A Perfect World

I could not help but to blog about one of my all time favorite movies, "A Perfect World." I'm sure that most of you have not heard of it but I definitely recommend that you go watch it. This film came out before I was even born, in the year 1993. One of my favorite actors, Kevin Costner, stars in the film playing the character Robert Haynes, also known as "Butch". My dad and I have been big fans of many Kevin Costner movies ever since he visited our house a few different times, a couple years back. That was a pretty amazing experience to meet a well known celebrity, especially at the time. Kevin Costner is sincerely a really nice guy on and off the camera. This is something that we really came to appreciate about him.  The movie is directed by Clint Eastwood, who usually seems to make excellent movies all the time. Eastwood also plays the important role of Texas Ranger Red Garnett in the movie. Another key character in the movie is T. J. Lowther, who plays a young eight-year old boy named Phillip Perry in the movie. Anyways, this has become one of our favorite Kevin Costner movies and I thought I would share my own comments on this movie, seeing as though I hope that after reading this blog, you will try and make the effort to see it as well.

This movie takes place in Texas in the year 1963, around the season of fall. Two criminals, Robert Haynes, nick named Butch, and Terry Pugh (played by Keith Szarabajka) just managed to escape from Huntsville Prison. During their prison break, as they are running from the law they bump into a house where Butch pursues to kidnap a young boy named Phillip Perry from his Jehovah's Witness family, seeing as though they were in need of a hostage. On the beginning of their long Journey together, Terry Pugh tries to molest the young child, leading Butch with no choice but to shoot his fellow convict. The boy soon comes to appreciate Butch for saving him from Pugh's treacherous actions. Together, Butch and Phillip become fellow accomplices to each other, doing everything they can to run from the law. Their pursuing police chase was lead by Texas Ranger Red Garnett. In this time period, Butch and Phillips become best of friends learning more about each other than you could ever imagine in such a situation. Soon you come to realize, just as Phillip does too, that Butch really is not as bad of a person as he is made out to be in the beginning of the movie. In actual fact, he is a kind hearted and protective man of great morals, who learns a lot from Phillip, just as Phillip learns from him. This strong bond between the two of them will become some of the most cherished days of Butch and Phillips life, teaching them more than you could imagine. It is truly an amazing movie that you must watch to find out about the rest. It has given me a very different outlook on life in which I will always be grateful for; sometimes you just have to dig deep to find the truth about people. This is something that "A Perfect World" perfectly demonstrates. You are welcomed to check out this short preview of the movie: "A Perfect World". I cannot express my love for this movie any stronger. Do yourself a favor and go watch it. You will not regret it!

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is based on the Book, which was written by Alice Sebold. I was the best-seller in the year 2002, so it was quite well known then. In 2009 it was released to theaters and directed by Peter Jackson. The film did not receive the best reviews from critics though; however, it still made over $43.5 billion. One problem that I had with the film was that the acting was kind of cheesy especially from certain characters. Besides that though, "The Lovely Bones" deserves more than it was made out to be. Overall, it had a very interesting plot that tried to display the different aspects of the book, such as the "in-between". Also the visuals were beautiful and it was packed with a whole bunch of great symbolism throughout the movie. If you haven't read the book, I think you will quite like the movie. However, if you did read the book you might be a little disappointed by the way it is perceived in the movie. Either way though, I recommend you go watch, and find out for yourself.

The movie takes place in 1973, in a small town named Norristown, Pennsylvania. It begins with the main character Susie Salmon (played by Saoirse Ronan), who is a young 14 year old girl who lives a very normal life, and dreams of becoming a photographer. One day when she is at school one of the boys in her class named Ray Singh (played by Rice Ritchie), whom she has a crush on, approaches her and slips a note into her textbook, asking her out. Of course, happier than ever, she says yes, and when they are about to kiss, they are interrupted by a teacher yelling at their classmate, Ruth Conners (played by Carolyn Dando) for drawing what he perceived to be inappropriate pictures. Later on that day, Suzie is dismissed from school, where she follows her daily path home as she normally does. On the way home as she is walking through a cornfield to get to her house, her neighbor, Mr. George Harvey (played by Stanley Tucci), approaches her out of nowhere. He says that he wants to show her an underground fort that he had just built for all the neighborhood kids. Of course, seeing as though she knew him already, she did not think much of it and pursued to go with him. Mr. Harvey leads her down into the fort and shows her around. However, she begins to get become fairly uncomfortable in his presence and manages to elbow him as he grabs her and then runs away. Susie runs through the cornfield and to her neighborhood street where she bumps into her classmate Ruth Conners. She continues to run seeing her dad, screaming for him, but he does not answer. She then goes home and finds Mr. Harvey bathing in a bathtub covered in mud, unable to see her. There she finds her lucky charm bracelet next to the sink which is filled with blood. This is when she breaks down crying, realizing she had never made it out of Mr. Harvey's underground den; he had murdered her and she is now in the "in-between". This is when you die but your spirit has not yet fully accepted your death and wishes to stay here until they are ready to leave their love ones behind. In the "in-between", Susie does everything she can to try and give her father signs of her spirit and help him discover her murderer. The movie progresses quite a lot from here on, becoming very interesting. I won't ruin anymore for you so that you can watch it yourself. Here's a little preview of the movie that you are welcome to watch: "The Lovely Bones". Thanks so much for reading! Hope you enjoy this one!

The Hangover

I thought I'd do the Hangover this week, seeing as though it is one of my favorite comedies out there. I love this movie so much, and anyone who thinks otherwise is absolutely crazy. By far, this is the best comedy that has come out in years! And I'm so excited, because I heard that they are filming a second Hangover, which should be released soon. Hopefully it will be just as good as the original. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Stu sings "Stu's Song", also known as the Tiger Song. Go to this link to watch a short clip of this scene from the movie: "Stu's Song". I play the piano, so the first thing I persisted on doing after watching this movie was devoting the rest of my day to figuring this song out. It's always hilarious to be able to play it and sing along randomly with friends and family. If you still haven't come around to seeing this, you better go out and rent it. 

This movie stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Heather Graham, Justin Bartha, and Jeffrey Tambor. The main plot of this movie is about four friends who travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party for their best friend Doug. This includes Doug (Justin Bartha) and his best friends Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and soon-to-be brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis). Doug is also lent the use of his father-in-laws Mercedes to drive to Las Vegas for the weekend. Upon their arrival in Las Vegas they check into the hotel Caesars Palace, where of course one of Alan’s famous stupid lines is said to the hotel check in desk clerk, “I’m sure you get this a lot, but is this the real Caesars Palace?" This is just one of my many favorite lines in the movie.  Anyways, the four guys check into a large villa at the hotel, where they leave later to pursue one wild night. But before starting off this night, Alan serves them all a drink in which he secretly slipped in what he thought to be ecstasy, but turned out to be ruffies. The movie than flashes forward to the next morning where they all wake up, not remembering a thing about last night. They soon discover that the groom Doug is missing, whose wedding is scheduled to occur the next day. Before you know it, the three guys set out on a crazy hunt through Las Vegas, trying to trace their footsteps and find Doug. On this journey they will run into tons of hilarious, plot twisting, and as Alan would say, "classic mix-ups". Here's a little preview of the movie: "The Hangover". Trust me, if you haven't seen you’ll love it!

The Social Network

I just saw this movie this weekend, and I was really surprised by it. My first impression was that it would be just a boring movie about some computer nerd who one day out of nowhere just decided to make "Facebook". In actuality, it was much more than that and it turned out to be quite a great movie. "The Social Network" is based on some true events dealing with how Facebook was created. The creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, said that a lot of the movie was fairly exaggerated and not made out like the actual story. However, there was an actual lawsuit from the Winklevoss Brothers who accused him of stealing their idea, and they made over 65 million dollars from it. The cast in this movie includes Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara, Rashida Jones, and Armie Hammer. The main character, Mark Zuckerberg, is a very bright and nerdy student at Harvard University. In 2003 he gets the idea to make a website where students all around Harvard can go to, to rate the attractiveness of female undergraduate students attending Harvard. He did so, along with the help of his mathematical genius friend, Eduardo Saverin, who in turn helped him to figure out the computer algorithm for the access of his website, FaceMash. Before you know it the website is live, and up and running. In just under a couple of hours, FaceMash already had over 22,000 hits, so much that the networked crashed. Later on, the Harvard administers find out that it was Mark Zuckerberg's fault for the crashing of their network due to high traffic, giving him 6 months of academic probation.

Mark Zuckerberg soon gets a lot of attention for setting up this sight and is eventually sought out by a group of club members at Harvard. These guys included, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, identical twins and members of Harvard's rowing team, and their business partner Divya Narendra. They were interested in seeing if he would consider setting up a Harvard Connection social network, called "ConnectU”, which would be targeted to Harvard students who had the email service "harvard.edu". In this you could set up your own profile, where you could chat with friends and upload pictures for them to see. It had some of the same characteristics that Facebook now has today. The instant the Winklevoss’s and Narendra asked if Zuckerberg was interested in creating this site, he said yes. More excited than ever about this idea, he ignored the twins and Divya, creating the website himself, for his own benefit, because he believed he could do a much better job of it without them, seeing as though their team could not handle its complexities. Mark receives help from his friend Eduardo Saverin, who sponsors the initial costs of running the website. They came to the agreement of splitting their shares in the website: 70 percent for Mark Zuckerberg and 30 percent for Eduardo Saverin. After nearly a week of putting it together, it was finally finished and streamed live across the Harvard Network. This soon becomes very popular in just days all across Harvard, making Zuckerberg one of the most well-liked students there. Of coursed angered by Mark Zuckerberg’s actions, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra will all try to sue him for stealing their idea for the website. This movie will progress into the rapid rise of Facebook’s popularity, the loss of friendships, and lawsuits against Zuckerberg’s company, Facebook. It was really a great movie! You guys will probably love it. It's also very interesting to see how this one website became so popular, so fast. Here’s a preview of the movie that you are welcome to check out: "The Social Network". Hope you enjoy this one!

Catch Me If You Can

Once again, I have decided to blog about one of my all time favorite movies. If you have yet to seen this, than you better go out and rent it, because it's great! This is a true story staring Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays a man by the name of Frank Abagnale Jr.. At the age of sixteen, Frank’s dad, Frank Abagnale Sr. (Christopher Walken), loses the granting of a loan due to IRS tax fraud on his part. This forces his family to move into a small apartment due to their budget restrictions. At this time, Frank Jr. is posing as a substitute to teacher to make a little extra money. This is the beginning of his many soon to come scams to make money. When Frank Jr. finds out that his mother had been cheating on his father for the past year, he becomes furious with her. They soon get a divorce leading Frank Jr. to rebel against his parents and run away. He does not resort to come home for years.

On his own at the age of 16, he soon begins to run out of money, which is something he cannot depend on from his own family. This leads him to one of his most ingenious scams as an airplane pilot. This impersonation as a pilot alone, allows him to scam the Pan American World Airways into paying him over 2.8 million dollars! He did this in under a year’s time by posing as a student interested in becoming a pilot and researching everything he could about plots, so that he could disguise himself as one. By doing this, he began to illegally make himself fake checks that appeared to come from the Pan American Airlines, which they thought that he was one of their employees. This skillful crime of check forgery will lead him to being soon investigated by the cops, specifically Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), an FBI bank fraud agent, who slowly begins to track down Frank with the help from his past acquaintances. This turns into years of him being chased down by the FBI with much struggle. Franks long avoidance from the police was mainly thanks to his several changes in impersonations of different careers such as, a doctor in Georgia, a lawyer serving as a Louisiana attorney, and parish prosecutor. The plot becomes more and more interesting throughout the movie so I won't ruin anymore of it for you. Like always, here's a preview of the movie: "Catch Me If You Can". You're going to love it!

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

This is another great film that I saw this weekend! It is a sequel to the film Wall Street that came out in 1987. Before you see the sequel to the movie, make sure that you watch the first one. Even though you will still be able to fully enjoy the second film on its own, it still really helps to see the first because you are able to pick up on a lot of scenes that reflect back to the original, and you will be able to understand the plot a bit better. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" deals with four main characters throughout the film. Gordan Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, is released from prison on October 22, 2002, after an eight-year prison sentence for illegal insider trading and security fraud. Jake Moore, played by Shia Lebeouf, is a Manager at a well-known stock brokerage firm called Keller Zabel Investments. His girlfriend, Winnie Gekko who is played by Carey Mulligan, is the daughter of Gordan Gekko, who she has refused to ever involve herself with, ever since her brother’s death while he was in jail. Winnie's brother killed himself under substance abuse, and she blamed her father for it because she believed her brother committed suicide thanks to the lost connection of his father while in jail. One other main character is Bretton James, who is played by Josh Brolin, and is a CEO of Churchill Schwartz, a competing brokerage firm with Keller Zable Investments.

When Gordan Gekko is released from jail, no one, including his own daughter, ends up coming to pick him up. He realizes that he has been slowly forgotten over the years and this is something he will remember throughout the movie, leading to quite the twist. The movie jumps to the year 2008 where right off the bat, you are able to quickly figure out Winnie's hate for her father just as Jake turns the Television on with Gordan Gekko advertising his new book, "Is Greed Good?” Jakes boss, Luis Zabbel who is played by Frank Langella, ends up giving Jake a huge raise of nearly 1.5 million dollars, in thanks for all his help as a great, loyal employee and friend. Due to the stock market crash that same year, Luis Zabbel is forced to either sell his company at a terrible price to his hated rival, Bretton James, or declare bankruptcy. Luis Zabbel becomes very depressed and eventually leads to committing suicide in a subway, before work. This was extremely hard on Jake, seeing as though Luis Zabbel was like a fatherly figure to him. Jake later on decides to take Luis's advice in the beginning of the movie, proposing to Winnie, and she happily accepts. After secretly meeting with his soon to be father-in-law, Gordon Gekko, he announces his proposal and tries to make the effort to reunite Gekko with his daughter, Winnie. Later on Gordan Gekko helps to convince Jake to get pay back on Bretton James and his brokerage firm, for in his mind, murdering Luis Zabbel. The movie begins to get better and better, and it eventually leads to quite a twisting plot. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in seeing it after reading this article. Here's a short preview of the movie: "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps". Trust me, you'll love it!