Bare (2015)

“I've done... a lot of things. And I, I have a lot to learn. But, you know, I would say: one thing that I've learned, that's true, is that if you don't make your own choices in life, the world will make them for you.”

            I live in a town where nothing really exciting goes on. I live in a shore town where it is dead in the winter and insanely crowded in the summer when the tourists come down. To me it is boring either way. For the past few years I have been dying to get out and experience something new. The kind of town I live and how I feel about it has been written about in countless books and made in to countless movies. The plot is tried and tired and overused and of course I wound up watching the movie Bare that has that plot.

            Sarah Barton (Dianna Agron) lives in a small Nevada town where nothing happens. Her life is aimless. She works at a grocery store where her head is not really in. Sarah is fired one day after a co-worker rats her out for not doing something. After getting fired instead of going home she heads to the antique store her father used to own. Her father passed away and she is having a hard time letting the store go. Sarah goes into the store and she finds a drifter named Pepper sleeping on the couch.

            Pepper is someone adventurous to Sarah. Pepper takes Sarah to Reno for a night of ripping a gambler off and other things. Pepper reveals to Sarah that she works as a bartender at a strip club. Soon Sarah is working as a waitress and then a stripper. The two women wind up arguing one night when Sarah find out that Pepper is actually a stripper and owes someone a lot of money.

            Of course everything comes crashing down for Sarah. But with this crash comes a realization that she can no longer stay in her small town and live the life she has been living.

            Bare was alright. I was not very into. As I said the story has been done so many times. I kept thinking that there are so many ways to escape a small town, boring life and the way Sarah was going about it was not the best. I only watched Bare for Dianna Agron. I enjoy her acting so much. Agron was not bad at all but the character was just so blah for me. The character of Pepper annoying right from the moment she was introduced. Bare is available to view on Netflix. Unless you are a big fan of Dianna Agron skip Bare. 

The Family (2013)

I am mostly Italian (my mom is one hundred percent and my dad I have no clue how much although our last name is Italian) and being Italian means I have had to sit through all the great gangster movies. I have seen The Godfather and before that I kept hearing “what is wrong with you you’re Italian and you’ve never seen The Godfather?!” I watched the first and second Godfather and thought they were excellent (I shall be skipping the third). I have seen Goodfellas and thought it was genius. Godfather II and Goodfellas have Robert De Niro in common and so does the latest gangster movie The Family. Also like Goodfellas Martin Scorsese is attached to The Family but only as a producer.  

            Giovanni Manzoni (De Niro) and his family are in witness protection in France. They were living in the beautiful Riviera until he did something he should not have done and his handler in the witness protection had to have the family move. They move to the middle of nowhere in Normandy where there is absolutely nothing to do. The handler, Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) tells them to blend in and keep out of trouble. He has the house watched by two FBI agents in a place across the street.

            Of course the first day in town everyone gets into trouble. Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), the wife, gets mad at a grocery store clerk and blows the back room up. Belle (Dianna Agron), the daughter, is taken to a lake by some French boys where one of them hits on her and she beats the every living crap out of him with a tennis racket. Warren, the son, manages to be a smart ass and gets his ass kicked but already plans out his revenge against the idiot guys that beat him up. Giovanni, or Fred as Robert has him called, beats up the plumber who was going to charge him for doing nothing.

            Besides all the beat downs, things seem to be going well for the newly named Blake family. Giovanni even plans on writing his memoirs on an old typewriter he found. That is until the mob boss that Giovanni squealed on and sent to prison manages to find out where he is hiding in France and sends his guys after him. Now the whole family has to come together to take down the hit men.

            The cast was excellent. Robert Di Nero is horribly typcasted as a former mob man but come on he made his name playing Vito Corleone who is without a doubt one of the most famous movie characters ever so of course he will forever play mobsters. Michelle Pfeiffer was good but her performance and character seemed a little awkward. I liked seeing her with Di Nero and the “kids” she was good with them. Now I must admit I went to see this movie for Dianna Agron. Let me set the record straight that I despise Glee. I watched two episodes with my friend and could not stand it unless the cast was singing (I like their singing so much I have a Glee playlist on my iPod I just hate the show and all the character drama). The episodes that I saw I fell in love with Dianna Agron I thought she was fantastic. Agron was so good. I went nuts in the two scenes where she beats up people she was awesome! Belle was a typical teenage girl character besides beating the crap out of a guy who touched her and a girl who stole her pencil case. She falls in love with a guy and is devastated when he leaves for Paris. I find it funny that Agron is a year older than me at twenty-seven years old and she is forever playing high school students. I hope to see Agron in more movies she has so much potential to become a popular leading lady. John D’Leo who plays Warren was so damn good. You could believe this kid was as smart as he was.  Much love and admiration goes to D’Leo for being a fellow New Jerseyian. My favorite parts of the film were the ones where Belle and Warren talk to each other. You can tell they know they are the only ones they can depend on. The best part was when Warren tells Belle how their father uses the F-bomb to express every kind of emotion be it bad or good. Tommy Lee Jones is just a great actor. Him and Di Nero together were hysterical. It was weird seeing these two giants of acting together but they completely worked. 

            The Family can be seen as a typical mob movie yet it is different from what has been done and what has been released the past few months. Of course it will not do anything incredible at the box office mostly because it is different and because it is another mob movie with Robert Di Nero. If you have seen Scorsese’s other films you will know that there is always a family element in them and it usually is large part of the story. The Manzonis are a typical Italian family from Brooklyn. They are all very close and no matter what happens they are always there for each other.  The story moves along slowly and the climax comes and goes very quickly. I did not have any expectations for the story so I was not let down in any way. As I mentioned I went to see this more for Dianna Agron and she was great. The Family in no way stands out as one of the greatest gangster films ever made but it is different and very enjoyable. I think I will be getting this when it comes out on Blu Ray. 

The Romantics (2010)

The only reason I sat through The Romantics was because of Josh Duhamel, Anna Paquin, Malin Akerman, and mostly for Dianna Agron. Honestly, I just saw a screen cap from a website that had Dianna Agron and Anna Paquin then when I looked the movie up I found Josh Duhamel and Malin Akerman were in it so I found it just out of curiosity.

            Dull and nonsensical do not even begin to describe the movie. A group ten friends gather for the wedding of Tom (Duhamel) and Lila (Paquin). Laura (Katie Holmes) was asked to be the maid of honor. The only problem with that is Laura and Tom had dated for four solid years in college and then for one year when they decided to give their relationship another try. They saw each other off and on and slept together in the mean time. Lila has no idea how long Tom and Laura’s relationship lasted and how neither one of them is over it except their friends. They all go to Lila’s family’s home in some rich area of the eastern seaboard.

            The friends all get drunk and spend the night not with their significant other. Laura and Tom have it out and then sleep together outside. The next morning Laura lets Lila have it about Tom. For years Laura has been letting Lila take things from her and the final straw was when she took Tom.

            Load of crap this movie was. The cast was really good except for Katie Holmes who I am not fond of as an actress. Malin Akerman is the life of the movie her character is very carefree and outspoken. John Duhamel was an emotional sad mess which was weird to see because he normally plays good characters with a goofy side. Anna Paquin’s character was a total bitch and really spoiled, she was not terrible but not really good. Dianna Agron was in the movie in total for about five minutes and she barely has any lines she is just Lila’s younger sister who happens to rip the wedding dress. Elijah Wood is Lila’s drunk brother Chip and he is not even in the movie very much to even comment on him.

            The Romantics had potential with its cast but it just bombed. It was so dull and the story had no detail. What made the movie bomb even more was that there was no chemistry between Josh Duhamel and Katie Holmes or him and Anna Paquin and this made their romances so unbelievable. Malin Akerman and the rest of the group had great chemistry. To me The Romantics is a hipster movie that tries too hard to me a real life modern love story and it fails miserably.

 

I Am Number Four (2011)

“My entire childhood has been an episode of X-files.”

            I am sure you must be asking yourself what the hell I am doing watching a movie like I Am Number Four and after I tell you why I do not blame you for judging the hell out of me because I feel like an ass explaining it but I have to so here it goes: I watched this movie because Dianna Agron is in it. But wait how do I know who Dianna Agron is, well I have watched a few episodes of Glee here and there. Now I beg of you do not think I am a fan of Glee because I absolutely hate that show but the few times I have seen it with my roommate I really liked Dianna Agron (also I like some of the songs they sing, they are very talented I just hate the show with a passion). I think she is really pretty and I like her few songs she has sung on the show (at the moment I am obsessed with her version of “Never Can Say Goodbye”). Besides Glee this girl has been on Veronica Mars and CSI:NY so I know she is talented. So that is why I sat through I Am Number Four that and the movie did not look that bad.

           

            This kid John (Alex Pettyfer) is an alien and is protected by a guardian named Henri (Timothy Olyphant). John and Henri move around a lot because of his abilities. He cannot be found out because there are bad aliens looking to destroy him. John is number four of nine kids from his home planet that escaped and they can only be killed off in numerical order and John is next. They have run off to Paradise, Ohio in the middle of nowhere from Florida where John got a scar on his leg that glowed when number three was killed.

            Henri wants John to stay in the house they are in but John wants to go to school he needs to get out of the house. At the school he meets a kid named Sam whose father was abducted by aliens and everyone makes fun of him. He also meets the school’s resident photographer Sarah Hart (Agron). One night Sarah takes John back to her house and he sees that her family is very loving and close and he feels sad that he does not have a family like hers.

            Of course John’s alien ability is let out of the bag and now the police are after him as well as the bad aliens. Another alien like John, Number 6, arrives just in time to help him when the bad aliens invade Paradise. Number 6 is awesome she is a kick ass girl who comes in and completely takes charge. 

            There was a lot that I felt was missing from the story that made it somewhat confusing. It felt like the powers that be were hoping for the movie to be really successful so that there could be a second one and then they would explain whatever was not in the first. Also I got a little bored because it is so geared towards teens it was ridiculous.

            Dianna Agron was great I really like her as an actress. You can believe she is a girl living in a small town who is pretty but not unbelievably pretty. Her character was very sweet and nice to John she seemed very genuine with that aspect of her character. Steven Spielberg produced this movie and he picked Agron out for the role himself because he likes her from Glee. Alex Pettyfer is gorgeous! I was looking up pictures of him while watching the movie and hot damn he is beautiful! Only problem for me is he is my brother’s age at twenty-one and that for me is a little awkward so my hopes were dashed when I found out his age haha (hey I can dream!!). His acting was pretty good I think he could be really famous and popular as he gets older and if he does better films. Pettyfer and Agron were very good looking together I would like to see them in another movie together. I think they dated and I do not blame them although she is a year older than me and he is three years younger than I am…

            I Am Number Four was alright. It absolutely did not hold my attention span because it was such a teen movie. To me teen movie try way too hard these days to be cool. They are not like 10 Things I Hate About You or She’s All That or Clueless. The stories are terrible today. I Am Number Four when it was released was being billed as a Twilight for boys… that could possibly be why it was not that good! Damn Twilight! It had that same kind of vibe and I HATE Twilight! All well at least I got this movie out of my system and my curiosity was filled.