If you're wondering, the movies (in order) are:
93% on Rotten Tomatoes
I was so super excited to watch this in the cinemas because of my huge girl crush on Jennifer Lawrence as well as the rest of the amazing cast (Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner) AND the fact that it was directed by David O. Russell (who also directed The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook).
The film is set in 1978 and focuses on two con-artists who are forced to cooperate with an FBI agent in order to arrest some corrupt businessmen and politicians.
The film was pretty good. I watched it mainly because of Jennifer Lawrence but because she was only a supporting actress she didn't have that much on-time screen. The times she was on screen though, she was hilarious and the spotlight of that particular scene. Her character is so ignorant, stupid and contradictory that most of the comedy side of the movie comes from her. However, the times she wasn't on screen the movie was still amazing. The cast was so great and the movie went at a reasonable pace, switching from drama to comedy and back again flawlessly.
I really love the concept of the film, the thought that "everyone hustles to survive". Obviously the con-artists hustle to survive financially, but even just us regular people hustle in our lives by pretending to be people that we aren't. We put on masks and we hustle ourselves into and out of situations depending on what we need to do to survive, be it surviving life, surviving relationships or surviving our job.
While the story is fictional, the characters were inspired by past con-artists and FBI agents and politicians and stuff and I think it's very worthy of watching, especially for Christian Bale's amazing acting.
75% on Rotten Tomatoes
This movie was amazing! It was so much better than the first one. I felt like the first one was spending too much time trying to make up the minutes until the three hour mark, and while this second movie still felt really long, it didn't feel like unnecessary filler scenes.
It follows Bilbo, Gandalf and the dwarves as they continue on their quest to the Lonely Mountain to help the dwarves reclaim their inheritance and their home. They also included some stuff that weren't in the original book, like some extra action scenes and even the characters of Legolas and another female elf, Tauriel.
I was a bit worried about them adding extra stuff in the movie, because I wasn't sure how it would fit in with the plot, but I think they did a fairly good job of it. Some scenes I was very confused as to what was happening, since it was much more serious and intense than the book. However, it's not like I really expected much else. After all, the Hobbit was a children's book and it was divided into three movies AND it's Peter Jackson. And Peter Jackson needs to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, you shouldn't overdo it. But other than that, I really loved it!
75% on Rotten Tomatoes
This is based on a true story about a millionaire Frenchman who is now a quadriplegic after having a paragliding accident. He ends up hiring some poor West-African man to be his 24-hour caretaker to look after him, including driving him around, washing him, feeding him and taking care of him when he gets sick.
I thought it would be a really sad and touchy movie because of the storyline, but it's actually quite hilarious and even in the comedy genre. I love how they were able to show that not all these stories need to be sad, and that we don't have to treat people with so much pity sometimes. The caretaker seriously has zero pity for this guy, he jokes around about him not being able to feel anything to the point where at one stage he even pours boiling water on the guy's skin in amazement, and the quadriplegic loves it. He loves being able to have a carer who just totally gets him and doesn't treat him with pity or anything like that.
I think it's a really great film, it's super funny and entertaining throughout, BUT it's spoken in French so you need to follow the subtitles. That's the only down side but it's not even that big a deal.
67% on Rotten Tomatoes
This is another film that's based on a true story. It's about the Bondurant brothers and their bootlegging back in 1931. They run an illegal distillery that's got an established clientelle, including the local Sheriffs and law enforcers. However, a new deputy is put in charge and his aim is to enforce the illegality of the alcohol industry. Since the two older Bondurant brothers are too rebellious, too tough and too proud, they refuse to cave in to these demands and the movie portrays the political, physical and mental battle between them and the new deputy.
It gets so intense and you can see how the characters develop over time. It's really well directed and the cast is amazing (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke). Guy Pearce was particularly extraordinary as the new deputy with his whiny voice, creepy eyebrowless face and terrible demeanour. I really loved this film and have no idea why it wasn't rated that well in Rotten Tomatoes.
It was quite violent though, especially the DVD version we got (I read that the American version that they released had a lot of things censored to keep it below an R rating), but it wasn't unnecessarily violent. I think the violence actually helps with the storyline, and who knows, maybe this sort of story will repeat in relation to the drug trade, since current law enforcers are very unyielding to legalising certain drugs.
50% on Rotten Tomatoes
This movies is about some hijackers who take control of a car on a New York City train and hold the hostages in return for $10 million. Their main means of communication is through the train radio, which goes to the train dispatcher in the central office.
This was an alright movie; nothing spectacular, but not horrible. Denzel Washington and John Travolta are great actors and the plot was alright, but what unnerved me the most was that they just portray humanity as a lost cause. The main important people here (the mayor, the hostage negotiator and the police) are just so stupid and hopeless! The plot was quite good I think, but John Travolta's character was so over-the-top and so unrealistic it made the movie seem much stupider than it could have been.
Favourite (but stupidest) quote:
*Teenage hostage on train has girlfriend on Skype on his laptop on the floor and she can see everything happening on the train but the hijackers don't know this*
Girlfriend: I really love you
Boyfriend: *silent because he's a hostage*
Girlfriend: Well... aren't you going to say it back to me?!
*After hijackers walk to the other side*
Boyfriend: I'm a f***ing hostage I can't really talk right now!
Girlfriend: All you need to say is yes... that's a lot easier than saying you can't talk.
96% on Rotten Tomatoes
Okay. I was under the impression that this was a really good movie, since it's been praised countless times and even the ratings are amazing for it. But... I just didn't get it. It was so weird and so chaotic.
It's about a man who gets admitted into a mental asylum on a trial basis for doctors to determine whether or not his crimes were caused due to insanity. The mental asylum has very colourful characters who are controlled by a very strict, inflexible and annoying nurse.
As I said, I didn't like the movie. At all. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher and Danny DeVito were good actors, it's just that the movie was so weirdly directed and boring. I have a feeling it's one of those movies that are amazing to analyse but just terrible to watch (à la Blade Runner). The concepts and the themes are really deep and thought-provoking (like how interesting it is to see the nurses and doctors control these patients mentally, and how this control falls apart once the main character is admitted), but I think the movie fails to entertain.
60% on Rotten Tomatoes
I think we all know what Independence Day is about. If not, it's an alien invasion that occurs coincidentally on Independence Day that aims to wipe out humans from Earth. And Will Smith saves the day.
I remember watching this ages ago when I was tiny, but I couldn't remember what happened so I watched it again. It was pretty good entertainment in terms of comedy and sci-fi and it wasn't too intense or suspensful, so it's a good action movie for when you're not ready to emotionally and mentally invest in a movie. It's obviously not the best film there is, but I think it did pretty good seeing as it was made in 1996 and (I think) is one of the first (good) alien invasion films.
36% on Rotten Tomatoes
The movie is about a married woman who realises just how terrible her marriage and her life is, and so she travels the world for a year trying to discover herself.
The movie is distinctly divided into three sections: first, she goes to Italy to eat, then she goes to India to pray and lastly, she goes to Bali and finds love.
Julia Roberts is an amazing actress, and even James Franco appears in the film for a minor role, but as you can see from the ratings... the movie wasn't that great. The humour was very dry and it did seem very unrealistic (the movie seems to tell us you can only find yourself if you have enough money to travel for an entire year without working). The concepts from this film are completely understandable though, but the way the film was carried out (especially the ending) was quite cliched and very sub-par.
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