Reviews by OsamaExKing

So, there's this concept that i'd like to call "being overally Hollywood", which is basically, a person people like to put on a pedestal, so, no matter what he write/direct/produce/create, people would go all the way to support him even if the final product is dissatisfying. the person in hand is Clint Eastwood. now, there is no doubt that Clint Eastwood is a talented, respectable director, but no-one is talented enough for people to trust him blindly, for instance, when "J.Edgar" came out in 2011, it was boring as hell, yet, people would still call it a good movie, hell, the same goes for "Lincoln" by the incredible 'Steven Spielberg' but people are afraid to call it as they see it, because they see a famous Hollywood Trademark slapped to the side and call it good no matter how bored they were, so, guess what i'm doing? i'm calling it as i saw it, a dissatisfying, uninspired, soleless borefest, that is 'Invictus'.

First of all, the idea of making a movie about Nelson Mandela is huge, the guy is one of the best revolutionaries of all time, so, you know as well as i do, that since this movie didn't receive much attention, it because it's sucked. it many not mean literally sucked, because of the overally Hollywood cast, but it didn't achieve anything through out the 2 hours borefest. i mean, we all remember 'Gandhi' from 1982, the movie went on to win 8 academy awards, including best actor and best picture, and you can argue that this movie was more about the rugby team than it is about Mandela, and 'Gandhi' was about 'Gandhi' more than 'Invictus' about Mandela, but the movie had the potential to be a masterpiece, i mean, 'Morgan Freeman' as Mandela?, and Matt damon as captain of the rugby team 'Francois Pienaar'?, that's fuckintastic, and should be as good as it gets, but sadly, it wasn't.

The movie tells the story of Mandela after he became the newly elected president of south africa in 1994, in which he decide to fully support the rugby team, the 'Springboks' to win the world cup of 1995 which held in south africa in order to bring people together through sport. 'Springboks' at that time represented prejudice and apartheid and featured all white players, and black crowds were going to the games just for the sake of cheering the opposite team, so, Mandela met the captain and inspired him to win the world cup after all hopes were lost for the team, because of the many consecutive loses, and the fact that the union tried to disband the team.

The movie was really slow, and featured some horrible performances, very unexciting scenes, little to no dialog, horrible accents and the most uninspired sport movie ever. i was actually shocked when found out that Matt Damon got an Oscar nod for a supporting character, i mean, don't get me wrong, he's a fantastic actor, but he had absolutely no screenplay, he was just there to be there, not to say anything. being the captain of the team, you'd think he'll have an inspirational talk with his teammates, once or twice, but none, absolutely none. the movie is about a sport, and it wasn't a sport movie. i've always had this image in mind about captains, screaming at the top of their lungs, yelling at teammates, inspiring them, saying something dramatic, yet, there was nothing to see here from he captain, he didn't even say anything to the team when they decided to throw away the national anthem lyrics, so, i thought, "if he didn't say anything now, i'll doubt that he'll say anything, ever" and i was right. it's a movie about a sport that doesn't get you excited at all, almost every scene were cold and slow, and overall lifeless, it was like a chore for the director to get these scenes and that's just sad.

More sad than that was Morgan Freeman performance and accent, it wasn't something big, which it should've been, it was just decent enough to look okay, and i expected lots more than that from one of the best supporting actors of all time, one with all the experiences, but come to think of it, i know now why he was never a leading man. his accent comes and goes and came out as painful, his performance wasn't encouraging or inspirational as the words he was saying. you'd expect some pain flow through these lines when he talks about prison, but nope, you'd expect some depth while saying these beautiful words and encouraging people to love and forgive, but nope, he should have prepared way more than that, because one does not simply get the chance to play Nelson Mandela for the whole world to see and then screw it up. it was like "so, i just stand in-front of the camera and say my line? okay, ready when you are", and that's a major flop in the movie, being the leading man delivering something uninspired nor exciting.

Now, sure, there were some few good qualities about this movie, like the writing, which i loved, the way the movie looked, casting of supporting characters were mostly okay, not all of them though, since, there's this cliched racist father, and there's also the cliched mean news anchor and the major elements of the movie were torture, so, it's hard to overlook these things.

Overall, the movie was slow, soleless and uninspired, and a sad turn out since it had all the potentials to be a great one. it was also very boring for a movie about a sport and would have been lots worse if it weren't for the 'Clint Eastwood' trademark slapped to it. i mean, if we can exchange the big names in this movie for exactly equal performances, like, instead of 'Morgan Freeman' bring a guy with much lower profile, and instead of 'Clint Eastwood' another lower profile, yet equal in skills, this movie would be an abomination.

I first heard about Wes Anderson about two years ago and decided to watch the most acclaimed movie of his until that point, which was "Moonrise Kingdom", and i thought that the movie was awful, no story just style, very boring, waste of talent, and completely absurd, but i thought it as no big deal, because many of the critically acclaimed movies are trash. but in 2014, i heard about this movie, and decided not to watch it because it's Wes Anderson again, but then it received 9 Oscar nominations including 'best picture', so, i thought hey "it's Wes Anderson again, but maybe he decided to add a story this time, not just the style" and i was completely wrong, as this movie is slightly better than 'Moonrise kingdom' which is still pretty awful.

Okay, first of all, the idea of switching the resolution to 16*9 is stupid, i mean, why would i do that in order to watch a movie? what, now, wide screen is too mainstream? and it isn't 16*9 entirely, because when Mr. Moustafa narrate the story, it's 16*9, but when we see him talk with the writer (played by Jude Law), it's wide screen again, and that's pretty awful way to start your movie.

The movie starts with a girl grabbing a book, reading from 'Mr. Writer' who was played by Jude Law when he's younger, and Tom Wilkinson when he's older, which tells the story of Zero Moustafa, whose narrating the story of him escaping his town after the war and how he came to work as a lobby boy for M. Gustave in the Grand Budapest Hotel. M Gustave is the owner of this very fancy Hotel in which most of his clients, are older women, including Madame D. (played by Tilda Swinton) who leaves him a very expensive and rare painting (called 'Apple Boy') after she dies. not willing to give it away are her family, mostly her sons, Dmitri (played by Adrien Brody) and her assassin's looking other son Jopling (played by Willem Dafoe), so M. Gustave decided to steal the painting, with the help of zero, promising him a percentage of the money if he sold it. M. Gustave then gets imprisoned for stealing and start planing a way out of prison with his cell buddies.

To give credit when credit is due, the movie looked awesome, although, a square screen doesn't let you fully appreciate the cinematography, but it was great nonetheless, there was intently noticeable amount of camera work, and the production design was masterful, and filled with so many details, and it helped switching from one scene to another by simply switching the camera to the right, left, up or down. there's also that symmetric thing that Wes Anderson's fans crazy about, which i don't find very useful, i mean, yeah, all frames looked beautiful but it's a movie not a picture slide show, specially that Wes Anderson forced so many frames just for the sake of looking beautiful, not for the sake of being logical at all. most of the time, he's just trying to fit as much people as he can in one frame, sometimes, it doesn't make any sense, like when, M. Gustave got imprisoned, and send a word to his hotel staff, with some poetry at the end, they showed M. Gustave in one frame with all the prisoners and the security all at once just standing behind him, which is like a WTF thing, and maybe this is just me, but i don't think this symmetric thing allow actors to explore/react/move because they should be standing at the same point until the end of the scene.

The movie had an obscene amount of wasted talents, it's shocking and irritating, and the most wasted cast since 'Moonrise Kingdom'. so many good actors are there just to make the frame look famous, there was not much to it, most of them didn't even have screen time, or had but few unmemorable lines, which is weird, since most of them, are A-listers, so the fact that they were brought up for the shortest cameos ever, just goes to prove that they either came for a curtsy of someone, or, were offered a large amount of money, because none of them even make a semi-impact line.

The performances were mostly good, specially by Ralph Fiennes, but the "humor" weren't working for me most of the time. at some points, i was asking myself, 'should i laugh now?' and i'm crazy about dark/black comedy, but the writing in this one was too sophisticated to be funny, and you can tell, they're trying to build this sophisticated atmosphere by using these fancy words, and the movie had a terrible ending, just stupid, semi-depressing ending (if you cared enough). the way they closed the story was not necessary at all nor funny.

Overall, i think it was a movie to showcase style, cinematography and production design featuring some good looking people staring at you from across the screen, not more, so, this wasn't my cup of tee and it won't be your's if you're not a fan of Wes Anderson, it's mostly for hipsters, and people who seeks something different from mainstream or indie movies, and i don't think the academy nominations are going to change my mind about this trashy flick.

Gone girl was the movie i anticipated the most this year and i prayed for it to be good. because i'm crazy about David Fincher, i mean 'Fightclub', 'The social network' and 'Se7en', how can one not be a fan of David.
But this movie left me very disappointed, shocked mostly, at the dramatic change of pace. i mean, the movie thrillers you to the max, and build high expectations for what should be coming next and then suddenly drops to zero leaving the audience speechless and irritated.

As usual, the movie starts up very slow, with a thrilling atmosphere, and beautiful cinematography as Nick Dunne (played by Ben Affleck) comes home at his 5 years anniversary with his wife Amy Dunne (played by Rosamund Pike) to find her gone, with broken glass and blood on the floor, indicating that a murder or a kidnapping took place. and then a massive search inducted to find her. the first hour of the movie is very average, aside from getting to know the characters, there was some horribly executed flash backs, as the wife write into her diary, and try to remember how she met him, and it was very fast paced and very rushed and overall boring, but that was just the flashbacks. on the 2nd timeline, there's the search which was going slow, with clues here and there, and then the wife suddenly decided to reveal the plot while writing into her diary, which was surprising for the story to get revealed that way but it was thrilling to the max as the wife planed to situate a murder that never happened, to blame her husband for her disappearance, and then get to live her life alone while her husband face the death penalty, and it was so beautifully and smartly executed, a 15 minutes of maximum entertainment, and right there, you know that you're watching a movie by David Fincher.

After the husband figure out her plan and the fact that she decided to blame him for her disappearance, he hire a lawyer and start a TV interview to win the public perception of him while preparing for court, and since it's not a perfect world, the movie suddenly gets confusing, as after the reveal of her plan, there's not much she do afterward, she hides her money in her purse, doesn't change her name, rent a room in some country motel and starts watching the news, which is pretty shocking, since her plan indicate that she's so smart, and been planing this for a long time, but is this her after plan? to sit in a dirty ass motel hiding her money under the bed? seems very stupid, i mean, is that the life she wants to herself after destroying her husband's life? and then to our great surprise, she gets robbed by her nosy neighbor and end up being homeless, sleeping in her car, which is shocking again considering the fact that she supposed to be clever, i mean, since she was very rich, couldn't she hide her money in a bank under a different name or something? because the story until that point seemed very unreasonable.

When she becomes homeless, she decided suddenly to alter her plan and go back to her high-school boyfriend Desi Collings (played by Neil Patrick Harris), whose a rich dude was crazy about her and stocked her for a long time. she decided to live in his house and stage a rape so she can blame it on him and get back to her husband, but the movie failed to show her desperation, it was pretty shocking for the other plan to get executed because she wasn't desperate enough to carry down a murder to get back to her husband as if she was kidnapped from her home and imprisoned in Desi Collings house and was tied up and raped multiple times until she got herself loose and killed him, i mean, she was decent enough to not kill her husband, but they suddenly made her a psychopath when they altered her plan like that, and right there, the movie drops to zero as if was written all the way to that point and then suddenly handed out to a different writer who was supposed to spice it up a bit, and that's dramatic change of event is shocking and not impressing at all, furthermore, it was filled with huge plot holes because there was not even one single evidence of Desi being the kidnapper, they found her diary semi-burned down in Nick Dunne's sister house which indicate that Nick Dunne was the kidnapper, and the FBI released her from the hospital after a 4 minutes investigation without looking at the overall evidence at all, it was like What the fuck David Fincher this doesn't make any sense, and just when you think the movie couldn't get any worse, the movie surprise you by Nick Dunne welcoming her home and not leaving her, even though, she confessed to him that she murdered her ex-boyfriend. i mean the fact that the audience should buy the excuse that Nick Dunne didn't leave his wife because he was scarred of the people's reaction in town as if it would make him look like the husband who left his wife after she got raped which doesn't make any sense. he was scared of her and didn't sleep at the same bed, why stay in the house? who cares about what people think, doesn't worth it for the people to think you're a decent person even though you're scared that she might kill you? and even when he decided to leave her after a while, she tell him that she's pregnant and he decided to stay and raise the baby which was the most forced plot ever. it's irritating and out of reason and a sad turn for a somewhat decent story.

I know it looked as if i hated the movie, but i hated the story, and i was disappointed by David Fincher, even though he isn't the writer but he takes FULL blame for how the movie turned out to be, i mean, it's a movie by David Fincher, the story shouldn't be such irritating and hazardous to your health, but it was, and now i can't even explain how good the movie looked, or how thrilling it was, and how David did an awesome job with the directing and the overall great performances even from the overrated Neil Patrick Harris, because the story fucked that up entirely. seriously, bad planning and sudden change of events is maddening.

Overall, it was high and low, good and bad, but overall WTF!!, and very disappointing coming from the acclaimed director, but this movie proved one thing however, which is that, fanboys will clap along to anything written/directed/produced by David Fincher even if the movie had plot holes the size of a football field.

Being the guy from the other side, i was immediately insulted by Hollywood choice to Capitalize on a tragedy, because in no way, shape or form, Hollywood would respect the victims and show what actually happened. if you want to see what actually happened then go watch a Documentary called "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", this movie on the other hand was a poorly executed, yet over-dramatic bullshit that never happened with a "Based on true events" sticker slapped to it.

Shockingly, it was the debut movie of the Actor/Director/Writer Luke Moran, who also took the leading role in this movie, which bring the first question, why in the world would your debut attempt at Hollywood picture be something really hard to interrupt, because, in one way or another, it had to be a political movie, it had to play it safe and make sure not to insult both sides, and it had to deliver a powerful message about the american policy in Iraq, there's no way around it, however, this movie managed to find a way around it, by doing absolutely nothing.

It's the story of Jack Farmer, an american solider deployed to Abu Ghraib prison for an initial period of six months, after arriving in place, the movie slap you in the face with the poor living conditions of the american soldiers, with no electricity or clean water, and with bombs falling on them the entire time, which is the movie "building up" for what it should happen next, so, after working in motor pool for a period of time, Farmer apply to serve as an MP (Military Police) as to the fact that the prison is understaffed, during this time he develop a good relationship with an inmate in which the inmate told him that he's an innocent man and was arrested during a massive arrest after a bomb went out and killed 18 civilians. three days prior to go home, he receive an order to stay for another six months in Iraq, but with a two weeks vacation to home in the upcoming months. while serving as an MP, he try to defend his inmate friend and offer him food and he start questioning the people doing the torture/investigation and get told that "as a solider, he shouldn't think, his job is to follow orders", so, he find himself unable to change anything. the movie cuts days very fast, in a way that wouldn't let you develop a relation with the main character, and it failed miserably to show any character development at all during the entire movie. cuts to few days later, the lieutenant tell Farmer that he won't be leaving for a vacation because he can't lose him and his inmate friend confess after being brutally tortured that he did commit these crimes and he did bomb people, and from there, the movie drops to zero, as they suddenly show Farmer being mean and loud on inmates abusing them and yelling at them, with no decent back-story as what have happened.

The movie is 1 hours, 20 minutes, in which nothing ever happened, the entire movie was about one american solider and one Iraqi inmate, there's no characters in this movie, it might as well, removed the inmate and all you have left is a story going nowhere, you have no idea where the inmate/solider relationship is going, and the movie had little to absolutely no dialog, and some horrible effects, close-ups and flashes poorly executed and overall amateur production value, it was a poor attempt at anything really and it failed to show any value, and we can all agree on that.

However, since i like to dig deeper, i won't give this movie any credit, which i usually do for debut/indie films, not only it wasn't anything about anything, it managed to be even worse than that, because, when that one, honest/innocent looking inmate was shown as guilty, then, that just goes to justify the soldiers actions, it even tries to victimize the soldiers, and show you that when they show compassion, they get stabbed and betrayed, which is downright misleading, and brutally insulting to the actual innocent people who were imprisoned there during massive arrests in Iraqi streets, and to add insult to injury, they show you that even the most decent solider can be so easily brutalized and then get convicted of war crimes for "just doing his job", hell, the movie never addresses the people whose in-charged of the torture, or the people who approved the torture, and it vaguely implied that torture is the best way to get information out of inmates, it even showed so little torture of inmates so the audience won't feel very sorry for them, and even if they did, then showing that man being guilty is a brutal justifications of the tragedy that happened there, seriously, fuck this movie.

Overall, a poorly executed movie with no value whatsoever, and brutally insulting to the victims who were tortured to death in that prison, the movie never achieved a valid point at all, instead it victimized the american soldiers and showed us that torture is the way to go, hell, this movie was discredited by people who served there as MP's who watched this movie and said that it was misleading, so, how bad is it? Insultingly bad.

This movie is the perfect answer for you if you get tired from the repetitiveness and the over-simplified characters of mainstream Hollywood, as this movie take place in a different part of the world, far away from the glamorization and conventional bullshit that we're used to.

Based on a true story (entirely or to some degree), this movie slap you in the face with it violence, and it successfully manage to show you how violent people are created, from the discriminated people who just want to prove themselves, or the people who want to fill a gap in them by gaining control over territories and doing whatever possible to be known and feared.

Taking place in 'City of God' which is a housing project in Rio de Janeiro, formed by the government for the people who fled their areas from floods in 1960, this movie shows you how this small project area turned into the most dangerous place in Rio de Janeiro in the 80's, as young people there started forming small gangs to control the city taking advantage of the non-existence and/or the corruption of police. Narrated entirely by Buscapé whose a wanna-be photographer who lived in the city and watched the gangs being formed and taking over places, to start dealing with drugs and weapons and competing to gain control over the City of God.

The first thing that stuck me about this movie is the ability of those young people, in which most of them aren't actors at all, to deliver, fantastic performances, adding to that the incredible writing and screenplay and the very stylist directorial skills and you have one the best foreign films of all time. it's a masterful work from the start to finish as it keep you glued to the screen the entire time with it incredible story and acting, it's also highly disturbing as it get's very deep into criminals mindset in which most of them are just kids, something, you don't see everyday.

The director Fernando Meirelles have this amazing ability to repeat the same scene from a different angle each time, as the narrator Buscapé tell the story of each character independently and then combine all that together in one scene, and you don't get to see it the same way, to avoid the repetitiveness of repeating, the director give you the same scene in a different way, and it was so perfectly executed that you can swear it can't be the same scene.

What makes this movie very powerful is the ability to capture so much emotions from people, in which most of them aren't actors, even from kids, it gets so deep on characters and explain so much, without actually explaining, just by the look on the scattered emotions you can understand so much, a quality that even the most praised movies fail to show, like that last scene, when the kid start following his "gang" and shouting at them to wait for him, and loss his sandal while running and they start laughing at him, it just show so many things, and it perfectly combines child innocence with violent criminals, it's almost satirical approach to criminals but it also highly disturbing, as it show that those empty discriminated kids can be way more dangerous than adult criminals for lacking of morals, and i highly praise the director for showing that, it's a Masterpiece.

It's a political movie that handle a large portion of U.S government policy overseas, it handle politics surrounding oil companies and terrorism in the middle east, it also tries to show that the U.S government is controlling the entire region, removing and installing whoever they want at all time, and it's based on a non-fiction book called "See No Evil" by Robert Baer. now i haven't read the book and now that I've seen the movie, i'm not going to read it, because it's too complicated, and i'd easily say that this movie didn't handle the materials quite well, because as a motion picture, the main objective would be to simplify and translate it to audience, but it didn't do that as the movie is also too complicated to understand.

It's a story about a CIA agent called Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney) as he get sent to the middle east to employ an assassin to kill an Arabian Prince because as the king there is dying, he have to give his crown to one of his sons, one being the guy who refuses to deal with the Americans and want the oil for his own people called Nasir Al-Subaai (played by Alexander Siddig) whose the one the U.S trying to assassinate and the other would be the spoiled son who got bribed and controlled by the U.S.A, so with so much politics going on and so much policy changes, the mission fails and Bob Barnes gets apprehended, tortured and sent back to the U.S .

The movie handle an enormous amount of politics, it had many people involved in many countries, and it had a lot of references to actual events happened over the years, which makes it exhausting to watch, it's also very Pretentious as it's treat the audience as if they were all familiar with the situations, like we all are history students or something, which means no matter how much the viewer knows about politics, Middle east, oil companies and/or terrorism, you will feel confused at 70% of the time. i literally felt like pausing the movie multiple times just to cursor over to Wikipedia and read about that reference real quick. now, with that being said, here come the major problem with the movie which is being highly encrypted, and not entertaining at all, i mean seriously, if you're going to show me some rich white man in a farm in Texas controlling the situation in the middle east while shooting ducks, you have to at least guide me through it, show me how it's done, don't just refer to it and pretend like we all know about it, because now, it's seems more like a propaganda than a fact, it doesn't mean it's not believable because it's highly believable, but the way it was handled made it suspicious. personally, i love politically charged movies, but this one being too pretentious made it not to my liking.

The movie had a very large cast of good actors, but the problem with that is they're weren't much screen time for anyone, even George Clooney in the main role have few scenes and few lines. the performances were very good for all, but it should be since most of the actors were brought up to say few things and go. Matt Damon brought another good performance along with Jeffrey Wright, Clooney, Chris Cooper and Alexander Siddig. i do give a lot of credits for the casting, because the movie brought Pakistani people to play Pakistani's, Arabs to play Arabs, which is not very Hollywood because movies tend to mix ethnics, races and accents when going to the other side of the world thinking that people wouldn't notice it, but it played carefully with languages, carefully with religious terms and it was deep on many things.

The entertainment falls flat as the movie contained too many short scenes of too many events all happening at the same time, some scenes were as much as 10 to 20 seconds, so you sit there wondering what have you learned from this 20 seconds scene and how is that gonna contribute to the plot and why i'm being updated every 2 minutes about things happening sometimes not even at the same time, why can't they show me the entire thing and then move on to another one, specially the fact being that many of these short scenes involve Jeffrey Wright as an attorney investigating a non-interesting thing about two companies merging together speaking in all legal terms that are too hard to follow as he supposed to show you the corruption within the system, they also tried to slap audience with the fact that the only guy who isn't rich in this one, is the honest upraising attorney who isn't corrupted yet, as they push the fact that he's still living in the Ghetto alone, childless and wifeless.

I know, it sounds like i hated the movie, but i'm not, the movie had a large amount of believability and had very good production value, it was also deep on situations in the middle east, like how foreign workers specially from east Asia are being treated, how easy for someone to exploit them and use them for terrorism purposes, it also showed how most Arabs sitting on the wealth of billion dollars are horrible businessmen that can easily get used or manipulated and it can be an eye-opener on so many other things if the materials was treated properly, not just pushed down our throats, the movie was a bit thrilling and had a good music to it, and was filmed exactly at the locations showing in the movie, which means they hired people from that area, and used actual people in some cases. maybe this is just me nitpicking, but George Clooney Arabic was horrible, i know it's a hard language, but if he was that bad, then alter the scene because it weren't that necessary, i mean he wasn't actually saying words, he was just blurting things that can't be understood, but his performance was good, i don't know if it was that good that he won an Oscar for it, but i guess, the Academy awards are more about appearances than performances and sometimes just about body transformations, furthermore, Alexander Siddig isn't Arabic native as he struggled a lot because he had many lines and not all of them sounded right, but it was decent nonetheless.

Overall, it's too political, even for political movie fans, it also too much and too Pretentious, not very enjoyable but that doesn't make it less valid which is the most important part as the movie can serve as a political overall on the middle east, or political overall on U.S policy overseas, but it needs a understanding of many things to get the movie right, and even then, some references still might sound encrypted, so it's diffidently not for everyone.

It's movies like this whose an ugly reminder on how teenagers control everything nowadays, they turn horrible artists into best sellers and they turn horrible movies into successful popular cult "modern hits", and i can easily see their perspective "Oh my god, a movie about high school, we are in a high school", "Oh my god, it has Emma Stone, and she's so hot".

I mean i'm all for freedom of opinions but it makes me mad to see such low standards for comedy, Easy A is a horrible high school flick that wasn't funny at all. even horrible movies can make me laugh some times, this one, never, i wasn't even amused by it, i was just repulsed and annoyed and kept looking at my watch, it's a sorry excuse for a comedy sold entirely on Emma Stone likability, they didn't even bother to write a funny script, and they managed to have so many good actors, but never use that to make the movie better.

It start with Emma stone playing as a high school student, narrating her story to the audience, looking at the screen constantly, because, you know, what's the point of having Emma stone if she didn't talk to the audience. she basically tells the story on how she turned from a unknown student to the most popular girl in school to the slut that everybody hates, the story is told with little effort, horrible acting, no depth to characters at all, some horrible editing in which the actor is talking but when the angle change, you can see from the back of his head, that he's not talking, it reminded me of cheesy low budget sitcoms, it also had some very bad lip-syncing and the whole production looked very immature and mashed together in effortless kinda way.

The movie had so many comedy cliches, and so many high school cliches, like the inappropriate parents, the very supportive not-caring parents, the shallow best friend, ect... and the story wasn't interesting at all, it's even worse with the main protagonist as Emma stone played it too cool for her character, it was like she's very mature for a high school student, she wasn't even in the character, it's like she's playing herself, kinda Like George Clooney in 'Batman & Robin', and the script looks overly written, as if the writer wasn't actually writing it with a high school mentality, even worse, was some random lines slapped here and there to make cheap laughs, like Emma's father (Stanley Tucci) asking his adopted son, "so, where are you from", or some random inappropriate conversation between Emma and her mom at the end, it's all very not funny, and random.

As i said before the entire movie was based on the likability of Emma stone, they didn't even bother to invest in a funny script, or funny jokes or interesting characters, which means, if you like Emma, then you're going to adore everything she says, and you will think it's funny, and i like Emma stone, i just don't like the character she was playing, that's why the movie was not funny at all to me, furthermore, the movie never makes usage of the many respectable supporting actors and actresses like Thomas Haden Church, Malcolm McDowell, Stanley Tucci and Lisa Kudrow. the script made them all corny and bad or just not interesting, and Amanda Bynes in this movie, which takes the awfulness into a whole other level.

The movie didn't have the decency to have an original score, instead, they purchased a bunch of old songs and slapped them together which was so lazy and pointless, and it gives the impression of a cheesy teen movie, even though they tried to hide that sense.

Overall, it's very immature (yes, even for teenagers), lazy, with a horrible script, awful performances, and based entirely on Emma stone, and a bad example for teenagers, as the movie didn't address the whole point of the confession it based on.

I've seen this movie a long time ago, it was very disturbing to me and i wasn't able to sit through it entirely, i had to pause and go back after a while because it's shocking to say the least, so i didn't feel like i watched it the way it meant to be seen, that's why i watched it again, and now i can safely say that it's Darren Aronofsky's best work to date, and easily a disturbing masterpiece.

The movie addresses drug addiction like no movie ever before, never seen a movie that actually made me sick to my stomach, it's an idea that you have to live with far after the movie ends. the intensity of the movie is very shocking that you can't escape from. you can't not engage in the movie, because it's right in your face. the movie is at that level of disturbance never achieved before, that how powerful this movie is.

It's starts with two heroin junkies, Harry Goldfarb (played by Jared Leto) and Tyrone C. Love (played by Marlon Wayans), harry is out of money, so he steals his mother television and sell it to get the money needed to get high, along with him is his girlfriend Marion Silver (played by Jennifer Connelly) whose also a junkie, they get all high together and one of them get the idea of buying some pure heroin and sell it to make money. the business was doing well for a while and they raised few money until a handout with the main distributor goes wrong and Tyrone get locked up, so Harry use the money raised to bail him out, so they find themselves at the same spot again, meanwhile harry's mother Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) is a lonely old women who watches the same TV show everyday, and dreams about being on TV, so she gets a letter in the mail that she will be a contestant on the show, so in a desperate effort to lose weight to fit in her old dress, she starts taking pills prescribed by her doctor.

The movie have this amazing ability to capture the desperation of the protagonists, in which harry and Marion is battling addiction, trying to make enough money to open a store and live a new life, Sara is desperately trying to lose wight, so she starts drug abuse, she starts getting illusions and can't sleep at night, it's all very disturbing as the movie leaves nothing to the imagination.

The movie employ visuals with an intense and a masterful Music by Clint Mansell, sometimes a split screen showing you two different things, some horror elements, like a jumping refrigerator, very short scenes overlapping to show you three sometimes four different events happening at the same time, it's all very valid to make the movie intense, it doesn't handle one event at a time, and it's sad and shocking, as you get to see four lives destroyed by drug addiction with no hope, the movie starts with a normal life and it all goes down from there, it's predictable outcome but presented with shocking endings, some scenes actually gave me goosebumps, the illusions contain some masterful visuals and the score is one of the best movie scores of all time, Clint Mansell's Lux Aeterna is a masterpiece.

It's my first time watching a psychological drama, and it left me astounded, glued to my seat, disturbed and horrified, made me sick, i doubt that anyone would watch this movie and don't feel that way, it's an anti-drug masterpiece, and it had fantastic performances specially from Ellen Burstyn, i have no input as how much she gained/lost weight, how much she had to go through to present such a performance but it was a shocking transformation through out the movie, along side of that, was an equally astonishing performance by Jennifer Connelly, the movie even manage to make a mediocre actor such as Marlon Wayans looks believable, that's how much Darren Aronofsky is a masterful director.

Overall, very powerful and disturbing yet valid anti-drug movie, with one of the best scores ever in a motion picture, and it's a unique intense experience never before felt, and it gets better everytime.

I'm a long term Kevin Smith's fan, i like his writing, his comedy and his vision, and i don't oppose change, i don't go around asking him to stick into what he usually do, but i mean come on, not this, this is just a mess of a movie, too many genres squashed together into glimpse of a clusterfuck, a movie that surpassed irritation, into a brand new level of violating the viewer, it's blatant disregard of the viewer sanity passed along as a "satire" and it failed on every level.

Kevin Smith cleverness was able to make him sell this movie, through Q&A sessions, in which he explained his "vision" to bunch of fanboys who would pretty much clap along to anything, but his "vision" weren't even close to his work, that's why you hear so many promising things but then you watch something irrelevant, it's outright false advertisement.

It's a story about three guys who go to craigslist trying to get laid, they end up finding an old women whose ready to do a foursome, so she drug them all together and give them to the church, in which her family is bunch of fundamentalists in small town, who oppose homosexuality, infidelity and pretty much anything against the bible, and early on in the movie, you see a funeral of a homosexual teenager, in which you learn later that the family killed him just for being homosexual, but the movie never explain why these three guys are the new target, because they weren't homosexuals, so you just have to assume that the church family oppose anything against the bible, which in this case adultery.

The most obscene thing about this movie is the exaggerated look into christian fundamentalists, a bunch of irritating faces that made me lose my sanity. and Kevin Smith dragged along that church scene way too long for the viewer to even recover from, an extremely boring 20 minutes of Michael Parks as a pastor in which he drowned into his own randomness, 20 minutes of random irrelevant screenplay that did not make any sense, surrounded by the pastor is the most irritating, charmless faces ever put together in one movie, and their exaggerated reactions to the pastor speech made it way worse than anyone can imagine, furthermore, you can't sense what the director is trying to accomplish here, i mean, is he making fun of them? or is this scene really that deep?, so you set in there bored as hell, confused as what to make of it, should you take it seriously or laugh at it?, specially, when the three guys you invested in, is about to be killed by these fundamentalists.

The movie is 80 minutes long, and it combined horror, crime, action, supposedly a political satire, and some kinda of black comedy at the end, and the movie failed at pretty much everything with the exception of horror, because the movie was fully engaging and it force you to invest in these three guys, before killing them brutally each one at a time. the action scene was another 20 minutes of a boring shootout between the FBI and the members of the family, a scene in which you can only assume one thing only, and it is Kevin Smith buying time to make it a full length movie, and he already did that with the pastor scene, and he did it again with the FBI agent Joseph Keenan, played by John Goodman, in which he have a long scene of one-sided phone call, where you learn about the family and what type on guns they posses and Kevin Smith tried to give the audience an alternate reality when he compared them to Fred Phelps family, the guy from Westboro Baptist Church, in which his message was like "this is a another hate group, but one that doesn't mind getting their hands dirty", and the message were invalid.

And to give credit where the credit is due, the movie looks great, the horror factors works really good with that camera work, the shootout was great, although pointless, i don't remember hearing a score though, and the performances weren't important nor memorable, the movie brutally kills the three guys and make you feel really irritated, and it was really confusing, because it was really hard not to take it seriously, also really hard to figure out what's Kevin Smith vision on this one, because if you're going to make a movie about fundamentalists, then make a movie about fundamentalists, don't insert some random satire at the end with that horn scene and ruin it for everybody.

And when Kevin smith did try to explain it at the end, he brought the most random actors, and execute that semi-court scene with minimal, outright horrible performances, with some really dark confusing "comedy" mocking these fundamentalists, and trying to deliver an encrypted message on the way that U.S handle terrorists. it's not valid, very irritating and can't not be taken seriously and it is the most lazy way to close a confusing movie. it's just Kevin Smith getting a free pass so he can walk away without explaining it, then explain it in any way he likes to fanboys clapping with a standing ovation.

Overall, it's bad, not valid, lazy, irritating, sometimes even violating it's audience, 80 minutes of a confusing mess that can't be taking seriously nor can be ignored, and it's Kevin Smith take on fundamentalists and politics, and it's outright horrible.

Nobody was anticipating this movie more than me, i cried of joy the first time i heard of 'LEGO Movie' idea, even before the trailer, i thought that this is going to be great, and when the trailer came out, i was extremely satisfied because it looked exactly like i thought it would be, beautiful colors, wonderful characters, fantastic voice overs, it was the upcoming 'Toy story' for me, but now that i have seen the movie, i'm shockingly disappointed.

Let me explain what's wrong with this movie to the best of my ability. let's say that you're drawing something, a figure, and behind it there's a background, normally, you would put more details and intensity in the figure, so that when someone look at the drawing, he will know exactly what to look at, it doesn't mean that you made the background blurry, but details on the figure is more important than details on the background, with this movie however, there were incredible amount of details on everything, and while that's always a good thing, unfortunately, everything in the frame looked detailed the same amount, which means, you will look at the screen but you don't know what's happening, where to look? where's the figure in this? furthermore, they're were too many things happening in the background, so it's not just the intensity, it's also the movement, i weren't able to absorb all that is happening, and that wasted potentials, because they worked really hard to make everything look amazing, but they failed to highlight what's important. in my best ability and complete focus, i was able to absorb about 70% of what's happening in the movie, and i felt exhausted after one hour, specially the car chases, and the explosions. just look at the picture below, see how the background from 'The LEGO movie' is detailed and see how the background from 'Toy Story' look a bit blurry, so you can the differences.



And to add insult to injury, the movie was really really fast paced, which makes it way worse than it should, because not only you can't see your figures and everything looks the same but also, it's fast, it's really exhausting.

Although, i did blur the line with the entry, but i did enjoy this movie, not all of it, but the majority of it was fantastic, the casting was great, too many great characters, Batman was hilarious, Will Ferrell's voice as 'Lord Business' was great, the jokes were really funny, the story brings out the child in you, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson and Will Arnett voices were adorable. and i was actually worried about their ability of showing emotions, because the LEGO face is so simple and they can't move it all like other animations, they can only move the eyes and the mouths, so i didn't think they'll be able to capture the necessary face impressions to highlight the character, but they did it perfectly, you can so easily relate to the LEGO and it looked adorable, also "Everything was Awesome" was a really, really good song.

An hour and 20 minutes into the movie and i was able to enjoy it as much as i can, but then everything dropped to zero when Emmet fell from the Skyscraper and they decided to show a kid holding the LEGO, a kid playing with the LEGO in non-animated kinda way. at first i thought, this is a good idea, it's like an another dimension to the movie, you know like in Toy Story, where the kid plays with the Toys, but i was surprised to see it in non-animation, it was really a shocking decision to feature Will Ferrell and his "son" arguing over the LEGO, it ruined it for me, the entire theme of the movie was wasted, and i can't stand Will Ferrell, but his voice was great, but why you have to show him (the real him) in the movie playing with the LEGO with his son, before this scene, i was ready to give the movie a 7 out of 10 for very enjoyable, but that non-animation scene killed it for me, why couldn't they do it like in 'Toy Story', what's the point in showing those people? did they think that people would say "hey, it's Will Ferrell, this movie just got better"? because he's already in the movie, don't show me his face, that was very shocking for an animation movie. and it made me wonder, can they do that? i mean will this movie ever be nominated for an academy award for best animation because it featured a non-animated scenes, and the non-animated scenes were so boring, it was really rushed, effortless and just thrown in the movie in a shocking way.

Overall, a semi-enjoyable movie, that was exhausting to watch but had so many potentials that could make it so much better, but some shocking decisions brought it back to average, and it's not acceptable to waste a movie like this, because the movie became sad for me while it should be enjoyable.