Easy A

Teen comedies are awesome. I love Sixteen Candles, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc. And I love to examine and want to change the way the world views promiscuous females. So, of course, I was totally looking forward to seeing this movie and I was totally impressed. It is so rare to find a movie that exceeds my already high expectations. The excellent supporting cast just adds to the witty performance of Emma Stone. At the end of the movie I was wishing Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci were my parents. The references to teen films of previous generations were just the cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness. This movie blends a fresh twist into a nostalgic genre.

Devil

I know just having the name M. Night Shyamalan attached to a film these days automatically makes a movie bad, but I loved the concept of having six people stuck in an elevator with the devil, so I gave the movie a chance and I am so glad I did. I found the twist predictable, but the characters and the actions leading up to that twist were engaging. I did wish there was a little bit more character development between the six stuck in the elevator, but besides that it was a good, solid film. Maybe Shyamalan should stop writing and directing and just stick to coming up with cool concepts.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

I saw the first Resident Evil and never felt compelled to watch any of the others, but this time I was in the mood to watch a guilty pleasure movie on a weekend afternoon, and this was perfect. It knew what it was, what kind of audience it had and didn’t have any extra level of pretention to try and make it a good film. It’s a good film because it’s a film about Milla Jovovich killing zombies and trying to bring down the Umbrella Corporation, nothing more. It’s a fun, fun, fun movie.

The Last Exorcism

Little girls being possessed freak me out. The trailer for this film freaked me out. I was expected to get scared out of my mind during this film. I was wrong. The mocumentary starts off comedic, portraying the priest protagonist as an arrogant douche bag who makes money off faking exorcisms and he decides he’s going to do one more based on a letter from a family in rural Louisiana. Throughout the film the audience is left questioning whether or not the little girl in question is actually possessed, which gives a new dimension to these stale idea. However, at the end of the film, there is an added twist which should’ve either gone on longer or not happened at all. That twist ending broke the film.

Monsters

My dad loves alien movies, so when I heard about this alien film was being shot by a father/daughter team I decided we had to see it together. It was a classic home-made, handheld camera film about aliens in Mexico and a man and woman having to cross the border into America without being killed by these aliens, these monsters. What gave this film an interesting twist was that it was less of an alien invasion film and more like a modern adaptation of It Happened One Night. A very enjoyable film.

Vampires Suck

I’m not usually drawn to these overly ridiculous parody films such as Disaster Movie and Superhero Movie, but I hate the Twilight films and didn’t mind watching them endlessly mocked. The most interesting part of the movie was the fact that the actors mocking Edward and Bella were actually better actors than their serious counterparts; Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson. This movie was great because the dialogue felt like a replication of the commentary my friends and I add whenever we watch one of the Twilight films.

Step-Up 3D

Everybody has a certain genre of film that is their complete guilty pleasure, mine is teen dance films. I love Save the Last Dance and Step-Up 2: the Streets, so yes; I was excited about this 3D dance spectacle. Though this film lacks any real plot like its predecessor, it is entirely fun and has does have the message to be true to yourself. I also made it a point to see the film in 3D because it was actually filmed with 3D cameras, unlike the rest of the “3D” films which have come out this summer, and I wanted them to dance in my face. All I wanted to do during the movie and after was DANCE!

Middle Men

A movie about the one thing internet is often used for, porn. Though this film is your basic overtly dramatization of actual events, it is none the less entertaining. The best part of the film are the interactions between Wayne Beering and Buck Dolby, portrayed by Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht. They add laugh out loud moments which propelled the story forward and added something different to the usual tale of porn and then men who make money off it.

Charlie St. Cloud

I’ve never seen any of the High School Musical movies and could never understand what the appeal is for Zac Efron, so I did go into the movie skeptical of what this movie would consist off. Though the plot is predictable and there are way too many close-up shots of Efron, it is a pretty decent film. The most impressive aspect of the film was Efron’s acting. I noticed in Seventeen Again that he had some acting capability and now I know it wasn’t a fluke.

Get Low

I would say this is the first serious film of the year. It is filled with excellent acting, directing, cinematography, etc. The chemistry of Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Bill Murray is phenomenal and pushes the story forward, keeping the viewer entertained and engaged. Robert Duvall’s character goes from grumpy old man to compassionate human being and it is compelling to watch.