NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010)
2 out of 5 stars

“you’re in my world now, bitch.” – nancy

OK, next time i decided to give these remakes a chance, someone please slap me or something? jackie earle haley did the iconic role of crazy serial killer of the dream realm, freddy kreuger, some justice as “creeper of the year”, but rooney mara (whom i can’t seem to understand a word she is saying), kate cassidy (david cassidy’s daughter!), and kellan lutz (emmett cullen from twilight!) just don’t cut it... hehe, pardon the pun. :P

so, as you know by now, freddy kreuger is this badly burned boogie man with the razor hands, attacking these poor teenagers in their dreams... this time, the movie starts with a guy named dean (kellan lutz), who dozes off in a town diner, only to fall victim to crazy freddy in his sleep! all of his friends start to talk at his funeral, and as it turns out, nancy (rooney mara), dean, kris (katie cassidy), jesse (the guy from terminator: sarah connor chronicles), quentin (reed garrett from CSI: NY), are all having dreams about freddy killing them in their sleep. kris starts to wig out at school and even at home, and she even has her ex-BF jesse stay with her. BIG mistake because after freddy slices her up in the dream world, jesse looks like he killed her... little do the police know that freddy is killing all the kids of elm st. because of what their parents did to him. extra points for giving freddy a little character depth with the whole child molester angle. but then...lost points for the shitty ending. :/ (EYE-ROLLINGLY BAD)

since when did this become a law & order: SVU reunion? :P i feel like almost all of these kids were on that show as guest stars with the exception of kellan lutz b/c he’s too busy with the twilight movies. (maybe he’ll guest star when those are over...) jackie earle haley did a great job as kreuger, but i have to say... robert englund AKA the ORIGINAL freddy will always be the one that will scare me shitless. :P

SAW 7 (FINAL CHAPTER)
2 out of 5 stars

“GAME OVER.”

ya know... i wouldn't have expected anything less, esp. since it is a SAW movie afterall. you've got the gore, the flashbacks, and even CRAZIER traps for all of jigsaw's victims in his 7th movie about determining those who live or die. you know we're getting close to HALLOWEEN when you've got to watch a SAW movie! :P

apparently, this IS the LAST saw movie! i was a little bit sad to hear that, but maybe hollywood or lionsgate finally came to their senses with this whole tortureporn franchise. to recap: saw VI starts out with jill tuck (widow of jigsaw) placing the reverse beartrap head apparatus on det. hoffman, leaving him to well...die. det. hoffman somehow gets out of the apparatus, leaving him scarred because the thing basically ripped his mouth and cheek open. he continues to set traps as “jigsaw” for his usual victims, but this time, he’s got traps for the police! (b/c jill has turned herself in and is in their custody for protection) however, det. hoffman is a cunning bastard, and eventually finds a way inside the precinct. as you know by now, every saw movie starts with some sort of trap. wanna know what it is this time? you’ve got 2 dudes and a girl attached to a tug-o-war style saw thing, and if they don’t move it one way or another, the girl gets sliced up on top. oh, and they’re displayed in some department store window. comeon! it’s a SAW movie afterall! :P

a lot of the motive-related questions are asked, and it’s the game of bobby dagan AKA a self-help guru and jigsaw trap survivor, who gets the test of his LIFE. he has to go through a series of tests determining who lives and dies, or...his wife dies. now, the SAW franchise has had some CRAZY/really disgusting traps created, but i have to say madd props to the creatives on the jigsaw-style car crash, the human oven trap, the department store tug-o-war saw trap, the scream silencer on the publicist, and the noose and plank trap on bobby’s agent. i actually thought that the ending and a certain cameo from the first saw movie was very clever, and gave this crazy franchise the ending it deserved. too bad saw creator leigh whannel and first saw director james wan weren’t a part of it. :/

SCREAM 4
4 out of 5 stars

“you forgot the first rule of remakes. don’t fuck with the original.”
– sidney prescott

almost a decade later, wes craven and screenwriter of the original kevin williamson team up again to produce the fourth scream feat. a fresh/young cast with members of the original movie AKA sidney (neve campbell), dewey the sheriff (david arquette), and of course, gale the news reporter. (courtney cox-arquette or whateverhernameisnow) not bad for a decade-long hiatus! ;)

so, sidney comes home to westboro, and boy, it’s quite the homecoming... she’s now a best-selling author, and she’s come to westboro as her last stop on her book tour. she’s with her bitchy publicist rebecca, and she reunites with dewey and gale at the bookstore. as it turns out, sidney’s rental car had the cell phone and knife that was used in the killings of 2 westboro HS girls from the intro. everyone is shocked, but not really... sidney stays with her aunt and cousin jill (a brunette emma roberts), and the stabbings just keep on coming and the death toll in this quiet town keeps on rising... the killer(s) obviously want sidney’s life, but only after killing off everyone around her first. (just like the first movie!) there’s even a party AKA a stab-a-thon at some farm and an “after-party” at a friend’s house! :P

and..just like the first movie, there’s character equivalents i.e. the 2 movie geeks, the shitty BF, the BFFs (LOL, hayden p. from heroes!), the “heroine” jill, and of course, the clueless cops. scream was probably the pioneer movie to create the horror-comedy genre, and there are a lot of good moments that reference the original in this so-called remake. it’s just too bad that they (wes craven) forgot to incorporate the witty and originality of the first one in this reboot, thus losing points... however, it’s probably best to compare this one against all the other screams before it, so it wins that way. but the BEST thing to do is probably just watch the original this halloween season, if you want wits, blood, and of course, crazy boyfriend billy loomis! god, i miss him being that he’s the biatch that triggered all this... ;)

THE BUCKET LIST
3 out of 5 stars

aww... this movie made me cry so much... :’( i think this was marketed as a comedy, but it’s actually really dramatic sprinkled with some comedic moments. it’s light-hearted, but then it’s not... this is definitely a movie that makes you wonder: what is on YOUR bucket list? ;)

the characters of carter chambers (morgan freeman) and edward cole (jack nicholson) could not be any more different. carter is a history-loving, jeopardy enthusiast, mechanic family man with three loving kids and a caring wife, and edward is a hustling, kopi luwak (most expensive coffee in the world) drinkin’ businessman/CEO mogul who has no family but TONS of $. the commonality between these two men is the fact that they both have lung cancer... both men end up in the cancer ward of one of the hospitals edward cole helped build, and while they battle their cancer, they inadvertently become...well, friends. then, one day, edward picks up a scrunched up piece of paper...carter’s “bucket list”. of course, edward convinces carter to go on an adventure of crossing certain items off, and they travel to france to eat the finest caviar, wear silk suits in hong kong, ride a motorcycle along the great wall of china, skydive, get tats, visit the taj mahal in india, see the great pyramids of egypt, and even go on a safari in south africa! i mean...if you’re going to die, you must as well go out with a bang, right? ;)

as ridic as this plot sounds, it’s a good story about how two men bond over their conditions. they both know that the clock’s ticking away, and that it was time to get life by the balls while their cancer was in remission... the ending is very sad yet a good ending, and it reminded me a lot of my dad and the way he lived. i’m sure if he had millions in the bank, he would have been a total edward. R.I.P. dad... :’)

IRONCLAD
2 out of 5 stars

the only thing great about this movie is paul giamatti as the evil king john… he has one pivotal scene, and that pretty earned this movie the extra star. otherwise, another 1 star movie with really bloody fight sequences and the whole movie taking place in one castle. :/ (an important castle though in british history!)

for a medieval/historical movie, there sure was a lot of fighting, limb loss, and blooooood. the movie starts out with english barons forcing king john (giamatti) to reluctantly sign the magna carta… then, the following year, king john starts to eliminate the barons, one by one, so that he can rule with an iron fist again. one baron by the name of albany (the great brian cox) has a really big problem with an unjust king, thus he gathers up his “magnificent seven” for a balls-out rebellion. he even recruits a templar knight named thomas (james purfoy) to help after he and a couple of templar knights escape after their first encounter with john and his horde of danish mercs. (john has their abbott’s tongue cut out- eww…) so, templar knight + M7 + baron albany decide to take over rochester castle as part of their rebellion, and basically…ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE when john’s forces and the rebellion collide. everyone goes into EPIC BATTLE MODE with lots of swords, blood, limb loss, axes, and hot tar. like my cousin said…”it ain’t a medieval movie w/o the hot tar.” hahahahahaha, so random that he knows stuff like that. :P

i feel like this was something offered to russell crowe at some point, but when he declined, it just kept getting passed on and on and on and around and around and around to someone. finally, someone in british hollywood decided to take on the project, thus this happened. like i said: paul giamatti saves this movie, and his scene with brian cox is the best scene in the whole movie. such anger! such rage! and…he only filmed his part in 7 days. i really feel like they needed a better lead and a better female lead too. kate mara?! really?! :/

THE CONCERT
4 out of 5 stars

what an uplifting story re: an orchestra that reunites after the communist govt in russia shut them down... the characters, the storyline, and of course, the concert itself is AWESOME. BRAVO!!! :)

the plot: after 30 years, a disgraced orchestra conductor named andrei filipov now turned janitor of the bolshoi theater in moscow, intercepts a fax from the prestigious chatelet theater to play a concert for the french public. he shares this info. with his BF sasha, a former cellist now ambulance driver, and he suggests that they play instead of the real bolshoi orchestra. so, the both of them get their general manager back on board, track down former musicians, even somehow convince this russian gangster guy to fund their trip, under the condition that he get to play in this concert, of course! :P but MOST of all: andrei the conductor wants to perform with the renown yet young violinist anne-marie jaquet (y’all might recognize her as shoshanna from QT’s inglorious basterds), and there is an important reason why... they have all these ridic demands for the chatelet theater, and it’s just comedy from there... they demand to eat at some restaurant that doesn’t even exist anymore, demand a cruise on the seine, and stay at a 3 star hotel...which it was in 1979? LOL, it’s all ridic but the real issue is being able to pull off this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity AKA THE CONCERT. andrei picks tschaikovsky’s famous violin concerto, and he’s not even sure he can pull this off. with his orchestra running around paris like wild hogs, who knows? also, andrei and sasha promise to tell anne-marie the truth re: her biological parents... (the truth is sad but makes a great plot- it has to do with the KGB sending russian jews to siberian death camps)

if you like foreign flicks, this one is definitely for you. my gripe is that there weren’t enough stories/connections to tie all the musicians together, but you get the general idea. lots of random moments that don’t tie well either i.e. that wedding they all went to?, but maybe that was just a cultural lost in translation issue? IDK... i really liked the characters of sasha and ivan, especially ivan since he still thinks the communist party of france actually has some power? :P you definitely end up rooting for these underdogs, and the music they produce is just delightful. as we learn from this movie, we learn that harmony, both musically and spiritually, are needed to keep our spirits alive even after encountering tragedy... ;)

YOUR HIGHNESS
1 out of 5 stars

SO DUMB... SO STUPID... WHY?! these are just the very thoughts i had while watching this movie. sooooooo much disappointment from the very minds that birthed pineapple express! WTH?! this movie wasn’t funny at all...WTH?! :/

basically, this one’s about a slacker prince named thadeous (danny mcbride), who can’t even deliver a message to the dwarf king w/o boning his daughter, has to go on a quest with his “perfect” prince broham named fabious. (james franco) the evil leezar (justin theroux) kidnaps fabious’ bride-to-be named belladonna (zooey deschanel) after he saves her from an evil cyclops guarding her in some locked tower... leezar crashes the wedding, and thus, the brothers go on their quest! (along with their man-servants) they’re accompanied by a “knights of a round table” sort of group of warriors, but then hit road snags by little things called deception, betrayal, and of course, random magical monsters. along their journey, they encounter fearless female warrior isabel (natalie portman), and together, they decide to fight leezar and put an end to his evil ways one and for all. sounds promising, you say? FAR FROM IT. :/

was this supposed to be funny? because that would be a FAIL. was this suppose to be a parody of all things medieval/arthurian/even greek mythology? because i think that’s what they were going for...but then, DOUBLE FAIL. it’s such a mish-mash of randomness and stupidity, that i’m not even sure where this movie was even going? i was under the impression that this would be pineapple express gone medieval, but that would have been me dreaming... franco and mcbride fans: avoid or be disappointed... :/

THOR
3 out of 5 stars

“whoever wields this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of thor.” – odin

the comic book character of thor and the dynamics of his family transforms into some shakespearean platform. also, the ruler of asgard has never been this sexier... ;)

if you don’t already know the story of thor and asgard and odin’s realm... thor (chris helmsworth) is an arrogant and selfish prince, who thirsts for war and vengeance. he wields his great hammer and source of absolute power from his hammer named mjolnir, which his father odin (the great anthony hopkins) bestowed upon him. on the day of his coronation, his special day is interrupted by a couple of frost giants, trying to take back their source of power called the casket of ancient winters. turns out the frost giants are lead by their own king, laffey, and he and odin have been feuding for centuries... odin obviously won, and took away laffey’s source of power AKA the casket. thor is hellbent on taking on the evil frost giants, and rounds up his friends even loki (british actor tom hiddleston), his jealous and mischievous brother, to attack them in their home world. odin disapproves of thor’s selfish action, and banishes him...to well, EARTH. (where he’s found by physicist jane foster or natalie portman) thus, thor is suppose to learn a thing or two on this planet called earth, and until that happens, he can not possess the power of his trusted hammer.

not that great as iron man, but definitely better than green lantern and incredible hulk. kenneth branagh, expert on all things shakespeare, brings him own twist to the comic book legend of thor, and he definitely emphasizes the father-son relationship between odin and thor and even applies the SAME storyline as henry V to this movie. comic book or not, it’s a great drama, indeed. the plot is flimsy and sort of shallow, but the special effects, music, and dramatic effects aren’t half-bad... however, this one needed a GREAT villain b/c i thought loki was a big old pussy for a villain. srsly? we deserve better than that...loki was just creepy and...well, weird. :P