The Big Lebowski

Nothing quite shows the talent of the Coen Brothers like The Big Lebowski. After I watched A Serious Man, I really wanted to go and watch more of their classics, such as No Country For Old Men, Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, but I wanted to go with my personal favorite of the bunch tonight.

So, after some searching through my DVD collection (being that I don’t keep the cases), I finally located The Big Lebowski, I may have made some noise of excitement, then I put it in and sat my butt on the couch with a taco and Kool-Aid (I know, a perfect evening).

The movie begins and you already feel like you’re on an acid trip. You’re introduced to the Dude, played by the wonderful Jeff Bridges, Walter, played by the equally brilliant John Goodman, and Donny, played by Steve Buscemi. They form a small bowling team and a wonderful trio.

So, the Dude is beaten up by some German porn stars looking for a different Lebowski. They then pee on the Dude’s rug that apparently ‘ties the room together’. The Dude then goes and meets Jeffrey Lebowski, who is better known as ‘The Big Lebowski’ and things get worse from there.

It goes from a kidnapping plot, to an embezzlement plot, to a crazy daughter, to a high school car thief, to a disgruntled porno maker, and it just keeps going from there, and you’re never entirely sure where the plot wants to take itself, but you never really mind, because it all seems to work together for an unforgettable experience.

You know, if you haven’t watched this movie before, I would definitely suggest it going and renting it. You may not like it, it has a quality to it that says Coen Brothers all over it, but if you like their style, then this will definitely become one of your favorites.

You know, this is one of the few movies that really doesn’t have anything wrong with it that I can see. Apparently, it’s has a cult following too, with Lebowski Fests all over the country in bowling alleys, and eventually I would love to attend one, have a White Russian, wear my robe and pajamas, and get my inner Dude on.

About my only complaint in this film however would be the editing. The scenes usually end too early, or someone is talking off camera. It wasn’t bad per se, but it wasn’t the greatest either.

Overall it’s a fantastic movie that I could watch over and over again. Definitely not a family film however, but it’s one that I would show to my own children when they got old enough. The Dude Abides. I give it 9 out of 10.

The Proposal

This is the transcript, just in case you can't watch the video.

Well, I finally watched The Proposal tonight. It took me three days to finally finish it, but I did, and it’s done, and it’s your choice for this review.

When The Proposal came out in theaters, I remember seeing the trailer and thinking to myself that it looked just like any other rom-com in existence. Boy meets girl, boy and girl don’t like each other, boy and girl start to learn and then the rest is history. So, I can honestly say that I really had no desire to watch this film.

So, I popped it in the DVD player and it started up and I was already bored, even though the opening credits thrilled me with such names as Craig T. Nelson, Betty White, Oscar Nunez from The Office, and hell even the main stars Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock. This film at least had its casting right.

The movie gets going pretty quick and we are introduced to Andrew and Margaret. Margaret is a big time editor at a New York book publisher and Andrew is her assistant/slave. So Margaret is informed that her visa is in the process of being renewed, but because she left the country without permission, her application for renewal has been rejected and she will be deported back to Canada. So, in a moment of insanity, she tells them that Andrew is her fiancé and they are getting married.

Andrew is completely against it, as well he should be, but she threatens his job and career unless he does it. So, he accepts but then the tables get turned where INS tells them of the consequences of lying to them, and suddenly Andrew has the upper hand. He forces her to make him an editor if he goes along with it, to which she accepts because she has no other choice (obviously, I’m still bored).

They then leave together for Alaska where Andrew’s family lives for two reasons. The first reason being that it’s his grandma’s 90th birthday. The second reason is to inform his parents about their ‘engagement’.

So, it was basically what you would expect out of a rom-com. It had a couple twists to it that I didn’t see coming (maybe because I was blind, I’m not sure), and it had several funny moments, most of which came from Golden Girls alum Betty White.

Like I said earlier, the casting was very well done. There were a few wooden scenes and a few ‘what the hell?’ scenes, but it wasn’t too bad. The editing wasn’t that bad. There were a couple moments that I got confused on because it had its choppy moments, but overall, not bad for a movie that you already know the ending to.

You know, I will admit that I liked it. It’s been the best rom-com movie that I’ve rated so far, but it’s not going to win any Oscars or anything. It is a great date movie though and it achieves its purpose. I give it 7 out of 10.

The Lovely Bones

I’m back, finally meeting a deadline that I set to have The Lovely Bones watched and reviewed by Tuesday. Now that I’ve got quite a bit of free time on my hands, I plan to review more frequently. Hopefully you won’t get sick of hearing from me.

So as I sat down in my seat to watch The Lovely Bones, I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not, just because most of the critical reviews have been negative. So, I told myself that I would give it a chance, not to judge it until it was over, then I would decide from there whether it was worth the film it was printed on.

So the movie began and we’re introduced to the Salmon family. We meet Susie Salmon as a little girl and we watch her grow (albeit fast). Then suddenly, Mark Wahlberg crosses the screen as Jack Salmon, Susie’s father, and I got excited. I have always liked Mark Wahlberg, even though he has made his fair share of stinkers, but I’ve liked him ever since The Departed.

Susie then talks about how she was murdered when she was fourteen years old and about a half hour in, we see the event (even though it’s not entirely clear until near the end just how it was done). We’re introduced to George Harvey, the murderer (played by Stanley Tucci), who did a fantastic job at playing a creepy old man. He reminded me of Ted Bundy how he would act all
nice and lure in young girls.

The movie is mostly about Susie crossing over and being in between heaven and earth and trying to come back. It’s also about her family coping with her murder, her father taking the case into his own hands and tracking people, her mother wanting to let go but can’t, and the police trying to figure out just what happened.

As Susie is in the middle, she meets a girl named Holly, and eventually several other girls and they kind of guide her as to what she needs to do, but she doesn’t want to listen and, like I said earlier, she wants to come back.

You know, there’s not much to say about this film as it wasn’t as deep as you would imagine it to be. Did I enjoy it? Yes, actually I did. Did I think it was a little full of itself? Maybe a little bit. There were several scenes that were brilliant, and others that made me roll my eyes in unbelief. The ending was fairly cheesy in my opinion, but if you want to know how it ends, then you’ll just have to see it. The editing was very well done, I will give it that. The plot was just so-so, it could have had a lot more depth to it, but who am I to judge?

The acting was outstanding. Everyone in this movie fit so well and it made you forget that you were watching a movie instead of an actual family dealing with the pain together. I don’t think it will be up for any Oscars, but it should at least get a mention.

Overall, it wasn’t bad, it was better than I thought it would be, and I am glad that I finally saw it, being that I’ve been waiting to see this film for a while, ever since I heard Peter Jackson’s name attached to direct. It definitely wasn’t Lord of the Rings good, but it was better than King Kong in my opinion (which I know that I’m in the minority on not caring for King Kong). I give it 7 out of 10.

Next up is The Proposal and don't forget to vote on my latest poll.

Sherlock Holmes

I must thank you readers for sticking with me even though I’m doing terrible at meeting my own deadlines. If you’re still reading, then I thank you again. I was going to have my review for Sherlock Holmes ready about two days ago, but I went on an unscheduled road trip over the weekend and I got a little distracted.

So, I finally got to see Shelock Holmes last night, and I was quite excited for a number of reasons. First off, I have always been a fan of Holmes, I’ve been a fan of Robert Downey Jr. since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, so I was excited to see him play detective again, and the trailer did make this movie look good.

The movie began and within the first five minutes, I was quite upset because it starts off with a heavy action scene where Holmes and Watson are stopping a human sacrificial ritual by a dark magician named Blackwood, and I felt that wasn’t very true to Holmes, the action part anyway. I know that Holmes was learned in fighting and defense and whatnot, but it was a little too action heavy.

Holmes begins narrating to himself about how he plans to attack a particular guy and you start to see the intelligence of Holmes start to blossom, and you see the battle tactics of Holmes, and you begin to realize that it’s not just pointless action, and my hope was renewed a little.

So, the movie continues and the bad guy Blackwood is hung, but before he tells them that he will return from the grave and kill three others. Of course, everyone thinks he’s a crazy old magician (isn’t that just a classic movie mistake, to NOT listen to the crazy magician’s warnings?) and they hang him and bury him, and well, just as he predicts, he comes back and people start dying.
Holmes is trying to figure out the case while Watson is more worried about his love life. I felt they could have explored Watson’s relationship a little deeper with his girlfriend, Mary, because it left questions unanswered in my opinion. There is a woman who I assume was an old girlfriend of Holmes, played by Rachel McAdams, who was kind of a double agent for a mysterious man (who they reveal near the end is Moriarty).

There were aspects of this film that I enjoyed, but far too many aspects made me feel inadequate and it bugged me. It was a film about mystery and Holmes and Watson figuring out how Blackwood was doing all this and it doesn’t reveal anything until the remaining ten minutes of the two hour film. The problem with the reveal was so much of it was way over my head and it made me feel stupid like I wasn’t paying enough attention, even though I was focused on it.

The film jumped around a lot. It was hard to follow in points because they would be investigating one thing, then the next scene, they would be doing something completely different and they would determine clues in ways that were confusing, and like I said earlier, it made me feel stupid, which is something a film should NEVER do to its audience.

This film truly reminded me of Batman Begins, not so much because it was an origins story, but because I wanted to see Moriarty and they kept hinting at him and then it ends with them going to see what he’s doing, so it reminded me of how Gordon told Batman about the Joker and just got you hankering it. The bad guys were similar in a sense and Holmes had to get over himself to finally solve the case. At least Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins was a lot cooler than Blackwood. Blackwood I felt was a pathetic villain.

Overall, it was a good popcorn movie, the sort that you’d throw your popcorn at, but it was enjoyable and the performances by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law were surprisingly good and even though this film was mediocre, it did make me crave a sequel, just because they portrayed their characters well enough to want to see them do it again.

So, I would recommend this as a dollar theater movie or a Netflix rental, but I felt slightly cheated at seeing it full priced. I give it 6 out of 10.

Next up is The Lovely Bones and I intend on reviewing it probably Tuesday. Keep reading.

Inglourious Basterds

Last year, I went to see Appaloosa with my friend and brother and we saw a trailer about a WW2 group of people, and I immediately got excited. I had read things about Quentin Tarantino’s newest film Inglourious Basterds, but I had no idea when it was coming out, who was in it, what it was going to be about, stuff like that, all I knew was something about WW2. So I sat in my theater seat and got excited. I saw Daniel Craig cross the screen and my blood boiled in excitement. The trailer finally got to the end, and the title crossed the screen…Deception. My heart sank like a rock.

Months later and an actual Inglourious Basterds trailer crossed the big screen and my excitement rose again. I’m not a huge Brad Pitt fan, apart from the classics such as Fight Club, Se7en, and even Ocean’s 11. But it was Quentin Tarantino, and I’ve trusted him since Pulp Fiction.

I unfortunately wasn’t able to see it in theaters, even though that was one of the things I looked forward to the most of 2009, but that’s okay, I actually have yet to see a Tarantino film in theaters apart from Grindhouse.

I waited for the DVD to come out for a couple months and was quite relieved when I saw that it was coming out in mid-December. Simple enough to say, I was the first in line (not literally) to get my hands on Tarantino’s latest masterpiece.

Well, I had already watched Inglourious Basterds once, but I didn’t see the harm in watching it again for my review.

Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France. Just the opening and the name of the first chapter got me excited. It opened to a small farm in France and a Nazi general who is known as ‘The Jew Hunter’ goes to inspect a Jewish family farm. He interrogates the father and discovers that he is harboring another Jewish family under his floorboards. They then proceed to kill the hidden family except for a young girl who escapes.

We then get out first introduction of ‘The Basterds’. They are small troop consisting of about ten people, and they have one job, and one job only…killing Nazi’s and giving their Sergeant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) their scalps, and he wants their scalps.

So ‘The Basterds’ are told that there is going to be a movie premiere about a Nazi troop who fought off several American troops and is a hero to the Nazi party. So Adolf Hitler himself wants to honor the soldier by being at the premiere himself.

The plot is basically just that, ‘The Basterds’ trying to set up their plans to get to Hitler, the theater owner (who was the woman who escaped at the beginning) planning an assassination attempt on them as well to get revenge for her slaughtered family, and a young actress who is a double agent for ‘The Basterds’.

The editing was well done, it was hilarious at several points, and it was dark at others. It was everything you could expect from Quentin Tarantino. It wasn’t his best movie, I think Pulp Fiction still holds that title, but I would rank it up there with Kill Bill. If you love Tarantino, you will love this movie. If you don’t, it’s still worth a watch.

Definitely one of my favorites of 2009, and I would love to see it go up for Best Picture. I give it 9 out of 10.

The Holiday

I’m back. Sorry it took me so long to getting around to doing this review, but if you read my previous blog, then you’ll understand. If you’ve had tooth pains before, then you’ll definitely understand my pain, literally and figuratively.

Well, here I am, sitting in the hospital’s waiting room. My girlfriend, Tandra, had knee surgery today, and the surgeon came in about a half hour ago and told us that she is out and doing great, the operation was a success and now she’s just resting and she just has to heal up.

I’ve been here since seven this morning and I decided that while waiting, it would be the perfect time to watch The Holiday and finally get it out of the way. So, here I am, just finishing up The Holiday and writing my blog in this very comfy armchair in a smelly waiting room (but hey, free danish’s isn’t bad).

So, I began The Holiday and I was completely convinced that I was going to hate it, being that I really don’t care for Jack Black, Jude Law, Cameron Diaz or Kate Winslet. Each of them have made a good film or two, but in my opinion, they’ve made far too many stinkers to completely trust them. But, it did surprise me in the sense where I felt like my time wasn’t completely wasted.

The movie starts out with Iris (Kate Winslet), who lives in Surrey, England, talking about being in love with a man who cheated on her, but she was still going to try, and then the guy she’s in love with announces that he’s engaged to another woman.

It then goes to Amanda (Cameron Diaz) in Los Angeles who is having a similar problem where her boyfriend has cheated on her, so she dumps him and tells everyone that she needs a long vacation.

She goes on a website and finds that Iris’ cottage in Surrey is up for a house swap, so they agree with each other to switch places, a classic switcharoo (which in my opinion, has been done so much it makes me want to barf).

So Amanda meets Graham (Jude Law), who is Iris’ brother, and they fall into a very fast relationship, but she finds it hard to trust him because she’s fresh out of a breakup. But, nevertheless, they still have sex the first night they meet.

Iris meets Miles (Jack Black) and also an old Hollywood writer and they all just become friends and nothing more. Iris and Miles then fall for each other and the rest is history.

The movie was very predictable. Basically, everything is given away in the trailer, and if you’ve seen a movie about couples on a ‘will they, won’t they’ relationship, then you’ll know how it’ll end. The plot was quite lame, the editing felt like it was chopped together in several parts and it just all around felt lazy, like they just decided to slap together a movie as quickly as possible and make some money. It also dragged several times at a whopping two hours and fifteen minutes (far too long for a rom-com).

If you’re looking for something deep, then you may want to see something else, but it’s not bad, not great either. It’s a date movie, that’s about it. It’s the perfect definition of a so-so movie. I give it 5 out of 10.

Broken Tooth

Well, I apologize to my readers about not having The Holiday or Inglourious Basterds review up yet. I broke a tooth on Friday night and have been having sever pains lately. I do feel bad that I haven't gotten around to my reviews just yet, but I will be back soon. I am going to watch The Holiday tomorrow morning and then Inglourious Basterds sometime later this week. 24 premieres this week too, so I have to make time for that too.

Thank you all for being patient with me, and I hope you've enjoyed my reviews so far, and there are plenty more to come. Next up is The Holiday, then Inglourious Basterds then Sherlock Holmes. Then it's whatever you, the reader, decide upon in the latest poll.

Thank you and goodnight.

A Serious Man

Congratulations reader, I have good news for you, but maybe not as good news for me. The good news is that you’re going to be getting three reviews by the end of this week because A Serious Man, Inglourious Basterds and The Holiday all tied in the latest voting poll. The bad news for me is that is a hell of a lot of work.

Well, to be honest with you, A Serious Man is what I wanted to review the most out of those choices, so I’ll do that one first. Tomorrow, I will do The Holiday, and over the weekend I will review Inglourious Basterds. I will also start a new poll after all these are done.

A few months ago when A Serious Man came out, about all I knew about it was it was something about a Jewish family and that it was made by the Coen Brothers. Well, I’ve been a fan of the Coen’s since I first saw Raising Arizona at about the age of ten, so I always look forward to their movies.

So the movie begins and we are introduced to a Russian Jewish couple sometime probably 1800’s, and the husband informs his wife that he was walking home in the snow and the wheel of his wagon fell off and a nice man stopped and helped him come home. The husband tells his wife this and she informs him that that man is dead, he died three years ago.

The ‘dead’ man then comes in and warms by the fire and the wife argues with him whether or not he’s a spirit, or a ‘dybbuk’. She then stabs the man and he begins to bleed and he leaves into the storm complaining, but not dying.

Time then passes to the 1950’s or 60’s and we’re introduced to an American Jewish dysfunctional family. The husband, Larry Gopnik is a physics professor and the wife is a crazy woman who wants a divorce from her husband because she’s screwing the neighbor.

His son is always being chased by a another kid to whom he owes money, and he steals from his sister, who keeps yelling because that is her rightfully owned money (which she steals from Larry’s wallet). Larry also has his mentally and socially handicapped brother, Arthur, living with them as well.

The story is about Larry trying to cope with his family, his wife working on getting a divorce, his son bickering, his daughter bitching, his brother gambling, annoying neighbors, Rabbis who don’t give any useful advice, and an Asian student who bribed him for a passing grade in his class and is threatening to sue him if he doesn’t.

The story has several twists and turns to it. I laughed at several moments, and it made you think at other moments. It was a very well-done dark comedy, and you find yourself rooting for Larry throughout the whole movie, hoping that it ends right for him.

Well, I’m not going to give away the ending, if you want to know it, you’ll just have to go see it yourself. It was definitely a fantastic movie, I loved it. Definitely not a children’s movie, but it would be a great movie to watch after you put the kids to bed and you microwave a bag of popcorn and snuggle up with a loved one. I give it 9 out of 10.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Welcome back to Cineplex 14. It has been a weird week, and thus I haven’t had as much time lately to watch movies. I’ve been doing a lot of babysitting. I assisted an elderly woman with making photocopies. My girlfriend, Tandra is having knee pains and will be going in for surgery on Monday. We watched Beetlejuice and it took us about 4 days to finish it. But finally, I got around to seeing the next movie on the roster.

I decided this time to watch and review the movie based on the book by the great Roald Dahl, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. We went to see it in a small theater with not that many people attending. I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not, being that I had only seen one trailer a long time ago and I had no idea what it was even about, so I went in clueless (I feel it’s better to watch a movie fresh).

So the movie began and we’re introduced to Mister and Misses Fox. Mr. Fox is a chicken thief and one day, the two of them get stuck in an animal trap due to Mr. Fox’s arrogance. Mrs. Fox then informs him that she’s pregnant and if they survive that he needs to go into a different line of work.

Two years pass (twelve fox years) and they have a son named Ash. Mr. Fox is a columnist for the local newspaper, Mrs. Fox is a landscape artist and Ash wants to be an athlete in school. Mr. Fox then goes and buys a tree because he’s tired of living in a hole, and they take in their cousin Kristopherson, because his father has ‘double pneumonia’.

The tree they live in is across from three farm’s owned by three evil owners named Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Mr. Fox then teams up with an opossum named Kylie and they start a ‘master
plan’ to steal Boggis’ chickens, Bunce’s ducks and geese and Bean’s alcoholic turkey cider.

So Mr. Fox goes through with his ‘master plan’ and the three farmers start chasing all of them underground and into the sewers. They keep meeting up with different animals who are on the run too because the three farmers have destroyed the forest.

You know, the plot really wasn’t that deep, and it was fairly short at an hour and fifteen minutes. The acting was pretty good. There were excellent performances from George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Bill Murray. The animation definitely took some getting used to. It was almost like a mixture of claymation and puppetry.

Overall, a pretty good film, not ‘fantastic’ as the title suggests, but it was still good. Definitely a family friendly movie that all the kids would love and probably beg for their own Mr. Fox after it was over. I give it 7 out of 10.

Just on a side note, I’ve got a lot of new ideas for Cineplex 14, such as doing seven movies is seven days of the same genre (I’ll have polls when it gets closer as to which genre YOU, the reader, would like to see me do most), then going the next week and doing a different genre.

Sometime in the future, I plan on doing a 100 movies in 100 days, so watch for that. Keep reading for more updates.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Well, I feel much better and finally got around to watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs tonight, the movie that you, the reader, decided you wanted to see me review the most.

I remember reading the book back when I was an elementary school student, and I loved the book. But to be completely honesty; I had actually forgotten about its existence. When I went to see Night at the Museum 2 in theaters, I saw the trailer for Cloudy and I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I still didn’t even remember the existence of the book.

I passed on it in theaters and a couple months later I was reminded that it was based on a children’s book and a rush of memories came flooding back to me. I remember being in Miss Dibb’s 2nd grade class when she read it to us the first time and I fell in love.

We began the movie and it honestly reminded me of something out of Tron with all the machines. It starts out with a young child named Flint who is a crackpot inventor. He makes Spray-On Shoes and sprays them on and can’t take them off.

His father tells him that he shouldn’t worry about inventing and work at the family bait shop. They live on an island in the Atlantic Ocean called Swallow Falls and they are the leading supplier of anchovies. But, the anchovy factory gets shut down because people realize that anchovies are ‘super gross’. So, the people of the island lose their jobs and they all have to eat anchovies.

Flint’s mother tells him that he should continue and she gives him a lab coat to feel like a real scientist. He gladly accepts it and keeps it on his whole life.

Several years pass and Flint is now an adult and he is working on a machine that turns water into food. He keeps trying and it fails because there’s not enough electricity. He then taps into the city’s electricity and makes his machine work. The machine then takes off like a rocket and is sent into the clouds.

A young weather girl from New York is sent to the island to watch the unveiling of “Anchovy Land” at the island, and Flint’s machine shoots past her and ruins her report. The two meet and it starts raining cheeseburgers from the machine.

Just like the weather, this movie really was unpredictable. Obviously, the children’s book had a lot less to it, so they added much more to the movie, but it was a welcome change. The animation was fantastic and would have made a great 3D experience, but it wasn’t realistic animation such as Up or other movies, but the animation was perfect for what it was.

It was definitely funny, and a fantastic family film. I watched it with several children and they all loved it. I did too. There were aspects I thought I wouldn’t like, but I did.

It definitely wasn’t the best animated film of 2009, Up I think takes that one, but it was still good. I give it 7 out of 10.

Julie and Julia

Well, it’s only been about twenty hours since my last review, but sometimes I will do reviews this quickly. If you read my last blog (The Time Traveler’s Wife) then you will already know what movie is next.

We began watching Julie and Julia this afternoon. I didn’t think I’d care for it much being that I’m not much of an Amy Adams fan, and also it looked rather dull. I was still interested in watching in for the food aspect, as I enjoy home cooking myself. When Julie and Julia came to theaters, my mother wanted to see it, but I refused because, like I said earlier, it looked rather dull. Well, I must say that I’m quite glad that I decided to go against my instincts and sit through the two hour long movie.

It begins in 1949 Paris with a young(ish) Julia Child and her husband Paul going to France because Paul has been sent there for a four year job at the American Embassy. Julia is lost, not really knowing what to do with herself in Paris, and after thinking about it for a while, she decides to take a cooking class. She is in a beginners cooking class and she decides to go be in a professional cooking class full of French men.

Shortly before that, the movie skips ahead to the year 2002 to a young couple named Julie and Eric moving to a small apartment above a pizzeria. Julie is a government worker and is tired of her job. She enjoys cooking and her husband convinces her to start a blog about cooking. So, Julie decides to start a blog talking about her adventures in making all 524 recipes in the Julia Child cook book, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, in 365 days (quite coincidentally, she sets her blog up at BlogSpot).

It goes back and shows Julia learning how to cook and getting better at it. Then she meets a couple other ladies who are trying to publish a recipe book and they ask her to join her in their writing.

The movie keeps jumping back and forth between 2002 and the 1950’s-1970’s. They did it perfectly in my opinion because they give you just the right amount of each character. When I would be watching Julia learning to cook and writing her book, after ten minutes or so, I would begin to wonder when it would go back to Julie, and then it would go to her almost immediately.

The editing wasn’t the best. There were moments where I felt the scene cut away too quickly, or not quick enough. The cinematography was quite brilliantly done, I truly believed what I was watching. The cast was well-chosen and the acting talent fantastic. It had a lot of humor where needed and it made me laugh hard enough that I had to pause the movie. It also had the right amount of emotion to it to make it full of heart.

This was definitely one of 2009’s higher-caliber movies. I give it an 8 out of 10.

The Time Traveler's Wife

If you are reading this, then I owe you a thank you. That means that you stuck with me through my Avatar review and decided I was good enough to stick with.

Nothing quite piqued my interest in trailers this year quite as much as The Time Travelers Wife. What really interested me was a relationship between a man and a woman and that they had to spend a lot of the time waiting for each other. I can understand that well, because I was and still am in a long distance relationship for 5 plus years. So, I must say that I was excited to see it.

I finally got around to seeing it just tonight. I must say I was still rather excited to see it, even though we (meaning myself and my girlfriend, Tandra) were going to watch Julie and Julia, but our copy didn’t work (look forward to a Julie and Julia review by the end of the week).

We began it and I was honestly not sure what to think at first. I kind of laughed at the Michael Bay-esque explosion at the very beginning, but I still was insistent at giving it a chance. I kept watching and was already set within the first half hour that I hated it.

I’m not going to lie; the film jumps around more than Henry does. The first half hour it jumped around so much that I wished I could have paused the movie and clarify that I still understood what was going on. I truly enjoy movies that make you think, but this one was a little too confusing at points.

Anyway, then the first half hour passes, and the time traveling settles down to an extent that it’s a little easier to follow. It starts following a chronological time order fairly well, but never quite did it for me.

The movie, just in case you don’t know, is about Henry, who (is never explained) begins to time travel after a stressful car accident, and then sees his mother’s death. Future Henry goes to child Henry, standing on the side of the highway, and tells him that he just time traveled and that it’s all going to be okay. Then it skips back ahead in time to adult Henry and stays there (I was halfway expecting to see Henry as a kid some more).

He then meets with Claire in the library where he works and she immediately goes gaga over him, and he has no idea who she is. She then explains that he’s been coming to her as a child when he’s older and he has become her best friend.

They then enter a (rather quick) relationship and the movie takes off from there, showing Henry go back in time and see his mother before she died, seeing Henry talking to child Claire in a meadow, meeting with his best friend before they become best friends, etc.

The editing wasn’t half bad, they made some scenes flow quite well, but other times (especially the time traveling scenes) they confused me because they didn’t explain it well enough. The effects weren’t too bad. It actually looked like he faded away when he time travels, but he sees a large buck at one point that looked fairly fake to me. It was short at an hour and a half too, which was a plus for me.

The plot was…well, I was never entirely sure where they wanted to take the plot. At some points you started to grasp the point they were getting, just to do a flip and go the other direction and confuse you some more. There was really no conflict of the movie, other than Claire being frustrated that she always had to wait around for him, and Henry to always try to find a new set of clothes (when he time travels, he loses all his clothes).

Overall, it was just so-so, not a bad date movie, but not a great movie either. I would give it 5 out of 10.

Last note, next time on my Julie and Julia review, I’m going to try to set up a poll so that you, the reader, can decide what I will review next.

Avatar

Well, I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Devin Griffiths. I am a twenty-five year old male living in Pennsylvania. I have dark brown hair, bright blue eyes, I weigh approximately 280 pounds and I am 6’5. But, enough about that, I feel like I’m signing up to a dating website.

I’ve been a fan of movies since I was a kid. I remember growing up watching The Little Mermaid when I was about six years old, and having the power go out in my house, and being afraid that Ursula was going to get me. Sometimes she had help from the Shredder as well. But, apart from being a young child with an active imagination, I never outgrew movies (I still watch The Little Mermaid and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to this day).

A few years back, I even took a crack at making movies. I worked with my best friends, Nathan, Andrew and Eric, and we made an hour and a half long movie called The Necklace about a mystical necklace that a dark lord wanted to get because the necklace made people do whatever he ordered. Anyway, long story short, the good guys took the necklace to him in exchange for the good character’s sister, and then they sucked the dark lord into an alternate dimension (I had a lot of fun playing the dark lord, Groc). Needless to say, it was about as good as you would expect from four guys and one girl with no experience other than a drama class in Jr. High.

About a year later, Nathan and I had improved our acting skills, just a little, and we made another attempt at film making called A Father’s Love. It was quite a bit better than The Necklace. We entered it into a film competition, but never heard anything back. I will put a link to A Father’s Love somewhere on this page for those who care enough. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGwJTdUMnnY Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwuStwJimns Part 2.

Since then, Nathan and I have written a screenplay, and will eventually do something with it…we hope. Well, that just about sums up my movie life. Oh yeah, I also have a girlfriend whom I love very, very much, but we have very different movie tastes (she dared to call The Mist stupid!). She’s great though. My lovely Tandra.

Well, I guess I will start my first movie review. Between that sentence and this, about half an hour passed trying to think of my first movie to review. Something good, something pure. Nothing says good and pure like James Cameron’s Avatar.

The movie begins with the main character, Jake, a paraplegic, being woken from cryogenic freezing on a large space ship because he took his twin brothers place after the brother was murdered in a mugging. He travels to the planet Pandora with a large group of marines.

When he gets there, he is introduced to his brother, Tommy’s, ‘avatar’. An avatar is a mixed race between human and Na’vi, the native creatures of Pandora. The avatar’s are bred to a specific person, so Jake is able to use his brother’s avatar because they have the same genetics. The avatar’s don’t have minds of their own and are completely user run through a pod the humans hook themselves into, very similar to virtual reality.

Jake is put in his pod and synched up to his avatar and immediately runs off, due to being overly excited about being able to use his legs. He’s then stopped and is taken on a mission into the forest to study the trees. He then gets chased off and separated from the group by a Thanator (a larger panther like creature).

The bad guy then reveals that they are on the planet simply to mine all of the mineral called ‘Unobtanium’, and it sells for twenty million a kilo.

Jake is found by a female Na’vi named Neytiri and she saves him and takes him to the Na’vi and he begins to learn their ways.

I don’t want to give too much away in case you haven’t seen it yet, and in case you have, then it may be worth seeing again. I unfortunately did not have the chance to see it in 3D, but I still enjoyed myself.

There were a couple complaints I had, small plot holes. Such as one character who refuses to follow the orders of the military, but she isn’t punished for it at all and it’s never brought up. Also, another character who is a double agent for the good guys stays and spies on the bad guys, but in a futuristic military base I would imagine would have thousands of security cameras, so they should have seen him betraying the bad guys on the cameras.

The editing wasn't too bad, but the beginning felt choppy to me. The rest of the movie seemed to flow pretty well. The graphics truly were amazing. About sixty percent of the film was CGI, but it was so good that you barely notice at all.

The film though at points felt rather condensed, almost like a large book being made into a 2 and a half hour long movie. I felt a lot of it didn't get explained in the end, and that it would have made a fantastic 700 page book.

Overall it was a good movie, and it was definitely a good return of James Cameron. I give it 8 out of 10 stars.