GOD DAMN this cast is PRETTY. Image via nerdbastards.com
I loved, loved, LOVED how Scarlett Johansson wasn’t overly sexualized as women regularly are in movies, especially action tales. Her boobs weren’t staring you in the face trying to mug you all throughout the movie. They were like a nice hug on a Saturday instead. Captain America had tighter pants on than ScarJo, I swear. Regardless, everyone in that movie looked AMAZING, equally aaaaand Loki is a jerk. If you haven’t seen this movie, it’s the perfect theater movie to see. DO IT! It’s already made like a bajillion dollaz. Way to go Joss Whedon!!!
This movie (by Gustavo Taretto) is about two people who live in Buenos Aires, Argentina who both have a lot of phobias and fears, live next door to each other but don’t know each other, and are perfect soul mates. It sounds like something a brunette-haired Katherine Heigl would LUV to star in. But it’s actually a nice look at city living and love that could literally be next door.
If you’ve been to Buenos Aires, you’ll recall that its a big, big city with lots and lots of buildings. Everywhere. Not as crazy as São Paulo, but pretty buildinged-up regardless. The shots of the city in the film paint a much darker view of the city I saw. However, I was on vacation in summer: Sunny days, sweltering heat and lots of drinks. The characters in the movie are living their own personal dull versions of hell. Very different versions of BA for sure.
It’s so cute in Spanish! Image via ionlitio.com
Mariela, the woman, is living alone again after breaking up with her boyfriend of 4 years. She has a couple weird eccentricities, but she’s mostly a sad yet beautiful girl searching for her own Where’s Waldo (yeah, there’s a Where’s Waldo theme. Actually a “Donde esta Wally?” en español). Martín is an agoraphobe who is also a web designer who takes photographs outside as going-outside-therapy. They share a wall and an undying hope for love and life outside their small, caja de zapatos apartments.
It’s definitely a hip indie flick, but a pretty cool one from an exciting Argentinean filmmaker Gustavo Taretto that deals with love in our modern age of connection and technology. We’re so connected through wires and waves and computer screens, that somehow the real world and real people seem too much to handle sometimes, even though you could be having a great time with someone really geographically close to you! Sidewalls is a real good look into quarter-life crisis of 20/30 something Argentineans, because it shows that we all are soooo much more alike than we are different. Everyone sits around on the internet, all over the globe! What a day and age!
Also, the film lacks machismo that seems to plague almost every movie in Spanish I’ve ever seen. There’s no “I’m a man, I can fuck and please any woman I want, even if I have a wife. But if she does, Imma go apeshit!!!” It steps outside of those stereotypes about latin men and women and shows two people just being two people in the world. It’s refreshing.
Afterthoughts
There is one cringe-worthy part though: In the rolling credits, Mariela and Martín have a semi-big Youtube video of them singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” A great song as noted in the tearjerker Stepmom, but fo real. No more movie montages with that song please. It’s gonna like, turn us all into people who don’t cut our hair and only wear jean skirts. If I EVER make a video like that…or any of you do… we will have hit absolute rock bottom. Way over meth addiction.
I wish this was a gif where the Netflix envelope dances to funk music with a suit and tie flashing on and off of him. Someone, do it! Image via pchell.com
I love me some Netflix. Fo’real. Granted, it used to be a lot better, like when they had an account with Starz and their CEO, or whoever runs the show over there, didn’t fuck everything up yet. (Qwikster… YIKES, dude. Seriously? A ‘w’?)
But I am SO BAD with keeping up with my queue. By the time the movie I wanted gets here, which is like a week later when I finally decide to return the movie I haven’t watched but want to get rid of, I’m uninterested. It’s a sick game.
You really have to be in the right mood to watch a certain movie. If I wanted to chill and watch something funny but instead had a Nazi war crime film, it might be really difficult to get back to the person I was when I ordered that movie. This modern world moves at such a fast pace, that I can barely pass my ample part-time gal free time watching something I recently wanted to see.
Is the internet too entertaining? Definitely. Should I feel bad that I waste $10 a month on maybe watching A movie? Probably. But there are always those surprising fits of energy when you sync up with your queue. It’s fucking beautiful. You’re excited to see the red envelope in the mail. You rip it open. GAHHH it’s your first Clarissa Explains It All disc! Success! Or you’re in a depressive, destructive mood and just want to watch something so horrible like The Diary of Anne Frank (Yeah, there are a lot of movies about Nazi Germany).
All I know is, it’s kind of nice to have this non-problem problem. It’s like those sit coms from the 50s, where there were no actual problems that weren’t super harmless, like a dog eating homework or Ritchie forgetting to cut the grass before the Sock Hop. If this post was more like a modern day actual problem, it would probably go like Meth: The benefits they’re not telling you. Not gonna lie, I’d totally read that blog. Meth + blogging is probably going to be the next big thing. (Or has it already happened?) Although I don’t know what people on meth are like. Blogging may be out of reach.
Somehow I stumbled upon a pop music search while browsing Netflix for a sweet little nightcap. In it I found the weirdest mix of pop music docs or live performances. None of them look particularly, good except Madonna: Truth or Darebecause that shit is awesome. I don’t know if I wanna watch the Tina Turner ones. Or even Cher. Usher, maybe. If he’s dancing. Tori Amos? I hear she’s good. The Britney one is a pass (her dancing is all hands)! Check them out here.
This movie is awesome. Elizabeth Olsen is amazing, and definitely did not get this role because of sisterly nepotism. She plays Martha/Marcy May/Marlene soooo well. Her character, M/MM/M got involved in an abusive cult and was gone for two years without really contacting her family. The movie shows her struggle with deciphering between what is real and what is a bad memory from her cult days. It’s hard to watch but that’s what makes it such a good film, because you’re navigating the fucked up story along with M/MM/M.
The creepiness of this movie and the way she got sucked in and brainwashed into a cult resonated with me for a couple of days. To have a film creep you out for that long was really fucking cool. Scary, but cool because it takes a lot of talent from everyone involved in the film to create a story like that. It’s a MUST SEE movie. Put it in your Netflix queue like, yesterday!
This movie is an instant classic. You know when you listen to a song or meet a new friend and you just instantly know you’re going to be bffs? Party Girl is that movie. Think early 90s Clueless with more clubbing, recreational drugs and 20s future-related strife.
Parker Posey plays this role to perfection. Everything she says is funny, even if it’s not supposed to be. She’s kind of like that in every role she plays, like there’s some kind of wit dripping from every word she says, even though she delivers with ice-cold perfection.
Image via
The movie starts off with Posey’s character, Mary, throwing awesome parties to make rent and have money for her fabulous lifestyle. Quickly she gets arrested and calls her godmother to pick her up. She reluctantly gives her a job at the library she works at. Mary doesn’t really care about the job, until she gets berated by her aunt to give a shit about something. She gets high, learns the Dewey decimal system and begins her transformation from crazy party girl to chic professional.
Of course there are boys boys boys involved! Mary has a crush on the Lebanese falafel guy she orders from everyday. Wearing one crazy outfit after another and trying to learn Arabic, their relationship flits along throughout the movie as she continues to figure out how to become adult-y.
This movie is hilarious, 20-something coming of age, fashionable and best of all it has heart. Instant favorite and definitely a Netflix diamond in the rough.
This movie looks really good. Judd Apatow anything is usually a safe bet. This is 40 is the kind of sequel to Knocked Up, but centers on Pete and Debbie’s relationship as they turn 40.
Paul Rudd is fucking fantastic always, and Leslie Mann is beautiful and awesome as a 40-year-old hot lady. Seriously, these people make 40 look like the new 30. Growing up is so easy for us. 30 is the new 24, and 40 is the new 30. 50 is 50 and 65 is the new 38, but with free time and no student loan payments.
Check out the trailer. I’m glad someone is making 40 look realistic but not so stupidly pathetic. Nothing ever HAS to be pathetic at 40, except like cosplay maybe, and still living with your parents.
Watching genocide unravel is never an easy movie to pick up. Angelina Jolie wrote, directed and produced In the Land of Blood and Honeybased on the Bosnian war in the 90s. In an interview, Jolie explained the intrigue that brought her to write a film on what happened in Bosnia. “This was, you know, the worst genocide since World War II in Europe … What were we all doing? And did we do enough? And why do we not speak about this enough?”
Image via wikipedia
The movie, as it was rumored to be, is not about a woman falling in love with her rapist. It is a startling love story between two people on different sides of the war. The man is a soldier who fights for the Bosnian Serbs, and the woman is Bosnian Muslim. Their love story begins before the war and continues through countless atrocious moments throughout the film. The dynamic between the two is so strange that at times you don’t know whether she is his prisoner or girlfriend.
At any moment throughout the film you feel like someone is going to get raped or murdered. It’s shocking to see society unravel so quickly to the point where soldiers who were civilly taking women on dates are now raping them in front of an audience of women and men. As terrible as it is to watch these things, it’s even more terrible to know that worse things happen everyday throughout the world. How many genocidal conflicts are happening right now? How many women are being raped and beaten? How many men are being killed because of their religion? The film raises these questions in the ever-present absence of the UN and the US during this conflict that ended so many lives in Bosnia.
The point of this film was to inform us about a gruesome war that many people in our country, and maybe worldwide don’t know much about. It’s not everyday that genocide is as popular as what happened in Nazi Germany, as many genocides throughout the past century have gone unnoticed by popular culture.
If you’re in the mood for a good, heart-breaking film that focuses on genocide and war, this is the film for you.
Check out the trailer for In the Land of Blood and Honey
American Reunion is kind of the fourth movie in the American Pie series. There was American Pie, American Pie 2, American Wedding and now American Reunion with the same cast from the original flick. Then there were all those teen, super soft-core pornish movies under the title American Pie Presents that were straight to DVD and pretty successful due to horny kids and weird adults.
You know what you’re getting into when you see an American Pie movie: Dick jokes, blow jobs, pubic hair, MILFs, awkward sexuality, sex with inanimate objects and unnecessary nakedness. Those things are the cornerstone of the AP movies, and American Reunion is no different.
The cast is older, obviously. Some look a little more worse for wear than others. We all know what Tara Reid has been through. It was nice to see her working. Jason Biggs looks exactly the same to the point where it must be witchcraft. Thomas Ian Nicholas who plays Kev will always have a place in my heart from the movies he was in A Kid in King Arthur’s Court. He definitely has some crows feet and awkward facial hair in the movie, but that shit happens. The rest of the cast kind of looks the same as always.
Fuck yeah! Image via rottentomatoes.com
In terms of inside jokes, which you would have to know if you’ve seen the previous big screen films, they are EVERYWHERE. It’s almost exhausting how many jokes and references to the old movies are running rampant. Milfs, Jim jerking off and something horrible happening to him, Finch and bathrooms, anything Stiffler says, etc. It’s like the movie had those VH1 pop-ups in verbal form!
The movie definitely took a progressive step (for an American Pie movie) in featuring bro-y gay men kissing and getting married who are friends of Stiffler. If there’s a young demographic that needs to be exposed to more forward thinking, I’m pretty sure it’s most of the American Pie fans. Also, sexual awkwardness, humiliation and gain were for the most part equal among the genders. You see Stifler going down on a ‘fat chick who gives great head’ just to have her be like “thanks, now fuck off.” Hell yeah. I guess American Pie has portrayed equal sexual favors for everyone since the beginning. Good for them.
This movie is worth watching if you’ve got a dollar and a Redbox when it comes to DVD. Sometimes you just need to laugh about penis jokes and see people get into horrible, awkward situations. Plus, it’s nice to see a group of people working that haven’t really been in a lot of other movies with the exception of John Cho (hell yeah Asian actors, I want an Asian pop star!!!). It almost feels like the American Pie cast was meant for these roles, because they all play them really well. It’s a group of faces that makes you feel something, whether it be about your awkward sexual youth or a group of high school friends reuniting. We can relate to both, so even if the dialogue is rushed and the plot is predictable, it still feels good to watch these goons doing crazy shit.
Sidenote: The budget for wigs was obviously whack because they were AWFUL. xoxox!
Oh. MY. GOD. I can’t believe they let her put on that show. Honestly.
Image via Netflix
First of all, I am a HUGE Britney fan. I love the songs and her early choreographed dance sequences. I spent all of the 2007/2008 school year forcing people to listen to Blackout. But Britney Spears Live: The Femme Fatale Tour makes me really sad. And it will probably make you sad too.
It was forgivable in the beginning of Brit’s career that she lip-synced here and there because she was gracing our eyes with the coolest dance moves of the new millennium to the coolest dance hits by the biggest and most successful pop producers in the world. She used to put on a high-energy dance performance while acting out the song. Now she moves around semi-mindlessly, clearly lip-syncing and disappointing fans with her lackluster dance production to songs that were made for a pop-dance breakdown.
After countless knee-surgeries and a likely prescription for lithium (never forget Britney 2007), she can’t quite move like she used to. Which is understood by everyone. But continuing to lip-sync during a show where you’re not even heavily dancing is just getting absurd. What’s the point of the live show if you get little more than seeing a famous person?
Image via liveconcertevents.blogspot.com
The concert is full of Britney’s greatest hits. She performs them by walking back and forth on stage, moving her arms with our best 6th grade dance moves and lip-syncing the whole time. The costumes looked cheap. At some points in the concert, she would just stand next to things, like a pole, and touch them from time to time. She was also allowed to sit (after the exhaustion of “singing” and “dancing”) on a huge swing that a guy climbed while she mouthed along to a ballad.
This woman is either an autistic savant pop/dance music genius who has gone aloof or a seriously damaged famous person being medicated and put on stage to walk around perform because she makes lots of money.
Do not watch this movie. It will do nothing besides make you feel sad that Britney isn’t the Britney we grew up with and angry that somebody makes millions of dollars for walking around on a stage sort of giving a shit about what’s going on.
I love Britney so much. A part of her will be in my heart forever. But this concert movie is a harsh reality check. We better keep admiring her saucy dance tracks from audio sources only because watching it live is hard. You’ve been warned.
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