A four: Les Miserables

     In a genre dominated by vapid musicals written by Rodger, Hammerstein, and Webber, few musicals have the depth necessary to keep me entertained. Les Miserables was one of the few, the proud, and the great. I have no idea why I had never listened to the music from this play or why I groaned when Eric got it from Redbox. This movie was FAN. TAST. IC.

The plot: This movie follows a prisoner, John Vailjean, from when he escapes from his parole after 19 years in prison for stealing some bread. Pretty reasonable, eh? He finds God and starts to run some sort of textile factory. Because John is dealing with Javert, someone who is after John, Fantine gets fired and forced into prostitution to feed her daughter Cosette. She dies of shock so, John vows to take care of Cosette. This is all in post revolutionary France and leads into the 1832 Paris Uprising.

I loved this movie. Loved it. They decided to have the actors sing live instead of recording it ahead of time and dubbing/lip synching it and that made everything more believable. I wasn't so sure if it was going to make a difference for how much effort Anne Hathaway had made it seem in an interview on the Daily Show, until "I Dreamed a Dream." Also, this movie was full of people that I knew were great actors, but I had no idea they could sing. So that made that fun. Also, I'm obsessed with points in history where people protest by putting trash in the street. So it was like this movie was tailored to my interests.

One thing I liked about this movie is that it didn't have a theme that incessantly ran throughout the movie. I mean, people are obsessed with "I Dreamed A Dream" and "Can You Hear The People Sing" but the music seemed to move with the plot and there was no pointless music. It conveyed how the characters were feeling. Also, when crunch an about 1500 page book into a musical that's roughly two hours long you have to keep up the pace.

To disagree with the haters, I loved Russell Crowe in this movie. He had a rough singing voice, but it was as he was about to kill himself, so, yeah, there's a lot of emotion there. It added to the moment and his character.

Towards the end of this movie, I totally bought into the hokeyness and was bouncing up and down singing "CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING? SINGING A SONG OF ANGRY MEN? IT IS THE MUSIC OF A PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT BE SLAVES AGAIN!" And it's was nifty that the characters that die, die because their dreams die.

Grade: A

Fun historical sidenote: The historical things that happen in this movie, happen in Paris four more times, and then the city and country leaders finally decide to make wide streets that are perpendicular to each other like most downtown city areas today. Then that, and the invention of Department stores and consumerism, stop the uprisings. It also leads to people living in different parts of towns based on wealth so the wealthy have less and less of an idea what it's like to be poor.
Nick's review: http://gorgview.com/les-miserables

A 0: Act of Valor.

Nick's Review:http://gorgview.com/act-of-valor


     The plot here isn't much to talk about. There's a terrorist attack, they go after him. One character writes to another character's kid. This is a recruitment video for the military. The actors are active navy seals. That's pretty much what you need to know without spoilers.

     Since the navy seals were actually navy seals, the acting was believable, because they were just doing their job that they do every day. Fair enough. Maybe it's because of my stepdad's experiences in Vietnam limiting me to hokey war films, but I actually liked when they were actually fighting because it was real. The bad guys were fake and melodrama-y, but this is a recruitment video so they have to make the enemy seem like they're terrible with no depth, because then you want to shoot them. or bomb them. While terrorists are generally bad people, no one is Dastardly Deeds. Or Dudley Do-Right for that matter.

  It took a long time to get to the end of this film. However, the end was great. The voice over tells the kid that he should use his pain at the loss of his father as fuel to do good in the world. Through the cinematography it's clear that "doing good" to these people entails joining the Seals, or at least the military, but it's a recruitment film, and pretty upfront about that. There's a terrible song that starts off the credits, but not technically part of the movie.

    So take that Nick! I disagree with your review! Nuh!

Grade: B-

A four: Everything Must Go.

Nick's Review: http://gorgview.com/everything-must-go


    In Everything Must Go, Will Ferrell plays a guy who loses his job, his wife, and his house all in the same day. He later loses access to his money and credit cards. All of this happens because he has an alcoholism problem and has had some incidents at work and at home related to that.

    I loved this movie in somewhat of a gentle way. This movie is really sad, like really really sad. Which makes the ending super awesome. You feel his pain. Especially if you're having trouble finding a job or relationship problems. Or if you've ever had a time in your life that the world has kicked the tar out of you. So probably everyone.

     One thing that I particularly liked about the movie is that the wife in the movie (played by nobody) is essentially abusing Will Ferrell's character and the movie deals with it in an appropriate way. Other characters blame Will Ferrell for his wife's actions (accurate), he gets really angry at the fact that no one helps him (accurate), and he sells his stuff to get money, but then the end happens and he takes his rightful things back (happens sometimes and gives hope to the audience so I'm for it). Oh yeah, and it didn't turn into an anti-feminist rant. Although I wonder how many people thought that Will Ferrell's character was being financially abused. Maybe I see this stuff everywhere. Maybe because it is everywhere. Meh. it made me like the film and now you will see it too the next time you watch it.

   I remember seeing this movie for the first time and hating it, but I really have no idea why. Except that I definitely missed the end, for some reason, and that made the movie. As endings tend to.

Grade: A

A zero: Toothfairy 2

Nick's Review: http://gorgview.com/tooth-fairy-2

Plot: Larry, played by Larry the cable guy, loses his girlfriend because he decides to bowl instead of go to a kid's birthday party. However, Larry wins a muscle car, so that's great, right? A year later she is going to marry the mayor and Larry is trying to win back her love. He does so by volunteering at the rec center for kids that she works at. He accidentally tells a kid that the tooth fairy isn't real.

   While I'm going to rip this movie apart, this is not to say that this movie is useless. I can totally see how kids would love this movie. This is great if you're making dinner or doing whatever that you can't entertain your kids and you let them watch a movie. Or at a family party while people are eating you can definitely pop this in. There are situations for everything. Also, if you think that cross dressing or southern accents are funny, then this movie is redeemable, but I don't.
   
    This movie just has a very child like view of the world. Which leads to plot holes. Like why does the tooth fairy go and give kids money for teeth but then parents do as well? So is there twice as much money? where do the fairies get the money? what is Larry doing to actually make money to pay for his buckets of chicken? Why is someone in charge of a day care spending time with her fiance while there's tons of kids there? Why are there only the groom's guests at the bridal shower? is being the mayor really that big of a deal?

     I couldn't get past that the movie was like "haha a guy is wearing pink." Some good things about this movie is it doesn't really do Larry the cable guy's standard stand up routine. "::fart joke:: that's funny right dere... GIT 'ER DOOOOONE" like he actually has some feelings and emotions and stuff. Granted they're poorly executed but it's a step up from his comedy.

Grade: D+

A four: Warm Bodies.

Nick's Review: http://gorgview.com/warm-bodies

     So, this movie drops us into the thick of a zombie apocalypse. You meet one zombie, R, who wants something more than to be a zombie. This is totally shown by his love for vinyl and music written before 1990. R has a best friend, and by that, he means someone that he stands next to and grunts at most of the time. While looking for food R runs into Julie, and falls in love. He takes her back to where the zombies live and keeps her in his airplane abode for a couple days. So, you know, you're typical story of zombie meets girl. Then, together Julie and R find out that love cures the undead. It would be unbearably mushy if it weren't so funny.

 

       I honestly think they were trying to hop on both the paranormal romance train and the zombie obsession to make a great movie, and it worked. It worked so well. This movie was hilarious. One thing I appreciated most about this film is that it wasn't one where you had to wait for them to set up the movie for it to be good, it was great from the very first line. Just a good balance of comedy, depth, drama, action and romance. The end had my attention, but I won't spoil it. Like Nick, I want to read the book now as well. 

Grade: A

Explanation of this blog

So I have a friend that writes movie reviews (here is his site) and his scale is from 0 to 4. Obviously 0 being terrible and 4 being ridiculously awesome. I decided that for funsies I would watch all of the movies he rated 0 and all of the ones he rated as a 4. I might rate some of my own, but who knows, I have a lot of movies to go through as it is, so I won't add to it quite yet. I'm using A through F as my scale giving the movies a grade like school. No A+'s or F-'s because that's ridiculous. So that's that.

The title will say "a four" or "a zero" because that's what Nick gave it. You have to actually read my post to see what I gave it.

Enjoy!