It’s way past my age but trust me the feeling is mutual.

This Is 40

On March 15 2013 I turned twenty six and basically in my mind, I’m dreading turning thirty. What’s funny is how this movie came along This is 40. It’s way past my age but trust me the feeling is mutual.

The best thing about it though is that a female found him which is quite ironic in my opinion.

Zero Dark Thirty 

I don’t know much about politics and frankly I don’t really follow it or get involved. However Zero Dark Thirty is one damn good political thriller about the search and death of Osama Bin Laden. The best thing about it though is that a female found him which is quite ironic in my opinion.

Is Rise of the Guardians a good babysitter for your kids why of course but it’s really nothing else.

Rise of the Guardians(2012)

There is a lot animated films that are released throughout the year some are good, and others mediocre. There are the ones that get nominated and the ones that are good but ultimately are unforgettable. That’s where Rise of the Guardians fit in.

Top Films of 2011

Top Ten Films of the year 2011

1. The Tree of Life

Director Terrence Malick brings a spiritual journey through tragedy on the big screen. Showing a family in turmoil and at the same time bringing us his vision of how the world was created. Mixing incredbile, surrealistic visuals of life and his narrative touch. Comes a film that could be easily misunderstood without having a open mind, but if one just Gomez correct the ride it teaches hope, faith and humanity.

2. Drive

There's aways a film that absorbs it's pop culture and that's what Drive is. A film that blends music and visuals together to make a film that this generation of cinema needs. With a powerful quiet performance from Gosling and a delicious evil Mel Brooks comes a film where that it proves you can a make a stylish film the right way

3. Shame

Writer and director Steve McQueen is what we needed in cinema. He's the young filmmakers we need to change cinema, to make important films about people and relationships instead of the amount of ticket sales. Same explores sex addiction to it's core. Michael Fassbender is amazing.

4. The Descendants

I have not seen much of Alexander Payne's work but The Descendants makes me want to explore his work. Bolstered by a excellent performance from George Clooney, the film explores family problems through a mature.and realistic way. Never once falling into melodramatic trappings.
5. The Artist

The Artist is fine filmmaking, making a black and white film in the 2000's and receiving the acclaim it's gotten takes balls. A true tribute to the silent film era. Reminds us the cinema is suppose to entertain us.

6. Moneyball

Baseball movies come and go but Moneyball stays with you. One of the best scripts I've seen and heard and great exploration of the cutthroat business behind a baseball team. Brad Pitt is awesome (throws chairs like a boss) and a great surprise performance from Jonah Hill!!

7. Midnight in Paris

Take a pot and mix these ingredients: Woody Allen, Owen Wilson, a Paris backdrop, a academy award winning script what you get: Midnight in Paris, if your not in charmed from this movie your a evil gnome.

8. 50/50

The best way to tell your parents u have cancer: "Um..have you ever seen Terms of Endearment.." 50/50's greatest achievement is that it has respect towards it's disease instead of making it shallow or melodramatic or cliche. This years Funny People.

9. The Girl With the Dragon Tatto

I always love a great thriller and Fincher brings in every thing to the max. The movie looks gorgeous and it's suspenseful. Rooney Mara is great as Lisbeth and Daniel Craig is great as usual. Fincher is the man!!!

10. Hugo

With a career that includes Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed, Gangs of New York, you wouldn't expect this director to make a children's film. Well Martin Scorsese did it with Hugo. Basically making a kids film that kicks the ass of other kids films.

11. The Ides of March

As a political thrillers goes The Ides of March is up there with great performances from top actors. The film explores The ugly side of politics.

12. Warrior

A movie that blends great acting, great direction and awesome fight scenes. A performance that got Nick Nolte an Oscar nomination. A must see.

13. 13 Assassins

A epic tale of a ruthless noble and the 13 assassins hired to stop. Experience a movie where 13 men risks there lives for a noble cause against an army. Having classic trends from classic Japanese films Takishi Miike makes you feel for the characters right before the epic action starts.

The movie begins with a evil creature killing things, damn evil creatures!!!

2/4

Warner Brothers has struck gold with DC comics, the Batman franchise, upcoming Superman reboot and Watchmen. Sadly the Green Lantern is not going to be in the hall of fame any time soon.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is what rom coms need a breath of fresh air even if it’s a small one.

3/4

This movie proves that love could really be crazy and stupid all at the same time.

Now a days romantic comedies come and go, there is so much formulaic and predictable movies of this genre coming out you can recite the whole thing with a blindfold. It’s so sad that the best romantic comedy I have seen that got full marks from me was 500 Days of Summer. That was a long time ago but now comes a comedy that transcends the genre, nothing really ground breaking but enough to kick other movies of the genre to the curb.

It doesn't explore the pathos fully but it's a fun ride andone of the better mainstream films of the past summer.

3/4

Marvel's comic book adaptations gets better and better. Captain America might not reach the height of other better comic book films but it's up there.

The problem with the film is that by watching it, it feels like your eating a stale bagel.

2.5/4

Case 39 is one of those child from hell movies where the kids looks sweet but end up being murderous little buggers. While the movie isn't that bad it doesn't  do much to the genre.

. Who knows what message Malick was trying to say but damn it reader he got me thinking.

4/4

The Tree of Life is not a movie going experience, it’s a revelation. A film that touched me in a spiritual way. There has been many movies out this year and none of them has made me say best picture nominee. I can guarantee that The Tree of Life is a guaranteed choice in the Academy Awards.

Was there ever a boss that you just wanted to kill? I did

Was there ever a boss that you just wanted to kill? I did, in my younger years working in a fast food restaurant I encounter a boss from hell. She would get on my nerves. There were moments when I said “God I would just choke her to death.” If I really did I wouldn’t be writing this review and you wouldn’t be reading it. That’s why we have a film like Horrible Bosses that gleefully explores that.

Entre Nos 4/4

There have not been many films out there that actually try to capture the struggles of illegal immigrants in the USA. Good thing that netflix exists because I found an incredible drama that perfectly portrays it called Entre Nos (Between us).

The film follows a family of four which consists of Mariana (Paola Mendoza) and her two kids and her husband Antonio (Andres Munar) He’s the kind of man who can never stay still in one place and always have to move to somewhere else. They have moved constantly in there native country and then finally to the United States. One day he tells her that he’s found a new job in Miami and that he is headed down there. He says to her that once he gets settled that he will send for her. She reluctantly lets him go leaving her alone with the kids without her having a job. One day she discovers that he doesn’t want her to come or even the kids, leaving her abandon. As well as to make matters worse there are illegal.

The movie is an unforgiving look into the life of immigrants who fall in hard times. It also shows how messed up the system that our government employs to solve these issues, while the movie is not political. You can feel the air of tension of her getting caught and then getting her kids taken away and being deported. I love the acting in the film especially of Mendoza she is great. Her performance as the mother is excellent. She has this knack in the entire film where no matter how things are going she still stays strong in front of her kids. She does falter and there are scenes that make you believe that she will break, but she calmly picks her self up. The child actors are great as well.

The film was directed by herself Paola Mendoza herself with a co director. It’s based on true life experiences (The movie is dedicated to her mother which the movie is based on) and she knows how to sidestep clichés and melodrama into more serious tones.

Entre nos might feel bleak at times but life is like that sometimes, it does not care about your plans. Mendoza perfectly infuses a bleak future with simple ending of hope.

4/4

The film Bridesmaids proves that not only men can have fun, the ladies could too.

 3.5/4
The film Bridesmaids proves that not only men can have fun, the ladies could too.

There is no easy answers here and the movie shoves it in your face.

 3/4

Last Night tries to explores how temptation could destroy a marriage while it does do that it’s not perfect.

 3/4
I Saw the Devil is a extremely hard film to watch, but it portrays a powerful view of how men can easily fall in violence.

The movie is expertly made on a huge technical level.

3/4

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the third best summer film I’ve seen its not the greatest but pretty good.

Love the 80’s and maybe that’s why I took it easy on the film.

Take Me Home Tonight is a collection of 80’s clichés and that is one my personnel guilty pleasures. Love the 80’s and maybe that’s why I took it easy on the film.

There is no reason to make nasty sex gags to make people laugh.

Hall Pass is the new directorial effort from The Farrelly Brothers, the same directors who brought us There’s Something About Mary. Hall Pass doesn’t really match up with that better film.

Sadly it just follows the same route towards mediocre PG-13 horror films.

The Rite tries to bring up the topic of exorcism is it real or just a hoax. The film tries to show that and at the same time talk about the faith of a man. Sadly it just follows the same route towards mediocre PG-13 horror films.

A lot of it doesn’t really make any kind of sense

When the news of Sucker Punch started coming out  and as well as the trailer. I was very excited it looked really cool and I was excited about Zack Synder’s first original work. Sadly it’s a major misfire.

The film explores different genres like fantasy, sci-fi, steam punk and you could even say women in prison movies.  So your getting a really mixed bag in this deal. The film begins with a long musical intro, explaining Baby Doll played by Emily Browning loses her mom and her sister and her stepfather admits her into a mental asylum. There she meets other prisoners, females with lot’s of issues. With a very evil orderly played by Oscar Isaacs who torments the girls in the asylum. Then the movie starts going into these music filled sequences of intense action and violence GCI overload. There’s one scene that involves large Japanese samurai with machine guns. A lot of it doesn’t really make any kind of sense.

The film has a extensive cast of females all of them are very talented but it’s not really enough to save the film. Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung and Carla Gigino. I give it to the girls for doing these action scenes they pull it off with style. Everything looks great here visuals, the girls, the action, the music. What the movie bombs is in it’s lack of depth.

The screenplay is very mundane during the scenes with out action. There is not much background for these characters. There all hot woman put up against incredible odds, but if only we care about them more. They have conversations but of nothing really interesting, I admit I wanted them to shut up and get to the action scenes. If you seen enough of Synder’s films his action is very stylized we all saw 300. So you get that pretty much here. The action is well made and it looks great but it just feels like someone else is playing a video game and there not passing controller. They only put it down when the cut scenes come on. There is one scene that I quite enjoyed that involves three females and a lot of robots.

You give actors bad material well they very often shows their disgust through their acting and that what pretty much happens here. There are blank stares, awful delivered lines and it just feels like they really don’t care. How could they, Synder doesn’t give them a chance to really developed or have dialogue that’s worth saying. Synder actually just cares more about the way the film looks then to actually make characters and a plot to resonant on the screen. Two things that I really didn’t get in this film, Scott Glenn a very good actor who’s been in a dozen films is completely wasted here. He plays The Wise Man he just spits out instructions and is basically a walking fortune cookie. The other thing is why is Joe Hamm from Mad Men is here. Did he need money or something oh wait I know what it is *cough* *cough*…studio didn’t trust movie put someone that audiences knows and recognizes *cough*.

Synder says this film is about geek culture’s sexism and objectification of women. I just see as a attempt to get 16 year olds to a movie where it has hot girls, guns, samurai swords and dragons. All that sounds cool but Sucker Punch is not a good example of it.

2/5

Best Movie of the Summer

I regret not seeing X Men First Class in the movies because it’s one of the best movies of the summer.

The film tells the story of Magneto who is played by Michael Fassbender and Xavier played by James Macavoy. It shows how their relationship started and eventually ends. It also shows how other characters begin as well that we see in the other X Men films.

The movie is great blockbuster fun, it has great special effects and the movie being set in the 1960’s are extremely well made. It clearly invokes the era. The acting is great as well, especially of Macavoy and Fassbender. The young cast as well brings a charm to the film. Kevin Bacon is very good here as the villain. Few actors can really invoke hatred and Bacon is one of them. He has this style that really gets in your skin.

One of the huge strengths of the film is how it treats the subject material with joy. We all do know this film is pretty ridiculous, but at the same time it treats it very serious when it comes down to the prejudice themes in all the X Men films. The characters have inspirations, goals, faults, they have conversations of how there are different. Yes it does lead to one big action scene at the end but at least we spend the time getting to know to these characters. So when the action starts we can actually care for the characters.

That was the problem with X Men Origins Wolverine they didn’t humanize Wolverine and made him a set piece for excessive special effects.

Matthew Vaughn directed the disappointing Kick Ass, but he redeems himself with X Men First Class where he didn’t go for shock value instead he made a movie.

4.5/5