Caro the Movie Critic

Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl as James Hunt and Niki Lauda. I have a confession to make. I do know some things about racing: NASCAR and F1. When directors try to make a racing movie, they try too hard to make the racing sequences spectacular, they do not focus on the characters. Like Days of Thunder  and Driven , the filmmakers really concentrate on terrible dialogue and the remaining time of the movie is basically fluff when it comes to the last race of the movie. Therefore, you would have formulaic caricatures of the love interest, rival, rivaled-turned ally, and predictable scenario of the race. This movie breaks the rule. The movie starts out with a narration from Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) to kick off his first race in 1970. He meets with James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), a guy with racing talent but a tendency to woo women and vomit before a race. Niki Lauda is technical and a calculating genius as to preparing cars. The rivalry begins when both cars spin out and Hunt wins the...

A group of girls being so glamorous. Do you ever dream of stealing a valuable possession from a big-time superstar? Do you ever think of breaking into a massive home just to covet what you want? It seems like anybody this present day can get any valuable item with some evident DNA from a superstar and sell it on Ebay or whatever website you can publicly auction. Well, girls can plan a jewelry heist, but how far can they go to get away with it? Marc Hall (Isabel Broussard) is a shy student who arrives at a new high school in California. She catches Rebecca Ahn's attention (Katie Chang), a girl who is really obsessed with fame and fabulous accessories. Marc's invited to Rebecca's house to party and while outside, the pair break into unlocked vehicles and steal cash and credit cards. While they both have lots of stolen cash, they use it as a shopping spree to go into a luxury lifestyle. Marc goes into a nightclub with Rebecca where they meet Nicki (Emma Watson) and her...

Downey Jr. as Stark sitting next to his invention, Iron Man. Iron Man  was so fantastic that it spawned a few sequels. Does that mean the trend will work? Not many sequels will work unless the director and writers create a brilliant and different storyline and not make a carbon copy of the predecessor. Let give me you a few examples of great sequels: The Godfather Part II, Aliens, T2, The Dark Knight, Lethal Weapon 2, Toy Story 2 and 3 . All of them had brilliance in the storyline. The second Iron Man was ok with a forgettable villain, but the third one redeems itself with a great performance and some flashy humor, but a ridiculous plot twist and a flawed climactic fight sequence. The movie starts with a sort of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang  style with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) narrating a past memory and then rewinding his past to start over. He recalls a memory of a New Year's party in 1999 where he was in a relationship with Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), inventor of Extremi...

Gyllenhaal trying to calm Jackman down. Any parent's worst nightmare is realizing and finding out that your child is lost, missing, or dead. The realistic nature of trusting your instincts depends on the parent's knowledge of what is going on in an area of your neighborhood. It's not a perfect world full of sunshine and rainbows. But, the fear of how your child is doing while missing is worse. It is worse because how do you know how your child is doing and who is this person that took the child away and what is the connection between that kidnapper and the victim or the kidnapper and the victim's parents? There are so many questions to be answered and that is germain to this thriller. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is a deeply religious person who attends a Thanksgiving dinner at the Birches, who are their neighbors and friends. Anna and Joy, the young daughters of both neighbors, go outside after dinner and go to Anna's house to get her whistle, but somehow they...

Pitt and Enos running for their lives. It's zombie-fest. Everywhere I turn to there has been a spiking interest in zombies whether if it is books, television, or movies. Why is most of the population interested in zombies? I have no clue but the interesting fact is its tension correlating with the characters' lives. I mean looking at this movie, the result presents a "zombie apocalypse". I mean, after I heard about this myth, I researched and it may happen. I still do not believe it, but, hey, it's not a perfect world. The movie itself, however, has "zombie-like" people and it looked like a mess based on the re-shooting. But, this is a surprisingly good movie. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is a former U.N. employee who resides with his wife, Karin (Mireille Enos), and his daughters, Rachel and Constance. It is basically the start of a normal day: Gerry making the family pancakes, and the kids asking questions about martial law and other issues. Later, the...

When you see an awful two-hour movie, you know that you'll never get your time back. It is that frustrating to see that there's no good material in that particular movie. So, here are the 20 worst movies. 11-20 was so depressing that I did not want to post pictures of the worst anymore. 1. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 2. North 3. Battlefield Earth 4. Norbit 5. Jaws: The Revenge 6. Freddy Got Fingered 7. Gigli 8. Vampire in Brooklyn 9. The Last Airbender 10. Speed 2: Cruise Control Runner-Ups: 11. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle 12. Beverly Hills Cop III 13. The Last Mimzy 14. Return to Oz 15. Batman & Robin 16. Basic Instinct 2 17. (tie) Just My Luck and I Know Who Killed Me 18. The Adventures of Pluto Nash 19. All of the Highlander movies. 20. That's My Boy

Patrick Wilson and Ty Simpkins. I declared James Wan, the director, a true horror film director after he made The Conjuring , the surprisingly successful horror film of the summer. He knows how to eerily create the tension and suspension without just putting predictable scares and jumps onto the screen. Even, I said that he could rank with John Carpenter, Wes Craven and maybe Alfred Hitchcock. But, sometimes, a director can have setbacks and all three of them had setbacks. James Wan has created his first bad horror movie with this laughable sequel. The sequel is back where they left off as Renai Lambert (Rose Byrne) is being interrogated and interviewed by a detective about the murder of Elise Rainer. She is really uncomfortable thinking that her husband is a killer. The family is staying with Lorraine (Barbara Hershey) and things are settling down after some strange occurrences and revelations in the previous movie. Josh (Patrick Wilson), however, is recovering and tells Renai...

Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Dianna Agron and John D'Leo. When you anticipate a gangster movie, it could wet your appetite to see what the story is about and the fates of each character. A gangster flick is highly unpredictable due to its gritty violent nature and violence is highly the unpredictable outcome to end someone's life. I mean, who is the gangster or hitman going to target next? Is the victim realizing he may be whacked? Who knows? Would a head of a mafia snitch someone out and risk their whole mafia life? Well, De Niro would and he brings his whole family in the Witness Protection Program. This movie starts as a fun spoof of the gangster genre and turns into a confusing balance with tone. Mafia Boss Giovanni Maznoni (Robert De Niro) snitches on Don Lucchese after he attempts to kill him and his family at a BBQ. He sends the don to prison and enter the witness protection program under Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones). He and his family have to relocate ...

Zachary Quinto as Spock and Chris Pine as Kirk. Let's go back to the beginning. When the previous "Star Trek" came out, I was astounded by the result because it had a very good plot and had very good chemistry between the cast members. I believed that they were in control of the Enterprise at a very young age. Even, Pine and Quinto were magnetic to each other when communicating about saving the ship or saving a planet. They had basically created their own set of characters. I think they produced the same result in this sequel with an excellent performance anchoring the movie. The movie opens in 2259 when the Enterprise is sent to a planet to study an isolated species. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) are on the group saving its inhabitants from a volcanic eruption. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is in danger when he is inside the volcano with a suit that cannot really withstand much longer due to the colossal heat. Kirk refuses to leave Spock in there and he vio...

Gary Oldman, Liam Hemsworth and Harrison Ford. Ay, ay, ay! Don't you feel when you see an awful movie that you want your precious time back? Time is precious and about 2 hours of my life is gone. Basically, Oldman and Ford would give it their all and find a way to save the movie and I will get to that in a moment. I always anticipate a movie like this because I can find some hidden agenda in the characters and the plot. However, this is a straight-up ridiculous story. Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) is a computer tech genius and inventor working in a corporation run by Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman). He is arrested for insubordination. But, later, Adam is confronted by Wyatt's henchman, Miles, (Julian McMahon) into going on the inside of a rival corporation, otherwise, he will be arrested for fraud. Julian goes inside the company run by Wyatt's mentor, Jack Goddard (Harrison Ford). Goddard built the company that Wyatt thought Goddard stole his ideas to create a software...

Vin Diesel as Riddick. I don't remember Pitch Black  or The Chronicles of Riddick, but I do recall the latter being awful and forgettable. Basically, Universal Pictures likes Vin Diesel a lot due to the success of the Fast and Furious  franchise. So, why not make another "Riddick" movie set five years later? Universal has been taking a lot of risks this year and it's really paying off with Fast and Furious 6  and Despicable Me 2 and others. I have to confess that I was not looking forward to seeing this and when I watched it, I thought it looks pretty dumb, but granted, it is just a fun, illogical guilty pleasure. Riddick (Vin Diesel) is stranded on a planet for five years after the events of the last movie and has repaired his badly injured leg. He goes into hibernation and experiences a state-like dream when one of the topics is returning home to Furya. In that sequence, it reveals how he was injured and buried in the rubble where he emerges from on the isolat...

The gang trying to survive. There has been a ton of post-apocalyptic or end-of-the-world movies in the past few years. I mean there were good ones and there were awful ones. But, clearly, the definition of this genre is pure and simple: Entertainment. The audience needs to be entertained emotionally or comically. Plus, an apocalyptic movie just lingers for a good amount of time for the group of survives determining how to survive. But, this movie just puts the situation and the comedy blending together into one funny damn movie. It's hilarious. They all play themselves, so Seth Rogen meets Jay Baruchel in an airport, inviting the guy to James Franco's party at his house. Once they get there, many people mostly drink and do drugs and other sinful acts. They all see everyone doing them including Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Craig Robinson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin), Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart and Emma Watson. (Weird that Wat...

Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg. Look closely. What do you see? It's a genre that many people are skeptical about. A movie which has the topic about magic is really tricky in execution and in the story because you want to keep guessing, but not be predicting the outcome. I've seen 2 "magic" movies, The Illusionist  with Edward Norton and Christopher Nolan's underrated The Prestige . They are both really good, so I was wondering if this could be a hat trick. It was until the heist began. Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco star as magicians who are brought together under a mysterious benefactor to Las Vegas. They are called the "Four Horseman" during the performances. As they perform the final trick, they call an audience member to volunteer to rob a bank. That person is teleported to a bank in Paris and uses the money to vacuum it to the crowd in Vegas. That is a neat trick and a very suspicio...

Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall. When anticipating for a British spy thriller, you have to expect the unexpected because usually when a director becomes creative enough, it becomes a pretty cool movie. The key to this type of genre is to lure the audience into being attentive to the material. It's not like a typical "James Bond" movie, but a serious chess game between enemies. Unfortunately, it has some serious intelligence but the movie lacks the urge to find all the pieces of the plot. The movie opens when there is a mysterious explosion in a London market. One named Farroukh Erdogan is the primary suspect and is detained. Lawyers Martin Rose and Claudia Simmons-Howe (Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall) are chosen to become Farroukh's lawyers in the case. They did have a relationship in the past and are now ex-lovers. The relationship causes tension between Martin and his family and urges him to restrain himself distantly from them. This is a highly classified case so it...