Caro the Movie Critic

Sometimes, in your youth, you can either become the bully or the victim or just an innocent bystander witnessing an act between the bully and victim. This movie, which is adapted by a young-adult novel,  takes a narrative device of a time loophole and inserting it into a tale of redemption especially for a young lady who is mainly popular for her looks and for her personality. But, sometimes, the personality can border onto narcissism and stupidity that can destroy other people's lives that guilt will cloud the person's judgment for the rest of your life because of ego. Does the victim deserve to get bullied? Why does he/she deserve it? Why bully in the first place? The movie surrounds those questions in a familiar, narrative device, however, the tone is so inconsistent that it becomes a bit more melodramatic than usual and gets a bit carried away in its soap-opera message even though the ending is quite suitable for the character's journey. Samantha (Zoey Deutch) is f...

We have another TV-movie adaptation coming out and I have watched the trailers. After watching the trailers, I felt a sense of sadness and depression because I did not laugh at all. I was slumping and sighing deeply because I was thinking, "Give me something." And, after the red-band trailer was over and seeing what Warner Bros. and the marketing department had to offer, we got Michael Peña carrying a nude Dax Shepard and Peña's gets face planted on to his bare groin. It felt like I was watching a rerun of sophomoric, lazy, sexist humor that offers nothing else on the table. It was one of the least laughable R-rated comedies I've seen in a while despite a somewhat noticeable chemistry and a few chuckles. Officer Castillo (Michael Peña), a professional cop and womanizer, is working undercover to take down a gang leader. He is particularly involved with this case because the gang leader is the same criminal that killed Castillo's partner not too long ago. The c...

Go, go, Power Rangers! Ok...the TV show came along at the right time when I was in my youth. I like a couple TV spinoffs of that show but I was not completely gaga over them because I found the series a bit over-the-top with its dialogue and some of its erratic editing. However, the series infused a certain cartoonish flavor that had 90s kids with bewilderment. It is the sense of imagination that is inserted in kids' craniums in that era that allowed fans, both male and female, to have the imagination in their playground activities where they pretend to be the Power Rangers. Now, even though I had low expectations such as the other movie, Life,  coming out, and I was totally surprised by this movie even though its campy in some areas in terms of dialogue and some action and one other performance. However, for what this level of camp is, the movie works. There is some backstory in the realm of the Power Rangers as the Green Ranger, Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks) betrays her com...

I had low expectations going into the movie theater when this movie was going to be presented and showcased to me and the audience. After watching the trailer, it looked like a rip-off of the movie, Alien . However, it is a dumb statement because many scary space movies feature the same structure and premise of a group of astronauts either returning from a mission or during a mission that something goes wrong...following the Alien structure or the Forbidden Planet structure. But, the movie depends on the story above all else and if it is worth your time because of its "entertainment" quality. After Life was over, I was surprised by its solid narrative structure and fantastic visuals that it sometime scared me but fully entertained me from beginning to end. The movie opens as the crew of the Pilgrim 7 attempt to get a capsule from Mars. Engineer Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds) steps out and tries to grasp the capsule and successfully does. Biologist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) ...

Oh, no. What happened? Ok...right off the bat, I have heard some stuff about this movie and I have seen a trailer surrounding this project. I sort of scoffed and laughed at the premise because I asked to myself: "What actually led them to this?" It is a vague question that will be revealed later in the review. But, after watching the red band trailer, I thought, "Ok, a bloodied Office Space mixed with the traditional Battle Royale  flavor to wet our appetite." Now, watching this experiment, and after thinking about what I saw, all I saw was an idea and/or experiment for a movie the whole time that it never takes off and finishes with an ending that felt a bit anticlimactic. Mike Milch (Frank Gallagher, Jr.) has been an employee at Belko Industries, located in Bogotá, Columbia, for a little over a year alongside his boss, Barry (Tony Goldwyn) and his girlfriend, Leandra (Adria Arjona). As new employee, Dany (Melonie Diaz) reports on her first day, she learns th...

"Tale as old as time..." Ever since the first few trailers were out, legions of people, young and old, were enamored by the 1991 animated classic being transfigured into an illuminating live-action movie. As more material and/or images surfaced, people that I have talked to or reports were mixed because of its visual effects and The Beast and I will get to that later in the review. However, there was another controversy that I will talk in-depth from both an audience perspective and a business perspective. Going into the movie, I had very good expectations but not an excellent expectation because I did not think that the animated would be improved compared to the live-action versions of Cinderella and The Jungle Book , which I thought were better than the animated movies. Based on my experience, this is a solid, not perfect, re-telling of this fairy tale that blended the intricate production design and magic with more character development. The movie starts differently ...

It's Kong in a new adventure. Back in 1933, King Kong  premiered in front of a crowd that has been introduced to the world of film for less than 10 years. However, sound was brought into play in the beginning of the 1930s so people were getting acquainted with "sound-quality pictures" as they used to call them back in the day. People were entranced by the big stature of fur and startled by its ginormous presence. It started a trend of monster pictures and also remakes with Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Naomi Watts, Jack Black. Even though there were parts of the 1976 that were thrilling, it was corny. I really liked the 2005 version, however, the 3-hour length prevented me from loving it. When I compare this latest adventure with Kong to other Kong movies, what is lacking are memorable characters that are one-dimensional and are not given much depth or good dialogue and it gets boring. The sad truth is that the Kong scenes are thrilling that the human scenes are what d...

Hugh Jackman as Logan one last time.  Let's throwback to 1999-2000 when the first X-Men was in development and produced into theaters and people were noticing now recognizable and celebrated stars such as Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Sir Ian McKellen, etc. However, there an unknown name at the time that audiences were hooked onto because of his portrayal of Wolverine and Hugh Jackman became a star and even cemented his name even more: with smarmy rom-coms such as Kate and Leopold  and Someone Like You , the former being forgettable and the latter being ok. However, with X2 : he became so recognizable that we got intrigued by the story and structure and became one of the best Marvel films to date. Unfortunately, the Wolverine trilogy started badly with X-Men: Origins , a terrible movie and then with a better movie with The Wolverine , a semi-very-good movie with the first half being real good and the second half going off the deep end, however, it was solid....