Date Night Movie Review - Django Unchained

I have long been a fan of Quentin Tarantino's movies, in fact, Kill Bill is one of my best movies of all time, so I know what to expect when I go to see one of them. I'm not a proponent for violence but I have to admit it feels good to see bad people killed. More than that, I love Tarantino's stories and the way he tells them - his characters, their dialogue, his camera work, the movie soundtrack, everything.

Django Unchained delivered on all these points, in addition, it presented a mirror up to what is the real history of America for us to remember and bear in mind. So while most of his movies are personal, this is both personal and political. I was totally mesmerized by the almost 3 hrs film.

Truth to tell though, I had to close my eyes at certain points in the movie because I couldn't bear to keep watching some of the deep pain and agony sprinkled through the story. This more than the violence was what I found disturbing, and several times I found myself crying. I also laughed a lot, and I can say that love it or hate it, Django Unchained will surely touch you.

Side Effects Preview and $50 Giveaway

One method I use to select the movies I watch at the cinema is by paying attention to the trailers that run before the films, and that was how I saw the Side Effects preview last year. I was immediately intrigued because it was by Steven Soderbergh, one of those directors I respect, and who made the Ocean's Eleven series. I have also watched Out of Sight, Solaris, and Erin Brockovich so I know to watch out for his movies.

He also directed Contagion which we had seen the previous year. Contagion did not disappoint, with its intricate plot, the disturbing realism of the story line, and the awesome performance of the actors, and I feel Side Effects will be somehow alike. Contagion was about a disease that spread so quickly even before investigators realized where it originated from. It reminded me of AIDS, Ebola, SARS, or worse.

When the preview for Side Effects started, I took it as another romantic thriller until some of the characters began to fling pills around and then the title took on a whole new meaning.

Date Night Movie Review - Les Miserables

Right off, I'll tell you that I loved Les Miserable, so expect some gushing. I never knew much about the musical until Susan Boyle won the British Xfactor with the song. I heard it from a musical based on a 19th century book by Victor Hugo and lost much interest. After watching, I'm kicking myself. What the actors brought to the screen was amazing, Fantine's suffering, different kinds of love - given, taken, and unrequited, revolution, passionate people dying for their beliefs, the works!

Les Miserables at its core is a story of good versus evil, on a personal, individual and national scale. We get to ask ourselves, can an evil man become good? How can a good man be so hateful? At what point do we forgive? How much gray do we have between Black and White, and what is the use of walking the straight and narrow line without love?

Javert (played by Russell Crowe) could not let down his duty toward Valjean (Hugh Jackman) even though he sees as over the years the ex-criminal transforms his life. For him, an officer of the law – there is no gray, the law must be upheld by all means. A couple of times in the movie, he walks the edge of a precipice secure in uprightness. When he is forced to consider other attributes to life, it is the most difficult thing for him.

Movie Reviews - Ties That Bind

Ama Abebrese is a doctor, she loves her ex-boyfriend but has broken up with him because she's had two miscarriages related to incompatibity issues with regards to making healthy babies. She's afraid that means they'll never have children together, and does not want to be barren or subject him to the same fate. She is also scared that everyone will blame her, and the burden of having or not having children would crush their love and marriage. So she pushes him away even without telling him of her losses.

Omotola Jalade is also incapable of having live babies with her husband, she either miscarries, has stillbirth or the children die as infants. We watch as she endures several humiliations and pressure from all around especially from her mother-in-law. Though he appears weak and under his mother's thumb, I like that her husband stands by her her when it really matters.

Oscars Nominations and who gets my Votes

I have watched several movies, some of which are I've reviewed, and it was with interest that I realized that a lot of those movies were being mentioned when touts for Oscar glory were being made. The nominations are out now and Lincoln takes the lead with 12 nominations, including best picture and best director for Steven Spielberg. I won't be surprised if it wins both, it is a worthy film though not my favorite.

At this point, can I say that I'm disappointed that Cloud Atlas did not make any of the top categories, and was not nominated at all, at all? Imagine the great work by Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and the other actors, as well as the directing, makeup, cinematography, editing, etc? Were they disqualified for some reason I don't know? Anyway, too bad.

So what do I think of those that were nominated? Not that it matters. The award winners are selected by "members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a group of some 6,000 working professionals in cinema", and I can assure you I'm not one of those esteemed people. But let's have some fun with this, shall we?

Date Night Movie Review - Nollywood Movies

I started the Date Night Movie Review series because I wanted to document some memorable movies, and celebrate doing things with your partner. Nollywood Reinvented pointed out a couple of weeks ago that we were neglecting Nollywood movies, and that was true. See, I like Nollywood Movies, but I know the ones I like, I just don't watch because I'm supposed to be patriotic or something.

I don't think I can be a Nollywood movie reviewer, I just don't have the patience. I watch for enjoyment, and maybe to learn something or two, either about storytelling, or simply about life. After all, movies are supposed to be a reflection of society, and writer/directors are auteurs meant to draw lessons through their stories. I applaud people like NollywoodReinvented who take the bullet so we can avoid the worst of the lot.

Other than review blogs like her's, my biggest criteria to choosing a Nollywood movie to watch - just like a Hollywood movie actually - are directors, story/screenplay writers, the trailer, and of course, the actors. It is almost a given that an actor like Denzel Washington, or Genevieve, or Omotola, at this stage of their careers, would not be found in low quality movies. I know I may miss some good movies that way, which is where selecting movies by certain directors comes in.

Movie Review - The Hobbit (An Unexpected Journey)

Far over
The misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep
And caverns old...

Atala - Thus begin the lyrics to the Song of the Misty Mountain, a song which recurs throughout "The Hobbit", the subject movie of this review. And I have to say that if I had to choose a song to fit the movie, I couldn't have chosen better than this. It's a deep, soulful and haunting tune which evokes scenes of epic adventure full of perils and drama.

And there are certainly perils and drama aplenty in this film, as Bilbo Baggins, the eponymous hobbit, Gandalf the wizard and a company of dwarves go on an adventure to reclaim the dwarves' lost kingdom.

I was somewhat apprehensive about going to watch this; a few months ago, I had watched a Lord of the Rings trilogy of films in a marathon session, and I came away with a headache.

Date Night Movie Review - Lincoln

Atala - I'm a fan of historical movies - I feel they are a great way to spark one's interest in the events of another time while being entertained at the same time (although if you're really interested in history, you probably will want to do your own research to roughen up the smoothed-out Hollywood storylines). With this said, I was very keen on going to watch Lincoln, even though I understood that the film wasn't a full blown biography, but would just cover the first few months of 1865.

I glad to say that I came away learning about an interesting sliver of history that I hadn't been aware of before. In a nutshell, even though Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Act prohibiting slavery two years earlier, he still needed to get an amendment to the constitution ratified by the House of Congress so that slavery's illegality would be made permanent.

Date Night Movie Review - Silver Linings Playbook

Myne and I were reviewing the movies that we'd watched since the start of 2012, and we realised that there weren't that many comedies in the list. There's a reason - we like comedies where the humour is sharp, intelligent and natural, but unfortunately, there haven't been that many of those kinds of comedies.

So when I heard that one; Silver Linings Playbook had received rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, and two, it was a comedy, I immediately put it on my must-watch list, and when it came out, we went to watch it.

It turns out that there was a difference between what I expected and what I got. I had been expecting a more hilarious movie - maybe like a comedy of errors. But it turned out more to be a moving drama with many humorous moments, which was a difference that I didn't mind.

Hope Springs review and Blu-ray Giveaway

Hope Springs was billed as a comedy that tackles issues of marriage, and seeing that the main actors, Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are favorites of ours, we decided to go see it. The movie, which is out on DVD and Blu-ray this week, turned out to be more serious, a mixture of comedy and drama and a very touching one at that.

Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) are a devoted couple, but decades of marriage have left Kay wanting to spice things up and reconnect with her husband. When she hears of a renowned couple's specialist (Steve Carell) in the small town of Great Hope Springs, ME, she attempts to persuade her skeptical husband, a steadfast man of routine, to get on a plane for a week of marriage therapy.

Just convincing the stubborn Arnold to go on the retreat is hard enough—the real challenge for both of them comes as they shed their bedroom hang-ups and try to rekindle the spark that caused them to fall for each other in the first place.

Date Night Movie Review - Life of Pi

Atala - I had read the book of the same name by Yann Martell many years ago, and I remember enjoying the first half of the book, while feeling the second half lacked the same compelling narrative. Still, I remembered so little of the story that I felt that there was nothing to be lost by going again to see the movie. Perhaps Hollywood would work some magic to make the story more palatable.

As it turned out, the film follows the novel quite closely. It's primarily about a Piscine "Pi" Patel, young man who is shipwrecked while he and his family are sailing from India to Canada with a collection of animals from the zoo that they owned in India, with the events narrated by Pi (now grown up) to a writer.

It starts with a very tender and sometimes amusing description of his life in India, and goes on to describe how, when the ship is wrecked, he is the only human survivor, as every one else perishes in the sea. Well, yes - Pi is the only human survivor, but not the only survivor. Floating along with him in his lifeboat are a hyena, an orangutan - and arguably the deuteragonist of the story, a Bengal tiger with improbable name of Richard Parker.

Date Night Movie Review - Skyfall

Atala - I'm not really a James Bond fan - that's more Myne's department - so I was very lukewarm about going to watch this. Still, I like to keep an open mind, as Myne's choices have turned out to be very rewarding experiences (e.g. Cloud Atlas, which I reviewed a while ago). So I went along with this, hoping I'd be charmed by the Bond magic.

The film opened with a thrilling chase as James Bond (played by Daniel Craig) is in hot pursuit of a man who has stolen a hard drive with information that could compromise the safety of MI6 agents, and it ends with him getting shot and apparently falling to his death. Unfortunately, for me, that was the high point of the film - while there were several other reasonably compelling action scenes later on, none of them came close in making my eyes pop open in astonishment.

In fact, I found the plot of the film rather weak - the villain of the piece is a disgruntled agent who wants revenge on Bond's superior, so he launches an elaborate plot involving computer hackery and subterranean tunnels. And the ending which - in the tradition of all thriller movies - should have ended in a titanic struggle between Bond and the villain was very flat and left me feeling "so that was it?"

Date Night Movie Review - Flight

Atala - The trailer for this movie pointed a movie which seemed morally ambiguous. Should I, the viewer, be rooting for a character who was such a skilled pilot that he was able to save the majority of the passengers when the plane they were flying on suffered a serious malfunction? Or should I condemn him because it turned out that he had been drinking alcohol on the flight?

With these questions buzzing in my mind, we went to watch the movie. And I should say that the first thirty minutes or so were some of the most dramatic scenes that I have watched in a long while. All I can say is that if you have a fear of flying, you probably won't want to watch them. But after that drama was over, the movie settled into a slower pace, and the what the movie really was about - an alcoholic pilot in denial - came to the fore.

Denzel Washington, who played the lead role, did a great job here. I found myself alternately willing him to slay his addiction demons and mentally washing my hands off him as he relapsed again and again in the movie, especially as the consequences of continuing on his course of destruction would be pretty dire.

Movie Review - The Man with the Iron Fists

Atala - When I first saw the trailer for this film, my first reaction was "Huh?" A man whose body turns to metal? An action sequence that I wasn't sure was dancing or fighting? I was sort of curious, but I put it out of my head after a day or two.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, and Myne and I were trying to decide what film to watch. We were going to watch 'Flight', a film that I had set my eyes on for a while, but the film times didn't work for us. So we had a look at what else was on offer. Thus it was that "The Man with the Iron Fists" reasserted itself into my consciousness again, and thus it was that we went to watch it, despite my apprehension at some negative reviews I saw about it.

It turns out my fears were misplaced, because the film turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. The main story is about a blacksmith who unwittingly ends up endangering the village he lives in when the weapons he makes fall into the hands of the baddies.

Date Night Movie Review - Cloud Atlas

I want to start a new series where I share the movies Atala and I see at the cinema. We have very ecletic tastes and see all sorts. Sometimes we both love our selection, or one or the other of us just hate it. On cloud atlas, it was two thumbs up reviews from both Atala and I.

Atala - I first heard about Cloud Atlas from Myne, who herself had seen it in a blogger's "must watch" list. I was intrigued to hear that it dwelt on themes of the interconnectedness of lives across time, because I'm a big fan of movies that explore the deeper issues of life. In addition to this, it promised grand spectacle - something that Myne is very big on. So we made up our minds to watch it when it came out.

I have a favourite saying - happiness is the difference between what you experience and what you expect. Well, in this case, that saying was turned on its head, because what I experienced wasn't better or worse than what I expected - it was just simply different. Different in a good way.

The movie is made up of six different stories which occur at different times, ranging from the nineteenth century to some time far in the future. The stories are very different in style, but I found them all enjoyable in their own different ways. The two stories that I liked the best was one about a composer who faces a conflict because of his sexuality, and one about a 'replicant' - an artificial human being - who ends up setting off a rebellion, because they both explore the agonizing emotions that someone experiences when having to make hard choices.