I Hope This Movie Springs to the End of the Film Already . . .

Name: Hope Springs
Actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, Steve Carell
Director: Dacid Frankel
Release Date: 8 August 2012


Okay. Mom and I saw the previews for this movie and decided it had the potential to be entertaining and humorous. Mostly, however, despite it being funny, it's just awkward.

So here we go . . .

This has to be one of the saddest marriages I've ever seen. Even though I have no intention of marriage, I still hope that I never end up like that.
     Ever

Wait a second . . .
     Tommy Lee Jone's character sounds exactly like my dad's reaction if mom mentioned marriage/couples' counseling or anything like that.
     . . . and my mom is a bit like Meryl Streep.

. . . Fantastic. I'm watching my parents go through marriage/couples' therapy.
     That brings awkward to a higher level.
     I don't even know if I'll be able to finish this movie . . .
          it's just to weird . . .

I'm seriously waiting for Ashton Kutcher to show up and tell me I'm being Punked even though that show no longer exists.

I need to stop now. This is entirely to weird and applicable to my everyday life.
     Save me. Please. Ashton? Anyone?

At least one good thing happened -- Meryl Streep isn't scaring the crap out of me like she does in most, if not every, other role she has.

I Dont Want to be a Good Blogger, I Want to be a Great One!

Name: Oz the Great and Powerful
Actors: James Franco, Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis, Zach Braff, Joey King
Director: Sam Raimi
Release Date: 8 March 2013

The tale of The Wizard of Oz is fairly well-known throughout the world thanks to the popular film featuring Judy Garland. Oz the Great and Powerful acts as a prequel to this movie, adding another dimension for the movie industry. (Not that there wasn't one already in book form)

The plot is fairly simple - How do we turn a magician from Kansas into a great wizard to serve and protect  the land of Oz from the Wicked Witch(es)?

Making it happen, however, is a difficult task on its' own.

When we are first introduced to Oz, he's obviously a player -- offering every girl he meets a music box from his grandmother to show them he cares when he clearly doesn't. He does not respect his assistants or anyone really. He only cares for himself.  Then, by chance, a tornado sweeps him up while he is in a hot air balloon.  He prays in desperation and is rewarded with a second chance to put things right in Oz. As he travels, Oz is humbled and becomes the person he always wanted to be through correcting his most recent mistakes made in Kansas.
     THAT is the way to achieve his greatness -- his goodness -- not his magic.

I just really like the circle it completes. It's awesome. But I have a Masters in Literature; I'm required to know these things.

Anyhow, the actors well chosen, even if I'm not generally a fan of James Franco, but I still say he did a good job just like everyone else. I especially enjoyed Mila Kunis and Joey King's performances. Both were beyond amazing. I loved it.

I really enjoyed the movie too. It was very well done.

Park It Chuck! We're Reading This Blog

Name: Charlie Bartlett
Actors: Anton Yelchin, Robert Downey Jr., Hope Davis, Kat Dennings
Director: Jon Poll
Release Date: 22 February 2008

Charlie Bartlett is the story of a boy who desperately wanted to be liked by his peers at any cost, including making fake driving licenses, selling medicine, selling DVDs of various students getting beat up by Murphy, throwing a party, and offering psychological advice from the comfort of the stalls in the boy's bathroom. While he gets in trouble for doing most of these things, he continues to act as a counselor for his peers to help them and get them to like him.
     His excuse? Being popular and well-liked is one of the most important things he needs/wants from his high school experience.  No one is able to convince him otherwise, even though his mother tries to say that there is more to life than that. 

In doing these things, Charlie's dream comes true. He is the most popular boy in school. Somewhere along the way, however, Charlie's dream changes. He becomes attached to the students he helps and wants to help them in every way he can, especially Susan Gardner.
     This isn't it out of character for him -- he is constantly helping his mom and arguably assumes a kind of parental role for her.
     It is interesting, however, that while Charlie can help all of these different people, he is unable to help himself, especially where is his father is concerned. Charlie needs to get to a point where he can finally visit his father and not stay in the car unable to go inside with his mother.
          Maybe he needs someone to talk to as well. He does have a psychiatrist, but their relationship isn't that open or helpful.

Moving on . . .

The music used for this movie is fantastic. It was jazzy and cool -- it really fit the movie well.

The cast is wonderful too. And I have to give props to Anton for all of his hard work with his accent and what not.

I love this movie now. I didn't at first because of the place I was in my life, but I've overcome that so I can fully appreciate the movie.
      It really is a wonderful film.

Les Miserables = Miserables?

Name: Les Miserables
Actor: Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried
Director: Tom Hooper
Release Date: 25 December 2012


Every advertisement I've seen of this movie, both when the movie was in theaters and when the DVD/BR was released, claims that Les Mes is "the greatest musical of all time."  I'm still not familiar with many musicals, but I've seen enough to appreciate the genre.
     So of course I wanted to see it -- it was a musical I hadn't seen and it's highly praised.

I went in with high expectations, mostly related to the actors and actresses in it because I love them and I know they are talented, but also related to it being labeled as "great."

And . . . to be honest . . . I didn't think it was all that great for reasons I cannot fully understand.
     1. I wasn't emotionally invested in the plot or characters.
     2. The music didn't speak to me despite it being so beautiful to hear on all accounts.
     3. Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway are two of my favorite actors so I should be in love with this movie.


I mean the music and the movie were amazing, I can appreciate all of it. They did a wonderful job. I guess something just didn't click because it was just . . . okay in my opinion. Maybe my expectations were too high. I don't really know.

I know this review isn't great, but I honestly can't remember anything about the plot or characters or anything really. So, I'm sorry. I know I'm not giving much of a review at all, but this is all I got. 

I do, however, plan on reading the book -- hopefully that will change my opinion of the film because I really want to love it.

Not All Aliens Are Here to Kill Us . . .

Name: Escape from Planet Earth
Actor: Brendan Fraser; Rob Corddry, Jessica Alba
Director: Cal Brunker
Release Date 15 February 2013


 To be completely honest, I didn't have much interest in this movie. It looked typical and something that I'd seen before. Something I definitely didn't want to see again, but I went anyway to spend time with family and found that the film was unexpectedly funny.
     Not really funny, but just funny enough to pass "The Hilarity Scale" for funny.
     Like my baby brother said -- it wasn't quite funny enough.

Funny or not, Escape from Planet Earth was still a typical family film with cheesy, traditional morals thrown in for good measure.
     Why else would you let a kid see a  movie if not to train them to be proper adults?

I know this isn't much of a review, but I saw this last month and haven't had time to blog because of my concussion and job (Yay! I got a job!). It didn't stick in my head at all -- so I guess that means it was nothing special.

But I enjoyed it anyway because my baby brother's laugh is one of the best sounds in the universe.

America's Next Life-Size Model

Title: Life-Size
Actor: Lindsay Lohan, Jere Burns, Tyra Banks
Director: Mark Rosman
Release: 5 March 2000


Lindsay Lohan is playing a football player. Yeah . . . so not buying it at all. Also, get some new pants because they are not helping you at all.
     Just saying

Fortunately, however, this is before she went completely crazy, dyed her hair blonde and became the wreck she is today.
     And to think . . . I used to like her. What a whackadoodle.

oh Tyra . . . What are you doing?
     At least it's funny to watch you. You're awesome. 

Just a sweet, silly movie existing to help children who have lost a parent and wished to have her/him back again.

Bourne Lamecy

Title: Bourne Legacy
Actor: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton
Director: Tony Gilroy
Release Date 10 August 2012


It's a Bourne movie, so it's all about being a trained assassin trying to break out of the program and become a free agent or whatever. Of course, people are going to try and stop or kill him, so they have a lot of exciting fighting scenes. It's a typical spy movie. It fits well into the Bourne brand of films which is a good thing seeing as I'm pretty sure there will be more to come.


I think it's funny to see Edward Norton and Jeremy Renner in a movie together. After all, Norton was the Incredible Hulk and was supposed to continue the role in Avengers while Renner played Hawkeye.

Jeremy should not have facial hair. It just doesn't work for me. After all, I saw him as being the "hottest" guy in The Avengers, but when he isn't compared to those other guys, the "hottness" goes away entirely.

Anyhow . . .

I'll be honest. I was writing in my journal at the same time. It was New Year's Eve -- I had a lot on my mind. In the end, though, it was an okay movie; just not my kind of thing.

"You Stink of Illiteracy" So You Should Definitely Read My Blog

Title: Paranorman 
Actor: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, Tucker Albrizzi, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Director: Chris Butler, Sam Fell
Release Date: 17 August 2012

Paranoman is about a boy named Normal who has the unique ability to speak to and interact with the dead. Because everyone makes fun of him, including his family, Norman remains lonely and deemed as being weird for seemingly talking to himself. They are required to believe him, however, when zombies rise from the dead due to the witch's curse.

 I don't know if this movie was actually funny or funny because I am so sick and tired watching it. Either way, I haven't laughed this hard at a movie in a long time.

For the record, I didn't really like the animation style. Tim Burton would have done it better, just saying. Also,Burton wouldn't let them have weird looking noses either. What was up with that anyway?

Anyway, the film had some fantastically funny lines, such as:
     "If you were big and stupid -- you'd be a bully too. It's survival of the thickest."
     "Swear?  . . . like the "F" word?"

There was a lot of slapstick humor as well. In my head, I'm picturing the scene where Norman is trying to get the book from Mr. Pendergast's body is fantastic. It was so funny.

This movie is obviously directed toward a young audience, but that doesn't make it any less funny, Or maybe I'm just that immature with my humor, but I will defend it until my death -- it's hilarious.

"Hold onto Your Butts . . ." We're Getting Prehistoric Now

Title: Jurassic Park
Actors:: Sam Neill; Laura Dern; Jeff Goldblum
Director: Steven Spielberg
Release Date: 11 June 1993


Okay . . .

Confession time.

This movie scared the crap out of me when I first saw it. I think I had thrown-up in my bed or something because mom was changing my sheets while I sat down with my dad in the living room to wait. He was watching Jurassic Park. The only scene I saw was the one with the T-Rex eating the lawyer. After that, I had nightmares about T-Rexes chasing me all over the place and eating my friends and family on its way. And then I would wake up just as the dinosaur was about to eat me.

Needless to say then, I wasn't in a hurry to see the film again.

Bur I'm older now, so I figured I'd have another go at watching the film. To my surprise, it wasn't "scary" at all. In fact, I was quite impressed, especially with the special effects they had available to use at that time. So bravo guys.

On the other hand, I was not impressed by the actors or characters. They were all flat, vanilla, and stereotypes.; the dinosaurs had more personality. The only saving actor was Jeff Goldblum. He was the ONLY actor able to bring his character to life and add some apparently elusive, substantial, realistic nature to his role.

And, for the record, I love John Williams. (of course. Who doesn't?). He's completely brilliant when scoring music for films.

Also, that lawyer got what he deserves. And that's hard for me to say because we all deserve death because we suck, but God lets us be alive anyway. So to say the lawyer got what he deserves is inaccurate and wrong. We all deserve to be eaten by T-Rexes while in an . . . awkward . . . position, not just him.

Moving on from my Christian and philosophical soap box . . .

I'll just say this: the film was better than I expected and the random snippet of philosophy in a movie about genetically engineered, frog-DNA infested, "dinosaurs."

The Ho-blog-it

Title: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Actors: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Andy Serkis
Director: Peter Jackson
Release Date:14 December 2012

The Hobbit is such a famous story, retold repeatedly because Tolkien is just that amazing. In light of that, I'm not going to spend a lot of time summarizing.
     In other words, I'm going to keep this one short and sweet . . . because unlike Peter Jackson, I can be succinct and to the point.

The movie itself was enjoyable because Peter Jackson did a brilliant job with The Lord of the Rings films, so you know the film will be meticulously detailed and most likely please fans of The Hobbit. The problem is, however, is that there are some SLOW points . . . even to the extent that it becomes, dare I say it, b-o-r-i-n-g boring.

I love who they got for Bilbo. He is precious and just the way I imagined young Bilbo being. And he's adorable. I loved him.

And I love that Gollum's actor stayed the same because he is perfect for the role, even if I can't stop envisioning him as Richard Kneeland in 13 Going on Thirty. Honestly though, it makes the movie so much funnier . . . and The Hobbit could have used a bit more humor.

I also like what they did with Smog. We only get to see pieces of him, never the full beast; just enough fragments to convey a frightening presence on screen to be built up in the next movies. Quite brilliant -- like the Fire Lord in Avatar: the Last Airbender.

But seriously -- Why does it need to be made into three separate movies? That's absolutely ridiculous. I just hope Jackson can keep me, and other people in the audience, interested in watching the two following movies.

Acca-scuse Me, But You Should be Singing This Blog

Title: Pitch Perfect
Actors: Anna Kendrick, Skylar Astin, Ben Platt, Brttany Snow, Anna Camp, Rebel Wilson
Director: Jason Moore
Release Date: 5 October 2012


Overall, it was acca-awesome just because it was so funny. It was also awesome because I got to see it with my brother and his fiancee.

Anyhow . . .

Obviously riding on the glee-club/singing fad's coat tails, Pitch Perfect is a movie about an all-girl singing group trying to win the national title as well as beating the all boy group from the same school. A new girl shows up and changes everything so that they can finally win. That's about it. Not much else happens . . . except for a few tossed cookies.

I'm going to pick on Anna Kendrick for a moment because she is, arguably, the star of the movie. I will give her props for being able to sing pretty well.  But she spent way too much time around Kristen Stewart filming the Twilight series seeing as she has also been diagnosed as having Dead-Face Syndrome -- neither of them are capable of emulating any emotion or changing their facial expressions more than a millimeter for each mood their character is in.
     It's awful.
     Admit it - you know you think it is too.

Anna Camp also seems to feed off of Anna Kendrick's lack of expression and dead-pan acting. Whatever. The other characters make up for both Annas.

Brittany Snow is also wonderful. The red hair was great and she's so talented. I mean, did you see Hairspray?

Rebel Wilson is fantastic. She's definitely my favorite girl there. She's just perfection in a crowd of skinny people taking pride in herself and her size. Her bluntness and comments make her perfect. I love it.

Yes, it is playing off the success of gLee, but seeing as they are also mocking the TV series so I'll let it stand. Can't really blame them for riding the current glee club phenomenon -- they want money and this trend is popular enough that they are assured maximum profit.

I loved it though.It maybe stupid and silly, but I think it's fantastic.

Are You Fireproof?

Tiitle: Fireproof
Actors: Kirk Cameron, Erin Bethea, Ken Bevel
Director: Alex Kendrick
Release Date: 26 September 2008


Okay.

Disclaimer -- This is a religious, very Christian movie, so if that will bother you, feel free to skip this entry. You won't hurt my feelings.

This movie is obviously about marriage and the challenge of making it work, especially when one of you is working all the time and doing everything while the other works sometimes and watches porn on free time.

Obviously, this is a serious issue.

Even more obvious, because it is a Christian movie, it is a beyond serious issue.

So what do we do?

The couple isn't completely to blame. Most little girls dreams of perfect marriage because her parents had such a good relationship. But they are children; this kind of marriage exists only in fairy tales any more. So, her expectations of marriage deteriorate and fall to pieces, but it requires work on both sides. Otherwise, divorce becomes a realistic option.

Once divorce is brought into the conversation, they begin to verbally argue because neither of them sees themselves as being "broken",  but one of them has to be in the wrong.
     This seems to affect the man the most because we see  more of him and his thought process than the woman. As a Christian, he claims that God wouldn't want them divorced because it wasn't in His plan.  But as he prays, he struggles, calling out "Where is God in my life?" and deciding that "God doesn't care about my problems."
    Thus, his dad hands him a book entitled "The Love Dare" - a 40 day plan to get your marriage spiritually right once more.

I'm not going to tell you the end because I'm pretty sure you can guess it on your own. It's not that hard.

The movie does bring up some interesting Christian thoughts:
     Is Jesus your crutch?
     Fireproof -- can you live through it? fires are going to come whether you like it or not? (eg. you can live through with fires with God)
     How can you love someone over and over again only to be met with rejection?
     Faith changes people -- obvious message seeing as its a Christian film and whatnot, but we know what we're walking into with the production company.
 
At least the neighbor, "Mr. Rudolph," adds something comedic because this is pretty intense.

It was alright. I can see why it's popular and powerful. I can see why The Love Dare is now a New York Times Best Seller book. I just think it would mean more if I had experienced marriage, but whatever. It really was an okay movie.

     (Courageous is better)

Hi! I'm Timothy Green's Blog

Title: The Odd Life of Timothy Green
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams
Director: Peter Hedges!
Released: 15 August 2012

Alrighty then . . .

I was interested in seeing the movie just because I like Jennifer Garner and it seemed to have enough "Disney Magic" to spark my interest as it did in Bridge to Terabithia. And, seeing as BtT is one of my favorite stories and the movie met my expectations, I knew I needed to see Timothy Green. Also, my mom really wanted to see it also, so I would have seen it whether I wanted to or not.
     Either way, I still enjoyed it.

Timothy Green is the story of . . . well, Timothy Green, a boy grown in the garden after his parents buried/planted a box full of everything they would want for their unborn, never-to-happen child. Timothy becomes everything they ever wished for and more. Timothy became their ideal son who not only changed his parents' lives, but the lives of other people around him as well.

. . . I'm going to stop there so I don't give away too much.

The idea behind the movie is interesting.There are so many good people who would die to have a child, but can't. So why not plant one instead? To be fair, the Greens had no idea that Timothy would pop out of the ground like a muddy, mole or something.  But wouldn't it be nice if we could help those people through this process?

Though not everyone understands Timothy by any means, Timothy does just what he is meant to do. Not only does he grant the Green's most precious dream (to have a child of their own), but he fulfills the wishes of others around him by reminding them what it was like to believe into magic and that anything was possible in the world. Timothy manages to bring out the beauty and youthfulness in everyone he touches, reminding them of a past version of themselves where they were happier and not so weighed down by everything in the world around them.
     Think Haley Joel Osment's character in Pay It Forward

I think that's also why the soccer team is called the "Erasers" -- Timothy is able to erase the pain and weight on others as well as everything weighing them down so that they can return to their happiest moment and be that person once more -- even if only for a moment. But, hopefully, that memory will sustain them for the rest of their lives.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. It was cute and all, but I do have one concern. They made the adopting a child process way too easy. It just doesn't work that way and that's false advertising or something close to that.