"Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life"

Year: 2010

Director: Will Gluck

Writer: Bert V. Royal

A small lie about how Olive spent her weekend spreads, and soon the whole school knows about it. When Olive promises to help a friend, pretending to have sex with him, makes everybody call her a slut.

Easy A is one of the very, very few teen movies, that actually make me laugh. And of course, Easy A isn't just fun and games: even though it's a comedy, it has some pretty heavy stuff. The movie seems like a really funny, easy movie, but it gets almost unbearably heavy towards the end, it's frustrating.

I love the story and the writing in this movie. The story is something that could at least partly tempt the audience of teenagers, and even some older and / or more mature viewers. It's a simple story, but still it has good themes, and of course the message it sends is very important. And the dialogue in this movie... It's seriously so amazing. It's funny and fresh, maybe not exactly realistic, but this movie has some of the best lines in these kind of movies. The dialogue is pure gold.

If there's anything that I wonder about this movie, it's how quickly the rumours spread. Mostly I'm surprised, because I don't think I've ever heard a rumour about someone's sexual life. I understood sort of , if someone was taking money for sex, that I could see spreading, but I don't know. Maybe it's just Finland, or maybe I'm just hanging around with the kind of people, who really don't care about other people's private lives. Could be the latter one.

And now to the message and purpose etcetera, the moral behind the story. I hate the people in this movie, I mean the other high school students, and some of the adults too. I mean, a girl "sleeps" with too people, and she is considered a slut, I mean really? Two people? Okay, to be honest, even if a girl would sleep with a hundred of guys, there still would be no reason to call her slut. I'm writing this, because some people still are struggling with this: someone's sex life is not anyone's business, and anyone should be able to have or not have sex as much as they want, if it's consensual, and you have consent. Another notable thing about this movie is how the guys who pretend to sleep with Olive aren't considered as "man-whores". There isn't even a proper "bad word" for a man who sleeps around. Even that tells you something about the double-standard. Anyway, the guys get praised and called studs while poor Olive gets called a skank and a slut and every bad word there is for a woman who sleeps with a lot of people.

This will bug me forever, and it should bug you too. If it doesn't, watch this movie. If you have seen the movie, and it still doesn't bug you, then I don't know, you really should think about why it doesn't bug you - you might have been influenced by institutionalised misogyny.

But I have to love Olive as a character. I mean she's a really hilarious girl, she's truly amazing. She's an example how someone can have to extremities in them. I mean Olive is strong, she's really strong, because she can handle what people are throwing at her. But that doesn't mean it doesn't get to her, or that she doesn't care. She is both strong and vulnerable, which shows how well written she is. I just had an argument about how it's hard for actors and actresses to play confident AND insecure characters, like as if they couldn't play both. Well, Emma Stone proves she can play both strong and vulnerable, confident and still insecure in the same role. I love both the character Olive and the actress Emma Stone very much. And Emma Stone can rock any kind of role, she's truly amazing actress.

Easy A is fun, but still holds an important message. It's both light-hearted and heavy, a perfect amount of both. I warmly recommend Easy A to anyone, because even if you'd only be into some really artsy movies, and couldn't even dare to look at Easy A, it's a good example of well-written comedy with a two-dimensional female leading character.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

8 / 10

"We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all."

Year: 1985

Director & Writer: John Hughes

Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.

- A. Nonymous

When I sat down to watch this movie, I mostly had one question in mind: is The Breakfast Club overrated?

Mostly what this movie has been praised for is the story and the writing. Though some of the praise would make you more think, what writing? It's said of a lot of scene how they were ad-libbed. I am quite suspicious of many of those claims, I mean if they all were true, basically it would mean there'd be only very little on the script, and that the actors and actresses were just thrown into the situation. I believe some of the scenes were ad-libbed, but definitely not everything. 

Of course the very idea of the story is good, well, now it has become a classic. I mean members of different cliques or stereotypes thrown in together... And of course I like the idea. It's the kind of idea you can get gems out of. And, well, John Hughes did get gems out of the idea. Some of the scenes were very touching and real in the way that it doesn't just feel like scripted bullshit mumbled by only decent actors. They felt real, and that's what's important.

But  apart from few deep and touching and funny scenes, The Breakfast Club was sometimes incredibly boring. It was kind of disappointing. I'm not a big fan of 80s movies, apart from Heathers, which is amazing, but I was sort of hoping for The Breakfast Club to be more amazing than it was. I probably was expecting too much, or maybe I'm too old to get it. Well, too old compared to the characters I mean.

So all in all, I wouldn't say The Breakfast Club is overrated. It's written well, and it's somehow so very truthful in the dialogue and everything. Of course there is clichés, but I can definitely understand why people like it, even though I wouldn't be so thrilled.

☆☆☆☆☆☆

6 / 10

Brains. Beauty. Bravery. These girls got it all... They just don't know it yet.

The House Bunny

Year: 2008

Director: Fred Wolf

Writers: Karen McCullah, Kirsten Smith

Starring: Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Colin Hanks

I actually don't know how to review this without talking about plot twists, so this review contains spoilers, 

When Playboy bunny Shelley is kicked out of the playboy mansion, she finds a new home and a new purpose: she becomes a house mother for a sorority full of socially awkward girls. The sorority is about to lose their house if they don't get enough pledges, and Shelley decides to help them.

When I first stumbled onto this movie, I don't know what I thought specifically. I just looked at the poster and thought, well, Anna Faris is great, I maybe should watch it.

Of course this movie had a bunch of clichés and stereotypes in it. Shelley was a stereotype of  a dumb blonde, who has a heart of gold anyway, and the girls in that sorority were such stereotypes of awkward nerds. Stereotypes are always boring. Everyone gets sick of stereotypes, because usually they make there characters one-dimensional. But the characters in this movie weren't actually that one-dimensional, but more about that later. 

This movie also featured that stupid trope of how the awkward girls got popular when they all of a sudden became hot, with help of Shelley. At that point of the movie, I was feeling pissed. But later on, and this is the part were I will probably spoil the movie, the girls luckily realised they don't have to be pretty or popular, they can be themselves. Though they did get some influences from Shelley, and they kept it. I mean they were starting to become mean and judgemental, but Lilly, who hadn't said pretty much anything through the whole movie, luckily talked some sense into them.

And all in all I think The House Bunny had a nice message for girls, I mean eventually it was that you should be yourself, though if you change, it also is okay. But you shouldn't try to change for a guy. That's what I got from the movie, of course someone else may disagree. And of course there's always a chance that The House Bunny is just a comedy and doesn't have a deeper message, but I don't think so. 

The House Bunny was actually quite funny, funnier than I thought. But they made that one date rape joke that kind of ruined some of it, I mean that was obnoxious.

The House Bunny was an alright movie, and apart from the message I interpreted, I don't think it's anything special. It might be worth watching, but there sure as hell are a lot better movies out there.

☆☆☆☆☆

5 / 10

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." "No, it doesn't. There'll be one guy left with one eye. How's the last blind guy gonna take out the eye of the last guy left?"

Actually I've now added "Crime" into my genres, I mean I didn't use that before, because I thought it's useless and "Crime" movies usually go to other genres. Well, they don't always do that. I don't know if I'll start editing old posts and adding crime to them, because that would take me a lot of time and effort. I'll just start using it from now on, though I won't be using it on every movie that goes into crime genre, because sometimes it's useless.

Year: 2012

Director & Writer: Martin McDonagh

I don't know why I used that poster with Colin Farrell on it. It just seemed like he was the main character, and well "the seemingly normal one", so.

A screenplay writer is struggling with a story about seven psychopaths. He gets inspiration from the situation he's dragged in, when his friend kidnaps a dangerous gangster's Shih Tzu.

The story was interesting and well-written. It's kind of a mixture of action and dialogue, like the characters tell stories a lot to the screenwriter Marty, who is writing the story. The screenplay mixes quite a lot with the "real life", like the Vietnamese guy. Also it was funny how much the screenplay in the movie affected the events in the movie. Like several things said about the screenplay did happen. Marty wanted less violence in his movie, well, there wasn't any violence for a while, etcetera.

The dialogue had some kind of Tarantino-like style in it. Especially the first scene, in dialogue and in every way, it was like it could be straight from Tarantino's movies. Also the dialogue was somehow realistic at certain times. Characters were talking about stuff and not the actual issues they had faced. Of course this didn't happen all the time, I mean they had to address the elephant in the room sometime. One thing that was really cool in a weird way, was how when someone didn't hear him, Billy (especially, someone else did this too) repeated the exact same line. Not making it simpler, not changing anything about it. I tried to find and example for this, but the script I found doesn't have that line in it, I don't know why.

The cinematography was, shall we say, decent. It wasn't special in any way, it was pretty ordinary. It had some nice effects though, especially when some stories were told. 

I always love it, when the name of the movie or book is featured in the movie or book. Like in A Clockwork Orange, the writer is writing a book called A Clockwork Orange. And in this case, Marty was working on Seven Psychopaths. Though in this movie the script wasn't there just for a short time, it was kind of what was happening in the movie, apart from the whole Shih Tzu incident. It's kind of amazing, you have to really think that this probably didn't really happen. Marty almost sharing name with the writer / director really affects this too.

I really liked the characters and actors. In the characters, there were clichés, but nicely put clichés. They were mixed with some originality. The actors were all cast well, and especially the chemistry between Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell truly worked. They were almost believable trio, like they didn't really belong together, but they still did as much as needed.

I really liked this movie. It might not be for everyone, but it was really, really well done and written. Really fun and interesting to watch.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

9 / 10

"Bite my shiny metal hat!"

Year: 2009

Director: Peter Avanzino

Writers: Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (Created by), Ken Keeler, David X. Cohen, 

While Leo Wong is planning to destroy a purple dwarf star for miniature golf course, Leela joins the eco-feminists and Bender falls in love with the wife of the Donbot of the Robot Mafia. Meanwhile Fry notices he can read others thoughts. After he loses at poker, he finds out it's (again) he's destiny to save endangered animals from powerful telepathic beings, the dark ones.

I've been watching Futurama with my sis for the past six months and I can't get enough of it. Soon we'll run out of episodes, but luckily we have these feature-length Futurama movies.

First I was kind of nervous that the movie would be ruined by the length. I mean usually when a TV show is developed into a movie, it seems like the makers had hard time coming up with a plot that's long enough. I was afraid that Into The Wild Green Yonder would be unnecessarily lengthened, but it wasn't. Actually it felt weirdly short, even though it was long compared to the 20 minute episodes, but still, it went pretty fast. 

What's most importantly, the movie was just as funny as the TV show. And Futurama offers all kinds of humour, I mean there's parodic and saritic humour, really absurd humour, stupid sex jokes, and just really weird humour, situation comedy and all kinds of humour, really. Actually that seems to be true on everything Groening has created and developed and written himself. At least Futurama proves that. I haven't watched Simpsons that much, but Groening's comics are also hilarious in many different ways, it's amazing. I really like and admire Matt Groening, I've  read Life In Hell since I was little. Maybe not the best comic for a 12-year-old, but I loved it. It's always a pleasure to see his head in a jar in episodes of Futurama.

The plot of this movie was interesting. It developed the same way episodes developed in the earlier seasons - it started with something not so important and just went on before you realise what the point was. And well the plot of Into The Wild Green Yonder was sort of complex, with so many  different side plots.

There's actually one thing this movie did that no episode did. I actually felt excited and thrilled during the end. I mean of course you know how these things usually end, but still it was thrilling, the whole situation seemed almost hopeless. I'm actually really amazed now.

And like any Futurama episode, 33 % of all the characters were voiced by Billy West. Okay, maybe not that much, but when you open the iMDB page, Billie West's roles just go on and on. Oh my god.

So yeah, this movie was good. I can't say if it was better or worse than the TV show, and why should I say either. I mean, they are part of the same story-arc, more or less. Would I recommend this movie to anyone? Well, yeah, but first you need to see first four seasons, and preferably the fifth season after this movie. But do as you please, I mean there's really not some kind of big plot that would join the plots of all movies and episodes. And of course this movie may not be cinematic masterpiece, but I don't think it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be fun, and it totally is.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

7 / 10

"When we were kids, all we ever talked about was being cops."

Year: 2008

Director: Gavin O'Connor

Writers: Joe Carnahan & Gavin O'Connor (Screenplay), Gavin O'Connor, Greg O'Connor & Robert Hopes (Story)

A family's moral codes are tested when Ray Tierney investigates a case that reveals an incendiary police corruption scandal involving his own brother-in-law. For Ray, the truth is revelatory, a Pandora's Box that threatens to upend not only the Tierney legacy but the entire NYPD.

- New Line Cinema

My friend from Boston warned me that Pride And Glory was bad. There are lots of people who would disagree with her, but I am not one of those people.

Someone on iMDB wrote how unusual Pride And Glory was for a cop movie. I don't know about unusual, but there were many details that were so typical for a crime thriller that they made me want to vomit. There were so many useless little things that were typical and clichéd and everything. The story? Well, I don't think it would be extremely unusual or original, I mean most movies of this kind use the same kind of pattern. Maybe some things were original and new, but they didn't really hit me that much. Mostly Pride And Glory felt like just a typical cop movie with the classical arrangement - good cops and bad cops, etcetera.

The plot also felt unclear and scrappy, at least in the beginning. You don't know anything, you just get thrown in the mix, and you need to figure out stuff yourself. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. But there were moments where I had to wonder who was on whose side and what were they doing and why. I don't know, there also could've been some kind of mistake in the subtitles, or I understood one line wrong, because that kind of made the whole thing feel weird compared to the rest of the plot. I don't really know.

If there was anything true to this movie, well, it showed what kind of pricks cops can be to people of colour, in this case Hispanic Latinos. Though usually cops don't even have to be criminals to be pricks, usually it's just because white cops can be racist, so I don't think Pride And Glory was trying to make some kind of political statement here. And oh, some of the criminals, usually Latinos, said the N-word a lot. It also made no sense, because usually the people around weren't actually black, or maybe I missed something. I don't know what kind of  point they were trying to make with using that word, it was just weird and of course kind of obnoxious.

How hard is it to edit a movie? I mean there was a lot useless stuff there that could've been cut without losing much. They had nothing to do with plot, some of them were just there to give character(s) some kind of  background story, I mean showing the viewer that they had life before this. Well it's something a viewer probably assumes even though if it wouldn't been said. This movie was about two hours, and they could've easily made it like one hour, 45 minutes. 

In short, Pride and Glory was sort of  boring. And now that I finished it, what do I have? Nothing. I mean the movie has its exciting parts, but they didn't really have that effect the scenes of a well made thriller movie usually give you. I don't really feel like much now that it's over. It doesn't really stand out, it just is another movie among others. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't worth of seeing.

☆☆☆☆

4 / 10

Also now I'm 86 % through my challenge.