NEW MOVIE REPORTS * * * * * *

[Kira&Nicole]

Step Up

The Step Up saga, known for their awesome chroeographies stories, bring us a fourth part, Step Up Revolution. This time, the story comes around simultaneously between the life of Emily Anderson (Kathryn Mccormick), whose dream is to be a professional dancer, daughter of a huge bussines man who owns Miami hotels; and Sean Asa (Ryan Guzman), lider of a dance group called "The MOB", which purpose is doing flashmobs all around Miami at anytime with huge and massive choreographies, on the way to a dance competition to win a sponsor. Emily and Sean match in one thing: the passion of dancing.
Emily gets interested in the MOB and decides to join them, but something awful gets on her way. His father will destroy Sean's small town to build a comercial center, and the only chance to save his neighborhood is to win the dance competition which will allowed him to save his town and reach his dream.
What choice will Emily take? Her father's or Sean's?

Step Up Revoltution has come up with positive critics, so this is highly recommended for the audience who likes the kind of musical movies, and those who share passion for music and dancing. It has a great soundtrack so you'll not get bored at all, and it involves a well structured story, with huge conflicts, ovbiously a love story for the girls and awesome choreographies that will blow your mind. It's not just about dancing, it's also about how far can you go to chase your dreams and the love of your life; so it also has a deep lesson about that.

Notes from the Moderator: I have not been a true-blue follower of street dance, and I confess I have not been really aware of Step Up. But this reflection has kindled my curiosity in the genre and the fact that there is a whole series of these movies. This essay is a good slice of setup and opinion with minimal GPS errors. Thanks for posting.

--mike http://www.moviesgrowenglish.com

By: Fernanda Vargas and Carlos Valcarcel.

[piskulich]

Hachiko is based on a true story.
Parker Wilson takes the train to work each day. one day he found a puppy in a box, he kept the dog, but he started to search a home for him, because he doesn't want a dog.finally, he decided to keep it even though his wife doesn't aprove that idea, he named the dog Hachiko.
Parker tries very hard to train Hachiko, beacuse the dog insists on following him every day to the train station,
one day, parker had suffered an cerebral hemorrhage and died, but hachiko waited him each day, at five o clock at the train station.
Finally, hachiko died after many years waiting for his owner to come back.

The best word I could use to describe this film would be: ¨heartwarming¨.A movie whose lead character isn´t exactly a person with a lot of touching dialogues, but a dog that the only thing it takes for him to do to make the audience burst into tears is to stand in front of a train station waiting for his owner´s arrival, and the thing that makes the viewers feel more touched by the scenes is that they know his owner won´t be coming back, and proves in many ways that maybe the love the animals share for their owners is more genuine than the love offered by other people.A movie that shows you the unconditional love of animals.

Moderator's note: I didn't even hear about this film, especially because it is Richard Gere. It seems unusual for him to do this kind of movie. I looked it up at IMDb, and, of course, it does exist and it is rather highly regarded. Interesting.

--mike www.moviesgrowenglish.com

[Preawwy]

Neighbors is a comedy movie about fighting between two adjacent houses. The first house's owners is Radner family, Mac, Kelly and their daughter Stella. They had been happy until a fraternity moved into the house next door. First, Mac and Kelly tried to be good neighbors. They introduced themselves to Teddy, the president of the fraternity. It seemed that they would be very good neighbors, but it's not. At the second night, the fraternity was very noisy, and Radner tried to ask them to lower the noise. Teddy did not do anything with the noise, so Radner called the police. The war between two houses was begun. They planned to tease each other in many ways, and also destroyed each other house. FAMILY VS. FRAT , who is going to be the winner of this war?

For our opinion, if you want to see a comedy movie, this is a good choice. This movie makes people relaxed and good-tempered. However, this movie is just a usual comedy movie, so it does not provide so many informativeness. Although we saw a lot of bad things in this movie such as drugs or parties, we also see the good things such as love between family, or love between friends.



Teacher's note: Excellent setup and opinion. Not too much information, but just enough to make me want to see this movie. I think Seth Rogen is very funny in Superbad and Knocked Up. Thanks for posting.

--mike http://www.moviesgrowenglish.com

Wii and Park

[sadeemsaleh]

Maleficent is a remake of the well known story for kids of sleeping beauty. The true sleeping beauty story talks about the princess and HOW she gets the spell. While Maleficent, also the name of the witch, talks about WHY the witch puts a spell on the princess and WHAT were her reasons.

The story takes place in a fantasy land, where there are unfamiliar creatures, fairies, dragons...etc.

one point of view says that the beginning of the movie was long and unnecessary. Could have invested that time for the ending as it was thrilling. Also points out that usually movies based on books would run for about more than two hours while Maleficent is only about 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Other opinion was fascinated and surprised by the truth behind the spell. Also realizes that there is no evil in the world without reasons triggering devious actions.

Elvira and Sadeem

Teacher's note: Your observations of Maleficent suggest that the story structure may be a bit flawed even though I understand it is a pretty entertaining film. Usually this kind of movie is 2 hours (as you point out). The beginning is about 30 minutes, the middle about an hour, and the conclusion about 30 minutes. Thanks for a nice movie report.

--mike http://www.moviesgrowenglish.com

[Muka]

"The other woman" is a comedy movie about how three women ruined a man's life . In the movie Cameron Diaz plays the role of mistress, which she did not know until she discovered that her boyfriend has a wife. Then she met her. At the beginning Cameron and her boyfriend's wife hated each other, so they did not talk so much to each other. Eventually they became friends. From that day, they tried to ruin Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's, boyfriend and husband, life. They planned so many things to destroy his life. In one of those planned days, they surprisingly discovered that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has another mistress. Then they talked to her and they all became friends too. Since then their real adventure has started. They creatively made a lot of plans to devastate Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's life.

In my view, I like these kinds of movies for many reasons. By watching it you really enjoy the movie. There are so many jokes, so you cannot just sit without laughing.Also it is relaxing. It teaches us for many things too but the most important one is that husbands and boyfriends should not ever cheat to their wives and girlfriends. The other useful thing about this movie is that we(English language learners) learn many vocabulary and expressions as well. It really helps us to learn and communicate in every day English.

Teacher's note: Sounds like a delightful movie, quite a romp, actually. I was surprised to learn that the bad guy has two mistresses and one estranged wife. He's got his hands full, and he deserves it. Gotta get my golf buds together and go see this one. Thanks for a cool report.

--mike http://www.moviesgrowenglish.com

[maggie10_27]

"How to Train your Dragon 2" is about peace and love. It is a buddy movie, too. It talks about how human and dragon get along with each other well, how they protect their homes from the dragon trapper and how they solve the conflict between friend and family. It’s not only just an animation, but also a good movie with excellent animated scenes, interesting characters and great plot. The plot is uplifting. Even though this movie is made for children, we still like it. And we saw that there are so many adults in the movie theaters, not just only children. For us, this is a very successful animation movie that it is worthy for people to watch. And there's How to Train Your Dragon 3 in the future. It will come in 2016. We all expect it.

We really like this movie, and this movie was considered to be the best Dreamworks animated film. It was made not only for children, but also for adults. We like the ideas of this movie that the director wants to convey to the audience, and we feel happy after watching this movie. Sometimes people should watch this kind of movie to relax and enjoy the movie time in the movie theater without thinking too much!


Maggie and Tiffany

[Yerka]

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
A new sci-fi fiction movie with a famous in this kind of genre actor Tom Cruise held place in the world's theaters. The movie is based on Japanese novel "All You Need Is Kill" with the same idea where in the future aliens invaded to the Earth and trying to destroy human beings. An American officer was sent to London to fight with aliens using a new technology which was the totally armed robot's form.

He got killed in the war and suddenly wakes up at the same place a day before the war. Few times more he got killed and occasionally he finds out that it was a time loop and gets back every time he gets killed. Afterwards he finds another soldier Rita who had the same phenomenon before him, but she lost that feature and it transferred to him. Finally, together they will try to beat enemies by officer's time loop advantage. But they didn't expect that aliens had the same feature and they always were a step before them.

The movie puts audience in the middle of war without explaining what happened and why it happened. There are no any references about the aliens and the reason why did they invaded to the Earth makes the audience a bit confused. The movie focused on main character Cage (Tom Cruise) and for my humble opinion he did good job with it, even if I didn't like most of his movies like "Mission Impossible" and other such kind of unreal action movies.

t has a humorous mood that definitely puts movie upper. The movie itself has nice special effects of course because it's a fantastic movie, but the ending a bit illogical. I don't know if I should write down my opinion about illogicalness of this movie because it's just a review, but I found it like that.

In general I would say that it's one time movie, you can watch it once and it would be enough. I liked his previous movie Oblivion because it's much stronger and deeper rather than this one. Still it's only my opinion and it depends on audience.

I hope every spectator will have a pleasant feeling after watching Edge of Tomorrow.

[oljas]

I always thought that the second film is more difficult to shot than the first. Especially when the first one was a huge success among the fans. I liked first film and I was looking forward to a sequel.

Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) continues to defend the city from all sorts of bandits and date charming Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), even though gave ​​a promise to her father in the previous film, that he would not put her in danger, what he did regularly.

But then there are such strong enemies as Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan). Just for a moment Iron Rhino (Paul Giamatti) appeared.This actor need[s] a bigger role with his acting. This film reveals many secrets of the first part, so new actions, new characters, new storyline appear.

I watched this film on IMAX and some scenes (especially when Spider-Man flies over New York)are breathtaking. Special effects became even better than in the first film, and the overall atmosphere of the film is much more intense. I think Jamie Foxx played well, I mean, he totally showed us who is Electro. As well as Dane DeHaan who played as Harry Osborn. In general, very well matched cast. Colorful characters always difficult to play and they did it.

Mike, you should definitely add this movie to the Films class!

Teacher's note: Thanks for a full report on the second of the new Spiderman franchise. I watched several of the Tobey Maquire offerings and got a little burned out on the CGI. Perhaps it's time to give Spidy another shot. I will consider your suggestion for showing this movie in class. Big thanks for posting.

--mike http://www.moviesgrowenglish.com

[xshang]

22 jump street

Setting: Morton Schmidt and Greg Jenko are two police officers, and their job is to chase the drug dealer. After they fail to pursue a group of dealers led by "Ghost," they are put back on the program to work for Captain Dickson. Their work location is on the 22 Jump Street. The story starts when they get their new assignment which is to go undercover as college students and locate the supplier of a drug named ”WHYPHY”.


Opinion: To be honest, American comedy films are not my type [Kaan]. However, after I’ve watched Jonah Hill’s amazing performance in the film "Wolf of Wall Street”, I decided to watch him in another film. Although the storyline of 22 Jump Jtreet" is not very creative and there were some irritating gay jokes and teenage puns, the film is still notably entertaining. I really enjoyed it and laughed. Visual techniques, such as split screen gags and imaginary flashbacks distinguishes this film from other similar ones. Besides that, the performance of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are just excellent. From my perspective, these two wonderful actors attribute more than half of the success of the movie. I highly recommend this film to those who enjoy action and comedy. Don't forget popcorn!

[Amberlovesfilm]

Amber & Hilda
Movie: Maleficent

Setting: Maleficent used to be a young, beautiful and pure-hearted girl with her proud wings. Her happiness lasted until she met Stefan, the male human she fell in love with but later betrayed her. From then on, her mind filled with revenge. She cursed Stefan’s daughter, Princess Aurora, to die in her 16 but a true love kiss could save her. As Aurora grew up, Maleficent changed… What would Maleficent do? Would Aurora die…?


Maleficent is one that totally different from the previous Disney works. It has more dark elements in both protagonist and antagonist, such like betrayal, curse, etc. It is a revolution for the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale. Compare with other fairy tale movies, I would say it is more like a reflection on real life with those sadness, doubts, and humanity…(Hilda)

As a fantasy film, Maleficent has a lot of highlights, including its cool special effects, interesting setting, and most important of all—its powerful leading actress Angelina Jolie. Jolie starred as Maleficent, who was once a cheerful and innocent fairy, but became evil after being betrayed by her puppy lover. I think Jolie is perfect for the role, since she has this mysterious aura around her, enabling her to perform both innocence and evil. She was so natural in the film, and her mischievous smiles make the evil Maleficent lovable.

Some may say the story of the film is a little bit superficial and weak. To be honest, I feel the same way, but on the other hand, the obvious plot fits the purpose of entertainment (Amber). Also, it is innovative and feminist to some extent since it satires the idea that girls need to be rescued by men. Instead, it broadens the concept of true love. This innovation makes Maleficent a good movie for parents who want to show their girls a new version of fairy tale.

Overall, though it is not a perfect 10/10 masterpiece, we both think Maleficent is a good choice for entertainment, and recommend you watching it with a bucket of popcorn>