Hanna - Review

“I Just Missed Your Heart”

Instead of reviewing the Transformers 3 like everybody else would, I chose to review a movie that pretty much no one had the plans of watching, at least no one in this part of the world. I am talking about Hanna, the Joe Wright-directed “thriller”. The movie stars Saoirse Ronan, the girl from Lovely Bones and Eric Bana – The Hulk and Cate Blanchett from The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons.

I put thriller between quotation marks, yea, because this is described as a thriller, but it’s actually not, this is an art house film that involves thriller elements, but it also involves some coming-of-age films elements and revenge-flick elements, so, this movie is a combination of a lots of types of films.

I personally liked this film, a lot. The acting on this film was amazing, especially Eric Bana, and I think the dude is extremely underrated, and Saoirse Ronan, the girl, was extremely believable as this person who is this person that was trained to be a warrior and has no knowledge on the outside world. The supporting cast was terrific, throughout the film, she met a family. Most of similar films tend to do this – they tend to put the protagonist next to a normal family, and as protagonist had never known anything about the “normal” world, the family would appear weird, but in this film, the family is actually weird, but on the appropriate amount. The group of killers was also great, especially the leader, he was charming in an evil way. But none of these characters were able to steal the show from the 3 protagonists, they were amazing.

The reason that I called this an art house film is because it was directed that way. The cinematography was amazing, but the movie was made in such an unpredictable way, and the sequences were so unique (there was a sequence of the movie where the group of killers was moving, and their rhythm coincided with the music, and I was sure it was intentional, and yea, I thought it was cool). Joe Wright did an amazing job directing this film, but because it was made as if it was an art house film, it might alienate part of the audience that would be interested in this type of films.

At times, this film reminded me (a lot) of Unleashed, the Jet Li film, but this movie was much better in most of the aspects, I would recommend this film to you, my non-existent readers, watch it on DVD, or even BluRay, it’s worth your time.

House M.D. Season 7 Review

“Everybody Lies”

I am a House fan, I have been since the beginning of the show, 7 years ago. However, there was a point that I went from being all fanatic to a moderate fan, I watch it on a regular basis, but I don’t watch it on a weekly basis anymore. However, I have always tried to follow a season as soon as it ends (so that I can watch all at once), and that’s what I did for season 7, I waited for the season to end, and I watch all in 2 days.

The reason that I became a moderate fan instead of a fanatic is that in seasons 4 to 5, there’s a change in the story that I personally didn’t like that much, and from that point forward, I watch House, but on a regular basis.

Now, for those who have never watched a single episode of House, I got to do two things, the first is to ask why on earth you wouldn’t House? Second, to provide a exposition for those who actually haven’t, and here it is: House is a doctor, he is a diagnostician that does medicine as if they were crime – they find “cases” that are rejected or ignored by all the other doctors, and they try to piece the case together by analyzing it. The process that House uses is more of a deductive process that a analytical process, which means that his diagnosis are often the result of his observation on his patients, rather than focusing on the medical stuff. The show fascinated me right from the beginning because they are like puzzles that I, as a business student, would never, and I mean never be able to solve, but I still like to watch House doing his thing.

The actors of this show are phenomenal. Hugh Laurie, you know, Stuart Little’s father, plays Dr. Gregory House, a doctor with a chronic pain situation, and a doctor that has the absolute skill when we are talking about human behaviors, and as such, he might appear to be an a-hole for most people, specially his patients. Supporting cast includes a lot of people that I don’t remember their names, because the show basically imprints the characters for the audience, so, most of us know the characters, not the actors.

Season 7 starts with a large change in House’s life, and the main story arc of this season is based on this change and the aftermaths of this change. The show continues to shine where it is supposed to shine – the medical puzzles, the writing and the acting. However, comparing to the 1^st three seasons, I still feel that it might be a bit better. House, in the 1^st seasons, were a bit episodic, and now it follows a continuous story arc while House takes different cases every week, the story arc was good, and the finale was “mind blowing” (for those who watch, this was intended), but I still think that House should be this prick that does things regardless of the consequences, but with his focus on medicine, and this season changed that a little bit. However, as I said, the season finale was amazing, and was intriguing, to the point that I feel safe to say that I will watch the next season, at least the 1^st episodes of it. To my non-existent readers, for the love of god, please, watch House, you will like it, it’s got mine stamp of approval, and a lot of other people’s too.

Knight and Day – Review

How would I describe this movie? I would describe it as a hot mess. The movie stars the always-young Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, Diaz plays June Havens, an “attractive” woman who just happens to be traveling with Roy Miller, this apparently charming fella that happens to have a secret identity, then, let the madness begin.

The movie has a couple of things going for it, performances being the most important one – Tom Cruise is just charming and alive, pretty much the same as his off-screen persona; Cameron Diaz has…let’s call it an average performance, but I would not praise it, because I saw My Sister’s Keeper, and I know that Cameron Diaz can act, so… this is nowhere near a good performance. Peter Sarsgaard is apparently the antagonist, once again, but I like him better here (than in the Green Lantern). There’s chemistry between the leads, but that would be saying that there’s water in a rainy day – for such big movie stars, manufacturing chemistry should come naturally, so, this is a good thing about the movie, but it is just a thing that this movie should have.

The movie’s editing style definitely killed the movie – it shifts from point A to point B by inducing a unconscious state on Diaz’s character, without explaining how the shift was made, and for us, the audience, it would look like that the writers were way too lazy to develop a sophisticated explanation for occurrences, so they just made Cameron Diaz black out and audiences just feel disconnected from the film. Also, the plot of this movie focuses too much on transiting between different locations, that the plot and the writing became less effective. The writers and the film makers should have made the movie to focus on one or two locations, instead of what is in the film, which was again, confusing.

The movie was a good summer blockbuster, because it has beautiful sights, beautiful people, and a lot (a lot) of explosions, but as a movie, or seeing this movie as a whole, it lacks cohesion. I would give this movie 3 out of 5, considering that it is a summer block buster. As I said, hot mess, it’s messy, but it’s still worth seeing.

Green Lantern – Review

“In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might, Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”

I have got to admit – I am not a Green Lantern fan boy. I knew who Hal Jordan was/is, and I knew what Green Lantern’s special power was, but I was never following Green Lantern’s story as some of my friends were (I am a Marvel fan, yup). Having that said, this movie was…OK.

The movie stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, my goddess as Carol Ferris (my goddess being Blake Lively) and Peter Sarsgaard as a evil doctor with a very large head. The plot is the origin story for Green Lantern, Hal Jordan is this test pilot who, apparently, was chosen to replace a legendary member of the Green Lantern Corp. The movie was directed by Martin Campbell, who previously directed Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson, a movie that I was a fan of.

Honestly speaking, this movie was really OK - if you took away the fact that it was based on a comic book. The reason that I say that you have to take away that the movie was based on a comic book that had half of a century of history, and because of that, it would be really difficult to convert such a long story in a 2 hour movie (I believe that it will have a sequel, by the way.) Ryan Reynolds was awesome, as always, Peter Sarsgaard was terrific as the antagonist in the movie, because he was able to create a somehow frightening character with a relatively weak script. My goddess, Blake Lively, however, was the weakest link in the cast. Her performance was somehow wood-y, she just was not able to convey that type of emotion that would make the audience feel for her, and the way she reads lines would lead audience to believe that she was actually reading, rather than doing a performance.

The thing that made this movie only OK, and not a good movie was the writing – it was SO CHEESY. The humor was not as bad as people are saying that it was, but it was no where near good – Reynolds’ delivery was able to make up for some of the cheesy humor, but the humor was just misplaced in the movie. Pacing was another issue – the writers are trying to start way too many story arcs in a 2 hour movie – Hal Jordan’s family appeared for 2 minutes, Oa, the planet, appeared for 10 minutes, those were example of things that the writers were trying to put in the movie, but the way they did it was like how a child talks – they started a subject, and when something that appears to be more interesting shows up, they start talking about that other thing – and this happens several times in this movie. I did not have much of a problem to the CGI based direction, because I think that a story like this needs to be CGI based vision, but this was clearly an example of spectacles overpowering the story, and when the story lacks focus as this movie does, the spectacles were distracting.

Overall, the movie was OK, it was just miserably placed in a summer where we got X-Men: First Class, Thor and possibly a good movie about a war propaganda hero (Captain America), and with such good movies in comparison, this just seems a bad movie – it really was not, it was just not a good movie. I would give this movie 3 out of 5, for Reynolds’ performance and delivery, and for the CGI.

Welcome to my world

I started countless blogs in my past, and I think I will start countless blogs in the future, but as my university degree was over last week, and I realize that if I start working, I might lose my only interest - movies - I will start reviewing movies that I have seen, just so that I can remember the feelings that I had on that particular movie, on that particular moment. I understand that starting a new blog takes time, and I never had an audience for that, so, there's that. But my blog will be mostly based on movie reviews, and sometimes rants about my work life, my school life (I will do MBA...if USJ, my university, allows me to) and my love life (if I ever had one), so, beware of this, kids, coz a moron is on his way to gibbering.