Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts

Monday, July 25, 2011

Waste of 93 minutes

Morgan and I watched the 1976 film, Bugsy Malone. A gangster movie with only children (including Jodie Foster and Charles in Charge). I remembered watching when I was young at a friends house and really liking it.

There were two 'great' songs I remembered, My Name is Talulah, and Down, Down Down Down.

Anyway, I got the movie from Netflix and Morgan and I watched it last night. It was a waste of 93 minutes. Morgan said it made his Top 10 Bad Movies list which includes, Mr. Wrong, and Killer Clowns from Outer-Space.

Several things were terrible about the movie - I know the actors were portraying adults, but the stage dancers were WAY too immodest wearing the shortest shorts possible. All of the singing was done by adults...I think the kids could have done better. It was painful to listen to. Finally, the movie broke its own rule.
The gangsters killed each other with whipped cream pies, until one gang got a splurge gun to kill people with. It was made very clear that if you were shot in the face with the cream than you were a goner. At the end there is an all out 'war' and everyone gets shot in the face but they all live and end up becoming friends.

Bleh.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Reviews

How Do You Know starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson

I LOVED this movie! I don't remember hearing about it before, but I was at the library Thursday night and knew I didn't have a Netflix movie so I stopped by the new release section and picked this one up.
It was so funny. There were several times when I laughed out loud - not something I do often in films. It was just really great. Morgan mentioned that there was no one that you hated during the film. Anyway, I think I would put this on my To Own list.


Roasting in Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsey

This was a really good read. I always wanted to know what happened next. He does swear in the book, but if you have ever heard of Ramsey that is not surprising. What was surprising was how he came started out with virtually nothing and made a success of himself. He has had difficulty in his life and it is nice to realize that everyone is human.


A Town Like Alice by Nevile Shute

This book had a slow beginning. I had to read about 80 pages before I was really interested. But once I got to that point I couldn't put the book down. I LOVED this story. It is one that I would love to see made into a movie. It also says a lot about what the difference that one woman can make in the world.
I would recommend this book to anyone.


Battlestar Galactica the TV series

Morgan and I watched this series on our Netflix instant queue. It was a fun show that we loved. Now that we are done with it our evenings are finally free. This is a good sci-fi drama.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Eating Crowe




My apologies to Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe. When I first saw the previews for this Robin Hood I wsan't all that interested. I especially made unkind remarks regarding "Old Maid" Marion. Cate Blanchett, while beautiful and very talented did not strike me as a Maid Marion.

I was wrong.

This movie is excellent. We got it from Netflix and watched it this past weekend. The story is not your typical Robin Hood, and is definitely not the Kevin Costner story (although both films use old blind men to tug at our hearts.)

The best way to prepare yourself for watching this movie is to think of it as a beginning story. How Robin became Robin of the Hood. As for Maid Marion, she is actually Lady Marion.

I would recommend you see this movie. It had action, love, battles, heart and laugh-out-loud funny moments.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Everybody's NOT Fine




I had seen a preview for this movie and thought it looked very funny. Robert De Niro is so good at subtle humor that I was really looking forward to this. We got it as a Netflix DVD and through our busy life never got around watching it for over a month. Morgan thinks that we had a premonition that this film would not be good.

Let me clarify. The film itself was very enlightening, and well done. It was engaging and created a emotional response in me. All the parts that they showed in the preview (which were funny) were in the film and in fact, were funny. But the movie WAS NOT a comedy. It was a crazy serious drama that I was crying through practically the whole time. It made me sad and mad.

The plot involves a father whose wife has died 5 months previously and each of his four children call and cancel on an annual family reunion-type activity. He decides since the children can't see him, he will go across the country to see the kids.
There is a lot going on and I won't explain it in case you decide to see this film, but the part that upset me the most was that one of the sons got into trouble in Mexico and none of the other kids are going to tell their dad about it. How dare you not tell your father that his own son is in serious trouble. Arg. It made me so mad.

The movie did make me want to stay in closer contact with my own siblings and parents, though. So something good did come out of it.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Movie Reviews

2012

I got this from the Library (no surprise there, eh?) and on the jacket it said it was "the best disaster movie ever'. I should have known from that, that this movie would be mediocre at best. But it had some of the same directors as The Day After Tomorrow, which I really like, so I was hoping for something more.

My problem with this movie, is that it was very funny, in a silly way. The characters took off in a plane with the ground falling out from under them 10-20 times, I lost count. The thing that really turned me off to the movie was, that as a disaster flick, California is falling off into the sea. Now this is something that I've heard jokes about before and not had a problem with. But here the people are trying to save themselves and you actually see bodies falling from tipped over buildings and things. So it made it real to me. Millions of people are dying here, and I'm laughing at the gags they are pulling.

It just left a bad taste in my mouth.


Where the Wild Things Are

Morgan liked this movie. It is one that he would watch again. Shannon didn't like the movie too much. Too depressing, not happy enough for our returned missionary.

As for me. This was a well made movie. Visually, thematically, they really did a good job making this Realistic. Unfortunately realistic is depressing and kind of sad. That said, it is a fine movie for adults to watch, but I'm not going to be showing it to Eli for quite some time. Also, it is not a movie that I am going to rush out to buy. If Morgan wants it I'll get it for him, but that's about it.


I knew I forgot to mention a movie. We also saw,

THE BLIND SIDE
This was a really good movie. It wasn't your typical football movie/sports movie. It wasn't really about football, but rather the Mom was the main character. I thought everything was really believable. Morgan was saying how he wondered that it got such great reviews and how Sandra Bullock got the Oscar for the part since it wasn't Dramatic. I said, maybe that's why she got the Oscar. Because she played this part that could be over-acted, and she Did Not play it overly dramatic.
Another funny thing, in the movie the NCAA comes and says that it would be wrong for a rich family to find poor kids that are good at football, take them in, and get them into their alma mater. I thought, what is wrong with that. If you have people with money who are allowing kids who would not have the chance otherwise to get into college. Obviously the kids are good enough at football, and they have to pass the minimum grade requirements. So you are giving kids a chance that would otherwise not have it. If they are not good at football no amount of money is going to get them into the school. So why is wrong with it? Maybe someone else can tell me.

Monday, January 18, 2010

More Reviews


The Express - Ernie Davis becomes the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. This movie was really great. It was fun to watch someone be the first, and in such an amazing way. Although this movie is rated PG I wouldn't watch it with too young of kids because there is a lot of violence on the football field.


CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS: We loved this movie. Eli has asked to watch it 3x in the short while we've had it (I've let him watch it twice). I know it is based off a book, but I have not read that so I don't know how it compares. Also, it had a lot of funny little things for the adults to catch, plus lots of funny stuff for everyone. Definitely a family film.


Duplicity is a corporate spy movie. I thought it was going to be something like Mr. and Mrs. Smith based on the back cover, but it was...not. I'm not sure it was better, or worse, just different. This is more in drama/comedy rather than comedy/drama. The best part about this movie is that it is never what you expect it to be. The ending, was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, that is all that I am going to say about it.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Movie Reviews

I've watched a lot of movies lately, and well...you're just going to have to hear about it.


Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
I wasn't expecting to really care about this one, but it was really fun. Really, really fun. Definitely one to watch with the family, and one to own at some future point.

Julie and Julia
Much better than the book, less swearing, drinking, and more Julia...but maybe because I didn't LOVE the book and only just 'got' through it, that I didn't love the movie either. It was okay and nice and all that. But I had never seen anything Julia Child, I'd heard of her, but she was just before my time. Its okay, don't spend money to see this one though.

Terminator: Salvation
I thought this was rated R, but Morgan showed me on redbox that it was PG-13 so we got it. It was fine. A nice action flick. A few days after we saw it Morgan said that he thought it was stupid because the computer go to all the work of making a human/robot cyborg thing and then when they have the chance to get John Conner they send 1 terminator when they have 50 others on the racks being made. Really, if you want to kill someone, go all out. Also they had a chance to kill Kyle Reese, a million chances actually and they did nothing but use him as bait. Maybe they just didn't know the future yet (all this past/future stuff is confusing) but come on. And no, I'm not voting for the computers to kill all humanity, but you want some brain power.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian
VERY good movie. This was a lot better than I expected so I really enjoyed it. The story made sense and was fun. Amy Adams had a great character
and there were just enough little jokes to keep it fresh.

Angels and Demons
This movie is much better (cleaner) than the book. The changes between the book and movie were satisfactory to keep the story less complicated and actually a little happier/more positive. As for the Catholic Church portrayal, I don't really have a comment, I mostly take everything with a grain of salt.

Bonneville
This movie was okay. I'm glad I didn't waste Morgans time by having him watch it with me. It wasn't as funny as the previews tried to make it out to be. Mostly a little sad. The characters are 'mormons' who sometimes drink coffee, gamble, completely focused on family to the detriment of self. But they are good friends. My favorite scene was where our oppressed housewife gives her Book of Mormon to a hitchhiker. He pauses, pulls a fresh one from his bag and says he got it on his first ride and had been offered 5 others before them. I got a little chuckle from that.

The Women
This movie has Meg Ryan in it if you haven't heard of it before. The entire movie is completely full of women. There is not a man to be seen ANYWHERE (not even the background) until the very end of the movie. An interesting concept. As far as the plot goes, it was fine. It is about a wife who finds out her husband is cheating on her. Her reactions were very normal and it was good to see her go out and make a life for herself. Whether she gets back together with her husband or not is left up in the air, but you know whatever she does, she is going to be okay.
One sad part about this movie to me, was that when her friend sort of 'betrays' her (not with her husband, something else) she says that That is worse than loosing her husband. I'm sorry, but your husband should be your best friend. Having a falling out with your friend should not be the worst thing in your life.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

New Moon

Wednesday while we were in Chillicothe we went to see New Moon with Morgan's parents while his siblings watched the boys. I enjoyed the movie. Victoria was in the movie more than she was in the book, but they had to show off the awesome wolves and their special effects. Visually this movie was great, no cheesy sparkles accompanied by even cheesier music. The thing that bothered me the most, and is an extension from the first movie, is that you don't really see Bella and Edward being happy together. They are always so serious and not-smiling. I am a firm believer that if you are in love you should be happy and smiling. There was one scene where she was holding back a smile at seeing him. I think, come on, you love him more than anything, is it really going to kill you to let the world (and him) see you smiling when you see him?

So that's my beef with the movie. BUT, even though the movies aren't masterpieces (though this one was 50x better than the last one) I love the story and the movie tries to follow the books, and does a good enough job that I enjoy the movies.

It is kind of like Harry Potter, although I get more frustrated with the Harry Potter movies because they have a much larger budget, but when people try to visually show you something you only imagined you have to say, thanks for the effort. I know it wasn't perfect, but thanks for trying.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Movie Reviews

Here we go again... a short review of some of the movies we've seen lately.

MONSTERS VS ALIENS
Great movie. It was really fun. Eli and Josh even stayed awake to watch it and had a good time. It did have some adult jokes - specifically (I think) about Ginormica the giant woman. But I was too focused on the fun kid story to really pay attention to little side jokes.


WOLVERINE - X-MEN ORIGINS
I actually enjoyed this movie more than I thought it would. I should have expected to like it, because I enjoy the regular X-Men movies, but for some reason I thought this was mostly just a made for $$$ film. But the story was really good and it has made me want to watch the future movies again to view them with a greater idea of what the 'past' was.


RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN
A fun flick. Too advanced for my boys, lots of explosions and mean government people. It was not just a 'remake' of the previous film, but definitely based on it. Morgan was expecting there to be some sort of twist or a-ha moment in the film. Instead it is just straight forward and predictable (Which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing.)


The verdict: Watch all of these movies.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

More

THE LITTLE MERMAIN II: RETURN TO THE SEA
This film was really simple. The basic story can be told is 5-6 sentences. The songs were okay, obviously nowhere near as good as the first one. It was nice to have the mermaid wearing a top, but Ariel was still immodest. The funny aspect of it was how Ariel was just like her Dad. They had a scene with Sebastion that mirrored the previous film. I would buy this movie someday only if I had girls.





BABY MAMA
As Morgan and I were watching this film I commented to him that it was like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village." How you ask? Many people went to The Village expecting a crazy scary movie about Those-We-Do-Not-Speak-Of. Instead they got a drama/romance with a few scary scenes.
Baby Mama, is a comedy, and it is funny, but the previews really showed most of the funny parts and there was a lot more drama and storytelling going on in the show. It was easy to guess the surprise ending, and being about pregnancy and childbirth there were definitely things that I wouldn't want a younger child watching/hearing about. It was an okay movie. Not one I'm going to buy, though.


KIT KITTEREDGE: AN AMERICAN GIRL
This was a really good children's movie. I wasn't expecting it to be very good (even though I knew it had Abigail Breslin in it.) Instead I was pleased to watch a good movie, good story and great actors. Along with Abigail it had: Julia Ormond, Chris O'Donnell, Joan Cusak, Mr. Inconceivable from Princess Bride - plus more. I don't really know the others' names, but have seen them in other movies. Anyway, my point it this was a great cast to go with this movie. I'm glad the American Girl series made the movie right. Pay good actors and do more than just a TV special.
The movie is also more like older movies, in that it doesn't just have action, action, action. There is plot, and storytelling. Its a good one, I would recommend it.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Meryl Streep is a good actress

I've been watching a few movies lately and had to give my review. First I feel I should say that I never really felt like I liked Meryl Streep. I told Morgan about this, and mentioned that the main reason is that she doesn't play characters that I like. Morgan told me that was the art of a great actress. After watching Doubt and Mamma Mia I realize it is true. I completely believe her (opposite) characters for both movies.

Now for the Review! - I watched Doubt knowing what it was about and even knowing the general principle regarding the ending. I appreciated this film. (You can't really like a film that is about whether someone abuses children.) You don't know who to really root for (other than the young nun who is just a sweet person).
As for recommending it, I would say if you are in the mood for a serious drama with good camera work than this film is for you.


My second Meryl Streep movie of the week is Mamma Mia! I watched this with two of my sisters-in-law and we watched the 'sing-a-long' version. It was fun to sing along with the words but that only worked for about the first half and then the songs/tunes weren't very familiar.
I had a friend mention that this movie was for her kids like Grease was to her as a child - a guilty pleasure. Kids don't know what all of the innuendo etc. mean, but parents know what's really going on.
The hard part is that this film is very appealing and then you realize they are selling a icecream sundae with a bug sticking out of it. It just goes down wrong.


Bride Wars

I watch this with Morgan thinking it would be a fun little chic flick. This movie is not a chic flick. It is for girls, but there isn't really any romance. So if you want to laugh with friends its good, if you want to cuddle up with your hubby, pick something else.
Morgan's complaint with this movie is that there were no surprises. They spoon fed you every single plot movement. They didn't trust their audience to have a brain for themselves.
However, this movie did have one line that is a Universal Truth. I don't remember it exactly but it went like this. The scene is the two grooms talking to each other on the phone.

"It like they went totally crazy a right before the wedding. Not the best idea. Not the way I would play it."

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Star Trek


I'm not the best at getting images, but this weekend we've been hanging out with Morgans family and his dad mentioned he wanted to take Shari to the see the new Star Trek and wanted to see if we wanted to come and leave our boys with Dan and Ginny. It is hard to turn down free babysitting so we went with them.

I have never been a Star Trek fan. I don't think I have ever seen an entire episode/movie of anything Star Trek. I didn't really have anything against it, but I also didn't think that it had anything going for it.

I REALLY enjoyed this movie. It was great. I realize that if I knew more about the beginning Star Trek that the characters would make more sense to me, I would probably have gotten a few more of the subtleties. But I was satisfied with the movie as it was.

Now for the question, should you try and see this in the theater or wait for it to come out on video. I don't know. I enjoyed it in the theater but I don't really think it was necessary.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Movies

Seven Pounds - ***
Great movie! Morgan and I really enjoyed it. We didn't know much about it, and I preferred it that way. This is a serious drama though, so you need to be in the mood for it to be able to enjoy it. It was a little confusing at first because there were 3 different time periods that you were dealing with.

Fred Claus - **
I didn't watch much of this, but Eli and Morgan enjoyed it. Nice little Christmas flick. My favorite scene was the "Brothers support group" it had such stars as Bill Clinton's brother, one of the Baldwin brothers, Silvester Stalones brother, and maybe others but those were the main ones.

Because I Said So - *
Not worth seeing, I wouldn't recommend it.

Over Her Dead Body - **
This was okay. Nothing special, but it was fine.