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January 11th, 2010
Avatar

Avatar

Rating: ★★★★☆

Movie: Avatar(2009)

Studio : Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 162 min

Website : Avatar

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa8i7b



Review:

Avatar is a great movie with astonishing visual effects. The graphic features of the movie are awesome but the movie is not free from being flawless.

The story is based on Jake Sully who has been transferred to another planet known as Pandora. He is there to replace his brother after his death and if he succeeds to accomplish the mission the government will then restore his legs. Pandora is a place which is occupied by the race known as Na’vi and it is Jake’s task to get used to their way of living and subsequently remove them somewhere else. When this happens the humans would come and rule the planet. The planet of Pandora is a land filled with rich material and this is what Parker Selfridge is after.

Jake has the task to gain access to the Na’vi people while using the identity of an “avatar”. In the process to create his bond between the race and himself he meets Neytiri and falls in love with the attractive alien. At the same time the merciless Colonel tries extreme tricks and techniques with his military unit to drive the race out and calls for a battle with the aliens of Pandora.

The visual effects of the picture are really unbelievable. Avatar is about a new world and when you watch the movie you feel you enter their world for a short period of time. The actors have worked remarkably well and have portrayed their emotions on to the viewers. Zoe Saldanas depicts a great emotional character and for some reason Sam Worthington parades around with many different hairstyles throughout the movie.

The movie is not an original and unique story, it is not much different from what we have been seen in the past. Although the director has done a great job in putting the movie together the story is nothing special.

You can enjoy ‘Avatar’ if you have a great liking for artistic and heavy visual effects. If not then this movie is not made for you and you are better off doing things outside the theater. However if you decide to go for the movie turn off your mind and just keep your eyes open to watch the creativity in the making of Avatar and you will then certainly enjoy it.

Action, Adventure, In Theaters, Sci-Fi, Thriller ,

Zombieland

January 10th, 2010
Zombieland

Zombieland

Rating: ★★★½☆

Movie: Zombieland (2009)

Studio : Pariah Films

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 80 min

Website : Zombieland

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbr8u3



Review:

It probably doesn’t help that I came into the theater already expecting it to be good because I’m a big Woody Harrelson fan, but to be frank I enjoyed Zombieland. To a point, at least.

Reese and Wernick’s zombiesploitation film features a classic scenario popularized from decades of undead films, comics, and internet memes: a virus gone bad, flesh-eating humanity, and a list of rules about what to do if you’re one of the living few. The result is a grindhousey romp through the U.S., and it is mostly successful, but there are two major faults that I must point out.

Jesse Eisenberg, who after this year’s Adventureland seems like another candidate for an Apatow film, isn’t strong enough to hold up this film as its leading role. While his pathetic demeanor provides premature laughs, he cannot seem to keep it up through the film beyond a funny run. Luckily, having Woody Harrelson seems to keep the film going along, as his buddy role as a zombie serial killer and Twinkie connoisseur is hilarious, right down to his facial expressions that not only tell you how pissed off he is, but how much he loves those yellow pastries.

The other fault lies in a midsection of the film involving Bill Murray’s mansion. I’m a big Murray fan, but at the same time I felt like the theme of surviving the apocalypse suddenly stopped at that point. In fact, every scene at that point has almost nothing to do with the apocalypse and more to do with teens doing whatever they want, at least until the climax. There’s so much potential you can cook up with a zombie-filled Hollywood, but it never gets considered and is instead replaced with Murray fandom and non-zombie things, and for such a short film it hurts the pace.

But that aside, it’s still relative fun to watch. I’m probably being partial because of Woody, but it’s definitely worth a group watch on DVD just because you can skip over that mansion scene.

-Donald Lee-

Action, Comedy, Horror, In Theaters

Where the Wild Things Are

January 10th, 2010
Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are

Rating: ★★★★½

Movie: Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Studio : Village Roadshow Pictures

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 101 min

Website : Where the Wild Things Are

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8um1a



Review:

Returning to childhood is never as good as we may remember it. Spike Jonze brings us back to those days in his adaptation of a popular children’s book that probably has lost most of its original meaning in the process. I say “probably” because it has been so long since I have read it that I only remember the core pieces of the plot, which I’m sure Spike Jonze assumes of his audience as this movie is not really as much a family film as much as a painful return to nostalgic times perhaps best left in nostalgia.

If you plan on bringing a child with you to this film, I emphasize that this movie is sometimes wince-inducing, and even downright graphic. The monsters in the original story have become personal aspects of the boy, bringing with them the sing-song logic of children seen in tales like Alice in Wonderland rather than, say, the modern children’s films of the 90’s featuring a wisecracking child capable of outwitting and conquering adults in the real world.

In the end, this film feels like the end result of Calvin and Hobbes mixed with Lord of the Flies. Granted, while the film paints a bleak picture of a child’s fantasy gone wrong, it also makes it that much more powerful seeing the tenderness and pure love that can be found between the unintentional violence of this fantasy world and the real one.

I suppose if there is anything I could gripe about, it’s how incomplete the ending feels with loose strings and unresolved issues. But, in a way, it’s that incomplete nature that just reminds me of how much reality is like that, and I guess I have to credit Jonze in the end for it rather than criticize him.

-Donald Lee-

Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, In Theaters

Black Dynamite

January 10th, 2010
Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite

Rating: ★★★½☆

Movie: Black Dynamite (2009)

Studio : Destination Films

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 90 min

Website : Black Dynamite

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x80qe8



Review:

Blacksploitation is back, can you dig it? Michael Jai White and the entire blacksploitation genre jumps into action in this movie that parodies everything we loved and loved to hate about these cheaply made movies. The film is littered with visible defects that people have made careers picking at, from people looking at the camera, to awkward silences, misread lines, visible boom mics, and bad editing. Combine this with every cliché you associate with blacksploitation: from Black Panther movements, to martial arts bad guys, to a singing funkadelic narrator, to murdered drug-using brothers, to the white man bringing the black man down and you have everything Black Dynamite is about. It wouldn’t even be fair to say that Black Dynamite doesn’t jump the shark unless you say it does it wielding Colt 45s John Woo style to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries as a synchronized team of great whites swim in concentric circles by a steam catapult-powered ramp. It goes above and beyond over-the-top with a vividly cheap budget and I can’t help but love the movie for it.

Although people will likely poke at the genre of the film and the inherent racism and sexism involved with it, I honestly was reminded of the days I watched Kentucky Fried Movie’s A Fist Full of Yen, where a parodied version of Bruce Lee movies and all its conventions accurately portrayed the Brucesploitation (yes, people actually use that term) back in the day. Even better, both movies not only understand their genre, but also were smart enough to never abuse this fact unless it was to throw another parody into it.

So if you have a chance, sit your butt down and remember: doughnuts don’t wear alligator shoes.

-Donald Lee-

Action, Comedy, In Theaters