Sunday, January 20, 2008

Juno


Out of all the movies I have seen this year, Juno is hands down my favorite film out of all. I wish I had another two thumbs so I can give it four thumbs way up. This is a story about Juno MacGuff, a highschool student that was impregnated by her friends Paulie Bleeker. After for two months in labor, Juno finally finds out about it and decides to get an abortion. When she finally arrived at the abortion clinic she has learned that not only does the receptionist at the clinic have a boyfriend who’s "junk" smells like pie, but the baby inside of her also has nails. Due to this new information mostly from the latter, she decides not to go through with the abortion. When Juno tells her best friend Leah that she will not do the abortion, they decide to search the Penny Savers for adoptive parents who are looking for a new baby (who knew you could do that). After finding Mark and Vanessa Loring in the magazine, Juno and her father meet them for the first time in their house about an hour away from them. Near the end of the movie, Juno becomes very upset with Mark (spoiler) after visiting them one day by herself, later listens to a speech from her father about finding someone who will always love you unconditionally no matter what, realizes that her perfect someone was always Bleeker. Unlike everyone else in school, Bleeker always looked at her face and not her whale sized stomach and said that she loved her even though she did not want to date him. In the end, Juno has her baby and Vanessa decides to still keep it even though she will be by herself taking care of the baby. Juno laying in the hospital bed is soon accompanied by Bleeker who laid down by her side. Even though these young kids are put into an adult situation, the director was able to make this movie very funny by making it very comedic with many examples of child youth while at the same time, having all the characters learn life lessons throughout the movie

Run Lola Run

This movie is some what interesting but I wouldn't name this one of my more favorite movies. Run Lola Run is about Lola who has to get one hundred thousand dollars for her boyfriend in twenty minutes before he goes and does something rash. What i found very interesting is that every scenario that Lola puts herself into is actually exactly twenty minutes long. Every time she starts over, she learns from her mistakes from before and acts on them. But what is difficult for her to understand is that even the slightest change that she does could change many things as shown in those Polaroids whenever she touches someone. To me this is actually like a video game. Whenever you loose you could just start over and learn from your mistakes in order to win and that is exactly what Lola has done. And in the end, Lola's boyfriend was able to pay off those people and made one hundred thousand for themselves.

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko has always been a very controversial movie. Every person believes differently about this movie and has their own explanation for it as well. In my vision, I believe that Frank the sinister looking bunny rabbit is from a different dimension in a different world who was sent to Donnie's world. Frank is supposed to be some sort of messenger or ambassador of his planet and is supposed to warn Donnie that his world will be destroyed. The reason why he is so important is that the "worm hole" which allows people or even objects to travel within space and time itself is actually inside Donnie. This would explain why he was able to see his and every ones liquid blob thing come out of their chest which shows where they will be going to in the future. When Donnie's teacher tells him that one will need some sort of device that could travel very fast to go through space, Donnie for some reason believes that to save the world, he has to die, so he uses a worm hole to transport the engine from the plane to crush him. I don't know how much of what i believe is actually true but what I can say is the more you watch this film you will learn something new every time.

Rushmore


Rushmore is one of my favorite movies I have watched through this entire course. Wes Anderson, the director has made many movies that I really enjoyed such as this one, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. Bill Murray, who is in about ever Wes Anderson movie has impressed me yet again with his amazing performance. This movie had a bit of dark comedy in it which made very comedic in some inappropriate places such as when Herman and Max started to hate each other and would try to pull pranks on one another. I also found it hilarious when it showed all the clubs that Max Fischer started and is somehow president for all of them. In the end of nearly all of Anderson's films, he has a way of clearing everything up such as the relationship between two characters so that they learn from their mistakes and become friends again just like in the beginning of the story.

Monday, December 3, 2007

ChungKing Express

This movie has to be one of the biggest turn around movies for me. The first day of watching this, I felt like I had no clue what was going on the motion of the camera made it seem as if the story was going twice as fast than it was supposed to be. Once the first story ended, I felt so dumb because I had no clue what the purpose of that story was. When the second story started, I was a little happier to see that the new character was not psycho. Watching this new story really made me start to appreciate the movie because I could see how others and I could relate to this character. I felt a big connection to this guy. I was surprised to see that I was the only one in the class to actually start enjoying the movie at this point. Also, I found the part with that woman sneaking into Cop 633's apartment and cleaning it up to be hilarious. Somehow once again, I was the only person in the class to find that funny. By the end of the movie my opinion completely turned around about this movie being bad and was even facinated by how well it turned out to be. I believe that the moral of this story is that time heals everything and you must learn to move on with your life.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Elepahnt

After watching this movie, my mouth just completely just dropped to the floor. I was never ever a fan of any form of school violence. Its hard to imagine what the bullies of the school really did to those poor kids. Not that I think what the shooters did was right but sadly when you mess with the bull you get the horns. Sometimes when I'm walking through the halls, I think if this could actually happen here and if it could, who would do it. I did like how the director filmed the movie. It was interesting to see a free moving camera following the characters and then switching point of views when one of the characters pass another. I also enjoyed seeing that the kids in the movie acted the same way they did in the interviews. I'm happy to see that they were not angry or aggressive kids who actually might have thought about doing something like this before. This was a very good movie and i think that all schools should have to show this movie to all their students so they know what could happen.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

THE LIST OF ALL LISTS: THE BEST OF THE BEST

(not necessarily in the order from best to worst)

MY TOP 30 LIST:

  1. Pulp Fiction
  2. Godfather Part 1
  3. Godfather Part 2
  4. Schindler's List
  5. Raging Bull
  6. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
  7. Saving Private Ryan
  8. Se7en
  9. Reservoir Dogs
  10. Star Wars: A New Hope
  11. The Usual Suspects
  12. American Beauty
  13. Dog Day Afternoon
  14. American History X
  15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
  16. Apocalypse Now
  17. Taxi Driver
  18. Leon: the Professional
  19. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
  20. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Vol. 2
  21. The Shawshank Redemption
  22. LA Confidential
  23. Once Upon a Time in America
  24. The Deer Hunter
  25. Gladiator
  26. The Departed
  27. V for Vendetta
  28. Full Metal Jacket
  29. Clerks I and II
  30. Goodfellas