10 Reasons why Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows pt. 2 is Awesome

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint

Year: 2011

Trailer

Movie Review:

Before I get into my 10 reasons….let me just say one thing…Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows pt. 2 is AWESOME! I havent read all the books but I am definitely a fan of the Harry Potter movies and all of its ups and its downs. Its hard to predict ( if you havent read the book) how end of super mega franchise like Harry Potter is gonna end…will it end on soft note, a quiet note, or an action packed extravaganza? Lets just say this Harry Potter movie delivered on the action, the drama, and alll the fanstical magical spells that it ever could, without losing track of the end goal ( the duel between Harry and Voldemort). I will say this though…if you havent read the book some parts will leave you scratching your head but the movie is still easy enough to follow so that your not completely lost and you quickly forget about your minor confusion because your completely distracted but all the freaking awesome magical duels which leads me back to my 10 reasons…

1. Really cool spells. Hermione casts this really cool spell that turns her and Ron into… (watch the  movie its awesome)

2. They return to Hogwarts! after two movies away from Hogwarts Harry and the crew return to their roots.

3. Professor Mcgonagall brings her A-game and lays a smack down on Professor Snape

4. The action and fighting sequences are amazing and highly entertaining leaving you on the age of your seat.

5.  All the characters from all the movies show up in this last goodbye to harry potter

6. Neville brings his A-game and really surprises everyone with his freaking badass warrior skills.

7. Harry Potter is less whiny and mopey than earlier movies and rightfully deserving of praise

8. Everybody has their special someone and gets a kiss.

9. Hogwarts has its own warriors who are also badass

10.Voldemort gets owned….BIGTIME.

The movie was awesome. go watch it. The End.

Bluej Rating: A+

Movie Review: Super 8

 

Starring: Elle Fanning, Amanda Michalka  Kyle Chandler

Year: 2011

Trailer

On vacation I saw this movie and had high expectations because many people have recommended it…and I was pleasantly surprised this movie is really charming. Super 8 ‘s trailer lets you know very little about the plot except that its an alien movie. So your totally left in the dark about what to expect from the movie, which I feel is always a good thing, I hate when trailers give away the whole movie.

The movie reminded me alot another Steven Spielberg movie; ET. I feel like the only major difference between this movie and  ET ; is that ET was a “good” alien and the alien in Super 8 was a “bad” alien. SIDENOTE; I always wonder when discussing alien movies what makes an Alien “good” and what makes an alien “bad”, which is why I always put quotes around both labels. If an alien kills someone only to defend itself and go home does that make an alien bad? If an alien doesn’t kill anyone but uses earth’s resources does that make the alien good? Can you see now how I’m always confused by the subconscious labels of good and bad aliens haha.

Anyways back to the movie… Super 8 is set in the 70′s in a small town and focuses on a group of kids who get together to film a movie. Then all of the sudden ( as you can see in the trailer) they witness a train wreck and the kids soon find out that things aren’t what they seem. That their is indeed a conspiracy and cover-up about what actually happened during the train wreck and the cargo it was carrying. The movie doesn’t put its entire focus on the alien but rather on the relationships between the kids and that’s what makes this movie great and very reminiscent of ET. The kids have a story, even the alien has story and the movie does a good job revealing everything at the right time, not too fast and not too slow. Although I will be honest I was worried that the movie was going to be one of those alien movies where you never see the alien like that movie Monsters  ( which was a horrible movie by the way) but it wasn’t like that at all. The alien in Super 8 definitely made an appearance and had a real story to go along with it, so all was good.

I also liked how the movie introduced different characters and opened up all their flaws to the point where you almost despised them and then in the next scene revealed a little bit more about the character and got you to feel pity for them and that is what I call excellent character development. You can tell within the first 20 mins that the cast has natural chemistry with each other and that’s what I call excellent casting. The cast has the natural ability to draw you in in the first few moments of the film and keep you entertained throughout the film with their natural charm and witty comments. The supporting characters (the parents and older folk) arent empty characters and add their talents as well which makes the movie a well rounded film that keeps you entertained and laughing.

Bluej Rating: B

Birthday Top 10

Yay its my birthday! although I definitely think that after 25 everything goes down hill so I feel kinda silly propping myself  up on being a late 20-something…but since I’ll be doing the family vacation for the next few days I thought I get one last post in before July. This post will be dedicated to my favorite movies from each genre ( genre’s that I watch regularly) and if you follow this blog you’ll definitely already know a few of my favorites.

1. Disney/Animation

The Little Mermaid

Runner up: Mulan

2. Pixar/Animation

Monsters Inc.

Runner up: The Incredibles & UP

3. Comedies

Men In Black

4. Fantasy

Lord of the Rings

5. Action and Adventure

The Mummy

6.  Romance

Ever After

7. Science Fiction

X-Men

8. Musicals

The Music Man

Runner up: My Fair Lady & Evita

9. Drama

Where the Heart is

Runner up: Erin Brockovich

10. Aliens and Vampires

Independence Day

Runners up: Underworld and Twilight Saga: New Moon

Movie Review: The Dilemma

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Queen Latifah, Channing Tatum

Year: 2011

Trailer

As I started to watch this movie my expectations couldn’t have been any lower, I’m usually not a fan of the typical Hollywood comedies mainly because I don’t find slapstick humor or teenage boy humor funny, but I was pleasantly surprised by The Dilemma. The movie stars Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, and I was pretty apprehensive about the movie because their persona’s in other films really annoy me…but frankly I was bored and figured I would give the movie a chance. I have started this new thing where I give movies between 20-30 minutes to capture my interest if I’m still bored 30 minutes into a movie then, into the garbage they go (obviously not literally).

watching The Dilemma, after 30 minutes I realized that while this movie is by no means great or fantastically hilarious, it definitely has its winning moments. The plot of the movie is simple; Should you tell your best friend if you catch his/her spouse cheating on them? (should you?). While the movie is pretty straightforward the move is not bland and I think that’s because of the acting, Vaughn and James were great together and didnt over do their performances. Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder who play the wife and the girlfriend also add some extra depth to the movie and play their parts excellently, there are also some brief scenes with Queen Latifah which added an additional humorous touch.

 

 

I think the funniest scenes to me were when …(spoiler) Vaughn got into a fight with the guy who was sleeping with his best friend’s wife, the guy (Channing Tatum, who I definitely have my questions about as an actor) started crying and freaking out and it was super funny. One of the other scenes I enjoyed was the scene where Vaughn tries to tell James that his wife his cheating on him and he says “can I talk to you about something personal?” and James freaks out and says something like ” really!!!!??? you think I have time to talk to you about personal stuff right now?!!!??” and then When James later apologizes he says ” ok you have 9 minutes of my undivided attention…*pause*  ok you still have 8 minutes tell me what you wanted to say”  hahaha. I think the most interesting character was the cheating wife ( Winona Ryder) her character is at first portrayed as only sightly annoying then the movie morphs her into the adulterous wife. Then the movie tries to get you to feel sorry for her by showing her side of the marriage and what led her to have an affair, but then the movie completely destroys any sympathy you feel for her by turning her into a super manipulative/borderline evil wife.

Another positive of the movie is that they give Vince Vaughn a real backstory and because of this, you really see his character go through significant personal development during the movie. which I think is the reason why I enjoyed this movie because I hate comedies that have no story and are just about getting laughs. This movie has a plot, a moral compass and provides humor all at once and that’s why its enjoyable. Cinematically, I dont think this movie stands out in other areas but the one area it does well ( not great but well) is plot and acting casting was also done pretty, well I think all the actors really brought their characters alive….and made you either love them, pity them, hate them, or cheer them on and I think that’s what good performances are supposed to be about.

Bluej Rating: B

Movies so bad I couldnt even Finish

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

So everything Ive head about this movie was just bad bad bad….but you know sometimes you just have to see for yourself And usually with sci-fi/fantasy movies no matter how bad the reviews I still have to see it for myself. Even though I had really low expectations about the plot and knew the acting was gonna suck at the very basic level i was expecting some sort of explanation for why the characters were running from shadows….especially when they mentioned that it the sun dosent come up for as long anymore but the darkness was never explained and i just couldn’t finish a movie that was going nowhere and had from what ( wiki says) a super dumb ending. It was also this movie that made me institute the 30 minute rule…meaning that if a movie couldn’t interest me in 30 minutes then its not worth my time haha.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

It was clearly obvious after watching the trailer that Red Riding Hood was geared toward the girly teenyboppers who are either team Edward or team Jacob….but as I said before, I definitely have a teenybopper side to me and I’m team Jacob….. so I thought there might be a possibility that I would enjoy the “hood” but I was wrong. The movie is a re-telling of the classic tale ” little Red Riding Hood” definitely has an interesting premise and could have been done really well but the producers/directors/writers decided rather to focus on making the movie look physically appealing through the use of cinematography and pretty actors rather than focusing on fleshing out a plot that would keep an audience intrigued and let the acting slide too so the movie just ended but being super boring and flat and pretty much annoyed you by my 30 minute mark and that has alot to do with Amanda Seyfried who In my opinion is a horrible actress and it really showed in this movie which is why after 30 minutes I got bored and trashed it.

Gigi (1958)

So for an upcoming spotlight on musicals I decided to check out Gigi and when I rented it from Netflix and it sat around my house for about a month. I think subconsciously I knew the movie was gonna be wack….and when I finally sat down to watch it I was right ,the movie was super corny ( and not in a good way) and really silly.  The movie’s plot is not based on anything substantial but instead celebrates extravagance and pomp its bows its head to Parisian high society in the 1900′s and all the retardedness that went along with that. The songs were dumb and I fast-forwarded through all of them and their was no dancing! the costumes didnt impress me, and the plot was dumb and boring. The characters themselves were just really uninteresting people who I would never want to know in real life much less spend 3 hours watching them. For all these reasons after an hour and half I coughed this movie up to a musical fail.

Bluej Rating: D ( for all the movies)

Movie Review: I Am Number Four

 

Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Teresa Palmer, Diana Aragon

Year: 2011

Trailer

So being a fan of alien movies and movies about people with powers, I was really excited to watch this movie (but not excited enough to spend movie theater dollars on it ) and while it definitely wasn’t boring, in my opinion it could have been better. I Am Number Four is about a group of aliens who escaped their planet when it was being destroyed and are now hiding out on Earth, hiding from the evil Aliens that destroyed their home planet and who have come to earth hoping to kill off the last of their kind. As you can see the plot is very simple and unoriginal. I happen to love sci-fi movies and I think that when somebody watches an alien movie they want to see back-story and creative plot premise…this movie was very shallow in both.

The movie is focused mainly on one alien high school, boy aptly named “John Smith”  who keeps his real identity a secret in order blend in. Apparently all the ‘good’ aliens have a guardian that helps keep them safe from the ‘bad’ aliens but John Smith dosent want to play by the rules he wants to be a “normal” boy and go to high school  ( like that is normal?! who wants to go to high school?! ). When John accidentally reveals that he is indeed an alien, his guardian Henri packs up his stuff and tells John they have to skip town before the ‘bad’ aliens find them. John reluctantly leaves with Henri but carries a big grudge that he had to leave his friends behind and that he never has a real home. Henri pretty much tells him to suck it up and that being an alien is a gift and not a curse and that he needs to quit complaining and being ungrateful.

At their new location John decides to disobey Henri and enroll in high school Henri is furious but allows John to go, giving him a warning that he better not do anything ‘alien-like’ and blend in. John being a blond haired, tan guy automatically dosent fit in ( which is one flaw of the movie because its totally unrealistic, that a good-looking blonde guy wouldn’t fit in at a creamy vanilla high school ).  Ok so John is having some trouble making friends but he isnt the only one….like in all Hollywood portrayed high schools  their is always one boy or girl that nobody likes and gets trashed everyday. In this movie that boy’s name is Sam. John feels bad for Sam (who is picked on mainly becasue he believes aliens are real and abducted his father) and since John dosent have any friends and is pissed at Henri he uses some impressive  display of alien strength by protecting Sam from the bullies. In the process he catches the eye of a pretty high school girl named Sarah ( I love how unoriginal the names of all the characters are too lol). John is instantly intrigued and proceeds to make Sarah his new girlfriend. Which pisses of f Henri further and warns John that he  shouldn’t get too involved with the locals for fear of being discovered.

 

John of course ignores his guardian and proceeds to fall in love with Sarah and befriend Sam, then all of the sudden John goes through alien puberty right in the middle of class and his hands start glowing, John freaks out ( and rightly so) and Henri comes and saves the day. Henri tells John that his kind are blessed with unique gifts that are supposed to be used to kill the ‘bad’ aliens and protect earth/people/’good’ aliens/the universe etc… John of course is excited by this news and proceeds to test his new powers in the woods with no one watching. Sarah of course loves the fact that John has no friends and spends all his time with her, invites him to a carnival they hang out together and this pisses off Sarah’s ex-boyfriend Mark.  Mark then proceeds to get a group of his friends together to harass Sarah and John but they dont know that John is an alien and can pretty much take care of himself. so when Mark and his buddies decide to jump John and drag Sarah off into the woods, John goes all cyclops/magneto/beast on them and pretty much puts them all in the hospital his crazy behavior scares Sarah but then she forgives him…but its too late becasue John’s crazy behavior has attracted some unwanted attention and the ‘bad’ aliens find him and create alot of ruckus….but I wont ruin the ending for you.

The movie as a whole had alot of unused potential, it was entertaining but wasnt anything special. Everything from the acting to the plot to special effects was mediocre a good afternoon movie but not something you stay home to watch.

 

Bluej Rating: C

 

Movie Review: X-Men: First Class

 

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender,Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon

Year: 2011

Trailer

I saw this movie last night and let me tell you after the first X-men movie (which came out in 2000)  this is the next best thing. I have no complaints about this movie whatsoever but I should warn you X-Men: First Class is not like  any of the previous X-Men movies. This movie completely focuses on character development (yay!) and while it does have some action, I would say the action is secondary to the actual plot and character development. The movie  focuses on the early lives of Magneto, Professor Xavier, and Mystique. which is nice becasue the early part of their lives are only covered for like 2 minutes or not at all, in the other previous X-men movies. So adding the background on these characters really gives depth to all the other x-men movies.

Another great thing about this movie is that it ties together all the other X-Men movies, like for the example X-Men: First Class opens with the scene of Magneto in the concentration camp which we saw in the very first X-Men movie. In the current movie instead of fast-forwarding to the future the movie continues with the story of Magneto in the concentration camp and how he developed his powers and the emotional influences that affected him throughout the rest of his life. The movie does a really good job at giving the character of Magneto a back-story not just with his powers but also with his emotional journey and how their tied together. Then in the same time period the movie switches to Professor Xavier as a boy, who lives in the big house that is the school in all the other X-Men movies and shows how he meets Mystique, who is also just a child at that time too.

Mystique and Xavier become friends or rather more like brother and sister and its nice to see how their not enemies at first. The movie takes it time showing the aging of each character and the personal development they go through, and that was one of things I really appreciated about this movie. The movie was not rushed whatsoever but it didnt drag along either, every thing was given its time and place and you could definitely get a sense of a natural progression. For example they showed Xavier as a child, then they showed Xavier as any regular college student…except that he is really smart but goes to parties/gets drunk like most college students and then they show him quickly adapting to the changing political climate and gaining a sense of responsibility towards fellow mutants.

The early version of Mystique is very interesting as well, they show her as a child who has to result into breaking into people’s homes to eat and survive and how Xavier takes her in. Then they show her as a young adult ( or teenager I cant be sure) and her struggle with her physical appearance and the desire to be accepted by human and mutants alike. What I liked about the Mystique story is how the movie explained her devotion to Magento and where that came from, I know in the other X-Men movies I never really got why she was so loyal to Magento and this movie explained that really well.

With each of  the three main characters the movie used the 60′s as the backdrop and specifically the Cuban Missile Crisis which I thought was brilliant. I think doing it this way gave the movie added depth and range and didnt just make the movie about mutants battling mutants ( which their definitely was some of that) but more about how mutant issues were intertwined with history so I thought that was a great way for the movie to add extra importance to the storyline. Even with all the greatness of movie my favorite part of the movie was the 30 seconds with wolverine when Xavier and Magneto tried to recruit him and he told them “go fuck yourself”  the whole theater laughed for like a minute haha. I really have nothing but praise for this movie I thought it was well made, great acting, great plot, excellent character development and loved how it tied everything together, hopefully they make a sequel ( but only if they have the same directors/writers/producers/actors).

 

Did you like the movie? What was your favorite part?

 

Bluej Rating; A