P.E.B.K.A.C.

Time: 1920’s, Place: Los Angeles hospital. An injured stunt man, Roy Walker, tell an epic of 5 heroes out for revenge to an injured immigrant girl, Alexandria. While we hear Roy tell the tale with his own words, we see how his words form an interpreted & imagined world of Alexandria mind. Alexandria casts the story with people she knows and location are from a picture book of the worlds most beautiful places. Roy’s epic is filled with death, honor, pain, wonderment & love, which we learn mimics his own life. In the end the epic as well as the girl saves the broken hero.

Director Tarsem Singh goes around the world filming in 18 countries to achive this artful and stylized movie. The locations and compositions are stunning. The full use of every inch of the frame makes every shot a piece of art with in it self. Which in turn makes this film experience as visually and thought provoking as if you went to a spectacular art gallery for an evening. I look forward to seeing this again to be able to watch the pictures unfold before me.

Tonight Jason & I had passes to go to a preview of the movie The Strangers. I am not one to go running to the theater to see a horror movie, but Jason got us passes and was really looking forward to seeing it. So what the heck right, another chance to dislocate his arm as I get freaked out. I knew from seeing the trailors that this movie is playing on one of my worst fears, random-no-reason-violence. It is all said in the two lines from the trailor “Why you doing this?” “Cause you were home.”.

The Strangers opens with a glimps of the horror to come and ends with a full bloody picture of the horror that was hinted at the start. Through out the movie you and everyone in the theater will jump and cringe as the bad guy comes into the screen. This was the scariest movie I have ever watched with closed eyes.

The Strangers Trailor

Ryan Reynolds plays a man named Will Hayes who is needing to deal with trying to bring understanding of relationships to his young daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) after a sexual education class at school brings up questions about why he & her mom are not in love anymore. Instead of just leaving the daughter with a simple answer to appease her curiosity he spends the time to tell her the intricacy of his relationships with several women including her mother, without ever letting her know which one was “the one”.

The movie’s story is told in a manner reminiscent of The Princess Bride, flipping from the past to the story telling at a child’s bedside with insightful comments by Maya. Just like the daughter being kept in the dark as to which women is “the one”, by change of names, so is the audience. Each women is likable and a perfect fit to the point that you at one point or another you hope that Will ends up with her. Each relationship puts smiles on your face as you watch them learn about each other as does the interaction of father & daughter. Favorite moments also come about when Will slips in his story telling and mentions his bad habits that every parent hopes that they can hide from their kids.

 Leave the figuring out which women is “the one” to Maya, you will find yourself smiling all the way to the end. 

As to be expected for this highly anticipated film the theater was full of Monster Movie fans. Fans who scoured the Internet for every little puzzle piece clue to this hush-hush movie, where even the official name was not known for quite a long time. J.J. Abrams newest release just like Lost had interconnected web sites that deliver out of movie/TV content & story.

The premises for this movie is that this film has been found by the government during the recovery after a catastrophe has happened in Manhattan. The video is being made by a group of friends who are celebrating their good friend leaving to head off to Japan to start a new job. When the celebration is cut short by the attack of Manhattan by a monster of unknown origins. The partiers continue to film so as to document their exodus of the danger with the thought that others would want to know what happened.

Cloverfield is slow in getting to the action and the monster. This time is given over to letting you get to know the characters so that you care about the paths & turns they take in escaping. The camera work fits with the concept of recording on the run, to the point that the fast movement & unfocused moments that even those that are immune to sea sickness may find they wished they had taken Dramamine before the movie started as they walked out. Cloverfield has explosions, chases, military action, falling buildings, daring escapes, a touch of love & much monster destruction.

Those that went into the movie looking for a Monster Movie showing the destruction of Manhattan will be disappointed. Those that are wanting a story about people & their relationships as they deal with exiting a world of massive destruction with be pleased.

Over the past few months I saw many different versions of previews for 27 Dresses and all of them showed another side of the story to be told. I wanted to see them all! Sure that this was due to marketing wanting to reach as many potential audience goers. Well they seemed to have reached there goal. We went to see 27 Dresses at a Sneak Peak showing on Sunday it was packed and as we joked before the movie the men to woman ratio was 1 to 50.

I tried for many days to think of something insightful to write for a review of this simple movie & came to a realization that simple is all that is needed to get my view across.

You could tell the path that the movies was going down which allowed you just sit back & laugh at the jokes as they played out. It was fun like getting drunk & dancing on a bar, you may not remember all the things that made you laugh, but man you laughed the whole time.

This morning I was doing something I never do but hope that I will do more. I visited a site called Dark Horizons. Dark Horizons is a website devoted to Movies in almost every aspect, from Stats to Trailors to interviews. I was reading an interview with Will Smith about I am Legend. (Great movie for me, but man the dog made me cry, yes I am a big wussy.) In this interview he mentions a new movie that was going to be working on called Hancock. Here is the description of the movie from the Dark Horizons:

“Hancock” centers on a tortured and alcoholic superhero (Will Smith) despised by everyone who crash-lands in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and tries to transform himself with the help of a publicist. He soon begins romancing the publicist’s alluring housewife, causing chaos in the city.

This description pecked my interest & then lo and behold I see a teaser among the trailers on Dark Horizons. The teaser definitely put this movie on my “Anxiously Awaiting” List.