Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Rating: 
Movie: Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire(2009)
Studio : Lee Daniels Entertainment
Info : Click Here
Runtime : 110 min
Website : Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa0omk
Review:
Precious is everything you would not expect from a typical blockbuster. It’s low budget, it features actors and actresses that are not likely to be confused with models (granted, there is Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz in it, but with minute roles), and it involves a tale that is incredibly depressing. The film is an underdog in all respects, and I can’t help but laud Daniels and the people who took part in this film for undertaking something like this when feel-good blockbusters are what most audiences seek.
Precious is the name of a young obese African American girl living in the inner city. Her welfare-dependent mother hates her and treats her like a slave, her father raped her on a regular basis and abandoned them, and she is undervalued at school despite being above average in certain studies. To escape the pain of her life, she fantasizes about what she hopes to be: a diva, with a light-skinned boyfriend, a stark contrast from a bitter reality that refuses to acknowledge her. Our story begins when she is offered the chance at an alternate education school, and we see the many things she must push just to find her recognition.
What makes Precious shine is its ugliness. Shots of lard-fried misshapen lumps of meat, underlit corridors, grotesque features of people you would likely see on the street of any major city: Precious’ world is as much our own, and she shows us its worst. Likewise, the acting polishes this film off: from Mo’Nique’s bitterness to Paula Patton’s initially standoffish but caring demeanor as Precious’ teacher. Even Mariah Carey’s role as a social worker seem remarkably believable, as her diffident but empathetic aspects emphasize she is very much real. It is all these trials steeped in reality that allow Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) to appear that much more triumphant in the end.
There are two particular flaws I found in this movie and that is that it feels incomplete, not so much in the ending, but in the way things feel edited out. While I imagine this film suffered the same problem any novel-converted-movie should encounter, it could have used those extra tidbits to let us delve further into her life. The other rests in how subjective this film can be. Granted, this is a tale told from the protagonist, but for a film that seeks to be so realistic it feels awkward to have the villain bear almost no redeeming qualities while even Gabourey’s role seems a little too exceptional at times.
Precious reminds us of what makes life so valuable, and to be grateful for what we have. As we all live trying to stave off the effects of a recession-starved world economy, it’s films like these that seem that much more appropriate for people to see than it suggests. After seeing it, it will make you put that much more to heed in this film’s headline: “We are all Precious”.
-Donald Lee
Drama
Precious
The Blind Side
Rating: 
Movie: The Blind Side(2009)
Studio : Alcon Entertainment
Info : Click Here
Runtime : 128 min
Website : The Blind Side
Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xatyjg
Review:
The movie “The Blind Side” is based on the book released in 2006 by Michael Lewis. The book tells the story of a football player and how as a kid he is misguided in life. The movie takes the story from there and outlines how he finds his way to the right direction and eventually reaches maximum success in his life as a football player.
The plot of the story is about a poor and uneducated Micheal Oher who is hired by a football College program. There he gets full attention of the instructors who help him become an educated and successful athlete playing for the NFL. Michael is an African American young man who belongs to a broken family. Michael’s mother is completely addicted to drugs and his father is nowhere to be found. Michael is supported by the Touhys, a family who help him reach the success points in his life. There are many challenges that Michael faces in his process to become a football player. He puts a lot of effort in his studies and his games in order to become a terrific player. The Touhys family and coaches provide him great guidance throughout the process.
Ray McKinnon plays the role of Michael’s football coach, a remarkable actor who has pulled off this one very nicely. McKinnon plays a powerful role in making Michael a professional NFL Player. Initially he tries to use Michael for his own personal career advancement but then realizes that the future of the player is the main priority.
The movie is very refreshing with many humorous scenes. You might get the idea from the trailers that it’s a tragic story but the dialogues between the family members will make you laugh. The closing sequences are terrific as well which shows Michael’s ceremony pictures with the NFL.
The story and the screenplay of the movie is nothing really unique. It does not make it shine out amongst the rest of the movies made with similar plots however it is a good movie with a good message.
The movie can be watched if you are up for some light drama. There is not much football scene if you think there is. The story is more focused on Michael Oher’s family and his student life relative to football sports.
Drama, In Theaters
The Blind Side
Where the Wild Things Are
Rating:
Movie: Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Studio : Village Roadshow Pictures
Info : Click Here
Runtime : 101 min
Website : Where the Wild Things Are
Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8um1a
Review:
Returning to childhood is never as good as we may remember it. Spike Jonze brings us back to those days in his adaptation of a popular children’s book that probably has lost most of its original meaning in the process. I say “probably” because it has been so long since I have read it that I only remember the core pieces of the plot, which I’m sure Spike Jonze assumes of his audience as this movie is not really as much a family film as much as a painful return to nostalgic times perhaps best left in nostalgia.
If you plan on bringing a child with you to this film, I emphasize that this movie is sometimes wince-inducing, and even downright graphic. The monsters in the original story have become personal aspects of the boy, bringing with them the sing-song logic of children seen in tales like Alice in Wonderland rather than, say, the modern children’s films of the 90’s featuring a wisecracking child capable of outwitting and conquering adults in the real world.
In the end, this film feels like the end result of Calvin and Hobbes mixed with Lord of the Flies. Granted, while the film paints a bleak picture of a child’s fantasy gone wrong, it also makes it that much more powerful seeing the tenderness and pure love that can be found between the unintentional violence of this fantasy world and the real one.
I suppose if there is anything I could gripe about, it’s how incomplete the ending feels with loose strings and unresolved issues. But, in a way, it’s that incomplete nature that just reminds me of how much reality is like that, and I guess I have to credit Jonze in the end for it rather than criticize him.
-Donald Lee-
Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, In Theaters
Where the Wild Things Are
Tetro
Rating:
Movie: Tetro (2009)
Studio : American Zoetrope
Info : Click Here
Runtime : 127 min
Website : Tetro
Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x96i8n
Review:
It’s been a long and tortuous decline for Francis Ford Coppola since his heady days as the confirmed Titan of the 70’s movie-brat scene. Who else has reached so high (Godfather 1&2 and The Conversation) only to fall so low (Jack)? Redemption (of a kind) now arrives, however, in the form of his latest film, Tetro.
The story centers on 17 year old Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) as he arrives in Buenos Aires in search of his estranged older brother Tetro (Vincent Gallo). Initially hostile and suspicious of Bennie, Tetro slowly welcomes his kid-brother into his world and introduces him round to his colorful coterie of artist and writer friends (which makes the carnival-like first act of the movie seem like a slightly cheesy cross between La Dolce Vita and the high-camp 1960 film version of Kerouac’s The Subterraneans). Starker family secrets soon emerge though to put the drama on a darker footing.
Through the poetry of Coppola’s renewed filmic passion, we learn of Tetro’s shattered past, his apparent failure as a writer and his subsequent breakdown. The bond between the brothers is what drives this story forward yet some of the most revelatory moments are when Coppola reaches back into their shared history to explore the deep family wounds that kept them apart for so many years. Some of the most inspired scenes of the film are those depicting their tyrannical musical genius of a father and the stunningly cruel games he played against his sons.
Another of the films intoxicating charms is how it celebrates the women that keep both brothers sane and (literally) alive – from opera-singing mothers to Buenos Aires bubble-bath beauties, the role that women play as the eternal muse again echoes Fellini. That is not to suggest that the female characters are merely window-dressing. As fine and refreshing a performance as the always electrifying Vincent Gallo delivers, the best moments in the film belong to the brilliant Maribel Verdú (as Miranda).
Tetro is no masterpiece – Bennie’s underwritten character and a slightly disappointing “twist” finale both hamper the Coppola comeback – and it’s overtly “arty” style will certainly not appeal to all cinematic tastes. Nevertheless, if you are looking for something out of the ordinary and which is laced with a desire to tell simple human truths in a stylish way, Tetro makes you an offer you can’t refuse.
-Paul Meade
Drama, In Theaters
Drama, tetro