Category Archives: Movies

Crazy, Stupid, Love – Movie Review


Oh Crazy, Stupid, Love how high my expectations were for you.

In my head, Emma Stone can’t go wrong in a movie. Especially after the awesome Easy A. Put her in a mix with Steve Carell, Julianne Moore and Ryan Gosling and the movie result shouldn’t be that bad, right?

Wrong.

Crazy, Stupid, Love was atrocious.

Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) and Emily Weaver (Juliane Moore) are a not so happily married couple out on a date when the wife blurts out that she wants a divorce and that she has cheated on him. Five minutes later, they are divorced and living in separate homes. So naturally, like any devastated husband, Cal goes out to one bar over and over again, repeating his sad story so everyone can hear, over and over again. It is then that he catches the attention of the bar’s prime womanizer Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling) who decides to give Cal a makeover and become his wingman. Soon enough, Jacob’s efforts succeed and Cal starts hooking up with every woman he can get.

At the same time, Jacob meets Hannah (Emma Stone), an aspiring lawyer preparing for her Bar examination and sooner or later, the two fall in love. Add to the mix Cal and Emily’s son having a crush on his older babysitter who has a crush on his dad, Cal. And then Cal sleeping with his son’s teacher, played by Marisa Tomei and you get a sense of what Crazy, Stupid, Love is.

Perhaps it’s the super weak script, perhaps it’s the unclarity that faces the film but Crazy, Stupid, Love had too many things going for it. And it failed to deliver on every single account, even on the laughing part. Sometimes, a comedy movie gets you to laugh. But at the end of the day, you can say it wasn’t a good movie. What if a “comedy” movie doesn’t get a chuckle out of you and is a bad movie? That’s Crazy, Stupid, Love right there.

Out of the bunch of actors and actresses in it, Emma Stone is probably the best. And no, I’m not biased. She delivers the movie’s rare funny lines and gives life to her character that all the other characters lack, and it’s not really the actors’ fault. Julianne Moore has such an underdeveloped character that it could have been omitted altogether. Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell lack chemistry as the movie’s main protagonists. The cast should have known better than to take on such a project.

The movie, moreover, has not one but two directors. It’s hard for me to believe how two “creative” heads thinking about making one movie could miss the mark in the way that they did. And none of it is fun to watch. The pace drags and lulls like the rickety joints of an arthritic ninety year old man.

And the script. Let’s talk about how ridiculously cliche the script is. There’s one point where one of the characters blurts out on screen: “Rain… how cliche.” Care to guess what happened before the rain? Yes, there was a fight. Sometimes, screenwriters can turn a cliche idea and make something good out of it. After all, not all aspects of life are out of the box. This is not the case here.

Crazy, Stupid, Love’s title is a very wrong representation of the movie. At least two thirds of the title. No, it’s not crazy. It’s as tame as movies go. No, there’s nothing to love about it. And yes, it is totally stupid. The movie’s fault? It never gets crazy or stupid enough to make you love it.

Rue Huvelin – New Lebanese Movie

And the series of interesting-looking Lebanese movies continues. After blogging about Nadine Labaki’s upcoming movie, Where Do We Go Now, it’s time to put the spotlight on Rue Huvelin.

For anyone who doesn’t know Beirut well, specifically Achrafieh, Rue Huvelin is considered a landmark. It is where the prestigious French system based university “Université St. Joseph” is located.

Slated for a November 17th release date, Rue Huvelin is a movie about the Lebanese student movement at the time of the Syrian (direct) occupation of the country, between 1990 and 2005.

The movie’s official summary is as follows:

In 1990, the Lebanon War ends with the Syrian army’s takeover of the Presidential Palace, signaling an ensuing fifteen years occupation. One of the consequences of this period was a general sense of collective retreat and apathy among the population. On Huvelin Street, where the Middle East’s leading Francophone university (Saint-Joseph) settles, a group of students opposed to the status-quo decide to break the silence and rally a pacifying resistance movement in the heart of Beirut at the close of the 1990s. Their resistance was a struggle between two opposing worldviews: between a liberal and freedom-loving lifestyle of a group of friends and compatriots, and between the oppression of authorities and the indifference of society.

Are you interested? Cause I sure am.

Soul Surfer – Movie Review

Soul Surfer follows in the Hollywood footsteps of movies such as The Blind Side, a true story based drama with a central Christian theme.

Bethany Hamilton (AnnaSophia Robb) is your regular teenager in almost every way, except that her blood is “salty water” – she lives to surf. Surfing is who she is and it is how she spends most of her time, in her Hawaiian hometown. However, fate has it that a shark attack causes Bethany to lose her left arm. If the attack had been two inches higher, Bethany would have lost her life as well. She lost 60% of her blood before she was rushed to the hospital where she struggles for her life and barely grasps to it.

It is then that Bethany’s struggle towards normality begins. How do you lead a surfing-based life with only one arm? How do you do your basic home chores and help around in the most basic tasks with one limb less?

With the help of her Youth Pastor Sarah Hill (Carrie Underwood) and her parents (Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid), Bethany regains her footing, learning the most valuable lesson of her life: with love and faith, you gain a new perspective on life, one that allows you to see the workings of God even in tragedies and allows you to come out triumphant.

I am by no means a sappy Christian. I struggle with my faith on daily basis. But Soul Surfer is one of those rare movies that demand nothing of you except to sit with an open mind and watch. It doesn’t preach. It doesn’t try to serve arguments about the existence of God, it simply shows you how Bethany found God in her life, as she stood on the precipice of a tragedy, the day before the rest of her life.

AnnaSophia Rob delivers a great performance as young Bethany. Her performance is highly nuanced, showcasing both aspects of her character’s character meticulously: the carefree teenagers and the tragedy-struck woman. She showcases Bethany’s struggle in a highly natural way and doesn’t shy away from asking those most crucial question in situations like this: why me?

Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt deliver performances that are representative of their acting caliber. They are the parents horrified by the troubles of their little girl, as they simultaneously put up this invincible facade to get her through her ordeal. But it’s Bethany at times who has to tell her dad not to cry.

Carrie Underwood holds her own in her movie debut as the youth pastor Sarah Hill. She is in about five scenes where she serves as guidance for Bethany and she does her job as a supportive character with flying colors. I had no idea what to expect from Carrie because I have never seen her take on a serious acting role of this magnitude before (although she has shown some acting chops in her Just a Dream and Temporary Home videos as well as a comedic side in a guest role on How I Met Your Mother) but I was pleasantly surprised. She held her own, did not over-act or under-act and gave the character the amount of emotion it deserved. And no, I’m not being biased.

All in all, Soul Surfer is one of those feel-good movies that actually make you feel ecstatic by their end. And even the story could have been this saccharine tale with the happy ending resolution, it doesn’t feel like this in this movie, mostly because you know this is not fiction – someone actually went through all of this. When Bethany is asked, towards the end of the movie, if she could go back and not go surfing on the day she got attacked, her reply was: “I wouldn’t change what happened to me because then I wouldn’t have this chance, in front of all of you, this chance to embrace more people than I ever could have with two arms.”

And when the end credits roll with real life footage of the real Bethany Hamilton, you remain in your seat, transfixed by this young woman who, against all odds, beat her tragedy to become one of the world’s most important surfers today.

8.5/10

Bridesmaids – Movie Review

Where do I start?

Over 90% in positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes, written by those responsible for the hilarious Saturday Night Live skits and brought to the screen by those that gave us Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin. Mix these together and you get a pretty high expectation level for Bridesmaids. Some had even called it the comedy of the year, a possible “Hangover”-esque comedy with women in power.

I don’t want to sound anti-feminist but Bridesmaids fails miserably.

Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Liliane (Maya Rudolph) have been best friends since they were little girls. When Liliane gets engaged, she chooses Annie to be her maid of honor. And then they meet the other bridesmaids: a neurotic woman named Helen (Rose Byrn), a newlywed Becca (Ellie Kemper), a tomboy-ish Megan (Melissa McCarthy) and a frustrated mother and wife named Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey).

Naturally, the bridesmaids won’t get along well as conflict between Helen, who wants to be Liliane’s best friend, and Annie soon arises. And this is the movie’s catalyst (or lack thereof): how the characters interact.

Starting off with a sex scene and going into the monotonous life of a woman and her best friend, the movie sets itself as a chick-flick from the get-go. And it doesn’t really try to stray from that connotation until about the 45th minute. And that’s a lot of baggage for a movie to try to get rid off with one scene that involves a dress fitting gone seriously wrong after some Brazilian food poisoning.

Yes, you will laugh your ass off at that scene and start hoping that the movie has picked up but you will be severely disappointed.

And what do you know, single Annie soon enough meets her own prince charming in the form of a police officer who pulls her over because he thought she was driving under the influence of alcohol. Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) soon embarks on a troubled relationship with Annie that doesn’t really unfold and is left as a side story more in the realms of cliche than of a true relationship.

Bridesmaids is a terribly slow movie as well. The plot lingers on so many irrelevant points that it doesn’t feel like moving at all. And mind you, I had no idea this was a two hour movie. It’s almost longer than Harry Potter. No comedy is supposed to take this long to unfold, especially one with so little jokes and so many useless dialogue.

The acting in Bridesmaids is pretentious as well. Not only is it agonizing to watch at times, but it’s also as rickety as the joints of a creaky table. Some have called Kristen Wiig’s performance a breakthrough. Excuse me, but have we watched the same movie? She’s not even the character that delivers the good jokes in the movie, it’s tomboy-ish Megan. And Helen, the movie’s “villain” is so marinated in everything cliche about the perfectionist wedding planner than seeing her on screen initiates your gag reflex.

Let me put it this way, Bridesmaids was so bad that a friend who watched the movie with me and who hates anything in the fantasy genre wished she had watched Harry Potter instead. And I was mortified that I had actually suggested we’d watch such a movie. I’m pretty sure a third screening of Harry would have been much more enjoyable than seeing a bunch of women make a joke of themselves by vomiting, cracking jokes about blowjobs, diarrhea and getting wasted on airplanes.

Let me try to grade this. 3/10

Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Sex Scene Video Leaked

Since I have a twihard following, I figured they’d be interested in seeing this. Everyone else, don’t mind this post.

After pictures from Breaking Dawn’s Sex Scene (and only scene I’m interested in watching for that matter) leaked back in April, a video of a few seconds from that scene has leaked today as well.

I’m beginning to believe these are intentional leaks to build the hype for the movie as viewers are probably waiting the most to see Bella and Edward hit it off.

You can see the video here.

[EDIT] I was asked to remove the pictures.