The Wolf Of Wall Street

Revered filmmaker Martin Scorsese directs the story of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio). From the American dream to corporate greed, Belfort goes from penny stocks and righteousness to IPOs and a life of corruption in the late 80s. Excess success and affluence in his early twenties as founder of the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont warranted Belfort the title "The Wolf of Wall Street."

Wow!!! This was a hell of a long movie. That's really the only knock I can make against it though. The movie had amazing performances across the board. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill were amazing. You kept going back and forth between despising them and wanting for them to come out on time. The build up from the bottom up and the downward spiral from there was amazingly directed. And the laughs? I had no idea that this would end up being one of the funnier movies of the year between the way the friends talk to each other and a scene of DiCaprio's drug use that might be one of the funniest scenes ever. This is easily one of the best movies of the year.

I would absolutely recommend people checking this out. But it is over three hours long so be warned. Also - the R rating is because of ALOT of drug use and nudity. But it really is an incredible movie across the board.

Delivery Man

Delivery Man stars Vince Vaughn as affable underachiever David Wozniak, whose anonymous donations to a fertility clinic 20 years earlier resulted in 533 children. David must now embark on a journey that leads him to discover not only his true self but also the father that he could become.

If you saw the trailer for this one then you saw the movie. There really was nothing more of substance to it. They tried to pull a bunch of heartstrings that didn't work. The only guy that was funny was Chris Pratt who plays his friend/lawyer. He was also the only funny part of the trailer. I wanted so desperately to find Vince Vaughn amusing again, but it just didn't work. Like not at all. I was bored pretty much the whole time and only laughed 3 times - none of which were from him.

I wouldn't recommend anyone wasting their time with this movie. It's formula in every way and you can just decide how you liked the movie from watching the commercial since there is nothing more that it brings to the table.

Walking With Dinosaurs

For the first time in movie history, audiences will truly see and feel what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Walking With Dinosaurs is the ultimate immersive, big-screen experience. Recent discoveries and a breakthrough in technology will introduce new and unique dinosaurs that are more real than ever before and put moviegoers in the middle of a thrilling prehistoric adventure, where an underdog dinosaur triumphs against all odds to become a hero for the ages.

This movie was more of an entertaining documentary than a movie. But it was like a documentary geared towards kids for the most part. The dinosaur voices were all done in a narrative format. The look of the movie was great and felt real and dinosaur fans should absolutely love it. There really isn't much I took away from it other than the good overall look of it. Why this was the only family/kids movie that opened for Christmas is baffling.

Outside of huge dinosaur fans, I wouldn't really recommend people checking this out. It's not necessarily bad but it's just kind of there and there are much better options out there.

Frozen

Walt Disney Animation Studios presents Frozen. When a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, Anna (Kristen Bell), a fearless optimist, teams up with extreme mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his sidekick reindeer Sven on an epic journey to find Anna's sister Elsa (Idina Menzel), the Snow Queen, and put an end to her icy spell. Encountering mystical trolls, an amazing and comedic snowman named Olaf, Everest-like conditions and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction.

This was another great entry in the line of Disney princesses. And I love that for once they made it about more than one with the sister angle. There wasn't really a bad guy/girl in this movie. That made it very different and fresh. As always, Disney movies like this are usually dictated by the comedic side characters and Olaf the snowman pretty much carried this one. I liked most of the songs but hated how they were scripted into the movie like dialogue. The two or three main ones could have been really good, classic Disney songs but they were woven into the characters talking to each other and kind of took away from that.

I would recommend people checking this movie out. It's worth the time and money. Adults will absolutely enjoy it as much as the kids.

American Hustle

A fictional film set in the alluring world of one of the most stunning scandals to rock our nation, American Hustle tells the story of brilliant con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), who along with his equally cunning and seductive British partner Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) is forced to work for a wild FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia that's as dangerous as it is enchanting. Jeremy Renner is Carmine Polito, the passionate, volatile, New Jersey political operator caught between the con-artists and Feds. Irving's unpredictable wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) could be the one to pull the thread that brings the entire world crashing down.

This movie was great. David Russell basically combined his casts from The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook and none of them missed a beat. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence were awesome as always. Amy Adams continues to get better and better with every movie she does. And Christian Bale? What else can be said about how great this guy is. Just the body transformation he went through for this film is mind blowing like what he has done with past roles. The story was very interesting and watching it all play out was a great hook. The only knock I could make against this movie is how long it was. There was no need for this movie to be nearly three hours. They could have easily trimmed this down.

Regardless of it being too long, I would still absolutely recommend this movie. It will be on most top ten lists by the end of the year and is sure to get many award nominations, deservedly so.

Saving Mr. Banks

When Walt Disney's daughters begged him to make a movie of their favorite book, P.L. Travers' "Mary Poppins," he made them a promise - one that he didn't realize would take 20 years to keep. In his quest to obtain the rights, Walt comes up against a curmudgeonly, uncompromising writer who has absolutely no intention of letting her beloved magical nanny get mauled by the Hollywood machine. But, as the books stop selling and money grows short, Travers reluctantly agrees to go to Los Angeles to hear Disney's plans for the adaptation. For those two short weeks in 1961, Walt Disney pulls out all the stops. Armed with imaginative storyboards and chirpy songs from the talented Sherman brothers, Walt launches an all-out onslaught on P.L. Travers, but the prickly author doesn't budge. He soon begins to watch helplessly as Travers becomes increasingly immovable and the rights begin to move further away from his grasp. It is only when he reaches into his own childhood that Walt discovers the truth about the ghosts that haunt her, and together they set Mary Poppins free to ultimately make one of the most endearing films in cinematic history.

This was a very well done movie and while it eventually got to the happy ending, this was not a light and fluffy Disney movie by any means. The back story of the author's childhood was tough at times. However, the back and forth jumping in the timeline to explain the much deeper levels of Mary Poppins was amazing storytelling. It definitely keeps the viewer hooked and wanting to know why PL Travers was the way she was. Tom Hanks was great at Walt Disney but the best acting of the movie by far was Emma Thompsen and Paul Giamatti as her driver.

I would definitely recommend people checking this movie out. It is great storytelling on a couple different levels and has some really good acting.

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is based on South African President Nelson Mandela's autobiography of the same name, which chronicles his early life, coming of age, education and 27 years in prison before becoming President and working to rebuild the country's once segregated society. Idris Elba stars as Nelson Mandela.

This is one of those movies that would probably be great for a history buff, unless they see it as propaganda like one point of view history. I am in no way, shape or form a history buff so I can't really touch on all that stuff and didn't really fully embrace the movie. I definitely enjoyed it and thought it was well told and well paced around a great performance by Idris Elba.

I would somewhat recommend the movie. It's one of those movies that I know is well done and I enjoy it but probably would have enjoyed it more if I were more connected to history and what not.

Homefront

Homefront is an action movie about a widowed ex-DEA agent who retires to a small town for the sake of his 10-year-old daughter. The only problem is he picked the wrong town.

This was pretty much another textbook Jason Statham movie. He's a guy trying to avoid conflict but when the conflict catches up to him and pushes him to far, he destroys everyone. The only difference is that James Franco is pointlessly cast as the bad guy.

If you like Statham's movies, I'm sure you would like this too. If not, I'm sure you have no intention of watching it.

Out Of The Furnace

Russell Baze (Christian Bale) has a rough life: he works a dead-end blue collar job at the local steel mill by day, and cares for his terminally ill father by night. When Russell's brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) returns home from serving time in Iraq, he gets lured into one of the most ruthless crime rings in the Northeast and mysteriously disappears. The police fail to crack the case, so - with nothing left to lose - Russell takes matters into his own hands, putting his life on the line to seek justice for his brother.

There was something about this movie that kept me hooked and made me want to like this movie. I liked the characters and thought that the acting across the board was great. Unfortunately, the movie never really came fully together. It took way to long to get fully moving. More disappointing was that once the characters got built up to a certain point they just kind of stopped and left things unanswered. Woody Harrelson's character is still annoying me now because I felt like I was left waiting for more to be put into the development of it instead of him being a douche just because he's a douche.

I wouldn't really recommend people checking this out. Its not that the movie was bad. It ended up a decent watch but it ended up just kind of being there instead of being a fully developed story of simple but complex at the same time characters.

The Book Thief

Based on the beloved bestselling book, The Book Thief tells the inspirational story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a new family in World War II Germany.

This was a great movie told about Nazi Germany in one of the more light hearted ways considering the subject matter. It was all basically through the eyes of a child and it put a different perspective on everything and really hooked you in. Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson were great as the adopting parents and the girl was perfectly cast with her innocent look. There were times where I felt the movie was too simple or too fluffy considering what was happening, but they still had you hooked and you cared about all the characters and what they were going through.

I would definitely recommend people checking this movie out. I thought it would be better and maybe it's level of greatness might have been effected by that but I still enjoyed it very much.

Inside Llewyn Davis

LLewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is at a crossroads. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, some of them of his own making. Living at the mercy of both friends and strangers, scaring up what work he can find, Llewyn's misadventures take him from the baskethouses of the Village to an empty Chicago club on an odyssey to audition for a music mogul and back again.

This is one of those movies that I feel was just way too overhyped by the critics. I've never been too big of a fan of the Coen Brothers work and it seems like they could take a dump on film and throw it on a screen and critics will say it's one of the best movies of the year. It's not that I didn't enjoy the movie. Honestly, I liked this one more than most. It was a simple movie following one man's struggles. Was there a point? Not really? Was the acting top notch? Not really. It was a decent watch about trying to break through in the music business. That's it. None of this should have been nominated for best picture nonsense. I'll never understand the Coen Brothers obsession.

I would somewhat recommend this movie. It is a decent watch and kept my attention more than I thought it would to be honest. I didn't find it remotely as great at the critical acclaim its been getting though. But then again - I rarely do with the Coen Brothers.

Catching Fire

Catching Fire begins as Katniss Everdeen has returned home safe after winning the 74th Annual Hunger Games along with fellow tribute Peeta Mellark. Winning means that they must turn around and leave their family and close friends, embarking on a "Victor's Tour' of the districts. Along the way Katniss senses that a rebellion is simmering, but the Capitol is still very much in control as President Snow prepares the 75th Annual Hunger Games (The Quarter Quell) - a competition that could change Panem forever.

This movie was awesome.  I had high hopes for it since I thought that this book was the best of the series and they completely met them.  This movie served as a perfect "Empire Strikes Back" to the series where it amped up the overall story while developing the characters and their relationships more and more.  The action was great and it even looked better than in the first one.  You could noticeably see the budget difference due to the first one's success.  

I would definitely recommend everyone checking this movie out.  Fans of the book are going to see it regardless but even non-readers should really check these movies out.  Even though its based on a young adult novel, the story is really good and has so many different layers to it that viewers of all ages can enjoy it as it all plays out.

Oldboy

Oldboy is a provocative, visceral thriller that follows the story of an advertising executive (Josh Brolin) who is abruptly kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his bizarre and torturous punishment only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment.

WOW!!!  This movie was one hell of a crazy mindscrew.  The quick story progression pretty much takes you along on the ride that Josh Brolin's character goes on.  And it is one of the most insane and twisted rides viewers could go on.  Seeing what he was put through for twenty years prior to being turned loose.  The craziness that happens after he gets released only takes it to any even higher level due to the insanity of the puppet master that has been controlling him all along.  I will not ruin how it all plays out for anyone that wants to see this but the reveals that come along the way just get more and more twisted and make the movie better and better. 

I would absolutely recommend people checking this movie out.  It's a rough watch because it is so extremely twisted and there is some pretty intense violence but if you can handle this, the movie is one hell of a awesome ride.

12 Years A Slave

12 Years a Slave is based on an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender), as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon's chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) will forever alter his life.

This was one of those amazing and beyond emotional movies about a period of time (12 years obviously) in a man's life.  The trials and tribulations of this man showed the absolute worst and best in fellow human beings.  There were numerous beyond uncomfortable scenes of slavery and phenomenal acting throughout the movie.  This movie will absolutely end up on most top ten lists at the end of the year and get a bunch of Oscar nominations.  The only knock I would make against this movie is that there were too many of the artsy staring off deep in thought type of moments.  Outside of that it was an amazing movie.

I would absolutely recommend everyone checking out this movie. The realistic gruesomeness is rough to watch at times but the movie was excellent.