hard core movie marathon
So over winter break Renzo and i watched the majority of the movies that we had been accruing since the summer to watch together. In the span of 2 weeks, we watched 15 movies in between hanging out with friends, me going away for Christmas for 5 days, and doing general other things. I'd say we were quite dedicated and hard core. Although, Renzo fell asleep during a few of them... At least we know what his opinion about the movies were. And now, in no particular order and not in the order viewed, just the random order of recalling what the hell i did watch:
Despicable Me was surprisingly good. I don't know what I expected, but I really loved the movie. They had some great lines and such great humor. There were a couple of grown up humor things that really made the movie wonderful. Besides, i've always loved the idea of failed evil villains and the mechanics behind supporting your business venture in evil. That part was really spectacular. I thought it was awesome that Vector was playing wii and that he had a freakin shark under his living room. I LOVED the minions. Totally made the whole movie. Apparently, their speech can actually be translated because each word they say represents a real word. It's called Minionese. They were adorable. The part where they're trying to make the home kid-friendly and the part where the social worker comes through is beyond funny. All in all, they did a great job with this movie. AND Julie Andrews was in it!! Of course it's a winner. Awesome quotes:
"It's so fluffy i could DIE!" Agnes
"When we got adopted by a bald guy, I thought that this would be more like Annie." Edith
"That book was accidentally destroyed maliciously... " Gru
"The physical appearance of the please makes no difference." Gru
"Aw. My caterpillar never turned into a butterfly." Agnes
"That's a Cheeto." Edith
"Oh." (then she eats it) Agnes [Priceless]
Now, I have a feeling that the only reason Prince of Persia was awesome to me was because I'm easy to entertain, my inner fanboy loves action fighting stuff, and my inner fangirl hearts Jake Gyllenhaal with his sexy english accent. The way he says, "don't press your luck" is rawr. Besides, I'm always a sucker for a street rat turned prince. It's some Aladdin complex or something. There was Dastan doing all sorts of awesome fighting and acrobatic unbelievable flipping around and taking down whole cities by himself. I love that kinda stuff. I'll admit, there were some cheesy bits, but i thought it was really fun. I liked the action-y stuff. Tamina was also very beautiful. I could've done without the parts where she gets fooled by Dastan and the ostriches. I thought it was funny though that i ended up seeing her in clash of the titans too. Finally, I just want to mention that, again, it's portrayed that if they're foreign, then they have an english accent. I'm pretty sure these people should have middle eastern accents. They're Persians.
So I really wanted to see The Fall because it was made by the same guy that did The Cell and the colors for the movie were similarly breathtaking and dramatic and the pie guy was in it. The movie started off well enough. It was charming and, again, beautiful imagery, and there was some fun humor, and then it got weird. It got super weird. I can't really explain it. It was beautiful all the way through, but the storyline decided to be really weird and i don't know. I didn't so much enjoy the ending to this one. The costumes and colors and imagery and locations and frames were magnificent though. I would recommend it just for that part.
Ninja Assassin is exactly what it sounds like. I had this hope that it would be a secretly fantastic movie with incredible fight scenes. Yeah, that was snuffed out real quick. It's a straight up kinda lame ninja movie. It started out well enough. They always start out well enough. I mean, yeah, there was that initial arm hacking stuff and unnecessary blood at the beginning where you didn't even see the ninjas using their awesomeness but i figured it was just an intro. The part where the main guy is going through his routine was pretty neat. Theeeeen, you're like eh? The ninjas somehow became imbued with the powers of the shadows and super speed towards the middle and end that took them into the slightly supernatural and since that wasn't stated from the start, it was so deus ex machina. There's this part where they have all these spotlights on the main ninja guy because they're sure that he'll escape or be assassinated if there are any shadows. The ninjas take down the facility anyway but it felt a lot like the Bogeyman movie with the whole beware-of-shadows-or-the-ninjas-will-eat-you thing. Not too much fun. I was just underwhelmed by the film that i felt could have been a great idea. I mean, secret ninja academy? Shadow powers? NINJAS! There could have been some epic ninja magic fight scenes but there wasn't anything that was really fun or interesting or unique.
Now, The Sorcerer's Apprentice i was pleasantly surprised by. It wasn't utterly fantastic, but it was really fun and entertaining. I really liked it. I loved the use of One Republic's Secrets in the movie and the spells and effects were pretty cool. When people put a little imagination and fun into creating magic, i usually love it. It can't be just levitating objects and making things disappear. Those little extra bits that make it so magic is all around you and can do incredible things is what sells it. I love the idea of magic. I also liked that they took some of the fighting to chinatown. I enjoyed seeing the dragon since that's my favorite part of the new year. I also liked that Monica Belucci was in it. I don't know why, but i enjoy her as an actress. Of course, the humor was also pretty good and i loved the references to Fantasia. I think they did a good job with this movie. The main character guy is a really fun actor.
Imagine my surprise when I saw Tamina again in Clash of the Titans. I had a moment where i was sure i had just seen her and sure enough I had. A lot of people were unhappy with this movie but i enjoyed it immensely. There was lots of being Greek with an English accent and nice fighting scenes. I love well done fighting scenes. They did a nice job with the sea monsters and Medusa. That was pretty cool. The ending was a bit weird though. Overall, I thought it looked really nice and the special effects were really good. I could have lived with cleaner scene transitions, but it wasn't too bad. Moral of the story: stop trying to make things 3D. Nobody cares.
The Last Airbender, for me, was a great big let down from so many standpoints. As a lover of the original series, I didn't see how they could mess this up seeing as how they had a blueprint. I didn't care that Zuko for some reason wasn't Chinese (even though I would have loved for Rufio to be Zuko) or that all the bad guys were dark and the good guys white. I didn't care about the whole racial profiling debacle. I was set to enjoy and like the movie based on merit alone. That was misplaced. Well, not entirely. The fight scenes were beautiful and amazing. i loved them. They really outdid themselves there. They did such a great job with incorporating the different martial arts into the different benders which i felt was a major part that they needed to carryover. I also loved Appa so much. He was exactly perfect. Also, I really liked what they did with Aang's arrow tattoos. That was really neat. However, the dialogue was really bad. The acting was kinda weird. Also, I hated the part where Kitara was completely inept at bending. She was supposed to be better than Aang. I was cool with Sokka and Kitara being white. The look of them matched, especially Jackson Rathbone's hair. It sucked that Sokka wasn't goofier and funnier. He was too serious. Yue was perfect. She was exactly like she was in the show. Now I'm nitpicking, but i really wanted Aang to do his ride-on-the-sphere thing. And what was with pronouncing Sokka like so-kuh? Or Aang like Gong instead of Sang? And the heavy narration was eh. At least the earth nation were chinese. At least someone was asian...The story also moved weird. They tried to cram a whole season into 1 movie and it shows. Something that really bothered me was that they took them all the way to the Northern Water Tribe and they didn't even go into the Kitara/misogynist storyline that was kind of important. I mean Kitara and Sokka are technically part of that tribe. It takes away part of Kitara's character not to include her struggle and intensity by just glossing over that personal battle. She had to fight for it. Kitara and Aang are supposed to train together and be equals in skill if not in power for water bending. The whole movie was just chopped together. The whole climax I feel like they got wrong. I know Aang was supposed to be royally pissed off and there was some spirit using him to do the great water thing. I don't remember well, but i think he was supposed to be angry that they had the audacity to try to kill the moon spirit so he was a vessel for which they were going to nuke them but ended up not because Yue gave her life back. I feel like this whole movie was based off the grain-of-truth-and-we'll-fill-in-the-rest principle. Aside from the awesome bending, i was really displeased with this movie.
So, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I really don't know where to go about this movie. I know I wanted to see it but i wasn't actually sure what to expect. It had Anna Kendrick in it and Chris Evans but the premise was...different. It was a fun movie. I loved all the video game references. All their references were really fun. I thought that Scott was a douche. It was hard to root for him when he was such a bad guy to knives. Overall, it was pretty funny. Renzo said, and i agree, that for each new ex, Ramona should have had a new hair color. I also liked the x-men patch and the signs that pointed to a new evil ex. I also loved the part where Scott is trying to find Ramona and he holds up an awful drawing that he made of her and someone recognizes it,. I liked it. It was just strange. A strange movie with a strange ending.
I was soooo ready to see Sunshine. MORE Chris Evans. How could this go wrong? Well, about 3/4 of the way through the movie, it stopped being a scifi and became a horror movie which was strange. Up to that point, i really liked the movie. I liked the whole oxygen farm bit and the weird holo deck room. I liked the whole premise. The ending-turned-horror-movie was really whack though. When people started dropping like flies, the drama got ratcheted up and then when there was that strange here/not here guy killing people off, then it became all sorts of confusing. It was really well made and the acting was really good, but the whole last bit at the end of the story just didn't seem to fit.
Inception blew me away. It was absolutely fantastic. I loved the whole thing. I loved Leonardo DiCaprio. I loved Joseph Gordan Levitt. I loved the story. I loved the effects. I just loved the whole thing. They did such a great job thinking up the inner working of dreaming and inception that i had a quiet moment at the end of the movie where i was just yelling in my head, "THIS IS SO AWESOME!" in that kinda stunned awe. I love the idea behind dreams because mine are so strange and i really appreciated that they put a lot of thought into this movie. I also loved the use of M. C. Escher since he's awesome. The use of the totems was amazing. My favorite line from the movie was when Cobb said, "Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange." because there is so much truth in that. Ugh, it was such a fantastic movie. I'd watch that on loop.
So, I heavily anticipated Black Swan as being a good movie. It was. First, i like realistic dance movies. This did not disappoint. I also loved swan lake when i saw it like 5 rows from the stage. Finally, i love psychological horror movies. Wrap them all up and hand that to me and it is pretty much my birthday. It was pretty dark and gritty with this hint of paranoia and underlying terror throughout the movie. The costumes and makeup for the performance were terrific. The sex parts were weird. I understand the necessity of them for the transformation Nina goes through, but they were still weird. All that psychological horror stuff was just spot on creepy. Loved it. (EDIT: I also love how Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman went from doing Black Swan to the exact same story in 2 different movies - No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits. Friends with Benefits of which I actually want to see with Mila Kunis.)
I went to the actual movies to see Tron: Legacy and you know what? I was pleased that I did. It looked really great. I loved the disc fighting and LOVED the crazy motorcycle racing thing. It looked really cool. Those slow-motion parts where there "turning on" the motorcycle from the stick was freakin' fantastic. It was really neat that they played with height and depth when they worked out those parts. What I thought was pretty booty was that they KNEW how important Kevin Flynn's disc was and he STILL put it on the outside of his dumb trench coat so that someone could just grappling gun it. I mean, if it was like the other people's discs, it should have had to slide up to go out and he should have been clothes-lined instead of just having that oh-shit face. Oh, and Sam Flynn was hot. It was one of those times where he became more attractive as the movie went on. Clu as young Jeff Bridges looked weird. Tron was hot. I also liked all the white in Flynn's video game house. The house was really awesome. They went all out for this movie and I think it paid off. There is this one part that was supposed to be funny but i crapped up because it's what i do. It's when Kevin Flynn is giving a speech in the real world before he went missing and he does this demonic thing when he says, "in there is are future! In there is our destiny!" I can't really explain it but he goes really deep and low on destiny and it was unintentionally hilarious.
We snuck into Tangled after Tron and it was pretty good. I think it would have been better in hand-drawn renaissance Disney style, but oh well. It was really funny with the frying pan and with, ha, Flynn. I really loved the part with the lanterns that are released every year on her birthday. In part because i love paper lanterns and also because it just looked beautiful. Speaking of beautiful, the king was hot. He was very attractive and in the scene right before they're going to release their lantern and he's really sad, it just broke my heart. I didn't like, though, that Rapunzel's hair kept changing lengths. It was really obvious. The songs were alright. Not the usual amazingness you expect from Disney. I loved her chameleon, Pascal. He was so cute and cracked me up a lot. The dialogue was pretty funny and it was really good overall.
I finally saw Halloween 1 with a young Jamie Lee Curtis. I think i saw it too late in the game. It was eerie at the creepy parts, but it moved SO slowly. Seriously took forever to get going. It also wasn't as scary as some other movies in the sense that it lacked a little bit of the underlying terror and creep out factor. It's probably because i grew up in the age of the jump-out-of-the-closet-and surprise-you scare factor and creep-you-out-because-your-imagination-of-the-unseen-is-worse-than-anything-anyone-could-ever-show-you terror. The fact that he disappears was creepy. Me imagining being creeped out just now creeped me out more than the movie did.
Now, Toy Story 3 was absolutely AMAZING after Toy Story 2 really sucked. That's all there is to it. It was an emotional roller coaster. It was exciting, there was drama, there was intrigue, there was a subtle creep out with that Lotso guy. He just screamed West Virginia. The story was really great and I loved how it ended. I don't think it could have ended better. I loved how lame Ken was in the barbie dream house with all his outfits and I loved the great escape. And oh! That wind up telephone thing? I TOTALLY had one of those as a kid. Brought me back. The Mr. Potato Head scenes were hilarious. They stole the show. It really was a wonderful movie. However, i had a bit of fridge horror at the thought of the toys living FOREVER. I mean, what happens if they get melted down? Do they still have sentience? If they get broken into pieces and can't move, do they just lie immobile and helpless for all eternity? It's vaguely distressing. But the movie was wonderful other than that. P.S. the Big Baby was uber creepy.
Finally, at the last movie: Eclipse. Now, the movie was really dark. I can't tell you how funny i thought how serious they were being was. It was unnecessary. A little levity and a little less overreaction and drama would have done them some good. Where were the quips? Where was the humor? It really should have been funnier. The part where Edward is trying in vain to grab Jacob's shoulder but he can't because Taylor Lautner beefed up so much and Edward's telling him to never kiss Bella again just cracked me up because of unexpected that was. Bella was supposed to be the angry one and Edward was supposed to be all calm and funny and Jacob interacting with Charlie was supposed to be funny. Jacob was also supposed to be unabashed for stealing that kiss. That was the perfect moment for levity but instead, we get psycho pale Edward with the crazy person eyes. Even parts that were meant to be funny in the book, were played serious instead. I did, however, enjoy the ribbing from the wolves. That was fun. Leah, who my roommate went to school with and was friends with which is neat, i did not appreciate her random bitchiness but i suppose they were making a point. The part at the end where half of Jacob is broken was pretty cool. The screaming part. The fight scene was awesome. Bella's hair was AWFUL. I'm a bit angry that they took out the training fight scene where Jasper and Edward are evenly matched because Edward is fighting with Carlisle instead. Oh, and could they make them more corpse-like? They're past embalmed-for-the-viewing and heading straight for dug-up-3-months-later-to-make-sure-they're-still-inside. It wasn't fantastic, but the movies keep getting better, which is good. Needs more levity.
While I'm on the subject, I also saw a bunch of movies before I even went home for Christmas:
First of all, The King's Speech was excruciatingly amazing. Helena Bonham Carter is pitch perfect. Everyone was simply amazing in this movie. Colin Firth's depiction of stuttering along with his attitude towards it is so spot on with the people that i've worked with. He did an amazing job. Geoffrey Rush is wonderfully funny. There were so many great funny moments and awesome touching moments and some sad moments but all of it was completely amazing. It was such an excellent movie. The quips in quality and timing were so perfect. They had an amazing cast. I enjoyed seeing Bellatrix and Dumbledore in opposite characters.
Social Network was unexpectedly funny. I don't think they meant for some parts to be funny, but i saw a lot of autism indicators that i just couldn't help but find them funny. I loved the twins. The part where one of the twins says something like, "we don't need to hire someone to beat him up. I'm 6'5", 220, and there are 2 of me." That was classic. Oh, and that little snub to BU. Even though it was a burn, i still appreciated it. I'm going to go with unexpectedly funny to sum up this movie.
I also saw Harry Potter 7.1, but I'm going to cover that when I see Harry Potter 7.2 because they deserve to go together.
SSDD
Despicable Me was surprisingly good. I don't know what I expected, but I really loved the movie. They had some great lines and such great humor. There were a couple of grown up humor things that really made the movie wonderful. Besides, i've always loved the idea of failed evil villains and the mechanics behind supporting your business venture in evil. That part was really spectacular. I thought it was awesome that Vector was playing wii and that he had a freakin shark under his living room. I LOVED the minions. Totally made the whole movie. Apparently, their speech can actually be translated because each word they say represents a real word. It's called Minionese. They were adorable. The part where they're trying to make the home kid-friendly and the part where the social worker comes through is beyond funny. All in all, they did a great job with this movie. AND Julie Andrews was in it!! Of course it's a winner. Awesome quotes:
"It's so fluffy i could DIE!" Agnes
"When we got adopted by a bald guy, I thought that this would be more like Annie." Edith
"That book was accidentally destroyed maliciously... " Gru
"The physical appearance of the please makes no difference." Gru
"Aw. My caterpillar never turned into a butterfly." Agnes
"That's a Cheeto." Edith
"Oh." (then she eats it) Agnes [Priceless]
Now, I have a feeling that the only reason Prince of Persia was awesome to me was because I'm easy to entertain, my inner fanboy loves action fighting stuff, and my inner fangirl hearts Jake Gyllenhaal with his sexy english accent. The way he says, "don't press your luck" is rawr. Besides, I'm always a sucker for a street rat turned prince. It's some Aladdin complex or something. There was Dastan doing all sorts of awesome fighting and acrobatic unbelievable flipping around and taking down whole cities by himself. I love that kinda stuff. I'll admit, there were some cheesy bits, but i thought it was really fun. I liked the action-y stuff. Tamina was also very beautiful. I could've done without the parts where she gets fooled by Dastan and the ostriches. I thought it was funny though that i ended up seeing her in clash of the titans too. Finally, I just want to mention that, again, it's portrayed that if they're foreign, then they have an english accent. I'm pretty sure these people should have middle eastern accents. They're Persians.
So I really wanted to see The Fall because it was made by the same guy that did The Cell and the colors for the movie were similarly breathtaking and dramatic and the pie guy was in it. The movie started off well enough. It was charming and, again, beautiful imagery, and there was some fun humor, and then it got weird. It got super weird. I can't really explain it. It was beautiful all the way through, but the storyline decided to be really weird and i don't know. I didn't so much enjoy the ending to this one. The costumes and colors and imagery and locations and frames were magnificent though. I would recommend it just for that part.
Ninja Assassin is exactly what it sounds like. I had this hope that it would be a secretly fantastic movie with incredible fight scenes. Yeah, that was snuffed out real quick. It's a straight up kinda lame ninja movie. It started out well enough. They always start out well enough. I mean, yeah, there was that initial arm hacking stuff and unnecessary blood at the beginning where you didn't even see the ninjas using their awesomeness but i figured it was just an intro. The part where the main guy is going through his routine was pretty neat. Theeeeen, you're like eh? The ninjas somehow became imbued with the powers of the shadows and super speed towards the middle and end that took them into the slightly supernatural and since that wasn't stated from the start, it was so deus ex machina. There's this part where they have all these spotlights on the main ninja guy because they're sure that he'll escape or be assassinated if there are any shadows. The ninjas take down the facility anyway but it felt a lot like the Bogeyman movie with the whole beware-of-shadows-or-the-ninjas-will-eat-you thing. Not too much fun. I was just underwhelmed by the film that i felt could have been a great idea. I mean, secret ninja academy? Shadow powers? NINJAS! There could have been some epic ninja magic fight scenes but there wasn't anything that was really fun or interesting or unique.
Now, The Sorcerer's Apprentice i was pleasantly surprised by. It wasn't utterly fantastic, but it was really fun and entertaining. I really liked it. I loved the use of One Republic's Secrets in the movie and the spells and effects were pretty cool. When people put a little imagination and fun into creating magic, i usually love it. It can't be just levitating objects and making things disappear. Those little extra bits that make it so magic is all around you and can do incredible things is what sells it. I love the idea of magic. I also liked that they took some of the fighting to chinatown. I enjoyed seeing the dragon since that's my favorite part of the new year. I also liked that Monica Belucci was in it. I don't know why, but i enjoy her as an actress. Of course, the humor was also pretty good and i loved the references to Fantasia. I think they did a good job with this movie. The main character guy is a really fun actor.
Imagine my surprise when I saw Tamina again in Clash of the Titans. I had a moment where i was sure i had just seen her and sure enough I had. A lot of people were unhappy with this movie but i enjoyed it immensely. There was lots of being Greek with an English accent and nice fighting scenes. I love well done fighting scenes. They did a nice job with the sea monsters and Medusa. That was pretty cool. The ending was a bit weird though. Overall, I thought it looked really nice and the special effects were really good. I could have lived with cleaner scene transitions, but it wasn't too bad. Moral of the story: stop trying to make things 3D. Nobody cares.
The Last Airbender, for me, was a great big let down from so many standpoints. As a lover of the original series, I didn't see how they could mess this up seeing as how they had a blueprint. I didn't care that Zuko for some reason wasn't Chinese (even though I would have loved for Rufio to be Zuko) or that all the bad guys were dark and the good guys white. I didn't care about the whole racial profiling debacle. I was set to enjoy and like the movie based on merit alone. That was misplaced. Well, not entirely. The fight scenes were beautiful and amazing. i loved them. They really outdid themselves there. They did such a great job with incorporating the different martial arts into the different benders which i felt was a major part that they needed to carryover. I also loved Appa so much. He was exactly perfect. Also, I really liked what they did with Aang's arrow tattoos. That was really neat. However, the dialogue was really bad. The acting was kinda weird. Also, I hated the part where Kitara was completely inept at bending. She was supposed to be better than Aang. I was cool with Sokka and Kitara being white. The look of them matched, especially Jackson Rathbone's hair. It sucked that Sokka wasn't goofier and funnier. He was too serious. Yue was perfect. She was exactly like she was in the show. Now I'm nitpicking, but i really wanted Aang to do his ride-on-the-sphere thing. And what was with pronouncing Sokka like so-kuh? Or Aang like Gong instead of Sang? And the heavy narration was eh. At least the earth nation were chinese. At least someone was asian...The story also moved weird. They tried to cram a whole season into 1 movie and it shows. Something that really bothered me was that they took them all the way to the Northern Water Tribe and they didn't even go into the Kitara/misogynist storyline that was kind of important. I mean Kitara and Sokka are technically part of that tribe. It takes away part of Kitara's character not to include her struggle and intensity by just glossing over that personal battle. She had to fight for it. Kitara and Aang are supposed to train together and be equals in skill if not in power for water bending. The whole movie was just chopped together. The whole climax I feel like they got wrong. I know Aang was supposed to be royally pissed off and there was some spirit using him to do the great water thing. I don't remember well, but i think he was supposed to be angry that they had the audacity to try to kill the moon spirit so he was a vessel for which they were going to nuke them but ended up not because Yue gave her life back. I feel like this whole movie was based off the grain-of-truth-and-we'll-fill-in-the-rest principle. Aside from the awesome bending, i was really displeased with this movie.
So, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I really don't know where to go about this movie. I know I wanted to see it but i wasn't actually sure what to expect. It had Anna Kendrick in it and Chris Evans but the premise was...different. It was a fun movie. I loved all the video game references. All their references were really fun. I thought that Scott was a douche. It was hard to root for him when he was such a bad guy to knives. Overall, it was pretty funny. Renzo said, and i agree, that for each new ex, Ramona should have had a new hair color. I also liked the x-men patch and the signs that pointed to a new evil ex. I also loved the part where Scott is trying to find Ramona and he holds up an awful drawing that he made of her and someone recognizes it,. I liked it. It was just strange. A strange movie with a strange ending.
I was soooo ready to see Sunshine. MORE Chris Evans. How could this go wrong? Well, about 3/4 of the way through the movie, it stopped being a scifi and became a horror movie which was strange. Up to that point, i really liked the movie. I liked the whole oxygen farm bit and the weird holo deck room. I liked the whole premise. The ending-turned-horror-movie was really whack though. When people started dropping like flies, the drama got ratcheted up and then when there was that strange here/not here guy killing people off, then it became all sorts of confusing. It was really well made and the acting was really good, but the whole last bit at the end of the story just didn't seem to fit.
Inception blew me away. It was absolutely fantastic. I loved the whole thing. I loved Leonardo DiCaprio. I loved Joseph Gordan Levitt. I loved the story. I loved the effects. I just loved the whole thing. They did such a great job thinking up the inner working of dreaming and inception that i had a quiet moment at the end of the movie where i was just yelling in my head, "THIS IS SO AWESOME!" in that kinda stunned awe. I love the idea behind dreams because mine are so strange and i really appreciated that they put a lot of thought into this movie. I also loved the use of M. C. Escher since he's awesome. The use of the totems was amazing. My favorite line from the movie was when Cobb said, "Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange." because there is so much truth in that. Ugh, it was such a fantastic movie. I'd watch that on loop.
So, I heavily anticipated Black Swan as being a good movie. It was. First, i like realistic dance movies. This did not disappoint. I also loved swan lake when i saw it like 5 rows from the stage. Finally, i love psychological horror movies. Wrap them all up and hand that to me and it is pretty much my birthday. It was pretty dark and gritty with this hint of paranoia and underlying terror throughout the movie. The costumes and makeup for the performance were terrific. The sex parts were weird. I understand the necessity of them for the transformation Nina goes through, but they were still weird. All that psychological horror stuff was just spot on creepy. Loved it. (EDIT: I also love how Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman went from doing Black Swan to the exact same story in 2 different movies - No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits. Friends with Benefits of which I actually want to see with Mila Kunis.)
I went to the actual movies to see Tron: Legacy and you know what? I was pleased that I did. It looked really great. I loved the disc fighting and LOVED the crazy motorcycle racing thing. It looked really cool. Those slow-motion parts where there "turning on" the motorcycle from the stick was freakin' fantastic. It was really neat that they played with height and depth when they worked out those parts. What I thought was pretty booty was that they KNEW how important Kevin Flynn's disc was and he STILL put it on the outside of his dumb trench coat so that someone could just grappling gun it. I mean, if it was like the other people's discs, it should have had to slide up to go out and he should have been clothes-lined instead of just having that oh-shit face. Oh, and Sam Flynn was hot. It was one of those times where he became more attractive as the movie went on. Clu as young Jeff Bridges looked weird. Tron was hot. I also liked all the white in Flynn's video game house. The house was really awesome. They went all out for this movie and I think it paid off. There is this one part that was supposed to be funny but i crapped up because it's what i do. It's when Kevin Flynn is giving a speech in the real world before he went missing and he does this demonic thing when he says, "in there is are future! In there is our destiny!" I can't really explain it but he goes really deep and low on destiny and it was unintentionally hilarious.
We snuck into Tangled after Tron and it was pretty good. I think it would have been better in hand-drawn renaissance Disney style, but oh well. It was really funny with the frying pan and with, ha, Flynn. I really loved the part with the lanterns that are released every year on her birthday. In part because i love paper lanterns and also because it just looked beautiful. Speaking of beautiful, the king was hot. He was very attractive and in the scene right before they're going to release their lantern and he's really sad, it just broke my heart. I didn't like, though, that Rapunzel's hair kept changing lengths. It was really obvious. The songs were alright. Not the usual amazingness you expect from Disney. I loved her chameleon, Pascal. He was so cute and cracked me up a lot. The dialogue was pretty funny and it was really good overall.
I finally saw Halloween 1 with a young Jamie Lee Curtis. I think i saw it too late in the game. It was eerie at the creepy parts, but it moved SO slowly. Seriously took forever to get going. It also wasn't as scary as some other movies in the sense that it lacked a little bit of the underlying terror and creep out factor. It's probably because i grew up in the age of the jump-out-of-the-closet-and surprise-you scare factor and creep-you-out-because-your-imagination-of-the-unseen-is-worse-than-anything-anyone-could-ever-show-you terror. The fact that he disappears was creepy. Me imagining being creeped out just now creeped me out more than the movie did.
Now, Toy Story 3 was absolutely AMAZING after Toy Story 2 really sucked. That's all there is to it. It was an emotional roller coaster. It was exciting, there was drama, there was intrigue, there was a subtle creep out with that Lotso guy. He just screamed West Virginia. The story was really great and I loved how it ended. I don't think it could have ended better. I loved how lame Ken was in the barbie dream house with all his outfits and I loved the great escape. And oh! That wind up telephone thing? I TOTALLY had one of those as a kid. Brought me back. The Mr. Potato Head scenes were hilarious. They stole the show. It really was a wonderful movie. However, i had a bit of fridge horror at the thought of the toys living FOREVER. I mean, what happens if they get melted down? Do they still have sentience? If they get broken into pieces and can't move, do they just lie immobile and helpless for all eternity? It's vaguely distressing. But the movie was wonderful other than that. P.S. the Big Baby was uber creepy.
Finally, at the last movie: Eclipse. Now, the movie was really dark. I can't tell you how funny i thought how serious they were being was. It was unnecessary. A little levity and a little less overreaction and drama would have done them some good. Where were the quips? Where was the humor? It really should have been funnier. The part where Edward is trying in vain to grab Jacob's shoulder but he can't because Taylor Lautner beefed up so much and Edward's telling him to never kiss Bella again just cracked me up because of unexpected that was. Bella was supposed to be the angry one and Edward was supposed to be all calm and funny and Jacob interacting with Charlie was supposed to be funny. Jacob was also supposed to be unabashed for stealing that kiss. That was the perfect moment for levity but instead, we get psycho pale Edward with the crazy person eyes. Even parts that were meant to be funny in the book, were played serious instead. I did, however, enjoy the ribbing from the wolves. That was fun. Leah, who my roommate went to school with and was friends with which is neat, i did not appreciate her random bitchiness but i suppose they were making a point. The part at the end where half of Jacob is broken was pretty cool. The screaming part. The fight scene was awesome. Bella's hair was AWFUL. I'm a bit angry that they took out the training fight scene where Jasper and Edward are evenly matched because Edward is fighting with Carlisle instead. Oh, and could they make them more corpse-like? They're past embalmed-for-the-viewing and heading straight for dug-up-3-months-later-to-make-sure-they're-still-inside. It wasn't fantastic, but the movies keep getting better, which is good. Needs more levity.
While I'm on the subject, I also saw a bunch of movies before I even went home for Christmas:
First of all, The King's Speech was excruciatingly amazing. Helena Bonham Carter is pitch perfect. Everyone was simply amazing in this movie. Colin Firth's depiction of stuttering along with his attitude towards it is so spot on with the people that i've worked with. He did an amazing job. Geoffrey Rush is wonderfully funny. There were so many great funny moments and awesome touching moments and some sad moments but all of it was completely amazing. It was such an excellent movie. The quips in quality and timing were so perfect. They had an amazing cast. I enjoyed seeing Bellatrix and Dumbledore in opposite characters.
Social Network was unexpectedly funny. I don't think they meant for some parts to be funny, but i saw a lot of autism indicators that i just couldn't help but find them funny. I loved the twins. The part where one of the twins says something like, "we don't need to hire someone to beat him up. I'm 6'5", 220, and there are 2 of me." That was classic. Oh, and that little snub to BU. Even though it was a burn, i still appreciated it. I'm going to go with unexpectedly funny to sum up this movie.
I also saw Harry Potter 7.1, but I'm going to cover that when I see Harry Potter 7.2 because they deserve to go together.
SSDD