For those of you who do not know Welcome Back, Kotter, just watch his Youtube video:
What I loved about Welcome Back, Kotter was that even though the Sweat Hogs were the school “gang” of remedial students,
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Remembering Welcome Back, Kotter
For those of you who do not know Welcome Back, Kotter, just watch his Youtube video:
What I loved about Welcome Back, Kotter was that even though the Sweat Hogs were the school “gang” of remedial students,
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Crazy Stupid Love Review
The main plot of the story of the movie is about a man named Cal (played by Steve Carrell) whose wife named Emily (played by Julianne Moore) divorces him, so
Friday, August 19, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens Review
Monday, August 15, 2011
Larry Crowne Review
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Rise of the Planet of the Apes Review
I’m kind of on the fence with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I liked the story. I liked the special effects. My problem was the characters. I did a great job in explaining the origins of the original Planet of the Apes, but for movies like this to seem plausible, it requires dumb main characters making dumb decisions. It was these dumb decisions, which annoyed me enough to not like the movie as much as I would like to like it. Let me break it down.
The story. Was it a good story? For Planet of the Apes fans, it was a great story. For non-Planet of the Apes fans, it was ok. One of the best approaches of this movie was humanizing the monkeys. It told a great story of how this genetically enhanced intelligent monkey came to existence and why in the future, the monkey’s dominated the earth, and the humans eventually became extinct. The monkey side of the story was the best part of this movie. The writers took cues from the past regarding slavery and mistreatment, which eventually became the monkey’s angst toward human beings. As time went on, the monkey’s unite, escape their shelter-like prison, and find refuge in the redwood forest. The other side of the story is the humans who used monkey’s as guinea pigs with kind hearted scientist that wanted cure mankind of Alzheimer’s disease. It was the human part of the story and the stupid decisions they made which is why this movie was ridiculous. Mesh the two together, you have a great monkey movie with stupid humans.
The characters. Did I like the characters? The main character is Ceasar, a born-intelligently-enhanced chimp who was born by a mother chimp on whom the scientist experimented. The special effects used to create this monkey were amazing. The filmmakers used the Avatar computer generated technique whereas they used an actual human (played by Andy Serkis) to create the movements and facial movements of the CGI-monkey. Him and the other monkeys out-acted the humans. The scientist played by James Franco was stupid. The girl-friend played by Freida Pinto was a pointless character that did nothing. The CEO of the drug company was stupid. Practically all the human roles were stupid people. Further explanation on this will be in my Chazztastic Thoughts. But I understood why they had to be stupid with stupid decisions, but because if they made the correct decision, the apes would never had risen.
The special effects. Though special effects were the best part of the movie, I don’t think it was more cool than fighting robots, magical children, or an American superhero icon. As cool as these intelligent monkey’s looked, acted, and moved, one problem I had with the special effects is trying to keep the size and scale of the monkeys consistent. Sometimes they looked bigger and sometimes they looked smaller. Unlike fighting robots whereas as long as they are as big as houses and buildings, they will look real, but the intelligent monkeys can’t realistically be taller than humans (except for the gorilla). And, to me, how big and small they were when compared to humans had some inconsistency. Why does that matter? Because consistency in a movie adds to the plausibility of the movie which I look for in movies like this.
Now for some Chazztastic Thoughts:
• The Scientist. The scientist was played by James Franco. Did he ever look like a scientist to get this role?
• The Veternarian. His love interest was played by Freida Pinto. Besides the 2-min where we see her as a veternarian, did her character even matter in the story?
• The Lab Assistant. He gets sick. He works for a multi-million dollar drug research facility. You know he has health insurance. Why didn’t you just go to the doctor?
• The CEO. Did bother any of you that the CEO of DRUG research facility was a black man?
• The Neighbor. If you were really scared for you children that a monkey was living next door, why didn’t you just constantly complain to Animal Control to get the intelligent monkey taken away? If he did that while the intelligent monkey was young, the movie would’ve been done a long time ago.
• The Intelligent Monkeys. The drug they were exposed to was for intelligence. Why did they eventually have super strength and near-invulnerability?
• The Police. Now, if you get 911 calls of monkeys running wild in the city, wouldn’t first reaction be that they must be rabid, a threat to humanity, and should be killed on site.
• Where were the news helicopters?
I can keep going on with my Chazztastic Thoughts. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m really on the fence with this movie. Though I liked the special effects and was ok with the story, the characters in the story was too stupid for me which was an insult to my intellect. On that note, I rate the movie: BlueRay rental or HD Cable TV. As for paying for it on the movie theaters, if there’s nothing else to watch and you really want to watch a movie, then it’s watchable. But the feeling you get from the movie theater is the exact same feeling as if you watched it on Blue Ray/HD Cable.
The story. Was it a good story? For Planet of the Apes fans, it was a great story. For non-Planet of the Apes fans, it was ok. One of the best approaches of this movie was humanizing the monkeys. It told a great story of how this genetically enhanced intelligent monkey came to existence and why in the future, the monkey’s dominated the earth, and the humans eventually became extinct. The monkey side of the story was the best part of this movie. The writers took cues from the past regarding slavery and mistreatment, which eventually became the monkey’s angst toward human beings. As time went on, the monkey’s unite, escape their shelter-like prison, and find refuge in the redwood forest. The other side of the story is the humans who used monkey’s as guinea pigs with kind hearted scientist that wanted cure mankind of Alzheimer’s disease. It was the human part of the story and the stupid decisions they made which is why this movie was ridiculous. Mesh the two together, you have a great monkey movie with stupid humans.
The characters. Did I like the characters? The main character is Ceasar, a born-intelligently-enhanced chimp who was born by a mother chimp on whom the scientist experimented. The special effects used to create this monkey were amazing. The filmmakers used the Avatar computer generated technique whereas they used an actual human (played by Andy Serkis) to create the movements and facial movements of the CGI-monkey. Him and the other monkeys out-acted the humans. The scientist played by James Franco was stupid. The girl-friend played by Freida Pinto was a pointless character that did nothing. The CEO of the drug company was stupid. Practically all the human roles were stupid people. Further explanation on this will be in my Chazztastic Thoughts. But I understood why they had to be stupid with stupid decisions, but because if they made the correct decision, the apes would never had risen.
The special effects. Though special effects were the best part of the movie, I don’t think it was more cool than fighting robots, magical children, or an American superhero icon. As cool as these intelligent monkey’s looked, acted, and moved, one problem I had with the special effects is trying to keep the size and scale of the monkeys consistent. Sometimes they looked bigger and sometimes they looked smaller. Unlike fighting robots whereas as long as they are as big as houses and buildings, they will look real, but the intelligent monkeys can’t realistically be taller than humans (except for the gorilla). And, to me, how big and small they were when compared to humans had some inconsistency. Why does that matter? Because consistency in a movie adds to the plausibility of the movie which I look for in movies like this.
Now for some Chazztastic Thoughts:
• The Scientist. The scientist was played by James Franco. Did he ever look like a scientist to get this role?
• The Veternarian. His love interest was played by Freida Pinto. Besides the 2-min where we see her as a veternarian, did her character even matter in the story?
• The Lab Assistant. He gets sick. He works for a multi-million dollar drug research facility. You know he has health insurance. Why didn’t you just go to the doctor?
• The CEO. Did bother any of you that the CEO of DRUG research facility was a black man?
• The Neighbor. If you were really scared for you children that a monkey was living next door, why didn’t you just constantly complain to Animal Control to get the intelligent monkey taken away? If he did that while the intelligent monkey was young, the movie would’ve been done a long time ago.
• The Intelligent Monkeys. The drug they were exposed to was for intelligence. Why did they eventually have super strength and near-invulnerability?
• The Police. Now, if you get 911 calls of monkeys running wild in the city, wouldn’t first reaction be that they must be rabid, a threat to humanity, and should be killed on site.
• Where were the news helicopters?
I can keep going on with my Chazztastic Thoughts. Like I mentioned earlier, I’m really on the fence with this movie. Though I liked the special effects and was ok with the story, the characters in the story was too stupid for me which was an insult to my intellect. On that note, I rate the movie: BlueRay rental or HD Cable TV. As for paying for it on the movie theaters, if there’s nothing else to watch and you really want to watch a movie, then it’s watchable. But the feeling you get from the movie theater is the exact same feeling as if you watched it on Blue Ray/HD Cable.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Captain America Review
Captain America Review
Captain America: The First Avenger – I loved it. One of the major problems that movie companies had until the 2000s was how to make comic book fighting sequences look realistic. Take a look at the 80s version of Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man. Just Youtube some of their clips and you’ll see how hilarious these characters looked, acted, and fought. If you would throw those characters in the middle of Compton trying to pull off their superhero antics, they would die. But that was the limitation of film making back then. In comic books, though the action is a literal freeze frame, your imagination went wild on how they fought the enemy. Now fast forward to the present. Because of CGI, chromakeying, and other advancements of technology, filmmakers are no longer limited to what they can do, and when it came to Captain America, they put their creativity all on the table for the audience to enjoy.
Before I continue on, we should first understand that there are no novels (and even, graphic novels) that can translate perfectly to film. Plus, with different Marvel comic book storylines, Captain America’s history has always been slight tweaked on how Steve Rogers became Captain America. The movie did a great job in picking the best parts of Captain America’s history to make the most coherent story for all the characters involved. For true comic book purists, they may have caught all the discrepancies between the comic book and the movies, but when looking at the whole cast, every big and small character had the right size part and screen time to make you believe that this story could have actually happened.
The special effects were amazing. Everyone who watched Chris Evans in the Fantastic Four knows that that boy got a fit, yoked body (no homo, guys), but when you see the pre-transformed Steve Rogers with a Chris Evans face, it looked real. Even in the trailers, you can see the little runt Steve Rogers trying to fight the bully, and you’re thinking, “Is that really Chris Evans? How did they do that?” Back in the 80s and 90s, the only way filmmakers could pull this off would be to get a smaller Chris Evans look-a-like, and then after the transformation, change him to the real Chris Evans. Now, if they did that with this movie, I probably would have not liked the movie as much, but they didn’t. They used current technology to make Chris Evans look puny and it looked real. And when it came to the action scenes, Captain America moved just like you would imagine as he did in the comic book. Jumping around, throwing his shield, and beating up the bad guys looked like a comic book story pane came to life.
One of the awesome surprises that I didn’t notice in the trailer was the appearance of the Howling Commandos. In Marvel Universe folklore, the Howling Commandos were the original Nick Fury’s special team to fight the Nazi’s. I admit I had to Wikipedia to further learn about the Howling Commandos, but when I watched the movie, I started to remember that there was a special WWII combat team that Marvel created, but I never remembered that that team was with Captain America. After some research, lo and behold, it was the Howling Commandos. I thought that it was cool for the producers to include them in the movie. Another cool thing was that one of the Howling Commando’s was ASIAN-AMERICAN, and he was from FRESNO. How often in white America do you see a film showing an Asian-American playing a role in defeating the Nazis? Me being a Filipino born in America, I found that to be great!
Now for some Chazztastic Thoughts:
• Why is it that after all Captain America has done, he never got promoted? Wouldn’t you think that after defeating the bad guys, he would’ve had some accommodations and be promoted in rank?
• I was never in the military, but isn’t it that when you get promoted, you get a raise in pay? So, he did all he did and still got the same pay as other Captains? WTH?
• Since the military refers to the personnel with title and then last name (like General MacArthur), does the Captain America have a first name? I think his first name is called White.
• Now at the end when the plane goes down and he “dies”, did anyone realize that he died a virgin? His whole story is being the small fry that sucked with the women. As Captain America, it’s implied that he still sucked with the women. So when he went down with the airplane and “died”, he apparently died without knowing the love of a beautiful woman!
So, who do I rate this movie? I rate this movie: Movie Theater and 3D. It was well worth the money.
Now here's the video review:
Captain America: The First Avenger – I loved it. One of the major problems that movie companies had until the 2000s was how to make comic book fighting sequences look realistic. Take a look at the 80s version of Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man. Just Youtube some of their clips and you’ll see how hilarious these characters looked, acted, and fought. If you would throw those characters in the middle of Compton trying to pull off their superhero antics, they would die. But that was the limitation of film making back then. In comic books, though the action is a literal freeze frame, your imagination went wild on how they fought the enemy. Now fast forward to the present. Because of CGI, chromakeying, and other advancements of technology, filmmakers are no longer limited to what they can do, and when it came to Captain America, they put their creativity all on the table for the audience to enjoy.
Before I continue on, we should first understand that there are no novels (and even, graphic novels) that can translate perfectly to film. Plus, with different Marvel comic book storylines, Captain America’s history has always been slight tweaked on how Steve Rogers became Captain America. The movie did a great job in picking the best parts of Captain America’s history to make the most coherent story for all the characters involved. For true comic book purists, they may have caught all the discrepancies between the comic book and the movies, but when looking at the whole cast, every big and small character had the right size part and screen time to make you believe that this story could have actually happened.
The special effects were amazing. Everyone who watched Chris Evans in the Fantastic Four knows that that boy got a fit, yoked body (no homo, guys), but when you see the pre-transformed Steve Rogers with a Chris Evans face, it looked real. Even in the trailers, you can see the little runt Steve Rogers trying to fight the bully, and you’re thinking, “Is that really Chris Evans? How did they do that?” Back in the 80s and 90s, the only way filmmakers could pull this off would be to get a smaller Chris Evans look-a-like, and then after the transformation, change him to the real Chris Evans. Now, if they did that with this movie, I probably would have not liked the movie as much, but they didn’t. They used current technology to make Chris Evans look puny and it looked real. And when it came to the action scenes, Captain America moved just like you would imagine as he did in the comic book. Jumping around, throwing his shield, and beating up the bad guys looked like a comic book story pane came to life.
One of the awesome surprises that I didn’t notice in the trailer was the appearance of the Howling Commandos. In Marvel Universe folklore, the Howling Commandos were the original Nick Fury’s special team to fight the Nazi’s. I admit I had to Wikipedia to further learn about the Howling Commandos, but when I watched the movie, I started to remember that there was a special WWII combat team that Marvel created, but I never remembered that that team was with Captain America. After some research, lo and behold, it was the Howling Commandos. I thought that it was cool for the producers to include them in the movie. Another cool thing was that one of the Howling Commando’s was ASIAN-AMERICAN, and he was from FRESNO. How often in white America do you see a film showing an Asian-American playing a role in defeating the Nazis? Me being a Filipino born in America, I found that to be great!
Now for some Chazztastic Thoughts:
• Why is it that after all Captain America has done, he never got promoted? Wouldn’t you think that after defeating the bad guys, he would’ve had some accommodations and be promoted in rank?
• I was never in the military, but isn’t it that when you get promoted, you get a raise in pay? So, he did all he did and still got the same pay as other Captains? WTH?
• Since the military refers to the personnel with title and then last name (like General MacArthur), does the Captain America have a first name? I think his first name is called White.
• Now at the end when the plane goes down and he “dies”, did anyone realize that he died a virgin? His whole story is being the small fry that sucked with the women. As Captain America, it’s implied that he still sucked with the women. So when he went down with the airplane and “died”, he apparently died without knowing the love of a beautiful woman!
So, who do I rate this movie? I rate this movie: Movie Theater and 3D. It was well worth the money.
Now here's the video review:
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