8/10
I am not a huge boxing fan but Rocky is a pretty good movie. It’s a Sylvester Stallone classic about Rocky Balboa the noname heavyweight boxer who gets a chance to fight Apollo Creed the heavyweight champ. The movie starts out with him barely getting by in life. He is a dock worker and a thug living a trashy life. When Apollo Creed decides to fight a small time boxer for publicity Rocky gets the chance and begins training. On the side he starts dating Adrian and uses the famous “YO ADRIAN!!” line. Rocky is one of those motivational sports movies that makes you feel good. The acting is good and while a bit melodramatic it fits the time the movie was made. Rocky is a classic and boxing fans should definitely check it out. As for others it is a pretty cool classic movie so see it.
| MPAA Rating: | PG |
Orange County like its main character wants to be more than it really is. The main character Shaun (Colin Hanks) succeeds but the movie itself does not get much outside of being a dumb teen comedy without much comedy. It tries to blend comedy with drama and comes out as movie that is just lacking. Shaun is a regular teen dude who loves to surf and hang out with his friends. One night one of his three close friends dies surfing and this makes Shaun think about his life more. He also finds the novel “Straight Jacket” and reads it. After finishing Shaun knows that he wants to be a writer and study at Stanford University. He makes that his dream and tries his hardest to accomplish it. His life isn’t the easiest with divorced parents, a drug addicted brother (Jack Black), a drunken mother, a seemingly unloving father, and the fact that his SAT scores were switched out with someone elses. Throughout all this the movie tries to infuse good lessons but bad timing on them and other negative things keep it from becoming the higher comedy it is trying to be. The acting is not that great and the plot’s direction starts out good then gets worse as the movie goes on. This review sounds super negative but the movie was okay because it did have some funny parts. Just the fact that Orange County truly could have been so much better than it is really makes me review negatively.
People rant and rave about global warming destroying the environment. In The Day After Tomorrow it really does when it causes a ton of natural disasters followed by the earth freezing. Dennis Quaid plays climatologist Jack Hall who knows somthing bad is coming because of the polar ice caps melting or something like that. He warns people but nobody really believes him. His seventeen year old son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in New York on a school trip at this time. When the crazy weather starts he is trapped there. Jack promises to brave the storm and come for Sam. The overall plot for The Day After Tomorrow is unbelievable and somewhat dumb but it’s alright for a disaster movie. The actors do an okay job but nothing that stands out. The main selling point for the movie are the effects and seeing people basically in peril from the weather. It does have its entertaining moments, but they really don’t make the movie. If you are a huge fan of disaster movies like Twister then you will probably really like this but if not then its the type of movie that is okay the first time watching but really has nothing special to it.
This movie reveiw is different than most. Taking into account how old it is I am not going to rate it out of ten. Recently I read the book Dracula and watched this movie for a school project. I guess it was good for its time but definitely does not hold up well now. All the nostalgia buffs would probably argue with that last statement but truthfully who really enjoys watching movies this old besides film students and old people. I really enjoyed the book so this review may be somewhat biased since the movie was quite a bit different than the book. This movie was originally a play and did so sucessfully that it was made into a movie. Bela Lugosi is the star and he is considered the face of Dracula by many. I on the other hand thought his face was ridiculously funny when he was trying to be scary. I really like some old movies but this was just not my cup of tea.
War of the Worlds is a sci-fi alien invasion flick. It is very loosely based on the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. Tom Cruise plays Ray Ferrier a divorced dad who takes his kids one weekend. During this weekend ALIENS ATTACK!! They come down in a lightning storm and pilot huge tripods that vaporize everybody in their paths. Ray’s loose plan is to get the kids to safety then take them back to their mother. His son hates him and he doesn’t really know his daughter. Over the course of the movie they bond. Dakota Fanning plays his daughter and does a good job acting but is super annoying with her screaming for like the first half of the movie. Cruise also has an execptionally good performance. They work well together and while action is not going on they move the movie along. The main point of the movie though should be the special effects and the alien action. There are huge explosions and people vaporized. The effects are great and the action is intense, but only shortly. There are many boring parts and there wasn’t enough focus on the aliens. Also the ending came too abruptly, but it’s still a good popcorn flick.
If you want to see a truly unoriginal, unscary, and predictable movie then look no further. Now I haven’t seen many Japanese style horror movies but I know that this movies “borrows” most of its content. It’s the typical vengeful ghost story. A photographer Ben(Joshua Jackson) and his wife Jane (Rachael Taylor) move to Tokyo for a photography job. On the way they hit a girl and after that weird things start happening. Many of their pictures have an eerie blur that looks like a ghost in them. Soon Ben and Rachael discover that there’s many of these “spirit pictures” that occur when a ghost is around that needs somthing before they can R.I.P. The scares the movie has are cheap with a few gross-out kinda deals. The acting is pretty bland and the main characters don’t really click together. As I said before the story is unoriginal and bland. Don’t check this one out.
Happy Gilmore stars Adam Sandler as a hockey player named Happy. He has a lot of heart and a super powerful shot but the only problem is that he stinks at skating and has never made the team. One day while messing around he discovers that he has a 400 yard golf swing and starts getting into golf. His motivation is to make money to buy back his grandmother’s house which she lost because of not paying taxes. Happy joins the Pro Golf Tour and definitely doesn’t fit in at all because of anger issues and crazy antics. The simple story works for the movie and is pretty fun. Sandler is good in his way of being funny which is a lot of yelling and being obnoxious. The scene with Bob Barker is particularly hilarious. Happy Gilmore may not be a deep movie but it is entertaining and turns a really boring sport into a funny movie.
