Pi (1998)

Pi is a Darren Aronofsky film dealing with the patterns and connections between math, nature, and discovering the meaning of life. It follows a genius number theorist named Maximilian Cohen (Sean Gullette) who is working to discover a pattern that can predict the stock market. This leads to a set of "random" numbers that his computer spits out, which takes him on a journey of trying to discover what it all means while he is being chased by a group of Hasidic Jews and a major stock broker.

What I like most about this film is it's relation to life and how Cohen relates everything in the world to math. He sees patterns in everything and uses these patterns to unlock more doors until he finds himself too deep to come out. It seems that all (or at least most) of the movies that I enjoy deal at some point with insanity. This film is insane from the get-go. Cohen is paranoid and reclusive but retreats into himself more as he uncovers more and more about the mysteries of the universe.

This film also does a good job of measuring the importance of what Cohen is actually researching. If he finds this one ultimate pattern, it can be used exponentially in an infinite number of ways and applications. For example, predicting the stock market, making religious discoveries, and explaining the meaning of life. Cohen is actually a numerical based existentialist in that aspect. I always get something new and interesting out of this movie whenever I watch it. It gets a 4.5/5.

Thelma And Louise (1991)

As many of you know, "Thelma and Louise" is a Ridley Scott film about two women on the lam from the cops for murder. I haven't seen it so I decided to check it out.

For those of you who haven't seen it, I'll provide you with a quick plot summary. Thelma and Louise start out going on vacation to a cabin to relax and do some fishing. Unfortunately they get into trouble when they stop at a bar. While at the bar Thelma gets a bit tipsy and dances with this man that she barely knows. One thing leads to another and she ends up almost getting raped by him but is saved when Louise comes to the rescue and shoots him. They run and run for the entire movie until they reach the climax with about 15 police cars chasing them around in the desert. They decide that they would rather die by their own will, rather than getting caught or killed by the police. So, they drive off the cliff of the Grand Canyon and supposedly die in a fiery crash.

What I liked about this movie was that it closely examines the changes in both Thelma and Louise throughout the entire film. They both go from being hesitant and sort of down about their lives to doing everything they can to escape from the police. They realize the value of life, but they also realize the value of their friendship they end up realizing that they really don't have anybody except for each other.

It really has a pretty heart warming ending with an engaging plot (that I really didn't do justice to in my summary). "Thelma and Louise" gets a 4/5.

Public Enemies (2009)

I was actually quite amazed with this movie. To the best of my knowledge it was historically accurate, it had some good chase scenes and really delved into the life of the famous bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp). The plot of course follows John Dillinger as he robs banks, caps cops, and escapes from jail, but also as he is chased by the FBI led by Christian Bale’s character. It truly is a fast paced movie with some good classic shootout action. All of the cars (including old Ford Model T’s) and the weaponry (including Tommy Guns and BAR’s) look incredibly authentic as far as I can tell.

Johnny Depp does a pretty fantastic job as John Dillinger, he seems pretty fit to be that awesome gangster who’ll stop at nothing to get the cash and make his escape. However, I can’t say this for the rest of the cast. The person who plays Billie (some chick I’ve never heard of), John’s girlfriend throughout the entire, really doesn’t do a very good job. Many of the scenes that are supposed to be intimate between her and John just sort of come off awkward with her kind of mucking up the screen, though she does have a pretty face.

One thing that really interested me about this movie was the way it was shot. Most of the film was shot with handheld cameras, which you can definitely tell because of the slight jolts from walking and lack of smoothness at some points. Coupled with this, the whole lighting and presence of the entire movie was different from anything I’ve seen before. It seemed like the cinematography was taking an approach of between what would be seen in a documentary and a high budget film. It was strangely interesting and sort of lent a certain air of authenticity to the entire film. It seemed like the camera was right in the action and everything was happening spontaneously.

Overall this was interesting but really only good acting from Bale and Depp. Good action and good authenticity. This one gets a 4/5.

Eraserhead (1977)

"Eraserhead". The title alone sounds disturbing. However, disturbing is only a slightly fitting title for this David Lynch film. "Eraserhead" follows an industrial worker in a post-apocalyptic world named Henry on his downward spiral into the rabbit hole. When I first watched it I didn't really understand much of it, but when I was given the hint that everything is metaphorical, I began to figure most of it out. Unfortunately because of this it is hard to give a plot synopsis and have you understand it without seeing the movie, but I'll do my best. I explain what happens and then below that give the metaphorical and symbolic meanings (as they are kind of spoilers).

aIt turns out that Henry is on vacation from his industrial job. He lives in a small, shabby apartment with a scandalous woman across the hall in a not-so-nice part of town (not that any part of town is nice). So Henry returns to his apartment and is informed by the woman across the hall that Mary called and that he should go over for dinner. Henry goes to Mary's house to have dinner with her family but everything is awkward between them. The dinner goes wrong when Henry tries to cut the artificial chickens that are the main course of their meager meal, and they start twitching and bleeding. After the failed dinner Mary's mother interogates Henry about whether he and Mary had sex. He admits that they did and Mary's mother tells him that they must get married at once becuase she gave birth to a premature mutant baby.

The next scene cuts to after Henry and Mary are married and living in the same apartment with thier mutant bundle of joy. Henry arrives home and checks his mail to find a small box with a worm in it, which he hides from Mary. When they go to bed Mary gets fed up with the baby crying and leaves to sleep at her mother's house.

Henry slowing begins to slide deeper into the rabbit hole. He begins dreaming of strange and troubling things. He dreams that the woman across the hall seduces him and he continuously sees a woman singing in the radiator about how everything will be fine in Heaven. He also dreams that he is decapitated and his head is taken to a factory where it is used to make erasers for pencils, hence the title. One day he sees the woman across the hall being intimate with a stranger and he is noticably surprised and sad. The mutant baby begins laughing at him in a disgusting sort of cackle. This enrages Henry to the point that he kills the child and it's innards splatter all over the room. The film ends with him embracing the woman in the radiator and smiling.

As promised here is a explanation of all of the symbolic and metaphorical occurences:

• At the beginning there is a scene with a man in a planet pulling levers. This represents Henry's brain controlling him to do things. The man shoots a sperm into a puddle of water which symbolizes Mary's vagina.
  
• The worm in the black box symbolizes porn, which he hides from Mary, and near the end of the movie looks at often.
• The woman in the radiator symbolizes suicide. I forgot to mention above that the chord on the side of the radiator had a bunch of sparking wires on the side which inevitably aid in Henry's suicide.
• The woman in the radiator squashes a bunch of sperm as they fall from the ceiling which is like saying that commiting suicide will solve all of your problems.

As I said, it's a very disturbing movie. However, I definitely enjoyed it. It's rare that you come across a film that requires this much thinking to understand, especially in todays market. So if you enjoy a film that will probably make your brain hurt, this is it. It gets a 4/5.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Wow. That is all I have to say to Michael Bay. He has really done it this time. In a bad way that is. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, probably the worst movie I've seen in a while. Before I do my review I'll give a quick rundown of the quality plot we see in this film of films. We start of with Sam going to college and whatnot and him trying to live a normal life when he discovers a shard of the Allspark in his clothing. What do you know. So the Deceptacons want the shard for a reason that is never really explained, and they chase Sam while the Autobots try to protect him. However, during the battle Optimus is ganged up on by three Deceptacons and killed. This is what gets me though, and I will elaborate later: nobody really sheds a tear for their fallen leader. A little sad music is played but they don't spend much time in his death before moving on with the action.

So blah blah blah the Deceptacons steal another shard of the Allspark that apparently survived as well and they reasurect the Fallen who used to be a Prime like Optimus but betrayed the other primes sort of. More blah blah blah action that doesn't really seem to have much to do with plot advancement and they end up in Egypt. So all of the transformers are fighting and sam dies and then he's reassurected by the other Primes and then Sam reassurects Optimus who owns the rest of the Deceptacons and the Fallen after getting a jetpack. That enough for you? As I said earlier, what got me was that not a tear was shed for Optimus when he died. But when Sam died everybody was crying their eyes out and the whole shabang. So is Sam more important than Optimus? I think not!

Along with this plot that attempts to be terribly in-depth (but ends up just getting confusing and annoying) Michael Bay made a couple of pretty large mistakes that he sort of covers up with all of the action. Number one, when the Deceptacons go down to give life to Magatron, five go down. It is confirmed by a sup that is guarding his likeless corpse. They then sacrifice one of their own to give life to Megatron. However, when they go back up the sub says there are six Deceptacons coming back up. 5-1+1=6? Did Michael Bay graduate from preschool? This is one of those things where you think either every single person in the cast and crew for the film missed or somebody caught and Mr. Bay just didn't care enough to change it. I guess when you have enough aciton and explosions you can get away with anything....

Number 2, I heard the Shia Labeuf hurt is wrist or something either during the shooting of the movie or before it or sometime around there, so he was wearing a big cast/bandage around his wrist for some of the movie. Now let me straighten this out; he was wearing it off and on throughout the film. He didn't just have it for now reason at a certain point and wear it the rest of the time. Another thing that Michael Bay must have missed. There wasn't even an explanation in the movie that shed light on why he was wearing it. Like, maybe he hit by a piece of rouge shrapnel from an exploding transformer. Nope, nothing.
Throughout this movie I also took some notes:

• Witty/comedic phrases from: Robots 10 Humans: 9
• Plot Progressing Events (events significant to the plot): 4
• Boobs/Butt shots of Megan Fox: only 6 :(
• Kisses: 5
• Minutes of Action (only counting time when stuff is really going down: for instance people are running or guns are firing): 1 hour 2 minutes and 32 seconds out of a 2 hour 19 minute and 46 second movie.
• Explosions: 227. Yes 227. I counted.

As my results show above, this is an incredibly unbalanced movie. Action sequences and explosions occupied the majority of the movie without much thought put into progressing the plot. When the plot was progressed it was confusing and there was often a lot of skipping around and it was difficult to follow. I was surprised that they didn't have explosions going off in the background of the credits. The movie pretty much goes non-stop for the entire time with a cut to a plot progressing event every now and then that doesn't really seem to fit. It was also very difficult to tell who you were watching. Most of the transformers look basically the same and since they are always moving you never really get a good look at them to see which one it is. And why are there even humans with guns and tanks in this movie? They really don't do anything when they are fighting GIANT ROBOTS FROM ANOTHER PLANET! The Autobots pretty much do all of the work when it comes to fighting and the humans just get killed. I'm also not sure how many there actually were. Like in the last movie there was pretty much a set squad of the transformers for each team but I'm pretty sure there were like 50 robots beating the crap out of eachother and I couldn't tell what team they were on.

There were so many things wrong with this movie it is impossible to name them all. See this if you want to be motivated to stay away from Michael Bay movies from now on. I'll give it a 2/5 and thats only because the action sequences (the majority of the movie) were pretty well put together, but everything else set me off. Michael Bay, please burn in Hell.

Mad Max (1979)

Mad Max, starring a very very young Mel Gibson, is a slightly anticlimactic film following the main character Max, a highway patrolman with a slightly crazy need to for speed and carnage. The first 15 minutes of this movie are actually pretty high energy with some pretty excellent car chases. However, after the beginning the movie slowly goes downhill. The plot continues after Max kills the leader of a biker gang in the action packed first fifteen minutes and follows him while he is being chased by the rest of the gang out for revenge. Like most movies of this caliber, I expected an action packed ending with a lot of explosions and a high death count. However, the end seemed very anticlimactic to me. I pretty proceeds to take out the rest of the gang in his car while they are on motorcycles and it just isn't a very well done action sequence. The entire plot builds up to the end but when the end is reached, it sucks. Max's wife in the movie (Joanne Samuel?) does some pretty terrible acting. There isn't very much plot development, and for an action movie, the action was disappointing. If I were you I wouldn't check this one out unless you're a big Mel Gibson fan because actually does a mediocre job. This one gets a 2.5/5.