movie review

Movie Review: I Admit It, I’m A Weenie

February 14, 2017 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Fatu Castillo

Staff Writer

I’ll be the first to admit that I, Fatu Castillo, am a weenie.

There, I said it, you can write it on my tombstone but I just don’t have the nerves for horror movies. Dark hallway with flickering lights? Nope. A poorly lit room filled with mannequins? Nope. Creepy looking antique dolls that move mysteriously? Nope.

Call me any name you want but I’ve learned to take anything mildly scary as a serious threat; I’d rather not have a heart attack when some demonic monster jumps onto the screen.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised when I could sit through Split without dying.

I went into this movie thinking that this movie was going to be a complete horror-fest.

The trailer made it look like there was going to be some kind of weird transformation, a little bit a cannibalism, and something happening with a dead buck.

And none of that stuff ever really came up during the movie. I mean, it happened but I never got see any of it. Yes, the bad guy did transform into some kind of monster but it was in a dark room. Yes, someone did munch on someone else but I couldn’t see the gore. And yes, there was a scene with a dead buck but it was hunting related.

There really wasn’t any horror going on in the movie, I felt relieved because I’m a Weenie and was misled because the trailer made it out to be the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So the trailer wasn’t the best thing to go by on what to expect, go figure. Overall, the movie wasn’t that scary to watch; if it had been then I wouldn’t have been able to watch it.

To start off, the plot had more holes than a broken, abandoned street in the middle of a ghost-town. There’s a scene where the obvious escape route was completely ignored in favor for an arbitrary reason. A character claims to be bullet proof, yet still feels the need to dodge said bullets and not charge at his intended victim. Several obvious instances where the bad guy can be killed yet no know thinks to pick up the newest sharp object and do it.

And my personal favorite, an old woman, who was fairly logical up until this point, goes off in the middle of the night to check if everything is okay, knowing there might be danger, but decides to keep her mouth shut and bring backup.

You know what I’m talking about, avoidable stuff.

But aside from some, a lot, of obvious mistakes, it was entertaining to watch. It didn’t exactly come off as the horror movie it was marketed as but something closer to a suspenseful mystery.

I had to keep track a background details like some desert conspiracy theorist to piece together what the heck was happening. There’s a lot of backstory that I needed to pay attention to otherwise nothing would’ve made sense. Though it started getting tiring after the movie tossed me seemingly key backstory without any context whatsoever for the fiftieth time, but that’s just me.

And the ending was a piece of work, I left feeling happy that at somebody survived yet exhausted knowing that a sequel probably gonna come out in the next couple of years, joy.

So would Split be worth your ticket fare? Probably not, if you’re looking to pee your pants, you might wanna save it to see Get Out or Rings. But yes, if you’d like to be at edge of your theater seat noting down minute details and trying to piece together a puzzle.

Movie Review: Rogue One Follows the Formula

January 9, 2017 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Aaron Watson-Sharer

Staff Writer

It’s no secret that Star Wars has been one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. In the past 40 years, each film has killed the box office and the 7th installment to the series netted over two billion. In 2012 George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney for four billion dollars. Star Wars has been held to a very high standard as maybe the best science fiction series to matriculate. So did Rogue One hold up to the reputation of the franchise?

Star Wars Rogue One tells the story of Jyn Erso, a woman who joins the rebel alliance in order to find her father, Galen Erso to uncover the plans for the Death Star. The first thing I noticed was that this movie had no chemistry between its characters. In every Star Wars movie there’s a core group of characters who have a sense of trust with each other, even if it takes time to develop. I didn’t like how nobody could trust anyone. I had a real issue with the fact that the droid K-2SO was the only character who knew where his loyalties stood.

The Force Awakens was a terrific movie overall, but it had one strong fault, it was too much of a reflection of A New Hope. Unfortunately, Rogue One failed to change that. Cassian was a proud rebel with hair trigger and it took him a while to come around towards Jyn Erso. He and his droid were a representation of Han Solo and Chewbacca. That’s the first experience Star Wars has had with a droid fighting for the rebels and making decisions by their own choice. Jyn Erso to me was shown as Luke Skywalker with a twist. It doesn’t take a Jedi to be a good rebel. A main issue I have with the new wave of Star Wars films (prequels excluded), is that we are fed a similar story again and again. Just a generation or two later.

Rogue One was a very entertaining film and I understood why we never saw any Jedi due to the Jedi Purge but WHERE WERE THE JEDI? The foundation of what makes science fiction movies like Terminator so popular isn’t that the storyline is pristine, but the ability to visualize something much greater than ourselves. To feed us fans our Jedi hunger, the writers implemented a blind but force-sensitive man named Chirrut Imwe. I liked this character, but he was boring. He was talented and of good heart, but that does not make for excitement. Assurance for him was “I am one with the force and the force is with me.” Hearing this 500 times was too reminiscent of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. The scriptwriters should have used their words more.

The biggest lure of this Star Wars installment was definitely the appearance of Darth Vader. My brothers actually went to the theatres twice just to see his scenes again. Darth Vader is terrifying. You hear it in his breath and even those most loyal to him are afraid of him. The way Vader moves and speaks, every action comes out with such conviction and that’s what I liked most about his appearance. We see the best character the Star Wars saga (and maybe also any movie franchise) has to offer.

All in all, this movie is reminiscent of the previous movies, with the same theme of a smaller, good hearted group trying to battle an ultimate evil. Rogue One had a great battle, the rebels first stand against the Empire that set the pace for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia to become fictional heroes. In the end, Rogue One held true to a Star Wars caliber movie, but failed to exceed my expectations.

Movie Review: Upstaged by a Talking Sausage

December 23, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Fatu Castillo

Staff Writer

Hands down, without any competition, Laika entertainment Studios is the best in the movie making industry when it comes to producing stop-motion films. Artists at Laika work their gluteus maximus’ off modeling puppets, making individual faces for characters, and creating sets.

Even if the name doesn’t ring any bells, you’ve probably seen at least one of their feature films. whether it be the nightmare inducing Coraline, the surprisingly emotional ParaNorman, or the family-oriented Boxtrolls.

Now their newest film, Kubo and the Two Strings, has joined their ranks after five years of production.

And I have to say, it’s a pretty epic movie.

The story starts off intense; a full moon looms in a windy night sky as waves crash around a tiny, rickety boat. I was filled with anxiety as the boat comes into focus and I realized that it holds a mother and her infant child. It gets worse as a great wave curls onto the scene, ready to smash the tiny boat to bits, I thought I might have a heart attack.

Saraitu, the mother and a supporting character, manages to split the oncoming wave using a burst of magic played off a shamisen. For a brief moment, I was filled with pure relief as the wind stopped howling and the waves calmed.

Until I saw the massive tidal wave forming behind the boat, the one Saraitu couldn’t see. This one did hit the boat, smashed it to pieces, and left mother and child to the ferocity of the ocean.

They both manage to survive, by some luck of the universe, but just barely.

After nearly having a heart attack, passing out from relief, and having my heart split in half only to have it fixed again: I was hooked.

For the rest of the movie I watched eagerly as Kubo dutifully cared for his mother and told stories in his village to seek out a living, laughed at the endless banter between Monkey and Beetle, two supporting characters, and smiled when it was revealed how Sarai and her husband, Hanzo, fell in love.

Turns out they had tried to kill each other, though that didn’t take away from the romance.

The whole movie had me on an emotional rollercoaster, from laughing to crying to holding my breath over the wellbeing of a talking beetle.

Which is why I was so heartbroken when I learned my new favorite movie had been upstaged by a talking sausage that can’t go 5 minutes without cursing.

As fantastic as a movie like Kubo and the Two Strings is, and it is really fantastic, it had to go up against giants on it’s opening weekend. Giants like Suicide Squad and, you guessed it, Sausage Party. Kubo and the Two Strings had a budget of $60 million and only made $12 million on its opening weekend.

We have to support good storytelling and animation when it arises, otherwise we’ll be stuck watching the same CGI explosions and listening to the same profanity.

Review: Moana Redefines the Disney Princess

December 13, 2016 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Deja Harrison

Staff Writer

Beware: unavoidable spoilers in this review!

As a girl growing up, I had the craziest obsession with Disney princesses. Every year for halloween I was a Disney princess until the age of 12 when I had pretty much did them all from Cinderella to Tiana. But as I got older, I noticed the lack of diversity in the princesses I grew up adoring. Disney princesses are typically portrayed as skinny, white and fawning over a prince. This bothered me because I could never relate to the princesses I grew up adoring, none of them looked like me.

This year, however, Disney got my attention again with the release of their latest film. Recently Disney has been trying to mix things up a bit and portray different races and body types of young women.

Their newest princess, Moana, is a polynesian teenager on a mission to save her people from the destruction of the world. Moana is less of a princess and more of a chief to her people on her island of Motunui, which is an early settlement in the North island of New Zealand. She is heir to her father who grooms her into becoming a proper leader of their homeland.

The movie starts with showing a story of how the world was formed: in the beginning Earth was just oceans, until the island goddess Te Fiti came about and used her heart (a small green stone) to create life. Without it all life would die. Her heart was stolen by a shape-shifting demigod named Maui who wanted to give it to humans so that they would be able to create life on their own. Maui was then battled by Te Ka, goddess of lava, for the heart. He loses, leaving him and the heart lost in the ocean. The ocean chooses Moana a few years later to sail the oceans, find Maui, and have him return the heart.

The only problem with this quest — and, being a Disney movie, there has to be some kind of challenge — is that Moana doesn’t know how to sail, and her father won’t let her or anyone else leave the reef because of the dangers of the ocean. Moana finally decides to leave after the sudden death of her grandmother who tells her she has to save their island or it will die because the heart of Te Fiti has not been returned. The rest of the movie revolves around Moana setting out on her quest to save the world. With Maui, her pet rooster Hei Hei, and the ocean as her allies she is unstoppable.

Overall I found the movie very enjoyable. The story that was told is based off a real Polynesian legend about the oceans and islands which I find very interesting. I think that Disney did an amazing job portraying the culture and a young woman of color. Unlike earlier princesses of color like Tiana, Moana doesn’t look or act like every other Disney princess and I think that’s what makes her stand out a lot more. She is strong and doesn’t need a man or anyone else to rescue her, she is the rescuer of her own people. The only negative aspect of this movie is the confusing portrayal of Polynesian and Hawaiian culture. I was very unaware that she was polynesian until I looked at the plot of the movie and it said so; Disney gave the impression that she and her people where Hawaiian. I wish they would have done a better job of making it very clear that she was Polynesian and not Hawaiian because children should know the difference. Still the movie completely exceeded all of my expectations and I applaud all those involved. It is a very good movie for children of different culture, body types, and goals to watch.

Interstellar Movie Review: Failing to Fly High

November 13, 2014 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Sean Morris

Staff Writer

Admittedly when I came into the theatre I didn’t know what to expect. But when I left, I still didn’t know what to expect in what is probably one of the most odd, hard to follow movies that I have watched and Christopher Nolan has done. I honestly needed to read the Wikipedia article of the plot before coming here, so I knew what I was actually talking about.

Essentially the film takes place in a world that can no longer support humans so Matthew McConaughey’s character, a former astronaut named Cooper, who, along with a team of scientists, head out into space, specifically though a mysterious wormhole in search for a planet that can sustain humanity.

To the film’s credit, it has MANY impressive visual feats that makes it a shoo- in for at least a nomination for best visual effects. For example, when Copper and his team are first traveling through space it has some beautiful shots of Earth from a distance, Saturn and especially when they travel through a wormhole. It also has a well-picked cast that carry off their characters fairly well, even if the characters themselves may not be fully developed or rounded. It’s able to pull off some emotional moments fairly well, even leaving me slightly teary-eyed.

However, it is overall a missed opportunity and failed to reach the heights and ideals it promised us as an audience. We come in thinking it’ll be about trying to secure humanity’s future beyond the planet we came from and ultimately leaving the world that we’ve had our collective history on. Instead we had Matthew Mcconaughey complain about not seeing his kids. The go-to-space-to-save-the-earth plot is a great concept to work with but got so tangled up in the individual character’s drama’s and problems it began to lose its overlaying sense of epicness. The world is dying, but the film only portrays one small town and how they are dealing with that, when the film could have shown how it affects the rest of the world-in big cities and internationally. And not to mention that with the entire world at stake, the majority of people working on this mission are white, which made the focus of the film seem narrow.

While I felt that Christopher Nolan’s film Inception was a masterpiece, Interstellar failed. In broad strokes they had similar storylines- massive ideas and concepts that revealed intimate moments of the human experience. In Inception’s case, it made more sense as it’s core was exploring the human mind, while Interstellar is suppose to be exploring the universe and the collective mass of humanity, so trying to whittle it down to the relationship between one man and his daughter didn’t feel right.

I would recommend the film if you’re interested in big space shots, beautiful cinematography and solid acting, but would not recommend it if you’re someone who needs a clear plot line to follow or doesn’t like not getting what they came for.