Rock of Ages - Review

I didn't know much about this movie before I saw it.  I saw a preview with Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand and said, "I'm in."  Imagine being in the same room as those two during the taping, must have been hilarious.  Too bad this duo wasn't enough to carry the movie.

The good:

Tom Cruise - Amazing in this role.  (There's no role he can't turn into gold, well except for Mission: Impossible 2, Tom you were set up to fail on that one).

Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand - all I wanted and more.

Catherine Zeta-Jones - great musical numbers, your Broadway experience shows through.

Paul Giamatti - you play a scumbag too well.

Best movie soundtrack ever.

The not so good:

The transitions - I'm a fan of musicals, but the transitions from speaking to singing were horrible about 70% of the time.  I expected it to be more like Grease or Moulin Rouge.  I guess it was too much to ask for.

The really bad:

If you have a rock movie, you need rock leads with strong rock voices.  TJ put it best, if they wanted a young Britney Spears look alike for the lead role they should have just cast Britney Spears.  It was too much pop and not enough rock.

Overall: it has a good story line and has great potential.  I recommend seeing the live musical production, because the movie just didn't deliver.

Men In Black 3 - Review

Now this is how you do a trilogy.  MIB 3 is one of the top movies this year so far.  If you haven't seen the first two you will understand it, but you won't love it. 

In this third installment Agent J travels back in time (because where else do you go after saving the world from aliens twice) to save the world from an alien attack (well how original.  Even more importantly he must save Agent K's younger self from being killed.

Let's talk about Josh Brolin.  I have loved him since the Goonies.  In MIB 3 he plays young Agent K so amazingly that you forget the part is being played by two different actors.  I can only imagine the Tommy Lee Jones impression he did in his audition.

The movie will give you a whole other level of understanding to the story and the characters.  I laughed, I even almost cried.  More importantly to the franchise I look forward to a MIB 4.  The only thing that could of made this movie better is if they played the original MIB music video during the credits.

The Lucky One - Review

Went to see this with the girls - Anne, Jen J. and Emily.  It's definitely a chick flick with the girl to guy ratio 50:1 in the theater.  Girls don't bother dragging your guy to this one.  You will want some alone time with Zac Efron.  You, Zac and 100 other women. 

About 20 minutes into the movie I hear Jen J. say, "When did Zac Efron become a man?"  He is all grown up, and you won’t be disappointed.

Zac Efron plays a marine who survived 3 tours.  In his last tour he finds a picture of a woman on the ground.  He goes over to pick it up, and that one act saved his life.  After that the picture is known as his lucky object.  When he gets back to stateside he seeks out to find the woman in the photograph.  When he finally finds her he doesn’t know what to say.  Of course he falls in love, she has a jealous X and yadda, yadda, yadda we have a chick flick.  

Anne, Jen, Emily and I had the honor of sitting in the first row for this movie.  The theater needs to take about 3 rows out of the front.  Everyone seemed distorted.  In one scene Anne recalls a mug on the table looking humongous.  She didn’t really enjoy the movie, but we cannot tell if it was that Zac’s love interest looked 10 years older then him or our distorted view.  Jen J. is a big fan of the author, who was there, and of course she will see it 2 more times and then buy the movie.    

I think that the author of the book has the most books made into movies.  If you are a Nicholas Sparks fan and liked any of the following: The Note Book, Dear John, The Last Song, A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle or Nights in Rodanthe, then you will like this one as well.  He actually knew from the beginning that he wanted Zac Efron in the movie.    With Zac’s ability to take off a bra he would be my first choice for any sex scene too.    

Detention - Review

And we have our first 90s tribute movie.

Here's the synopsis:  this movie has everything.  Horror, comedy, time travel, aliens, high school, love story, Steven Seagal, and the best sound track ever.  I don’t get it but I kind of liked it. 

If you think this is confusing, see the movie. 

Bully

Take your kids to see this movie.  Then encourage others to see it. Everyone has seen bullying at some point in their lives.  I was bullied through out elementary and middle school.  What really shocks me about this movie, is how the schools don't have a plan for bullying.

It's not like this is something new.  Bullying has been around since probably the beginning of the human race.  So why is there not a global way to teach children not to bully or how to put a stop to it when it does happen?  As a student or parent it is assumed that schools have a plan when bullying arises; how to recognize it, deal with it and put an end to it.  The most surprising moment in this movie is when you realize they don't. 

This movie follows the lives of children and their families who are dealing with bullying.  Some are in hopeless situations where the school is failing them and their parents don't know what to do, some are the parents of children who have taken their own life because of bullying.  One brave teen came out, something that's hard enough to do with out the entire town turning on her.  This brave child takes a stand to be who she is.  I wanted to tell her that not all places are this way.  She could move to a larger city where they are more open minded, where she could have a chance to be happy about who she is. Bullying is emotional abuse and it is painful to watch its effect on each child and how the system just fails them. 

I remember my brother getting in trouble in middle school.  He snapped and pushed a kid down the hill.  At the time my brother was a 6'2" 8th grader.  Of course he was punished, he was the bigger kid.  You probably think by reading this that he is the bully, the huge kid who picks on others.  In reality he was the victim of being picked on and being made fun of every day.  As Anne mentioned its usually the bully that gets punished. Unfortunately for the children in this movie and thousands of other children, the real issues are not being dealt with.  They are instead alone and suffering without knowing what to do.

It's sad that it takes something like a movie to spark interest in something we all know is an on going problem.  This movie inspires you to want to help.  My inspiration is to get as many people as possible to see this movie and encourage others to do the same.  We need to develop a national plan for bullying in the schools.  Watch this movie.  If you have children tell your schools that their staff needs to watch this movie and ask what their plan of action is.  Then as a parent ask yourself what your plan is. 

The Wrath of the Titans

The one movie you will not go to see this year actually did 3D justice.  I even moved my head to dodge a rock at one point.  The coolest part was when the camera took you through a crack in the earth all the way down to Hades.  Not only did you feel like you were traveling, you had the motion sickness to prove it.

The Greek Gods aren't what they used to be.  In Wrath of the Titans we see the Gods are dying.  In one scene Zeus is just barely holding on to life.  Unfortunately the cheesiness of his movie had me waiting for someone to say, "Clap everyone if you believe in Zeus." No amount of pixy dust can save this movie.  This series peeked at the Kraken.