Throwback Thursday: Seriously Concerning Edition

So I had the pleasure to watch a lot of movies this week. All of them had serious psychological issues/impact, and some of them were definitely worth seeing. The newest one was "Animal Kingdom" out of Australia last year. Here it goes:

1) Twelve Monkeys
Okay, its been a few days and I'm still not sure what happened in this movie. Its early Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis from 1995. There isn't too much I can say about this because it is a super confusing and convoluted storyline, but basically Bruce Willis is a convict in a post death-to-humans era where everyone lives underground and is sent in a time machine to the past to get information on a terrorist/extremist group that was in charge of killing 5 billion people. It was really strange but really good, I never really knew what was coming next and even at the end I was going "wait what?". Its on demand as of now, and I would definitely recommend renting it either way!

2) Platoon
Okay, this one is way more well known, but none the less I had never seen it! It came out in 1986 and featured Charlie Sheen, Johhny Depp, Kevin Dillon (who was oddly attractive in his younger days) and Forrest Whitaker just to name a few famous faces on in this one. Chris Taylor (Sheen) is a rich kid who volunteers to go to Vietnam, and chronicles his time there. I was really impressed with this, and I think its fair to say it is one of the most gripping and moving portrayals of Vietnam that I've seen (much better than Apocalypse Now, if you ask me). I really like it, and definitely think it would be one to watch again! See it.

3) Animal Kingdom
Okay, as I said a film from last year from Australia. So strange. It really was. I had a really tough time understanding the dialog, but basically J's mom dies and he goes to live with his crime riddled rest of the family with an incredibly protective (and creepy) grandmother. I guess in theory the story line was strong and inventive, but I got caught up in the dry, slow movement of the film and the incredibly thick accents. I would recommend it, only if you've seen everything else in this post. It definitely freaked me out more in a "those people are insane" way than anything else.

4) Domino
Okay, why haven't I heard of this one before? 2005, Christopher Walken, Keira Knightley, Lucy Liu and Mickey Rourke are all key players in this one, and I really liked it. It is super dark and twisted, with strange lighting and retrospective storytelling. It was raunchy and gross, and moved really fast, but I thought it told a seriously twisted story. Domino (Knightley) is a newly established bad ass bounty hunter who had a famous actor for a dad. She and her bounty hunter team proceed to get caught up in an incredibly twisted act of capture, theft, and double-crossing. I really liked it, and would recommend it if you like serial thriller action flicks. But pay close attention, because it moves really quickly. Oh, and Keira Knightley is a total badass, I was impressed.

Last dabbles of New Releases

From this point onwards I promise I will keep up, all you avid readers....

crickets.

1) Hangover 2
This was rediculously raunchy, almost so much so that I couldn't really get into it. I want to see it again, I'm sure there are funny quotes I missed out on, and will think are funnier the second time through. I didn't mind that the story was exactly the same, what bothered me was that things weren't fixable. In the first one, everything that happened could be fixed and moved on from. But, in this one, there is some shit that you just can't fix! I mean, jail and amputations aren't fixable.

2) Everything Must Go
Will Ferrell in a fairly mature humor role, and I kinda liked it. This was more of a dark, make you think, comedy in a way. It was extremely complex and left me with thoughts and ideas that I continue to ponder. It was almost painful to watch someone's life just fall apart in front of your eyes, and their inability to deal with it. I liked it though. Made me think. See it when you aren't in a vulnerable state in your life. (i.e. I saw it graduation week. poor choice indeed)

3) Green Lantern
Ryan Reynolds is so freaking hot. Like not even real he's so hot. The movie was just a wee bit too much sci-fi for me, and I think they tried to cover too much comic book story line too fast. I was confused why there were a million green lantern people who were protecting millions of planets never heard of. Again with the Blake Lively issues, her as a brunette-pilot-businesswoman? Come one people, give me two out of the three, but not all three...that's just not even plausible. It was an okay story, the effects were cool, but it just seemed like a lot of buildup to not that much actual superhero action. Mehhh....