Adventures with the Baby-Sitter

The Sitter

Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Jonah Hill, Max Records, Sam Rockwell
Released: December 9, 2011

I can't compare a movie about a baby-sitter having a crazy night with their charges without also mentioning one of my favorite movies from the '80s, Adventures in Baby-Sitting which I already wrote a review, but for the purpose of this review I will be comparing the two movies.

In The Sitter, we have college student Noah (Jonah Hill) who lives at home with his single mom and has a "girlfriend", Marisa. I say girlfriend lightly because their relationship is very one-sided. She only wants to be around him when it's beneficial for her and doesn't care about what he wants, but he doesn't seem to care that she's just using him and thinks things will be better. In Adventures in Baby-Sitting, we have high school senior Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) who is dating a popular, but douchey guy named Mike (played by a pre-Josh Lyman Bradley Whitford).

Both Noah and Chris have plans that do not involve baby-sitting, but somehow get suckered into it at the last minute. They don't belong to the Baby-Sitters Club where they meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and clients can call them on those days from 5:30-6 to set up baby-sitting appointments! (Did you ever notice in those books NOBODY ever needed them to baby-sit when they were having their meetings? Huh...how convenient!) Noah has plans to watch some documentary on TV he's interested in and Chris has plans to go out with Mike. (Noah is not as popular as Chris!) Noah's mom is supposed to go out but gets a call from the Pedullas needing someone to watch their three kids. Noah doesn't want to, but knows if he doesn't, then his mom will and she will miss her social function which she has been looking forward to, so he agrees to baby-sit. Mike cancels on Chris when he tells her he can't go out because his younger sister is sick and he has to watch her. The Andersons call later needing a baby-sitter for their daughter.

Noah's charges include the Pedullas' two biological kids, Slater (Max Records...he was the kid in Where the Wild Things Are), a thirteen-year-old who is very neurotic and thinks everybody is after him and needs his medication to keep him calm and Blithe, who is six or seven and likes to wear tons of make up and talk about how "hot" everything and everybody is and always has "hot gossip" to share. There's also their adopted son from Guatemala, Rodrigo, who is twelve or thirteen and likes to destroy things and set cherry bombs in public bathrooms. He's kinda useless to the movie and only comes in as a plot device for one scene.

While Chris is only supposed to baby-sit for Sarah, an eight-year-old who idolizes Thor (and for the longest time...well up until the recent Thor movie came out, I had no idea that Thor was a real character...I thought he was made up for the movie! And no, I am not joking, I actually thought that. I don't care about comic books, obviously!) Sarah's older brother, Brad, a freshman in high school has a huge crush on Chris and when he finds out she's baby-sitting Sarah, he decides to stay home even though he was suppose to spend the night at his friend's Darryl's house.

Both Noah and Chris aren't at their charges' homes very long before they both receive calls that will change their entire nights. Noah gets a call from Marisa who's at a party (even though she told him earlier that day she had gotten food poisoning and was too sick to do anything!) and asks him to stop by at a guy she knows to get some drugs and drop them off at the party. She promises him that if he does her this favor, she will have sex with him. Chris gets a call from her best friend, Brenda, who has decided to run away from home because her stepmom is driving her crazy. She spent all her money taking a taxi downtown to the bus station where she is now stuck with a bunch of unstable people and wants Chris to come and get her. Two very different situations and Noah comes across as the worst baby-sitter in this situation because he doesn't even hesitate about going - he just grabs the kids and off they go on their adventure. Even though Chris's situation is more dire (hmmm....help your best friend who is in serious trouble or score drugs for a girl who treats you like crap....no contest!), she has hesitations about going and tells Brad to watch Sarah while she's gone but they tell her if they do that they'll tell her parents so she's forced to take them with her along with Darryl who happens to stop by at that time.

Both head out with the kids and their evenings turn into complete nightmares. Let's see if I can remember all the mishap they get into: Noah has to make a stop at a department store to get new underwear and pants for Blithe after she has an accident (why they didn't just go back home, I don't know) and one of the workers and customers, who also happens to be an old classmate from high school, find it suspicious that a grown man is hanging out around little girls' underwear and when the worker asks Blithe if she knows him, she replies with, "I only just met him" and there's a conversation that puts him in a bad light. When they return to the car, they find out that Rodrigo has ran away, but with a tracking device, Noah finds him at a fancy restaurant where he's planted a cherry bomb in the bathroom and a toilet explodes. He manages to get drugs and while he's there, Rodrigo comes in saying he has to use the bathroom. When Noah leaves, he notices that Rodrigo has a huge egg-shaped item that he said he took. Noah tries to grab it from him, it breaks and cocaine spills all over him and the car. The druglord finds him and tells him he owns him 10 grand. Noah gets an idea to go to a bar mitzvah for twin girls in Slater's class who have invited him. They'll attend the party and he'll steal all the checks people have written for the twins. While he's there, he meets a girl working as a waitress who used to go to high school with him and it turns out she likes him and had a crush on him back then (and she is much prettier than his current "girlfriend"...hmm, dude...get a clue!). More shenanigans transpire including a huge fight, Noah breaking into his father's jewelry store to steal diamonds, getting arrested, stealing a car, getting held by gunpoint...I don't think those are in chronological order, but you get the idea!

I remember the events of Adventures because I've seen that movie many more times (as opposed to the one time I watched The Sitter). Their car breaks down and a tow truck stops and offers to take them to a garage. I would not have gotten in the car with that guy...he was creepy, and not just because he had a hook for a hand. No, it was the way he kept laughing manically. They never make it to the garage because the truck driver gets in a gun fight with some guy and Chris and the kids make a run for it and end up in a stolen car that is driven to a huge warehouse where they are taken upstairs to a room to be dealt with later. They manage to escape by crossing a beam across the ceiling and climbing out a broken window. Of course nobody happens to look up except for the one "good" car thief. The bad guys discover the kids are gone and start chasing them. The kids end up in a blues bar where nobody is allowed to leave until they sing the blues - that place looked pretty crowded too; it must take a long time for all those people to sing the blues and leave. Anyway, that's one of the most memorable scenes of the movies but while watching it this time, it made me wonder why all these people were laughing and cheering about this seventeen year old singing about how her best friend is probably dead and her car broke down and there's these bad guys after them...I mean, you think one of these people would think, "Hmm, these young kids are in heaps of trobule - maybe I should contact the authorities?" Uh, no! They end up on a subway while running away from the bad guys, again, and discover they are sitting in a car between two gangs who are about to kill each other. Chris tries to stop them, but one of the guys calls her a bitch and Brad gets mad and tries to stand up for her resulting in a knife being thrown in his foot. This scene gives us the best line of the movie when Chris says, "Don't **** with the baby-sitter!" You would never hear one of the girls from the BSC say that! They take Brad to the hospital, they find themselves at a college party where Chris meets a nice guy who hits on her and lends her the money, they get their car back from a Thor look-a-like, and everything seems to be going well and they can finally pick up Brenda until they pass the French restaurant where Chris was suppose to have dinner with Mike and sees that Mike's car is parked out front so he obviously went there without her...what a jerk!

She goes in there to confront him where she finds him having dinner with another girl who has a piggish face. The same thing happens in the other movie when Slater is at the baz mitzvah and sees his best friend there with another friend who had previously told him that he couldn't hang out because he was sick and it turned out he just didn't want to hang out with Slater...what a jerk! Back to Adventures where Darryl kicks Mike into another table and they leave all happy that they taught that jerk a lesson. But, oh no! Sarah is missing! Thinking that she went to a toy store nearby, they run over and check, but she's not there. Brad notices the building his dad works in and where he and the Misses is tonight. The building is nowhere near their location and they decide to run there, not go back to their car and drive there like any normal person would do. What idiots! So they get to the building and there's evidence that Sarah is there too. She's being chased by two bad guys and she goes all the way to the top floor and when she sees one of them has followed her, she decides to climb out of a broken window with a rope. I think this little girl had a suicidal wish: when she was in the truck and there were bullets flying past her, she was laughing and clapping her hands and when she was in the subway and the two gangs took out their pocket knifes, her eyes lit up. And now she's climbing out of a fifty-story building. The best part is when she's right outside these huge windows where the party her parents are at is being held (just two stories below where she climbed out) and even though the party is full of people, NOBODY notices her except for the other bad guy and Chris who has disguised herself with a large fur coat. Yeah, right! I call shenanigans!

Both movies end similarly. Once everything is situated, both Noah and Chris have to race back to their charges' homes before the parents arrive back. They both do this and tidy up the home with just minutes to spare. The only slight difference is in The Sitter where all three kids are watching TV with Noah when the parents get back at one in the morning, where in Adventures, Chris had the common sense to tell them all to get upstairs to bed. When Chris leaves, she runs into the guy she met at the frat party and they kiss with the kids looking out the window. And when Noah is leaving he runs into the girl he met at the bar mitzvah (there was a whole other storyline involving her) and kisses her while the kids are watching from the window, it was a shoutout!

I would say The Sitter is slightly (only slightly) a little more realistic than Adventures in Baby-Sitting, but I have to say Adventures is the better movie. Yes, I've seen it many times and I love it, so I may be a little biased!

MTV Movie Award Nominations

I discuss the movies nominated for the MTV Movie Awards:

Read my The Help review here
Read my Bridesmaids review here
Read my Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 review here
Read my The Hunger Games review here
View my Breaking Dawn Part 1 video review with my comical co-host companion Cameron here (Yes, I love alliteration!)

My New Year's Failure!

11 '11 quick movie reviews

1. The Rise of the Planet of the Apes - This is the first Planet of the Apes movie I've seen. I've never seen the original movie or that God-awful Tim Burton one from 2001. But this one was getting good word-of-mouth and thought I would check it out when it was available on Netflix. It stars James Franco who's been testing a drug on chimps to try to cure Alzheimer's which is what his dad (John Lithgow) has. They have to shut down the facility because one of the apes goes balistic and they have to shoot her. Turns out she had a baby and was only protecting him, so Franco ends up taking it home and caring for it. The chimp is named Ceasar and is super smart from the drug. He can solve puzzles and communicate with sign language. However, after he attacks the neighbor (because he is being a bully to Lithgow) he is taken by animal control and sent to a primate shelter where all the primates are being abused by the owner and one of his slimy little workers, Tom Felton, who of course everyone knows as Draco Malfoy. All the apes are created by computers because obviously there's no way they could have used real primates...that would have been a little difficult to have them do what's done in the film by the CGI ones. I have to be honest...while somebody has mad skills with the computers, all the apes still looked exactly like that...like computer apes. The main ape is played by Andy Serkis in the same vein as he played Gollum in Lord of the Rings. The orangutang was my favorite...he was really cute! The gorilla scared me the most, probably because I had a horrifying experience with a gorilla when I was little. Not a real gorilla, but an animatronic one. I used to go to this kiddie place called ShowBiz Pizza (kinda like Chuck E Cheese...do they even still have those around?) and they had a stage where a band of different animals (some animatronic, some people in costume) would play different instruments. You had your cute little bunny or doggie or friendly lion or whatever, and they you had this HUGE gorilla. He was taller and wider than all the other animals, so he was very intimidating and it scared me so much! The gorilla in the movie is much bigger and more aggressive than the other primates and has to be kept in a special cage when all the other primates are playing together. Of course, he's the one who ends up sacrificing his life for Caesar. There's a little teaser at the end of the movie that hints that there may be a sequel...or maybe not because it shows that a virus has spread around the world and is killing people in droves...kinda like Contagion.

2. Beginners - The beginners in question are Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor who play father and son in this coming-of-age film. After Plummer's wife dies, he admits to his son, that, at the age of 75 he is gay and wants to live the remainder of his life as who he really is and has a relationship with a much younger man played by Goran Visnjic. Plummer's scenes are told in flashbacks because he has already died of cancer in the film's "real time" which focuses on McGregor and his relationship with a woman played by Melanie Laurent. It was a sweet little movie with a cute little dog to boot.

3. Friends With Benefits - Dear God in heaven, what idiot came up with the bright idea to have Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis star in a movie where they're naked most of the time?! God, they are so hideous! Calm down, people, I'm just joking. If anything, this movie will make you feel even more insecure about yourself because both actors are ridiculously gorgeous and have the added benefit of being rich so they can afford a trainer. Oh, and I'm sure the airbrushing department helped too.  They're not really friends in the movie, though. They've just met through work so they're more like co-workers who decide to have casual sex with no strings attached (hey, the name of that other movie with the same plot!) so it should have been called Co-Workers With Benefits, but that would have been weird. Kudos to this movie for reminding the world what an awesome song "Closing Time" is. (By Semisonic, NOT by Third Eye Blind :-))

4. Kung Fu Panda 2 - I thought the first Kung Fu Panda was really cute and charming and this one is no different. When it comes to Pixar vs. Dreamworks, I am always Team Pixar; the only animated movies from Dreamworks I've ever enjoyed are the Kung Fu Panda movies and How to Train Your Dragon. In the sequel, we are once again introduced to Po the panda (Jack Black) and his team of fighting animals: the tiger (Angelina Jolie), the monkey (Jackie Chan), the snake (Lucy Liu), the praying mantis who is so strong that he can hold a panda back (Seth Rogan), and a crane (David Cross). Po finds out that he was adopted (pretty obvious since he was raised by a goose) and wants to find out who he really is and where he came from. The villain in this film is a peacock voiced by Gary Oldman. And just like a real peacock, he was also strutting around and acting vain. By the looks of how the movie ended, they definitely have a third movie set up. (It turns out Po's father - his real biological panda father - is still alive).

5. 30 Minutes or Less - Jesse Eisenberg plays a pizza delivery boy who finds himself in a situation where these two idiots who need money have knocked him out and strapped a bomb to him and tell him if he doesn't get them $100,000, he's going to be blown to smithereens. Aziz Azari plays his friend who tries to help him rob a bank. There were a few funny moments (like him speeding to the houses so nobody gets a free pizza), but for the most part the movie is filled with stupid racial and homophobic jokes.  Okay, I did laugh when one of the idiots calls Aziz's sister "Slumdog".  Only see this one if you can see it for free.

6. Crazy, Stupid Love - I didn't love this movie as much as all the critics did, but it was an enjoyable watch. Steve Carrell and Julianne Moore play a couple who split up after he finds out that she's had an affair with someone she works with. Carrell, who plays a bit of a doofus, spends some time at a bar to try to pick up women and gets some help from Ryan Gosling who is a certified smooth-talking ladies' man. Carrell soon starts picking up women and starts a relationship with Marisa Tomei, who turns out to be his son's middle school teacher. Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling makes the moves on Emma Stone who's already in a lackluster relationship with Josh Groban (in what I believe is his first movie role). Carrell's son is in love with his baby-sitter, who in turn, is in love with Steve Carrell. I didn't buy that at all because what teenage girl would have the hots for some goofy older guy? There's a little twist at the end that I won't spoil.

7. Cowboys and Aliens - You think a western/sci fimovie with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig (Indiana Jones and James Bond, for God's sake) would be awesome, but no, it was just as bad as all the critics said it was. The concept was cool, but they just couldn't get there. Skip this one, folks.


8. The Hangover 2 - Everyone was right when they said this is an exact replica of the first one, only it takes place in Bangkok instead of Vegas and there's a monkey instead of a tiger. This time the gang is in Thailand for Stu's (Ed Helms) wedding and once again he, Phil (Bradley Cooper), and Alan (Zach Galafanakis) get drugged and spend a wild night and forget everything they did when they wake up the next morning. Stu's fiance's little brother was with them and he's the one they lose and need to find. (Of course they check the roof first since that's where they found Doug in the first movie). There were some funny lines, but you'd be better off watching the first movie. I really don't understand how you could be so stupid that you get that s***-faced twice! And now I heard they're making a third one. God, please, no!

9. Our Idiot Brother - Paul Rudd plays Ned, the "idiot brother", his three sisters are played by Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, and Emily Mortimer. After Ned sells weed to a cop (in uniform!) he loses his job and his girlfriend kicks him out of their house after he returns from jail. To make matters worse, she has a new boyfriend and is keeping Ned's dog, Willie Nelson. Ned seeks help from his family, but only makes matters worse. He finds out one of his sister's husband is cheating on her, accidently tells another sister's girlfriend that she cheated on her with a guy and is pregnant, and messes up the friendship of the third sister with this guy she knows. Of course his intentions are good, but he doesn't know that he's not always helping. The scene that made me laugh the most was when he was on the subway and is counting a big chunk of money while everyone is staring at him. He drops his bag and gives the guy next to him the money to hold while he picks up the things from his bag. The guy is just looking dumbfounded at everyone and it looks like he wants to bolt, but he doesn't.

10. Abduction - This movie did not make any sense. I was confused throughout the whole thing. It stars Taylor Launter, who is a horrible actor but does have some charisma, I'll give him that, as a high school senior, who, while doing a project for a class, finds out he is in the database for missing children. Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello, his "fake" parents are killed off by the bad guys who are alerted when Launter accesses the missing children database. In a plot I don't fully understand, Launter's mom was attacked and killed in Paris when he was a toddler because....uh.....I don't remember. I honestly don't know why. Well his dad is still alive and he has some list that the bad guys want...IDK. This movie was so effing stupid! I thought it might be good because it was directed by John Singleton and it has Jason Isaacs in it! Alas, he does not last long in this movie.... Lily Collins (I believe she's Phil's daughter) plays Launter's love interest and she's always with this other guy who is fighting with her and giving Launter the evil eye, but she tells him that he's not her boyfriend and there's this weird history between her and Launter where they used to be childhood friends, but then they drifted apart. They're also neighbors...sounds like Drive Me Crazy! She really has no use for the movie other than to be arm candy for Launter (and let's face it...he's the prettier one between them!) Sigourney Weaver (another cool person wasted in a crappy film) was right when she tells him that he should get rid of her. The movie was confusing because I was really never sure where they were. It takes place in Pittsburgh, but they (Lautner and Collins) find themselves in Virginia, but then I see Lautner's friend and I'm wondering how the hell he got to Virginia, but they were back in Pittsburgh...uh....HUH? And that happens twice! Stupid movie.

11. Rango - This won the best animated Oscar this year. Johnny Depp voices a lizard who finds himself in a town full of interesting characters that included mice, cats, birds, and snakes. (Still not sure what exactly Beans, his love interest, was suppose to be). He had been used to being alone his entire life and always wanted to be somebody and now gets the chance when he is put in a situation where he has to find out what's happening to the town's water supply.

Class of '93

I wrote about the first two seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 and now it's time to share my thoughts on the third season! I know you are as excited as I am!

Gotta love that theme song!

I'm slowly but surely getting through each season of BH, 90210 and I just finished the third season aka the gang's senior year of high school. Again, I will go through each of the eight main characters but first I should tell you one of the biggest storylines of the season involved three characters: Brenda, Kelly, and Dylan. As you know, Dylan and Brenda were a couple last season, but Brenda's dad wanted her to stop seeing Dylan because he thought he was a bad influence on Brenda, but they still see each other behind her parents' backs. The Walshes think Brenda is getting too serious with Dylan and decide to send her on a six-week school trip to Paris so they can spend some time apart. While they are apart, Dylan and Kelly start spending some time together and they kiss and there are sparks between them. When Brenda comes home, Dylan and Kelly don't tell her what happened and Kelly avoids them when they are together, but Brenda eventually learns that Dylan had a summer fling, but she doesn't know who it was with. When she finds out it was with Kelly, she gets pissed and she and Kelly stop talking to each other for awhile and Dylan leaves town for awhile because he has to think things over. Eventually Kelly and Brenda become friends again and they decide to tell Dylan he has to choose between one or the other and Dylan eventually chooses Kelly and this pisses Brenda off again and she stops talking to Kelly...again, but by the end of the series they're cool again. :::exhaustive eye roll:::

Brenda - So like I mentioned earlier, Brenda goes to Paris with Donna for six weeks. While she's there she meets a pre-Superman Dean Cain, a college student from Wisconsin. Brenda decides to have some fun and pretends to be Parisian and offers to show him around the city. They kiss (and Brenda feels guilty because she's with Dylan even though she has no idea he's cheating on her back home, poor thing) and Dean wants Brenda to join him in touring the rest of France together but she says no, that she has a boyfriend. Well imagine what a coincidence it is when she's been back in BH for awhile and when she and her friends are at a video store (yes, you read that right!), Dean happens to come in the store and instead of just hiding and waiting until he leaves, Brenda goes up to him, still pretending to be French and says she's in the States visiting family after Dean tells her he's transferred to UCLA (another coincidence!) They go out a couple times and I can't remember if Brenda has already broken up with Dylan or not. She confesses who she really is and decides she doesn't want to be with him even though he likes her and is not mad at her for deceiving him. At the end of the series when the gang is getting ready to start their college journeys, Brenda was planning on going to California University (is that even a real school?) with her brother, but starts deciding she might attend the University of Minnesota. When her mom asks if this decision has anything to do with Dylan, she says, "Mom, this is the '90s. I'm not going to base my decision on where to go to college based on some guy." BWAH!

Dylan - Besides having to decide between Brenda and Kelly, Dylan's main story line revolves around his dad who has recently gotten out of prison for embellzement or something...I really don't know. Anyway, there are some bad guys after him and they rig his car so when he gets in it, it explodes and he's killed. Dylan almost got into the car because he had to move his dad's car, but Kelly called him and his dad said he would move the car...and that was the end of Jack McKay. He was engaged to be married to a woman and Dylan finds out she was working undercover to find out information from him, but that she had fallen in love with him and had intended to marry him even though he had no idea she was working undercover. We never hear from her again after that. There's one episode where Dylan is trying to "discover" himself after Kelly and Brenda tell him he needs to choose between them and he goes to a horse ranch where he meets an older (and might I say fugly) woman who's suppose to be all sexy and is trying to seduce him and tells him, "You can't just ride the same horse." Uh...yeah. At the end of the season, Dylan decides to travel through Europe and take Kelly with him. 

Kelly - Kelly was suppose to go to Paris with Brenda and Donna, but decides to stay home with her new baby sister, Erin. It's weird to think that baby Erin is now Silver on 90210 the new class and all the shit she'll be going through in about 17 years. Poor baby Erin Silver! Kelly thinks she's fat and starts working out all the time and taking diet pills, so she becomes a huge bitch because she's always exercising and never eats. The thing that drives me the most crazy is that when she's on the treadmill, she's not even wearing her hair up in a ponytail! She's wearing it down! WTF? I don't know anyone with long hair who exercises with their hair down! For one thing, it make you get hot and uncomfortable quicker, for another, your hair would get in the way! Kelly faints at a party and has to be rushed to the hospital where she then joins a support group for teens who are starving themselves. She doesn't stay in there very long... Last season, Kelly's mom and David's dad got married (and produced Erin), but while Kelly, Brenda, Donna, and Andrea were staying at spa with Jackie and Cindy, Brenda overheard one of the massage therapists tell one of the other women she was having an affair with a dentist named Mel Silver, so Brenda tells Kelly who tells her mom who divorces Mel. Kelly is afraid her mom is going to resort back to drugs, but she stays clean. Jackie hasn't used since season 1. I'm so proud of her! Kelly and Dylan win "Best Looking" for the yearbook. Gag me with a spoon!

Brandon - At the senior lunch, a group of girls (including Brenda - how weird) sing a song for Brandon with lyrics like, "Brandon - likes a girl who's dreamy; Brandon - likes a girl who's creamy." No, seriously, that's how they went. WTF? A note about that senior lunch: it was all about the eight main characters and nobody else. Anyway, the song was an ode to all of Brandon's girlfriends this season. He met a girl over the summer while playing volleyball and dated her until he realized she was a racist; then he started going with a sophomore named Nikki who used to be in an abusive relationship with David Arquette, but they break up when she moves back to San Francisco to reconcile with her family. Brandon is definitely the do-gooder as he invites a homeless vet from Desert Storm to spend Thanksgiving with his family (they had this very same storyline last season when Brenda invited a homeles man dressed as Santa Claus to spend Christmas with them). Another social economic storyline Brandon is involved with is when there's violence at another school their football team was supposed to play against and the game and dance that was supposed to follow is cancelled. Brandon also gets in some serious trouble when he starts gambling and when he can't pay his bookie a couple times, Nat has to come and bail him out.

Andrea - So in the middle of the season, Andrea is hit by a car pretty badly and is in a body cast. She has to wear casts on her legs and be in a wheelchair/crutches and then two episodes later, she's totally fine. Yeah.... Anyway, she was hit by some guy who races car and Brandon found out who it was because Andrea told him she remembered there was a star hanging from the rearview mirror and when Brandon was betting on drag racing, he saw a car that fit her description. Andrea butts heads a lot this year with the new English teacher, Gil Meyers, because he made Brandon the new editor in chief of The Blaze and Andrea is livid! 

David - David becomes the Vanilla Ice of the season when he decides he wants to be a rap star. At first he hires Steve to be his manager after Steve persuades him, but Steve screws up and David goes to a record company who tell him they'll only sign him if he drops Steve. 

Donna - Like I mentioned earlier, Donna goes to Paris with Brenda and while she's there she meets an older man who wants to make her a model (somewhere my brother is laughing because he thinks, and I quote, "that Tori Spelling is the ugliest person on TV".), but of course he's just taking advantage of her and she doesn't get to live her dream of being a world famous model. Boo - poor little rich girl. There's a funny/awkward scene where Donna and David are in the video store looking in the porn section and Donna's priest just so happens to be there and walk up to them. Uh huh. And she feels all guilty because she's in the adult section and her priest is just making conversation with her. AWKWARD! For the Christmas episode, Donna was in charge of having the gang go to an elementary school and hand out presents and everyone is mad at each other and she's having a hard time getting anybody to go. The episode was really awful; it was a rip off of It's a Wonderful Life where two (celestial) "stars" were narrating the story and at one point the female star calls Donna "an angel sent down from Earth" or some stupid shit like that. In fact the title of the show was called It's a Totally Happening Life". Yeah... Donna gets smashed at the senior prom and all the students were warned beforehand that if they were intoxicated at the prom, they would be expelled from school. David's dad let everyone have a glass of champagne before the dance and Donna had more to drink on the limo ride over. The gang start a crusade to let her graduate and decide to have the entire senior and junior class walk out during finals. While Brandon Brenda, and the others were calling their peers to tell them the plan, I couldn't help thinking how it would have been so much easier if they had Facebook back in '93 so they could just type one message and send it to everyone! Oh, and in case you were wondering, Donna was able to graduate. Thank God! 

Steve - Steve's "freshman buddy" is a kid who's really good with computers so Steve convinces him to break into the school with him and hack into the computer so he can change his grades. Of course it doesn't work and while Steve tries to deny he ever did anything, he is found out and has to serve detention before and after school until graduation and keep up his grades. He was going to get expelled, but he told his mother who was angry with him, but made that deal with the school.

The last episode is a stupid clip episode of the past three seasons and the gang rearranges the Hollywood sign so it says "West Bev HS Class of 93" or something like that. I honestly don't know how they did that. Onward to season four.... eventually!

Are you ready to go back to Titanic?

Titanic
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Zane, Victor Garber, Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton
Released: December 17, 1997; April 4, 2012
Viewed in theaters: December 24, 1997; January 24, 1998; March 24, 1998; April 7, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture  (won)
Best Director - James Cameron (won)
Best Actress - Kate Winslet (lost to Helen Hunt for As Good as It Gets)
Best Supporting Actress - Gloria Stewart (lost to Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential)
Best Cinematography  (won)
Best Art Direction (won)
Best Costume Design (won)
Best Sound (won)
Best Film Editing (won)
Best Sound Effects Editing (won)
Best Visual Effects (won)
Best Make Up (lost to Men in Black)
Best Original Song - "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion (won)
Best Score - James Horner (won)

It's been 84 years and I can still smell the fresh paint.
The china had never been used.
The sheets had never been slept in.
Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was.
It really was.

Let me preface this review by saying I freaking love this movie. I'm not ashamed to say it! Even though I already saw it three times in the theater when it was first released and have seen it many times on video and DVD, I still wanted to see it again in the theater (even though I couldn't escape the 3-D aspect!) This is the only movie which has been re-released in theaters I've seen that I remember seeing the first time. I saw the re-release of E.T. and the first two (ugh) Star War movies, but I was way too young (or not born yet) to watch the first time around in theaters. 

Even after fifteen years, the special effects still hold up and the story still moves me and the 3-plus hour length never seemed that long to me. Now I'll be the first to admit that it isn't perfect. It had cheesy lines ("a woman's heart is like the ocean - full of secrets!") and a few scenes were unintentionally funny, like when the guy falls off the boat and hits the propellers - that always makes me giggle. :::hangs head in shame:::

It's been fifteen years and I can still remember seeing this movie in the theater for the first time. The date was December 24th, 1997 and I went to see it with my mom. I used my free movie passes. I remember being awed throughout the whole movie, crying my eyes out during several scenes (Rose jumping out of the lifeboat to be with Jack, the montage of people preparing for their inevitable deaths when the orchestra is playing, Rose letting go of Jack and calling for a boat with the whistle). Titanic was called the biggest movie ever and it was. It really was!

This time around, I noticed a few young girls in the theater between the ages of ten and fifteen and it warmed my cold little heart because while it's possible they've seen the movie before on DVD, you knew this was their first time experiencing it in the theater as many of them wouldn't have been born or way too young when it first was released in theaters. No young boys in the theater, though! There were only a couple guys...they were probably being dragged along by their girlfriends or wives! I didn't cry as much as I did the first time I saw it...but I did cry when Rose is on the drifting wood and hears somebody shouting for survivors and starts saying "Come back! Come back" and swims to a dead officer in the water and uses his whistle to get their attention. Yep, that made me cry a little! 

Somebody left the water running!

I absolutely LOVED Kate Winslet's wardrobe in this movie: the white dress with the purple trim and matching hat when she first boards the ship, her beaded red dress when she's going to jump off the ship, but my favorite was the blue dress she wore during the "Jack! I'm flying!" scene. Oh, and speaking of that scene, who hasn't been on a boat and gone to the bow and pretended to "fly" or shout "I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!" Or is that just me?  Yes, I do that. Luckily, I haven't been on that many boats...

I was seventeen when I saw this movie, exactly in the age bracket that the movie was targeting. I always thought it was cool that I was the same age as Rose. Now, while I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was cute in the movie and while I do think he's a good actor, I was never one of those annoying Leo fangirls. (I think my mom was more enamored with him than I was!) I didn't see the movie in the theater those two (now three!) other times because of him, I saw it again because, as I've said before, I love this movie! 

You know, before I saw this movie, I hated being a redhead. Like, seriously, hated it. I would long to be a blonde or brunette and I was so jealous of my friends with dark or fair hair. But then I saw Kate Winslet with those gorgeous red curls, and I thought, damn, if the female lead in The!Best!Movie!Ever! (which is what I thought at the time, I was only 17 ;-)) has red hair, then red hair must be awesome. So now I'm all like, "Yeah, my hair is awesomel" Of course, Kate Winslet is way prettier than me! She was 22 when this movie came out and want to hear something crazy? The little girl who played Cora ("You're still my best girl, Cora!") is probably the same age now as Kate Winslet was when she was in Titanic. Stuff like that just blows my mind! 

Okay, so my favorite scene of the movie is the one at the very end. Remember, they show Old Rose sleeping, and they pan through her photos (okay, how awesome did Kate Winslet look in those, I especially love the first one - she just has that classic look, some actresses look too modern, but she really does look like she could have been born in another era) and then we see the Titanic underwater, but it morphs into before it sank and the camera pans into that room with the staircase and we see a big group of people - the men in the orchestra, Tommy and Fabrizio, Cora and her father, and I love that Mr. Andrews is the last person we see before Jack. Then of course, it's revealed that Rose is the one who has just entered and she and Jack kiss and everyone claps. Shut up, yes, I love that scene! It still gives me chills! I think she dreamed that, but died right after and is now in "Titanic heaven" with the other people who died on the ship. Yes, that's how I interpreted it! 

Weekly Movie #13

The Hunger Games
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Hemsworth, Lenny Kravitz
Released: March 23, 2012
Viewed in theaters: March 26, 2012

I, like most everyone else in the country, have read The Hunger Games trilogy. I really loved the first book, still enjoyed the second book as though it wasn't as good as the first, and was heavily disappointed by the final one. I didn't like that one because it didn't have the same flow as the first two and I was really angry and baffled at a certain character's death. I mean, I know a lot of people die in these books, but I didn't understand why Suzanne Collins chose to kill off this particular one.

The Hunger Games is what you would get if you combined the short story, "The Lottery" with the reality show, Survivor, and the Japanese movie, Battle Royale. Oh, and throw the Olympics in there as well. The parade of the tributes, the personal stories, and the training reminded me of the Olympics. The film (and book) takes place in a dystopian future where the United States no longer exists and is now a place called Panem. It doesn't specify when in the future it takes place, but I'm guessing a couple hundred years.  

Panem consists of the Capitol, which is really wealthy and where the Hunger Games are held. Also, part of Panem are twelve districts that each have their own specialty (mining, agriculture, fishing, technology, transportation, etc.) and the higher the number, the poorer the district. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, lives in District 12 - the poorest district. The citizens have to hunt for their own food and trade their goods for others. Even though the film takes place in the future, there were times when it looked like it took place in the past!

The Hunger Games have been going on for 74 years and it's something the Capitol (aka the Government) came up with to show that they are in charge, pretty much, and they won't tolerate other people rebelling against them or making their own rules. Each year a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen from each district at the annual Reaping to fight in the Games (and it's done by drawing names ala "The Lottery") and they must fight to the death and the last one standing is the winner.

Katniss's sister, Prim, is the female tribute from District 12 who is picked, despite this being her first  Reaping and Katniss volunteers to take her place in order to save her sister. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie and it definitely got me choked up! Peeta (Hutcherson) is the male tribute chosen and they're mentored by the only former winner of the Hunger Games from District 12, Haymitch (Harrelson). 

After the 24 contestants have been trained and prepped, they're put into a terrain that's controlled by the Capitol. They all stand on individual platforms and there's a huge pile of weapons out in the open they can grab. Haymitch has advised his tributes not to grab anything because most of the tributes are killed in the first few seconds of the games. Katniss, the accomplished archer, sees a bow and and arrow, but forgoes it for a nearby backpack filled with supplies instead.  

This is how it reminded me of Survivor: not only is this being shown on TV as the world's most effed-up reality show, but they do things you'd see on Survivor - build fires, make alliances, catch food (and sometimes they even "win" food and supplies), make shelter, etc. 

And then you add in the whole middle school and high school-aged kids killing each other with whatever weapons they can get their hands on, and you have the plot of Battle Royale! 

It's been over a year since I've read the book, but I thought the movie did a good job of following it. Everything that happened in the film, I remembered reading in the book. The character of Gale, Katniss's friend from District 12 really has nothing to do. He's just there to look jealous when he sees Katniss kiss Peeta on TV during the games. 

Apparently there have been some uproar on Twitter with really stupid and really racist people having a hissyfit because the actress who plays Rue, the young girl in the Games from District 11 that Kat allies with, is black. I don't know why they are getting so angry over this  - anyone who actually read the books should know that the character is black. I believe the author describes her as "dark-skinned" so maybe these idiots thought she was white with a tan? I don't know, but it's really stupid how these morons are acting. 

Well, I think it's really cool that both Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are fans of the books and got to play two major characters (well, duh since Jennifer plays the main character!) in the movie. If I were an actor, I would love to play a character in one of my favorite books. 

Natural Born Killers

Bonnie and Clyde
Director: Arthur Penn
Cast: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Estelle Parsons
Released: August 13, 1967

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to In the Heat of the Night)
Best Director - Arthur Penn (lost to Mike Nichols for The Graduate)
Best Actor - Warren Beatty (lost to Rod Steiger for In the Heat of the Night)
Best Actress - Faye Dunaway (lost to Katharine Hepburn for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?)
Best Supporting Actor - Gene Hackman (lost to George Kennedy for Cool Hand Luke)
Best Supporting Actor - Michael J. Pollard (see above)
Best Supporting Actress - Estelle Parsons (won)
Best Original Screenplay - David Newman and Robert Benton (lost to William Rose for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Costume Design (lost to Camelot)

From one doomed couple to another - although I'm willing to bet that people are more familiar with Bonnie and Clyde than they are with War of the Roses.

Bonnie and Clyde is one of those movies saturated in pop cultures - it's been referenced in songs, movies, and TV shows and yet this was the first time I've seen it. Of course I knew what the story was about and how it ended so I wasn't exactly shocked with the ending!

Warren Beatty plays Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway plays his partner in crime, Bonnie Parker. The film opens up with Clyde trying to steal Bonnie's mother's car and Bonnie spots him from her bedroom window and comes down to stop him. He denies trying to steal her mother's car and that is how they are introduced.

He tells her that he has just been released from prison for robbery and she becomes intrigued by him. Bored by her life, she decides to join him and they start holding up small stores and gas stations. At one of the gas stations they hold up, they pick up an attendant named C.W. who proves his worth of being part of their gang when he steals the money from his own register. Also joining their group is Clyde's brother, Buck (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Blanche. All five of the main characters were nominated for Oscars but only Estelle Parsons who played Blanche won. Out of these five characters, Blanche was my least favorite. She was so loud and screechy! She was the one who shouldn't have been part of the gang because she didn't know what she was getting herself into, but she was supposed to be annoying because Bonnie sure couldn't stand her, so Parsons did a good job with that! God knows I wanted to smack her and tell her to shut up!

The Barrow Gang, as they call themselves, start robbing banks. C.W. acts as the getaway with Blanche while Bonnie, Clyde, and Buck go in with their guns and hold everyone at gunpoint and demand money. At one bank as they're getting away, the bank manager jumps onto their car and Clyde shoots him in the face. Now they're wanted for both robbery and murder and they all seem proud of the fact that they're famous in Texas and surrounding areas.

A person who didn't know the fate of Bonnie and Clyde and was watching this for the first time might think that they will get away - because for a minute it does look like that - but we all know better. This movie came out in 1967 and for the time it was extremely violent. I think it's pretty violent still watching it in this day and age! I don't think I've ever seen that many bullet holes in my life - I don't think I've seen anyone on film die in such a gruesome way! Well, I probably have, but Bonnie and Clyde (and their car!) were riddled with bullets. Those Texas law enforcements really wanted them dead - and they got their wish!

Family Feud

The War of the Roses
Director: Danny DeVito
Cast: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito
Released: December 8, 1989

Slight spoilers in this review at the end.

This was a movie I was always aware of, but had never seen until just recently. I was too young to see it in the theaters, but I knew it was about a couple going through a nasty divorce...just how nasty I didn't know until I watched it! I knew Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner play the feuding couple, but I didn't know that Danny DeVito directed it, but it shouldn't really surprise me since he seems to be drawn to (directing) dark comedies.

Douglas and Turner play Oliver and Barbara Rose, who meet and have an affair when they're college students. They get married and have two kids (one of who will grow up to be Sean Astin). Oliver becomes a big shot lawyer and by the time their kids are pre-teens, they move into a gorgeous house that Barbara's been eyeing.

I wasn't really sure when they started hating each other, it just sort of happens without any explanation when Barbara and Oliver are giving a dinner party for some of Oliver's clients and she's angry at him for making her look like a fool. They had been pretty snide to each other back and forth but it isn't until Barbara announces she wants a divorce when things turn really nasty. After Oliver has had a heart attack, Barbara confides to him that she was really scared when she found out...scared because she was happy at the though of him dying so she could be free of him! Ha! My favorite scene is when Oliver is angry at Barbara for not visiting him in the hospital and tells her he had written a note for her and gives it to her and she reads aloud this really heartfelt note and he tells her he didn't sign it and she says, "Oh, I'm sure someone would have told me who it was from!" LMAO! The look on his face is so priceless, hahaha!

Neither of them want to give up the house when they divorce and Oliver finds a loophole in his law books (with the help of Danny DeVito who's also in the movie as Oliver's law buddy) that says that a separated couple can live under the same roof. Even though they divide the house into "his half" and "her half" and have neutral zones (like the kitchen), they still cross paths and end up doing something to infuriate the other. Oliver accidently runs over Barbara's cat, but he purposely ruins her business meaning where she's prepared a bunch of new stuff for her catering company by spitting in the soup and peeing on the fish. She reacts by running over his fancy little car with her huge car. He retaliates by burning her expensive stoves and she in turns starts breaking his expensive porcelain figurines. By the end of the movie, they get into a huge fight and find themselves on this huge chandelier that hangs over the foyer. (I missed how they actually got onto the chandelier since my POS DVD skipped during this part!) Oliver wants to swing them back over to the balcony, but Barbara tells him that the screws are loose because she was planning on dropping it on him. They call for help and DeVito and their housekeeper tell them they're going to get a ladder, but before they return, the chandelier drops and our two lead characters die. The end.

This is a pretty strange movie, but there are funny parts. Both main characters are so awful that you're never really rooting for either of them. The tag line of this movie makes me laugh: "Once in a lifetime comes a motion picture that makes you feel like falling in love all over again. This is not that movie." True that!

Weekly Movie #12

21 Jump Street
Directors: Phil Lord and Chris Miller
Cast: Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Ice Cube, Brie Larson
Released: March 16, 2012
Viewed in theaters: March 20, 2012

Only 40 more movies to go! Oh, boy... Luckily this movie was MUCH better than the one I saw last week (Safe House). I wasn't bored once and didn't have to resort to counting the chairs in the front row and the ceiling tiles like I did when I saw last week's movie. (No, really, I did...)

I wasn't very familiar with the TV show this film is based on. All I knew is that it's from the '80s and Johnny Depp was in it. I had no idea what the premise was, though.

Hill and Tatum play rookie cops  Schmidt and Jenko who went to high school together seven years prior, but never really hung out together because they were total opposites in school. Schmidt was the dork obsessed with Eminem ("Not so Slim Shady") who was in all the AP classes and couldn't get a date to prom and Jenko was the cool, athletic guy who didn't apply himself. While training to become cops, they become friends so Schmidt can help Jenko with the academic portions and Jenko can help Schmidt with the athletic portions.

Because of their youthful appearances (Hill is 28 and Tatum is 31 and while Hill looks like he could possibly pass for a high school student, Tatum is a little more hard to believe, and the movie does make fun of that throughout), they are assigned by Ice Cube's hilarious screaming captain to go undercover as high school students to try to find out where this new drug called H.F.S. (you'll laugh when you find out what it stands for) is being supplied from.

In a weird role reversal (blame it on Glee! Hee!) Schmidt becomes the cool one while Jenko is stuck hanging with the nerds. They accidently switch identities so Schmidt is in Jenko's easy classes while Jenko is taking all these AP classes. They make friends with the kid who is dealing the drugs and try to get in deeper with him to become part of the drug ring.

I love the scene where Schmidt calls Brie Larson's character, Molly, and she's like, "Everyone usually texts me." Schmidt went to high school in 2005 and weren't people texting back then? I'm pretty sure they were...oh, well it still made me laugh. I also like when Eric (the drug dealer) starts to get suspicious of Schmidt and Jenko questioning their taste in music and how Jenko looks like he went through puberty when he was really young.

This movie is very, very funny and trust me, you want to see this before anyone can spoil anything for you because there's a great scene where you do not want to be spoiled...

About a year ago I wrote reviews for ten teen movies that came out when I was a teenager and for each one I had a checklist with the required scenes for a teen movie. I shall do the same one for this one. (And I reviewed Never Been Kissed which is also about someone going undercover as a high school student.)

Is there a party scene? Affirmative

Is there a prom scene? Affirmative 

Is there a football scene? Negative 

Is there a make over scene? Affirmative - obviously Schmidt and Jenko have to dress like high school students. LOL I love the scene where Jenko tells Schmidt to "one strap it", and when they get to school everyone  has both straps over their shoulders. I was a two strapper because my backpack got so heavy with all my books 

Is there a scene where all the different high school cliques are being shown?Affirmative - they make a joke of them spotting the jocks and the nerds, then start to see other cliques and they have NO clue what group they belong to! 

Was this movie spoofed in Not Another Teen Movie? Well, obviously not since that movie came out in 2001 and this one was released, like, a week ago.

Any movie that plays "The Graduation Song" - Ha, love that song is still getting love after 12 years!- is all right with me. The most unbelieveable thing about that this movie is that high school students would know who Fred Savage and The Wonder Years is. You'll have to watch the movie to find out what I'm talking about! 

Weekly Movie #11

Video review of "Burlesque"

Weekly Movie #10

A Separation
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Cast: Peyman Moadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayet, Sarina Farhadi
Released: December 30, 2011
Viewed in theaters: March 2, 2012

Oscar nominations:
Best Foreign Film (won)
Best Original Screenplay - Asghar Farhadi (lost to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris)

While looking for my next weekly movie to watch, I was glad that I saw one of my nearby theaters was playing the winner of the foreign film Oscar. There were still a couple options I would consider, though most likely they would be rentals for me. I hope some better movies will be coming out in the near future!

I haven't seen many foreign-language movies, but I've probably seen more than your average movie viewer. Of course I've seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Life is Beautiful, but I have seen others. I should post my ten favorite foreign-language movies sometime. I know some people are adversed to reading words on screen, but I don't mind - I'm a pretty fast reader!

A Separation is an Iranian film and the movie opens up with married couple Nader and Simin sitting in front of a judge with Simin asking him for permission to divorce her husband because she wants to move to another country so their eleven year old daughter, Termeh, can have a better life. She needs a divorce because her husband refuses to go with her because he has to take care of his father who has Alzheimer's. The judge does not grant her the divorce because her husband is a good man and has never done anything to harm her and he tells her to go on and live her life.

Simin goes to live with her mother for awhile because she is still determined to get a divorce and leave the country. While she is away, a young pregnant woman named Razieh comes to take care of Nader's father while he is at work and Termeh is at school. Simin found her through a friend and needing the money, Razieh soon finds out that the job wasn't exactly what she had in mind. She thought she would just have to watch the old man, but when he soils himself she begins to panic because she was told he always said when he had to use the restroom and she was worried it might be against her religion if she changed him. When Nader returns home, she tells him that she doesn't think she can do the job and tells him that she'll tell her husband and can Nader interview him tomorrow? Nader agrees to this and interviews Razieh's husband (who didn't know that Razieh had been working for him). Due to conflict, he isn't able to show up to work the next day, so Razieh takes his place and tells Nader that her husband will be able to work in a couple of days.

Things go to hell when Nader and his daughter come early one afternoon to find the door locked and nobody is answering the door. When they enter their apartment, they find Nader's father has fallen out of bed and has his hand tied to the bedpost with a scarf. When Razieh and her young daughter who she always brought with her return back, Nader, for good reason, is furious at her. She explains that she had to go out and do something and since his father usually slept at this time, she thought it would be okay and had tied him to the bed so he wouldn't get up and hurt himself. Nader accuses her of stealing money because he found money missing from a drawer but she claims she didn't. He doesn't believe her and forces her out the door. She comes back again and this time he pushes her out. She ends up falling and has a miscarriage and Nader is charged with manslaughter, but he says he had no idea that she was pregnant or otherwise he would have never been rough with her, although he says he never pushed her.

Basically the rest of the movie deals with this feud between the two couples. It's very intense and keeps you interested in how this is going to play out. I thought the young girl who played Razieh's daughter was really cute, but I thought it was really unprofessional of her to bring her daughter to her work! Maybe they couldn't afford a daycare, but even though the little girl didn't mean any harm, she would mess with the old man's oxygen tank and when her mother asked her to take out the trash she got trash and food all over the steps. Of course this does have a big part in the movie.... which I highly recommend!