Lack of Classes? Movie Time!

With the current state of turmoil in Puerto Rico, there has been a week of chaos and student strikes in the University of Puerto Rico. This week was given as an academic recess by the President of the UPR to “avoid conflict” which has of course been received with even more criticism. Regardless, I’m not here to write about politics and the UPR’s situation, not in this post anyway. In such dire times, I’ll instead write about what I’ve been doing this past week when I’m not busy worrying about activists and politicians screwing with my education.  I’ve been to the movie theater more frequently than I’ve ever been. Setting a new record for myself by watching four movies in one week. All the movies I saw were awesome in their own ways (bonus!).  I watched Jennifer’s Body, Zombieland, The Informant, and Adam. Now, I will indulge myself and proceed to put my thoughts on these movies into words.

Last Tuesday, I went to watch Jennifer’s Body with my girlfriend. Jennifer’s Body is a horror/comedy movie with smart dialogue. I’ll let that sink in for a little bit… OK. It’s pretty unexpected for a Halloween-timed horror movie to not simply be a quick cash cow with no real merit, but here we are. Jennifer’s Body was written by Diablo Cody of Juno fame, and she does not disappoint. Jennifer’s Body is the tale of a teenage beauty and her geeky friend. The beauty gets possesed by a demon, and begins to kill teenage boys. Typically, I don’t like horror movies since the great majority of them are laughably bad. This flick made me laugh, but because the dialogue was funny. There are no cheap scares in this movie; the scary parts are genuinely scary and creepy based on their content. That said, the movie has a lot of gore, which might turn some people off, but then again it is a horror movie so you can’t complain. Personally, I thought the gore was damn cool.  The soundtrack was great, and the story was entertaining and not too corny. One thing I must note is that at one point I felt the movie was running a bit too long and not wrapping things up fast enough. Shortly thereafter, about 5 minutes, it did wrap up the plot though. I definitely recommend this movie to anyone who loves good dialogue and gore in their movies.

Thursday did arrive, and ‘lo and behold ’twas movie night once more! I had heard good things about Zombieland on these here Interwebs. The movie sounded promising, and the cast was solid. I’m a pretty big fan of Woody Harrelson too, and he’s a zombie-killing badass in it, so I was sold on that alone. The movie is a zombie comedy, and it’s not at all scary. It has tons of action, great jokes, and a story with a surprising amount of substance. The movie centers around four characters: the badass, the shy dude with the heart of gold, the hot girl, and the hot girl’s spunky little sister. The characters all live up to their stereotypes, and it’s a fun ride. Seriously, I’m not going to bother explaining any further. All you need to know is that it’s hilarious and there’s lots of awesome zombie deaths.

A few days passed, and we decided to go on a road trip. On Sunday, Jose, Leo, and I drove to San Juan to the Fine Arts Cafe theater for some flicks that won’t reach the mainstream theaters. Since we already going on a long drive, we decided to make it a double feature and watch two movies. The Informant is a dark comedy starring Matt Damon. The movie is about a corrupt executive turned FBI informant. He’s also a compulsive liar; hilarity ensues. It’s a very funny talking heads movie; don’t expect any action here. I liked it, and you should give it a try if you’re into smart, funny, dialogue-based movies.

For our second round, we watched Adam. Adam is a drama/comedy about a young man with Asperger Syndrome and his struggles with life and romance. It has very sad moments and very happy moments. The story is very well told and the acting is superb.  Personally, I really loved this movie. I’d write more, but it’s a very story-driven film and I think it should be experienced.

It was a fun week in cinema for me, and I hope we keep getting good movies this year!