My Review: Gimme Shelter (5/10)

"I'm just asking you for a little time."

Vanessa Hudgens' latest film, Gimme Shelter, is based on an inspiring true story in which she plays a pregnant teenager named Apple, who has been abused and felt unwanted all her life. I'm sure the true story is an inspiring one, and I admire Apple's strength to continue fighting despite all the hardships she went through. I also admire those people who took her in and helped her, but just because the real life story is inspiring that doesn't mean I enjoyed this film. The story has several flaws and feels very manipulative. It never felt authentic and I really had a hard time believing Hudgens' performance. An inspirational film should try to be less manipulative and feel more authentic and real, but the characters in this film never felt real. The dialogue in the film wa weak and everything felt rushed in such a way that there was no time to delve into what led to some of the characters changes in behaviors. It seemed like director, Ron Krauss, was rushing the story to its feel good ending without really stopping to analyze the pain and hardships Apple went through. These films are usually hard to make and very few are able to succeed in feeling authentic and this wasn't the exception. I wasn't sold by Hudgens' performance and that also hurt my appreciation for the film. It's a film with good intentions and an inspiring tale, but they failed to transmit it in a compelling way.

Brendan Fraser plays Apple's father who she has never met because he was only 19 years old when he left her mother, June (played by Rosario Dawson) pregnant. June hasn't been a good mother figure for Apple as she spends her time getting high so Apple has been in and out of shelters and foster care all her life. She has been abused several times, so she finally decides to leave her violent mother and find her dad. She finds him and discovers he's a big shot in Wall Street. Stephanie Szostak plays his wife and together they have two young children. They take Apple in, but have trouble coping with the fact she is pregnant. When they try to convince her to have an abortion, Apple is back in the streets again. After an accident, a nice Priest (James Earl Jones) visits her and convinces her to go to a shelter run by a nun named Kathy (Ann Dowd) who specializes in treating pregnant teenagers. This is where Apple finds a loving family for the first time in her life. The performances in this film were all hurt by the weak script. I didn't understand Fraser's character very well either and the story failed to transmit why he and his wife had a change of heart. Ann Dowd plays a very different character here than the one she does in The Leftovers so it was nice to see her in a much friendlier role. Rosario Dawson was convincing as a junky and abusive mother. There is not much more I can say about this film, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either.

My Review: Spring Breakers (5/10)

"I got Scarface. On repeat. SCARFACE ON REPEAT. Constant, y'all! I got Escape! Calvin Klein Escape! Mix it up with Calvin Klein Be. Smell nice? I SMELL NICE!"

Spring Breakers begins with its colorful neon lights, its catchy score, and its hallucinatory hedonistic atmosphere in such a way that it draws the audience in from the very beginning. There is no character development whatsoever or an interesting plot, but there was something magnetic about this social commentary on today's youth and search for pleasure. Spring Breakers was written and directed by Harmony Korine, and at first I was really drawn in to this film that had a very unique mood and energy to it. The music and the slow motion allowed for Korine's social commentary to get across pretty easily. But as the film progressed and continued to be repetitive (there are literally several scenes and voiceover narrations that play over and over again) I felt like I was getting more and more irritated with it. By the end it got so repetitive that I felt like I was watching the same music video on repeat several times. Even at the short length of 90 minutes this movie felt too stretched out. This could have worked as a short film, but instead Korine decided to stretch it out in order to get his point across. He focused so much on the hedonistic and immoral side of today's youth that I just felt overwhelmed by this movie. What began as a provocative film slowly began to lose itself into a fluorescent nightmarish dream. I understand that the one dimensional characters were actually intended, but the plot could've used a little more work and less repetition. I preferred Coppola's The Bling Ring, which I felt worked as a better social commentary about today's celebrity and fashion obsessed youth. In Spring Breakers, Korine focuses on this generation's hedonistic search for pleasures such as sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence. Finding one's identity seems to be related with having fun and searching for as much pleasure as one can find. Korine got his point across, but he seemed to be repeating himself too much. At the end it just felt too preachy.

Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson), and Cotty (Rachel Korine) have been best friends since they were in grade school. Now they are all studying at the same University and they are looking forward to spending time together during Spring break. They are planning on going to Florida to have a good time and discover themselves. They talk about this event as if it were going to be some sort of spiritual experience and self discovery, but in reality all they are looking for is to party. The only problem is that they never come up with the money to travel. Candy, Brit, and Cotty all have similar character traits, they are very outgoing party girls. Faith on the other hand is a little more reserved as she has a christian background and likes to go to church and prayer groups. The three troublemakers decide to rob a local restaurant in order to come up with the money for their trip. With only a couple of water guns they succeed and are all set for their adventure. Faith joins the girls and together they begin having the time of their life in Florida. But the fun and games don't last too long after they experience some trouble with the law and end up behind bars. A stranger, a gangster rapper named Alien (James Franco), bails them out and invites them to hang out with him. He has some interesting plans for these special girls. 

The film has some very interesting performances here, but the stand out without a doubt has to be James Franco. He plays a very different character from the ones we are used to seeing from him. Despite how much I enjoyed his performance, I still think you could enjoy it from the trailers alone because there isn't much more in the film. Some scenes actually felt like if it were the trailer repeating itself over and over. Selena Gomez also gives a very different performance from her Disney roles as we see her smoking and drinking, although she is a little more reserved then the rest of the girls. The other three girls are very hard to distinguish in this film. They all play similar roles and it was as if director Korine was purposely mushing the three characters into one. They were all hungry for adventure and all they were looking for was to experience as much pleasure as they could having no morals at all. When James Franco comes into play at first we see him as this dangerous figure for the girls, but soon we realize that he might be in for a surprise. I had no problem with the performances here, I enjoyed them. My main issue had to do with the fact that the movie had no plot and it continued to repeat itself over and over. The magnetic appeal it had at the beginning slowly went wearing off on me until I could care less for what was happening. 

My Review: Sucker Punch (3/10)

¨ Who teaches us what`s real, and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live, and what we'll die to defend? Who trains us, and who holds the key to set us free? It's you. You have all the weapons you need. Now fight! ¨

Zach Snyder has adapted various graphic novels into films in the past and I enjoyed his movies very much; I was a big fan of 300 and Watchmen and I thought those movies were terrific. In Sucker Punch Snyder tries something new; he wrote the story instead of adapting another novel, but still tried to give it the same feel and look his other films had. The look of the film is also stylish, full of CGI, and the graphics make us think we are playing a videogame instead of watching a movie. This style worked for me in the past because Snyder`s stories were interesting. In Sucker Punch I just couldn’t get into the story, I didn’t like any of the characters, and thought the plot was just ridiculous. The approach was also very hypocritical because the movie tries to preach about female empowerment and girl power, but the entire time the movie is targeted towards a male audience; we have girls fighting in short skirts, and the male characters have little screen time. I can see how this movie might be enjoyed by a young male audience, but it just didn’t work for me. Comparing it to 300 and Watchmen this movie doesn’t even come close, but even before watching Sucker Punch I had lowered my expectations with the trailer. I understood the metaphor and ideas the story was trying to get across, but it was just meaningless with these characters since they weren’t even developed at all. There was not one interesting character, they were all one dimensional. The screenplay was adapted by Snyder himself and Steve Shibuya, but the entire movie relies only on the CGI.

Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is sent to a mental asylum by her stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) after her mother dies and she accidently kills her little sister while trying to protect her from her abusive stepfather. She was aiming at him, but she missed and her little sister suffered the consequences. Baby Doll is institutionalized and in five days the doctor will perform a lobotomy on her so that she forgets everything her stepfather has done. Blue (Oscar Isaac) receives an important amount of money from the stepdad to make sure the doctor signs the ok for the lobotomy. Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino who also starred in Watchmen with Snyder) never signs the petition because Blue falsifies the signature and so everything is set for within five days when the Doctor (Jon Hamm) comes back. Baby Doll isn’t alone in the asylum. She befriends four other female companions: Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and her sister, Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung who was recently seen in The Hangover 2). Baby Doll decides to create an alternate reality in order to avoid her pain and guilt. In this fantastical world she becomes a sort of warrior and with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) she comes up with a plan to escape the mental facility. Along with her four friends they go on a mission to retrieve the five elements they will need in order to escape. In this fantastical world they have to face ninja robots, Nazi zombie`s and different kind of monsters. The lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur as they try to collect the items and break free from the asylum.

The characters are so poorly developed that I really didn’t care whether or not they escaped the institution. Even the fantasy clips in which all the main action and cool effects take place felt more like music videos due to the loud music and videogame style graphic. The movie is empty; simply eye candy and I couldn’t see anything philosophical or deep about it. I really was disappointed with this movie, but I know Zach Snyder will bounce back. He should stick to graphic novels. As for the performances there was nothing remarkable about any of them, but the cast isn’t to blame because the entire movie relied only on the special effects and not on trying to develop the characters. The effects are interesting at some times, but we`ve seen them all before and there is nothing new to Sucker Punch. This will definitely be on my list of worst films of the year; it was a huge disappointment for me. Everyone has the right to make a bad film; even Pixar came short with Cars 2 so I don’t think Zach Snyder should be worrying about how things turned out in Sucker Punch. Some young males might want to check this movie out, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

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