It is indeed A Wonderful Life

The past few days we have been watching Frank Capra's movie "It's a Wonderful Life" in class and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself with this movie. I have always heard nothing but good things about this Christmas classic yet i am not a big TV person so I had never seen it before. Although, I always hear people chat about how they have watched this movie on television throughout the holiday season every year. At first I thought this movie was a little bit cheesy because it started out with what looked like stars but they were glowing and talking, we later find out that they are angels and that is what sets up the whole context for the movie. I believe the reason I liked and respected this film so much was because we read the original short story it was written after "The Greatest Gift". While they had many similarities, Capra's film was also very different from this short story as well. He unleashed a fantastic inspirational film that has a phenomenal ending, it truly moves.Despite the fact I usually don't prefer the movies that I watch be in black and white; this film truly rocked it. I was just extremely incredible.
This film featured John Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore. (Yes that is a family member of Drew Barrymore, incase you were wondering). John Stewart and Donna Reed has great chemistry throughout the whole movie and it really did show.
I would give this movie a 4.5 stars out of 5. The only reason it is not a five is because I still feel like there is something missing from the movie that could have made it from great to spectacular.

A Sequel That Shoudn't Have Been

Not many things happen to scare me. I can go to Knotts scary farm and get followed around the entire park and not become the least bit frightened. I am the same with the movies I watch; the movie has to extremely terrifying to even scare a little bit. I kept on hearing great things about the movie Paranormal Activity 3; i heard it was the scariest one yet and everyone who had went to seen always would talk about how good and scary it was. The trailer looked down right frightening; i didn't even know what to expect. I figured since so many people had said nothing but good things about it I would go off and see it. I had extremely high expectations of the movie and too say the movie was a disappointment is an understatement.
This film was a collaboration of the directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. Henry also directed a few other films, the documentary Catfish(2010) and the film NY Export:Opus Jazz(2010).  While Ariel Schulman also directed the documentary Catifish(2010), as well as the short Jerry Ruiz, Shall We Do This? The both together created a movie that brought the supernatural world into play through a young child by the name of Kristi who is often visited at night by what she calls her invisible friend "Tobie". As the interactions between the two become more frequent Kristi's mom's boyfriend becomes more and more suspicious and starts putting cameras up around the house to record anything disturbing happening.  Young Kristi is played by Jessica Tyler Brown and her sister Katie is played by Chloe Csengery. While their mom and her boyfriend are played by Lauren Bittner and Christopher Nicolas Smith. There acting was alright, although its pretty ironic to me that they were trying to act like they weren't acting since it's supposed to be a "homemade" film, or that's the look they were going for.
This movie is supposed to be hand-filmed, but i think that it looks to professionally done for it to be played off as a home movie kind of thing.
 The music throughout the film was nothing too special, or atleast nothing worth remembering. It was pretty average and it didn't help nor hurt the film. The lighting was so so, nothing like i haven't seen before. It was pretty average and bland in my eyes.  The mis-en scene was very ordinary; everything strewed through the seens look like it was meant to be there since most of the setting was just in the family house.The directors tried to create a scary movie but if you ask me it was too predictable, the ending was too abrupt, and it was not scary at all. In my opinion this film turned out to be more humorous than anything. Also, now looking back on it the first scene was completely irrelevant to the entire movie and it has nothing to do with the rest of the plot. I honestly do not understand why it was even added in. The fact that this movie was only 84 minutes should have told me to begin with, usually the movies i enjoy are of the longer variety. Long story short this movie is not one i would reccomend to anyone and i go as far to say that I would not spend my money on this movie; let that be seeing it in the movie theaters, renting it, or even buying it on DVD. The Paranomal Activity directors should not have made any sequels of this movie to begin with. The Original Paranormal was incredibly mediocre. If i were to rate Paranomal Activity 3 i would have to give it 1 and 1/2 stars out of 5. A horror should be able to scare you at least a little, it was a complete let down.

Emma Stone Strikes again, but this time in a new light.

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important." These are the words of Aibileen (played by Viola Davis), a nanny in the movie "The Help" which came out sometime in September. This is a movie set in Mississippi in the 1960's when racism was at its peak. It gives a glimpse on three very special women that made a big impact on white families lives, whether they choose to admit it or not. It is a very real, very raw, and very sad movie. 

I'm not going to lie; I was a little indifferent about going to see this movie. It was my mom's birthday and her only wish was for the family to see "The Help" in theaters with her. We did so and I was surprisingly pleased. Although, this movie was a great tearjerker, even my dad teared up a little (SHHH- he would be embarrassed if he knew I put this on here). It covered a very hard topic to portray, almost perfectly and the reasoning behind it being so sad was the fact that this was not a fiction tale, everything that happened in this move actually happened in the United States at one point in time. We actually let ourselves discriminate because of the color of ones skin, not the content of ones heart.

Many may know Emma Stone from her quirky persona and extremely humorous attitude; she has been seen is “Easy A” and “Crazy Stupid Love”. This movie shows Emma Stone in a new light. She plays the role of Skeeter and is the only one who seems to actually want to help these women in more ways than one. I believe she is so concerned for these women because she even had a nanny herself when she was growing up and knows what an impact hers had on her. Skeeter is the one who writes the book “The Help” and it seems she is the only one who genuinely cares for these women.

I am almost positive this movie will bring in some awards at the next Oscar. This move definitely deserves to be recognized. I give the move "The Help" a 10 out of 10, easily.