Surrogates

I like the majority of Bruce Willis films, so I don't think I'll be very objective about this one. I know this based on a graphic novel, but if this was a book, I'm sure it would cover the ethics of surrogates. The whole idea is for people to avoid death and sickness, but how healthy can you be reclining/lying down all day avoiding being outside and whatnot? I deleted what I originally said after this because I have an idea that I want to use and not have someone steal it. The story and the conflict of the movie made sense. For some reason there are a lot of movies about men who lose their children and have incorporated into the story ie. Gerard Butler and Jason Statham. I thought the effects of the surrogates looked really good. The movie addresses a unique notion of beauty and who the real person is behind the surrogate. It kind of looks at that, but minimally. This movie has great discussion potential. An entire lecture if not a couple on it. Anyone up for a discussion? It was an average movie, but I enjoyed it.

Lymelife

I think this is a great movie. The Culkin's always seem to pick indie movies with great writing and characters. Typical Baldwin playing the same character he always does. Emma Roberts was a super young femme fatale in this. I hope she makes it as an adult actor. Indie or indie-like movies always have a fascination with adolescent boy sexuality. This movie is not one to stray from that theme. This was humorous and awkward, just like how young boys are when it comes to sex and sex related activities. It was neurotic, pessimistic, sarcastic, charming and funny. I recommend this movie, because I really liked this one.

Easy Virtue

I don't have much to say about this one. I'm not even interested in mentioning basic plot. I rented this for my mother because she wanted to watch it. Not to mention the publicity this film got in various magazines. It was definitely charming and funny. The son was a bit of a spoiled wanker in my opinion. Biel's character is supposed to be an "older" woman, but I didn't see that. Maybe they should have used an older actress. Although Biel was pretty good in this. The magazines said this was her "break-out" role, but I don't think so. Maybe in a few more years. The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the songs they used in the movie. I think they just should have used the instrumentals and not the singing. Because they were new recordings, they took away from the feeling of the movie. This wasn't a bad movie, but it's not for everyone.

Battle for Terra

So I thought this movie would be pretty good. It was very bland. What's with all the celebrity voices??? Is it to get people to watch it? I want to see a good story, and if that means spending more money on the visuals than the actors than so be it. Some actors are just not voice actors. Their ability to the convey emotions only through voice is lost because these people are more expressive physically. Although the facial animations were minimal so that's also possible why I saw lack of emotion. I disliked it more than I liked it. I also slept through the final battle and I didn't feel like going back to watch the climax either. Number one complaint, real things have texture. Everything looked smooth. Sorry, but unless it's man-made, it's not smooth. Secondly, according to physics, the "floaters" ability to hover makes absolutely no sense. There are limitations to imagination. Unless it's magic, there is no reason for why these things hover. The story had potential, it just didn't follow through.

Ponyo

I went to see this because I love Hayao Miyazaki's films. Although Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle and a couple others can be more for adults than children, Ponyo was definitely for a younger crowd. This movie was a Miyazaki retelling of Hans Christian's Little Mermaid. This movie was so adorable and filled with so much imagination. The style of this movie was visually different. The background cells looked like pencil crayon somewhat the style of a friend of mine and water colour for the animation. The orchestra added to the magic and excitement of the story. The way Ponyo always nods off is so life-like that it steals your heart. Miyazaki never fails to entertain and tell beautiful stories.

The Informers

I didn't recognize the movie because of the DVD cover. Had I of read the back I would have remembered that this was a movie I wanted to see. The only reason I put it in was because it had Sundance 2009 on the back. This is also Brad Renfro's last theatrical performance who's death was overshadowed by Heath Ledger's. This movie was deep, dark, and gritty. I want to say it was sexy, but all I saw was a theme of morality. There was some really good lines in the movie. Probaby one of the best ones was when Graham played by Jon Foster says something along the lines 'I want someone to tell me what is bad. I want someone to tell me what is good. How else would we know what is good.' That's not the exact quote, but I'm not going to rewatch the scene of the movie to quote it exactly. When I was getting the image from a site, the plot mentioned a vampire. There wasn't a vampire in the movie. I checked it out. The vampire parts hit the cutting room floor. I'm sure they took the vampire bit out because it wasn't a movie about vampires, it was exactly what the tagline of the movie was Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever. The last line of the film also delivered by Jon Foster makes sense is so many different ways. I think it would have been less subtle if they had kept the vampire murders in, but whatever. There are lots of parallels between plot and characters ie. Christie and her rapid sickness and the parallel to the use of light. This movie has made me very gloomy, but it was fantastic. Not a movie for everyone though. The best parts of the film were the scenes with the young actors. I could care less about Billy Bob, Basinger and Mickey Rourke. The young cast stole the show. This movie made me want to read Ellis' book right now since Ellis' characters left me wanting more.

Obsessed

I liked this movie. I think Ali Larter plays crazy well. I think they could have done more stalker craziness, but as far as the movie goes, it was enough. It's the modern version of Fatal Attraction, although not comparable since the plot is different and nobody could play crazy scorned lover, turned obsessed like Glenn Close can. For once I thought Beyonce was not that bad. Idris Elba is super sexy. When I was looking for the image Wicker Park came up because I guess it's also known as "Obsessed". Now that movie had crazy delusional woman. Of all the things I didn't like would have to be that there was a couple Beyonce songs. Super lame. Especially the Christmas one. I can't remember if that was playing at the Christmas party or while their family was having Christmas. This movie wasn't bad at all, not bad at all.

Fighting

I'm going to be quite blunt. This was an awful movie. My friend reviewed Terrence Howard as being annoying with his slow-mindedness. I agree Terrence Howard was annoying in this. I usually like him. I was surprised he picked this script. I pin-pointed his voice. He sounded just like some good for nothing soft-spoken slimey weasley hustler that was one step above being an alcoholic/drug addict on social assistance picking butts off the ground to smoke. Why is Channing Tatum always playing some dancer or some meat head macho person with no brains all the time? Can he really not act? This movie was terrible. Almost every character in this movie was a loser. People who are too lazy to contribute to society in a positive way and just further destroying the good of humanity. I had force myself to watch this all the way through. The only reason I didn't take stop the movie was because I had nothing else to watch. Thankfully I borrowed this and not spent money on it. It makes me think that the director who co-wrote it, must have lived in this kind of lifestyle, only to be stuck portraying life in the poor of New York City and unable to create anything else outside of their life experience. They were all losers. They weren't even good people. This contributed nothing to culture or the history of film. How did someone fall so far ended up even further by their way of redemption? Evan Hailey was just a pawn at getting back what he lost, but in the end he still lost, despite what some people may think was a happy ending.

The Final Destination

The writing of the script was really bad. Some of the casting too. I basically think they just wanted to make a lot of money by making a 3D movie to capture audiences in the first few weeks and that was it. I honestly think the producers just wanted a paycheck instead of actually trying to make a good movie. Which is really sad, because I happened to like the other Final Destination movies. Okay I lie, I liked the first one and the last one where the DVD was interactive on how the people died. This movie was weak. The director didn't even have the ability to be creative enough to use more 3D effects. More things should have been coming out of the screen e.g. My Bloody Valentine had eyeballs, picks and fire coming through the screen. Like Corliss from Time said, putting in more money to make a movie look really good, will bring in more audiences. Maybe you should see this on DVD. I don't know if it didn't occur to me before when I watched these, but I entirely disagree with predetermined death. Lame.

Sunshine Cleaning

This was less of a comedy than I thought it would be. It was actually quite melancholy. The characters were real. The whole giving the photos to the deceased woman's daughter after befriending her was slightly odd in the movie. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it was there so that Emily Blunt's character could release her pain of her mother's suicidal death when she was a young child. This was a really sad movie. I really liked it, it had its moments. The characters sometimes lacked honesty when there should have been the truth told. I really liked the guy with the missing arm. The last thing I would ever want to do is try to impress people from high school that I'm not a loser, but have made something of myself some 10 years later. They can suck it for all I care. What people think of you, especially the people who really talk shit about you behind your back are not worth the time. Maybe it's a small town thing. Who knows. I would prefer not running into people I graduated with. Amy Adams' is beginning to be typecasted for some doe-eyed thing that is naive to something or other. I would love to see her play something edgier or fierce. It's about time she does something new.

Earth

Although they use a lot of footage from the BBC series, it still had new narration and a certain storyline based on the theme of life and death or more specifically predator and prey. Since it is Disney, they took out all the eating and whatnot. The ochestra was heavenly. The cinematography was breath taking. They have things where you seen the seasons changing. There is this tree that they starting panning slowly that has the leaves changing on the tree. It was beautiful. To tell you the truth, I knew a lot of these things they already showed, but it doesn't stop me from watching these things over and over. I bet this was an awesome job collecting all this amazing footage. I love usiqng my knowledge of geology whenever I can. Earl Jones narrates the perfection of the tilt of the planet that creates the seasons and whatnot, but they never really brushed up on the perfection of the earth's homeostasis that makes life and eveything we know it today possible. It's beyond the tilt of the planet. It's our distance from the sun. The size of the sun, the size of our plannet. The fact that Jupiter being such a huge gas planet shields a lot of the meteors and comets that would hit Earth if were weren't being shielded at all. It's way more than just a tilt. The whole system is just so complex. Earth is this perfect mathematical equation of thousands of elements that make this earth what it is. No hour and a half movie could ever capture the essence of earth. I watched this on Blue Ray which is as close to seeing it in real life can be. I would rather much rather see it all in person than to have technology that makes me feel like I'm really there. Odd, this reminds me of a short story about a room and the African Sahara. I really enjoyed watching this documentary.

Gamer

I hear eveything thinks this movie is bad. It isn't bad per se, it is just that it is similar in basic plotting to Death Race, but at the same time entirely different. i don't think the main premise of the story is way off to the future of science. My mom is always saying we should get that Nextel card or something similar to that to get into the US. I'm totally opposed to it because they have your fingerprints in the American database. It makes me feel like a criminal. I'm going off on a tangent here, but here's these Americans who are terrified of government controlled health care, but they aren't worried about their fingerprints being collected. If you commit a crime, well if we have you in our database, you're as good as caught. That's terrifying that we are "potential" crime committers. This film is entirely plausible or happening in the future. It's more than true that the minute someone tells you not to think something or puts an idea in your head, it is almost impossible to not think about what you shouldn't. It's quite clever. It reminds me of a professor who told me not to look at my feet, which I didn't, but I couldn't help but avert my eyes towards to floor anyways. The movie was slightly sexist. Women are always skantily clad in games. I liked the movie. It had deep philosophical questions and probing. Funny, how the future and technology always leads to morality and ethics. What doesn't?

The Life Before Her Eyes

Reviewing this movie would most likely spoil it. Had it not have been for the title of the movie, I may have still been confused, which makes me seem dumb. I liked this movie, it was strange. As much as I like Uma Thurman, I couldn't stand her in this. Evan Rachel Wood was really good in this, since she hasn't been in awhile. This movie had a poor choice of casting for a couple of the characters and it had the potential. It was the "future" that wasn't so good. Imagine a strong willed character suddenly becoming soft and nothing of their old self. If I say anything further, I'm just going to spoil the movie. A good movie has nothing to ruin.