The Artist

BRILLIANT! Perhaps I am bias as I have always been a fan of old movie-black and white and silent included but this film was truly amazing. I was curious how it would translate doing a silent film with current actors/technology/settings but it was executed perfectly. This was honestly one of the best films I have seen, period. The story of a big time silent movie actor (George Valentin) who by happen stance meets a woman(Peppy Miller) and helps put her in a film as background. She slowly climbs her way to the top and becomes America's sweetheart of the talkies. All the while George can't adapt to the transition between silent films and talkies and all the while his life falls apart. He makes a movie he finances that bombs in the box office, loses all his money in the stock market crash and his wife leaves him. We follow how Peppy tries to help him with out his knowledge and his pride continually runs himself into the ground. He hits rock bottom when he almost burns alive in his apartment, then after recovering realizes everything Peppy has done and tries to put a bullet in his head. She finds him just in time to save him (in more ways then one) and wraps up with him performing in a talkie starring George Valentin and Peppy Miller and hearing his voice for the first time. There is a scene in the middle where he has a nightmare and you only hear sound effects of everything around him-still no speech. Aside from the nightmare and the final scene where they wrap the take by transitioning into sound the entire film is true to being silent. It goes to prove that all you need is a good story to have a brilliant movie. It was memorable, delightful, saddening, nostalgic, and truly inspiring. It makes you feel there is hope in an industry that has been recycling old movies and producing films such as transformers 3 where there is absolutely no story. Bravo to the people who took the courage to make a movie in a genre most people these days have never seen before, and showing the world what made those movies brilliant to begin with. I STRONGLY encourage watching this film.
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The Adventures of Tin Tin

This movie lacked direction and a clear story line. While enjoyable and visually stunning I continually lost interest through out the film. You were on a treasure hunt to find a ship, which you later discover carried a mysterious cargo which turns out to be wondrous treasure. While I thought this would be like a CGI Indiana Jones, it turned out to be more like National Treasure. One clue lead to another clue which lead to another clue and never ended. Even in the end they found a handful of treasure and a clue to find the rest. The sidekick sailor character to Tin Tin even gives up part of the time. If the characters in the movie are losing interest I DEFINITELY am as an audience. I feel as if this may have been due to collaboration issues. Perhaps Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson just couldn't agree on all aspects and flipped a coin as to the best option. I expected more than what it was. It's too adult for a kid to get and too drawn out for an adult to care. Save your money, wait for it to be put on Neflix.
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Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol

Hmm... as far as a franchise goes this one has been successful. When it comes to watching Tom Cruise do action packed fetes you would never normally see, he takes the cake. He escapes from a Russian prison with the help of a team, then breaks into the Cremline to steal tapes or something or other, before he has to trick a head hunter and nuclear extremist to both giving up the goods with neither being the wiser. This is all topped off by a fight scene in a high tech parking garage. It's exactly what you'd expect it to be. While all looking very cool it lacked in story and a clear villain-which I've hence decided to be nuclear war.  The main villain was completely forgettable, had no real background story or dialogue. It was an excuse for Tom Cruise to take his shirt off and perform extreme stunts. If you have time to kill and thats what your into, by all means watch it. If you're looking for an in depth and emotion investing story-look elsewhere.
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Apollo 18

WOW! Lets keep this short and simple, do not waste your time. This is a made to look real documentary style flick. It feels like they tried to take Blair witch to a syfy changing your idea of history place. Apparently on our final mission to the moon that no one knows about NASA was experimenting on humans to see the effects space monsters. Guess what? the 3 astronauts die, 2 from what is best described as space spiders and the 3rd from a crash from infected space man #2. Oh did I mention said space spiders are actually space rocks? They basically transform to become scarab like spiders. The kicker was that they put a little text at the end saying what they told the public and families of how they "really died" and that all the space rocks brought back to earth between all the previous missions have either "disappeared or been stollen." This is by far one of the worst movies I've ever watched and the most upsetting part is that a good portion of people who saw the preview or the movie believe this actually happened.

Crazy Stupid Love

Here is a fantastic film that will likely go under the radar despite it's extensive advertising.
It's a classic case of boy meets girl, girl falls out of love, man tries to win girl back.
Steve Carrel has been married to Julianne Moore when you discover she has cheated on him and wants a divorce. He moves out into an apt while Julianne Moore gets to keep the house with their teenage son and elementary school daughter. He then goes to meet a friend at a bar to only discover that the friend has taken "sides" with the wife and now has no wife, no house, barely see's his kids AND now has no friends. Drowning away his sorrows at the bar a handsome womanizing gentleman (Ryan Gossling) takes Steve under his wing and teaches him how to be a new man. Of course this involves a frothy montage of a makeover. After finding his manhood again, sleeping with multiple women you see that he's clearly not happy. You also are slowly discovering that Ryan Gossling isn't all that happy with his detached womanizing either.
This is where Emma Stone comes into play. She's been randomly thrown in throughout the movie but you cant quite figure out why, her and Gossling met at the very beginning then she went off into her own little side story. After Stone gets blown off by boyfriend (Josh Grobin) who she thought was going to propose she happens to go to the exact bar that Gossling is at and asks him to take her home. Instead of having meaningless sex they spend the night talking and falling in love. You then find out that Gossling has taken the leap to being in a full fledged relationship and is on his way to meet Emma Stones mother.
Steve Carrel has also decided to do a blowout last effort to win his wife back by building and setting up a mini golf course in the backyard of their house. This is where its revealed that Emma Stone and Ryan Gossling were coming to meet Julianne Moore-the mother-apparently their oldest child and cause for young marraige that had been purposely omitted until the perfect moment. Steve Carrel FLIPS when he finds out that the man who taught him how to pick up chicks is the one being brought home with his daughter when conveniently David Lindhogen ,the man Julianne Moore cheated on Carrel with.(Kevin Bacon) shows up and all hell breaks loose.
Theres also been a side story of the baby sitter being in love with Carrel the whole time-the daughter of the friend who "broke up with him" in the beginning and some nudey pictures come into play and friend is also thrown into the all out brawl. The cops arrive, everyone gets broken up and all feelings are left a little raw.
It ends with Stone and Gossling happily together, and Carrel saying he will never give up trying to get Moore back. It's not a happy ending per-say but a realistic one.
Loved this movie and encourage all to see.

Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Indians you say? no no... Cowboys and ALIENS! Yes thats right. A futuristic twist to a classic concept.
Lets start by saying the cast is star studded, including Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Paul Dano, Sam Rockwell, and Keith Carradine, who all play their parts fabulously and some nearly unrecognizable to their everyday selves once decked out in their western garb. Jon Favreau has been successful yet again in dazzling the senses in a high intensity fighting, where half the movie you (and the characters) are trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
It opens to Daniel Craig in the middle of the dessert not knowing where he is, who he is, or how the hell he got there, but still manages to remember that he's a bad ass fighting machine by kicking the crap out of 3 random cowboys. After stealing their clothes, weapons, horse, and dog he sets off to get some answers and clean up as he has a mystery wound in his abdomen.
After being sewn up by the town holy man, he discovers some little punk (Paul Dano) fucking everyones shit up. May I say, Paul Dano commits to his roles and is successful every time. He's drunkenly threatening the town for not respecting him because "if it weren't for my father none of you would be here," until he accidentally shoots one of the law enforcers and gets put in jail. Daniel Craig joins shortly after for being on a wanted poster and no one knows why. In the process of being transferred to county the aliens first arrive!! They are seemingly stealing people and blowing things up for apparently no purpose other then they can. Now Daniel Craigs wrist contraption seems to activate and blows up a spaceship and the alien escapes when Harrison Declares they have to get their people back (including his son, Paul Dano)
Everyone sets off in search of the "demons" including Olivia Wilde who thus far just keeps asking Daniel Craig who he is, he has to remember and showing no real purpose other then some eye candy. They get attacked by some aliens some more, some indians take them captive, Olivia Wilde dies, then comes back to live, OH did I mention she's actually an alien from an eliminated race? She came here to prevent the same thing from happening, they're "researching" human weakness and stealing our gold, like a good western plot should contain. A peyote trip later Daniel Craig figures out that he was a bandit, getting out of the biz, stole some gold, which caused the aliens to attack him and his gal. Watched his woman get gutted alive then stole the aliens wrist weapon, kicked his ass and escaped.
Long story short the cowboys and indians work together to try and ambush the spaceship and get back their people, while Olivia Wilde self destructs the ship, and Daniel Craig of course kicks some ass.
In the end everyone lives happily every after, besides Olivia Wilde, who suicide bombed herself and the ship.
All in all its exactly what i expected it to be, not many twists and turns but still fun to watch and a pretty good western with some futuristic twists thrown in there. I will also say i liked the design of the aliens. Movies are running out of new/scary alien bodies and Ill say they managed to accomplish a unique new body with these ones.
I recommend seeing it and enjoying a few hours of visual splendor.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

 Let me start off by saying WOW!! For all the pop culture references to this movie i felt I should finally take the plunge and just see what everyone was talking about. Was I pleasantly surprised? Far from it. Was it an awful movie? No.
This is a tale of 4 travelers from earth in a spacecraft who went on a journey to return to earth many moons from their time to see what becomes of the world. They accomplish this with the combination of suspended animation chambers and a spacecraft traveling at lightyears. Upon arrival they crash into a lake of an "unidentified planet light years from their destination." Not quite sure of the location and time they go out to explore the world. Female dies before impact as her chamber had a crack in it and she'd been dead for at least a year. Male #1 of 3 dies in the hunt that occurs when they find other "humans" and the apes are hunting them. He is later stuffed and placed in a museum-the only black man may I add. Male #2 disappears until later when you find he's been lobotomized for his intelligence and ability to speak as the apes don't want the truth of mans past to be known. Male #3 (Charlton Heston) 
is the one we go on a journey with. He is locked in a cage as his throat has been injured thus causing him to loose his ability of speech then tries to escape, shows he can write, run away, then eventually speaks. They try and lobotomize him as well but he escapes (with his female partner who is just a mute attractive girl... every mans fantasy) goes to some caves to look at ancient artifacts to find a toy doll that can talk, PROVING man used to be an intelligent species. He then leaves for the forbidden zone with his lady friend to find the statue of liberty in the picture above screaming the classic line "YOU BLEW IT UP!" You then have full confirmation that he's been on earth the whole time (which I suspected upon impact.) Then comes to an abrupt ending. I expected more out of this ending, he yells and OVER!
On a scale of 1-10 i give it a 6. Is it a classic for a reason? Yes, it went in a way no one had explored before, in retrospect could they have done a better job of it? most definitely.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Finally a movie worth watching but mildly hard to follow. I have now viewed this movie twice and understand slightly more then my previous viewing, but theres still some gray areas yet to be explored.
This was Heath Ledgers final movie before his death and Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Collin Farrell take over his role for the parts that hadn't been filmed, which they did in a very tasteful way. Every time Tony goes into the mirror, he becomes one of the different actors so it doesn't leave you saying "now that was obviously done because they had no choice."
This is a story basically of a monk and the devil and getting people to make the decision of right- or easy. Now don't you fret this isn't a religious back hand of making you realize the greater good and why don't we live a more righteous life, no no no. This is essentially a man, a monk, Dr. Parnassus, who got tricked into a never ending game with the devil. Originally to prove that there was good in the world and later into other things.
There is a circus sideshow type of traveling gypsies who get people to go through a mirror and are faced with challenges and literally have to chose the easy way (the devil) or the right way (Dr. Parnassus) and the results of these choices decide the fate of their bets. Dr. P's first win granted him immortality, he states "he gave me this one" he wanted him to win, then becomes a battle royale for anything and everything, at one point he wagers to be young and mortal again so he can be with the love of his life, unfortunately you discover if he has a child (which he does, a daughter, Valentina) that upon her 16'th birthday the devil owns her. They then wager that the first to 5 (in the mirror) decides the fate of Valentina, if Dr. P wins, she is free.
Tony gets thrown in along the way when they find him dangling under a bridge seemingly dead by noose. After rescuing him you discover he did live via a flute down his throat so he could continue to breath. He helps the gang of gypsies to try and get to 5 first, but why you ask does this stranger do so? Well other then they saved his life, he wants to get into the pants of Valentina.
They Win 4, then some Russian mobsters notice Tony and follow him in the mirror and inevitably give 4 to the devil. Now it's left on the fate of 1 and Tony Drags Valentina into the mirror, he promptly shags her then when she says "we should get married and have babies" he begins to distance himself and goes off into HIS fantasy world. I feel it's perfect they used Collin Farrell for THIS version of Tony because he himself is a piece of shit. They go to a Fundraiser for the children with fictional dignitaries and parade their cause to find out that Tony isn't the man he was cracked up to be. He was laundering money through the company and doing nothing for the children, in fact i think he was hurting them.
Then the chase begins to get Tony to make his choice. Dr. P tricks him with several flute options at the top of a staircase with a noose at the top to (rightfully) kill him and set Valentina free. Unfortunately we've lost Valentina along the way, now Dr. P is mindlessly trying to find her and later many many years down the road you discover she's gotten married to Anton (one of the gypsies) and they had a daughter and lived happily ever after.
Oh and Verne Troyer is in this.
Highly fantastical, and and amazing graphics, most the movie is done with a green screen and cg effects but it is visually stunning. Recommend watching but with a clear head and prepared for odd. If your in a sad mood and you want a feel good flick, do not turn to this, but for all other intensive purposes go out and watch your little hearts out.

Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Well what a load of crap this was. Despite Hugh Grant's awkward charm and Sarah Jessica Parker's...uh oh wait she has no good qualities, this movie was crap.
A separated couple goes out to dinner so that Hugh can try and win back his wife (who he cheated on while they couldn't conceive a child) and witness a murder. Thus they are put into the witness protection program and relocated until the murderer is found who is apparently some professional killer working for a mob boss of sorts.
They're sent to Ray, Wyoming which is essentially a ranching town with about 50 citizens occupying it. Everyone in town knows each other and doesn't get dressed with out attaching a gun to some part of their body.
Of course Sarah Jessica Parker calls the adoption agency who wanted to give her a baby and says she is relocated (but doesn't say where) and the adoption must be put on hold, though they've been repeatedly told to not use the phone or internet because they will be found by the murderer, and guess what? Because of this absurdly stupid act they are found.
Just as Hugh and Jessica decide to give it another shot she tells him she slept with someone during their separation, they fight just as the killer finds them and chases them around a rodeo until, yeah you guessed it, he pulls out a gun and everyone in town pulls a gun on him. Theres also some bull riding and horse tricks thrown in there for the cowboy in all our hearts. The murderer is arrested they go back to New York to go back to their normal lives, phew.
Final scene they bring home their adopted Chinese (they always are) baby and discover Sarah is pregnant as well, aww and they all lived happily ever after, and I want to blow my brains out.
I say- give me back 2 hours of my life this movie was a complete cinematic and budget blowing waste.

Devine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood

WOW talk about what I thought would be a feel good movie and epically failed....the feeling of "at least this wasn't my childhood" comes to mind quite frequently.

Lets sum this up short and sweet. Sandra Bullocks character is the daughter of the old women from Requiem for a Dream. It goes through the old woman's life, childhood, motherhood, old lady-hood and how its effected Sandra Bullock as an adult. She apparently is some famous dancer and it starts off with Sandra having an article written about her mom in people magazine that just destroys her as a person. She has 3 best friends who are part of the "Ya Ya Sisterhood" which every time they have to do something for each other or in general they yell YA YA!!! which gets rather annoying. The "Ya Ya's" kidnap Sandra and bring her home (via roofy) to tell her what really happened when she was a kid.
Heres the stories wrapped up in a nutshell, old woman meets love of her life-he joins air force and dies in the war, marries his friend who LOVES her but she's not too fond of, they have 3 kids who she grows to HATE, is an alcoholic, tries to stop being an alcoholic and is told to take drugs, which of course make her INSANE and she beats all of her children while husbands not home, goes to rehab for 6 months and never tells the kids where she went so they assume she ran away for hating them, life continues as normally as possible. Of course Sandra's character holds resentment against mother for well EVER because she thinks her mom despised them so much that she beat them then ran away for 6 months.
Theres also a side story that Sandra Bullock is getting married and she keeps trying to find ways of getting out of it because she thinks she'll turn into her mother.
How's this shindig end? Sandra decides this man is the love of her life and she cant lose him, that her mom was doing the best she could, and mom and dad show some sort of affection towards one another.
My advice...unless you want to kind of feel like crap for an hour and a half, avoid watching this movie. It's a good take on -you don't really know what happened when u were growing up until your an adult- but otherwise just kind of a messy disaster of painful memories.

Fitzwilly

1967

This is a story about a butler and the other servants if you will who work for a woman named Miss Victoria Woodworth. and for all intensive purposes will now be miss w.

The movie opens with essentially a heist occurring to discover that the people working the heist are all her employees, why they are stealing and swindling you do not know yet. Fitzwilly aka Claude R. Fitzwilliam aka the butler, is the ring leader.

Now you must assume that miss w is wildly rich as this is set a many years ago and she has a mansion along with I'd say 12 people running her household. 

All of a sudden a young woman shows up at the door saying she has an appointment with miss w, she wants a typist to help her write a different kind of dictionary. This will list all the ways most people spell a word-that are wrong-along with the correct way to spell it. But before being hired the young woman-Juliet- must be approved by the butler. Now why you ask would a butler decide on who will be staffed? Apparently he is Claude R. Fitzwilliam II, the son of her original butler and has been living with miss w essentially his entire life, almost as a mother. 

The butler says he doesn't want to hire her, then the woman eggs him on about why so to prove her wrong he hires her. Why would this be an issue you ask? Oh because they cant really pay for her. But I thought miss w was wildly rich? No no no, her father was and when he passed away he left her virtually no money. Why? We never know, but apparently the heists have been performed to pay all her bills and charity donations without the frail old woman realizing she doesn't have an honest dime to her name. 

Of course Juliet slowly figures out that something isn't right and to throw her off the scent Fitzwilly asks her on a date. 

They of course decide they are madly in love with each other after a few brief kisses throughout the night, and Juliet confesses she knows about the stealing but wants to know why they do it. All is explained and of course loving eyes see no problem with this as long as it ends before the wedding, yes thats right, with/in 24 hours they decide with no discussion necessary they are engaged. 

However theirs still the issue of miss W having no money so one last ELABORATE heist is planned, to rob a dept. store much like Macy's. They station boy scouts in front of 2 doors and throw money or something of that sort in front of the 3rd. Then post signs in all windows saying "free color tv with any purchase no matter how small" so of course rioting quickly ensues. 

Fitzwilly changes into a disguise-which ironically looks much like he does now everyday, and convinces the man watching the vault that he's with the insurance company and all the money should be given to him for safe keeping and avoiding potential robbery. He then mails the money to himself so that he wont be walking out of the building with anything.

However no one accounted for the footman who is a religious fellow and confesses to a crime, but not where the money is, and says he acted alone. 

Miss w is called and brought in to discuss the consequences and (thinking she's wildly rich) writes a check for the amount that was stollen as if it's pocket change. Everyone now is at square one. 

Then as everyone feels hope is lost, you discover miss W sold her "dictionary" for a series of screen plays and will now have limitless money coming in, in a 5 year plan, and they all lived happily ever after.

In all i give it a high rating. It's full of unrealistic love stories and an outlook on how easy it was to rob rich people back when security was a very different thing. You must remember when watching it that these were very different times then now, and can make you giggle as to what was considered normal then. Of course Dick VanDyke does a wonderful performance per all of his roles. I recommend it for a lazy sunday or a night in with your significant other, your lady friend will be impressed that you picked a movie that didn't involve blowing things up. 

Monsters

Spoiler alart:I will ruin all mystery to this movie
This is a good concept to a movie but not extremely well executed.
Essentially it's about something was brought to earth(from somewhere in space) 6 years ago that mated with earth organism to create a "monster" breed of THINGS that include but are not limited to actual giant "monsters" as well as things that live on trees and potentially much more but thats all you REALLY see. The monsters are essentially giant squid/octopi that have electricity in them. you only ever see them at night and they're always glowing.
So lets start at the beginning.
You see a mystery man entering a hospital in mexico-where the infected area is located. He's there to pick up a mystery woman. You have no idea who either of these people are. You later discover the girl is a daughter of some huge publication owner and the man works for her father as a photographer. his job is to photograph the monsters, which he poorly does throughout the film. His boss (father) has instructed to get her home safely.
Why she is in Mexico is a mystery, in which is never solved. You find out she has a fiance (who is obviously rich by the giant engagement ring she has.) The man has a son, and a baby momma who wont allow him to be a "father." You also observe that they are slowly developing feelings for one another.
So they reach a place to buy ferry tickets and the guy highway robberies them and says its $5,000 to get a ticket. they have to leave by the next morning at 7am the last ferry before they shut down the boarder. They are essentially quarantine'ing mexico to try and contain the monsters and theres 48 hours before they are locking down the boarders for 6 months, we now have a time cap on escape.
so they stay in a hotel and the guy goes out gets drunk and fucks a mexican who steals both their passports and tickets, how do they board the ferry now? Oh wait they cant.
so the guy running the tickets area says for $10,000 they can go through the infected area by land. which involves a boat ride, a car ride. They have no money since they were robbed so they give the expensive diamond engagement ring in exchange for travel arrangements. The boat ride goes somewhat smoothly beside the fact that the boat motor BREAKS and they have to fix it for hours in the middle of the night and a monster tries to get them, via water attack. They fix the motor and get away, phew.
They reach the jeeps who then start driving them, they camp for the night, find some of the organisms have grown on the trees til the monsters (large ones) attack the jeeps and all the people in them. The couple gets left alone in one jeep in which they shut up and turn off the lights and apparently thats the key to survival as ALL other vehicles and people are destroyed and killed.
Now they are left to finish on foot. They reach the boarder in which you expect will be covered with patrol vehicles and army personal to discover it's deserted.
They find an abandoned gas station, they call the police to get rescued and as they wait the girl calls her fiance after she's conveyed to the audience and other guy that she doesn't want to get married to the fiance anymore.The other main character calls his baby momma and son to tell them he's okay, make sure their okay and cry at the fact he cant be a father.
The monsters then attack the building and is basically syphoning energy from the television. You must assume at this point that thats how they are living. Then another monster arrives, they interact and have a touching "beautiful" moment, then part ways and leave the 2 of them completely unharmed then they finally kiss for the first time after viewing the beautiful moment and in turn creating their own.
Then a police car arrives at the gas station and the credits begin to roll...
So essentially nothing is resolved, she never technically gets home though you assume she will. You never meet the father, the fiance, see the resolution of her ending her pending nuptials, and though you discover the monsters wont kill EVERYONE they're still killing people and have now infected the U.S. The only thing that was SOMEWHAT resolved was the fact that they fell for each other.
So visually-great, intensity, great  story wise and resolution/progression-fail.
Worth watching if your bored, but not a life changing movie or award deserving film.