only by accident that the lights are (briefly) turned on when Clark's mother goes into the garage to retrieve something and turns on the light - turns out all they need to do to turn on the Christmas lights is to flip on that switch. All the cords plugged into that electric outlet was humorous - and looked pretty dangerous! I'm pretty sure they were breaking the fire code! Through a series of mishaps, the lights go on and off multiple times, blinding their snooty neighbors, Todd and Margo (Julia Louis-Dryfus before she was Elaine). That scene is so iconic in pop culture that Old Navy has made some cute commercials out of it including this one:

Between these commercials and the recent Old Navy ads with Beverly Hills, 90210 alums, I have to say I am proud to shop at and own clothes from Old Navy!

Another one of my favorite scenes is when Clark and Eddie takes the kids sledding and Clark has that round sled that he greased with something to make it go extra fast -which it did! That was filmed in Breckenridge, Colorado, which I thought was pretty cool since I've been to Breckenridge many times. Of course the film takes place in Chicago and as far as I know there are no mountains in Chicago, but I guess you can just pretend it's a very big hill!

Everything is going wrong for the Griswolds on Christmas Eve: the delicious-looking turkey Katherine made turns out to be completely dry; poor Aunt Bethany's cat (which she accidently put in a box and wrapped) gets electrocuted; Uncle Lewis completely burns the huge Christmas tree Clark was so proud of; the new tree Clark cuts from his yard and brings into his home has a squirrel that springs out and attacks him; Snot chases the squirrel all over the house, wrecking nearly every room in the house; and to make matters worse, the Christmas bonus Clark was expecting turns out to be a jelly-of-the-month club membership ("the gift that keeps on giving" according to Cousin Eddie) and after Clark rants about his boss and tells everybody how much he wants his boss right in front of him so he can call him a string of not-so-nice adjectives, Eddie grants him his wish which results in the police invading the Griswold household. But in the end, everyone has a nice and heartfelt Christmas.

A definite must-see for the holiday season!

Man's Best Friend

Turner and Hooch
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mare Winningham, Craig T. Nelson, Reginald Veljohnson
Released: July 28, 1989

This is one of those movies I loved as a kid, but recently re-watched and it just doesn't hold up. Of course, I still adore Hooch (the dog), a French Mastiff so ugly he's cute, but dang, do those dogs drool! All the time. It's really quite disgusting. Tom Hanks is (Scott) Turner, a tidy and organized detective who acquires the unruly beast after his owner is killed in his boathouse because he is a witness to some shady business going on in a seafood manufacture plant not far from where he resides. Since Hooch was the only "witness" (he was restrained inside and wasn't able to break free until his owner was already dead and the bad guy ran away), Turner takes him, in hoping he can gather evidence on who the murderer is.

Hilarity ensues when Hooch comes to live with Turner (who was always afraid of him when he visited the old man). He sleeps on the porch the first night and howls until Turner can't stand it anymore and takes him in to the garage, the only room in the house Hooch is allowed. While Turner is away at work one day, Hooch gets into the main house and completely obliterates everything and Turner has a (who can blame him?) conniption fit.

But of course, Turner learns to love the dog as his own when he spends more time with Hooch. I remember bawling at this movie when I was little, cuz I remember Hooch gets shot when Turner and the bad guy are having a shootout,  but I forgot what the outcome was as to whether he lived or died. I don't want to give any spoilers for a 23-year-old movie, but let's just say the opposite of what I remembered happened.

Mare Winningham plays the love interest who also happens to be the town vet. She owns a collie and Hooch and the collie must have gotten together (I guess Turner didn't think to neuter Hooch!) because at the end of the movie there are a bunch of little puppies. Here's the kicker: there are about four purebred collie puppies and one purebred French Mastiff. All the puppies are cute, but I'm a little confused: If a collie and a mastiff mated, I don't think you would get purebred collie puppies and a purebred mastiff puppy...you would get a puppy collie/mastiff hybrid you would make up a portmanteau for and call a Colliff or a Massie. So that was really stupid. Of course when I was a kid, that never crossed my mind because I was stupid, but now I know that could never happen!

What lesson did I learn from Turner and Hooch, you know, besides always get your dog neutered? I learned that movies I loved as a child may not be as good when you're a little older, a little wiser, and a little more cynical!

Shameless Plug Time!

Hey everyone.

For the holidays, I made a Tumblr dedicated to Christmas, so please, check it out: My Christmas Tumblr

If you scroll down, you will find a list of 25 Christmas movies and you can see the ones I have seen. I will soon be watching and reviewing my annual Christmas movie and I can tell you it's on that list. I'll give you three hints:

1. It's not Elf, Love, Actually, or Home Alone as I have already reviewed those movies.
2. It's a movie I have seen.
3. It's from the 20th century.

What Do You Think This Is, A Game?

The Game
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, Deborah Kara Unger, James Rebhorn
Released: September 12, 1997

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!!

So I'm at the video store and I'm browsing though the "Favorites" section (only $1 for five nights!) and I pass The Game and I must have heard somebody talk about it on a recent movie podcast (which I listen to many - I should write an entry about that someday) because it had been in the back of my mind as just one of the many movies I should watch someday. I thought, hey why not? It's a psychological thriller; it could be interesting and cool. It's directed by David Fincher; he's given us some good, critically-acclaimed movies. It stars Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as brothers, that's not shabby casting.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this movie, but the ending literally made me say "WTF!?" There will be spoilers, as I have already warned above, so be warned (again) because I don't know how to talk about this movie without giving away any spoilers.

Michael Douglas is Nicolas Van Orton, a very wealthy investment banker who is about to turn 49, the same age his father was when he committed suicide and which Nicolas witnessed. Sean Penn (who is barely in the movie) plays his brother, Conrad, who has had substance abuse problems in the past and who Nicolas rarely sees.

For his birthday, Conrad gives Nicolas a voucher to a company called CRS - Consumer Recreation Services. He can redeem it for a "game" and makes Nicolas promise that he will call them and redeem the ticket. Nicolas asks him what it means, but Conrad doesn't tell him, but only says that it will change his life and it's something he must do.

After hearing some fellow members from his fancy gentlemens' club he frequents (you know, the kind of place with lots of leather furniture where rich old white men smoke cigars and drink whiskey while discussing politics and finance) talking about this so-called "game", he becomes intrigued (especially when they will not tell him what it is, but again imply that it will change his life) and goes to the CRS offices to apply. There, a somewhat unorganized employee helps him with the application form and the process of signing up for this "game". He has to answer a survey of never-ending questions that range from the bizarre to very personal. He also has to go through a series of mental and physical tests; it's almost like he's being trained to be an astronaut or something. There's a lot of waiting time between each test and you can't blame him when he is becoming very testy and snaps at the employee, "You've already taken up my entire day!" when the employee tells him he has to wait just a few more minutes before the results are ready. After this agonizing and irritating day, Nicolas finds it has just been a waste of time when he gets a reject letter in the mail saying he is not qualified for the game.

But Nicolas knows something is up when he returns home one night and there's a creepy life-size clown doll laying in his driveway with a note in its mouth. Why he decides to bring the clown into his house and sit him on a chair in his living room, I have no idea. I would not want that creepy clown anywhere near me! He has the news on in the background and as he's looking over the clown, the newscaster suddenly starts talking like he's having a one on one conversation with Nicolas and that catches his attention and the newscaster tells him there's a camera in the clown's eye. Right now I am both totally intrigued and confused...

The note he finds in the clown's mouth has a key attached to it and the newscaster tells him that he will need to find what the key is for and he will find two more keys and it is up to him to know what the keys are for and when to use them. As the days go on, Nicolas becomes more paranoid and it seems like everyone he comes in contact with has something to do with what's going on around him.

Things start getting out of hand and Nicolas stars to fear for his life and think that CRS is after his money. Conrad confesses to him that CRS if after him too and that he owes them money and even though he paid them double, they won't leave him alone.

So after almost being drowned in a submerged car underwater, after having his home totally ransacked and destroyed, after being drugged and left in a Mexican cemetery, after having to find his way back to the States with only a little money, after (thinking) he accidently shot and killed his brother, and after leaping off the roof of a skyscraper to his death does he find out....it really was a game all along! SURPRISE! The entire thing, from when Conrad gives him the voucher is already in place and planned. Every person that Nicholas meets along the way is in some way involved with this "game" and everything is meticulously planned to how the events will unfold. I was aware of anybody that Nicholas met along the way, like the waitress who gets caught up in his activities...I thought she might have something to do with the whole thing and she did. I just wasn't aware that EVERYBODY he encountered was in on it too. They even planned his "suicide" - when he jumped, he just happened to break through fake glass and land on a huge air mattress where all the guests for his surprise birthday party are waiting for him. Good thing he didn't jump off the other side of the building!

Why this elaborate hoax? Because Conrad thought it would help him embrace life and stop being such a hardass like their father or something, I really don't know. All I know is that if somebody ever did that to me, I would scream expletives at them and NEVER talk to them again. Does Nicholas do that? Noooo. He's not mad at all! He even flirts with the woman who played the waitress and was in on it. Ugh. Interesting premise, stupid ending.

Peach Pit, After Dark, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, oh my!

It's time for season six of Beverly Hills, 90210! 

Dylan - Dylan was only in the first ten episodes, then he left. I had no idea Luke Perry ever left this show (I know he'll eventually come back). I don't know if he left to pursue a movie career or what. Let me remind you that his father was killed in a car explosion during the third season. Dylan vowed he would find who was responsible for it and would make him pay. He finds out that Tony Marchette orchestrated Jack McKay's death. Dylan learns that Tony has a kid by the same name who attends CU, so Dylan audits a class the kid is in and soon learns that Tony is actually Toni - a beautiful girl with loooong, curly hair. Her hair was gorgeous, but my God, that would have to be a fucking pain to deal with! Surprise, surprise, Dylan and Toni fall and love and Dylan confides in her about what her father did and she doesn't believe him at first, but when she point blank asks her father if he killed Dylan's dad, he doesn't deny it. Of course Marchettte is against his daughter's relationship with Dylan. Only Brandon and Kelly know who Toni's father is. Dylan and Toni decide to get married. I'm not sure which engagement happened quicker - theirs or Brenda and Stuart's from season four (although they never went through with the wedding). Dylan and Toni go through with the wedding despite Marchette's non-approval. He has a plan to get rid of Dylan forever and calls him the night after the wedding to ask him to stop by his house. However, Toni is upset because it's raining like crazy and the stray cat that she and Dylan took in has gone missing and Toni says she will go see what her father wants if Dylan stays behind and looks for the cat, so she takes Dylan's car and leaves. Meanwhile, Toni's bodyguard, who is very protective of her and likes and approves of Dylan, is suspicious that Marchette is up to something sinister and tries to get a hold of Dylan, but Toni has taken his phone off the hook so they can spend their wedding night without any phone calls. So he calls....where else, but the Peach Pit and gets a hold of Brandon and tells him his concerns. (Sidenote: this is the '95/'96 season. There were cell phones back then, correct? Surely these rich Beverly Hillies have cell phones, but I guess not). Brandon tries to call Dylan but of course can't get through to him, so he drives over to his house and tells Dylan he think Marchette is up to something no good and they drive to Marchette's house hoping to catch up with Toni. They are a few minutes too late when Toni (remember, she is driving Dylan's car) has to slam on the brakes when a car pulls right in front of her and a guy takes out a gun and shoots her repeatedly. Dylan's car must have tinted windows because I don't think anyone would be that stupid to confuse a girl with long, curly hair for Dylan. Dylan and Marchette have one last stand off at Toni's burial when he takes Dylan aside and hands him a gun and tells Dylan to shoot him, but Dylan denies him, saying that they are even. Well, maybe, but not really. After all, Dylan lost his father AND his wife while Marchette lost his daughter. True, he and Jack McKay were once friends, but seeing as he arranged his death, I don't think he was too upset over it. Dylan decide it's time for him to pack up and leave (he even has his cat in the cat carrier on the back of his motorcycle). We later find out towards the end of the season he is in London living with...(dot dot dot) Brenda! You know Kelly is jealous, you just know it!
A short-lived romance:


Kelly - Kelly spent her summer in New York where she met Colin, an artist who moves to Beverly Hills to be with her, although he lives in a different place while Kelly still lives in the beachhouse where she rooms with Donna and Clare. Colin is supposed to be this AMAZING artist (he was asked to paint a mural for the After Dark), but his "art" looks really cheap if you ask me. Kelly is mad at Colin for missing her 21st birthday which is held at the Rose Bowl Stadium (and Kenny G performs, which is an odd choice for a 21 year old....maybe a 71 year old, but 21?) He couldn't come because he was working on his painting for Kelly's gift and he hadn't completed it yet. At the end of the party, he stops by her house and takes her to see the painting which he has set up on the beach. I burst out laughing when I saw it. It was a huge birthday cake with an angel hovering over it. Tell me that this isn't the worst painting you've ever seen:

Oh, man, that makes me giggle everytime I see it! Turns out Collin is addicted to cocaine and when Kelly catches him high, he tells her, it's only for the holidays to give him a boost and that he'll stop, but he doesn't. Kelly starts getting into it after she spends a day with her dad and he leaves without telling her goodbye and leaves her $5000 and tells her to buy something nice. Kelly has the cocaine because Colin had given it to Valerie to hold on for him and she had given it to Kelly, saying that it was her boyfriend's, so it was her problem, so Kelly, feeling dejected, snorted it. The next few episodes she's spirals downward, skipping classes, fighting with her friends and spending all her time with Colin, always high. She finally manages to get help and is sent to a rehab center where she spends a few weeks. She and Colin break up and she tells Colin that he should get help, but he says he doesn't need any. Uh huh. One of the dealers that he and Kelly often went to, comes to Colin's place, asking Colin if he can give him a ride somewhere (not sure how he got to Colin's place in the first place...). He doesn't have any money to pay him, but says he'll give Colin this new stuff that's suppose to be awesome and hands Colin a vial of powder. Colin drives him where there's obviously some drug sellin' and usin' going on. Turns out there's a sting and Colin, alone in the car, realizes he has the drugs and gets the hell out of there which results in the police chasing him OJ-style and it's on TV and it's the funniest thing ever. "Oh my, God, I think that's Colin's van!" Brandon says to Valerie as they watch it at (where else?) the Peach Pit. Kelly is watching it in her rehab room with her roommate. Of course Colin is caught and I'll finish up his story when I talk about Valerie...

Kelly's rehab roommate is a young girl named Tara. (She's played by the same actress who played Veruca, the she-wolf who tried to kill Willow and go after Oz in season 4 of Buffy). Tara ran away from home; she is originally from Colorado, and got into drugs and living on the streets and finally got some help at the rehab place. When it was time for her to leave (and, uh, I don't think she was ready to leave!), Kelly said that she could live with her and Donna and Clare for as long as she needed. Donna and especially Clare are not very happy with this arrangement because Tara stays out her welcome. We soon find out that Tara is Loony Tunes when she gets jealous of Kelly's new boyfriend, the med student she met at the rehab center and after she goes bowling with the two of them and David, she tells the doc that she doesn't think it's in Kelly's best interest for her to see anyone at the moment. Then she calls a flower company and orders two sets of flowers. The first set it sent to Kelly and it says, "I never want to talk to you again." And it's signed from the doc. The second set is for the doc and it says, "Please never talk to me again, Love, Kelly." Then Tara, who has shoulder-length brown hair, goes to the salon and she gets a blonde bob - exactly like Kelly! (Speaking of Kelly's hairstyle, I hated it. She looked way too matronly!) That's the point where Kelly realizes something is wrong. When Kelly discovers that Tara has letters in her suitcase from her parents asking her to come home (she told Kelly that she never heard from them when she tried to contact them), she confronts Tara about them and Tara takes out a gun she had been hiding and demand Kelly take them for a drive. They end up on the edge of a cliff where Tara, who has tied up Kelly's hands, has hooked up a hose from the exhaust pipe to the inside of the car. She tells Kelly that they are both going to fall asleep and never wake up. Kelly, the oh-so-clever psychology student, uses reverse psychology and tells Tara that she wants to die, but she wants to be untied because she doesn't want to die "like this" and Tara says, "You'll just try to get away!" and Kelly assures her she won't, so Tara agrees and as soon as Kelly has her hands free, she grabs fro the gun in Tara's lap and they're both fighting over it and it goes off and shoots the top of the car. Next scene they're at a hospital where Tara has been sent to the psych ward (I think it's the same one where Emily Valentine was sent to). Tara's parents show up in case you were wondering.

Valerie - Valerie hasn't done a good job of making friends in Beverly Hills, so she and her friend, Ginger, from Buffalo who is visiting, come up with a scheme to make them like her better. She will pay Ginger if Ginger steals all her friends' things, then Valerie will expose her to her friends and think her a hero. Valerie does find herself becoming closer to the gang except for Kelly who has never trusted her completely. Even Donna, who knows that Valerie slept with her boyfriend, learns to like and become friends with Valerie. Valerie starts dating David and she wants to take their relationship slow because she doesn't want to mess it up. It's only when she is falling in love with him that everything is messed up for her when Ginger comes back to town, saying she will expose that Valerie was in on the plan for Ginger to steal her friends' stuff (she has evidence) and that she will only leave once and for all if Valerie pays her 50 grand or lets her spend one night with David ala Indecent Proposal. Since Valerie doesn't have that kind of money, she lets her friend spend the night with David. She is relieved when David tells her that nothing happened between her and Ginger because he told Ginger that he was in love with Valerie, but he broke up with her because he was disappointed that she would just let him spend the night with another girl (hmmm, I bet most guys would love that....obviously you can't beat the hotness that is T.A.T., but Ginger wasn't a bad-looking girl) and when Valerie told him she didn't have a choice, he said, "You always have a choice, Val." Heartbroken, Valerie turns to another heartbroken soul in the form of Colin. They had met years ago on a tour of Europe when they were teens. Small world, I know. She is trying to get him to stop with the drug use but we all know how that turned out. She says she will get him the best lawyer but things don't turn out so well and he is sentence to jail and Colin bails and runs away and if he doesn't show up within a certain time period, Valerie will owe a bunch of money and so will Nat because Valerie runs the After Dark which is connected to the Peach Pit so any money that Val can't pay will come out of the Peach Pit. They do find Colin, who is thankfully still in L.A. in the last episode. Speaking of Nat, he gets in contact with a long lost love and finds out he is going to be a father....uh, I don't know how old Nat is suppose to be (40 something at the youngest), but his wife-to-be (of course he proposes) looks like she's about to start menopause, just saying! 


Donna - Donna was dating Ray during the first half of the season but wants to break up with him because he's being abusive to her. He tells her that he will get help and she likes that idea but still wants to break up with him. When Ray sees that Joe, a new guy who likes Donna, has walked her home, he gets jealous (because he had been waiting for her on her porch like a creepy stalker) and hurts her by holding her arms really tight. When Joe hears her whimpering, he comes back and decks Ray several times. Ray takes it to the police and Joe and Donna are ordered to court where Donna must admit to her parents that Ray abused her and it will become public record. After a talk from Brandon, Ray admits that it was his fault and he tells Donna he is sorry and that he won't bug her ever again.

David and Donna start making videos for semi-famous singers (like Ray Pruitt) and are picked up by some major music company. Donna learns that Ray is better and is now engaged to another girl. Wow, that was quick. 

Donna decides to run for Rose Bowl Queen who will be featured as the Queen of the Rose Bowl Parade. She doesn't win, but she gets in the finals which means she can still be in the Parade. She starts dating Joe who got her the most annoying Christmas/birthday present: a squawking bird that Joe has taught to say, "Joe loves Donna!" Ugh, poor Kelly and Clare. Can you imagine your roommate having a bird that said, "JOE LOVES DONNA! JOE LOVES DONNA." No wonder Clare was happy when the bird got lost. They found it but in the end they donated it to the bird sanctuary. Speaking of 
Donna's pets, whatever happened to her dog?????? 

Joe proposes to her at the end and wants her to move back to Pennsylvania where he's from (he's at CU for football) and wants to teach football to kids, but she declines because she's from Beverly Hills, for God' sakes. She doesn't want to be a high school football coach's wife in some small town in PA! This ain't Friday Night Lights! Of course she was much more gracious when she broke up with him and did at least cry. 

David - David and Donna get back together in the last episode! He dated Valerie for awhile, but we all know how that turned out. 

David is dealing with his mother, who he and his dad found homeless on the streets of Portland last season. She tries to commit suicide, but gets help. This brings him closer to Valerie because she knows what he is going through because her own father killed himself. 

Brandon - Brandon starts dating Susan who's the editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. She's played by Emma Caufield of BtVS fame. (She played Anya). They break up at the end of the season when Susan gets an invite to go to Washington D.C. to work on the campaign (the '96 campaign, that is!) and they were supposed to go on a roadtrip across the USA. Brandon is pissed at her because he had the opportunity to intern for a newspaper in Boston that would guarantee him a job when he graduated college, but turned it down because of the road trip. Since Brandon met Susan early in the season, most of his story lines involve her. They go skiing with Steve, Clare, and David and they (Brandon and Susan), being competitive skiiers, ski down an unmarked mountain and Susan hurts her ankle and they have to stay overnight in a cave. In another episode, they win $5000 in a lottery, but they get mad at each other when the ticket is lost and they both thought the other one had it. (It later turns up in a travel book they'd been reading). And they go to visit Susan's parents who still haven't gotten over the death of Susan's older sister who died a year ago when she was hit by a car. Oh, and how could I forget? They get trapped in an elevator during a power outage with a (of course) pregnant woman who (of course) goes into labor and they (of course) have to deliver the baby. 

Brandon thought he was selling his house, but he learns the people who are buying it want to tear it down so he decides not to sell it and lives there with Valerie and Steve...and maybe some other roommates...I'm not sure. I'm glad they didn't tear down the house...I would have missed it. I love that house! 

Steve - Because of Steve's low GPA in math, he needs a tutor, so Clare tells him that she will help him. They bicker, but this leads to them dating and I must say I think that they are one of the best couples of the entire series. Yes, even better than Brenda/Dylan or Kelly/Dylan. Despite Clare being really smart and Steve being a slacker, they mesh very well together. It's funny because I LOATHED Clare when we were first introduced to her back in season 4. I just hated the way that she was always draping herself over Brandon, but now that she's stopped doing that, I actually quite like Clare. And she and Steve make a great team. 

Steve has his big 21st birthday bash at the end of the season. (The funny thing is that Ian Zeiring was probably 31 when he filmed it!) Clare's friend, a prince, hosts a big party for him on a huge yatch and they have the Goo Goo Dolls play. Much better than Kenny G, if you ask me. This is the episode where they find and catch Colin. 

Remember how Steve was adopted? Well he (and the viewing audience!) finds out who his real birth father is...it's his adoptive father! Well, who he thought was his adoptive father is his biological father! See, Steve's dad had an affair with Steve's biological mom and when he found out she was putting the baby up for adopting, he decided to adopt his own son. He never told anyone so Samantha Sanders, Steve's adopted mom and the TV star, has no idea that Steve is her husband's real biological kid. Do you have a headache yet?