Thursday, May 7, 2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron

                  It's about time I put up another movie review, since all these new movies will be rolling in quite soon. One such movie that I'm sure you're all dying or have already seen is the new Avengers movie. Well, I'm here to tell you about it, review it, and recommend it. 

WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

                  Okay, now that the warning is out of the way, let's get to our movie: 

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

                  I'm sure we can all agree that this is probably one of the most highly anticipated movies of the entire year. And plus, it's the one that kicks off all of the summer films. So, with our standards set high, we wait for Ant-Man, Batman vs. Superman, Tommorowland, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. 
                  Until then, we have the next chapter in Marvel's continuing story of superheroes. 
Ultron's First Body
                  The film begins with action pretty quickly. Hydra has gotten hold of Loki's scepter, and are accessing its power for weaponry. They have been successful, and the Avengers are tearing up the military base. The people inside the base, including Baron von Strucker, are a little freaked out. 
                   Strucker orders his people to put up the shield, and is trying to reassure everybody that they won't get in. One of the scientists says, "But they're the Avengers!" 
                  Good job! You finally got it. The Avengers can do a lot of things, including breaking into a top secret super protected military facility as if they were breaking into an unlocked home. Not very difficult, and the Avengers get the scepter. But... with some complications. 
                  They meet Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who are working for Hydra. Scarlet Witch looks into the Avengers' minds and sees in Tony Stark's that he wants to create an artificial intelligence. She sees that he could make the world possibly a better place overall. So she wants him to succeed. She therefore allows Tony to take the scepter. 
                  The Avengers go back to the Avengers tower and begin analyzing the scepter right away,
with Tony and Bruce working on it to try and access its power, therefore completing Tony's "Ultron" program. The "Ultron" program was designed to end the Avengers. 
                  Every time that an alien race would come to wreak havoc on Earth, Tony is hoping that by creating Ultron, the Avengers will never have to assemble again, because Ultron will take care of the threat before it even thinks about touching the surface of Earth. 
                  After three days of endless work, Tony and Bruce are still unsuccessful. However, they are able to take a little break and enjoy Tony's party. We see a lot of familiar faces, Rhodey, Maria Hill, Falcon, and of course, the Avengers. 
Where Ultron builds his army
                 Tony leaves Jarvis to continue running diagnostics to see if they can finally create Ultron. Almost immediately after Tony and Bruce leave for the party, Jarvis succeeds in creating Ultron. Ultron wakes up and begins asking questions. Jarvis tries to explain and keep him calm, also seeing that Ultron's intentions of being a "hero" are quite harmful to the human race. 
                 Jarvis tries shutting Ultron down, but Ultron destroys Jarvis, and begins making a body for himself. This is where the action starts to pick up with Ultron. Ultron creates his first body, and has his first encounter with the Avengers. 
                The Avengers easily beat Ultron's first body, and Tony has to reveal what he was working on for the past few years after the incident in the first Avengers film. And guess what?! They are not happy... especially Captain America.
                Tony complains, "Does anybody remember when I put a missile through a portal, in New York City? We were standing right under it. We're the Avengers, we can bust weapons dealers the whole doo-da-day, but how do we cope with something like that?"
                Captain America responds: "Together."
                "We'll lose."
                "We do that together, too."
                Now what? They need to get the scepter back. So they go to Africa, near Wakanda where the Black Panther is. Why? Ultron's going there to obtain Vibranium, the material Captain America's shield is made of. Okay, before I go on, when the Avengers first returned to the Avengers tower, there was a scientist there who helped Hawkeye because he was injured. In fact, part of his abdominal tissue was completely shot off. 
                 The machine that the scientist and Tony created makes natural skin tissue based off of the person that is in the chamber. Now, Ultron wants to use that machine to make for himself the perfect body. For those of you who know this story arc... you know that Ultron is creating the Vision. 
                 Now, this is where in the trailer you see Hulk and Iron Man fight as the Hulkbuster. Tony gives his hulking 11 foot suit the name, "Veronica." Just a fun fact. Why do Hulk and Iron Man fight? Because the Scarlet Witch gets inside the Hulk's head and makes him see his fear, which is never truly revealed. 
                Iron Man beats the Hulk, and the Avengers fail in getting the scepter again, with Ultron
Hulk vs. The Hulkbuster
being successful in getting the Vibranium he needs to make his synthezoid. 

     SYNTHEZOID:  A special type of android empowered by synthesizing energy; in other words, he is a special android made from a different material, defining him with special human-like organs; also his different make-up gives him his abilities such as flight (source: Explanation of Synthezoid)
               The Avengers then go to the home of Hawkeye, where they recuperate and hope to come up with a strategy. Nick Fury meets them and tells them that they better pull it together, or else the entire world will be destroyed. 
                  The Avengers eventually catch up with Ultron, and prevent him from making Vision so that Ultron can occupy the Vision's body. Instead, Tony brings back Jarvis and implants him into the Vision's body, and so is born... The Vision. 
                  I'll leave the action to you... but it was totally awesome. See for yourself. This is a movie you don't want to miss. 

Rating- 
Story-line: 9.3 out of 10 Shields; overall, the story was accurate, except for the fact that Tony Stark is actually not the one who makes Ultron. It was in fact Hank Pym, but it all worked out. And the fact that the Vision was Jarvis was all wrong, but that worked okay too. 
Action: 8.9 out of 10 Hulkbusters; not that the action was bad... there was just too much of it. I dunno, maybe I'm just being stupid, but it didn't seem like there was too much development of Ultron, which I would have liked to see more of. But... you can't do everything, can you Whedon???
Rewatch Probability: Very high, aka 9.6; if you know a lot of the story arcs that tie in to these movies... then that means you will be flipping out at the very end of the movie. It's totally awesome. Now, at the end, if you're confused, those are the New Avengers. Iron Man left, so did Thor and Hawkeye. Captain America is still the leader, but it's new people. I was actually hoping that that could be potential for the West Coast Avengers, but that potential will come up in Civil War so yeah. 
Overall Rating: 9.27 out of 10 
Wondering how I got that answer??? Add 9.3, 8.9, and 9.6, and you end up with 27.8. Divide that by three, and you get 9.266666666667. So rounding... 9.27. 
So there you are!



                 


Bibliography: "Avengers: Age of  Ultron Ultron's first body"<https://ifyouwantthegravy.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/avengers-ultron-first-body.jpg>
"Avengers Age of Ultron the Vision clip" <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAyPg0LQ25o>
"Hulk vs. Hulkbuster Avengers Age of Ultron" <http://i.newsarama.com/images/i/000/146/176/original/avengers-age-of-ultron-trailer-screengrab-27-hulk-hulkbuster.png?1428932851>
"Age of Ultron Wakanda" <http://images-cdn.moviepilot.com/image/upload/c_fill,h_540,w_960/t_mp_quality/avengers-age-of-ultron-you-saw-wakanda-and-you-didn-t-even-know-it-25d0a714-f484-482d-b6b4-e5220c3100e0-png-162136.jpg>
"Avengers Age of Ultron title poster" <http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Y8ecAVfowDQ/maxresdefault.jpg>
"Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch Avengers Age of Ultron" <http://www.blastr.com/sites/blastr/files/QuicksilverScarletWitch1_0.jpg>

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

The Imitation Game

                  Benedict Cumberbatch does a fantastic job in a movie about the quest to break one of the greatest weapons of the Germans in World War II: The Enigma.
                  The film focuses in on Alan Turing, a genius in mathematics, who is attempting to apply for a government job.
                 The job technically doesn't exist. Therefore, Alan is not applying for a job at all. Anyway, Alan is accepted and put on a team of brilliant people in Europe who all want to break Enigma.
                 Now, you have to understand that Alan is not the most social. In fact, a little tidbit of information you might want to have in your back pocket is the fact that Alan is gay. Not happy gay, homosexual gay.
                 You get a sense of that as he has flashbacks to when he was in the seventh grade with his only friend, Christopher. Alan is telling his story to a police investigator who has convicted him of treason.
                He tells his brilliant story of how he and a crew of four men and a woman (Kiera
Knightley) break Enigma and help the Allies win the war.
               And it was all because of a machine that Alan built, which was later called a "Turing Machine." Today, we call them computers.
               If you want an even better kick outta this movie, it's based on a true story. Yep yep! I basically told you the whole plot, so I'll let you guys figure out whether it was good or not. But here's my ratings:



FAMILY FRIENDLINESS: 4 out of 10 Enigmas
PLOT AND STORYLINE: 9 out of 10 Christophers
OVERALL RATING: 9 out of 10 stars


THE IMITATION GAME



Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Funny Pics

Haha, right?
























                                                      <https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/3a/b9/a4/3ab9a425e4ebf427bebe5289c2d39d56.jpg>
                                                     <http://thumbpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Skeptical-Mutt.jpg>
                                                     <https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/46/21/3a/46213a952b15c61aab5d1443a766e56e.jpg>
                                                     <http://www.vitamin-ha.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/VH-Funny-Animals-067.jpg>
                                                     <http://d2tq98mqfjyz2l.cloudfront.net/image_cache/1383619296537122.jpg>

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Project Almanac: The Parent Edition

P R O J E C T    A L M A N A C
-----------------THE PARENT EDITION-------------------

                  Like I have said, these editions are for the parents. So, if it's not too much trouble, I would ask you parents to read the previous Project Almanac review post, and we'll pick up from there:

PREVIOUSLY ON PoC's  Project Almanac:

 But Quinn makes a really staggering remark: "Well didn't you guys see the video? I mean, I think we already built it." Oh shoot, right? If they already built it, that means that time is repeating itself. So this pops a question that isn't actually  verbalized or even referenced, "Wait, so does that mean that their future is set?" I'll tell you the answer to that question... No. 

                    So we pick up from here. No, the teen's fates are not set in stone, although it seems that way. So, in order to find out, Step 1: Build a Time Machine. It's not as easy as it sounds, though. You don't just snap some paper clips together for protection from the shock, make a 4 x 5 obsidian frame, ignite it with flint-and-steel,
scratch the date that you want to go to into the obsidian, and hop in. We all wish it was that easy, right? 
                  Well, David's father left behind blueprints for how to build the machine. One of their first problems is the amount of hydrogen required. They need literally pounds of it in order to jump time. So where are they going to get that much hydrogen? The High School.
                  David, Adam, Quinn, and Christina all break into the High School and go into the store room that has boxes and shelves of hydrogen canisters. They grab about 20 or so and frantically run out of the school, going home to David's basement. 
                  The next step is a source of energy that the machine can use. And it uses a whole ton. Translation: they need batteries. BIG batteries. Where else are you going to get batteries the size of your head? The Hardware Store. So the gang goes and spends money on huge batteries, and they are, for the most part, still doubting whether this can actually be pulled off. 
                  And Christina, while videoing, goes up to a store employee and asks, "Excuse me, can you tell me where your Time Machine section is?" 'Crazy teenagers' is what was running through that guy's head probably. Time Machine? Hmm, must be living a crazy dream. 
                  But guess what??? After months of hard work and equations and blueprint following and mapping and innovating and thinking, David, Adam, and Quinn, using an XBOX 360, build a time machine. And it's strong enough to jump back one minute. 
                  "One minute??? I thought this was supposed to go back ten stinkin' years!!!" I know, hold your horses. They do test runs on a Barbie car, using a Honda's Hybrid Battery in order to power the machine to send the Barbie car back one minute in time. And it works. Although, the car ends up welded into the wall of the basement. 
                  Oh, BTW, they use the battery of the car of a popular girl, Jessie, that happens to become a part of their gang. And it's at a party. So, yah. Kinda weird, but whatever. Oh! You're actually going to have to remember this party. Keep it in the back of your head, because it's one of the time frames that David will travel into solo on multiple occasions.
                  So what does that mean if the teens travel back in time??? Will they end up welded to a concrete wall, left to starve and die?!?! Thankfully, no. That never happens to them, although the machine will throw them
around quite a bit.
                  After that trial, they're ready to start human trials, the humans being themselves, of course. How eager, right? David is still cautious, and goes through formulas and equations to determine if they can jump back any farther themselves. And he comes to the conclusion that yes, they have the capability. But they can't be carrying a 25 pound time machine everywhere. 
                  So David makes major modifications and improvements to the machine to make it more efficient in energy usage, and a whole lot lighter, weighing in at about only 10-12 pounds, and being able to fit inside of his school backpack with room to spare for school-related material. How cool is that?!?! 
                  Then David and friends make the ultimate test... human trials. They jump back to yesterday, and find yesterday's Quinn, with present-day Quinn drawing on the back of his own neck. As he draws on yester-Quinn, the drawing appears on present-day Quinn. 
                  They have succeeded. But yester-Quinn sees himself (present-Quinn) and vanishes. What the heck? They changed time. Then they jump back to the present day, and bring with them a dog. When they get back to present-day, there are signs everywhere for  a lost dog... the dog they time-traveled with. Uh-oh, they changed the fabric of time... again. 
                  They ignore this fact, but this is a fact you should not ignore. They begin to jump more. Their continuous jumping causes crazy rifts that change the world on an international scale. Then comes some of the complex things... the changes constantly made to "fix" things in the present. 
                  One of their jumps allows them to find out the numbers to the lottery and they win the jackpot, therefore allowing David to give his mom the funds to pay for his college and to keep the house.  Yay, right? Wrong. Another jump causes the teens to go back to a concert three months previously and they change the time continuum again, but without them winning the lottery. 
                   His mom is still selling the house when they get back. And he screwed up with the Jessie, and she won't talk to him. So what does he do??? He jumps alone. And that was one of the rules they made: DO NOT jump alone. Yea... not so with David. He changes what he did with Jessie, and then he comes back to the present day where she is in his house in his room. 
                  She just gets out of the shower and she's in a towel. "Hey David." Okay, hey, this is one of the parts where it is suggestive. David asks if they had sex, and she confirms. He asks if under the towel she's naked, and she confirms, letting him touch her body... behind the towel of course. 
                  So... yea. But then as a result of David jumping, Adam is hurt. Badly. He's been hospitalized for almost a week now, and David goes to his basement to set up a series of maps and timelines. He figures out the event that started the entire chain reaction of events gone wrong... the party where they first tested the time machine. Uh-oh. 
                  David is about to jump when Jessie comes down and asks what the heck is going on. David says that he needs to go back and save Adam, so that he can undo a lot of what he's done. "Wait, you're jumping alone? You can't do that! How many times have you done it?" More times than he can count, and not all of them are shown in the movie. 
                  So since the jump is in progress, Jessie and David go back to the party and then David tackles a popular
kid out of the way of a car coming, therefore saving Adam. Now David needs to get back before Jessie and him are seen by their past selves, or things could go terribly wrong. Now remember when Jessie's car was used to power the time machine? Yea well, remember the ballerina car keys??? Those are Jessie's. If I didn't mention them, sorry, but that's one of the things David is carrying in the frozen frame of him at his seventh b-day party.
                  Okay, Jessie starts freaking out at David about him jumping alone, and David is trying to calm her down so that they can jump back to the present. But guess what happens? Past-Jessie sees herself, and then present-Jessie starts to time out, and she disappears. 
                  She drops her ballerina car keys and David picks them up before jumping again. He jumps to the present-day where his mom is still in debt with the house, and his friends and him haven't won the lottery. But when he jumps back, the police are looking for him. Why? They think he kidnapped Jessie. And he's on the run.
                  But he's a kid. They can easily trace him. So he's gotta move, and fast. And he knows exactly where he's going. He sets the time machine to jump back ten years, however many days, hours, and minutes, and presses the jump button. There's a power-up sound, and then a failure sigh from the machine. Out of hydrogen.
                  David books it (with caution) to the High School and breaks into the gym. He finds the hydrogen shelves and gets a tank, popping it open and putting it into the machine. I think in the process of going to the school he
gets shot. I can't remember. But David hurriedly punches in all of the numbers for the jump and initiates the process. 
                   The police in the mean time, have caught up with him and are making their way into the building, and just as he's about to complete the jump, the police burst in, and he yells out, "DON'T SHOOT!!!" I'm not sure if they do, but the force of the jump throws the officers back, and there's a slight discrepancy in the videoing. David slowly gets up, and grabs his camera. 
                   He begins to walk through his school in 2004, and all of the students are looking at him like he's some freak, which makes sense since he's all bloodied up. He makes his way to his house, and slowly creeps in. He gets to the point where he is in the mirror of his seventh birthday party and is reaching behind the wall to turn off the light switch. David then makes his way down into the basement, following his father.
                   He comes up behind his dad, and his dad says, "You figured it out! You did it! Oh my god, I have so many questions-" David basically shuts him up and says that they need to get rid of the blueprints and everything about the time machine. He puts everything in a tin can, and then sits on the bench. 
                   Wind starts to kick up around David, the lights begin to flicker, and David starts to time out, until finally, he disappears. The video feed runs out, and the screen goes blue. 
                   Fast forward ten years and David is in the same predicament, looking for a way to make everything with his tuition and whatnot better. Christina finds the original camera, but David pulls out the one from the previous time, and that's the one that has everything on it. They watch it all... the jumping, the intimate relationships, the partying, the lottery, all of it. 
                   And David takes Jessie her bag just like previously. Jessie routinely says, "How did you know I was going to say that?" David leans in, looks around, and says, "I think that we're about to change the world."





                                                                               <http://www.theworkprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/project-almanac-movie-image-5.jpg>
                                                                                 <https://turntherightcorner.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/project-almanac-movie-screenshot-sofia-black-delia-jessie-pierce-10.jpg>
"Project Almanac David at His Seventh Birthday Party" <http://filmracket.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/projecta1.jpg>


                   

                  
                 

Friday, February 27, 2015

Project Almanac

                  Hello everybody. I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a bit. I missed Valentine's Day so that's not really good. But oh well. Anyways, I saw Project Almanac and I deemed it a worthy movie of Piece of Cake! (PoC) So here we go!

P R O J E C T    A L M A N A C

Project Almanac Trailer 2

                  Now tell me that after watching that trailer, you are not hyped, excited, a bit confused, and a little skeptical about the content. I'll tell you, that's definitely everything I was thinking. For the content, there is no sex at all, so that gives a valid reason for the PG-13 Rating. Now what about the bikinis and half-naked girls???
                  Well, it's a concert. It'll come later as I go through the entire movie, but that's one of the only suggestive themes in the movie. Then there's other parts that I will definitely mention and describe to you so that when you go to see it, you know exactly when to expect it. 
            
WARNING: The following film when described in words can become very confusing. Try to keep up with me, and I will try to describe anything that may be mind-boggling.

                  The entirety of Project Almanac is seen through the lens of a video camera. And there are rare scenes where the camera is not looked through. Project Almanac begins with David Raskin, a
seventeen year old guy who is attempting to get a scholarship at MIT. 
                  David is videoing a very impressive experiment with his friends, Adam, Quinn Goldberg, and his sister Christina Raskin, aka Chris. The experiment is a success, and MIT sends an acceptance letter, saying they will pay for $5,000 of his tuition. 
                  That's great and all, but his mom will struggle with the other $40 grand. Devastated at how much David will still have to pay, he goes to his attic to look for a science experiment that his father may have performed that could possibly help with another scholarship. 
                  His sister comes up with the camera and scares him. Chris finds an old camera that videoed David's seventh birthday party. And then... something strange appears. As you saw in the trailer, David sees himself in the mirror of his seventh birthday. 
                  Now, of course when he shows Adam and Quinn, they think he's insane. Maybe it was just a clown or something? But David makes a valid point, the shirt he's wearing in the video is the same shirt he wears almost all of the time. Except some things are going on. 
                  His shirt is stained, he's holding a ballerina that marks car keys, he's also holding a box that looks like a tool box, and he's wearing his backpack that he takes to school. Well, his friends start trying to figure it out. They freeze the image and zoom in on David, and replicate what he's doing in the frozen image.
                  He's in the house that he's lived in basically his whole life, and still is living in currently, and he's reaching behind a wall, maybe for a light switch or something other. Or maybe a door. Adam and Quinn position their own camera at the spot where the video's camera was, had him stand in the exact spot he was in the image, and has him reach in the exact same way he is in the
image. 
                  David finds that he is reaching for a door handle leading to the basement. What's down there, right? Well, they go to find out. And they find... you guessed it! A time machine. Well what the heck are they going to do with it, and let alone the fact, how are they gonna build it???
                  But Quinn makes a really staggering remark: "Well didn't you guys see the video? I mean, I think we already built it." Oh shoot, right? If they already built it, that means that time is repeating itself. So this pops a question that isn't actually  verbalized or even referenced, "Wait, so does that mean that their future is set?" I'll tell you the answer to that question... No. 
                  I will not spoil the rest of the movie for those who want to see it, but parents!!! There WILL be a Parent Edition, and I highly recommend reading it when it comes out. There are some suggestive themes in the movie that you may want to be aware of. So, stay tuned for that.

Overall Rating: 8/10 time machines There are some things in PROJECT ALMANAC that are unnecessary, such as some scenes of partial nudity and some suggestive scenes suggesting nudity.

Story-line Rating: 9.25/10 almanacs The story is very well done, although some points can be become confusing, it is not necessarily a movie where you've gotta think. But definitely make sure your brain is on the entire time. 

Family Friendliness Rating: This is based upon the age groups of children. I would not suggest this at ALL for any child under the age of 11. Ages 12-13 I'd be a bit skeptical about, but for 14 year-olds and up, I'd say this is okay. But if you're a little more strict, I'd go for 15 year-olds. I know this may seem a bit strict, but you've gotta see it if you want to make your own opinions, and I also want to help out those parents who are extremely protective. I try to help everybody out.

P R O J E C T     A L M A N A C