Caro the Movie Critic

Anna and Kristof meet Olaf, the snowman. Disney Animation has been on a roll with The Princess and the Frog  (I was not too crazy about it despite some great characters), Tangled , and Wreck-It Ralph . I mean the holiday season is upon us and children would want to see a movie with their families that takes place during the winter, right? Well, I have to confess that Pixar has honestly been creating decent movies, but not memorable ones recently. So, since there is not really a lot of competition from other animated movies this year, Frozen is no question the best animated movie of 2013. The movie starts with the young sisters, Anna and Elsa, when they were children, playing with Elsa's snow magic. When the magic goes too far, the royal family tells the trolls to remove the magic from Anna and the memory of her sister's power. Elsa is banished from the world and Anna because the parents wanted to protect Elsa. Both sisters are lonely without each other and their lives ge...

I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving! I am blessed and thankful for all my friends and family who are together on this wonderful day. I also thank God that I am healthy and privileged to be surrounded will all the ones I love. Everybody, have a safe Thanksgiving!

Katniss and Peeta on their Victory Tour with Effie. Let's go back to the first movie. I thought that the first Hunger Games  movie was pretty confident and convincing and true to the book. But, despite the good level of excitement, it was the direction of Gary Ross that truly hurt the movie a little. This movie produces more excitement and vulnerability from Katniss Everdeen after the 74th Hunger Games. There is some havoc going on in the political world right now as President Snow controls every district as inhumanly as possible. The movie starts with Katniss and Gale (Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth) hunting down a couple of turkeys. As she kills that one turkey, Katniss imagines that it was another person from the previous Hunger Games. She is traumatized and haunted by the events of the last games. After that freak-out, she and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) are set to go on the Victory Tour around Panem to visit each of the districts. Gale is still uncomfortable with the r...

Dusty Crophopper getting ready for a race, I suppose. When Pixar Animation Studios made the movie Cars , I was delighted to watch this movie because it was fun despite the cars and trucks just talking with no humans surrounding them creeping me out. When they made the sequel, I thought it was a little too much of everything, especially, too much of Mater, the best character in the series. Now, Pixar is not involved with the next animated movie which is called Planes . That's pretty good because I thought this movie was just a waste of time and effort from Disney Animation. Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Dane Cook) is a crop-duster plane who works at a cornfield and spends his free time doing aerobatic exercises dreaming that he could race with other planes one day. It kind of sounds like a familiar set-up to different movies including Days of Thunder.  However, his boss, Leadbottom (voiced by Cedric the Entertainer), and his mechanic, Dottie (voiced by Teri Hatcher), disapprov...

Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in a sticky situation. Again, we have another buddy-cop picture and with a familiar situation relevant to some money. I am kind of getting tired of these pictures because there seems to be a familiar conclusion to all these movies in that particular genre. Also, we do not really care about the case, but, we do care about the chemistry the two main lead characters of a buddy-cop picture. It seems that I am repeating myself with the description of a buddy-cop movie because I have seen The Heat  with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. (Check my review of that.) But, this time we have Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg anchoring this movie and again, this movie looks silly and familiar, but it is supposed to be silly. Robert Trench (Denzel Washington) and Michael Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) are arrested by U.S. Customs after they witness being in an allied meeting with a drug lord called Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). But they both do not iden...

Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams as the main couple. Time travel movies are risky because of the destination that the story is trying to direct itself to amuse the audience. A filmmaker has to have bright characters with a sense of charm and hope. Therefore, any time travel movie can solidify itself with a colorful story in any type of genre. For example, take a look back at the first Back to the Future : I mean we still remember the DeLorean and Marty and Dr. Brown. The confusion about time travel continuum and paradoxes still baffle and confuse me. But, it was a fun ride. This movie, however, has two attractive characters but in a bland story. Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) is 21 and discovers that he can travel through time when he was a New Year's Eve party and after he was too nervous to kiss a lady, he goes through this closet to travel to another timeline. Tim's father (Bill Nighy) tells him that all men in the family have always had the lucky ability to travel thr...

Here are the movies that I will review during the week of 11/18-11/24. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Delivery Man 2 Guns (DVD) Planes (DVD) Blue is the Warmest Color (maybe)

Henry Cavill as Superman. A reboot? Again? Well, Superman Returns  was forgettable. So, how can you make another Superman movie more creative, original, and worthy of the script? Well, maybe, take David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, the geniuses of the Batman trilogy, to write the story and script. Even, though, the direction by Zach Snyder and innovative storytelling by Nolan and Goyer do not mesh together, this Superman movie is good despite some reservations. The movie opens when Krypton is at war when Krypton's natural resources are being depleted. Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife (Ayelet Zurer) have a son named Kal-El. Meanwhile, General Zod (Michael Shannon) and his followers deposed the military council of Krypton. While Jor-El infuses his cells in order to save the Kryptonian race in a codex and Krypton is getting destroyed, he and his wife sends his son in a spacecraft to Earth. General Zod and his followers are being captive and arrested after the attack. ...

Yep, the holidays are near and I love this time of year when family and friends get together during the holidays. If you cannot stand the cold weather much longer, then make yourself a cup of coffee or hot cocoa and watch any one of the holiday movies. Here are the movies that I recommend to watch: It's a Wonderful Life (my favorite Christmas movie) Home Alone Miracle on 34th Street National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Elf The Santa Clause Scrooged The Polar Express The Santa Clause 2 A Christmas Story Love Actually The Holiday Bad Santa Miracle on 34th Street (1994) Die Hard A Charlie Brown Christmas Have yourself a merry little Christmas this holiday season!

Robert Redford at sea. We had a few survival stories this year and last year at the movies with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney being stuck in space in Gravity , Suraj Sharma being trapped on a boat with a tiger at sea in Life of Pi , and now Robert Redford being stuck on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The only two questions are: What will he do to survive and will he survive? It is the main point for all audiences to figure out in the middle of this movie. The movie starts with the unnamed man (Robert Redford) addressing some dialogue to the audience while he is stuck somewhere on the Indian Ocean. It goes back eight days earlier, where water is flooding the "Virginia Jean". He discovers that his boat has collided with a container poking a hole on the hull of the deck. After he repairs the damage, he finds out that the communications and navigations systems have also been damaged due to the collision. He tries to connect the radio by using a back-up powe...

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) ready for action. I don't really anticipate a Marvel super-hero movie in the fall season or close to the holidays. But, hey, I'll take it. The only disappointing outcome would be that any Marvel superhero movie will be that because of great expectations due to the success of The Avengers , we will see a great story. Even though, the movie has some humor and flair and great action, I thought that the result was a mixed bag. In the opening of the movie, there is a war where Bor, the father of Odin, fights with Malkeith (Christopher Eccleston), who wants to destroy the universe with a weapon called the Aether. After defeating Malkeith and his forces, Bor keeps the Aether in safe keeping and Malkeith, Algrim (Adewale-Akinnouye-Agbaje) and a few others escape. The battle was a little unnecessary to set up because it is just too obvious and ordinary. But, they had to explain the Aether and set up the evil characters. The film flashes forward to present-...

Boy, is Sir Ben Kingsley and Harrison Ford happy to be in this movie? Another science fiction movie in the future? Well, I am a science fiction fan and I always anticipate any project that filmmakers and writers can distribute to the audience. What kind of original creativity can anybody come up with? I thought Neill Blomkamp's Elysium  was a good action movie with sci-fi touches, but did not show the issues of the lack of health care on Earth too well. Ever since Inception , the originality seems to dial down in sci-fi films. I mean Gravity is a great sci-fi film, but it looked like a real perilous situation. This movie had sparks of visual wonder, but there is no thought or originality in the script. The movie starts out with an attack of Earth in 2086 by an alien species called the formics. What a terrible basic name for an alien species. Someone who I would not reveal sacrifices himself to prevent the attack from getting worse. Years later, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin...

Here are the movie reviews that I will post on the blog during the week of 11/4-11/10: Thor: The Dark World All is Lost (maybe) Blue is the Warmest Color White House Down (DVD)

Douglas, De Niro, Freeman, and Kline in the Hangover: Part 43. Ok, jk. Well, you can't stop having fun when you are older. I mean, reunions are really a special event because you can have conversations about present times and memories with older friends and go forward where left off. The substantial array of current events can fascinate or anger a person due to normal and grudging circumstances. The particular array of current events is relevant to the four characters in this movie. Why not see four great actors and a great actress be in one movie having fun in Las Vegas? I mean, why not? The movie begins with 4 12-year old friends in a photo booth at a store. One friend gets teased by an older boy and when another friend hits him, he says that no one calls him names but themselves. So, it's kind of a warm moment, I guess. The movie fast forwards 58 years later. Sam (Kevin Kline) is married in Florida and is bored. Archie (Morgan Freeman) just suffered a stroke and is kep...

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northup. Every ambitious risk to make a slavery picture might pay the price in the end. A director has to be disciplined in every detail in a slavery picture to bring the audience back in the era and witness what every slave has to go through. The explicit nature and dark content has to be dealt with delicately to convey the slaves' emotions of pain and self-inflicted punishment. But, when a free man has to deal with the situation of being sold into slavery and endearing the pain again, the journey is haunting and we are drawn into it. It starts in media res  where Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and some slaves are given instructions to do some work. But, we flash back to 1841 in Saratoga, New York where he is living his life as a free slave with his wife and children. His job is going to partying gigs to play the violin. While his wife and children go away, he is lured by a pair of men who perform in a circus (Scoot McNairy and Taran Killam, f...

The Counselor is in a bit of a messy situation. I was honestly excited about this movie because of the grand scale of epic proportions that the title character has to deal with balancing his clients and the characters he loved. A movie with a great cast wets your appetite because they can bring something fresh to the table and on to the big screen. The surreal experience of anticipating for a wildly insane movie based on a trailer is just tempestuous until...you have actually seen the movie. And going forward, this was one was kind of a confusing downer. The movie starts out with a nameless Counselor (Michael Fassbender) flirting in Shame mode explicitly with his girlfriend, Laura (Penelope Cruz), while lying in bed. They both just communicate in dirty sexy language, so...um...anyway, moving on. The Counselor goes on a business trip to Amsterdam, but he's actually meeting with a jewelry and diamond dealer in order to conduct a transaction to purchase an engagement ring. Of co...