Management

Management

I rented this movie on a limb. I saw it at the Redbox kiosk, and said, “aw what the hell, ill try it out.” What made me want to get it the most was that Steve Zhan was the main character. I loved him in Happy Texas where he was an ex-con posing as a gay beauty pageant director. He is great in a lot of movies. So that’s why I rented it. Really knew nothing about it.

It was actually really good. I was surprised. What surprised me the most was how plain Jenifer Aniston looked in the movie. Ok, to the real stuff of the movie. The plot of the movie is great. Steve Zhan (Mike) works at his parent’s motel. He is the maintenance man. His life is more or less the same everyday. He lives in Arizona, and they rarely get interesting people coming through. So one day when Jenifer Aniston (Sue) comes through, Mike is automatically smitten by her. He comes by her room every night and brings her random gifts. When those fail, he tells her that he likes her butt, and she lets him touch her butt. They start a little fling. Mike flies out to Maryland to try and pursue her. It doesn’t work out. He ends up taking a bus back to Arizona. Then she comes back to Arizona, and it doesn’t work out again. She leaves. Mike wants her back, so he travels to Maryland to find her, and finds out that she is living with her ex boyfriend who is a “punk” played by Woody Harrelson. Mike goes to Aberdeen to find her, and gets a job at a Chinese restaurant and makes best friends with the funniest Chinese guy ever. They are determined to win Sue back for Mike. After a while, Mike becomes a Buddhist monk, but gets asked to leave when getting to intense about volleyball. Then he tries one more time with sue…

Might have given you to much info about the movie, but trust me, it goes way more deep than that. This movie is extremely funny and quirky. Through out the movie I was laughing, and just feeling bad for Mike. He is just so in love, and doesn’t know what to do about it. Steve Zhan stole my heart in this film.

Jenifer Aniston didn’t to do bad in this movie. I liked her character. I have never seen her play a character quite like this. She was dull, boring, and played it safe. She wasn’t outgoing, and dressed really plain. She wasn’t hot at all.

Woody Harrelson and the Chinese friend were so funny in this movie. Woody plays this ex-punk rocker, and does a very good job at it. He cracked me up through out the movie. The Chinese dude was just dope. He had great one-liners, and made the movie have very good balance.

This isn’t a movie that focuses on cinematography, or editing. It was a romantic comedy. It also had a great soundtrack with songs mostly by The New Pornographers. All in all, this movie flowed together very well. I liked it so much that I bought it on Amazon immediately after renting it. It’s a movie I would like to own in my collection for a long time.

Where the wild things are

Before this movie came out, I was extremely nervous. I was afraid that it would be overhyped (which it kind of already is in the states thanks to Urban Outfitters). I was afraid that my tattoos on shoulder and stomach from the book would become a fashion trend (even though I got them years ago) and that the movie wouldn’t do the book any justice. I was mostly wrong. Just mostly. It wasn’t perfect, but pretty darn close to how I would have done it.

Spike Jonze directed the movie. For those who don’t know him, you should know that he is pretty much a genius. He is the mastermind, along with the Beastie Boys behind Crailtap (Girl skateboards, chocolate skateboards, Lakai…) and has so much imagination. He has made such movies as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. His most famous works are probably Jackass 1 and 2. I am assuming more people have seen those movies than his others. He started out doing skate videos, then music videos for the Beastie Boys, and just worked his way to the top. He is a true artist in every sense. He was the perfect director for this movie.

The crew behind this movie was excellent. You had Dave Eggers ( as the writer, Spike Jonze as director, and Maurice Sendak as the producer. All of them pure artist in their own way. Maurice wrote the greatest children’s book. Dave Eggers is one of the best humor writers, and Spike Jonze is just crazy.

The plot of the movie is the same as the book, expect it takes it to a whole new level. In the book, the story goes that Max gets in a fight with his mom. He tells her that he will eat her up, so she sends him to bed without any supper. Upset, Max stomps to his room. All of a sudden, his room starts turning into a forest, and then he hops on a sailboat and sails to a land where the wild things live. He declares to be a king, and becomes their king. They just play and have fun. Max then becomes homesick and sails back home. When he gets home, supper is waiting for him, and it’s still hot. The movie follows that, expect adds more drama to it. In the movie, Max is struggling to be accepted and fit in his family and world. His family thinks he is annoying and hyper, and he doesn’t seem to have very many friends. When trying to get his mothers attention while her boyfriend is over for dinner, Max over reacts and bites her, and gets sent to his room. Instead of going to his room, Max runs away into a forest. He finds a sailboat, and starts sailing into the big blue ocean. He finds an island, and monsters live there. He approaches them with no fear, and wants to be there friend. He tells them that he was a former king, so they shouldn’t eat him. They come to trust him through his lies, and do what he says. He tries to make all the monsters happy, especially Carol, and they begin to build a big fort. When Carol finds out that he doesn’t have any powers and isn’t a real king, he becomes very angry and tries to eat Max. Each monster represents his emotions, Carol obviously being his abusive Dad that caused his mom to be single. Max escapes by hiding in KW’s (his mom) mouth, and then goes to his boat to return to his mother. It was a very sad goodbye between Carol and Max. I might have cried. Not sure though.

This is not a kid’s movie in my opinion. I feel that it is too sad for children. This is definitely a movie for adults who grew up as children reading the book. Adults who have dealt with real life, and can relate to Max. They can relate to Max in the sense that they just want to get away from it all sometimes and be someone else. The whole over all tone and mood of the movie is very depressing. It’s an emotional movie, with lots of interpersonal battles. Carol, the main monster, has a hard time controlling his anger. Some of the monsters have a hard time controlling their depression. With all these personalities clashing together, conflicts arise.

Granted, the movie is PG, but the overall tone isn’t kid friendly. I would have no problem taking a kid to see this movie, I just don’t know if they would be entertained as much as I was during the movie. I thought that the writing was sheer brilliance. It had its own flavor and style to it. These monsters were cool and funny as crap. They had real personalities, personalities of people you meet every single day. Max was every ADHD child you can think of, who had a running imagination. He was probably a lot like Spike Jonze as a child. Max and the monsters were casted perfectly, and they worked so well together.

The soundtrack was excellent. Karen O (singer from the yeah yeah yeahs) did a great soundtrack. It fit the movie perfectly, and gave it its ups and downs. It is worth buying and listening too.

The cinematography was very good. So many scenes I wanted to keep as a snap shot. They did such a good job with lighting and unique angles. It was honestly beautiful.

All in all, I wouldn’t have changed a thing about this movie. I thought it was perfect. I don’t think there could have been a better adaption of the book than this movie. I am glad that Spike didn’t make it for the masses either. It wasn’t made for everybody. Majority of people will not like this movie and will disagree on my review. They could think it’s too sad and depressing. But this movie wasn’t made to make everyone happy. This movie was made to make a classic children’s story come to life, and it did. I loved it so much. It was honestly done just right. I walked out feeling so relived. It didn’t disappoint me at all, and I don’t think that it will become a movie that everyone will see. Which is good and bad. But I think it was done just right. I honestly wouldn’t have changed a thing about this movie. It wasn’t to long, to short, to scary, to dark. It had its funny moments, and its sad moments. It was pure beauty.

Zombieland

Zombieland

Wow. Let me start out by saying WOW! This movie was awesome. So many things I loved about this movie. In all honesty, I can’t think of negative things to say about it at the current moment, which is because I am so stoked on it. It reminds me a lot of Shaun of the Dead. I don’t want to make an outlandish statement saying one is better than the other, but currently Zombieland has my heart. It has all the things I want, zombies, hot chicks, comedy, and gore. Plus it has Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray.

Earth's population has been decimated by a virus, related to

the mad cow disease, that turns everyone into flesh-craving zombies. Only a handful of humans remain, including Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a student at the University of Texas trying to make his way to his hometown of Columbus, OH, where he hopes his parents are still alive. Columbus has long been an outsider and somewhat phobic, which he uses to his advantage in avoiding zombies. In fact, zombies are not his greatest fear: clowns are. In order to stay alive, he has created a list of rules, rules that he always follows no matter what.

While walking down the highway, he encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), driving an Escalade. He is trying to get to Florida and kill as many zombies as he can on the way. Tallahassee agrees to give Columbus a ride as far as Texarkana. When they stop at a grocery store in hopes of finding Tallahassee's coveted Twinkies, they fight off three zo

mbies then find two teenage girls, Wichita (Emma Stone) and her younger sister, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) in the storeroom.

From there, it’s a series of cons back and forth, and killing Zombies, and they end up traveling together to get to a theme park in LA based on rumors that zombies are not there.

This movie had a lot of good things going for it over all. The flesh eating zombie scenes were awesome. Killing the zombies was even cooler. Woody Harrelson is a master at killing zombies, and uses many cool weapons to do so. Jesse Eisenberg was brilliant. At first, I thought this is a wanna be Michael Cera, but he is something new and fresh and not as annoying. Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin worked very well together, and made a good sister team in the movie.

Did I mention it was very funny? Bill Murray was excellent in it. He had a good cameo in it, and his brief moment in the movie was classic. All in all, the movie was a good laugh and riot.

Surrogates

What to say about this movie… Well, I guess one thing I could start off by saying is that this movie was entertaining and did have some value to it. But on a scale of 1-10, I give it a 5. I don’t know if I am being generous or harsh with the 5, I want to give it a 4 but I felt it was to mean. Also, I am not the biggest fan of sci-fi stuff either. Compared to majority of sci-fi films this one actually could be believe able.

I compare this movie to kids being addicted and obsessed to games like “The Sims” or world of war craft. Games where you build your own world around you, and be who you want to be, look like what you want to look like, and do what you want to do, and live your life through these games. People are living their lives remotely from the safety of their own homes via robotic surrogates -- sexy, physically perfect mechanical representations of themselves. It's an ideal world where crime, pain, fear and consequences don't exist. When the first murder in years jolts this utopia, FBI agent Greer (Willis) discovers a vast conspiracy behind the surrogate phenomenon and must abandon his own surrogate, risking his life to unravel the mystery.

There are things I hate and like about the movie. The things that I really liked where the special effects. I thought they were pretty cool. Seeing Bruce Willis looking like a doll and jumping from buildings to buildings was pretty cool to see. It had some good action sequences, and some very good twists to the plot. I liked that there wasn’t to much bad language, or any sex scenes. It was pretty clean for the most part.

The movie had bad acting though. I cant pin point why it bothered me, maybe it was the writing, but I remember being bored with the dialogue majority of the time. Bruce Willis isn’t exactly the greatest actor in the world, I mean he is good, but this movie had no body to really support him well enough to make this a block buster. I personally think he is getting to old for these cop action movies, way to old.

Ma vie en rose

This was a very fun movie to watch. It’s a French Belgium film, and it gives you a very different look and point of view of children, homosexuality and confused little boys. No one in the movie actually is gay, but the main character of the movie is struggling with his identity as a male, and he is only 7.

Ludovic is a young boy who can't wait to grow up to be a woman. When his family discovers the little girl blossoming in him they are forced to contend with their own discomfort and the lack of understanding from their new neighbors. Their anger and impatience cave and Ludovic is sent to see a psychiatrist in the hopes of fixing whatever is wrong with him. Then the town flips when Ludovic plays the part of snow white in the school play, and tries to get kissed by a boy at his school. The town drives out the family. A movie that addresses trans-gender and gender issues in general through the eyes of a child.

This is movie is very funny, and very sad at times too. But all in all, it’s a drama with humor through out it. What impressed me most about this film was the character development of the mother and the father. At the beginning, the father was raged at his little boy, and the mom tried to help understand what their son was going through. Towards the end, the roles switch, and the father accepts his son and loves him, and helps his wife to accept their son and love him too. It made me really happy to see the changes that they made, and the fact that they accepted their son for who he was, or wasn’t. It is very hard on parents to accept that their child could not be normal, and they fear for the child more than anything else.

The little boy who played Ludovic did an amazing job. He had long hair, and at times he did look like a girl. But I thought as a child actor, he did a phenomenal job. You could tell that this little boy really believed he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and you felt so bad for him for being so confused.

The ending of the movie was really good. It was a good change and outlook on life through a child’s eye and their choices. This movie is worth renting for sure

Rudo y Cursi

As you can possibly tell, I am soccer nut, and love to watch soccer movies. The beautiful thing about soccer movies is that they are made in many different languages. Unlike baseball or American Football movies, which are all made in USA, soccer movies are made world wide, and it is a world wide loved sport.

This movie however puts an interesting twist on soccer. In this sport, you can be big one day, and dead the next. The trick is holding onto your fans.

Mexican half brothers Beto and Tato - who will eventually be appropriately nicknamed Rudo (rough) and Cursi (corny), respectively - have a typical love/hate relationship with each other. They both work on a banana plantation and live with their extended family consisting of their mother, abusive stepfather, sister Nadia, and Beto's wife Toña and their children. The family are rural peasant class and are barely making ends meet. The brother's fortunes change when into their lives comes Batuta, a soccer scout. Despite their advancing ages, both Beto and Tato are naturally gifted at soccer, Beto as a goaltender and Tato as a striker. Playing professionally has always been Beto's dream, although Tato has other professional thoughts on his mind. Batuta eventually recruits both for different teams in Mexico City. Beto and Tato's fortunes rise and fall, the falls based on those things which hold more passion for the brothers. For Tato, he loves fast women, specifically television spokes-model Maya, but he loves singing even more. He would give up his soccer career for one in Mexican country singing, if only he was any good at it. For Beto, his passion is gambling. Although Beto is up front and straightforward about most things in life, he would lie and cheat to hide his gambling problem and debts. They just have to keep these alternate passions in check to make their soccer lives lucrative ones.

This movie by no means is anything amazing though. It’s kind of slow, and has awful music in it. That could be part of the joke of the movie, but it got on m

y nerves after a while. But I thought it was a good rags to riches story, and how fast you can go up and down in life.

I personally loved the character of Cursi played by Gael García Bernal, who was Che in Motorcycle Diaries, was in Babel, Y tu mamá también and The Science of Sleep. He is a very good actor, and I love him in all of his movies. He was very funny and corny in this movie, but not that good of a soccer player. In the mov

ie itself, you don’t actually see him play soccer, or that much soccer playing, you mostly see him cheering after a goal and the crowd’s reaction towards it.

This movie is rated R, and there is some nudity

in it. If they took out this one sex scene, this movie would be PG-13 with out a doubt. The language isn’t all that bad. I cant remember if there was a lot of F words or not, but I know there was some in there. But I thought it was a good movie and I didn’t think it was a waste of my time.