The Truman Show

I'm actually really happy I'm reviewing this. I can't believe I've put it off this long.

The Truman Show is a very well made film which showcases Jim Carrey's amazing dramatic acting skills and shed a new light on the actor. The story is weird and very metaphysical I would say, it centers around the life of an ordinary man Truman Burbank, who just lives his day to day life. But his whole life is a show, it is filmed for millions of people around the world who are enthralled to just watch an ordinary man live his life, broadcasted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is a fascinating concept, and can be delved into very deeply, not just on a simple physical level but deeper into a psychological, ethical, and emotional point of view. Granted the idea of our reality being untrue and another lying beyond our knowledge is not new, but the way the film potrays it all and how it deals with the subject matter makes it very endearing to watch. Carrey's performance as I said is great, he can be a bit of a clown and have fun but when it hits hard you buy it, you totally buy the emotion. It's a great movie, and certainly should be viewed by lots more people in the years to come mainly because of the character of Truman Burbank and not the concept of a life being televised non-stop. The sets are exaggerated but work, the music is upbeat but can slather good dramatic and impactful pieces when needed, the humor is good but the drama is better. It's a movie greatly enjoyed by me, and hopefully you tune in to it whenever it comes on.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Hooray, I'm back and with a really good movie!

This is easily the best work of Tim Burton I've seen in a good while. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is a charming, very well done, and slightly nightmarish film following a young boy named Jake who after years of hearing tales of monsters and a group of peculiar people, actually discovers that shock and surprise, they actually exist. But not all is well, the monsters are on the move again and to protect the children Jake must take up arms just like his grandfather before him. First thing I got to say is, I really enjoyed the tone of this movie. It's very difficult to describe but by God it has an excellent stride in it's story, characters, setting, and dialogue. The casting is so out there it becomes genius, we have Eva Green, Dame Judi Dench, Terence Stamp, and friggin' Samuel L. Jackson! What?? Brilliant! So obviously the major players are great, but how about the kids? I love them. I wish I could adopt them all. They are kind, considerate, some gushing with adorableness, but the movie never lets their peculiarities become the character. They have moments of doubt, sadness, anger, jealousy, and love. You really believe they do exist. I love the setting in this movie from a straight up Edward Scissorhands style suburbia, to the cold and dark shores of Wales, to the eponymous home which is very beautiful and is filled with much character. The soundtrack is beautiful to listen to, combining very creepy yet lovely music which does indeed make me want to track the soundtrack down. I got to say it didn't take much for me to want to see this movie, it wasn't Eva Green, it wasn't a new Tim Burton film, it wasn't even this strange and great looking new film, it took exactly two seconds of a tv spot showing skeletons with weapons, a la Jason And The Argonauts to make me say, yep I'm going to go see this movie and I am so glad I did. It's a very good movie with a quite frankly awesome mythology, characters who I cared about, and although it got nightmarish near the end, I would recommend it to families and children, I think they'll enjoy the world and characters very much like I did and might even enjoy watching it quite often. But we all know it's great just because of Grandpa Zod. Just kidding. Have a great night everybody, see you (hopefully) next week!

So It Begins....

And the school year has begun. I have...mixed opinions on it. I enjoy getting back in there and progressing my education but with the schedule I have set up, the work haul is much greater than before, thus creating problems in terms of reviews. I'm going to be lucky if I get ONE review out this week! That shouldn't happen and regarding the fact that I don't have many movies and am concentrating on vast series with more than quadruple the run times of a standard feature film, hell even some extended films, it's going to become a bit of a problem to review them. Granted, I'm still going to try, I'm even taking a cinema class to better my analysis of media. Almost every action I take is going towards this! So know I'm not abandoning this site, these reviews, the people who take time out of their day to hear my ramblings and opinions, if I could do this full time and get paid for it, I would never stop. So I'm merely asking for patience in the following weeks at least until I get a good handle on this, I'm even taking a night class (Yay....) so it will take time to get used to and hopefully with the introduction of my cinema class, I can atleast get some new material. But if the gods are kind I can get a review out by tomorrow or Saturday. So bare with me here, and as always have a fantastic evening.

The Lobster

What a weird movie. I liked it.

Wow. Oh my God. I'm sorry, I find it difficult to describe this movie. The Lobster is a drama I would say, with tiny bits of comedy peppered in centering around a society in the not too distant future where single people are forced to find love within 45 days or be transformed into a animal of their choice, which is where we meet our main character David who has just recently been divorced and must find love or be transformed into a lobster. What follows is both an absolutely brilliant satire on love, or rather society's viewpoint of what love is, how is it formed, how is it achieved and a truly disturbing view into the human psyche. The film has some great use of dark comedy though scant, but it is extremely adult orientated and deals with a quite frankly disturbing reality. Whether you have lost your loved one through either a break up, a divorce, or even death you are forced to go to a hotel to find a companion in a limited amount of time or be transformed into a animal, your entire being is stripped of all identity focusing on one unique trait whether it be fair hair or a limp to sum up who you are, you have no choice in how to express yourself through clothing or music, only what is ordained. Being a single person in this reality is considered a crime! You have to be with someone. I would not bode well in this society. It is fascinating to watch this movie, because it flat out mocks how people pursue and win love but also how the human mind copes with such a world as this one potrayed in the film. It almost takes a cynical and cold look at relationships which I have to applaud the film to some degree, you never see that in movies. I'm kind of speechless after viewing it because not of how odd and surreal it is, but of how true and thought provoking it is. I would certainly have to recommend it but to who? Who is the target audience of the film? I would say adults because of it's mature content and thought provoking messages but nothing is concrete about it. It could be teenagers but I think it would severely jade them on basic human interaction let alone romance. This entire movie is a complete mystery. What is it?? I mean I like it, I enjoyed it, it's a true solid film that needs to be seen by most people but it just confounds me as to what to call this movie. A human drama perhaps? A surreal romance? There's probably not a good title for it so I implore you to watch this just so we could discuss it with other people. Wow guys, um...this film is quite a special thing, I'm probably never going to forget this bizzare little movie and hopefully some of you feel the same.

Star Wars Rebels: Season 2

Now it's kicking off.

A vast improvement over the first, season two of Rebels picks up on all the elements that they did fairly well in the first season. Our crew of freedom fighters have now fully joined the Rebellion and have begun to slowly form the basis of their operations, with the Empire always hot on their trail. The action has been upped significantly, the character development continues in some cases brilliantly, we get a few familiar faces this season that never ceases to make me happy, and the finale alone is what brought Rebels on the map for me. If you made it through the first season and thought it was good, by the end of this season you will consider it to be great. Pretty much the season finale to season two combined with the trailer for season three is what got me to watch the show, and once I got the backstory and re-watched the final scenes of the finale, it got ten thousand times better than it already was. I'm excited to watch season three, it's only I think maybe three or four episodes until the end of that so I timed my watchings perfectly. Hell, maybe even in a week or two I can fully review season three! One thing I have noticed though is the big bad of the seasons are surprisingly not in it often, the main oppressive force is the Empire as a whole. The first season had the Inquisitor which was a basic but still interesting villain that appeared throughout the first season but at the end of season one it is very clear who is taking the forefront of the villain role, and yet...he's in it for two episodes, the first and last episode of the season. That kinda sucks but I'm amazed they got the original voice actor for the role which is just the cherry on top of this sundae, but you can forgive it solely because of the duel at the end. I just hope they don't follow suite for season three, I want to see the Grand Admiral in action often, because if you know anything about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars then you can understand my concern for this character. But needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this season of Rebels much more than the last. I'm excited to start watching season three and if all goes well, you can expect that review before the end of this month.

Star Wars Rebels: Season 1

I didn't have high hopes, but by God it's not half bad.

So Star Wars Rebels takes place a few years before Rogue One (I love how I can say that now.) following a group of smugglers who slowly transform from mercenaries/smugglers to freedom fighters battling against the Empire and creating the spark of rebellion. So the story starts off with this kid Ezra he just lives his life on his home planet until he runs across this crew sabotaging Imperial supply routes and this crew is very unique in the Star Wars universe, we have a Twi'lek pilot named Hera who pilots their ship the Ghost, Kanan who seems to be the leader of the group and has a bit of a past to him, a Mandalorian explosives expert who is a young girl named Sabine, a Lasat called Zeb who is like if Wolverine was an alien in Star Wars, and their astromech droid named Chopper who is a bit of a wise ass. Ezra soon joins the team as they go through a mish-mash of different missions almost all around being a nuisance to the Galactic Empire. It has interesting and unique character development which appears every now and then, granting significant growth as characters and not just being like, oh yeah Hera's just a pilot and that's about it. No, they build on them slowly but satisfyingly. Now the story follows in direct correlation with the previous animated series Clone Wars, now it's not pertinent to watch Clone Wars but it does help in the long run with this series. Now one thing I cannot avoid talking about is the art design. It is like a love letter to Ralph McQuarrie who did all the conceptual art to the original Star Wars movie, the series could not adapt it more if it tried. And I have seen many of the conceptual artwork of the original movie, and I greatly appreciate the look of it all. Now I have to admit, I did not start watching Rebels until this week, I thought it was just a dumb kid cash in on Star Wars on the Disney Channel, but when I saw the trailer to season 3 and heard much fan talk about it I decided to take a look. It's a kid show without a doubt, whereas Clone Wars was aimed more towards early pre-teen to teenagers (I was a teenager by the time Clone Wars really took off) and yet I never watched that show until a few years after it ended, because I watched the original Clone Wars mini series that came out between Episode 2 and before Episode 3 even hit theaters and I thought it was an unnecesary remake. My God, was I wrong. So wrong. I apologize to Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. So yeah, I wasn't expecting greatness but I got a decent show and it got really good a few episodes before the end of the season. If you like Star Wars or have kids that enjoy Star Wars this is a decent show to put on.

As of today I am almost finished season 2 and will have the review up next week. I won't do just one review a week when it comes to television shows, so no worries about lack of content but I will probably have to cut it back to two reviews a week. Yeah, material is running thin but not entirely gone. Merely a setback but it does not dampen my spirits, I shall persevere and continue bringing you more recommendations and opinions. See you next week.

Happy New Year!

Alright, I'm back. All refreshed and ready for another year. Now as stated before my movie resources are almost dead, so I'm going to take as much as I can from other sources, mainly television. And we'll do it season by season as always, some stuff has changed but not to the point where I can't work here. I believe I have 17 new movies coming to theaters this year that have highly garnered my interest, and those are all peppered out through the whole year, but what do I do in the meantime? Well, why not television? I got a lot of shows to watch, catch up on, and finally end. I don't like the idea of going episode by episode even though it would fill time very quickly, I would post maybe 3 or 4 episodes a day and it would turn into a mess so I choose to do seasons so it can be concise, controlled, and tidy. It's a bit more of a challenge to write tv reviews since there is so much to cover and talk about while still not spoiling anything, so it creates this sort of challenge for me to write but I enjoy it nevertheless. I'm rolling with it. I ended the last few days of last year with Star Wars, and just this week I've been watching a new Star Wars tv series so I'd like to start this year with that. So you can expect that tomorrow. Until then my friends.