DRIVE
5 out of 5 stars

OMG, this was EXCELLENT!!! i’m not even a big fan of film noir movies, but i really liked this one! at first glance, this felt like a heist gone wrong, but the style, the music (that 80s electro synth pop!), the way the story is presented is all done in a way that gives this movie extra points. it's more of a 4 star but EXCELLENT job! :)

like i said, at first glance, you don’t really expect much... a young blond guy in a scorpion jacket who has no name...just goes by driver or “kiddo” (ryan gosling) drives around downtown L.A. as a getaway driver for these two crooks. that’s just his night job. his day job (because everyone has one) is part stuntman for the movies...part mechanic at crippled shannon’s auto shop. (breaking bad’s bryan cranston) he also befriends a young woman named irene (carey mulligan) who has a young son named benicio, and they live in the same apartment building as him. the three of them begin to hang out more, and it seems that the driver really loves irene. but then...irene gets a phone call from her husband’s lawyer stating that standard (that’s her hubby’s name) will be released from prison early for good behavior. the driver decides to back off from irene, but standard could tell that his wife has feelings for this guy... it also doesn’t help the fact that standard is asked to rob a pawn shop in the valley to pay off his debts for protection while he was inside, but he won’t do it. his “clients” kick his ass real bad, and the driver decides to lend his services for the sake of irene and benicio because they threatened to hurt them. so, what’s a nice guy like the driver to do? EXACTLY... ;)

this reminded me a LOT of pulp fiction, reservoir dogs, inglorious basterds, and L.A. confidential because of the way they paint L.A. as this dreamtown for crooks, the mob, and even your average citizen i.e. irene. yes, there’s lots of violent moments i.e. the fork in the eyeball, the hammer to the hand, the arm vein split, or the face bashing! it’s all bloody and gross, but it’s done with a certain style like scorsese or tarantino. there isn’t much dialogue between the characters, so you really have to watch how they react and act in certain situations. it may not seem like much, but subtlety is the name of the game for this one. def worth a watch... ;)

THE RUM DIARY
3 out of 5 stars

lotterman (paul’s boss): how does anyone drink 161 miniatures?
paul kemp: are they not complimentary?

LOL, i actually really liked this movie! it wasn’t as psychadelic/crazy as fear and loathing in las vegas, but it did a hunter s. thompson novel justice as a big screen adaptation... however, like i’ve said before, johnny depp REALLY needs to just stick with tim burton for maximum movie success. their relationship is like tomato and basil. they just go together really well. this is proof that johnny or juanny needs tim around more... ;)

so, if you’re not familiar with the work of hunter s. thompson, paul kemp (a semi-cleaned up johnny depp) is a reporter from NYC whose been relocated to write for a local san juan newspaper called the san juan star in 1950s puerto rico. he’s flown in to PR by the paper, and immediately meets his supervisor, mr. lotterman (richard jenkins), who immediately realizes paul is an alcoholic by his bloodshot eyes covered by his sunglasses. but it doesn’t matter because lotterman hired paul based on writing skill, not by how much he drinks in a day... ;) he also meets a sleazy businessman named hal sanderson (a gorgeous aaron eckhart) who has a business proposition for him, along with his beautiful GF chenault. (scarjo lookalike...amber heard!) she’s got some googley eyes for poor paul and so does he...but he can’t risk anything with jealous hal around. he befriends the paper’s photographer bob sala, who takes his under his wing, and between him, bob, and another drunkass reporter named moburg (giovanni ribisi nails this role!), they start some trouble in paradise PR by getting into a fight with some locals, a fight with the policia, and eventually a fight at a club during carnival. but paul’s biggest problem isn’t the clash with the culture. it’s actually finding his voice, and figuring out what it is as the while this shit is happening...

i really liked how the 1950s was captured with the color filtering, the costumes, the demeanor...everything. they did a good job capturing the essence of the 50s, but i could have used a little bit more humor and crazier situations. afterall, this IS a hunter s. thompson story, right? maybe i just needed to have drank some more rum before watching this? i dunno... :P

A GOOD OLD FASHIONED ORGY
3 out of 5 stars

LOL! of course, this movie could have been funnier, but i actually really like tyler labine (he won me over in dale & tucker vs. evil) as the token dumbass in all his movies! :P

for eric (jason sudeikis) and mike (tyler labine), there’s only one thing in mind when five o’clock before memorial day weekend rolls around... PARTY IN THE HAMPTONS!!! all their friends gather up their stuff for a WILD weekend at eric’s hampton home...starting off with the white trash bash with mullets, wife-beaters, plaid, farm animals, and cheap beer GALORE. :P eric even meets a girl (leslie bibb), but forgets to call/forgets the # altogether when he jumps into the pool with mike. then, it’s the morning after... eric’s dad shows up, and tells him that he’s planning to sell the place. eric is dumbfounded by this news, and decides to have one big blowout before the house is sold. he comes up with the idea of an orgy with just his core friends (“let’s keep this intimate”), but none of his friends want to participate in an orgy... i mean, would you? would you want to fuck your best friend in a room full of your other best friends? LOL! however, one by one, everyone decides to try it out, and the results... well, sometimes, you just have to let things out. ;)

probably the BEST scene is when eric and mike decide to do some recon at a known swinger’s joint called frank’s mattresses. the awkwardness there is just priceless... :P the orgy itself is pretty comedic, while the rest of the movie is just them discussing about how awkward it’ll be when it’s over. well... like i said before. would you want to fuck your best friend in a room full of your other best friends? yeeeeeah, that’s what i thought. apparently these guys...notsomuch. and the result is comedic. (as it should be) :P

COLOMBIANA
2 out of 5 stars

“cataleya, never forget where you came from.”

umm... doesn’t hollywood know that this sort of movie already exists? it’s called...LEON THE PROFESSIONAL. oh, but it looks like luc besson wanted to do a colombian version. WHY, LUC, WHY?!? better yet...POURQUOI, LUC, POURQUOI?!? :/

so, if you’ve seen leon the professional, you probably know what to expect re: plot... it’s colombia 1992, and a 12 year old cataleya is doing HW at her kitchen table. suddenly, her father comes back from his meeting with don luis (his former boss), and he tells his wife and daughter that they have exactly 10 minutes to pack and get out of colombia FOR GOOD. unfortunately, don luis has already beat him to the punch and sends his goons after cataleya’s family to be executed... cataleya’s father tearfully tells her that he loves her, gives her an address for her uncle in chicago, as well as a little microchip which is her “passport” now. cataleya’s parents are gunned down, but she is spared by some guy named marco, who thinks it’s wrong to kill children....even though they might grow up to be revenge killers. (point proven in this case) she stabs marco’s hand, and flees. even as a young kid, cataleya is as stealthy as a cat! :P she eventually finds her way to u.s. soill, escapes homeland security custody, and finds her way to chicago where her uncle emilio lives. (new zealander cliff curtis does colombian VERY well in this movie!) fast-forward 15 years later...cataleya (zoe saldana) is all grown up and a highly skilled professional hitter, systematically taking down all those affiliated with don luis’s cartel... however, it’s only a matter of time before don luis decides to send back a message to cataleya and for FBI to follow her trail of bodies. ;)

expect ACTION and lots of it. it’s highly stylized esp. the first hit with the guy in prison. that’s probably the best part in this entire movie, and...possibly the second hit with the fat guy with the sharks. cataleya ends up hooking up with who we know as agent michael vaughn from alias waaaay back when, and that was sort of completely unnecessary but brings the govt heat on her. that whole part was EXTREMELY far-fetched, but hey...it’s a movie. anything is possible. i just wish this movie was written better. zing! :P

 SHARK NIGHT

 1 out of 5 stars

UGH...it seems like EVERY shark movie with the exception of jaws seems to get a 1 or 2 star review from me. at least, piranha has boobs and campy elements! this had neither. in fact, it took itself waaaaay too seriously for a movie about freshwater sharks living in a saltwater lake that go after a bunch of tulane kids for no apparent reason... :/

i guess the spring semester is over, and a bunch of tulane kids decide to party at sara palski’s (sara paxton from last house on the left) home in lake crosby, LA. they pack up their SVU, head for the highway, and do a pitstop at a bait shop. sara’s token black friend malik and his GF maya encounter some good ol’ fashioned racism from the locals, and it turns out one of them is sara’s ex-BF, dennis. (you know he’s either gonna be the bad guy or help these tulane bitches against the sharks) they get to the house, and it’s all about the tanning, jet-skiing, and beer pong in the pool. things are going great until malik, who’s on the jet ski, is attacked by a shark and loses his arm! everyone is freaking out, until the pre-med guy states that they need to take malik’s ass to a hospital. of course, from there...the sharks decide to systematically take out each college kid..until it’s just our heroine sara and her hero nick. we find out why there are sharks in a saltwater lake, but it’s nothing surprising... i’ll give you a hint: SHARK WEEK on the discovery channel. ;)

instead of this shit, they could just done a re-make of deep blue sea. remember that crazy shark movie with LL cool j and thomas jane and WHO COULD FORGET...SAMUEL L. JACKSON?!?! this movie took itself waaaaay too seriously. all it needed was SLJ yelling “I’M SICK...OF THESE MUTHAFUCKING SHARKS...IN THIS MUTHAFUCKING LAKE!!!” :P too bad that didn’t happen because i would have automatically given this one an extra star. sigh...

REAL STEEL
3 out of 5 stars

it’s like the robot version of rocky! aaaaand like rocky, you can’t help but root for the people’s champ AKA atom!!! :)

i wonder how much the producers of this robot boxing shitshow paid hugh jackman to star in this....err, shitshow. :P anyway...hugh jackman is charlie kenton, whose not only a former boxer but now promoter and deadbeat dad. the movie starts with charlie booking a boxing gig with a texan buddy of his named ricky (it’s martin keamy from lost!), and loses really big when his robot gets horned by a ginormous black bull. as ricky says...if you mess with the bull, you’re gonna get the horns! so, his robot is trashed and he loses $10K to ricky but not before a couple of dudes inform him that his ex-GF has passed away and his son max is waiting for him at court because the aunt wants to formally adopt him... charlie appears before court, but not before brokering a deal with the rich uncle. he’ll sign over his rights as charlie’s father for $100K, so he can buy a new boxing robot named noisy boy to fight with in the ring. there’s another condition: max has to live with him all summer. he does, and he tags along with charlie to all the robot boxing matches. noisy boy basically gets turned into scrap metal, and charlie is shit out of luck...yet again. not until, max discovers a junkyard robot that they train into a boxing champion... ;)

like i said, it’s like robot rocky and there’s a lot of feelgood moments i.e. when max and atom bond by dancing and different workouts, when max and charlie also bond, and of course, the BIG fight at the very end! sometimes robots > ppl. in this case, DEFINITELY b/c the acting is meh but atom kicks total ass. point proven? :P

MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS
3 out of 5 stars

SUH CUTE!!! the penguins in this movie are sooooo adorablezzz... :)

a pretty shallow movie about a commercial real estate broker named tom popper (jim carey) whose life gets turned upside-down when his father leaves him penguins in his last will and testament. the movie starts with a young tom popper circa age 5-6? who communicates with his daddy via radio, and every time he comes back from a trip, his dad seems to get him a lil’ souvenir i.e. a snowglobe or a book. then, one day, he loses contact with his dad... fast-forward thirty years later when tom popper is all grown up, and he’s as sleazy and slick as they come. he’s got an assistant named piper who has a love for words that start with the letter P, and he knows how to close ANY sale. then, one day, he learns that his father has passed away, and then comes the shipment of penguins! his beautiful loft is soon transformed into an icy habitat for his new “room mates” AKA the captain, loudy, bitey, stinky, and nimrod! even his kids love him for having penguins as pets. well, that is until the zookeeper at the new york zoo wants his penguins too, so he could further his own agenda... what is mr. popper to do? ;)

like i said, this was a pretty shallow story with really shallow acting. so, this is what jim carey has been upto... i still think to this day, his best role was ace ventura. (LOL) laugh if you must but his ace ventura movies were pretty funny. comeon, him coming out nekked out of a rhino’s butthole? CLASSIC!!! you get NONE of that here, but the penguins are quite adorablezzz. what this lacks in everything a great movie has makes up in cute penguin scenes. penguin lovers will love...obviously. ;)

CONTAGION
4 out of 5 stars

this has got to be the scariest movie i’ve ever seen... VIRUSES ARE FUCKING SCARY. :O :O :O

contagion follows the story of one person, who goes on to infecting/killing almost 26 million globally... beth emhoff (GOOP: govt name- gweneth paltrow) is some sort of global construction project manager who travels extensively for her work, and the movie starts with her coughing but talking to some guy named jon neal, whom she just slept with in chicago during a layover. her home is in minneapolis, and she’s greeted at home by her loving/adoring husband mitch (matt damon) and her young son clark. a couple days pass...and beth can’t see, feel her arms, begins to have a seizure, and then ends up dead in the hospital. the doctors have NO CLUE WHATSOEVER to what killed her, so they end up doing an autopsy (a truly gross scene when they peel back her scalp to examine her brain), and IMMEDIATELY call the CDC, the WHO, and practically anyone whose involved in public health safety and infectious disease control. the director of the CDC (laurence fishburne) sends a field agent/doctor (kate winslet) out to minneapolis to investigate this matter further, but you’ll see what happens to her... the CDC deal with this domestically, along with pressure coming from paranoid homeland security officials, but the WHO (world health organization) deal with this in china by sending marion cotillard, where they think the virus originated from b/c beth was on a business trip in hong kong...specifically a macao casino. there’s also a pesky blogger in the form of jude law who complicates things by creating mass paranoia through his video blog posts and such. A LOT happens throughout this one, but wait until the very end when they show you how the virus started. ;) (hint: a bat was eating a banana in a tree when a construction bulldozer chopped it down...)

MUCH better than outbreak and not melodramatic at all!!! it’s a clear account to what would happen if something like this were to happen, and we sort of already know based on what we experienced with swine flu AKA H1N1 virus. a lot of good actors were attached to this project, and i really liked steven soderbergh’s directional style. this one doesn’t have that soderbergh gritty-ness that makes it semi-indie and stylistic, but it still does the job. my only gripe is that damn awful soundtrack that’s suppose to be electronic/synthesizer ??? just distracting and really ANNOYING... :/

COWBOYS & ALIENS
3 out of 5 stars

ella: “they want gold.”
col. dolarhyde: “well, that’s just ridiculous. what are they gonna do? buy something?”

duuuuude... THIS MOVIE WAS RIDICULOUS. :P

the whole premise is that aliens are invading the wild wild west, and indiana jones (an angry harrison ford) and james bond (a stale daniel craig) team up with a bunch of western outlaw bandit types and apache indians to take said aliens DOWN. do they succeed? of course, they succeed! IT’S INDIANA AND JAMES BOND!!! :P however, in case you want to know the whole story... a cowboy named jake lonergan (daniel craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert...not remembering a single thing. he’s got a weird metal bracelet on his wrist, and notices a scar on his side. he’s bleeding, but doesn’t remember getitng shot. these other cowboys try to take him into town, but he beats them up and basically steals their clothes. (and gun!) he rides into town, and finds that col. dolarhyde’s son percy (a crazy-ass paul dano) is causing trouble in the town of absolution. both percy and jake end up locked up in jail when the aliens start attacking the town, snatching up the townsfolk with their metal claw-like lasso hooks. the aliens essentially snatch up everyone except the main starts of the movie, and both indiana and 007 need to 1) rescue their peeps and 2) kill all aliens and 3) figure out what they’re doing here on earth. YEE-HAW!!! :P

at first glance, i thought this was going to be independence day: the wild west version. umm...it’s not. independence day had the funny black guy and the awkward jewish dude, but this was angry old white guy and super serious british dude... where’s the fun in that? also, adam beach, whose played and attached himself to almost every native american movie, is a little bitch in this one. i, for one, who have liked to see him as chief...hah! (hasn’t he earned it by now?) very stereotypical- in terms of cowboys, native americans, even the aliens with their creepy little tri-fingers! i expected better than the director who gave us iron man... seriously, where’s the witty dialogue? or RDJ?! oh yeeeeah...probably passed up on this b/c of the shitty writing. :P

one star movie weekend!

THE TEMPEST

1 out of 5 stars

if you’d like to watch a naked ben whitshaw (but sans penis- where’s the fun in that?) float around in the night sky as a mischievous tree spirit for an hour and a half...then, this is the movie for you! :P uhh...this movie was WEIRD. i dunno how else to put it, but what a fucking weird movie... i thought it’d be a good weird, but julie taymor’s interpretation of shakespeare’s beloved tempest is very existentialism and makes you feel like you’re watching a shakespeare play after eating some ‘shrooms? this play is all about magic and fantasy and such, but it pushed the envelope into a whole nutha realm and was quite BORING... too bad b/c this one had a great cast lineup including the always fab dame helen mirren as prospera (gender change), chris cooper as the evil antonio, alfred molina as the drunk-ass stefano, russell brand as the dumb-ass trinculo, and djimon hounsou as the vengeful slave, caliban. who knew the words russell brand + shakespeare could ever be spoken in the same sentence? actually, he was really fitting as the dumb-ass trinculo, and i would actually prefer to see him MORE in other shakespeare remakes! i can’t believe i just said that... :P 

STRAW DOGS (2011) 
1 out of 5 stars

1 star b/c of alexander skarsgard’s hott bod AKA eric from true blood...this time with a nice tan and MUSCLES!!! the plot of this movie made absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. the only scene that made somewhat else was the ending...fortunately. everything else leading up to it was basically nonsense. why did david and amy (james marsden and kate bosworth) decide to fix up the house in the first place if all they were gonna do was workout and write a boring screenplay about WWII russia? also, why did charlie rape amy? and...why did anyone decide a remake of the 1970s version would do well in theaters?! :P ALL RELEVANT QUESTIONS...NONE OF THE ANSWERS REVEALED. alex skarsgard basically plays a non-vampire but beautifully tanned eric, and james marsden actually does a good job as pussy screenwriter and city kid david... dominic purcell AKA lincoln from prison break plays this pedophile/mentally retarded guy named jeremy, and that whole storyline meshed with david and amy’s storyline pretty much blows things out of proportion. (LITERALLY) this movie in some ways make southern folk look bad... in some ways, it would have been better as a comedy. ugh... :/