Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Rating: 80%
I head about this movie a couple of times. Mostly on just how it's good and that Jim Carrey is not how he usually is. But it was just yesterday that I finally saw this and I have to admit that it was not what I was expecting.

Plot: Joel and Clementine strike up a relationship while riding the train. But it turns out that they actually have formed a relationship before which ended with Joel finding out that after they broke up, Clementine hired this company to erase all of her memories that have to do with his Joel. As a result of him finding out, he hires the same company to erase all of him memories of Clementine.

Okay, this movie turning out to be a romantic science fiction film and how: awesome. Fascinating really. I mean I thought this was like a romantic comedy or something, but no, it turns out to be something completely different. And that is awesome. Really the choice of cast itself is really interesting. I mean it's Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kristen Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson. That's a pretty interesting combination. One the whole it's unique, it's interesting and it really is just a nice, clever film all around.

Acting/Characters:
Jim Carrey/Joel: This movie was messed up to watch when it came to this guy. Cause his really brief part in Simon Birch aside, this is the only time I've seen Jim Carrey be anything close to not trying to be funny so a huge collection of overacting at all. And I have to say, with this character, he did a pretty good job with it. I kind of want to see more.
Kate Winslet/Clementine: She was a fun character. I mean she was meant as a free-spirited kind of person but still.
Kristen Dunst/Mary: I did like her later in the film when he find out more about her and how she takes it.
Elijah Wood/Patrick: I didn't like his character considering how he was being rather despicable and in reality a sort of shy little wimp.

Music: The music was good. It was nicely done.

Editing: I thought it was good. I do think that the way they organized the order of what memories were being wiped out may seem off to some people but it was mostly just fine with me.

And that's my review for Eternal Sunshinse of the Spotless Mind. It was far from what I expected with giving me an interesting cast, a clever plot and just a movie I recommend altogether.   

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Rating: 70%
Now here's a movie that I tried to fully see two times in my life but I kept getting interrupted my parents sending me to bed or needing to go to school/work (not sure which) and never get the chance again. But at long last I have finally seen the movie in full, and here's what I thought of it.

Plot: Li Mu Bai is a skilled Wudang swordsman whose master was murdered years ago by a woman named Jade Fox who sought the skills of Wudang. Now he requests that Yu Shu Lien, a female warrior whom Li Mu Bai shares feelings for but never admit it to each other,  to send his sword, The Green Destiny to a friend of theirs in the city of Peking as an intention of giving up his warrior life. But a masked thief steals the sword and if believe by a police inspector that the thief is in league with Jade Fox which leads everyone to attempt to catch her.

Now I admit to most of the reasons why people really like this film. I mean the action is well done, the effects are cool (I envy all the characters that can fly), and I enjoy the all around scenery and stuff with it being China and all. But I didn't entirely care for the characters or how the story carried on. Why is didn't care for the characters I'll say on my Actors/Characters section. But how the story ended...just wasn't as big and I hoped. *WARNING SPOILERS* I guess the thing is that I expected it to be a big climatic battle between good and evil and all that. How Jade Fox tried to end it once and for all does make sense with her being a bit of a coward and not exactly an expert in Wudang, but I do feel like it could've been so much bigger and longer than that with much, much more fighting. *END OF SPOILERS*

Actors/Characters:
Chow Yun-fat/Li Mu Bai: Now my issue with him as well as Yu Shu Lien is just the whole thing where they won't admit that they love each other. I think I just don't really like that kind of romantic story line where the whole time they won't admit some as simple and obvious as that...I blame Revenge of the Fallen for this. But even then, Li Mu Bai was a nice character in how he was this skilled, wise warrior who did try to help Jen with what she was going through.
Michelle Yeoh/Yu Shu Lien: Now romantic deal aside, she was a good character too with how she was also this skilled, wise warrior. Maybe not as wise as Li Mu Bai but still.
Zhang Ziyi/Jen Yu: Now when it comes to being smarter and much more skilled than Jade Fox, I really liked her. But the whole thing about her having a lot of potential and having a lot of good inside or whatever sounded too much like Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Maybe Jen is how they came up with that particular character or something, I don't know, but if it is, the sad thing is that for me Zuko came first and Jen came years afterwords.

Music: I did enjoy all the Chinese music that the film had to offer.

Editing: I thought the editing was very well done especially with the fighting scenes. Didn't find anything wrong with them.

And that's my review for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I liked it for its effects, action and the setting, but the characters and how it ended just didn't really work for me.

WALL-E (2008)

Rating: 95%
This to me in the kind of film that I prefer to watch only once in a while to keep it enjoyable to watch every time. So here's my final Pixar review # 11: WALL-E.

Plot: 700 years ago, Earth was abandoned due to too much trash. a set of robots called WALL-Es to clean up. All but one have broken down. And this one WALL-E for all these 700 years has developed a curiosity for things from earth back before humanity left. One day a ship comes to Earth dropping off a female robot named EVE. WALL-E and EVE start to take a liking to each other. But when WALL-E shows EVE a plant that he found during his work, she suddenly stores the plant inside her and goes into a standby mode. A ship comes to pick her up and WALL-E stows away as the ship leads to the main ship Axiom where the human population is suffering from bone loss and has become very obese.

Now there's a fair amount of people who don't really care for this movie because it's preachy. Well...yes it's preachy but it gets away with it, with the story, characters and all that good stuff. I mean the story is very clever even if it's preachy, the characters are VERY lovable, and the romance between WALL-E and EVE is simply adorable. The animation is also very beautiful. It's just a wonderful film that should be remembered even if we do leave Earth just the same way humans did in that movie...which I don't think will ever happen.

Characters:
WALL-E: He was awesome. Simply adorable. His voice, his characteristics, his devotion for EVE, how can you not love this little guy?
EVE: EVE was a lot of fun too. How she was the smarter one, quick-tempered and yet had this really fun side of her that makes her relationship with WALL-E go really well together.
AUTO: I thought he was a cool villain just because of his voice and his movement and features.

Music: The score was excellent. You also can easily enjoy the songs in the movie from Hello Dolly, "La vie en Rose" from Louis Armstrong and while "Down to Earth" had no chance against "Jai Ho" at the oscars, it's still a good enough song that it earned being at least nominated.

And that's my review for WALL-E. It may be preachy, but it's still a very fun film with lovable characters, a nice story, and very well done animation. It easily is one of the complete best films that Pixar has made.

So that's the end of my Pixar Marathon. I hoped you enjoyed what I had to say for all of these mostly very good films that Pixar has given us for our families and even friends to enjoy. If you want to see my Toy Story 3 review since that was done long before this marathon even started, here's a link:  http://haksreviews.blogspot.com/2010/12/toy-story-3-2010.html

And here's to what's in store for Brave within the next within the next 22 days. Hope to see you then.

Dark Shadows (2012)

Rating: 30%
My boss - yes I mean the total ultimate trekkie for those of you who read my Horrible Bosses review - use to tell me a lot about the TV show. How while it was a over dramatic soap opera, it became awesome the moment they put Barnabas Collins in the show. I tried to watch it a little myself...didn't get far. By that I mean I couldn't watch the show at all without playing a video game or something to keep myself amused while watching it. But now we have come to the actual film made by Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. So let's take a look at how that worked out.

Plot: in 1760, Barnabas Collins was a wealthy playboy to a fishing business who broke the heart of a servant who was a witch named Angelique. For revenge, she cast a spell on Barnabas' lover Josette making her jump off a cliff and then turns Barnabas into a vampire. She then reveals to the townspeople that he's a vampire and they lock him up in a coffin and bury him. He breaks out of his coffin later to the year 1972 where Angelique has made a fishing business that is rivaling the Collins' business. So Barnabas convinces the matriarch of the current generation of the Collins family that he is a vampire and to allow him to bring the Collins family back to their former glory.

This movie is mixed. They have there little bit of humor, some of the ideas they put at is awesome, and while I didn't expect much with the story, there were a couple of things that I didn't expect that were nice touches. But, the humor isn't spectacular, and while some of the unexpected stuff from the story was nice, to me they were hardly structured well. My main examples *WARNING SPOILERS* would firstly be that for a horror comedy that aims at family being the best thing in the world (which was cheesy, I mean seriously) , I don't think they gave us the family that Barnabas was fighting for very well. I especially mean how David's dad left and never came back. Now bear in mind that I barely touched the show, but I seriously doubt that fans were okay with him being that way. Not to mention I think him coming back would've been nicer touch to the whole family thing. Actually, they don't make the family too much of a priority. Oh sure it's because of family, Barnabas fights on against Angelique, but during the very end it's about the romance between him and Victoria, then the little twist over Dr. Hoffman, and then that's it. I just think that if they were making the whole deal about family so important, you'd think they'd end on something that has to do with it. You know, make it the final word. The second thing is the romance between Barnabas and Victoria. I think the way they started it was way to quick. I mean after Barnabas moves in, they have the moment where they read Love Story and then later in the film, he's asking Carolyn about woman in this current age. In fact, all the dialogue they have is just a brief talk about her past and then say that she has always known him and boom, there's your romantic moment that's actually built in just one scene after hardly doing anything outside of reading throughout the movie so far. I just thought it was poorly developed with that said. and finally, how there were parts in the movie that was just interesting but they didn't go too much on. My main example is Carolyn turning out to be a werewolf. I mean in the eyes of certain film geeks like me, we are talking about Hit-Girl being a werewolf...that's awesome. the problem is, she gets her butt kicked a little easily which is part of the other part of the problem which is that her moment as a werewolf is really short. It was just a really cool twist and I just wished we had more! really both that and the deal with the romance in this film leads to the all around problem that they only develop a little on a lot of things, and then just squish them together to be temporarily introduced, then go back to Barnabas' battle against Angelique. This somewhat falls in line to what I said about Bridesmaids. They hardly worked on the other characters, and in the end, it was more about the main character, Annie than all the other ones that we were interested in. Now it's not quite as bad in Dark Shadows because these characters are more developed and have an actual part in the climax, but at the end of it, it's just all about Barnabas just like it was all about Annie in Bridesmaids. Plus, we're getting these characters on a less than two hour long movie. So maybe there was no way they could've given us more than they did for all of these characters no matter how interesting they are. If that's the case, then maybe they should've made this longer or something because this didn't really do the job to give us these characters from fan and non-fans alike. *END OF SPOILERS* Now when it comes to the fact that they've taken a Gothic soap opera into a horror comedy, I don't think it really worked out that well. I mean I agree that maybe they needed to make it a little different from the show since the show was not exactly LOST and stuff like that. Heck, this movie probably works better for some people since we are given a Dark Shadows story in less than two hours rather then one that's 1,225 episodes long. But on a whole, it's very likely that they make it so off from the show that it'll work for very few fans. I mean when my boss saw the trailer for the film all he said was that it was a forsaken shame.

Acting/Characters:
Johnny Depp/Barnabas Collins: There was a critic who said, "How is it possible that a man who just a few years ago stood as one of our most exciting and unconventional actors has now become one of the most predictable?" -Matt Burnson. And I regrettably have to agree. Depp's performance was very predictable. In terms of how he speaks, or tries to be funny or dramatic, it looks like it's been done enough times already that we got the idea long before he was buried. What happened to all the different voices or the unpredictability and all that? This particularity hurts in terms of being Barnabas Collins. We mostly have Johnny Depp being Johnny Depp but we probably don't get enough of him as Barnabas the vampire. Sure he kills a few people but I didn't find those moments as serious as they could've been for something horror related. Because we have him killing people, which is confronted with the Johnny Depp who says stuff like, "I'm terrible sorry, but I'm quite thirsty."
Michelle Pfeiffer/Elizabeth Collins Stoddard: She was nice. The one thing I did like was how she was...well a determined matriarch. Because I didn't think she's be anything like that after seeing the trailers so it was nice to see that she was.
Gulliver McGrath/David Collins: This was another character I thought they should've developed on more. David was being viewed as this mysterious kid who thinks there's ghosts after his mother's death. They show that, but they don't go too far with it. they show it on a couple of scenes and then it's on to Barnabas' thing.

Music: If you like music from the 70's whether it's Alice Cooper or not, then you should have no problem with the songs in this film. As for the score, I didn't notice too much to have much of an opinion.

Editing: I thought it was nice.

And that's my review for Dark Shadows. It's a little okay, but there's so many things wrong with it that it really doesn't work too well with developing a lot of the stuff that's interesting or the characters you might like.


And if you want to see my video review. here's my links for both parts for them.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Ygiqszrk4&list=PL29674ED22E57C355&index=3&feature=plpp_video

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orKCKl4c3hc&feature=relmfu
   

A Bug's Life (1998)

Rating: 85%
Oh man, I remember only too well how this use to be one of  my favorite movies and the video game was my all around favorite when I was in elementary school. So here's Pixar review # 10: A Bug's Life.

Plot: In a place called Ant Island, a colony of ants are made to pick food for a gang of grasshoppers head by their leader Hooper for protection. But one day an ant named Flik accidentally knocks the offering off into the stream, Hooper demands that they ants make another offering with twice the food. Flik then comes up with the idea to find other bigger bugs to come and fight Hooper and his gang. He finds a group of bugs to come and fight, but eventually when they come to Ant Island, they revealed to Flik that they actually are circus bugs. So Flik has to make the colony still think they're going to fight the grasshoppers while he tries to still use the bugs to help.

Like I said, I loved this movie to death when I was a kid. And why not? The characters are lovable, the world is creative and some of the comedy were just awesome when I was a kid. But I think for me, what really got me into completely loving this movie was just the story and primarily the all around adventure. Throughout most of my elementary school days, this movie was one of the kid movies that were a super lot of fun because of the exciting adventure that I just loved to death and still do with some of the other films like Hook, The Prince and the Pauper and The Rescuers Down Under. Now I am older to be aware of how it's similar to The Seven Samurai. And I admit that the all around lying to everybody bit is not that swell. But it gets away with it by still giving us an exciting and fun movie to enjoy.

Actors/Characters:
Flik: I loved Flik. He was clever with all of his creative inventions, he kept thinking of ideas to help things work out, and the was all around a very clever hero in the end.
Hooper: I think I viewed Hooper as one of the biggest villains when I was a kid. Now yes, I know better now with being familiar with villains like Venom, The Joker, Norman Osborn, Hannibal Lecter, Voldemort, Skynet, the San Diego Chargers, the Boston Red Sox, Shakespeare in Love, etc. But he's still a pretty menacing villain when it comes to his all around look and his desire for power. Plus it's interesting to watch him now, now that I know he was voiced by Kevin Spacy.


Music: The music was awesome. I really liked the music from the theme score to that song that ant band was playing when the circus ants came to Ant Island, and I personally really liked the music during Hooper and his gang coming back to Ant Island. I think with that last one I just thought it was an awesome music to give us an exciting yet sort of villainous - mostly just because it's played as we see the villains - song to build the suspense of the grasshoppers coming back.

And that's my review for A Bug's Life. It's funny, it's adventurous, and if you grew up loving it, I hope you still do in at least a certain way and if you haven't seen it, maybe you should check it out.

Up (2009)

Rating: 80%
Well here's supposedly the big one. The one that practically everyone loves. The first animated film to be nominated for best picture since Beauty and the Beast. I am of coarse talking about the movie that's my Pixar review #9: Up.

Plot: Carl and his wife Ellie were fans of an adventurer named Charles Muntz who was last seen re-exploring a place in South Africa called Paradise Falls. They tried to good there themselves but budget cuts and ultimately Ellie's death kept them from going. Then as he gets older, Carl gets evicted from his out after attacking a construction worker and is ordered to a retirement home. Instead, he inflates a large number of balloons tied up to his house to use it as an airship to fly to Paradise Falls. But along the way, a young boy named Russell accidentally stows away in his house and joins for the trip.


Now there's one thing that nobody who's anybody should deny: this movie is original as frick! I mean a guy using his house as an airship, plus the stuff that joins that like dogs having translator collars, it's just one film that really succeeds in giving us something entirely different. Most of the characters were a lot of fun and some of the comedy is very memorable from Alpha's broken translator to Muntz's reaction to Russell smearing the window as he's floating by. And the first ten minutes of the movie are completely awesome. Just incredibly well done.But is it altogether as wonderful as everyone says it is? To me, no. I mean please don't misunderstand me, it deserves a lot of the praise that it's been getting. But I feel that the whole journey on Carl's part mostly was just not original *WARNING SPOILERS* You know he's going to avoid Russel, Kevin and Dug throughout the journey, you can tell they'll start to grow on him and it's clear that in the end he's going to let go of his dream to help them. *END OF SPOILERS* So the movie is very good when it comes to its originality and it's all around usual family humor and fun Pixar style. But since Carl's part as far as I care is no better than McQueen's  in the first Cars movie, it just doesn't do it for me.

Characters:
Carl: Well my main opinion has already been said in the spoilers so yeah.
Russell: I thought Russell was okay. He wasn't horrible but I didn't find too much in him that I found interesting.
Dug: Dug I easily loved. I mean he's a dog for one thing and the things he said are cute and can probably be mostly what most dogs are thinking at certain times. He's a very lovable character and pretty much my favorite in this film.

Music: It was very nice. the theme music was nice.

And that's my review for Up. It's funny and also original an heck, but Carl's personal goal and the change throughout the journey just was unoriginal enough that it didn't work for me.      

Drive (2011)

Rating: 90%
I remember how some of my friends from film school talked about how this film is totally awesome when it was in theaters. Sadly I didn't find the time to take a look myself when it was out. But tonight I just watched it with my brothers and my dad using Netflix on Xbox Live and here's what I think about it.

Plot: An unnamed driver lives in L.A. as a mechanic, stuntman, and a getaway driver. He befriends his neighbor Irene and her son Benicio who before long gets his father back, Standard, from prison. But Standard owed some people from prison money so they get him to rob a pawn shop to pay his due and have the Driver give him a ride there and back. But the job results in Standard gets shot and The Driver finds out that the people who Standard owed the money to planned to double-cross. So he goes out to get back at them.

This was a very interesting and altogether different movie. The tone was very quite, the story was interesting and the way it turned out was creative. Though the tone may have been done too well when it came to there not being to many reactions from the characters. For example when a mafia guy was getting beat up by the driver at a strip club, the strippers' didn't really have a reaction. They just watched. But that was just one thing and it wasn't that big of a deal. It is surprising though that it was a very gory film. I mean that's not a big deal to me but I didn't expect that to happen at all.

Actors/Characters:
Ryan Glosling/The Driver: He was very interesting. I mean he hardly raised his voice or made any big facial expressions. It was just fascinating. Altogether he was a very unique character with how he was caring for Irene and Benicio and not really trying any big between him and Irene and even willing to help Standard, he's just a cool character. 

Music: I really liked the eletrical-pop music that was playing. I think my favorite song that they played was "A Real Hero" by College and I thought the timing in playing Oh My Love by Rix Ortolani was just weird.

Editing: It was pretty enjoyable. I admit that I liked how there where scenes where they cut between something that happens and the dialogue that happens before that certain action happens.

And that's my review for Drive. It's unique, it's interesting, and I would recommend it if you want to see a movie that's just totally different from what you'd normally see.