The following are my reviews for the films nominated for the 'Best Picture' Academy Award.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

The film stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as, you guessed it, gay cowboys who share camping and fishing trips up on Brokeback mountain. It's hard enough for them to continue their monthly visits when, during this particular time period, homosexuality is shunned in American society, but to make matters worse both men are married. Ledger has a wife and two kids, while Gyllenhaal has a wife and a new born boy. The film captures the struggle the men must go through just to continue seeing each other, never mind avoid their desires to start a life together in public. The movie is fantastic and really plays with certain emotions and allows the audience to decide whether or not they believe their relationship is worth the trouble, or whether or not it is right for two men to have a lifestyle such as they do. I definitely think that the movie is worth seeing, but there are many people who will not like the movie because of their own personal views. Nontheless I highly recommend this film.

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CRASH

Crash is one of those movies that you have to watch twice. When you first watch it you wonder what all the praise for the film was. It doesn't jump out as a particularly wonderful film, but after you think about it for a while, the more you like it. Crash is about how a bunch of people in Los Angeles' lives are connected and affected by one car accident. The films major conflict is about racism. Everyone in the film have pre-conceived notions and feelings about the other characters because of how the person appears. Even if they don't mean to be racial, like Don Cheadles character, everyone in the film is a little bit. The movie deals with some pretty heavy topics and is definitely worth seeing.

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GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

Good, but not as good as it could have been, George Clooney's 'Goodnight and Good Luck" follows CBS's struggle with Senator Joseph McCarthy and shows how Edward R. Murrow was one of the only people in America brave enough to speak up against McCarthy. The film depicted the newsroom atmosphere very well and was really able to show what these men went through each week to bring their opinions to the world. However, while watching the film, you rarely feel the urgency of the situation. These workers went through a lot of stress to prove their points, but you barely ever feel that this was somehow affecting a Nationwide audience. The audience is barely ever mentioned. I think this is one of the major things that the film left out. Also, the lack of suspenseful music (or any music whatsoever) caused the viewer to feel less than on the edge of their seat.

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CAPOTE

This is my pick for Best Picture this year. This movie is amazing from the acting (Philip Seymour Hoffman really deserves that Oscar) to the story. The film follows Truman Capote throughout his four year journey to write his Non-Fiction novel "In Cold Blood." The entire feel of this movie is perfect. The other movies nominated for Best Picture are good too, but this was the only one that never had a dull moment. Every second of the movie was entertaining. Watching Hoffman act was almost fun and how Capote did everything to get the information he needed was fascinating to watch. If you still haven't see this movie I suggest you go to see it as soon as possible. It even made me go to the library and check out "In Cold Blood."

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MUNICH

I still have not seen the film Munich

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THE OSCARS ARE ON SUNDAY MARCH 5th and
JON STEWART WILL BE HOSTING

When I saw that my idol Kevin Smith was going to be in an animated movie with Chevy Chase, Jon Stewart, and Jimmy Fallon I got really excited. The trailer showed a hilariously clever family film with a 'Lord of the Rings' twist to it. Instead I sat through the worst kids movie ever made.

This year has just been terrible with films so far.

Last years worst film was Michael Bay's 'The Island' and Doogal was easilly worse than that. The Island kept me interested for half the time, and even when the movie was bad I was still a little interested to see how it would end. There were at least a few parts that made me think 'well that's interesting' or 'Hey, thats kind of clever.'

Doogal is a dog who LOVES sweets and will do anything to get them. So he hijacks (so to speak) a cart full of lollypops and licorice, but accidentally crashes it into a magical Merry-Go-Round. The Merry-Go-Round was actually a prison and held an evil ice wizard inside. When the ride breaks, the wizard is freed, and three diamonds (that just happen to keep the entire world in balance) are sent flying to dofferent parts of the world. Doogal must then, with the help of his friends and a good wizard, find the diamonds before the evil ice wizard does.

I got bored before they found the first diamond. I actually thought to myself 'When is this going to end?' And I NEVER think that during a movie; at least not during the half hour. Even during movies like 'Transporter 2' and 'Stealth' iits only during the last, dragged out action sequence that I think 'Okay, this can end now.'

There wasn't even any good humor in the movie. I didn't laugh once. There were two characters that I kind of enjoyed (Jimmy Fallon's Rabbit and Kevin Smith's Moose) but I didn't even laugh at the jokes that they dished out rapidly. The jokes were delivered so quickly and in such great abundance that you'd think at least one would make me laugh, but NO! In fact, barely anyone in the theater laughed (except for a couple of little kids every time the moose farted).

This movie should definitely be skipped even if you are a fan of someone in the cast. Wait for the DVD and then fast forward to the part with your favorite actor. If you watch any more than that you are likely to fall asleep.

Instead, if you are looking for a good kids movie, check out Curious George and then watch out for Pixar's 'CARS' opening this summer, and Aardman's 'Flushed Away' opening this fall.

Naturally you wouldn't expect too much from a full length movie version of the "Curious George" books, but the film is actually fantastic.

The story follows Ted, voiced by Will Ferrell, as he embarks on a journey to the jungle to find a large Ape Idol. Instead he finds a little monkey that wants nothing more than to have fun. Returning home without the 40 Foot Idol the city museum was promised Ted must figure out how to break it to his boss that there is no idol, and he must figure out what to do with his new monkey friend.

The animation in this movie is absolutely adorable and will leave you saying "aww..." throughout most of the movie. It is the best kids movie since Hoodwinked, and is the best movie I've seen since 'Brokeback Mountain" (I do understand its strange to compare 'Brokeback' to 'George,' but its true.

I was really looking forward to Date Movie because I was SURE Hollywood couldn't screw it up! I figured even if the plot stunk, the humor would still be really funny!

WHY must Hollywood ruin EVERYTHING!? I think I could have done a better job writing this film! I will admit there were a few VERY funny parts, but most of those parts were in the trailer! The 'My Best Friends Wedding' and the "Big Fat Greek Wedding" spoofs were very funny, but the "Meet the parents" and "Meet the Fockers" spoofs were terribly done. I don't understand how someone can spoof a comedy. It seems wrong to me. Certain things just aren't funny a second time and the entire "Meet the Fockers" scene was take right out of the movie! It wasn't changed at all!

Overall it was bad....just BAD.... Scary Movie 4 had better be worth while...

Its Valentines Day and one of my favorite movies from last year is on DVD! Naturally this is what i asked my mom for for V-Day: SAW II!

Both disturbing and terrifying, Saw II is a terrifically creepy psychological thriller that will leave you shaken even after the film ends. Though the film is played out by a group of no-name B-movie actors, the film delivers an edge of your seat horror film until the final line is uttered. The film's writing and directing styles went above and beyond my expectations. I also could not believe that a movie such as this could generate such strong emotions as it finds your own biggest fear and displays it on screen for you to experience along side the characters. This film should not be passed up, unless you are squeamish. If that is the case stay FAR away from this movie.

But if you're not interested in a bloody horror film I suggest renting or buying "Just Like Heaven," a romantic comedy that was released on DVD last week. Its a funny feel-good comedy that works for this holiday.

Also: Date Movie opens this Friday! I can't wait!

I remember about one year ago HBO made a film called "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers," which I loved, but my dad refused to watch it. I asked him why and he told me that he cannot stand watching someone try to be Peter Sellers. I agree with my dad, but I don't think Geoffrye Rush did too bad a job. Steve Martin on the other hand didn't even come close. Though Steve Martin can be VERY funny he needs to stop doing family comedies. "Cheaper by the Dozen" may have served him well, but when you compare that to such films as "Loony Tunes: Back in Action," "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," and now "The Pink Panther" you can tell that kids movies aren't exactly his thing. I'm not saying he should abandon doing films that could be rated 'PG,' but he should return to doing films like "Father of the Bride" and "The Three Amigos."

The Pink Panther is one of the most valuable diamonds in the world and it has been stolen! Who better to call to solve the case than bumbling detective Inspector Jaques Clouseau? At least this is CHief Inspector Dreyfus' thoughts when he hears that he has nabbed his eighth Medal of Honor Nomination (In seven nominations he had never won) against a nun. He figures that if he hires an idiot to solve the case of the Pink Panther, Dreyfu can solve the case on his own and look like a hero compared to Clouseau.

Though parts of this film are funny the humor is nothing compared to that created by comic geniuses Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards. Also, a note to parents, this film should have been rated PG-13. The crude humor in this film, though funny, was over the top and too risque for a PG rated film. I'm not exactly sure what the writers of this film were thinking when they took on the job of re-creating the world of The Pink Panther, but their heads were not in the right place. The old films were able to have you rolling around on the floor laughing, without having to resort to Crude and Sexual Humor.

As I said last week, some films should never be made. In this case some films should never be REmade. I'm not saying the film wasn't funny, I'm just saying that no ammount of comedy could ever come close to reflecting the original Blake Edwards' Pink Panther.

GREAT DVD RELEASES

“JUST LIKE HEAVEN”

Okay, Into the Blue looked really bad and wasn’t about to go see Serenity, so I checked out a movie that has been out for a couple weeks. “Just Like Heaven” is a romantic comedy about a guy who moves into a vacant (yet furnished) apartment, to find the spirit of a woman, who believes she lives there. The film stars Mark Ruffalo, Reese Witherspoon, and Napoleon Dynamite’s John Heder.

The film had the feel of Romantic comedies such as “13 Going on 30” (which also starred Ruffalo), but this film wasn’t just targeted towards girls. The films humor would make anyone in the audience laugh, and John Heder (though he was typecast) was responsible for a few great laughs. The ending dragged on a little, but overall the film exceeded my expectations and I recommend you check it out.

Special Features Include: Subtitles: English SDH; "Making Of 'Just Like Heaven'" featurette; "Meet The Cast", Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel, Dual Layer, Single Sided

Nick Park has done it again. In 2000 I was amazed by the highly entertaining chicken run. Now, the British Television show I've been watching since I was six, has become a full length motion film. This film completely lived up to the original show, and absolutely blew me away with terrific characters, witty jokes, and amazing detail and craftsmanship. This is my pick for best animated film of 2005.

Subtitles: English SDH; "How Wallace & Gromit Went To Hollywood," Behind The Scenes of "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit," "A Day In The Life At Aardman," "How To Build A Bunny," "Stage Fright & Commentary," "Production A", Behind The Scenes Featurette, Director Commentary, Featurette

AND BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD ONES

Elizabethtown

Cameron Crowe's new film Elizabethtown is about a young suicidal man (Orlando Bloom) who is about to kill himself when he gets a call saying that his father had died. He decides that he will return home for the funeral and will afterwards kill himself. However "his plan" is interrupted by a stewardess named Claire (Kirsten Dunst) who becomes intrusive in his life.

I am not going to continue summarizing this film because it will cause me to give away the ending. The film is as confusing as it is emotionless. The entire film was about how he felt bad that he never spent time with his father. I never once related to any of the characters.

The acting on Orlando Bloom's part was alright, but it didn't give the film what it needed to be great. Kirsten Dunst also didn't do a fantastic job. I could understand her emotions better than I could understand Bloom's, however she kept changing her accent. It started off sounding southern, then it changed to Northeastern, then it changed back to Southern, and by the end she had no accent at all. In fact the best actor in the film, Alec Baldwin, had a character that appeared for about ten minutes of this two hour film. The characters were not well developed. There were many characters that had no significance in the film, but they kept coming back. Again, a poor choice on Crowe's part.

The writing itself was all over the place. It seemed as though Cameron Crowe took eight separate ideas for eight different movies and he stuck them all together. The film was light hearted, but he would often try to slip in a comedic scene. These scenes were funny, but they were very random and seemed cartoonish compared to the rest of the film. The films ending also needed work. Again, it seemed like Crowe had multiple ideas for an ending and then he decided to put them all together.

In short, the plot was overdeveloped and the characters were underdeveloped. The film itself was sloppily made and was utterly confusing. This film may be entertaining for a little while, but the entire story line gets old fast. It's a messy movie from beginning to end.

Doom: A Mess of Confusion and Apocalyptic Mayhem

The trailer for Doom portrayed the film as a film shot primarily in first person, while having many cut away scenes shot like a regular film, to keep a sense that you were actually in the film. The commercials and movie posters were misleading.

The films plot is simple. A virus has spread turning everyone into giant monsters and flesh hungry zombies. Now it is up to The Rock to save all of man kind. That is all it is. It's just another special effects driven, badly acted, time wasting pile of Hollywood garbage. It leaves nothing to the imagination , and doesn't thrill you with anything you haven't seen before.

The first person effects in the film were, needless to say, awesome, but there was one problem with them. They took up two minutes out of this two hour long movie! The trailer for the movie showed most of these scenes anyway. It was a disappointing failure of a great idea.

This film is totally not worth seeing. Though I myself am not a personal fan of the video game (I am praying for a well-made 'Quake' film) I attended the movie with a few 'Doom' fans and all agreed that they were less than impressed.

ALSO AVAILABLE: BAMBI II (One of my friends LOVES the original and is not so happy that this sequel was made)

Hollywood has once again set fire to and killed a wonderfully scary urban legend. First we were given “Boogeyman” which was a two hour film about a man with a phobia about opening doors. Ouch! Scary! Then we’re given “Darkness Falls” which takes the story of the tooth fairy and makes it into one of the worst slasher films ever created! And now we’re given “When a Stranger Calls,” an urban legend that Hollywood had no right to ruin for the world. I think that Hollywood needs criterion for making a film out of an urban legend.

Rule #1: Don’t end the legend! Urban legends are meant to scare people into thinking that this story could happen to them. In this case, the kids were supposed to die and every babysitter should now be terrified that they may be in the same house as a psycho nut-job. Hollywood ended the Urban Legend; the man will never again kill anyone. I won’t tell you how it happens, but it’s a real downer.

Rule #2: Don’t hire good looking actors to play the lead roles in these films. Because no matter how many hits these actresses take, no matter how many swamps these girls have to swim through, no matter how many times she has to jump out of a speeding car, their make-up and hair is always perfect! Hollywood needs to get a major grip on reality!

Rule #3: Don’t EVER stray away from the original story! There are people who love to read urban legends because its fun to be afraid! Don’t take a story and then make everything work out in the end! No one will be scared afterwards! Hollywood is ruining horror movies and I’m sick of it!

They have no right to decide that we’d rather see an attractive girl save the day, than to see a couple little kids die and the killer run free! Believe it or not Hollywood, we don’t see enough films where the bad guy gets away! I’m not saying every movie should be set up for a sequel, but don’t be cliché! Cliché films are the last things ANYONE wants to see. Especially people like me! We’re looking for something fresh and new! If I want to see something where I know the ending to it right from the beginning I’ll go watch a Hugh Grant movie… or Citizen Kane.

The new horror film ‘When a Stranger Calls’ opens in theaters tomorrow and I am very skeptical about seeing it. The film is based on the following urban legend:

THE BABYSITTER STORY

A teenage girl is hired by a young couple to baby-sit their two small children. They go out to a dinner party and leave the girl to tend to the kids in a somewhat isolated, large house at the end of the block.

When the hour gets late, she puts the children to bed and sits down to watch some late-night TV. The phone starts ringing and startles the half-asleep teenager. When she answers it, she hears heavy breathing and a man tells her he is "coming to get her." While she is somewhat scared, she dismisses it as a prank phone call.

About 15 minutes later, the phone rings again. When she answers it, the man starts laughing and tells her that he is closer. The baby sitter is truly frightened now and calls the police.

They tell her that it's probably just a prank phone call, but they will try to trace the call -- so she must keep him on the line as long as possible if he calls another time. She once again settles down on the couch, not sleepy at all.

The phone rings a third time and the man tells her he has come for her and it's only a matter of time. He continues with some heavy breathing until the babysitter is so terrified that she hangs up the phone again.
She quickly decides to get the children and flee the house when the phone rings again. This time it is a policeman on the other end and he tells her frantically "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW!" THE MAN IS INSIDE THE HOUSE AND IS CALLING FROM THE UPSTAIRS EXTENSION!"

She runs from the house as the police arrive. The madman escapes but they find the children upstairs dead and a bloody axe laying on the bedroom floor next to an open window.

I first read this story when I was in seventh grade, and lucky me, a man who lives down the street from me asked me to watch his kids a few days later. This Story freaked me out. However I think the movie will ruin the story. The tip-off is that its PG-13. I don’t think the film needs to be overly bloody and violent, but from past experiences PG-13 horror movies just haven’t been very good. Plus the teenager in this film looks like she is about 24, 25. Movies like this are never usually very good. I think that the trailer for the movie looked good, but from past experiences PG-13 horror movies just lack that certain element that make a horror movie scary.

Just for fun here are all the problems with the urban legend and how to tell it is a major fabrication:

The baby-sitter urban legend is as old as the hills. In this story, the man is always calling from the "upstairs extension" -- but in reality, he wouldn't be able ring the phone from an extension. He would have to be calling from a separate phone line upstairs.

Notice how the perpetrator gets away, leaving him "on the loose" to prey on other innocent teenage girls? It makes for some great storytelling, particularly when the crime is not solved.

How do you think it will be? Let me know.

All Urban Legend Material from http://www.halloween-website.com/babysitter.htm

Scary Movie 4 is set to be released on April 14th! I'm a little dissapointed they didn't wait until October to release it, but the film is a parody of 'Saw' so I am excited. The movie makes fun of "War of the Worlds" (The world is under attack by giant I-Pods), "Saw" (Dr. Phil saws off his own foot, while Shaq watches in horror) and The Grudge. The film also pokes fun at The White House (Leslie Nealson plays the President and is in a class room when he finds out the world is under attack. He then tells his assistant that he'll take care of the problem as soon as he finds out what happens to the little duck in the story he's listening to.) and it also pokes ALOT of fun at Tom Cruise (A Scene With Oprah Winfrey... do I have to explain?)

I thought that Scary Movie One was terrible because they relied too much on the gross out humor

Scary Movie Two was better because, what can I say, I love Tim Currey

Scary Movie Three was the best, because the humor wasn't as raunchy and... come on... Leslie Nealson!

I hope the pattern continues and the new film is even better!

See the trailer at

http://movies.go.com/movies/movie?name=scarymovie4_2004

Also, "DATE MOVIE" comes out on February 17th! This film mocks action movies such as "Kill Bill" and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith", as well as date movies such as "Bridget Jones' Diary," "Meet the Parents," "Wedding Crashers," and (though it may not be a date movie) the ever popular "Napoleon Dynamyte." It look hilarious, but not quite as hilarious as SM4.

See the trailer at

www.apple.com/trailers/fox/datemovie/

WATCH THE TRAILERS FOR EACH AND THEN LET ME KNOW HOW YOU THINK THE MOVIES WILL BE!