Sunday, 18 December 2011

The Hangover

Celebrating his impending marriage to Tracy Garner, Doug Billings and his friends Phil Wenneck, Stuart "Stu" Price, and Tracy's brother Alan travel to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, staying at Caesars Palace.
The next morning, Phil, Stu and Alan awaken to find they have no memory of the previous night and Doug is nowhere to be found. Stu is missing a tooth, their hotel suite is in disarray, a tiger is in their bathroom, and a baby is in the closet. They find Doug's mattress impaled on a statue outside of their hotel and when they ask for their Mercedes, the valet delivers a police cruiser.



Following clues to their steps, the trio travel to a hospital where they discover they were drugged with rohypnol, causing their memory loss, and that they came to the hospital from a chapel. At the chapel they learn that Stu married a stripper, Jade, despite having a long-term relationship with his mean-spirited girlfriend. Outside the chapel, the trio are attacked by gangsters saying they are looking for someone. They flee and visit Jade, discovering that she is the mother of the baby, before being arrested by the police.
Having been told that the Mercedes has been impounded, the trio is released when they volunteer to be targets for a taser demonstration. While driving the Mercedes, they discover a naked man in the trunk who attacks them and flees. Alan confesses that he drugged their drinks to ensure they had a good night, thinking that they were ecstacy.
Returning to their villa, they find Mike Tyson, who orders the trio to return the tiger to his mansion immediately. Stu drugs the tiger with the remaining roofies and they drive towards Tyson's home in the Mercedes, but the tiger attacks them and damages the car's interior. After pushing the car the rest of the way to avoid the tiger, Tyson shows the trio footage of them stealing the tiger to help them locate Doug. While driving, their car is struck by another vehicle intentionally; the passengers are revealed to be the gangsters from the chapel and their boss, Leslie Chow – the naked man from their trunk – who accuses the trio of stealing $80,000 of his money and kidnapping him. Chow says he has their "friend", threatening to kill him if his money is not returned. Unaware of the location of Chow's $80,000, Alan, with help from Stu and Jade, uses his knowledge of card counting to win $82,400 playing Blackjack. They meet with Chow and exchange the money, only to find that "Doug" is the drug dealer who inadvertently sold Alan the roofies.
With the wedding occurring in hours, Phil tells Tracy they cannot find Doug. Following a conversation with "Black Doug", Stu realizes where Doug is. The trio travel back to their hotel where they find Doug on the roof, moved there on his mattress while he was asleep, as a practical joke by Stu, Phil and Alan. Before leaving, Stu makes arrangements to meet with Jade the following week to pursue a relationship. With less than four hours before the wedding and with no flights available, the foursome race home, with Doug revealing he has possession of Chow's original $80,000. Despite their late arrival, Doug and Tracy are married and Stu breaks up with his girlfriend. As the reception ends, Alan finds Stu's digital camera detailing the events they cannot remember and the four agree to look at the pictures together before deleting the evidence of their exploits.

Just Go With It

Danny Maccabee (Adam Sandler) is a successful plastic surgeon in Los Angeles who feigns unhappy marriages to get women, after having been heartbroken on his wedding day 20 years ago. The only woman aware of his schemes is his office manager and best friend Katherine Murphy (Jennifer Aniston), a divorced mother of two. At a party, Danny meets Palmer (Brooklyn Decker), a sixth grade math teacher, without his wedding ring on, and they have a connection together. The next morning, she ends up finding the ring, and she assumes he was hiding the fact he was married. She refuses to date him because her parents divorced due to adultery and doesn't want to be an adulteress herself.


Danny goes to Palmer's school to try to woo Palmer back. Instead of telling her the truth, he tells her that he is getting divorced from a woman named Devlin, named after Devlin Adams, whom Katherine had mentioned was an old college sorority nemesis. Danny informs her that they are getting divorced because she cheated on him with a man named "Dolph Lundgren" (not the actor). Palmer then insists on meeting Devlin, and Danny agrees. Danny asks Katherine to pose for him, and they go shopping on Rodeo Drive to buy her clothes, so she can look like a trophy wife.
At a hotel having drinks, Danny and Palmer are greeted by a made-over Katherine (posing as "Devlin"), who gives them her blessing. However, after hearing Katherine talking on the phone with her kids, Palmer assumes that her kids are Danny's as well, which Danny goes along with. Danny then privately meets with Katherine's kids, Maggie (Bailee Madison) and Michael (Griffin Gluck), to get them to play along. Initially, Katherine is furious, but she reluctantly agrees.

War Horse

Young Albert enlists to service in WWI after his beloved horse, Joey, is sold to the cavalry. Albert's hopeful journey takes him out of England and across Europe as the war rages on.
Director:
Steven Spielberg
Stars:
Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Peter Mullan, Eddie Marsan, Niels Arestrup
 
 
 
This is a beautifully built, classically framed movie, shot with the unshowy natural expressiveness of a John Ford Western by Spielberg's great cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski 

Pokémon: The First Movie

Pokémon: The First Movie, originally released as Pocket Monsters the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back is a 1998 Japanese animated film directed by Kunihiko Yuyama, the chief director of the Pokémon television series. It is the first theatrical release in the Pokémon franchise. The title can also be interpreted as Mewtwo's Counterattack.

The Pokémon Mewtwo was created in an island laboratory from the DNA of Mew, a rare Pokémon believed to be extinct, recovered from fossilized remains. Displeased with the concept of being nothing more than a mere lab experiment, Mewtwo destroys the laboratory.Shortly afterward, he meets Giovanni, the head of Team Rocket, who proposes a partnership with the Pokémon in exchange of helping it control its powers. Mewtwo is "trained" over the next few months, being pitted against challengers in Giovanni's gym and restraining Pokémon for Team Rocket to capture. Mewtwo eventually realizes that Giovanni is merely using him as a tool and destroys his headquarters.
Mewtwo reveals itself to Ash, his friends, and three other trainers who braved the storm battle as the "World's Greatest Pokémon Master," and that it had created the storm with its powers to test the trainers' wills. After being berated by Mewtwo for the relationships they share with their Pokémon, Ash and some of the other trainers challenge Mewtwo after witnessing Mewtwo's confession of having kidnapped Nurse Joy for his own personal purposes, the trainers pits their Pokémon against clones of Venusaur, Blastoise, and Charizard. The clones easily defeat the trainers' Pokémon. Mewtwo proceeds to steal everyone's Pokémon, including Ash's Pikachu, with a special set of Poké Balls; he also captures three trainers with these Poké Balls as well. Ash pursues his Pokémon as they are taken deep into a cloning facility on the island and rescues them while they are being cloned. The clones join with Mewtwo and the cloning machine explodes, releasing all the captured Pokémon. Mewtwo announces its intentions to overthrow humanity with its army of Pokémon and rule the world. Enraged, Ash lashes out at Mewtwo, who repels and blasts him away with its psychic powers. Ash is saved by Mew, the rare, playful Pokémon having appeared periodically before, who is engaged by Mewtwo. A brutal battle between the trainers' Pokémon and their clones erupts, although Pikachu refuses to fight with its own clone.

Saturday, 17 December 2011

New Year's Eve


New Year's Eve is the worst night of the year," declares Ashton Kutcher's character in one of the early scenes of this mishmash of a movie that takes a bunch of New York and romantic comedy cliches and strings them together like a set of Christmas lights."It's one big giant let-down."

This is probably the only time in life where I will find myself agreeing with Kutcher, whose New Year's Eve party-pooping mood is at odds with the film's opening narrative that praises New Year's Eve for its ability to unite people all over the world in celebrating the new year.
Alas for director Garry Marshall, Kutcher's sentiments are also a perfect summary for the entire film.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Sacha Baron Cohen adopts another one of his famous altar-ego's in this movie. Borat Sagdiyev is a Kazakh reporter who travels to the "US and A" with film director and partner Azamat Bagatov to film a documentary on 'life in America'. Low and behold, the Movie whilst funny, has some rather obscene moments, for example Borat and his bordering-on-obese film director wrestling naked in a hotel room due to a disagreement over a 'baywatch' book.

Needless to say, the movie is interesting at best for most people, but for those who are childish and have a sense of humour (like myself) it is the funniest movie ever hahaha.

PEACE!