Okay, so I just got back from my local college that has a theatre that usually does concerts (I'm still in high school) and they showed us this. And I have to say...this is the first documentary I've ever reviewed. But now that I think about it...how can I give this movie a grade? It's true, this movie has a rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Of 100% from critics. But in a documentary like this one where everything is happening as it goes, and the family is trying it's best to carry on with normal life, I can't really give it a grade.

So, Summer Pasture is about a family of Tibetan nomads, the husband Locho, the wife Yama, their adorable unnamed daughter and a few families they live around in these giant tents that are about as big as my bedroom and go up in roofing height halfway. Takes place for three months sometime in 2007. Yama at the time had a two year old daughter, was pregnant three times but two of her babies died. The law says that you are allowed three babies maximum, and with her relatives having one baby, she can have another but her uterus is sort of swelling up. All the meanwhile, the entire family must get up at 4 every morning to milk a hundred yaks, infact, the opening sequence shows Yama gathering and spreading dung in a pattern and I had no idea why and I didn't want to know why. In this family, their neighbours are more and more moving to the town because a life of being a nomad is too hard. One of the first lines in the movie from Yama is that she wouldn't give up her life of being a nomad for anything, but I think she was kidding herself.

Now, thankfully the audience and I got to Skype an interview with Nelson Walker, one of the directors of the film. He was very nice and sometimes when you meet the person who made a film, it can seem better. I asked him if their daughter ever made it into education. He said "yes" so that's great. Good to know. It doesn't say in the documentary if she ever succeeded, but that's not really the film's fault because of the flow of time. Also, I don't know what I expected out of this film. My mom said it was about how the Chinese took over Tibet 60 years ago, but the Chinese are barely in this, except when Locho is fighting at some stand about paying 45, 43 or 42 pounds for something, and eventually the store worker says, "Fine, just take it." I shivered. With that sort of life where the only things they can really eat over the winter are butter, cheese and some sort of dumplings, it was no wonder the doctors said Yama was working too hard and not eating enough. Their life makes a life of being a movie critic and earning 24 grand a year seem luxurious and eventually after forty-five minutes, I was sort of interested on where this life would end up. 

Normally, a documentary on a Tibetan life should be enough to make me forget for two hours that I have to make my bed, but you'd be shocked. My mind wandered throughout a huge chunk of the movie. But maybe that's because it was the sort of documentary where things happen as they go and for this sort of poor striving family, that's routine. And surprisingly, I didn't really leave the little theatre feeling wanton like The Departed or something like that. In conclusion, once again, I can't give this movie a grade.

Back to the Future Part 2! This is the transition between my review of the first Back to the Future and this one, sort of like how Marty, Jennifer and Doc travel to this day. The only reason I couldn't give the first movie an A+ is because of this movie. That would've been saying I liked it just as much as this movie (untrue). You know the funny thing I learned today? In the movie, it says the Cubs will win the World Series, and this year, and this doesn't usually happen, the Cubs are in the playoffs. Cool, right? And I think the reason we should celebrate this day is not to mourn for the fact that we don't have hover boards (which, in a way, we have a few) but for what we've actually accomplished over the last few years. Oh yeah, and to have a good time with one of the best movies ever made. Not to mention that my birthday is November 12th, 1998. November 12th was the day Marty went back to 1985. I guess I have a correspondence with this franchise or something.

So, Back to the Future Part II picks up right where the 1985 one picked up (it had been a four year difference because I heard director Robert Zemeckis didn't want to do a sequel(s). Shame on him) and Marty with his girlfriend Jennifer and Doctor Emmett Brown have to save Marty McFly's kid from being tried and convicted for doing a crime that Griff Tannen forced him to do. Also, this Doc seems kind of intent on destroying the time machine after all is fixed despite wanting to see what happens in the next thirty years at the end of the last film. In the meantime though, one man who is getting in the way of this is Biff, and you can kind of smell his presence in the movie during the opening sequence when he looks at the vanishing DeLorean in awe and confusion. It also involves Marty trying to have some fun with the opportunity to see into the future and it bites him and Doc right back. Now they must fix this paradox involving the past, ahem. then present 1985, and now-present 2015! And under quite the time limit.

This time, Marty and Doc don't really have the time to plan ahead their moves. They...well, Marty mostly, must simply make up their plan as they go. Yes, it's true, the future's far-fetch'd, but some people dress like that, I guess. And there are airplanes that can get in garages. I don't know if people had those back in the 80's, but we've improved. I think...know we have machines that identify you from your thumbprint. As I said, there are some hover boards that work on metal, so it's possible with science that the overboard Marty uses in a chase scene that actually improves over the first one that the bridge and the rocks and the grass all had metal. And I remember a restaurant where you just typed and described how you wanted a burger and it may not be that far out to the 80's cafe. Jaws 19 directed by Max Spielberg? IF ONLY. (Roll of eyes) I wouldn't be surprised if all these great ideas for inventions displayed in this movie inspired us to make similar gadgets today. The future opening is not the only thing good about the movie, of course. In the paradox of 1985 comes a story with actually a decent punch of tragedy, surprise (this movie is kind of informative on what a town run by an asshole, like, for say, my antagonist in The Blacktop Brothers 3, Ricky Nyland) and accuracy of time travel theory and science. Does something change overtime if something was supposed to happen that did happen that you changed? We may never know but it's always good to, like this film, dream. Not to mention the consequences time travel seems to bring. I think indirectly, the movie kind of shows you the danger of trying to do something sneaky and to think about your actions a little more.

The stealth scenes are perfect too, which happen in the distant past rather than the future, which we can still CALL the future for just a little longer. Not for one moment during this film was I positive Marty was NOT going to get caught, it's like you're right with him, nor did I predict anything. Marty also uses the "What's that?" joke three times in the movie, and every time it is laugh out loud funny. Oh, and did I mention the special effects, to the hover boards to the flying cars to the characters together? It all looked so real and I couldn't see how anything could've been CGI at all...Awesome and revolutionary for 1989.

In conclusion, I'm posting this on 4:22 PM, Wednesday, October 21st, 2015, because 7 minutes is usually my lucky number. Oh, and Back to the Future Part 2 is one of the best sequels ever.

The Watchmaker from Survivor. The Nightwatcher from TMNT. It's kind of easy to get them mixed up. Oh well. Both characters are quite strong and ruthless, just the way I like 'em.

So, Survivor is a movie that seems to have had a casting director friends with the one for Olympus has Fallen. Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett and Robert Forster who all starred in that movie star in this one too. It opens up with a boy named Johnny Talbot who is captured and killed while working in Afghanistan. (If only American Sniper had a scene like that.) And introduces Katherine Abbott, a highly educated government women whose job it is to approve or decline passports for potential terrorist threats at the Embassy. Why? Well, there was 9/11. And after an incident with forgery proof of a passport with no watermark, a big set of terrorists realize that they can't forge Visas and these people looking for them know that Neeral Franks specialized in combustible gas munitions. Abbott brings most of this to the table and is the one in charge of any suspicious activity her co-workers may catch. Then one day she comes across this one man,Emil Balan, played by Roger Rees (which was his last performance.) He has pharmaceutical gases as his specialty and Abbott's friend Bill seemed to have it approved no charge. Abbott feels something is wrong and is enough to get an expertise on chromium and killings, The Watchmaker, played by Brosnan. The chase is on.

What I automatically admired about this movie is how it seems to know about the terrorism business without ever making us lost. Brosnan's character seems to have all this amazing machinery and the guy to make good forgeries. I learned recently that sometimes, police can look at people's emails sometimes if one gets sent out with something funny said on it. Well, at least this scene in his labaratory shows that some of the bad guys have some tricks of their own. Abbott is given some complaints about not approving Visas even when she's trying to do the right thing, and that isn't that far-fetch'd. There have been several lineups I've been in where people scan you too much or cops take up their power and I can understand how complaints can file up and people can use that to their advantage. And we completely agree with the actual good guy this time, the one trying to stop a terrorist act, and a very believable performance from Jovovich in the process. 

To make a movie like this work, you need to have likeable characters doing the detective work and bad characters doing the terrorist work and in another director's shoes, the blackmail aspect of the movie could've gotten more detail that may have forced some of us to root for the bad guys getting away with something even worse than the Boston Marathon bombing, or perhaps even 9/11. Perhaps. Thankfully, it doesn't. Thankfully, a movie with guns on it is showing that what it's supposed to do is entertain you with them and it does so in spades.

This is the sort of movie where you feel anything could happen at any moment and you are always on your feet. Survivor is amazing because I don't think Milla Jovovich has ever been better, Pierce Brosnan has never been more sinister, it understands how terrorists can take advantage of operations, and you really feel for Abbott who could actually get captured. There may be a few times when it seems Jovovich is completely bulletproof, but what is this movie called for?

It's the year. Actually, October 12th represents the day in the Back to the Future GAME by Telltale Games from back in 1931 during one of it's episodes so I thought this would be a reasonable day to put the posting. I don't think there has ever been a movie series so influential on dates of the year. Nor are there many classics to hold up to this day.

If you don't know what Back to the Future is about...where have you been all this time? Basically, a 17 year old high school senior named Marty McFly is friends with a scientist who may have something to do with the theft of some nuclear plutoneum. Marty is head of a band called The Pinheads who don't make it only because of volume (very funny name for a band, by the way.) His Uncle Joey is fresh out of prison, his dad continues to be bullied around by his high school chum who treats him like chum Biff Tannen. You know, the "Hello? Anybody home? Think, McFly!" kind of guy. His mom is not exactly the happiest married femme around either. Then at 1:15 in the morning, Marty is called over by his friend Doc Brown to test out his latest invention...a DeLorean.

Okay, I'm done with my usual explain-what-it's-about rant. What does this movie do good? For starters, I haven't seen many movies that seemed to have worked so hard on one scene, this one at the beginning of the movie, with doing and timing so many different contraptions and clocks without switching to a different camera and out-of-the-picture pausing. With little CGI, even during the blasting speakers (I've done my homework on this, trust me) and riding on the back of cars on a skateboard while in this effects age, it'd probably have hidden wires or all this nonsense about filling out paperwork, it's refreshing to see something that has probably given hooligans some ideas to get to school and the convenience store quicker (but to not do it around police.) The buildup to the race against time in the movie is quite clever, giving off just enough detail so that almost nothing doesn't seem important or is forgotten about later on. What's even more clever and holds up to this day is it's double conflict and seeing your parents. I've seen pictures of my Mom and Uncle Grant when they were my age, and not only do I see the similarities, but they looked, well, like I'd want to meet them in those ages too. Is that creepy? Probably is, but you probably did that once. It's very interesting how Marty takes the opportunity and gets back at Biff when he's his age and there are no consequences for him. Do you have a bully who is bigger than you right now, and is perhaps even an adult? Now imagine you're back against that bully who is still that bully, younger now but perhaps still big but you can punch him and it's up to you how it all will be resolved. Would you have done the same thing Marty does? Would him being smaller help you? If you've seen the movie, I'm sure you must have felt joy when Doc saw an invention of his own from paper to leather. Also, George and Lorraine's now bent and suddenly nonexistent relationship is quite complicated, isn't it? The idea of rescuing your own fate by reuniting your parents doesn't have any monsters or big portals but still carries just as much suspense, even though in this movie it may sometime drag. But that's pretty much the only thing wrong with the whole movie. That, and, well, I'll tell you why I can't quite give this movie an A+ in nine days.

And, hey, world! How about we make a movie about travelling thirty or so years back today? I bet they've probably done others; time travel IS a movie genre, I guess. But other than the Hot Tub Time Machine movies, unseen by me, I can't think of any. Whichever way you look at it though, I don't think time travel can get much better than this. Well, except in...

Turkeys trying to take themselves off the menu? Well, okay, fair enough plotline, I guess, but turkeys are still on the menu today, and it's hard for me to really see the glamour. That, and this is from the same company that would do The Book of Life a year later, one that I felt was okay but too rushed. So let's look at their other animated feature.

In some farm town that looks like Haliburton or somewhere, is a turkey farm where all the turkeys are stupid, even though they can talk; they just sit around all day and whenever a human takes them by the neck, they're in belief that they'll be going on holiday. Regi, a turkey played by Owen Wilson knows better, and he tries to convince them to run away sort of like Ginger from Chicken Run, but none of them see the light. Then Regi is chosen as the turkey who will be freed from slaughter due to a tiny mishap and decision from the president's daughter who, with or without the cameras, must be given approval. Then a few I think weeks or months of pizza later, five minutes for us, Regi gets captured and taken by this buffed up and unmistakably Woody Harrelson voiced turkey named Jake who keeps saying it's his duty to take turkeys off the menu because The Great Turkey told him so. He's so committed he has to say it twice in which it looked like the same animation rigging was done for them both. There's a little story to this great turkey business as well that I already kind of predicted.

Now, I want you to think what would happen to this time travel business. Yep, that's pretty much how it goes. The whole movie seems to borrow many elements from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III" and maybe sometimes "Barnyard", but not in the good ways. I will admit, there are one or two chase scenes that are nice, especially this one at the beginning involving a clever resolution on retracing steps, plus this thing with the left eye of the one who should be called the main protagonist is different. I just in the end had no idea what the filmmakers wanted me to get out of it. I especially didn't like how the human characters are shown as occasionally starving, it briefly made me want them to nag a few of the rednecks. There is a joke involving pizza, but I think the four-green you-know-who's sparkled this dynamic long ago already. The dogs are also well animated and reminded me a little bit of Barnyard's coyotes, but here I think they're just a little too scary for most kids which this movie will be aimed at; ones that haven't seen many movies with a good story. It's also supposed to cause a hint of sadness but I hadn't been given enough time with the turkey community and I barely knew this one person who leads a big roll of bread in the turnabout. That's another thing. Free Birds also has the problem The Book of Life had; I finished the movie feeling like I'd just went out for lunch at somewhere with fast food; it was over before I even knew it. Not to mention this predictable psyche in the ending which anyone who has seen Back to the Future, as everyone has by now (which will be my next movie review) will predict coming as easy as predicting the lineup when Mockingjay Part 2 comes out.

Basically, Free Birds was...too basic a film with a bad idea in general about meat-eating with a few fast moments that can't make up for it's bar style of humour.

Man, something is wrong with my computer. I would've posted this a day earlier, but right when I put in the picture, my text just went Bye Bye. Argh! And I just retyped the whole thing for you guys. I bet if I quickly copied my text before it happened instead of sitting around, like I shouldn't do if there was a disaster like this, it would've been fixable and everything could've been all right.

In the summer of 2014, my family and I were in San Francisco for a week because we were allowed to come with my dad on a business trip, and by where we were situated, some people were filming Terminator Genesis in the basement of our hotel, a movie that's still on my list of things to watch. I also heard from somewhere that The Rock was filming a movie there at the time, and I bet you it was this one.

Now, Dwayne Johnson plays a rescue lieutenant named Ray, but you need not know his character name. All the names of the people he plays in his films, Jack Bruno, Derek Thompson, Ray, whoever he was in G.I. Joe Retaliation and the Fast and the Furious Films, it's all the same to me. He stars alongside Carla Gugino who starred with him in Race to Witch Mountain which I'll review sometime. Basically, they have good chemistry, though Gugino's character Emma has just mailed divorce papers since she's now interested in a guy named Daniel played by Ioan Gruffudd. Oh, and she's in charge of Annabeth Chase. Or was supposed to be as Lawrence, played by Paul Giamatti, explains to a college course and to us the biggest real life earthquakes in the world that happened only 4 years apart and put both Japan and the U.S. to its knees, because of shifting tectonic plates, aftershock and the science that explains how the entire world can end up a giant rickety wave. And it will once again come to it's knees and Johnson has to find his family and get them out of the mess. I mean, when you are shooting a scene at the Hoover Dam, what do you expect is supposed to happen?

The movie opens up with a little, er, no, gigantic disaster of it's own, involving an innocent girl and didn't actually have the doesn't have the don't-distract-yourself-while-driving cliche even though I smelled it. And she SO couldn't have gotten luck like that. Couldn't the team have just used a ladder? That's what I was thinking about during the opening shot, but fortuantely, even though it doesn't fully sanitize itself, it doesn't stay on the completely flawed ground. One flaw I felt the movie had off the bat was that the family they have invented over these stars is not very interesting nor has original conflict, and this family works better when they are apart and trying to survive, mostly because these amazing special effects are there to throw them around. This probably would've been the most expensive movie ever made if a director like Michael J. Bassett who liked to use as little CGI as possible was in the chair. Trust me, the special effects bring real tension and look like an actual disaster with every building, up to the point where it looks like it was dangerous to film. It's gorgeous to see all the ways Johnson and whoever is with him can survive one one-more-second-and-we'd-be-flat-as-pancake stunt after another, and there's also a twinge of fortunate humour to lighten the mood when it seems that all hope is lost. One little flaw in the action though, is every disaster is exactly the same; after nothing happening for a while, there's a shake, things look bad, and things end up VERY bad. However, the movie makes up for that as it seems to try it's best to replicate The Day After Tomorrow with it's loud suspense and almost entirely succeeds.

So basically, there was not a single moment where I was bored with San Andreas, and I probably would've loved it if I didn't feel like I'd already seen it.