Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

So. We all know that the Harry Potter movies are usually exceptionally made, the special effects are amazing, and the movie can hold your attention. Well, I don't think this one was quite as good as the others. It was still made very well, but i just couldn't get into it. Halfway through the movie I was Googling how long it was so I would know when it was over.


There was so much going on during this movie that I could hardly keep up, I also have never read the book, so I didn't really have anything to go on either.

So the movie starts out with Harry and Hermonie leaving their families. Well, Harry's aunt and uncle leave him, and Hermonie erases herself from her parent's memories, to protect them from Voldemort. Then the Order of the Phoenix shows up. and takes Harry to the Burrow, they get attacked and the rest of the movie is basically Harry, Hermonie, and Ron running from Voldemort and the deatheaters. There are smaller side storie within the movie, I guess. Like Ron wore the horcrux too long and got all kind of evil, and left Harry and Hermonie for a few days. But its basically them running all over the place trying to find horcruxes to destroy them, and reach their ever present goal of deafting Lord Voldemort.

I really can't remember how the movie ends, because I got serious ADD halfway through and just couldn't pay attention. Which I guess is good, if someone is a big fan of these movies, I can't spoil the ending for them. Maybe I was just having an off night, because I usually do think that these movies are good, but this one just.. wasn't as good as the others I think. But who know, maybe you'll like it!

Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 starts out with Andy, now all grown up and going to college having to go through all of his stuff and decide what to take with him. Well, his toys get accidentally thrown away, but they managed to escape the garbage truck and end up getting taken to Sunnyside, a daycare. They are excited at first, because they will always have a kid to play with them, but they aren't so sure its a good thing after their first round of playtime with a bunch of screaming toddlers.

Woody eventually decides that he is going to rescue his friends and escape from Sunnyside. Lotso threatens them and tries to make them stay there. They get stuck in the dumpster, then almost escape but not before the little aliens get scooped up into a dump truck. They end up being taken to the landfill facilities, but manage to escape unscathed, even after a close call with an incinerator.

They find the dump truck that goes to Andy's neighborhood and manage to get back before Andy leaves for college. They get back into the "attic" box. Woody jumps back into the college box but after hearing Andy tell his mom that he would still care for her even though he was away he realizes that Andy woud still care for his old toys. So he grabs a post-it note and writes down a little neighbor girl's address and jumps into the "attic" box. Andy thinks his mom wrote the note and takes the box to the girl, introducing and explaining a little bit about each one to her.

Of course everything ends happily, with Lotso gone from Sunnyside Barbie and Ken are running Sunnyside, and everyhting is going well. Woody, Buzz, Slinky, and everyone else are happy with Bonnie, the little neighbor girl.

Killers

The movie starts out with Jen Kornfedlt (Katherine Heigel) is going on vacation in Nice, France with her parents after a bad break-up. There she meets Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher), who is actually a government assassin, but they hit it off and start dating or whatever, and end up getting married. Spencer had tried to get away from being an assassin while he and Jen were still in Nice because he just wants a normal quiet life with her. He starts his own contracting firm and everything goes well for a  few years. Then, Spencer gets a note from his old boss, and all kinds of crazy things start happening. The morning after his 30th birthday party, Spencer finds out that he is the target of a multi-million dollar hit. The first person who tries to kill him is one of his best friends, who worked with him at his firm and everything. Then another employee tries killing him, a supposed customer, and he finds out his old boss was dead. While all this is happening Jen and Spencer find out that she's pregnant. They almost break up or whatever, but by the end of the movie you find out that it was actually Jen's father (Tom Selleck), who placed all the sleepers in Jen and Spencer's lives, because he did not trust Spencer. You also find out that Jen's dad is an international superspy as well. But everything ends all happily ever after.

If you liked movies like The Ugly Truth, What Happens in Vegas, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, you will probably like this movie. I liked it, although I think that the ending probably could have been better.



Splice

Splice came out in June 2010, it was directed by Vincenzo Natali. It is rated R for sexualality, language, nudity, sci-fi violence, and some disturbing elements. It is the story of two affluent genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrian Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley), who are both famous from splicing different animal DNA together to form hybrids. They work for a pharmaceutical company that funds their research, which they call N.E.R.D. (Nucleic Exchange Research & Development), and they try to convince them to start funding research using human DNA. They refuse and tell them instead to keep working on the hybrids they already created. Well Elsa and Clive decide to do it anyways, in secret.

They do disagree on some things, like whether to carry the hybrid fetus to full term or not. However, they don't have a choice when it develops extremely fast and has to come out of the incubation tank thing. Clive wants to just kill it when in the next day or so of having to deliver it, the hybrid that Elsa eventually names Dren (nerd backwards) has developed enough to run around and cause problems in the laboratory they keep her in. As Dren gets older and bigger, the lab gets increasingly more crowded, and Dren keeps making alot of noise and causing problems. At one point she gets a really high fever, so they try to give her an ice bath to cool her down so she'll survive. Well Clive actually tries drowning her, but instead they discover that she has amphibious lungs. She also has a stinger, that is poisonous, that they try to keep covered. Eventually they move with Dren out to Elsa's mother's farm. Her mother had passed away, and it was in the middle of no where, so they ran a much lower risk of anyone seeing Dren.  They kept her in the barn since it was bigger, and had a huge tank of water for her to swim in. She develops fins that look somewhat like wings and she gets better at communicating the older she gets.

Alot of really messed up stuff happens near the end of the movie. Clive ends up finding out that Elsa used her own DNA to create Dren, then he ends up being seduced by her, and caught by Elsa. Then Dren gets a really high fever again, and they think that she is dead and bury her behind the barn. Then two other scientists that they used to work with show up snooping around, and they find out that Dren is not dead, but she does kill the other two scientists.  Then takes off into the woods. One of the scientists happens to be Clive's brother, so Clive takes off after her and they end up at this lake, and Clive gets pulled in by Dren. Elsa gets there in time to help pull him out but then Dren, who has turned into a male, comes up out of the water, knocks Clive out and chases Elsa down. Else ends up getting raped before Clive comes and hits Dren straight in the back of the head and gets him/her off Elsa. But when Clive goes to kill Dren, he/she stabs him in the heart  and kills him. So Elsa finishes him/her off and then it cuts to later that year, where Elsa is signing papers to do a study. Because she was pregnant.

If you can handle all the really messed up stuff at the end I would probably recommend this movie. It was good, but it was different than what I expected just from the movie trailers. I guess if you like sci-fi movies you would like this one.

The Boondock Saints

The Boondock Saints is fairly old, it came out in 1999, but in my opinion, it is a pretty good movie. The plot follows two Irish brothers, Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery) and Murphy MacManus (Norman Reedus). they aren't anything to special really, they work in a meatpacking plant in Boston, and they have a pretty normal life. Well that changes on St. Patrick's Day, when they get into a fight at a bar with two Russian mafia thugs. Well the thugs come back and find them later, and Connor and Murphy end up killing them. They turn themselves in and get away clean, since it was self defense. They end up thinking that their calling from God is to help rid the world of evil people, so they start knocking off bad guys one by one. Instead of getting arrested and thrown into prison, the newspapers call them 'saints' and they get away with everything.

This movie is pretty violent, so if you don't like movies with that in them, this isn't the one for you. There is also a sequel out, the Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day which came out in 2009. I haven't seen it but I've heard that its pretty good.



Employee of the Month

Employee of the Month was directed by Greg Coolidge, and it came out in 2006. The main character is Zack Bradley (Dane Cook) who works at Super Club because when he was younger he lost all of his grandmother's retirement money with a start up dot com, so he wanted alot less responsibility. But when a new woman, Amy Renfro (Jessica Simpson) gets transferred to the store, Zack is motivated to get the Employee of the Month award, since he and his friends read her personal file and found out that she goes for the employee of the month. Well Zack's coworker, Vince Downey (Dax Shepard) is also trying to win Amy over, but he does alot of weird things and he tries to be more like zack even, wearing the shoes with the wheels in the bottom of them and everything.

Zack eventually almost ties the amount of gold stars that Vince has, and the store decides to have a contest to see who would win the award, along with a brand new-ish 2005 Malibu. If you want to find out who wins, you'll have to watch the movie. I liked it, and I thought that most of it was funny. Some similar movies are Happy Gilmore, and Dick, which is a really old movie from the '90s, but it was really good. Anyways, if you like those kinds of movies you would probably like this one.

Get Him To The Greek

Get Him To The Greek was released in June of 2010 so it is still fairly new, it is a comedy and was directed by Nick Stoller. The main character is Aaron Greene (Jonah Hill) who has to get Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), a famous Britsh rock star to the Greek Theatre in Los Angles, so he can play a show and recover his career. Aaron's boss Sergio (Sean Combs) warns him to not let Aldous out of his sight, to try to keep him as sober as possible, and to never underestimate how much chaos he could cause. I guess if you really want to know how it all turns out, and if Aaron succeeds in getting Aldous to the Greek, you'll have to watch it, although I thought that it really wasn't that great. There were some funny parts to it, but some of it was just kind of stupid. This is somewhat of a spin-off of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so if you liked that movie, you would probably like this one as well.