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.

Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 was directed by Jon Favreau and has Robert Downey Jr playing the main character Tony Stark. In this sequel, Tony is trying to find a replacement for the palladium core that keeps him alive, because it is actually killing him. Meanwhile, he is getting tons of pressure from everyone to give his technology to the military, so they can make ironman suits for their soldiers. There is this real sneaky guy, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who is the head guy of Stark Industries biggest rival company. While Tony and Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) and her new assistant Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) are in Russia for some kind of party they get attacked by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who is try to get revenge for his father. Apparently Tony's dad had something to do with Ivan's dad being exiled basically, and Ivan is still pretty upset after 40 years. But he makes something similar to the Ironman suit, except he has like, two whips made out of electric current, and he calls himself Whiplash.

Well, Ivan gets arrested in Russia for trying to kill Tony, but Justin Hammer busts him out and offers him a job. He wants him to make iron man suits, and when Ivan doesn't deliver and just does what he wants by building drones, Justin gets super angry and like trys to hold him hostage and everything. Justin leaves him with some guards and goes to an expo to show off his technologies. While he's there presenting the military drones, Ivan kills his guards and hacks into the mainframe and takes over the drones, making them attack Tony and blow stuff up and all that. Then Natalie, who is actually an agent for the government, goes to find Ivan at Justin's facilities but when she gets there he's already gone. She does manage to hack back into the computer and stop the drones from being crazy and everything though.

And then if you really want to know what happens in the end of the movie, I guess you should watch it. It's pretty good, it's full of action and it keeps your attention throughout the whole tmovie.



Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting came out in 1998, so it's really old, but its still a pretty great movie. It was directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

It is about this young guy named Will Hunting (Matt Damon), who grew up in South Boston and had a horrible childhood. His parents died and he went through a couple foster homes where he got beaten and it pretty much just wasn't a good time for him. But, in the movie, he's grown up and he's working as a janitor at MIT. Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stelland Skarsgard) leaves a proof on a blackboard in the hallway one day for extra credit for his students and Will solves it at night when no one is there. That's when you find out that Will is basically a genius. No one knows who is solving the proofs until one day the professor sees him standing at the blackboard and he tries to ask his name but Will just walks off and tell the professor to "'f' himself."

The professor finally tracks him down and tries turn him into his prodigy. But Will would really rather spend his time with his friends from the rough neighborhood he grew up in. Professor Lambeau set up several interviews for Will, which he almost never went to, so that he could get a good job making like 80,000 just starting out. But he kept turning them down, and making excuses. One friend in particular, Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck), who Will grew up with, and is basically his best friend, tells Will that he would give anything to have what he had, and to have an opportunity to get out of the tough South Boston neighborhoods.

More towards the beginning of the movie, Will is arrested for battery, and Professor Lambeau has to bail him out of jail, and one of the terms to him being released to the professor's care is that he has to see a therapist once a week. Which is where Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) comes in. He helps Will work out all his childhood issues and everything, and helps him find the right direction for his life. Dr. Maguire was Professor Lambeau's roommate in college, and they have a very tense relationship. They get into a couple fights throughout the movie, over Will and other things.

There is one other character in the movie that plays an important role in Will's life, he name is Skylar (Minnie Driver). Will meets her in a Harvard bar when Chuckie tries to talk to her and her friend and this other guy comes up and starts trying to make Chuckie look like an idiot. So Will comes up and starts pulling all of this historical and political philosophy out and makes the other guy look like a fool, before they leave the bar Skylar gives Will her number and they hit it off or whatever. Skylar has a lot of money though, and Will doesn't seem to be able to handle that really.. They end up breaking up at the end and its supposed to be all sad.

If you really want to know what happens, then I guess you should watch this movie. It really is good, even though it's so old. It has some sad parts but overall it's not bad.



The Proposal

The Proposal came out in 2009 and is directed by Anne Fletcher. This movie is about a woman named Margaret Tate, played by Sandra Bullock, who is a powerful executive at the publishing company she works for. She is actually an immigrant from Canada, and she finds out that she's going to be deported. She blackmails her assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her so that she could stay in the country. They go to Alaska so that they can tell Andrew's family, but things go awry. At the wedding Margaret backs out, and tells everyone the truth, admitting that the marriage was fake and she was being deported. She runs out and Grandma Annie (Betty White) convinces Andrew to go after her by faking a heart attack and having the ambulance people fly them to the airport instead of the hospital, but they're too late when they get there.

I think this movie is good for everyone, because even though is a romantic comedy or whatever, its not overly done and it has some really funny parts. Obviously guys won't enjoy it as much as girls will, but it's really not that bad. I think if you liked 27 Dresses, Made of Honor, Failure to Launch, or movies similar to those, then you'll like this one.

Gentleman Broncos

Gentlemen Broncos was written and directed by Jared Hess, it came out in 2009. It's a story about Benjamin, played by Micheal Angarano, who is an aspiring fantasy book writer. He goes to a writing convention for homeschooled kids called Cletus Fest, where his hero Dr. Ronald Chevalier ( Jemaine Clement) is speaking and doing work shops, as he is a great science fiction writer in the story. They hold a contest to see which story is best, judged by Chevalier, the winning person getting published. Benjamin leaves Cletus Fest early, and never gets his story, Yeast Lords, back. It turns out that Chevalier has stolen his story and made changes to it so that he wouldn't get caught and has had the story published.                         

                                                                        

Benjamin shows up at the book signing and accuses Chevalier of stealing his story and he ends up in jail on his birthday. Benjamin's mother comes to see him and she brings his birthday presents with her. One of them is a box full of all his stories that he had written throughout his life, including Yeast Lords, which had all been certified with the National Writer's Association. So in the end everything is made right; Chevalier and Benjamin both got what they deserved.

I would probably recommend this movie to anyone who liked Napolean Dynamite or Nacho Libre, movies like that. It is a totally pointless film, but it has its funny parts. In the movie, it goes between real life and what is going on in the story Yeast Lords. It shows the changes in the characters and the setting once Chevalier gets ahold of the manuscript and starts making changes.

The Expendables

The Expendables is a movie about these guys who are basically mercenaries, they get hired buy a man to kill a former FBI agent who got greedy and went rougue. This former FBI guy started a drug ring on a little island called Vilena, he has this military general as the face of the "revolution," but everything on the island has pretty much gone to crap, andall of the people just want it to go back to the way it was. Well the mercenary guys went to the island to scope stuff out. And well, if you want to know what happens, you should watch it. It was a very good movie, plenty of action, and plus you get to see a guy, well actually a few of them, be shot in half. I thought it was kind of cool, but if you don't like blood or stuff like that, then this probably isn't the movie for you.

Have you ever seen the movie Boogeyman? If I had a choice right now, I would take back the two hours of my life that I wasted watching it. It was not scary in the least; it didn’t even freak me out at all. It was somewhat disappointing. The only time I jumped was when it would be really quiet, and then there would be a really loud noise. My brother and our roommate also agree with me.

I would never recommend anyone watching this movie; it really was a waste of time. Perhaps someone else might enjoy it, but I sure didn’t. There are so many movies that are better than this; it seemed kind of low budget maybe. I don’t know, the effects weren’t good and it just wasn’t a good movie at all.