The Iron Giant (1999)

Synopsis: Hogarth Hughes loves adventure and exploring the unknown. Well, the unknown comes to him when a space ship crash lands in the forrest beside his house. He explores the crash site and finds a huge iron giant eating the power plant. The giant gets caught up in the wires and Hogarth saves him. The two become friends as Hogarth teaches the giant about his world and society. But the giant has to learn quick when a government agent, Kent Mansley, uncovers the secret and sends in the army. It's a heart warming story about discovering the secrets of friendship, compassion, sacrifice, and that you are whoever or whatever you want to be.

Should You Watch It? If you are not familiar with this film, it's directed by Brad Bird, the director of all the Pixar films these days. If you haven't read my review for Ratatouille then just let me reillerate how much of a genius this guy is. Well, actually, I'm not going to blow his horn anymore, cause it's pretty worn out. Just, go watch it. It's for your own good.

Things to Watch Out For: The animation of course is not as clean or crisps as the new Pixar films but for 1999 it is pretty good. The theme is great in this film and really appropriate for children. Be what you want to be is the theme and is expressed through not only the giant's arc but Hogarth's as well when he takes responsibility for the giant's safety and realizes the importance of understanding. The voice acting is pretty great especially when you have Jennifer Aniston as the mother, Annie Huges, and you even have Vin Diesel in there as the giant.

Things You Don't Expect: The movie is short. Well, I guess that's expected. I mean, how long can an animated film be, right? The relationship between the giant and Hogarth is obviously the main plot but I think they could have done more with the relationship between Annie and Dean, a scrap yard owner. Their arcs are simple enough and expected but could have added a lot more depth to the film and give it a nice romantic subplot if they explored it a bit more. Oh well.

Final Comments:
Story: 8.0 (Ted Hughes: novel. Tim McCanlies: screenplay)
Direction: 8.2 (Brad Bird)
Voice Acting: 8.6
Animation: 8.0 (Warner Bros. Animation)
Music/Sound: 6.5

Final Score: 8.2

The Godfather (1972)

Synopsis: Michael Corleone's (Al Pacino) family is in the mob. Well actually, his family is the mob and his father, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), is the Don. The whole family works for the Don but Michael doesn't want to have any part of it. But the reluctant hero is dragged into the business when a rival mob family in New York puts out a hit on Vito. Suddenly, the Don is in the hospital fighting for his life while Michael's brothers are fighting for the family. Michael slowly begins to realize that nothing in the world is more important than family, something his father has always preached and practiced. Now Michael is on the path that he swore he would always avoid. But is it for power, or for family?

Should You Watch It? If you have not seen this movie like me until today, then you are definitely missing out on a classic and the defining movie in the gangster/mafia genre. This movie brings you into the patriarchal society within a mob family. This movie brought so many new things into film that it's really amazing for 1972. I don't think anyone can talk like Marlon Brando nowadays and not be considered in the mob.

Things to Watch Out For: Al Pacino when he was young is crazy! I didn't recognize him for almost half the movie. The movie follows him through his reluctancy to his full acceptance of his family duties. The movie focuses on the family and cleverly brings Michael into the family instead of chasing him around. This way, the audience is able to see all the other members of the family and how they react differently to responsibility. The change in Michael is brilliant and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen. The music motif that plays whenever the Godfather does something dooming is used nicely with Michael's arc as well.

Things You Don't Expect: This movie is freakin' long. I mean it's almost three hours. It doesn't really drag in any parts but it does feel that there are certain parts where they tried to put too much into it. Some of the dialogue is unneccessary for the film but it does add flavour to the characters and really makes it hit home when those characters get offed. The climax was a bit weak because you really don't know when it's coming and you're not sure when it's gonna end because it coulda ended in two or three parts. But the ending is satisfying and very well portrayed.

Final Comments:
Story: 8.2 (Mario Puzo: novel. Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola: screenplay.)
Direction: 9.4 (Francis Ford Coppola)
Acting: 9.5
Cinematography: 6.5
Music/Sound: 8.0

Final Score: 8.6

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Synopsis: Raoul Duke, a journalist (Johnny Depp) and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Torro) travel to Las Vegas to cover a number of news stories in the 1970s. It's not a difficult task seeing how Duke is a brilliant journalist and can write the hell out of anything. The only problem is that these two are completely strung out of their minds by doing every drug known to man. It's to the point, where they are on a constant high and have completely lost touch with reality. Duke, now, must find a way to regain enough of his consciousness in order to find reality again and get ride of the devil haunting him. But is reality all that much better than the magical drug world?

Should You Watch It? This movie is a definitely behind the scenes movie because it shows you exactly what it is like to be high, all the time! The way a drug addict perceive the world while being high is very well portrayed in this film. The only problem that this film may run into with some viewers is that there really isn't much else beyond seeing the world through the eyes of a drug addict. The highs and lows of being on a drug is related to the 70s anti-war protest and how society, like being on a drug, goes through the highs and the lows, and is always trying to find their true identity which is constantly being hidden by drugs we can't see.

Things to Watch Out For: I don't even want to think about how a person would watch this film if they were high themselves. Their head might just explode. The camera and cinematography is a work of art mixed in with brilliant acting. It is truely a treat to watch. But it might get old during some parts because there is not really a structured story in there. There are also plenty of cameos by noticable stars including: Tobey Mcguire, Cameron Diaz, Christina Ricci, Ellen Barker, and Gary Busey.

Things You Don't Expect: This movie is very episodic, meaning that Duke goes around from one place to another doing crazy drug induced things along with his crazy lawyer. There really isn't a resolution of any kind. There really isn't even a realization on Duke's part of what he has to do. Of course, the moral of the story is that drugs are bad so you shouldn't do them and here's what happenes when you do. But the heroes of this movie, especially Depp's character just doesn't do enough to make us feel that he's really changed. I don't know, perhaps that was the intended resolution based on the ending in the novel but for a film, it felt imcomplete.

Final Comments:
Story: 7.5 (Hunter S. Thompson: Novel. Terry Gilliam, Terry Grisoni, Tod Davies, Alex Cox: Screenplay)
Direction: 8.5 (Terry Gilliam)
Acting: 10.0
Cinematography: 9.0
Music/Sound: 7.8

Final Score: 8.5

Transformers (2007)

Synopsis: On some distance planet live a bunch of huge robots. They have been waging a war so great that their planet was destroyed. The giver of life for that planet, a giant cube called the Allspark was lost in space and just happened to crash land on Earth. Now, the Autobots (good guys) and the Decepticons (bad guys) come to Earth to wage the final battle that will determine the fate of not only their race, but ours!

Should You Watch It? I'm really at a conflict of interests here. To tell you not to watch it, would be doing my duty as a objective reviewer of films, but then you would probably miss out on the biggest film event of the summer. Not because the movie is good, mind you, but because everyone will be talking about how bad it is, that you'll feel left out! But, if I told you to see it, then well, I wouldn't be doing my job now would I? So, really, I guess you should go see it just because it has a bunch of nice CG robots duking it out over a big city. I guess for some people, that's enough. Oh, and watch out for the blatant advertising haha it's pretty great.

Things to Watch Out For: This movie is not an epic. I repeat, this movie is not an epic. It might seem like an epic with the scale of which the movie presents itself. But because the protagonist is one man, and one girl. Okay, so the girl is really hot and the guy is the perfect underdog that we all like to cheer for, doesn't make this movie feel like an epic even with the world is hanging in the balance. Positives, positives... my therapist always told me to focus on the positives. Yes, I needed to see a therapist to quesiton my profession after watching this film. The robots are good. All your favorites are in there but because the Autobots are the good guys, you see them and learn a lot more about them. The Decipticons are only there as the bad guys and you know nothing about them except for Megatron. The transformations are probably the coolest part of this film cause everything else just looks the same.

Things You Don't Expect: The freakin' dialogue. Holy shit. Pardon my language but everything that everone says tries to be philisophical. Everytime a fucking robot opens their lips, yes they have lips, they want to make some broad statement that's supposed to shed some light on humanity and existence. And if you've seen other Michael Bay films, then you would have seen all the camera angles and shots already cause he recycles them for this movie. He even took the soundtrack from Armageddon. Damn you Bay!

Final Comments:
Story: 6.0
Direction: Fail (Michael Bay)
Acting: 6.0 (Megan Fox, you are the saving grace)
Cinematography: 9.4
Music/Sound: 7.0

Final Score: 6.5

Ratatouille (2007)

Synopsis: Remy is an awesome chef. He has the talent to be the best bistro chef in all of Paris. The only problem, he's a rat. To make matters worse, his family forbids him to interact with humans. But when the rat colony gets separated, Remy finds a new home at Gusteau's restaurant which is on the downward spiral from a 5 star rating to a tourism spot. There, he meets Linguini, the young heir of the late Gusteau trying to hold down a job at the restaurant. Remy and Linguini decide to work together to become the number one chef in Paris and bring Gusteau's name back into Paris's elite cuisine. But they have to over come plenty of obstacles including the stingy head chef, Skinner, and the food critic from hell, Anton Ego. But Gusteau believed that anyone can cook, anyone!

Should You Watch It? This film is amazing. I don't care who you are. You have to watch it. I don't care if you hate puppies and wanna kill all pets, you have to see this movie.

Things to Watch Out For: 90 minutes of pure entertainment. Oh yeah, and the beginning short film is the best one I've seen from Pixar in a while. The beauty of this film lies in the simplicity and how open everything is to the public. There are no hidden meanings or metaphors or stuff like that. Everything is made clear and used to entertain. Absolutely brilliant.

Things You Don't Expect: How the hell does Brad Bird do it every year? This guy is some sorta, master story teller or something. Everything he touches turns into gold. He's amazing. It's to the point where if he told me to poke my eyes out cause it would make me a better writer, I'd do it.

Final Comments:
Story: 9.0 (Brad Bird)
Direction: 9.5 (Brad Bird)
Voice Acting: 9.2
Animation: 10.0 (Pixar)
Music/Sound: 7.8

Final Score: 9.2

Perfume: The Story of Murderer (2006)

Synopsis: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is gifted with a great sense of smell. He can literary smell better than a dog. His story begins from when he was born in the fish market all the way through his childhood, growing up in an orphanage. He eventually gets sold to a tannery where he worked or more like survived, until he was around 16 or 18? He makes a delivery to a master perfumer, Baldini whose trying to unlock the ingredients of a rival perfume. Jean-Baptiste does it with ease and makes the perfume even better! Baldini buys him from the the tannery guy then uses Jean-Baptiste to create the most beautiful perfumes Paris has ever smelt. Except Jean-Baptiste isn't happy with his life of perfuming. He wants to make the ultimate perfume, a perfume that captures the essense of a woman's beauty. Conventional methods are impossible so he travels to some other place to study the art of preserving scent. He learns that the only way to preserve a woman's scent is to own them first then cut them up. Oh, it's grim alright, but Jean-Baptiste will stop at nothing to create the ultimate perfume.

Should You Watch It? Well, this movie is based on a best selling novel so you know that the story is going to be good. The thing is, this movie is pretty artsy and it doesn't really talk about how Jean-Baptiste uses his perfume to get power and whatever. The entire movie is about him owning these woman in the process of making this perfume and how the town is trying to hunt him down. I'm not going to tell you how it ends, obviously, but let's just say that the theme of this movie is greed destroys all, literary.

Things to Watch Out For: Jean-Baptiste is obviously the protagonist in this film but it doesn't really feel like it. He doesn't really talk and he's a bit crazy with his obsession. He doesn't really interact with any other character other than Baldini at first. His whole being is obsessed with this ultimate perfume. As a result, Jean-Baptiste isn't the greatest hero in film and you might have a hard time liking the ending because of it.

Things You Don't Expect: I guess perfume provokes a kind of euphoria and euphoria is tied into sexual pleasure. So, in a sense, perfume, if strong enough, can evoke the same kind of sexual pleasure in people. So this movie has a lot of sexual content. Not in the beginning or the middle, but a big way in the end. So, this isn't a movie to watch with the kids.

Final Comments:
Story: 7.0 (Patrick Suskind: Novel)
Direction: 7.5 (Tom Tykwer)
Acting: 7.2
Cinematography: 7.8
Music/Sound: 6.8

Final Score: 7.0

パプリカ (Paprika) (2006)

Synopsis: Have you ever wondered what if your dreams are really real and what you precieve as reality isn't real at all? Well, that's what this movie is about. Tokita is a genius who invents a machine called the DC Mini which enables therapists to go into the dreams of troubled sleepers and helps them solve whatever is bothering them. This sounds pretty sweet and at first it is sweet but when three DC Minis go missing, dream terrorism occurs as people begin to loose track of reality. The only person that can stop it is a scientist, Chiba who is Paprika in her dream state. Paprika has the ability to go into people's dreams even without this machine. Now, it's up to her to stop the dream terrorist before he destroy more dreams and ultimately replaces reality with a dream world.

Should You Watch It? Are you confused yet? If you are then good! cause this movie is hella confusing. It's definitely a thinker but if you put in that extra effort, the rewards are well worth it. The animation style alone should be enough to convince any fan of the genre to go take a look. It's an interesting new take on surrealism and the merging between reality and dreams. The story, after some thought, is very interesting and raises a few interesting questions about dreams and society in general.

Things to Watch Out For: The central question in the A plot is whether there is a difference between dreams and reality and how can we truely differentiate between the two. The deeper question is about perception and if what we percieve is in fact reality. This movie asks us to look around and think about our daily judgments. It's common practice to look at someone or something and just past judgment, cause it's our perception but often times that's not the reality. Also, is reality something that can be manufactured? Is TV reality? What about the internet and virtual realism?

Things You Don't Expect: I did not expect this movie to be so much like Akira. If anyone has seen it, and I would like to think many of you have, then you will know the unique style that I'm talking about. Although, this isn't as revolutionary, it is quite good and has some nudity which is nice to see. Not cause of the nudity but because it's bringing animation to an adult audience which is something that North America as yet to do.

Final Comments:
Story: 9.5 (Yasutaka Tsutsui: Novel, Seishi Minakami: Screenplay)
Direction: 8.8 (Satoshi Kon)
Voice Acting: 7.0
Animation: 9.0 (Masashi Ando)
Music/Sound: 8.0 (Susumu Hirasawa)

Final Score: 8.2