The Book of Life

2014 - 4.2/5

So I intended to see this before halloween and before the Mexican Day of the Dead... well, that didn't happen, but I still wanted to see it. Fyi: I didn’t see this in 3D.

I’ve waiting 11 months, but finally, I have a favourite movie of 2014. It was only 5 minutes in and I loved it and already knew I was going to buy it.

Where else would I start but the obvious: the animation. By just watching the trailer, you can tell that this movie will be visually fantastic. Now that I’ve seen all 95 minutes of it, I will say that it was amazing! I loved the animation and I loved that they were wooden people; that was done SO well. All the little details added, all the great colours… this was a beautiful movie to watch.

As for the plot, you’d think its one that’s been done a million times over, but for whatever reason, it seemed different than others. It didn’t come off as a movie about 2 guys after the same girl. It was just different in a way that I can’t seem to put my finger on, but I really liked it.

The music was so fun. The “remix’ish” versions of Mumford & Sons, “I Will Wait”, Radiohead’s “Creep”, Freddie Scott's “You Got What I Need” and Rod Stewart's “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy” were so well done. They changed the songs just enough to make it fit into the movies vibe and its Mexican style.

The only name I recognized on the movie poster was Channing Tatum’s and he did a good job with the voice over. I liked how he fully embodied the character Joaquin, but Tatum himself was present in the character (him saying “come at me bro”).

The moment the Candle Maker opened his mouth, I knew it was Ice Cube. After having seen him Ride Along this year, I felt as if his voice was a perfect fit for this character. I’d say that Ice Cube has a better movie presence with his voice than he does with his own self. While I’m on this character, I also want to mention that I really liked the idea of the Candle Maker and what it stood for. It was a neat way to present it.

As for the main character Manolo, I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of Diego Luna or heard his voice. Not a clue who this guy is, but wow, he had a great singing voice (if it was actually him). He had a very smooth voice and it suited the character.

All the other characters had good voice over’s as well, the grandma was funny, Mary Beth looked spectacular and about half way through the movie, it finally hit me that Xibalba looked like Jafar from Aladdin!

Overall, this was a great movie, and even though it’s an animated movie, it doesn’t mean an adult won’t enjoy it. I am so happy I got to see this. 20th Century Fox is defiantly giving Disney a run for its money!

Dumb & Dumber To

2014 - 3/5

I was pretty excited to see this and from what I saw in the trailer, this has got to be good! And to call it Dumb & Dumber TO, was a good touch as well.

My friend and I were actually planning on seeing St. Vincent (2014), but because of traffic, we were a bit later than we wanted to be, so we ended up watching this. We did miss about the first 5 minutes of it, but it was just what we had already seen in the trailer with Harry visiting Lloyd and the whole catatonic prank.

The way I see it, there is no elephant in the room – you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. You can’t go into this movie not expecting it to have a shaky plot, which it did. It had a decent enough storyline to allow the viewer follow Harry and Lloyd on their second road trip.

When you see the trailer, neither Jim Carey or Jeff Daniels have aged a bit; they look exactly like they did in the first one. I love that 20 years later, they're both still wearing pretty much the same thing. I also love that it has been 20 years since the first one came out, and its also been 20 years in the movie. The movie did have some well placed throwbacks to the original, for example, the blind kid with the bird being the same kid!

There were a few parts that could have been left out completely and you could tell they were all added in order to get just-one-more-laugh. They didn’t fit into the storyline 100%, but the director, for whatever reason, really wanted that line/joke in there. That’s not to say that there weren’t any good jokes. There were, but considering I saw this movie only a few hours ago, I can’t say I remember specifics. Unlike the first one, there wasn’t anything that was truly memorable.

In the first, both Harry and Lloyd were just naively stupid, like they so innocent they were dumb. But in this one, I found that they were more purposely immature. They weren’t as naïve, so at times they came off as mean.

Because this movie had so much to prove in the sense that it had big shoes to fill, a lot of it was overly done (which I was expecting). For me, this was a nostalgically fun movie to watch.

Nightcrawler

2014 - 3/5

Jake Gyllenhaal was gaunt. That is all. Nah, just kidding, I'll write a slightly better review! :P

This movie was Jake Gylynhall. His performance as Lou Bloom made this movie. You can’t take your eyes off him because you don’t want to miss anything. You’re probably going to blink as many times as Lou did in the entire movie (which I’m pretty sure was a handful).

I cannot tell you how creepy Lou was and how amazingly Gylynhall portrayed it. To some extent, you like Lou because he’s the main character and you feel like you should like him, but at the same time, you see how much of an ass he really is. His quick-witted speech and his delivery sends a shiver down your spine.

It takes a bit for the pace to pick up, but the overall vibe and Lou’s motivation to move forward using any means necessary keeps the viewer interested.

The one thing that didn’t sit well with me was how stupid the news people were. I can say with 100% certainty that I’ve never seen news reporters narrate a video that is being showed in such a stupid way; as if they were narrating a parade! It seemed like they belonged in an infomercial or something. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes with regards to how pathetic that instance was (I’m specifically talking about the mansion video).

Big Hero 6

2014 - 3.5/5

It's a Disney movie, which means its a must see. Fyi, I did not see this in 3D.

As always with Disney (and Disney Pixar) movies, let me just take a moment to talk about the short Feast. This short was as cute as the dog (Winston) in it. I LOVED the animation used to create it. It didn’t have distinct harsh lines.

I’m not sure I’ve ever described a movie with this word, but it was adorable! And it was all because of Baymax! This robot was so lovable and you just want to see more of him. He was programmed to do what he does (health-related) but his character does develop as the movie goes on (fa-la-la-la; LOVED that).

The brothers, Hiro and Tadashi were the next best characters, and to be honest, I didn’t really care for any of the other characters.

I can’t say this movie had the best plot ever, but it had a good enough plot to carry the audience through 1.5 hours.

Let me also mention how great the setting was: San Fransokyo. Although I’ve never been to San Francisco or Tokyo, this movie created the perfect hybrid of the 2.

There were 2 times in which I thought the soundtrack was perfect; all the other music/score fit well too.

Overall, it’s not as good as Wreck-It-Ralph, but it’s waaay better than Frozen. Disney’s still got it.

Let's Be Cops

2014 - 1.5/5

After having seen the trailer I actually wanted to see this. Usually, I wouldn’t care if I saw it or not, but what really got me, was that this wasn’t a buddy-cop movie because the 2 guys weren’t actually cops! But at the same time, the idea of 2 guys pretending to be cops is a bit different, so I was enticed.

It starts off as a fun movie; 2 guys having fun impersonating cops, then it actually gets serious. And I was very surprised that it wasn’t cheesy-serious.

Overall, it wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t terrible, I got a few good chuckles, but was it really a comedy? I’m glad I didn’t pay to see this.