Oh Pixar. You just gotta keep tuggin’ at those heart strings, dontcha! First with Moana giving that weird giant volcano creature her heart back, and now with Coco. There’s literally nothing more sob-inducing than a little boy crying and singing to his crazy old great grandma who’s also crying and singing. That whimpering singing sound is for sure the saddest/hardest thing to listen to. Pixar’s playing dirty. IF YOU DON’T TEAR UP IN THAT LAST SCENE YOU NEED TO GO TO THERAPY, BECAUSE SOMETHING IS CLEARLY BEING SUPPRESSED AND THAT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN CARE OF.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I can watch this movie again. Well, ok, I’ll obviously watch it again, but I’m going to need at least a few months to get my strength back. This film had me on the verge of tears about 60% of the time. It’s the same feeling you have when you watch “Up”- where you’re super sad in the beginning but you JUST started the movie so you can’t justifiably get blubbery in the first 10 minutes. So you just sit there, sad and heartbroken but NOT crying. And even though the boy scout is cute and chubby and the dog is oddly relatable, you’re still just sitting there thinking about that super sad opening scene. This movie is basically the same, emotionally. You’re sad right out of the gates and then there’s some classic Pixar humor, and then it gets REAL sad at the end and then the movie ends. The middle bit is super cute and the music is quite lovely, but the overarching theme throughout this movie is SADNESS and DEATH.

Also, [Spoiler Alert] this movie took a super dark turn when you find out the celebrity of this movie, Ernesto De La Cruz, murders his best friend. MURDERS?! Pixar, what?! “Finding Nemo” was stressful enough when the fish get flushed down the toilet, but now you put in straight up MURDER?!? I am very nervous about your next film. Please reset and go back to the “Ratatouille” days of food and rat infestations.

The main lessons in Coco is that family comes first and that music is great. I am a big fan of both of these lessons. Family + Music is basically the best combination. So, start a band with your sisters and your life will be complete. Thanks, Coco!!

Popcorn Rating: 4 popped corns

Only watch this move with people you are comfortable ugly crying in front of.

Best

PFP

Wow this is one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies. Not only is Jude Law hunkalicious, but believe it or not, Jack Black isn’t completely repulsive! It’s incredible. Plus, Kate Winslet makes the best damsel in distress, or should I say, damsel in an unrequited love triangle, AND Cameron Diaz plays the perfect high maintenance LA workaholic. That’s right, this review is a rave and I have evidence to prove why it’s a must see this season.

PFP’s Evidence:

1) A house exchange between LA and England is literally everyone’s dream. I don’t care where you live right now, you know that LA to England is your dream. Plus it’s a cottage in England and a mansion in LA. Basically the two most perfect types of houses in the world. Mexican Pueblo exchanges with Bermuda Bungalow- who’s watching that movie?

2) Cameron Diaz’s job is to make movie trailers. Besides that also being everyone’s dream job, her TV and DVD collection alone are worth having total envy for.

3) Jude Law is Kate Winslet’s brother. Talk about some great genes/some prime casting. Never underestimate the power of attractive siblings.

4) Jack Black is a movie score writer. Or he at least composes for some cheesy love movies cuz that’s all they show you in the film. Whatever his job description is, it beats Mr School of a Rock Teacher by a long shot! He’s still weird and goofy in this movie (and his voice still resembles that of a Panda), but he is oddly charming to Kate and after the first three viewings of the movie, he starts to grow on you.

5) Jude Law in glasses is what I assume to be the female equivalent of the sexy librarian fantasy.

6) John Krasinski is also in this movie.

7) This movie has one of those false happy endings where it ends without a realistic future plan, so you have to pretend that you’re happy with the fact that both relationships are still quite illogical, but they’re together for the last scene so everything is somehow right with the world. The ending is oddly comforting and yet also leaves you with some questions. It’s like the ending of Inception but way less stressful.

Popcorn Rating: 4 popped corns and a two kernels for Jim Halpert

I LOVE this Christmas film! It’s a chick flick (doi, look at the cast). It’s predictable (doi, look at the cast). And you will need to have Kleenex handy (doi, look at the cast). This movie is textbook Christmas cheesiness, but it is also pure perfection.

Enjoy,

PFP

Nothing screams “Christmas Spirit” more than Bruce Willis killing Eastern European terrorists at a Christmas party where he’s trying to win back his wife! If you haven’t seen this classic, you haven’t really experienced Christmas properly.

Here’s a quick and super accurate summary of the movie: Bruce Willis is an NYPD cop and arrives at his wife’s Xmas party to try and patch up their pretty broken marriage. While at the party, some terrorists stop by and take everyone as hostages so they can steal the CEO’s bonds which are worth millions of dollars. Per usual, the cops and the FBI are pretty useless so Bruce Willis decides to be Clark Kent and starts to kill all the terrorists off one by one. There’s a pretty bloody scene where Bruce Willis has to walk barefoot over some glass, and then there’s a graphic scene where one of the vaguely Eastern European terrorists gets hung by chains. [Spoiler Alert] Bruce Willis wins and gets his wife back and then makes Die Hard 2.

Popcorn Rating: 4 popped corns

Grab your wife, grab your kids, grab your family and watch this movie. The amount of Christmas spirit in this film will shock you.

Truthfully Yours,

PFP

There are so many ways I could review this series. Actually, there are too many ways and I’m overwhelmed. So I’m picking my favorite option and I’ve decided to tell you which characters glowed up throughout these 8 movies and which ones, well, peaked in the Sorcerer’s Stone. I will use their character names instead of their real life names so that it doesn’t seem as personal. Enjoy.

Harry Potter Character List (in order of when I thought of them):

1) Harry Potter – Glowed down. Didn’t grow after Azkaban. His hair is out of control movies 4-7.

2) Ron Weasley – Glowed up. Definitely helping the ginger community get a better rep.

3) Hermoine Grainger – Glowed up. She was cast as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast”. She is goals.

4) Neville Longbottom – Glowed up. WOWOWOWOWOW. Google him now.

5) Draco Malfoy – Glowed down. Also didn’t grow after Azkaban. His facial hair makes me uncomfortable. His hairline also has the same unfortunate fate as Nicholas Cage’s.

6) Cedric Diggory – Glowed down. Don’t watch the Twilight series. I’m warning you. Robert Pattinson was way hotter as a wizard than a vampire.

7) Dudley Dursley – Yikes in all 8 movies.

8) Cho Chang – Glowed up. Started pretty and stayed pretty. YOU GO GLEN COCO.

9) Rubeus Hagrid – can’t tell behind the beard.

10) Ginney Weasley – Glowed up. Pulled off a full Kendall Jenner. Started the series as an awkward 8 year old and ended as quite the beaut.

11) Luna Lovegood – Glowed up. She is a prime example of how growing your hair out can totally change your face. for the better.

12) Dean Thomas – GLOWED UP. Don’t even know who this guy is or what his role was but HUBBA HUBBA.

Those are all the important characters. Nobody else matters.

Popcorn Rating: 5 popped corns

Aside from Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit series, the Harry Potters are my favorite! Allow yourself one week to not shower, stay in your pajamas, and watch all 8 movies. You will never regret it.

Yours Truly

PFP

This is an anime film. I have never seen an anime film before, but I love animations, so I figured I’d take a stab at this genre. MISTAKE. I was so confused the entire time, I didn’t understand any of their names, and everyone looks the same.

I literally pulled up the plot synopsis on wikipedia while I was watching because I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on. Now obviously the “demons” are bad, but there was a whole army of wild boars, a family of incredibly large wolves, and a town of humans that were trying to make some version of a gun, and they all seemed bad to me. However, the main character, Ashitaka (definitely had to look that spelling up), was trying to help all of them! What a sick joke! What main character tries to help everyone? What is this guy trying to do? Become a saint? I can’t.

Also, why the heck is this movie called “Princess Mononoke”? One of my biggest pet peeves is when the title of a movie doesn’t reflect the movie itself. For example “Second Hand Lions” had nothing to do with animals, “Hope Floats” was the least hopeful movie I’d ever seen, and “The Grapes of Wrath” had absolutely nothing to do with bad wine. And what do all these movies have in common? They are terrible. It’s like seeing a box of cookies titled “Chocolate Delight” but when you open it, it’s a box of whole wheat crackers that look like chocolate, but have absolutely no chocolate in it. THIS MOVIE WAS A BOX OF WHOLE WHEAT CRACKERS.

Princess Mononoke was apparently the same person as “San” – the girl version of Mowgli. But she is only called “Princess Mononoke” for 5 seconds and then is called “San” for the rest of the film! Even in the ending credits it says “voice of San”! There is absolutely no character in their ending credits called “Princess Mononoke”. What is this? Why even bother? Is she even a princess? I am questioning everything.

Popcorn Rating: 2 popped corns that were confused

If you like to watch animation where the words don’t correspond with the mouth movement, go ahead and rent this movie.

Best

PFP

Ok. So I’ve watched this movie twice and I am still very perplexed as to what the plot is and where I am. The first time I watched this movie I laughed at the end because I was so lost the whole time and it was hysterical.

However, this is what I’ve gathered thus far after my second viewing:

1) Dust should be everyone’s number one fear. Kicks quicksand’s butt for sure.

2) Girls are better at math than grown men.

3) Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway have zero chemistry

4) Matt Damon sucks as an evil person. Stick with zoos, casinos, and math, Matt – evil astronaut doesn’t work for you.

5) I don’t understand science, or NASA, or math, or robots

In case you haven’t seen this movie let me give you a brief summary so you know what you’re getting yourself into:

Matthew McConaughey is a “retired” astronaut (or something like that), has two kids and lives with his dad. They are living in some futuristic year where the whole world is basically a big dust bowl and everyone’s dying and coughing. Matthew’s old astronaut friend asks him to go check out some planets and see if they can move Earth to another planet. In the meantime, his friend said he’d work on an equation that could also save Earth in some other science kind of way. So, Matthew ditches the fam and heads to space with Anne Hathaway and another guy who used to be an extra on the show “Lost”. He almost gets killed by Matt Damon and then ends up getting left in space with a robot. However he discovers the “fifth dimension” and tries to talk to his daughter when she was a little girl to convince her to tell him to stay home instead of leave. That last sentence might not make sense, but neither does this movie.

Finally, Matthew wakes up in a hospital bed, looking fresh and not a day older from the day he left on his 50 year excursion, and ends up seeing his daughter, who is on her death bed and who also apparently solved the “insolvable” problem and saved Earth. However, her new “planet” that she created is like one small neighborhood so apparently Earth is just one village at this point. The music at the end of this movie tells you that you should be feel happy, but quite honestly, I think the dust won and this movie is just straight up depressing.

Watch this movie if you like feeling confused and/or if you believe everything at face value and don’t need things to make sense for them to be true.

Popcorn Rating: 2 popped corns

My brain hurts.

PFP

Fact#1: Having a butt chin is tough 

Fact #2: Aaron Eckhart has a butt chin 

Fact #3: To be attractive with a butt chin, you must look like Aaron Eckhart 

Moving on to the movie. “No Reservations” is my all time favorite movie to watch when I’m feeling OCD because Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character always has me beat. It’s like when you watch The Bachelor because you’re single and it makes you feel so much better knowing that 24 crazy women aren’t all going for your crush too. Ya feel? 

This movie is basically every OCD/Control freaks nightmare, but of course ends with love so we all get sucked into liking it a little. Catherine leads this very controlled, very straight forward life, she’s the head chef at a fancy restaurant and does everything exactly how she likes it. But then her sister dies in a car accident and leaves her young daughter, Abigail Breslin, to Catherine’s keeping. Because Catherine is absent from work dealing with little Abigail, the restaurant brings in a replacement chef and he is a Mr. no-rules, no-structure, opera-listening free man that basically rocks Catherine’s world. Oh, yes, that man is Aaron Eckhart, the butt chin master himself. He is charming and lovely AND can cook!! The trifecta, amirite ladies? 

Aaron allows Catherine to enjoy her life, stop and smell the roses if you will , and ultimately teaches her how to fall in love without controlling everything. It’s basically a plot that is so far from reality that you just have to sit back, relax, and enjoy the fact that someone got paid to pitch this idea to a movie studio! YOU GO GLEN COCO! 

Popcorn Rating: 3 popped corns and 2 kernels

In short – this film has food, an OCD female lead, Abigail Breslin while she was still innocent, and Aaron Eckhart’s butt chin. Need I say more. 

Truthfully Yours,

PFP 

I’m gonna be honest, I am very confused as to what I just watched. I originally thought this movie was a drama, but then I thought “oh wait, this is a comedy” but then it wasn’t actually that funny so now I’m back to thinking it’s a drama. However, from my knowledge of how drama movies usually go, the main character is supposed to go through major trials and/or tribulations. Yes, Ralph Fiennes (the main character in this movie) goes to jail for a bit, but he makes friends and escapes, so how bad was his trial/tribulation, really? Long story short, I still have no idea if this movie is a drama or a comedy, but quite frankly I was just confused from the beginning and all I remember is that the cakes in the movie looked DELICIOUS. 

I know that the point of this movie was to give you the history of this hotel- The Grand Budapest Hotel. There is a tradition that is apparently supposed to be upheld in these Grand hotels and there’s a way to work up the ladder and eventually become the manager of the hotel, which is goals, I guess. There’s a system, and one must abide by the system to be successful! So the movie starts by telling us about Ralph Fiennes and his incredible work ethic, and how he finally became the manager of the Grand Budapest Hotel. However, when Ralph Fiennes finally works his way up to owning the hotel, all hell breaks loose! 

His system was to keep old ladies “company” at his hotel and then when they’d inevitably die he would get a part of their inheritance since he was basically their “last love”. One lady in particular, passed away and left him a valuable painting, but her biological son refused to let Ralph have it and then the whole movie turns into a confusing, Nazi involved, goose chase! 
In short, I don’t think I learned anything from this film. I didn’t laugh that much and I also didn’t cry at all – so you can see my conundrum. IS IT A DRAMA OR IS IT A COMEDY? Help. 

I also watched this on an airplane so my bar for what is entertaining is low, which means that if this didn’t do anything for me on an airplane – it’s not gonna do anything for you at home. 

Popcorn Rating: 1 popped corn

Save yourself from an afternoon of confusion. Hard pass on this movie. 
Yours truly, 

PFP 

This movie single handedly made me a super weird kid. The two things I took away from this movie were:

1. Gargoyles will come alive if you’re lonely enough 

2. Every necklace you wear is a secret map of a city and if you look at it correctly, you can find gypsies and/or an underworld full of outcasts. 

So basically, when I was 10, I believed that if you wandered far enough away from people and made legit eye contact with a gargoyle/stone creature, it would eventually come to life and be your friend. I also started to overanalyze every piece of jewelry ever given to me in case I missed a cross or “x” or something to indicate a secret tomb full of oppressed people. I was THAT kid that tried to talk to rock figures and legit thought my jewelry was magical. Thanks, Disney! 

Other thoughts on this movie: the soundtrack is PHENOMENAL. No lie, this soundtrack is for sure the most underrated soundtrack in all of history. It’s beautiful and amazing and I’m positive if John Smith sang it, it would be number one on Spotify, but since a hunchback named Quasimodo is singing, it didn’t even get top 100. Don’t get mad at me, I’m simply the messenger. Listen to the soundtrack- it’s TO DIE.

Also, Frolo, who is the pious priest that “takes care” of Quasimodo is a super sleezy really creepy man and I didn’t realize how creepy he was until I heard his song “Hellfire” in my early 20s. WOW WHAT WAS DISNEY THINKING. It’s all about how he lusts after Esmeralda and it’s crazy uncomfortable and I can’t believe this movie is for 8 year olds!!

Finally, Esmeralda is so pretty, I don’t understand. Headbands literally never look good on anyone, and she pulls it off like a champ. It makes me angry that her hair is perfect and her eyes are green. I know she’s an animated character but it still makes me upset. Esmeralda, we can’t be friends.

Popcorn Rating: 3 popped corns and 1 kernel 

All the popped corns are for the soundtrack and Esmerelda’s perfect face. Overall, this is a classic Disney film, just don’t show your kids until their older and past the stage of wanting inanimate objects to be their friends. 

Best

PFP 

Remember in third grade when your teacher would ask you, “if you were stranded on an island and could only bring three things, what would you bring?” And of course, being in third grade, you would say, “my blanky, a book, and my pillow”. As if all you had to do was wait two hours for someone to pick you up. If only every third grader had seen Cast Away! This movie made me realize that to survive on an island I need a FedEx airplane full of packages, a volleyball, and a picture of Helen Hunt. 

There will be a lot of spoiler alerts with this review, so beware! If you haven’t seen this movie and also haven’t talked to anyone who’s seen this movie, and you still want to keep the ending a surprise, then go ahead and watch the movie now and finish this fab review later! Otherwise – here goes. 

Let me start by saying I love this movie. Then I would like to add that the more times I watch this movie, the less I love it. The first time I saw Cast Away I literally weeped at the end and felt sick to my stomach for about 85% of the film. The second time I watched it, I was sick only 40% and shed a tear at the end. The 3rd-5th times I just got impatient and at the end just wanted to slap Helen Hunt. Now who knows what I’d feel – it’s been quite a journey. Basically, after 5 views of this movie, here are my current concerns: 

1) What happened to Tom Hanks tooth? He passes out and then what? Is it out? Healed? Passing out does not mean the tooth ache has been resolved, Hollywood!! I need answers.

2) I cannot believe how strong Tom’s big toe is? That cannot be real. Everyone knows that scene where he’s making his “rope” from leaves (need more details on that too please) and it’s all tied around his big toe and he’s pulling like crazy to make a tight braid and all the force of his pulling is going against his big toe?! What?! No toe can double as an anchor. I don’t understand.

3) 5 Years??!! 5 years of eating fish and coconuts? If I remember correctly, there was a food pyramid my PE teacher was telling me I needed to abide by otherwise I’d die. Pretty sure fish and coconuts were not the entire pyramid. SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW TOM IS ALIVE. 

4) Helen sucks.

5) Is it just me or is there anyone else that feels super bad for all those people who didn’t get their Christmas gifts that year? I feel so awful every time I watch that plane crash. Yes, I feel bad for Tom Hanks, but there’s also some girl out there that was supposed to get ice skates and instead it was used as a knife for 5 years on an island. Poor little ice skate-less girl. 

Popcorn Rating: 4 popped corns 

This movie is a classic. Tom Hanks obviously does an amazing job, and so does his supportive actor, Wilson the volleyball. Overall it is a must see, but I am warning you, the more times you watch it, the more frustrated you’ll be. 

Truthfully Yours,

PFP