Despicable Me 2

Adorable! If you enjoyed the first movie then you should love this one! The villains are not the focus of this one. It is more of a redemption story. Gru (voice by Steve Carell) is no longer and evil villain trying to steal the moon or take things. He know is a happy father to Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Agnes (Elsie Fisher), and Edith (Dana Gaier). This Anti-villain task for ask Gru to join them but even in this task force to take down villains they may have their own agenda.
Gru works with Lucy (Kristen Wiig) to watch the workers in this shopping center to catch the bad guy. There is a Mexican restaurant owned by Eduardo who Gru is convinced is El Macho. However the Anti-villain says they have the guy. But then why are his minions being taken? Gru does not notice this because he is not as focused on being home, or the jam they were making. His trusty sidekick Dr. Nefario (Russel Brand) has missed doing evil and leaves him.
What he did not know was the evil planning was with El Macho and they are taking the minions and turning them into evil killers! They are indestructible. Of course there needs to be an epic battle between Gru and El Macho. Good verses evil is always a good match up.
Be ready to smile, giggle, feel slightly sad, but overall entertained.

Hit & Run

Dax Shepard does an amazing job in this film. He directed, wrote, and starred in this film. It has a smart sense of humor with a story line. I was entertained by the story of having to rush off for Annie Bean (Kristine Bell) to make her job interview in LA. Although she has this momentous opportunity that is career and life changing, Charles Bronson (Dax Shepard) Annie boyfriend's past gets in the way of making this an easy trip. Alex Dmitri (Bradley Cooper), Neve (Joy Bryant) were Charles crime buddies, Alex went to jail and Neve used to be his fiance. They find out where Charles is thanks to Annie's ex boyfriend Gil (Michael Rosenbaum) who still believe that him and Annie belonged together. This doesn't end the crazy train, Charles witness protection officer Sanders (David Koechner).
This crazy train doesn't end here. First Sanders is introduced by him getting out of his car that's not parked, it heads down then road and he's chasing after it shooting his gun. The neighbor kids are playing in the front yard and his mini van almost runs them over. This just introduces you to the ridiculousness you're about to experience. If you liked Fast and Furious you would enjoy this. Combine that with Dukes of Hazard, well at least those are the only movie combinations that I could possibly think as a combination for this.
Writing, directing, and staring in this movie wasn't a terrible idea or job. The cast seemed like closet friend. Kristen Bell - fiance, Joy Bryant - co-stare and wife of show Parenthood, now where Michale, Dax, and David came from they could be other connections to being in the same industry. It's good to have friends that can help when it comes time to bringing a project to life.

Honeymoon Killers Critique

Already feeling like your going to die a lone, this movie just propels that feeling. Fear of Marriage? Concerned about going to Match.com cause you’d meet a serial killer? Well, this movie just add those two fears. Director and writer Leonard Kastle takes Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) a victim of Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) to be a lover, partner, and killer. Yes, that did escalated quickly.

Martha is terrifying. She has an over barring mother who wants her to get married so she begins exchanging letter with Ray Fernandez who his mother set her up with on this letter exchange. Martha falls fast and hard. It’s easy to see this might be the first man to ever show any interest. When Ray goes back to his home after they meet the first week end she constantly calls him and wants to see him. SUPER needed! However Ray stays with her and they move in together. Ray wants to continue his day job though. Martha joins with as his sister.

Let’s reflex on this twisted idea for a second. Yes, I will go along with you to get close to this lonely women with money, manipulate them, and take convince them to give you their money for a marriage blessing. She becomes almost a driving force in the scenarios. Sure Ray is the one actually leading them on, but she’s crazy. If I haven’t made that point clear lets have this scene show it. Warning it’s a spoiler. The second women that Martha and Ray travel to leaves by the water. The scene starts with Martha being left to shore while Ray goes swimming with the women. Ray is slightly flirting with the girl, but this is job correct? Martha can’t handle so throws a tantrum and goes in past where she can swim. Martha almost drowns before Ray comes out and rescues her. When they reach a point where they both can stand they have a tender moment, a little too tender for siblings.

The women is obviously uncomfortable and that ends that moment. Even with all this dysfunctional relationship, lying, stealing, and manipulation Ray and Martha dearly care for one another. It is one example of a loving relationship. Do I recommend it? No.

This film is based on a true story. Does is seem to exploit the relationship of the couple? No. To be direct about it at least. The writer was telling this story as it happened focusing on the relationship between Ray and Martha. Without showing it from the perspective of Martha you would not have been able to pity her like you did. The moments where she whined and threw tantrums you would just want to hit her. She’s an adult. However the story begins with showing her life and you feel bad for her. Ray is seen as a bad guy you can’t stand. Ray’s a jerk basically.

As the relationship continues you see they both do really love each other. It’s a little strange but they are both there for each other and the other person comes first in their life. It is sweet to see. Although the moment that was too much to handle would be the ending when they used Myrtle Young (Marilyn Chris). She was the sweetest old lady. Martha bullied her and Ray pushed her to sign her $10,000 over to him. Myrtle become concerned about this and starts thinking correcting and can’t sleep because of not know where her checks are or why she signed them over to a man she just meet the day before.

Martha cannot handle Martha and tells her to stop but the situation escalates. Ray comes up in the commotion and it adds to Martha’s hysteria. Ray tells Martha to kill Myrtle. Martha does! The next they are cleaning up the crime scene and it just seems like a normal day. It’s amazing how that scene wasn’t the most horrifying. The final scene is them going to see Myrtle’s daughter and her family! That scene is what showed the sadistic attitude of the characters. It’s unnerving to see that these characters where not simply made up in the writers mind. Ray and Martha were real people who did this. Oh the chills!

Sassy Pants Critique

Thinking by the title the this movie could be a witty movie or some girl with an attitude. Nope. It’s a story about an under appreciated girl within her family. Forget about the witty part. All families have their dysfunctional parts to them. I believe that is a given. It is a relatable thing. However this movie takes too many levels of dysfunctional parts to a family to make it believable. There is a gay father living with his love, over protective and extremely controling mother, divorced parents, crazy grandma, and teens who do not know how to properly socialize.

Writer and director Coley Sohn seemed to be reaching for a lot within the narrative of this movie. It could have been away that he dealt with his own life. Whatever the reason it seemed like he needed to deal with something and this was his way of doing it.

This first scene opens to this girl in pink sheet, with pink pajamas, going to get dressed for the day in her closet, which is full of pink clothes. The girl, Bethany Pruit (Ashley Rickards) has an mother who is extremely over protective, it is more like a prison. Within the first half hour the extreme controlling side of the mother and rebelling of the daughter is shown. It’s not even a big thing, it’s a dress for her homeschooling graduation. Bethany picks a sexy red dress while the mother forces this pink very childish dress. The forcefulness of the mother goes to show that this is not a mother/daughter bonding time, it is to get a dress the mother picks and leave.

The mother played by Anna Gunn constantly keeps tabs on all the children moments, has them home schooled, does not let them have contact with other children, and is one massive guilt trip. The father played by Diedrich Bader is even more of child, running away from the mother, turning gay and proud.

Bethany wants out of her trapped life. One night she goes to a party with her neighbor and her mother goes to the party and forces her to come home. Bethany has had enough of her mother so sneaks out of her house to go live with her father and his lover Chip, played by Haley Joel Osment. The couple has a party hard mentality and are the extreme opposite of living with her mother.

There is no learning point to this movie. A girl is trapped by her mother, then trapped with her father. Even through all this and not really coming off as being hard working but a plan Jane who just starts designing clothes, she works retail to learn more, and even applies to a fashion college. Her mother finally finds where she is and guilts her to come home saying her grandmother is dying. Bethany return home, works for a local shop to design and the only sane one in the whole movie is the “dying” grandmother who light s cigarette while on oxygen so the mother needs to care for her.

The camera followed Bethany through out this movie. She was the focus. There was no wide shots to see the multiple characters and get more in their head. Had the story followed a wide screen setting, showing the multiple characters, this movie would have been better at showing the screwed up world this family created for itself. It stayed with natural lighting look because it mainly was inside of a house or in a store. Very rarely were the characters shown outside.

The characters rarely moved around the set. The where given one spot they stayed in. Once scene was Bethany talking with her coworker at the mall, Brianna (Shanna Collins) and she was talking about stealing the clothes because they deserve it and also trapping her boyfriend into getting her pregnant so they couldn’t break up. This is one of the few times that a low camera angle is used. It is as if to confuse the audience rather than looking down at them in judgement we are below them. What they are say is “right”.

The camera is never above the characters. It is either at eye level or a low angel. If there was an over view it was Bethany looking out her window at her neighbor Hector (Rene Rosado). That keeps perspective of Bethany though.

This movie still has potential though. Yes, the crazy mother and grandmother dynamic was well done. That is not the thing that fully gets me, but Bethany gets me. She is the main character to this movie, the driving force. She has no drive, nothing really propelling her forward. Does she seem to have a focus on fashion and want to go to school? Yes. But there seems to be no inner passion with her. Till the end. Bethany has been working at the local boutique making a decent amount of money and trying to save enough to get to school. When she losses her job because the boss does not want the focus and all his profits going to Bethany she’s upset. That’s not the kicker (spoiler) her mother stole her money! 

Correct not only is the mother over protective, guilt trips her kids, does not let them grow up and have a life, but she’s a thief. This throws Bethany over the edge and her grandmother is the one to give words of wisdom. Basically it’s your life, you can’t keep blaming your mother or be trapped in it. There comes a point in time where you need to take ownership of your own life.

The movie has a good message but the slow pace with not completely developed characters makes this movie fall short.

True Romance Critic

Bring on the bright colors, sex, violence that makes up the collaboration between director Tony Scott and writer Quentin Tarantino. True Romance is the love story between Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette). Clarence works at video game shop and Alabama is a hooker. Alabama is set up with Clarence by a Clarence’s boss and after spending the night together they fall for each other and get married.

All of Alabama’s stuff is at her pimps house so Clarence goes to get it. In the process he ends up taking the wrong suitcase that is filled with cocaine. This cocaine belong to Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walker) and he searches for the couple and ends up in Hollywood. Clarence is using his friend Dick (Michael Rapaport) connections to sell the cocaine and get a Hollywood Agent, Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) to buy it. However Vincenzo is not the only person looking for Clarence. He left behind his ID at the crime scene so the cops are after him as well.

Through one scene Alabama is being beaten by one of Vincenzo’s men and Clarence is talking about a comic book with a stranger. This new style is not a typical Tony Scott film but it’s not the style or shooting that makes this. This could be debatable but passing the time with pop culture references, violent scenes, and over lapping story lines of humor mixed with violence. It’s finding humor in the violence that takes away from the gore that the viewer just experienced. What else could be expected when the main characters is influenced and driven by Elvis.

Fight Club

I am going to start this review with the disclaimer that I was told the ending twist before seeing Fight Club. However, the drama kept my attention and threw me for continuous loops. The movie takes place in the present day when it was filmed in 1999 in a city which is on the outskirts and a bad neighborhood. The story in driven by the inner monolog of Edward Norton’s character by his voice over narration. Edward Norton’s (Moonrise Kingdom) character wakes up on a plane on his way home and Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt (Oceans Eleven), is now sitting next to him. These two characters enter into a dysfunctional friendship. In between these two dysfunctional friendship is Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter (Dark Shadows), who has a sexual relationship with Tyler.

The movie opens up to Edward Norton’s character barely sleeping because he is an insomniac. He’s unable to sleep because he is emotionless. To over this issues he goes to support groups and gets addict. This is where he meets Marla Singer, who is also a support group addict. This is the first relationship shown with the narrator. People do not seem to get close to the narrator. Tyler he meets after Marla and becomes his closest friend, even though he appeared next to him when he woke up on the plane. Tyler lets the narrator stay with him when his apartment blows up and they start fight club. It was in a parking lot where Tyler ask him to hit him as hard as he can and they start fighting. Men come to gather and watch and then ultimately join and be apart of fight club to feel alive again.

One of the members from the support groups, that the narrator went to, becomes a member of fight club. His name is Bobby, played by Meat Loaf (The Rockey Horroe Picture Show), he had testicular cancer and with the two of them confiding in one another they had a genuine bond. Marla and Tyler’s connections to the narrator had it’s dysfunctional side but with Bobby he was his one true friend that - spoiler sorry - when he is killed and the men are saying to just bury him in the garden. Bobby is evidence and the men did not want the police to find him, the narrator says that is wrong and he’s a person. He begins screaming out his name Robert Paulson, which all the men begin chanting. They come off as brainwashed saying that in fight club they don’t have an identity but in death they do.

Fight club brought men together in a way that Tyler liked to say was a near life experience. That doing their daily life, that is where they were dying, but at fight club they were alive. The narrator breaks it down by showing him encountering another fighter and the voice over says that outside of fight club they do not acknowledge one another. At a restaurant the server is another fighter and they do not interact beside looking at one another. Fight club is the release.

Fight club seems to give the narrator confidence in his life at work. He is first shown as a timid character that does as he’s told and does not stand up or speak for himself. Then, as the movie carries on he begins to have a psychological break down. For example in one moment where the fighters are given a mission to start a fight with a totally stranger, he starts one with himself in his bosses office. He’s covered in blood and making it seem as those his boss had just beaten him.

As the story line begins to unfold he becomes paranoid of those around him. Tyler is leaving the narrator out of his plans. He is now replaced as Tyler’s second hand in fight club by one of the recruits. A second segment of the fight club begins. He is not told about what going on with the group. None of the members will give him information which adds to his paranoia.

The filming angles of this movie works to add to the paranoia going on in the film and the twist to make this movie get in the viewers head. This movie’s story line is created to make you think. With the camera’s fast cuts back and forth between Tyler and the narrator speaking gives the speed to interaction pulling you into the story. When his paranoia begins to be extreme it makes the viewer almost uncomfortable by Tyler. In one scene where Marla is over and the narrator begins to have an honest conversation with her, he is distracted by this noise Tyler is making down stairs. Marla is shown behind the narrator making her appear insignificant. The angle on Tyler is almost eye level even though he is at the bottom of the stairs he takes up most of the screen. He is shown to be the stronger voice and the one in power. Many shots of Tyler is as if he’s the main focus when the narrator, who is doing the voice over and the story is told from his perspective, his made small. The narrator is not given many close ups and the camera is generally a wider view when showing him.

The casting for this movie was well selected. The acting of Edward Norton and his relationship with Helena Bonham Carter’s character was dysfunctionally splendid. Their relationship starts off as being a love hate relationship. Edward Norton shows pure hatred for Carter’s character telling her his hatred for her because she was posing as a fake victim in these groups, just like he was. The two split up their groups but Carter does not keep up her side of the bargain which leads her to reaching out to Norton’s character. In this plea to see him she talks about how she’s going to kill herself. Tyler  then takes over the situation beginning a sexual relationship. This twisted love triangle adds to the confusion but well constructed story of Fight Club. Are they friends, do they care about each other, or is Carter the crazy one? This relationship is a small piece to this complex story that the director David Fincher, writers Chuck Palahniuk (who wrote the novel) and Jim Uhls (screenplay) weaved together.

Disclaimer for if you choose to watch this movie, do with an open mind. There is vulgarity, foul language, sex, and violence. Besides all that the story line, characters, and well done filming will keep your attention. Even with being told the ending I looked for flaws in the story line and there were some, but not enough to make the story fall apart. One thing that irked me was how Tyler first showed up on the plane. That was not believable for me. Norton’s character falls asleep with a women there, and wakes up and suddenly Tyler is there, they have the same briefcase, and he’s the extreme opposite personality of the narrator. Even with this flaw the rest of the story plays out to make that scene become an over laps to make Tyler so real and believable. The more confused Norton’s character gets and confused as to what is happening in his life, as are you. The twist to this movie were unpredictable. Sure it is not perfect. However even if the big twist is revealed, the way it is revealed is well done.