Movie Reviews By Movie Reviews Pro

(500) Days of Summer

Rating:

Movie: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

Studio : Fox Searchlight Pictures

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 95min

Website : foxsearchlight.com/500daysofsummer

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9q55j

Review:

(500) Days of Summer is the story of Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his year-and-a-half on again/off again relationship with Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel). Tom, a greeting card writer, falls head over heels for Summer, a new administrator at the same greeting card company, and is convinced that she is the one he’s been waiting for all of his life. We’re told that Tom believes that he’ll never be truly happy until he finds “the one”—hence the importance of discovering Summer Finn—and he’s carried this belief with him his entire life because of 80’s British pop music and a misreading of the film The Graduate. Summer, on the other hand, doesn’t really believe in love, at least not the kind of love Tom believes in, but insists on taking Tom on a ride that he and audiences will never forget.
Audiences also will have a hard time forgetting the performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Gordon-Levitt’s Tom, wonderfully balanced with charm and sympathy, paired with Deschanel’s free-spirited and whimsical Summer makes their repartee so much fun to watch. They execute their parts so well, it’s really difficult to imagine anyone else playing these characters.

This script, by neophytes Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, has Best Original Screenplay written all over it. It’s a combination of the best of the youthful, hip, music-induced flicks Garden State and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist with the originality and freshness of Little Miss Sunshine. The “author’s note” at the beginning of the film implies that the author did, in fact, live this story. And there’s just enough realism in the script to believe that, perhaps, he did.

With such a splendid cast and such a solid script in place, Marc Webb could have just phoned in the direction. However, for his first major motion picture, this music video director decided to not let his considerable visual acumen go to waste. And though he uses every trick in the book—animation, split-screen screen, infectious music—it doesn’t feel overwrought.
Webb’s Los Angeles backdrop is the real winner here, and thanks to Webb, anybody under 40 who doesn’t want to visit L.A. after this film doesn’t have a pulse.

-Sam Henderson

Comedy, Drama, Romance 500 days of summer, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Adam

Rating:

Movie: Adam (2009)

Studio : Olympus Pictures

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 99min

Website : foxsearchlight.com/adam/

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9zn4g

Review:

Adam is 29 years old, living in an apartment he once shared with his father, and is a relatively good-looking man. He gets blatantly affectionate looks from women, is well-dressed, and is a hard worker at his job as an engineer at a local toy firm. With his awkwardness towards the opposite sex and his tendency to ramble about his passions, you would initially think he had the makings of a 40-Year-Old Virgin, but chances are you would never imagine he had something like Asperger’s Syndrome unless he said so.

When Beth, a budding children’s author and daughter to an influential executive accountant, moves in and meets the awkward fellow by chance, she finds herself entranced by him and, like the very satellites Adam rambles on, they begin to push and pull against each other in an orbital dance with each other that leads both into a predictable trajectory and impact you expect from a romance film, but with the trappings of a convincing relationship between a woman finding her own way in her world and a man learning to understand his own.

I have to say that the acting throughout the film is really good. It seems that every character with more than one dialogue in the role has at least one moment to pull out at least one good scene in the film (Frankie Faison steals quite a few as Adam’s mentor-like friend, Harlan). While Rose Byrne does not seem to shine as well as her counterpart Hugh Dancy, she more than makes up for it in the later half.

Kudos should also go to the cinematography for the film, where you can tell care was placed in shooting the location and getting the most visually-appealing scenes and compositions you could hope for in a film of this nature.

-Donald Lee

Comedy, Drama, Romance adam, Comedy, Drama, Max Mayer, Romance

Funny People - Adam Sandler

Rating:

Movie: Funny People (2009)

Studio : Columbia Pictures

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 140min

Website : www.funnypeoplemovie.com

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8fy1t

Review:

Funny People is the third directorial effort from Judd Apatow.  While this movie has the same amount and degree of laughter as Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I felt this one was a lot deeper and darker than those two efforts.
 
Adam Sandler stars in this movie as George Simmons, a Sandleresque comedian who has achieved fame and prosperity, but is essentially a lonely man.  He begins to reevaluate his life when he’s informed that he is dying of a rare blood disorder.  Seth Rogen is Ira Wright, a struggling comedian who writes good jokes, but whose awkward on-stage delivery keeps him from progressing to the big time.

Simmons’ disease prompts him to return to his roots by performing at one of the clubs where he got his start, and by chance, he happens to catch Wright performing.  Seeing some potential in the young comic, Simmons decides to hire Wright as his joke writer/assistant.

The routines performed by the comics are hilarious, and the interplay between the two leads is fantastic.  Rogen slimmed down for this role, and he’s not playing the usual slacker he normally embodies.  He’s passionate and determined in his ambition to make it to the next level, and we root for him to do so.

I’ve always been a fan of Sandler’s work, and he conveys the same darkness and complexity that he brought to Punch Drunk Love.  His character has made some bad decisions in his life and is not a very nice person as evidenced by the way he treats his new assistant.  Still, we identify with his pain and loneliness, and we root for him to get what he wants.

His driving desire is to get back together with Laura (well-played by Leslie Mann), his ex-fiance whom he still loves, but lost several years earlier due to his philandering ways.  The final act of the movie involves Simmons and Wright driving up to San Francisco, where she’s settled into the domestic life with an absent husband and two daughters.  Her marriage has been tumultuous for years, and the arrival of the two comedians brings this tension to the surface.  At the risk of spoiling a plot point, I’ll say that this subplot ends on a surprising note, but one that’s entirely fitting to the behavior of these characters.

Funny People has a number of laughs, but the script also makes us think about human nature, mortality, and the essence of friendship.  It’s Apatow’s (and Sandler’s) best work yet. 

-Craig Wynne

Comedy, Drama, In Theaters, Reviews by Genre adam sandler, Comedy, Drama, funny people

Orphan - Jaume Collet-Serra

Rating:

Movie: Orphan (2009)

Studio : Warner Bros.

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 123min

Website : orphan-movie.warnerbros.com

Trailer : http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8qjbh

Review:

Movies about creepy kids have long been a reliable box office draw. Usually consisting of some seemingly angelic little boy or girl who starts out all wide-eyed and innocent but in the end is revealed to be a granny-mangling demon from the bowels of pre-pubescent hell, this sub-genre has given us such nightmarish cinematic icons as Regan from The Exorcist and Damian from The Omen.

The Orphan probably sits somewhere between the above classic examples of how to do creepy kid movies and Children of the Corn (as an example of how not to). Essentially it’s a domestic horror tale centering on the troubled Coleman clan and the swirling black-hole of loss and guilt that resides at the core of the family. We soon come to learn that the black-hole is the result of the tragic loss of Kate and John’s unborn baby. Kate is in therapy for her drinking problem while John deals with things by wandering around the house in a near perfect state of semi-consciousness. And so, to fill in the hole they decide to adopt another (older) child. Enter Esther.

Believed to be born in Russia and possessing prodigious musical and artistic abilities, the delightfully polite Esther immediately impresses Kate and John with her quiet and sad demeanor and they quickly decide to take her home from the orphanage. What was interesting at this point was that Esther was not simply being depicted as a one-dimensional mini -monolith of evil, but rather seemed genuinely vulnerable and moved by her introduction to the Colemans’ (relatively) stable family life.

It wasn’t long however before the creepy kid clichés began to pile up. But still, I reassured myself, that’s okay – heck, you could argue that all genre movies are just a series of orchestrated clichés! It was in the final act though that I finally gave up on The Orphan. Back-pedaling furiously from the complex position of having created an almost sympathetic killer kid, the film-maker instead took the easy way out by inserting one of the most ridiculous “twists” to come down the pipeline since Bobby Ewing came back from the dead in Dallas. Yes, the “twist” did answer a few (unimportant) questions – but it also provoked a new one: why did I spend $10 dollars on this crap?

In the end, despite the strong first half, the only person I would recommend this orphan to is Madonna.

-Paul Meade

Drama, Horror, In Theaters, Mystery, Thriller Drama, Horror, Mystery, orphan, Thriller