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