Ride Along: Movie Review

Today I want to talk about the movie Ride Along. This movie won zero awards and in fact you're probably not going to remember it a year from now. But it has a few laughs, a surprise or two and at least one hardworking actor. It only has a small job to do, to divert. And it does it.

Now the actor Ice Cube plays an in-your-face Atlanta cop and Hart is an excitable wannabe who wants a shot at the Police Academy – and also the man's blessing to marry his kid sister (Tika Sumpter). But how's he going to do that? He thinks he can impress this guy with a ride along.

This movie really reminded me a lot the Rush Hour in a couple ways. Hart yammers away so constantly, so screechingly that you wonder if he has to cut royalty checks to Chris Tucker. Hart can be genuinely funny, though – he is one of those comics who will do anything for a laugh, and some things twice – and he is tireless. Nearly boneless, too, from the shots of him (or his stunt double) getting bounced off walls like a rubber ball.

What he doesn't get to do here is play much of a consistent character – he's trash-talking brave or jelly-spined scared, as the jokes require. Nor is Ice Cube called upon to do much more than glower. But director Tim Story – who directed Ice Cube in "Barbershop," and Hart in "Think Like a Man" – knows his actors' strengths and weaknesses, and mostly plays to the first while trying to hide the second.

The plot, which has the cops looking for a mysterious crime figure known only as "Omar", is pretty good enough, too. And although Story is bad at staging firefights (there are two extended gun battles where it's hard to tell exactly who's shooting whom) he's pretty good with fistfights and car chases. And yes, there are plenty of both.

So what did I think of Ride Along? In all honesty it was pretty much exactly as I expected considering it had Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. It wasn't at the top of the line comedies, but the subtle little fits of Kevin Hart and the crude yet hilarious remarks and violence from Ice Cube was exactly what I was looking for when watching this film.

The Pursuit of Happyness: Movie Review

One of my favorite movies of all time with Will Smith definitely has to be The Pursuit of Happyness. In mine and I'm sure many other's opinions, this movie was by far one the most fantastic performances that Will Smith has given in his career as an actor.

It all starts off like this. Smith plays Chris Gardner, a struggling salesman who spends his days trying to sell expensive, unnecessary medical equipment to doctors who don't need it (he obtained many of these machines when someone was selling them for dirt cheap and he thought they would be a revolutionary product. Turns out he was wrong). When he randomly runs into a Wall Street trader who informs him all one needs to do his job is be good with people and numbers, Chris decides to pursue a coveted internship at a brokerage; unfortunately, the job is unpaid, which means that he will have to support himself and his son Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) without any promise of a paying job in the future.

There isn't much more to tell about Happyness in terms of plot, but it's not because nothing happens; rather, the obstacles that Chris faces are likely familiar to many or most people who watch, read about or follow underdog stories like this. The difference between this tale and others, however, is that it's based upon a true story - naturally with some of the details changed. For example, the real Chris Gardner's son was only about a year old, not five as in the film; whether this was changed because the real story seemed too outlandish or just because Smith's son Jaden was available to play the role remains unknown, but rather than undermining the believability of the tale it adds a counterpoint - namely, the child's perspective - that enriches Gardner's struggles.

But what feels most striking about this film is not its truth or accuracy, at least not in a technical sense. Rather, it's that the film does not seek blame or create unfounded obstacles for the character - particularly racial ones - instead enabling Chris' triumph as a personal one unencumbered by social or political context. Ultimately, this isn't the story of a black man learning how to succeed in a white world, or a poor person becoming rich, but the achievement of one man who looked past the litany of obstacles to which he could have easily surrendered. The fact that no one in the film looks down on him because of his sometimes unkempt appearance, much less the color of his skin, is a testament to the unfiltered purity of the real Gardner's story, and what makes the movie accessible to all audiences.

Hunger Games- Mockingjay Part 1: Moview Review

To me this post is very fun for me to do because I for one, love the Hunger Games series. Yet i thought both the book and the movie was a bit mediocre. I still think it definitely deserves a review though.

Lately The Hunger Games series has been what is popular among movie-goers for both young-adults and some of the even more mature crowds. It isn't surprising to me though, they are good films with a great concept, a decent amount of heart-string tugs and some great action. I would definitely call myself a fan of the series, but I would not call myself a fan of the recent trend of splitting the final films in popular series in two, which is something this film kind of suffered from.

Most of you probably already know the plot, but I'll give you a quick summary in case some don't. Katniss, the face of the up and coming rebellion against the evil capitol of Panem, has to deal with whether she wants to lead the rebellion or not. Now this film focused primarily on the political side of the story, how District 13 (Katniss' new home) is going to get the rest of the nation to help them rebel against the corrupt capitol. I find the politics of Panem pretty fascinating, and especially in District 13. The main objective they have is to film propaganda, and the team they have assembled to do so has such great chemistry, and all of the characters are very likable and quite funny.

This leads to talk about the performances in this film, and as always Jenifer Lawrence did a very good job. Her character is very fascinating as she never expected, or even wanted to be a part of any of it, so she has to to choose and deal with the pressures of those around her. It is always a pleasure watching Woody Harrelson play his character of Haymitch, along with Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket. Those two have provided a well needed comedic relief throughout the rest of a dark series. This film also lead to the introduction of a few new characters, and some past characters getting some more screen time. The performance among these that stands out the most to me is Julianne Moore as President Coin. I thought she fit in perfectly with the rest of the cast, and her character provided for the first time someone who was able to control Katniss a little bit more than we had seen done before.

As I said, there were a few characters from the past films who got more play in this one, and who I'm talking about are Prim, played by Willow Shields, and Gale, played by Liam Hemsworth. Prim hadn't been seen too much of since the beginning of the first film, or at least to this extent. I thought it was refreshing to have her character back since we were able to see how she grew and had become more independent with the absence of Katniss. I would say same goes for Gale, he gets a lot of flack, but I think he is also a very interesting character, which leads me to finally talk about Peeta, who isn't in this film much at all. I can say for what he does do though, he succeeds. He has a particular scene towards the very end which was very well done, and incredibly intense as opposed to the rest.

Now so far I have been saying primarily positive things about this film, and again I will say that I did enjoy it, but I did have a few flaws with it. Although the concept of having one film centered around the political side of the story, it at times got to be really slow. I am able to handle films that don't move at fast speed, and aren't always full of action, but I don't think that is what these films are. They are a mix of politics, action, underlying themes, emotions, and relations. Having too much of one of these and not enough of the others made this film seem like it was two different in tone to the others, and I'm not saying that that is always a bad thing,but in this case it was. Although there were a few scenes that were well done and interesting I often was wondering when it would pick up, and when I'd see what I wanted to see. It was at the end I realized that wasn't happening for another year.

Mockingjay Part 1 is not something I would call a cash-grab as many people have. It is not entirely for the money, I think the artists do believe that there is enough story that it can and should be stretched over two films. I did not agree with that though, and that is where my main issue with the film was born. Overall I did enjoy it a lot though, and it made me very excited to see the next film!

Spongebob Sponge out of Water: Movie Review

As a fan of both the Spongebob Squarepants Series and the 2004 Spongebob Movie, I was really looking forward to see this new movie that came out. After watching it, I do have to say that I wasn't as thrilled with it as I thought I would be. But then again,how could you possibly follow the last movie that was made. That movie was fricken awesome!

Having written all that, I'm giving Sponge Out of Water a moderate recommendation. It's got some golden moments of weird, surreal glee, but there are also parts that are a huge mess. I know, it's weird to criticize something like SpongeBob for being too unorganized or wacky, but when it prevents the story from telling the way it should you wind up with a movie that sort of feels like a bunch of separate SpongeBob episodes all tacked together in a row.

The first movie was meant to be a bit of a primer for viewers who may not have been all that familiar with the series. It focused mostly on SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and his thickheaded starfish friend Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) as they went on a quest to retrieve King Neptune's crown (and adventure that also took them up out of the sea and onto land). The rest of the SpongeBob regulars took a backseat to a more streamlined tale and (filled with guest stars like Jeffrey Tambor, Scarlett Johansson, and more) and it worked out really well. Despite sort of being "SpongeBob for Beginners," it turned out awesome.

Sponge Out of Water instantly sheds all notions of exposition at the door and dives into an insane story that contains magical tomes that can alter reality, singing seagulls, time travel, and inter-dimensional omniscient rapping dolphins. It's meant to just be a big madhouse with ever-so-slight signs of a story.

Sponge Out of Water brings all the series characters together for a movie that feels like a true ensemble, complete with a handful of truly golden moments of goofy hilarity. But it's also dragged down by an "everythingand the kitchen sink" approach that makes it feel like a bunch of good separate ideas thrown together in haste.

The Flash: TV Show Review

Most of you readers know, that my blog has mostly consisted of music and movie reviews. But I would like to live up to the name/blog change that I have made and go further into it with a review on my thoughts of the new Flash TV show.

The pilot episode was released on Tuesday October 7th (ironically my birthday, how nice of them). While watching it, I couldn't help but feel like this show was very heavily influenced by Sam Raimi's spider-man films. It sets up the whole origin story very similarly, as well as the action scenes, and the special effects are quite reminiscent. This is hardly a bad thing however, many superheros (such as the Flash) are very hard to translate to film, it is hard for them to not try to come across as trying to be serious and have that flop. The other option is to embrace the cheesiness, and boy they did. They cheesed it up just like a mouse in Wisconsin. They poured a whole bottle of Reddi-cheese on this show and doused it with an extra layer of queso!

Now, you're probably wondering if it was really that cheesey, and the answer is no. If it tells you anything , it is very similar to something you would see in the comics. I am being honest when I say they were definitely not holding any of it back. Now for many people this will be a turn off for. For the people the show is really targeting though, it won't be a problem at all! For me, it wasn't too big of a problem, but if I continue to watch it I could see it getting old real fast. I mean, the acting was pretty mediocre and the writing, don't even get me started on that.

Going into this, I did not expect much out of the action scenes. How could you really? You don't see too much examples of well executed super-speed, with the only exceptions being Quicksilver's "Time in a Bottle Scene" from X-Men Days of Future Past and Dash running on water in The Incredibles. Now nothing in this show did justice to either of those examples, but for the budget of a television show I thought they did fine. It made use of a lot of slow motion and styling effects of that sort to make it seem more realistic. In addition to that whenever Flash would be running we would either see it very up close or from a very wide angle. The wide angle actually added an interesting perspective that enhanced these scenes.

One of my biggest complaints is of the character development, it seemed like the writers tried to force a lot on you that could have fit into a three episode long area, but I'd rather have this than stretching out of material that ends up falling short. Over all I thought "The Flash" was alright, not too good or bad. I can see it sliding into the path of bad some point soon though, but I guess I will just have to wait and see!

One Song, Many Artists

The song I am going to talk about today is one that has touched the lives of many and relates to a very large group of people. This song is called "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen. There are several covers of this song, one of the most known covers of it is by Jeff Buckley, the song itself actually found greater popular acclaim through a cover by John Cale. But my personal favorite cover is by Rufus Wainwright. He puts so much emotion into the way he sings this song and even if you don't even understand the meaning the first or second time you hear it, it still might make you emotional and feel the why Rufus feels while singing it.





Many other cover versions of "Hallelujah have been performed by many various singers, both in concerts live and recorded for different events which have added up to 300 total versions. The song has been widely used in films and television soundtracks, the most popular was my favorite cover of the song by Rufus Wainwright in the movie "Shrek", which was actually the first time I had ever heard the song before.




What most people don't pay attention to, is the true meaning of the song. Even when people listen to it, I can't believe no one fully understands this song. The song is about both love and heartbreak, but there are also strong religious undertones, not exactly "anti-religious" but just showing the theory that people only turn to God to complete the holes left by the imperfections in life. The first verse combines these two meanings, beginning with a biblical reference to David being Gods favored man on earth, before a lyric with two meanings, "it goes like this, the fourth the fifth... the minor fall and the major lift" the first part cleverly refers to the musical structure of the song, but it also refers to the rollercoaster of love, peaks of emotions from the best to the worst.




The second verse is a reference to Sampson and Delilah from the holy bible, although when it says "you saw her bathing on the roof" is another reference to David and Bathsheeba. It finished by telling how a failed relationship can break your life apart, and again how people in relationships and mid_life crisis's "find god".

Big Hero 6: Movie Review

Disney has finally used the first of their Marvel properties they plan on using, and it is Big Hero 6. It takes place in a fictional hybrid city of San Francisco and Tokyo, cleverly named San Fransokyo. When complications arise, Hiro (our protagonist) must gather a robot and his collective friends to get together to fight someone who betrayed his family.

The animation in this film was very good. It looked very classic Disney at times but had the overtone of a new age animation style which I found to be really sleek. The city design was also quite amazing. The combination of the two cities oddly works perfectly, and makes for some great landscapes in the film.

This film had me laughing a lot. Which is probably the best thing I can say about it. There were several characters who just worked so perfectly and had great chemistry together especially since they were animated characters. The show was often stole by the widely advertised Baymax character, who was often funny not by the dialogue he had, but by his actions.

Although I really enjoyed this film, there were still a few problems I had with it. One being that it felt as though the characters did not receive enough development. One scene characters are introduced and in the next one they are being referred to as the main characters best friends, it just seemed as though it happened incredibly quick, and it just didn't seem right. Also, many of the happenings towards the end have become very cliche as of late. Especially the final battle scene, it seemed like it was an exact copy, but kiddie-d down, version of the final battle in The Avengers.

With that said, I really did like this movie. Disney seems to be on a real hot streak lately, and I am very glad for that. I encourage anyone, especially people with kids, or people into kids movies (I guess) to go see it!