Romina’s Blog

Basically Wall-E was really cool. Everything was just how I had expected… AMAZING! It was so much fun going to see the movie at midnight, because you know that the only people crazy enough to be in that audience are the people worth watching the movie with.

It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun. Everyone should check out Wall-E!

PS: The short film Presto that comes before the feature, is brilliant! So keep an eye out for that too.

I <3 Pixar.

“21 is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.” - imdb.com

If you’re looking for Ocean’s 11 without the glam and organized by college students then maybe you should think about watching 21. Check out the trailer: here.

Jim Sturgess stars as Ben Campbell, a mathematical genius. He’s finishing his year at MIT and looking for money to pay for Harvard Medical School. Long story short, he ends up in Las Vegas playing cards to get the money. The most interesting part about this film is that it’s true.

For the most part, I would recommend the movie. The way it was directed made it fast-paced, not allowing the audience to fall asleep. Although, there were a few loop holes and the “sex” scene that was inserted was quite frankly… a bit ridiculous. Aside from that I really think that this is an important role for Kevin Spacey. It’s been a while and I’m glad to see him do this character.

Kevin Spacey plays the professor (Mickey Rosa) that groups these students together to create a “team” that pays weekly visits to Vegas in order to play the game. What is most complex about this character is the way that he starts as a protagonist and converts into an antagonist. The good guy that we were all cheering for at the beginning of the film is the one that we hate in the second half.

I would say that Sturgess and Spacey do the best job with their acting abilities. And although Kate Bosworth is also mentionable… in my opinion she looks too old and acts too old for the part.

If you find the trailer intriguing then I suggest watching the film. It was entertaining and kept me attentive the entire time. But just as a warning… this film is better than the trailer puts it out to be. I was not expecting it to be as watchable as it was.

I’m a little bit late with this, but hey what can I say… I’ve been busy!

Last week I saw Charlie Bartlett directed by Jon Poll and written by Gustin nash. Here is a synopsis from IMDb.com if you have no idea what movie I am talking about: “A rich kid (Yelchin) becomes the self-appointed psychiatrist to the student body of his new high school.” Check out the trailer: Here.

If you have already read other reviews about this, I am sure that you have heard the comparisons made with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or that it is a “rip-off” of said movie. Whatever you may have read along those lines… forget it!

Charlie Bartlett is a high school comedy that subtly breaks a few boundaries in said genre. The film focuses on the teen angst theme, embodying the ever popular “parents just don’t understand” phrase. We follow on a journey that Charlie goes on trying to get others to accept him, while facing the difficulties of accepting himself.

The best part about this film is that they made the bold move of using young actors that do not have familiar faces (ie: Lindsay Lohan). Anton Yelchin did a fantastic job as the complex and quirky character Charlie Bartlett. Kat Dennings took a role that could have very easily been a burned out character and managed to make her into a unique and very memorable person.

Although this film is not filled with knee-slapping moments such as Superbad, Charlie Bartlett was able to capture high school moments that actually happen and make them laughable (as they so quite often are in reality). The film makes it easy to relate to with these awkward instances, whether you went to a high school like the one portrayed in the film or you didn’t. It focused so much on each student as individuals as opposed to grouping them into cliques as in Mean Girls.

During the Q & A with Gustin Nash, in response to the question of whether the film had some autobiographical events in it, he said that all of his projects had a touch of his life in them. It is quite clear that there was a little bit of Charlie Bartlett in all of us, especially as we were growing up in high school. Charlie Bartlett is insecure, he’s confident, always seeking approval, yet doing things his own way. Sounds like a teenager, doesn’t it?

If you enjoyed movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club, then you will enjoy Charlie Bartlett and every nostalgic bit of it.

So this doesn’t really count as a movie review… it’s more of a documentary review.

I don’t watch documentaries. Quite frankly I find the majority of them to be dull, boring and repetitive. I’m not sure if it was because the subject matter interests me, but The Pixar Story was so much fun.

I absolutely love Pixar and learning how the company was developed, or almost didn’t get developed… was fascinating. The documentary was also fast-paced and had some very funny moments. It was light and chipper, even in the “dramatic” moments in history. Seeing the archives of my fellow idols (John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, and Steve Jobs) gave me great joy. They were full of ambition and it’s wonderful to know that my favorite animation company began the way that it did.

Leslie Iwerks did a good job of putting all of this information together and making this documentary as fun as all of the Pixar films. So if you like Pixar, I recommend looking for this documentary.

After the movie, I got to meet Leslie Iwerks and Roy E. Disney. I couldn’t be happier.

I kind of want to get this list over with. I don’t have much to say about Grace is Gone because it didn’t interest me as much. It’s a very depressing movie and I don’t recommend it for the holidays. It was nicely done on an obviously low budget.

The father, John Cusack, doesn’t tell his two daughter that their mother has died in the war. Throughout the whole movie he struggles of how he will tell them or when, for that matter. This is the part that bothered me the most. The whole point of that movie was to get to that moment in time when he tells his daughters, and when he finally does… his voice fades down and a soundtrack music begins. I felt cheapened. I wanted to hear his words so badly and it was muted.

Anyway, if you like John Cusack go see the movie. During the Q&A with John Cusack I learned quite a bit about him and I’m very impressed. So if you have a desire to go see this film, then please do so by all means, but be warned of its sadness. If you don’t feel interested, then don’t bother to go.