127 Hours

Right off the bat I must say that I wish I saw this movie when it was in theaters last year, because it was fucking awesome. Director/writer Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) did an amazing job of recreating the harrowing survival story of adventurer Aron Ralston, portrayed by James Franco (Freaks and Geeks, Pineapple Express, Spiderman).

So if you don’t know (or you’ve been under a rock for the last year [BAHAHAHAHA]) 127 Hours is an inspiring story of survival against insurmountable odds and also a story of how the things and people we take advantage of come back and can be the last thread that keeps us alive.  From the opening scene you can see a hint of the cinematic awesomeness that went into this movie as you see scenes of thousands of people moving, cheering, living showing the amazing situations in which people come together in swarms juxtaposed. After this you are given a taste of who Ralston (Franco) is: a young man with a thirst for adventure. Ralston leaves his house in Utah in the very early morning hours, with a bike, rock climbing equipment and all of the other adventurer accoutrement. Ralston then drive excitedly, in the dark, to Blue John Canyon.

That morning Aron throws some Phish on his MP3 Player and heads out into the vast Utah canyons with a handy cam recording the whole adventure. We are presented with stunning shots of the canyons and far-stretching, dry rolling plains. Ralston bikes for sometime before setting out on foot to find a location he was eagerly set on getting too in record breaking time; until he meets up with some fine hiking honeys. He takes the two girls out to some crazy underground pool and chills and flirts with them and shit before setting back out on his journey (the real Aron Ralston claims that this did not actually happen and he only showed the girls some rock climbing tips, other than that Ralston claims that this film is as close to a documentary of his situation as you could get). 

This is where the story really takes off and where the “meat and potatoes” of this film lays. While traversing the cliffs and crevices of Blue John Canyon Aron steps awkwardly on a boulder and falls into a crevice; trapping his arm between the boulder and the wall (I guess you could say he was stuck between a rock and a hard place =\ ). Aron goes through his supplies which consisted of some carabineers, ropes, a small amount of water, a dyeing head lamp, some food, his cameras and a crappy multi-tool. Over the next  6 days Aron must overcome and survive the mental and physical extremes his body goes through as he struggles for food and water.

While he’s trapped with the boulder, Aron must delve deep into his mind to find the motivation to keep living and trying. During this time you are presented with scenes from his life where you see the many relationships that he has had and left behind and the impact that they have on him.

127 Hours is one amazing movie which really plays on your emotions. During this film I found myself looking back into my own life and the people I’ve forgotten about or left behind. I often overlook the people and situations in my life that have forever  changed me and given me the opportunities to live the life I’ve been so blessed to have. I love and hate when movies do that to me. SO ANYWAY, 127 Hours was absolutely awesome and on my inconsistent scale receives a 9.3. That is all.   

Battle: Los Angeles

Seeing LA burn puts a smile on my face

So last night I hit up a local beer hole with an old pal and then dragged our sloppy asses to the movie theatre to see the latest in a string of alien apocalypse filmes Battle: LA, starring Aaron Eckhart (Thank You For Smoking) and Michelle Rodriguez (S.W.A.T.). From the beginning of this movie I knew I would have to brace myself for some very atypical disaster movie cheese. The film starts off with some very Armageddonesq cheesy character introductions, where we meet the typical group of movie marines, as well as their cheesy melodramatic back stories. The main character, SSgt. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), is the typical seasoned war vet who's "seen too much", who we learn at the beginning is considered kind of a traitor throughout the other marines for getting some men killed in the Middle East.
  

Following the character introductions the story starts to pick up at a feverish pace. You learn that Alien crafts (origionally thought to me meteors [DERP]) are landing, dropping off aliens and fucking up everything in sight. And of course the marines are too the rescue.
 

After a while though the movie starts to come into it's own and you can actually sort of enjoy it. I found the camera work really cool, the film uses a lot of handycamish shooting techniques and in your face angles to add more of a sense of realism (though I'm sure it could make a lot of people sea sick). I was happy to see that they did didn't fuck up when designing the aliens. The creatures were a species that survives off of water and rely on surgically implanted devices to move quickly and fight. The aliens were, from what I could see, eyeless and very skinny.

Though there are some cheesy moments that will have you rolling your eyes, and the fact that this is nothing more than the typical alien disaster apocalypse movie it was actually enjoy able. The explosions and CG were enough to keep me awake, and are the best part of this movie. You basically don't go more than 5 minutes without hearing something blow up or the exchange of bullets. Overall Battle LA was a good movie, but with several character, dialogue and storyline issues plus a distracting amount of product placement. I give it a 7 alien water sacks out of 10   
 

Easy A - Easily an A.... ha ha ha....ha.......ha.

So it seems that lately I’ve been branching out beyond my comfort zone and indulging in movies an television I usually wouldn’t have anything to do with. This week par example, after a brutally stressful situation at home I took my woman out for a nice movie date.
On this particular outing we landed on seeing the motion picture: Easy A starring Superbad’s Emma Stone and Amanda Bynes (pretending to be young enough to be in high school).

I had seen commercials for this movie plastered on bus stops and television commercials for the last month or so and figured it would be just a horrible cookie cutter teen comedy to be used as a springboard to help catapult a young actress’s blossoming career, turns out I was sort of kind of halfish wrong? Well in the sense that I’m sure this will be great for Emma Stone’s name, but it wasn’t exactly horrible, or particularly cookie cutter.

The movie is about this girl named Olive, who despite being a crazy hot teenager in a California high school, is still a virgin. Through a series of rumors (started by her) she ends up basically becoming the schools prostitute in an attempt to surround her name with infamy and legend... When really, she just accepts gift cards to different stores in exchange for starting rumors about her fucking around with various nerds and gay guys to stop them from getting shit-kicked at school. Of course, this amazing plan ( =\ ) ends up going south and a lot of hilarity and sadness ensues.

I found that at the beginning of the film Easy A was trying way too hard to disassociate itself from other movies tied into a similar genre. There was a few awkward points where the basically made attempts at calling itself unpretentious when really it should have been left to flow naturally. But I guess character introduction is either really smooth, or kind of rough there isn’t really an in between point.

Overall though I found this movie very funny and easy to pay attention too (where a lot of movies leave me looking over my shoulder trying to read the backwards letters for the deaf people on the thing above the projector). The interactions with her parents (who are new aged and funny, but not annoying like the fucking god damn parents from Juno) are worked in smoothly and with a lot of well timed and placed laughs. Also the adage of the schools Christian Youth Group (lead by Amanda Bynes) ended up creating some good Clergy based jokes.

Overall Easy A was a very pleasant surprise of a movie. I love when I walk into a movie that I think I’m going to be disappointed by, and come out with a smile on my face. This film achieved its goal of taking my mind off of my at-home drama, and to that I think ye Easy A. On a scale from 1–Awesome I’d give it a "Great Job Sport" (I think that’s like an 8 on a normal scale)