Arthur

Directed By: Jason Winer

Starring: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, and Jennifer Garner

Running time: 110 minutes

Arthur, played by Russell Brand, is a wealthy drunk. He is taken care of by his nanny Hobson who is played by Helen Mirren. She is constantly disapproving of his one night stands and bad choices in spending money. He spends money at auctions by buying way over what other people can afford such as when he bought a suit worn by Abraham Lincoln to wear for fun.

He lives his life of one night stands and eventually finds an average girl that he likes. She is not wealthy in any way. This causes Arthur’s nanny to dislike her not only because she is average, but because Arthur is supposed to marry a girl that will cause him to inherit a huge fortune. His nanny is in fear that he will make the wrong choice and choose some one less than him.

Arthur has a few random and funny things happen in this movie. I thought that it was pretty funny. It is not the greatest movie but it was worth going to see. It is rated PG13 for alcohol use, drug reference, sexual content and some language. Arthur is not too graphic in any way and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a funny movie.

The Switch

Directed By: Josh Gordon and Will Speck

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, and Patrick Wilson

Running Time: 101 minutes

In this movie Cassie Larson, played by Jennifer Aniston, is a 40 year old unmarried woman who wants to have a baby. She has her best friend Wally Mars, played by Jason Bateman; help her find a sperm donor. One day while Wally is in Cassie’s house he finds her sperm sample and decides to switch it with his own.

Cassie becomes pregnant and moves back home to be closer to her parents. Seven years later she moves back to the city because of a job opportunity. Wally gets to know Cassie’s son who is secretly his son also. They are very much alike and they bond with each other a lot. Cassie does not know about the switch. She starts dating the guy she thinks is the father of her son. Her boy does not like this guy at all.

The guy who was thought to be the father of Cassie’s boy was planning to propose to her at a party. He made the mistake of telling Wally his plan. Wally realizes he has to take responsibility and tell her about his secret switch. It ruins the proposal and eventually she forgives him and Wally and she get married.

This movie was pretty good. A lot of funny things happen. It is rated PG13 and it is a  romantic comedy. I would recommend it to anyone who is board and likes romantic comedies. 

The FIghter

Directed By: David O. Russell

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bell, and Amy Adams

Running Time: 115

This movie is about the famous boxer Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, in his early years of professional boxing. Micky’s brother Dicky Eklund trains him and tries to take all the credit for himself. Dicky is always acting like he is so much better and that one day he will come back. Dicky is also always bragging about how HBO is making a comeback film for him when in reality HBO is making a video on crack addictions for young kids to see.

Micky has to deal with Dicky and his mother who don’t care about his fights as long as they cash a check. They make bad calls on fights such as putting him up against a middle weight when he a weight class bellow. Dicky often doesn’t make it to the gym to train with Micky because he is high and drunk.

Micky meets a girl who wants him to have a better shot at making it in boxing. He starts dating her and his family hates her. They have a lot of arguments. When Micky and Charlene, his girlfriend, and Micky’s family were at dinner Dicky was out impersonating a police officer he got beat by the police when Micky tries to save his low life brother. As a result the police beat Micky’s hand with a knight stick.

I thought this movie was interesting. I liked it a lot because I really liked Micky Ward, I was surprised to learn about what a crappy beginning his career had to suffer. I think this movie should have gone into the Fights with Arturo Gatti, but it ended there. It was a great movie any way and I do recommend it. The Figher is rated R for violence, language, drug content, and sexuality. It might not be the best movie for kids.

Gran Torino

Directed By: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Christopher Carley

Running Time: 116 minutes

Clint Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski who was a veteran of the Korean War. Walt is a grumpy old man and he is quite racist to Asians he calls them things such as gukes and zipper heads. He notices that there are many Asians that have been moving into the houses that surround his.

A Hmong teenage boy, Bee Vang, is always being bothered by a local street gang. The leader of this Asian street gang is Bee’s cousin. The Gang convinced Bee to steel Walt’s prized possession which is a 1972 Gran Torino. Walt catches Bee and brings him to his parent’s house. Bee’s parents want to make Bee work off the trouble he caused Walt. Walt doesn’t want anything to do with the offer. Against Walt’s wishes Bee shows up at his house to work.

Walt begins to like the Asians in the end. He also takes care of the street gang that bothers all of the Asians on his street. This gang has been frightened by Walt so he plans to go have a “shoot out” with them. Bee wants to come with but Walt locks him in his house and goes alone. He gets their attention and then points his finger as if it were a gun and pretends to shoot them all. He then goes like he is reaching in his jacket and the Asian gang tears him up with fully automatic weapons. The gang now goes to jail, and the old man has saved everyone. Walt leaves his Gran Torino to Bee in his will.

I liked this movie a lot. I would recommend it to anyone who is not easily offended. It is probably not the best choice of movie for young children. I didn’t like the ending of this movie at all. I thought he should have killed all of the Gang.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

Directed By: Chris Columbus

Starring: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, and Alexandra Daddario

Running Time: 118 minutes

This movie is about a dyslexic teenage boy who finds out that he is the son of a Greek god named Poseidon. Percy Jackson is played by Logan Lerman. Percy goes through the movie with Brandon Jackson who plays as Grover Underwood and Alexandra Daddario who plays as Annabeth Chase. Grover is Percy’s protector, and Annabeth is the daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war craft.

The three teens are on a quest to the underworld to save Percy’s mother from Hades and explain that Percy is not the lightening thief. In order to escape the underworld they need to follow a map provided to them by Luke to find 3 perils that will allow them to escape the underworld.

On the quest to find the perils they are met with several obstacles. The first one is a garden where Medusa tricks people and turns them to stone. The teens manage to behead Medusa and steal the peril from her bracelet. They take her head with them in case they need to turn someone into stone.

The next obstacle is a hydras which is a 5 headed dragon that grows 2 heads for each 1 that gets cut off. The beast ends up as a ten headed creature. They did manage to stop it by using Medusa’s head and turning it into stone.

The third peril was located in the Lotus hotel and casino in Las Vegas. This was an odd place because they had a signature dish called the lotus flower. This flower made people forget why they are there and some people were confused enough to be there for years because of the lotus flowers. This last peril delayed the kids 5 days but they eventually got out. The last step on the map was Hades.

I liked this movie a lot. I went to it in theaters and watched it on DVD just recently. It is a very good movie and I would recommend it to anyone.

Red

Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Bruce Willis, Hellen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman
Running Time: 111 minutes

Bruce Willis stars in this movie as Frank, who is a retired CIA agent who leads a boring lonely life and collects his pension from the CIA. Frank notices that there is a hit out on him and he gets his old team back together to find out why they are being killed off. He kidnaps a girl Sarah, who he has a thing for and she travels with him through out the movie.

Frank is able to break into CIA HQ with a little help from Sarah. He finds his file which is now marked "RED", which means "retired extremely dangerous". He soon finds out that there is a list of retired agents who are labled RED. These retired agents have hits on them, they are supposed to be killed to cover up a mission that they were all involved in before they retired.

Bruce Willis goes through the movie trying to get to the bottom of the mess he found himself in so that he can live a normal life.

I liked this movie a lot. There was some violence so if that bothers you then you may want to consider not watching this. However it is not to graphic i would recomend this movie to everyone.

You Again

Director: Andy Fickman

Starring: Kristen Bell, Odette Yustman, and Sigourney Weaver

The movie You Again is about a girl named Marni was tortured and bullied in high school. It starts as a time capsule video from when Marni was in high school. It tells about her horrible high school experience and the people who were mean to her. The video focuses on one girl in particular, who went out of her way to be cruel Marni, this was the head cheerleader Joana.

Marni gets on the airplane to go to her brother’s wedding. She is talking on the phone to her mother when she finally realizes it is Joana from high school that her brother is marrying. She gets very upset and freaks out about this. Upon arrival she is very cautious and untrusting of Joana; to her surprise Joana pretends she does not remember her.

Throughout the film Marni tries to find ways to get back at Joana and ruin the marriage. She eventually gets it done with a video that shows a scene in high school of bad things Joana said and did. Later on in the movie every one forgives each other and everything is fine again.

I thought this movie was ok. It was not really funny though it had some parts that were. It was a pretty generic movie where everything is perfect in the end. It is rated PG so it is appropriate for everyone, though I’m not sure I would recommend it.

Secretariat

Directed by: Randall Wallace

Starring: Diane Lane, Scott Glenn, and James Cromwell

Running time: 123 minutes

The movie Secretariat is based on a true story. This movie starts when Penny Chenery, Diane Lane, goes to the ranch where she grew up because her mother has died. While she is there she ends up firing their horse trainer, she is now the boss because her father was no longer able to make executive decisions due to dementia and other health issues. In fact, the reason the trainer was fired is because Penny found out about a deal he was trying to make with another ranch. This crooked horse trainer was attempting to get penny’s father to sign off on a sale of several of their horses at a third of their actual value.

Penny realizes she can’t leave the ranch; she gets involved in the races and starts to get back into the family business of racing horses. She does all of this without the support of her family back home. Penny realizes that two of the best mares in her stables are pregnant by the best stud around, she does some research and finds that the one who seems to be obviously the better horse may actually not be the best horse of the two, she is pleased to know this because she is about to flip a coin with the man who owns the father of the colts to be born to see who gets to choose their colt. She loses the toss, but she does get the horse she had really wanted. This horse becomes known as “Secretariat”

I personally liked this movie. I had thought I wasn’t going to like it when I started watching it, but it is a good movie. This is a movie that you can watch with the whole family, as it is rated PG13. It is a pretty interesting story, and it goes through the life of this legendary race horse pretty well.

MacGruber

Director: Jorma Taccone

Running Time: 99 minutes

Stars: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig and Val Kilmer

The Movie MacGruber is about an Ex-Special Operative named MacGruber. He is retired, but the military needs him to steal the X5, which is a nuclear war head that MacGruber’s arch enemy, Dieter Von Cunth, is planning to use on an American city. MacGruber decides to help so he tries to get his old team back. He does get most of them to agree to come along on his newly assigned mission.

After MacGruber manages to get a team together, he is talking to the officer who had convinced him to help, when his van, with his whole team in it blows up because it was packed full of c4. MacGruber felt pretty dumb. After the accident he begged to get to work on the case, because he wanted revenge on Cunth, who had killed MacGruber's wife. They do allow him to be a part of the mission to stop Cunth, and disable the X5. However, since he accidently killed his old team, a new team is created. This group includes a guy that MacGruber was very rude to throughout the movie, a girl that who MacGruber made do all the dangerous work, and of course MacGruber.

This movie was pretty good, it was Rated R for violence and Sexual content, and also vulgar language. If that sort of thing bothers you this may not be the right movie for you to watch. It is not very serious, it is a comedy and a lot of stupid unrealistic things happen.

Case 39

Directed By: Christian Alvart

Stars: Renee Zellweger, Ian McShane, and Jodelle Ferland

Approximate Running time: 109 minutes

Case 39 is about a social worker named Emily, Renee Zellweger, who gets involved with a child abuse case. A ten year old girl appears to be abused by her parents. Emily is able to rescue the girl from her parents who are attempting to bake her in the oven. The little girl’s parents get arrested and the girl begs Emily to take care of her, at least until a suitable foster home is found.

While the little girl is living with Emily, odd things happen and Emily starts to realize that the parents may not have been crazy after all. The little girl has a super natural way of playing with people’s mind and making them think that the thing they are scared of the most is attacking them. For example Emily has a friend who was talking to Lilith, the little girl. The man who was questioning her was asking about her fears and various questions that she had answered in a test, she was being difficult and she asked him questions, he told her he was terrified of hornets to help her realize its ok to be scared.

Later that night he thought hornets were crawling gout of his body all over the place and he broke his neck. The crime scene had no evidence of any bugs, so one can infer that he only imagined them because that little girl was playing with his mind.

This is a pretty good film; I found it to be easy to follow though it was pretty suspenseful. It is rated R so you may choose not to watch it because of violent deaths and some blood, though it is not a “slasher” film at all. But it is sort of creepy and I do recommend it.

The Devil's Rejects

Warning: this post will reveal the ending of the movie. Starring: William Forsythe, Danny Trejo, Lew Temple, Brian Posehn, and Daniel Roebuck. Directed by: Rob Zombie Produced by: Michael Paseornek, Peter Block, and Andy Gould Summary: This movie is about the firefly family, they are a family who likes to kill people; they do some disturbing things with them such as: cutting them apart and removing body parts, keeping the body parts in jars, and then sewing up the body. One morning they wake up to Sheriff Wydell’s attempt at capturing them, there is a huge gun fight, the only two members of the family that are able to escape this mess are Otis and his sister, Baby. Later on in the movie while Otis and his sister are hiding out at a cheap motel, their father Captain Spaulding meets them to hide out as well. They kill several people in their stay at this little hotel. One of their plans is an ambush, in which Baby convinced a middle aged man to take her to his room. The man agrees but is soon met by Otis who escorts him to the room at gun point. In the room they eventually hold several people hostage and they kill all of them. In the end of this movie Otis, Baby and Captain Spaulding all get killed. I liked this movie, but I don’t recommend it to people who don’t like seeing a lot of blood or violence. Remember, this movie is rated R for sadistic violence, strong sexual content, language, and drug use. So it is probably not a good movie for everyone. But I do recommend it.

The American

Directed by: Anton Corbijn

Starring: George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli, and Violante Placido

Running time: 105 minutes

This movie is about an American assassin who hides out in Italy to finish one last assignment. George Clooney plays as the assassin in this movie, his character's name is Jack. While Jack is in Italy he is assigned to build a very accurate weapon for a Belgian assassin. After he constructs the weapon he meets the woman who is buying the gun that he built, she tests its accuracy by shooting the tops of reeds that are growing out of a pond. She then hands the gun to Jack, who built the weapon, and tells him to shoot the top of a cat tail that is growing next to her. She does this to see how well he trusts his weapon. After the test is passed she tells him what types of ammo she wants for it and she buys it. Later on in the movie the lady assassin who bought the gun that Jack built, was killed. George Clooney's character dies in the end also. He was shot, and just as he arrives at the meeting place him and his lover set up he dies in his car.

I really did not like this movie. I thought it was really confusing because it gives no background information to George Clooney’s character at all. I really don’t recommend this movie at all, it was explained in the end, but it was very confusing until it ended and it doesn't seem like anything is really happening, so it is a pretty dull movie until about the last 5-10 minutes of the film.

Introduction

I have recently been watching a lot of movies, so this blog will be a summary and opinion of various movies that I chose to watch.