REVIEW: Melancholia

In honor of Valentine's Day here is my review to a film that doesn't really have a love story, but would be an interesting flick to watch with your significant other. Lars von Trier's Melancholia is a wonderful film that explores someone with a deep state of depression coupled with a cataclysmic event. This film is definitely not for everyone, but it was one of the more profound movie experiences I have had in a long time.

Louder Than Words

I cannot call myself a filmmaker without making films myself. Here is one I recently completed for my USC Cinematic Arts application entitled Louder Than Words.

REVIEW: The Devil Inside

I am tired of found footage films. Once in awhile found footage films work, like Cloverfield  and the original Paranormal Activity.What makes them work is the simple fact that they are creative and they bring new and fresh takes to the genre. This film neither has any creativity nor does it bring anything to the found footage genre. 

REVIEW: Drive

Drive is an excellent display of what films could be if you removed all the extra Hollywood non-sense. The set up is simple. A stuntman/getaway driver falls for his next door neighbor, Irene. After a few weeks it is revealed that Irene(Carey Mulligan)actually has a man that will be soon released from prison. Throw in members of a crime organization and you have Drive.

The French Connection

I just want to start off by saying I have not been following the Republicans election campaigns as much as I probably should be. However one does not need to follow a campaign to realize when one of the candidate's is running a smear campaign, which they all do. This ad has to be one of the best displays of stupidity I have seen in awhile. I am of course speaking about the fact that Newt Gingrich is criticizing Mitt Romney because he speaks French.

                                                                      

New Year. New Beginning.

I hardly posted anything on here last year(actually nothing at all) but now that will all change. I decided to give the blogging world another chance. In the coming weeks I will post reviews about movies I have recently watched, some new and some old. First on my list is Nicolas Winding Refn's critically acclaimed film Drive.

REVIEW: Captain America: The First Avenger

Easily the best comic book film of 2011 so far, Captain America: The First Avenger excellently displays how comic book movies can in fact be full of heart and soul. Movies like  Thor and The Green Lantern try to tell grounded and heartfelt stories, they both failed to reach their respective goals. Thor's dark and incomprehensible action sequences took me out of it's more human moments. The Green Lantern's Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds who was surprisingly  the biggest strength of the film, lacked any real reason to care for anything that happened to Hal or for anyone else for that matter. Joe Johnston's Captain America not only strives to be a more grounded human story, it surpasses what came before it and is ultimately a success, all without The Green Lantern's reportedly 300 million dollar budget(For that much money, you would expect the villain not to look like the Smog Monster from Godzilla.) By giving us something to care for and by having small but important action sequences, the film succeeds not only as a super-hero movie, but as a story that happens to have a super hero in it.