Leaving High school...

With my high school career ending in six short days, I am reflecting on the way Christian Brothers Academy has shaped me as a person.  Four long years at the academy can do a lot for a naive fourteen year old coming out of middle school. Coming into high school, there was a long list of stuff I didn’t know, and more stuff I thought I knew.

    Since I came from one of the smaller towns (Monmouth Beach)  in the area, I was fortunate enough to “breeze through middle school”. Literally not having to lift a finger as far as school work came, I was kind of attacked by CBA classes when I arrived. I remember the first weeks of CBA, there was the freshman run and a whole lot of orientation introducing our class to the academy. Looking back on it, I can remember myself thinking “I’m so bored of sitting around and listening to people talk, I wish classes would just start” and boy was I wrong. The most difficult part of freshman year, for me, was the biology midterm. Not only was it my first real science class, and my first exam, it was the first mid term on the schedule. I thought “Okay, I can study for this the night before.” and I cannot write in words how wrong I was.

    After freshman year, CBA didn’t seem as bad. I made friends with people who I probably would never had met, I got to go to places where I probably never would have been, and I got to do it all with a good education and athletic leadership. 

dodgeball

Dodgeball is one of Vince Vauhn's funniest movies. He stars as a gym owner who is having money trouble, so him and his buddies start a dodgeball team to compete in a tournament. They go to Las Vegas for the competition and a Cinderella story occurs.

 

 Labeled as "A True Underdog Story"  Dodgeabll includes every element of a great movie. From comedy to drama, it is a story best told on the movie screen with popcorn.

Trailer Park Boys

Trailer Park Boys is what happens whens a sit-com meets with a reality TV show. Three convicted felons make a fake documentary on their life living in a trailer park. Making several attempts at illegal schemes and operations, they try to make large quantities of money for their "retirement", meanwhile they just keep getting arrested.

 

 The three main characters Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles are Canadian raised and proud of it. Constantly fighting with the law and the trailer park supervisor, Jim Lahey, these three musketeers are  always getting into trouble. Trailer park boys is on their tenth season, this one including Snoop Dogg.

Scarface

When Castro let thousands of Cuban prisoners into America, it created a chaotic scene (espicially in Miami). It began drug lords known as Cocaine Cowboys and a Cuban and Colombian cartel rose from it. A positive outcome from this decade was the movie Scarface.

 Al Pacino was courageous in playing this role of Tony Montana and using a strong, fake Cuban accent. It paid off for him, as we all know, it was one of his best movie roles ever. He played a poor Cuban who came over to America with nothing, claiming to be a political prisoner, and worked up the cocaine cartels. Loosely based off real events, Scarface is a fictional story of the drug trade in Miami.
A good reference documentary is a doc. called Cocaine Cowboys, which tells stories of and interviews the real kingpins of Miami from the 80's.
The reason this time in Miami was so interesting was because it was raw and insane. As you see in the first scenes of Scarface, Tony Montana goes into the street after almost being chainsawed, and shoots a drug lord right in the head. In front of many citizens.
Scarface is going down as one of the best movies due to its out-of-this-world violence.

2016 Academy Awards

In the past year some of my favorite films have been released and last night on February 28, the Academy nominated who the best was.

The obvious award everyone wanted to see was Leonardo Dicaprio winning best actor for the Revenant. And not only did he win best actor, but Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won best director as well. The Revenant had to be filmed over a prolonged period of time due to the climate. Being filmed in northern Canada/Alaska there was very little daylight, so the cast would spend the non-film time rehearsing for perfection. Leonardo Dicaprio preformed amazingly by portraying the role of Hugh Glass, a 19th century fur hunter and navigator. Inarritu also did an extraordinary job filming and choreographing the cast in the movie.

Brie Larson won best actress for the movie The Room, which was a fictional portrayal of non-fictional accounts of woman being kidnapped and locked away in someones house. The story being very dramatic, Brie Larson did a very sentimental performance with Jacob Tremblay, the son she had while locked away.

The Departed

The Departed is my favorite Martin Scorsese movie. It is an amazing script and directed perfectly, but the cast of the movie carried the film to its Oscar.
It was funny seeing Scorsese going up to accept his award, when he got the microphone he asked, "can you reread the envelop? are you sure this is right?" It was about time he won an academy award for his work. Although he deserves most of the credit, like I said, the cast of the movie was the heart and brain of the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Alec Baldwin all can be in a movie without each other and still thrive. The fact that this was a cast is amazing, because if you compare them from back then to now, they have all reached great success in their careers. It's almost like Freaks and Geeks or Parks and Recreation, where the cast is 100% talented and each member goes on to achieve success.
I don't want to spoil the movie, so all I can say is The Departed is a great sequence of realistic crime twists in a south Boston police department and this movie will leave you at the last scene with your jaw on the ground.

Entourage

Probably the only good movie that originated from a television series,  Entourage cannot be compared to any other movie that started out as a TV show. Entourage, in my opinion, is perceived as a good show because it is a realistic fantasy of what people want to live. I doubt the Hollywood lifestyle is really like that, but with all the cameos and real life situations, it is seen as realistic.

Cameos are kind of what makes the show. Having actors and celebrities play themselves so often has never been done. But besides the cameos, Vinny Chase's "entourage" is the second likeable factor about the show. All of them came from nothing together, and they are enjoying the fame together. No matter what happens they stick by each other. Which is something that is a lot easier said than done. People love seeing good morals and bad habits mix, and Entourage is the epitome of that. For example, if Johnny Chase, Vinny's brother is having a bad week, the entourage will take him out partying. Cheering up your family members by going to a mansion in Malibu, Entourage offers a mix of good and bad priorities.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is my favorite movie. I say this about a lot of different movies, but this has every element I look for in a film. It's plot is confusing enough to keep my mind pondering and the acting is great enough to keep me watching. The dialogue and the scenery is all well done.
What I like most about this film is how original and well told the story was. I love watching movies like Inception and Donnie Darko, where you don't really understand what's going on until the half way point, or even after. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play a couple who were madly in love with each other, but then something happens (watch the movie yaself), so it has a big romantic aspect to it, and you can tell within the first 10 minutes that this is no Dumb and Dumber Jim Carrey comedy flick. He plays one of the most serious, mildly depressed character, and does it so well.
Not only is the acting, script, and title interesting. It really makes you value memories and relationships with people. It goes through the mind of Jim Carrey's character and all his memories, releasing a wave of nostalgia. If you want to see a really sentimental and wonderful movie, go watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Star Wars Episode 7

As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows, Star Wars Episode 7 came out in mid December. Everyone knows star wars for its huge fan base and what they do. You see pictures of people dressed up as Yoda or Chewbacca at conventions having light saber battles, but the saga of movies means so much more.

When George Lucas released the first 3 movies, he changed the way people film movies. Half the movie took place in space, so he had to make a background of space. If you have ever seen a movie in space before the Star Wars movies, you will notice the significant difference. By using small crafted space ships, and filming them close up at the right angle, Lucas made it seem like the Millennium Falcon was the size of a house flying through space. He pioneered the way he filmed movies and created his own genre. By putting together such a good orchestra and scenery to go with it, the movie and soundtrack made it so surreal.

Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man

In 1988, Rain Man came out starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. It brought Dustin Hoffman his second Oscar, this one for best supporting actor, despite the fact that he thought this was his worst acting while on set. If you haven't seen this movie, Dustin Hoffman plays the role of an autistic mathematics genius.

Only a few actors have pulled off playing a mentally ill character in movies throughout history, but Hoffman somehow manages to be identical to someone with borderline autism. In the movie he is wrongly diagnosed with autism because his doctor was late to a golf tournament, hence the reason Rain man says "Sorry you're late to golf" throughout the movie.  Hoffman has these little punchlines that he says throughout the movie that contributes to his acting of an autistic character. He played the role so well that it was hard to tell he wasn't autistic. This was also the first time I ever seen Dustin Hoffman in a movie, and I now cannot imagine him playing a normal role. He played this character so well that Rain man sticks to him just as well as Jack Sparrow to Johnny Depp.

The whole premise of the movie was that Tom Cruise's (Charlie Babbit) father died. Of course, he was extremely rich, but money wasn't what Charlie cared about. Charlie's father had a vintage car he never let him drive, and Charlie never spoke to him since he was 18. So when his father died and he found out he left the car in a will to an autistic man, Charlie had to get to the bottom of it. Charlie goes to "Rain man's" hospitality help and breaks him out.

The whole movie shows what it's like for someone with autism to experience the real world. Charlie has Rain man count cards, remember a telephone-book, and attempt socializing for the first time. It's a dramatic comedy that can touch your heart as you learn along the way the strong relationship Charlie and Rain man never knew they had.

The Situation Fails at Roasting Donald Trump

Every so often Comedy Central hosts "Roasts" for celebrities on their
birthdays. If you don't know what a roast is it's basically 6 to 9
people making fun of everything about someone with no remorse. As
cynical as it sounds, at the end of each roast the roaster sends a somewhat sentimental message to the roastee about what they've accomplished.
Most of the roasters on comedy central are actors or writers or stand up
comedians. The roasters of Donald Trump were Seth MacFarlane, Snoop
Dogg, Anthony Jeselnik, Larry King, Whitney Cummings, some others I'm too lazy to type, and lastly, Jersey Shore's Mike "The Situation". The person who owns this show is Jeff Ross, who also participates in the roast.
















                                          Mike the Situation is undoubtedly one of those people you see on TV and celebrity events like this and say to yourself "how is that guy famous?". I'm a huge fan of these roasts, so when I saw he was on the roast line up, I had to watch. And when I watched this it was everything I expected. What I laughed at most in this video is the reaction of the people he's roasting. I actually think he didn't do as terrible as he seems, but the way the real comedians and celebrities reacted to his jokes was hilarious. Of course, nothing he said to Donald Trump made sense or was even funny, but when Jeff Ross jumped on stage, it took away the uncomfortable awkwardness everyone watching felt.

Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction is one of the most notorious action movies and Quentin Tarantino's biggest movie. The story line is pretty simple, it follows 2 hitmen in their daily lives and a corrupted boxer. Samuel Jackson and Johnny Travolta play Jules and Vincent, the 2 hitmen, working for Marsellus Wallace who hires them to retrieve a suitcase. The suitcase is just another mysterious element to this movie that keeps the watcher on the edge of their seat. We never really find out what's inside the suitcase, some say its drugs, money, or Marsellus Wallace's soul. 
        Pulp Fiction is such a recognized movie because of its displacement in almost everything. The conversations between the 2 hitmen sound like 2 coworkers from Costco who are on lunch break, and the final scene is probably the most unexpecting scene in cinema history. Between dialogue, scenes, and the outfits Jules and Vincent have to wear, this movie is as unpredictable as it gets. Whether there is action or no action, this movie keeps you guessing.
 

Good Will Hunting

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are arguably the best duo in cinema history, especially when they came out with Good Will Hunting. In my opinion, I think the roles could've gone either way,  Damon played Will Hunting amazingly, but I also think Affleck could've had the same affect as Damon did. No matter what roles they play, having them in a movie together is a blessing; which is why casting Robin Williams made this movie so much better.
Probably the most memorable cast,  Good Will Hunting won the best screenplay Oscar, along with Robin Williams best supporting actor Oscar, R.I.P.

Besides the cast, the other element of the movie that I loved was the script and the improv. Since Matt Damon played a genius, he would have to improve some of the genius dialogue, making the conversations more real and quick. Robin Williams also improvised the scene were he talks about his deceased wife. He tells the story of her farting in bed, and a very touching quote, "People call these things the imperfections. But they're. They're the good stuff."Put away the improv and the dialogue is still amazing. Damon and Affleck wrote this together which I find amazing because it is such a complex and thoughtful script, I am befuddled that 2 regular guys like them could write something as compelling as this.

Nightcrawler

The movie Nightcrawler came out in 2014 and didn't recieve too much critical acclaim, even though it was starring Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie is very different from the trailers released. I feel like the movie has a menacing, fantasy setting to it. If someone told you it was based on a true story and then you watched it, you would be very quick to doubt them. Although Gyllenhaal's pyschopathic personality is probably similar to someone in real life, the director of this movie did an amazing job carving it into a fictional story.

The movie is about a lonely, OCD crazed guy who is looking for something to occupy him. The first scene of the movie describes what the next two hours will be perfectly. Gyllenhaal's character breaks into a junkyard and robs it of all this cheap, garbage copper. Someone comes by in a security uniform, they argue, and the next scene is Gyllenhaal driving away with a smirk on his face and the watch worn by the guard. He basically goes about the whole movie, in LA, just taking what he wants, and trying to resell it or make some profit from the steal he just made. The following scene after is him trying to sell the cheap copper to a junkyard owner- and Gyllenhaal trying to negotiate him to upper prices.
Eventually, he drives by a car accident, where news reporters just arrived on the scene. Police pull up, and you can see how the reporters are closer to the accident than the policeman. The "nightcrawler" takes a great interest in this and asks really detailed questions to the reporters. The movie takes flight after this and you see this character just repetitively gaining obsession with getting to crime scenes before anyone else. He rushes to film every type of crime heard on the police radio, even before the police come, making him the Nightcrawler.

Vince Vaughn

Vince Vaughn is arguably one of the biggest faces in film to this day. He's starred in countless lead roles, just as well as supporting roles. He's also helped write and produce movies in the past recent years.

Two movies starring Vince Vaughn I strongly recommend are Swingers and The Delivery Man. Although Wedding Crashers he established a well known relationship with Owen Wilson, these 2 I will put over any other Vince Vaughn movies.

Swingers is a decently old movie just about guys in LA, trying to have a good time. Vince plays this role of a confident "swinger" trying to make his way as not only an actor but a legendary wingman for his no so confident friend who just got out of a relationship. This is the first movie you get to really see Vince Vaughn be stupid but make it look like talented acting.
He repeats the phrase "c'mon baby you're gold, they loved you" every time his distraught companion would go up to a girl at the bar and get denied. Its hard to even tell if his character is joking because he says this so much.

The Delivery Man is quite the opposite, Vince Vaughn plays a way more serious role. In this movie he's a lousy truck driver for Boar Head meat, but soon discovers a decision he made years ago will immensely affect him.  In the movie,Vaughn comes to find out there is a scandal about a person known as "Starbuck" who donated a mass amount of sperm to a sperm bank. Soon be unveiled, Vaughn is Starbuck, and feels the moral obligation to meet his over 300 biological kids and get to know them. All this is happening just as he is trying to get his financial life together, just as well as a relationship with a girl.

Being a Steve Buscemi fan, it is hard to choose my favorite movie he is, but one sticks out in particular. In Fargo Steve Buscemi plays the role the not-so-scary kidnapper Carl Showalter. Although the movie is supposed to be a dark tragedy, Steve Buscemi playing the kidnapper turns it into dark humor. Also, the fact that is takes place in snowy North Dakota, and everyone has Canadian-like accidents, it just adds to the movies intended humor. The dialogue is almost hilarious because you get a sense that the director is making fun of Canadian accidents and how they are so friendly when talking to one another; but the setting is just as perfect as the dialogue. The movie takes place in a quiet small town, where the only police case is about a broken down car or a missing pet. So when this goofy car salesman hires Steve Buscemi's character to kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom, it kind of adds humor to the dark concept.
Steve Buscemi and the man (Gaear Grimsrud) next to him get hired to kidnap this low paid car salesman, and hold her ransom until the wife's father pays off the ransom. The car salesman goal all along is to hire these people to kidnap his wife- get his father-in-law to pay the ransom- then meet with the kidnappers and split the money. This elaborate goal is supposed to take the car salesman and his family out of a tight money situation, but sure enough, more and more problems occur, and the friendly pregnant policewomen gets involved in the case.
As the movies unfolds, you realize how stupid the decisions begin made by the characters are, and you are able to look past the fact that someone is begin kidnapped against will, by their own husband.

One of my favorite movies directed by one of my favorite directors, Christopher Nolan, Interstellar has the ability to to be one of the most original ideas for a movie. Nothing can be compared to its futuristic, yet present time realism of the portrayal of space and universes. There are movies that involve a real sense of space and astronomy such as Apollo 13 and Space Odyssey, but while watching Interstellar, you actually feel like you are orbiting around a planet (especially in the theater).

Not only is the idea of Interstellar original, but the way it was filmed and the choreography was pure originality. The idea of the soon to be apocalyptic stage of Earth has been seen before, but very few screen writes have told the story of Earth while it was decaying away. Most tend to do post or even pre-apcalyptic movies.  Nolan tells it in a incredible way, and then manages to shoot the movie even better than it was written.
Christopher Nolan, as much as it seemed, didn't use a green screen and CGI effects often. In fact, all the space ships and shuttles were actually built and the scene were they to the water logged planet, was actually a knee deep lake in Iceland. Nolan revolutionized filming and directing movies in Interstellar by the way he displayed the vast and unexplored vacuum known as outer space.

Forrest Gump won 2 academy awards in 1994. Winning best picture and Tom Hanks winning best actor proved the movie was more than a simple man, cluelessly roaming the Earth. Although it seemed that way, I believe the message in Forrest Gump was much more.

Most people watch Forrest Gump and laugh continuously throughout the movie, because they either thought the way he said, "Jenny!" was funny, or the scenarios he got himself into were comical. What I believe, and what most might disagree with, is that there is extremely deep meaning to this movie. This not-so-smart, easy going man did everything in his life based off a simple question is it good or bad? If you noticed, in the movie he nearly does nothing bad (besides beating the man up who wouldn't leave Jenny alone). You can compare Forrest Gump to Jesus Christ even, although they lived in a drastically different time period and one was divine, they both acted upon morals. Forrest just did because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Even the times he didn't know he was doing a good thing, he was. He ran cross country (literally) while people raised funds and advertised Forrest. He went back into guerilla warfare to get Bubba and Lt. Dan. He went to the freedom speeches in D.C. and accidentally participated in rallies. Robert Zemeckis, the director, did an amazing job of incorporating Tom Hanks into actually footage of history. Another belief I hold is that this movie was to show a timeline of American history and peoples point of views while it was going on; and that Forrest Gump was to be an example of a simple man, who had the right opinion.
Even though the most recognizable quotes from this movie were, "Run Forrest, Run!" and, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." (an amazing quote) this movie has such a deep meaning, and could be a source of how to look at life.

In the past decades, motion pictures have become a popular way to get distracted from the daily, repetitive lives us people live. One of the best genres of movies is comedy. And very few people do it so well. Seth MacFarlane and Sacha Baron Cohen are the two funniest comedies of our time.

Seth MacFarlane, well known for Ted, Family Guy, American Dad, A Million Ways To Die in the West, has the satire, edgy sense of humor our parents tried to hide us from when we were children. Of course, we eventually began to watch such comedy.
Seth MacFarlane has always been doing something with animation, weather it was a whole show of cartoons, or a animated teddy bear edited into a movie. Either way, with or without cartoons, he gets the job done. Although he has some twisted humor, he is so well known and appreciated because he makes fun of the stuff you're not supposed to; and he gets away with it. If you take any other person off the street and have them tell a typical Seth MacFarlane joke, they will be viewed as racist, anti-patriotic, something along those lines. The way Seth MacFarlane does it can be considered an artwork. His comedy is obviously making fun of, not laughing with (he makes that clear) of people, ideas, events, etc. Just watch one episode of Family Guy and every minute or so they have a spin off making fun of something and really insulting it. I don't know how he does it, but he holds nothing back and is constantly funny. Seth MacFarlane is also known to do multiple voices, and he has a knack for doing musical notes in his writing, where he incorporates satirical humor into a song and has characters preform it. Oh, and he also hosted the Academy Awards, where he wrote a musical note to be preformed.

Sacha Baron Cohen has the same idea as Seth MacFarlane, where he is extremely satirical and edgy with his comedy. The only thing Cohen does different is he goes out into the real world as his characters. Sacha Baron Cohen may not be his most recognizable persona, but rather "Borat" or "Bruno" or my personal favored "Ali G". Yes, he is that guy that made one of the funniest, immature movies ever titled "Borat" where he played an innocent reporter from Kazakhstan just trying to get by in America (and meet Pamela Anderson). Cohen is a comedic legend because his comedy isn't written out, edited on a computer, and processed into a movie; instead it is filmed by an incognito camera man, where most of his dialogue is improve, and just going with the flow of the confused unprepared civilians he is dealing with. Although Cohen has gotten multiple lawsuits from his antics, he  surprisingly plays his role really well. Borat and Bruno are two movies where everyone in the movie had no idea he was playing a character. This comedy is so rare, after seeing Cohen do it, I don't think anyone can do it better. But, Cohen also does written out skits. He did that one movie, "The Dictator" where he played a foreign dictator that came over from America. Not his best work, but still a little funny. Also, he does this character "Ali G" where he plays an English wanna-be gangster who seems to know next to nothing and is very immature. He's interviewed hugely famous people like Kobe, Shaq, David Beckham, and then random people like small business owners, farmers, etc. But in every interview, he finds something that he can say to annoy the interviewee, or befuddle them with immense stupidity. Simple things like asking, "How many springs are in a basketball?" to Kobe can result in top quality comedy.

Where To Watch Movies

Since going to the movies now a days is too much time and money for our important lives, people have conveniently made websites with the theater movies in them. You can download a computer app called Popcorn time and watch almost any movie or TV show that has ever aired, or you can go onto putlocker.is and watch movies that came out only weeks ago (if you can click through all the ads). And since I find it helpful to watch full length films instead of doing my homework, I am here to tell you which ones to watch and which ones not to. 

Cop Car, a movie I recently watched featuring Kevin Bacon, very much met my expectations. The plot was more thought out than I thought possible for a film called "Cop Car", especially the fact that 2 of the main characters were kids. Jon Watts filmed and directed this in the scenic Colorado Springs, where 2  around find a cop car. One thing leads to another, and eventually they are in the car driving it. Yes this is a very simple story idea, but the reasoning behind why the car is there and what later happens to the kids and the car-less cop is remarkable.