Update 3/3/13

     Hello many readers of this blog! just wanted to update you on a couple of movies I've watched recently. I don't really have time to write full review, but I have seen some that were good.

Die Hard - Action classic, duh. No one told me that Snape was the villain, though! In my head, after he would gun someone down, he would say" I told you to turn to page three-hundred and ninety-four." The underlying tale of marital struggle was woven in quite nicely, only popping up at appropriate moments. 4 out of 5 shard of glass

Charade - I watched this one at a film club meeting on a Friday afternoon. It was just my friend and I who showed up. Though I like Cary grant and Audrey Hepburn very much, their age gap bothered me to no end. I hate that Hollywood just thinks it is okay to pair up an old dude with a young beauty. Not okay. I really wanted to know who had the money, which kept me interested, There were a lot of things I actually didn't see coming and that redeemed it a bit. 2 and a 1/2 out of 5 stamps

Little Big Man - This movie was just too long, I'm sorry. Can't get into all the things that bothered me in detail, but it made me laugh a few times so... 2 out of 5 scalps

The Social Network - My best friend has been bothering me to watch this for a while, and I finally did. I really liked the way that it isn't clear who is right and who is wrong. I never completely liked Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg either. Not too many movies these days will risk not having the audience be completely on the protagonists side. I felt really bad for Andrew Garfield's character, Eduardo Saverin. it didn't seem like he had done anything wrong. I didn't think this was possible, but I actually disliked Justin Timberlake for a few days after watching it. Great characters, cool interpretation of real event. And the Winklevoss twins were played by one actor! How crazy is that? 4 out of 5 socially awkward nerd-geniuses

The Bourne Identity - I liked this movie a lot. It was complicated enough to keep me interested, but not enough to make me confused, and eventually angry. Nothing spectacular, though. Solid 3 out of 5 secret government agencies

     I watched the Oscars in their entirety last Sunday night. I thought that Life of Pi should have been classified as an animated movie and that Skyfall should have won for cinematography. But things don't always go my way. Jennifer Lawrence is basically my favorite person and I'm desperately trying to find a way to be her best friend, so I'm very glad she won for her amazing job in Silver Linings Playbook. If you're looking for a giggle, go watch some of the footage of J. Law on the red carpet because she is just too precious.

     I am currently reading Let the Right One In in preparation for a double feature of both the Sweedish and the American film versions of the book. Hopefully I can find someone to watch them with me, because goodness knows I will have a hard time watching them alone.

My Watchlist:
Argo (no I haven't seen it YET)
Django Unchained (I promised my best friend we would watch it together because it would be weird to watch it with anyone else)
Lincoln (basically, I haven't seen any of the Oscar nominated films)
Day of the Jackal (a movie enthusiast friend suggested this one)

Silver Linings Playbook

     Sorry guys, I couldn't come up with a clever title for this one.

     Over a four-day weekend recently, my boyfriend and I met up in Pennsylvania for a few days as a birthday present from my family (he goes to college in Massachusetts and I am still attending high school in Virginia). I had been wanting to see "Silver Linings Playbook" since it had come put and especially since it has been nominated for some Oscars. So we picked a theater, somehow navigated our way over there, and went to see it. A friend had warned me that it wasn't a rom-com by any standards, but that she thought I would still like it. I was optimistic, and it was rewarded.

     "Silver Linings Playbook" is one of the best movies I have seen in years. It was everything a movie should be. Every single character was believable and the story line was incredibly unique. It wasn't an artsy movie, there weren't any dutch tilts or other fancy angles, but it was well made. Since the movie was plot-driven, those things didn't matter much. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence played crazy so well, I kind of thought they might actually have the disorders their characters had. I don't know if I have any other words to describe how beautiful this movie was. It made me laugh. It made me uncomfortable to the point that I was burying my face into my boyfriend's shoulder, begging him to "make the awkward stop." I'm pretty sure I was crying at the end, it was so perfect. If this movie is no longer in theaters near you, I implore you to watch it when it comes out on DVD. I didn't think Hollywood could make movies this good anymore, I had lost hope. But it has been restored, all thanks to this wonderful film.

5 out of 5 jujus

Just by the way, while looking for the poster to put in this post, I realised that this movie was a book first...

SEEKING A STUPID MOVIE FOR A THURSDAY NIGHT

I was trying to find a movie to watch with my friend (Jessica), who doesn't have the same taste in movies as I do. So we picked Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. There were some funny moments and some touching moments. The asteroid that is the cause of the apocalypse is named Matilda. Fun fact: there actually IS a asteroid named Matilda, but it will never come even close to hitting our Earth. Yay! But I'd like to take a moment here, while I have your attention, for a little rant. It will ruin the ending, but that's okay because you're not ever going to watch it. Hollywood really needs to stop having young girls fall for old dudes. Keria Knightley is twenty-seven years old. Steve Carell is fifty. THAT'S A GAP OF OVER TWENTY YEARS. Sure, Mr. Carell's character certainly didn't look fifty, but he was considerably older than Keira Knightley, who was playing a younger woman. This trend first started to bother me when I first watched My Fair Lady, one of my favorite musicals. I won't give you a plot summary, but once again a young, pretty woman ends up with the older guy. Switched around, people would be calling the woman a cougar, but there are no nicknames of that sort for men who date/marry much younger women. I hate it. Not that I plan on marrying a considerably younger man, but I'd prefer not to be prescribed a label if I chose to. I don't know how to fix this problem. The movies Hollywood produces are (usually) just a reflection of what our society values and our general values. There isn't a solution. I'll just go sit in my pretending-the-world-doesn't-exist corner and do just that. You may join me if you'd like. We can make fun of people together. 

2 out of 5 asteriods

 (this is how I felt at the end of the movie)

NOT QUITE PUNCTUAL

“In Time” was not quite true to the title. Drawn out and low in substance, the latest from Andrew Niccol, lacked tension, but had a very interesting premise. Though the plot was far-fetched, it created an insightful mirror for our society, which isn’t surprising seeing as Niccol’s other films including the also disguisedly pensive “The Truman Show”. The slow tempo made the film so much longer than it needed to be. 


The film starts out with a flimsy explanation of how time became currency and for being what the entire film’s plot is based; it doesn’t really create a solid foundation for the plot of the movie. Will Salas, played by Justin Timberlake (who is unfortunately not as good of an actor as he is a singer) is your everyman, making just barely enough to scrape by. When Will comes into some time from a random wealthy man who has lost the will to live after a century, he crosses from the ghetto into the classier side of town (New Greenwich). This introduces us to the pampered daddy’s girl seeking adventure, Sylvia Weis (played by Amanda Seyfried) and they go on a wild romp, trying to bring some sort of fairness to their top-heavy society where the rich can live forever but the poor live day to day (literally). One of the things I thought the film did well was use contrasting colors to offset the two different worlds- the ghetto and the rich neighborhood. The ghetto had some color, but was mostly grayscale. The rich and wealthy scenes had very stark and edgy colors. Another cool aspect of the film was the watches that everyone had on their arms. When a person in this dystopian future turned twenty-five, their clock started, counting down one year. If they just let it run, they would “time out” when the clock hit zero. Things are paid for in minutes and hours and transfers of time-money are made by locking arms… it got weird, let’s leave it at that. The green clocks were a constant reminder of the status of the character but the constant cuts to people’s arms got annoying after a while. I kept thinking, We get it, they are running out of time! Unfortunately, the ticking arm-clocks were not enough to drive the pace of the film. It seriously lagged in the parts between the sparse dialogue. There was a cool speech given by a Time Keeper (a policeman), however, about how corrupt their society is.


The way in which their society mimics and exaggerates ours resonates deeply, especially with the Occupy Wall Street protests with their “We are the 99%” chants. The line repeated several times that harkens back to that is “For few to be immortal, many must die”. This attitude is much like the one shared by America’s wealthy and Niccol is trying to get this audience to see this. I think this movie’s release date worked very well for it.





2 1/2 out of 5 minutes

SUPA DUPA EIGHT

Have you ever seen E.T.? it's a cute movie about an alien trying to get home. Well, Super 8 is the same story except imagine that E.T. resembled a giant spider and ate people.  Mix that with a coming of age story and a tale of coming to terms with grief. and you've got yourself a Super 8. All of the thrills and scares were predictable and expected, but they packed a punch all the same.  I would say the best thing that they did with the movie was that, even though the alien murdered people throughout the entire movie, somehow the audience (or maybe it was just me) didn't hate the thing. The more you found out about the monster, the more you came to feel sorry for it.  All of the actors and actresses involved did an amazing job.


And by the way, LOVED the little zombie movie they were filming the whole time.  It was a really cool touch.




4 1/2 lockets

THE CLASSIEST OF ORIGINS

     I won't call myself a X-Men officiando. I've seen some of the movies before this one and enjoyed the fairly recent Wolverine origins movie. But I have an issue with origin movies. I know how they end. The same could be said for most movies, since the good guys usually win, but that is the only thing you can almost totally expect going into a movie. With origins or prequels, a viewer who has seen other movies in the franchise knows exactly what state the characters will end the movie in. It's like going to see Romeo and Juliet. Everyone knows they die in the end, but yet we still watch it. We watch movies (and plays) where we know the outcome because it's how the movie gets to the known ending, not the finale itself. If you have seen any of the previous X-Men movies, (spoiler alert) you most likely know that Charles Xavier ends up in a wheel chair. I certainly didn't know HOW he ended up in one, but now I do, thanks to X-Men First Class.

     Overall, it was an enjoyable movie.It was fun sitting in the theater trying to put the pieces of the character's past together.  The actors who played Erik/Magneto and Charles/Professor X did a REALLY good job.  Especially Michael Fassbender, who played the deeply angry Holocaust survivor, Erik. He was the best actor in the movie by far. Kevin Bacon was a very poor choice for the villain.  He did all of this really evil stuff, but all he seemed to be was power hungry (literally and figuratively). TO get away from the negative, there was that moment when the good guys did something clever/unexpected to win a battle, which, along with some humor sprinkled within the serious plot line, made the movie fun. I recommend it to anyone who likes morals mixed in with their mutants.

     The X-Men are different from your average superhero because, instead of just one man or woman living a double life with secret identities and the rest, it's hundreds of people trying to blend in with society despite their obvious differences from the average joe. Every character already has issues because of their misfit status. Which gets boring. Not everyone has to be troubled, ya know. Which brings me to my next point. Of the x-men, very few have strong personalities. You've got Professor X and Magneto (and Wolverine, who wasn't featured in this film) and that's about it. The rest are just angsty for various reasons ALL. THE. TIME. This is because their mutations/superpowers have become their personalities(and to be truthful, some of the mutations are REALLY LAME- just sayin). Flaws with the franchise and prequels aside, X-Men First Class may not be your average superhero movie, but it is an enjoyable one. 

PS- there is nothing at the very end of the credits. 

3 and a half out of 5 lame mutations



maid of dishonor

     Bridesmaids was really funny.  I wont lie to you.  But I can't say that I liked this movie.  It was just too raunchy.  As a very Catholic chick, I just can't sit through this kind of thing and say I enjoyed it.  What made this movie so funny was the craziness in which the characters partook.  It wasn't because any of the characters had particularly funny or witty lines.  The humor came from the crazy, raunchy stuff they did.  Like taking a crap in the middle of a street- in a wedding dress.  A girl in one of my classes said that you shouldn't see this movie with your parents.  DEFINITELY DON'T.  The opening scene involves... never mind- I"ll let it be a surprise. The thing is basically a really long SNL skit.  Don't get me wrong- it's really funny.  I'm just trying to impart on you, my readers, what is in store for you when you buy tickets to this naughty comedy, staring many NBC comedy stars, many playing the same character they do on television.  Which I had no problem with because their characters are hilarious.  









                    3 out of 5 gasp-then-laughs