Easy A - That 2010 movie

It's a comedy involving high schoolers and classic literature. The literary references aren't Shakespearian (it's actually American literature, mostly The Scarlet Letter and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - incidentally, two books that I have not read), though, so I can't say it's a Shakespearian teen comedy, but it's pretty close.
Now, there are many things that were very fun about this movie:

• our main protagonist is witty and hilarious
• seriously, her parents are also hilarious
• yes, I actually giggled out loud at many points in the movie - which is actually a pretty rare thing to happen, especially if I'm watching an intentional comedy. So props to that

There were, however, things that I really didn't like about it:

• firstly, the plot is rather ludicrous - although if you keep in mind that it is entirely from our protagonist's perspective, it makes more sense
• I mean, seriously, do high schoolers really care about who is allegedly having sex with who? Oh, right - of course they do, it's just one of those thing that I never really got. Yaaay.
• Most characters aren't very dimensional? They usually have mostly one or two dimensions. But that could be chalked up to the fact that it's all from the protagonist's perspective.
• And the "best friend"'s attitude towards our protagonist (after the whole scandal thing took off) was infuriating.

So yeah, I enjoyed this movie, even if I found it a bit problematic at times. 

10 Things I Hate About You - That 1999 movie

Heath Ledger (as the male lead/love interest).
Julia Stiles (as the awesome lead female character, the "shrew" if you will).
A young Joseph Gordon-Levitt (!).
A Shakespearean teen romantic comedy - an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew.
Also, some 90's fashion and music and cultural references.
I liked it.

How To Train Your Dragon - That 2010 Movie

Excellent!
There's dragons! And Vikings! And passing references to viking mythology! And a super cute dragon named Toothless! And also, an epic final battle.
I want to watch it again!

The Princess and the frog - That 2009 Disney movie

I am such a kid.
It's a good movie, although I did find parts of dialogue hard to understand because of the characters' accents and because I am REALLY TIRED and I have trouble with accents (and run-on sentences) when I am tired.
The character design was very Disney princess style, and the animation mostly hearkened back to the days of The Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan and such. With the notable exception of the main antagonist, the evil Voodoo Doctor Facilier - by the way, I think he's my favorite Disney villain so far, and I'm quite disappointed that he didn't have more scenes. Anyways, the overall look of the movie should be familiar to anyone who's grown up with Disney movies, with some interesting (but brief) forays into different (and sometimes REALLY TRIPPY) styles. I liked it!
And like any self-respecting Disney movie, there are songs! My favorite being Doctor Facilier's Friends On The Other Side. And my second favorite being Tiana's Almost There (the change in animation style is fun!). Fun stuff!

(500) Days of Summer - That 2009 movie

Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Zooey Deschanel. What's not to love?
I liked it - except maybe for the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me ending and the fact that Summer's storyline is a bit um... Nonsensical. Out of character.
But apart from that, I really liked this movie; it's a non-linear story with little bouts of interesting cinematography in-between the major plot points. It's enjoyable, even when you want to tell some characters that they're being real douchefaces.

Inception - That 2010 movie

Oh where to begin?
I liked this movie. It wasn't really confusing (or at least, a lot more simple than the reviews I'd read made it seem), and it was a very interesting concept to begin with: how do you plant an idea into someone? People can trace back the genesis of their ideas, so you want to make them think that they thought of it first. And since there's some convenient dream-invasion technology available, guess how our protagonists do what they have to do?
Anyways. You have Leonardo Dicaprio, Ellen Page, and a guy named Joseph Gordon-Levitt whom I had never heard of before this movie, and who looks a lot like a skinnier (and more alive) Heath Ledger. The whole concept of layers of dreams reminded me of the layers of the Twilight in the Night Watch series of novels. (Yes, I had to bring a book in somewhere!) And... well, it's a very entertaining movie, that I might even watch again someday. Maybe.

Mean Girls - That 2004 movie.

The first time I saw this movie (sometime in 2004/2005, probably), I didn't appreciate it very much. This time around, though, I think I fell in love. It's just so amazinglygoodandentertaining-andenjoyableandOHMYthisisthe-bestteenmovieI'veeverseeninmylife!
Seriously, the screenplay writers have done a great job - the many gags and jokes and snide side comments are what makes this movie great (apart from the excellent acting and the, you know, actual character growth that goes on). And look at that - Tina Fey wrote the screenplay. AND she was great as the math teacher (look, a secondary character that shows... well, character!). It's decided - I like Tina Fey! Not the least because of this gem:

You've got to stop calling each other sluts and whores - it just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.

I must admit, Lindsay Lohan did a very good job of her role, too. There was one scene, though, that I found very funny of unintended reasons: the "drunk at the party and pukes on love interest's lap" scene. That was not "drunk". "Drunk" involves slurred words. (This particular kind of not-good acting amuses me) In any case, props to the people in charge of the visual aspects of her character for the correlation between the level of styling of her hair/her attire and her inner emotional turmoil/shallowness/peace with herself.
Well, I could go on and on about Rachel McAdams' amazingness in this movie, but this thing is getting pretty long already. Let me just say that

1. gotta love how the "BURN BOOK" looks about twenty pages long, and yet "every girl in school except for 3" are in it.
2. the fact that "sexually active band geeks" counts as a clique amuses me to no end.

Oh, and on a last, math-related note: did I spot a mistake in the Mathletes' Sudden Death Round? They have to find the limit where x -> 0, for ln(1-x)*sin(x)/(1-cos^2(x)). Now, the movie said that "the limit does not exist", BUT if I remember my calculus correctly, it should be

• lim[x->0] for ln(1-x)*sin(x)/(1-cos^2(x))
• lim[x->0] for ln(1-x)*sin(x)/sin^2(x)
• lim[x->0] for ln(1-x)/sin(x)

Using l'Hôpital's rule, we then get

• lim[x->0] for (1/1-x)/cos(x)
• lim[x->0] for 1/(1-x)*cos(x)
• which equals 1/(1-0)*cos(0)
• = 1/(1)*(1)
• = 1

Oh well. I only learned that rule in first year of uni - if we're talking about a high school-level math competition, they might not expect the competitors to know that rule. But still.

(Longest post so far? I think so. Wheee!)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - That French movie

This was a really good movie. The story - based on the novel of the same name - was heartbreaking, the acting was very very good (so good that you forgot it was acting), but the best part was that it was cinematographically innovating. The camera angles were interesting, and the first-person perspective it offered (except in moments of flashbacks) was very interesting indeed.
So yes, I liked this movie. And I can see why the director won a Palme d'or at the Cannes movie festival; he has an excellent, innovative vision.
A little warning, though: at one point, the guy's eyelids have to be sown shut, and since it happens during a first-person perspective moment, people who are squeamish about such things will definitely be uncomfortable.

The Breakfast Club - That movie

Five WASP-y kids are stuck in detention all day, on a Saturday. They are the embodiments of the high school stereotypes that would plague all later depictions of secondary school education: the nerd, the jock, the troublemaker, the popular girl (that the troublemaker's attracted to), and the silent girl that wears black and is pretty weird (to be replaced by the emo in post-2000 high school stereotypes).
Before I saw the movie I expected it to be an overrated disappointment - but I was pleasantly surprised. Despite the appearance that their high school targets twenty-year-olds (seriously, that guy has grey in his hair!), the over-sadistic principal and the cheezy ending, I actually really enjoyed this movie.
Among my favorite moments are:

• The part where sushi is treated like this super weird gross-sounding never-before-heard-of foreign food
• The exact second you realize all the characters' hair is parted in a straight line (it looks so weird!)
• Smoking up in the library

The first 2 are attributable to the fact that this movie is straight from the eighties, and the last one... was just odd. Still, it made for a pretty entertaining movie.

Hercules - That Disney movie

A boy. A myth. A movie.

Hercules wasn't a Disney success, but most kids who have grown up during the '90s have seen this movie. I even still have a promotional plastic plate with Phil's satyr-ness on it - like the picture on the right but stained (we went camping, had spaghetti, and didn't immediately clean the dishes. Good times!).

As a kid, I had an obsession with Greek mythology - and I didn't enjoy this movie because of it. Let's face it, it's a Disney movie; it might be inspired by a classic or even ancient tale of bravery, but it certainly won't follow it. You could even say that, in regards to the Greek mythology that inspired it, this movie is 100% guaranteed to NOT be canon. But as a little know-it-all kid, I this movie was horrible and horrendous just because it didn't match up with the mythology on a few little details, like:

1. Zeus is the Greek name; Hades is the Greek name; Hermes is the Greek name; but Hercules is the Roman name of the Greek hero Heracles.
2. The elemental bad guys were called the Titans in the movie. In fact, they were the Giants; the Titans were the generation of deities that gave birth to (and had kids with) the Olympian gods (Zeus and his ilk).
3. Actually, Heracles - fine, HERCULES, (let's perpetuate the misunderstanding, shall we?) was a demi-god: Zeus was his father, and a mortal woman called Alcmene was his mother.
4. That's right, Hera wasn't Hercules' mother - and in fact, she tried to kill him.
5. Hades just didn't give a shit about Hercules-as-a-baby. Really.
6. No, Hades didn't try to steal Zeus' throne. And he voluntarily chose to take care of the Underworld.
7. Speaking of the Underworld, for normal people it isn't a green swirly river, it's just a grey, featureless, boring place to shuffle on after you've died.
8. Also, what's up with giving Hades power over fire? Seriously, did we need Judeo-Christian allusions to the Devil that badly?
9. Furthermore, where's Poseidon? He's equal in power and importance to Zeus or Hades, so where was he during the entire movie? Chilling out at the bottom of the ocean?

Yes, I was an annoying kid.

But! I've grown up, and now I can actually appreciate, and yes, find this movie enjoyable. All the songs involving the Muses were really good - especially the first song of the movie, the Gospel Truth, and Meg's "I won't say I'm in love" song. There were also a ton of cultural references that were timely in 1997, and are now pretty hilarious if you remember what they referred to (Air-Hercs anyone?), and the plethora of little visual jokes everywhere in the movie seem to indicate that the graphics team had fun making this, at least. I mean come on, at one point Hercules wears Scar as a headdress!

Speaking of visual stuff; the character design was really good. I loved the visible awkwardness of the adolescent Hercules: the wide shoulders but scrawny biceps, the disproportionally large hands and feet, the feet pointing inwards, the facial features (his chin mostly) too large for his face - he's adorkable! My only question is: what's up with the princess Leia-inspired ears? (Just re-watch the first twenty minutes of the movie, and you'll see what I mean)

When Hercules hits adulhood, though, I find that the character design could have been better; ok, I get it, he's strong and all but does he really need to have biceps bigger than his legs? Seriously Disney, you already did that with Gaston...

My main complaint about this movie, though, has to do with the bad guys - Panic and Pain, the incompetent demon sidekicks, are annoying. Also, the mythological Hades is not in any way in charge of fire, so why does the movie one have a fire toupee? (Yeah, I still haven't gotten over that.)

On a side note, if we pretend Disney is right and Hades does control fire, am I the only one who's noticed a parallel between Zeus-Poseidon-Hades and Jolteon-Vaporeon-Flareon?