Unbroken

This image shows my favorite part in the whole movie

Before I say anything else, let’s make an agreement, shall we?

Let’s pretend that I have been writing on my blog all along. I will not mention how I haven’t written a single word here for the past ten months and you will pretend that I have never stopped writing :)

No, I can’t do that lol

I’ve missed writing here so much!! And I have missed hearing from you so much that I’m nervous I might end up messing up this review and writing it all wrong.

But I’m going to try ok?

As some of you might have seen on my Facebook page, last week I went to the movies – to that nice movie theatre where the seats recline and the popcorn is free (yay!) – and I watched a movie that wasn’t talked about much, but that is so worth watching! It’s a movie called Unbroken.

It’s about this young man, Louis Zamperini, who when he was a child, never believed he could amount to anything, until his older brother encouraged him to join the track team in his school. He gave it a go and found out that he was extremely good at it. He started winning all the competitions and although he was still very young, he got to compete in the Olympics.

A few years later, he was sent to fight in the war in Japan. As he was leaving in the train, his brother told him something – now pay attention because it’s here you realize this is going to be a good movie. He tells him:

“A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.”

And then his train leaves to go to war.

In one of his missions in Japan, his airplane crashes into the sea - killing 8 of his friends. Only he and 2 others survived. One of them, as soon as he entered the little boat that would be their house for the next 47 days, started saying, “We are going to die! We are all going to die!!” Guess what happened to him?

Louis and his friend survived 47 days at sea, eating raw fish and drinking rain water, but one day there was a very big storm and seeing he was probably going to die, he makes a prayer asking God to get him out of there and that if He did, he would serve Him forever and do whatever He wanted. So by now you know this movie is going to be REALLY good.

The storm passed and still they were stranded, no sign of rescue from anywhere. When all hope seemed lost, a ship comes and rescues them. But guess what? It’s the Japanese, the enemies they were fighting in the war!

He and his friend are taken to a prison camp and what happens after that is something beyond what I can describe here.  You have to watch it. All I can say is that I will never forget the messages given in this movie.

If I were to summarize all the messages in the movie in one word, it would be: Endurance.

The situations Louis went through and his reaction to them are just… You can see there was a Higher Power with him. You can tell God was with him in every one of them, otherwise he wouldn’t, couldn’t have survived.

This movie teaches us the importance of not letting other people’s actions change us; or the hard knocks life gives us, break us. It shows the power of not paying with the same coin but to hold fast to what you know is right and to remain strong in that faith. Yes, this movie is about faith and about believing until the very end.

You see, if this was just a regular movie, written by a talented writer, it would have already been good, but the great thing about it is, it’s a true story. A story about endurance, resilience, forgiveness, faith. It’s about an answered prayer made in a moment of desperation. It’s about how God never fails those who trust and believe in Him, even if for a long time it seems like He has.

I can’t say anymore, except that I love this movie and if you had no plans to watch Unbroken, you really, really should.

I will however leave you with this amazing quote from the movie, just to give you a little taste. When Zamperini said he wanted to kill his enemies, that he didn’t care if he died in the process; he just wanted to kill them, a fellow war prisoner said to him:

“This is not how we beat them. We beat them by making it to the end of the war alive. That’s our revenge.”

I mean… just awesome!

Freedom Writers

I wonder why is it that whenever I want to write about a movie I like a lot, I seem to get tongue-tied.

It is as if no matter how much I write or how well I explain, I will never be able to fully express to my readers why I like it so much, especially when the movie is based on a true story.

That’s exactly what happened to this week’s review. I’ve been meaning to talk about it for a long time, but I always find an “excuse” to postpone it and leave it for another day… until now.

I have watched this movie at least four times and it never seizes to amaze me.

It’s the story about a woman named Erin Gruwell (played by Hilary Swank), who after having followed a different career, decides it’s time to fulfill her lifelong dream of being a teacher. She applies in one of the schools and is thrilled when she gets the job.

She prepares herself in every way for her first day. She chooses her best outfit, arrives early and stands there eagerly and nervously waits for her students. You can see her happiness in her face. Her dream will finally come true. She will be able to teach what she knows to a whole class of young people and hopefully make them see the world a little bit the way she does.

She is very inexperienced but oh how she hopes she will be able to inspire them somehow!

And then one by one, the students start to come in room 203, where they will have their English classes with the new teacher and as they do so, she smiles at them… she wants to make them feel welcomed.

But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw in their faces. Nobody returned her warm welcome; instead she saw coldness, anger, disinterest, hatred, racism, resistance, prejudice, conflict, anguish, fear… and all that on the first day! Each student sat with their own “group”, turned their desks away from the front of the class and just did their own thing. All they wanted was for the bell to ring so they could go to the next class and then go home. Nobody cared about her, nobody cared that she was there.

Needless to say her first day as a teacher was a complete disaster and the following days were no different. She would try and teach them but nobody paid any attention. She then started to learn that most the students in her classroom and in the whole school were gang members; they carried knives and guns into school, they fought among themselves, they fought outside school, many were poor, some were homeless and none, not one, believed they could be somebody in life.

They didn’t respect her and didn’t care about anything she had to say or teach.

So, maybe wanting to be a teacher wasn’t a good idea after all.

Maybe some dreams never come true… maybe making a difference somewhere or in somebody’s life is not for everyone. And by looking at everything that is going wrong in your life, you realize that maybe… maybe you are just not good enough.

Who has never faced a difficult situation or a great disappointment that left you felling exactly that way?

I know I have.

And so after reading this you might ask, “How can this movie be any good? If this is the story, why should I watch it?”

Well, here’s when the story starts getting really interesting…

I haven’t told you the best part yet.

Come back here next Friday and I will ;)

Despicable Me 2

No, this is not a repetition of last week’s review. This is about "Despicable Me 2" :)

Let me start by saying that I LOVED this second movie even more than the first!

It’s so so so funny!!! I think one post wouldn’t be enough to describe how entertaining watching this movie was.

To tell you the truth, I cried from laughing so much. Twice!

There are two scenes in the movie that are just too much. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. I felt like a little kid!

So before I say anything else, let me say this:

GO WATCH THIS MOVIE! Take your kids, invite your husband, go with your friends. You will not regret it!

But you should really watch the first one first. It will make more sense and you will see how the second really complements the first ;)

And the message is just on point. It really spoke to me…

The first movie showed the importance of having and giving value to a family.

This second one reinforces that idea by making a stronger point that some people seem not to give a lot of importance to. 

If you know a little about the story, you know that Gru (the main character) adopts three little girls, Margo, Edith and Agnes, thus changing their world forever. Now they have something they could only dream about before: A real home and a father to come home to. Someone who loves them, watches over them and will be with them always.

So now they are happy, right? They have everything they ever wanted. They have a family.

Really?

Let me show you a conversation in the movie that made me think twice about that.

Agnes, the youngest of the little girls (and the most adorable one) is having a hard time rehearsing for a school play. The play is about mothers (for mothers day I think) and she just can’t say the lines naturally enough. Whenever she tries, she sounds like a robot. So here comes her father to her rescue. The conversation goes more or less like this:

-        - I can’t do it!

-        - You just have to keep trying Agnes.

-        - I don’t think I should be part of the play anyway.

-        - Why not?

-        - I don’t even have a mother…

-        - Well… then why don’t you just use your imagination?

-        - You mean I should pretend that I have a mom?

-        - Exactly! Can you do that?

-        - Yes! I do that all the time…

And here’s my question to all the readers of this blog.

Can you see what I see in that conversation?

Does it speak to you as strongly as it does to me?

What does it tell you?

Iron Man 3

I had never heard of Iron Man before the first movie came out. I actually thought it had to do with the “The Man in the Iron Mask”… I know, I know… complete different movie. But anyway… Back then I wasn’t as interested in super-hero movies (that has changed) because they were usually all the same thing. There was a villain, there were the innocent people and there was some kind of super-hero that would save them all. But that has also changed.

The basics continue the same, but now it’s so much nicer than before. They have better especial effects, they plot is usually very good, they have the action, the romance, that some of us just can’t go without, and in the case of Iron Man, they have Robert Downey Jr. who, in my opinion, brings the entertainment to a whole new level in any movie he is in.

I enjoyed the first two Iron Man movies, but this third one is just very nice!

And the best thing is that it is so funny. My goodness! I laughed the whole time! It was very, very entertaining indeed.

So, if you also like super-hero movies, you definitely have to watch this one.  And watch out for the Mandarin, he is really, really dangerous. The worst villain in all the movies I’ve watched O_o  

However if you haven’t watched any of the Iron Man movies, you should watch them in the right order so you can really understand the story. Here’s the correct order:

Iron Man

Iron Man 2

The Avengers – if you don’t watch this one, you don’t understand why he mentions New York so much in the movie. He keeps saying “Since New York things are not the same”, “I can’t sleep since New York”… but this is just a tip ;)

Iron Man 3

I wanted to discuss something about the last fight between Iron Man and his enemy, but I can’t because if I do, I will spoil it for you. All I can say is that it has something very much in common with the last fight between Batman and his enemy on the last Batman movie.

If you’ve watched both movies, my question is, do you know what I’m talking about?

Let’ s see who paid attention… hehehe.

Zero Dark Thirty

When I saw the trailer for this movie, I was very curious to watch it. Did you know that depending on what they show in the trailers, you can tell whether it's going to be a nice movie or not?

For example, if they show a lot of the story, a lot of scenes; if they give a lot of the plot away, then it’s probably not a good movie and they are trying to convince you to go watch it by showing you the whole story in the trailer.

When a movie is good, they usually show only bits and pieces of it. They give you just an idea, a small hint of what the movie is about and that’s exactly what makes people want to see it… they want to find out what happens next.

But that can be quite tricky sometimes. It could also be that they don’t show you a lot because the movie is just plain garbage and therefore they don’t want you to find out before time hahaha…

So when I saw the trailer for “Zero Dark Thirty”, I was a bit divided. They don’t show a lot of things, just that a woman was probably responsible for the capture of Bin Laden.

Ok, so let me tell you a bit about the story of the movie.

It’s about a team of CIA agents who were assigned to track down the hiding location of Osama Bin Laden after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. In the beginning all the agents were working tirelessly to hunt him down, but after using numerous strategies and investigating all the leads they had, they started accepting the fact that they might never find him.

Until a female agent was hired to work on the investigation and boy, did she make a difference!

There are lots of nice things about this movie, but if I tell you then I will be saying too much. So instead let me say what I liked the most about this movie.

It shows how strong, determined, efficient and influential a woman can be when she decides to.

It clearly illustrates how sometimes in life people will not believe in you or your ideas, sometimes no one will, but that shouldn’t be a reason for you to give up.

And here’s my favorite: The power of focusing and investing on something you believe in.

There’s a scene in particular that I really liked and that got stuck in my head since I watched it.

One of the heads of the CIA came to speak to the agent I was telling you about, and trying to make small talk, he asked:

“What else have you done for us in these 12 years you’ve been working for the CIA?”

Her reply was:

“Nothing. I’ve done nothing else.”

This sums it all up for me. This is the scene that spoke louder that all the others, but in order for you to understand it, you will have to watch it ;)

Moneyball

I didn’t really want to watch this movie when it came out… it looked very boring. Some people recommended it to me, but still, I don’t know why, I just didn’t think it was a good movie. Boy, was I wrong!

This movie has no action, it doesn’t have a lot of emotion, there are no fights, no drama, but I liked it a lot!!!

It’s a story based on true events about the baseball manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt). I don’t understand anything about Baseball, but the movie shows that if compared with other teams, the one managed by Billy was quite poor and therefore had no conditions to buy the best players and as a consequence, they could never win a game, let alone compete in championships.

So, Billy’s goal was to find a way to use the limited financial resources he had to put together a team that was good enough to start wining some matches and take the whole team out of the awful situation they found themselves in.

It’s a lot to explain here, that’s why you should watch the movie and pay very close attention :), but to summarize it, he chooses to use a strategy created by a man everyone deemed to be crazy. Instead of looking at a player’s appearance and at everything the other teams looked at when buying a player, he starts looking at the statistics… how much a specific player could score points.

He faces a lot of difficulties because no one believes in his new strategy, the coach does not make things any easier for him, no one believes in him, only another guy whom he hired to work for him, who by the way started the whole idea.

Am I saying too much?

Let me try and summarize more lol. So, he starts doing some crazy things… he fires the “best” players he had, forces the coach to change the positions of the players on the team, he changes the way he treats the players; he does everything he knew and could, for he really believed in it.

And what happens??? It works!

This movie teaches us that if you want to make the difference, you will have to be different and not go by what everybody is already doing. It shows the story of a man who really knew how to make lemonade out of the bitter lemons in his life!

And that to reach success or to solve a problem is just a matter of faith, proper planning and mathematics.

Awesome movie! I absolutely recommend it! 

Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows

 I’m going to keep this review really short.

You know when the first movie is very good and the second is a complete disappointment?

Well, that is NOT the case with Sherlock Holmes 2. In fact I think I even liked this last one better.

It’s very entertaining, very intriguing and most importantly very funny! I laughed throughout the movie.

Robert Downey Jr. plays his role exceptionally well, including speaking with a British accent.

They couldn’t have done better.  

Excellent, excellent movie!

You must see it!!!

Good Oldies Tuesday - Shutter Island

This is an R rated movie

Do you know those movies that you have to pay a lot of attention in order to understand it? Well, such is the case with Shutter Island. And even if you do, you will still be a little bit confused for the most part lol. And this is precisely what makes this movie so good, because you end up having to solve the mystery :)

This movie is about two U.S. Marshals played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo. They are assigned to solve a case where a woman went missing on a psychiatric hospital/prison.

This hospital only treats people who have committed horrible crimes and have been declared insane. So what happens is that this female patience simply disappeared from the hospital facilities, even though it was a maximum-security hospital on an Island where people can’t really escape from, unless they had a boat or could swim for hours in freezing waters.

When the two Marshals get there, everybody looks suspicious and no one knows or can explain how the woman could have escaped. Meanwhile all this crazy things start happening there and you don’t really know whom to believe in anymore.

This is an excellent movie, the kind that makes you think and think but still doesn't help you make sense of what’s going on. And the best part is, you may be very, very smart, but I don’t believe you can guess what’s going to happen in the end.

I remember that towards the end, when the mystery is finally solved, I went ‘NOO, I can’t believe it!!!!’ So, expect lots of surprises throughout this movie. All I can say is that it’s really, really nice, not predictable at all and a little bit scary.

If you like the kind of movies that make you think a lot and keep you on the edge of your seat, you will really like Shutter Island… trust me ;)

Good oldies Tuesday - Coach Carter

I don’t really like watching sports on TV but strangely enough I love watching movies about it. I don’t really understand American Football, but really enjoy watching movies where they show it, the same with baseball and basketball… go figure.

This is a movie about a High School Basketball Team that after losing most of their games in their past season, decides to hire former basketball player Ken Carter (played by Samuel L Jackson).

Carter has very different tactics to train his players and one of them is by teaching them respect. Respect towards others and themselves. After months of practice and really hard training, they learn how to play well and sure enough their team start winning all the games.

Although this is a very interesting part in the movie, it’s not what I liked the most. What I liked the most in this movie is that the coach didn’t want to only have a successful basketball season; he wanted to teach his players that there’s more to life than the here and now.

Most of the students of his school either dropped out, went to jail or ended up dead and he wanted to change that, at least for the players on this team. He does everything in his power to show them that if they chose to, they could have a better future, they could be someone in life; they could go to College and do things they never believed they could.

And the whole school really admired him for that… well, not really.

You see, whenever you are trying to make a difference, you will face opposition. You are misunderstood, misinterpreted, judged and even criticized and that’s exactly what happens with Ken Carter. He was trying to help but people didn’t understand it that way.

Coach Carter is based on a true story and that’s probably why I like it so much. 

So, if you haven’t watched this movie yet, you should. It’s really inspiring and definitely one of my favorites.

Good oldies Tuesday - The Mirror has Two Faces

I watched this movie quite a while ago. I had always heard of how good it was and so one day I prepared a snack, bought ice cream, invited a couple of friends over to watch it in my house and we had a very pleasant afternoon together.

This is what I remember every time I think about this movie :)

The movie tells the story of a woman and a man. Both are professors in a University. She is very smart and very good at what she does. He is very smart but his students don’t really like his classes.

When he saw how everybody seemed to like her teaching methods, he asks for her help and from then on they develop a friendship.

She is the type of person everyone wants to be around and although she has family and friends, she never really found someone to love.

He is the more loner type of man but has had many experiences with women who left him heartbroken.

She believes in true love, the kind that makes your heart race and takes your breath away.

He believes true love doesn’t exist and that you don't need love to get married. All you need are two people who are friends and enjoy each other's company.

So after a few months he makes a proposition to her. What if they got married so they could be each other’s companions? They would get married, live in the same house but sleep in separate beds. They would enjoy each other’s friendship but would not have any kind of physical contact.

She accepts it and that's when the story really starts… Can’t really say any more, otherwise I’ll give the whole plot away.

I recommend it 100% and would watch over and over again if my dear, dear friend Aline Munhoz hadn’t borrowed it  a few years ago and kept the DVD for herself (you still owe me for that by the way) lol.

This movie is very funny, very entertaining and truly a nice movie!

A romantic comedy like you don’t see nowadays anymore. 

The Help - A follower's review

This is the beautiful Bruna. She's been a faithful follower of my blog since I started writing. She recommended this movie to me last year when I hadn't yet watched it and so I asked her to write a review for me and here's what she has to say about it:

During the 1960’s women got married, and with a husband came children, and with children came a maid…

Black women in those days were expected to clean up after their employer’s kids and take care of them from the time they were babies, until they were grown, got married and got a maid of their own. The mothers didn’t really take care for their kids; instead they would hand that responsibility to the maid, together with all the cooking and cleaning.

However, our main character Skeeter (Emma Stone) is a single woman in her 20’s and was looked upon by her mother and friends as someone not fit for the society at the time. She was not married and didn’t have any children because instead of going for the norm, she opted for studying and getting a degree in writing.

The story turns even more interesting when Skeeter comes back home from college, and finds out that the maid who raised her and cared for her better than her own mother, was no longer working at her house. After that she started noticing more how other African-American women were treated and perceiving how their life as a maid was really like, she decided to start a book based on the maids point of view.

This movie is very inspiring. It shows us not to be scared to stand up for what’s right. 

In the movie we see how the maids were scared to tell their stories, afraid of the punishment they might get from their employers. But through her attitude Skeeter shows them that no one should be afraid to be different and make the difference, regardless of their color, culture or background.

Emma Stone did a wonderful job portraying a girl who goes against the flow and does not accept the rules and concepts of a society where the color of one's skin dictated how they were treated, what they had and how they lived.

I totally recommend this movie; it has something to give and the story is truly captivating.

Bruna Araújo

I agree 100 % with you Bruna! This movie is very good, funny and entertaining! I had a lot of fun watching it.

I just didn’t agree with what the boyfriend did. He was an idiot...

Real Steel

There are currently no good movies to watch in the theaters and so without much option, my husband took me to watch Real Steel.

I wasn’t too excited about it because, let’s be honest, robots boxing? Not interesting…

But I really liked it!

It’s the story of this man who after making all sorts of wrong decisions in life sees himself for what he really is, a failure. When things couldn’t go any wrong for him, he finds out his girlfriend of 10 years ago died and left their son, who he never cared about, without both parents. He has no money, no bright future to look forward to, no chance to make things right… But can his son’s presence change the way he sees life?

You leave the theatre thinking of how important the presence of a father is in his child’s life and how devastating it can be when he is not present.

I totally recommend it for the whole family; this is the kind of movie you can actually take your kids to watch! And as the story between father and son unfolds, you even start enjoying the robots fighting… trust me lol

The Lincoln Lawyer

Whenever I really like a movie, it’s usually because of the following reasons:

1. It has an intelligent plot
2. The acting is good
3. It’s intriguing
4. The story develops nicely
5. It catches your attention from the beginning
6. It makes you THINK in order for you to understand it
7. It teaches you something
8. It’s a true story
9. It has a message, you take something from it
10. It’s not predictable
11. You find yourself talking about it afterwards

There might be other reasons but I just can’t remember any others now. If you have any different reasons, please feel free to leave your comments below.

The Lincoln Lawyer has ten of the eleven attributes written above, it would have all of them except that it’s not a true story. But this is a very, very interesting movie! It tells a story of a rich guy, Louis Roulet (played by Ryan Phillippe), who is accused of trying to rape and murder a woman. This Louis guy is very rich and can afford any lawyer in the country to defend his case, but he chooses the not so well known attorney Mickey Haller(played by Matthew McConaughey). Mickey is the kind of lawyer who will defend anybody; regardless of the crime they are accused of and is known to succeed in most cases he represents.

Louis swears he’s innocent and so he hires Mikey Haller to prove it…  or at least that’s what you think in the beginning of the movie, but let’s just say that that was not his only reason for hiring him. But let me tell you already, you will have TO PAY ATTENTION in order to understand this part, but it’s totally worth the effort.

The Lincoln Lawyer has a nice cast, very intelligent plot, it’s intriguing and it’s definitely not predictable. It’s R rated though… I have no idea why. I’ve seen other movies that show horrible things and are still PG 13… But I thought I should let you know anyway.

So, let’s agree on something, shall we? Go watch The Lincoln Lawyer and then come back here so we can share our thoughts (I really like to do that… no wonder I created a blog about movies).

Go, watch, come back and comment.

We’ll talk soon!

Inception

You can't really say that you are into movies if you haven't watched or doesn't want to watch Inception!

When I went to the theaters last July, I was expecting a very intelligent plot, the kind that forces you to think and figure out what's going on in the movie, but Inception does more than that to your brain...

Here is the thing, if you look away from the screen for five seconds, there's a great chance that you will miss some important information about the story and might not understand anything. So my advice is keep your eyes glued to the screen, your ears attentive and your brain sharp.

This movie has everything, good cast, brilliant plot, lots of action, intriguing scenes and to top it all off, it has a message.

But I'd like to hear from you! If you have already watched it, please share your views in the comments below. What did you understand? What did you think of the movie? Did you like it? What message did you get from it?

If you haven't watched it yet, now is your chance, Inception is out on DVD and is sure to blow your mind away!

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I've been wanting to watch this movie since it came out but only last week I finally had the opportunity.

I loved this movie, it's surely on the top 5 movies I watched in 2010! I couldn't stop thinking about it afterwards. I could say that The Chronicles of Narnia are like hidden treasures, if you don't really pay attention, you end up missing the great value it has. I had also watched the first two Narnia movies, but this was the one that inspired me the most.

I could write a long post here about the many lessons I learned with this movie, but if I do I will probably end up telling the whole story, so I'll just say what caught my attention the most. Here we go:

* You were brought to this world for a purpose, it was no coincidence nor an accident. The places you go to and the things you go through can help you fulfill that purpose.

* All of us have a mission in life, but most don't accomplish it, they get distracted by other things and fall into the many temptations the world offers.

* You belong somewhere better than where you are now, but whether you will get there or not, depends on the choices you make.

* There are times in life when you have to be ready to make tough decisions, just like Edmund, Lucy and Caspian had to.

So you see, this is the kind of movie you should want to see, because it doesn't only entertain you, it teaches you something you can use in your life. If you haven't seen it yet, postpone all the other movies you were planning to see. Go watch Narnia and get ready to be inspired!