Reviews

For someone who has watched many horror films, slasher movies etc, I have found that I go into these types of movies with the same expectancy: It's going to suck, but I'm gonna enjoy the few jump-scares, creepy audio, obvious natures of oncoming deaths, and terrible acting. I will enjoy this movie no matter how bad it is, and I will love to hate it.

I walked into Sinister with no knowledge of it whatsoever. I didn't watch a preview, read any articles on it, nothing. I had no idea what it was about aside from what was on the poster. If you haven't seen the poster, it's basically a girl spreading a lot of blood on the wall behind her with a creepy, demonic face made from the blood. The tag-line is "Once you see him, nothing can save you." I thought it was going to be about some murderer/demon type antagonist who follows this poor girl and tries to kill her the whole movie and kills her friends, family, loved ones and so forth until she triumphs and rids the planet of the bad guy. Then the camera would pan down and you'd see the guy wink or twitch and cut to credits.

Never have I been more wrong. Skip to the next paragraph due to possible spoilers. The movie opens up with what looks like a home made movie of four people getting hanged in a tree in slow motion. This lasts the entire opening credits and immediately raises my heart rate a bit. The movie uses this and other home movies to drive the plot and it's honestly very well done. After each movie I felt unsettled and disturbed. The way that it seemed so much like documentary and that it was a personal camera was just eerie. Almost as if it would be put on youtube. The movie follows Ellison (Ethan Hawke) as a true-crime novelist who has moved to the house that that hanging had occurred, and He doesn't reveal this information to his wife Tracy (newcomer Juliet Rylance) or his family. Strange events happen as Ellison finds a box full of those home movies showing different murders. As he watches each murder scenario, he tries to link them together and possibly benefit off of it, but it soon changes as Ellison tries to save his family from being murdered as well.

The acting was great. Hawke and Rylance worked well together in the tense and serene moments of the movie. Dialogue didn't seem forced or cliché in comparison to other tense moments in horror films, and it flows well. I didn't find myself lost or wondering what was just said. Their children also did well and everyone meshed well together in this movie.

I could see some jump scares coming from a mile away, but they were still done well. The idea of finding-footage horror is a bit overdone, but it was portrayed well in this movie. I found that the use of "old" technology such as a film projector was done well whilst being enveloped in iMacs and iPhones. The film felt modern and the setting was defined well.

Audio. Audio is key to a horror film. Sinister has great audio in all of the right scenes to keep a low-grade set of tension simmering at almost all times. Even in the nice well-lit scenes, you are always expecting something bad or scary to happen. The music for the home movies was done quite well and had a good creepy vibe to each scenario, and every time the house was dark, the ambiance was great.

I was annoyed at the fact that he never turned on any of his lights to any room in his house at any point whatsoever. This didn't take from the movie too much, but some scenes he could have just flipped a light switch up for reassurance. I guess this was a way to increase tension, and it worked. I also didn't like how little was explained about their son Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario)'s Night Terrors. I had no idea what that even was, and it was just assumed that it was normal for him to be doing what he was doing. But that is just my lack of knowledge.

Those home movies definitely stuck with me after leaving the theater. I have an over-active imagination, and driving home was tense and nerve-racking. The film did its job. It didn't scare me as much as it disturbed me, but it did leave me looking over my shoulder even while typing this review. I know it's just a movie, but this was a refreshing horror flick. It's good to get some fright out of me, whether it was the movie or my imagination, this helped.

I absolutely recommend it.

I work at a movie theatre that housed this film. Out of sheer curiosity, I went to a late night employee showing of this movie. I had no expectations other than: "It's a movie about a bunch of male strippers. Channing Tatum is in it." I went in expecting just that and got a bit more than I expected. Big spoiler: There's a bunch of guy's asses thrown about the stage while Matthew McConaughey, the owner of the male strip club, flaunts his 'I'm-better-than-you'-ness to all of the screaming women that go to these events. I had fun watching the women's reactions and seeing how it all works back stage, and McConaughey and Tatum play their roles quite well. There is good tension, humor, drama, and it was very entertaining. One thing kept ruining it for me. Cody Horn plays the sister of the new guy to the club, and main focus of the story, Adam (Alex Pettyfer). It was painful watching her forced emotions and hearing her fake laughs while seeing her awful timing ruin a lot of the immersion I thought I was having during the movie. Tatum's character, unfortunately, develops a love interest as absolutely painfully as possible. He went from the gorgeous and goofy Olivia Munn to a very uptight, unpleasant, downright cardboard-cutout overprotective-big-sister. By this, I mean, she never smiled during the entire movie, her lines sounded like they were read through a Microsoft-speak program, and she showed no interest whatsoever to the possibility of a relationship until the last five minutes of the movie. And even then, the wordplay is painful at best as she waits for an awkward thirty second before lunging onto Tatum in cliché 'credits-roll' romanticism.

Overall, I did enjoy the movie. I didn't expect to, so that is good on the movie's part. To describe the experience, however, imagine this: You have a plate of food in front of you. There's everything you like on it cooked very well, but right on the edge of the plate is a tiny piece of feces. You can enjoy the meal however you want, but the experience is lessened as you try to figure out why that crap was put on your plate in the first place.

21 Jump Street. Now I've seen a lot of Jonah Hill movies, from Superbad to Accepted and Get Him to the Greek, but this one has to be one of his best. Though Superbad was basically the main movie you'll know him for, 21 Jump Street definitely can be another milestone in his career. Even though people have been standing by the whole, "He was only funny because he was fat" thing, Hill makes a great character. Channing Tatum also does a good job in the film, being the polar opposite to Hill in almost every way. I have only seen Tatum in The Vow, and I like him in that one too, being the big muscular guy with a big heart. Here, Tatum puts on a more silly, college student role and it suits him well, though he is huge and nobody would actually believe he is in high school.

The movie had me laughing pretty hard most of the time. You get a back-story for Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) as they both fail at high school and become cops. Then things go bad one day on patrol and they get sent to do an undercover high school drug-bust because they look like kids in high school. The drug circling the school is called HFS, and Schmidt and Jenko have to find the supplier to stop it from getting to other schools. This gets ridiculous as we follow the duo's tactics for finding said supplier. One of which requires the both of them to actually take the drug and still try to focus whilst in class, and another results in a car chase across town in a pink Volkswagen buggy. The movie is pleasantly silly and had just the right amount of ridiculousness. Obviously stuff like this wouldn't happen in real life, but who goes to the movies to see real life? The only actual problem I had was with the love story that ensued between Schmidt and Molly Tracey (Brie Larson). Schmidt does look like he is in high school, but he graduated, as the movie suggests, in 2005. The movie is set seven years later, so Schmidt has to be at least 25 years old. Throughout the movie, he gets attached to Molly and ends up asking her to prom and making out with her, and this whole time I kept asking myself if a 25 year old would really do that with someone who is still in high school. It wasn't stated that Molly was graduating any time soon, so she could be 16 or 17 at that time. It's silly for that to bother me, but it did not in any way lessen the experience I had watching this movie.

In conclusion: The movie was great. The characters all worked well together. I liked them all and didn't get tired of anyone. The comedy wasn't just the same joke stretched throughout the entire movie, and it never got stale. Looking back, I keep chuckling at certain scenes from the film, and that's what a comedy is supposed to do. I'd give it a 9 out of 10.

Also, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise make a hilarious return from their 1987 television series 21 Jump Street to this movie as the same characters, and I couldn't help but marvel at how awesome that was.

The Lorax. I remembered the story vaguely before watching the movie, and I can say that it was not a disappointment. I was curious to see how it could have been integrated into an hour-and-a-half-long film, being one of the shorter Dr. Seuss books. It was done quite well. There was a musical number right in the beginning, and that caught me a bit off guard, but it wasn't too daunting of a curve-ball. Then the nice back-story of the main kid, Ted (Zac Efron), was developed with his family and friends, and Betty White is an awesome grandma who knows everything and can snowboard and such. The main villain is a short, but mean guy, Mr. O'Hare, who sells fresh air to the plastic, smog-filled town of Thneedville, the resultant of the deforestation that was the main story in the book. All of this is developed early around Ted's life and his attraction to Audrey (Taylor Swift) who just wants to get a tree that isn't plastic. So Ted leaves town to go find one because his grandma said to, and he has to bring (from the book) fifteen cents, a rust nail, and the shell of a great-great grandfather snail to The Once-Ler (Ed Helms (Stu from the Hangover)). This is where the movie plays into the first couple pages of the book, and it's nice to have that back-story so we can care about the kid from the book. Here, the Once-Ler's life becomes the next hour of the movie, and not in a bad way. It doesn't drag on, and the Lorax (Danny DeVito) gets introduced here. You see the Once-Ler deforest the land in greed and grime, and it follows the book well while still remaining interesting and kiddy. The singing fish became a bit annoying at times (most of the times in the Once-Ler's flashbacks) and they beat the fat bear joke till it coughed sand, but this didn't hamper the entire experience. Danny DeVito fit the Lorax quite well, and I found myself laughing a lot at what felt were the right times. So as to not spell out the entire movie, once Ted leaves the Once-Ler's abode, the movie has to stray from the book. It gets action-y and downright silly at these points, but it still stayed true to classic Dr. Seuss style. Happy ending etc with fun music, midget humor, and color explosions. I'd give it an 8 out of 10. The music seemed a bit forced at times, and the fish were quite annoying, but the movie was great. It adapted the book quite well and definitely kept my attention throughout the movie. I would absolutely watch it again.

Alright, here's another review. Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance. After the below par first installment of this movie, I didn't have much hopes for this one. So special effects have increased obviously the past few years, and if you're looking for a bunch of fire, smoke, and dust, then by all means, see this movie. But if you're looking for acting, dialog, and up to speed fight scenes, you're out of luck. Nicolas Cage is...Nicolas Cage. I'm not too fond of him and this movie did not increase our relationship at all. Luckily, the child actor in the movie was not that much of an annoyance. The main girl was hot, and the main villain was okay at best. But Nicolas Cage should not have been this role. As is to come in many of Nicolas Cage movies, there's awkward emphasis on all of the wrong words that turns a serious situation to hilarity. And there is a scene where he shoots a flame thrower out if his dick. This film at best is sub-par. It's a mockery of Marvel Comics and to Ghost Rider, and it was not worth me staying up till two in the morning to watch. 5/10 at best. Try to see it for free. Don't pay for this movie.

P.S. There was only one actual fight scene that lasted all of two minutes. This ended up SPOILER with the main villain dying. (Big surprise) The way in which his death was portrayed was horrible. The effects sucked and it looked like they forgot to add in his death and then made the animation in twenty minutes.