Movie Review Catch-Up, Part 1

Now before I get into reviewing, it's time for a disclaimer. I'll be including this each time I post about a movie I’ve seen because I feel strongly about it.

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The Disclaimer
Just because I've watched a movie or enjoyed it doesn't mean that it's for everyone. I don't like raunchy content in a movie and I use the websites, ScreenIt and Kids In Mind, frequently to find out what kind of content is in a movie before I watch it. BUT. Everyone's tolerance level of how much content you'll put up with if the movie's worth watching varies. With that in mind, when I say a movie is good, I'm saying that in an overall sense, and I'm saying that from my perspective. I'm not endorsing it, nor am I saying that the content that is in it is appropriate for all ages. I'd prefer the movie to be clean, but if it's overall worth watching and isn't overly raunchy, I'm able to look past a lot of it.

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3:10 to Yuma
GREAT movie. Doesn’t matter if you’re into westerns or not, this movie is chock full of goodness and deserves to be watched.
5 of 5.

Hellboy 2
Ehh. It looked better than the first in the trailer, but it really wasn't. Some cool Del Torro imagery, of course, and some cool action bits, but all in all, no biggie.
2.5 of 5.

X-Files 2
It sucked. Tremendously. That’s all you need to know.
1.5 of 5.

The Life Aquatic
I’ve always heard negative things about this movie in the past few years, but a friend (thanks, Brad!) told me I HAD to see it. I agreed to check it out and I loved it! Classic Wes Anderson and so many good little lines throughout.
4 of 5.

Lars and the Real Girl
Man, do I love this movie or what. It’s pretty low-key, and I like those types of movies, and was enjoyable all the way through. Ryan Gosling dominated his role, fo sho!
5 of 5.

Shotgun Stories
I saw the trailer for this on Apple’s site a few months back and it looked interesting. The main actor has a really cool persona in my opinion and this movie didn’t disappoint. Especially for a directorial debut, it’s great.
4 of 5.

Iron Man
Overall, a great movie, but in seeing it the one time I did, I thought the characters / plot seemed a bit shallow at times to me. Definitely worth watching, though, and I look forward to seeing it again, and possibly raising my rating of it.
3.5 of 5.

Indiana Jones 4
Overall it was great, especially compared to a lot of the crap that gets released. It was definitely more stylized than the others, a bit too much at times for me, but still not terrible. There were some parts of unbelieveability / cheesiness that rubbed me wrong (Shia's "Me Tarzan" moment, going over the waterfalls, etc.), but nothing that would keep me from blowing the movie off.
4 of 5.

The Happening
My summary is basically that I liked a lot of the parts of the movie (suspense, score, filming, creepiness of actually seeing the wild deaths, etc.), but I didn't like the sum of its parts. The premise with the plants... what?! C'mon, M. Night. You totally can do better than that. As for no twist, well, he said that this one wasn't really supposed to have one. He said he wanted it to just be a bitter / sweet ending, which we got, but it was still kinda like. Oh. The movie's over. When I first saw the trailer it didn't look great at all and I just saw it because it was him and unfortunately, my feelings were confirmed.
1.5 of 5.

The Dark Knight
Perfect in every way. Just try to find me something wrong with this movie. Out-of-this-world direction. Mindblowing score. Amazing action sequences. Incredible script. And of course. UNBELIEVABLE acting. I wonder how long it’ll be again until a movie does it for me as much as this one has. If you didn’t like it, I don’t like you. Just kidding. Kind of.
100 of 5.