5/12/2019 1 Comment Wine Country (2019)My mom and I were looking for a movie to watch on Netflix and we agreed that the first movie that popped up we would watch. Wine Country turned out to be advertised and at the top of the so we decided to watch it. Wine Country is about life-long friends who meet up for a long weekend to celebrate one birthday. The movie explores the positive and negatives of friends growing apart and reuniting. These women begin to question their relationship and future when a card reader begins their vacation in Napa Valley. So, all of the main characters are actress on Saturday Night Live. Going into this movie, my mom and I were excited because we thought it would be hilarious. It was funny, but not really “knee slap” funny. There were some scenes that I really thought were funny, but not anymore funny than anything else. It was just super average. The storyline was thought provoking and made me reflect on my current friend group. It made me wonder if we were going to end up as sad and pathetic as the women in the movie. Okay, pathetic is maybe a little harsh. But, they are supposedly best friends and hide important life details from each other.
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5/6/2019 1 Comment The Last Summer (2019)As I was scrolling through Netflix’s, I came across The Last Summer. Intrigued, I clicked on the description and saw that it was about Chicago teens during their summer before college. The movie goes through love, maturing friendships, and personal discovery. I did not think that The Last Summer was a particularly good, but it was a fun movie to watch as I enter my last full week of high school.
There were so many poor technical aspects of The Last Summer. It looked like all of the other chick flicks that Netflix’s produces- cheap. There were so much potential that The a Last Summer had. I think that if A1 or any other fun company took on the script it would be decent. It is totally made for high school seniors who are either exiting or freshman entering. The actors were actually decent. There were a couple that I recognized but none that were really like WOAH. I thought that KJ Apa did a good job and I loved Halston Sage because I’ve seen her other works (Before I Fall- such a great book and movie). In all honesty, the goal of this movie was to hit the feels of freshman and seniors and it definitly worked, it was just a little cringe along the way. 4/29/2019 1 Comment Sweet Home Alabama (2002)So, over break I went to Orange Beach, AL like I usually do since my grandmother has a house down there. I never had the desire to watch Sweet Home Alabama while I was down there but for some reason that’s all I wanted to do. I was literally obsessed with the movie. I have always enjoyed Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde is a staple for a girl empowerment movie), but fell in love with her after rewatching Sweet Home Alabama.
Melanie use to live in Greenville, AL which is a super small town in the middle of Alabama. She moves to New York City to escape and the small town and becomes a big time fashion designer. She is engaged to the mayor of New York’s son but has to go back to Alabama to divorce her secret husband. I loved this movie. I don’t know why, but as I said I was obsessed. It was fun to watch and get lost in. I honestly just watched it for fun and didn’t notice any technical aspect other than the great acting and fun script. 4/14/2019 1 Comment Unicorn Store (2017) As I was looking through Netflix to find what I was going to watch next Unicorn Store immediately caught my eye. I loved how colorful the cover was and the description intrigued me because I thought it would be something different than what I normally watch. In all honesty, I thought it was going to be uber weird and not my vibe at all. But, it ended up being right on my wavelength. I thought it was a creative idea and enjoyed watching the story, but will never watch it again. It would be a great movie to sit down with and have as background noise while doing homework or getting ready to go out with friends. While I thought this movie wasn’t awful, I am disappointed that it wasn’t more. I think it could have been a really cool movie, but it just missed the mark.
Unicorn Store was about a woman who failed art school and had to go back to live with her parents. Through their continuous efforts to make her motivated/grow up, Kit finally takes a job at a boring cubicle company. She gets mysterious invitations to go to ‘The Store’ and one night she decides to see what its about. The Store ends up selling whatever Kit wants- which turns out to be a unicorn. The rest of the movie follows Kit on her mission to accomplish what is needed to receive her new pet. As the viewer travels with Kit on her journey you get to see her mature with relationships, purpose, and overall life. I thought the colors in Unicorn Store were fantastic. They did a great job at conveying Kits mystical outlook on life. I thought the costuming did a wonderful job at indicating the changes in Kits life and giving the viewer an insight to who the parents are. With that being said, it looked super cheap and like it was thrown together. I thought the movie left a couple of plot holes and was confused at certain points. Such as, when did the mailman, kit, and this one lady get close? I don’t remember a scene or any indications that they were friends. So, when they did the presentation together, I was quite confused. I also did not like the Vice President's assistant. While I saw her purpose, it never really came important in the movie. 4/7/2019 1 Comment Social Animals (2018)Social Animals is a documentary about the effect of Instagram on young people's lives. It was extremely eye opening to see the positive and negative results it had on people my own age. The documentary was filmed extraordinarily well and was written to make you think about your own life. After watching, I looked at the screen time report on my phone for the past seven days. It was ridiculously high (3 hours and 37 minutes a day). Then, I looked at the specifics and saw that I was on Instagram for 37 minutes a day resulting in 4 hours and 20 minutes over the week. Social media is basically controlling my life. I never thought I had a problem, I look at my friends and see that their life is literally glued to their phones but never thought that it was me. Apparently it is. After watching the documentary, it opened my eyes to realize that while I’m not as awful as many people my age, I still have work to do as I improve my addiction to observing other people on Instagram. Social Animals was very successful in it’s feat to document to the effects of social media and try to impact others so they do not grow obsessive as the people recorded have.
3/10/2019 1 Comment The prestige (2006) Since last week was the ideal Ainsley Movie Marathon (Legally Blonde, Sex and the City: The Movie, Hairspray, and Dumplin’), I decided to watch a couple of movies this week that were ultimately out of my comfort zone. So, after several recommendations from a friend, I decided to watch The Prestige. And my oh my, was it trippy. It was so trippy that I started singing Run DMC’s It's Tricky song and changed ‘tricky’ to ‘trippy.’ The Prestige was a period thriller set in England. Two magicians compete with each other and go through extreme costs to prove they are better than the other. The trick of transportation drives the two to take extreme costs and ultimately risks the lives of those involved.
The editing in this movie was extremely powerful!! Usually, I do not pay attention to editing, but after learning about it in class, I was on high alert. There was a scene at the end that was incredible. It’s hard to explain since it includes doubles and many other weird small details, but I will try. The man who was hung dropped a red bouncy ball when he died then the red ball bounces across the screen to the other main character. Okay, it sounds a lot simpler as I am writing it out than it actually is. Yes, I reread that, and it is very unimpressive. But, I swear that it was cool at the moment. I also thought it was super basic to unveil the movies plot twist at the very end, but it would really only work there. There was a massive amount of plot twist. So much that it was hard to keep up with it all. So confusing- especially with the doubles, you really have to pay attention. Overall, I liked this movie and reminded myself that it is fun to explore genres that I wouldn’t usually go for. 3/4/2019 1 Comment Legally Blonde (2001)Elle Woods has everything she could ever want. She is gorgeous, practically famous, beloved by all, and is in an incredible sorority. While she has all of this, she really wants to be Mrs. Warner Huntington II. But, Warner breaks up with her because she is too blonde and not smart enough. In attempts to win him back she tries to be accepted into Harvard law school. To his surprise, she actually gets in and does very well.
I love this movie! It is a great feel good movie and a way to empower yourself to do something hard that no one expects you to be able to do. While being entertaining, it has a way to make sure that they can do whatever they want when they put their mind to it. My favorite part is when Elle looks at Warner after he questions her acceptance and says “What like it’s hard?”. My other favorite part is when she uses her background of being a sorority girl to have the girl confess and whin the case. Over all, I really enjoyed this movie and like to watch it twice every year to remind myself that I am capable of anything I want to do. 2/24/2019 1 Comment Abducted in plain sight (2017)Okay this movie had literally everything!!! It had aliens, affairs, tape recorders, mystery, creepy guys, motor homes, Mexico, theme parks, FBI, Mormons (LDS), and so much more!
I usually give a summary about the movie I watched but do not want to spoil anything in detail. But in all honesty this documentary baffled me. How, as a parent, do you wait 5 days before contacting the police if your child went missing, let a grown man sleep in your child’s bed while listening to weird sex tapes, and let this man back into your family’s life? None of that is normal!!! The conversation had to of gone like this: B (the pedophile): hey is it okay if i build a wall in your 12 year olds room and sleep with her while listening to my special tapes? Oh and take her on a vacation to ride horses? The Parents of Jan: oh sure B!! That sounds perfectly normal. That is so ridiculous. Jan was abducted twice because of her parents stupidity. Which I don’t think you can say, but it is really what happened. Over all I really enjoyed this documentary. I told all of my friends to watch it and when they did they loved it. We had fun discussing the strange kidnapping stories among each other. WHile it was fun to hear the story, the documentary itself was kind of cringy. It reminded me of a cheap conspiracy theory doc that examined something like The Knights of Templar. It was just didn’t flow and they reused the same pictures all of the time. If you haven’t a;ready, definitely give it a try!! 2/10/2019 1 Comment Eighth Grade (2018)Eighth Grade was suuuupppppeeeeerrr cringy. It was physically hard to watch at times. So, the movie starts with Kayla recording a vlog for her Youtube channel. On her channel, she displays herself to be someone that she's not. From the beginning, the viewer can tell that Kayla desperately wants to be cool but is too shy to really be popular. The viewer follows Kayla on her last week of Eighth grade, and we see how awful her middle school has been. Once Kayla shadows a high schooler, and the story finally picks up to Kayla gaining confidence.
I do not remember eighth grade like this, so it was interesting to see. Some interactions that Kayla had with her father made me feel soooo sorry for parents with kids in the eighth grade. So much to where I asked my parents if my current eighth-grade brother and I acted that way (they said no- thankfully) But overall, I think that the movie was supposed to be that awkward and awful to represent what eighth grade is like. So, Bo Burnham accomplished the goal of the film. * the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind main character (Jim Carrey) looks like the father in Eighth Grade (Josh Hamilton) Being one of the first films with sound, M told the story about a murderer in Berlin. M mainly involves a child murderer and the race to capture him by the cops and the criminal underworld. This all started by a couple of kids being kidnaped and murdered while walking home from school. Lots of parents and city people became enraged but did not know what to do to help the cops stop the child murderer. It was not until Elsie Beckman was walking home from school and killed that the public decided to take matters into their own hands and hunt of the criminal since the cops were not doing a good job with it. As the criminal underworld hunts this man, they see him and mark a M on his back in white chalk. This gave the public a target and began to corner him to capture the murderer and take him back to their meeting space to give him a trail (and eventually kill him). But, the cops bust in and take the murderer into custody.
I was very impressed by the sound quality in this film since it was Fritz Lang’s first sound film. I really liked the way Lang gave the murderer a specific whistle that identified him. I also really liked the shot where Elsie was throwing the ball on the ‘Wanted’ poster and the murderers shadow slowly appeared on the screen as he approached her. I also appreciated the fact that it was a formalist film but made you invented in the character while paying attention to all the creative freedom that the director applied. Overall, I liked M. I really enjoyed the creative effort that the director put into the film. I thought that it was a neat film since it was an early thriller. It is interesting that one of the pressing issues in this time period was kidnapping, murdering, and letting the offender get away from the cops and the fact that it still is a major pressing issue. Showing that, even 87 years later people still are most afraid of social injustice. I really like how something that was released so long ago still has the same effect on its viewers. Meaning that by watching this film I was tense and 87 years ago someone completely different than myself became tense during the same scenes. |