Fruitvale Station Review

On July 15, 2012, two Lake County police officers where pursuing a man and tracked him to a residential neighborhood. They found his motor cycle outside of a house and approached. They banged on the door, without announcing themselves, and kicked it in. When they were inside they saw a man holding a gun, they then shot twenty two year old Andrew Scott dead. The problem was, Andrew wasn't the man they were looking for; it wasn't even the right house, the person they were looking for was next door. They claimed they shot because he was holding a gun and it was self defense; but if two people come banging on your door in the middle of the night without announcing themselves, it's reasonable to have a gun for protection. The problem with this is that neither of the police officers faced serious punishment for this, just probation. The fact that two police officers didn't have enough sense to make sure it was the right house, didn't announce themselves, then kicked in the door and shot an innocent man, and they weren't charged with any sort of crime is just wrong. I believe it is the job of the strong to protect the weak, that day the police did not protect the weak. And on January 1, 2009, the police did not protect Oscar Grant. Fruitvale Station is the directorial debut of Ryan Coogler, and is the true life story of a young black man living in Oakland, California named Oscar Grant. Oscar is a f*ck up, he's a two time felon, he recently got fired from his job, he just can't get it together. He has a girlfriend and a daughter, and all he wants is to take care of them. So he finally decides it's time, he stops his questionable activities and even hopes to marry his girlfriend. The events take place on New Year’s Eve, Oscar and all his friends want to go into the city and have some fun. They decide to take the train so they don't get stuck in traffic. Everything goes smooth, until Oscar runs into a member of the Aryan Brotherhood he knew in prison. After that, things go from bad to worse. To call this movie emotional would be an understatement. I have cried three times watching movies, this movie made me tear up. This movie is tragic like few others in recent memory. One thing I would like to commend this movie on is the acting; the entire cast does an outstanding job. The writing is also top notch, it feels very real. The only problem I have is that the movie is slow up until the last half hour. Other than that this is a top notch movie, especially for a directorial debut. This is an important movie, it shows that people are given power and they will abuse it. And when they do they won't always face the consequences; if you going to the theater this weekend, this is the movie to watch.

4/5 Stars

Greatest Movies of all Time

Honorable Mentions: Amadeus, The Shawshank Redemption, Pan's Labyrinth, Network, Star Wars: Episode 4/5/6, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fantasia, Saving Private Ryan, L.A. Confidential, No Country of Old Men, There Will be Blood, King Kong (1933), The Birds, Sherlock Jr., Chinatown, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Taxi Driver, The Maltese Falcon, It's a Wonderful Life, To Kill a Mockingbird, Korol Lir (King Lear), Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, Goldfinger, Enter the Dragon, Die Hard, E.T., The Searchers, Once Upon a Time in the West, Some Like it Hot, 12 Angry Men, Raging Bull, Yojimbo, Annie Hall, Psycho
Note: This list is comprised completely of my own personal opinions. And remember I haven't seen everything.

10. Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction is a strange movie; it defied what we consider entertaining at the time of its release. It's a two and a half hour movie driven only by dialog. There is no central conflict, there is no singular plot, and it’s different from so many movies before it. But Pulp Fiction's dialog is of such a high quality, it is unmatched by almost every other movie ever made. The movie manages to stay serious while making you laugh on more than one occasion. Another aspect that always interested me is the characters, they are some of the worst people I have ever seen in the movie but I like them. They are mean, selfish killers but I care what happens to them. Pulp fiction is a phenomenal movie that defined 90's cinema, and one of my top five favorite movies.

9. Goodfellas

Consistently ranked as one of the greatest directors of all time, Martin Scorsese has made so many good movies it's hard to keep track. But of all the movies he's done, the one that stands out above all the rest is Goodfellas. Released in 1990 to universal acclaim, the movie somehow was robbed for best picture. Goodfellas is generally considered the best gangster film since the Godfather part 2. I look at Goodfellas as the story of the American dream; I see a bunch of people who just want to make a name for themselves. I see people trying to become as successful as they can possibly be, even if that means stomping on anyone in the way. Sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Are these good people? No. But somewhere deep down inside, you want to see them succeed.

8. 2001: A Space Odyssey

This movie was like nothing that came before it, a visionary masterpiece that changed the science fiction genre like no other had before and no movie has since. Coming out the mind of the most unappreciated director of his time, Stanley Kubric created one of the most unique movies that has ever been shown on the silver screen. Upon its release the film was met with polarizing viewpoints; while some praised it for being one of the most daring and ingenious movies ever made, others criticized it saying they didn't even know what the f*ck it was about. Now a day’s many are turned off by its slow pace, but I don't look at it like it's slow but instead it's giving me a chance to think differently. It challenges me to think outside the norms of the traditional movie and just lets me dream.

7. Jaws
Jaws is quite possibly the most terrifying movie ever made, legend has it after its release towns on the east coast that rely on tourism had to file for bankruptcy because people were to afraid to go to the beach. Jaws was the first summer blockbuster and it was an unimaginable success, becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. It changed how the film industry promotes and released movies. What makes the movie so impressive is that it's scary even though it barley shows the shark. If you watch the movie most of the time when the shark has reared its ugly head it's only implied he's there. We see the shark for maybe five minutes out of the entire movie. Jaws was a movie that defined a generation and still holds up today.

6. City Lights

Charlie Chaplin is one of the most legendary and influential members of the film industry we've ever seen. He's been involved in some of the all time greats: movies like Modern Times, The Kid, The Gold Rush, and the Great Dictator. But his unrivaled masterpiece is City Lights. This is one of the funniest and touching movies I've ever seen, not a single word is spoken yet the love between the tramp and the blind girl is stronger than any other romance movie I've ever see. I remember watching this for the first time in my tenth grade theater class and along with everyone else we were almost falling out of our seats laughing. City Lights is the greatest comedy film of all time, the greatest romance film of all time, and the greatest film of the silent era.

5. The Wizard of Oz
When I was a child I didn't concern myself with whether a movie was good or not, it just was. It wasn't until the last couple years I refined my pallet on what I consider to be "good." When I look back on what I saw as a child, my viewing experience consisted of Pixar films, Star wars, and Indiana Jones. One movie I had seen countless times but didn't really enjoy when I was younger was the Wizard of Oz. Watching it now I see one of the most delightful and even magical movies to come out of Hollywood. The love and care put into this movie is only rivaled by a small number of other films. The movie is just joyful, a film that should be mandatory for every man woman and child to watch. They could be the most cold hearted bastard ever born, but this movie will make them feel warm inside.

4. Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now is one of the haunting images of cinema, a disturbing look into the madness of war and what it does to people. Created by Oscar winning director Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse now is the greatest war movie ever made. Taking place at the height of the Vietnam War, a small group of soldiers are tasked with traveling deep into south East Asia to find a colonel whose gone rogue. And on this journey the soldiers are greeted only with death and destruction, concluding in one of the most disturbing movie endings ever. At the end nothing is gained, nothing is learned, only despair is left. The movie even spawned the greatest documentary of all time Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse, a look at the hell people had to go through to make this masterpiece. But in the end it was worth it.

3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Whenever someone ranks The Good, the Bad and the Ugly among some of the greatest movies of all time, the argument the nay-sayers always bring up is that it can't be good because it's a spaghetti western. I absolutely despise that, I believe that spaghetti westerns are far superior to the traditional ones in every way. Both as entertainment and as an art form. The master of the spaghetti western was Sergio Leone; and his best movie is undoubtedly the final installment in the "dollars" trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The problem is that people take spaghetti westerns to seriously, they are meant to be tongue-in-cheek satire of the genre. Everything is extremely over exaggerated on purpose, and somehow it works perfectly. 

2. Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence of Arabia is the most daring and ambitious epic of all time, it truly was a stroke of mad genius. At the time of its creation it was one of the most expensive movies ever made. Years after the films release one of the stars said on the films ambition "If you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you, and says he wants to make a film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story, and not much action either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert--what would you say?" But in the end it all paid off by winning seven Oscars as well as becoming the highest grossing movie of all time (not accounting for inflation). Everything about this film is perfect, but the most notable aspect is the star Peter O' Toole. In my opinion, he put on the finest performance in the history of cinema. Lawrence of Arabia is a movie that truly defines its genre, and will go down in history as one of the greatest.

1. The Godfather Part 1 and 2
It might be a little unfair to have two movies take up the number one spot, but it seemed redundant to have two movies from the same trilogy be ranked at number one and two. The Godfather Part 1 and 2 are the greatest movies ever shown on the silver screen. Directed by one of the all time greats Francis Ford Coppola, the first two installments in the Godfather trilogy are just about perfect. Whether it be the some of the greatest performances of all time from Marlon Brando, Robert Di Nero, and Al Pacino or some of the most memorable scenes ever put into film. The Godfather Part 1 and 2 have remained unchallenged on top of the mountain as the all time greatest, even after 40 years.

The Conjuring Review

Great horror movies are few and far between now a days, the last one that I can that's worth the time of day was "The Host" back in 2006; which is a shame because I really do like horror movies. I blame this bad streak on the industry, horror movies are cheap to make and make a lot of money very quickly, so people don't even put in the effort. Fortunately director James Wan, the one guy who seems to care about horror movies anymore, attempts to revitalize the genre with The Conjuring. Taking place in the early 1970's, we learn the story of Ed and Lorraine Warren; a couple paranormal activity investigators who spend most of their time going around debunking hauntings. One day after they give a lecture at a college they are approached by a very desperate woman. She claims that the house her family just moved into is haunting them. She pleads with the Warren's to help her, they ultimately agree; and the second they step into the house, they sense something more evil than anything they've ever seen before. So they feel it's best to fully investigate the events plaguing the family and hopefully get the church to sign off on an exorcism. Now all they just got to survive until then. I've been itching for a really good horror movie for a while now; the last decent one I can think of was Evil Dead earlier this year. And going into the movie I heard almost nothing but good things; it has an 80 something on rotten tomatoes, several critics I followed vouched for it, I've even heard several people call it the scariest movie in years. So my hopes were high, and they were shot down. To be honest this movie is boring, nothing even happens for the first hour. It reminded me of old school horrors movies minus the ingenuity. The movie has a number of horror clichés, while it doesn't have as many as most movies these days it has more than I felt were necessary. The movie also fewer jump scares than a lot of movies, it relies more in tension. I can respect the movie for trying to be different, but it doesn't change the fact that it's boring at times. And at no point did I feel scared, there were one or two scenes that were creepy but nothing memorable. This movie was a letdown, I was hoping to be scared but all I did was fight the urge to fall asleep. Most people seem to love it so I seem to be an outlier. If you really like horror movies I'd say it's worth a shot, but in my opinion you're not missing much. 

2/5 Stars

Only God Forgives Review

There were few movies going into 2013 that had me as excited as Only God Forgives did. The movie is by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who also made Drive which was one of the best movies of 2011. And like Only God Forgives the movie also stared Ryan Gosling. The reason I was so excited to see this was because I loved Drive, I ranked it the second best movie of the year. I've only seen a couple of movies that were truly as memorizing as Drive was, and it really was one of my favorite movies of the year. So that was why I was so excited for OGF, I would have been satisfied if it was only a fraction as good as Drive. So does it meet my expectations? Short answer, no. OGF takes place in the magical city of Bangkok Thailand, where two brothers (one being the younger brother Julian played by Gosling) run drugs out of a Muay Thai gym. I wouldn't exactly call these two gentlemen upstanding citizens, the older brother is actually killed by a father of a 16 year old he raped and murdered; as you can imagine this pissed of quite a few people. The brothers mother actually flies out from America, not so much to grieve but to seek revenge. She asks Julian if he found the killer, he says yes but let him go because he believes his brother got what he deserved. He doesn't even blame the actual killer for his brother’s death, he blames a dirty cop who let his brother be killed. So the family and their associates vow to kill him and avenge their comrade. Let's start off with what I liked about the movie, mainly that's the visual style. I think the cinematography in the movie is outstanding, it looks great. Every shot looks like it was meticulously planned. Not just the position of the characters and the camera, but the lighting as well. Striking contrasts of light and shadows and a wide array of colors really add to the movie, all of these aspects combined makes it feel like you are in some sort of dark fairy tale. The acting in the movie is also quite good, while no one will be getting any awards I felt they played their characters to the best of their abilities. But the problem with that is that their characters aren't very good, now this brings us to the bad. The story and the writing are sub-par. This is one of those movies where very little is said, but of what is said there might be two memorable lines. Ryan Gosling's character has 10 minutes of screen time in the first 25 minutes and literally said one word. The plot of the movie is all jumbled up and doesn't make a lot of sense when you're watching it. You spend most of your time wondering what is going on, and to make things even more difficult there are several dream sequences in the movie which you can't tell apart from reality. It'd be alright if there was one or two but there are several and it just makes things confusing. Now one of my biggest problems with the film would be the violence. Like I've said before I don't have a problem with violence, but I'm not a fan of violence for the sake of violence; and boy does this movie have that in spades. When asked about this, the director said he almost had a fetish for violence which is very evident in OGF. Drive also had violence but it was in isolated sections which played a heavy contrast to the dream like state the rest of the movie was in, which actually worked. In OGF the use of the violence is almost like the directors is just being self indulgent, and it feels unnecessary. In conclusion I was disappointed in the movie; I didn't hate it, I actually liked it for the most part. But it was so much less than what I was hoping for. This is a super art-house movie that will certainly be hated by many, but if you get the chance I would suggest the watch just for the experience. In conclusion Only God Forgives is a beautiful movie where the actors do the best job they can, but aren't enough to save the movie from being bogged down by mediocre script and jumbled plot. The movie is left just being decent; I feel I could go the rest of my life without seeing this movie again and I'd be just fine. 

3/5 Stars

Before Midnight Review

A while ago I got in a conversation with one of my friends about movies; he asked me what my favorite trilogy was. I told him the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a heartbeat, it wasn't even a question. If I could go back, I would actually have to think about. Recently I discovered the Before trilogy: Before Sunrise (my pick for best movie of 1995), Before Sunset (my pick for best movie of 2004), and the final installment just recently released Before Midnight. Here's how it all started, in Before Sunrise an American named Jesse and a French woman named Celine meet on a train in Germany. Jesse is going to this city to get the first flight back home early in the morning while Celine is on her way home from her own trip. The two meet and have a connection, once they arrive at the city Jesse is getting off at his proposes a deal. Since he's leaving early in the morning he decided to just walk around the city and not bother with a hotel room, he asks Celine to join him. She agrees and all they do is talk, by the end of the night they are in love. They agree to meet up in the city again in 6 months. Nine years later the events of Before Sunset happen. At this point both characters have moved on in their lives and never met up again. Jesse has actually written a bestselling book, based on the night the two of them shared. He's on a book tour in Europe and while on his last stop in a book store in France, Celine shows up and surprises him. She heard that he was going to be in town and couldn't resist. Since their last meeting Jesse is married with a kid and Celine is in a long standing relationship. Since France was his last stop he is supposed to fly back home at the end of the day, but wants to spend as much time with Celine as possible. So they decide to just walk around and talk about what happened since their last encounter. They soon realize that they still have feelings for each other, and Jesse decides to miss his flight to spend a little more time with her. And seven years later Before Midnight happens, here Jesse and his wife are divorced, he's in a relationship with Celine, together they have twin girls, he writes a couple more books and becomes an established author, and they live in Europe. Taking place in the summer, Jesse's son actually comes to visit him. Jesse feels that he is losing connection with his son and wants to move back to America. And at the same time Celine is having an identity crisis, after working environmental work for a while she is considering taking a job in the government against Jesse's suggestions. And on top of all of that while they are on a vacation visiting some friends in Greece, both are afraid they are no longer in love. There are a very finite number of trilogies where all three movies are great, and the Before trilogy has joined their ranks. What I love about these movies is how real they are. They aren't over the top and cheese like so many other romantic movies. It's just a couple talking about their views and beliefs and it's one of the most enthralling stories I've ever seen. I would like to say that Ethan Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Deply (Celine) have some of the best on screen chemistry I've ever seen, maybe the best. The movie also feels very believable, much more than the previous two. This isn't two people under extraordinary circumstances and fall in love instantly, this movie is about two people who have lost the sizzle in their relationship and are falling out of love. This is a story I can believe 100 percent. I love this movie, it's absolutely fantastic; I'd say it's the best of the trilogy, certainly one of the year’s best. If you like romantic movies, the Before trilogy is a must watch. It's smart, sincere, and emotional. And with this third installment, the Before trilogy has cemented its place as one of the all time greats. 

5/5 Stars.