The Five Year Engagement (2012)

The Five Year Engagement
This movie was a lot of fun.
Very funny.
I love all the characters in the movie.
It's the small characters that make this movie
funny and smooth.
Same kind of style as Bridesmaids and
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which is the same director).
It looks like a romantic comedy but it's totally
straight up comedy for me. Yeah, there's some romance.
But still has some laughs.
I like a lot of scenes.
The chicken feather and blood experiment pitch
made me burst out laughing.
I'm a fan of Jason Segel.
He did awesome as usual.
Emily Blunt did alright.
My favorite part with her is her Cookie Monster and Elmo scene.
Love the cameos.

Good Saturday night movie.
A must for the comedy section as well.

Kung Fu Friday: Dirty Ho

KUNG FU FRIDAY

Every fourth Friday of every month this year,
I'll be checking out a kung fu movie of any period.
Gives me an excuse to kick the walls and break
blocks of wood. Also gives me the excuse to
go to I Luv Video or Vulcan Video and catch up on
some great kung fu flicks out there.


Dirty Ho
Awesome kung fu movie.
It was a bad dubbed English version that I saw.
There was lots of jump cuts and shots that repeated.
It was like I was watching a Grindhouse movie.
These things made the movie funny.
The fights were cheesy as hell.
I love the sounds.
Just a little hand slap sounds like
a big move. There wasn't a lot of fights
as I wanted but enough to say this
is pretty damn good.

I'm adding this to the kung fu section if I see it
on sale.

The Divide

The Divide
This movie was at first a little boring but
then things got a little interesting.
Not too exciting but okay for a movie
I didn't expect much from.
This was screened at SXSW this year as part of
the Fantastic Fest midnight specials.
Anything that has to do with Fantastic Fest, I would
pretty much see. 
All these people got on my nerves early on.
I was wishing all them to die in the movie.
Which, most of them did.
I like the idea of the story but
at times it felt a bit lazy (like finding out there's
another way out near the end.)
It's the end of the world, people.

Alright to check out for a late night movie but

must have caffeine or else the music here will put you to sleep.

New Release Tuesday: Cinema Verite

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY

Cinema Verite
This was a good movie.
Never heard of it until last week.
I'm not much into reality tv and nowadays
they seem more fake.
This movie about the first reality tv family
was interesting.
It's not all peaches and cream.
There's lots of family issues including the big one, divorce.
Tough emotional subject.
I like the performances here especially the mother.
I like that every once in a while they
show clips from the actual show.

Good to check out.  Nice little surprise.

Home Invasion Thursday: Extremities

HOME INVASION THURSDAY

Every third Thursday I'll comment on a
home invasion movie I've never seen before.
When I saw Kidnapped from Spain last year,
I decided to start a home invasion section for my collection.
Might as well do a special on this.


Extremities
80's cheesy home invasion but a little different.
It was pretty cool.
The intruder here just walks in to the house
like no ones business and starts crap with the
girl here. It's the same guy who tried to rape her
in the beginning. So he's here to finish the job.
After a while the tables turn and now he's
the one who is trapped and is being tortured.
I liked it.
I like some of the dialogue like:
"I come home and you ain't got no food."
I like how some things get a little
different and interesting once the roommates show up.
There's only two things I didn't like about the movie.
One, the main door was unlocked and the guy
just went in like that.
It was a psycho move but the girl was so paranoid
about everything that she forgot to lock
the main door.
The second thing I didn't like was the ending.
But, I did like that all this takes place during the
day. Most home invasions take place at night.
So kudos for that.

I may add this to the section one day.
We shall see.

New Release Tuesday: Shame

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY


Shame
Blogging this a little late, (it's actually Thursday now).
But, better late than never.
This was a good movie.
Felt very real.
Every shot and every performance was so great.
My favorite shot is that long tracking shot with
our main character jogging in the streets of New York.
There's other memorable shots.
Michael Fassbender nailed his role as a sex addict.
It was good checking it out.

This is rated NC-17 and it shows, but it's a good drama.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
This movie was so annoying to me.
I wanted to kill that damn kid.
Almost every scene he was in,
I wanted to shut him off.
Especially that scene where he's throwing things
and yelling at his mom.
I didn't like the way they told this story.
They go back and forth between the past and the present.
To me, in this case, it takes away the sadness.
I didn't feel anything for this kid.
His father dies at 9/11, but this kid didn't sell it to me.
He was just too smart.
I did like the mute grandfather.

Not worth the 2 hours of your time.

Boy Wonder

Boy Wonder
All I can say is that I love vigilante movies.
Movies like: Kick Ass, Mirageman, Super, Vigilante,
and Dennis the Menace. The last one doesn't really count,
but you get the idea.
This one was okay for a low budget vigilante movie.
There's bad acting throughout the whole thing but
who's to blame?
Our Boy Wonder here gets his ass kicked a few times
but he's a psycho cold blooded avenger.
He shoots his "victims" except for the last one.
The last one is the one that started all of this.
The guy that killed his mom and got away with it.
Oh yeah, that guy got killed in a different way.
I just want to add that I love the ending.
The ending was probably much better than
the whole movie itself.

So just for that ending, this movie is worth a trip to the Redbox.
I don't know if I'll buy it unless I decide to start
a vigilante section in the future but that's unlikely.
It is Sunday, I want to get in the habit of mentioning my favorite movie
of the week. The week starts Monday and ends Sunday.
My favorite movie of the week goes out to: "Brick."
This week we got a few interesting movies and some not
interesting ones. I'm looking forward to Shame, Extremities,
and Dirty Ho.

The Girl By The Lake

The Girl By The Lake
This Italian movie reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks
but without the David Lynch weirdness.
It's one of those movies where everyone is a suspect
and keeps you guessing until the last 10 minutes of the story.
For me, the first half had me going.
But, the second half, I lost interest.
I don't know why, it just seemed kind of weak.
The music was good, though.
A little different.
A mix of traditional Italian music with techno industrial sounds.

I was browsing the Italian section at Vulcan looking
for a movie to go with Pasta and Italian wine.
This one seemed interesting. Never heard of it.
Now that I've seen it, I can say that there's nothing exciting about it.
But, the food and wine was good.

South American Cinema Night: A Red Bear

SOUTH AMERICAN CINEMA NIGHT

Every 2nd Wednesday of every month
I'll be checking out a movie from any country in South America.
My goal is to see one movie from each country.
This excludes any films I see at film festivals.

Tonight's movie is from Argentina.


A Red Bear
Little more dramatic than I expected.
I guess I wanted a little more action to
go along with my Fugazza (Argentinian pizza)
and Quilmes (Argentinian Beer).
Props to all the scenes that featured Quilmes.
It was okay, I guess.
I like some of the moments between "the bear" and
his daughter, like the coin scene.
A few fights, a few drinking scenes,
a lot of moaning and complaning.
I wasn't fully satisfied, I wanted a thriller
and a little bit of drama. Nothing wrong with the drama here.

I'll be seeing two more movies from Argentina this year
for my South American Cinema Night (besides the ones
I see at film festivals).
The next Argentinian South American Cinema Night will
be on August 8, 2012 with the movie, Rolling Family.
Next month, we'll go to Venezuela.

New Release Tuesday: The Iron Lady

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY


The Iron Lady
No sir, I didn't like it.
I was wanting more on how this lady became
the first female Prime Minister.
It was kind of annoying that they kept focusing
on her as an old lady with flashbacks every few minutes.
Meryl Streep did alright.
Same as she always does in my opinion.
I just didn't like the flow.
I did like some of the hallucinations with her funny dead husband.
That was cool.
Other than that, I wouldn't watch it again.

Brick

Brick
I liked it. I liked it a lot.
This reminded me of the stories
and adventures I would think about in my head
while I was in high school.
Of course, this is not reality.
No high school kids are like this.
So it was kind of cool to see a mystery and
have these kids act as adults.
My favorite scene is when we meet "The Pin."
He's supposed to be really big in the underworld.
A few minutes later after meeting him,
we are in a dinning room and The Pin's mom is
serving juice and cookies while they discuss business.
That was awesome.
The movie gets crazier with people killing people
and stuff.
This is the same director who did "The Brothers Bloom."
I wanted to watch "Brick" for a long time.
Now the director (Rian Johnson) is coming up
with another interesting movie this year called, "The Looper."
Supposed to be a time machine gangster movie.
Can't wait.

Recommend this. Just gotta suspend your belief
that these are not your typical high school students.
They are way more organized and smarter than most
of us.

Easter Parade

Easter Parade
Guess why I decided to watch this on Easter Sunday?
Well, since it's hard, I'll give you a hint:
the title says it all.
This was a last minute decision.
Nice little classic musical.
Actually, it was a little funny as well.
There's non-stop music through the whole thing.
Some of my favorite musical numbers were,
"I Want to Go Back to Michigan," "Snooky Ookums,"
and ""A Couple of Swells."
I also like the "waiter explaining his special salad" scene.

Pretty cool musical.
Might add this to my Musical Section one day.

Soo

Soo
This Korean thriller/drama started out with a bang.
Then it slows down and became a little confusing for me.
But there was some interesting stuff here.
This movie went by quick.
The revenge plot was okay, nothing new we haven't seen before.
The first half reminded me a bit of
The Man from Nowhere.
I was wanting a little more than what I got.
I wasn't feeling the main character very much.
But, for a Friday night with some Hites, this can be okay.

Melancholia

Melancholia
I don't know where to start.
I guess I can start by saying that this is
directed by Lars Von Trier (Dogville, Dancer in the Dark, Antichrist).
This came out at Fantastic Fest last year.
It received a lot of buzz at Cannes last year too.
It was just a tiny bit interesting and entertaining.
But majority of it was annoying.
The 8 minute artsy intro reminded me of another disappointment,
The Tree of Life.
The movie is broken up into two long chapters.
I didn't get the first chapter very much.
The main character (Kirsten Dunst) supposed
to very depressed on her wedding.
But we never get why.
The second half was a bit better because
right here is where the movie turns more
into sci-fi. But, still it was a downer until the end.

If you're thinking of checking this one out, my recommendation
is to go find "Dogville" or maybe even "Dancer in the Dark"
by the same director. Those movies put this one to shame.

New Release Tuesday: Immortals

NEW RELEASE TUESDAY


Immortals
Nothing interesting came out today.
So it was hard to pick a movie to watch on New Release Tuesday
when I don't feel any of the movies.
My first pick was going to be a movie called, Tyrannosaur.
It was rented out.
So here I am with my second pick.
I'm not too big on Greek mythology movies
so I went in with low expectations.
It wasn't bad.
It was somewhat entertaining for me.
You got the new Superman kicking ass
with a magic bow.
You got The Wrestler playing an evil King.
You got Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) playing
a virgin Oracle.
And you got lots of cgi and some battles.
That's the movie.
Somewhere after halfway through the story,
I lost interest and started falling asleep.
So the second half wasn't as memorable for me.
But, to each his own.

If you love 300 and Clash of the Titans and etc.
this movie might be good for you.

80's Monday: The Blues Brothers

80's MONDAY

[Every first Monday of every month is 80's Monday.
There's a lot of movies that came out
in the 80's that were so popular that I haven't seen.
I'm an 80's kid, so this segment will give me a chance
to catch up on some of those popular typical movies from this period.]


The Blues Brothers
I finally got to see this comedy tonight.
Was it worth the wait?
It was pretty cool.
Love all the Blues Brothers songs.
The music scenes from all the other artists were okay.
My two favorite scenes are the Country bar scene
and the final concert where they fill up a whole venue.
I like their style and that they always wear their sunglasses.
I like their cheesy dialogue.
This movie was long though. And it felt like that
during times. But, it's a classic.

Dan Akroyd and John Belushi are really good with these characters.
Now I know why they are icons in the movie world.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Great 50's alien movie.
Had me hooked early on.
I wanted to see this classic ever since I saw Roadracers
by Robert Rodriguez.
And when Roadracers finally came out on DVD a few weeks
ago, I knew I had to make these two movies a double feature
with some homemade hamburgers, fries, and a chocolate shake.
This movie was short and sweet.
The only complaint I have is that they don't explain
on what happens to the actual human after the alien human clone
is finished. We never see if they die or disappear or anything.
Other than that, run for your lives and don't trust no one.
These aliens are taking over and they don't feel any love.

This turned out to be a great double feature experience
with Roadracers.
Roadracers references this movie quite a bit and the main
actor from this movie also makes a cameo.