I saw Billy Elliot for the first time when I was only eleven-years-old. It was news to me then, news to me that a boy could be a ballet dancer, a “ballerino” if I may. However, I had just entered junior high at that point in my life and decided that the pursuit of dance would only make my walks down the hall that much more difficult.

Billy Elliot was also my first introduction to Jamie Bell, an actor who I can now not help ...]]> There has only ever been one movie that has inspired me to take ballet classes—this is it.

I saw Billy Elliot for the first time when I was only eleven-years-old. It was news to me then, news to me that a boy could be a ballet dancer, a “ballerino” if I may. However, I had just entered junior high at that point in my life and decided that the pursuit of dance would only make my walks down the hall that much more difficult.

Billy Elliot was also my first introduction to Jamie Bell, an actor who I can now not help but love. It is the story of an eleven-year old who discovers his love for ballet while in the midst of the 1984 Thatcher closure of British coal mines. His father and older brother are less then excited when they find out that Billy has shunned his boxing prowess and hung up his gloves for a life of pirouettes and frappes.

Perhaps the most charming quality of Billy Elliot concerns his earnest desire to dance. At first, the only support he receives comes from his closeted friend, Michael Caffrey. Even Billy is wary about ballet at first and signs up for classes across town without his father and older brother knowing. Of course, his father and brother are not pleased in the beginning, but eventually they come to champion his efforts to tryout and join the ranks of the Royal Ballet.

It is rare to find a movie with this combination of tenderness and grit. It is certainly a coming of age story that deserves to be seen by boys and men of any age. I saw this for the second time once I had entered college and this second viewing prompted me to start taking ballet classes both at my school and at independent dance studios. In this sense, this movie is also a rarity in the film world—rarely am I provoked to follow through on the emotions that I felt while sitting in the theater. In this case, I was.

Roadie is about a man, who after 25 years of being a roadie for Blue Oyster Cult, is fired by the band and forced to return to his home town ofQueens. His return home is anything but glorious. His mother is old and alone and quite forgetful. His old love has married his high school nightmare, and his high school nightmare still refers to him as “testicles.”

What really surprised me about this movie is that it all ...]]> I thought something was going to happen. I was waiting for something—anything—to happen. And when it did, I simply wondered why it was happening.

Roadie is about a man, who after 25 years of being a roadie for Blue Oyster Cult, is fired by the band and forced to return to his home town ofQueens. His return home is anything but glorious. His mother is old and alone and quite forgetful. His old love has married his high school nightmare, and his high school nightmare still refers to him as “testicles.”

What really surprised me about this movie is that it all takes place over the course of one day, the day of his return. I was expecting to see things unfold over the span of a few weeks, so in this sense, I was disappointed. I don’t know why I expected this or why it really matters, but it does.

So, Johnny spends his day drinking beer and taking shots of Wild Turkey at a local bar. He drinks and drives with his high school bully and snorts enough coke to immobilize a full-grown Bull Elephant. When is it ever a good idea to get loaded and hangout with the person who not only terrorized you in high school, but married one of your first loves, in a motel room no less?

Well, after things go crazy and people fly into a coked-out rage of brutal honesty and rage, the movie sort of unravels. His old bully verbally berates him and his old crush stands by and does nothing. He stumbles home, gets his ass handed to him by a preteen, gets into a fight with his mom the next morning, and wimps out on life. For hanging with a rock band and going on tour for the last 25 years, I expected this guy to have a little more gumption.

The acting felt solid and the story had promise, but the story started with a whimper and ended in a dull moan. This guy seemed like a roadie in the sense that he had never made a decision for himself in his entire life.

There are no scenes of dismemberment or undead creatures feeding on warm human bodies. Pontypool does not rely on brutal death or quick scares. Pontypool mostly takes place in a small ...]]> It’s nice to see a movie that doesn’t directly correlate the idea of ingenuity with high budgets, cutting edge special effects, and international stars of the silver screen. It’s even nicer to see a movie improve and innovate a genre that really does not have a lot of room left for new idea. Pontypool is a low-budget, Canadian horror film that puts a new spin on zombies and scare tactics.

There are no scenes of dismemberment or undead creatures feeding on warm human bodies. Pontypool does not rely on brutal death or quick scares. Pontypool mostly takes place in a small radio station, occupied by its three crew members. While inside the radio station, reports of death and destruction start to flood the radio waves. First, the crew members start to receive reports of random acts of violence. Before you know it, they pick up frequencies that talk about full-scale riots and the intervention of the Canadian government. You see, what really works for this movie is the fact that there is so much mystery. As an audience, our only access to what is going on in the world is no better than the radio station crew. During the first half of the movie, the crew hears various eyewitness testimonies about what is going on outside of the radio station. People are going crazy. People are losing it. People are dying. This is at least what our imagination leads us to believe.

As it turns out, Pontypool is a zombie-esque movie. However, people are not getting bitten or savagely torn apart. No, this sort of virus is spread my language. Yes, language. I won’t go any further into it than that because I don’t want to give anything away.

I’m not really sure how I felt about the ending. It did feel fitting for the general tone and vibe of the rest of the movie. Still, part of me thinks that they simply ran out of ideas. Either way, it was a pretty cool idea. Not the greatest movie, but a cool idea.

C.R.A.Z.Y is ...]]> From Stand By Me to My Girl and The Sandlot to The Breakfast Club, the coming of age film genre embodies elements of film that are both entirely unique and personal, as well as completely universal and relatable. While these types of films deal with the coming of age experience—growing up, adapting, growing older—each of them means something slightly different to everyone who watches them. More often than not, these films deal with family drama and tragedy and triumph. Well, C.R.A.Z.Y is no different in these respects, but in other respects, it is absolutely and positively different and fantastic.

C.R.A.Z.Y is the story of a 1960’s Montreal working-class family. One of five sons, Zac knows that he is different. He shares not only in the birthday of Christ, but also the healing powers of the Son of God, or at least that is what his mother was told by a Tupperware saleswoman when he was young. Zac is coddled by his mother and shunned by many of his brothers, even the youngest one. He is confused most of the time and spends the rest of his time trying to impress and please his highly skeptical father. Zac is gay.

This movie is colorful, and no, that is not a pun of any sort. It’s a veritable rainbow in every way imaginable—the mother, the father, the junkie brother, the clothing, the story, the fights, the beginning, the ending—it is all bursting with life. There is not a dull moment. There was not a single isolated instance in which I did not feel the dull aching throb that seemed to persist so secretively during the period of adolescence, which seems so synonymous with growing up. And of course, it always helps to have such an immense cast to help stir up the family drama.

The plot and story go places that I would never have imagined, spanning Zac’s life from childhood the adulthood. And I must say, the ending is something to really cherish.

50 years in the future, the sun is dying. Its brightness is fading and its rays are not reaching quite as far. So, a team of astronauts is sent out into space to revive the sun with a payload the size ofManhattan. Well, this team fails and this is ...]]> Innovation in the realm of science fiction is not as easy as it sounds. Just because you come up with a new name for something—crumple-horned snorkacks and deluminators and whiskerwompers—does not mean you have a great story. It takes more than creative names to make great science fiction, and Sunshine has this—more.

50 years in the future, the sun is dying. Its brightness is fading and its rays are not reaching quite as far. So, a team of astronauts is sent out into space to revive the sun with a payload the size ofManhattan. Well, this team fails and this is where the movie really begins, 7 years later when a new team of astronauts is rocketed into space to reignite the sun and save planet earth.

There are no notions of heroism or glory in this movie, no space cowboys who hookup and drink cheap hooch and mess around. This is no Armageddon. Sunshine is built on a creeping suspense that swallows you into the vacuum of space and puts you right into the Icarus II with the other astronauts. As the astronauts approach closer and closer to the sun, you can feel the loneliness and suspense and weight of the mission, of being in charge of saving the earth with theoretical science and an 0-1 record as your only viable tools.

The movie relies on a slow pace, and by slow, I do not mean boring. By slow pace, I mean a sneaking, creeping, sinking suspicion that something isn’t right. Just when you think the entire movie will stay on the same course, the team discovers the Icarus I (the ship that carried the first team 7 years before them) and that slowly building creeping suspicion rapidly morphs from a seedling of a feeling into a full-grown and rabid beast.

If there were ever two movies that deserved to be packaged and sold together, it would be Sunshine and Moon. Both films deal with a future planet earth in some form of a dire energy crisis and both films absolutely nail the subject matter with an artful perfection.

If you’ve ever seen The Brave Little Toaster, then you know that scientific researchers are evil and soulless. Well, that is not quite the case with Nim. Many of the families and teachers ...]]> The story of Nim follows a chimpanzee that we tried to make human. In the seventies, Nim was plucked from the arms of his chimp mother and placed in a New York brownstone to be raised by a human family. This was all part of a language experiment that was being conducted through Columbia University—can a chimp learn sign language and create grammatical structures to communicate with people?

If you’ve ever seen The Brave Little Toaster, then you know that scientific researchers are evil and soulless. Well, that is not quite the case with Nim. Many of the families and teachers that had contact with Nim absolutely fell in love with him. Once you’ve seen footage of an infant chimp playing with a cat or an empty box, you are bound to suit up in full camouflage gear and head out to your neighborhood zoo to snag a chimp of your own. Really, Nim was just that cute. However, with all of the movie’s cuteness—Nim playing with the dog, being breastfed, asking for hugs, and smoking joints—there was a great deal of sadness in this story.

Nim had a high turnover of human relationships. While one teacher would quit because of an odd sexual relationship with Herb Terrace, the project’s leader, another would leave because Nim bit her in the face. Yes, Nim does bite quite a bit. The movie doesn’t show it, but everyone talks about it.

As Nim grows older, Herb shuts down the project and delivers Nim back to where he came from, an ape research facility in Oklahoma. So, Nim makes yet another transition, only this time it is a move from a swanky, New York countryside mansion, formally occupied by the president, to a cage and the wrong end of a cattle prod in Oklahoma.

The journey does not end there. Nim bounces between a medical research facility packed to the brim with fellow apes being injected with Hepatitis B vaccines, to a Texas animal sanctuary with no apes and plenty of loneliness.

Project Nim is a revealing tale about how a chimp affected the lives of so many people. It is also a story of how people severely altered the life of a chimp, creating a being that lived halfway between the worlds of humanity and the wild.

Young@Heart follows the Young at Heart chorus as they prepare and learn new songs for a concert in their home town. What makes this particular chorus so interesting is that the average age of the performers is 81. What makes these performers so awesome is that they learn songs that would normally not be associated with the likes of an octogenarian. So, you’ve got people with canes and oxygen tanks belting out tunes from James ...]]> Sometimes, there are movies that allow us to gain some perspective on life. What perspective? I do not know, but this is one of those movies.

Young@Heart follows the Young at Heart chorus as they prepare and learn new songs for a concert in their home town. What makes this particular chorus so interesting is that the average age of the performers is 81. What makes these performers so awesome is that they learn songs that would normally not be associated with the likes of an octogenarian. So, you’ve got people with canes and oxygen tanks belting out tunes from James Brown and Sonic Youth. This alone makes the movie highly enjoyable.

I have never been able to really imagine the realities of being old, and I don’t mean 50 or 60 or 70. That’s not old, or maybe it is. I’m only 22, so who am I to say? I try to tell myself that I will enjoy being old, that I will be infinitely wise and carefree and deeply satisfied with the life I have lived. There is also the distinct possibility that I will be immobile, senile, and deeply regretful of the live I have lived. Or there could be some middle ground—senile but happy, mobile but sad, mobile and immensely intelligent, but alone in the world. Well, either way, it was truly wonderful to see the Young at Heart chorus living it up.

A few of the performances are likely to make you tear up, and many of the rehearsals are likely to send you into chuckling fits. While there is a great deal of humor in this documentary of geriatric proportions, there are certainly many tragedies that befall the group. The performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” and Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” are sure to make you melt, while you probably wont be able to keep yourself from smiling during “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and James Brown’s “I Got You.”

Let this be known: It took me about twenty minutes to figure out that this was not an actual documentary. I think my inept ability to differentiate between fiction and real life, at least in this case, speaks to the merits of this movie. Let ...]]> Chalk deserves each and every one of its three and a half stars. Considering that I had never heard of it before and happened to stumble upon it while hopelessly searching the Netflix Instant database—usually a sure ticket to instant dissatisfaction and regret—Chalk was a charming treat of a mockumentary. Plus, it was filmed in Austin,TX.

Let this be known: It took me about twenty minutes to figure out that this was not an actual documentary. I think my inept ability to differentiate between fiction and real life, at least in this case, speaks to the merits of this movie. Let this also be known: After Chalk had ended, I couldn’t tell whether or not I felt extremely happy or intensely deprived at having never obtained my teaching certification. Make what you wish of that.

So, Chalk follows the lives of a group of teachers through one year at Harrison High. You have your socially awkward and stuttering computer programmer turned history teacher, Mr. Lowrey, who carries himself with the confidence of a terminally ill Chihuahua. You have the meathead, macho, overly enthusiastic Mr. Stroope, the teacher who is so comedic and hilarious because of his pent up rage and frustration. There is also the short-haired and seemingly lesbian Coach Webb and the music teacher turned assistant principal, Mrs. Reddell, who regrets leaving her teaching career. I know that my memory of high school is not without its distortions, but the portrayal of high school teacher personas in this movie was so spot-on, that it was shocking, disturbing, and utterly hilarious. The social structure of the teacher’s lounge and the romantic advances of thirty-somethings looks even more miserable and pathetic than the chain of popularity and awkward dance moves at a junior prom. I mean this in the best way possible.

More than anything, Chalk manages to put a humorous spin on the sometimes dull, often frustrating, and always trying lives of public school teachers.

Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill) plays a college screw-up who gets ...]]> The Sitter relies on a loosely constructed, general formula that I find to be irresistible. This formula usually includes any combination of the following: drugs, alcohol, drug dealers, police, car chases, action, and a group of laughably incapable protagonists who somehow manage to avoid the sweet release of death. And of course, the motivation for all of the madness: sex, usually. Well, The Sitter has most of these things. If you happened to enjoy Superbad or Pineapple Express, then I can almost guarantee that you will be a fan of this.

Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill) plays a college screw-up who gets wrangled into a night of babysitting for some neighborhood kids. Of course, these are not your average children. Slater is a 13-year-old closeted homosexual with more anxiety issues than Woody Allen. Blithe isn’t a day over 9 and all she can talk about is hot gossip, going to the club, and getting bottle service. And then, there is Rodrigo, our sweet El Salvadorian adoptee who loves to set things on fire, blow things up, and watch kickboxing.

Well,  a potentially hellish night of babysitting turns into a raucous adventure when Noah gets a call from his “girlfriend,” otherwise known as the girl who uses him for mind-blowing oral and cocaine delivery, and finds out that she is at a party and is willing to have sex with him if he brings the blow. So, Noah rallies the kids, buckles them up in the minivan, and hits the streets of Brooklynfor some cocaine and snatch.

While The Sitter is packed with public urination, crazed drug dealers, and a small army of bodybuilding guards, there are more than a few tender moments. Just like Franco, Rogen, and McBride bond over weed and rescue missions and weed and weed, Noah and his group of tweens also cultivate some special connections while enjoying a night of grand theft auto and more types of grand theft.

I would call this movie pretty kickass. Noah J-bird gets to fly—CawCaw!