Interstellar Movie Review

            Interstellar produced by Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan, Lydia Obst, and directed by Christopher Nolan, was released on October 26, 2014. This film is filled with many great actors including Matthew McConaughey. Interstellar is a thrilling sci-fi movie that takes place in a time period where Earth is running out of food and all the land is made up of corn fields. While people on the Earth are struggling to get by a group of scientist predict the future is much worse and sooner or later there will be nothing on the earth to live off of. The main character, McConaughey is sent off on a mission to space to find another planet that can be the home to a new human generation. If you are intrigued by space or science in general I would highly recommend this movie. There are many problems that McConaghey and his team encounter throughout the way and this film is filled with numerous different emotions. The film is nearly 170 minutes however every minute will keep your intention. I enjoyed the excitement and it was really cool to see the possibilities of life outside of Earth.

Movie rating 10/10

Doug Avellino

Reed Learned

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Movie Review

The movie Enron: The Smartest guys in the Room, available on Netflix, is a fascinating documentary based on the rise and fall of Enron, once one of the largest companies in America that fell from grace amid corruption accusations that proved true. It focuses on the main players in the business: Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastau, and Ken Lay. These people are profiled, and the culture of greed and deception is well versed throughout the film. a very interesting and vivid picture of how money can ruin lives, and ultimately huge corporations.

Movie Review: Horns

Reed Learned

Horns

I watched the movie Horns over the weekend. I have only seen it on Netflix, but I don't think it's a Netflix original. It starred Daniel Radcliffe, who plays a man who loses his fiance and the love of his life due to a horrible murder which was unsolved. To make matters worse, he is blamed of the murder by his whole town, although he is in no legal trouble. He is universally hated by everyone around him save his best friend and his brother, with his parents not even liking him, just tolerating him. He is a miserable man, who lost everything in his life and is hated because of it. He exists in this horrible fashion until he unexpectedly grows horns one morning. He is obviously freaked out, and soon realizes that when people see the horns, they admit their sins to him. He uses this power to find his killer, a very unexpected character indeed, and kills the murderer before dying himself and being joined with his love after death. A good movie that had some dark points, but was very interesting overall

Overall rating: 7/10

Movie Review: Taken

Taken

By Mohamed Al Fadhel

Taken is a movie that was released in 2009 starring Liam Neeson and Maggie Grace. The movie is about a recently retired CIA agent Bryan Mills who tries to build a closer relationship with his teenage daughter, Kim who lives with her mother and her wealthy stepfather. While Bryan was working as a security guard at a concert with his friends, he saves a pop star Sheerah from a knife attack. Sheerah, grateful offers to assess Kim’s talent as a singer. Before Bryan gets tell Kim about Sheerah’s offer, Kim asks him for his permission to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. Bryan instantly refuses, but relent after his ex wife pressures him. At the airport, Bryan discovers that Kim and her friend are actually following U2 during their European tour, Which Bryn’s ex wife did not tell him about.

When the girls arrive in Paris Kim and Amanda meets a man named Peter who he offered them to share a cab so that he could know their address. At the apartment discovers that Amanda’s Cousins, who are supposed to go with them are out of the country. While Kim talks to her father Bryn on the phone, she witnesses that intruders from the bathroom window are abducting her friend. Kim complies to her father’s instructions as Bryan records the incident as Kim is being abducted.

However, in the end of the movie Bryan immediately flees to Paris and finds and kills the kidnappers and rescues his daughter from them. They both return to the U.S where Kim is reunited with her mother and stepfather. Afterward, Bryan takes Kim to see pop Sheerah for her first singing audition. 

Film rating: 8/10

Movie Review: The Gambler

The Gambler
Reed Learned

The Gambler is a movie starring Mark Wahlberg and John Goodman. It is about a college professor (Wahlberg) who is a very bright but also very troubled individual. The opening scene starts with Wahlberg taking a huge 'loan' from a dangerous man who doesn't even like him. The man obliges to give Wahlberg the money, more out of curiosity than anything. We learn that he is in debt to another dangerous man who owns an underground casino as well. This is all a very good lead-up, and definite interest is formed early.

However, the movie fizzles out quickly from the lead-up. Wahlberg falls for a girl in his class who, of course, is a waitress at the underground casino he goes to and knows of his secret life. Once he falls for her, the movie shifts from action-packed, potentially thrilling story of money and danger to any other love story. The movie tries to switch from action to love back to action, but frankly I would've rather watched a full-blown love story than a confused action-love packed movie that switches from one to the other.

The movie's end provides no real saving grace, as it just sort of ends. Of course Mark as the protagonist ends up paying the people he owed and getting the girl he wanted, but it happened in no interesting way at all. He just sort of go the money and the girl, and the credits rolled. A very disappointing end to a bad movie.

Movie Review: John Wick

Movie Review: John Wick

John Wick (2014)
By Nicholas Luu

John Wick is a new movie lately published in 2014. The movie takes place in Manhattan, New York. This movie such a drama and action movie to me when it first start with a short story of the main role, John Wick.

John Wick was starred by Keanu Reeves, a guy who was storming a time with a series movie of the Matrix. He was awesome with the kickass role even now.

In the movie, John Wick was a mob hit man who worked for Viggo Tarasov, a father of a gang pretended to be a businessman. With the work of John Wick, Viggo has became a rich businessman by killing other businessmen and take over the position. John Wick has retired after falling in love with Helen, then 5 years later Helen died due to her illness. The last gift from Helen to John was a puppy, a small life that keeps John out of despair, with a note that tells John to love the living thing instead of car.

One day, John met 3 guys at the gas station, one of them asked for John's car, a vintage '69 Mustang. Those 3 guys later found and broke into John's house. They stole his Mustang and killed the puppy. As the only last gift from his wife, Helen, he started tracing down those 3 guys. He lately found out the one who killed his puppy is a son of Viggo. John didn't worry much about who he is, so he didn't say a thing to Viggo when Viggo call him. Viggo then sent a group of men to assassin John in his house, but all failed. A cop arrived and knocked on John's door and that cop saw corpses on the floor but didn't say a thing, instead let John clean it. John then smashed off his floor in the basement to get the gun crate out of a secret slot under his house basement's floor. John called for a clean up team and pay them with gold coins.

There is a hotel where John was used to rent in before when he was a hit man. He re-rent a room there and pay everything with gold coins. He found a friend who worked with him before, Marcus, but then that guy was pay in contract to kill John. Marcus failed to kill John and turned out the helped John escape a deadliness move. Finally, John bypass all of those bodyguards of Viggo's son, and killed his son. Viggo turned crazy and killed Marcus because Marcus betrayed him. Lately, John killed Viggo with a lifeless-care move.

I was impressed because of the underground transaction was all involved with gold coins instead of real cash. By the way, the movie was greate. All the actions look real, and couldn't figure out if there was a stunt man take over Keanu Reeves in the action parts.

Film rating: 8.5/10
by Nicholas Luu

Movie Review: Million Dollar Arm

Million Dollar Arm

By Dougie Avellino

Based on a true story the 2014 film Million Dollar Arm takes place in Indian and the US. This sports drama film was released on may 16, 2014. Although this film did make it to theaters I didn't have a chance to watch it until recently, when it was added to Netflix.

This film is based off of the true story of baseball pitchers Rinku Singh, and Dinesh Patel who were discovered in India by sports agent J.B. Bernstein. The main character, Bernstein is played by Jon Ham while Rinku is played by Suraj Sharma and Dinesh is played by Madhur Mittal.

J.B. Bernstein is a professional agent for athletes. After his partner and him start their own business they struggle to find new clients and their business is at risk to fail. J.B. realizes that he has to go somewhere new to get athletes. His partner (Ash) is obsessed with the sport cricket which is the national sport in India. J.B. plans a trip to India with motivation to find a cricket player that can be converted over to an American baseball picture and earn a spot on an MLB team.

Burnstein, along with a scout he brings along from the US travels to various towns around India and hosts contests to see who can pitch the fastest baseball. This is marketed as "The Million Dollar Arm Contest." The winning contestant will be awarded 1 million US dollars and a trip to America to tryout for a pro team. Second place will also be given a tryout and an award of 10 thousand US dollars. After J.B. makes it back to America with Rinku and Dinesh he faces multiple problems with the boys because they have never been outside of their Indian culture. As the movie progresses J.B. starts to grow more attached to these boys.

This is a feel good sports movie that is much more then about sports. This film teaches and shows you how different the Indian culture is from our American culture. Rinku, and Dinesh come from small towns where they have never been taught anything about baseball before. This movie was special in my eyes because it tells the story of two boys that were nothing and made themselves into major league baseball pictures. If you are a sports fan who enjoys heartfelt stories I highly suggest seeing this film. Rinku and Dinesh are now apart of the Pittsburg Pirates organization.

Film rating 8.5/10

by, Doug Avellino

Movie Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

By Michael Pitts

I am not the biggest Lord of the Rings fan-boy, but I love the original movies so naturally I went to the theater to see the concluding chapter of the prequel series: The Hobbit.  I was pretty impressed by Peter Jackson's(director) last addition to the franchise, but it's easy to be impressed when you're not expecting much isn't it?

The beginning of the movie does in an incredible job in immersing the viewer.  There is no prologue or "what happened last time" introduction, it's just the audience and the dragon.  The downside of this is that if you haven't seen the first two installations of the series, then you may start off a little confused watching this one, but this is expected.  It is clear at the beginning of the movie that there is no messing around in the special effects department.  Smaug the dragon looks elegant and menacing as ever and the scenes including him had the audience on the edge of their chairs.

As for the special effects, I feel that this movie really nailed it.  People began to become skeptical of the newer "Hobbit" movies because things started to look different.  However I feel that this movie had the perfect combination of actual actors with make-up, and computer generated graphics.  Although the "boss" Orcs, or "bad guys" were mostly done with CGI, the armies on screen were actually groups of actors!  This is a refreshing flashback to the way things were in the early 2000's when the original movies were made.

A little more time into the movie and things start to "slow down" (everything is relative; the middle scenes of the movie would't seem so slow if the movie didn't open with a fight against a flying, fire-breathing dragon!!).  The story is thick with character development and exciting connections between the original LOTR movies and the plot of the Hobbit.  As the movie continues the action kicks right back in and all of the plot developments and twists work there way into the flashy battle scenes.

Overall, this movie was very entertaining and did feel like sufficient closure to the Lord of the Rings Saga.  The beautiful thing about "The Hobbit" is that the small prequel book left much room for Peter Jackson to impress his vision of the story.  Although there were no plot disagreements between the movie and the original text, Jackson felt free to add in all sorts of cameos and connections to his original movie trilogy.  The event labelled "The Battle of the Five Armies" used to seem so low-stakes compared to Frodo Baggins' journey through Middle earth in LOTR, but somehow, I was just as excited watching this movie as I was "Return of the King".  Jackson once again proved himself to be a brilliant directer and creator in this film.  He demonstrated his deep knowledge of "Middle-earth" and the characters that compose it.  The only complaint I had about the movie was a usual one of Peter Jackson's films.  It seemed at times that the special effects in the action scenes where a little over-the-top.  Everything looked great, but it seemed sometimes that minor battle scenes had way too much screen time.  I think that if Jackson had prioritized the events in this movie better, then the pacing would have improved much more.  However this final chapter summarizes the series and brings a clean intro to "Fellowship of the Ring", Jackson's first LOTR movie from 2001.

Final Rating: 8.3/10