The Lucky One

A Marine travels to Louisiana after serving three tours in Iraq and searches for the unknown woman he believes was his good luck charm during the war.

Director: Scott Hicks

Writers: Will Fetters (screenplay), Nicholas Sparks (novel)

Stars: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner

Storyline

Logan is a marine serving in Iraq. While there, he finds a photo of a girl with "keep safe" written on the back. He is admiring it when his unit is attacked. He survives and credits the photo for saving him. He tries to find the owner but can't, assuming he was killed. When he goes back to the States, he finds it difficult to adjust and is still haunted by what happened. Analyzing the photo, he finds in the background a landmark that tells him she is in Louisiana. He then goes there and finds her. He learns her name is Beth. He tries to tell her what happened but can't get the words out. She assumes he's there to apply for the job they advertised looking for someone to help at her family's business, a dog kennel. He says yes but at first she gets an uneasy feeling from him but her grandmother decides to give him a chance. It isn't long that he makes a connection with her son. He then discovers that it was her brother who had the picture only he doesn't remember him.

Reviews

Zac Efron made some giant strides in shedding his Disney High School Musical image with this romantic drama where he plays a former Marine on a mission. In The Lucky One even gets some tastefully done romantic sex scenes with co-star Taylor Schilling.

While in Iraq on a military style mission Efron finds a picture of a pretty woman with the inscription 'stay safe' on the back. Without thinking it didn't help the Marine who had it before, he takes the picture and credits it as a good luck charm which kept him safe in a nasty fire fight. After discharge, Efron makes it his mission to find whose picture it is.

The mission takes him to the Louisiana bayou country where he finds Schilling together with her young son Riley Stewart and a most jealous ex-husband Jay Ferguson who is a deputy sheriff. She's living with her grandmother Blythe Danner and the photograph belonged to her brother who was in Iraq the same time as Efron.

There's a fine line between romance and stalking and Efron may have erased it. He tries to tell Schilling, but she just assumes he is answering an advertisement she put around town about her needing help with the family business which is a dog kennel. She hires him and nature takes its course.

Efron and Schilling hit it off for themselves on the screen and for the audience watching. Some real nice cinematography of Louisiana in the fall also distinguishes The Lucky One.

Will this be luck for life? You have to watch The Lucky One to find out. I will say Zac Efron was lucky to do this film.

Tangled

The magically long-haired Rapunzel has spent her entire life in a tower, but now that a runaway thief has stumbled upon her, she is about to discover the world for the first time, and who she really is.

Directors: Nathan Greno, Byron Howard

Writers: Dan Fogelman (screenplay), Jacob Grimm (fairy tale) (as the Brothers Grimm) , 3 more credits »

Stars: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy

Storyline

After receiving the healing powers from a magical flower, the baby Princess Rapunzel is kidnapped from the palace in the middle of the night by Mother Gothel. Mother Gothel knows that the flower's magical powers are now growing within the golden hair of Rapunzel, and to stay young, she must lock Rapunzel in her hidden tower. Rapunzel is now a teenager and her hair has grown to a length of 70-feet. The beautiful Rapunzel has been in the tower her entire life, and she is curious of the outside world. One day, the bandit Flynn Ryder scales the tower and is taken captive by Rapunzel. Rapunzel strikes a deal with the charming thief to act as her guide to travel to the place where the floating lights come from that she has seen every year on her birthday. Rapunzel is about to have the most exciting and magnificent journey of her life.

Reviews

A few days ago I saw "Megamind", and thought it was just okay. I enjoyed it for what it was, but I didn't think it too spectacular. My faith in CGI entertainment was on the wane.

Well, tonight Disney pulled me from that depression, and help reinvigorate my belief in, well, just plain Disney.

What we have here is Rapuntzel turned on her head, with a dash of "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty" stirred in to keep our interest.

The film was charming, clever and witty without being too much of either. The comic timing was toned down for the young kiddies in the audience, mostly little girls and some younger boys, but the comedic aspect itself did not lose luster for this. If anything it showed just what good clever comedy was. Note Rapuntzel's improvised weapon, and how she brings it to bear on the baddies in the local tavern. Classic character sketch comedy, and I don't care if I was the only one who noticed it and was laughing. You're supposed to laugh!

The story itself regards fleeing the nest from a "Mime" like character, whose interest in our heroine is less than altruistic. The dashing rogue comes in to ground the story and keep Mandy Moore's character from running amuck and falling into despair.

All in all, even though a middle aged dude like myself is no where near the target audience, I enjoyed it immensely. 

Some criticisms; the villainess seemed marginally cliché. She had the liberated 70s woman gone bad thing going on for her, but it almost seems like we may have seen this character before. Not sure, really. The horse was extremely likable, but his rider could have played more of a role. In fact the supporting cast almost seemed as if they were denied screen time so we could revel in Rapuntzel's golden locks. For all that, and even though the action did dive into classic Warner Brother's cartoon territory, "Tangled" does make a very respectable showing.

That, and it was good to hear the voice of Richard Kiel play a big galoot who turns out to be a good guy. :)

My final note is that there was a very good message for young girls at the end, and in fact anyone with some sense will have caught on to it. It's a message that won't last too long, but hopefully will serve as a reminder to those who paid attention. Remember, hair isn't everything. Regardless of color *wink*

Take the family, but, if you're the father, then please, PLEASE, do not spend countless minutes like the idiot in front of me paying for his four member family with several credit cards while the ticket taker next to him managed to whiz through four or five parties of several members each for the 7:20 showing at the Redwood City theatre on Theatre Row.

Yeah, if you're reading this, you know who you are. Stop being a putz!

American Graffiti 

A couple of high school grads spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college.

Director: George 

Storyline

It's the proverbial end of the summer 1962 in a small southern California town. It's the evening before best friends and recent high school graduates, Curt Henderson and Steve Bolander, are scheduled to leave town to head to college back east. Curt, who received a lucrative local scholarship, is seen as the promise that their class holds. But Curt is having second thoughts about leaving what Steve basically sees as their dead end town. Curt's beliefs are strengthened when he spots an unknown beautiful blonde in a T-bird who mouths the words "I love you" to him. As Curt tries to find that blonde while trying to get away from a local gang who have him somewhat hostage, Curt may come to a decision about his immediate future. Outgoing class president Steve, on the other hand, wants to leave, despite meaning that he will leave girlfriend, head cheerleader and Curt's sister, Laurie Henderson, behind. Steve and Laurie spend the evening "negotiating" the state of their relationship.Lucas

Writers: George Lucas, Gloria Katz, 1 more credit »

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat

Reviews

I was born at the beginning of the next decade--1970--yet "American Graffiti" was a chord that rippled throughout my life.

My father, who, like George Lucas, grew up in California's Central Valley, said this movie perfectly captured what it was like to grow up there--street cruising, hot rodding, picking up chicks, pulling pranks. Though this movie necessarily sidesteps the boredom inherent in growing up in the pesticide-choked San Joaquin Valley, the place itself is not as important the time it explores. It was a time just before the 1960s descended into the beginning of the end of American culture--the prototypical middle America that existed in almost all its small towns and now has substantively disappeared thanks to the urbanization and suburbanization of much of this country.

The ensemble cast, including so many that went on to become hugely successful in Hollywood--Ron Howard, Cindy Williams (well, with Laverne & Shirley at least), Richard Dreyfuss, and of course Harrison Ford (not to mention Lucas himself)--is handled with great skill from such a young director and reinforces the mystery why Lucas has so horribly mishandled Star Wars Eps. I and II. Lucas simply has been at the Ranch too long and his brilliant career has arrived parked in the garage at a large, entirely perfunctory business and media empire.

Anyway, regardless of Lucas' drift far away from the cutting edge, "American Graffiti" still stands as a kind of monument to his precocity. It is the kind of movie that hits every note with effortless precision, which I think is less the effort of great editing as it is a combination of youthful exuberance and actors and a director at essentially the beginning of their ascent as some of the best in the business.

This movie also withstands the test of time simply because it works magically both for those who have no particular emotional connection to the '60s and for those who were there on nearly equal levels. There is tremendous humor and naturalistic character play and dialog that few can help but be drawn into. Anyone with any sense of history will acknowledge that all the characters are standing at the edge of the deflowering and self-destruction of America in the '60s. It is a time of tremendous innocence, change, and harrowing decisions. The Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam haven't happened yet.

With Iraq and terrorism chewing at our consciousness every day, it's pretty easy for modern youth to identify and yearn for the nostalgia of such innocence.

Dracula

The vampire comes to England to seduce a visitor's fiancée and inflict havoc in the foreign land.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writers: Bram Stoker (novel), James V. Hart (screenplay)

Stars: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins

Storyline

This version of Dracula is closely based on Bram Stoker's classic novel of the same name. A young lawyer (Jonathan Harker) is assigned to a gloomy village in the mists of eastern Europe. He is captured and imprisoned by the undead vampire Dracula, who travels to London, inspired by a photograph of Harker's betrothed, Mina Murray. In Britain, Dracula begins a reign of seduction and terror, draining the life from Mina's closest friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy's friends gather together to try to drive Dracula away.

Reviews

It is called "Bram Stoker's Dracula." The title is deceiving.

This film is an incoherent mess, to put it rather bluntly.

The effects, which look beautiful, only take away from the story-- you forget that this is a vampire movie and you are left with an impression that it is a special effects promo. And for crying out loud, what is with that tagline "Love Never Dies?" This film has taken a classic story and mutated it into a romance. Granted, there were huge romantic elements in the original Dracula-- the gothic horror classics such as it and Frankenstein flowed elegantly like poetry, and romance was used. But this film has taken something that Bram Stoker never intended and made it the key focus: Mina is now a riencarnation of a lover who Dracula lost while still Vlad the Impaler, and the whole film is basically an endless trek as they find each other and rediscover their lost love. OOOOKAY!

As far as events in the book goes, it is pretty accurate, but that's not the point. The point is, they completely changed the focus on some kind of unnesseccary love story. If Coppola had made the film an accurate account of the legend, it would have worked great. If he had changed the title from "Bram Stoker's", I might have liked it a little better (Even though the endless effects, as I have mentioned, made it mind-numbing and incoherent). Instead, it is only boring, tedious, and an insult to everything Bram Stoker hoped to accomplish. Poor Mr. Stoker....If he knew such trash like this would come out of his work, I'm sure he would have never written it.

If you want to see a good Dracula film, watch the Klause Kinski version of Nosferatu. It certainly isn't faithful to the novel, but at least it doesn't PRETEND to be, like this sorry excuse for a Dracula epic does.

I would give this film a negative two hundred on a scale of one to ten, if not for Anthony Hopkin's brilliant performance as Van Helsing. Truly, he's the only brillaint thing about it.

The Lobster 

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou

Stars: Léa Seydoux, Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz

Storyline

A love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

Reviews

The Lobster is a surreal deadpan comedy about the strangeness of social pressures and modern relationships. 

The setting is a bleak, tightly controlled hotel on the coast of Ireland. David (Colin Farrell), a recently divorced Architect, is given 40 days to find a partner or else be transformed into an animal of his choosing; in this case, a lobster. Sound strange? That's just the first 10 minutes. Guests of the hotel are subjected to routine trips to shoot 'loners' with tranquillisers, and awkward high-school dances to entice singles to mingle. As David's days start running out, he decides to feign common interest with a heartless woman in order to escape his fate. But can he pull it off? 

Farrell really hits the mark with this role, displaying awkward machismo and fragile humility in equal measure. His comedic timing is matched only by his supporting cast that includes John C. Reilly, Ashley Jensen, and Olivia Coleman. Rachel Weisz is also spot-on as the short-sighted woman.

The Lobster has just about everything you'd want from a film. It's unpredictable, it's offbeat, and it's laugh-out-loud funny. But it's most impressive feature is the subtext - it manages to reflect how odd our own modern-day social pressures are. How loneliness is feared, how individuality loses out to the mainstream system, and how relationships have to be deemed 'legitimate' by some higher order. There's plenty to talk about with this film, and I'll definitely be seeing it again to delve a little deeper....

Kung Fu Panda 3

Continuing his "legendary adventures of awesomeness", Po must face two hugely epic, but different threats: one supernatural and the other a little closer to his home.

Directors: Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh

Writers: Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger

Stars: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman

Storyline

When Po's long-lost panda father suddenly reappears, the reunited duo travels to a secret panda paradise to meet scores of hilarious new panda characters. But when the supernatural villain Kai begins to sweep across China defeating all the kung fu masters, Po must do the impossible-learn to train a village full of his fun-loving, clumsy brethren to become the ultimate band of Kung Fu Pandas.

BoJack Horseman

Meet the most beloved sitcom horse of the '90s - 20 years later. BoJack Horseman was the star of the hit TV show "Horsin' Around," but today he's washed up, living in Hollywood, complaining about everything, and wearing colorful sweaters.

Creator: Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Stars: Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie

Storyline

Meet the most beloved sitcom horse of the '90s - 20 years later. BoJack Horseman was the star of the hit TV show "Horsin' Around," but today he's washed up, living in Hollywood, complaining about everything, and wearing colorful sweaters.

Reviews

When I initially read the summary of what the series was I was excited because of my love for 90's style cartoons and I thought that it was a strange enough concept that might just work. 

When I started watching it I thought it was a tad slow but I guess they have to establish which character is which and give a little personality of each character so I'll forgive it for that but when the series got going I couldn't stop laughing. It uses the typical comedy formula that is used in a lot of comedies now which is escalation. Things keep on escalating till they are ridiculous and that teamed with Bojack's ability to say the wrong thing is a winning combo in my book. 

Although it does have many laughs through the series it still has serious moments and some sad moments too which I thought gave Bojack more depth as a character. The character manages to not be at all like the viewer but also very relatable to the same time in the observations he makes about life. 

Overall I thought that the series is defiantly worth watching, especially for fans of comedies such as It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Very good stuff and glad its been renewed for a second series.