BURLESQUE
3 out of 5 stars

if there was ever an award for GAY FAVE MOVIE OF THE YEAR...this one takes it! why? do i even have to state the obvious i.e. it's got cher, xtina, AND a fiesty stanley tucci! (AND...alan cumming dancing burlesque) plus, i have never seen that many gays in one movie theater in my life... :P


plot-wise, this is a mashup of chicago the musical, showgirls, and moulin rouge. you really want to know...read on: starry-eyed ali (xtina) packs her bags for the city of angels AKA los angeles, and starts looking for work. she comes across an old-school burlesque lounge located in the dead center of sunset blvd., and immediately becomes infatuated with the music. (plus greeted by a sassy alan cumming @ the front door) she starts asking questions about work, and introduces herself to tess (cher) who immediately dismisses her. ali ultimately gets her big break when jealous rival nicki (kristen bell) unplugs the musical track to one of their numbers on stage... from there, xtina lets it ALL out... ;)

like i said, this has the musical qualities of chicago, the rivalry of showgirls, and almost the exact same problem/plot of moulin rouge. (esp. the part re: finance) add in some burlesque + pop melodies, and you get this movie! the music alone is AWESOME. (i soooo want the soundtrack!) acting...cher and xtina just play themselves so stanley tucci makes it up tremendouly for all the witty quips, sass, and all-around wonderful gay BFF for cher's character tess. BEST scenes: ALL of xtina's wonderful burlesque numbers, the pajama scene w/ jack, the wedding dance between tess and shawn, ALL of stanley tucci's scenes, and might i mention that cam gigadet is mr. yummy hottness? i think whether you're a gay or a straight (lady), you'll enjoy this one... ;)

HACHI: A DOG'S TALE
4 out of 5 stars

OMG. every dog owner or anyone who's ever owned a dog needs to watch this movie ASAP! probably one of the best dog movies i've ever seen, and the story is sooooo touching... :)


based on a true story about an akita (japanese hunting dog) whose loyalty and devotion to his owner lasts for a lifetime... the movie starts with hachi the akita puppy traveling via plane and train to get to his new owner from the mountains of japan. his crate/kennel breaks, and hachi the puppy escapes, only to be found by prof. parker wilson (the fab richard gere), professor of music at some university. he travels via train (the real kind) to work, and he is now stuck w/ this cute lil' puppy. his wife (joan allen- pretty much playing herself) is opposed to the idea of caring for a puppy, esp. one that'll grow up to be ginormous, but eventually she realizes the love between hachi and parker... even the daughter loves hachi, and they decide to keep him. years go by, and hachi always follows parker to work, where he leaves via train to go to work. he knows that his master arrives @ exactly 5pm everyday, so he waits for parker's arrival. tragedy strikes in the form of a heart attack, but hachi continues on to keep a regular vigil for parker. (that's when the waterworks start...)

a beautiful portrait of a beautiful dog w/ even beautiful music accompanying it! what's not to like about hachi the puppy's lil' face? ADORABLEZ! (i can't help but "aww" throughout this) i think it's also great that the director decided to film certain shots in monochrome...just like a dog would see the world. (certainly putting an emphasis that this is hachi's perspective of the story) a very sweet and moving movie about the power of canine loyalty to its master and the special bond between man and man's best friend. in this case, you really see why dogs are called just that... ;)

DATE NIGHT
2 out of 5 stars

this was such a disappointment! this just goes to show that steve carell and tina fey should just stick with their respective roles as michael scott and liz lemon because i'm not sure they're good as anything else other than those characters... :/


basically: phil (carell) and claire (fey) are a simple/boring couple living in suburban NJ. every week they go out for date night to their neighborhood steakhouse, and eat their salmon and potato skins as their date night meal. their kids are left with the babysitter (gossip girl's blair), and it's shampoo/rinse/repeat for them... after hearing about their friends' soon-to-be divorce, phil decides to take claire out to the hippest hot spot in new york city called CLAW to spice things up. unfortunately, the place is sooooo hott that they don't take walk-ins, and are basically treated like NYC's trash from the very get-go. thus, phil comes up with the idea of stealing another couple's reservation, and trouble follows in the form of common (the rapper) trying to recover a lost flash drive AKA computer sticky thing...

i'll tell ya: the entire movie is basically the trailer. there's really nothing new except for the hilarious pole-dancing towards the very end. everything else, just watch the trailer! james franco and mila kunis are very funny as the "tripplehorns", as well as mark wahlberg trying to keep a straight face as hottie/shirtless private security expert holbrooke grant. james and mila have such small roles, but i wanted more from them b/c it looked like they were having more fun than steve and tina. hollywood, take note! ;)

BROOKLYN'S FINEST
1 out of 5 stars

brooklyn's finest? well, it's more like hollywood's worst! even the great richard gere AND don cheadle couldn't save this one from failure... :/


this is a movie where hollywood needs to take a lesson in PLOT DEVELOPMENT and a CLEAR STORYLINE because there is a severe deficit in BOTH. it's really just vignettes about 3 NYPD policemen: 1) richard gere's character eddie: the soon-to-be-retired beat cop who just wants to retire and no longer cares about the job 2) ethan hawke's character sal: the desperate/corrupt raid cop whose got way too many kids and a pregnant wife and seriously strapped for cash for a new home 3) don cheadle's character tango: the undercover posing as a serious drug dealer in a brooklyn project and faced with the dilemma of turning on his BFF casanova (wesley snipes). none of the characters really interact with each other, and the entire movie focuses on how each character deals with their lives/work situations.

i thought because this was another work from antoine fuqua, the director of training day, that this would have some potential. it doesn't... in fact, there are times when i wanted to turn this shit off and watch training day again. richard gere and don cheadle are respectively GREAT in their own roles, but that's about all. we could have had a movie with just the two of them, so that should say a lot about ethan hawke's character...or lack there of? oh, ethan... you were so good in training day! what happened to you, man? :/

THE OXFORD MURDERS
2 out of 5 stars

i decided to give this movie a try since the subject matter of the movie seemed interesting. umm... it was a good try, but for a thriller, this could have done better, IMHO... :/


of course, the murders/story all take place @ oxford university. american grad student martin (elijah wood) moves in at the eagleton house on oxford's campus to study with the great prof. arthur seldom. (john hurt in a great/mysterious role) things go from bad to worse when martin is humiliated at a lecture given by prof. seldom as well as finding out that prof. seldom doesn't take mentees including doctorate students. martin befriends his land lady named mrs. eagleton, who was good friends with the famous alan turing. (famous for decoding the enigma code during WWII- eventually beat the nazis) he also befriends mrs. eagleton's musician daughter/cellist, who seems to hate her mother... both martin and prof. seldom stumble upon mrs. eagleton's dead body one rainy afternoon, and her death seems to be the first of a string of murders centering around logic and cryptic symbols.

this was a lame version of da vinci code. you have cryptic mathematical symbols and a "code" that prof. seldom and martin are trying to figure out, but unlike da vinci code, it's not as riveting/captivating/thrilling... the oxford murders were written by a argentine author and mathematician guillermo martinez, and it sure references a ton of mathematical principles and famous theorems. i think what bothered me most about this is the fact that martin's character was highly under-developed and he just "happened" to know all the right answers. i feel like we knew nothing of martin, wheras we we knew a ton of prof. seldom. (that just goes to show that elijah wood should just stick with LOTR and LOTR-related movies) despite all this, i do have a feeling that we might see the argentines or the spanish filmmakers out there tackling this intriguing story again for us. guillermo del toro or alfonso cuaron, you two listening? ;)

SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE
4 out of 5 stars

jack: you're a moodle.

kirk: a moodle?
jack: a man poodle. girls, they wanna take you out on a walk. they wanna feed you, they wanna cuddle you, but make no mistake, no girl wants to do the moodle.
stainer: NO ONE would EVER fuck a moodle.

OMG this movie is hilarious! the conversations between kirk (the main protagonist) and his work friends stainer (TSA security guard), jack (tarmac worker/plane mechanic) and devon (airline ticketing agent) are priceless... :P

kirk (jay baruchel AKA the sorcerer's apprentice) is just your average skinny white guy working as a TSA agent @ the pittsburgh intl airport. so when super-hottie molly (alice eve) boards a plane to JFK for an event-planning gig, kirk can't believe his eyes! molly accidentally leaves her iphone in one of those grey security bins, and kirk decides to return it to her when she gets back into town. she invites him to another event gig @ the andy warhol museum, and thus...sparks fly! (or, devon would say: when prince aladdin meets jasmine and the andy warhol museum is the palace...LOL!) things are going great for kirk and molly, except for the fact that all his friends as well as molly's friends think that their relationship won't work due to the fact that he's a 5 and she's a hard 10. but will that matter in the end? why don't you find out for yourself... ;)

the premise/story of this movie isn't all that complicated, but the script is very VERY well-written! A+ for the good screenwriting with interesting/humorous characters i.e. kirk, kirk's family, kirk's friends, and even molly is well-developed. kirk's family dynamic is CRAZY shit (OMG slap shot regatta!) but all the more humorous... however, i didn't really understand how/why marnie (kirk's ex) was a "part" of his family...? it looked like this one was shot on location, which adds "authenticity" to the story AKA the penguins game, the airport, the dates around pittsburgh, even down to the food! (AKA hamburgers served with french fries on top!) overall, GREAT movie and GREAT dialogue... ;)

THE MACHINIST
4 out of 5 stars

i don't know what's more scarier: the creepiness of this movie or the fact that christian bale lost more than 120 lbs. to portray the skeletal character, trevor reznik AKA the main protagonist in this... :P



so, who is trevor reznik? he's an... industrial machine operator, and he hasn't slept in a year... in fact, his insomnia is soooo bad that it's affecting his health as well as his mental state. he's in a so-called "relationship" with a call girl named stevie, and even she is concerned about trevor's weight problem. (there's one scene where he flexes his "muscles" and it's a sight that will make one flinch!) one day, he goes out on a smoke break outside of the factory, and finds a strange new guy chatting away. he finds out that he's a new guy working @ the factory, and his name is ivan. of course, things go from weird to worse when upon a moment of distraction, trevor causes a machine to turn on and it severs off his co-worker's arm! purely an accident, but an accident caused by trevor, nonetheless... his mind really starts to go bonkers when he finds cryptic puzzling post-its on his fridge with a hang-man game and 6 little lines for the 6 missing letters...


an interesting storyline about how one man struggles to block out the truth to who he is, and i love how it's done in a film-noir-ish style. i'm not too familiar with brad anderson (the director)'s work, but given this film...i really like it, and would want to see other stuff by him. (FYI: he directs FRINGE...that sci-fi show on fox!) christian bale went through extremes to create trevor reznik and boy....does it show through the weight loss, the craziness and his acting. he really makes this film GOOD. guilt really fucks this guy over, and it sure takes you on one hell of a ride with the mystery of trevor reznik... ;)