Just a quick one.

I will have a review of "I Am Number Four" tomorrow.

As for tonight, I would just like to say congratulations to everyone who got nominated for an Oscar.

And a special congrats to everyone who received a King's speech Oscar, I enjoyed the movie so much, and you guys definetly deserve it.

To anyone who still hasn't seen this movie, now is an excellent time!

Way to go everyone!

Sanctum Review

I must again apologize for the delay in this review getting up, but I can assure you, thant my schedule is slowly clearing up, and this blog will receive regular updates.

I want to talk to you today about a movie... Nuff said, as I will be telling you about Sanctum.

Sanctum is a re imagining of the timeless tale of man vs. nature, unlike most stories though, this is a steaming pile of garbage.

Let's start off with the characters. At the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to Josh, a young but extraordinarily talented deep-dive rock climber and son of the most famous deep-dive rock climber alive. His character is alright, nothing really jumps out at me about him, he seems to be the only sane one of the bunch. Next we meet Carl and his girlfriend, Carl is the epitome of the one-liner. His first lines in the movie are composed of every single one-liner/cliche you've ever heard....ever. Next we have Josh's father, a world-renowned deep-dive rock climber, who is on the verge of discovering the last known unexplored cave in the entire world. Every other character is virtually unimportant, so there is no need to go over them at all.

With the characters out of the way, let's discuss the plot...or at least what tries to masquerade as a plot. What happens is Josh appointed to bring supplies down to his father's team who is miles beneath the earth's surface when a storm on the surface traps everyone down inside the cave, trapped in a sanctum if you will. Now, the premise isn't too bad, where this movie falls flat on it's face is the acting, or lack thereof. The actors are atrocious and do nothing to complement the story being told, and in a story where the other other plot devices are... a cave... the acting needs to make you interested in the characters. Death is a big part of this movie as it seems to be around every corner, and yet again, I had no way of connecting to the characters, so I was very numbed to the death being portrayed...

The bottom line for me is that this movie is utter crap. Avoid it at all costs. Just because James Cameron's name on it doesn't mean it's Abyss 2. Sanctum gets a 1/10 from me only because the amount of laughter that insued after the movie was over between me and my friends made up for having to pay for this garbage.

Hey guys

Sorry for not being responsive. In these last three weeks, I've had three family members die on me...

So I haven't had a lot of time or energy to post of reviews. But that doesn't mean I'm done.

Tomorrow I will post my review of Sanctum.


Thanks for your patience...

The Rite Review

So, I got to go out and see The Rite, starring Anthony Hopkins and Colin O'Donoghue. From what I've read into it, it's classified as a horror thriller. Sadly, I didn't enjoy this movie as much as I should have. I'm a huge fan of Hopkins, the king of creepy, and yet I found his performance lacking. Cinematic style-wise, it was very well done, scenes carry well from one to the next and the settings range from the beautiful streets of Rome to the dark cold inner sanctum of an exorcist's chamber.

Our story begins with an introduction to our main character, Michael Kovak (played by Colin O'Donoghue), who works as an apprentice mortician under his father. As he struggles with finding his role in life, he decides to attend a seminary as it is somewhat of a tradition in his family. After a timeskip of roughly four years, we see Michael sending an email to his superior to tell him he is resigning. After witnessing Michael commend a woman's soul to god after a spontaneous car accident, his superior suggests he be sent to Rome to undertake lessons on exorcisms. Michael reluctantly accepts after being told that if his faith isn't restored after taking the class, he will be free as a bird.

Once in Rome, he still finds the idea of demonic possession to be unbelievable. His teacher sends him to meet Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins) in hopes of exposing him to a first-hand exorcism. Father Lucas explains to Michael that the devil has many ways of taking advantage of those who have lost their faith. After a haunting confrontation with an apparently posseed pregnant teenager, Michael is still skeptical of the process. Father Lucas reaffirms Michael and the story continues from there.

All in all, this movie was alright,  nothing jumps out at me as spectacular. The writing is really good, Father Lucas even goes as far as to separate the movie magic with the real deal by asking Michael, "What did you expect? Spinning heads and pea soup?" The movie just wasn't "Horror" enough for me, it was more thriller/drama than horror. There is the occasional spook every once in a while, especially near the end, but all in all it's more about the Colin O'Donoghue's character arc and the trials that go along with it. I'd watch it again, but I wouldn't suggest going to see it if you're in the mood to be scared. It get's a 3/5 for me.

The King's Speech Review

This time around, I'm gonna hit you with a period drama. The King's speech is a drama based on the true story of King George VI of the United Kingdom and focuses on his battle with a speech defect. Tom Hooper, the director, is most likely more well known in the UK than here in the US, and has come through with a gratifying view into a very important historical figure.

The story begins with some rather interesting cinematography, and we are introduced to Prince Albert, Duke of York, as he prepares at the Empie Exhibition at Wembley Stadium. As he approaches the microphone and begins his speech, his problem becomes quite obvious, he stammers. Therein lies the focus of the main plot, which is a riveting good ride.

Along the way he meets a rather interesting "doctor", Lionel Logue, an Australian whose unusual treatments allow out main character to speak with more fluidity. Lionel slowly builds a trusting friendship with George VI and leads the viewers to where most of the comedy of the film is located.Geoffrey Rush does a great job at really giving you a feel for the character, he doesn't really keep anything inside (personality wise) and wears his emotions on his sleeve.

This movie was a home-run in my book. I think it speaks to the everyman. Anyone who has ever dealt with an uphill battle, anyone who has gone toe-to-toe with their fears and never given up, will be able to take something away from this film. As a period drama, it does its part to make the importance of its time known, while showing you the much more important human side of things. This movie gets a 10/10 in my book and my highest recommendation. If you like Dramas of any nature, go see this movie!

The Green Hornet Review

For those of you who don't know, The Green Hornet opened this week. I'll start by saying that I'm not the biggest Seth Rogan fan out there. I don't enjoy the scripts he writes or the characters he plays. In this movie, I found myself eating my own words, with lots of butter and salt.

Seth Rogan plays Britt Reid, the young-playboy son of wealthy newspaper mogul, James Reid. Due to James Reid's untimely death, he is left in charge of one of the Largest and most powerful newspaper companies in the industry. Along the way he meets Kato, a former employee and marial arts expert, together, the two decide to enforce and protect the law in the only way they deem correct, by breaking it.

Jay Chou stars in his first Hollywood movie as Kato, The Green Hornet's sidekick/driver and in my opinion does a damn good job. He's no Bruce Lee, but he never tries to be, thats what I enjoyed about his performance.

The Special effects were pretty neato, however, I didn't find myself enjoying the 3D aspect at all, it just ended up hurting my eyes. Kato vision was a pretty cool idea, I won't dig into it that much, if you are interested in the movie, I'd go see it for just the action scenes alone with the amount of special effects and the over-the-top-action.

All in all, this was a decent movie based on a Television series (as the tv show was based on the original radio show, The Green Hornet) that did the original proud (in my opnion at least). Bottom line, if you want an action packed movie with a "comicbook-ish" feel to it, go see The Green Hornet, but don't bother with the 3D, I didn't find it worth it.

Justice League Review

Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, Justice League was a cartoon series based on DC Comic characters. It ran for two seasons spanning from 2001 to 2004.

Justice League was a great series to me for a lot of reasons. I enjoyed the amount of character interaction, I also enjoy how well the continuity of all the superheroes blends. It doesn't feel like the characters were plucked out of their environment and thrust into a storyline of which they had no interest. Of the seven heroes, the writers picked some of the very best. While Batman and Superman are pretty obligatory choices, John Stewart (AKA The Green Lantern) was a choice that I rather enjoyed, him being my favorite GL and all. John Jonzz and Hawk Girl were also very interesting choices to me, as they are on the more obscure side of the DC comics.

Characters aside, the animation is just fantastic. Not to say it doesn't have it's small blips, but for what little cheesiness, there is so much more good.

It really is done quite well, the character interactions are written in so well, a lot of play back and forth between superheroes as well as supervillains with just the right amount of comedy. The scenarios are presented in a pretty realistic terms (or about as realistic as comics about super-powered metahumans can be) that give a reason for the characters to bother with each other. Then again, you can always just give a bit of fan service to the audience.

No expense is paid when it comes to the bad guys either. You want Luthor, you got him; you want Darkseid, you got him, Braniac, Savage, and even The Joker. I even enjoyed seeing Gorilla Grodd make an appearance, way cool.

While this show was very well done, it did have some drawbacks (to me at least). One of the things I didn't enjoy was the episode style. Justice League seemed more like a compilation of seperate story, as just about every single story was a two(or three)-parter, with the exception of the christmas episode. Another thing I didn't enjoy were some of the story ends. Characters like Amazo and Aquaman never really got legitmate endings to their storyline arcs, either because no one could defeat them, or because no one could give them what they need, seemed like a cop out to me.

For what it's worth, Justice League was a really really good show, and if you enjoy comics as much as I do, you might really enjoy this series!