Mini Review Of In-Theaters Now: Sucker Punch, Madea's Big Happy Family, The Lincoln Lawyer, Insidious, The Green Hornet

I decided to combine all these reviews into to one being as I don't really have too much to say about these films and I watched them awhile ago in theaters but I never did a post on them. Anyway, here they are nice and wrapped in a pretty little red and yellow tie.


Sucker Punch (2011): When I first sat down and the movie started playing I was like okay, this is going to get good. I mean nice Sweet Dreams music playing, etc... and then Baby Doll (the main character) is out of a mental hospital and into a whore house. WTF.I looked down at the family with the two small kids and I thought about how much they wished they would have read the full plot summary before taking their four and five year olds to this movie. Once the shock of being lied to by the film trailers (I know movie trailers don't ever lie... wink wink)  was over I sat and watched the film with a open mind. The action was decent and so was the acting and story line. Let me just say there is a little surprise at the ending. P.S. This is more of a guy's film with female favor tossed into it.
Rating: 4/5

Madea's Big Happy Family (2011): Funny as hell! A lot of people say that they did not like the movie but I personally believe that those people just do not know how to laugh. The plot is the basic Tyler Perry plot of girl being raped, redemption, etc.. etc.. but I just watch for Madea and trust me she was bigger and better than ever in this film. If you do not like Christian drama or Tyler Perry films just go for Madea. " Big girls you are beautiful"
Rating: 3.5/5

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011): Good plot with twists. I love the slower sarcastic vintage feeling that you get from watching the movie. I've never really been a big Matthew McConaughey fan but his acting was superb.
4.5/5

Insidious (2010): Not very scary and over done plot (not including the ending). If you watch A Haunting on Discovery channel than who have basically seen 1/3 of this film. Terrible acting on Rose Byrne's part. She was such a little cry baby and she bitched and all these other nonsenses. Before everyone attacks me with "OMG I loved Rose..." let me explain. There is a part in the middle of the film where the family is being attacked by the demons. They are everywhere and everyone is fighting them off. Now in the corner you see this little "word I don't wanna use" crying and screaming help at the top of her lugs while a demon is nearly on top of her. The husband is fighting demons off himself! How the hell can he help you Rose when he can barely help himself! Grow a backbone and start helping yourself! If you have read any of my other post you may know that I love a strong woman who can kick some ass so to me she sent us back into the stone age with this like act. Okay, Okay, maybe she was frozen in fear but come on she wasn't so frozen that she could just stand there and yell for help now was she.
Rating: 2.5/5


The Green Hornet (2011): Funny and overall good performances by Seth Rogen and Jay Chou.
Rating: 4/5

Karthik Calling Karthik

Year : 2010
Runtime : 125 Min.
Genre : Psychological Thriller
Director : Vijay Lalwani
Movie Stars : Farhan Akhtar, Deepika Padukone, Ram Kapoor,S hefali Shah, Vipin Sharma
Country: India
Language : Hindi, English

Very different in terms of Hindi films. The beginning was perfect for me being as I love when the nerds become big man on campus but in the middle the film started to drag out..... realllllllllyyyyyy really baddddddd...... The middle should have been edited a lot better. Once over that milestone the ending was a nice tie-up. I don't want to give too much away but just remember it's a psychological thriller. Wink Wink :)

Darn phone won't stop calling me

Karthik (Farhan Akhtar) is an introvert want who lacks confidence in dealing with everyday life situations and feels trapped in his average job at a construction company. He produces even less-than-average results as he is continuously troubled by an incident of his childhood. His elder brother, Kumar, used to torture him, but whenever he complained to his parents about him, they did not believe him. One day, Kumar took Karthik to show him some beautiful tourist spot, and took him to a well, trying to throw him in it, but Karthik escaped. Kumar next tried to tie him with rope but accidentally fell inside the well and died. Karthik thought himself to be responsible for his brother's death.

Shonali Mukherjee (Deepika Padukone) is a co-worker at Karthik's company. Karthik’s boss Kamath (Ram Kapoor) and landlord treat him extremely negatively, often humiliating and disrespecting him. Shonali, on the other hand, is considered by Karthik to be an independent, classy and confident woman who remains unaware of his secret love for her, much less his existence even though he's worked at the company for close to 4 years. Karthik attempts to e-mail her his feelings very regularly, but on each occasion stops himself, as he concludes that Shonali is dating his co-worker Ashish. After being derided by his boss yet again, he figures that his life can’t get any better and decides to commit suicide by consuming sleeping pills. At the exact moment that he is about to consume the sleeping pills, the phone rings and a stranger, having the same voice as him, tells him that he is also Karthik, and that he is his well-wisher. By and by, Karthik finds that this stranger can exactly locate his psyche, and come up with solutions that can make things better. The caller convinces him that he has the ability to change him, if he strictly follows his guidelines. The caller expressly tells Karthik that he should not mention his phone conversations to anyone, lest he will be perceived as mentally ill.

Japaneses phones are evil

Gradually these phone conversations become his life guide. His chats take place every morning at 5:00 a.m. and the caller provides advice on every problem that arises in Karthik's life. The caller keeps a close eye on his life, guides him to become a successful man and win his secret love, Shonali and eventually enables him to bring color to his otherwise monotonous and unremarkable existence One day, when Karthik and Shonali are together, Shonali tells him that he should tell her everything. He tells Shonali about the mysterious caller, but Shonali does not believe him and asks him to consult a doctor. The night when he receives the call, the caller asks him to lie to Shonali and tells him not to consult a doctor. The next day he lies to Shonali, but she sees through his lie. When he goes to his psychiatrist, she asks her if she could come to his house and check the call at 5 a.m. When she arrives at Karthik's house, the phone rings and the same voice tells her that it existed whether she believed it or not and when she heard it, the cup from which she was drinking coffee, falls down. Karthik gets up and goes to get a wipe to clean it, and when he comes back in the room, he sees that there is nobody and the door is open. The next day he tells Shonali that he consulted a doctor. Shonali does not believe him and says that she will herself stay with him and see the calls arriving. The phone again rings in front of her also but she stops Karthik from receiving them. The phone eventually stops ringing.

Karthik receives the calls again the next morning, and the caller warns him that if he could bring him up, then he could throw him down also. When he goes to the office, his boss throws him out of the office telling that he called him last night and blackmailed him that he would tell his wife about his affair if he sold illegal land. While he is moving out, he meets Shonali who tells him that he called her last night and made fun of her. He tries to tell her that he did not do anything but she does not listen. Karthik thinks that he should go somewhere that even he would not know. He puts on his glasses and sits in the train, pretending to be blind. He thinks that he himself won't know where he is, then how would the caller know? He goes down the train on the station and asks the driver of his cab to take him to any small hotel of the area. When he reaches there, he asks the receptionist to remove the telephone and room number plate. After the passing of a few months, Karthik is comfortably living in a small town. His life is back to normal with respect to work and other elements except for the fact that he refuses to have a phone line. However, upon his boss's request, he is forced to purchase a landline but goes to great lengths to ensure that he himself is unaware of the number but purchases the same model that he had earlier. After a day of restless sleep, he is glad that no calls come through and takes this as a sign that those events will not occur again. But the next day, at exactly 5 a.m. he receives a call from Karthik, who tells him that he has found him and will now find a way to kill him. In the meantime, he has contacted Shonali and even intends to meet up with her one day. She is contacted by Dr. Kapadia who explains that Karthik is Schizophrenic.

Can you feel the love tonight?

 He has an alter ego that is more assertive and advises him on what to do and how to live life. And he has been dealing with this condition from a young age when he created a fake brother. Turns out that the Phone Model that he purchased has the capacity to record messages and act as a playback feature at a certain time. And these functions work regardless of whether a phone is plugged in and the messages can also be sent to other numbers. This explains the voice on the other line. He would wake up in the middle of the night, leave himself messages in the alter ego state and then go to sleep.

Oh No, not even in India can you escape Hollister!

Eventually, Karthik is so disturbed that he attempts to commit suicide by ingesting sleeping pills, but Shonali arrives at the right time to save him. After a few months, Karthik is in the process of dealing with his schizophrenia and has Shonali's help in living a happy and rehabilitated life. Note: The last image of the rubiks cube signifies that Karthik's alter ego had won because the real Karthik could never have solved it. 
Rating: 3.5/5

Loose Cannons (Mine Vaganti)

Year : 2010
Runtime : 110 Min.
Genre : Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director : Ferzan Özpetek
Movie Stars : Riccardo Scamarcio, Nicole Grimaudo and Alessandro Preziosi
Country: Italy
Language : Italian

IMDB: Tommaso is the youngest son of the Cantones, a large, traditional southern Italian family operating a pasta-making business since the 1960s. On a trip home from Rome, where he studies literature and lives with his boyfriend, Tommaso decides to tell his parents the truth about himself. But when he is finally ready to come out in front of the entire family, his older brother Antonio ruins his plans.

A cute little story about an Italian family facing modern issues with as much grace and comedy as possible. I'm a fool for good scenery so A+ in that department, but the film lacks some realistic elements Spoiler! Once the jewel of a grandmother dies Antonio reappears and seems to be accepted into the family after being dismissed by his father for being gay. Am I truly supposed to believe that centuries of traditions and values are supposed to be forgotten just because the grandmother dies?Also, am I supposed to believe that Tommaso will be accepted also in his small south Italian town? Still, it's a movie and who wants to see realistic things anyway...? then it would be real life not the cinemas. The comedy is not fast paced (Ex: The Hangover, etc.) but it's more of the slow steady comedy (Ex: Amélie: Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain).  You kind of feel sad and angry for the character Alba (Nicole Grimaudo. You can tell she likes Tommaso but accepts him for who he is and their friendship for just that. At any rate, I enjoyed the family elements, funny but too perfect characters, and this small Italian town.
Rating: 3.5/5

Dek Hor

I don't really feel like writing a summary for this movie, so I'm going to paste the one from Wikipedia with a few of my added detail because it pretty much sums of the plot of the movie in a few sentences.

 Summary
In Thailand, young Ton Chatree (Trairat) is sent to a boarding school by his father to get good grades and not tell his mother about his father about him having a affair. Once in the school, Ton feels like an outcast and misses his family and friends. His new schoolmates tell ghost stories about a boy who died in the school swimming pool and a young pregnant woman who committed suicide. The stories frighten him, thereby exacerbating Ton's difficulties adjusting to the school. However, Ton becomes close friends with another lonely boy, Vichien (Chienthaworn), who Ton later discovers is the boy who drowned, and his death repeats every night. Ton finds a way to help his friend rest in peace by seeking help from the school "weirdo", who tells him that the ghost can not move on till another ghost breaks the cycle. Ton is found later on the floor, apparently, taken some kind of liquid that would just knock him out but not kill him. I'm not sure what the liquid was because my version of the movie did not have English subtitles over the bottle to translate the Thai writing. The boys move Ton's body over to the pool and wait. The scene flashes back to Vichien's death, only this time Ton is there to save him. The scene changes once again and now Ton and Vichien are walking down a road together talking about a girl. Ton gets ahead of Vichien while walking and looks back to hear Vichien say he has to go now. Ton wakes up in the present with the group of boys around him and Miss Pranee running to him.

At the same time, Ms. Pranee (Sukapatana), the school administrator, is deeply troubled by Vichien's death because she believes incorrectly that Vichien committed suicide and that it was partly her fault. At the end of the movie, Ton tells Pranee the truth, that Vichien's death was an accident and that Pranee should not blame herself. Ton and the boys that bullied him and told him the ghost stories are now friends and the troubles between Ton and his dad are resolved.

Vichien's Death  And Why He Can't Move On
The wiki summary doesn't go into detail on Vichien's death so I'll explain it for you. The boys of the school were swimming all day. Another boy, jokingly begins to call for help and bob in and out of the water yelling. All the boys that were not in the pool quickly jump in to aid the falsely drowning boy. The students become distressed when they can not find the 'drowning' boy after he goes under water. After a few seconds he pops back up and begins laughing about how scared everyone became. The students slash him with water and say that it's almost 6 o'clock, dinner time. As everyone gets out of the pool Vichien remains and starts to call for help. The other students believe that he is joking and stand around the pool as Vichien is drowning. Hungary, the boys leave the pool for dinner. Vichien goes under the water and doesn't come back up. Hours later at bedtime one of the boys comes to Miss Pranee's office to inform her that Vichien has not returned to the dorm. Miss Pranee imediately rushes to the pool where she finds Vichien's body floating in the water.

The part that really bugs me about this film in the fact that no one but Miss Pranee felt bad in anyway for Vichien. Miss Pranee had nothing to do with Vitchien dieing, but all the students that sat by and watched did and yet they felt no remorse for what they did. They even made of a ghost story about him, saying that he killed himself. Granted that most of the boys that were at the school with Ton arrived were almost as new as he was, but there were a few that had been there when Vichien died.

According to some web searches that I did Vichien couldn't move on to the after life because the Thai people believe that if someone dies in usually ways that are not of natural causes, such as drowning, they wouldn't be able to move on till the cycle is broken.

Review
Thai horror film Dek Hor, or Dorm/ My School, seemed more like a suspense and thriller than horror to me. I wasn't scared during the whole movie. I enjoyed it quite a bit but there were some moments that bored me. It a good suspense film. I would recommend it to anyone.  

Watch Online{Click}
Subtitles: English
Video Quality: Fair- Medium
Source: Youtube

El Secreto De Sus Ojos

El Secreto De Sus Ojos, also known as The Secret In Their Eyes, is a 2009 Argentinean film by Juan José Campanella, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos (The Question in Their Eyes).It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, making Argentina the first to win it twice.

Having this be my first Argentinean film I was more than excited. The movie is a crime thriller, something I'm very much into, so I thought I would give it a go. For all of you who have not seen it, I'll give you a quick summary. Spoiler Alert! Benjamin Espósito is seen writing a novel about the Morales case, having been assigned to it years before. He pays a visit to Irene Menéndez-Hastings, his partner on the case, to seek advise on how he should tell the story. She suggests that he begin at the start of the case.

On a quiet morning in June Liliana Colotto is found raped and murdered in her home. (Warning! Nude scene of Liliana's body) Espósito promises the widowed husband, Ricardo, to put his wife's killer to justice.  Aided by alcoholic friend and assistant Pablo Sandoval and the law smart Hastings, they uncover photos of Liliana in her home town of Chivilcoy. All the photos contain a man named Isidoro Gómez looking deeply at Liliana, his eyes never leaving her. Espósito sees this as unresolved lust and believes they are the eyes of an killer. Espósito's suspicion leads him on a journey spanning  years to uncover secrets of the accused killer, the widowed husband, and himself.
The Ending

Espósito, after completing his novel, with help of Hastings finds the widowed husband of Liliana in a rural area of Buenos Aires Province and takes his finished book to him. Apparently, he is no longer obsessed with his wife's murder and has seemingly moved on. Espósito is shocked and reminds him of his promise to get the man who murdered the love of his life. Backed into a corner, the widower reveals that he tracked down Gomez, kidnapped him, and shot him. Espósito leaves with this revelation on his mind. As he is driving back, Espósito begins to wonder about the case and about the widower. This thinking leads him back to a conversation he has with the widower years ago, a conversation about the death penalty. The widower was strong in his belief that the death penalty was wrong and unjust. Espósito is unsure that  a man who believed so strongly against the death penalty could go back on his views and kill a man. Espósito senses that something is not right and heads back to the widower's property. Undetected by Ricardo, Espósito follows him into a small building at the side of the house. Inside is a makeshift cell, where Ricardo has been hiding Gomez for the last few years. Gomez is tried and older looking. He asks if  Espósito could get Ricardo to speak to him, apparently, he has not all these years. Ricardo reminds Benjamin of his promise that Gomez would never go free.
My Review
The film moved a little bit on the slow side for me. I usually like the fast pace murder mysteries but, it was still a decent watch. I didn't really talk about the love connection between Hastings and Espoito, but that was a good twist in the plot. The character were full with emotion and wonderful actors. The scenery was nice to look at, reminding me of some old French city. All in all, it was just a decent film. I read so many good reviews for this movie that after I saw it I became fairly disappointed. I was expecting to be blown away and fall forever in love with Argentine films, but unfortunately this was not the case. I would recommend it to other people with a understanding of films, not someone who gets bored easily or is unable to see past what is in front of his/her face. The plot is about human nature more than just a murder case.
Rating